A very wise friend once said to me: “You are unique….just like everyone else!”  It is my belief that we are all more alike than we are different. Independent of gender, age, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, in other words, independent of all sociological differences, people have three basic human needs.  As I discuss in my video blog, those needs are 1: the need to be loved 2. the need to be accepted and 3. the need to be understood. Every infant is born with these needs and our personalities are shaped by the manner in which these needs are attended to during the first months and years of life. There is ample research that shows that personality structure is formed in the years when there are no words, only feelings; this is certainly prior to the development of sexual orientation, hence the title of this blog.   As I discuss in my book, when patients seek treatment for relationship difficulties, it is usually because they fear emotional attachment for one or more of four reasons: a. fear of engulfment b. fear of abandonment c.  fear of loss of impulse control and d. fear of vulnerability (Pepper, 2014, p.6-7). Gays and straights alike struggle with these fears.  And when couples come for counseling, all couples must resolve conflicts around at least four separate but related core issues in relationships: 1. who is in control 2. how do decisions get made in the couple 3. whose needs come first 4. emotional intimacy, what  feelings toward each other do couples choose to share  and what do they share about the lives outside of their relationship. The resolution of conflicts around these core issues is essential for a healthy relationship, independent of sexual orientation.