Friendship Between Two Female Hearts

In my early twenties it occurred to me that friendships are an active experience. It was early summer and I’d sent an email to Katie, my closest girlfriend in college, telling her I thought it wasn’t a good idea for us to live together the following semester. I felt our lifestyles weren’t conducive to sharing an apartment. A week or so later, with courage gained from several drinks at her local bar, she called me in the middle of the night to let me know exactly how she felt. Kate was angry and hurt not only about my decision, but the wimpy way I addressed it with her from behind a computer screen. She expressed her hurt and out came my defenses. But somewhere during an out-breath I also realized I admired her bravery. It was the first of two or three heated and difficult conversations between us in which we both had lots to air, and those talks—her insistence—became the beginning of real intimacy between us. Our friendship today is over a decade old and one of the most reliable I have because it is rooted in our truths. We don’t need the booze to activate that anymore, either.

Authentic Connections:

It’s interesting to me—ever since that phone call—I have had to acknowledge that as a woman I put guards up around the level of intimacy I am willing to allow other women. How can that be?? I find myself saying on first instinct–I’m a feminist! As pro-woman as it gets! That’s just it—part of the responsibility of being a woman today is taking active part in the evolution of our inner lives, and nowhere is this most potently practiced than in our friendships and close relationships. Childhood idealism about the easiness of friendships translates to the reality of commitment as an adult. Real, authentic connection between two hearts, two female hearts especially is still in large part a novel experience. Think about it, how easy is it to qualify our relationships? That’s my work friend, that’s Jenny from the gym, that’s Lyn who I know from daycare… With these qualifications come standards of what we think the experience should look like, complete with limits and boundaries accepted or created as socially conventional. This is typical, of course, and in many cases appropriate. But it also allows us to unconsciously predefine our relationships and miss the treasures of who the other person, as well as our self, actually is. This happens unconsciously because it’s easy. It’s also a form of being in control: of how much I give and how much I let another person in.

What I learned about myself as a young woman back in college is that almost every one of my girlfriends, early on, broke some idea I had initially created of her and who I thought she was or how I thought she ought to be, and allowing her to be herself was really hard for me. It still happens in my new relationships and that self-truth is a tough one to swallow. It’s my way of edging friends out so that I don’t ever have to risk real closeness. The more I see this pattern emerge, the more I name it as the potential of rejection, and the fear of my own personal imperfections driving these choices. Not gaining intimacy with women is just easy—I don’t have to make room for them to challenge me. And it also ensures that I remain passive, never learning to address my inner needs by having to learn how to vocalize what my heart or mind feel to be important.

Heart to Heart Communication is Key:

Heart to heart communication isn’t always pretty and doesn’t always feel good. I like this rule of thumb: honesty without compassion is brutality. In other words, communicating what’s going on with me is appropriate and I have a choice in how to do it. Combatively, or with gentle but honest directness. It’s a lesson I am grateful for about practicing being myself by respecting my girlfriends enough to offer them both the most authentic version I can of me, and room for them to just be them.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mark-crossfield/3990178177/sizes/z/in/photostream/

My girlfriend, Kate and I, who inspired this article.