Through the narrow pass: Experiencing same‐sex friendship in heterosexual(ist) settings

The Western notion of ideal friendship is often associated with same‐sex relationships characterized by similarity and ease. Cross‐sex friendships, on the other hand, are seen as being plagued by problems of jealousy, sexual attraction, gendered differences in communication patterns, third party attributions as to their “real” nature and purposes. In this paper, I use personal narrative to argue that tensions associated with cross‐sex friendships also occur in same‐sex friendships. I maintain that the belief that these problems are particular to cross‐sex friendships is associated with the heterosexualist bias of our culture and much of our scholarly literature.