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Lesbian Couples in Couple Therapy

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Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy
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Introduction

In the twenty-first-century United States, lesbian couples are building and navigating their couple relationships within a cultural climate of quickly shifting legal landscapes and cultural discourses, continued sexism, and internal and external tensions between the sameness-difference and rightness-wrongness of their relationship. When they seek our support for couple’s therapy, they bring these realities with them, in addition to whatever relational challenge or injury they are presenting. As couple and family therapists (CFTs), we are trained to think and work systemically; we are encouraged to consider the context, culture, issues of power and privilege, and potential influence of our own and our clients’ intersecting identities on the experience of a presenting problem and its resolution. For these reasons, CFTs are uniquely positioned to provide an incredibly valuable and much-needed service to lesbian couples seeking couple therapy.

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Correspondence to Jeni Wahlig .

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Wahlig, J., Long, J. (2019). Lesbian Couples in Couple Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_498

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