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Relationship Power, Sociodemographics, and Their Relative Influence on Sexual Agreements Among Gay Male Couples

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Abstract

Men who have sex with men (MSM) in primary relationships engage in condomless sex both within and outside their relationships and a majority of HIV transmission risk may actually occur within primary relationships. Sexual agreements regarding non-monogamy are a critical component to understanding HIV prevention in male couples. Relationship factors have been associated with how sexual agreements function and power is one dyadic construct likely to affect couple’s maintenance of non-monogamy agreements. Multilevel modeling was used in a cross-sectional study of gay male couples (N = 566 couples) to examine associations between partners’ demographic characteristics traditionally used to define relationship power, a scale of decision-making power, and outcomes related to sexual agreements, including investment, agreement breaks, and break disclosure. Results indicated that decision-making power relative to one’s partner was not associated with any agreement outcome, contrary to hypotheses. However, controlling for decision-making power, demographic bases of power were variably associated with sexual agreements’ functioning. Younger partners were less invested in and more frequently broke their agreements. Lower-earning partners broke their agreements more frequently, but also disclosed breaks more often. White men in white-minority relationships broke their agreement more often than their partners. Concordant HIV-positive couples were less invested in their agreements and HIV-positive men disclosed breaks more frequently. HIV prevention efforts for same-sex couples must attend to the social, developmental, and cultural influences that affect their agreements around non-monogamy.

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Notes

  1. We note that other published papers have reported on breaks to agreements by couple’s HIV serostatus elsewhere [26, 29], as well as on agreement investment [19, 26], using subsets of the current dataset. However, the current paper is the first to publish these results using the full dataset of all participants, to examine the interaction of individual and couple-level serostatus, and to examine these effects in multivariable models controlling for other relevant demographic bases of power.

  2. Models including age were also run controlling for relationship length. However, the significance and pattern of our results remained largely unchanged, so we chose to present the results for models without relationship length included.

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Acknowledgments

Support for the study came from grant R01MH065141 awarded by the National Institutes of Mental Health to Colleen Hoff. Support for analyses came from a Gustafson Fellowship awarded by the University of Utah to Nicholas Perry. We thank Timothy Smith for contributions to the current manuscript. Lastly, we thank the couples in the study for their time and participation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Room 502, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    Nicholas S. Perry, David M. Huebner & Brian R. Baucom

  2. Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Colleen C. Hoff

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  1. Nicholas S. Perry
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  4. Colleen C. Hoff
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Correspondence to Nicholas S. Perry.

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Perry, N.S., Huebner, D.M., Baucom, B.R. et al. Relationship Power, Sociodemographics, and Their Relative Influence on Sexual Agreements Among Gay Male Couples. AIDS Behav 20, 1302–1314 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-015-1196-6

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