Queer Love Isn’t Always Free from Gender Roles and I See It in My Office

Pride is often framed as joy, celebration, and visibility—and it should be. But for many queer Latinas, especially for those raised in homes shaped by silence, survival, and machismo, Pride Month can resurface the internalized relationship dynamics many thought they had left behind, such as emotional labor, power imbalances, and heteronormative roles.

Being queer doesn’t automatically mean healed, safe, or free.

As a Latina Relationship Therapist, I see this often. Queer clients who are out and proud (or not) are still playing out the same gendered dynamics they grew up around. Emotional labor is one-sided. One partner is always holding space. The other is emotionally unavailable, dominant, or avoidant. This isn’t always abuse, but it is a cycle. When your childhood taught you that love is sacrifice or that one person leads while the other follows, or one is “feminine” and the other “masculine,” those scripts don’t disappear just because the gender of your partner changes. The dynamic often remains the same, especially when no one ever showed you what emotional safety actually feels like.

You might be queer, but still over-functioning in your relationships, always nurturing, anticipating needs, and holding everything together. You might be in a same-sex relationship and still feel pressure to be the strong one, the provider, or the caretaker. You might be deeply in love, yet still performing instead of resting. You wonder why it’s still hard to be held, to feel chosen without having to earn it.

It’s important to name this truth: heteronormativity doesn’t just affect straight couples. It shapes all of us, especially those raised in cultures where machismo was glorified, emotions were gendered, and love was measured by endurance rather than ease. Even in queer or nonbinary partnerships, it’s common to unconsciously recreate what we were taught.That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re human, shaped by your environment and conditioning.

Here’s some context to help you understand what might be happening.

Heteronormativity refers to the assumption that heterosexual, binary-gender relationships are the standard. In this framework, one person is expected to be masculine, stoic, logical, and dominant—while the other is expected to be feminine, emotional, nurturing, and submissive. These roles are reinforced everywhere: in media, in religion, our culture, in our family systems, and in everyday language. Even if you don’t believe in them, they are often internalized on a subconscious level.

Queer and nonbinary relationships inherently challenge this framework. But just because a relationship defies the binary doesn’t mean the conditioning disappears. Cultural norms can be deeply ingrained, especially when you grow up in households where you didn’t see alternative models of love. In queer love, we can end up reenacting what we never had the safety to question.

Healing queer relationships requires a shift from performance to presence, from emotional labor to emotional reciprocity, and from survival-mode partnerships to relationships rooted in mutual care.

If your queer relationship doesn’t feel as free as the world assumes it should, you’re not alone.

These are some of the questions I ask clients who are navigating these dynamics:

• Am I being emotionally held in this relationship, or just holding space for someone else?
• Am I unconsciously replicating gender roles I witnessed growing up, even in a relationship that defies those roles?
• Do I feel emotionally safe to express all parts of myself, or am I shrinking to keep the peace?
• Who initiates hard conversations, emotional check-ins, or repair? Is that effort shared, or is it always me?
• And perhaps most importantly: Am I showing up with authenticity, or performing what I’ve been taught love should look like?

Queer love should feel like liberation, not a reenactment of old wounds. That liberation begins with telling the truth to ourselves and to our partners.

You don’t need to shrink, silence yourself, or shape-shift to be worthy of love. You don’t have to perform the version of love your family modeled or the one society told you was acceptable. There is no single ‘right’ way to be in partnership, not in queerness, not in womanhood, and not in healing.

We don’t heal by recreating pain that feels familiar. We heal by choosing relationships where emotional labor is shared, power is balanced, and love feels safe. Love that allows you to rest, to receive, and to be seen.

Pride can still be a celebration. But it can also be a reclamation. The most radical kind of love isn’t the one that looks perfect on the outside. It’s the one where you feel free on the inside. Because even in queer love, healing begins when we stop reenacting survival dynamics and move toward love that feels liberating and rooted in truth.

Cynthia Flores is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, speaker, and host of the Heal & Manifest Podcast. As a first-gen Latina Therapist, she offers trauma-informed, culturally informed therapy to help women heal generational wounds, own their voice, and build healthy, emotionally safe relationships.

Instagram: @cynthiafloreslmft Website: www.cynthiagflores.com