I pushed her -- again and again -- to move. What we wanted, after all, were not just good jobs and good friends, but fun, functional relationships with men, sex and, someday, families of our own. And we knew that all of those things meant choice and compromise and sacrifice. Our time as single women allowed us to build a strength and self-awareness that would help us make healthy choices. We were spending playful, selfish years hammering out what we wanted from life until we knew our own desires well enough that we could take chances -- like moving to Boston for a boy -- and not risk losing our sense of self. So here we are. Sara's sacrifice is giving up her home, her job. Mine is giving up her.

And now that it's happening, I'm angry. So angry that last weekend, hours before her going-away party, I decided it would be the perfect time to call Sara and scold her for some minor social crime, a move that ignited all her bottled stress and sadness. We had a mean shriek-fest of a fight that ended with her hanging up on me, and both of us raging around our respective homes for hours before we mended things. When we did, she gigglingly told me that Matt -- in town for the weekend -- had been so flummoxed by her howling outbursts of fury and grief that he'd followed her around helplessly, repeating, "It's just because she's upset you're leaving."

Around the time that Sara and I were hurling obscenities at each other over the phone, the New York Post carried a story in response to the recent flap over actress Cynthia Nixon's affair with a woman. The story was headlined "The Truth Is Out: Gals Envious of Sapphic Cynthia," and was illustrated with a photo of Sarah Jessica Parker, Nixon's "Sex and the City" costar, with a thought bubble over her head that read, "I couldn't help but wonder ... are women better company than men." "While many straight ladies say they have no intention of swinging Sapphic," the story read, "they can't help but wish that dating New York men was as easy as hanging out with their gal pals." That the piece was ludicrous on almost every level should go without saying: The musty straight-girl "I wish I were a lesbian" refrain might reasonably offend anyone who actually happens to be a lesbian and is denied legal benefits and recognition of her partnerships. Plus: We don't want to sleep with the people we don't want to sleep with. But what many of the women in the piece were actually saying was pretty familiar. Like 24-year-old Maryellen Martino, who "said nothing beats her girlfriends because 'they're so supportive and understanding.'" And 24-year-old Corinne Covey, who said, "It's the understanding you get from your girlfriends."

What the women in this story seemed to be saying -- what I'm saying as I let my friend go -- is that the alliances single women form with each other are profound and lasting. What we're mourning, when we yell at those friends who are about to depart, or tell a newspaper that we wish we could be lesbians, is that on some level, these relationships demand recognition. During our formative 20s and into our 30s, women provide us with the emotional and intellectual sustenance and shared curiosity about life that we're not getting from our parents anymore, or from husbands or from our temporary or nonexistent sexual partners.

As I watch Sara go, I feel slightly duped, slightly betrayed by the peculiar alchemy of the female bond: Has the fortifying power of our friendship made this move possible? Do the best kind of girlfriends act as placeholders for romantic partners? We practice intimacy and boredom and petty bickering and compromise and connection, so that when and if we do settle down with traditional families, we won't have forgotten how to do those things. But I hate to think of these alliances merely as dry runs for our "real" relationships with men. Perhaps I especially hate thinking of them that way as I prepare to be replaced, in a daily way, by a man.

There aren't any goodbye rituals for us. This is not a divorce or even a breakup; there was no acrimony here. There's no division of property, though the de-accessioning of her apartment has left me with a new wine rack and a copy of "Embarrassing Medical Problems." What I really want is the thing that she's taking a chance on: love and sex, and, someday, marriage and children. Maybe Sara's departure will be good for me on that front. Maybe losing my comfortable beer-and-television partner will make me uncomfortable enough that I'll be forced to open up to the possibility of actual -- even optimistic -- dating. And it's not as though I'll be alone. I have many dear friends, one just around the corner from me in Brooklyn. Sara's even arranged for mutual friends -- who are engaged -- to move into her apartment. "So you'll have someone to take care of you," she has said, and I know she's not kidding.

Recent Stories