Friday Night Date Place – When Good Singles Groups Go Bad

I think I’ve mentioned before how I was once part of several singles groups and how these groups can sometimes develop strange dynamics. The key was understanding the "politics" of them:

-those who make "friends" strictly as an opportunity to date those within the circle -those who genuinely want friends -those who just want folks to kill time with until they find someone and then they can disappear -those who want an entertainment/activity circle

So I’ve been thinking a lot about when a singles group can reach a tipping point to where it might be better to move on from that group. This is a fairly common occurrence as most folks only tend to last 3 years in a singles group before moving on for one reason or another (if for no other reason than they are tired of “singles groups” and move on to explore the rest of what life has to offer).

The fact of the matter is that part of the dynamic of the singles group is that unless it is continually renewed with, let’s call it what it is, fresh meat, they eventually implode. Close and constant proximity can cause feelings to occur even when, on paper, you wouldn’t ordinarily find yourself attracted to that person. Rinse, lather, repeat, and sooner or later, most of the group has gone through the round robin of dating one another. If all went well, the group can settle into being friends. However, things rarely go well and sometimes the very process of round robin dating tears the group apart.

Sometimes the group is TOO up in your Kool Aid. There’s a fine line between a protective circle of friends and a bunch of nosey busy-bodies. The difference will lie in the type of individual relationships you may have with the folks in the group. My friends have a lot more latitude to speak into my life. A group of acquaintances, despite the frequency of us hanging out, does not. (Though I try to not be too hasty in dismissing their opinions outright just because we may not like their conclusions. Sometimes friends, because they aren’t so personally invested, can see things that you can’t.)

In my ideal single’s group, there would be married couples in there to act as mentors of a sort. One, for an example of the type of relationship the singles (think) they want, if only to take the romantic notions off of marriage to replace them with realistic ones. Two, to set the example of not ditching your friends after you get married. Three, to give the benefit of their experience. A friend of mine recently found herself in a dating dilemma which threw her singles group into a tizzy. It was a single’s group mostly her age, with largely her level of experience in life. She posed the same dilemma to another set of friends, most of whom were married and had dated to much greater extremes and experience (read: severe consequences) and the perspective was entirely different.

There are other times when the community you are in may not be the best fit for you. Communities change over time. If teh interwebz have taught us nothing it's that it only takes one or two personalities (read: trolls) to poison a group if they are left unchecked. If you find you don’t have deepening relationships, but instead everything remains on a very surface level, you may want to move on (unless that’s what you want). While all close circles of friends have “gossip” issues because they talk to each other about each other, such behavior can turn negative. In fact, it doesn’t take too much for a once loving community to become a bullying, excluding clique.

In the end, singles groups are like any other community: you have to decide if it is helpful to you or has become toxic. If nothing else, how the group continues to reach out to people, how it loves, how it forgives, how it handles crises, and how it repairs damaged relationships tells a lot about the group. I began quoting from one previous blog, so I’ll end with another:

Take a look at your current circle of friends. There’s a good chance that a year from now, maybe two, the complexion of your circle of friends will be different. People whom you shared intimate secrets with one day drift (or storm) out of your life. People fight. Misunderstandings occur. Trust is betrayed. People move, switch social circles, life, circumstances, what have you - you wake up one day and realize that some folks aren’t as close to you or aren’t as much a part of your world as they used to be. There is a natural ebb and flow to relationships.

Luckily, friendships renew themselves. Cherish the friends in your life right now.

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Conversations About Friendship

Sometimes I really underestimate the power of social networking to have interesting conversations. For this weekend’s reach-around, there was the conversation I had during my impromptu friendship appreciation day. (Okay, to be honest, weekends are slow on Twitter and I get bored easy, especially if all I’m doing is sitting around thinking.) Many of us have difficulty telling our friends how much they mean to us. Thus my tweets from Saturday.

thinking about what it means to be a good friend

thinking about how we toss around the word "friend" way too easily without truly understanding what it takes to be one

-Matthew Warner at 12:15pm December 6 Eat that, John McCain!

(before I get e-mails, Matt said that, not me. Now go buy his books)

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller i do think internet "friending" defines friendship down to where we confuse acquaintanceship with friendship.

-Susan Taylor at 12:32pm December 6 Or strangers with friends. ;) heh

(Don’t know Susan? Go read her magazine)

Maurice Broaddus at 12:35pm December 6 we're all a series of 1s and 0s ... unless we truly invest ourselves. because i know i have teh interwebz to thank for more than a few FRIENDships. ;-)

Laurie Handel Miller at 12:42pm December 6 so you're saying i don't REALLY have 81 "friends?" this is truly a revelation. and my friends don't have 372 friends? amazing.

(Don’t know Laurie? She makes church a delight.)

Maurice Broaddus at 12:57pm December 6 i barely KNOW 631 people, much less have that many friends. :-)

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller it's like we've lost the word acquaintance because anything less than calling someone a friend might hurt their feelings

christammiller @MauriceBroaddus As for online I sometimes look at my lists and think, Who are these people and why do they want to friend me? LOL

(Don’t know Christa? Go correct that.)

christammiller @MauriceBroaddus And is it possible/desirable to REALLY be there - to put forth the same effort - for every single one... to risk trust?

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller absolutely not. we're going to have people we're closer with, who we will have more connection to.

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller we physically/spiritually/emotionally can't be there for everyone on that intimate a level.

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller true intimacy requires trust and risk and investment and shouldn't be (casually) given to everyone we encounter.

christammiller @MauriceBroaddus So it's about being more judicious with whom we think of as "friends"... not trying to do/be more for friends who aren't.

christammiller @MauriceBroaddus Which frees up our emotional/spiritual resources 4 our truest friends and allows us to let the others go to find their own.

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller i find it interesting that we were told to love our neighbors as ourselves, not go and be friends with everyone.

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller e.g., i can love "you" (generic you) and behave in love toward you without emotionally investing in any more of a relationship than that

christammiller @MauriceBroaddus "Behave in love toward you" I guess is where I was going with the question on "being there" fully for everyone in your life

christammiller @MauriceBroaddus By "behave in love" you mean treating others with kindness and respect though... not necessarily giving of energy?

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller honestly i try to be there for the people in my life, as fully as possible, while not forsaking my most impt relationships

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller keeping in mind they are in my life for a reason; and i'm not going to be there for everyone the way that i am for my wife

MauriceBroaddus @christammiller one of the biggest problems i've faced working in the ministry: people's inability to make and keep friends

thinking about how destructive endless back-biting is to a friendship or a community of friends

Mark Worthen at 2:47pm December 6 but backbiting and infighting is about as productive as sticking your finger in a bowl of water trying to leave an impression.

(Don’t know Mark? Fix that.)

thinking about where we'd be if none of us were forgiven for our past mistakes

thinking about what a great support i have in my spouse, which i've too often taken for granted.

(who else would buy me my very own Charlie Brown Christmas tree?)

thinking about all of the precious friendships i’ve been privileged to have as a part of my life.

thinking of the family i was born into and the family i chose (in my friends)

ah ... and a true milestone was reached in my twitter history: my first fail whale for too many tweets.

(it’s like teh interwebz is saying “shut the hell up”)

Hmm, if you read only the parts in red, it almost reads like a guided meditation on friendship. Feel free to add to the conversation* here or with your own friends. I’m sure it’s long overdue.


*None of this takes into account Brian Keene becoming a preacher or me looking into pimping, but I didn’t say all of the Twitter conversation was going to make sense.


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Friday Night Date Place – The Road to Just Friends

Remember when we tackled this question: how do you love your brothers in Christ without giving them false hope of you wanting something more? Apparently I need to revisit the topic. The situation is a familiar one. You dated someone, it lasted a few months, you realized it wasn’t going to work out so you ended it. The things which first drew you to the person are still there, they are still every bit the friend they had always been, so you want to keep the friendship.

Now, the other person makes the attempt (read: lie) to just be friends. Sometimes they’re sincere, sometimes they intend to, and sometimes they are doing whatever it takes to stay in the game (and a lot of the time, the intent to stay friends is prelude to just staying in the game). But along the way to being just friends, there may be the occasional bumps as feelings settle down. In short, you’ve told someone to move on and you won’t date them over again, but you’ve let them know that you still want to be friends. Now what?

The transition to “just friends” is fraught with emotional land mines. It’s hard to go from dating to being just friends. When part of you wanted more, dreamed of more, expected more and all those hopes came crashing down and falling short. It takes a while to pack those feelings back into a box and be able to manage them. It takes focus to channel those “more than friends” feelings and energy into something platonic. The road may be full of DTRs.

Sometimes the road may want to make you re-think being friends. Honestly, the commitment to friendship begins with one sentence: If you can’t deal with the fact that I don’t want to date you any more, then this is the last conversation we will have. The true test comes with one simple scenario: can you handle me going out with someone else?

Basically, you have a decision to make: to be friends or to cut things off. And they have to be prepared to either accept the reality of the situation or stalk you.

For the being friends contingency, both of you will be pouring energy into the relationship, in time and emotional sweat. In some ways you have to live life in light of their feelings, balancing being sensitive with the need for you to move on and do what you’ve got to do. But you do have to lead your life and attend to your own emotion needs and situations.

In the just end it scenario, look, sometimes you can’t be “just friends” and you may have to just cut bait cause friends don’t work. If they don’t get the hint that things really can’t work when you’re being nice, the follow up conversation won’t be pleasant. To quote my brother-in-law: “come here Roly Poly, turn into a ball so I can flick you into the grass.”

Either way, there might be some stalking-ish behavior. Constant phone calls. Texts throughout the night. Showing up where ever you might be. Standing outside your window with a boom box raised above their head playing Peter Gabriel songs. They stay close cause at some point you may end your new relationship and they can catch you on the rebound, after all, the point for them is to stay in the game. This is one way how on again/off again relationships start.

Relationships are commitments, even friendships. Sometimes you have to walk away from friendships for a time in order for the relationship to heal and the two of you to move forward as adults. There’s nothing wrong with that, and that beats the alternative of silly games and stalkerish behavior. We’re better than that.


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Friday Night Date Place – Friends Without Benefits

I had a friend who always got in trouble in one of the singles groups I used to be in. Whether he actually did anything wrong was a matter of debate, that debate usually splitting down the great sex divide. You see, he was nice. When he talked to women, he was attentive and actively listened. He walked ladies to their car. He checked on them if they were down or sick. He hung out with them regularly and paid for lunch when he did. To guys like me, we thought we numbered among a dying breed: the fabled gentleman. To the ladies in the group, he sent mixed signals of interest.

One of the peculiarities of that beast we call the singles group is how the dating tension is an ever-present specter. It hovers over each activity, conversation, and interaction, bubbling with attendant drama for the group. All because it’s tough having male/female friendships without sending "mixed" signals.

Because singles groups exist to kill time before people drop out of them, one of the casualties becomes the prospect of real friendship across the sexes. Everything become fraught with “is he interested in me” or “is she too into me” type questions in the back of people’s minds.

We’ve come so far in our social interactions, and by far I mean men have sunk so low, that gentlemanly actions, which were once routine, now signal interest. Apparently, if you do the gentleman thing with a lot of your female friends, despite your intent, it stirs up their passions. Why ELSE would you be so attentive? There's nothing worse than a nice guy dangling themselves in front of a woman. So it was explained to me/us.

As I’ve managed to get my brain around this notion, despite what we said or how clear we’ve been about our intent (“I’m just looking to be a friend. I just want to get to know you better as a person”), we gave the illusion of interest. By giving the illusion of increasing intimacy (arm holding, lots of one-on-one time, even what we would consider simple politeness), we sent the signal that we were interested. In other words, it’s the couch dilemma (and will result in the dreaded “Defining The Relationship” talk).

Don’t get me wrong, if you find yourself (even in a platonic) cuddling scenario or if part of your act is being a perennial flirt, you do confuse the issue and send a mixed signal. It’s a fine tightwalk to walk. I tended to err on the side of love. I would risk helping, protecting, and nurturing because I try to be genuinely loving. If that sends a mixed signal, then, well I'm sorry society has conditioned us to believe that's a mixed signal. In the end, I'm guilty of being nice. That being said, there is trust and friendship and relationship, none are to be treaded upon lightly. We want relationships, all types of friendships, so we need to be ever-mindful of the signals we send and the feelings that may get hurt.


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Episode 14: Keyboard Courage (And Friend Pimpage)

For all those still butthurt over my “I hate Twitter” rant, I offer an olive branch of sorts. The folks at JustLife.tv had me back on their show to rant about the impact of technology on relationships.

Episode 14: Keyboard Courage (Part 1)

Episode Synopsis
Maurice was back for a two part podcast on friendship and technology. If you’re reading this, you’re using some of the technology we talk about in this podcast. We considered the role of technology in creating community and/or false community. It was a lively discussion that turned into two podcasts.

Episode 15: Keyboard Courage (Part 2)

Episode Synopsis
We continued rolling the tape (even though we’re using a digital recorder) as we continued discussing the role of technology and relationships. Maurice shared about his experience with “fans” who cross the line in their pursuit of moving a “virtual” friendship into a “real” friendship.

In the “I’m so happy for you/I hate you” of my friends department, two quick announcements: Kelli Dunlap is pleased to announce that her first novel has been picked up by Larry Roberts of Bloodletting Press and will be published under the new imprint of Morning Star in 2009. She shoots, she scores. And I’m sure she’ll still be “happy dancing” at Mo*Con and we’ll get nothing useful out of her on any panels. Probably ditto with Lucy Snyder: Del Rey has purchased her first novel Spellbent and two of its sequels. Their tentative plan is to release Spellbent in early-to-mid 2009 and the other books in the trilogy will of course come later.

Do you know what happens when your friends start selling their first novels? It makes you want to pick up the pen and start working your butt off so that you can keep up.


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Episode 11: Wired for Relationships

I've been interviewed for the JustLife.Tv podcast. It's a project that's in the beginning stages, but I've been privy to the grand plan and I can't wait to see take off.

Here is the Episode Synopsis:

In this episode we talk about friendship and the impact it has in a marriage context. Maurice Broaddus brought a unique spin to the conversation. We talked about the tug and pull in friendship, what we want in a friendship, and how we develop a friendship over time.

Click to go to Episode 11: Wired for Relationships

And they may be having me back to rant about "Friendship and Technology." Be looking for that sometime in June.


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A Name Meme

The irony here is that I usually hate memes, however, I was having a discussion with a couple of friends where we were using other friends names as verbs. There are the obvious ones:

Keene – to inadvertently out one of your message board alts by forgetting to log out before you post again.

Mamatized - when you’ve been handed your butt in an online argument, dispute, or otherwise been shown to be just plain wrong about life and thought.

Haringa-d – when you’ve been handed your butt grammar Nazi-style.

Now, granted, this came up after someone said they had Mauriced in public [1) to annoy or otherwise be unnecessarily sarcastic; 2) a semi-drunken verbal rampage that involves being annoying or otherwise overly sarcastic, though usually ending in declarations of love and/or use of a “preacher’s voice”.] So, choosing five friends, I continue the tradition:

Lauren – to become obsessive compulsive about every aspect of your life or routine. Also known as a Ro.

Rolfingsmeyer – to start a project, bubble with a plethora of ideas about it, only to have the idea fizzle by the wayside as yet another project unfinished. (Specifically, this is referred to as a Rob. The Marcia is when one is playing a game of Magic the Gathering and pull a random/unprovoked/illogical attack on a player which results in your demise in the next turn.)

Stephen noises – when a generally quiet person clears their throat in preparation of saying something. This includes the resultant pause in all conversation as everyone awaits the pronouncement.

Harp – to prematurely destroy something you’ve created because it isn’t coming out the way you imagined.

West - to have a teddy bear-like innocent love of all things horror related.

Consider yourselves tagged.


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Friday Night Date Place – Shopping to Shop

Smokey Robinson sang about “my momma told me, ‘you better shop around’” (my dad listened to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, I’m not dating myself by any stretch). I am more of a pragmatist at heart than a romantic, so a certain about of shopping, haggling, and trading makes sense to me. Also feeding into this is the fact that I’m a guy, so mid-life crises (still not dating myself) also makes sense to me.

I can see this blog quickly getting away from me (it’s the potential pitfall of writing about singles’ issues while your wife not only reads over your shoulder, but keeps flashing back to the series of break ups the two of you had while dating), so let me try this another way. On a certain level, I understand (not saying I condone, approve, or otherwise give assent to) the idea of people trading up: to go prettier, smarter, funnier, wealthier in their next relationship – a terminal case of the grass-is-always-greener-itis. (Unless you are escaping a bad situation, then just run!)

It’s not much of an intuitive leap since too often we treat relationships like disposable commodities. However, what I can’t get my mind around is the idea of shopping to be shopping, or rather, trading simply for the sake of trading. A lateral move rather than a move up in anyway. I suppose in guy parlance, it could be seen as getting a little “strange” on the side; taking us back to the idea of folks getting tired of the same old home-cooking (which would really suck for me since I do all of the cooking in our house. I mean that in the literal sense).

The irony of all of this—between the stereotype of the mid-life crisis/trading the wife for the young secretary and/or the idea of getting some “strange”—is that the reason this topic has come up is because in my circle of friends, it has been the guys dumped. So obviously, this is an equal opportunity condition.

Selfishness and narcissism can rot relationships from the inside. The idea of entitlement, things being about “my needs” and “me first”, is antithetical to how relationships ought to work. Not having needs met; wanting to feel young, pretty, relevant, pursued again; simply wanting a change of scenery, these are symptoms of a poor idea of how relationships work (and while dating, maybe it’s best that they leave. However, these are things that ought to be worked through in a marriage situation).

We suffer from a relational disconnect. There is an emotional desensitization that comes with spending too much time with one person, especially when locked in the same routine. Relationships can only survive by continual reconnection. We combat the disconnect by being present in the relationship, investing time, self, and energy into it, prioritizing the person we wish to spend our life with.

I have a couple of friends who I see constantly. We worry about relational fatigue because we don’t want to get sick of each other. I worry about it less (now) because, for one thing, relationships change. If you take a look at your current circle of friends, there’s a good chance that a year from now, maybe two, the complexion of your circle of friends will be different. People whom you shared intimate secrets with one day drift (or storm) out of your life. People fight. Misunderstandings occur. Trust is betrayed. People move, switch social circles, life, circumstances, what have you - you wake up one day and realize that some folks aren’t as close to you or aren’t as much a part of your world as they used to be. There is a natural ebb and flow to relationships.

For another thing, we have a dynamic I pray will be sustained despite the aforementioned observation about relationships. It’s like we’re in a constant competition to see who can love each other more. The math is simple: Continual acts of love = continual reconnection. Not letting the relationship grow stale or old, valuing the time you spend together, not taking the relationship for granted. Distance may make the heart grow fonder, but only until the heart no longer cares.

Browse if you need to, that’s what dating is all about. Serially wrapping yourself in a relationship simply for the sake of doing so (for the sake of not wanting to be alone, or needing a new face to keep you company), is the height of selfishness. And you may want to seriously look in the mirror and examine yourself about that.


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Friday Night Date Place – Finding Your Comfort Place

Comfort can sometimes be defined as the ability to pass gas around our significant others. (Note: this isn’t so much a test for guys as we generally enjoy any excuse to do so. In fact, right now any guy reading this is ready to demonstrate to his significant other just how comfortable he is around them).

Backing up, not too long ago, we had a discussion on my message board about the importance of similar world views within relationships. A point that was brought up was how it’s one thing to have to go out and battle your worldview in “the world” but you don’t want to have those battles at home. This kind of brings to mind the idea of being able to breathe in a relationship.

We live in fear of being rejected for who we are or, more specifically, of finally revealing what we're really like only to have people leave us. As much as we want to be known by others, we all have walls put in place to keep people out and keep ourselves from being hurt. It’s nice to be able to lower them, to find someone we can lower them around. When we can reach a relaxed level of comfort around our significant others, we can feel free to be ourselves, to be real.

This is one of those mystery elements to relationships. There are so many ways to be connected to people, from family, to casual acquaintance, to co-workers, to friends. Some people you have simply known forever or who it feels like they've known you forever. This deep sense of connection comes because they've seen you in ways others can't or haven't. They get you, sometimes without words. They let you change. They let you be.

There is an ingredient that is often difficult to explain to your friends about why you are with so-and-so. Your friends may see your significant other’s glaring faults, but the ability to be yourself around them is an intangible quality. But being comfortable, being able to relax and be yourself and be accepted can balance out a lot.

Finding that comfort can be difficult with friends—that easiness to the relationship, like when friends can enjoy a good silence between each other—much less significant others. Frankly, it is rare that we find those folks we can be comfortable around. Because there is so much artifice surrounding the game of dating, it takes time to get to that place where you can be genuine.

When you find that connection, it's precious; and maintaining it can be work, but it's the heart of the relationship. So, besides time, continual conversation can get you to this place. Talking, and more importantly, listening, are skills best developed as soon as possible. The sooner you can quit being so self conscious about yourself and the sooner you can stop thinking so much about how others view your relationship, the sooner you can learn how to just breathe about your significant other.

Or ... not breathe. It took me nearly two years into my marriage before I could pass gas in front of my wife. I thought that was a major breakthrough in our relationship. She informed that she could live with one or two walls in our relationship.


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Friday Night Date Place – Circles of Friends

Since this seems to be friendship week on the blog, I thought that I would continue the theme through this week’s Friday Night Date Place. Sometimes in learning to be a contented single it helps to have a circle of friends. Friendships can assuage some of our intimacy needs as well as take the edge off the constant boogeyman of singleness: loneliness.

I think I’ve mentioned before how I was once part of a singles group and how these groups can sometimes develop strange dynamics. The key was understanding the "politics" of them:
-those who make "friends" strictly as an opportunity to date those within the circle
-those who genuinely want friends
-those who just want folks to kill time with until they find someone and then they can disappear
-those who want an entertainment circle

To break the groups down even further, there are planners and there are those who wait for invites and not always do the two meet. I was a planner: I would get bored, decide to do something, and call some folks to join me. Oh, the crap I’d take if I didn’t always invite the right folks (the right folks defined as those who might hear of people getting together and them not getting the invite and then getting bent out of shape over it).

Of course the accusation of the group having "cliques" was bandied about. Not understanding that sometimes I want to hang out with other folks or even just my closest folks. [Just as there are good cliques and bad cliques, there are levels of friendships.] It got to the point where I felt made to feel guilty for not calling folks every time I took a crap. What was on display was the fear of being outside the clique or their friendship rejected or them not being accepted (in fact, the only way to get away complaint free literally was to make every "activity" open to everyone/call everyone – which sort of ruined opportunities for smaller groups to get to know and spend time with each other). A valid fear, since we all prone to believing lies about ourselves—that we’re not good enough, not likeable enough, not funny enough, too hard to be loved—not realizing that we all suffer from moments of these feelings.

One solution was to say "why don’t you plan something?" However, planning takes risk too. The same risk as any attempt to increase intimacy: what if you plan something and no one shows up? Then your attempt to reach out is met with a slap. Some people are simply relationally lazy/afraid: they expect everyone to come to them, to bend to their needs, call them (because their hands are obviously broke)and chase after them. It’s a safe position that minimizes their risks (but maximizes their need to complain when people aren’t cooperating). But, seriously, people aren’t always going to chase after you. [I’m not Captain Sensitivity on this point: I had a girlfriend who used to love making dramatic exits expecting me to follow after her. Dramatic stunts like that only made me reach for the remote control to see what was on television.]

The temptation is to say "put your big girl panties on" when folks complain or just say "screw it, I’m tired of being constantly tested and doubted. Yes, you’ve got me. I actually hate you. " The natural question to ask then becomes why bother? Seriously, why make the effort to dance around the neurotic landmines of even worrying about folks who seem determined to look for cracks in relationships, communities, and fellowship? Well, because we’re called to love one another, to bear one another’s burdens, and to be the "stronger brother". So you spend a lot of time balancing out various folks’ needs and insecurities while trying to maintain your own friendships. (But, as the "stronger brother", you do that friend no favors by just bending around them. You are to push them also.)

Eventually I left that singles group in order to help plant the Dwelling Place. I knew the tenor of the relationships would change. It’s not that we were suddenly any less friends, but I would be out of the rhythm of their lives and I/they would have to work harder to maintain the relationships. Is all of this effort worth it? Well, a solid circle of friends is always worth it; being as considerate as possible, helping folks form friendships, and easing them through their bouts of doubts and insecurity helps form you into a better friend. Just understand that developing a community of friends requires careful care and feeding.

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Circle of Friends: Care and Feeding

You know what? Many of us have difficulty telling our friends how much they mean to us. In fact, we’re on the verge of taking them for granted, either by not calling them, seeing them, or otherwise spending time with them as often as we should. (And, yes, I’m especially talking to the “I ALWAYS call them first” folks, because friendship isn’t about keeping score.)

Granted, this was a lesson hard learned. I once had a case of “loving someone from afar”, you know the deal where you have feelings for someone but never quite muster up the testicular fortitude to say anything about it. A year later, she married someone other than me. When I asked her what drew her to him, she said that she was looking for was a guy who was just like me. So I vowed to never let anyone out of my life without letting them know how I felt about them.

Of course, now I’ve swung so completely in that direction that if I have extra time to kill (read: stuck in traffic), I play cell phone lottery. I’ll randomly punch through my address book and whoever I land on gets a phone call and “I love you” message. (Rules modified if I land on my work number).

It boils down to the fact that many of us are afraid to put ourselves “out there.” To risk possible rejection, to be vulnerable, to open ourselves up. Love, even love among friends, is a risky proposition, but one that is well worth it. We are wired for relationships and that includes cultivating our circle of friends. I also get that I risk losing my guy card by advocating something as radical as expressing how you feel, even if it’s to one of your boys.

So, never take your people for granted. Tell them how much they mean to you and have a random “I love you” day. Sure, they’ll make fun of you for it (believe me, they’ll make fun of you for it), but they’ll also appreciate it (on some level. I hope).

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Circle of Friendship: Cliques Happen

People who have been to the Broaddus Household have seen our "family wall". Someone once described it as the visual story of our lives, a reminder of the people who make up the fabric of our lives. The story starts when you first enter our front door with pictures of our biological family (family by blood).

It winds around the corner along the hallway of the bedroom for our friends family (family we choose).

There is a blank space above the hutch in our dining room. That is where the pictures of my "writing family" is going.

I know that I’m in the minority in thinking this, but while all groups have cliques, there are good cliques and there are bad cliques. Good cliques are a close group of friends, people who naturally gel together. Closer friendships/relationships will just happen among folks; this is how community is formed. Bad cliques are an exclusionary group, folks who run around for all intents and purposes saying "you" can't be our friend.

You know what? Cliques happen. Some people gel together more quickly and closer levels of frienship develop with some than with others. On the flip side, some people struggle with the idea of community, having been betrayed or abused by it in the past. They don’t trust it, don’t want to trust it, and look for the first signs of history repeating itself. In a lot of ways, this stunts their ability to create circles of friends.

I think some people see a close knit community and long to be a part of something like that themselves not quite realizing that these things form over time – a mix of chemistry and history that leads to intimacy. At the same time, sometimes—whether by choice (not hanging out with their folks) or by action (by breaking trust)—people remove themselves from those circles, which makes it hard to complain about not being in folks’ inner circle. I think I’ll take up this topic in this week’s Friday Night Date Place.

My family wall humbles me. When I walk up and down the hallway I, realize how blessed we are. Some people are lucky to find one good friend, much less the bunch that we have. Still, my feelings are tempered by realizing how much work we put into making those friends. And friendships take work.

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Circle of Friends: On Friendship

I went out to lunch the other day with my friend Rob Rolfingsmeyer (because constant phone calls and IM conversations aren’t enough - we're not going to be happy until we're hetero life partners) and we were discussing the nature of friendship. It struck us as funny how some relationships seem to click immediately, how some folks can know each other for a long time and yet be little more than acquaintances; but others we can know for a short time and those people feel like they’ve always been a part of our lives.

I firmly believe that we’re too quick to call some people friends. We call folks we’ve met a few times friends; we call people we’ve shared message board space friends; we call business associates friends. I suspect that part of this might stem from an idea that it would be rude to not call someone we know a friend (I once corrected someone who called me a friend by saying that we were actually acquaintances. You would think that I took their family pet and used it for piñata practice. Awkward lesson learned: sometimes it’s easier to just go with the popular definition of a word).

The reality is that we have spheres of friendship which are defined by levels of intimacy. We have those folks in closest orbit to us (the smallest circle of friends) and as we move away in levels of intimacy, those spheres include more and more people. I have folks in my life who I am close to and I have folks in my life who assume they are closer to me than they are. It doesn’t make us any less friends.

Friendships are forged through defining moments and history. Have you noticed that some friendships can miss weeks, months, or years between contact, but pick up right where they left off? The key ingredient is intimacy (or else you are left with an acquaintance you’ve known a long time). And intimacy takes time, a reciprocal process of revealing and sharing with one another, as trust and love are established.

We can all stand to be better friends, to learn how to peer out of our spheres of self-involvement and self-focus. Good friendships rare enough and should be treasured when you find them.

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Friday Night Date Place - The Let's Just be Friends Lie

You know, when I started "Friday Night Date Place," I figured that after maybe ten blogs or so, I'd run out of stuff to say. Luckily for me, I still hang out with my single friends, and they can be a bitter, bitter bunch. Yay friend fodder!

For today's topic, I think it prudent to once again mention that I’m not the best person to take advice from on how to deal with break ups. However, there is one idea that I wanted to examine: this notion of ending things on the note of “let's just be friends.” Let’s face it, whenever I have told someone that “we can still be friends” what I really meant was "I really don't want to be around you anymore but let’s part on good terms so that my pets don't end up in a pot of boiling water." (My other policy was straight “scorched earth”: usually by the time a relationship with me had run its course, neither she, her family, her friends, her work colleagues, nor her pets wanted anything to do with me).

Oddly enough, the world is not populated by people who think like me and some people really mean it when they say they want to remain friends. I think the question we have to examine is would we really WANT to be “just friends”? I think there are a few complications you’d have to keep in mind:

-the emotional confusion: the stuff that attracted you to each other is still there. Time is a dual edged sword. Given time, you will have moments of being drawn to each other, especially given your history. It would be hard not to want to be close again. However, time also dulls your memory and you forget that the reasons you broke up are still there also.

-future relationships: your future significant others might not be cool with the idea of you and your exes hanging out.

-and then there’s “NO!”: you know what? I have enough friends. I don’t need someone to do my hair and have pillow fights with. (Okay, I don’t know where I was going with this, but I’m now stuck with the image of me and Wrath James White in our undies and feathers flying all about us). Anyway, the point is that there are some folks you don’t want to think of as friends nor want them thinking of you as friends because your heart will always want more from the relationship.

If you’re serious about remaining friends, you have to allow space and time before proceeding. Space for the two of you to gain some distance, get on with your lives a bit, fall into new (or sometimes old) routines. Time to heal from the relationship, to let the memories of the relationship fade, and to let the affairs of the heart settle a bit. Getting over the loves of our lives takes time. I wish there were some magic formula, but the best we can usually hope for is that things will "hurts less". Once they do, you can truly re-visit the idea of being “just friends”.


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Friday Night Date Place – Meet the Friends Part II

So what if meeting the friends doesn’t go especially well? [The same questions could be asked of meeting the parents or meeting the kids.] In the final analysis, the relationship is yours and it is your life to lead. Everyone has agendas, and those of your parents, your kids, and your friends, might not be as pure as we would like. For example, some from those circle may not be operating from a perspective of not having your best interests at heart. So you have to weigh those opinions for what they are worth.

However, let’s not be too hasty in dismissing their opinions outright just because we may not like their conclusions. Sometimes friends, because they aren’t so personally invested, can see things that you can’t. People in love develop blind spots, especially when they are too close to a situation. They can’t always see themselves, their significant others, or their relationship objectively.

Some blind spots you think would be obvious to anyone with eyes:

-if the guy has an alcohol problem
-if the guy is abusive or disrespectful
-if the guy has no interest in the things fundamental to you (such as your faith)
-if you are so desperate to be in a relationship, to be loved, that you’ll settle for whoever pays you attention

Sadly, that last item is what usually leads to the blind spots. Which means you want to have ears open enough to hear what your friends are saying if things along these lines are being said. If you are that friend, however, there are certain responsibilities that fall on you:

-Talk to your friend who is in that dating relationship and let them know how you feel. At least do them that courtesy rather than have “war councils” with the rest of the circle of friends that don’t amount to anything more than gossip times.

-Support your friend. Mistakes are theirs to make and we can’t live other people’s lives for them. We all have regrets, mistakes we can hopefully learn from.

It is tough seeing those you love about to make what you are sure will be huge mistakes. You don’t want to burn the bridge of friendship in the name of being heard (read: being right) or doing “whatever it takes” to sabotage the relationship in the “best interests” of your friend. A friend offers council and support, when asked and sometimes when not asked. But there comes a point after that when you need to step back and be prepared to catch your friend should they fall.


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Friday Night Date Place – Meet the Friends

I have a friend who is terrified of the idea of her friends meeting her new boyfriend. It’s the ritual we go through every time: she meets a guy, hangs out with the guy, starts to like the guy, then makes noises about wanting him to meet everyone. Those noises are usually accompanied by pointed words, oddly aimed specifically at me, to “be good.”

Whatever. I’m a delight to know.

Beyond the pressure of presentation, the big deal made of first meetings, why is there this underlying fear? It is the beginning dance of integrating a significant other into the world of the rest of your friends. You like your friends, you like your significant other, and you want the two to like each other. Fair enough. (It’s easy to see how dating within your circle of friends may seem like a simpler prospect in this regards. Yes, this is one hurdle it clears, though the true risk lies should things go bad. We’ve all seen friend circles get disbanded by incestuous dating and breaking up within it).

For some reason, the risk of a serious relationship presents quite the precipice for one to leap from regarding their friends. It’s a shame that one’s other single friends may distance themselves from you or outright cut you off since you can’t hang like you used to. Your significant other just wants to be liked and be accepted, but at the same time, they are learning about you by the people you call friends.

Like with meeting your parents or meeting your kids, meeting your friends has its own dynamic it is working through. The specific dynamic in this case is kind of like presenting their significant other to be group interviewed. Your friends are another screen. They are judging their character, judging how the two of you interact, and the chemistry of your relationship. Friends, like family, can check your thinking. You may have blind spots in regards to your significant other, or yourself (believe it or not, some people are prone to make bad decisions rather than risk being alone).

You can sometimes become so focused on the person, on having someone in your life, that it’s good that you have friends may be able to see something that you’ve missed. Some people are so close that they hear no other opinions, which doesn’t bode well for the long term health of the relationship. Friends are people who know you, who care about you, and want to see you happy.

Mind you, this is the ideal situation, so allow me to make the qualifications of sanity: If you have sane friends, friends who have you best interests at heart, you want their opinion. If you’re a sane couple, wanting to have the healthiest possible relationship, you want to integrate your friends as best as possible. Of course there will be friends who don’t play as nice with others as some of your other ones, and they may be some friend distance accrued as your social circle changes. This is natural, relationships change over time naturally.


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Friday Night Date Place – Meeting the Kids

Every now and then, I think about what if I was to find myself single again. I’m approaching 40 (it’s the new 20!), I have two boys (complete darlings!), and I would be facing the possibility of dating all over again (I bring teh hotness!1!). I just celebrated my 7 year anniversary and I was a contented single person. However, the thought of dating period, much less navigating those treacherous waters with kids in tow, reminds me to pray that my wife will outlive me.

To a degree, I can still sympathize with trying to date while having kids. It’s hard enough finding the time to go out with just your spouse, to keep the relationship fresh. One of the reasons we decided to stop at two kids was that we could still find people to babysit for two (free!). Around three or more, we weren’t just paying, but we would be paying big. Or else making better friends. Many folks find themselves single with kids or single again with kids or have to go through the motions of weighing the pros and cons of dating someone with kids. There are many issues that they have to check off. Issues like:

-going from being single to an instant family
-dating while juggling kids
-dating while dealing with ex-spouses or the children’s other parent still having to be around
-blending two families
-how and when to develop/allow the appropriate attachments

It’s a lot to absorb and deal with on top of trying to figure out if you like the person you’re going out with, though every relationship has its baggage. I talked to a few friends of mine to see how they handled dating folks while having kids, and a few similar threads kept coming up.

1) Take time before introducing the kids to the other. Okay, one person I talked to made it a point to not introduce her kids to whoever she was dating until the relationship had lasted a year first. Your timing may vary. The point is that your first responsibility is to your kids and creating a stable environment for them. You don’t want to confuse the kids with a constant stream of “friends.” And the simple fact is that it’s important to see if the two of you are going to work as a couple, if they are worth the time/emotional investment, to move to the next level.

2) Take the attachments slowly. Judge the children’s reaction to your significant other and your significant other’s reaction to them. For one thing, you don’t want to let the kids get attached only to have your “friend” disappear. Break ups are hard enough on adults, but they are even tougher on kids. On the other hand, you also want to allow time to allow the relationship between your children and your significant other to develop naturally.

3) Be honest and upfront. My sister handled introductions this way: “Hi. My name is Ro. I have two kids.” It puts the facts immediately out there and gives them an out that way they can run if they’re going to run.

4) Realize that where there are kids, there are parents. A baby momma/daddy may still be in the picture, another party to your relationship. Like any other family, you inherit them as a part of the relationship. If there is any drama with the children’s other parent, that needs to come up pretty early in the discussion also. (I’m thinking that “By the way, the baby daddy’s crazy” is a date three conversation.)

The key rule to relationships of all sorts boils down to how best you can love one another, your kids and yourself as you seek to find your own happiness. This topic is way too big for me to gloss over in one blog, no matter how lengthy, so I may me re-visiting it again in the future. What are your thoughts?


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Friday Night Date Place - No One Wants to See That

One of the criticisms that haunted my wife and I was that we weren’t very affectionate in public. This criticism would especially rear its head during “marriage and the family” month at an old church we used to attend. By some folks judgment, we didn’t sit close enough together, didn’t hold hands often enough, didn’t act like much of a couple, much less a married couple.

[Of course this criticism came from the “family is everything” crowd in the church, the one that has put “family” on an altar and believes the mission of the church is solely to strengthen and encourage families. The same crowd that reduces singles to second class citizens within the church (there are three levels to full citizenship: Level one: you get married. Level two: you have kids. Level three: you homeschool. I’m just saying). But I digress.]

We didn't take it as a sense of busy-bodyness that our married friends intruded, assuming that our marriage is in trouble because we never acted "couplely". We always appreciated their concern, because that’s the whole point of being in a community of friends: we look out for one another. However, we pointed out that they forgot that we ministered mostly to singles ... who don't want to see people drooling all over each other.

Sometimes relationships have to walk a fine line of being a couple among your single friends and not retreating from your single friends. In the spirit of lazy blogging, how about a mediated discussion between the moderators of my message board (read: blogging catfight ... get your popcorn):

You guys can't tell me that you've never had a set of friends fall off the face of the earth because they started dating. I know you have. Either that or I'm the only one with these kinds of people for friends. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy asks girl out, boy and girl all but disappear. You guys can't get mad at me for assuming this. You've had it happen to you. Maybe you've even done it in the past. And I've done the whole swearing up and down that I'll never do it and make my friends promise not to let me. I've also had friends who asked me to do the same for them and then when they start dating, what do they do? "I'm not spending all my time with him/her." "I don't get to see him/her very much." "I still see you." "I know I said that but things are different now."

This is the age old story. It’s a bit of a chicken and an egg situation: who pulls away first, the couple of the single friends? Does one precipitate the other? Does it matter and there is simply an inevitable pulling away?

i seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from many of my single friends from different circles. basically, my stance is that just because i'm in a relationship, doesn't mean that i'm on house arrest. i'm not becoming a nun, i just now have a partner to help me fight my battles and win my triumphs. i've found that many of my single friends avoid me like the plague when i'm in a relationship. i try to call and if they answer, they make the conversation short. or if i invite them to do something, even just me and them, they're suddenly busy. or when i finally do see them, and go to give them hugs and kisses, i get a butterfly pat as a sorry excuse for a hug. then these same people turn around and complain that i've changed!! i don't get it. is there some unwritten rule that as long as friends are single, they can stay friends, but if they get involved, then they have to quit being friends until either they break up or the other singles get involved, too?

This was the situation my wife and I faced. Our single friends pulled away from us, though we fought and scraped to assure them that just because we were married didn't mean that we were going to fall off the face of the earth (by our reasoning, it made it more convenient since it meant one party household instead of having to drive back and forth between us - like one stop shopping for friends). Yet it still seemed like we were plagued with relational cooties. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, some of your single friends may simply retreat:

It's been a natural ebb and flow with my friends. One minute we all find ourselves single and throwing popcorn at the stupid chick flick we decided to torture ourselves with. The next everyone is acting all mushy and flirty and talking about some guy like he's the best thing since sliced bread ... I'm happy for my friends. Most of them are dating (or have not-boyfriends or un-boyfriends or fiances) men who seem to be wonderful guys. And I hope that they spoil you all rotten and talk as much mush as you want and treat you like the queens that you are.

Just please wait until I leave the room.

Couples need time alone to figure themselves out, what “we” are. Accommodating a new person into your life can be quite the adjustment, especially if you aren’t used to carving out that space. You need time to focus on each other, learn about each other, before introducing them to the rest of your life.

Just as long as they are brought into the rest of your life.

When relationships become islands, it should throw up a red flag. Not that there’s something inherently wrong with cocooning (though I'd be on the lookout for controlling behavior), but relationships can become ... claustrophobic when it is reduced to “all each other all the time.” When your significant other is brought into the rest of your life, one still needs to be mindful of their single friends. It’s easy to give them the sense of you rubbing their nose in your coupledom. On the flip side, singles need to allow their coupled friends room to be themselves also.

The bottom line is that relationships, of any stripe, aren’t static. Take a look at your current circle of friends. There’s a good chance that a year from now, maybe two, the complexion of your circle of friends will be different. People whom you shared intimate secrets with one day drift (or storm) out of your life. People move, switch social circles, life, circumstances, what have you - you wake up one day and realize that some folks aren’t as close to you or aren’t as much a part of your world as they used to be. There is a natural ebb and flow to relationships.

One of the reasons me and my wife still hang out with singles is to let them see the (realistic) joy of marriage. If I’m drooling over my wife, I’m probably in a deep sleep.

Frankly, I’m still stunned that she puts up me.


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Friday Night Date Place - Break Ups Part II: Still Mourning

I read yesterday that a break up is so painful it's like mourning a death, and when I analyzed my emotions, it rang very true. When breaking up you've lost a loved one, someone very close to you, and trying to move on is heart-breaking. You have good moments and bad, and when you think your done thinking about them, they enter your mind out of nowhere and the tears begin to fall. In a way, I believe breaking up can be more painful because there isn't any real closure. That person is still out their living their life, and you can't reach out and wrap your arms around them.

There is something to be said for healing times, times of transition and recovery, after a break up. Granted, the times needed to recover are going to differ depending on whether you were the breakee versus being the breakers, as well as the circumstances of the break up, but there still ought to be a cooling off time if only to allow your feelings to settle.

I know many folks who go with the “Scorched Earth” policy (I, of course, have never been guilty of this), wherein the person they were involved in is essentially dead to them. To facilitate this “death”, the circumstances of the break up are particularly ... sharp. Usually in a very loud and messy way - kind of like flouncing. They burn the bridges of any future type of relationship, including friendship. Sure, on the surface it may allow you to move on faster, but in reality, it is not dealing with the emotions of a situation. It’s a way of running away from them. Also, if we’re told to love each other as we love ourselves, we have to ask ourselves if destroying all bridges to further contact is what Christ had in mind.

We have a tendency to want to rush through grief. We don’t want to make others feel bad and, let’s face it, grief makes people feel uncomfortable. So that feeling of abandonment is increased as you fear friends avoiding you. It is also increased by the fact that you really have withdrawn from contact. You have a lot of emotions to sort through and deal with. To figure out if you want the chance to salvage a friendship for later. Wondering if you (or they) can ever be “just friends” ever again, and if it’s worth the natural phases of awkwardness and sensitive feelings. You have hurt and anger to have to sift through. Not to mention their absence has left a void, one that we feel needs to filled as soon as possible.

Because we’re afraid of being alone.

Don’t be afraid of time alone. Being alone is a perfectly natural response, a stage of grief as it were. A phase where you keep your head down, keep a low social profile, and lick your wounds. You don’t want to wallow there, thinking that bad things can’t keep finding you if you’re ducking life. Bad things may still happen, but you may also miss out on all sorts of interesting opportunities while you were busy hiding. A few things to do while in your self-imposed retreat:

Mourn. Let yourself really mourn, to fully experience the stages of grief. It is a heart-wrenching time and you are allowed to feel hurt or sad. Something you’d come to depend on died. I’m also a big fan of mourning rituals. We don’t appreciate ritual and tradition as a culture. Symbols have power and there is a power to ritual. So burn pictures, pack up the stuff they gave you, delete them from your top myspace friends. Do what you have to do.

Learn. This is a great opportunity for reflection. We have to avoid the trap of self-pity and self-defeatism (“I’m just one of those people meant to be alone” type talk). Re-examine and re-assess how you approach relationships. Take a look at your behavior and decision making that led to your choice of that prospective Significant Other - especially if you have a history of making bad choices. Then keep in mind that you may be doing everything right and, well, they were an ass. Or maybe they weren’t and things just weren’t meant to be. Also keep in mind, self-blame is not the same as learning

Go to God. Another role of the quiet time is one of prayer (for healing or thanksgiving, depending on the break up). Spend time with the Father of Compassion, the God of all comfort “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (II Corinthians 1:4). Let your friends, church, community be His arms of comfort. In other words, know when it’s time to come out of your exile.

Move on. Drunken nights aren’t dealing with anything, they are attempts at masking pain. Considering the nunnery isn’t dealing with anything, it is running away. Watching re-runs of Friends while eating Cheetos is not moving on, it’s not even living. Get (or reclaim) a life. Re-connect with old friends (and shame on you for dropping them just because you got a S.O.)

Sometimes break ups are necessary, so we strive for as clean a break as possible. In so doing, we have to always be considering what are the best ways to love one another. Even when you don’t want.


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Friday Night Date Place - Treasuring Friendships*

We are relational being, created to form relationships with one another. Intimacy with others is a need hard-wired into us. Because friendship is a beautiful and unique form of love, it truly provides a genuine opportunity for our need for intimacy to be met apart from family and romance. One protection against isolation and loneliness is to create and sustain solid friendships. Their benefits range from emotional encouragement to spiritual support and stability.

Granted, we are quick to call some people friends. We’ll call casual acquaintances (from work associates to people whose faces we recognize at a party to people we interact with on messageboards - people we see during the normal course of our lives) friends. Which makes it tough to distinguish who we are talking about when we talk about our closer circle of people that we call friends. We even distinguish that circle of friends from those we call our “best”/closest friends, those people we trust intimately. Then, in the final circle, is our spousal friends (certainly leading to an interesting Dante-esque image regarding final circles). Regardless, we need friends at each of these levels for an emotionally healthy life (though I wouldn’t suggest having more that one friend at the spousal level).

We must live in the midst of a caring community. Love must be shared. Life must be shared. There’s no such thing as instant intimacy. Friendships are a blessing from God, opportunities to both share and receive His love through another. Like any relationship, you have to be willing to risk being vulnerable to establish a friendship. All relationships have a measure of inherent risk to them. Sometimes it can be tough to maintain friendships with the opposite sex. Difficult but not impossible, you just have to be clear because, like any relationship, friendship affords the chance to develop intimacy.

Good friendships have several characteristics:
-Loyalty. Relationships are built on trust. Defending your friend. Supporting your friend in good times and in bad.
-Communication. Listening. Speaking. Accepting. Understanding. Forbearing.
-Challenging and stimulating. You ever hear the phrase “iron sharpens iron” (actually, it’s a proverb: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Proverbs 27:17)?
-Fun. What’s the point of spending time with people whose company you don’t enjoy?
-Self-sacrificing. Putting your needs above their own.
-Loving. All of our relationships should be characterized by love.

Lastly, we want to be careful about who we choose to be our friends and which voices we let speak into our lives. They should be formed around the right kind of things, with us choosing our friends because of their character. I can’t emphasize character-based friendships enough. Not because of what they can do for us, or what kind of status they bring to us, or just because they are cute. Like any relationship, we can’t be too needy, draining the friendship. Just like you can’t rush intimacy, you can’t be desperate about forming a relationship.

We need to be present in the lives of those closest to us. Touching their lives, pouring ourselves into each other’s lives. People aren’t an interruption of our lives, they are the reason for our living. While you can’t be everyone’s best friend, you can significantly impact one person. Good friends are worth their weight in gold. Treasure them when you have them and don’t take them for granted. Let them know how much you appreciate them.


*Once again, owing a debt of gratitude to Rich Vincent.


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Friday Night Date Place - The Couch Dilemma

Defining The Relationship.

I suck at DTRs. My first DTR with the woman who would later become my wife was not an auspicious occasion. In fact, it involved a lot of me ducking for cover and running. You see, we had began our dating life without me knowing it was a date. I was killing time with a friend, hanging out as a lark. She was on a date - I simply didn’t get the memo. The memo was received the third time we were hanging out. I wanted to see the movie Starship Troopers, couldn’t find any takers, then she informs me that she would love to see Starship Troopers [this was actually a bold faced lie, as I came to find out that not only didn’t she like Starship Troopers, but she hates any alien movies where the aliens look too ... “alien” (meaning only muppet aliens need apply). This isn’t as weird as her fear of animals with really small feet thing, but I digress.]

I stop by, she asks me if I’ve eaten. I say no, then am treated to a home cooked, and candlelit, meal. “Uh oh.” My guy sense, dull and quite selective thing that it is, went off. She was way far into this ... thing (I couldn’t bring myself to call it a relationship), and I’m barely at the “do you have any hobbies?” stage of things. I rationalized that it wouldn’t be fair for us to keep dating with her so deep into me (okay, it was an ego-centric rationalization. I was going through a “who can blame them for falling for me” stage). Actually, I’ve come to realize, in retrospect, that our relationship was a series of DTRs, usually ending badly, all precipitated by what I will call “the couch dilemma.”

The couch dilemma
I don’t know if this is a common phenomena or just one common is Christian singles groups, so I figure I’ll describe what it looks like and you can see if it sounds familiar. Guy calls up girl. They get together to hang out. Dinner, movies, or other activities. Whatever. They find themselves spending a lot of evenings sitting on the couch talking til all hours of the night. This happens repeatedly. Until someone’s, usually the woman’s, feelings get so entangled that they can’t take it anymore and they break down and have a DTR. At which point they pursue a relationship or that’s the end of their hanging out. Sometimes I call it the non-dating/kinda dating dilemma, the lie of courting, two people just hanging out, or the difficulty of opposite sex platonic relationships.

Before we examine what’s going on, let’s point out a few things. Most times this starts out simply as friends going through the motions of dating (which is why it is so important to define what a date is). To the outside observer, it looks and almost feels like a date in a lot of ways. Enough to make the lonely times seem less desperately so. Guys like being able to call someone up. Ladies like to receive that call. And, it beats the alternative: doing nothing. And again, they are in the company of a member of the opposite sex, spending an evening doing something with someone.

But eventually, someone, usually the woman, asks themselves (and eventually him) what’s going on? What are we doing here? Are we dating? Are we courting? Are we just friends hanging out? Which only means that you will face the inevitable DTR talk.

Whoever asks, is at the disadvantage (if you have to ask, you aren’t the one in control). The woman, the usual asker, is asking in the hopes of either taking the relationship to the next level, or making sure there are no misunderstandings going on. The man, the usual coward (or strategically wise depending on how you look at it) has set up a no-lose scenario. If he’s interested, things could keep going as they are, and he’s spending time with the woman he’s interested in. Even if, in a previous conversation she has said that she wasn’t interested or he realized he had few of the things on her “guy wish list”, he’s snuck in under her radar (under the auspices of hanging out as “just friends”) to take his shot. So if she asks and he senses her wanting to “make sure there are no misunderstandings” (READ: I don’t want to ruin the friendship, I see you as a brother, blah, blah, blah), he loses no face by saying “oh no, we were just hanging out”. And if she’s wanting to take it to another level, great.

If he’s not interested, which means he was just killing time with her (saw her as a friend, or a sister, blah, blah, blah), then he gets to weasel out of things by apologizing for the misunderstanding. That by they way, if she had grown interested despite the numerous talks they may have had before they started hanging out, leads to resentment on her part as she mulls over “what was he doing with me that whole time?” She’s left with the used hand towel feeling of having her emotions toyed with. All this without any kissing, much less sex, to make her feel even more used.

That is one reason why the DTR can be long in coming. Both enjoy the time spent together, no matter what level that is done on. And two, they have asked themselves is the risk of the DTR worth the relationship changing, because it will change.

Guy/Girl Platonic Relationships?
Plato is the philosopher who came up with the idea that there can be a type of love or friendship that can be purely spiritual, not sexual. That’s why male-female, non-sexual (i.e., without sexual attraction), relationships are referred to as Platonic. (Mind you, how sad is that? That you suck at something so bad that they name the phenomenon after you. Of course, considering my track record, my name should be Maurice LetsJustBeFriends, but I digress).

Friendships across the sexual divide are hard to establish if you set out to form one. It is rare that the friendship is seen as an end in and of itself rather than a stage in the relationship. Half the time, you have these friendships thrust upon you. You know, you sidle up to a person and, lose your dating map, and find yourself in the friend zone. Actually, that fear of one or the other of you having an agenda is one reason why these friendships aren’t trusted. They can almost only happen once the possibility of dating has been ruled out.

God brings people into our lives for reasons.

True guy/girl friendships have certain characteristics. On the plus side, they develop a true brother-sister relationship. They become sounding boards into the mystique of the opposite sex. They have clear boundaries. They may have entertained romantic notions, but they moved past them, however awkwardly. These friendships are experienced on different levels and in different ways that same sex friendships. Partly, this is because they allow us to imitate or express ourselves in ways analogous to a romantic relationship. Guys become more vulnerable. Ladies get to relax and have fun. It’s like dating without the games.

Thus the confusion.

On the negative side, there is always the potential tar pit of emotional intimacy and confusion. Or physical attraction (sex in friendship clothing). You have to realize that you two are of opposite sexes and there is a mystery to sexual attraction. Reality dictates that though you may not be attracted to them now, nor see yourself ever being attracted to them, sexual attraction is a mysterious alchemy. I know too many people, myself included, who woke up one day finding themself suddenly looking at their friend in a different light. Luckily, I married mine. Also keep in mind that these friendships may be difficult to maintain once one or both of you enter into relationships or marriage. Not a big deal since most of your friendships will have to adjust should you get married. And it’s smart to include your spouse in that friendship.

Friends with benefits
The great philosopher, Chris Rock, doesn’t believe in Platonic friendships between the sexes. To paraphrase him, women keep guy friends much like penises behind emergency glass: break in case of emergency. And guys only have women they haven’t slept with, yet. Have you noticed that singles tend to hug a lot more often? That’s because a hug means physical contact. In the absence, sometimes long absence, or kisses and caresses, hugs go a long way. But this is a topic for another conversation.

Anyway, don’t fear the DTR. A clarification does not equal a proposal. Unless, you eventually define the relationship by proposing. Which was sort of how me and my wife’s story ended/began. Eventually.


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