83 It’s
eminently reasonable to take care to introduce oneself to others by “putting
your best foot forward,” so long as it’s done with more of an aim to project
one’s good traits rather than conceal undesired traits. Just don’t place too
much emphasis on the process than is beneficial. You can stand to gain in
relationships by not calculating every
move or speech to try to accomplish a goal beyond merely helping a person get
to know you. In romance, I feel that she will eventually get to know all of you
eventually, if she’s the One, so being boldly open about yourself can do
nothing more for the most part than help ascertain if the girl you’re
interested in really IS the one.
84 Asked
if I have a yearning for close male friends, not just my future wife, I
pondered why I might not be so interested. I concluded that I have no resistance to male friendships, and have
a welcoming attitude toward such fellowship, and that I can see the benefit
thereof. However, I feel nothing drawing me in the same way that I feel an
emotional void that a wife would fill. I neither need nor am made for having a
lifelong intimate male partner. I’m made for a woman. This is Biblical. So the
answer to the question was no, but not with a rebellious attitude, just with a
sense of lack of both interest and need.
85
That should be clarified: married men don’t need “buddies.” They don’t need to
have guys they hang out with in order to satisfy their need for social
interaction. I do say this as an introvert, so there’s a risk my opinion is
skewed from that. Fair warning. But I think a man should be first and foremost
satisfied socially in his wife. She’s the one he connects with. She’s the one
he can talk to—talk with—and listen
to. She’s his companion and she’s the one he participates with in
entertainment, rest and relaxation, chit-chat, philosophizing, sharing advice,
talking about life, helping each other with problems, etc etc. FIRST. What’s he
need male friends for, but to help him with the rare things he needs advice on
with respect to his wife that he CAN’T ask her about (if they’re fighting and
she’s giving him a cold shoulder, for example. Or if she’s mourning, and he
wants to be careful and sensitive). This gets to the point of having male
friends. The interest and need at the end of point #84 is emotional. I have and
will have no emotional need for other men. The benefit (me-directed; my benefit
to others is another Thought) of male friends is in their ability to improve
your Christian walk in the few ways that your wife can’t—namely, she can’t tell
you from personal experience how to be a Christian man. You can only get this
wisdom from other Christian men. And if your buddies before marriage aren’t
Christian, drop ‘em. “Bad company corrupts good morals.” 1 Corinthians 15:33
86
But a single Christian man can only give you so much help. I’m writing this blog openly as a single Christian
man. I have lots of thoughts and possibly very good advice for other single
young men. Not limited to them: this blog can certainly be insightful to young
women, or even people who are unsaved, or married. But what I have to offer
will be less and less helpful to each successive person in that list. Why?
Because in the case of women, I can only help them see what a Christian man
ought to think and how he ought to behave, but I can only approach Biblical
Womanhood from the outside—I can’t offer them as intimate of an insight. I
don’t know what it feels like to be a woman; it’s not my experience. I can
speak to a woman’s heart, but I can’t
speak from a woman’s heart. And in
the case of the unsaved, if you don’t accept the Gospel, theology has little
practical benefit to you. Being willing to obey it is sort of a prerequisite to
benefiting from being obedient to it. And in the case of those married, I can’t
yet speak to their personal experiences, because I haven’t had many of them. I
can only give them my approach to women, romance,
courtship and marriage. I can’t tell you anything from my own experiences. To
get the wisdom gained from marriage firsthand, you’d have to talk to a married
man! This whole Thought’s point, then, is that you can benefit much more from
friendships with married men, especially
if you’re married, yourself!
87
And the direct consequence of this last point, then, is that if you as a
married man have sought a married man as a friend or mentor, logic dictates
that he has a wife. The reasonable thing to do, then, is for you to, as a
couple, make friends, jointly, with other married Christian couples! So harking
back to point #84 and #85, I don’t ever anticipate having ANY friends, when I’m
married, who* my wife doesn’t also know, and likely no one that she isn’t also
friends with! And to my best knowledge so far, from what I’ve learned from
older people who have spoken on this subject, this is both the best practical
thing to do, and it is Biblical and wise. It removes opportunities for
temptation, keeps your accountability high, and gives you trusted confidantes
who can help you in your walk, as a Christian and as a spouse.
*I
am really curious if I used the right who/whom in this instance. Anyone with knowledge
on the subject, please leave a comment. :)
88 Why do I have an easier time making
female acquaintances than male ones? There’s two suggestions: one is that I put
more effort into it because girls are more interesting. If that doesn’t account
for it, then I suspect it’s because I’m more
interesting when I open my mouth, to girls—particularly those with some life
experience—than to guys. When I talk about love, romance and marriage, by and
large, young women respond with head-nods of affirmation that they agree with
my ideas, that I paint a picture that appeals to them, that the characteristics
of a husband that I describe are what they desire. They act as if it’s
refreshingly different to hear these things coming from me. Why? I think that,
more so than guys, girls “get it.” Guys typically don’t know what women want,
though they have many ideas. I’ve gotten closer to the mark, choosing to imbibe
Biblical theology and wisdom from the life experience of esteemed elders,
rather than take my cues from what other guys—or my own emotions—have been
telling me. And when I express what I think women want, to women, I generally
perceive that it’s warmly received—because women, being women, know what they
desire in their own hearts, and are able to recognize it in what I say!
I want to take a break in the
middle here and make a caveat that I’m definitely not trying to cast myself as
a know-it-all who has females all figured out. I’m using generic language for
the convenience, but I don’t mean “all women” when I say ‘women.’ Please don’t
mistake that. I’m simply sharing anecdotes in this Thought, and will surely
affirm elsewhere that I have plenty of things I think or say that probably
irritates women, too. Don’t misinterpret my words as reeking of pride. Be charitable
in your interpretation of my statements.
So, the point I’m getting at is
answering the question of why it’s easier for me to make acquaintances with
females. And the answer I believe is most accurate is that I have a tendency to
talk about sex, love, romance, marriage etc with women (I’m very casual in
conversation, as I am in writing), and more so than idiot guys my age and
younger (and older, sadly), the kinds of things I express are things that make
very good sense to thoughtful young women. Even more so if they’ve had bad
experiences in relationships. They’re far more apt to assent to my notions that
men have a certain responsibility in how they treat a girl, and agreeable to
the notions of abstinence and the order of events. Guys, who neither bother to
learn this stuff nor are women so as to be by nature better poised to
intuitively recognize the sense it makes, generally respond to my philosophies
in a patronizing or dismissive way, supposing that a guy with no history of
relationship, single and virgin, can’t know very much. But what they fail to
appreciate is the role restraint plays, and especially the fact that experience
doesn’t guarantee wisdom—wisdom can be learned willingly through study, without
the pain of your own mistakes forcing you to submit to it.
And so, I have fewer guy friends
because they’re more interested in chasing tail than having deep talks. Girls
are far more interested in that, and so it’s the easiest and most obvious way
for me to connect with them, conversationally.
That’s a long answer to a short question, and it constitutes a single
thought out of 1000.
~ Rak Chazak
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