Co-creating the Psychological “White Picket Fence”: Three Gay Couples’ Relationship Reconfiguration

Abstract

Many gay couples engage in nonmonogamous relationships. Ideas about nonmonogamy have historically been theorised as individual pathology and indicating relational distress. Unlike mixed-sex couples, boundaries for gay couples are often not determined by sexual exclusivity. These relationships are built along a continuum of open and closed, and sexual exclusivity agreements are not restricted to binaries, thus requiring innovation and re-evaluation. Three white South African gay couples were each jointly interviewed about their open relationship, specifically about how this is negotiated. In contrast to research that uses the individual to investigate this topic, this study recruited dyads. The couples recalled the initial endorsement of heteronormative romantic constructions, after which they shifted to psychological restructuring. The dyad, domesticated through the stock image of a white picket fence, moved to a renewed arrangement, protected by “rules” and imperatives. Abbreviated grounded theory strategies led to a core category, “co-creating porous boundaries”, and two themes. First, the couple jointly made heteronormative ideals porous and, second, they reconfigured the relationship through dyadic protection. The overall relationship ideology associated with the white picket fence remained intact despite the micro-innovations through which the original heteronormative patterning was reconfigured.