Is Platonic Love Possible?

Ladies' Mirror, Volume V, Issue 2, 2 August 1926, Page 26

Is Platonic Love Possible?

c ßy Lady Forbes-Robertson

"/ have long given up believing in these platonic friendships." —■ Mr. Justice Avorv. All the world, it has been said, loves a lover. In other words, when two people fall in love, everybody who knows them looks on with sympathy and goodwil, wishes them luck and happiness, and a career of real and lasting wedded bliss. Nowadays, however, people are not rushing into marriage as once they did. Circumstances alter cases. Many people find the road to marriage by no means so easy as their fathers and mothers did before them. Will this lead to a recognition of

the possibility of platonic affection? Will it lead to the recognition that close and sincere friendships between the sexes can be formed, without any question of love in the sense that leads to plighted troth and the altar? Cost Of 'Being Wedded ' I v he matrimonial outlook for the ■*- present generation is certainly difficult. Upon all ranks of society the cost of living weighs heavily. The average young man has therefore to contemplate a period often of years before he can hope to be in a position to set up a home and take on the obligations of a wife and family. The average, and typical, young woman of to-day, too, is very different from her predecessor of the Victorian era. She is not brought up to sit with folded hands, waiting for Prince Charming to come along and, after a formal proposal on bended knee and in the grand manner, open for her the doors of the Palace of Wedded Love. She is not restricted to marriage as practically the only career open to her. In the arts and in the professions she is finding a career, and not only wider interests in life, but economic independence. The urgent need for marriage docs not dominate her thoughts.

Is there anything wrong, then, in such young people forming deep and profound mutual attachments, without any question of love, without any thought of marriage? Surely not. Surely this is a natural development of our present-day conditions. In the Victorian day this was scarcely possible. Young women had to be chaperoned, and if a young man showed any marked predilection for a girl's company, it was rightly presumed that this could only lead directly to a proposal of marriage. There was practically no opportunity of testing the possibility of platonic affection.

For my ,part, I cannot sec the slightest reason why such platonic affection should not exist, with no real danger to our morals or manners and with immense benefit to the parties concerned. j\[o Longer Taboo Let us take the case of two young people, neither of them seeking a career in marriage, who arc deeply interested, say,.in art. In existing circumstances they can go about together freely, to the art galleries, or the exhibitions and lectures. They can cultivate the same set of artistic friends, move in the same circles, and get out of life the maximum of pleasure and interest. I can easily understand, in such conditions, that a woman might have a sincere friendship with a man, based on intellectual or artistic interests, in which they might look forward with the utmost keenness to being together to enjoying each other's company, without any thought at all of love or marriage. Indeed, I can quite imagine cases where a genuine friendship of this kind could be formed by a woman for a man whom she would not dream for a moment of falling in love with or marrying. Happily, in the greater freedom of to-day, friendships of this kind,

if they are. not very common, are no longer taboo, even when they are between people who are already married—and not to each other. It would make life very much poorer, for example, if such things were not possible. Woman, in her friendships with man, brings rare gifts, sympathy, understanding, encouragement, and inspiration. The poets, those true "abstract and brief chroniclers of the time," have acknowledged that clown the ages. Would it not be a senseless as well as a cruel thing to discharge such helpful and comforting friendships for fear of Mrs. Grundy? In artistic and literary circles platonic friendships are perhaps more common than in other walks of life. Why? That is because artists, actors, and writers are less hidebound by conventionality than the staid business man. And they have wider interests ; and, as most intellectuals do, they deeply appreciate sympathetic and encouraging help. There is a sort of vulgar scepticism about Platonic love that is as common as it is distasteful. There are a great many people who decline to believe in anything they do not understand. There is another thing that accounts for a scepticism that is neither vulgar nor cynical. Most people believe that when two young persons of different sex are thrown much together and develop the same tastes and interests, sooner or later they will follow the timehonoured path that leads through betrothal to the altar. As the old proverb puts it, "Love will find a way." That is quite true. It only means that many a friendship, begun without any thought of anything but mere friendship, has deepened and ripened into Love. It only means that platonic affection is not so common as the love that is everywhere and, to quote another proverb, makes the world go round. Platonic affection, when it has to compete with Cupid, is no doubt almost invariably beaten. In that respect this generation is just like its predecessors.

ation of freedom and independence among women. Should we not treat them with becoming reverence and respect ?

Francis Bacon was a very wise man. He declared that a true friendship was one of the greatest boons life could give us, that it helped us in hours of darkness and difficulty and added to our pleasure and happiness in hours of joy.