Lesbian Couples are 2.5 Times More Likely to Divorce Than Same-Sex Male Couples — Here Are 6 Reasons Why
Women are meant to be at better relationships, yet same-sex female couple’s relationship data tells a different story
An interesting trend has been occurring in countries which have allowed same-sex marriages, same-sex female couples end up being by far the most likely couples to get divorced.
For example, ONS data from the UK in 2020 found that lesbian couples are 2.5 times more likely to divorce than same-sex male couples and 2.3 times more likely to divorce than heterosexual couples.
This trend is consistent everywhere you look, for example, a study from the Netherlands which tracked married couples over 10 years found that 30 percent of same-sex female couples had divorced versus 18 percent of heterosexual couples and 15 percent of same-sex male couples.
The trend even transcends into non-marriage-based relationships and even friendships, same-sex female couples are more likely to break up than heterosexual and same-sex male, and women are more likely to have more interchangeable friendships than men.
The question is, why, why when you add a woman to a relationship of any kind do you increase the chances that that relationship will end?
If you believe men, the answer is women are simply pickier, harder to please and even harder to keep pleased. But as ever, the real answer is more complex than that and after searching the net and finding endless ideas but nothing crystal-clear, I decided to speak to a friend of mine, *Sarah.
Sarah has experience working with same-sex couples as a therapist and is in a lesbian relationship herself, and so has a deep interest in trying to understand why women seem to struggle more than men to maintain a relationship. The answers she offered were extremely eye-opening.
Lesbian couples tend to get married sooner than heterosexual and same-sex male couples — this creates problems
Sarah tells me that Stonewall co-founder Lisa Power when commenting to the Economist on why lesbian couples were more likely to get divorced, highlighted that one reason was that they were more likely to quickly invest in a relationship than other couples. This is known as U-hauling.
It does make sense that women would be more likely to emotionally commit more rapidly simply because they wouldn’t have a reluctant man who is petrified of connecting and committing and has no clue how to properly connect and commit to make her slow things down.
But perhaps this is not a good thing i.e. perhaps men’s commitment phobia has a silver lining.
In terms of why, it is well known that couples who commit too quickly are more likely to run into big problems, which would perhaps explain why the ONS data showed that lesbian couples were more likely to cite unreasonable behaviour, so things like adultery, not listening, not helping around the house et cetera as the reason for divorce than same-sex male couples and heterosexual couples. Because they had not done a proper trial run to see if they could properly function together, and so ran into more big problems.
So, a reason that lesbian couples likely are more prone to breaking up and divorcing is that they are more prone to committing too quickly i.e. they lack a healthy fear of committing too soon.
The mythologising of lesbian sex can create expectation problems for same-sex female couples
When I was younger I had a 3-year relationship with a woman and was quite shocked to find that it was nothing like what I expected it to be. There were just as many problems, and the biggest one was the one I expected to have the least trouble with, sex.
For example, women in same-sex relationships are substantially less likely to ever have had an orgasm at the same time as their partner.
However, heterosexual couples and same-sex male couples all consistently report having the ability to do this and having done this. It’s surprising how powerful being able to have an orgasm at the same time as your partner is, even if it does not happen consistently.
Then there is the orgasm full stop, despite popular belief that lesbian couples are more likely to have orgasms, the story is actually a lot more complex.
For example, per sexual session, lesbian women are more likely to have an orgasm, but heterosexual women are more likely to have more orgasms overall because they have more sex.
Also, LGBTQ women are more likely than heterosexual women to have never had an orgasm from their partner.
However, you would never believe any of this based on the story popular culture sells. Sarah tells me that the porn industry has mythologised the idea of lesbian sex into this amazingly orgasmic event full of endless pleasure and orgasms, which can be damaging to same-sex women when they find out the reality rarely lives up to expectations.
She also tells me that often the idea of how amazing lesbian relationships are can lead straight women who have had a bad experience with a man to try to “go lesbian”, only to go back to men once they realise the reality is not like in popular culture i.e. they are no better, nor worse, just different.
So, the mythology of how amazing lesbian sex is can totally mess up the same-sex female scene for women, hindering their ability to have successful relationships.
Sex is more likely to dry up in lesbian relationships which causes problems
Sarah tells me that unlike in popular belief, sex is far more likely to dry up in same-sex female relationships. She goes on to list several reasons why, from having to manage two menstrual cycles which can especially cause problems if they don’t sync, to two people who are at heightened risk of BV, yeast problems, UTIs.
Then there is menopause, which can create endless problems both in and out of the bedroom, if you times it by two those endless problems can be doubled. Then there is stress, stress is known to kill the female libido, but empower the male, so if you don’t have a male in a relationship, when there is stress, you end up with two dead libidos.
She adds that the list goes on and all these problems can lead to sex problems which can lead to relationship problems.
From my own experience, I tell her that I was surprised by how much harder it was to have a mutually pleasurable quickie with a woman. Sarah told me this is something she hears often, and due to this difficulty, it can lead women in same-sex relationships to avoid having sex due to them needing a longer duration to be able to have mutually pleasurable sex.
She said this can especially create frustration because it can lead to a partner when they want sex, being rejected more often if their partner knows that it will take more time and effort to please them.
This makes a lot of sense, I don’t want to say it, but I have to, it’s much easier to please a man in the bedroom than a woman.
Sarah laughed when I said this and added that she often hears this from women who have gone from dating men to women, and added that we don’t talk enough about how much more difficult it is to please women in bed, which is a mistake.
I asked why, and she told me that unless we acknowledge the complex nature of the female sex drive and pleasure system, we will never be able to understand how to more consistently unlock it. A very good point.
She also added that having at least one partner who can be easily sexually pleased is surprisingly useful for keeping sex lives functioning.
I agree with this, when it comes to my partner, when I would like some intimacy but I’m not really in the mood for sex, we have a quickie, which pleases him greatly, then we cuddle up afterwards and that is the part for me that I enjoy most.
That keeps our sex lives alive, but it is harder to create this dynamic in a same-sex female relationship — at least I found this.
Sarah agreed and said it is a problem she and her partner have, adding that many lesbian couples herself included end up kissing and cuddling but not turning sexual due to the greater difficulty to have a mutually beneficial quickie. But this can create a problem because it is not the same as having sex.
She is right, sex releases love hormones that bond couples together and make a couple feel close to each other. This is why when sex dries up relationships typically find themselves in trouble because they lose the sexual connectivity that sex creates.
This inevitably can lead to great frustration in couples over the lack of sex, but also it can lead to much looser bonds which inevitably lead to relationship problems like infidelities, which is perhaps why the most common cause of same-sex female relationships ending based on ONS data is infidelity.
Sarah agrees. So, a common cause for why same-sex female relationships are so much more prone to ending is likely due to the greater difficulty in maintaining sex.
The myth that dating women will be safer than dating men women leads women to miss more red flags when dating women which leads to more relationship problems
Women are from a very early age warned about the dangers of men, if you get stuck in extreme feminist literature, you can easily end up buying into the idea that all men are rapists who want to oppress women. This is rubbish of course, but this is a narrative that is sold far too often and bought into far too often.
On the flipside, a narrative that is typically sold across the board is that women are safe zones — especially for women. Even the women who are not safe zones are safe zones because they are harmless — because they are women.
So, it is very widely sold that women are not a threat to anyone even when they aspire to be.
Sarah tells me that this completely false narrative — and it is completely false — can lead to women who date women getting a very rude awakening by missing endless red flags due to them holding the mistaken belief that a woman is a safe zone.
I can fully believe this happens because it’s happened to me, a close female friend of mine when I was in my teens sexually assaulted me, all the signs were there that she was the type who would do this, but I ignored them because she was female.
I’ve never made that mistake again and treat men and women alike now on that front.
Sarah tells me that unfortunately, that’s not the first time she’s heard someone say that, she also says that if you look at violent domestic abuse data, over one third of domestic abuse victims are males.
The majority of the data looks at heterosexual couples, and frustratingly there is not much data on the levels of abuse in same-sex relationships, but if women can abuse men in such high numbers despite men being physically stronger and more able to protect themselves, inevitably, that means women can also abuse women — which they do.
Sarah adds that if you look at mental abuse alone i.e. abuse that does not turn violent, women are the more likely perpetrators, and if you include all forms of abuse data including bullying there is near enough parity between men and women when it comes to likelihood that they will abuse or bully somebody in some shape or form.
However, because this is seldom ever sold in popular literature outside of male-only focused content, Sarah says that there is often this total disconnect amongst women from the idea that women could be a threat to women, or could do bad things like cheat, rape, and more, which leads many women to miss red flags that they would have seen if they had been dating a man.
So, a likely reason why same-sex women have a higher breakup rate is that women are more prone to putting too much faith in the good faith of women, which sadly makes them more likely to get a rude awakening.
Women are less tolerant of bad behaviour in a relationship and two women equals double the intolerance — this creates problems for same-sex couples
I’m not sure I fully buy into this one, but Sarah tells me from her experience that these days women are on average simply far less tolerant on nearly all metrics in a relationship than men are.
“In my experience,” she told me, “men are more tolerant of people not putting the work in around the house i.e. so not keeping the place in good shape, they are more tolerant of conflict, disagreements, bad behaviour, they’re even more tolerant of infidelity.”
The first three I could perhaps accept but the last two, I think men are equally as intolerant of bad behaviour and infidelity as women just perhaps in different ways.
Sarah says I could be right and it’s just a thought, but one thing to remember is that we do as a society put a lot of effort into trying to get men to be more tolerant.
She is right on that point. This is because inevitably we are trying to lower the problem of violence amongst men. Sarah agrees, and says that it is perhaps this push to get men to be more tolerant that may actually be giving them an edge in relationships.
On the flipside, she adds we are working very hard to try to get women to be less tolerant of bad behaviour, and I do see where she is coming from. On many levels this is a good thing; however, perhaps when it comes to two women in a relationship together who have been raised to be very un-tolerant of a person not helping around the house, not giving consistent and good sex, and of general disagreements, perhaps it does lead to a greater chance of them ending the relationship i.e. because you have double the higher level of taught intolerance on these factors.
Still, I’m on the fence about this one. Sarah just smiled, and added that it may be difficult to consider that on average women are the overall less tolerant sex these days — at least when it comes to relationships. “But,” she went on, “if you consider what we used to have to put up with, it perhaps wouldn’t be a stretch to think we have gone to the extreme other side.” A fair point.
Men are better at conflict management which gives people in a relationship with men an advantage when it comes to staying together
This is an extremely controversial one, and I’m sure you can imagine my feelings when I heard it. But Sarah tells me that from her experience of working with same-sex male couples and same-sex female couples, there is one trend that she has noted that is very clear, the men are much better at managing conflict than the women.
She told me what she meant by that was that men don’t hold back and are very clear and to the point whereas the women she worked with have a tendency to be more passive and ambiguous. So, it is like the women are trying to protect each other’s feelings whereas the men are just going in like a hammer — unless they are with a woman.
She also told me that the men were less likely to get upset when a hammer blow was thrown at them than the women, which perhaps could be linked to the fact that male culture is more linked towards telling each other what they like to call harsh truths, whereas female culture is more linked towards praising each other no matter what i.e. saying you look great in that dress even when you don’t.
It is also widely known that men are typically less averse to conflict avoidance than women, which is why there is such a violence problem amongst men.
But perhaps there is an advantage to men’s lower aversion to conflict, on average they’re more likely to have it out and put all cards on the table, whereas women are more likely to be too passive which means the problem doesn’t get solved.
Also, as men are typically less averse to conflict, perhaps they truly can on average take the harsh truths better than women which makes it easier for them on average to deal with problems.
However, just like with the last point, I’m on the fence over this one. But it is indisputable that women are more likely to engage in passive-aggressive tactics and to avoid conflict, whereas men are more likely to engage in direct aggression and to walk headfirst into conflict.
Perhaps when it comes to maintaining a relationship, this does give them an advantage and means that having a man in a relationship leads to a greater probability of a relationship surviving. My partner certainly has an ability to bring out a hammer-blow fury that I have never brought out with a woman, he also has the power to deliver them, and this does inspire us to sort out problems right away, so who knows.
Final words
The reality is, same-sex female couples are more likely to commit too quickly and see sex dry up more rapidly. When it comes to a successful relationship, committing too quickly is a leading cause of relationships not working out, as is sex drying up.
If you add this to the fact that there is a false image sold — especially to women — over who women are and what it will be like to date a woman and how safe it is to date a woman, and the fact that women are billed as the best at relationships, whereas the true story is unquestionably a lot more complex, it is likely not surprising to see that there is a much higher rate up rate amongst same-sex female couples than heterosexual and same-sex male couples.
What this means is if we are to improve same-sex female relationships and friendships we need to spend a lot more time and effort understanding who women are and how women really work, and not shirk away from the dark edges, and the difficult truths.
Until we do this, it is likely that though women will remain the best at forming relationships, men will remain best at staying in them.
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