March 31, 2021
I saw a friend of mine and my brothers; she's currently pregnant in the waking world, so we (I) congratulated her in the dream. After chatting for a bit, we went ahead and parted ways. I stepped into a group of people with my brother to say hi before the event started. This group consisted of one guy and a dozen or so women. In this group, we somehow got to talking about two other friends of ours, both women. One was an elderly lady, and one was not.
The guy in this group of women became angry; he could not believe that men and women could just be friends. After telling us so, he stormed outside of the building, entirely indignant with some of his female entourage following him out.
Confused, I followed him outside, asking him why. "Why can't men and women be friends? Won't it challenge us to grow in different ways? What's the problem?"
Ignoring all of my questions, he continued through the parking lot and to his car. Once seated and settled, he took off. The women who walked out with him may have ridden with him, but I could not directly see them from where I stood, and the parking lot was full of cars, so that did not help.
That guy was a hypocrite. He may have lacked female friends, but what he lacked in friends he made up for in women he considered potential partners. This was a short dream, but I find the material fascinating as I myself, an Afro-American man, have female friends. However, could it truly be beneficial, and how would one determine that it is beneficial or that it is not?
These are questions that the dream has left me to ponder within the waking world. A common argument against male and female friendships is the most obvious one, that being, "You might catch feelings." A legitimate argument indeed, but one based on the assumption that this does not happen among friends of the same sex.
If we were to say that Christians must only entertain same-sex friendships because they might catch feelings due in part to the presence of an opposite-sex friend, regardless of distance, it obviously does not take into account Christians that experience same-sex attraction.
Regardless of one's willingness to engage with these feelings, the feelings are there. Should they avoid same-sex friendships because of the attraction that might arise in such circumstances, and if so, does this mean that they should only be friends with members of the opposite sex? If yes, what if their opposite-sex friend begins to catches feelings? What if they themselves discover that they are bisexual and not homosexual through that relationship?
Avoidance is not an answer for me as I tend to run into people I am avoiding everywhere. Trying to give your heart away to "transfer a crush to someone new" is also not an option as this will not completely absolve a prior infatuation, if at all. For me, the hardest thing seems to work the best. If I develop a crush on a friend, I will do my best to approach them, as avoidance is a sign that I am expressing a crush. Oddly enough, this has seemed to help me overcome and reduce the potency of those feelings of attraction or limerance.
However, the approach does not mean confessing; on occasion, it might include that, at other times, it does not. Approaching is simply a choice to do something difficult: being willing to love someone platonically regardless of my own desires. This includes having positive conversations about their crushes, encouraging them in their relationship with others, or helping them get close to a crush. This also includes me not putting their crush down but lifting them up whether they are around or not, like any friend should.
I am reminded of a confession letter from many years ago. I once felt lead to write a letter of confession to a crush, so I wrote it as a story. The story consisted of a figure named "Vulcan" and another I will call "Melody." Melody was a being whose body was crafted from all manner of musical instruments; her every breath and stride was pure music; this was my crush.
Vulcan was born at the base of a volcano; his skin was obsidian, his veins flowing with molten rock, and his face consisted of several bars of iron that smoke bellowed out from. He could push the molten rocks through his veins to heat and mold his limbs in an infinite number of ways; I got really into this. His head was full of water; the more his anxious mind would run, the more water would appear. If he allowed his mind to run, he would drown himself. Not saying how I felt and only thinking about it was how I was drowning in that time.
Though he was born of fire, his heart was made of ice. It descended as a snowflake from the heavens above to his forming body. However, just before it reached him, Melody caught it and walked away with it. Seeing her walk off with his heart, Vulcan followed her in hopes of getting it back, for fear that she might break it. However, the joy it brought to her face changed his mind, and the two became friends. Vulcan decided to let her keep it as he slunk back into the woods, but he was still close enough to watch her give it away. To the one whose hands she entrusted it, he treated it carelessly and broke it.
I wrote it this way because I never intended to give the letter away, and even if I did, I didn't believe that we would ever be anything more than friends, and I am ok being a friend until the time comes for us to part ways, or for our friendship dynamic to change. As I finished the story, a thought came to mind, "Turn this story around and read it as if I wrote it to you." God gives His love to me, and I consistently choose to give my love to others before Him. That which remains I give to Him, the leftovers.
The above really made me think about how I relate to God and others. There is such a beauty in one-sided love; through that pain, I feel as though I can attempt to relate to my God just a little as He experiences this same thing. Like Father like son, right? It certainly makes reading through the book of Judges and Hosea hit a little bit differently.
Back to the earlier question, can guys and girls be friends without wondering where a penis goes in that relationship? Yes! Whether in a group context (the easiest way) or not, I would certainly like to think so, but I would not bet on this becoming a new Western norm within the Church.
Finally, are these relationships beneficial? Personally, I would say yes. I benefit from having the perspective of female friends in my life. Still, I can only speak to my own experiences as such a relationship's benefits would be entirely subjective. For example, I have a one-track mind. If I plan on doing X, anything that gets in the way of X will frustrate me. However, a female friend of mine helped me see that this was one-track thinking, something I had not considered. Sure, I could have learned this anywhere, but I happened to learn it from her, and the topic never came up outside of the context of our relationship.
I like that my female friends think differently than me. I like having both male and female perspectives to challenge me in the space of my own biases. I'm also well-aware that the relationships I have must be treated as if they are sacred through the presence of complementary boundaries, both spoken and unspoken.
I completely understand if you disagree, as all of this is entirely subjective and observed through the tainted logic of a dream.
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