Romantic Friendships

Romantic friendships are relationships that constitute a break from modern views of intimacy behaviors in same-sex friendships. Romantic friendship is a contemporary term used by historians and literary critics and applied to the interpretation and analysis of intimate same-sex relationship characteristics through time—particularly the 18th and 19th centuries in England and New England. Scholars researching romantic friendship do so through literary and historical analysis of literature along with personal journals and correspondences. The term romantic friendship became widely used after the publication of Lillian Faderman’s book, Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women From the Renaissance to the Present. The work that has followed in this vein has characterized romantic friendship as intimate; passionate; emotional; and, at times, sexual. The historical ...