Befriending the Goddess
Can men and women just be friends?
When I moved into a house with a friend who happens to be attractive, philosophical, and moves in the same circles as me, some of my friends joked, “How long until you end up sharing a room?”
It's easy sitcom-style humour we've grown-up with, the expectation that any ongoing interactions between a man and a woman will always lead to something else.
Yes, we're just friends, and the odds are against anything changing.
The friend zone
I used to be terrified of the friend zone, but now I'm finding it to be a wonderful sanctuary. The various embodiments of the divine feminine that have shown up in my friendships have enriched my life in ways I could never have previously imagined.
She is the one who saw me crying at the festival, and came to hug me without knowing who I was, and has since held me many more times as I cried.
The massive heart forged by her own trauma and healing, who loved me in my darkest moments when I felt unworthy of love, and who made space for whatever came up.
She is the one who prayed for me on the beach, and on the other side of the spiritual coin, the one who taught me to pause and pray before setting foot on the mountain or entering the ocean.
I see her in the queen who sees deeply into my being, and lovingly confronts the parts of me that want to hide away for fear of fucking up.
She is in the maiden who played guitar and sang for me on my bed whilst I cleaned my room, making the mundane beautiful.
Even the one who broke my heart into pieces finds her place in this constellation, not as a friend, but as a divine teacher bar none.
The burden of ‘one man, one woman’
As rewarding as these relationships have been, there's still something appealing about meeting someone and building a life together in a primary partnership. The wisest people I know say that's where the deepest transformation happens, where unconditional love is truly called forth in your life.
But it is an impossible burden for one person to satisfy all of the desires we might have from human connection, and that's why we have friends. However, when in a relationship, friends of the opposite sex are often perceived as threats. And so the only female friends with any significant level of relating end up being the partners of male friends. Naturally, this manifests in friendship groups with mainly couples. Don't play with fire, don't get burnt.
But is that single, vivacious woman really fire? If there's kindling in yourself that you're denying, certainly. The bad news is that turning your head the other way isn't going to solve that.
Untangling loves
At this point we can divert on multiple pathways: the continual experience of dissatisfaction with what we currently have, or learning how to navigate the shadow spaces of desires. The line I want to follow is the possibility that we might simply be confused about what we're experiencing.
The Greeks had four words for love: philia - brotherly love, eros - passionate and romantic love, storge - familial love, agape - divine, unconditional love. Plato also gave us the term platonic love: a deep, affectionate friendship without romantic or sexual attraction, arising from his belief that love could be a pathway to contemplating divine beauty itself.
Eros is often the easiest to spot, as it typically manifests with physical arousal. But I have at times felt a quickening in my body with women whom I have no sexual desire for. It was disconcerting at first, but I'm learning to stop my head running away with ideas, and seeing that the different loves might have similar physical signatures.
These are subtle differences, though, and I won't pretend to be an expert on this—I'm just getting started.
Making space for magic
Importantly, though, when I stop trying to control and categorize these interactions, it opens up a space for magic. The one category that fits all, though, is friend.
Each friendship teaches me something different: how to hold space without fixing, how to receive love without feeling the need to reciprocate, how to be intimate without being possessive. So many mirrors for my own inner feminine, the anima that yearns for acceptance and unconditional love.
The divine feminine is not to be controlled. She is sovereign in all her forms, and when we approach her with respect and intention, she emerges to teach us that love is far more vast than any single container can hold.
A fire to warm our hands on her love, rather than to burn.
This piece is dedicated to Robyn. I’m so grateful for your presence in my life: for your no-nonsense attitude, your intuition and wisdom, and for how you hold space for me and so many others. (Also, for listening to my half-formed first drafts)
This was magic to read!