“Love between man and man is impossible”

“Love between man and man is impossible” is a sentence James Duffy wrote after ending his relationship with Emily Sinico. It sets out his belief that friendship between a man and a woman cannot exist without sexual intercourse, making a failed intimacy into a universal proposition and a record of the isolation he chooses afterward.

Context and Wording

The sentence appears among papers Duffy seldom writes in. He composed it two months after his last interview with Emily Sinico, when they agreed to break off their relationship. The statement pairs two claims: sexual intercourse must not occur between men, while friendship between a man and a woman is impossible because sexual intercourse must occur. Its compressed, symmetrical structure gives a personal judgment the air of a settled principle.

Relationship and Rupture

The sentence follows a moment Duffy had not understood as Emily did. During one evening of unusual excitement, she took his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek. Duffy was surprised; he interpreted her action as disillusioning his words, withdrew for a week, and then asked her to meet. They chose a small cakeshop near the Parkgate rather than repeat what he called their ruined confessional. After nearly three hours walking in the Park, they agreed to end their intercourse. Duffy told her that every bond is a bond to sorrow. When Emily trembled on the way to the tram, he feared another collapse and left her quickly; days later, she returned his books and music in a parcel.

A Principle Enacted

The written sentence makes the logic of that separation explicit. Rather than describe what happened between the two of them alone, Duffy reduces the possibilities of intimacy to incompatible categories: friendship without sexual intercourse between a man and a woman cannot endure, while love between men is ruled out because sexual intercourse is prohibited. The formulation offers no space for a relationship that might exceed those categories. Read beside the breakup, it functions less as an abstract account of love than as Duffy’s attempt to close off the kind of bond that had become painful and difficult to interpret.

Aftermath and Significance

Four years pass, and Duffy returns to his even way of life. His room continues to display his orderliness; he acquires new music and two volumes by Nietzsche, but writes seldom. He avoids concerts so that he will not meet Emily. The sentence remains in his papers as a concise expression of the rule beneath that withdrawal: attachment brings sorrow, and intimacy appears impossible except on terms he rejects. When a paragraph in the evening paper arrests him during dinner, the narrative shows his routine suddenly interrupted, while the surviving evidence leaves the full significance of that report outside the sentence itself. The expression therefore links Duffy’s effort to reason away intimacy with the disruption that eventually breaks into his carefully maintained routine.