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Of Friends and Boyfriends

Feeling a Little Dumped

Sigh. We've all been there. A good friend gets a boyfriend, and suddenly she's not so easy to find. "Oh, you're not coming after all? Hey, it's cool. No, really, it's cool. No big deal that it's the third time this week. I'm sure I can find someone else to use your ticket. No, seriously, you go have fun."

Grr.

To a certain extent, it's understandable. I mean, things change. Friendships go through seasons, and I think we can expect a certain amount of turnover in our circles of friends as people get married, move away or become more involved in activities that we're not part of. (Who among us hasn't lost a friend to competitive pingpong?) Spending less time with friends who have new boyfriends is just one of those immutable aspects of human interaction.

But it's kind of sad, isn't it? There's the loss feeling, and the left-out feeling, and the loneliness feeling. (All of these things, by the way, make the friend-gets-boyfriend storyline perfect fodder for shows like "Full House." Remember how Kimmy got all upset when DJ forgot her 16th birthday because it fell on DJ and Steve's anniversary? I do.) And sometimes those tricky feelings compound when we're pretty sure our friend has moved her new beau to the tippy top of her priority list, at the expense of everything else.

And then it's not just sad. It's also a little scary and confusing.

Tunnel Vision

Why do we even do this in the first place? Because just as we've all been ditched for a guy, I'm pretty sure we've all ditched someone for a guy, to some degree or another. Why does the boyfriend thing take up so much space in our consciousness?

Quite honestly: Beats me. Maybe it's a self-esteem thing. Maybe we place too much importance on having a boyfriend and require a romantic relationship to feel OK about ourselves. Or maybe it's not so malignant. Maybe we just want to be with someone — sometimes so much that, when he finally comes along, we'll do whatever we can to hang on to him.

It's not wrong to want to be with someone, obviously. There's an eternal truth at play: marriage = good, and most marriages seem to spring up from at least semi-romantic relationships. And it's probably completely normal to get a little caught up in a new romance — those budding habits and dynamics need a little attention to get off to the right start. But if we start to lose our sense of identity in a relationship, or if we become unable to simultaneously nurture that particular relationship and other areas of our lives — including friendships — we might have a real problem.

Why? For one thing, it has shades of "Someday My Prince Will Come" — the belief that everything will be OK once the right guy comes along and makes our lives great, which I'm nearly positive never happens in real life. I mean, nothing is a fairy tale, and real-world relationships take mutual commitment, not Cinderella perfection. (Take a breath, Jessica.)

Right. Anyway. When we devote our sole focus to one relationship, we're sending up red flags in other areas as well. There's the possibility that we're unduly deriving our sense of worth and value from the guy we're seeing, and that's both dangerous and ridiculously easy to do.

There's also the possibility that we've anchored ourselves so tightly to the relationship that we start to float away from things like faith and other values we used to hold. And that's not cool either.

Finding Our Own Way

A big part of leaving home is finding one's own identity. We tend to look fairly different coming out of college than we did going in. We've had time to solidify our beliefs and have a few formative experiences, and, hopefully, we emerge with at least a vaguely defined sense of personal mission and purpose. One might even say a better informed "worldview," eh?

And the thing about personal missions is that they need to be personal. We all have creeds by which we conduct our lives; doesn't it seem much better if we actually, personally believe those creeds to our core, rather than merely accept them because of someone else?¹

Now, I don't believe that faith is completely individual. I don't think we should try to go it alone as we sort out our beliefs; I think real, meaningful faith is communal. But if a new relationship starts to take us away from our faith and from our faith community, I think it's time to ask ourselves what effect that relationship is having on our spiritual development. Is spending time with our special someone really helping us form our own beliefs? Or is it just giving us a new, pre-approved set of ideas? Or, is it lulling us into a comfortable haze of finally belonging, which feels so nice that we drift into apathy?

I guess we have to remember that we all need a lot of things. We need the affirmation a romantic relationship can bring, yes; but we also need a sense of our own identity, and we need to own our beliefs. We also need non-romantic friends — people to share the road we're on, people who can warn us when we need a warning. Sometimes we don't realize we're doing it, but we can't afford to neglect friends or faith in favor of something else.

Hang in There

So, anyway. I usually like to start my articles with a longish, somewhat self-absorbed anecdote; you'll notice that this article is missing that particular kind of intro. The reason for this is that I can't say I've experienced an especially meaningful resolution to the where's-my-friend scenario. Yeah, I've had friends all but disappear after the arrival of a boyfriend (one of my best friends even forgot my 16th birthday, which I guess means my life mirrors Kimmy Gibbler's more closely than I'd prefer). But as time went on … well, time went on. We got back on track, or I came to accept that my friend and I would see each other less often, or both.

I think the solution for all of us — whether we're the one feeling dumped or the one doing some unintentional dumping — is simply to pursue friendship: "Hey, let's hang out. I want to hang out." We all need community. And we all have to pursue it actively. (One might add, a truly good romantic relationship won't hinder community, but help it.)

If you suspect your friend's relationship is pulling her away from healthy things, well, I think you're going to have to talk to her. Pray for wisdom and be gentle, but talk to her. Bring cookies.

Be forewarned that she may not hear you. I have this theory that when it comes to the romantic, people do more or less exactly what they want. The whole romance thing is so close to the core of our being, and often so close to parts of us that are hurt, that we don't always act rationally. At all.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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How have you dealt with losing a friend?

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Maybe that's one more reason we need to be faithful to each other as friends, and faithful to give each other to God as we navigate life and love together. We can't make it on our own. So even as friendships go through their ups and downs, we're wise to hang in there.