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.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.out-ona-limb.blogspot.com" title="Out on a Limb" target="_blank"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-n29f61sTp1Q/UPbeoumwNwI/AAAAAAAAAN8/XA85_8dBbbU/s128/Thursday.jpg" alt="Out on a Limb" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

(Re)Train Your Brain

This morning, I woke up to the song, "Kookaburra," repeating in my head.  If you don't know it, it's an Australian folksong I learned in Girl Scouts when I was 9 years old; it's about a bird.  AN-NOY-ING when stuck on infinite repeat in my brain.

The only way to rid myself of the tune in my head comes by derailing the train of thought that "Kookaburra" clearly bought a 1st Class ticket for this morning.  I need to buy tickets for other passengers or change trains, so to speak.  I usually pray first, because it's something I am training myself to do "without ceasing," as I Thessalonians commands. A friend once said, "I'm learning to pray as a first line of defense, instead of a last resort."   So, I pray, and Kookaburra hops a few tracks, hits a dead-end, and returns to the original track.   As I pray in thanks for blessings, I begin to create a list of groceries, review plans for the day, jot a gift list for Christmas donations, and plan our evening meal.  I get busy doing whatever I need to do; however, I don't recommend singing in the shower when you have a song stuck in your head -- it seems to aggravate the problem (grin).  As I add more trains to the network in my mind, Kookaburra's train begins to lose momentum I move away from letting him into my head.  By the time another hour has passed,  I have forgotten the strange bird and the tune.  Free at last!

Simple and common, we all know this type of rut in the brain, a channel that our thought processes seems to lodge in and not move from without effort.

What do you do about thoughts and memories that jump into your head that you know need to stop because of their emotional, mental or spiritual harmfulness?  Can you banish memories you never want to recall again; the ones you wish you could erase from your memory because of harrowing sadness, because of soul-invading disappointment or because they reverse the healing of a broken heart?

Yes.  You can change trains in the hard stuff, too.  It takes prayer and practice: learning to refocus on positive, appropriate, worthy subjects.  As actors do in a fine film or musicians do in a symphony, you must rehearse, rehearse and rehearse some more to perform well, and you must have a qualified director or conductor (God!) to pull it all together.  Also, you need to be aware of what you're thinking, when, where and why.  More on that later.

Recalling pain, sadness, fear and other negatively-geared memories can put a person in a tailspin. I used to find myself on "auto pilot" to navigate my day while my brain took the train to the places I did not want to go.  A friend told me I had the power to retrain my brain, and the power comes from God, through prayer and purposeful changes in my thinking habits.  Elizabeth over at Warrior Wives calls these purposeful changes "mental gymnastics."  I've found God to be an expert coach in mental gymnastics.  Go for the gold!

Paul, in 2 Timothy:1-7 says this, 

"For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control." 

 Fear of our own thoughts does not come from God, nor does the "repeat button" we put on those thoughts come from God, for as above, He gave us a spirit of power and love and self-control.  Self-control!  But I CAN'T control those thoughts.  My mind just goes ...

The practice/rehearsal part we need comes in exerting self-control.  We teach our children to have self-control.  We expect it from them at greater levels as they grow older, yet as adults, we find it strangely satisfying to share our pain again and again -- to explain it to others for validation (others often have the same issues), and to sit in our own misery, remembering and replaying and hurting all over again.  Totally lacking in self-control.

If you happen to be in a situation at present that grieves you, that hurts, that has broken your heart, the spirit of fear can feel like a constant companion.  Many emotions swirl inside, but the idea that thoughts will invade unexpectedly can bring an overwhelming sense of fear that we keep, like a watchman at his post, ready to alarm us at the first inkling of a distressing memory.  Don't let the train run away with you.  Pray for peace of your mind, for new focus on positive things, and for God to be the watchman, turning you in the right direction to overcome fear and the habit of remembering.  

In Philippians 4:8, you have a sort of list of acceptable thinking: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

Easier said than done?  At first, yes.  Remember ... practice!  Now, it's time to know WHAT will trigger thoughts and memories to surface.  Paying attention to the core of the memory -- why it aches so much (loss, rejection, dealing with illness, betrayal, disappointment, etc.) and giving that core an airing to God -- whisper it, think it, cry it, yell it, scream it, call it out from the deepest part of your soul.  Pour out your heart, and do so every time you feel the lowest lows and believe He will both help and heal.  You will begin to feel His peace, to see more light than usual, to find new direction in areas of your life.  The low points will begin to gain altitude, and you will feel God making a difference in your outlook and in your thought patterns. 

Notice WHEN you remember these things.  Discover WHERE they tend to unveil themselves and WHY they seem to come at you when and where they do.  Do they happen when you find yourself alone for a while?  In a certain environment that triggers the emotions or memories?  In the company of specific people or at a time of day?  Pray about these triggers, for the ability to overcome them, and to make the effort to return them to normalcy as much as possible.  When you know you will face one of the stimuli for your unwanted thoughts, toss a prayer to God and find ways to prepare yourself, mentally, for discomfort or struggle within you.  Lean hard on God.  Talk to Him as you enter the difficult arena, and as you move through it. Focus!

So.  You want to change trains on these thoughts of yours.  Pray.  Know your thoughts -- all the details, and the what/where/when/why of them.  Pray some more, and breathe a prayer whenever a wave hits, and give thanks when you find you have overcome a bad moment with more ease.  Let God be the conductor in this faith experiment.  

You are not alone.  

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.  Proverbs 4:23