I have been so blessed by the reactions of singles as they have read SUSP. I have greatly appreciated their questions and feedback. I believe Scripture and history attests to the relational, emotional, physical, and communal depth of friendship. While friendship does not share the same union as husband and wife, it is a path for singles to experience robust sexuality, love, beauty, and communion in friendship. Human experience witnesses to the fact that deep life-giving, mutually satisfying oneness is accessible without sex in friendship. One of the great metaphors that Christians have used in referring to friendship love conveys to us this indisputable reality: “two bodies in one soul.”
What then, are the challenges for singles who wish to seek this gift? I will address them one post at a time in this series. In this first post, I will just name then and briefly summarize each one.
1. Sex. Let’s just get this challenge out on the table before any other challenge.
2. Marriage-besotted. It is healthy, beautiful, and good for singles to desire marriage. But that unfulfilled desire if it is overwhelming, could undermine a male-female friendship from flourishing. In the sports world the metaphor for this, is that the single is so absorbed in wanting to get married, they are caught up in “looking ahead to the next game.”
3. Romantic myth. This ideology clearly diminishes any kind of affection, language, support, or depth between a man and woman unless it is fused with romantic energy, meaning, and trajectory.
4. One Begins to Date or Marry. This is when one of the singles (if the friendship is between singles) begins to date and eventually marry but not their friend. If the single is deep friends with an opposite-sex friend who is already married, it is also a challenge in navigate this.
5. Intimacy. To fully engage in intimacy with anyone is a challenge in and of itself without sex. To learn how to surrender to each other, give and receive love, beauty, and goodness—mutually-- is no easy task. But there is no question it is possible for singles to fully engage in intimacy.
6. Boundaries. This follows intimacy. The beauty and rewards of deep friendship is that like any deep story of love it significantly shifts emotional and physical boundaries.
7. Marriage. If the single forms a close friendship with an opposite sex- friend who is married, one must navigate the intimacy of a small personal community of three.
8. Friendship or Romance?: The challenge when both cross-gender friends are single and one of them desires to turn the friendship into romance.
OK, Dan, you've got quite a list there. We're all waiting for what you will say about #1. You should have made it #8 so you could get a running start at it! (Wink! Wink!)
Posted by: Sheila | August 22, 2010 at 06:29 PM
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Posted by: steve | August 28, 2010 at 11:01 PM