Until Death Do Us Part? The Impact of Differential Access to Marriage on a Sample of Urban Men

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Abstract
To date, lesbian- and gay-themed research has identified exclusion from marriage as a dimension of the homosexual experience, yet little research has treated marriage as an explicitly problematic feature of homosexual biography. This article presents a comparison of the life histories of a sample of urban heterosexual and homosexual men to examine the impact of differential access to the institution of marriage on the sexual career. Like the opposite poles of a compass, inclusion in and exclusion from marriage provide contrasting navigational reference points, propelling heterosexual men into career trajectories characterized by decreasing sexual exploration and growing investment in monogamous dyadic forms and, homosexual men into career trajectories characterized by increasing sexual exploration, dyadic innovation, and reevaluation of the value of monogamy. Still, despite the contrasting structural positions that heterosexual and homosexual men occupy, the narratives of both sets of study participants reveal shared ambivalences stemming from structured life paths that permit the satisfaction of some desires while frustrating or precluding altogether the realization of others. That is, the life histories of these men reveal patterned crisis tendencies around intimacy and commitment that transcend categories of sexual orientation and are perhaps endemic to late modernity.

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