The number of female couples in the state went up 53 percent compared with 32 percent for male couples. "I don't know if it's an age thing or a couple thing or a little bit of both." The Illinois data also showed a notable difference in the overall increase of male couples compared with female couples. "I think when you become a couple, you don't go to bars to meet people, so you can live in the suburbs, farther away from all that," Corcione said. Sam Corcione said he and his partner moved to Evanston as their lives shifted from hanging out in bars to going out to dinner with friends. For example, Will County had a 77 percent rise in male same-sex households and a 108 percent rise in female same-sex households, for a total of 1,198 couples. The surrounding counties have considerably lower numbers of same-sex households, though the growth has been substantial. Suburban Cook County showed even greater growth, up 39 percent to 5,362 same-sex households in 2010. In Chicago, there was a 25 percent increase in same-sex households, up to 11,715 from 9,412 in 2000. "It could suggest that there was a much bigger 'closet' in 2000 than I expected, and there now is much more acceptance of gay households." Gates said that acceptance of gay unions probably accounts for a growing number of gay and lesbian couples establishing households, but that trend has not yet grown enough to account for the big jump of reported households in the census. "I didn't expect it to be quite that large," said Gary Gates, a demographer at UCLA's Law School Williams Institute, which studies sex orientation as it pertains to law and public policy. The size of the increase surprised some demographers. Of the 30 states whose data was released before Illinois, the number of same-sex households was up 49 percent. Data on same-sex households is being released by the U.S. People now are evidently far more willing to identify that way." Since the 2000 census, the country's acceptance of gay and lesbian people has grown, as evidenced by laws in more than 10 states allowing same-sex civil unions or marriages and even the broader cultural mainstreaming of gay characters in movies and television. "I do think there's a correlation with these numbers when you look at how society now accepts same-sex couples and same-sex parent families. "There has been a very sharp growth in acceptance," said Richard Rykhus, who lives in Evanston with Carlos Briones and their 6-year-old son. The numbers were up in Chicago but also in the suburbs: in Aurora there were 463 same-sex households, an 80 percent increase over 2010 in Oak Park, the number of female same-sex households grew by almost 65 percent. In Illinois, the number of same-sex households increased more than 40 percent, according to 2010 U.S. The number of gay and lesbian households in Illinois jumped dramatically over the last decade, in part a reflection of societal changes that have made it easier for couples to be open about being in a same-sex relationship.