Gays and Lesbians understand their partners' bodies and biases with a certainty that many a clueless "breeder" yearns for
Queer IQ: The Gay Couple's Advantage
"There will always be a battle betweenthe sexes because men and women
want different things," quipped comedian
George Burns. "Men want women and women
want men." But when men want men and
women want women, each couple can circumvent
treacherous romantic terrain because partners
more closely share sexual appetites and
mind-reading abilities than do heterosexual pairs.
Most lesbians don't fear rapacious women and gay men need not always
soft-peddle their sexual predilections. On balance, gays and lesbians
understand their partners' bodies and biases with a certainty that many
a clueless "breeder" yearns for. "Homosexuality could be viewed in
some respects as the triumph of the individual's matingintelligence
over the gonads' evolutionary interests," argues Geoffrey Miller.
The result is that gay relationships are less mired in deception and
perhaps even less prone to friction, according to multiple studies.
"If two guys in a relationship are on the same wavelength, it's going
to be very hard for them to deceive one another about their motives,
their lusts, their philandering. Whereas between the sexes, each sex
presents a socially acceptable form of masculinity or femininity that
is reassuring to the other person but not particularly accurate," says
Miller.Romantic lies are, after all, a sort of Rosetta stone on which
genderdifferences are coyly inscribed. Straight men lie about their
commitment to the relationship and about their resources, finds
psychologist Maureen O'Sullivan. They are also more likely to lie
to keep their partner from getting angry at them, a small but telling
testament to the wrath of women. Women, in contrast, lie to flatter
a man's sense of self and to downplay their interest in other men.
Gay and lesbian couples are not only more honest with one another,
they are also more likely to exhibit affection and humor in negotiating
relationship stressors, according to John Gottman, emeritus professor
of psychology at the University of Washington. Gottman compared conflict
discussions in gay and straight couples and found that "gays and lesbians
talked explicitly about sex and monogamy. Those topics don't come up in
31 years of studying heterosexual couples, who are uptight in discussing sex.
In their conversations, you really don't know what they're talking about.
"Whether a same-sex edge to mating intelligence makes for longer unions
is unclear. Among the couples Gottman studied, the projected break-up rate
for homosexuals, over a four-decade span, is a grim 64 percent (gay men are
far more likely to split than are lesbians). The 40-year divorcerate for straight
couples in first marriages is 67 percent. To amend George Burns: If you wait
long enough, every couple wants different things
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