I know that once the walls protecting and defining innocent and healthy affection have fallen in a culture, they are hard to rebuild. This is especially true when many do not want the walls that used to prohibit same-sex, sexual expression rebuilt. I think of the popular movie from a few years ago, "The Hours." Incredibly well-acted, it sent the quiet sideline message that sexual ambiguity between women can be a given — between sisters or friends, in this century or another – and ultimately, lesbianism is just another option – at least as long as you choose it from your heart. I disagree with this message, and I know to some, that makes me a killjoy who wants to dictate what’s right and wrong in sexual expression. Backed into a corner, eventually I fall back on the teachings of the Old and New Testament, but that only carries weight with certain people.

Still, even with that one line drawn, not every question is answered. What is a girl to do when it comes to loving other girls well? Reluctantly, I am thinking that naiveté as an option must go. Some guiding image of “Shirley Temple meets the Ya Ya sisterhood” isn’t a strong enough picture to define or protect female friendships in this era. The competition is just too strong. Think of Victoria’s Secret catalogues filled with images of woman as predator. Scary. Or there’s the almost “hip” mystique that same-sex sexual experimentation can take on. One high school girl explained to me that at her boarding school, all the cool girls were “bi.” Throw on top of that a culture that is intimacy deprived, and the potential for real confusion is obvious. Even when the questions aren’t overtly sexual in nature, there’s much discussion about enmeshment and boundaries in friendships. Clearly, the walls have come down and a lot of us are wondering how to proceed. Somehow, a way has to be consciously re-forged – within the realities of a real, twenty-first century, hyper-sexualized and intimacy starved culture – for girls to love girls well. …

A number of years ago, I read an editorial about marriage by Meg Greenfield, a writer at the time for both Newsweek and The Washington Post. Marriage, she reasoned, is strained in our country not because it is valued too little but because it is valued too highly. We expect too much of it, she explained. The emotional needs and relational desires that used to be met through both nuclear and extended families, which themselves were grounded in larger communities, are now telescoped onto only one relationship: that of husband/wife. That, she argued, creates a level of pressure that no marriage was intended to sustain. How much more so then, I have to wonder, does this apply to individual friendships – especially among single women?

Imagine a single woman, perhaps living away from her family in a busy, professional world. Due perhaps to serial disappointments, past wounds, a lack of available marriage candidates, busyness, or simply fatigue, her hope or even desire for marriage begins to wane. But with no solid community to which she can belong and contribute – it’s hard to come by in urban, transient, harried settings – where will she go to experience love? She might start trying harder with men. She might pour more of herself into her work. Or, as I often see with single women, she might eventually default to her friendships with women, or perhaps one friendship in particular, for her soul’s sole provision.