Faith Dance

Challenges for Singles in Cross-Gender Friendships Pt. 3

The next challenges for singles in cgfs are an overdependence on marriage itself to "fix" them, or to bring them deep happiness and meaning in life. This can be exacerbated by secular romanticism. I will look at these two together since they are related.  It is good and beautiful to desire marriage. It is an extraordinary gift from God and a common human experience. Part of the pain for singles who remain unmarried but not by choice is seeing their single friends marry.

Because it is so common and such a blessed gift from God, the overwhelming majority of singles expect to be married. Indeed, much of the evangelical community expects singles to get hitched and there are strong messages to contend with the longer one remains single.

Challenges for Singles in Cross-Gender Friendships Pt. 2

The dominance of the romantic/marital script in the evangelical community has driven a deep wedge between the haves and the have-nots, between a stark choice of robust sexuality or singleness. Because of this feast or famine approach to sexuality in much of the evangelical subculture, there is the challenge of the “sex part” for singles who intentionally seek out cross-gender friendships—and for those who remain single not by choice.

The greatest overall challenge for Christians who are single is not resisting temptation to have sex (although there is no question that temptation is bound to present itself even more to singles following the romantic/marital script). The challenge of the “sex part” for singles (as well as for those of us who are married!) is choosing a fully-orbed, robust sexuality and spirituality beyond the ubiquitous secular romantic/marital script in Western culture. In that script, the greatest love of all is romantic/sexual love. That’s what happens in movie after movie, song after popular song. In that script, singles are isolated, lonely individuals who have to wait for the depths of authentic intimacy and romantic love. This script alone has the social power to create the dichotomy of married-single in faith communities. So, you are either “single,” “in a relationship,” or “married.”

8 Challenges for Singles in Cross-Gender Friendships

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.”