Just Friends?

I don’t necessarily agree with everything Tolkien and Lewis have to say on this topic, but I do think their views are worth considering.

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Can men and women “just be friends”?

J R R Tolkien answers:

“In this fallen world the ‘friendship’ that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. This ‘friendship’ has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a ‘friendship’ quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by ‘falling in love’. But a young man does not really (as a rule) want ‘friendship’, even if he says he does….”

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C. S. Lewis, can men and women “just be friends”? Lewis answers in The Four Loves:

“All these, of course, are silly women. The sensible women who, if they wanted, would certainly be able to qualify themselves for the world of discussion and ideas [with men], are precisely those who, if they are not qualified, never try to enter it or to destroy it. They have other fish to fry. At a mixed party they gravitate to one end of the room and talk women’s talk to one another. They don’t want us, for this sort of purpose, any more than we want them. It is only the riff-raff of each sex that wants to be incessantly hanging on the other. Live and let live. They laugh at us a good deal. That is just as it should be. Where the sexes, having no real shared activities, can meet only in Affection and Eros – cannot be Friends – it is healthy that each should have a lively sense of the other’s absurdity. Indeed it is always healthy. No one ever really appreciated the other sex – just as no one really appreciates children or animals – without at times feeling them to be funny. For both sexes are. Humanity is tragi-comical; but the division into sexes enables each to see in the other the joke that often escapes it in itself-and the pathos too.”

So Lewis says sensible people generally avoid cross-sex socializing; only the riff-raff of each sex try to develop cross-sex friendships. Only silly women try to invade male spaces (and vice versa). Note that the one woman Lewis did become good friends with, he married.

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Like Tolkien, Lewis did allow for exceptions:

“From what has been said it will be clear that in most societies at most periods Friendships will be between men and men or between women and women. The sexes will have met one another in Affection and in Eros but not in this love. For they will seldom have had with each other the companionship in common activities which is the matrix of Friendship. Where men are educated and women not, where one sex works and the other is idle, or where they do totally different work, they will usually have nothing to be Friends about. But we can easily see that it is this lack, rather than anything in their natures, which excludes Friendship; for where they can be companions they can also become Friends.”

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More Lewis, noting the dangers (similar to Tolkien):

“Hence in a profession (like my own) where men and women work side by side, or in the mission field, or among authors and artists, such Friendship is common. To be sure, what offered as friendship on one side may be mistaken for Eros, on the other, with painful and embarrassing results. Or what begins as friendship in both may become eros. But to say that something could be mistaken, for or turn into something else is not to deny the difference between them. Rather, it implies it we should not otherwise speak of “turning into” or being “mistaken for.”

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Lewis’ view seems to be that because of the sexual division of labor, men and women will not share the kinds of common activities that form the basis of friendship. But he does allow for exceptions, while noting that these friendships risk arousing Eros on one or both sides of the friendship. I’d add that the possibilities of male/female friendship differ at various ages and stages of life. For example, in college, it’s not uncommon for men and women to have something that resembles friendship even if nothing ever materializes, or isn’t even an interest. It’s also possible for a young man and woman to have romantic interest in one another, but for their relationship to begin as something that resembles friendship because (for a variety of possible reasons) they aren’t yet ready to begin dating.

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From there, Lewis goes on to say that when women join a male circle of friends, it usually leads to unhappiness for both sexes – women find the men boring or barbaric, and make companionship ends up being banished from whole neighborhoods.

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Pastor Bill Smith shares his thoughts on male/female friendships here.