Intimacy and subjective tension experienced by young gay and lesbian couples in Chile

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the results of a qualitative study conducted in Santiago, Chile, designed to explore the meanings attributed to couple conflicts by gay and lesbian youth, as well as the strategies they use to cope with such conflicts. Data were collected from focus groups (2) and life stories (5). Participants in the two focus groups were seven men and five women. Two participants in the focus groups (one man and one woman) were later contacted to participate in the life stories. Thus, 15 people participated in the study. Their ages ranged between 20 and 25 years old. All of them belonged to the middle class, had completed high school, and had attended college for at least two years. Data were analyzed from a phenomenological perspective (Finlay, 2014; Starks & Brown, 2007). Results indicate that the participants view couple relationships as a space for self-discovery and self-knowledge in terms of sexual desire. However, couples are also interpreted as a space of conflict and tension, experienced with perplexity and fear. Some of the conflicts are associated with the perception that they need to fight to have their relationships socially acknowledged as legitimate. Thus, the participants developed three main tactics to achieve this legitimacy: 1) The search for thorough honesty and transparency 2) the maintenance of binary division of roles, closer to heteronormativity 3) the dissociation of the emotional and sexual dimensions of couple experience. Keywords: same-sex couple relationships, conflict, legitimacy, Chile.