In Christian life, the merging of two people as one in the eyes of God is something very, very profound and, sometimes, unfathomable. When God leads two people to marry, He's asking them to combine everything they know, have, and are to make a new unit. It's about not keeping secrets. It's about sharing everything in your heart and home. It's about merging families and about creating something new from two old things.
And that new thing includes the wonderful, dangerous thing called friendship.
In today's world where both men and women live single lives that have family gatherings, educational adventures, personal hobbies, and social practices even before they meet their future spouse, the merging of two people into a new social unit can be a more extensive process than one expects. Every time a couple gets together, gets engaged, or gets married, there are multiple social adjustments on their way.
Family members need to be introduced. Past stories need to be recounted. Daily tasks need to be discussed, and future plans need to be shared.
And one of those crucial areas of adjustment - is friendship, particularly with friends of the opposite gender.
My husband grew up with two sisters and numerous female cousins. While his close friends growing up were mostly boys, there have always been female friends for him in church, in school, and in other areas of life. I grew up with two brothers. That ratio in our home has made me enjoy hobbies and intellectual discussions with guy friends all my life. No matter my stage in life, I almost always had as many male friends as female friends.
That background meant that we needed to learn to share our friends, extensively.
In our marriage, we've agreed to never maintain opposite-sex friendship for any individual. In other words, I will not maintain close friendships with my guy friends (or make new guy friends) without including my husband. My husband will not maintain close friendships with his female friends (or make new female friends) without including me.
It makes for an interesting mix.
Because we aim for that particular sort of marriage, we end up having three kinds of cherished friends in the long run:
1. Couple friends - where the boy and girl are friends with both of us.
2. Single friends - individual guys and gals who are close to both of us.
3. Same gender friends - female friends I keep in touch with, or guy friends my husband keeps in touch with, often without the other spouse involved.
That list, of course, is more of a generalization. There are also cousin friends and work friends. There are social media friends and strangers-turned-friends we meet in the most random gatherings and places. There are many different sources and kinds of friends.
But, still, anyone that grows to be a long-term personal friend belongs in one of the three categories.
These things don't happen overnight.
Just because we both agree we only want to maintain those three sorts of close friendships doesn't mean we automatically have them.
In order to grow socially from two individuals to one, we had to make a few adjustments.
1. Share friends. The first thing, and often the happiest and simplest thing, is to introduce existing friends to each other. Whenever I meet a college friend, I might contact the girls on my own but always involve my husband when we meet the guys. When we visit my husband's hometown, he introduces me to all of his friends (male and female) and goes out with any of them only when I accompany him. Existing friends of one spouse can become new friends of both spouses - and it's a wonderful thing to share life that way
2. Find friends. Sometimes, it's not so easy to share existing friends. Maybe there's a distance thing. Maybe there's bad blood. Maybe there's the simple fact that spouses and friends may speak different languages, come from different cultures, or enjoy different things. Maybe there's no time or chance to meet up. Sometimes, in the most serendipitous ways, God leads us to new people who will befriend both of us in unique ways. I never advocate "replacing" friends by ignoring past friends and intentionally finding new ones. I do advocate being open to God's leading - and to the people He may place in our lives in a new chapter.
3. Choose friends. Now, this is the most controversial of our choices. We believe - unanimously - that if any of our friends simply refuse to include our spouse in the friendship, then we must prioritize our spouse. Refusal, of course, can come in different forms. Just because a female friend, whom we share, has more common topics with my husband isn't wrong. Just because a guy friend of ours alternates talking to me, to my husband, and to both of us isn't bad. Refusal is involved when a friend bad-mouths or belittles our spouse. Refusal is involved when a guy just wants to be friends with me, without my husband; or, vice versa, when a girl just wants to be friends with him, without me. Any friend who insists on that - is offering a friendship we're afraid we can't maintain.
It's all nice theoretically, but we often have to take some physical steps before we can achieve what we both believe in.
When we communicate with any opposite-gender friends, we talk about it with our spouse. When we talk extensively with any opposite-gender friends - online or in person - we try our best to include our spouse in the conversation (which means we have lots and lots of three-persons or four-persons Viber groups, even if only two people are doing the actual talking). We know each other's account passwords for e-mail, social media, gadgets, etc., if not share our accounts altogether.
We never promise to keep secrets from each other - and tell anyone who confides in us that our spouse will know all. We never plan, and wholeheartedly avoid, isolated time with friends of the opposite sex, from sharing a car to grabbing coffee to grabbing lunch. We never spend more than a week or a few days apart, whether it's for work, for family, or for ministry. We want our social choices to reflect the fact that we are one, not two.
All couples who adhere to the same principles have their own ways of making sure they are never socially isolated with people of the opposite sex. Many of our pastors share e-mails as husband and wife. My father will include his driver in a meal when he's accompanied by a female colleague. My husband's family encourages wives to accompany their husbands on business trips. Some of our friends will always bring their spouse to any social activity. Some other friends share all their mail and e-mail and financial transactions.
How we strive for the same goals can vary. The means is not absolute.
What is absolute is the goal of safeguarding and protecting our marriage - of making sure that we never jeopardize it by allowing any friend to become more important to us than our spouse is. What is absolute is the need to treasure our marriage - and to never allow anything, even something as great as friendship, to have the chance of getting in the way.
