Romantic friendship
Encyclopedia
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
relationship
Interpersonal relationship
An interpersonal relationship is an association between two or more people that may range from fleeting to enduring. This association may be based on limerence, love, solidarity, regular business interactions, or some other type of social commitment. Interpersonal relationships are formed in the...
and at times physical relationship between friend
Friendship
Friendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...
s, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in modern Western
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
societies, and may include for example holding hands
Holding hands
Holding hands is a form of physical intimacy involving two or more people. It may or may not be sexual.Whether friends hold hands depends on culture and gender: in the Western culture this is mainly done by women and small children , spouses and romantic couples...
, cuddling
Hug
A hug is a form of physical intimacy, that usually involves closing or holding the arms around the neck, back, or waist of another person; if more than two persons are involved, this is referred to as a group hug. A hug, sometimes in association with a kiss, eye contact or other gestures, is a...
, kissing
Kiss
A kiss is the act of pressing one's lips against the lips or other body parts of another person or of an object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely. Depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, affection, respect, greeting, friendship, and good...
, and sharing a bed.
History
Up until the second half of the 19th century, same-sex romantic friendships were considered common and unremarkable in the West, and were distinguished from then-taboo homosexual relationships. But in the second half of the 19th century, expression of this nature became more rare as physical intimacyPhysical intimacy
Physical intimacy is sensual proximity or touching. It can be enjoyed by itself or be an expression of feelings which people have for one another...
between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety.
Several small groups of advocates and researchers have advocated for the renewed use of the term, or the related term Boston marriage
Boston marriage
Boston marriage as a term is said to have been in use in New England in the decades spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe two women living together, independent of financial support from a man. The term was little known until the debut in 2000 of the David Mamet play of the...
, today. Several lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, and feminist authors (such as Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman is a scholar whose books on lesbian relationships and romantic friendship in history have earned critical praise and awards. Faderman is a professor of English at California State University in Fresno, California.-Early life:...
, Stephanie Coontz
Stephanie Coontz
Stephanie Coontz is an author, historian, and faculty member at The Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited...
, Jaclyn Geller and Esther Rothblum) have done academic research on the topic; these authors typically favor the social constructionist view that sexual orientation
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
is a modern, culturally constructed concept.
Historian Stephanie Coontz writes of premodern customs in the United States:
Examples of historical romantic friendship
The study of historical romantic friendship is difficult because the primary source material consists of writing about love relationships, which typically took the form of love letters, poems, or philosophical essays rather than objective studies. Most of these do not explicitly state the sexual or nonsexual nature of relationships; the fact that homosexuality was taboo in Western European cultures at the time means that some sexual relationships may be hidden, but at the same time the rareness of romantic friendship in modern times means that references to nonsexual relationships may be misinterpreted, as alleged by Faderman, Coontz, Anthony Rotundo, Douglas Bush, and others.Shakespeare and Fair Lord
The content of Shakespeare's works has raised the question of whether he may have been bisexual.Although twenty-six of Shakespeare's sonnets are love poems addressed to a married woman (the "Dark Lady"), one hundred and twenty-six are addressed to a young man (known as the "Fair Lord"). The amorous tone of the latter group, which focus on the young man's beauty, has been interpreted as evidence for Shakespeare's bisexuality, although others interpret them as referring to intense friendship or fatherly affection, not sexual love.
Among those of the latter interpretation, in the preface to his 1961 Pelican edition, Douglas Bush writes:
Bush cites Montaigne, who distinguished male friendships from "that other, licentious Greek love
Homosexuality in ancient Greece
In classical antiquity, writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Athenaeus and many others explored aspects of same-sex love in ancient Greece. The most widespread and socially significant form of same-sex sexual relations in ancient Greece was between adult men and pubescent or adolescent boys,...
", as evidence of a platonic interpretation.
Montaigne and Etienne de La Boétie
The French philosopher Montaigne described the concept of romantic friendship (without using this English term) in his essay "On Friendship." In addition to distinguishing this type of love from homosexuality ("this other Greek licence"), another way in which Montaigne differed from the modern view was that he felt that friendship and platonic emotion were a primarily masculine capacity (apparently unaware of the custom of female romantic friendship which also existed):Lesbian-feminist historian Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman
Lillian Faderman is a scholar whose books on lesbian relationships and romantic friendship in history have earned critical praise and awards. Faderman is a professor of English at California State University in Fresno, California.-Early life:...
cites Montaigne, using "On Friendship" as evidence that romantic friendship was distinct from homosexuality, since the former could be extolled by famous and respected writers, who simultaneously disparaged homosexuality. (The quotation also furthers Faderman's beliefs that gender and sexuality are socially constructed, since they indicate that each sex has been thought of as "better" at intense friendship in one or another period of history.)
Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed
Some revisionist historians have used the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed as another example of a relationship that modern people see as ambiguous or possibly gay, but which was most likely to have been a romantic friendship. Lincoln and Speed lived together, shared a bed in their youth and maintained a lifelong friendship. David Herbert DonaldDavid Herbert Donald
- Career :Majoring in history and sociology, Donald earned his bachelor degree from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his PhD in 1946 under the eminent, leading Lincoln scholar, James G. Randall at the University of Illinois...
pointed out that men at that time often shared beds for financial reasons; men were accustomed to same-sex nonsexual intimacy, since most parents could not afford separate beds or rooms for male siblings. Anthony Rotundo notes that the custom of romantic friendship for men in America in the early 19th century was different from that of Renaissance France, and it was expected that men would distance themselves emotionally and physically somewhat after marriage; he claims that letters between Lincoln and Speed show this distancing after Lincoln married Mary Todd. Such distancing, is still practiced today.
Emily Dickinson and Sue Gilbert
Faderman uses the letters between poet Emily DickinsonEmily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
and her friend and later sister-in-law Sue Gilbert to show how love between women, understood as nonsexual romantic friendship, was accepted as normal at the time, and only later thought of as deviant:
Following is an excerpt of the examples of censorship that Faderman cites: The 1924/1932 editions of Dickinson's letters include a letter dated June 11, 1852, from Emily, saying:
The original letter reads:
Why were these letters not destroyed by Emily Dickinson before her death, or by her heirs upon her death? Faderman's position is that the originals were not destroyed because they were not taboo at the time, since this was not a homosexual relationship. Those who claim the relationship was homosexual believe that the preservation of the letters doesn't prove otherwise, since the lesbian expression, though forbidden, was confined to private love letters and thus was wholly outside the larger domain of 'society', where strict propriety must be observed.
Biblical and religious evidence for romantic friendship
Proponents of the romantic friendship hypothesis also make reference to the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. Historians like Faderman and Robert Brain believe that the descriptions of relationships such as David and Jonathan
David and Jonathan
David and Jonathan were heroic figures of the Kingdom of Israel, whose covenant was recorded favourably in the books of Samuel. Jonathan was the son of Saul, king of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, and David was the son of Jesse of Bethlehem and Jonathan's presumed rival for the crown...
or Ruth and Naomi in this religious text establish that the customs of romantic friendship existed and were thought of as virtuous in the ancient Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
, despite the simultaneous taboo on homosexuality.
The relationship between King David and Jonathan, son of King Saul, is often cited as an example of male romantic friendship; for example, Faderman uses 2 Samuel 1:26 on the title page of her book: "Your love was wonderful to me, passing the love of women."
Ruth
Ruth (biblical figure)
Ruth , is the main character in the Book of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible.-Biblical narrative:Ruth was a Moabitess, who married Mahlon, the son of Elimelech and Naomi, but Elimelech and his two sons died...
and her mother-in-law Naomi
Naomi (Bible)
Naomi is Ruth's mother-in-law in the Old Testament Book of Ruth...
are the female Biblical pair most often cited as a possible romantic friendship, as in the following verse commonly used in same-sex wedding
Wedding
A wedding is the ceremony in which two people are united in marriage or a similar institution. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes...
ceremonies:
Faderman writes that women in Renaissance and Victorian times made reference to both Ruth and Naomi and "Davidean" friendship as the basis for their romantic friendships.
While some authors, notably John Boswell, have claimed that ecclesiatical practice in earlier ages blessed "same sex unions", the accurate interpretation of these relationships rests on a proper understanding of the mores and values of the participants, including both the parties receiving the rite in question and the clergy officiating at it. Boswell himself concedes that past relationships are ambiguous; when describing Greek and Roman attitudes, Boswell states that "[A] consensual physical aspect would have been utterly irrelevant to placing the relationship in a meaningful taxonomy." Boswell's own interpretation has been thoroughly critiqued, notably by Brent D. Shaw, himself a homosexual, in a review written for the New Republic :
It should be noted that historian Robert Brain has also traced these ceremonies from Pagan "blood brotherhood" ceremonies through medieval Catholic ceremonies called "gossipry" or "siblings before God," on to modern ceremonies in some Latin American countries referred to as "compadrazgo"; Brain considers the ceremonies to refer to romantic friendship.