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best friend of the opposite sex

Author’s note: One of my perennially best-traveled posts remains Christian, Married, and Attracted Elsewhere. It’s not unusual to be attracted to or feel connection with someone else.

But as followers of Jesus–how do we handle it? Is it kosher to be married and have a best friend of the opposite sex who’s not your spouse?

To be clear, I think it’s 100% healthy to be married and

  • have a best friendship of the same sex. (If you’re same-sex attracted, use wisdom with your same-sex relationships, but by all means, cultivate deep and meaningful friendships! Consider Wesley Hill’s book, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian.)
  • have friends of the opposite sex. As a married woman, I find such richness in friendships with men, and my husband is a better man because of his true connection in his relationships with women. As a safeguard, he and I communicate openly when we’ve had a connecting conversation with someone of the opposite sex. 

Today, I’m grabbing another cup of coffee with you about whether it’s cool to be married but have a best friend of the opposite sex.

Whatcha think? Can I have a best friend of the opposite sex?

Hey. Thanks for your honesty about what’s going on.

Sometimes, when you’re lonely, or things between you and your spouse have changed, or someone just finally gets you, sees you: Feeling known at last feels like a drink of water in a desert.

You feel worthy of being pursued, at last. And worthy of connection. So you might feel this friendship lifts a weight you weren’t sure you could bear.

I can’t fault you for longing for true connection: The longing itself is legitimate.

When God said it wasn’t good for man (…or woman) to be alone, he was hinting at the way we were made for community.

Because he is community.

You read that right. Three persons, acting as such intimate community, they’re one. It was the daily prayer, the Shema, of the Hebrews: The Lord Our God, the Lord is One (Deuteronomy 6:4).

And Jesus alludes to his people having that same flawless unity, so the world would see God:

that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:21)

Looking at Creation, we see a striking unity in diversity we’re drawn to–dark/light, land/sea, man/woman–that somehow represents God. We long for real connection.

Asking the right questions

So that brings up my first question for you.

How does this person–not your spouse–make you feel? What hunger is finally met? 

And that begs more questions. (Heads-up: I’m a question-asker.) I’d love your real answers, so we can cut through to what’s real.

Was your spouse ever that person? What was it like when you first got together?

Hold here for a minute. Around the world, people marry for reasons other than friendship and emotional connection.

Maybe it’s financial stability. Alliance of families or groups. Protection and provision. Or maybe you were young, and you wanted different things, or didn’t know better, or you and your spouse have grown into very different people.

Not everyone marries for love.

And for some, love doesn’t equal “you’re my best friend.”

When you married, it might have looked like, We are committed to each other. We meet each other’s needs. You remind me of my dad. You help me get something valuable to me. We’re pregnant, so why not? I admire or respect you. We make a good couple.

Or even, There’s a significant amount of lust between us.

I could be wrong–but I assume a best friend of the opposite sex happens outside of marriage because something isn’t clicking within the marriage.

Questions, Round #2

That said: I have more questions for you.

  • If you’re not emotionally connected to your spouse right now, what’s the story of how they become not that person? What’s your marriage like now?
  • If they weren’t ever that person, why did you get married? Or what else made you fall for them?
  • How has that become unsatisfying–and/or how has this best friend of the opposite sex become more satisfying?

And finally–

  • What do you think God thinks of this friendship? 

If you’re not emotionally connected to your mate now and you are connected to someone of the opposite sex?

Things arguably get dicey.

Why could a best friend of the opposite sex be dicey?

  • Your brain and body are now awakened to sexuality. Both will tend to point in that direction as emotional connection deepens with the opposite sex.
  • God put you together. No matter how you came to be married,

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Mark 10:7, emphasis added)

And your marriage, your faithfulness–that seamless unity I talked about earlier–shows the world how he loves his people. For better, for worse. Whether we are rich or poor or sick or healthy. Until death.

  • As it deepens, emotional connection with someone else almost always pulls you away at the heart level from your spouse. Your lack of connection with your spouse may become more pronounced or unsatisfactory. That oneness God created for marriage may start to splinter.

You might wish that person were your spouse. (Maybe you can see how seeds of unfaithfulness start sprouting here, deep in the soil of your heart, long before a single button unbuttons.)

Questions, Round #3

Maybe you’re starting to agree with me that for a married follower of Jesus, emotional attachment can be problematic.

If so, let’s continue to be curious. Because unless you think deeper about what brought you here, your heart could keep starving.

(Scroll down here for 12 Signs of an Insecure Marriage.)

  • When you’re honest, what kind of attraction do you feel toward your best friend? When do you feel it?
  • How are you pursuing friendship with your spouse? (Is it enough?)
  • How does your best friend enter into your fantasies? (Check out Matthew 5:28.)
  • How could these fantasies serve as a map to what you long for–and what God might long to restore in you? (Counselor Jay Stringer’s Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing comes highly recommended to me, and so far I love what I’m reading.)
  • Would you want your spouse to have these thoughts and this connection with someone else? (And I’m not talking just so you could feel better about this friendship. Nice try.)
    For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13)

What should I do?

If you’re getting the idea I don’t think you can pursue a healthy marriage and a best friend of the opposite sex?

You’d be right.

 

And it’s time to break ties.

Yep. Every. One. (Check out Matthew 5:29, if you think this is extreme.)

 

Allow me an example here. When my family lived in Africa, any time my kids would get a fever (and there were plenty), I had to prick their finger to test for malaria with these small, pregnancy-test-looking kits. You can imagine how fun that was with a sick toddler.

During our time there, a man came on a short-term trip during our tenure. He developed the symptoms, but failed to test and treat.

His family, stunned, had to retrieve his body at the airport.

Malaria is a parasite, see. It consumes the blood of the infected.

And emotional affairs can be similarly swift and fatal—partially because we aren’t honest about them with ourselves. With God. Jeremiah warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (17:9).

Got a best friend of the opposite sex? Here’s what not to overestimate

Another question.

 Do you truly believe God’s ways are the ways of health and flourishing, the best for you and everyone affected?

Do you believe He can be enough, and provide for you, in all you long for?

How much are you willing to put behind that?

Picture Joseph fleeing from Potiphar’s wife, to the extent he left his coat in her hand.

Were there risks? You bet.

She lied to his boss. He lost his job. The whole thing landed him in prison for years. But Joseph chose in that moment to serve God with his whole self.

But again, in the theme of honesty–do you think your heart will be like, “Oh, no problem. I’ll see them now and again, and just start to simmer down.”

James reminds me, “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire…Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 1:14, 4:7).

And in Matthew: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (26:41).

Yes, God gives me ways out (1 Corinthians 10:31). But I’m prone to overestimate my ability.

 

I know these words probably feel hard.

I hope you can hear how I mean them: As someone who cares about you enough to look you in the eyes and tell you what’s true.

Only us

I’ve been poking around in Song of Solomon lately. A friend recommended its picture of love–including sexual love–for me to explore the imagery of God’s delight in us. It showcases his pursuit of our whole person, and vice versa.

See, Dr. Juli Slattery points out that sex shows God’s covenant love to our holistic selves in four crucial ways: faithfulness, intimate knowing, sacrificial love, and passionate celebration.

The bedroom acts as a microcosm of our whole relationship: What’s showing up in the bedroom illustrates what’s healthy or broken elsewhere.

Don’t miss WHY YOUR MARRIAGE NEEDS SEX

And one thing we see in the bedroom, as in Song of Solomon, is the beauty of singular focus.

Only you. Only us. This is our secret garden. 

How could we be truly singular there–one flesh, one us–in the bedroom, but not singular emotionally? 

Would God allow his heart to pull away from His bride? From us, his people?

Your marriage represents God not only to your spouse and your self, but to the world. Pursue the oneness it deserves.

 

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