My Facebook friend Doug (who is single) muses on some of my recent posts:
"The main idea I took from the previously posted quotes is that a person doesn't have to be married or even in a "romantic" type of relationship to experience life-giving relationships. This is because marriage/romance isn't the ultimate relationship, and because people can have deep, life-giving friendships. These ideas seemed really good to me; they seemed to make sense and to fit.
Personally, once these ideas sunk in, it felt like a weight had been lifted--it was great news. I hadn't really been consciously aware of it, but I did have the notion that I wouldn't really experience the kind of life-sharing relationship I desired until/unless I was married (or with the person whom I would eventually marry). Once pointed out, these ideas seem almost so obvious I wondered that I didn't wholly see them before. Now, I know intellectually that marriage won't fulfill every desire a person has. But it's easy to slip into feeling like your waiting for what you really desire, as I had."
This was exciting for me to hear. Imagine what would happen if evangelical communities began to see romantic relationship not as the ultimate relationship. Imagine what would happen if evangelical communities began to see friendship as one form of ultimate, life-giving love?
1. Those who are not in a romantic relationship would not be burdened with the oppressive romantic myth.
Doug's reaction, "great news" means he really is beginning to embrace the deep reality (not myth) of life-giving relationships outside of the romantic myth. This is huge. I repeat this is huge. For many, this is a paradign shift in their hearts, minds, imaginations, and dreams.
If you are a single who has been conditioned by the romantic myth in the evangelical community, there is only one path to experience life-giving relationship and that's if you experience romantic love or are married. Therefore, if you are romantically unattached or single, you are in this perpetual mindset of waiting for real or true life-giving love to happen to you. You are waiting for the romantic/sexual buzz that the romantic myth exalts as the ultimate experience of life, and therefore, is the ultimate in life-giving.
Flip it around. You're not only waiting for life-giving love to happen to you, you obviously, can't give your life, your love, your heart to others. Non-romantic love is seriously inferior to the kingdom in the romantic myth. You obviously can have friendships. You can hang out with your friends. You can accumulate many friends and social contacts. You may have 1,000 FB friends. But these relationships are in the "just friends" category, the non-romantic relationship category of evangelical experience. It doesn't feel right to pour yourself into them while you are waiting for something magical to happen.
2. Those who are women would be freed from the oppressive sleeping beauty complex.
Evangelical women are so conditioned to wait passively for their prince to come. In the romantic myth it's impossible for them to receive non-romantic life-giving beauty and life-giving intimacy. They have to interpret it not the ultimate, as not as powerful, not as meaningful as romantic love.
In the romantic myth in many evangelical communities women are conditioned to be passive receivers.
3. Outside of the romantic myth, one is free to enter life-giving beauty, life-giving goodness, and therefore, life-giving intimacy.
The Christian life (romantic or non-romantic) is about the deep beauty of life-giving love, life-giving relationships, life-giving sweetness, life-giving community. In Christian spirituality, it is possible to open oneself up to the dance of life-giving beauty and love in friendship that opens the door for profound love, for profound intimacy, for deep happiness in friendship. There are no, "Yes, buts," in life-giving friendship. That is, something like the mindset, "I am receiving life-giving beauty in this relationship, "yes, but" it's not romance and therefore it can't be as significant to me or as deeply meaningful to me. I am waiting for the real and true beauty and life to happen."
As a single, life-giving beauty and intimacy comes not by giving a part of our selves (some miniscule place called the non-romantic part of self). It comes from the entire self. This is what makes intimacy, truly, life-giving beauty and intimacy. In this sense, singles would not see non-romantic relationships or friendships as stepping stones or waiting stages until they get to "true" or "real" love. This ultimately is vulnerable to seeing friends as some intermediate, or "halfway" point to life-giving intimacy and beauty rather than seeing them as immediate life-givers and lovers in the kingdom.
I've experienced the great joy as a married man, of giving something deep from my heart to a single woman and having that woman receive it for all the life-giving beauty and love and dance with it. On the other hand, I have given something deep from my heart to some single women within the same kind of appropriate context and they have received it as something along the lines of "Thank you, for this, but I am waiting for the real thing to come along." Of course, they don't really say that to me after the "thank you" but one can tell--especially if one has experienced the former.
I will never forget the first time a single woman told me that my love to her was "life-giving." I knew she meant it. her words conveyed such reciprocity in return but in some sense, I was already aware by how she was "receiving" me and dancing with me that I could tell she was receiving my life-giving love. But it was incredibly sweet and powerful--life-giving to hear it from her lips. She wasn't just mouthing the words.
4. One does not have to deny or give up the life-giving beauty and deep intimacy of romantic love/marriage to embrace the life-giving love outside marriage.
The romantic myth wants us to believe as gospel truth that only within romance, only within marriage, is life-giving beauty possible, real, and true. Christian spirituality and sexuality are much bigger than that. It can embrace both marriage and friendship as significant, life-giving, deep beautiful relationships. There is room enough for life-giving beauty, significance, passion, commitment in both of forms of love. There is room for unique, life-giving specialness for both expressions of love.
Love this. My only comment would be...dont forget the other side. It's not just singles who live under the myth that romance will be the all-in-all. As a married woman I believe I've faced plenty of the idea that I shouldn't need as much in close friendships (and especially cgf) since I have a husband.
Posted by: Jennifer | April 15, 2011 at 09:16 AM
Evangelical women are so conditioned to wait passively for their prince to come.
In my experience, it's not so much "waiting passively" as "rejecting all comers". You want to experience Rejection like an Omega Male in high school, sign up for a Christian(TM) dating service.
Posted by: Headless Unicorn Guy | April 19, 2011 at 12:25 PM