Female friendships...

Note: Some of you have captchas (verification words) that are grey.. on a grey marbled background. They take me six or seven tries.. and then I frequently have to give up. I can't read them. Just know please that I am reading and enjoying you... but will no longer be able to comment. Sorry.

~*

Many, many years ago I read a book about female friendships. It was essentially a history of women's friendships over the years, how they were valued and nurtured.

In all honesty, my female friendships mean far more to me than romantic relationships. Now that I'm older (and perhaps always without my recognizing it necessarily ~ more on this another time), I have little to no interest in romantic relationships. There's something in the dynamic that just doesn't appeal to me.

These days, I completely value my female friendships. I could easily spend the rest of my life quite happily living with my closest female friends, offering each other support as we get older and creating a quiet, safe and stable life.

My female friendships have always had a depth and quality to them that I've never found in any romantic relationship, including my marriage. When I was married, there was always a tension there. We are different by nature, men and women ~ as it should be ~ but it seemed more energy than should be necessary was devoted to navigating those differences. Those differences were ultimately accepted as natural and the tension remained. In some ways, he saw me as a foreign creature and I saw him the same way. I had to give up large chunks of who I am to be with him and I'm sure he gave up large chunks of himself to be with me.

With my female friends, there is an understanding without words, without explanation, without tension. While our lifestyles and even some values might differ, there is a bond.

I find it interesting that two of my closest female friends are gay. I am not but on some level, I completely understand their preferences. I just don't have the hunger for an exclusive relationship with anyone so I can't imagine a gay relationship any more than I can imagine a straight relationship, even though one of my gay friends said I should "try" it.

Since my last attempt at having a romantic relationship, I spent a few months thinking about it and realized it is just not going to happen for me. In fact, truthfully, I don't even want it any more. In thinking about it, I came to that realization that I don't want to navigate those differences.

I'm quite comfortable in my world populated by females. While I do have a few male friends, the relationship is entirely different. How wonderful it is to be free to be who I am and so completely enjoy my female friends without strange dynamics running in the background like some unix script; unseen, unnoticed and hidden.

We females come with the internal "software" and know inherently how to support and nurture each other. We inherently know how to form community and community bonding.

Over the past 40 years or so, this has been devalued for a more aggressive, competitive woman who is encouraged to be just like a man. We've lost so much of what it means to be and have female friends as corporate and market values have replaced family and community values, using a perversion of feminism to reinforce it. When I look back and remember the early days of feminism, it was all about celebrating women. It was all about knowing that we did have value as human beings and that our roles meant something in the larger community as well as our own homes.

Now women are pressured to "get out there", even if they are content to stay home and keep the hearth.

Market values have ruined many things but perhaps the worst casualty is that connection we have to each other and the value we once placed on our role as the hearthkeepers, mothers, sisters, daughters and friends.


Peace,

~Chani