I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on the responses to yesterday’s post "All of my best friends are guys." Keri distinguishes "sisterhood" from feminism in ways that I find useful, especially since I am inclined to use the terms as synonyms! Altmama has her own response at her place, and I encourage folks to check out her blog. And Antigone has pointed out the rather unfortunate Ladder Theory site that attempts to explain male-female friendships in a most unpleasant and stereotypical (albeit humorous) way.
I’ve been thinking about my friendships with women. I’ve blogged before about my friendships with men, and how precious they are to me. (And how long it took me to be able to trust men and get close to them.) I don’t blog about my relationship with my fiancee out of respect for her privacy. I’m honored that hundreds (on a good day, thousands) of folks come to this blog; I have "put myself out there" and attracted a fair degree of animosity for doing so. (And no doubt annoyed many with my waffling and my hubris.) I want to protect she to whom I will be married from all of that. It’s not easy marrying a man like me, you know; she deserves absolute privacy.
Though I’ve mentioned past marriages and relationships, I’ve never written much about my female friends. It’s true, today I have fewer female (and more male) friends than I did in the past. As a high school and college student, I was the sort of guy who was uncomfortable around other men, but I had a great many wonderful female friends. (Taking women’s studies classes certainly helped with the ratio!) The vast majority of these relationships were never explicitly romantic or sexual.
But the fact that these relationships were "platonic" (in the vernacular sense) did not mean that they were entirely without some degree of longing. I certainly did have "crushes" on some of these women, almost invariably unrequited. At least until I left college for graduate school, I was what my friends called a stereotypical NGB — a "Nice Guy, But" (I became a less kind person in my twenties, to put it mildly, and lost that label rather quickly.) I loved having so many female friends, and lord knows, I learned from them. I would never have ended up doing what I’m doing professionally had it not been for some exceptionally loving, patient friends who gently guided me towards not only doing gender studies, but doing real work on issues related to women, men, sexuality, and violence. I’m so grateful for all that they gave me.
Today, I’ll be honest: I have far fewer female friends than I did in my teens, twenties, or early thirties. There are a number of reasons for this. One, I’ve been very intentional about developing friendships with men. In my limited time for friends, I’ve focused on hanging out with other guys, both teens (whom I mentor) and peers. Two, I’ve got little tolerance for friendships with ambiguous boundaries. Though I’m an absolute believer that a straight man and a straight woman can be dear friends without any romantic tension whatsoever, I’ve found such relationships to be rarer than I had imagined when I was younger. Human sexuality is an immensely powerful thing, more powerful than I think many folks recognize; the desires of the heart are often equally compelling. I’ve been fooled more than once into believing that there was no chance of desire emerging in a given relationship, only to be stunned into embarrassment, awkwardness, or worse.
Three, I care about what other people think. When you’re young, you’re supposed not to give a damn what your wider social circle thinks of your behavior. But I carry the trust of a great many people: my fiancee, my family, my kids in youth group, my students. I’ve made some fairly bold claims about how my life has been radically changed since coming to Christ. My past gives folks plenty of reasons to gossip. Many of my professional decisions (like teaching a course on gay and lesbian studies) provide grist for rumor mills. So when and if I’m seen in public by friends or students or kids I work with, having a meal or a cup of coffee with a woman who is not my fiancee, I need to be prepared to explain my behavior. That doesn’t mean I never go to lunch with female friends and colleagues, I do. I just need to be mindful of what others perceptions are. When I was younger, I could ignore appearances; I’ve learned how fragile reputation is, and I’m working hard to keep the trust I’ve been given. None of this means I don’t still have wonderful female friends! I do, but for all three of the reasons covered here, the number is far smaller than it was in years past.
I do believe a healthy human person needs friends, and needs friends of both sexes, in order to be truly whole. I don’t believe that sexual desire or romantic attraction inevitably undermines mixed-sex friendship. I do believe, however, that when we’re young (and sometimes not so young) we lie to ourselves about how powerful and potentially dangerous these forces are. Few of us come to full adulthood unscathed by the fallouts of such a friendship gone sour. And without question, past experience has made me warier about forming and maintaining such friendships. I don’t pretend that my experience has been everyone’s. Others may find it easy to do what I found quite challenging, and I am sincerely glad for them.
What does this mean for feminism? I’m not sure. My feminism and my faith teach me that women are radically equal to men. We are not only all worthy of being friends across the gender divide, I believe we are called to form platonic relationships with the other sex in order to become fully human and whole. Feminism tells me, rightly so, that most of the obstacles to healthy, non-sexual, non-romantic mixed-sex friendship are social constructs. But experience has taught me that construct or no, though I may have reason not to be fearful, I am called to be wise and to set good, healthy, boundaries.
Most of my friends are probably men, but I have close female friendships. On the whole, I feel good about it. When I first got with my boyfriend, my close male friendships caused discomfort, but now we’re way, way past that.
I agree that attraction doesn’t undermine relationships and one hard thing to sell to others about my friendships with men is that any one friend’s attraction to me or vice versa can be dealt with through patience and honesty. I’ve made friends with men who intially had untoward intentions towards me and watched them move onto women who are much better matches and taken pleasure in their joy. This has made my life immeasurably better–plus, I get to be friends with their new girlfriends!
Indeed, lots of patience and honesty — and kindness — can resolve many of the classic pitfalls that happen in this area. Being friends with your friends’ partners is vital.
Heh. One of my best friends is a man and his girlfriend threw herself on my mercy and asked for my advice on how to get a commitment out of him. Being grossly honest, I told her the truth. And to this day, he gives me hell about it.
Okay Amanda, now I gotta know: what did you tell her? (Damn you for spiking my nosy curiosity!)
Quite frankly, I think that site is more harmful to guys: it says that they are immature and completely incapable of getting over their little head. But, it still hurts to think that my friends consider girls to be only good for sex.
I once had a discussion with as young man from the UAE about a similar topic. He said that the reason so many in the middle east believe in full covering for women is because men can’t control themselves if they see a woman’s shape. I told him that men who can’t control themselves need to grow up and to learn self-control, rather than making the women have to dress in a fashion to enable men to control themselves.
any one friend’s attraction to me or vice versa can be dealt with through patience and honesty
Word. And with self-control.
I think people aren’t delineating between:
a) whether Mixed Sex relationships where there is no attraction, are commonplace, and
b) the ideal way to deal with a valuable friendship which also includes unrequited attraction.
This is a pretty important categorical difference. For example, “self-control” has nothing to do with A, and everything to do with B.
Personally, I feel that completely unattracted-relationships are not commonplace (and is more frequent than people realzie because of how often the lusted-after party may be in denial). But they SHOULD be, and that means we should continue to encourage mixed-sex relationships even if they can’t always be as platonic as we like.
For me, one of the challenges of growing up (and even more so, once I became involved with the person I eventually married) was learning how to be an intimate friend to someone of either sex and appreciate them as a sexual person without feeling that *I* needed to be sexual with them in order to somehow “consummate” the friendship.
For a long time it seemed that throwing all restraint to the side was the marker of true feeling. But now I have a different idea of true feeling, and think that putting up boundaries actually helps me become a truer friend, and a truer me.
Also, thanks so much for the link! Glad you thought I had something to say. :)
Tony, you make an important point. When I was young, “A” category friendships were rarer than they are now.
Quite frankly, I think that site is more harmful to guys: it says that they are immature and completely incapable of getting over their little head. But, it still hurts to think that my friends consider girls to be only good for sex.
Yeah, he wrote the site in a somewhat tongue in cheek way. I thought it was pretty funny. But the point of the site was not that all we guys look at girls for is sex and nothing else, it was that when we first meet someone of the opposite sex, guys are more inclined to first think of women in terms of how they might or might not form a romantic relationship with them. We guage their suitability. I think that is somewhat true, at least in unattached guys even if on an unconscious level.
I think that the notion that all we look at is how high the possibility is that we can get your britches off is kindof crude, as well as inaccurate… Its probably at least the third or fourth thing we think about….
Now as to what you women think about when you first meet a guy.. well if I knew that I’d be a famous author by now.. I suspect it is somewhat the same. Men are just going to be more up front about it. Equality aside, men are still expected to initiate any romantic intentions..
I told her that if she wanted a commited, monogamous relationship with him, she needed to tell him that it was important to her and leave if he wouldn’t agree. I told her that she had to make sure that she really felt comfortable with terminating the relationship if he wouldn’t agree to be her boyfriend, but if his lack of commitment was making her miserable, she needed to say so. Well, she did what I suggested and he caved.
Frankly, I wouldn’t want to fight it out like that, but that doesn’t make my advice any less true.
Not with me Micheal. I don’t think I’ve ever had a relationship where the guy intiated. I’m not patient enough :)
Looking back, it’d be hard to determine whether it was my husband or me who initiated our relationship going beyond friendship. It was more of a “natural progression,” if you will. Of course, there were several times, for each of us, where we nearly quit the relationship because it seemed “too perfect,” if you know what I mean.
The two issues that interest me are the reputation issue and Tony Vila’s reference to denial by the lusted after party. I have several male friends I have made through my job, two of whom are particularly close friends of mine. One I talk with at length everyday and email frequently, and the other one I see for lunch a lot.
I have also assumed that because I am married and everyone involved is married that it is clear to my male friends and to anyone who knows us that these relationships are strictly platonic. Now I am wondering if 1) perhaps my assumption is a bit naive, and 2) whether there is something I should be doing differently. Since these relationships are part and parcel of a professional setting, I care what people think. On the other hand, I don’t want to just socialize with other women during my work day.
Three, I care about what other people think. When you’re young, you’re supposed not to give a damn what your wider social circle thinks of your behavior. But I carry the trust of a great many people: my fiancee, my family, my kids in youth group, my students.
I understand where you’re coming from here. As a counterpoint, however, consider the perspective of one Jonathan Richman (the following track is on his album “Jonathan Goes Country” which I suspect you’d enjoy):
(Beth)Jonathan it’s late, don’t you think that I should go
(Jonathan)Naw we were just starting to talk now,
It was just getting good don’t you know.
(Beth)But if I leave here in the morning.(Jonthan) Yeah.
(Beth)What will the neighbors tell your wife?
(Jonathan)Well my wife knows me by now
So there’s no need to let the neighbors run my life.
No, no need to let the neighbors run my life, no no.
Well it would look suspicious
And I know why they’d want to know
They love my wife but oh
They don’t want to hurt and so
If that’s all they see
I wouldn’t blame ‘em let them go and tell my wife
Cause my wife should know me by now
So there’s no need to let the neighbors run my life.
No, no, no need to let the neighbors run my life, no no.
(Beth)Here we are down the street
Here we are hand in hand.(Jonathan) Yeah, so.
(Beth)You’re close to me won’t people misunderstand?
(Jonathan)That’s fair, yeah, they could
If that’s all they see,
I wouldn’t blame them if they go and tell my wife
But my wife should know me by now
So there’s no need to let the neighbors run my life.
No, no need to let the neighbors run my life, no no.
I’m not sure that’s a counterpoint, djw! Rather, a ringing endorsement of my position. My goal is to never put another woman in the position where she has to ask me, “Hugo, what would your fiancee (wife) think?” That’s my job.
I think the point is message is a little different. Jonathan isn’t up to no good here, and he’s not worried about what his wife would think, as their relationship is strong and trusting. I think he’s expressing frustration that the friendship in the song refracted through a set of social expectations about gender and friendships (it’s the expectations, not the neighbors themselves, who he absolves of blame) is cause for a potential social ‘problem’ of sorts. In the end, he encourages a rejection of action taken out of fear for protection of reputation–it’s the strength of his marriage that allows him to do that. That’s how it comes across when he sings it, anyway. It has a wonderful innocence to it, but a sense of naivete as well.
I’m sorry, djw, I don’t know the song. But holding hands walking down the street with a woman who isn’t one’s wife is, I think, almost never innocent. Anyone who demands that it be construed as such is living in a fantasy world.
Ya know, I know a man who’s a musician, and I’m good friends with his last ex-wife. It’s ex because he would stay out ’til all hours without calling, then he’d just not come home at all from gigs, saying he was sleeping on a female musician friend’s couch. It got back to his ex (before she was his ex) that he wasn’t necessarily sleeping on the couch.
When this man came by my house to see his son, who was staying with us while all this was going on, he handed me that line: “She should have trusted me! She knew I loved her!”
Well, she *thought* he loved her… until he started doing things like that.
I hear you, Caitriona. Love is a verb, after all; it’s how we conduct ourselves when our spouses aren’t around that is often the best indicator of how much we truly love them.
If you heard him perform it he’d sell it to you.
The fact that I’m pestering you with song lyrics can only mean I’m procrastinating on grading. I solemnly pledge not to post here again until my grades are turned in.
I’ll bet he could sell it to me. I’m easy that way.
It feels so GOOOOOD to be done! Finish soon enough to enjoy your Friday night!
I often walk hand in hand with a married man - my sister-in-law’s husband.
I don’t know why your sentence rubbed me the wrong way, Hugo, about “But holding hands walking down the street with a woman who isn’t one’s wife is, I think, almost never innocent,” since of course I know you weren’t thinking of family relationships. I think it kind of sexualizes relationships with women or ignores/downplays the importance of family relationships.
In general I think men are less committed to their birth family than women. I don’t know if there are stats on this but it seems to me that a man is more likely to end up closer to his wife’s family than his own, and taking care of her aging parents than his own. I think that’s a bad and a sad thing (and not so fair on all of us single sisters!)
Let me amend it then, Tara: “Holding hands walking down the street with a woman who is neither one’s wife nor one’s relative”. I was thinking of the song djw provided; I don’t think that the woman in this case was the songwriter’s sister-in-law, sister, cousin, or any other relation.
i wnat a cool and understand female to stay with and should be 16to17 age.i’m in GHANA WEST AFRICA
BYE.