We used to be friends
Once upon a time boys played at being blood brothers. Once upon a time girls swapped hand-made friendship bracelets and wore them until they fell apart. Now it seems the line between friendship and romance is blurring, and the friendship part is losing. In an article about sexuality and film at SydneyAnglicans.net, the (unnamed) author comments,
In When Harry Met Sally, Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) famously explained to Sally (Meg Ryan) that men and women could not be friends. The reason? The sex bit always gets in the way.
Friendship between people of the same sex also seems to be heading for cinematic extinction. In a sex-obsessed media the concept of a deep and loving sexless relationship is becoming an enigma ...
Have we forgotten how to be friends or how to depict friendship?
To me it seems we have forgotten. We've gone from Anne and Diana of Anne of Green Gables, who exchanged locks of hair and vowed to be “bosom friends” forever (without sniggering over the “bosom” part), to the bare-breasted lesbianism of Rita and Betty in Mulholland Drive. We've ditched the amiable partnership between Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson for the unrequited passion of Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain. Even the friends of Friends couldn't keep their relationships strictly Platonic. And there have always been those who like to speculate that David and Jonathan, or Jesus and his disciples were really homosexuals.
But if we lose friendship, we really do lose, simply because of its nature. As C.S. Lewis points out in his chapter on Friendship in The Four Loves,
Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best. And the reason for this is important.
Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A,B and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A's part in C”, while C loses not only A but “A's part in B”. In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets ... Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, HarperCollins, 1978 [1960], pp. 58-59.
In a world where the focus in relationships is on finding Mr or Miss Right, we need our friends more than ever. Even if we are married, we need friends, for it a well-established fact that a marriage cannot meet all our needs (and nor should it). We need friends we can confide in, we need friends we can relax with and have fun with, and we need friends who will support us—who will let us call them at three o'clock in the morning when life isn't going so well and who will catch us when we fall. And our friends need us to do likewise for them.
So let's not forget. Let's keep that line between romance and friendship firmly drawn, and save ourselves from this present state of confusion so we can look forward to an eternity with God—and each other.