Chapter Four
Friendship and Individuality

In friendships, theorists have proposed, we best express our individual identity. Between friends obligations rest on fulfilling general human virtues—all else we negotiate individually, privately. Our mutual self-expression forms friendship and determines its solidarity. Because friendship is perpetually voluntary and relatively free of institutional obligations, it can be a terrain of moral excellence, spiritual growth, and psychological expression.^[1] Georg Simmel selected friendship as the relationship par excellence of individuation, the best example of a relationship ungoverned by the "super-individual elements" of larger institutional orders. Individual freedom to construct a mutually gratifying relationship has "much more play" in modern friendship than in marriage, according to Simmel. Modern marriage, based on free choice and love, remains lodged within "traditional forms . . . social rules . . . and real interests" that do not favor "the most pointed individuation."^[2] Even theorists who view the family as the crucible of adult identity generally concede that we consolidate our individuality in the more autonomous realms of modern experience.^[3]

I have questioned the view that the nuclear family bounds the relations of intimacy, attachment, affection, and altruism—the primary relations of identity and commitment. Women's close friendships extend the bounds of emotional and moral investment beyond the family. Now I look at friendship and individuality, scanning my interviews to see how individuation and autonomy are engendered and reinforced in women's close friendships. I con-

sider how ideals of friendship and practices of individuality intersect with women's commitments to marriage and family.

I define individuation as autonomous activity and the experience of self as both distinct and complex.^[4] Simmel treats the historical, structural, and interactional dynamics of individuation; friendship is often his example. In his structural social psychology of friendship, Simmel causally links segmented participation in market society to the individualized personality to "differentiated friendships" in which people share only certain aspects of themselves with others. Modern friendships, says Simmel, restrict "ab solute psychological intimacy" and access to individuals' total personalities; friends share various but limited sentiments, interests, and aspects of life and mind. "Modern man, possibly, has too much to hide to sustain a friendship in the ancient sense. . .. Personalities are perhaps too uniquely individualized to allow full reciprocity of understanding and receptivity, which always, after all, requires much creative imagination and much divination which is oriented only toward the other."^[5]

The distinguishing mark of Simmel's analysis of modern friendships is not, however, his recognition that they are specialized and restricted. It is rather his view that such relationships may yet be morally and affectively rich, personally and socially integrative, that distinguishes Simmel among nineteenth-century writers. Simmel believed that although modern friendships were typically "surrounded by discretions" regarding access to whole knowledge of the other, "they may yet stem from the center of the total personality" and involve "the same affective depth and the same readiness for sacrifice, which less differentiated epochs and persons connect only with a common total sphere of life."^[6] In spite of Simmers dim view of the drift in metropolitan life toward "tendentious individuation," a positive valuation of individualism is implicit in his writing. His modernist ideal might be characterized as an organic solidarity binding autonomous individuals in a network community of friendship pairs.

Simmel's depiction of modern friendship has aged well. Following Louis Wirth and others who elaborated only the negative side of Simmel's portrayal of metropolitan individualism were those like Claude Fischer and Barry Wellman who revived the positive vision in his analysis. But Simmers social psychology is most persua-

sive when we read it, as he intended, to apply to the social and private worlds of men.

Now women are the less individualized sex; variation of individual women from the general class type is less great than is true, in general, of men. This explains the very widespread opinion that, ordinarily, women are less susceptible to friendship than men. For friendship is a relation entirely based on the individualities of its elements.^[7]

Simmers gender distinction in individuation appears to rest on nineteenth-century men's greater social participation. He does, however, envision an eventual inclusion of women in the modernizing logic of friendship, as prefigured in the "modern, highly differentiated woman [who] shows a strikingly increased capacity for friendship and an inclination toward it."^[8]

The increased incorporation of women into public roles over the twentieth century lets us reexamine Simmers analysis, which still appears to hold up a mirror to men's friendships. Our examination, in this chapter and in others, does not corroborate Simmel's structural logic. Women who occupy differentiated social roles do not form only specialized friendships that conceal broad areas of personal experience. Evidence here and elsewhere that men are more likely than women to limit self-revelation in friendships suggests that Simmel's conception needs two kinds of refinement. Simmel considers only the structure of public life and its effect on personality; but that effect is mediated by the practices of private life. To understand differences in the friendships of modern women and men, we must consider how the division of labor in the family affects the relations between the structures of public life and practices of friendship. Thus, the first refinement is a structural analysis that expands to include private life and gender stratification in private and public institutions. The second is a more complex social psychology of self.

I have already presented several examples of how a more inclusive structural analysis could explain gender differences in intimate styles. In the last chapter I argued that a woman's resources shape her friendship exchanges; women friends prefer to give of themselves because they have relatively little autonomous control over material resources. Chapter z offered another gender power analysis: women friends reveal more of their private life to one another

because some of their significant private experience is ignored, devalued, or rejected by husbands. Wives, on the other hand, are more likely to attend upon their husbands, just as any subordinates asymmetrically do with their superiors.^[9] This argument suggests that husbands are less impelled to make themselves vulnerable to friends through intimate self-disclosure. It may also be, because men have more power, that they have fewer marital troubles to disclose.^[10]

To explain intimate styles, structural analyses need a social psychology of self. Yet Simmel's analysis lacks a psychological extension that could explain the various patterns of discretion and reserve, individuality and dependence that have developed among contemporary men and women. Specialization and the division of labor do shape modern personality, individuality, and intimacy, just as Simmel says. But structures not only operate immediately and directly on mind and self through adult experience in differentiated social roles; they also operate developmentally through their internalization in personality. The division of labor in private life, including childrearing, shapes gender-differentiated personality and individuality in children, who as adults develop differing modes of intimacy. Simmel's narrowly structural analysis misses such personality differences, which may lead to gender differences in friendship practices of "creative imagination and . . . divination . . . toward the other."^[11] Such differences may substantially influence friendship cultures.

In the following pages, I explore how women's culture of friendship both promotes individuality and subordinates it to family responsibility and how this culture sustains an autonomous realm of friendship and submits its claims to those of family. I propose that individuality and autonomy are practiced in a variety of modes. Understanding specific practices of individuality and autonomy in close friendships can clarify the connections between friendship and other social structures like marriage. It can also suggest hypotheses about gender-based cultures of community.

Autonomy in Friendship

The ideal of autonomy poses friendship as an independent and private relationship—independent even of marriage. It suggests why

individuals rarely choose best friends from contexts, like work or church groups, that they do not enter or leave easily or often (see the last chapter). And it explains why they regularly choose best friends from contexts separate from marriage. Among the women I interviewed, only one had a closest friend whom she met through her husband (hers was the most distant of the close friendships described). All of the others drew closest to women they knew independently of their husbands.

I have already noted how responsibility for young children limits autonomous choice in friendships. For example, the mothers of young children chose friends whose childrearing practices were consonant with their own, to ensure a peaceful ground for sociability that necessarily included children. Poverty, long work hours, educational disadvantage, old age, and disability are also likely to limit choice in friendship.^[12] So, of course, are individual differences in needs and capacities for forming friendship; they may, in part, be gender-related.

I saw all of these constraints operate in my interviews. Poverty, for example, narrows the contexts from which one can choose friends as well as the resources one can exchange in friendship. Of the four women in my sample whose sisters remained their best friends, three had the lowest incomes and educations. There is more in their stories than disadvantage, however, to explain their choices. All three came from ethnic cultures that emphasized ideals of family solidarity; they also came from families with many daughters, so each chose among several potential sister-best friends. All three lived in family networks and economic circumstances that limited the "flowering out of rules of relevance" in their other relationships.^[13] That is, their values and poverty discouraged them from turning social contacts into friendships involving variegated exchanges of personal and material resources.

Whatever their circumstances, virtually all the women chose best friends independently of their husbands. Note, in the above examples, that family of origin—not marriage—appeared to narrow the choice of friends. Indeed, all three women with sister-best friends significantly defied husbands to help kin or accept support by kin. Like others in the sample, they perceived their best friendships as autonomous.

Best friendships emphasize autonomy from marriage more than

other friendships, even those in the close network. Thus, I expected that more "second circle" close friends and more sociable friends would have been acquainted through husbands. That is precisely the case with the women I interviewed. Moreover, couples often carry on friendships that are more sociable than intimate. Their relative power may easily influence how they recruit friends and socialize. Unless we assume that couples are of one mind and inclination, we must assume that one member's preference will prevail. And since husbands tend to have more marital power, I would expect more couples to be inducted by husbands than through wives. This was true in my sample, although the differences were not large. According to the wives, husbands periodically exercised a veto power over wives' choices of sociable couples. In many cases, this power seemed to leave the husbands happy to delegate the arrangement of the couples' social lives to the wives. Other, larger scale studies suggest the same: husbands recruit more couples as friends, and wives coordinate contacts within kin and couples.^[14]

A second indication of the ideal of autonomy appears in women's descriptions of their husbands' attitudes toward their women friends. All the women believed their husbands "approve of" their closest friendships. All but one believed their husbands "like" their closest friend (the exception said her husband "doesn't feel either way"). Contradicting these forced-choice responses, however, spontaneous comments occasionally revealed more than a few instances of husbands' hostility toward closest friends.

He'll ask, "Who'd she go to bed with last night?" But he won't discourage the friendship.

He's made little remarks about me and Jan, like "You guys are so close, you must be lesbians or something." He says it jokingly, but. . . Now I tell him, if he's worried about that, it's his problem.

Women may have emphasized their husbands' positive attitudes toward best friends because there is a norm of benignity toward a spouse's close same-sex friends. Its rationale is the liberty to choose one's friends. This interpretation is supported by responses to questions about whether husbands had "ever disapproved" of a friendship and whether they had "ever discouraged" one. Thirteen of twenty women said husbands (or former husbands) had at some

time disapproved of a friendship. But only six of these thirteen believed their husbands had actually discouraged the relationship.

He would never say, "Don't see her." It was more an intellectual put-down. Her ideas weren't sound, the feelings she had were laughable, or whatever.

He never tried to discourage it. But we'd talk about her and he'd tell me he just couldn't see how I could have anything in common with her. But he never tried to stop me.

He wouldn't have much to say when she was around; or he just wouldn't be there [be engaged]; or he'd try to set it up so he could disappear. But he'd never tell me I couldn't do things with her.

As the foregoing quotations hint, in most cases where apparent disapproval or outright discouragement had overridden the norm of benignity, the husband believed the friend to be morally suspect, a bad influence, or in some manner threatening to him or the marriage. This was Louise's conclusion when she recounted her husband's remark that she and her best friend must be lesbians. "I guess he feels threatened—because we are so close. Sometimes he feels I like her better than him. It's like what happened when I first went to work. He felt I wouldn't need him."

The friends who aroused disapproval were frequently single, divorced, or bad housekeepers. Dwight, Janine's husband, put a stop to her socializing with single girlfriends. "He thought I'd be messing—doing the same things they do. He figures they're single, and I'm married, and I shouldn't be around them." Betty's husband forbade her to associate with a woman in the neighborhood who was rumored to be "wild and irresponsible." Nancy's husband, Mike, and Kay's husband, George, were hostile to those of their wives' friends who neglected their housekeeping and paid too little attention to family. Nancy described Vi: "She was more interested in her clothes, herself, and her work. But I still liked her. Mike couldn't understand how we could be friends." Kay conceded that Trish was "disorganized," but she liked her for her "basic goodness." However,

George doesn't even want me to take the kids over there, because her house is such a mess. He gets disgusted because he thinks it would be easy for her to get things more together. He doesn't want to do much

with Trish and Jim. He gets all tensed up around them, and I get nervous and talk too much, trying to cover up what's happening. But I wouldn't say he discourages the friendship.

Frances first attributed Jack's hostility to her divorced friend, April, to a "bit of jealousy." Then she amended it: "Not jealousy, maybe a fear: 'I hope she doesn't decide to pick up April's bad habits.' She is loose, but she loves her kids. She's really O.K." Hilda's former husband had jealously crushed one friendship after another, insisting each was breaking up the marriage. She recalled his statements: "He never said why. But they could never come back."

Had the women found their husbands' disapproval discouraging to the relationship? The fact that most of the disapproved friendships are now defunct suggests that they had. Yet the women described the decline of their friendships as motivated by their own disenchantment. "I ended up feeling the way he did about her."

Because most of these women were not hesitant to admit elsewhere that they had complied with their husbands' demands against their own desires, it was not egalitarian marital ideology that caused them to deny their husbands' negative influence on friendships. Rather, I suspect, they wished to see their practices consistent with their belief that close friendships are a very individual matter and should begin and end independently. As we shall see, women expected friendships to respect marriage as a highest priority. But the friendships themselves were to be personal.

Friendships were also to be private. The protection of confidences was a clearly specified friendship norm and the foundation of mutual trust. All but two of the married women named friends as those "to whom you've told things you've never told anyone else." I initially concluded this meant a friend's confidences were secret, even from one's spouse. Yet when I asked a hypothetical question about confidentiality to gauge how each woman actually constructed the boundaries between friendship and marriage, some answers were conditional. I asked, If your best friend asked you to keep secret something you really wanted to share with your husband, how would you deal with that? Two-thirds answered firmly, "I'd keep the secret." The remaining third answered conditionally:

I probably would keep it secret. If it were really personal, like something about her marriage, I wouldn't tell. Some other things I might tell.

If I thought I had to tell him, I'd tell her then. Most things, fine, I wouldn't tell.

If she really didn't want anyone to know—if it would hurt her in any way, I wouldn't tell him. Some things I think she wouldn't mind. And I know it wouldn't go further.

For these women, breaking a friend's trust to share a confidence with one's husband was conceivable, although hardly routine. Comments like this suggest that most women regard close friendship as an autonomous relationship with its own firm rules of closure.

Friendship and Individuality

Evidence that friendship encourages individuality and autonomy appears in its exchanges or content. As evidence of support for individuality I took statements that emphasized a close friend's contribution to self-awareness or understanding; a friend's approving recognition of individual effort, achievement, or self-development; or a friend's privileged access to a woman's authenticity (that is, her perceived "real self").

These exchanges are only part of what we might consider relations of autonomy and individuality. There were aspects of an ethic of autonomy that I did not find in my interviews—specifically, support for unfettered individualism, for a severely differentiated sense of self, or for individuality as a supreme value that should override responsibility and commitment. I believe I might have found an ethic emphasizing more autonomous aspects of individuality had I interviewed more younger women, more unmarried women, more women who had jobs but did not parent. In my sample of mostly married mothers over thirty, themes of individualism were distinct but constrained.

In strikingly similar ways the women emphasized how well close friends knew women's true selves and how friends contributed to their self-understanding. Chapter 2 illustrated the pervasive reliance on close friends for empathy and companionship in self-examination. Here are more examples from two large sets of ques-

tions—one, a set of name-eliciting questions, the other a set of probability-of-exchange questions. The latter set showed women very likely to involve friends in solving personal problems and in discussing love, pride, anger, unhappiness, and self-doubt. For each kind of intimate exchange, no more than three respondents— usually just one—said they would exclude friends. All the women said they would talk with a friend about moral or religious beliefs, all but one about news or politics.

Thirty-four name-eliciting questions sought to identify the people with whom the respondent exchanged intimacy, genuine response, and emotional support. On these questions, eighteen of twenty-one women named women friends (including sister-best friends) among those to whom they would confide very personal problems; all included friends among those whose personal problems they would "take to heart" (although six of the seventeen married women did not include their husbands on this item). About three-quarters listed friends among those "to whom you've told things that you've never told anyone else" and among those "to whom you can confide something you're ashamed of."

Two-thirds of the twenty-one women talked to close friends about their most important beliefs. Seventeen felt that close friends shared their most important values. All but two listed close friends among those who "know and like the real you." The same number placed friends among those who made them feel good about themselves (although six of the seventeen married women omitted their husbands from this answer). Seventeen named friends among those who like to share their moments of pride.

Exploring one connection between friendship and individuality—the mutual recognition of individual striving and self-development—I uncovered some interesting contrasts between friendship and marriage. I found a unique specialization of friendship was discussing autonomous activity and experimentation, as well as the fantasies, ambitions, and plans they generate. Specialization is not entirely surprising: married women might prefer not to confide to their husbands their fantasies about romances with other men. Wishes and plans about work, schooling, and civic participation, however, seem an appropriate subject in a companionate marriage. Certainly, the image of a young husband thrilling his

wife with his grandest vision of future achievements is a staple of companionate marriage's image in literature and the media.

If this image in fact reflects actual husband-to-wife communication, my interviews testify to an asymmetry in this supported self-development. Women not only talk to close friends about such ambitions or strivings; many say they discuss these topics with friends more than with husbands. In the series of questions on how often one would discuss a subject with friends if it were on one's mind, women most frequently answered “A lot of the time" to questions about discussing future dreams and ambitions, work problems, and opinions about news or politics. Each is a theme of individuality or autonomy. Individual aspirations, endeavors, and beliefs are clearly appropriate topics in friendships.

The thirty-four name-eliciting questions allowed me to compare exchanges with friends and with husbands. Women were to name anyone who came to mind for sharing specific kinds of exchanges. In name-eliciting surveys other researchers found that respondents sometimes forgot to list husbands.^[15] To avoid this, I reminded my respondents that they should list husbands, children— anyone—who fitted the description. Moreover, since I asked many consecutive name-eliciting questions, I assumed that husbands would be mistakenly overlooked in some regular way. But there was no regular pattern of husband-absent responses; the rate of husband-absent responses varied by the question. The differences are provocative.

Seventeen married women answered the thirty-four questions asking with whom they exchange intimacy, genuine response, trust, and affection. For fifteen of the thirty-four questions, one to three women did not list their husbands, although most listed friends or kin. For fourteen, four to six did not list their husbands. For four questions, seven or eight did not name them. And for one question—Who encourages you to try out new experiences or things?—ten of seventeen women failed to list their husbands. This last figure contrasts with a total of four married women who did not list friends for this question.

The exceptional absence of husbands from those who encouraged new experiences, with the strong presence of friends among those who discussed future dreams and ambitions, marks women's

perception that friends more than husbands recognize their strivings for individual autonomy. It suggests that a woman friend (and less often a kinswoman) may play a unique role in supporting these individual aspirations.

Responses to other questions in the name-eliciting series supported this conclusion, although much less powerfully. In answer to the question, Who recognizes your talents or abilities?, only two of seventeen married women failed to name friends, whereas four did not name husbands. Only one married woman did not include friends in her answer on mutual respect; four did not name husbands.

It is difficult to interpret these contrasts without more probing investigation; I did not explicitly pitch my interview to this topic. The subject of friends as better support for individual aspiration emerged spontaneously a few times, however, in responses to other questions—for example, in comments on areas that women could discuss with best friends but not with husbands. Rita talked about "my own independence" with June, preferring not to touch the subject directly with her husband. “I act it out more with Lloyd, rather than talking about it ." Debby, who repeatedly spoke of her husband, Jay, as her "best friend and advocate," still preferred to talk with Joanne about "problems of deciding what to do from here on in—knowing there's something better out there, job-wise—wondering what to do about it." Thea, whose marriage is among the most companionate, also preferred to talk to her best friend, Catherine, about "what I personally would like to do with my life." Arlene conferred with Sally when she began "getting involved in new things," like taking on the presidency of a civic organization: "Jeff felt it would be overwhelming for me, which of course it was. He didn't want to hear about it, and I didn't want to talk to him about it." Lisa, one of the youngest in the group I interviewed, summed up the area she explored better with Doreen: "It's different walks of life. Maybe other men. Going other places and seeing new things. Doing other things with my life."

Lisa's comment hints at one reason women may avoid this general subject with husbands: certain ambitions and fantasies may hint at alternatives to marriage. That is why Nancy, like Lisa, confided thoughts of other men to Annette, although she said the topic was entirely fanciful. But Rita, who returned to college in her late

fifties, was content to imagine a future with her husband. It was in work, ideas, and friendships that she wished to expand her autonomy. Rita said that her husband, Lloyd, for all his pride in her accomplishment, found this kind of independence inexplicably disturbing.

Likewise, Arlene was not thinking about leaving Jeff. She simply wished to avoid being discouraged from accepting challenges that might unsettle her life (and Jeff's). Similarly, Kay talked to friends rather than George about her desire for more schooling and then returning to work. "George and I have been on a good ride since I quit my job and stayed home with the kids." Kay was intent on going back to work the day her youngest was old enough for day care. She was postponing the conflict her working raised in her marriage by keeping her plans among friends. Debby, by contrast, never hinted that planning to change jobs was a tense subject at home. Yet the topic came to mind as one she could discuss better with her friend than her husband, simply, she said, because Joanne was thinking about the same thing.

There is some sociological evidence that associates working wives with marital conflict and discusses the advantages in power that wives derive from organizational participation, education, and income.^[16] We might guess that women learned from experience that by doing the planning elsewhere they could at least postpone the tremors in marriage that independent achievements can create.

My theoretical guide for interpreting these patterns is an essay by Jessica Benjamin. Benjamin conceives of individuality as recognized independence, autonomy, and selfhood. Individuals who suppress their awareness of depending on recognition by others— who cannot openly recognize relationships in which selfhood is defined—develop not individuality but "false differentiation."^[17] Benjamin uses object-relations psychoanalysis (and a rather unparsimonious array of philosophy and social psychology) to construct an alternative to the classical psychoanalytic model of individuality. She aims to replace psychoanalytic views that individuation begins in oedipal relations of authority and must repress awareness of dependence and attachment to others.

In Benjamin's view, autonomy and individuality are established through recognition by others. Mutuality is a condition of indepen-

dence, in that "true differentiation involves not only the awareness of the separation between self and other but the appreciation of the other's independent existence as an equivalent center."^[18] Only a person who is an independent subject can recognize the other. And only a person who can simultaneously acknowledge depending on the other for recognition can achieve independence. Dependence and independence, recognition and autonomy, exist in this reciprocal and paradoxical but inevitable relation. Benjamin contrasts this "related" individuality with a widespread "one-sided" defensive individuality that eschews depending on and indentifying with the other and exists through instrumentalism and domination.

Benjamin's work poses an ideal that must be seen as two separate ideals in contemporary gender arrangements. Benjamin joins other object-relations theorists of gender—notably Chodorow— who maintain that the division of labor and authority in the modern family creates gendered personality. Men and women divide the internalized capacities: separation, differentiation, and activity on the one hand (masculine); and dependence, mutuality, and nurturance on the other (feminine). Only men, in this ideal-type, reach the available form of individuality—a falsely separated independence. Men are likely to fear attachment; women separation and independence. This dynamic leaves women with more complex internalized object-relations and a greater capacity and need to sustain intimate relations alongside heterosexual love.

The work of Benjamin, Chodorow, and others in the tradition^[19] suggests how the structure of family dynamics and the psychology of self might be interposed into the causal relation Simmel draws between social organization and friendship culture. The gender structure of family life and its impact on gender personality help to explain how the larger social structure affects friendship culture. These psychodynamics also suggest another basis for my argument that close relationships among women exhibit mutual support for a communally situated and constrained individuality, similar to Benjamin's nonauthoritarian ideal: within the family, women may be structurally inclined toward interdependent individuality and psychologically disposed to favor it as well.

My interviews suggest that women's close friendships, more than their marriages, engender a mode of individuality that ac-

knowledges interdependence as a condition of and constraint on independent striving. I am proposing that there are two strands of unique influence in friendship. The first is support for individuation and autonomy, which marriage suppresses more through asymmetries of power between men and women. Women's economic dependence on men and the "oedipal asymmetries" of gender personality corrupt the possibilities of mutually recognized subjectivity within marriage. Husbands less often than friends support independent ambitions or endeavors. (The reverse is also true: if wives cannot be autonomous subjects when they support— or mirror—their husbands, then men cannot confirm their individuality in marriage.^[20] This lack of confirmation may be another structural explanation for men's lesser interest in marital self-disclosure.)

The second strand of influence in this scheme is the practice of constraint in friendship. A communal ethic of interdependence is evident in friends' recognition of women's dependence on and responsibility for both friends and family. We shall see in the next section and again in the next chapter that friends help each other to emphasize family responsibility over individual autonomy; they do so by muting the claims of independent friendship and by advocating accommodation in marital problem solving. The communal authority of friendship operates in standards of commitment that place vast areas of personal life within the scope of friends' observation and intervention. As in traditional communities, communal constraint is possible because of mutual knowledge and familiarity.

In the friendship, however, the tension between dependence and autonomy pulls women toward the pole of individualism. As I have shown, friends are most often equals in status with symmetry in relational need and capacity. Their standards of commitment center on the mutual intimacy that highlights individuality and admits dependence. And their rules of relevance strongly enforce both personal liberty and ultimate communal responsibility.

In their closest friendships, women may well create a unique moral voice of community. The dependency friends establish in intimate exchange encourages mutual responsibility, mutual independence, and individual agency. Friends reinforce each other's independence within the context of familial and friendship com-

mitments; they do not develop the stark individualism popularly attributed to modern culture. Neither themes of individuality nor communal obligations predominate, although their balance can certainly vary. Friends know they depend on and have obligations to family. By extending both friends' communal responsibility outside marriage and by invigorating their subjectivity that is easily submerged within marriage, friendship builds and strengthens a communally rooted individuality. Within such bounds, friendship's intimacy, autonomy, mutability, and terminability allow individuation considerable play.

Subordinating Friendship to Marriage

The higher obligations of marriage, family, and work constrain patterns of friendship even though its norms stress autonomy from these institutions. Although it adapts to other institutional commitments, friendship shows little strain of adjustment. Women's close friendships appear to be crucial ingredients of their well-being and satisfaction and an important support for their marital and familial commitments. Given the importance and distinctive character of these friendships, and considering the expectations that generally accompany such important relationships, we might expect contention between family and friends. We might look for conflicting demands on women's time, jealousy of attachments, and competing loyalties, like those that occur when women are heavily involved with close kin as well as family.^[21] In fact, I turned up little evidence of conflict. Women reported few antagonisms between husbands and friends. They rarely experienced difficulties in balancing their obligations in these two arenas; friendship and marriage appeared effortlessly harmonized. How do women operate in two different spheres of strong emotional attachments without feeling torn between them? What orderings of obligations and expectations underlie this apparently peaceful arrangement?

This section explores these questions, attending to the explicit and tacit ways friends adjust to each other's marriage obligations. I summarize this material with Simmel's work on discretion in mind and extend the notion of discretion beyond his focus on revelation and concealment to clarify the relation between social struc-

ture and the culture of friendship. The discussion should also illuminate the particular individuality practiced and promoted in women's friendship.

Just over half of the women I interviewed reported they had to "choose" between their friends and their husbands or families; but they said this conflict occurred only once in awhile. All but one of the currently married women rarely experienced conflicts between their alliances with friends and with family (although the divorced women were more apt to recall conflicts). When asked what they did to keep obligations to friends from competing with obligations to husband and family, most women had to stop and think. "That's the most difficult question you've asked," Thea responded. Then she continued: "But it has the simplest answer: it's just realizing that my family always comes first. Period. Any friends I have know that."

I heard versions of that answer over and over:

I don't think it's ever been a question. Sally and I are both aware that our families come first.

My obligations to my family come first. Keeping a home, providing for my husband and children, making sure there's a meal and that they have clean clothes—all that comes first. After that it's a priority list of what's most important at the time. If it's more important that Helen is upset about something, then I talk to her, and the kids will have to wait.

Women so much take for granted that obligations to family come first that they rarely remember ever explicitly negotiating those obligations with friends:

It just kind of falls into place.

There's never any question that something Sally and I might want to do would come before our kids or our husbands.

All I have to say is, "Oh, I just have to go home and make dinner." I may have to do what I don't want to do. But I've got this obligation first. [----Do friends ever have difficulty understanding your obligations?] No, not my friends—never.

Some, however, were aware that they had worked out methods of balancing the two sets of obligations, even though most friends had not discussed these arrangements.

I divide my time. I go to visit Lily in the morning, when Dwight is at work. We've got an understanding—when Dwight comes in from work, I'd rather not have any company. When her husband comes home, I leave too. We just do our spare time together when the kids are at school. And we just resume the next day.

I would say timing—when I go out. I'll try to do it when he's at work. And frequently—not just when I go, but how often. I try to work it out between me and him.

There's an understanding that my weekends are pretty dear. Sometimes I'll have to say, "That's Lloyd and my night for ourselves—can't we make it a daytime plan?"

Martin and I are flexible about finding family time that fits our schedules. But I don't usually plan outside things on weekends. When I'm not working, it's easier to do things with friends strictly during the day, avoiding time when husbands are home.

I try to limit calls in the evenings. We all do.

I'll try to do things that bring people to my house, so I don't have to be away. Or I try to find ways to include families.

Some of the arrangements women friends worked out involved very contingent commitments to joint plans.

We're good enough friends that she would know that if we had plans and then Jerry wanted to do something, we'd just postpone. She wouldn't get upset with me. She understands that he would come before her as far as doing something social.

It used to be if Gwen and I had plans and Fred decided he wanted to go out together, I'd say, "I just agreed to go out with Gwen." He didn't like that. Then I thought, "Wait, the husband comes first." So, now I just tell Gwen, "Fred just called about going out," and she understands.

I just try not to commit myself too much. I'll say, "Yea, probably, we'll see." Then I have a way out if I need it.

If Jay and the kids came up with something to do and I'd made plans to go out with a friend, I'd probably change that arrangement.

Yet, in spite of their precautions and reservations, women occasionally found themselves explicitly choosing friends.

One time Lily was upset about something with her husband. She asked if I'd come down and visit her and talk to her. Dwight said, "No, you can't

go now? But if I see that she's really upset, I'll just have to go on and see her. I feel he's wrong to say no. Because if I were in her place, I know she'd come to me. It just troubles me to have to choose like that.

Like Janine, above, others had made the choice of friends' needs over family wishes; and all had found the decision stressful. Several said husbands felt "hurt" or "left" by their choice; some said husbands or children objected or became angry. Unexpectedly, Betty found herself upset at her husband's cooperativeness when she anticipated an objection to putting her friend first. “I didn't expect it. I thought, 'Hell, this means he just doesn't care.'"

Some of the women volunteered strategies they used to reallocate time peacefully from family to friends. Three strategies cropped up a few times. The first involved "brownie points" or "buying time":

I do my home work. I live up to my role here. Even if I'm going to go out, I'll have dinner ready for him. Then he feels taken care of and that cuts down on the static.

The three of us would say, "Let's get together in two weeks." Then someone would say, "Well, I'll spend this weekend with my husband." That meant she could get to join us. There would be some consulting of calendars: if we're going to take a night out, what do we have to do to buy that time. But it wasn't something we really talked about. It was more subterranean.

The second strategy involved simple justice:

I just say, "You're not home that much either. Or when you are, you're drinking. If you go your way, I'll go mine."

If I'm going to do something at night, Ill ask way ahead. But if it comes down to an out-and-out negotiation, I'll say, "Well, how many times did you play baseball this month?" But it doesn't usually come down to that. I don't ask much, so he doesn't often say no. I've never said, "I'm going somewhere and that's it!"

A third strategy involved the telephone. Friends stole brief visits during family time, sometimes extending phone conversations "until somebody complains." Debby laughed sheepishly when she revealed her sense of deprivation when that strategy is not available: "The main problem [in keeping obligations from competing] is the telephone, especially in the evenings because we try to save

that kind of time for family. I should really limit my calls more. We often unplug the phone in the evenings. But I find it really hard to cut ourselves off—we might miss something."

Women take as their obligation to one another the responsibility for learning the subtleties of a friend's familial constraints. An example of this attention to subtleties is Lynn's account of how her friend Donna sensed the appropriateness of her presence when Lynn's husband was home. "She could figure out if it's O.K. to visit just by walking in and seeing what's going on between Jerry and me. She'd just read her cue to exit if she sensed something was going on between us. It doesn't happen that often, but she could tell if we were in the middle of a fight or something."

Lynn and her friend extended permissible visiting time into what, for many of the women I spoke to, was time for family alone or for socializing as couples. The price of extending the friendship's time boundaries was a delicate sensitivity to relations between Lynn and her husband and a willingness to defer immediately to a signal of desire for privacy. Lynn and Donna never talked about how and when to undertake these mutual adjustments. They "just know." Others noted the same tacit agreement: "I can just hear Leslie saying, 'We didn't even include you in these plans because I know you have family then.' Or 'I'm sorry to call you now because I know this is your family time.'" Underlining the general rule, another said, "With Sarah, I just know not to call at night."

The expectation that friends recognize and adjust to each other's primary commitments to family is observed so meticulously that one only becomes aware of rules in their violation. But, when a rule is violated, women seem quite disposed to making it explicit.

Gloria's husband was always out with friends at night. She'd get lonely and drop in over here. I finally told her what I felt about friends dropping in like that. I thought she understood, but she kept it up. I was furious. So this time I made it clearer. She was hurt, but she stopped. And we're still good friends.

A lot of the women in my [volunteer] group are younger and single. A lot of things they'd like to do together are easy for them, but hard for me because of my home obligations. I try to get them to understand my situation and I ask them not to put the pressure on.

The acknowledgement of the priority of family obligations was not simply descriptive; it was normative. In answering questions about how friends generally should behave, women underlined their convictions that friends should accord family first place. A majority (ten of seventeen women) answered "Always" to the question, Should friends expect each other's first loyalty to be to a husband? The remainder, those who answered "Sometimes," offered only circumstances of extreme need to justify contravening what they saw as the general rule. The answers were similar for the question, Does a friend have the right to ask an important favor that is likely to create conflicts or problems at home for the woman from whom she's asking help? A third of the women selected the most negative of their three choices, "Hardly ever." The remainder, nearly all of whom chose "Sometimes," explained that an "important favor" should indeed be critically important to justify such an intrusion. "I would hope I wouldn't have to ask."

Although few of the women I spoke to found it easy to identify the kind of limitations they placed on friendships, those who did stressed placing family first and avoiding "excessive demands" on friends. I asked, Are there things you'd never ask of a friend? One woman put the contrast in absolute terms: "I'd never ask her to make decisions about her and her family versus me. I'd never make any of my friends choose." Another generalized: "I wouldn't do anything that would greatly inconvenience her, if I could help it." A third woman stated specifically, "I'd never ask for financial assist-ante, although I could."

In general, women wished to avoid entering into the exchange of resources over which they did not have sole jurisdiction. These included family time, family territory, and money. These limitations on the exchange of friendship were the form of discretion I heard most about in women's descriptions of friendship.

Certain characters appeared over and over in the women's accounts, those friends who failed to get the message about the priority of husband and family. There were the husband's pals, who continued to "hang around" after the couple married; the single women friends, who did not have similar obligations; the occasional married friend whose husband "doesn't always come first"; and close kin—often aging parents—who asserted kinship obliga-

tions. Women tended to see such asymmetries in expectations as structurally determined but still amenable to reform; they generally attacked the problem directly, with good results. Kay's stow about the friend who dropped in late at night is one example. Another is Rita's account of her attempt to educate single friends about the demands marriage made on her free time. Rita was less successful in limiting the demands of one of her younger friends: "She had tremendous expectations of my being available to her at all times. She wanted me to be more like a mother to her than a friend. At first I was very gentle; then I began to say no; and finally I withdrew altogether."

The women I spoke to had tolerated differences of opinion with friends, distaste for friends' life-styles, friends' distaste for their husbands, and various disappointments and disagreements. They did not tolerate "unreasonable" demands on their time. The few accounts I heard of deliberate withdrawal from friendships all involved a friend who wanted more of a woman's time than she could give. Respect for constraints on a woman's time emerged as a primary rule of friendship—uncodified but clearly recognizable in reports of its transgression.

Parents, close kin, and husbands' pals presented problems more difficult to solve. The reform of husbands' friends was the responsibility of husbands, who frequently viewed things differently. Parents and close kin presented ambiguous problems because the priority of family over kin obligations is not as clear as the priority of family over friends; kin networks, closer-knit, do not allow people to withdraw as easily as do looser networks of friends. I heard many more accounts of recurring disagreements between spouses about a women's attentions to kin than disagreements involving friends. Women capitulated to husbands' disapproval or jealousy of friends—resentfully perhaps, but more frequently than when the object was close kin.

Another mechanism that subordinates friendship to family is that friends do not discuss the relationship itself among themselves. Friends may recognize each other through a self-conscious conferral of the status "best friend," but they do not otherwise make the relationship a topic of discussion (or even, it appears, contemplate it privately). Friends do not assess friendships in the way couples often assess marriages. They do not identify problems

in the relationship and discuss ways to solve them (indeed, as the last chapter showed, friends actively suppress conflict). They do not often mention problems in their dose friendships to spouses or other friends. Eight of sixteen said they would rarely, if ever, talk with friends about problems with other friends. Only a few volunteered that they talked about their best friends with theft husbands.

Inexperience with reflection on friendship caused most of the women to express surprised satisfaction at the end of the interview. They had never thought so clearly about their friendships before— what they shared, how they felt, what they wished. They were often moved by what they had just told themselves aloud. Although many had exposed deep feelings and complex arrangements, sometimes giving them eloquent expression, little of this kind of language had ever passed between the friends. Of course, many women rarely discussed theft assessments of their marriages with their husbands. Even these women, however, had assessed or critically reflected upon their marriages privately; and many had clone so with close friends.

This silence about the relationship does not mute emotions but deflects evaluation that could interfere with a woman's commitment to putting family first. It is particularly eloquent in a period which increasingly applies voluntarist ideals of mutual gratification and good companionate relations to all close relationships, including marriage and kinship.

In sum, by explicit or tacit agreement and by unreflective but regular arrangement, women friends subordinate the claims of the most valued friendships to the claims of marriage and family. To find a framework for interpreting this coexistence of deep attachment and psychological intimacy with fairly rigid constraints and explicit second-priority status, I return to Simmers work on invasion and reserve in friendship.

Simmel argues that the ideal of modern friendship, which developed in a romantic spirit, aims at absolute psychological intimacy.^[22] But modern men (and, increasingly, women) are too "differentiated" and "individualized" to engage in friendships of such full reciprocity. Friends practice discretion regarding invasion and reserve, revelation and concealment; they respect the vast unfamiliar and unknowable regions of each other's life and mind. Dis-

cretion, according to Simmel, allows friends to avoid the painful experience of the structurally induced "limits of their mutual understanding."

My interviews with women, including those in the most modern social and economic sectors, revealed that women do not extensively practice this form of discretion. Rather, women's close friendships achieve the affective depth embodied in Simmel's ideal by striving toward full reciprocity in knowledge of the other. In contrast to relations in traditional society, private regions of modern experience may be less knowable and familiar to close friends. Yet women friends exercise the "creative imagination and . . . divination . . . oriented only toward the other" that allows them empathic access to a considerable breadth of each other's private experience.^[23] Occupying specialized social roles does not seem to lessen their ability or willingness to engage in mutual understanding with their closest friends.

The women I interviewed do practice another form of discretion, however. They scrupulously distinguish arenas of individual liberty from those of communal responsibility, and they deliberately practice reserve in the former. Now it may be that men practice this form of discretion as well. The women I spoke to, however, believed that their husbands, and men in general, do not develop many nonkin ties that would elicit the same degree of communal responsibility. And however close or attached their friendships may be, if men practice more concealment—more discretion, in Simmers sense of the term—they have a narrower terrain of moral exchange and fewer opportunities for commitment and constraint.

A second form of discretion these women practice, with great subtlety and delicacy, is prudence regarding the higher commitments of marriage and family. Again, it is likely that men also practice this form of discretion. Yet the women I interviewed believed that their husbands, and men in general, do not share ardency and intimacy with friends or acknowledge a need for close friendship. If this is so, the task of prudence regarding a friend's obligations is likely to be more formulaic: men are not foregoing relations they deeply need or putting someone so important in second place. Prudence for men friends may require the sacrifice of self-interest but perhaps not deeply felt need. Moreover, if men's time together

is more child-free, they are less consistently called upon to practice this form of discretion.

This chapter has presented women's close friendships as singular relations of individuation. The interviews offered persuasive evidence that women friends uniquely support individual aspirations and efforts, that friendships enhance self-development, and that the values of friendship favor individual liberty. Both the autonomy of friendship and its mutual support for individuality are, however, constrained by communal obligations within friendships and by communal values that oftentimes supersede individual ones. Women friends construct and enhance individual identities that are both individuated and interdependent.

The dynamics of constraint in contemporary friendships are not as systematic or effective as those in traditional community. Individuality is a much stronger theme. Yet women's entrenched social position strengthens an ideology that subordinates obligations of friendship to those of family, and individualism to family responsibility. Friends accept and attempt to realize this ideal, harmonizing friendship and family commitments to a degree that seems astonishing when we consider women's emotional investment in both spheres. Yet women's culture of friendship—the quality and content of relationships, the manifest ideals of individuality and interdependence—holds the possibility of an expanded role for both community and autonomy as women's social position advances.