What's Plato Got to Do With It?

I believe, 100%, that men and women should develop friendships.  I've heard some people argue that it's nigh impossible to do without high potential for terrible complications.  If one party should start to want to be more than friends, but the other party doesn't reciprocate, then lots of anxiety, confusion, hurt feelings, and hard conversations are inevitable.  Platonic friendships just aren't worth the risk, some might say (though I've no idea what Plato has to do with any of it.  I assume he must have some treatise on friendship between the sexes, but if so, I haven't read it.  No, I'm sorry to inform you, these musings I'm typing out here are all coming straight from my own head.)

So let's go ahead and grant the premise:  platonic friendships between heterosexual men and women are highly subject to being plagued by the hardships of unrequited attractions.  Does that automatically mean they are not worth the effort?  Certainly not automatically.  Whatever we end up concluding, we can't reasonably make the argument that because something presents challenges, we shouldn't do it.  Most people would agree that just about anything worth doing comes with challenges (except eating ice cream; that's always worth doing, and there could hardly be anything less challenging).

So the more pertinent question is, do the unique challenges that come with male-female friendships warrant avoiding them altogether? Is the reward gained by good male-female friendships worth the risk of damages wrought by bad ones?  Well, I kind of already gave my answer in my first sentence, so you already know my opinion.  My friendships with women have played too important a role in shaping who I am today for me to possibly think otherwise.

But this is not to say that I take the risks lightly, and I do think I have learned some important things along the way.  Here's a few (note these are coming from my--a man's--perspective.  I don't make any claims about how well they apply to the other side of the aisle.)

1)  Everyone has a different set of boundaries, and everyone's boundaries are worthy of respect.  What's acceptable when interacting with one friend may be completely unappreciated by another.  That's okay.  Pay attention to responses, learn the boundaries, and heed them.

2)  Avoid overly romantic gestures.  As a man, I find it much easier to be sentimental and expressive towards my female friends than my male friends. Sometimes, I get notions to express something deeply personal or make some grand gesture to show my appreciation for them.  Such things can feel really great in the moment, but might end up sending the wrong signals.  So, I try to strike a balance in my behavior. I challenge myself to not be overly expressive towards women, and to be more expressive towards men. If I find myself wanting to say things to and do things for the ladies in my life that I know, in a million years, I would never say or do with my guy friends, I usually take that as a sign I should temper myself.  It's at least a good impetus for checking my motives:  "Why do I really want to do this?"  If it's just for sheer emotional indulgence, it's probably not the right thing to do.

2, a) I say all this with the caveat that some "romance" between two single friends can be healthy.  I put "romance" in quotes because what I'm talking about is not really romance, but it might resemble it in some regards.  Like everything being considered here, context is everything.  It's so difficult to lay down principles that apply to a majority of situations.  But to use a specific example--one out of a million potential examples--let's say two long-time, good friends are at a wedding, and one asks the other to dance?  In at least some contexts, that could be a nice, sweet, but completely platonic moment between two friends just having fun together, even though it's something that, in a million years, I personally would not do with my male friends.  (Not to be hyper macho or anything, I just can't picture that being something that me or any of them would enjoy.)

3)  I may be old school in this way, but I believe it's always the woman's prerogative to respond or not respond to me in the way that I wanted or expected. Because of the different power dynamics between men and women, I just think that men should go out of their way to avoid making women feel pressured or forced to respond in a particular way.  "Hey, I smiled at you, you should have smiled back."  "Hey I texted you yesterday and you never responded."  "I did this for you, you should do that for me."  That's not friendship, it's contract negotiation.  At any point, of course, a guy has a right to say, "I don't think she's reciprocating the friendship as much as I'd like, maybe I'll back off a little bit."  But she doesn't owe you anything.  Personally, I'd rather let the girl's response be the weather vane to indicate which way the friendship is blowing.  

4)  Friendships between sexes can play a key role in romantic development and emotional maturity.  Some people find love through matchmaking, blind dates, online dating, etc, which is great if that's what works.  But a small segment of people, myself included among them, don't really develop romantic feelings until becoming friends with a person first.  For my purposes here, by the way, I'm drawing a distinction between romantic feelings and sexual attraction.  You can be attracted to a person without wanting to pursue a deeper relationship with them.  But you need both of those nutrients for a proper romance to bloom, and for some people, the romantic feelings develop most readily, or maybe even exclusively, in the environment of friendship. And some guys just need good female friends before they'll ever even have a fighting chance in the dating arena.

4, a)  This is decidedly NOT to say that the goal of friendships between sexes is romantic relationships!  It's fine to hope for that result.  Maybe that's your ideal scenario, where one of your best male or female friends develops into your lifelong romantic partner.  But if you use friendship as a tool for dating, you're doing it wrong!  The problem is, you'll end up discarding every friend whom you don't date because that was the only value you saw in them.  Pursue friendships for friends, and you'll have genuine, honest, supportive love and care around you for a lifetime!  If you get a husband or wife out of the deal, too, that's lagniappe.

5)  Lastly (for this article anyway.  There is much more that could be said I'm sure), if/when one or the other party begins a serious romantic relationship with someone else, you might want to have a conversation about it.  Could be awkward.  Lots of things are.  But one of the things I will never forget is what one of my closest female friends did for me years ago.  She started dating a guy who she had previously dated when they were both in high school.  They had a pretty long-term relationship before, and really liked each other, so she knew right away that there was potential for this to be a serious relationship.  She had always been someone who had close guy friends.  One day, she pulled me aside to tell me she and this fellow had rekindled their romance.  And she said to me, "I just want you to know, I really value our friendship, and I told him that if he's going to be jealous of me having good guy friends, then this isn't going to work."

I felt so valued by my friend in that moment.  Truth be told, I would gladly fade into the background for any of my gal pals, if that's what needed to happen for them to successfully pursue a good dating relationship and/or marriage.  The only thing that means more to me than their friendship is their freedom to pursue the life that they feel called to and what's most valuable to them. But in this particular context, with this particular friend, she knew herself and her own boundaries, and what she would tolerate and would not tolerate in her relationship/potential marriage, and she decided to take a stand for our friendship. I thought it was pretty cool, even though I acknowledge that it wouldn't work for a lot of couples.  It worked out fine for all of us.

I'll conclude by noting my disdain for a phrase that I was guilty of using earlier in this very article:  I don't like the phrase "more than friends."  When we use it, surely we don't understand the power of friendship.  Of course, in this day and age, romantic love is the more charged and explosively emotional power of the two.  But for Christians, shouldn't we consider what Jesus said, that in the world to come we will not be given in marriage?  So between friendship and romance, which will be the more enduring?
       



      

Why I Think You Should Go Back to Church (Part 1)

The Bible is more lovey-dovey than I usually prefer to imagine.  It's cloyingly replete with rejoinders to love God, love people, love strangers, love neighbors, love enemies, and so forth.  God loves Israel, God loves the world, Jesus loves his disciples, etc.  And some might say, "Yeah, but there's this many Hebrew words for love and this many Greek words for love, and they all mean different things, and real Biblical love is not the sentimental sort."  Well, I'm no scholar of Hebrew or Greek, but I'm not talking about merely the words.  I mean, have you read about how God tenderly clothed Adam and Eve right after they rebelled?  Have you read of how David said he searched for God like a parched throat thirsts for water, and that God's kindness was better than life itself?  Have you read Song of Solomon?  Hosea?  What about Jesus longing to gather the children of Jerusalem under his wing like a hen?  Have you heard about the rejoicing--the exorbitant and prodigious party--that happens when one sinner turns back to God?

Quite lovey-dovey if you ask me.  And sometimes, I act like I'd prefer to do without all that.  I want to focus on what we're doing.  It's too easy to manufacture emotion, and it leaves me vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy, not least of all from my own conscience.  The moment a sentiment of love wells up from deep within, I fire back, "How dare you think you love God?  You just broke one of his commandments earlier today!"  "How dare you think you love that person?  They were in need, and you pretended not to notice."  "I can sing God's praises all day long, but how many people are going to think my faith is authentic if I'm not even doing this or that?" 

There is some merit, no doubt, in weighing one's felt sense of piety against the weight of one's actions.  But at what point does the stifling of emotion become a self-defeating impediment?  And who are we to reject what God has embraced?  If his word is to be trusted, love is not merely sentiment, but neither is it merely action. When Jesus said, "All who believe in me shall not perish but have eternal life," he deemed that the ground in which salvation is sown should include not only the will but the mind and heart as well.  For who could possibly repent and believe in such a Gospel without wells of sorrow and gratitude attending?

Which brings me to my point. If you are a Christian and have been away from church, why should you go back?  Jesus told his disciples:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now, remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:9-12)

So I ask, how can we love each other if we don't even see each other?


  

I might try to not actively contribute to my own cognitive decline.

If the book I m reading now--about the effects of exercise on the brain--is even half accurate, it may be catalyzing a significant lifestyle change for me.  I've dabbled in different forms of exercise before, but the realist in me has tended to believe that I won't truly be motivated to be consistent until I see the consequences of not doing it.  "As long as I don't notice my gut getting bigger or any general symptoms of poor health, I'm just not going to worry much about it," was my mindset.

What I am learning now, however, is that by not exercising, I am actively contributing to my own cognitive decline.  So . . . I want to go ahead and maybe not do that.

Elevate Discontent

The Apostle Paul said he had learned to be content in all things--an impressive statement for someone who had suffered wrongful imprisonment, torture, shipwreck, betrayal, and all of the unceasing labor involved in his efforts to expand and unify the varying strands of Christian communities being spawned during his time. 

I have also been content in all things.  But for me, it wasn't learned and it's not nearly as impressive.  My contentedness tends to be my natural disposition, and it's rarely been challenged. I've typically thought of my contentment as a good thing, but recently I have been calling it into question.  I enjoy life.  I have my basic physical needs met, I have family and friends that I love, and I have plenty of hobbies and passions that ensure I am always doing something I enjoy during my free time.  Naturally, I'd be quite content to keep living life exactly the way I'm living it now for . . . well, for who knows how long.  But . . .

The concept of wasted potential has been pressing itself upon me.  Have I buried my talent?  Have I conceived of God as a hard master, and consequently pursued what is safe?  Please understand, I don't consider "ordinary life" to be a waste of anything, necessarily.  My belief remains strong that most of "thy will be done" happens in the course of "ordinary" life.    But there is a growing sense in me that I want to do even ordinary life exceptionally well. In my vocation, in my relationships, in my thoughts, deeds, and words, I want to excel.

It's a lot to think about all at once, and it feels overwhelming when I try.  I'm not sure where to start.  I need wisdom.



 

The Fourth Perspective in Job

On a cursory reading, I think it's often assumed that the Book of Job presents the outlook of three different entities: Job, Job's friends, and God.  There is clearly a fourth though:  the narrator/poet.  His perspective, which is the one he aims to impart to the reader, can be characterized as making the following four arguments:

1)  Job's friends are wrong in their insistence that Job has done something to warrant his suffering.
2)  Job, in his criticisms of God, fails to fully account for the obvious limitations of human wisdom.
3)  Job's death wish is myopic in light of the totality of Creation and all its grandeur.
4)  The grandeur of Creation is not an answer to the problem of suffering, nor a justification of God's ways, in and of itself.  It's simply a signpost that, when properly read, should lend to us a modicum of awareness that God's purposes cannot be assumed to always align with our individual desires.

One may object by asking, "Isn't this the perspective attributed to God?"  In other words, "Isn't the poet's perspective and God's perspective the same?"  Not exactly.  Job and God are in dialogue with each other, thus God's words are to be taken as a rebuttal to Job's friends and Job, respectively.  The poet then is a mediator between the story and the reader.  Via the narrative and the poems, he is pushing us to probe the question for ourselves:  how should we think of human suffering in relation to the righteous and loving nature of God?  He is not able to present God's perspective because he himself does not know it.  God's prosodic "answer" to Job is indeed a revelation, but not a revelation of understanding.  In its power, grandeur, and beauty, it seeks to imitate the revelation of Creation.  Which is to say, it is a revelation of humility, awe, and wonder.  The poet is a voice offering a hand, to walk alongside the reader in approaching such a revelation.

Further Thoughts on My Atypical Romantic Outlook

I've written about this several times in the past, but it's a topic I will likely continue to revisit periodically, to see if new insights develop in my thinking.  There are a plethora of terms popping up recently to describe circumstances in which people seem to experience something atypical regarding romantic or sexual drive.  Terms like asexual or demisexual seek to describe something atypical--not regarding whom a person is attracted to, but rather--in what circumstances a person experiences attraction at all.

What we seem to think of as the norm is: initial attraction can develop almost instantly in a person, catches them by surprise in a moment, primarily based on perception of physical beauty and/or desirable personality traits.  Then, based on future experiences (dating or other socializing), that attraction can either fade or develop further.  If the attraction is mutual, then a committed relationship can form.

Personally, I don't identify wholly with terms like asexual or demisexual or aromantic, but neither do I identify wholly with what appears to be the norm as articulated above.  I experience attraction to women, I think in a way that's mostly normal (though it's difficult to say what's normal when it comes to internal experiences).  But even in this initial attraction, I've noticed that for me, it has never been exclusively based on physical beauty.  There has to be at least one other factor, and that other factor can be fairly simple or even trivial, like a shared interest.  But I don't ever get "swoony" over a complete stranger based purely on looks.

It's what happens after the initial attraction that I think is most atypical for me:  The initial attraction doesn't lead to a strong desire to date/court/pursue the woman. If, in the circumstances, I don't have the opportunity to interact with the person further, the attraction will simply fade and be forgotten.  Or the same might happen if I do have the opportunity to get to know her, but then other factors lead to being un-attracted.  Throughout my entire adult life, I have only developed a strong desire to act on my attraction in a few rare circumstances--circumstances which have always included first the development of a significantly strong friendship.

I don't think this is an ideal way to be, and sometimes I wonder if it is all simply avoidance.  What I mean is, am I simply so dreading of all the work/responsibility/accountability/vulnerability/life changes that would come with a committed relationship, that I've built myself I nice little fortress around it all?  But even if that were true, I would wonder why that doesn't seem to be the case for most people.  For most, doesn't the desire for romance/sex get strong enough to override their fears?  Why not the same for me?  That question usually leads me back around to the idea that maybe my romantic ambitions really are just weaker than the average person's, for whatever reason that may be.  Or, must I consider that maybe my fears really are just that strong?

Another possibility is that I've rarely been at a point in my life where I feel ready to be a good match for someone.  I mean, considering my current circumstances, my best pick-up line would be:  "Hey girl, do you prefer your men to be low in cash or in assets?  Cuz honey, you're lookin' at the total package.  Pick me up at 8?"

Either way, I have the added advantage (or disadvantage, depending on perspective and context) that I am quite content being single.  Bear in mind that I am Christian and believe that sex is reserved for marriage.  So I don't mean that I am content to be a free-wheeling bachelor.  I mean that I am content to be wholly single.  I could see myself getting married some day, but the thought of not doing so causes me no grief whatsoever.  As I am now approaching the age of 37, my genes and hormones probably despise me right about now, but their dissatisfaction doesn't ever seem to reach my mental state.

And by this point, my thinking always circles back to one thing:  how can I focus more on using my singleness as an advantage and as a blessing to others?  If I am going to be atypically romantic, let me at least be atypically generous, kind, and God-serving.  I have a long way to go, but 'tis a great adventure.
   

Abandonment

I saw myself once.
I was young,
sitting cross-legged
in the middle of the kitchen floor,
absorbed with some simple toy--
an elastic ball I think, something plain--
while preoccupied with other thoughts
too large for my brain.

I left him there.
I mingled with the adults
crowding in as it started to rain
(it was a house party)
and didn't introduce him to anyone.

I didn't take him with me
when I left.

He's likely still there,
readily entertained
with his elastic ball and too-small brain.
I wouldn't know.
My own grew too big
to hang on to just the hem
of a garment of an idea
and look up at something
it couldn't contain.