Friends First (Part II) - The Christian Online Magazine

The Christian Online Magazine -

So, you’ve decided: you want a relationship based on love and not sex, you’re willing to wait, and you’ve even managed to talk your partner into it. Now what?

This is the part we don’t do a good enough job of in the “you should wait camp.” We don’t give options, and we don’t give practical advice on how to build a strong relationship from the beginning.

For years I have told other young ladies I think it’s important to be “friends first.” That means that even as you feel love’s power coming on, be willing to commit to a “friends first” relationship. How do you do that? First you have to find things to do that don’t involve the backseat of a car or somebody’s apartment.

The initial stage of friends first is casual dating and then dating. Go out with other friends together. Go bowling; go to the movies to watch the movie; go to the mall or the park. It doesn’t have to be expensive—actually it’s better if it’s not expensive. Expensive is meant to impress, and impress is what you do when you are operating from fear. Let your hair down, be yourself, and just have fun together.

Do things together that he likes to do. Do things together that she likes to do. Do things together that you both like to do. Go for a walk. Spend some time with each other’s family. Get to know more about the other person than how their outside happens to look.

The second stage of friends first involves work. (Yeah, first stage sounds so much more fun already, huh?) What I mean is find a mutual goal and work toward it together. Maybe this is helping his sister move or fixing a car or hanging curtains. If you can’t think of anything, find a charity that needs volunteers and go down together to help for a day.

This step is the one I feel most blessed to have enjoyed with the man who is now my husband. We are both workers by nature, and this step gave me a real sense that together we could accomplish anything. Some of the things we did: made play blocks and painted them for his nieces and nephews for Christmas, build a curio cabinet for my sister, helped his mom and dad switch houses with his brother and sister-in-law. We didn’t work together every minute of every day, but we did work together enough to learn a lot about each other.

How does he handle adversity? Does she make details important? When we’re with the other family, is it fun or is it awful? And who does he/she handle it when it’s awful? These are things you really need to know about the other person long before you say, “I do.”

Built into this stage and stage one is the admonition to take time for yourself and to allow your partner the space to do their own thing on their own. Very often when two people get together, they cling to each other to the exclusion of everyone else in their lives. I don’t consider this love either. This is control or jealousy (read: fear) not love. The implied message is: “I don’t feel like I can trust you if I let you out of my sight, so I’m just going to cling so tightly that you can’t let go.”

In fact, during the first two stages I think it’s important to not even have an exclusive relationship—I hear you gasping in shock. No, I think it’s important to be able to trust each other even when you know the other is free to go out with someone else. Doing this will tell you a lot about yourself and about the other person. There will be a time for exclusivity, but the initial phases of friends first is not that time.

The third stage enters the exclusivity stage when you both are deciding that “yes, this is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.” Sadly long before most couples have even reached this stage, they have already outwardly made the decision by sleeping together before they’ve inwardly even thought about it.

A relationship that breaks up at this stage is heart-wrenching for all involved. Both people have invested time and effort into this venture and now it’s over. What we fail to tell young people, however, is that just because the romantic, get-married relationship doesn’t work out—if you’ve avoided the trap of sex equals love, there is a good chance that the friendship built will endure past the break-up.

In the third stage of friends first, it’s time to get real and get honest. This isn’t about impressing anybody. This is about loving the other person enough to want them to make a good decision for their lives (which, by the way, is what that couple sleeping together before they even knew each other has never even considered). Wanting what’s best for the other person as well as for yourself is true love, so don’t skip this step because you think you might find out you don’t truly love each other. You may decide marriage isn’t right, but that decision can’t touch real love between two people who are already friends.

So how do you go about this step? Well: What do your finances look like? What does the other person’s finances look like? How do they handle money? Debt? Spending or saving? What type of education do you have? What type do you want? What do you think about kids and how should they be raised? What’s a husband’s role in the family? A wife’s? Who does what and how do we handle the things nobody wants to do?

There are a myriad of books on the market to help you through this process, and admittedly many of these questions you will already have either asked or you will know the answers to by this stage. Nonetheless, it is vitally important not to skip over this stage thinking, “Things will work out.” They may, but if there are genuine differences in thinking—now is the time to find those out.

Finally no discussion of friends first can be complete without talking a little about the spiritual aspect of the relationship. Even if you are of the same faith, it is important to share your beliefs and values with the other person openly. Go to church together. Talk about life and death and what you think it means and why we’re here. Learn about the person underneath the physical and deeper even than the mental or emotional. Take time to learn who this person really is.

Too many couples want the church wedding without building a spiritual relationship first. This is as much of a lie as you’d have sex with me if you really love me. If you want the church wedding, then start by working on having a spiritual relationship. If you do this, I can guarantee that church wedding will be all the more meaningful to all involved.

It’s important to note that if you’re in a marriage that your not happy with, one that may have been based on two bodies in a bed, maybe it’s time to start back at stage one of friends first. That would be the best investment in your marriage you could ever make.

Personally, I’m glad my husband and I were friends first. It makes those times that I don’t like him very much livable. Marriage isn’t always easy. In fact, there are times when he’s had a bad day, and she’s had a bad day. They come home, and the bad day is exponentially multiplied by putting the two together. Friends first doesn’t remove those bad days, but when they occur, neither partner questions the friendship—that part is by this point a given. Now all they have to do is figure out how to make the marriage work. With a strong enough foundation of friendship under you, you will always find a way back to each other in a marriage.

That friendship foundation is built a brick at a time over many weeks by loving each other enough from the very first time your gazes meet to make being friends first not just an option and not just a priority, but the only option you are even willing to consider. Because, in truth, this is the way to love the other person, to honor who they are, and to build enough faith and trust in the relationship to see you through any hard times that come your way.

Friends first. It’s the only way to have the relationship that everyone is so desperately seeking.