Tag: friendship

Friendships

I took a deep breath, then asked a question no friend expects. Tom’s answer could affect the rest of my life. ‘I’m planning to ask Alison to marry me. You know both of us well. Am I doing the right thing?’

Tom looked startled. He’d never imagined being asked such a question. But he didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course you’re doing the right thing. You should have asked her ages ago.’

I laughed, feeling grateful and relieved in equal measure. I wasn’t inviting Tom to make my marriage decision for me, but as a deep and close friend his support meant a lot. 

Thankfully Alison said ‘yes’ and, as well as being my wife, she’s been the closest friend of my whole life. But Tom probably came next. Sadly, Tom died several years ago but he knew me through and through, and I’d have trusted him with my life. Others have also been important, and some still are. I’ve also had many acquaintances and truly enjoyed their company, but I’ve a feeling there’s room for only a few very special friends.

So, what defines the best of friendships? I’ll share my answers, but others will have their own priorities. They’ll also vary according to who the friendship is with – every friendship is unique.

Here are nine qualities of friendships I think important. They’re not listed in any special order.

Being genuinely interested    I have a secret which is almost a confession. From about the age of 18 I realised that girls are not attracted to boys who talk endlessly about themselves, especially when they brag about their accomplishments. I’d understood that girls were much more drawn to boys who were interested in knowing them. I’d ask simple, non-intrusive questions. Not just learning facts, but discovering what they thought or felt about all sorts of things. It worked.

If that was only a technique to find a girlfriend, it would be manipulative. But if being interested in someone is sincere, it’s appreciated.

That truth isn’t limited to romantic encounters. It’s foundational to all friendships. Every relationship of depth involves really knowing the other person: thoughts, feelings, hopes and fears.

Caring    Knowing someone isn’t enough. Real friendship also involves caring about anything that concerns the other person. It means supporting through tough times, helping with hard decisions, commiserating with disappointments, rejoicing in successes.

Caring marks the difference between deep friendships and more superficial friendships. Lesser friendships aren’t bad. It’s good to have acquaintances with whom you enjoy spending time. But lower-level friendships aren’t about lives intertwined, bearing each other’s burdens, supporting through the worst days and the best days. I shared doubts, fears, ambitions, hopes and dreams with Tom. Why? Because he cared. And I was helped and strengthened by having him to lean on. I believe I was able to do the same for Tom.

Respect    There are long-term relationships that lack respect. They can be bullying or domineering or dependent relationships which go on year after year. But they’re not friendships, and they’re not healthy.

In a real friendship each accepts the other for who they are. No-one’s trying to control. No-one’s taking advantage. Each believes the other person is worth knowing, worth trusting, worth supporting, worth respecting.

At a later point in my life, I built a strong and helpful relationship with Stuart. What began with polite but guarded conversation developed over many years into sharing struggles and disappointments. Stuart was consistently supportive. Eventually I knew I could tell him anything about myself and he’d still respect me. So I talked about areas of life where I was falling short. That wasn’t easy for me to share or him to hear. But he counselled me wisely, and made it clear I was still a person of worth. That really mattered to me.

Despite failings Stuart still respected me. A good friendship has that quality.

Sharing experiences    Tom and I first met on study courses that would give us admission to university where – we discovered – we both hoped to do the same degree before entering Christian ministry. We were from different denominations, but aiming for the same vocation. Our friendship grew, and we found we had similar spiritual questions. Both of us were particularly concerned about living closer to God. We read books, went to meetings, and we talked endlessly. And then we hit on the answer: if we got together and prayed all night, surely we’d be close to God by morning.

So we chose a suitable night, one when we’d have no early classes next morning. We began our praying about 11.00 pm, sitting in chairs with our heads bowed. After an hour we decided it was more spiritual to pray on our knees. After another hour my knees ached unbearably, and I had to sit on the floor. Tom’s knees were in no better shape, so we were both seated on the floor. We got to 2.00 am, but by then our prayers were short and infrequent. Less than half an hour later, I said I’d be more comfortable lying on the floor. I knew nothing more until a short time later Tom shook me by the shoulder and said, ‘I’ve pronounced the benediction. You can go to bed now.’

Next morning we alternated between laughing and pronouncing ourselves spiritual failures. But our ‘failed’ night of prayer wasn’t the end of still seeking ways to be better Christians. Our search went on.

That was part of sharing experiences for me and Tom. Other people will go to football matches, or to music festivals, or be cinema buffs, or read the same books, or climb hills, or work in the same firm, or whatever else they share. My point is only this, that friendships involve journeying together, not merely crossing paths occasionally while going our own ways.

No hidden goals    Relationships are not friendships if either or both have ulterior motives.

I boarded a plane in Kathmandu for my flight home to the UK. Beside me was a young lady, probably aged in her mid-20s. Mo liked to chat, and I thought, ‘This could be an opportunity to share my Christian faith’. Once the plane had taken off and meal served, we had several hours to talk. We got on to the subject of belief remarkably easily. Eventually I realised why. Mo had been in Nepal to study at a Buddhist temple and school. (Buddhism is the second largest religion in Nepal.) She was fired up about her Buddhist beliefs, and as our conversation wore on I realised Mo was trying to evangelise me. So, while I was trying to convert her to Christianity, she was trying to convert me to Buddhism. Both of us had ulterior motives for our conversation. It was a very odd experience.

Friendships can’t have hidden goals. One can’t be trying to ‘sell’ something to the other, whether a religious belief or a political position. And one can’t be trying to ‘get’ something from the other, like the boy who offers a girl friendship (or, what he calls ‘love’) in order to get sex.

Strong friendships don’t come with an agenda. They’re not like business relationships where someone’s trying to make a ‘profit’. Friendships exist because each values the other. No other motive. No other goal.

Openness    Every friendship can’t involve a complete opening of hearts and minds, as if every secret must be told. That would be an impossible burden. But the strongest of friendships work only where there’s a reasonable sharing of thoughts, feelings, experiences, desires, and ambitions. A friendship can’t exist when either is ‘closed’ to the other.

Henry had a hundred friends. He wasn’t difficult to like – gifted, knowledgeable, chatty, generous. With some of the hundred he’d watch football matches, walk in the hills, go to the cinema, accept invitations for meals in their homes. But, just when people felt they were really getting to know Henry, he’d back away. Without explanation he wouldn’t seek their company any more. Why not? No-one knew for sure, other than that Henry had withdrawn as soon as relationships deepened. It seemed he didn’t want his innermost thoughts and feelings known. Which was sad.

Openness is fundamental to any kind of deep friendship. It doesn’t work otherwise.

Honesty    Friends can risk telling truths that would be resisted if spoken by anyone else.

Another way of saying that is this: A superficial friend will tell you what you want to hear. A real friend will tell you what you need to hear.

At times we act foolishly. We might voice prejudice. Or buy a vintage car that’ll cost a fortune to maintain. Or keep bad company. Or run up debt on our credit card buying a new mobile phone every six months. Or skip classes at university. Or constantly turn up late for work. And so on. Someone has to warn us; to tell us we’re being an idiot. We won’t like it. But it needs to be said. Only a friend will take the risk of telling us what we must hear. A strong relationship will stand the strain of that.

Resilience    Children – including young teenagers – fall in and out of friendships. So parents hear words laced with anxiety: ‘She doesn’t like me any more’; ‘He doesn’t want to be my friend now’. Thankfully it’s usually all different just one day later. Back to being the best of buddies.

Real friendships – friendships worth having – are far stronger than one row, one disappointment, one time of letting the other down.

I’d put it this way: deep relationships are not transactional they’re relational. In other words, they’re not like a contract where, if someone breaks the terms of the agreement, the deal is torn up. Strong friendships are like having a brother or sister. We’ll squabble but you’re still my brother or you’re still my sister, so we’ll forgive and move forward. In the same way, commitment to each other is essential to strong friendships.

Perseverance    Six-year-old Hazel comes home after her first day at a new school. Mum asks: ‘Did you make any friends today?’ ‘Yes,’ Hazel says, ‘I sat beside Jackie, and she’s now my best friend.’

Well, I’m glad Hazel found a friend at her new school. But ‘best friends’ after one day? Absolutely possible in a child’s world. But the reality check for those of older years is that the deepest and best of friendships don’t happen in one day. Houses are built brick by brick, and friendships are built day by day, month by month, year by year.

And that takes perseverance. It involves all the attributes listed above put into practice constantly. In the early days there’s no guarantee that a friendship will last. Not all friendships do. But once the days and months turn into years, friends are relaxed with each other, feel secure together, and have confidence in their relationship. Students going off to university for the first time are told: ‘The friends you make in the next year or two may well last for the rest of your life’. That often happens, but it needs commitment and effort from both sides.

Finally,  I know some find it hard to find friends, so I’ll close with one piece of advice.

Be open to friendship, but don’t grasp at it, don’t force, don’t even make friendship your goal. Just be the great person you are, relax, and let friendship happen.

I don’t know you’ll find a great friend. But I also don’t know any reason why you won’t.

Values and friendship

Gail and Simon said they wanted me to conduct their wedding service in two weeks time. I knew them but hadn’t been aware they’d been seeing each other.

‘How long have you been going out together?’ I asked

‘Three weeks,’ Simon said.

I took a deep breath. They’d dated for three weeks, and now wanted to get married in another two. At any time with any people, that would give a pastor pause for thought. But I also knew two other things about Gail and Simon. The first was that neither of them were without a load of troubles in their lives. The second was that Gail was twelve years older than Simon, not a disqualifying factor but I didn’t have strong hopes they’d have thought through issues related to their age difference.

I didn’t refuse to marry them, but did make it clear it couldn’t happen in just another two weeks. They were very unhappy, telling me it was my ‘job’ to marry them. I explained gently my services were not theirs to command, and I must fulfil my role as a pastor in accordance with the trust the congregation had given me and what I believed was right with God.

They left, but not before saying they’d find someone else to marry them in two weeks.

In less than two weeks they’d split up.

Gail’s and Simon’s relationship seemed to have little going for it, and the fact that it ended almost as quickly as it began was no surprise. But I have been surprised with other couples, like Amy and Vic who had a strong and loving relationship others might envy. But not so strong or loving after ten years when it ended.

Relationships never come with guarantees. But there are factors that support and help a relationship to thrive. Love is, of course, foundational. But you can’t live in a foundation. You must build on it. And what’s built, and how it’s built, determines if love will grow and flourish. Real happiness in a relationship is not an accident. It has to be built.

I’ve been identifying factors that help, and in this third (and last) in a short series, I’ll set down two more building blocks that Alison and I believe have been important.

Values When very different people get on well, we say ‘opposites attract’. Yet when two similar people do well, we don’t say ‘similarity attracts’. Personally I don’t give much credence to the ‘opposites’ v ‘similarity’ theory.

What does seem to matter are values – how great a value we place on things that truly matter to us. Relationships can work with differences in these areas, but the greater the differences the greater the potential strain on the relationship.

I’ll give examples, but these are mine and you will have other things which, for you, are deep values.

Faith    When Sharon was fourteen, the faith she’d been taught from childhood came alive for her, and she became a committed Christian. A few years later she went to university, joined a Christian group where she met Joe and, after some time, they became a couple. He proposed, she accepted, two years later they were married, and eventually they had two children. They seemed very happy. But not entirely. One day Sharon told me that two days before their wedding Joe told her he wasn’t actually a Christian. He wasn’t sure faith had ever been real for him; it certainly wasn’t any more. Sharon had always intended to marry someone who shared her faith, but what was she to do with wedding day so imminent? She married Joe, then prayed and hoped he’d find new faith, but he never did. ‘We’re okay,’ Sharon told me, ‘but there’ll always be a gap in our lives that nothing else fills’.

Over the years many have told me of ‘the gap not filled’ because of a faith not shared. Perhaps some couples haven’t felt that tension, but I struggle to understand how faith can be central to every value and purpose of life and for that not to be the same for the person to whom you’ve dedicated your life.

Children    This sub-heading could cover several things, all related to children.

One of the biggest questions is how many? From the start Alison and I felt it right to add to our family number until we knew that more children would seriously harm the wellbeing of those we had already. We reached that point with four. We’d already met disapproval when we went past two, some suggesting that number three must surely have been a mistake. When number four was coming, several reacted ‘Oh no!’ and offered no congratulations. And Alison’s first pregnancy-related medical appointment began with a nurse who assumed we clearly didn’t understand contraception. How could anyone actually want four children?

Well, we did want four. Others may want none, one, two, three or any other number. How many they want doesn’t trouble me. What does is when couples are sharply divided on family size. Several times I’ve been told, ‘We have two children, and I want at least one more, maybe two, but my husband absolutely refuses’. Division on something so fundamental generates pain and frustration for both involved. No-one can know in advance if they’ll be able to have children, nor what family life with children will be like. But some couples admit their pre-marriage conversations about family size lasted only until their differences became uncomfortable and then they backed off. If you asked, ‘Did you talk about this?’ they’d say they had. Did they resolve it? No, and therefore they didn’t realise how different their heart-felt hopes were.

Once there are children, plenty other ‘values’ issues surface:

  • About spending time with them
  • About discipline
  • About education
  • About behaviour
  • About the role of grandparents
  • About the kind of friends they can have
  • About ambitions for the children

And so on. When parents don’t agree on values issues like these, they become pressure points in a relationship.

Money    Alison and I had very little income in our earliest years together. For seven years we had no car, our furniture was almost entirely second hand, and none of our carpets were new. The children’s clothes were castoffs from kids who’d outgrown them, or bought from charity shops. Summer after summer we never had a family vacation, until finally we got a week’s break because friends loaned us their caravan at no cost. Alison would do our budget three times to make outgoings and incomings at least distant acquaintances. We learned three important things. One, you can be happy with just a little. Two, when having one thing means not having another you value what you buy. Three, money was not a subject that divided us because our attitudes to it were aligned.

But many couples I’ve known were far from aligned about finance. One spent, the other saved. One ran up huge debts, the other begged creditors for time to pay. Some didn’t know the other was spending their money, a secret that always came out and caused great tension. Different attitudes to money can wreck a relationship.

Life goals    I was one of a team interviewing people with a sense of calling to overseas missionary work. Harry and Cathy were only in their mid twenties but especially promising: great personalities, clear thinkers, well qualified, full of faith. Everyone enthused about them. Until, that is, we interviewed Harry and Cathy individually, and those who talked with Cathy reported that they’d sensed she had reservations about being far from her family. In the final session Cathy confessed she’d always dreamed of living within only a few miles of her parents, raising her children with their support and having her parents play an integral part in their grandchildren’s lives. Harry’s dream was going overseas to serve disadvantaged and impoverished people, and Cathy had tried to make herself share his dream. But now – at the moment of decision – she couldn’t face that future. So, lovingly, the interview team advised Harry and Cathy to withdraw and find the way forward that would be right for both of them.

Sadly I met some who had squashed a conflicting dream and gone overseas. It never worked. Whether overseas or at home, it’s very hard when one is chasing a dream the other doesn’t share.

My work was always demanding: pastoring growing churches, heading up a mission agency, being president of a seminary. But Alison believed in the rightness of what I was doing as much as I did. Sometimes she’d say: ‘He holds the office, but both of us have the calling’. Jointly owning a life goal is important.

Shared responsibilities    One short story will tell the message here. Ken and Jean were part of a small group who knew each other well enough to be open and honest about deep issues. What was shared in the group stayed in the group. One evening Jean talked about Ken’s love of playing squash and football, but they used up any time he had alongside his growing work responsibilities. Jean had a significant career too, but she had cut out hobby-type interests in order to do the shopping, cook the meals, and keep the house organised. Jean’s pain was clear as she described what that was like. Here’s how she finished: ‘I’d always imagined we’d each have home responsibilities and careers, so each with one and a half jobs. Instead Ken has one job and I have two.’

No-one left the group that evening unaware of how those unshared responsibilities were hurting their relationship.

Values matter, and the more foundational they are the more they matter. When they’re in tension with the values of the person with whom they share life, the more difficult that relationship becomes.

Friendship

I’d rank friendship as one of the most important foundations for a strong and happy long-term relationship. Here’s when I first realised it.

Before Alison I had an earlier girlfriend called Kate. Kate was outgoing, popular in company, great performer from a platform, clever academically and came from a strong family background. We had good times together.

Except there were two problems. One was almost a culture issue. Her parents were wealthy, lived in an impressive stone built house in the suburbs, and Kate had absorbed tastes in clothing, travel, dining out, that were foreign to me. Then we got near to her birthday. She knew I’d be away on the date of her birthday, so Kate was clear she expected a bouquet of flowers to be delivered on the day. I certainly couldn’t afford flowers, but it seemed to matter so I raided the bank account for her. But it left me feeling uneasy.

The second problem was more decisive. I didn’t have a car, but my aunt loaned hers so I could take Kate out for a day. There were good things about that day, but during the longer drives I realised we’d run out of things to talk about and silence was uncomfortable. I began inventing subjects to fill the void. The day that should have been special was actually stressful. Warning bells rang, and the relationship with Kate gradually came to an end.

With Alison it was different, both then and all the years since. From the beginning there wasn’t just romance there was friendship. We enjoyed being together. We laughed, had fun, chatted about anything and everything, and when there was silence we were at peace. It’s still like that. Alison often reminds me that I vowed life would never be boring, and that’s always been true. We enjoy listening to each other’s stories as much as telling our own. We have stimulating conversations on countless subjects. We love visiting places together, exploring, learning, sharing. We support each other through rough times emotionally and physically. Neither of us fears the other would fail to care, no matter what happens, because we’ve already shown we do. When things have gone wrong, we’ve forgiven and moved on. Some marriage books have a chapter about ‘keeping romance strong’ where they advocate date nights, candlelit bedrooms, or meals in expensive restaurants. And there’s nothing wrong with those if that’s what you want. But romance can happen through every day, every event, every experience, every part of life. It’s in the simple joy of being together, a joy that’s never diminished, and in fact gets stronger and better all the time.

Relationships are unique to a particular couple, so our experience won’t be anyone else’s. But a bedrock of friendship seems crucial – enjoying each other, sharing with each other, depending on each other, laughing with each other, moving forward together.

May whatever relationships you have be productive, strengthening, fulfilling, and fun.

(My apologies this blog is posted late, but this last weekend I prioritised a very special birthday event for Alison with all our family. It was the right – and very happy – thing to do. Thank you for being understanding.)