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Originally Posted by Depletion
But many people during that period did have very close friendships--friendships that would seem very romantic to us to day. These kinds of friendships between women were termed Boston Marriages. Here's a Wikipedia article if your curious Boston marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
and they also seemed to happen between men. Some people speculate that Abe Lincoln's close relationships with other men may not have been an indication of his sexuality, but were a certain kind of close friendship that was common in 19th century culture. Here'a link about that if you are curious too. Boston marriage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. |
I'm sorry - I think I was unclear. I was only talking about closeness in romantic/life relationships such as marriage. The questions in the test referred to "romantic partner" or "my partner", and I have a feeling that there is an expectation that once you have a romantic partner, that is the person you are supposed to share your innermost thoughts with. Even here at PC, some of the "expert" (for want of a better term) blogs make this statement as if it were a law of nature, and I have seen the claim made that a marriage where there is no such sharing is automatically inferior.
Close friendships is another thing. I have no doubt that those have existed for as long as human languages have existed.
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Originally Posted by Depletion
At any rate I think that its important to have someone close to you to confide things in--someone who understands you. Therapists do a lot of this work today, and I kind of thing that's too bad. Sure culture have always had healers of the emotional/spiritual nature, but I think there's a problem when therapy becomes the place where you are supposed to go and "deal with" your emotions, so that you can function in the rest of society.
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I don't know that that is necessarily a bad thing, actually. I don't know what kind of things most people talk about with close friends, though.