Navigating Relationship Challenges for LGBTQA+ Couples: Communication Tips for a Stronger Bond
- Lisa Shouldice
- Jun 20
- 6 min read
As a Psychotherapist of over 20 years working with Queer Couples and helping couple navigate relationship challenges, as well as identifying as lesbian myself, I have found we deal with specific issues that are unique to us. Unique to our daily lived experience of being a part of the LGBTQAI2S community(ies).
How do we learn to navigate these issues in a heteronormative world with little or no guidance?
How do we get the right help when needed?
Let’s start with the topics unique to us.
Navigating Relationship Challenges: What Makes Queer/LGBTQAI2S relationships different?
Polyamorous/Open relationships are more likely.
It is possible you have a unique structure to your relationship. You are more likely than the more heteronormative world to be in sexually open relationships and talking about how to meet each others needs with more flexibility, not assuming monogamy is an ideal. I see queer polyamorous couples, throuples, polycules and extended chosen family more often as well.
These relationships require a lot of ongoing communication and developed emotional intelligence to ensure resilient mental health for all involved parties.
Navigating Relationship Challenges: Relationship dynamics are different.
This was a really important one for me when I was beginning to work with couples in the LGBTQAI2S communities. I wanted to meet our needs in the best way.
I have observed that lesbian couples are often more likely to report emotionally very close relationships with caretaking and nurturing pieces. In my heteronormative education and training to be a couple/family therapist this would be considered “enmeshed” and labeled as an issue to address.
However, these dynamics can work really well when women connect, there is no need for this pathology.
Gay couples often feel they avoid intimacy and want to push through this to connect deeply and build more a permanent relationship. This may possibly be how they are socialized, but not necessarily a pathology or even an issue, depending on relationship goals.
We connect differently and that is OK. We are unique and we have to feel into what works for us.
Navigating Relationship Challenges: There are often trauma(s) in simply being Queer people.
We all know it can be challenging to be Queer in so many ways. And those challenges are different for each of us depending on our personal life experience.
We can introject the “jokes” and messaging we all hear, all the time in mainstream society as well as in our families. This functions to teach us how to be in the world and relationships, some of which we have to reject to be ourselves as Queer people.
This can leave us with relational trauma(s) and even internalized homophobia.
We all have a coming out story as well, whether we see this as easy and positive, negative and awful or a complex mix of both.
Many of us who expect to have a positive reaction from family that we see as open-minded, but can then be shocked and hurt when the story ends up different when closer to home. We navigate many different reactions, figuring out how to be once we take the brave and necessary step to live our truth, be ourselves.
We are all out in different ways as well. You may decide not to be out at work if you are in a more traditionally minded field and fear judgment &/or impact on career advancement. You may decide not to tell family as you know it will not be ok and living hidden is seemingly your only option.
This is obviously not something heterosexual couples have to navigate, and you and your partner may be in very different places in this area.
We navigate heteronormativity all the time, right? Book a vacation and arrive to find a resort booked separate beds for two people of the same sex on their booking reservation.
Comments by even good, well-meaning people about gender roles and related assumptions ex: who’s the handy one?
Another regular, lived daily experience the heterosexual people in your life may try to understand, but simply don’t experience.
Navigating Relationship Challenges: Gender norms.
The gender presentations and various expressions are still more varied in our amazing, diverse community.
Many of us go through a gender journey trying to find the right fit for us, different than general, societal expectations. This also means navigating family reactions, transitioning at work and many other related changes.
If you decide to change your body as a part of your gender journey it will change your sex life, how you show up and even how you experience feelings (hormones, brain restructuring).
And then we also have to express and communicate these new feelings!
Navigating Relationship Challenges: Family planning/fertility pieces.
Is having children &/or parenting a part of the dream, a personal goal you share as a couple, in your relationship?
This is never straight forward for us. We have to determine what is possible and important. We also have to decide who carries a child, how we might work together with our larger community/family to best meet these goals.
This will include complex feelings and a high need for healthy and effective communication. Celebratory pieces as well as grief. Again, unique to us.
Navigating Relationship Challenges: Communication Tips for a stronger bond.
How do we support each other in this complex terrain that is being us, in a good way?
1. Know what your partner carries and how they feel, bring curiosity to these important conversations.
2. Know how you feel. Reflect on the above section(s). What do you carry as a Queer person? Do you have other intersectionalities as well? Sit with your feelings so you can communicate effectively and from a heart place.
3. Make plans to navigate each of the identified areas, over time, as it feels right. Ex. What do we tell our families about us? How do we tell them? Will this change over time? What is needed by each of us to be ok in these complex situations?
4. Bring empathy and emotional support to Unsolveable problems. The Gottmans, famous couple therapists, refer to couples Solvable and Unsolveable problems.
Some we can work through and they get better.
Some conflicts seem to recur over and over and are more core to our personal psychology and experiences. This is where we heal and take care of each other. Ex. Conflict avoidance in our families.
5. Have conversations about the Metacommunication in your relationships. This refers to communicating about how you communicate.
Is it healthy or do you fall into traps and things don’t get resolved?
What natural ways do each of you fall into? Ex. Blaming partner, conflict avoidant partner.
Do you want to change and shift these in a different direction? Bring acceptance?
Ensure you talk about this when calm and stop if it gets heated or upsetting.
Last tips: Be a team and solve these issues together. Bring empathy. Try not to blame. Listen with your whole self. Bring curiosity. Check-in often as things evolve and shift.
Navigating Relationship Challenges: When we can’t seem to make it work.
Do you get stuck in conflictual patterns and can’t seem to solve anything?
Do you shut down and can’t make yourself talk about these things, frustrating your partner?
There are a few common couple patterns that present to couple counselling.
Pursue-pursue. We go at each other, yelling and shouting over each other. Or we talk for hours about things and never seem to move forward, or find actionable items.
Pursue-withdrawal. I try to start conversations, share my feelings often with angry intensity. I am met with shutdown and withdrawal, they simply won’t address things. They go inward and don’t share their feelings.
Withdrawal-withdrawal. We never talk about anything. We live everyday life, try to get along but it is too scary to talk about hard things. What if it ends us? But we do not feel close anymore anyway.
This can be shaped by both our central nervous system and how we learned to deal with feelings in our childhoods and throughout our young life. Trauma and other mental health struggles also impact how we feel and communicate (or don’t).
Navigating Relationship Challenges: Is it time to get help?
Help! We can’t do this. We just get lost in intense feelings and conflict.
How to find a therapist in our community. I wrote a blog on finding a therapist in our community.
Getting an individual therapist.
Getting a Couple Therapist.
Lisa S.
