Why are we resistant to intimate friendship?
Our resistance to intimate friendship may have a variety of
sources. Many claim that they have not
time for such frivolous / extraneous connections as friends. Their lives are quite full with work, family,
volunteer opportunities, household tasks.
Others find the entanglements of friendship to be a risk not worth
taking. One may be quite social while
not maintaining a few intimate connections with peers.
I hear people (myself included) bemoaning the fact that they are bad a relationships in
much the same way one might say they are bad at math. Blaming self for relational failure, they
avoid the risk of failing yet again.
There are also many who feel they have been burned repeatedly in the
past and do not want to open themselves to the risk of such pain again.
I have recently read treatments of the great challenges in
having any permanence in friendship while building and maintaining a family
and/or a career. Both career and family
appear to be the higher priorities to the exclusion of a deeply committed /
permanent friendship. Yes, of course,
there are work friends and church friends.
There are the friends who are parents of your children’s friends. There are the old friends from college or
high school. People readily say there
are “friends for a season” as if permanence is neither possible nor
desirable. Families with young children
curtail their social lives and circle the wagons exclusively around family,
their children’s routines, and possibly other families in their same stage of
life. Friendship is luxurious and there
isn’t time for such frivolity.
Married couples are heard to complain of not being able to find
couple friends with whom both are compatible.
Singles are in the midst of the dating scene or, as they age, can become
socially isolated due to a failure to participate in a perceived societal norm
of marriage and children. They are out
of step and alone.
While many may complain of the challenges in developing
friendships during the teen and young adult years, those times in life bring great
availability and ease of bonding.
Adulthood finds individuals with increasingly complex and competing
priorities and the baggage of failed relationships. There is a lack of time, and, frequently, a
seeming lack of desire to choose intimate non-sexual companions for the road.
Psychologists claim the benefits of alonetime on
marriage. But, what of the benefits to married folks for friendship (not simply extended family)? Family is predestined. Friends are freely chosen. The mate was chosen initially but marriage
brings a commitment of legality and permanence (despite the availability of
divorce). Friends are free to come and
go from one another’s lives. There can
be great beauty, health, benefit, and value in choosing to commit to one’s
friend(s) for a lifetime.
