“Having a Girlfriend Without Knowing It”

This article provides a qualitative analysis of the intimate friendships of 80 adolescent and young adult sexual-minority women who were interviewed as part of an ongoing longitudinal study. Many reported having participated in a same-sex best friendship that they considered as committed, intimate, passionate, and intense as a romantic relationship. These "passionate friendships" typically combined components of the normative heterosexual friendship script with components of the normative romantic relationship script. For example, although passionate friendships rarely involved sexual contact, they frequently involved forms of physical intimacy (such as cuddling and hand-holding) that are usually considered exclusive to romantic relationships. Although such intense friendships are typically interpreted as unrequited love affairs, this misrepresents the unique nature of these bonds. Because such relationships challenge conventional notions about the distinctions between friendship and romance, as well as distinctions between heterosexual and sexual-minority women, they have important implications for understanding the interplay between emotional and sexual feelings in the close relationships of all women.