Permissible Talk

One series of forced-choice questions asked women to estimate how often they would discuss a particular topic with a friend, if the topic were "on your mind." (Sixteen women responded to this series, which I added to the interview after conducting the first five. Forced-choice questions provide a range of answers from which respondents choose one.) The questions probed their willingness to discuss different areas rather than frequency of discussion. The topics ranged from political or religious beliefs through emotional states to work or family problems. In general, the women would discuss any given topic with a friend "Some of the time" or "A lot of the time" rather than "Once in a while" or "Never." The main exception was marital sex—that is, a woman's own sex life, not sex in general—which nine out of fifteen women said they would never discuss.

Financial problems also presented a sensitive topic, although not as private as marital sex. Nine of sixteen would discuss financial problems, if they were on their minds, only once in a while. Given that sex and money are quintessential items of family privacy, how-

ever, it is perhaps more appropriate to focus on the complements of these fractions: all the women said they would talk to a friend about money problems at least once in a while. And over a quarter would discuss their marital sex lives once in a while. In open-ended questions a few women volunteered that they preferred discussing financial matters with a close friend rather than husbands ("because she isn't as close to it"). It is obvious that some women do discuss such sensitive areas with friends: even though just over half of the women interviewed considered their sex lives and money problems too private to discuss, over a third confided them to their friends.

Problems with other friends fell in the intermediate range of sensitivity or privacy. Answers to whether women friends would discuss problems with other friends were fairly evenly distributed over the four categories of inclination. My respondents described themselves as more likely to confide marital problems than those involving friendship.

For the rest of the questions in this series, at least two-thirds of the women would talk to friends, sometimes or a lot, if they were thinking about problems with husband or children or household, moral or religious beliefs, or husband's work problems. At least three-quarters of them would discuss feelings of love or of anger, their own problems involving work, news or politics, and future dreams and ambitions. Considering all the topics, the problems women felt they were most likely to discuss were ones dealing with their own work and future dreams and ambitions. Nine of sixteen said they would discuss these a lot of the time. I say more about these items in the next chapter when I consider friendship and individuality.

Asked about subjects or areas of life a woman would never discuss, two-thirds of the women said there were none. Even more women said their best friend had never even tried to broach issues or problems they did not wish to discuss. One category of discourse they seemed to avoid, however: issues that generated conflict between the friends. Yet not all combustible topics were easy to avoid. Women did try to resolve childrearing differences that made it difficult to socialize when children were around. Friends did feel compelled to address disagreements about how much of a friend's time is available for friendship. However, they more easily

suppressed other issues of disagreement or conflict of values. Take, for example, this rather significant difference of belief between Sylvia and Pat: "When we were first getting to know each other, I didn't see how we could be friends, because our views aren't close at all. She believes in women's lib, which is completely opposite of my views."

But Sylvia and Pat built upon their common ground and avoided tangles over feminism. Sylvia showed little sign of infection by her friend's belief system; I suspect the noninfluence was mutual. The same appeared to be the case with Karen and Maria: "She's a Republican and I'm a third-generation Democrat. You can imagine why we never discuss politics."

Others revealed more frustration with their chosen mode of suppressing differences:

We disagree about work habits. She's big on shortcuts. I'm a stickler for doing it right, down to the last detail. Sometimes it kills me to watch her doing sloppy work. I get frustrated, but I'd never say anything. It wouldn't do any good.

She's a born-again Christian. We don't discuss religion, because we're in such different worlds in our beliefs. Maybe it's just that I don't understand her complete dependence and devotion. But I'm concerned that it keeps her from having any belief in herself. It feels like something strange between us.

It disappoints me that she doesn't share certain feelings about what's right, about the way the world should be. . .. It's a difference in ethics . . . in a feeling for other people. It's hard to let things she says pass. But it's too frustrating to try and make her see how I feel. I try not to be angry.

Each of these women felt that suppressing conflict was the way to preserve harmony in a friendship, although for some it nonetheless left troubled feelings. Their sense of the destructive potential in unrestrained conflict seems accurate: sustaining relationships surely depends on partners' ability to express and restrain conflict. But I was surprised at the extent to which the women seemed to have avoided expressing disagreement and conflict. Given the extent to which they revealed to each other their beliefs and opinions and their emphasis on the value of honesty, I would have expected a greater willingness to disagree openly. Studies show that conflict

occurs more in marriage than in friendship, and that conflict in marriage does not necessarily correlate with dissatisfaction.^[23] Why then do rules of relevance for women's friendship appear to proscribe virtually all conflict?

I have no evidence that addresses this question, but I have a few ideas. For one, a relationship of contingent commitment may feel (and be) considerably more vulnerable to the destructive effects of conflict than one whose conventional bonds help assure the relationship will survive periods of distress. It is far easier, for example, to stoke anger in self-imposed isolation when the requirements of daily life do not bring a pair together at meals or in bed. On the other side of the coin, a relationship of contingent commitment may not build in primordial or irrational conflicts as marriage does, with its cornerstone issues of sex and identity. In other words, friendship may be less subject to uncontrollable conflict than marriage is. A further explanation for women's suppressing conflict in friendship may lie in the relationship's dynamics of empathy and identification. Women's exchanges in friendship strongly emphasize the projection of similarity. By contrast, the experience of difference may threaten the capacity to empathize. The sense of separation and distance created by disagreement and conflict may appear to women to menace the intimate and mutualistic bonds of their friendships. Avoiding conflict does not necessarily avoid stress, however.^[24] The frustration evident in the remarks describing conflicts smoothed over may affect the relationships in ways the friends fail to grasp.

Whatever the actual cause, women not only avoided conflict with friends, they believed friends in general should do so. And two to one, they believed that women friends avoid conflict better than men friends. To one question from a series on beliefs about gender differences in patterns of friendship, a majority of women agreed that men are "more likely" to argue with friends than women are—the only characteristic of friendship, out of twenty-three, that a majority credited to men over women. (On two others—jealousy of a spouse's friend and being likely to lend money to a friend—women credited men more often than women, although a majority believed there was no gender difference. On another seven items, including loyalty and breaking up friendships

more easily, a majority of respondents pronounced no gender difference; but here women received more votes than men. And on thirteen items—most centering on closeness, emotionality, and disclosure—women overwhelmingly acknowledged their greater inclination.)

These responses suggest some of the rules of relevance for friendship talk. The desirable topics, as chapter z revealed, are feelings, childrearing, husband problems, the deprecated daily tasks of homemaking, news in social networks, and thoughts of individual achievements. The range of permissible talk is vastly in-elusive, but most women felt that it excluded money problems and marital sex as well as issues of conflict between friends.