Love Between Men

About the author

Rik Isensee is a licensed clinical social worker and a psychotherapist whose practice working with gay men and male couples in San Francisco goes back to 1978.

Summary

The first chapter of Isensee’s book begins with a question: “What is unique about gay male relationships?” In short, he provides the following answer: “How we relate to one another is influenced not only by our emotional and sexual attraction for other men but also by how we’ve been socialized as males in a homophobic society. Homophobia isolates us, and male conditioning inhibits our awareness of feelings. Recognizing how these influences operate in our own relationships will help us challenge and overcome isolation, and provide us the support we need to form an intimate bond with another man” (3). Expanding on this idea, the text—as a whole—identifies challenges that gay men are likely to face (at least, those who reside in the U.S.), but the advice offered by the author also has a wide appeal. Different chapters in the book focus on topics like internalized homophobia; how to express your feelings and how to listen to someone else’s; male-male couples deciding when to move in together; how to communicate your preferences around sex to a partner; when to seek professional counseling; initiating discussions around monogamy, open relationships, mental health, ending a relationship; if, when, and how to come out at work; and living with a partner who has AIDS.

The book’s second chapter, titled “Empathic Listening," provides a useful snapshot of how the book looks and operates. This chapter focuses on a fundamental concept when it comes to relationships, looking at effective communication when an argument or a conflict has occurred, but it breaks down the simple concept of listening into a series of ideas: paying attention to both what and how a person is communicating, paraphrasing what your partner has said in order to ensure that you’re both on the same page, reflecting your partner’s feelings by imagining how you would feel in their shoes, and identifying your partner’s positive intent (the sense that there’s a desire for a positive outcome or alternative at the root of a conflict). 

To reinforce what productive or unproductive interactions might look like, Isensee often employs imaginary albeit realistic examples of arguments that couples might have between made-up characters like Randy and Steve, Kevin and Greg, Bill and Scott—characters who often receive second chances for more empathic conversations thanks to the author’s interventions. 

Analysis

In terms of analyzing this book, getting at what the text is doing—or what it wants from its readers—is a matter of triangulating the book’s investment in queer studies, the gay man as an individual, and a broader gay community. The following examples from the text highlight Isensee's investments in each of these areas.

Queer studies
“We are probably most vilified by other men who have homosexual attractions but are so repulsed by the possibility of being gay that they project their feelings onto us. We become a container, in a sense, for their own repressed desires, and the recipients of their revulsion” (4).
Notice that Isensee is tentative and speculative in his phenomenological breakdown of what internalized homophobia is and of why some seemingly straight men vilify gay men.

Individual
“We tend to assume that we can’t ask for what we want for fear of being too demanding” (77). Here, Isensee seeks to empower the individual to voice their wants and to negotiate when both party’s desires are out in the open. The focus is on the individual and on interpersonal communication—it’s geared towards self-improvement. 

Community
The following excerpt comes from a section dealing with alcohol and substance abuse. “Human beings have a natural capacity for altered states of consciousness, which occur spontaneously throughout the day as we make love, exercise, sleep, or daydream. […] The problem we face today is that the proliferation of refined substances has overwhelmed society’s capacity to handle their effects. Highly refined substances are more likely to be abused than the herbs from which they were originally derived” (159).

Isensee also aims to educate his readers, often by critiquing societal conceptions. Beyond this measured framing of alcohol and drugs, which Isensee spends a full chapter discussing, he elsewhere defends bisexuality from critical attitudes that were, at that time, common among gay men; reminds readers that spending time in navigating ethnic or cultural differences is often necessary for conflict management (64); and encourages readers to build networks of support for those living with AIDS (147). 

Analysis in context
This book has received a number of positive critical views, coming from a variety of sources—from a peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of social work, from a trade publication for librarians, and from an LGBT news magazine. Not all of these reviews are about the Alyson Books edition, but at least one is. Writing for a Canadian LGBT magazine titled Perceptions, one reviewer notes that, “Although it was written 11 years ago, the information in this book is still quite relevant,” with a caveat that the contents will have to be “translated” by the reader for their own relationship. 

Perhaps it’s a wish to avoid this “translation” work that leads to two negative book reviews from readers on Amazon. “One size fits all,” writes one such reviewer. “Basic, oversimplified, and outdated,” chides another. But these negative reviews (which still gave the book 3 out of 5 stars) seem to be outliers. From 59 overall ratings, Amazon users have given the book 4.4 out of 5 stars. On Goodreads, the book has received a similar 4 out of 5 stars from 27 ratings. On this latter site, only 1 review has been written: “If you were ever interested in learning what it takes to maintain a loving and commit[t]ed relationship, be it male or female, I would recommend reading this book.”

This last review highlights an interesting aspect of this book, however. While it’s said to be written to fill a void on material that aims to help men in same-sex relationships, the idea that anyone could benefit from reading the text seems to indicate a kind of double standard—learn from our relationships, but we can’t learn from yours. But perhaps it’s more productive to think about it as a blurring of the book’s primary intention or a worthwhile switch in the availability of specific perspectives. Whereas everyone has had consistent opportunities to learn from traditional, heteronormative relationships, the publication of Love Between Men is one of the first resources where we all received a similar opportunity to learn from a gay man’s perspective. 

Cultural context

The book, itself, offers useful contextual frameworks for thinking about the types of concerns gay men in the 1990s faced. A broader investment in psychoanalysis, gender theory, and gay and lesbian studies was evolving at this time. Worth noting, for instance, Isensee’s personal counseling practice was located in San Francisco, and it began shortly before the City College of San Francisco founded the first university program in gay and lesbian studies in 1986 (Blumenfeld). Isensee would later teach classes on gay men’s relationships through the school. A lot of the ideas he addresses are in the vein of this early scholarship in gay and lesbian studies and even earlier works from feminist writers. Some foundational ideas, for instance that gender roles are the result of social conditioning and frequently lead to harmful stereotypes, was already established enough it seems that Isensee spends little time making the argument himself—rather approaching it as a given.

Growing investment in male-male relationships 
“The onslaught of AIDS has had a profound influence on our sexuality. […] Though safe sex needn't preclude casual encounters, many of us have also begun to explore what we want from longer-term relationships. These explorations certainly took place before AIDS, as well, but our community’s response to the epidemic has altered our social landscape considerably” (6).

Emerging landscape of the AIDS crisis
New treatments for—and greater knowledge around—HIV/AIDS has altered many of the stigmas expressed in this book. At the time of publication, however, silence and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS was still quite strong. Isensee even addresses gay men’s reluctance around getting tested head-on.

Increased opportunities for having children
Building on the “Gayby Boom” of the 1980s and 1990s, one chapter deals at length with how couples might navigate differing desires for family. Potential solutions for partners with conflicting desires also offer solutions that stray quite a ways from the “traditional” molds in which families in the U.S. are often cast. They include one partner coparenting with a lesbian couple, moving into separate apartments so that one partner could parent while the other visits when they want to, and becoming an “uncle” to another gay or lesbian couples’ child rather than one partner having a child of his own (122).

Works Cited

Bell, Kirby. “Love Between Men: Rik Isensee.” Perceptions, vol. 19, no. 5, 2001, p. 22.

Blumenfeld, Warren J. “A Brief Early History of LGBTQ Studies in the United States.” Campus Pride, 13 Oct. 2022, www.campuspride.org/a-brief-early-history-of-lgbtq-studies-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=The%20first%20university%20program%20in,in%201989%20(CCSF%20website). 

Isensee, Rik. Love Between Men: Enhancing Intimacy and Keeping Your Relationship Alive. Alyson Books, 1996. 

---. “Rik’s Books for Gay Men.” Gay Therapist, www.gaytherapist.com/riks-books.html. Accessed 9 Mar. 2024. 

Peterson, Joann S. “Love between Men: Enhancing Intimacy and Keeping Your Relationship Alive.” Social Work, vol. 37, no. 3, National Association of Social Workers, 1992, p. 270.

Roddy, Kevin M. “Love Between Men: Enhancing Intimacy and Keeping Your Relationship Alive.” Library Journal, vol. 115, no. 5, Library Journals, 1990, p. 105.