Religiosity and strict boundaries concerning friendship.
Yesterday, I posted, on social media, about how I am reluctant to share with a friend of nearly five decades that I no longer identify as an evangelical Christian and have embraced Quakerism. The comments I received, in response to this, were mostly along the lines of ... if it were a true friendship, it wouldn't matter. On the surface, I agree with that statement, but it's a simplistic response, in my view. So, I wanted to delve more into this in a forum where I wasn't limited to a few sentences, and decided to address it here. I think I can illustrate this best in a life experience I had several years ago. A mother and her daughter and I worked in the same place. I liked them both, immediately, and as the years went by, we shared more of our personal lives, as one does when you get to know and trust one another. These women were also very nice to my life partner, and sought him out quite often when he came to pick me up from work, or joined me there on my lunch break. He