Note: Due to a mis-communication, there were two posts for chapter 3. Here is the second version.
So I am going to start out by stating my own personal opinion and go from there. I truly do believe it is possible for a friendship to happen between males and females. We start out as kids and maybe your best friend growing up is the boy next door. Then somewhere in junior high and high school, you start thinking about cute boys and he is thinking about hot girls. It goes to show that as kids we have a certain maturity we tend to lose as we get older and trends get sexualized.
In chapter 3, it starts out comparing our segregation of sexes to the segregation of blacks and whites. History shows us that cross-gendered and cross-raced friendships have not been popular. But in a day were sex is everywhere you turn, can you really assume a man and woman eating lunch together really are just eating lunch? There is nothing else more?
There were some examples at the end of the chapter of some successful male/female friends such as Queen St. Margaret of Scot and Bishop of Andrew, Turgot. They managed to have a deep, intimate friendship while she was happily and success fully married to King Malcolm III for 23 years till she passed away from illness and he was tragically killed.
In the instance of Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantel, they were beyond close in their friendship and never worried about who was watching, listening or what others thought. Looking at this example, Brennan quotes Carole Hallundbaek as saying, “… In this day of correct, even sterile, behavior between colleagues (especially in the church) in an increasingly litigious society, it is wonderful and refreshing to find two people who can express their love an affection for each other with such openness and freedom…”
What are your thoughts? Have you or do you have a cross-gendered friendship? Is it working out? If not what happened and if so, what do you think are the reasons it is a successful friendship?