Martha - I knew the phrase but not the origin so I checked Wiki:
t seems that the term Boston marriage came into use after Henry James's book The Bostonians (1886) detailed a marriage-like relationship between two "New Women". The term Boston marriage was used in New England in the late 19th century to describe a long-term monogamous relationship between two unmarried women. Some women did not marry because men feared educated women during the 19th century and did not wish to have them as wives. Other women did not marry because they felt they had a better connection to women than to men. Some of these women ended up living together in a same-sex household, finding this arrangement both practical and preferable to a heterosexual marriage. Of necessity, such women were generally financially independent of men, due either to family inheritance or to their own career earnings. Women who decided to be in these relationships were usually feminists, and were often involved in social betterment and cultural causes. with shared values often forming a strong foundation for their lives together
Some Boston marriages were lesbian relationships, others were platonic.
