The "church" does a great job talking about the importance of fellowship. But when it comes to relationships, the quantity of conversation on the topic certainly doesn't amount to any quality conversation.
POOR RELATIONSHIPS
According to a survey by Cigna:
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Nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone (46%) or left out (47%).
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27% rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them
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43% feel that their relationships are not meaningful
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18% feel like they have no one they can talk to
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Living with your children doesn't have a statistical impact on the degree of loneliness you feel
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Adults aged 18-22 are the loneliest generation to date and also happen to have the worst health of all prior generations
That last one is a real kicker. What's a church congregation to do? Well, clearly these statistics focus on the degree of openness and transparency people aren't feeling in their relationships, so we should focus on those qualities, right?
Wrong! Churchianity has long been holding out this idiotic notion that emotional vomit is somehow healthy. They tell us that we should all connect with a small group where we can be completely open and share all of our deepest, darkest secrets, our greatest life struggles, etc.
Women talk. Men do. Despite what our feminized society would have you believe, men are better at building healthy relationships than women. For example, this article from PsychologyToday notes:
- "According to substantial research, women across all ages and lifestyles report higher levels of loneliness than men do. [Ironically:] Except, perhaps surprisingly, in one subset of people - single people. While married women inch out married men for the lonelier group, single men vastly outweigh single women as the lonelier bunch."
Notice the language here? Substantial reserach. All ages. All lifestyles. Men are better at building relationships (unless you're a single omega).
And yet we're taught that everyone should build relationships like women.
And yet the research is showing that this advice is producing the loneliest generation of people ever. Go figure.
NEGATIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Notice how all of those seem to be negative things? Churchianity assumes that talking about good things in life is the norm, but that talking about the negative things are where it "gets real." Again, they're wrong. I've attended a ton of small groups in my lifetime, and have talked to leaders and participants of countless more. I always get the same feedback: that people will share surface-level praise reports TO the group, but will focus more on sharing WITH the group all of the harder things to talk about.
This is no different than social media. Anyone can go on Facebook for people to share TO them how great everyone else's life is. But commenting on someone's status update, "That's so great," is no different than being at a small group, giving a polite nod and saying, "That's so great!" in person. They don't feel your joy with you. Yet when you speak negatively, suddenly people are empathizing, laying hands on you, and communicating heart-felt concern. We're following the command to "mourn with those who mourn," but forgetting how to "rejoice with those who rejoice."
When we only ever connect intimately with people on negative things, relationships feel very heavy and burdensome. Yes, it's better than no relationship at all. But they're far from fun and enjoyable. I have never known someone to describe negative-only relationships as "best friends." It's rare to find them even called "genuine friends" at all - they're more the people you call your "friends" just so you feel like you have friends, but in reality you only ever see each other in very select contexts.
CONTEXTUAL "FRIENDS"
True friends enjoy living life alongside each other. I remember watching How I Met Your Mother with my wife while we were dating. She made a comment, "I would love to find friends like that - people who just hang out with each other all the time, not because they have an agenda, but just because they like being around each other."
Contextual friendships are friendships with an agenda. They're the people in your small group, on a ministry team with you, co-workers, family members, etc. Countless times I've seen people leave a congregation and suddenly all those people they were "so close to" are now acquaintances they only see once every few months, or when they randomly bump into each other at the store. How genuine were those friendships if they can't survive a change in context? Not at all.
I have work friends. But I've never hung out with my co-workers outside of the office. I'm okay with that. But I did just leave my congregation of 7 years. My wife is connecting with a girl from that congregation to sort kid clothes. Another girl asked her for coffee last week. I've had numerous phone calls with different guys and have meetings scheduled with 3 of them - not sterile conversation-only settings, but things like playing frisbee golf, going swimming, or watching The Boys together. We're having another couple over for dinner next week. We changed contexts, but the relationships are continuing. Why? Because we build genuine friendships within our congregation - things that survive context. This is the rarity, and it only happens for me because I have made an intentional point of doing it.
This is particularly bad for people who are in full-time ministry positions or heavily involved in ministry activity in a church congregation. They place a heavy degree of importance on the context of why they're connecting with each other - making a difference for eternity - and think that this trumps everything else in the relationship (and they're right). So, all of their interactions focus on talking about the Bible, or planning the next event, or refining their ministry process. Even when they "go deep" with each other, it's for the purpose of praying together, sharing each other's burdens, and helping each other find freedom, as "good servants of Jesus Christ" should do. But at the end of the day, they have no connection with each other outside of their own context. This is where they've gone wrong, not realizing that the lack of authentic relationships among each other is negatively impacting their ability to make a difference for eternity.
I once asked a guy who his top 5 best friends were in the congregation he was attending. He listed off 5 people by name - and actually knew all of their last names, so that was a good sign. I asked him how often he called them up randomly just to chat. Never. I asked him how often he saw any of them outside of a ministry-related function or conversations that ended up being primarily about ministry. Never. I asked him if he felt comfortable calling any of those guys up to see a movie with him that night. None. Guess what: they're not real friends.
AUTHENTIC RELATIONSHIPS
Some people mistakenly believe that being intentional means being inauthentic - that relationships are only genuine if they happen naturally. This is just idiotic. The fact that I plan to have close friendships doesn't mean it's impossible for me to have close friendship. The fact that I plan to save up for retirement rather than just naturally and accidentally having enough money when I want to retire doesn't mean I'm not really retired. It means I was wise about investing my money toward a goal. Be wise about investing your relational efforts toward a goal.
Remember that women are focused on finding a natural. They don't want to feel duped by some guy who only pretended to be a confident alpha. They want to bag the real deal. So, there's a stress against anything that may seem inauthentic, and being intentional about a thing makes them feel inauthentic. But this isn't true for broader friendships. The feminization of our understanding of relationships is what created that impression in the first place. Leave it behind and you'll find that being decisive and intentional about how you go about building friendships is also completely appropriate - and perhaps even a more masculine way of doing things.
POSITIVE RELATIONSHIPS
Speaking of the feminization of relationships, have you noticed another thread throughout this post? That's right: all of the focus on relationships is your emotional connection to someone else. We're taught that building healthy relationships comes from fostering deep emotional connections, which happens through conversation about deeply emotional things going on in our lives. Even the women I've known in my life haven't formed real friendships this way - how much less men!
I once went on a campaign asking people, "Who are the best friends you've ever had in your life?" Take one guess how many listed a spiritual mentor or counselor as their answer. None. Virtually everyone listed someone they knew in high school or college.
I then asked them what aspects of their relationship made them such great friends. How many do you think listed "open, transparent communication about our deepest life struggles" as their main criteria? None. Instead, virtually everyone talked about "that time we went white water rafting" or "we just loved hanging out with each other a lot" or "we really enjoyed going to concerts together." It was all about the things they enjoyed doing together that build their best relationships, not the transparency of their life issues.
You want real, healthy friendships that last for a lifetime? Go out and have fun with people. That's really the answer.
SEXUAL DYNAMICS
Why am I writing this on an RP sub? Let's get to the real point of this post.
The church obviously misunderstands male/female relationships horribly, but it doesn't stop there - they also misunderstand basic friendship relationships too. Don't trust what you hear from your ministry leaders. Build authentic relationships, where authenticity isn't defined by how open and honest you are with each other, but by how much you enjoy being around each other.
Is it at all surprising, though, that most Christian women look for communication, transparency, openness and honesty as the hallmarks of a good marriage? After all, this is what churchianity tells them to look for in a good friend - and Christian women are told that their husband should be their "BEST friend." So doesn't that mean that he should be even more open, honest, and transparent with her than anyone else? Isn't that how their marriage can soar into the heights of emotional bliss?
No. Because relationships don't thrive on these things. Transparency, honesty, and openness - even vulnerability - are tools that can help a relationship move from a bad place to a good place. But they are not the foundation of the relationship itself.
Attraction is the foundation of all good relationships - even friendships. For the sake of friendship, it's about charismatic attraction. You don't want to spend time around people you don't like spending time around. Duh. But when there is a charismatic draw to being around someone - because they're really funny, or show great leadership qualities, or have a lot you want to learn from, or simply because you want they life they have - those are the people you love spending time with.
For marriages to function properly, there must be both a charismatic attraction and physical attraction. There are some truly hot women who I would never want to spend more than a few second around because their character is so vile that there's no charisma when I talk to them. There are plenty of other women who have great personalities that I really enjoy being around, but I'd never marry them because I'm not physically attracted to them. A good marriage requires both.
This is particularly true for YOU, MEN. If you put on that stiff military face all the time, thinking you're being "stoic," you're probably really coming off as non-charismatic, cold, and unattractive. Have some fun in life. Be funny, a great leader, a wise teacher, or the guy who has the life your wife wishes she had. Leave her thinking, "I wish I could be more like him." And keep going to the gym. Be more physically attractive too.
This is how you're going to build a healthy relationship. And, as noted above, healthy relationships are found more on what you do than on what you say. People remember their best friends by what they did together, not by what they talked about together. Even girls won't say, "Shaundra was my best friend because we talked about my divorce all night." She will say, "She was my best friend because we had sleepovers, played truth or dare, did each other's nails, etc." Even when it is about talking, like, "We loved talking about boys together," the connection that formed less about the content of the conversation (i.e. what they were saying about the boys) or the insight they were getting into the other's taste in men, thereby creating some "emotional connection" ... and more about the activity of talking about boys, regardless of which boys came up.
In the same way, if you want your wife more attracted to you and desiring you sexually, focus less on talking together and more on doing things together. And no, Netflix and chill doesn't count. That's what you do to wind down after you're done doing things together. But yes, having sex is definitely doing something that enhances relational connectivity. If you're reading, here's a fascinating research analysis that uses lots of fancy scientific words to explain that sex actually has a positive impact on relational bonding beyond just feeling good in the moment. Duh.
But don't get sucked into the lie that good relationships are built on "going deep" with the negative things. Penis shaped things, sure. Positive things as well. But not negative. Marriage counselors love pushing this agenda because that's their entire job: digging into pains and struggles, negative things in your lives, and opening up conversation and transparency, and creating vulnerability in those places. Their entire career is about developing emotional stability in people, so it's not surprising that their advice is all about emotional aspects of relationships. Indeed, for some people who have never dealt with their emotional issues, this can be a valuable tool. But don't let it be a replacement for the authentic types of relationships that will leave you with memories that will carry on into eternity.
While not the best example, and I take issue with aspects of the sentiment, there is some truth to the old adage:
- A good friend will bail you out of jail. But your best friend will be standing next to you saying, "Dude, that was totally awesome!"
Submitted July 29, 2019 at 10:37PM by Red-Curious https://ift.tt/2LMbK9R
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