This study explores the private and public experiences of Black/White interracial lesbian and gay couples. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory and intersectional feminism, this research focuses on how the intersections of gender, race, and sexuality influence relationship experiences and family processes in both private and public spaces for interracial same-sex couples. This study is based on 19 in-depth interviews with individuals in Black/White lesbian and gay relationships. Participants’ stories highlight intersectionality in terms of the ways interracial lesbian and gay couples navigate these interpersonal and public spaces. Participant experiences suggest that the dichotomy of private/public is often blurred, and these two spaces frequently overlap and intersect. Often what participants experience in public is then discussed and interpreted within private spaces. It is in the private space that participants work through complex issues in order to present themselves as a couple in public. Participants frequently used their public and interpersonal experiences with their partners to be reflexive of their own understandings of the social world, relationship processes, and love. Given the lack of research on same-sex, interracial families, this study makes an important contribution to sociological research on families, LGTBQ studies, and race studies.

L'émergence de couples interculturels suscite certaines interrogations de la part des membres et des responsables des Églises locales. En effet, la thématique de l'interculturalité exige une certaine sensibilité aux enjeux de la diversité culturelle, mais elle n'est pas toujours le domaine d'expertise ni de prédilection des prédicateurs et enseignants à l'Église. De surcroît, les pasteurs n'ont pas toujours toutes les compétences nécessaires pour accompagner les couples interculturels dans leurs besoins. Dès lors, les membres de l'Église n'ont pas de repère pour les guider quant à la façon de s'y prendre face à l'accueil et d'entrer en relation avec les couples interculturels. Ce mémoire tente d'attirer l'attention des pasteurs et des leaders des Églises locales sur les besoins et les attentes des couples interculturels comme une nécessité indispensable sur laquelle il importerait d'éveiller la conscience des membres de l'Église. Nous comptons y parvenir à travers la proposition d'une pastorale de mariage et d'accompagnement des couples interculturels en nous inspirant des données recueillies auprès d'une vingtaine de couples interculturels à l'Église Nouvelle Vie. / The emergence of intercultural couples raises certain questions from members and leaders of local churches. Indeed, the theme of interculturality requires a certain sensitivity to the issues of cultural diversity, but it is not always the area of expertise or of predilection for preachers and teachers in the Church. In addition, pastors do not always have all the necessary skills to support intercultural couples in their needs. Consequently, the members of the Church have no reference point to guide them as to how to deal with welcoming and entering into a relationship with intercultural couples. This dissertation attempts to draw the attention of pastors and leaders of local churches to the needs and expectations of intercultural couples as an essential necessity on which it would be important to awaken the conscience of the members of the Church. We intend to achieve this through the proposal of a marriage ministry and support for intercultural couples, drawing inspiration from the data collected from about twenty intercultural couples at l'Église Nouvelle Vie.

There is increasing acknowledgement that problematic interpersonal relationships and negative emotions are key factors in the development and maintenance of various forms of psychopathology. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples centers on changing attachment behaviours as a means to improve distressed relationships by helping partners access underlying emotions and foster positive interactions that promote accessibility and trust. EFT is a highly effective therapeutic approach that encourages the development of adaptive emotion regulation observed in secure attachment. The development and emergence of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques, in particular functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), provides a unique opportunity to investigate neural adaptations underlying successful psychotherapeutic change. Eighteen distressed couples received an average of 23 sessions of EFT, and the resulting functional and structural differences in the neural processing of threat were investigated before and after therapy using MRI methods. Female participants engaged in a stressful task in which they were confronted with the threat of electric shock, while they held their partner’s hand, a stranger’s hand, or were alone in the scanner. Results offered preliminary evidence that EFT can significantly impact emotional dysregulation, promote attenuation of neural threat by their partner, and result in structural change in a key region of emotion circuitry. Moreover, physiological data demonstrated that following EFT for couples, female partners were effectively soothed by their male partners, as demonstrated by decreased cortisol levels.

Thesis advisor: Bernard O'Brien / This study investigated factors which influenced stable, primary love relationships among twelve lesbian couples who had been together at least fifteen years and had not reared children together. Each participant was interviewed separately in a retrospective, semi-structured interview that assessed the impact of selected factors over the course of the relationship. Each factor was examined to determine its influence in the beginning phase of the relationship (the first 5 years), in the middle phase (5-10 years into the relationship), and most recently (beyond 10 years into the relationship). Interpersonal dynamics as well as the influences of culture, religion, values, finances, and social supports were explored to determine their impact on relationship stability. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 1994. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental Psychology, and Research Methods.

Literature on identities in marriage has suggested that there is a tension between the interpretation of marriage as a unity between two partners, and the importance of each partner within the marriage maintaining his/her individuality. By drawing on data from seven semistructured qualitative interviews with married couples or couples involved in marriage-like relationships I examine some ways in which these boundaries between individual and collective identities and associated epistemic rights are drawn or become treated as blurred. Specifically, I use a conversation analytic approach to examine two sets of practices that reveal how this tension is made observable and is negotiated: 1) the use of personal and collective pronouns and 2) shifts in gaze direction. In contrast to previous research on this topic, I focus on the exploration of these phenomena in their moment-by-moment construction in talk-in-interaction. Based on my findings, I conclude that these practices serve to demonstrate the oriented-to ways in which marriage involves compromising one’s own individual identity or epistemic rights while becoming a part of a unit and show how and where this is done in interaction.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the characteristics of long-term lesbian relationships (operationally defined as five or more years) and to compare these characteristics with prior findings on short-term or term non-specific lesbian relationships. Several studies that have been done made assumptions about the nature of lesbian relationships based on data gathered from women in brief relationships (Caldwell and Peplau 1984; Elise 1986; Gordon 1980; Krestan and Bepko 1980). This study was designed to examine whether or not lesbians in long-term relationships might have different interpersonal relational dynamics, just as married heterosexual couples have been shown to have relationships differing from heterosexual cohabitating couples. A questionnaire was developed by taking questions directly from prior studies on lesbian relationships in order to allow for direct comparisons. The specific areas investigated were power and equality, merger, feminist impact, structural supports and sexuality. The study used a non-random sample. The fifty-three couples who participated were gathered from announcements made at local and national lesbian events. The data were analyzed through tabular and correlational procedures. Many of the findings in this study were similar to those of earlier research. The respondents were just as likely as those in prior studies to be feminists, to value both autonomy and relatedness, to be sexually satisfied, and to have similar attitudes about women's issues. Feminism, and its focus on independence and non-monogamy, does not seem to have affected these women's abilities to maintain a long-term relationship. But the differences are also important to note. Prior studies had indicated that having equality with their partner was essential for lesbians within their relationships, and couples in this study were much more likely than those in prior studies to say that they had an equal balance of power. They were also more committed. They were more willing to move for their partner, buy a home or car with their partner, and much more likely to believe that they would still be together five years later. They were more likely to have made large joint financial commitments together and to have pooled finances. This information is important for lesbians who value long-term commitments, for therapists who may be assisting lesbian clientele with their relational dynamics, and for researchers examining lesbian relationships.

According to the interpersonal process model, interactions characterized by self-disclosure and empathic responding foster emotional intimacy between the two participating individuals (Reis & Shaver, 1988). This study provided “insider” and “outsider” perspectives of this model, examining the relation between perceived and observed behaviors in couple interactions and their relative contributions to the development of intimate feelings. The sample consisted of 102 community couples who completed measures of intimacy after engaging in videotaped discussions about relationship injuries that occurred both within and outside of the relationship. Both self-report and observational measures were used to assess disclosure and empathic responding during these discussions. There was significant agreement between self- and observer-report of men’s behavior, between self- and observer-report of women’s male partner’s behavior, and between partners’ report of disclosure and empathic responding. There was mixed support for global distress and attachment style as predictors of differences between self- and observer-report. Whereas an earlier study using observational measures found gender differences in the effect of self-disclosure and empathic responding on intimacy (Mitchell et al., 2008), in this study self-report measures from the same sample indicated that perception of both an individual’s own and his or her partner’s disclosure and empathic responding predicted intimacy for both men and women. Observational measures provided incremental validity relative to self-report measures in predicting intimacy. These findings suggest that targeting certain personal and relational characteristics may be helpful in treating intimacy deficits and also indicate that self-report and observational measures provide unique information about the influence of behaviors on the development of intimate feelings in couple relationships.

There is increasing acknowledgement that problematic interpersonal relationships and negative emotions are key factors in the development and maintenance of various forms of psychopathology. Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples centers on changing attachment behaviours as a means to improve distressed relationships by helping partners access underlying emotions and foster positive interactions that promote accessibility and trust. EFT is a highly effective therapeutic approach that encourages the development of adaptive emotion regulation observed in secure attachment. The development and emergence of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques, in particular functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), provides a unique opportunity to investigate neural adaptations underlying successful psychotherapeutic change. Eighteen distressed couples received an average of 23 sessions of EFT, and the resulting functional and structural differences in the neural processing of threat were investigated before and after therapy using MRI methods. Female participants engaged in a stressful task in which they were confronted with the threat of electric shock, while they held their partner’s hand, a stranger’s hand, or were alone in the scanner. Results offered preliminary evidence that EFT can significantly impact emotional dysregulation, promote attenuation of neural threat by their partner, and result in structural change in a key region of emotion circuitry. Moreover, physiological data demonstrated that following EFT for couples, female partners were effectively soothed by their male partners, as demonstrated by decreased cortisol levels.

According to the interpersonal process model, interactions characterized by self-disclosure and empathic responding foster emotional intimacy between the two participating individuals (Reis & Shaver, 1988). This study provided “insider” and “outsider” perspectives of this model, examining the relation between perceived and observed behaviors in couple interactions and their relative contributions to the development of intimate feelings. The sample consisted of 102 community couples who completed measures of intimacy after engaging in videotaped discussions about relationship injuries that occurred both within and outside of the relationship. Both self-report and observational measures were used to assess disclosure and empathic responding during these discussions. There was significant agreement between self- and observer-report of men’s behavior, between self- and observer-report of women’s male partner’s behavior, and between partners’ report of disclosure and empathic responding. There was mixed support for global distress and attachment style as predictors of differences between self- and observer-report. Whereas an earlier study using observational measures found gender differences in the effect of self-disclosure and empathic responding on intimacy (Mitchell et al., 2008), in this study self-report measures from the same sample indicated that perception of both an individual’s own and his or her partner’s disclosure and empathic responding predicted intimacy for both men and women. Observational measures provided incremental validity relative to self-report measures in predicting intimacy. These findings suggest that targeting certain personal and relational characteristics may be helpful in treating intimacy deficits and also indicate that self-report and observational measures provide unique information about the influence of behaviors on the development of intimate feelings in couple relationships.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-171). Also available on the Internet.