ABSTRACT
Gay male couples are highly diverse. Various social and historical conditions combine with constructs of eroticism, gender, and intimate relationships to create the rich constellations of gay male couples. These include, but are not restricted to, variations of ethnicity, race, class, models of coupling (such as exclusivity versus nonexclusivity; see LaSala, 2001, 2002, 2004a,b), heterosexually married gay men with extramarital gay relationships, and noncohabiting partnerships (Kurdek, 1998, 2006), longitudinal stage of development, age discrepancies, and a cohort of gay identity and coupling formation (Kurdek, 2004). Thus, gay male couples must be conceptualized as subcategories within a broader frame of social relations and are not identical to heterosexual couples in structure or form.
