THAT'S MENGay marriages are far from typical - in fact, research shows that they are often better, writes Padraig O'Morain
WHY RUIN a beautiful friendship by getting married? That's the sort of question heterosexuals sometimes snidely ask when they hear talk of gay marriages or civil unions.
The idea seems to be that if a gay couple enters into a marital-type relationship, then they're going to end up with all the problems that afflict straight married couples.
There may even be a certain amount of malicious satisfaction in these remarks. Go right ahead, get married and see how you like it - life isn't all about having fun, you know!
Well, we heterosexuals can wipe the grins off our faces. Committed gay relationships, it would seem from research in Vermont in the US, are happier than straight marriages. A lot of this, it seems, is about equality and sharing.
Typically, in a straight marriage, the wife does most of the housework, whether or not she also has a full-time job. She is not happy about this, and who could expect her to be? The result is justified anger and resentment on her part.
Also, in straight relationships it often works out that the man is the main income earner as the woman may give up full-time employment after having children.
In a gay relationship, both are probably earning at around the same level of income.
So there is far less excuse for one to arrive home from the office and collapse in front of the television, while the other gets the dinner and tidies up.
In a gay relationship, therefore, the housework is more likely to be fairly shared and, hence, less conflict. Greater equality means less resentment.
But conflict there will be, of course. Long-term relationships between human beings involve fights, sulking and growling as well as the good stuff, and that holds true whether they are straight or gay. But though gay couples fight too, they seem to handle conflicts in a healthier way than heterosexual couples.
For instance, gay couples fight more fairly. They are less likely to be belligerent or domineering in a row. They make fewer verbal attacks and they work harder to defuse the conflict.
If the conflict gets really bad, gay couples are more likely to use affection or good humour to try to bring it to an end.
Conflicts worsen as people get more and more worked up. We all end up saying things in the middle of a row that we would never have said at the beginning.
Moreover, many of us stay angry for a long time after the row is officially over.
To find out if gay couples were similar to straight couples in this regard, researchers monitored heartbeats and adrenaline levels when both types of couple were fighting. This is easier to do than it sounds.
It's not a difficult thing to get couples to have a fight for experimental purposes, so long as they have something to fight over - and they usually have something to fight over.
The researchers found that the heartbeat speeded up more in straight couples than in gay couples during a row. They also found a greater surge of adrenalin in straight couples.
So heterosexual couples get more worked up than gay couples in a fight. And heterosexual couples are more likely to stay agitated afterwards, they found.
I suspect that there is further reason for the higher happiness levels found in committed gay couples. Research into happiness and children shows, contrary to all right-thinking expectations, that the happiness level of a heterosexual married couple falls when the first child is born.
Parents do, you will be glad to hear, get back to their earlier levels of happiness - after the last of the little darlings leaves home (and if you can't persuade them to leave home, happiness might never be restored to former levels, but that's another story).
This is not the sort of thing we expect in the current era of the adoration of the child. Nevertheless, gay couples are far less likely to be parents and therefore far more likely to be able to preserve their happiness levels.
Well, that's enough sacred cows upset for one week.
Any gay person seeking ammunition can find out more about the research at psychcentral.com/blog.
• pomorain@irish-times.ie Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor. That's Men, the best of the That's Men columns from The Irish Times is published by Veritas