Forsaking All Others: Opposite-Sex Friendship

An Internet search conducted today using the words "opposite-sex friendship" will deluge a searcher in a waterfall of choices; findings flood the search landscape in everything from scholarly articles based on university and think-tank studies and surveys to blog articles and message boards based on personal experience in which you can almost feel the opinions and experience pulsing in the comment sections.

Generationally, male-female friendships have expanded in number and in scope, and their very existence seems to indicate something unusual on the social curve.  Prior to 1974, no one had even conducted a study of these friendships.

One supposition I make on this lack of "data" is that in older generations, male-female friendships sat at a surface level, more formal, more business-like or acquaintance style.  My parents' friendships were forged with other couples, and they included widows and widowers, single people who needed companionship, but they did not include separate friendships with the opposite-sex.  I can see the shock on my mother's face at the mere suggestion.  That would be wrong, it would look improper, it would be improper for her to associate with another man in a close and personal way.  My grandmother's generation held a narrower view, and I can still hear my grandmother refer to church and neighborhood men as, "Mr. Young," or "Mr. Olson."  Lines existed.

Today, we hold a loose leash on "How to Relate to Others," and even fewer lines of certainty drawn anywhere.  Divulging of personal information to any listening ear prevails in an atmosphere of café and coffee shop meet-ups, texting, instant messaging, e-mail, social network platforms and comment section banter.  Reins on conversation topics grow looser, responsibility and self-control have relaxed their grip through the dumbing down of conversation that contains an overabundance of information.  What our conversations lack in importance we make up for by the number of texts we send.  We communicate more and say less, but in the case of friendship, we often say too much.  Our world tuned into friendship and "feel good" in lieu of imposing safeguards and setting limits.  We have ditched respectability and grabbed for familiarity on all levels.  We want to know and be known.

I'll just get it out there now:  most people are missing God.  Those holes in life they're filling?  God-sized.  Many people agree with this and know where the snakes lie in the grass ... people who don't know this seem to keep adding more activity and more people to life in order to fill those spaces.  Without God in there, they're feeding a vacuum.  A black hole of need.

What does this do to marriage?  What about male-female relationships outside the bonds of marriage?  Should a married man have female friends or a wife have male friends, each enjoying social time separately?  Sharing activities, deep conversations, and meeting together when each finds free time?  Texting and e-mailing any time of day or night?  Are there implications to consider?

Is it okay for a wife to want to hang out with male friends while her husband wrangles the kiddies and manages without her? 
Is it okay for him to want to go for coffee or see a concert with female friends while she takes on the roles at home on her own? 
Is it right for her husband to feel uncomfortable that she has male friends whom she makes time to see relatively regularly on her own?
Is it right for her to feel uneasy about his female pals with whom he texts or spends time in person? 
I have my own answers:  Two yes and two no.  Not in that order.

Whatever happened to that vow you made?  The one stating that you will "cling only unto each other, forsaking all others"?  "Cling" doesn't mean hang around each other's necks like baby chimpanzees, but it does mean "hang on tight to what you have right here.  And what does forsaking mean, anyway?

forsaking  present participle of for·sake (Verb)

Verb Abandon (someone or something): Forsake the idea for a better one. Renounce or give up (something valued or pleasant): "I won't forsake my marriage principles".

I believe the initiating of opposite-sex friendship happens when we stop being close friends with our spouses and the drift to opposite shores begins.  Most definitely, a spouse should not serve as our only human connection, but marriage is our most important connection, the one we should cultivate first, above all others.  Forsaking all others.   Giving up friends does not mean giving in to control -- if a husband demands an end to all friendship, by all means, think harder than that.  But, if a husband wants that male friend to hit the bricks, please lay those bricks now.  Your marriage matters more than does your social life.  If you feel a stronger pull to socialize, and if the pull feels any greater than social interaction, you are on the wrong road.  That yellow sign up there at the top of the page is the one to obey:  DANGER, WRONG WAY, TURN BACK.  Proceeding with caution still leads in the wrong direction.  You must turn around and do it completely.

We can't know another person's heart, but we can guard ours with everything we have.

Marriage requires giving your best to your spouse, not dangling leftovers in front of him.  If you're hanging with others often, same or opposite sex, you aren't ... simply ARE NOT giving your best to your husband. If you share thoughts and feelings with that opposite-sex person for the purpose of evaluating your marriage, you are not giving your best to your husband.  If you associate with that friend for the feeling of closeness he or she provides, you are not giving what you should to your marriage; you are cultivating a relationship with the friend.

A friend (female!) and I share a smile over this upended quote,

The grass is always greener where you water it.

If you put the energy into marriage that you would allot to an opposite-sex friend, you would see results.  If you take your marriage seriously, you will want to make it greener.  People don't marry to fail, but they fail to keep watering, weeding, fertilizing and taking utmost care of the marriage they planted in the first place.  When you begin to keep watch over another relationship, you divide your time and you cannot focus the way you should.

Friendship entails sharing.  Life troubles arise.  Trouble garners sympathy.  Sympathy asks for comfort.  Comfort shares emotions.  Emotions connect.  Connections link hearts, and even the happiest marriage can find itself sabotaged by an external friendship that grew too far without pruning of twining branches.

Opposite-sex friendships might remain completely platonic.  They certainly can.  However, there is always, always, always, ALWAYS potential for temptation.  Illegal U-Turns happen.  People run red lights and exceed speed limits.  People make wrong turns and figure they'll explore a new avenue and see the sights as time allows.

Opposite-sex friendship has to have brakes.  Emergency brakes, too.  In such friendships, a guard has to always exist.  God provides that guard in the form of his Spirit within us ... but we have the free will to make choices, and that makes the difference.

The truth is, good things -- positive relationships -- can start out innocuously.  They can begin during a phone call, at lunch, in a bowling alley, during work, at the grocery store, at the kids' school, and in church!   An invisible ball, usually static and centered in platonic relationships, begins to roll.  It might go unnoticed for a while, but soon, that ball has inched past the center ... the safe zone.  Feelings -- distinctly male and female -- can rise.  When the Spirit alerts you, how do you respond?  If you don't have lines drawn, if you don't listen to the small voice of the Spirit, you don't.  You simply follow the ball.

Marriage is more important than any friendship.
Marriage means sacrificing for husband/wife, for the sake of the other, which offers benefits for both.
Married people must live transparently, having no secrets, holding no cards under the table.
Marriage focuses on the other person, not oneself; service and giving trumps asking and receiving.
Marriage joins a couple in every possible way, and the rest of their lives need to fall in line of importance around it, not the other way around.
Marriage is a lifelong commitment, not a chance and not a maybe.

Marriage is more important than meeting for coffee, than playing a sport of joining a club and connecting with other people of similar interests.  Marriage is more important than any other commitment in life.

Pray about your friendships, to sincerely ask for God's direction, not rely on our own feelings and needs (which fail us all the time).  Bringing it up to God and listening intently for the answer, which may come as a feeling of aversion to those opposite-sex friendships, or a need to back away and set limits, will happen.  If you're on the fence in a friendship, looking at the greenery, hop off into your own weedy, brown grass and get watering!

We can't know for certain where friendship will lead, but we do know where marriage will take us.  With the focus on what's right and proper, with what we vowed to do on our wedding day, we make the right choice.

A true friend will understand.

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The In-Law Invasion

My mother and father-in-law arrive today to celebrate Christmas a little early.  As ever, I dive into cooking in advance and cleaning down to and including the baseboards.  Housekeeping happens as necessary in my gene pool, and that means I feel a need to do it when there's a need to do it.  As in, when we will have guests.  Really, I would like to have a crumb-free, uncluttered environment in which to live, and I try.  I just didn't come equipped to keep up with it.  We all have our strengths.

I fall on the short end of the cleaning stick, and so I guess I make up for it in cooking and baking.  Which makes a mess.  Doesn't it figure?

Stress.  I feel stress to get it all right, because I think, deep down, that judgment cometh.  Some people are very particular, very expectant, and I married one of them.  He comes from that kind of lineage.  And it stresses him out, too, wanting everything to be perfect, from the house and children to the meals and relationships. 

No matter how well we plan and prepare, very little of that perfection has a possibility of happening. We are fallible humans!  Personalities clash, preconceived notions make truth crawl under the carpet, assumptions slither into attitudes, and nerves stand on edge, and when any one of these bind with another, our minds and sometimes our stomachs take a hit. 

We want better for ourselves, and we want better for the rest of those involved. 

I think all of us married folks, from time to time, have in-law issues.  Even the most perfect in-law pair, either the seasoned parental couple or the younger wedded couple, have difficulties that seem to surface.  These difficulties may happen only in their heads, but they happen, leaving stress, irritation, and sometimes anger or tears at the inability to live up to the example, in the attempt to avoid criticism (giving or receiving), the attempt to avoid advice (giving or receiving) or ilkjn the attempt to avoid a hamster wheel world of trying to be everyone's everything.

My husband and I have navigated 21 years of marriage and dozens of visits here or there with our sets of parents.  Every time I think of Exodus 20:12, which reads:

"Honor your father and your mother,

so that you may live long in the land

 the LORD your God is giving you."

No suggestion here, a commandment.  Hoo-eee!  It sometimes feels like more pressure, but, in making it reality, it pays for itself.  First, in obedience to God, which should stand as our first line of action, in all things (don't look at me -- I'm practicing, too!).  Then to the feeling that comes from blessing the very people who provided your husband by giving him life in the first place.  Finally, in the continued blessing showered on us when we witness a change in attitudes and behavior all around because we have acted as we should.  

The in-law resistance we often feel, I think, we usually create ourselves.  We have our own preferences.  We have our own hopes for the relationship.  We have our own sets of expectations that, Satan-bound, put us first ... wholly because we feel that others should act or speak in certain ways to maintain the structure of the relationship we envision.  Dysfunction runs rampant in this way of thinking.  As Sheila Wray Gregoire illustrates in "Do You See What I See?" our preferences and sadly, our expectations color our vision.  We need to use God's vision -- and he gladly shares it when we ask.  It offers more clarity than we will ever find in an independent search.  It offers grace in place of contempt, it provides hope instead of defeat, it views everyone with love instead of with impossible expectations in mind.

And, while I'd sometimes like to toss the reminder of Christ's review of the marriage commitment (Matthew 19:4-6) toward my mate's parents when advice or questions arise -- I'd be offering God's word as judgment, wouldn't I:

"He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 

I know that I have my own expectations of perfection and hopeful views of what family should be.  I know my own biological family has no claim to perfection or excellence.  And, I remember, a little sheepishly, as I think of retorts or admonitions:

"A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control."  Proverbs 29:11

I need to keep the relationship in perspective and remember that feelings are fickle and hearts live out life on people's sleeves in family relationships sometimes.  It's our job, as wives ... as family ... to protect both.

Distractions in Life and the Marriage Effect

Distractions in my life waylay my best intentions.  They take my mind off the list of chores or projects I need to accomplish.  They make me forget to check my calendar for appointments or special days in the lives of loved ones.  Worse, distractions do not support the marriage relationship I should have, the one I need, the one God set aside for me and my husband to have.

It's our job, this marriage thing.  Without work -- hard work -- it will not succeed.  It will not produce, it will not provide dividends, it will not thrive; it will divide and destroy.

All of us who hold the role of wife must focus clearly on the man to whom we have vowed commitment (love, honor cherish ... until death do us part).  Life does not have to run away with us; it really is our choice to let it run and drag us along.  Think about it.  You may have to work, but you do not need to focus on it all the time.  If you have children, they should revolve around you and your husband, not you around them.  You may subscribe to social media but you do not have to alert yourself electronically or check in throughout the day, letting it rule you.  Real life remains. It doesn't go away, even when you try ignoring it or when you fight against it.  Taking a weekend away with friends will bring you home to the same chaos or discomfort you left there.  Coffee with your favorite pal will not drown the sadness that prevails in the problems you haven't faced.  Diversions, distractions, means of escape can overtake real life, but real life remains when the aura disappears.  The only way to maintain focus and balance is to cut back on the number of activities you do, inside or outside your home.  Cut back a lot even from the good things, because they divert attention from what matters most, too.  You may volunteer for a wonderful organization (I did!), and maybe you find great support and positive feedback from it (I did!).  Don't let work, family, friends, volunteering or social diversions take the place of the support and feedback you can get at home.  If you have lost the support and feedback at home, you may have to work to rejuvenate it.  You can.  You'll need to work at it, but the rewards multiply fast.  Everyone wins.

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. "  ~~ Philippians 4:8

Distractions have a stealthy way of diminishing the relationship we have with our husbands.  They take our time, they deplete our energy and they consume our thoughts.  Where, then, do we have room for the Man of the House?  We don't think he notices when we squeeze him in here or there in our jam-packed schedule.  He doesn't say much.  He doesn't seem to mind.  He doesn't say much because, in most cases, men grow quiet and withdraw when wives start finding other focuses in life.  So, the men find other things to do.  When you get to the point that he "doesn't seem to mind," you have already leaped the barrier between "busy" and "too busy."  Jump back!

We women often fog the mirror of our own abilities, believing the busier we are the more important or indispensable we are.  In reality we are not either of those things in the eyes of those who matter most -- our husbands and families.  We lose sight of our own shortcomings and lack of attention to the details at home -- the underlying details that make marriage hum along in a healthy way, not the cooking and cleaning and clothes washing.  Anyone can do that, and our husband and/or children will not resent having less clean underwear and more time with wife or mom.  Those of us who stay at home full time often fill hours with outreach activities in order to appear accomplished to the outside world while our families and homes suffer from neglect, failing to thrive at our own hands.  Likewise, working women may fill the schedule with accomplishments that look good on a resume, with negative results at home.  When I fog the mirror of self with "important activities", I can't focus on the needs of my spouse or my children.  The fog builds and I work at getting through it, while my husband drifts along on the other side of the fog.  I can't even see him.  Those outside activities creep closer, making a denser fog, and completely obscuring my vision of him with "I'm busy." When he calls to me from the other side of the fog, I begin to see him as a distraction from all the busyness, rather than my respite from it.  How wrong is that?

"Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives,"  I Peter 3:1

The Bible states that we should be subject to our husbands, which does not mean taking on a subservient role or having no opinions or strength, but to honor his choices as head of the household.  When I take on more distractions, I unintentionally begin to force my husband to live by my calendar.  Interesting.  The needs of my spouse move to second, third ... or last position under all the other time-takers on my list if I do not carefully weigh and discuss my options with him.  What is my goal?  Do I want to appear important?  Do I want credit?  Do I want admiration?  Do I want control?  Do I want to make my mark on the world?  Or, do I want a solid marriage with my husband?  How can I do that when I continue to take time in activities that promote ME?

 “Love is not self seeking, it’s not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong.” 

I Corinthians 13:5

The bottom line remains this:  The busier I make myself with other things, the less time and attention I have for my husband.  I did not always consider this -- I believed I had time for everything and continually added to my outside obligations without a thought about the time involved. Through my own experience:

•  I believe every wife must treat every decision as if her family depends on it, because it does. 
• A wife should make decisions about roles outside her marriage with her husband's input, because she married him to be his partner, and partners communicate these things.
• A wife needs to show her children that her marriage comes first (after God).
• A wife needs to understand that children reflect the marriage relationship, they don't come before it and cannot expect her to take sides.  Husband+Wife+Children=FAMILY
• A wife must let friends and family know that she esteems her husband (for some, this will take some changing of attitude) and will not fall into speaking negatively about him (huge distraction, especially in the company of other women who are unhappy in marriage).  
• A wife needs to make marriage her priority, not one in a long list of distractions.  

When a wife does make the switch, she will feel free, and her husband will feel respected and powerful - in a good way - because she depends on him and uses his strength as she should.  She creates in him a protective feeling, and he begins to watch out for her and the family differently.  This is what God planned in the first place.  

"And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever."  I John 2:17 

A Wife Challenge for today:  Maybe you don't feel your life is out of balance, but you really do not feel in a comfort zone marriage-wise.  Take some time today to list your activities (children's, social, church, personal, work, hobby) and pray about them.  Ask God to show you where to cut back or maybe (sigh of relief) eliminate.  Taking the step to stop an activity or sever a tie to an organization to which you devote your time and talent seems not only risky, it takes a lot of effort to consider doing such a drastic thing.  In the spirit of marriage  purpose and contentment, the  profit outweighs the risk.  You will gain a greater sense of satisfaction as you devote more time to being married.

You can bank on it -- as long as you remember to keep God at the head of it all.  Go to Him with your decisions and challenges, and remember to give Him thanks for every small success.