30.The LoveALLways Study- The First Ever Study on LGBTQ+ Marriages

This episode is maybe one of the most unique I've done so far- so don't miss out!

I chat with Nick who is leading a study with the following description: 

"The Loveallways study is a project led by an LGBTQ+ affirming lab focused on newlywed LGBTQ+ couples."

We chat about the importance of how the findings of this study will impact the future of our community, both from the community's perspective and outside! AND! BONUS! if YOU are queer and recently married, you can participate in this study and help contribute to the future of our community. Learn more and sign up here: https://redcap.du.edu/surveys/?__dashboard=4T7YM3KL73R
OR 
Keep up to date with the study by following them on their Instagram @loveallwaysdu

The intro and all instrumentals were written, sung and recorded by @JaynaDavisMusic

Queerly Beloved, I'm so glad you joined!
Please keep the community going by checking me out on instagram @wildlyconnectedphoto and come say hi! I'd love to hear from you! :)

Transcript

0:43

All right, Queerly Beloved, welcome back to this week's episode. I'm so excited for this week. I have, do you prefer Nick or Nicholas? Nick is fine. Okay, I have Nick with me and he's going to be talking about an amazing study that he's conducting. And I think it's just, Yeah, from what I can tell, super important and so needed in the world we live in today. So I would love if you could introduce yourself, your pronouns, and other identities you share. Sure. So, I'm Nick Perry, as he, him, his pronouns. I'm a gay man and a clinical psychologist and researcher. Living here in Denver and I'm really thrilled that we can connect and chat a little bit about the study we have going on that I think I am hopeful will be really important to the community. I think the science will be really important. And I'm just grateful to have a chance to share more about it with you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so let's get right into it. Would you tell everybody a little bit more about what you're doing? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So maybe a little background on me is helpful first. I can start there. So, so I'm an assistant professor in psychology at the University of Denver here. So I study LGBTQ plus health broadly, but really through this sort of lens or focus on families and close relationships and romantic relationships. I really think a lot about how our close social relationships. Impact our own individual health and well being and vice versa. Right? There's a sort of like feedback loop between partners or family members and so This new project i'm leading is called the love always study All so love in all forms or all ways as well as hopefully i would love for a long time if that's what you want And so the project is a federally funded grants for the National Institutes of Health. We are looking at newlywed LGBTQ couples across the whole community nationally and across the country to understand what changes in that newlywed period for them. We are really wanting to understand, how their relationship shifts and grows and evolves, maybe have stress changes or mood or health and well being. It's a really dynamic time for couples. It's a big change in their lives and there's really been no there's been no research that's large scale in this way on this topic since same sex marriage was legalized across the country in 2015. And I just think that's a really important gap for us to fill both for. Equity and like representation in the scientific literature, but also for important new discoveries. I think for our community. I think there's a lot we don't know about who chooses to marry and why and how they approach that. And then what happens in the aftermath in the wake of that choice event. Right? There are lots of ways we can help support people both approach that event. And adjusting their new lives afterwards. But we just don't know enough scientifically about what that's like for queer couples, using queer broadly. And I think we need to know more to be able to really help the community around that really magical moment. Yeah. Yeah. That is so beautiful. I mean, it's, I truly, honestly, maybe this is bad, but I don't think it's something that I ever really thought about until you reached out to me. I'm just like, Oh yeah. I guess there really isn't much out there. And just thinking about like how helpful that would be in so many different areas, even I think well, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too, but even just things coming to mind of therapists wanting to meet with couples and not necessarily having anything to reference other than trying to shift away from, Traditional gender roles and figuring out that. And then now, so, yeah, what, how do you see, the applications of the results applying. Yeah, well, maybe I'll talk a little bit about what we're doing in the study 1st, and then they'll help us think through what we hope to get from the data that we're collecting. So we're recruiting couples all across the country. Uh, and we followed them for 2 years. After they enroll in the study, so there's sort of 3 pieces of the site, everyone, the whole studies, we'll get 6 surveys over 2 years. Right? So that's roughly every, uh, let's say 3 months. Right? So, they get them spaced out over the 1st, 2 years of marriage or recruiting folks pretty early in marriage in the 1st table of months. So we have a really good sort of spread across that early kind of period. Those surveys are, people take them on their own online. They take them independently. However, they feel comfortable. Whatever device works best for them and those surveys ask all kinds of things about initially about people's background right around about their identity and who they are a little bit about their history and then we ask questions about a little bit about their wedding was like, a lot of questions about. Their relationship around communication and in conflict. We know that's important and support and then we asked a lot of questions about health and mood and mental health, because we also think those are really important kind of health and well being indicators. So that's what those big surveys are for. And then a handful of the couples in the study will be asked to meet with us a couple of times for interviews during the study period and so they would be with 1 of our team myself or 1 of our other team members usually for about an hour and a half or so and we would interview them about, what's it feel like to be married? What's changed in your life since you've been married? Has your relationship feel different or not, maybe since you've married? What new things that come up for you around like family or friend interactions? How do people react to the news? All these kinds of experiences that we just don't know very much about. And the benefit of doing that through an interview is people can tell us. Whatever that experience is like for them, right? And whatever sort of like words and narrative they choose, and that can be much more individualized than what we ask in a survey, right? Which we have to ask everyone the same way. And then the last piece of the study is that this, uh, uh, portion of the whole sample will be asked through these sort of like daily life bursts. And when that means is that we ask people to do for 2 weeks, they'd answer very short. They're like 5 minute surveys periodically throughout the day spaced out. That's where we're asking things like, did did you talk to your partner since we, or your staff since we last met? Cynthia survey. What was your direction? How's your mood right now? We're trying to get a little bit of in that snapshot moment, like what's going on for you because we know that a lot of the things that we're asking about, like health and relationships and well being stress all shift at a much finer grained kind of moment to moment experience in the day experience and the big surveys are capturing like much more space out changing people's lives, right? In that 3rd piece, we also are going to ask couples, I know it sounds a little science fiction y, but we're going to ask them to spit in tubes for us and mail that back to us, because the spit will allow us to collect cortisol data, which is a stress indicator, as well as another stress indicator called alpha amylase, which is 2 biological indicators of cortisol. Physical stress in your body, we know that there's a lot happening that really went period for couples. There's a lot of change going on. Some of that stress is positive, right? It was just like a lot of a lot happening that you're navigating. Right? And some of the change is hard and maybe, not as healthy or adaptive, and we really just want to understand like under the hood, so to speak, like what happens in this moment for couples over this period of time for them, both biologically and, from their own report what they see in their own lives. So we're trying to get it from multiple angles, what's happening in this period. Yeah. That's awesome. Like you clearly have thought about so many different angles and I don't know, I imagine that's super helpful because I could see some people not taking this seriously, right? Like for whatever reason. So the fact that you're able to be like, Hey, we're coming at this from every angle, thinking through everything and like making this like as in depth and scientific as possible Wow. I'm like already so curious about what these results are gonna be. I mean, we're too we're super curious. I mean, so we we just started enrolling couples pretty recently. So we're building on our numbers there. And what's been so exciting to see for me, I think is, some of the questions we have in there are around people's wedding experiences. So people have shared a little bit about if they chose to make their wedding queer or LGBTQ in some way, they would work that in some part of their moment, right? Like, how do they do that? Those are like, really beautiful, fun responses. Not everyone wants to, and that's totally fine. But for the folks who do they're very creative and sweet about it. It's yeah. It's just really lovely to see that. And then we also ask people at the very end, and open it in a way they can write whenever they want or nothing at all. They don't want to, but what motivate them to join the study. And so far, I think every couple we've had has said something along the lines of wanting to get back to the community or help the community. There are other reasons to write, we pay people for the study and that's important to recognize them for their time. And I think some people enjoy going through it together as a couple. It's a shared experience. It's interesting, potentially for some people, but a lot of folks are really motivated to want to get back to the community and help our community through giving designs in this way, I think it's just very it was a great helps me read those responses. It's very, uh, gracious of people. I think. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you briefly mentioned that you were recently engaged too, right? Yes, I have. I burned them all in my own study, but yes, I am engaged. Well, congrats. Yeah, it makes sense. You can't be in your own study, but I am curious if any of that sort of inspired your interest in this project or what really inspired you to take such a, Big role in this project. Yeah, so, that's a great question. So my research prior to this was on LGBT couples more broadly. It wasn't focused on marriage specifically. And I did some work around how stigma experiences affect how couples manage conflict is really interested in how experiences of stigma and that kind of stress might spill over into a relationship. And coming off of that study, I was thinking both point to something a little more like resilience and positive, having a more positive focus, a little bit less of a negative lens and also realizing just how little out there was in scientific literature anyway, about LGBT couples approaching marriage and how they do that and what that's like for them and there's this whole like wealth of scientific studies on them. What marriage is like for cisgender and heterosexual couples, and then it's really important for their health, actually being in a supportive marriage. It predicts mortality. It better than some things like smoking or heart disease folks in supportive romantic relationships also recover from wounds faster. Like, all these kind of wild ways that being in a close, supportive relationship is really important for people. And then I was, you Thinking a lot about like this, relatively recent legalization of marriage for the community. Right? 2015 is actually like less than 10 years ago. And which is wild. That it has been both like, a long time and also not a long time. And I was just thinking a lot about wow what a big change for our community and for our options for the future for folks who want to get married, what it means to have it. Federally legalized across the country. And then we just know nothing about this. And so actually all of that sort of predated my own engagement, I will say. So the study came first. But maybe may have helped me be more thoughtful about approaching my own proposal or something along those lines. Totally. Yeah, that makes sense. Is there anything about your own relationship that you want to share? Oh, gosh. That's a great question. We are like wedding planning currently, and I am, I mean, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to plagiarize off anyone's fun ideas in the study, but I am, like, it is making me think a lot about, like, all these creative ways people think about making their weddings feel celebratory about LGBTQ weddings and marriages, and that can be, like, a really fun, I think Meaningful piece to highlight, right? That weddings are a little bit different than the traditional quote unquote wedding, right? And that's maybe that's worth celebrating. I that idea a lot. So now we're mid wedding planning, which is a crazy time to be living in, I think for lots of couples and just navigating that as we can. Yeah, that's so beautiful. Oh, my gosh. I'm so happy for you. I'm really excited to see. Yeah, whatever it is that you feel is right for you to create it's such a new thing for people to be able to make personal. I hope right. Oftentimes people feel pressured to have their wedding be a certain way, probably, but I think when you can build it the way you want it, I think that's really lovely. Yeah, I've been, I recently just started reading The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker and listened to a podcast that she did. And so I've just been thinking a lot about this idea. She talks about where in the podcast, she actually used weddings as an example of essentially like this great example of people get engaged and then they're like, Oh no, like they're in, they're caught in this weird sort of position of maybe there are things about the past or tradition or heritage or whatever it might be that they want to honor. And at the same time, realizing that some of those things are. Harmful and maybe not even applicable to their kind of love. And so they're like, Oh what do we do? Like how we want to do something different, but there's also something beautiful about tradition. And so basically, yeah, we're just in this weird time in life, I think where there's a lot of change happening, which is both really beautiful and also can feel like a lot at once. Yeah. Just work through and make sense of it. Figure out what you want out of that. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah, so I'd like to circle back after my tangent here and just hear your thoughts on. On what your hopes are for the end results of this. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the whole grant is for 5 years, the whole bunch of gold run for 5 years, even though couples will only be busy in it for 2. I'll say, and so, at the end, while quite a lot of data to think about, and I mean, we'll publish some scientific papers, but I also think a lot about how to make the findings that we have really available to the community and like accessible and, approachable, right? I don't want it to feel really jargony or too scientific. That's not very readable for lots of people. Unless you're, like, really into science. And I think that really matters, right? I think people be interested in what we find out and want to know. And so I really am thinking a lot about how to then in a few years, when we're wrapping things up, like, how to then spread that back out, right? What we've learned and what we found. Because I think there's, A lot we'll learn about for example, like. Who chooses to marry, right? Which couples choose to marry? Not everyone will. And, like, why they choose that for them. What's it mean for them? Which would be really helpful to think about, like, how to help support people in approaching it, right? So, you mentioned couple therapists, for example. If an LGBT couple is coming into therapy, wanting to get ready for getting married, let's say, or think about the future of their relationship. I'm not sure if they want to marry. Really helpful therapist, some of these things in the community about, like, how we tend to think about it at the average level anyway. Right. Or what kind of factors predict whether a marriage feels strong and healthy in a couple of years after marriage. We can look at things like. Prior to the marriage, right? Because we'll have that in the surveys that might predict for LGBT couples, which relationships like stay together, which are really healthy and strong thinking about what things we might want to help people prepare for as they intermarry together. So, I'm hoping it might make services more effective, right? It might also help therapists or other kinds of providers or folks in the wedding industry to, I think about how to have their services feel approachable for couples that were LGBT couples wanting out of weddings or marriages and like, how are they thinking about approaching that moment might help. Uh, like, all services connected to that moment, right? Feel more affirming which I just think is really important. The more I've been doing this work to try to recoup my study and advertise and get the word out the more I'm realizing that it's a lot of small businesses are the ones that are really LGBTQ affirming, really trying to serve the community deliberately and thoughtfully and intentionally, right? The big wedding companies and big sort of whatever, wedding industrial kind of Uh, vendors aren't usually thinking about our community very much. And so it's just it's just this interesting kind of network of folks who are really wanting to support the community around this moment and their lives and relationships. And I think it's really lovely and I just wish we could maybe use some of this research to help highlight that in some ways. Yeah, absolutely. I guess I, I just had two questions pop into my brain that one. So, hoping I can throw them out there and lunch, but my first sort of question is. 1, how you see the applications, if at all, differing from, people within the community about it versus outside of the community. And then I'm also curious about, I'm not a researcher or as, as far as all of you working on the project, but I guess I'm picturing. Like traditional studies of 54 percent of women do whereas like in a study like this where there's so many different kinds of relationships and different gender identities and different pairings of people, how you're going to clump it in a way where people, yeah, no, it's a super smart question and something that we wrestle with all the time in research in this area. I think Yeah. I can see the 1st question 1st, I think, and then I'll get to the 1 about diverse or simple is because the community is very diverse. In terms of the outside inside kind of question, I think it's really interesting because I think, part of what we're curious about is people's experiences with folks in the community and outside the community as they. Mary and are in their kind of early newlywed period. Like, how did family and relationships change over that time? Or how did family and friends shift in their sort of support or view of the relationship or acceptance of the relationship? Maybe I can imagine that for some couples, the wedding might really bring a lot of kind of validity to the relationship for people who are on the fence, right? They might see it in a new way, seeing a couple celebrate in front of everyone and be really loved and obviously loving each other. That might bring someone into the fold, so to speak, right? Who was skeptical or less accepting previously. It could also push some people could Wholesome folks are not something like further away, right? Folks might be like, okay, I can't come to your wedding because I don't agree with this. And that might also sort of shift a relationship over time, right? With a family member or friend who's not supportive or accepting. So we are measuring some of that in the surveys. Because I am really interested in how marriage or shift people's larger social networks. But then in the community too, right? So we're really curious yeah. Uh, at least in my own life, I think I've only been to, I don't know, actually, my first LGBTQ wedding I'm going to is uh, end of this month ever in my life. Yeah, I know. And we have lots of queer and gay and lesbian and bi, et cetera, et cetera, friends, and That's the first one. So, one of the questions we're asking in the survey is have you been to an LGBT wedding before your own? Like how how scarce is that in your perspective on your view? Because I think it really matters if you feel like you're, like, totally charting it alone for the first time, right? You have no other reference. Even for things that you don't want to do or don't like. And we also asked How many how many folks at your wedding identify as LGBTQ? We're curious like community integration and like who matters to you that's there as of the community versus not in the community. Now that's like better or different, but I think it's important to just know. So I am really curious about how this moment will shift people like social connections more broadly outside of the relationship as well. And I hope that the findings in the study will be helpful kind of broadly, right? I think these, I say this all the time when I study LGBTQ issues and psychological sciences I think this matters for people who study topics in other kinds of populations or all populations, irrespective of LGBTQ identity, right? I think things. When I I think being able to take the theories we have about why people behave the way they do, which is what psychology is, right? And be able to test those theories that are developed in majority groups. Right? So, usually, it's just gender and heterosexual with people, because there's a chance to see does this theory really fit for everyone? The way we think it does is this theory really about. Gender, heterosexual people, for example, and we need some different adaptation or some different tweak or adjustment to this theory for LGBTQ people. For example, I think there are lots of ideas around commitment and fidelity and monogamy in marriage. Right? It's a cisgender heterosexual kind of like norm. And I think this study and studying LGBTQ weddings. And marriage is specifically might help us understand, like, how do folks with a variety of viewpoints around those things feel differently about those things navigate marriage while having diverse or broad views about monogamy or fidelity or commitment and all kinds of ways. That's really helpful for everyone to know, because it's not just people who want to have a relationship that's consensual. Right? And ethical. I just think there are lots of ways that we can learn from each other and. Celebrate LGBTQ weddings and marriages in a way that will inform like, larger science. Right? 1st question. That was a long answer. Beautiful. I love it. Do you want me to move to the 2nd one? Yes, I would love that. So, so you asked scientifically, right? How are we going to reckon with, I'll say the fact that the sample of couples we recruit will be really diverse, right? In terms of gender identity and sexual orientation. And certainly a number of other factors as well where they're living race and ethnicity, because we're recruiting a fairly large table across the whole country. And so there's a lot of variety in the sample for lots of reasons. And I think that is going to be 1 of our biggest challenges down the road, we're actually analyzing the data to think about how to. Sort of categorize people, which feels a little uncomfortable, I think, for a diverse community in a way that makes sense in the data so that we can be confident and speaking to our findings about across groups of people as. Accurately, as we can what's challenging in numerical data is when you start to make those groups very specific and small, it's hard to speak. In a generalizable way about the population. So, if we have, let's say, in the sample, we end up with relatively few I don't know Black non binary people. It would be hard for us to look at those people specifically, and then speak to the population of Black non binary people of any kind of confidence, because we don't have a lot of them in the study. So we often have to make these difficult choices about how we describe the sample, or how we sort of group people together in a way that. Makes sense, but also what does try to generalize the population? It's just total trade off because we're never doing it quite the right way. But that's what I really like to about the qualitative piece that interviews, because the point of those is to go really deep and rich and not necessarily generalize to a whole population that speak to 1 couples, really deep and rich experience. And we're not trying to like, then extrapolate to let's say the whole population of. But I'm binary people news that I got, we didn't interview with them that concern on its own, because that's like this rich context of their life history that we gathered from them sharing with us. And that is just seen, I think, are viewed differently scientifically as data versus the numerical data that we have to try to parse and group in this complicated way. So, I mean, that was that was a really insightful question, because it's a challenge that we're going to have to really grapple with part of the. Balance for me, or the tension for me when I was writing the the grant proposal to get the funding is often LGBTQ research we're focusing on sort of 1 group within the community. And often it's because we're looking at a certain hub. com, because not all of those affects the whole community equally. So, for example, a lot of studies on HIV prevention focus on queer gay and bisexual men, right? Those guys are at high risk for HIV. And then, but then queer women have really left out of those studies, right? Because they're not really at risk for HIV, but there's a whole lost opportunity to understand other things about them that are really important. And so I wanted this to be really inclusive. And so, as long as the members of the couple identify as LGBTQ, they can enroll in the study. Those are the only sort of identity based criteria that we have. And I did that really deliberately because I wanted to be as inclusive as possible, and there wasn't a real scientific reason to exclude anyone in different groups of identities, right? There wasn't a reason to zoom in and focus just on Queer women or like gay men, for example, I just this is a sort of a moment that's available to all of us and it matters for all of us. And so I wanted to say to be as inclusive as possible for that reason. Totally. Yeah. I think that's great. And hopefully, I mean, yeah, like you said, it's the first study of, the size of its kind. And so hopefully there'll be lots of grace along the way for, the groupings and the results and all of that. Yeah, I just think it'll be so interesting to if people can see themselves in the results. Right. That's my hope. Yeah. And, to the point, too, is sometimes we do need say, isn't specific groups or don't show up in science often enough. Right? For a long time, I'll speak research wasn't really paying attention to the T wasn't paying attention to gender diverse folks at all. Right. And so, I can imagine at the end of this, I'm hoping this won't be the last study. I'm hoping people will build studies off of this 1, 2, right? And so I can imagine at the end this is like a really big, important. Step in this feel for the for science, I think, but I can imagine someone could then want to do a more focused study on, some sort of segment of the community that makes a lot of sense, right? Building off of what we were able to learn in this 1st, pass, we'll say in a way. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm just thinking even to it'll be so interesting from more just like a social perspective of, there's kind of those stereotypes, right? That exists of lesbians doing that U Haul thing in terms of how quickly things progressed or even My business partner. He's a gay man. He does video for me and like he just mentioned casually the other day there's a stereotype about how gay men don't really get married or if they do it's, maybe later and I was like, oh, I had no idea. I, but apparently that's something that you talk about. So even just socially, I think it'll be super interesting to see how those sort of day to day kind of silly conversations compare. Throughout the data, right? Right. Right. Totally. Because often, when people are having those kinds of casual competitions about kind of cultural norms, right? Or what tends to happen in our community? There's often, some pieces of data for that, or some people are drawing on their experience, right? So there's some evidence there for why that exists, but does it really hold up? We have enough data and look at it in this in a. Scientific way, do we see proof of that? Because sometimes we're, drawing a conclusion that seems true on the surface, but then we look deeper and it turns out oh, that's not the case. I'm trying to give a good example like the U Haul thing there's been a joke about that for a long time. Right. And maybe relationships with 2 women move more quickly. There's stronger, I don't know. Right. Yeah. It's a range of emotion or like more affection, who knows what sort of drives the engine forward. But it's also possible it's like not the case and it's just our perception that they move quickly, right? There could be lots of outliers, lots of like lesbian couples who don't move that quickly and we just don't talk about them as much. So I, you're totally right. I'll be really curious to see like what the data show about some of these like ideas we have about, I think, how we approach relationships as queer people. Yeah, I mean, personally, if you're going to ask me every, pretty much every lesbian I've talked to, the lesbian to you whole pipeline is, uh, it's really strong. I know. I know that one might bear out the data. We don't have, but I think it's such a good question. Yeah, it helps us understand ourselves better too. I think is the goal, right? Ideally. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Truly. So excited. And yeah, I think it'll be such a. Cool conversation point for couples. I think like you said, even how the couples that are actively doing the surveys and stuff. I can imagine it almost turning into its own couples therapy session among and I'm like, Oh, really? That's how you Oh, okay. Interesting. So, yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. Yeah, me too. Yeah, we are trying to not, uh, we're trying to kick up anything to to your point about, like, how folks talk about it afterwards. But I do think it's it is a sort of shared experience of enrolling in this sort of big study and doing these things together. And I would imagine it doesn't make folks reflect quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Is there I know you're still super early on, but is there anything that. Any just early stages on takeaways, even if it's, obviously not like scientific, but maybe it's just Oh, for our community or whatever it might be. Are there any early takeaways? Yeah, I mean, my 1st blush and it's, this is so early. I think we have 20 or 30 couples enrolled and we're shooting for 2. 50. Okay, we're like, so it's a pretty small chunk of what we're aiming for. So it's early days. I mean, initial blush so far from what we've seen is is that folks are very sorry, very creative and thoughtful about how to make their wedding feel like it's Their own, right? Some of that is like deliberately making it queer in some way or incorporating that like parts of the culture or community into their wedding. And folks are like, really excited often about that moment in their lives. It's a real high point, which is for like lots of couples, right? But it's just really nice to see it reflected in LGBTQ couples, where this is like a newer thing available to us that we fought so hard for I think that's. Which is very meaningful. And then it does. I mean, so far we have had more female identified couples enroll the mountain by couples. I don't think that necessarily speaks to that more female couples get married necessarily, but. There's really a little easier to find, I'll say, is we're recruiting. For whatever reason, right? Might not be about like total numbers per se, but that's one thing that's I'm noticing that we'll want to keep an eye because we're trying to have a pretty balanced like representation of different gender identities. And so we'll keep an eye on that as we keep going with the study pressure. Totally. Very interesting. Okay. Yeah, well, sir, the last kind of question I have before I would love you to. Give your plug at the end and give more information, but before that, I know you said that this is going to be running for five years. So I guess I'm just curious, like what your hopes and dreams are for what the world will be like, maybe five years or even 10 years and when it comes to gay marriage, when it comes to where this study is, yeah it's a poignant question because I feel like these are, these have been and are still like, uncertain political times. Right. But I'm hopeful and optimistic that. The right to marry isn't going anywhere. That's my hope. I think, I mean, it's interesting to think about who were since we're recruiting folks were so newly married, it's interesting to think about who's enrolling in the study now versus who got married when they were first in the UIs, right? I think there was, like, a, like a long line of couples who've been together a long time. We're just waiting for the moment that they could. I think some of that has uh, died down. We're getting those couples have gotten married or getting this new generation, we'll say of uh, LGBTQ couples getting married. I think that's my guess from uh. How things have played out historically. So I am hopeful that in the next 7 or 10 years it just continues to grow and visibility. I think that's the piece that feels like I'm learning feels most absent to me is not that folks are getting married. They are, but there's just not a lot of representation, in media or even in social media or in like resources and businesses it's very spread thin and it's harder to find. And I'm hoping that was increase in volume and feel more and more accessible to people and I'm like, normalize or like visible. Right? I don't love it. My 1st wedding. I'm going to as in a couple weeks or something. I'm like, oh, I'm in my almost late 30s now. This feels like this should have happened by now. And so I'm hoping we can keep increasing the visibility of that for the community, because the folks who want to get married, I think it's really important for them not to like not to raise marriage about any other kind of relationship. Right? But that I wanted to feel like available to people who do want that. And I think when it isn't really readily visible, it doesn't feel as available. That I hope will change. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm curious too about just like when the findings are published, it'll be interesting to see. And maybe you already have plans for this. I don't know. But Kind of all the other queer folks in the world who never got married. For example, our neighbors lesbian couple, that's been together for almost 50 years, but never got married. Cause it wasn't an option at the time. And then it just was like, well, so super interesting to think about. Just how those things will compare to I know. Yeah, I think yeah, it's like an interesting shift for our community. It happened in a big shock way with the ruling in 2015, but I think it's still slowly like. Shifting and growing and evolving to the community over time to right now that helps growing up with that available to them. What does that what does it mean for the future of the community? And how we think about marriage who wants to marry or who feels like they can. I think it's good. It's there for people if they want to have that. Yeah, I feel like in 10 years, it's going to be a, or my hope is it'll be much more beautiful world and yeah, I'm just, I'm hopeful too for some of those kind of like concrete findings that feel like they can't be argued, even just for the sake of the way I grew up I went my dad's a pastor, I went to a private Christian school and I remember getting a handout yeah. Of something basically saying that it was scientifically proven that, like. If you're gay, you automatically die young because it's like not God's will and I remember trying to ask about where they got that information and not answer, but even just in those contexts I'm hoping it will really, be able to. Debunk that once and for all. Yeah, right. I I do think science is hopefully a 1 of several tools. I think against like stigma and sort of misunderstandings and that information. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited. I'm like, Oh, my God, so long from now, but I'm very excited to be watching the journey from afar. And I'm going to be right there to congratulate you when it's all so thank you for doing this super important work. This is huge. Well, thank you for having me a chance to talk about it. It's really fun to always it's always fun to chat about the site. So I appreciate it a lot. Yes. Yeah. And I would love if you would share, like, where people can find more or anything if you want to put a plug in for applying to be a part of it, yeah, sure. So, so, okay, anyone in the U. S. where both members are LGBTQ and have gotten married in the past 6 months or currently engaged because engaged folks can enroll to can enroll in the study I'm trying to the best way to direct people to get in touch with us. If they're interested, I wonder if we put a link or a landing page in the description of the everything will be in the show notes. I did see. Yeah. You guys have an Instagram page too? We do have an Instagram as well. Yep. It's called lovealwaysdu because it's University of Denver. Folks are welcome to follow us there either like to, learn more about the study or just to keep an eye on what's happening for us. We'll like post updates as we go there and you'll that's a great place for us to share I think news about what we're finding and that kind of thing. And, we would just be so grateful for anyone who's willing to share their marriage story with us and enroll in the study. We know it's a big commitment, we're asking you to be with us for 2 years and but we really want to honor your time and be respectful and just partner with any couples who are wanting to enroll in this journey with us, essentially. And we also, of course, will pay you for your time. So it feels like duly compensated. I think that's important to say. So happy to have more folks have questions and are interested to hear more definitely reach out. We'd love to hear from anyone who's interested to hear them. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, come on guys. You could be like the future here. This is the making. So, yeah, I will definitely make sure that everything is linked in the show notes. But yes, thank you so much again. Seriously. Yeah, this is so interesting. I feel like. I don't know. It just gives me hope for the future. So thank you. I think science is good for that sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. This is really fun. I really appreciate it.