Love on a Sunday

Love on a Sunday
This week, especially yesterday, has brought some things about my friendship/relationship patterns into a new perspective. This is not in reference to any specific friendship, present or past, but rather about them all. I will mention a few present and past friendships for examples and clarification. This is habit and practice for me, and I could well be wrong in my actions and conclusions. This is merely a statement of explanation for my habits, not an excuse or evasion of any rules or customs of manner. I welcome the thoughts and advice of those, my wiser counterparts.

I have always wanted a little sister. I didn’t always understand this desire, at least not till I was older. I didn’t desire a romantic relationship, just one of care, love, protection, and respect. I guess the reason I wanted a younger sister specifically was for the playfulness and joyful closeness that I felt would come with a younger that would be considered flirting with other girls, and would be awkward to have with guys. But alas, this was never something God saw fit to give. Even without the provision of a biological or legally adopted sister, however, the concept shapes how I approach girls I become close to.

Don’t get my wrong, I have an older sister, and love her and have been close to her most of my life, but she has never been really mine to take care of, as she, the older, sees me as the twerp kid. This relationship has been very influential in forming who I am. But I have an older sister. The role is filled. I have no need of another, because Abby fit that space in my heart perfectly

I have never had a hard time making friends. At the same time I have never been able to force myself to get to know someone. Every real friendship I have had has not been the result of any desire or intent or even any real effort on my part. They form, as God forms them, blessings to me that I neither deserve nor cultivate, nor really appreciate to the extent I should. Put simply, my good friendships have always been the ones I never sought after.

My personality, however, combined with my inner desire for a sister, has had affects on my friendships. When I get close to a girl, in my mind and heart, I often begin to view her as that sister. Not at all a bad place for a girl in my heart. With some variance, I treat her as I feel I would like to treat a biological sister, though perhaps with less familiarity. The variance occurs based on personality; some girls show, by action and suggestion, that they prefer to be treated differently, and so in order to respect how they were made, I (usually subconsciously) choose to treat them differently, though still as a sister.
This establishment of “sister” status has seen both unintentional and acknowledged applications. With my old friend Rosie, we became close, in spite of her actively disliking the idea of being considered a sister by name. Laura and Anna, on the other hand, broached the idea of connecting as surrogate siblings before I did. Both were strong friendships, though one was classified as “best friends”, and the other as “siblings”. The result, after the variance for the different personalities, was three close friendships, each with a different connection, but all defined by the situation.

Forthwith are the problems of this sort of system. First, the proximity of the friendship is close, but limited by the desire to refrain from romantic connection or pairing off. That being said, each friendship is of equal status. Should God ever direct a deeper relationship, leading to marriage, then a change of status is required for the remaining friendships. Also, this could cause potential problems with jealousy, mixed signals, and mixed messages. This is a situation I experienced firsthand over the summer.
Second, though the establishment of young women as “sisters” prevents attachments that are more than friendship, it does not do so with immaculate consistency. Crushes still can form before the connection as siblings has taken root. And even if it has been established as a brother-sister relationship, it does not preclude the possibility of either party wanting it to become something more, and thus changing the status quo.

Every good friendship I’ve been given, as I said before, has been not of my own work, nor have I ever been able to make a good friendship out of effort. They just happen. Thinking back to a crush, there was a girl I wanted to get to know, but was unable to due to her personality and the circumstances surrounding our friendship. It was a bridge I could not get over. The friendship failed because I tired to make it more than it would have been naturally.

But that itself is the key. Every bad or wrong relationship I have had has been one in which I tired to make the friendship into something I wanted, or tired to manipulate it to get something I wanted. On the other hand, the best friendships I have had were free of my involvement. They weren’t formed by any feelings or desires of my own making.

Both in friendship, but more so in the relationship that will lead to marriage, the same principle will apply. Not something I push for or work for based on any desire, attraction, or emotion, but instead something that develops free of my intervention. So often people form relationships because they like each other. Their desire for the relationship or for each other mutates the natural course that the friendship was meant to take. God is the real author of marriage-love, and only he can stir it up properly. We humans need not intervene.

Of course, for me the one exception that makes this rule a problem is Laura. I never tired to make us anything. To my knowledge and understanding, it just happened, not based on intent or desire almost until the end. Not quite sure how that factors in… Shall I end this blog off with a question?