This Book is Gay

Chapter 10 focuses on navigating long-term partnerships in the LGBTQ+ community. Dawson opens the chapter with a comparison of monogamy and promiscuity, the act of having multiple casual sexual partners. Dawson uses a table to list the pros and cons of both kinds of relationship structures, giving an equal number of pros and cons for both. Some people have open relationships in which they have sexual partners outside of the relationship, which Dawson uses testimony from her survey to describe. Some survey respondents do not like the idea of open relationships because of the risks they pose, both to their relationship and their sexual health. Dawson concludes that open relationships are not for everybody but uses an anecdote from her survey to show that they can be fulfilling when done with open communication between partners.

After addressing relationship structures, Dawson turns to marriage and childrearing. Marriage equality, as of 2015, was gaining wider acceptance and legal recognition in the United States. Dawson urges her readers to lean on the legal protection afforded to them through these recent changes. Due to technological advancements, LGBTQ+ couples who could not have children on their own are now able to. Dawson uses the example of surrogate mothers, people who carry a child for a couple that cannot carry their own child.