ABSTRACT
This Focused Genogram provides a way to examine issues of gender, sexuality, and romantic love with clients. For both men and women, gender probably influences rearing, opportunities, and life structure more than any other factor. From the first question asked at birth-is it a boy or a girl?-life experience is gender linked. This is true not only in love and sexuality, but in male and female psychology, and in the countless differences in role, opportunity, and power offered to men and to women. From this sense of gender difference flow different kinds of love for the essential people in our lives, and our construction of sexuality and its meanings. The Gender, Sexuality, and Romantic Love Genograms give clients a mechanism for understanding intergenerational influences on their sexuality, loving, and everyday experiences of being men and women. Each of the components of these genogramsGender, Sexuality, and Romantic Love-contains elements of the others. A Time Line contains elements of all these components, as the person moves developmentally from childhood to adult love relationships.
