In HIV-discordant relationships, the HIV-negative partner also carries the burden of a stigmatised disease. For this reason, couples often hide their HIV-discordant status from family, friends and community members. This perpetuates the silence around HIV-discordant relationships and impacts on targeted HIV prevention, treatment and counselling efforts. This article reports on experiences of st...

People in romantic relationships can develop shared memory systems by pooling their cognitive resources, allowing each person access to more information but with less cognitive effort. Research examining such memory systems in romantic couples largely focuses on remembering word lists or performing lab-based tasks, but these types of activities do not capture the processes underlying couples' t...

Most of the literature on romantic relationships focuses on adults. In addition, those who study the differences between interracial and intrarracial couples often look at only two racial groups, mainly black and white couples. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of adolescents in the United States (1994-1995), We examine h...

This article focuses on lesbian and gay couples and families and the politics of same-sex marriage. Drawing from the literature on same-sex couples, same-sex marriage, and queer theory’s concept of heteronormativity, we argue that gay and lesbian couples and families both affirm and challenge heterosexual and gendered family forms. First, we review literature that discusses how same-sex relatio...

This review highlights recent advances in research addressing intimate partner relationships and health. Consideration of the strong mutual influences that the members of a couple have on each other's mental and physical health trajectories provides a new way to view the health implications of couples' convergence or interdependence; marital closeness can have a clear downside when one partner ...