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If you are a gay or lesbian couple in a relationship, you are having relationship problems, and you wish to work with a counsellor who identifies himself as similarly sexually orientated, then contact me, Dean Richardson, today to arranging a no-obligation initial session to see if gay couples counselling could be suitable for both of you. My contact details are here, or you can click here to send me a secure email .

Why a Gay Couples Counselling Service?

When I began setting up my private practice in Portsmouth/Southsea (and later expanding to include Chichester, West Sussex), I was aware that the last thing the areas I practised within really needed … was just another generic counsellor offering just another generic counselling service.

Notwithstanding that my qualifications and experience in individuals- and couples work allow me to work generically with all sorts of people and presenting problems, as a gay man, and beyond my general counselling service for gay and non-gay individuals, I have chosen to offer a counselling service specialising in working with gay couples whose relationship is in difficulty and who wish to work with a gay counsellor who is trained, qualified and experienced in helping couples resolve their relationship problems.

Why consider Couples Counselling?

Do any of these phrases sound familiar to you?

Gay Couple Relationships.

It is true that gay couple relationships have as many problems and issues to negotiate as any other couple relationship, regardless of sexual orientation.  So a systemic & psychodynamic approach to the couple therapy is useful no matter what the sexual orientation of the couple.  However, gay couples have a number of issues that other couples tend not to have:-

• Their relationship roles are not defined purely by their gender or their gender-stereotyping.
• Their relationship may require extra negotiation skills – requiring more openness in their communication skills.
• Family may not be able to help with gay relationship problems.
• Gay couples cannot marry – and some gay couples do not find the Civil Partnership to be a satisfactory equivalent.  Without formal commitment, gay couples can experience an extra burden when struggling to commit to one another.
• There can still be prejudice toward gay people – and gay couples – and living together as a couple may attract unpleasant attention.
• A gay couple may find entering therapy with a heterosexual therapist to feel problematic (whether real or not) & may prefer to work with someone of their own community.

Therapeutic interventions for LGBT relationships.

As part of my qualifications, I practice couples counselling using a combination of systemic and psychodynamic methodologies (plus some useful techniques borrowed from other therapies such as CBT and Gestalt counselling).  This allows me threefold:-

1. To therapeutically facilitate a couple in discovering behaviours and possible root causes of their chosen focus for therapy,
2. To assist the couple in hypothesising for themselves what could be done to creatively perturb the problems sufficiently to create a change,
3. To help the couple find lasting changes to the originally presenting relationship problems.

Working with one gay relationship – not two gay partners?

Therapeutically, when I work with a couple I work mostly with the one relationship as my client.  Thus, my contract is, in a way, with the couple’s relationship itself and less with each individual within that relationship.  I meet with the couple together (weekly) but when there is a difficulty in the couple meeting together we can discuss an alternative approach suitable and agreeable to everyone (for example meeting with the available partner and bringing the other partner up to date when they return).  Meeting with one partner, though, is not individual counselling and the therapy is still in the context of the relationship, not the individual’s personal problems in isolation.

Sometimes a couple come to therapy identifying that one partner “has the problem.”  Nevertheless, I will work with the both of you at the problem within your relationship – if you both agree – rather than to see the one partner in isolation in an attempt to “cure” them to the satisfaction of the other partner.

Problems in the relationship are within the relationship and needs the relationship available to therapeutically work the problems through to a resolution.

Domestic Violence.

If domestic violence is revealed in the assessment – or in the counselling work – then we will talk about stopping the violence immediately.

We will discuss the “Safety Plan”.  In summary: during a situation between the couple that may be leading to violence, one partner will take responsibility for leaving the room/leaving the situation.  The other partner will take responsibility for not following the leaving partner (the partners don’t need to decide beforehand which role they are going to take).  The partners will stay separated until such a time when both partners feel that it is safe to come back together.  Then can then have a conversation about what lead up to the safety plan being executed.  They will also discuss with the counsellor what happened when they next meet with the counsellor.  Whilst this sounds like a simple plan – and in essence it is simple – it can be very difficult for a couple to execute the plan.  In counselling we will discuss the plan in detail and discuss things every time the plan is put into action.

Relationship counselling can helpful but it can initially make things worse because we are perturbing with a relationship system in order to help re-build it more safely and successfully.  Disturbing a disturbed relationship can be very difficult for both partners.  Both of you must convince me that it is safe for you both to work with me in counselling – and discussing the safety plan is the main way we will achieve this.

The counsellor’s sexuality – does it matter?

Many therapists will agree that the counsellor does not have to have very much (if anything) in common with  a client in order to work successfully in therapy.  Although some clients may ask “have you been through this yourself” or “have you worked with other people with this problem” they are seeking assurances that their problem can be worked through – that is the important part.  For the most part I would agree that the counsellor does not have to identify with the client for helpful therapy to take place.  However, LGBT-identifying clients have also told me that when they have attempted to work with a non-LGBT counsellor they have found themselves reserved .. and sometimes unable to speak about matters that are strongly related to a LGBT lifestyle. I find that this concerns me for the clients.

Indeed, this particular issue may, or may not, be about the therapist themselves … but the fact is that the gay client needs to feel as though they can talk with the therapist.  Gay couples working with a gay couples therapist is part of the unique selling point of my practice.

Could your choice of counsellor, for example, appreciate the struggles and practicalities of an open-relationship?  Or discuss openly gay or lesbian sexual practices?  S&M?  Threesomes?  Keeping your relationship secret because one or both of you are not “Out”.  Or just the struggles of a plain vanilla relationship between a couple who happen to be homosexual?

See also “LGBT Counselling – Does the Counsellor’s Sexuality Matter?”

Arriving together and leaving … together … or separately?

Sometimes couples come to therapy in order to learn how to stay together.  Sometimes they come to learn how to separate.  This is no different with gay and lesbian couples.  If part of the initial therapy is to help you two decide what you wish to do (stay together or separate) then this is perfectly fine with me.

Should the two of you decide that you wish to stay together then I will help you work on how this can be achieved.

Similarly, if the two of you decide that you wish to separate then I can help you work towards separation.

Perhaps the two of you disagree on if you shuld stay together or separate.  I can help you work towards making this decision too.

How to begin gay couples counselling?

Initially we would meet together for an assessment.

The assessment allows us time to discuss the relationship problems, discuss finding a focus for our couples work, and then setting a contract to work together.

Together – or individually.

If, during the assessment, it was felt by all parties that couples therapy could not proceed at this time … perhaps because one or both of the individuals wanted to seek individual therapy, or domestic violence could not be worked with sufficiently to proceed with counselling  … then I would suggest making a referral to one of my other experienced colleagues.  Ethically, it would not be appropriate for me to work with the one individual in the relationship, only to later invite the other partner to return later to begin couples therapy.

If individual therapy was appropriate before couples therapy began, then after one or both of you had completed individual therapy, we can arrange for you both to return to couples therapy with me later.  This is a perfectly legitimate situation, if not unusual, because working through individual problems within the couple-relationship is also a perfectly legitimate therapy too.

It is also perfectly OK for a couple to be in couples therapy at the same time as one or both are in individual therapy.  This is because I will be working with your relationship, not you as individuals.  Individual therapy works with you as an individual.

Appointments.

I offer a weekly counselling appointments (rather than several times a week, or ad-hoc ‘drop-in’ sessions) – and both partners are required to attend each session.  On the occasion where it’s not possible for one partner to attend, the other partner may attend on the understanding that (a) the session will continue to be about the relationship (not the individual, or the other partner) and (b) that the attending-partner and I will inform the other partner about what we discussed.

Related Reading:

Activism and Lgbt Psychology (Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy)

The Gay Sex: A Manual for Men Who Love Men

Desire and the Female Therapist: Engendered Gazes in Psychotherapy and Art Therapy

Developing Psychodynamic Counselling (Developing Counselling series)Explores the opportunities for counsellors to develop their own practice of psychodynamic counselling. This title encourages readers to look carefully... Read More >

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of Lgbt People in the United States

A Typology of Domestic Violence: Intimate Terrorism, Violent Resistance, and Situational Couple Violence (Northeastern Series on Gender, Crime, and Law)