Male-Female Friendship

[Fauken]

Why do you think that monks and nuns don’t live in mixed monasteries but separately?

Define mixed. A convent has to have some guys there, at least a priest to say Mass, though he would live in a rectory if he didn’t commute there every day. If memory serves, the Carthusians have a priest and a few other guys present at a convent to help the nuns with particularly strenuous labor. But unlike a convent or a monastery, I don’t live with my guy friends. All the nuns live together, all the monks live together. Friends of the opposite gender do not.

 

[FollowerofJesus100]

I think that sure they can. Maybe that person and you have a lot in common and have clicked to form a great friendship. I have an older friend and him and I have become really good friends. We have a lot in common including our religious beliefs and the gospel music we like. We are definitely just friends, I have a boyfriend and he is married. I even considered asking him to be my God father and he said he would’ve (I already have one). So, I think…yes, a man and woman can definitely be just friends.

 

[TominAdelaide]

I personally don’t think married men and women should have close friendships with members of the opposite sex (as it could create jealousy, etc). Also, if a friend becomes an occasion of sin for us (whether of the same or opposite sex) they have got to go….

Is a platonic friendship ok for one who is married? Ask an Apologist

Is it a sin for a married person to have a platonic relationship with a close friend.

Is there an appropriate way to hug a married woman? Ask an Apologist

I recently got into a very heated argument with my husband over how my brother-in-law hugs me. My husband thinks it is excessive and inappropriate. My brother-in-law IS very affectionate, not just with me, but moreso with me because I am the youngest sibling in my family and he has known me for at least 15 years. I have never felt uncomfortable or that he is being inappropriate. My family was not used to being around someone so affectionate at first, but we accepted his lovable personality e…

 

[Sarcelle]

The possibility can be disturbing if we go with the segregation of the sexes route.

People could be forbidden by law to have a certain profession. So women could be prohibited from becoming engineers and men could be forbidden from being nurses since both of these professions are dominated by one sex.

 

[Dolphin]

I have plenty of female friends that I am close to in a non-romantic way. I was friends with my girlfriend for months before we started dating. As such, this friendship we built has been an amazing for our relationship over a year later. She’s my best friend and we have been planning our engagement and future lives together.

Nothing wrong at all with having female friends if you are male or the other way around as long as you understand there are certain boundaries.

 

[TominAdelaide]

From “The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity” by Bernard Häring C.SS.R (the work has the nihil obstat and imprimatur):

Friendship is possible between man and woman even outside the area of nuptial love and beyond the radius of the sexual and erotic. It may be within the family circle or beyond it. But if the principle is universally valid that the aloofness of reverence must restrain the closeness and intimacy of love, it is particularly valid in this instance. Quite often the hazard of erotic or even sexual temptation proscribes any intimate friendship between man and woman. Often the danger of scandal forbids it. The example of St Paul must be our norm of action in such instances: “if food scandalize my brother, I will eat flesh no more forever, lest I scandalize my brother” (1 Cor 8:13). Wherever man and woman, outside marriage, are drawn to each other in a friendship which is not orientated toward mutual furtherance of divine friendship nor mindful of the salvation of the weak, who see in such friendships a justification of their own frivolous “friendships,” they embark on a course filled with peril for Christian love of neighbour.