Why LGBTQ+ Couples Need More Than an Affirming Therapist
Ten years ago I drove weekly from Gainesville to Oak Lawn in Dallas during rush hour to see a therapist who specialized in LGBT couples counseling. He changed my life. Seeing him also required me to take half a day off work for a one-hour appointment, sit in Dallas traffic, and explain to coworkers why I needed to keep disappearing in the middle of the afternoon. At the time, that was simply the reality of needing gay couples counseling in Texas.
Today, more therapists than ever are openly affirming, including many of my friends and colleagues right here in Denton, and that’s making a real difference for LGBTQ+ individuals and couples across North Texas. I’m so grateful for the difference they make, because I still remember what it felt like to wonder whether a therapist would understand my relationship before I walked through the door.
I remember feeling that same uncertainty while planning my wedding. My wife and I found ourselves asking questions many straight couples never have to ask: Would our families show up? Would this vendor be comfortable working with us? Would we need to explain ourselves before asking something simple? Thankfully, many therapists have gotten much clearer about who is welcome in their offices. I still wish wedding vendors were as openly affirming.
I wasn’t just looking for an affirming therapist. I was looking for a therapist who didn’t need me to explain my life before we could start working. That’s still what many couples are looking for today, and specializing goes beyond affirming in ways that matter more than most people realize when they first start searching.
I’ve spent the last fifteen years doing gay and lesbian couples work. I’ve also lived through family estrangement, religious discrimination, and the grief that comes when people you love don’t show up the way you hoped. While we are all more alike than different, some LGBT+ couples experiences remain unique. The conflict may not be about communication. Sometimes it’s about grief, or shame, or the weight of navigating a world that has asked one or both partners to defend, explain, or justify their relationship for years. That’s where specialized LGBT couples counseling extends beyon affirmation.
Common Issues I See in LGBTQ+ Couples Counseling
The situations below come up regularly in my work with gay and lesbian couples across North Texas. They aren’t the only issues LGBTQ+ couples face, but they’re some of the most clinically complex — and the ones most likely to get misread or mishandled without a therapist who genuinely understands the context.
When One Family Shows Up and One Doesn’t
I’ve lived this one personally. My wife and I had to navigate who would and wouldn’t show up for our wedding, and I know what it’s like to be genuinely excited about getting married while simultaneously grieving the people you wish were standing beside you.
One of the most common things I see in practice is a couple navigating a profound imbalance in family acceptance. One partner’s family is at the wedding. The other partner’s family isn’t — or worse, neither family is. That’s not just a painful day. It follows couples into holidays, milestones, and quiet moments when one partner feels the absence more acutely than the other.
The partner whose family didn’t show up often carries grief that surfaces as withdrawal, anger, or a quiet belief that they are somehow less deserving of love and connection. The partner whose family did show up is often trying to figure out how to hold both things — their own joy and their partner’s loss — without feeling guilty for having what the other doesn’t. Without a therapist who understands this dynamic specifically, it almost always gets misread as a communication problem or a compatibility issue. It isn’t. It’s minority stress operating inside the relationship, and it needs to be named as that.
Being Each Other’s Everything — and What It Costs
Esther Perel writes about this in Mating in Captivity: the closer two people become, the more domesticity and security can quietly displace desire. This dynamic shows up in every long-term relationship, but it has a particular intensity in lesbian couples. When your partner is also your best friend, your primary social support, your chosen family, and your safe place in a world that hasn’t always embraced your relationship, the closeness that develops makes complete sense. It’s also one of the most common things that brings couples into therapy wondering what happened to the spark they used to have.
What surprises most couples is that the closeness they built to protect the relationship is part of what’s dimming it. That’s not a comfortable thing to hear, and it takes a therapist who understands why that closeness developed in the first place to hold that conversation well.
The Decision to Have Kids — and Everything It Stirs Up
For gay and lesbian couples, the decision to have children is never a casual one. The financial weight of IVF or adoption, the legal considerations, the medical complexity, and questions about parental rights create conversations that straight couples rarely have to navigate with the same intensity. Underneath all of that is usually a deeper conversation the couple hasn’t fully had: Do we both actually want this? Are we doing this because we want a family, or because we feel some pressure to prove something or follow a certain path? What happens to us if it doesn’t work?
The stress of the process has a way of surfacing old attachment wounds and unspoken fears in ways that can blindside a couple who thought they were completely aligned. I’ve worked with many couples who entered the process on the same page and found themselves struggling with questions they never expected to face.
When Faith Pulls in Different Directions
This one doesn’t get talked about enough, especially here in North Texas. It’s more common than people realize for one partner to be actively deconstructing their faith, processing religious trauma, or stepping away from a church community while the other partner wants to remain connected to faith or continue practicing. Both experiences are valid, and they’re also genuinely difficult to hold together in a relationship.
One partner may feel pressure to deconstruct faster than they’re ready to. The other may feel judged for maintaining a spiritual connection, or may be grieving a church that welcomes them individually while treating their partnership as something to tolerate rather than celebrate. Having lived through religious discrimination myself doesn’t make me an expert on someone else’s experience — what it means is that I understand how complicated these conversations can be without needing them translated for me.
The Research That Shapes My Work
Lived experience matters, but it isn’t enough on its own. The way I approach this work has also been shaped by researchers and clinicians who have dedicated their careers to understanding LGBTQ+ relationships specifically.
The Gottman Institute’s research on same-sex couples draws on a twelve-year longitudinal study examining what helps these relationships thrive and what contributes to distress. The outcome research published alongside that work found that gay and lesbian couples in specialized couples therapy improved at more than twice the rate typically reported in broader couples counseling research.
Joe Kort, PhD has been one of the most influential voices in LGBTQ+ affirmative therapy for decades, and his work on identity, relationships, and sexuality — including his book 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives — has shaped how many clinicians approach this work today. D. Merilee Clunis and G. Dorsey Green’s Lesbian Couples remains the foundational clinical text on lesbian relationships, authored by two lesbian therapists from inside the experience. And Dr. Jen Towns’ Our Deepest Roots: Navigating Past Trauma to Build Healthier Queer Relationships, winner of the Literary Titan Gold Book Award, is one of the most honest and clinically grounded books written in recent years about trauma, attachment, and queer relationships — and one of the most important additions to this field in years.
These researchers and clinicians continue to shape how I understand what LGBTQ+ couples bring into the room and what actually helps.
What This Means for Couples
Specialized LGBTQ+ couples counseling isn’t a diversity module or a checkbox on a therapist directory profile. It means engaging with this research, pursuing continuing education focused on minority stress, family systems, attachment, and same-sex relational dynamics, and integrating lived experience into clinical practice in a way that is honest and useful rather than performative. Affirming matters — it’s the necessary foundation. But for many couples, the difference between feeling accepted and feeling deeply understood can change the entire therapy experience.
If you’re looking for a therapist who understands both couples counseling and the specific realities of being LGBTQ+ in North Texas — and who doesn’t need your relationship explained to them before the work can begin — I’d be honored to work with you.
Jay Krenek is a Licensed Professional Counselor with 15 years of experience working with individuals and couples in Denton, TX. She sees clients in-person and via telehealth across Texas. Her practice, Rogue Haven Counseling and Wellness, specializes in LGBTQ+ affirming therapy and couples counseling.
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