Both straight and gay teenagers know
the intimacy and adore of friendship, but all too many straights " grow
out of " those fierce involvements and pour all their emotional energies
into their husbands or wives, and children.( perhaps they should ) Parents of
gays often puzzle over how their children can endure the loneliness of single
life. Since the parents are usually very rooted in their marriages and often receive
little real sustenance from friends, they would naturally have difficulty
understanding a life-style in which friendship is central. Typically, a gay man
will have two or three close friends, male and female, with whom he shares his hopes
and doubts about his job , his health, his emotional and spiritual growth, and
his personal goals. Friendship means more to most gay men than it does to many straights, and gays
learn how to value and cultivate
it.
Exceptions abound, naturally; there are
married straights who maintain intense, one-to-one friendships, and conversely,
gay couples who socialize only with other couples. Nevertheless, experience
seems to suggest that gays, especially those without lovers or between affairs,
enjoy friendships that are active, supportive, candid, and nurturing. Friendship
is not a substitute for love; it is its own province. One that some
philosophers have considered a higher effection than love, because at its best,
friendship is free from the need to dominate, to possess, or to use. Because friendship
is so crucial to the happiness of most gays, they should take pains to make it
thrive. Nothing is more irritating (and self-defeating) than the gay man who
drops his friends and goes into hibernation the moment he finds a new lover.
Compared to the glamour of a new
passion, friendship may seem a mild pleasure, but it's a pleasure that endures
and ripens. Friends should not be taken for granted. They should be selected
with care, and their feelings regarded with sensitivity.....