For gay men, a subculture of community often dictates how they should live—how they appear, where they live, where they travel, who their friends are. If they grew up with trauma, many have learned to distance themselves from their family dynamics. But to create a new life as a couple, gay men need to come to terms with their pasts and decide how to be together.

Our families, and in particular our parents, taught us what we know about relationships and intimacy. If parents were distant, we come to expect distance; if families are accepting and respectful, that can give male couples an advantage in forming their own partnership.

Families of origin impact both ourselves as men and also who we are as part of a couple. We learned how love, pain, communication, disappointments, and joy are experienced and communicated and coped with inside the family system. Somewhere early on in working with all new clients—not just couples—I ask people to describe what home like was like when they were younger, and inevitably this opens up a Pandora’s box of events and memories. How can it not?

On the other hand, living in a healthy home environment imparts innate tools and a sense of how to connect and love others,........

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