Their affair is lifelong, but at nearly every turn there is something that stops them from being together in the way they would like. There are societal constraints, of course (Proulx, 2005)
They aren't gay; one of them is a womanizer and the other spends his whole life regretting the loss of the one woman he loved. They're straight, but just as crippled by a society that tells them how a man must behave and what he must feel" (Ebert, 2005)
.as they flee the more constraining and civilizing domain of women" (Holden 2006)