Eskimos have more than 20 words for snow. We have only two words to identify intimate relationships: friendship and love.
This leads to a lot of confusion and the occasional bout of teen angst. For concepts so profound you would think we might have come up with more ways to describe them. Worse, we make a dichotomy of the two even when they can be so intertwined.
We toss “love” around like our favorite pair of old jeans. So many varieties and levels of love exist that it is hard to know how to distinguish them. We say the relationship between love and friendship is complex, but it is these complexities that make life worth living — and pretty damn interesting to boot.
I recently had dinner with a guy I “dated” last spring. I use “dated” loosely because what we were doing did not constitute dating in any real sense. We held hands and kissed; it lasted roughly a week, although in gay time that’s the equivalent of months.
Early on, he told me he loved me. My cynical side laughed, but this naïve, half-closeted little boy saying he loved me caught me off guard. No one had ever told me that before. It was exhilarating, and I fell for it.
It wasn’t love in the Hollywood sense, but he had a tiny piece of my heart. He still does, but is it love or friendship now?
Like all such stories, this one has a weird ending. The boy stopped calling — he said he was confused about his feelings. He said he didn’t want to hurt me; he wanted to be my friend instead. When a boy, gay or straight, tells you he just “wants to be friends,” it’s over.
I ran into him again a few months ago. We have become friends again. I’m not quite sure on what level that friendship lies, and it has had its shaky moments, but we are friends nonetheless.
As the world’s most celebrated sodomite, Oscar Wilde once observed: “Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.”
Which brings me back to our recent dinner. He asked me why I still talk to him after what he did. I was floored — what could have prompted his epiphany?
Apparently the tables have been turned and he has found himself in the identical situation, except now he is in my position. I admit to a slight guilty pleasure. (Like you wouldn’t.)
I don’t know why I still talk to him. Perhaps it’s because on some level, I hope he will say that he loves me again. Pretty sad, huh?
But when you think about the many levels and kinds of love that exist, it is not all that tragic.
One can love in the familial sense, of course. One can love in terms of friendship. One can love another person for who they are, and that can be romantic, passionate or lustful, even platonic or fraternal.
Most often, these types exist in combination, and the proportions ebb and flow over time.
And that’s really the point: I can’t decide how I love my dinner companion, or how he loves me. Meanwhile, although Mr. Wilde might not approve, we are friends.
No one said love, in any of its many flavors, is easy to understand.
