#630. Awkward opposite sex friendships.
Oct 1st by adminA few weeks ago I spoke at a conference that required me to fly. Months before the conference, I asked the organizers if I could have a guy drive me to the airport. Not that a girl driving me was a big deal, but my wife and I had discussed it and we both felt better about me avoiding awkward situations like that. Three of my favorite pastors, Andy Stanley, Craig Groeschel and Billy Graham, live by that policy and I felt fine with putting it in my life too.
I know what you’re thinking, “Hey, you’ve got a book coming out, don’t you have an entourage with one really big guy who everyone calls ‘Tiny’ and another guy who can always talk his way out of a jam and possibly a really tall guy who can reach things on shelves that you can’t? Aren’t you rich?” Yes, I mean globally speaking I am rich in that when I went to pick out shoes to wear today it was a multiple choice test. But I don’t have an entourage, which is a request that Zondervan continues to ignore. When I travel it’s just me and my backpack. No luggage, no baggage, just a seemingly bottomless LL Bean backpack which makes me feel a bit like Dora the Explorer.
So without an entourage, I decided to request that a guy drive me to the airport. I just wasn’t comfortable with the idea of spending an hour in LA traffic alone with a girl. That just didn’t seem smart to me and the conference was completely cool with that request. They found a guy, everything was good.
That felt like a no brainer to me. I had a chance to honor a commitment I made to my wife, so I did. And at the conference, one of the female staff made a point of thanking me for making that request, so I felt good that I had not disrespected anyone by asking for a male driver. But what about other less obvious situations? When you get married, you’re suddenly thrown into all these awkward opposite sex friendship moments.
What about having a one on one meeting with a woman? Is it enough to just leave the door open? Or do you have to have three people present at all times? I know churches who use both approaches.
What about a lunch meeting? A married friend recently told me that if he couldn’t go out to lunch with females he couldn’t do his job. Is lunch with a lady a date? What if it’s a business lunch? The CEO of Zondervan is a lady, what if she calls me and says, “Jon, we’d like to give you a 37 book deal and your own Honda Ruckus Scooter for a cross country tour called ‘Ruckus by Ruckus,’ can we go out to lunch to discuss the details?” Do I have to invite someone along with me? What if my wife is not available that day?
And when you get married, at what point do you have to officially retire the silly sentence, “I’ve just always gotten along better with the opposite sex, that’s how I’m wired?”
I don’t know. I don’t have the answer on this one. Just the idea that things get a little awkward when you get married and have to figure out friendships with the opposite sex. But of the two camps, “Jeez you’re such a Puritan, loosen up” and “Better safe than sorry, can a dude drive me to the airport,” I know which one I want to fall into. Because no one ever wakes up and says, “Today I’m having an affair.” Affairs are slow burn decisions, with a wick a mile long made of little steps and little compromises.
Are you single?
Did your married friends of the opposite sex dump you the second they got hitched?
Are you married? What’s your approach? What are your boundaries?
Comments
Obviously, it's not wise to spend excessive alone time with someone outside of your marriage, but I've seen unhealthy boundaries between friendships between women too. Ultimately, I think we need to be having vulnerable and ultimately costly discussions with our spouses and friends about relating cross-gender. I really believe that if we do that, we learn what it means to be in right relationship with one another. I guess I'm just up for the messiness of it all, because I know God offers us healing and grace in the midst of it all. (2 of 2)
During my 27 year marriage, my ex constantly introduced me to her female friends and co-workers. She encouraged me to build friendships with these women… odd? Yes, but in the end I discovered it was her way of justifying her own constant infidelity.
That's just awful. My sympathies.
You have so many comments here, I don't know wether you'll ever get to read mine… I understand fully, and completely disagree.
I was in a Catholic movement (I'm a Catholic) where the approach to opposite sex was more or less as you describe it here – the effects were awful, mostly for teenagers like me then. As if the sheer attraction both sexes feel for each other was something wrong.
From my experience now, I believe the best is to admit that men like women and viceversa, it's wonderful – not wrong. I can be married (3 years in my case) and be friends with a very attractive man, even like him a lot, even fall in love with him! It's not something you provoke, it's actually a gift, a chance to understand that he (in my case) doesn't belong to me, but he's been called to something else – and so have I – and being friends means, for me, to help him fulfill that. Everyone can fall in love, specially those more sensitive to beauty. It is better to became mature, with good friends' help, and grow emotionally, so you can love more everyone and not be afraid of your afections. Else, everything becomes awkward and potentially sinful, everything becomes sex! I believe that is, actually, the easiest way to fall.
Please remember I'm a roman Catholic, so I obviously have strict morals on being faithful to my husband and looking at men from purity – but I also learnt a healthier way to deal with sex and affection.
This post freaked me out a little. I never thought much about being alone with a male friend or work colleague, but now I will think about it. I guess I am too trusting and didn't realize how truly dangerous men are. I just thought they respected women more, and could control themselves better. If you think about though, most violence in the world is perpetuated by men, so it is better to be safe than sorry. I will try to work on keeping my distance from men, but I think I may still take a risk and marry one, though!
Honestly, guys have -always- made me nervous, -especially- when I was single. It's a miracle I found one I liked enough to marry, actually! lol
When I was single, I developed little ways to avoid communicating with the opposite sex [especially men focused more on body parts than on who I was]. I would keep a book to read, or a drawing pad to doodle on, or my mp3 player with headphones on. This generally discouraged any unwanted advances. Also, glaring works. And if it comes right down to it, I just say "no". In general, most guys are pretty knowledgeable about what the word "no" means. [There are a few who don't take the hint, but they are easily lost in large crowds.]
I think what a lot of people forget [and not saying this is always the case, but still...] is that the other person may not find us remotely attractive in that way. Or that we may not find -them- remotely attractive. For instance, if I was in your situation, and I had no choice but to ride with a 55-year-old man who did nothing but complain about other drivers, I'll be the first to say there would be NO chance of us doing anything REMOTELY sexual. lol
In comparison, now when a guy hits on me [which is rare now since I'm nearly always with my husband in public, and I make my wedding ring rather obvious], I can just pull my left hand up and say, "Sorry; married!" and go about my day.
I trust my husband enough to -not- have an affair, since he says he barely notices other women anyways. [We live in a more...rounded section of the country, let's just say. lol ]
Lady Tam, guys fall into three categories:
1) Guys who look at a beautiful woman's body.
2) Guys who are good at pretending not to look at a beautiful woman's body.
3) Gays.
You're probably right to mistrust guys, but don't be too harsh on the guys who sneak a peek. Unless they're being really brazen about it (which means they want you to notice, which is just boorish), they're just doing what everyone does. It doesn't mean a guy is unfaithful to his wife either; it's just a glance. It doesn't indicate a serious desire for anything more. It's no more indicative of unfaithfulness than my wife's interest in Brad Pitt movies. You can't get threatened by that sort of thing.
PS. Speaking of more "rounded" parts of the country, I recently visited Busch Gardens in Virginia (a very nice amusement park, by the way) and I was struck not just by the preponderance of obese women, but by their brazen clothing choices. I get it when a woman with a swimsuit body wears immodest clothing; she's showing off her assets. It's vain, albeit no more so than a guy who drives around in a Hummer. But what's with these obese women who wear revealing clothes in public places? It's extremely unattractive; much more so than if they wore more modest clothing.
Do you have any idea how HOT it gets at Busch Gardens in Virginia sometimes?
Trust me, misplaced vanity has nothing to do with it, LOL! It's a matter of, how am I going to make it through this day. And when everyone else is doing it, you just don't notice it as readily. A word of warning, should you ever contemplate a return visit: the boundaries of taste only get more compromised as the season wears on. It goes something like this…
June: Yay, a beautiful summer day in a beautiful park! I think I'll show off my new empire-waist top and pair it with some sensible capris!
July: Well, I don't want to be That Woman who makes the young men think "Ewww! Wonder what it would be like to — Ewww!" Guess I'll go for the moderate V-neck. Not like I have DVS or something.
August: Screw it. I'm a stay-at-home mom and it is freakin' AUGUST at freakin' BUSCH GARDENS and it is HOT. It is not my job to make myself remotely attractive to anyone besides my husband and he is freakin' NOT HERE TO HELP PUSH THE STROLLER TODAY.
(Sorry for that glimpse into the dark recesses of my scary Virginia mind… wait, no, I'm really not! Ha!)
Hey – Just starting reading the blog, its fantastic.
I'm single and female and I have to say I generally get along better with guys. I have absolutely no problem talking to them one-on-one, praying together or anything. Most of them have made contributions to my faith in one way or the other and some of them have been major blessings to me. It doesn't matter if their single or not (if they are dating, chances are their girlfriend is usually one of my friends anyway).
I recently went to an Islamic country (with male and female friends from church) and one of the things I noticed was that there didn't seem to be many male-female friendships there. I remember thinking how incredibly lucky we are as Christians because we have such freedom to treat eachother as brothers and sisters in Christ. We should have LESS social boundaries, because we have liberation from all that…
seriously, acuff. this is the stuff of dreams for me. i have needed someone to write a book like this for years!
to answer the question, though…i am almost 33 and still single -attractive, curvy, have gone from being asexual in a charismatic church to going a little bit crazy with my sexuality to finally just being comfortable in my own skin.
and i don't make new friendships with guys. there's just no reason for me to do that. i hang out with my married friends and they're husbands because they're safe – but never alone, because of the reasons you explained. i don't want to put myself or anyone else in any sort of uncomfortable situation, especially because i don't always know what they struggle with in their marriage.
plus, i'm sort of awkward around handsome men. like when i was 13. which is why i started drinking later in life.
Me too!!! (The awkward part.) And I hate, hate, hate, that it makes me avoid my brothers in Christ. And I hate, hate, hate that my brothers in Christ avoid their sisters in Christ…
We (the whole lot of us) do act like we're all still 13. And there has GOT to be a more mature way for us to handle this issue than "boys over here, girls over there." But I am so guilty too.
I have to say that I think the lines should be very clear around a relationship or marriage on this issue. I have been married a couple of times, because both of my prior husbands couldn't commit to the "thou shalt not commit adultery" part of the 10 commandments and the expectation that mirrors it in our wedding vows.
That of course left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to future relationships and therefore, I promised myself that the next time I was in a relationship, there would be a boundary discussion and agreement for both sides, mine and his, so that there would never be any situation where there could be "smoke" that turns into an eventual "fire", if you get my drift, or anything that would even give the appearance of an inappropriate relationship.
I thought my new husband and I were on the same page there, we went to premarital counseling and talked about the issue at length, the healthy fences were established so I never thought I would have any reason to worry about it ever again. Unbeknownst to me, my husband had been texting a female co-worker back and forth, (some work related and some not), for the first year of our relationship and then the following 2 after we were married.
Once I found out, I told him it needed to stop, even if there was nothing going on between them, it wasn't appropriate for him to be doing that as a married man, and she is married as well. He said he told her that there was to be no further non work related banter of any kind, and I thought it was done. However, she continued to, in my opinion, pursue him….he told me once that she'd complained to him about her lack of a sex life with her husband. And then, she started showing up when he was alone down at his "shop" working after work, and then I found text messages on his phone that HE initiated to her!
She would call because she had seen him across the street after work hours were over, going somewhere, and ask what he was up to on his voice mail. He would text her back, telling her whatever she wanted to know, and he started frequenting the bar she hangs out at while I was home caring for our 5 kids. When all of this blew up finally, he said that I was making too big of a deal out of it. He claimed that he agreed it was inappropriate to talk on the phone with her outside of work about non work stuff, but he didn't want to hurt her feelings or be rude so when she asks what he is doing he feels it's ok to respond via text. I asked him WHY it's her business what he is doing?!
I told him that a married woman who discusses her sex life with another married man, or unmarried man for that matter, is searching for something….and his behavior indicates to her that he might be interested. And the fact that her feelings being hurt ranks higher over our agreement of healthy fences around our marriage and my feelings as his wife and mother of his kids tells me where his priorities lie. He disagreed. What do you think? Am I being unreasonable?
sorry about the multiple posts…it was too long to put all in one so it made me split it up