The Sacred Friendships Project

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 4

"Hope" in part four forms a friendship with "Rick." One of the powerful reasons why this is important is that this story adds the challenge of "intimacy" (not sex) in cross-gender friendship. Intimacy free from sexual behavior may still be unhealthy. 

 

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt 3

Hope continues on with the third part of her journey into cross-gender friendship. She has experienced significant lows and highs on the way. I think her story has great depth and value to cross-gender friendship. In this part she meets her first cross-gender friend, "Paul." 

Seeking the Love that Heals Pt. 2

Hope continues her story. In this part, she meets her husband, "Leo." 

 

 

Part 2.  Disillusioned

 

I married ‘Leo’, within 18 months of meeting him, and am still married to him 34 years later.  He was a Christian, I was a Christian, there was the strong pull of physical attraction, he was very hardworking and near the top of his year, didn’t smoke, gamble, drink excessively etc, so we weren’t ‘unequally yoked’ (as I understood it then), and most of all he wanted me, which, to someone who believed herself utterly undesirable, was pretty intoxicating stuff. Ok, he wasn’t very romantic, but obviously I didn’t have what it takes to inspire romance; and he was always trying to correct or fix me, but since I’d been told all my life that there was heaps wrong with me, I just kept drying my eyes and trying harder. For him I gave up the uni course I was just drifting through, because if we were going to get married someone had to be earning, and he was still studying with a great career ahead of him. For him I changed denominations, which didn’t seem a big deal at the time, I thought the differences were mostly in things like church government (which seemed like a non-issue to me) Leaving my old church meant leaving what friendships I had (not a big deal, again, since none of those relationships was intimate) – only later did I see there was a hole in my life where I missed what those voices would have said. By then it was too late, everyone had scattered in different directions, and most had married and changed their names. His friends became my friends; his world my world.

 

I was a virgin on my wedding day, so was he. We had had plenty of opportunities to “misbehave”, and we chose not to. This is actually terribly relevant to the whole cross-gender friendship issue, having always exercised self-control with the man I intended to have a sexual relationship with, it literally never crossed my mind that I would somehow lose control with anybody else. And my husband has the same “innocence” or whatever you want to call it (yes, I know some would call it naiveté, but after 34 years of marriage I’m reasonably confident on this one). Whatever marriage problems we have had to deal with along the way, sexual jealousy and fears of adultery have never been part of the problem.

 

So, reader, I married him (Jane Eyre allusion for the literature minded) and I thought, free from the misery of my family of origin, we would sail off into the sunset together and sweet music would somehow be playing (ok I’ve always wondered where the musicians were hiding in those intimate Hollywood moments). I was lonely, needy and afraid of life, and I swallowed every romantic cliché I had ever encountered. When a lot of things didn’t work out that way (and the ins and outs of that are a long, long story) again, I blamed myself and despaired at my own failure. None of this was helped by the fact that I was no sooner married than I was invited along to a course called The Philosophy of Christian Womanhood. If I could get hold of that course today, I would rip to shreds every copy in existence. It taught the most poisonous forms of doormat-submission, and was the first time I’d really been exposed to the concept that this kind of passive suffering was what God demanded of me just because I was a woman. For someone with my background and fears, married to someone who really hadn’t got a clue about any sort of mutuality in marriage, and who thought he had the right to control me, and hit me if I dared to question him, this was ... well, words fail me ..

 

We muddled along. He was a workaholic, in a profession that not only rewarded hard work, but justified it because it was immediately helping other people. He is an ESTJ, I am an INFP, it doesn’t take any knowledge of Myers-Briggs to realise we don’t have a single trait in common.  And yet the chemistry was always there, and, after 34 years, still is.

 

I left the job I hated as soon as he was earning. We had 2 children, he finished his training and developed his own professional practice.  We presented as the perfect couple who had it all together. He was an elder of the church, and universally admired. But he was very controlling, and I was very lonely.  The severe Calvinism of the church we went to deepened my sense of unworthiness, and, while I got on well with people generally,  I made no close friendships. Most of the men barely related to women at all, and none of the women shared my passions or interests. They wanted to talk about babies and fashion and craft the whole time, and how to manipulate your husband to get what you wanted out of him*. If I ever raised a theological question, the stock answer was that they didn’t bother their heads about such things -- that was their husband’s concern. I felt sinful for all my other intellectual interests (literature, theology, psychology) that lay outside this normative female realm. I concentrated on being as good a wife and mother as I knew how, and wrote poetry on the side to express my unacknowledged misery. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t satisfied with my textbook marriage. I had no idea that, at age 36, my world would come crashing down.

 

*The example I will never forget is the day I heard some elders’ wives discussing how you could spend more on clothing than your husband approved by paying part of the price in cash and only putting an amount that looked good on your credit card. The blatant dishonesty floored me

 

 

Seeking the Love that Heals

This is the first part of a story from a woman we shall call "Hope." Hope believes it is important for us to know the background of her cross-gender friendship themed story in order for us to have a deeper appreciation of where she is in the present. I will post the second part tomorrow. The third part, the next day. Feel free to engage Hope or ask any questions as we run the parts.

They Date, I Die

In the American culture, "true" romance is the pinnacle relationship. All other relationships bow to the idealized romantic myth in dating and early on in marriage and for some even after marriage. There are some secular as well as Christian voices who have pointed out the exaggerrated ideology of this relationship over all others. It is portrayed as "true" love. The only "true" love. It is so revered (even in the evangelical community) the romantic couple is virtually free to do whatever they want with other relationships without critical feedback about how their self-absorption impacts others. In many evangelical circles, this is repeatedly accepted by such a narrow modern, individualized, romantic/sexualized interpretation of "leave and cleave" that covers all relationships even beginning with dating. As both secular and Christian thinkers have pointed out, never in the history of the world has intimacy been as narrowed as the romantic self-absorbed couple. 

In order for sacred friendship to flourish and for a flourishing of community, friendship stories like the last one I posted as well as this one, need to be told, heard, and understood. Romantic love is a gift. It is beautiful. It is good. It is from God. But when couples embrace it as an ideology rupturing present friendship loves (or important loves in their lives) and leave behind friendships in the dust, there is something unhealthy and dare I say it, unChristian about it. It's one thing when friendships wane because of natural contexts. Certainly, it could be argued that romance/marriage is one of them. Yet, especially in the evangelical community, the romantic couple is taught again and again a "leave and cleave" that kills friendships and community.  

For singles, it creates this social dichotomy between "us" and "them" and "we're the inferior ones."  In the romance-obsessed evangelical culture, friendship love is not an important or "true" love and romantic couples are encouraged to look at all other relationships as peripheral to theirs--never mind that Jesus' kingdom includes deep relationships (i.e. "friendships") held into great tension with family relationships. For single women, the issue is even more complicated as you will read in KSB's story: "They Date, I Die."

 

The Gift of Physical Affection in Friendship

I devoted one chapter in Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions to sacred bodies with a particular focus on healthy, chaste, intimate physical affection in friendship between men and women. There is an embodied chastity, an honest openness to the beauty and touch of the other. Arthur Roberts from George Fox, believes that intimacy "occurs significantly among friends through manifold sensations of touch."  

Jennifer Roach shares her reflections on the beauty of healthy hugs from men in her life. 

A Single Woman and Cross-Gender Friendship

I met Susanne Osborne in a class at Trinity Evangelical Divinity Seminary in 2005. Two years ago, we began nurturing a deeper friendship. As a result, Susanne has become a close friend; her friendship with me is very special. Susanne is single. 

Single women face a great challenge in the evangelical community. Their options are either "just say no," or "true love waits."  The evangelical world has focused on the family--that is the nuclear family and romantic love. Beyond that, members of the opposite sex are viewed as threats to sexual purity. The "just say no" message goes much deeper than sexual restraint. The message is to avoid any deep, life-giving intimacy with the opposite sex for that will lead to sex. 

But does romantic love have a monopoly on all true love?  Can authentic, passionate, friendship love be true and life-giving? Susanne and I have grown really close as our friendship has developed over the past two years. We had some initial conversations about friendship when we saw our relationship forming into something deeper. Its not everyday that a single woman and a married man form a friendship bond of love in the evangelical community so we began talking about what friendship would look like between us. 

I've been deeply blessed as we have grown into a freedom to be ourselves as a man and woman in close friendship. Romantic love does not have a corner on all the wonder, mystery, and delight in love between a man and a woman. In the wonderful affirmation of love, we have been able to nurture and enjoy love, where I know she cherishes me as a friend who is a man (I'm not just a stepping stone to romantic love).  While romantic love is indeed, a precious gift from God, friendship love is too.  

Here is Susanne's story:

My Father's Daughter: The Impact of Pastoral Cross-Gender Friendships

My close friend, Jennifer Ould shares the deep blessing she has received in her life-story from pastors who have befriended her:

 

Cross-gender friendships have been a part of my life to some degree or another, with different levels of restrictions and boundaries, all my life. Like all friendships, some have been long-standing and others more transient. Some have been deeply rewarding and others disappointments. Many have been with single men, but as I’ve grown older, more and more have been with married men (which may be a matter of demographics more than anything else). 

There’s one particular variety of cross-gender friendship, however, that has – even with all its complexities – had a particular impact in my life. They are relationships with men I’ve learned to identify as ‘father-voices.’

Friendships Beyond Boundaries: Welcome to The Sacred Friendships Project

“I've told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father” ( John 15:11-15 The Message).

Gail O’Day says of this familiar passage, “For Jesus, friendship is the ultimate relationship with God and one another.” In John’s Gospel, in a particularly crucial moment in the redemptive story, Jesus highlights friendship as the ultimate relationship. Yet, surprisingly, in much of contemporary Christianity, friendship is utterly inferior in social bonding, alliance, and love to romantic love. But clearly, according to Jesus, romantic love does not have a monopoly on love.

For followers of Jesus, friendship is a love that goes beyond conventional and cultural boundaries. Friendship goes beyond the status quo. Perhaps that sums up heart of The Sacred Friendships Project: friendship-love beyond boundaries.