Black Couples Face Unique Challenges in Relationships : Lifestyles: Childhood training, racism and disparate pay scales can work to thwart communication.

“Whether some folks want to admit it or not, black love is at an all-time low,” wrote journalist Tonya Pendleton in the Philadelphia Tribune after reading Terry McMillan’s 1993 novel, “Waiting to Exhale.”

Perceived by some as an exercise in “black-male bashing,” McMillan’s book and the controversy it sparked led thinkers like Harvard psychiatry Professor Alvin F. Poussaint to conclude that “black men and women have, for the past several decades, been mired in a never-ending battle, each generation rehashing the same old issues. . . . We are in a state of crisis and we must act now.”

Are the professor and the writers holding a mirror up to reality or painting an unnecessarily grim picture? Whatever side of the question one comes down on, few would disagree that there’s a multitude of challenges unique to black couples in these times.

“It is a problem with polarization, an inability to communicate with each other,” says Devya, a stress-management and meditation teacher in New York City.

“There is a heightened sense of frustration and stress,” agree Derek S. Hopson and Darlene Powell Hopson, husband-and-wife authors of “Friends, Lovers and Soulmates: A Guide to Better Relationships Between Black Men and Women” (Simon & Schuster, $20).

The two psychologists, who are black, see the situation as “a crisis of intimacy”: “Because of the pressures we experience in general, we displace that stress on to each other,” says Derek Hopson.

And the ability to communicate with each other about those pressures is often squelched early. Many black parents want their kids to keep a low profile--especially about their emotions. “In a large way we are overdisciplined by our parents,” says Devya, whose husband of three years is a massage therapist whom she calls her romantic and professional soul mate.

“Part of it comes in order to protect the children: Parents are aware that white society expects different behavior from us, is not nearly as tolerant of black misbehavior,” she says. “So they overdiscipline to keep away some of that criticism, to make their children fit in and be acceptable . . . the message is, ‘I want you to be as perfect as possible so that you will be accepted.’ ”

Black men are more at risk in white society, Devya says, and so they are even more deeply affected by this dynamic. “This person grows up, takes on a spouse--what’s he going to do, suddenly start talking?” The silence can go on, she says, “until the wife says, ‘I’m going to leave you if you don’t open up.’ ”

Even if they do learn to communicate well, couples may find themselves enmeshed in disagreements about a host of other subjects. Some examples mentioned by the Hopsons include internalizing racist stereotypes, differing reactions to incidents of bigotry in daily life and in the news, and the need to assimilate into mainstream culture versus the desire to live an Afrocentric life. And although their book deals only with relationships between men and women, identical dynamics can play themselves out, say the Hopsons, between same-sex partners who are black.

Most recently in the news are studies by Queens College and the Economic Policy Institute showing that black women college graduates now earn more than similarly educated black men. The salary discrepancy could, believe some experts, make it more difficult for women to find suitable partners--and cause trouble within existing relationships.

The Hopsons see professional women as needing to broaden their idea of who is a good match. “Many black sisters,” they write, “have discovered that someone who is reliable and has deeply held convictions . . . can make a great partner, even if he doesn’t have the world’s most well-paying and reliable job.”

Other influences on black relationships include lower pay scales (and the impact economic hardship has on raising children), where you have to live because you are black and “just the day-to-day struggle,” said Bernadette Sullivan of North Babylon, N.Y.

Sullivan, who works in the central supply department of a hospital, has been married 29 years to her husband, Gwendo, a truck driver for a large furniture company. She agrees with the need for the kind of book the Hopsons wrote, defining the specific issues of black couples. “It’s a different culture,” says Sullivan, “and you encounter people who have no idea why we act the way we do.”

But there are things Sullivan considers blessings that black couples often enjoy, including “the closeness that blacks used to have when I was coming up. The big family was an advantage--always around giving advice. And I think this teaches caring for each other.”

This kind of close-knit, extended family is something the Hopsons identify as a carry-over from ancestral family structures in Africa.

“The expressive, collective African model contrasts sharply with the more individualistic European outlook that views every man for himself, every woman for herself, and each family on its own,” they write. The authors add that the competitive attitudes blacks need to adopt for the white workplace must--once the day’s job is done--be exchanged for the more traditional African values of collectivity and cooperation at home.

Journalist Angela Dodson mentions something else she sees as a cultural difference: the amount of processing a couple does around actual or perceived racism.

“You spend that much more time on what happened to you today,” says Dodson.

“There’s always something that came up, with a cab, a bus or a boss, or something that happened to the children, whatever. It’s useful, and it’s good to have someone to bounce things off--’You think this was about racism or what?’--trying to analyze it--’Yes, it probably was,’ or, ‘No, it was an accident’--but that kind of discussion does take up a lot of time.”

What happens during leisure also is affected. When friends are over on weekends, there’s bound to be a great deal of talk about current books, news reports or television shows that have to do with race matters. Sometimes, Dodson says, she wonders, “What are other couples doing with all that time?”