Amazon.com description: Product Description: This is the first book to examine the special bonds and stresses, common to lesbian families and to provide a five-stage working model for the development of lesbian couple relationships. Drawing on more than sixteen years of clinical experience and research, Suzanne Slater explores the coping mechanisms, lesbian families have developed in order to interact with their families of origin, with the straight world, and with the lesbian communities of which they are a part. By treating lesbian relationships on their own terms, rather than in terms of heterosexual relationships, Slater provides valuable guidance for friends as well as members of lesbian families. Her book is also useful for therapists who wish to design more effective and informed therapies than those based on heterosexual experience.