檳榔嶼

- Deep, abiding friendships are the place where many women know lasting love.
- Women who are steadfastly heterosexual may live a lifetime without feeling true love between themselves and heterosexual partner. The greatest tragedy of marriage within patriarchal culture is not that so many couples divorce but that an even greater number of couples stay together without feeling that they love one another.
  - Sadly, sexist notions of romance that romanticize domination often keep women and men from learning how to love.
  - Particularly, women and subordinated men often accept all manner of abuse in romantic partnerships, behavior they would find unacceptable in even the most casual of friendships.
  - No wonder, then, that as independent women, especially single women, practicing the art of loving in midlife and beyond, we often cherish anew the friendships with both female and male friends that allow us to dwell in love, to know true love in relationships with others even if we have not found such love in romantic partnerships.
- These romantic friendships lacked sexual engagement but were rich in erotic passion. Nonsexual erotic passion has little meaning in today's world.
  - Nowadays the assumption is that something is wrong if an individual feels intense erotic connection with someone and does not allow that eros to lead him or her to sexual intercourse. 
- In keeping with the spirit of romantic friendships, individual women are choosing to create lifelong partnerships or to make lifelong commitments with individuals they never live with, or live with for a time.
- My whole heart that it is best the have a circle of love, with committed bonds that extend beyond one privileged partnership.
- Many abiding romantic friendships between women are broken when one of the individuals finds a mate or marries. This is especially the case when an individual woman does not have a feminist consciousness.
  - value on our bonds with women as we placed on partnerships with males, to value our nonsexual bonds with male friends as much as we value those in which we are sexual.
  - That consciousness-raising must continually take place as long as patriarchy exists, for it teaches girls and women to value fully our bonds with one another, to value all deep bonds equally.
  - In a homophobic culture, deep, nonsexual, same-sex intimacy is often viewed suspiciously by straight and gay folks alike. For that reason, it has been harder for females who share nonsexual, same-sex romantic friendships to talk openly about these bonds.
  - In heterosexist, patriarchal culture, the only commitments that are deemed truly acceptable and worthy are those between straight women and men who marry.
  - It is still difficult for nonsexual partnerships to receive the respect automatically give heterosexual relationships. A romantic friendship that lasts for a lifetime may be considered not as important as a sexualized romantic partnership that ends in a few years.
- Romantic friendships are a threat to patriarchy and heterosexism because they fundamentally challenge the assumption that being sexual with someone is essential to all meaningful, lasting, intimate bonds.
  - When women begin to do the work of self-love. And the outcome of that work is often the recognition that they would rather be alone than remain in unsatisfying partnerships. Finding a man to be with is a lot easier that finding a man who can be a loving partner.
  - Barbara De Angelis, <<Are You the One for Me?>> : List traits we should look for in a partner. They are "commitment to personal growth, emotional openness, integrity, maturity and responsibility, high self-esteem, and a positive attitude toward life."
  - Patriarchal culture, and patriarchal domination of the psyches of men, encourage most men not to develop these traits.
  - Many progressive, liberated, loving women never imagined that we would one day turn away men as partners because we would see so clearly that they are not ready for healthy, mature relationships and may never be ready.
- Granted, most heterosexual women try again and again to entice men to do the work of self-healing and self-love so that the promise of true love can be fulfilled, but most men are just simply comfortable with the status quo, or they lack the courage to go through pain to the space of healing that would enable them to be mature, love adults.
  - Growth usually means that we have to experience suffering, and plenty of men want to avoid emotional pain at all costs.
  - In deep, abiding, romantic friendships, commitment to personal growth is a given. The work of healing is shared, the pain and the joy.
- Significantly, romantic friendships can coexist with the fact of partners' marrying, because their reason for being is not to replace marriage but to open up the possibility of sustained, committed true love existing among friends, and not just same-sex friends.
  - Our goal is to bond within a circle of love, of deep and abiding affections that are inclusive rather than exclusive.
  - Ideally, when females and males have feminist consciousness that enables them to break with patriarchal thinking about romance and the notion that there should be a dominant party and a submissive party, then they can honor the bonds of love that they hold with one another and with anyone else.
- Commitment is the ground of our being that lets us make mistakes, be forgiven, and try again.
- "Romantic" in patriarchal cultural always evokes the possibility of sexual activity.
- If women of all ages freely embrace the term "romantic friendship", we will open up the space where we can develop primary bonds in platonic relationships that are constant, committed, and able to last a lifetime. These relationships ensure that the woman who does not find a perfect mate will still know true and abiding love. And at the end of the day it is this love that sustains us and gives life meaning.