Friendship.

I think one of my stupidest tendencies is to measure my definition of something by what everyone else thinks it is.

This sharing is going to feel pretty vulnerable, so please be kind and try not to judge me.

I have been questioning exactly what a “friend” is for quite awhile. This stemmed from many different things converging. The social network these days calls everyone in my network a friend – even some classmates that I haven’t talked to since that one class 4 years ago. Also the mass of new people I meet each year at church, through small groups, ministries, and random events, add up to a lot of faces that I could call a “brother or sister”. Are these really friends?

I remember a conversation with a girl about my confusion and lack of clarity. Is there a line between “ministry” and “friendship”? When I led a small group, I spent a large portion of my time either with them or thinking about them. I invested a lot of time into these people because I really wanted to learn to love them – and to some extent, I really did love them. So, are they my friends?

A “friend” feels like such a relative term to me these days, and I’m honestly befuddled when I try to “count my friends”. Does anyone else do this? I am at a loss sometimes when I try to decide what makes someone a friend and what makes someone just an acquaintance. How do you measure a friendship? How do you know if it’s still as good of a friendship as you thought it was? People are constantly changing, so it makes sense that relationships follow suit. So how does one honestly and accurately evaluate something like a friendship?

I’m finally seeing the reason and motivation behind my need to “define” my friendships. It’s actually a self-protective mechanism that is masked by the seemingly pure desire to act appropriately with people. Let me explain.

If a person sees me as their best friend ever, I want to know so that I can appropriately respond. I wouldn’t want to hurt them and let them down. On the other hand, if a person only sees me as a ministry partner, someone they call to pick up things and do certain tasks, then I don’t want to burden them with the emotional expectations that come with anything more than that. It’s a very reaction-based tendency.

All of this seems innocent enough until I realized it is because I don’t want to be hurt or rejected myself. So rather than pursing the people I like/enjoy the company of, I sit and wait for people to initiate. It’s a very people-fearing way to live. (This isn’t a cover-all explanation, just my tendencies).

In the first case described above, I don’t want to hurt them, but I don’t want to fail their expectations because then I’d potentially lose a “best friend ever”. It’s not that I love them whole-heartedly and want the best for them (though of course sometimes I do), it is often driven by a fear of them potentially no longer want to be my best friend ever. Similarly, with the second case, I want to know if they only see me as a certain role/position, because then I’ll know not to expect anything more out of the relationship. But the sinful side is this: it’s not just a lack of expectation from them, it’s also a mental note not to invest in this relationship from my side – because I’d be rejected or it wouldn’t yield “much” since they are not genuinely interested.

Since realistically speaking, I cannot go up to every person I see and ask “are we friends?” (though sometimes I do, sorry), I have turned to really superficial and unreliable methods to answer the question myself.

How often do we communicate through email? How much do they write on my Facebook wall compared to other people’s walls? How much do they want to spend time with me compared to others? Do they look happy when they see me? Do they look burdened when I ask to hangout or to grab dinner? What do they share about when we get to talk? Do they think of me randomly?

I started to use how other people seem to define their friendships to define my own. It is so unreliable, and I know it too, but I still do it.

Being a feeler, once I start to feel like a person isn’t investing in our relationship as much as s/he used to, it’s really hard for me to fight it. As someone who doesn’t want to face the day when she’ll ultimately get rejected, I end up “dropping” them instead. Usually, I’ll assume that time & distance have separated us and for one reason or another, I need to “move on”. It’s a reject-before-being-rejected kind of thing.

Ironically, this tendency to “drop friends” to protect myself actually gives me what I fear – rejection from friends. Funny how that works, right? But logically, it does make sense… if you drop someone and start being cold, they’ll feel hurt and rejected so they may want to “let go” as well, and then it cycles back to you. All of this may have been avoided if you had not started being cold to protect yourself in the first place. It’s such a messed up cycle, but I still find myself trapped in it.

One thing that has started to breakthrough this terrible perspective was when I read a simple sentence:

“Love does not measure”.

Wow. It’s so simple. It was after reading this that I started to see through my motivations of why I want appropriate relationships so much.

When 1 Corinthians 13 talks about love, it says to “keep no record of wrongs”. Perhaps I have misunderstood the heart behind this verse. Perhaps more than the record of wrongs, love keeps no record, period. It is not a I’ll love you more if.. or I’ll love you less if.. kind of thing.

These days, I’m really trying hard to see each friendship as a special relationship and fight the desire to compare. It’s not easy, because many times I still doubt and wonder if I’m “investing in nothing”. But, I really do believe it is time to take my protective eyes off of myself. In order to understand love, I need to learn to love. And for me to love, I need to know Love.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

– Romans 5:8

The Gospel is the greatest love story; God did not wait or test to see how much we will want to be associated with him first, he simply loves us maximally, all the time.