The Meaning of Friendship for Gay Men and Lesbians in the Second Half of Life

Abstract

Little is known about the role and meaning of friends in the lives of older gay men and lesbians, notwithstanding popular discussions about chosen families and the role friends play as a buffer between the individual and the stigmatizing world in which gay men and lesbians live. Present analyses explore the definition and meaning of friends as disclosed by 53 self-identified homosexual and 106 heterosexual men and women in later life, all ranging from age 50 to 88 years. Using a framework developed by Adams, Blieszner, and de Vries (2001), the transcribed, verbatim responses to questions addressing the meaning of friends were coded to reflect their focus on five process categories: (1) behavioral, such as assistance and shared activities; (2) cognitive, such as trust and loyalty; (3) affective processes, such as care and compatibility; (4) structural, such as social distance and group membership; and (4) proxy measures, including frequency of contact and length of acquaintance. Gay men and lesbians defined friends using a greater number of process dimensions and, in the absence of age and gender effects, were more likely than the heterosexual sample to include cognitive and affective processes as well as proxy measures of process. These findings highlight the depth of consideration with which older gay men and lesbians consider their friends and offer an initial exploration into the relational interactions of a population that has witnessed sweeping social movements throughout their lifetime.