As a result of feeling rather out of sorts, the other night I had a dream which brought to mind an interesting topic to discuss. About a year ago, I was sick in a rather distressing way; a group of us were out camping far from immediate access to medical help, and it wasn’t something that a doctor would have been brought out for in any case but just something that had to pass, but I was experiencing unsettling hallucinations and distortions of perception, and I really could not bear to be alone– I felt extremely distanced from everything and very small, there were periods where visually nothing was making sense, and night was closing in. My closest friend at the time spent that night wrapped in blankets with me, keeping me feeling warm and, perhaps more importantly to me at the time, secure. When I was incoherent and distressed, he held me and brushed the hair out of my eyes and tried to keep me from getting too hot or too cold, and kept me pressed close like a child when I expressed how much it was bothering me that I felt detached from everything around me, to keep that sensation from becoming unbearable. The thing I remember most clearly from that time is how much of a help that was, how much worse of a state I surely would have been in without it, no matter how much I tried to reassure myself that it was only the sickness making me feel so.

We made ourselves very emotionally vulnerable to each other during that incident: two people clinging to each other in the middle of a freezing field, one of them babbling like a five-year-old and the other reassuring them as if they were. Our friendship had always been a close one, but it was only after that, when things we’d revealed could not be un-revealed, that we realised how deep of a bond we had; in particular, how much he cared for me and how happy I was to have that.

Stop me if this sounds like bad slash fiction. Because it isn’t. And, furthermore, I have said absolutely nothing that might have logically implied that a relationship of that nature developed between us. Indeed, the ending to this story is that I discovered he had considered me as close as family for quite a while, and since my blood family have all been (not through any especial fault of their own) estranged from me for most of my life, I appreciated that bond, and since I have always shared a lot with him it didn’t feel awkward to acknowledge this closeness. Neither of us misunderstood the other as wanting something other than we did, which was genuinely nice.

I haven’t been sick in quite a while, and something about being so must have reminded me of the incident, because I did indeed dream about it the other night, and it brought up something I wanted to discuss in general; namely how a deep expressed affection for someone, particularly one that includes a comfort with or even desire for physical closeness such as hugs, is almost always correlated with the existence of sexual feelings– and I think we would be much happier as a species if these two concepts were treated separately.

Emotional closeness and caring does not necessarily equate to sensuality, and I think a lot of people reject the strength of closeness they feel for others because they think that expressing it implies a physical kind of closeness that they don’t feel interested in having. And that’s a shame, because if they didn’t feel it had to imply that, if those who did not necessarily feel sexually for each other but nonetheless loved were able to express the depth of their feelings without fear of being misunderstood, I feel that people would be… well, a lot closer. Even outside of distressing situations, children like hugs and closeness, and adults are no different; they perhaps are a little less forward about desiring such, but I assume most adults still generally appreciate it much as children do, as a soothing and bonding experience. Spending time lying curled up close to a friend isn’t something most cultures normally invite, but if it feels appropriate for both parties, what could be the harm in it? Just because it crosses arbitrarily-drawn boundary lines about what friendships might allow, what sibling or sibling-like closeness might allow, and what sexual relationships might allow, does not invalidate the fact that it is not a sexual experience in and of itself and that people might find it bonding in a way that does not touch on that aspect of life. Similarly, one might desire to write effusive letters detailing the good qualities of a friend and telling them that they are loved, without either considering them a parent- or child-figure or a sexual partner.

To say, as some people do, that a person could not possibly want to share physical closeness and warmth with another human being– we are social animals, after all– without having some “ulterior motive” for doing so, is, I feel, a very limited and distorted view of how people work. It puts caring into such a limited box. Indeed, it puts caring into a box focused on short-term gratification, and I don’t think that is a helpful way to look at it at all. Not that I have anything against sexual intimacy outright; not that I would demean its value. It just seems very wrong to think of it as the ultimate reason for wanting any kind of closeness.

I make distinctions between “sexual relationship” and “romantic relationship” throughout this post specifically because I believe one can have the latter without having the former; and certainly it is not an unfamiliar concept to most people that one can have the former without having the latter. I also do not think that all friendships in which one desires or allows physical closeness, or effusion, or any other such thing necessarily need to be termed, or ought to be termed, “romantic”. For the record, the friend in question is not someone I would generally seek out to cuddle with, though I would certainly not feel uncomfortable if, for example, during a trip we ended up sharing sleeping space. However, that does not mean that I might not find that appropriate in another friendship. There are, I believe, as many diverse and individual ways to relate to people as there are people, and putting them into boxes marked “friend”, “lover”, and “family” hardly does justice to the full expression of these relationships.

Do we ever, indeed, love two people in the same way? For those who have had a number of romantic-and-sexual relationships (I could have used the word “relationships” alone here and most of you would have understood what I meant, yet if I had meant another type of relationship I would have had to specify, a testimony to the monopoly this type of relationship has over the word. I would like to think I have “relationships” with all my friends and even acquaintances, that I “relate” to them in a meaningful and identifiable way. Can we not reclaim the base form of this term?), did you love all of those people identically, or was each a unique feeling and expression of affection for that person’s individual qualities?

There are other people I feel this way for too. I have a friend in particular whom I love dearly, but I’ve found that culture is a barrier to conveying that easily. In this culture, you cannot easily say you love someone without being misinterpreted and, if the person does not return your feelings, inviting a possible future of awkward interactions– all based on the assumption that you are implying this expectation of sexual closeness. What hope do those have who might not ever wish to be sexually intimate but wish to bond deeply with others none the less? If they have no close family, must they spend their entire lives without any real human contact other than the occasional hug in greeting or accidental touch? Children deprived of physical contact frequently develop psychological problems in adult life, and while once we have made the transition to adulthood this comfort becomes less essential if we have had our sufficiency in infancy, it is still a vital part of our makeup. It is a sad thought that those so inclined might especially suffer for, ironically, being presumed to be the exact opposite of what they are. I rather wish more of society understood this perspective.

Further to this entry, a powerful and poignant website on the history of deep friendship.

The more I read the articles on this site, the more I find it distressing and absurd that society has fallen to a state where genuine, tender affection between human beings is variously ridiculed, censured, seen as little more than window-dressing for a particular specialised kind of intimacy, and confined to those only in specific roles. Until recently the kind of closeness that these days requires lengthy essays and websites just to explain was a cheerful norm. What have we deprived ourselves, and our society, of by this isolation?

I would also consider this website required viewing for slash writers. I have no objection whatsoever to people who wish to write about gay relationships– goodness knows they are stigmatised enough as it is– but if it is merely closeness between two individuals that these people seek to explore, there are other, less overused, options in need of exploration and exposure.