Stuff Gay People Like: Therapy

Domestic arguments can get heated – parents and teenagers start cussing matches that wake up the neighbors, and husbands and wives will scream about divorce. But that kind of blatant expression of anger is far from universal – people who have spent time with a psychologist have a very different style of blowing off steam. You’ll find them most often among academics, NPR-listeners and people who live in Connecticut, but same-sex couples of all types have experience there, and their stinging barbs are wrapped up in delicately worded “I statements.” Some disputes look more like a debate between Benjamin Spock and Milton Erikson.

“Phillip, stop being passive-aggressive and start using a damn coaster,” Victor says. “You’ve been deflecting, but the fact is, my emotional need for a tidy and healthy home is unmet when I keep finding water spots on the coffee table.”

“Frankly, your frustration is triggering,” Phillip retorts. “You just don’t know what it’s like to have grown up in an emotionally-toxic household and I don’t want to continue to live in fear that every little thing is going to set you off.”

Gay people go to therapy after they’ve been rejected by friends and family, when they have years of school-age trauma to unravel, when they try to rally the courage to get tested for HIV or when they decide to deprogram themselves of religious guilt instilled in them for being gay. They do what anyone would do in this situation – talk to someone – and the result of a critical mass of the community having been to a therapist is that the whole lot of them are armed with psychological jargon and self-soothing techniques.

You’ll learn that bullies and religious conservatives are simply “insecure” about their social status, that those who are not sexually interested in you are “afraid of intimacy,” that bitchy guys just have “defensive personalities” developed in reaction to social criticism and anyone who drinks slightly more you “uses alcohol as a crutch” (but anyone who drinks slightly less is afraid to live life).

Telltale signs of years of therapy not only reside in personal relationships and attitudes, but spill out onto online profiles, letting the world know that this gay man is on a journey.

“I have been through hard times but I’m learning to hold my head up and move on,” he writes. ”I have been single now for six months and am not perfect, but I’m worth your time and am surrounding myself with people who are kind, drug-free, not afraid to love and will respect me and as a true friend … SO IF YOU ARE A USER OR A FLAKE OR SUPERFICIAL, PLEASE F*CK YOURSELF AND MOVE ON!” Of course this type of advertisement probably attracts exploitative and immature people like squirrels to a bag of peanuts, but such is life.

Therapy is probably helpful for most people who get it, but its vocabulary is made for someone in a cozy office who is paid to help you – not for personal arguments. There isn’t much you can say when a person traces your every disagreement to your relationship with your father, or says that your views on a topic of contention are, like your belief in monogamy, “indicative of a deep-seated denial of uncertainty.” Psychoanalytic jargon is the ace card in the deck, reducing the opponent to a crumpled wreck of confused self-doubt.

“Aw, it’s OK,” he says as he pats you on the shoulder, beckoning you out of your fetal position on the kitchen floor. “This is your first step in overcoming that kind of thinking. Soon enough, you’ll agree with me and laugh about how silly your ideas were today!

Stuff Gay People Like (SGPL) is a satirical/cultural column featured in Out Front Colorado. Visit the Facebook Page or view the whole list.

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