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A romantic friendship (also passionate friendship or affectionate friendship) is a very close but typically non-sexual relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in contemporary Western societies. It may include, for example, holding hands, cuddling, hugging, kissing, giving massages, or sharing a bed, without sexual intercourse or other sexual expression.
The term is typically used in historical scholarship, and describes a very close relationship between people of the same sex during a period of history when there was not a social category of homosexuality as there is today. In this regard, the term was coined in the later 20th century in order to retrospectively describe a type of relationship which until the mid-19th century had been considered unremarkable but since the second half of the 19th century had become rarer as physical intimacy between non-sexual partners came to be regarded with anxiety. Romantic friendship between women in Europe and North America became especially prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with the simultaneous emergence of female education and a new rhetoric of sexual difference.
Among those of the latter interpretation, in the preface to his 1961 Pelican edition, Douglas Bush writes:
Bush cites Montaigne, who distinguished male friendships from "that other, licentious Greek love",Rollins 1:55; Bush cited Montaigne's 1580 work "On Friendship," in which the exact quote was: "And this other is justly abhorred by our ." . as evidence of a platonic interpretation.
In his discussion of Bush's contention that the sonnets are an expression of intense, idealised, non-sexual friendship, what he calls the "Renaissance cult of male friendship", Crompton, in Homosexuality and Civilization, points to the sonnets' complaints of "sleepless nights", "sharp anguish", and "fearful jealousy" arising from love of the fair youth. Crompton concludes these are "torments" such that "friendship hardly could" cause. He notes also that the writer C. S. Lewis, though not a proponent of a homosexual interpretation, did find the sonnets' language "too lover-like for ordinary male friendship" and declared himself unable to find any comparable language used between friends elsewhere in 16th-century literature.
Lesbian-feminist historian Lillian Faderman cites Montaigne, using "On Friendship" as evidence that romantic friendship was distinct from homosexuality, since the former could be extolled by famous and respected writers, who simultaneously disparaged homosexuality. (The quotation also furthers Faderman's beliefs that gender and sexuality are socially constructed, since they indicate that each sex has been thought of as "better" at intense friendship in one or another period of history.)
Stating that "one must tread gingerly in approaching this matter," Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow wrote that it is impossible to say "with any certainty" that Laurens and Hamilton were lovers, noting that such an affair would have required the exercise of "extraordinary precautions" because sodomy was a capital offense throughout the colonies at the time. Chernow concluded that based on available evidence, "At the very least, we can say that Hamilton developed something like an adolescent crush on his friend." According to Chernow, "Hamilton did not form friendships easily and never again revealed his interior life to another man as he had to Laurens", and after Laurens' death, "Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it."
In contrast to Hamilton's effusive letters, surviving letters from Laurens to Hamilton were notably less frequent and less passionately worded, although some letters written by Laurens have been lost or may have been destroyed.
The practice of "smashing" involved one student showering another with gifts: notes, chocolates, sometimes even locks of hair. When the object of the student's affections was wooed and the two of them began spending all their time together, the "aggressor" was perceived by her friends as "smashed". In the early twentieth century, "crush" gradually replaced the term "smash", and generally signified a younger girl's infatuation with an older peer.Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (1993). 9780870238697, University of Massachuchusetts Press. ISBN 9780870238697 Historian Susan Van Dyne has documented an "intimate friendship" between Mary Mathers and Frona Brooks, two members of the Smith College class of 1883. Mathers and Brooks exchanged tokens of affection, relished time spent alone together, and celebrated an anniversary.
Romantic friendships kindled in women's colleges sometimes continued after graduation, with women living together in "Boston marriages" or cooperative houses. Women who openly committed themselves to other women often found acceptance of their commitment and lifestyle in academic fields, and felt comfortable expressing their feelings for their same-sex companions.
At the turn of the century, smashes and crushes were considered an essential part of the women's college experience, and students who wrote home spoke openly about their involvement in romantic friendships. By the 1920s, however, public opinion had turned against crushes.
The relationship between King David and Jonathan, son of King Saul, is often cited as an example of male romantic friendship; for example, Faderman paraphrases 2 Samuel 1:26 on the title page of her book: "Your love was wonderful to me, passing the love of women."2 Samuel 1:26. Biblical scholar Theodore Jennings emphasizes that Jonathan's affection for David started out as love at first sight brought about by David's beauty, concluding this is no brotherly love but a feeling tinged with eroticism.
Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are the female Biblical pair most often cited as a possible romantic friendship, as in the following verse commonly used in same-sex wedding ceremonies:
Faderman writes that women in Renaissance and Victorian times made reference to both Ruth and Naomi and "Davidean" friendship as the basis for their romantic friendships.
While some authors, notably John Boswell, have claimed that ecclesiastical practice in earlier ages blessed "same-sex unions", others maintain that this is categorically impossible given their understanding of individuals’ and officiants’ mores and values. Boswell notes that past relationships are ambiguous; when describing Greek and Roman attitudes, Boswell states that "A consensual physical aspect would have been utterly irrelevant to placing the relationship in a meaningful taxonomy." Boswell's work has received much criticism. Brent D. Shaw, who is incidentally gay himself, noted some of the differences between the two types of solemnized relationships in a review written for The New Republic:
Historian Robert Brain has also traced these ceremonies from Pagan "blood brotherhood" ceremonies through medieval Catholic ceremonies called "" or "siblings before God", on to modern ceremonies in some Latin American countries referred to as "compadre"; Brain considers the ceremonies to refer to romantic friendship.
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