by claire coshan

Created on: October 06, 2010

Some people will tell you that when it comes to establishing and  maintaining a healthy relationship that the rules are no different for lesbians and gay men than they are for heterosexual couples. In fact this is not true. Lesbian relationships have a very different dynamic than heterosexual couples.

The goals may be the same but the road to achieving them is certainly not. A relationship with two women is very different from a relationship containing a woman an a man. Just as it is very different to a relationship containing two gay men. 

The key to establishing a healthy partnership is to make sure that your common goals are the same or at least similar. Your common goals are the big things in life. The most important of which will need to be establishing whether you both want kids or neither of you do. If one of you does and the other one doesn't then this can lead to big problems and a lot of friction later on in your relationship.

You need to be honest with each other about this. If kids are important to you and you can not imagine your life without children in it then you need to make this clear. Alternatively if you have no desire at all to have children then you also need to make sure that your partner knows this.

Another surprisingly common cause of friction in a relationship is marriage or civil partnership. Some women have no interest in having a marriage or civil ceremony and other women relish the idea of being a bride. Make your feelings clear about this.

Every relationship is about compromise but when it comes to lesbian relationships it is a different kind of compromise.  Some psychologists believe that it is more difficult to compromise in a lesbian relationship than a heterosexual one because in the lesbian relationship there is an equal distribution of authority. This means that there will be more clashes which could cause more arguments.

Many men joke about if two women live together then there must be an alarming amount of hormones flying about. But to a degree this is true. Two women living together will experience a lot more hormonal instability and so this needs to be taken into account. Think very carefully before you react if you believe that you or your partner are hormonal. Hormones may sound trivial but they are powerful things and they can lead to some very nasty arguments and some nasty behaviour.

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