Can a woman be close friends with a man outside of marriage?

I want to think about this issue because a Google search shows that most of the people asking this question apply a religious source or cast to the discussion. Does religion really co-opt this kind of moral act? Can I find sources and reasons to think about extra-marital friendship other than custom and received belief?

Naturally, this question is not limited to women. It equally applies to married males and possible extramarital partners who happen to be friends. Nor is it limited exclusively to heterosexual or even monogamous relationships. Every distinction of a family group has borders and edges, what is beyond the pale and what is not; otherwise, we wouldn’t even have the concept of “family,” much less support it as one goal of civilization.

I have been married almost thirty years and have helped raised two sons into college and beyond. Back in the day of the 1970’s there was experimentation with “open marriages,” “group marriages,” and just “shacking up.” While none of these experiments are extinct, when I read about them nowadays it is most likely a wistful nostalgia of free-wheeling hippie failures rather than models of the current collegiate trends of “hooking up,” abstinence and group encounters that my sons tell us about. Here too, correspondents reaching their thirties say that even the newer experiments self-extinguish and converge as the cohort ages into a custom what us oldsters used to call “dating” as new families are conceived.

Alternatively, is this a simple matter of male and female personal freedom? What right does a spouse in a trusting, mature marriage insist on the other not seeing whom they want for whatever purpose they want? Isn’t this simply, say, a patriarchal response one step removed from treating woman (or men) as chattel, or not much better, slaves, servants, or “help-mates.” In other words, the ladies’ auxiliary to a real, vital, masculine life?

For example, can a married woman visit a man alone in his apartment? How about driving all day alone with him in his car? How about a man sharing a room visiting a female relative of the same age? How about a group drinking date? How about something as innocuous as neglecting to mention the relationship to the significant other?

Now, let’s continue on. How about extramarital oral sex? How about A-Z Kama Sutra full-on experimentation with an interesting stranger?

Wait. Hold on! you say. Am I really equating sex with a simple friendship based upon a handful of shared interests?

Yes, I am. For the same personal freedom reason, why should a man or woman’s choice of extramarital partners be limited to purely non-sexual activities? Surely utter physical and other emotional closeness is part of a whole, fulfilling life and should be as much a personal choice as what color clothing to wear in the morning, or what toothpaste to use, or what book to read? And if we reserve some intimacies only for our husbands, isn’t this a slippery step to them eventually requiring us to shroud in hijab?

And I counter with my own argument. Why ought not a middle-aged father sleep in the same bed as his teenage daughter? You recoil in disgust. But wait. Assuming a non-sexual intent and the sole purpose of fostering emotional bonding between a father and daughter, how does this differ from overnight camping for a married woman with a good male friend? OK, age is one difference. But we are not talking sex here, so age of consent is not an issue.

Most shudder at this comparison: Men are perverts. They don’t think with their big heads. They are physically and socially overbearing. Women are more selective and self-controlled in their intimacy because, among other reasons, the consequences for them can often be far greater than for a man.

And I agree that regardless of the moral or intellectual intent that it would be inappropriate for a father and daughter to sleep in the same bed. But similarly, I think it is inappropriate for a married woman to share a room in an overnight business trip with a good male friend, also regardless of prior non-attraction or merely platonic intent.

So, where is the line? Is a cup of coffee together OK? How about a movie together? How about a long-term extramarital emotional relationship?

To form a tentative bright line, one thing that should be properly factored into the debate is the strength of impulse compared to the strength of chastity.

Now regardless of which religion or belief system you hold, whether magical or scientific or evidence-based or fairy based, chaste or libertine, those beliefs are far, far newer and juvenile than our physical existence as family-forming primates on the planet.

It really is hard to compare the invention of, say, writing, in Mesopotamia several thousand years ago with the distinction of primates as primates in evolution about 60 million years ago. Multiple orders of magnitude difference.

Primates have spent much of that time before morality or the articulation of good intentions or platonic thoughts or feminism or patriarchy refining their senses and skills for one basic end, which is to successfully mate and to perpetuate and improve those very narrow skills of soliciting, grooming, and having sex, sex, and more sex. Every single one of our senses--from sight, sound, feeling, smell to taste—has been refined, discarded, improved, perfected, and improved again for millions of years longer than we have spoken or wrote about them. Even our nose is thought to exploit quantum tunneling to distinguish similar molecules millions of years before Schrodinger and Pauli defined the concept.

Compared to the single-minded sophistication our physical machinery, our most thoughtful and reflective musings as recorded in canon, beliefs, testaments, glossing, commentary, social science, bibles, and hallowed traditions (including this blog) are laughable infant babblings of illiterates.

And this is the crux of the matter.

No matter what your higher intent when you enter into any extramarital relationship, no matter how you have been raised, what church you go to, what liberalism you espouse, or what guru you follow, the fact is that your body creates primordial impulses that the late-coming mind is ill-equipped to deflect.

Sure, we have laws and customs and a substantial measure of self-inhibition so most people don’t engage in wanton pillage and rape based upon their feral urges. But it is a losing battle to bet against the body when it comes to keeping hands off another given the additional opportunity of a bed, a private car, a hotel room, or a two-person camping trip.

So, I would argue that often neither men nor women don’t use our “big head” to reason out the most socially coherent and positive relationships. Insisting that one’s mind is sufficient to enforce a non-sexual friendship and to prevent wanton compulsion ignores the strength of the primal impulses that well up from the core of our species. We cannot escape our impulses, but we can avoid the accompanying opportunity.

What are the consequences?

The destruction of families and the long-term security of children and economic co-operation of spouses (ever wonder why the income poverty level between households of size one versus size two differs by only about 25%?) are some of the stakes here.

No, having an affair or a divorce is not going to lead to the destruction of civilization, just as street crime is not going to engulf our basic social institutions. Breaking up families is not going to crush the newly-singled even if the economic fragments of the familial destruction are more likely to descend into poverty.

Nor do I think that crushes, admiration and relationships between a married man or woman with an extramarital friend is negative: not many people believe that the spouse is or can be the entire source of social fulfillment for their partner. You need other people to admire to learn the best qualities of life and to further improve and exalt in oneself. So, I guess, finally, the answer is "yes" to the question of "Can a woman be close friends with a man outside of marriage?"

But until we understand the millennia of advantage our bodily impulses have over our nobler thoughts--just as we oughtn’t try heroin “just once”--we ought to restrict our friendships excluding situations in which the errant impulse, unbidden and unwished, but acted upon, can in a moment endanger a family of multiple lives that perhaps was years or decades in the flourishing.

No, there is no enforcement mechanism other than experience and foresight to appreciate the force of impulse combined with opportunity.  Just never, ever, underestimate the wisdom of the body—nor its utter stupidity.