Category Archives: Relationships

Do nice guys finish last? Is pleasant unpalatable?

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with , , ,

Sometimes I wish I was someone else.

Sometimes I wish I had a little more bravado. Sometimes I wish I laughed at things other people found funny. I wish I was more spontaneous. I wish I was unpredictable. Surprising. I wish I had that edge. Whatever that edge maybe.

That edge that makes guys attractive to girls. And makes dates more than pleasant.

Because sometimes I think I am dull. Just dull. Barely making the mark of mediocrity known as pleasant.

Sometimes I wish I was someone else.

Someone better, scrap that, not better necessarily. Better is a bit too much like nice which is a bit too much like pleasant which sounds rather like code for dull. Different, I want to be different.

nice-guy-emotionsYesterday Threads’ anonymous Girl About Town wrote about her date with pleasant Christian guy. And it provoked quite a reaction. Guys split down the middle between trying to demonstrate their ‘fun’ credentials, and those like myself who sneered at the somewhat faux virility and opted instead for self-deprecation. An elaborate double bluff showcasing introversion and nerd like pursuits as a masquerade to shield insecurities.

It’s a cliché that good guys finish last, but sometimes that is what it feels like. It feels as though to achieve success in one part of life I have to screw up a little more. I could swear here to make my point with added weight but I don’t want to. I prefer not to swear.

We turn finding someone to build a relationship with into a game, where there is success and failure, and we are tempted to try and stack our hand. We weigh percentages and hunches and work out what would give us an advantage. Wondering whether if we were someone else the road might be easier. Wondering if a new identity might help. Thinking the grass is always greener through our rose tinted glasses.

We want everything to be okay, we want to be without blemish so we erect structures and façades to shelter our fragile self. We are told there are ways to behave, things to do and not to do, and knowing that we don’t always live up to that we sometimes try to present an image that we do.

I think that if I wear the costume enough it might become a second skin. It is never quite home, but close enough that I lose sight of the ways it betrays me.

Sara Kewly Hyde commented: “I think sometimes rather than discovering the fabulous and unique individual God’s made them to be, some men (people) are trying to be what impresses others and that in turn can lead to… Well a whole host of insecurities, the fruit of which is sometimes blandness… I think as Christians we also struggle to assimilate our dark or shadow side so at times repress it rather than asking God to glorify himself through it. Repression can also = pleasant but nowt else. If we allowed our imperfections to be as visible as our good bits then it’s unlikely ‘pleasant’ would be the adjective de jour here. Pleasant is great if accompanied by other adjectives.”

Another friend simply said: “pleasant might also mean stifled”.

When guys hear they are too pleasant, the immediate reaction can be to add another layer of characteristics they think might help. So as well as being the good Christian guy they also need to be the Alpha male chopping down trees, skinning rabbits and rescuing the damsel in distress. I mock to make a point.

Christian guys are told to pursue, protect, provide and pastor, and that becomes another list of things they ought to do to make the mark. If they are being rejected as dull, dismissed as pleasant, then they are not doing enough to woo the women. Emily Maynard commented on cultural norms that so heavily circumscribe Christian dating, which create a culture imbued with such deep, existential morals and genderised stereotypes. And the fear of slipping into sin or causing someone else to sin.

We are afraid of doing it wrong. Asking the wrong girl out, acting improperly, not being sufficiently chivalrous, not picking up on signals, showing too much affection, or more likely not enough. And under the weight of it, all that emerges is a bland pleasantness that might not be offensive but betrays its insincerity. It can also freeze us into inactivity.

The layers of personhood expected to be worn to fulfil the role of the right Christian guy become so deep personhood is lost. In trying to be something we stop being ourselves.

Here’s the challenge, I get the thrill of the different, the exciting, the edgy, but telling Christian guys they are too pleasant puts them on the defensive. It knocks their security and only encourages more layers covering over who they are.

Truly pleasant

Being nice is not bad. Being pleasant is not just about being polite. And good guys do not need to finish last. But if the pleasantries are a charade or a forced manicure they leave an emptiness where you or I should be.

Dave Shearn put it like this: “I think lots of us are non-committal and non-confrontational in the name of being ‘loving’ and that is lame. Passive aggression and people not agreeing with God that he made them awesome also doesn’t help.”

I also wonder if there’s a false dichotomy that’s being set up between atheist-guy and pleasant-guy, is the very fact atheist-guy is such what gives him that edge? Pseudo-rebellious was the way someone put it. It’s not that Christians are necessarily more dull than anyone else, but they are known and to some degree safe, and sometimes an element of danger is alluring.

The unknown can be attractive but it is also dangerous. Because I hope one day to be fully known and to know someone fully. I want safety to be a good thing. In the long run maybe pleasantness is a valuable attribute.

That don’t impress me much

I want to marry someone who loves me, and not love who I might pretend to be. Someone who knows me with my frailties and my failings, who sees my longings and my hopes and dreams. But I also want to be a better man. And I think it is a noble thing to want to be with someone who prompts you to be your better self. Not some act to be more edgy or less pleasant. But to find the ways I can glorify God more fully. To see the ways I can live a more holy life. To bear witness to the image of God that gives me dignity and humanity. To echo in a quiet whisper the love that has been given me.

And be all of it. No one is just one thing. No one is just pleasant. No one is just dull. No one is just boring. And no one is just exciting, edgy or different. We are whole people with a breadth of characteristics and being pleasant is a good one to own. But if that’s all you see yourself as no wonder that don’t impress her.

And I think trying to impress a girl who takes your fancy is a good thing. As long as the impression you’re making is yours to give.

PS while writing this a friend tweeted a link to an interesting sermon on ‘new rules for love, sex and dating’ so I thought I’d share it.

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Is finding a wife like shopping for shoes?

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with , , , , ,

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Are you looking for a wife? Or, are you happy being single?

That wasn’t quite the question put to me but it sums up the sentiment. That it is a choice. And that either I am happy being single or I should start shopping.

Because that seems to be the mentality. Looking for a spouse attracting the same approach as I might take to hunting down a new pair of shoes, or maybe to give it a little more seriousness, similar to buying a flat.

Maybe I should confess that I’m not very good at buying shoes. I don’t find the process difficult, it is not a particularly complex task to complete. I just don’t do it. I have a smart pair and a casual pair and wear them until their resemblance to footwear is solely a historic recollection. I also have sandals for the summer, slippers for the winter and climbing shoes for, well, climbing.

But last year I bought a flat and that was a big decision, it was a task I gave myself to. There were things to do, some time consuming but mundane, others swift but significant. Putting in an offer, signing for a mortgage, collecting keys. There were words spoken and written, the handover of a set of metallic objects. Yet it was much more than that, the simple acts were imbued with significance, they meant something because of what linked them together, where they came from and what that signalled.

So I wonder, is finding someone to spend the rest of your life with like buying a house, and stripping the complexities away to push the point, is it like shopping for any other item?

When I go shoe shopping it’s not for a luxury, but for something I urgently need. Therefore I refuse to let myself come home empty handed. And when I bought my flat I had decided I was going to do so, I took some time but eventually made a decision. It was a big decision but it was not an irrevocable one. I can sell, I can let. It is a material possession.

When we buy something we choose to get something over nothing. We decide that while there are better or worse options, having something is better than having nothing at all.

I don’t believe that getting married is more important than getting married to the right person.

I don’t think getting married is like buying shoes, or a flat. Finding someone to spend your life with is not a consumer experience. It is a dance of emotions and expectations and hopes and dreams. It is prospect that absence may take the place of something.

Maybe it is like Schrödinger’s cat. Until you open the box you don’t know if the cat is dead or alive, so by some ridiculous chain of logic which I cannot begin to fathom, the cat is both dead and alive. Maybe you can be both living life to the full as a single person and want to get married. And until something happens you are both.

If I’m in a relationship it’s not much good living life to the full in my singleness, I don’t think that relationship would last very long. But until that point I am living in a contested reality, there are alternative routes that my life can take and I need to be open to pursuing either while acknowledge one would close off the other.

And that can sometimes stop you from opening the box. Not wanting to close down options can prevent you from making a choice. Sometimes I can be paralysed by indecision, and the multitude of options, and potential future options can cast me in formaldehyde and root me to the spot. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t a choice.

But the choice is what gives it meaning. The choice to take a risk and do something you don’t essentially have to do. Doing something you could live without, doing something that will limit your further choices, doing something that will stop you from always thinking that something better could come along.

Because getting married isn’t a step in life improvement, it isn’t a way of becoming more complete. It isn’t an accessory to make you more glamorous, or an investment to make you more secure.

And it is neither mail order nor magic. It is not a formulaic process or the result of an abracadabra. Relationships do not just happen and we cannot script them.

But we live them and we love them, and in them we find life and we find love. And if that’s how you think about your shoes I recommend some therapy.

What do single Christians want their church leaders to do?

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with , , , ,

SinglenessTonight I went along to a Christian Connection event reporting back on a survey of 3000 people, mostly users of their dating site, about singleness and the church. David Pullinger analysed the data and presented results focusing on what single Christians appreciated about church, and what they found difficult.

The results are still being finalised, and more formalised reporting will come in due course, and some of the results have already been reported. But a couple of comments immediately stood out.

  • Only 1/3 of single men aged 30-44 socialise with their friends at least once a week. This is a significant drop from those younger than this and is not matched by a similar decline among women.
  • Single women often find married couples reticent to offer hospitality, and this seems to be related to a perceived threat to their marriage. Single women often work, don’t care for children and as a result often find they have more in common with the husband than the wife. I’m fascinated to look into this more and eagerly await seeing the data.
  • And there was a list of twelve things single Christians would like their church leaders to do, in order of importance…
  1. Give talks about singleness
  2. Organise or enable social and fun activities
  3. Hospitality
  4. Provide models of singleness
  5. Pray personally or in the church
  6. Be inclusive in all church activities
  7. Organise or enable single groups
  8. Be in contact, through phone, email or text
  9. Provide or facilitate practical help
  10. Provide practical help in finding a partner
  11. Knowing and recommending singles events
  12. Seeking the single person’s viewpoint

It’s an interesting list, and some I certainly agree with. But in all of this I had a recurring question, is there a danger of entrenching an identity of singleness, and possibly as a result seeing identity defined by the absence of a partner, rather than the many other things which make up the individual’s character.

Is singleness something which should be seen as an identity? If you’re single is it a label you use or appreciate? Or do you think it can do more damage than good?

We need to talk about singleness

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with ,

singleFirst up, a confession: I was once a junior chess champion. I even got a medal for it. So there’s nothing wrong with joining a chess club to find a date.

I don’t think we talk too much about relationships. But I do think we’re not very good at talking about relationships.

The conversation might vary depending on who it is with, it is different with married friend to those who are also single. But there are some people who I know I will pretty much have the same conversation with whenever I see them, especially if I don’t see them very often. Miriam Skinner’s comments about ‘Martin in the blue jumper’ hit a little close to home. I’ll mention someone in a slightly off-the-cuff but almost obligatory response who I have taken a fancy to, who will then be brought up when I next see someone even if it’s a year later.

Miriam’s article is amusing and clever and filled with plenty of wisdom. But I think I disagree with its core message – that we talk about relationships too much. I don’t think we do, I think we easily slip into stale formulaic conversations that you could record in advance and hit play when the questions arise, and that needs to change. I also think we need to match our words with action, so that frustration is not left to fester.

We waste a lot of breathe and emotional agony on shooting the breeze, feigning sincerity when we speak barely masked gossip. Discussing the relative merits of courting over dating, contemplating whether to use an internet dating site, analysing the minutia of the actions of the opposite sex. Looking for clues about where romance lies and where it leads. Asking each other for advice which more often simply serves as affirmation for our intransigence.

I have a rule that I’ve developed over the past few years: most people who are single would rather not be. Rocket science, I know. Some people are happy – or content, to use the phrase de jour – in their present singleness, and a few think that is how things will always be. But for most people I know, even if they don’t see a relationship as important at the moment envisage themselves at some point with someone, or might like that to happen. I can say I am content being single and would yet might not want that to be the end of the story.

And I do not think that is a problem.

The Church should value and affirm singleness. And not just as a stage of life to exercise patience in. The Church should be aware of the ways its structures, processes and events can sometimes become hard to access for those without families or a husband or wife. I’ve heard of dinner parties that suddenly open up when the first ring goes on the finger: ‘my fiancé and I’ is the password to a new social circle.

Being in a relationship does not remove our need for God, it does not lessen out dependence on him, but I don’t think it needs to be a trade off. I think you can want a lot from romance and get even more from God. In some way the closeness of our human relationships with someone else reflect the way God makes himself known to us, and wants to know us more. We get to have both.

Here’s a hunch I have no way of verifying: if you get married the conversations don’t go away. The same sort of inquisition the Spanish would be proud of probes into new areas, and probably the banality of formulaic conversations won’t go away either. It might be a children, or buying a house. It might be about your sex life, or lack thereof. It might be about lust. Because that doesn’t go away either.

How do we talk about relationships in a way that is not formulaic and does not suggest that the shift from single to married is somehow answering a problem? I don’t know. It is hard.

But not talking about it won’t make the longing many people have go away. But it might, and I absolutely do not consider this to be what Miriam was saying, make people less willing to say words that are hard to say. To admit frailty in knowing who they like and whether they do. To say the person who caught their fancy last week is not in the picture any more. To speak of fears and hopes. To verbalise feelings and emotions that might get lost in a vacuum of solitude.

We probably need to cut out a lot of the crap from our conversations. The flip side is that we do just need to get on with stuff. Relationships, and I don’t just mean the romantic sort, are best built when we do something. As much as I like a relaxing evening in the pub there is something productive about activity, even if it’s playing games or cooking food. Much more if it is some sort of quest, some daring adventure, overcoming foes and reaching for the prize. Sorry, got carried away there.

I don’t mean just guys man-ing up and asking girls out, I mean helping each other, being the go between like we did at school discos when we were twelve. We could even set up our own dating service, I’m thinking ‘Church’ would be a great name for a place to meet and introduce people.

And when talking about relationships…

  • Accept that Sarah, the short brunette mentioned last week might not be someone’s eternal destiny
  • Talk about specifics, don’t let conversations become generic and repetitive, ‘oh there’s someone I like but I’m not sure whether they like me, or if I like them enough’.
  • Talk about beauty and attraction more than lust. Attraction is a good thing.
  • Talk about faith and where our identity and security is coming from (see I agree with Miriam there too).

Christian Connection has carried out research into the views of single Christians in the UK and are presenting the findings at an event in London next Tuesday (23rd April). I’ll be there and having seen a sneak peek of a few of the findings I can assure you it will be fascinating.

Virginity and Christian expectation

Posted by Danny Webster in Faith and Failure, Relationships and tagged with , , , , ,

Last week I nearly didn’t go to church, I was bored of all the same words spoken. I was frustrated with the expectations and event management. I had had enough of having enough. I got annoyed with the words that people spoke, and found objections to the smallest of things. There was something deeply out of step, and going to church only made that worse.

Tomorrow I will walk through the doors again, partly out of habit, and partly out of a determination not to let my disenchantment beat me, partly because I still believe the church to be a good thing. But also out of pride.

Out of pride that I don’t want to let my guard down, I don’t want people to know that everything is not quite a-okay. Slightly defeated by writing this post.

I feel as though I have an image to protect. That of the sorted Christian. The one who doesn’t have doubts or struggles, the one who knows which verses to quote at which point, who knows the right point in songs to raise their arms in worship. The one who knows just how much sarcasm and cynicism about church culture is acceptable.

This is probably the most vulnerable thing I have ever written, I can write about relationships and keep that at arms length, I can write about being single, even in deeply personal terms and manage that. I can throw a dose of humour into posts about dating, I try and find the seems of compassion when addressing controversial topics. But on this I have no guard, I am deeply exposed.

Zoe Sanderson has written this week that: “God is big enough to handle our questions, but in my experience churches often aren’t”. When we have questions and doubts church should be a place where they can be wrestled with in all their raw, uncertain, honesty. They shouldn’t be made into abstraction, and they shouldn’t be shunned out of fear they may cause others to question or undermine the values and beliefs of the church. When the church is afraid to listen to questions it loses the right to try and answer them.

Shame is different to acknowledging that something is other than the way it should be. I do not think my attitude towards church is a particularly healthy one, and I would prefer it to be otherwise. However, fearing speaking out about those doubts and problems because shame may be the result is a far worse situation. I worry that promoting too perfect a vision for how something should be creates a culture that silences uncertainty. And this can make the church the last place people turn with their doubts.

This week’s been labelled ‘impromptu sex week‘ due to the sheer number of posts around the issue of virginity and purity. Emily Maynard, Leigh Kramer, Preston Yancey and Joy Bennett all got in on the act, and attracted some flak from The Gospel Coalition. And I think the core of the issue is less about sex, virginity and purity than about shame.

It raises the question: how can we talk about something being a good thing without pushing those who might not achieve it into shameful silence?

I am a virgin, and I think that is a good thing. But when an unwavering focus on maintaining a particular good thing unwittingly perpetuates a culture of shame for those who might not be it should force a rethink. Not necessarily about whether abstaining from sex before marriage is a good thing, but what we are communicating when the church teaches that. If in trying to encourage purity we just shovel silence onto puritanical norms and end up causing far more harm, suddenly what might be a good thing becomes a very bad thing.

Joy Bennett added a clarification to her post, and then I think amended that, in it she pointed out that neither abstaining from sex before marriage nor not abstaining is shameful. Originally I think she wrote that both are fine, but I think ‘not shameful’ is better. I think we can and should hold views that some things are not fine, but our actions should never lead to shame.

In Emily Maynard’s post she wrote: “Virginity is just another way that people in power talk about who’s in and who’s out of favor with Church, that we set up winners and losers in a Kingdom supposedly of equals. It’s just another way we try to make God like us more than other people”.

I’ve sometimes wished I had a more exciting past. I wish I was saved out of a life of drugs and rock and roll, gone off the rails at one hundred miles an hour and crashed back down to earth only to find my way into the arms of God. I’ve told my testimony as one of many repetitive narratives, I’ve given into the lie that dramatic is better. In the conversation this week I’ve felt I have little to say, I’ve never nearly lost my virginity, I’ve never felt shamed into keeping my trousers up. I have never felt like a winner in the kingdom because I’ve not had sex, it is just where I am. I have got so many other things wrong that there is no source of pride in this.

Someone who has kept out of bed until their wedding day is not more of a winner in the Kingdom of God, and someone who has never had doubts about church does not claim the prize. This is not, as The Gospel Coalition suggested, rampant individualism, it is acknowledging that we do not get it right, and what that looks like for each of us will be different.

It is about the church being a community of grace that does not pretend everything goes right once you tick the box marked saved. It’s about discipleship that goes deeper than sin management, it is about accountability that is more than confessing to messing up.

It is about me finding the words to say I barely want to go to church. But it is also the assurance that the solution, for me at least, does not lie in running anywhere else.

I may not be proud of my virginity, but I am afraid of the shame of saying that I sometimes don’t want to go to church. I may not be au fait with the purity culture more prevalent in the US, but I have struggled with the pressure of not admitting the questions and doubts that might linger in my heart and mind.

Affection, ambiguity and Anna Karenina

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with , , ,

I had planned to read much of Anna Karenina over Christmas. That didn’t happen: between being ill, cooking food, playing with my nieces and defending the ending to Downton Abbey’s Christmas special, I managed a scant 60 pages. However in those early pages of this Russian masterpiece I came across a line that struck me with considerable force.

“But Levin was in love, and therefore Kitty seemed to him so perfect in every respect, so transcending everything earthly, and he seemed to himself so very earthly and insignificant a creature, that the possibility of his being considered worthy of her by others or by herself was to him unimaginable.”

Anna-Karenina-Poster-–-Pure-Love-460x650Two things immediately strike me from this passage, firstly, the early throws of affection limit our ability to think clearly. And secondly, sometimes when we like someone so much we find it hard to conceive that they might feel the same way.

It’s that moment when you meet someone and suddenly they become everything that matters. All else fades away. Except it doesn’t, it just retreats into a corner of your self which you allow to go untended for a while. They capture your imagination with an unreal sense of importance, you are for a short period of time infatuated. You see only their positives, only the things about them you want to be true. As Levin did with Kitty you see them as perfect. If you know the story of Anna Karenina you’ll know it’s not quite as simple as this, in fact, if you know anything about the interaction between any two people you will know it is never as simple as this.

No person is ever perfect, and no infatuation is ever pure. There comes a moment when you realise things about the person who has so exclusively dominated your attention which draws your attraction away from them.

Doubt sets in. Maybe it wasn’t to be. Maybe the infatuation was an illusion. Maybe, echoing Levin, you think they could never reciprocate the emotions you feel for them.

Sometimes things just don’t work out, the affection you felt at first fades and there isn’t the substance beneath, substance which would hold something more long lasting together. And that’s okay, at least, I’m starting to learn that it is okay. For too long I’ve lived in a halcyon state where I think the right relationship starts in a certain way and if it doesn’t carry on then I must have got something wrong at the outset. I’m less sure about that, I think part of working out how the intricate jigsaw puzzle fits together involves the messiness of agonised, attempted and aborted efforts at getting to know someone and whether there is a future for you and them.

When I’ve written about relationships I often keep it incredibly abstract, not wishing to involve myself or anyone else in the thoughts and ideas I set out. But time for some honesty. This messy state, where you are trying to work out if there is the beginning of a relationship emerging, is where I’ve been these past few months, and it’s largely why I’ve avoided writing about relationships. And I look back and I don’t have any regrets. I’m surprised by that, if I had thought at the start that it was going nowhere I probably would never have set out along this particular path. Yet that’s exactly what I’m learning: we do not know where we are going to end up, and if we live in the fear that a vague proto-relationship may fizzle out, then we are better off not even getting out of bed.

The other thing from Levin’s thought process, that of feeling unworthy of another’s affection, also resonated as I reflected on my situation over Christmas. I had doubts about parts of me I never usually thought about. I worried about how I looked, whether I was sufficiently articulate, funny, insightful, whether I was showing enough compassion and attention – or maybe too much attention. I found it hard to believe that me as me would ever be enough.

Strangely, in a line being drawn beneath the situation and agreeing it wasn’t going to go anywhere I did not feel vindicated in my doubts. The fact that a potential something turned out to be nothing did not persuade me of my lack of worth but encouraged me to be confident in who I am.

Funny how the messy stuff sometimes works out. I’ve learnt that dealing in ambiguity is okay, it requires honesty and openness, but sometimes accepting things aren’t clear is the quickest way of casting light on a confused and complex situation. Sometimes clarity doesn’t come, sometimes it is elusive, sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

 

Beauty, attraction and modesty – a five act thought process

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with , ,

 I

A couple of weeks ago I went to Scotland and it was beautiful.

It is as easy and natural as that. The description of beauty was done without any further thought or consideration.

Last night I went out and met a beautiful girl.

Well actually I didn’t, I stayed in on my own and watched a couple of episodes of The Pacific. If I had used a real life scenario it would have suddenly become awkward. And that’s my point. When we talk about beauty and it relates to some feature of nature or a work of art it does not provoke the same array of inquiries as to its meaning or subtle squinting of the eye to work out where the statement in question originated.

If I say a girl is beautiful it is taken to mean something more than just a factual observation. In short you’d probably assume I was interested in her romantically. And I might be: because I’m a guy and have been known to be interested in that sort of way.

But it’s also far too reductionist and it takes a whole swathe of compliments out of use. While I am sometimes attracted to a particular girl because of her beauty, that does not mean I am attracted and seeking to romantically pursue any girl I consider to be beautiful.

II

Beauty is subjective, someone I find especially attractive, someone else might not. It’s true with art, I stood in front of Gustav Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ astonished by its ability to pull beauty out of chaos. The things that shouldn’t work but before collapsing into a mess of disordered colours and materials pulls together to create something beautiful.

Maybe that is how it works with us. Perhaps when we look at another and are overawed by their beauty, it’s the collection of factors edging towards chaos that provokes such a strong reaction. When others look at us, and see something that stirs them it is a mixture of the beauty and the chaos.

Are there two types of beauty? I ask because I think that I am supposed to think that everyone is beautiful, but I know I only find some people truly so. Is it like love, how I love everyone in Christ but some are positioned for particular affection?

III

I sometimes get distracted by beauty. Admittedly the perils are not quite so great as they are in summer time. It’s not just when you’re walking down the street, in the park, on the beach, or out for the night that beauty might cause problems. It can happen in church when you struggle to concentrate on the worship when there’s a girl in tight jeans stood in front of you.

Yesterday someone mentioned the awkwardness of conversation with a lady because of the way she was dressed, it meant he felt he was looking where he shouldn’t.

What does this mean? Does it mean women should dress differently in order to make my, and fellow guy’s lives easier? I don’t think so. I’m not one of the modesty proponents, I don’t want to blame my problem on someone else. I don’t want them to have to act because I’m affected by the way they look. I’ll admit, it might make my life easier for a moment or two. But so in that regard would never leaving my flat, or walking around with a paper bag over my head.

Just as I might have won favour with a few of my female readers, I’m now going to lose their support. I would never blame the way thoughts that might come into my mind which probably shouldn’t on the ladies around me, but I don’t think that completely lets them off the hook either. I think whatever the circumstance, whether it’s around attraction and lust, or about money or power, or anything else, if we are aware that the way we act causes problems for other people we should be prepared to adjust our behaviour. This isn’t about modesty, it’s about using freedom responsibly.

IV

Now I’ve alienated the guys by saying it’s their problem if they get distracted by their attraction, and also alienated the girls by saying even if it’s not their problem sometimes the gracious thing to do might be to change what you wear, I suspect no one is left reading.

But that’s okay, because it takes the pressure off as I approach the crux of my argument. We get beauty wrong.

A beautiful person is still beautiful whether they are dressed in a short skirt and low cut top or draped in Hessian sacks. Last week I watched someone spend the entirety of a fairly long tube journey applying layer after layer of make up, and it didn’t affect how beautiful they are.

On one slightly trite but nevertheless true level, we are all beautiful. But as important as that recognition is, it is vital to acknowledge the basic reality that we are attracted and interested in some people more than others, and therefore our conception of beauty is more likely to be structured around that attraction than an otherwise objective measure.

So I will find people beautiful who are similar in appearance to people I am attracted to. I think putting it this way round is more helpful than saying that I am attracted to people I find beautiful, and I find a certain type of people beautiful.

V

Beauty is both innate and irrefutable and also a construct. A popular conception of beauty is ordered around that which is attractive to many people, or at least attractive to those people who get to decide what others should think is attractive. So a woman who is sought after because of her beauty, reflects back to us those characteristics of beauty which are deemed attractive, and are thus confirmed in our minds as being indicative of beauty.

It means that beauty is associated with a certain type of woman, it means that it is often affected by age and even race. And now think hard: why are women viewed and judged in terms of beauty in a way men are not? I’ll leave that for you to ponder.

It doesn’t completely remove our own ability to form our own opinions but perhaps it might provoke us to pause a minute before we accept hook line and sinker that someone is beautiful and someone else is not. And it might also cause us to think how we act in response to that beauty. For if beauty if defined by terms that we have accepted and used to form an opinion, why do we object to women seeking to attain that which we have already set out is the standard we want them to reach?

So before we go calling for modesty or appropriate clothing take a long hard look, not at the girl in front of you but at your heart and your mind, and why the attraction you feel towards the person before you might be a mixture of healthy and hormonal on one hand, and a distorted and implicitly imposed construct on the other.

And then celebrate beauty. Fear can cripple, and if we are so afraid of what people might think that we never tell someone they are beautiful then we have been taken out of the game by fear.

Friendship with the other

Posted by Danny Webster in Relationships and tagged with , , ,

I’ve always had lots of female friends. There’s something about using the word female over girl that immediately takes the romantic assumption from the form of words and convinces me it is as simple as that. Because at most points in my life my closest friendships have been with girls.

Yet when I suggested yesterday that maybe this wasn’t always the most ideal situation it prompted a deluge of justification for why they are healthy, important and biblically directed. I call four direct messages a deluge. In the early days of the life of this blog I wrote about how friendship can get in the way, and I stand by those thoughts but maybe I am trying to reduce relationships to a simple form that cannot hold them.

I reflect on the nature of the many friendships I’ve had and cherished. Of the girls at school who in hindsight treated me a bit like their non-gay, gay best friend, the non threatening bridge into the male gender who they’d pepper with questions and attempts to reassure themselves of their attractiveness and possibilities for romance.

I think about the friend who as we walked told me she now liked the man who’s advances she had previously rebuffed.

Of the lady who made me nearly cry with her insight to my character. And I only liked her more.

Perhaps I ponder why it was a certain girl was sure I was interested in her because of how I chose to spend my time.

The friends I’ll meet for dinner and not think twice. Until later and the encounter is replayed in my head and the doubts begin to fester as to the status of our friendship.

The two girls I spent a whole day with not so long ago. Friendship I enjoyed without pressure or the need to act up to impress or to be one of the guys.

I could blame it on my family and their friends, my sisters, their friends and the almost entirely female friendship pool I grew up surrounded by. On my darker more sombre days I wonder if I play certain cards to keep emotionally detached: enough friendship to sate my loneliness, but not too much to ever cause a rupture of unease. I opt for the easier option in the short term even if it becomes more complicated as life roles on.

Last night I listened to Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, pontificate on the nature of personhood and how a proper grasp of this moves us beyond a focus on the individual and towards a fuller and healthier understanding of each other. The bearded wonder was at his cerebral best, which meant I didn’t understand too much, and quotes from Lossky, Spaemann, Sennett and Augustine provided some needed light relief. Maybe once I’ve had a chance to listen to the audio again, read the transcript and rubbed my head a little more, grown some more facial hair and accumulated the subsequent wisdom I might record some more thought through reflections.

He said something along these lines: “What makes me a person… I stand in the middle of a network of relations, the point at which all the lines cross.”

So whether the relationships are clarified, confused, distorted or direct, it is the patchwork quilt which we inhabit that makes up much of what defines as a person rather than any anatomical structure.

He also said:

Last summer I wrote a couple of posts while reading Alan and Debra Hirsch’s Untamed and explored the idea of otherness and the need for a deep ‘I-thou’ relationship with each other that fully values the other as something different to yourself. The differences that lie between us are what makes it so important that we grow closer together. We understand each other better by a life that is lived together.

In Christian theology we are used to referring to the otherness of God but we need to get better at embracing the otherness of each other. There’s a tendency to want us all to be alike, custom built, unique in the eyes of God but conformed by the power of the church.

Of course there’s confusion, misdirected emotions, ambiguity over whether you like someone or they like you. And it’s easy to see the tortured web we weave and opt for the clarity of straight lines. Boundaries and definitions, what is in and what is out. What is allowed and what is not. What is inappropriate and leads towards sin and what is healthy, positive and life affirming.

But here’s the thing. Risk is life affirming. Have you ever felt fully alive playing it safe?

Ambiguity is the love child of a universe embracing both chaos and wonder. Otherness is the gift of a God that wants us to get better not become the same. A wise lady put it like this: “Rules lack the grace required for the complexity and nuances of human interaction”.

I could seek clarity from every friendship I form with a girl. We could have a contract, it could be laid out whether or not we were pursuing anything other than friendship. There could be defined steps and processes, it could be recorded and audited, inspected and refined. It would remove the confusion that haunts as you lie in bed at night and wonder the precise meaning of the final words, or intent behind the body language you thought might convey something approaching affection.

It would also destroy the beauty that forms as you approach someone else, hesitant, faltering, nervous. If I knew all the answers I would ask no questions, and if I did not question the nature of the other I would not know just how different it is yet how alike we are. If I am only affirmed in my personhood by relationships with others, that relationship, whatever form it might take has to come before any determination of where it might end.

Ambiguity is part of the fun. Let’s enjoy it, and not run away scared.

The faded certainty of attraction

Posted by Danny Webster in Faith and Failure, Relationships and tagged with , ,

I thought that I would know. I thought that the moment the right person walked into my life all would become clear. Sirens would scream, lights would flare, passions would ignite and all doubt would be banished.

I thought that one day I’d be mature enough to move past the waves of attraction that fade in and out like the intermittent reception on the battered transistor radio placed between the paint and tins of nails in the garden shed. I hope in some recess of my mind that certainty is still only the right person away. But that hope recedes into the realms of fantasy.

Because what I learn each moment that I pass through life is that affection and attraction are fickle friends. And knowledge and certainty are elusive ideas that once found only present more dilemmas. Following yesterday’s post on Vaughan Roberts’ interview, I thought I’d ponder a little more. This is a tad more theological that I originally intended, maybe all a smokescreen to protect my fragile emotional state!

In response I, and you, and anyone else, could take either of two divergent paths. Either we see the doubt that lies before us and turn and run away. We could opt for what we know, what is safe and what is comfortable. In the most relativistic sense we rely on where we are to authenticate our ability to decide truth. We either allow comfort to lead to inertia or dissatisfaction to prompt change.

The second option is to live in the light of what Francis Spufford in his new book apparently labels with the acronym HPtFtU. I haven’t read the book – it’s on my ever expanding list – and for the sake of modesty I won’t unravel the abbreviation, but it’s what we in more biblically literate times might label as sin. Stuff goes wrong, and we do not see clearly how things can work themselves out. We live in chaos and confusion, and in the most enlightened of moments only have hazy clarity and even then we might be kidding ourselves.

So the gaze of attraction I cast toward a lady in my midst might be motivated by lust, or it might be the beginning of a love that she is due. And in most cases it is probably a little bit of both. Because even if I get married I will not be free from lust – I’m told that enough by my married friends – I will at times lust after my wife, and other women I encounter.

But all this talk of lust scares me off. It makes me worry that any attraction is motivated by my nefarious desires. Somehow this needs to be redeemed. Beauty is not bad, attraction is not bad.

Beauty must be appreciated for what it represents. It represents God’s creation and his love for us. It is not just the physical but it is the physical. We are not to get so spiritual that we deny what is literally right in front of us. Something I have to repeatedly remind myself is that finding someone attractive is not a bad thing.

It leaves me embracing uncertainty, and learning that as much as I might like things ordered and classified, colour coded and project managed, that’s not the way life works. There is ambiguity around every corner, there is discernment over what needs discernment and what needs a shunt of courage to spur us to take risks when we will never know all we wish we did.

Doubt lurks around every corner waiting to cripple me and hold me back. Whether it is my worth, my value to others, my abilities, or the prospects of love, doubt undermines your security and tries to tell you your identity is in whether you overcome these frailties, and if you don’t then your identity is as a failure.

But doubt is the door through which redemption arrives. We learn that we cannot do it on our own, we are weak and we are frail, and we are broken and lost, and these will not be cast aside any time soon. But when we learn that we cannot overcome all that might try to drag us down we look up. We see that in the mystery and confusion, and the uncertainty and unsettled resolve there is a place we can be secure. And from the place of security we can go on adventures unshackled by doubts and fears.

Appropriate attraction

Posted by Danny Webster in Faith and Failure, Relationships and tagged with , ,

Vaughan Roberts has won plaudits for the incredible honesty and bravery he has shown in his interview with Evangelicals Now. Those I share and add to: I think the words of a man highly respected for his commitment to biblical truth and Christian ministry describing his struggle with same sex attraction could potentially be a game changing moment for the way such issues are understood and handled in the church.

What Vaughan Roberts says, and the way that he says it, is a mark of maturity. It has and will continue to attract attention because of the subject matter and the highly volatile current political debates around same sex marriage. I encourage you to read the interview in full, but to summarise he outlines that while he has struggled with same sex attraction this has not diminished his commitment to living a life that upholds the orthodox Christian understanding of sex as reserved for a man and a wife. For him, this means he lives a celibate life.

Each of us have things in our life which pull us away from the type of life God would prefer us to lead. For each of us these are different in their specifics, but hallmarks ring loud and clear. Sexual attraction of one sort or another ranks high, as does a desire for power and authority, a propensity for self interest and greed dominates too many of our lives. We put ourselves above God and choose to let that which is not God take priority in the ordering of our lives.

In the interview Vaughan Roberts studiously avoids describing himself as gay, a demarcation that has already generated discussion. This is interesting because it raises the question for all of us of how we define ourselves and what identifies us from the crowd. I recall a quote which I’m failing to attribute, whoever it was he was asked whether he was homosexual or heterosexual, to which he responded neither. He said that he’s not attracted to men or women but to one woman, his wife.

What struck me as I pondered Vaughan Roberts’ words is that it’s not as simple as same sex attraction is something which we should flee from. I think there are good and bad forms of attraction, the good form, when we indulge it we are actually becoming more human in the giving of ourselves to another. But there are other forms of attraction that we choose to spurn because we believe them not to be in tune with a way of life that honours God.

The most refreshing part of the interview was the implicit acknowledgement, and if I am reading too much into it then I apologise, of the present continuous nature of his struggles. It’s something I’ve been toying with for a few months, how we handle the fact that we don’t just move past our struggles, that they often continue to walk with us. Roberts puts it like this:

“While homosexual sin must always be resisted, the circumstances which often accompany same-sex attraction should be accepted as a context in which God can work. There is, without doubt, a difficult aspect to those circumstances, such as, for example, the frustration of not being able to experience the intimacy of a sexual relationship or a feeling of isolation because of the sense of being different.”

He goes on to say: “This perspective should transform how we view all the difficult circumstances in our lives. We’re not called to a super-positivity which denies the frustration and pain; nor are we to embrace a passivity which spurns any opportunity to change our situation. But we are to recognise the loving hand of God in all we experience and see it as an opportunity for service, growth and fruitfulness.”

Because we are not defined by whatever brokenness exists in our lives we are defined by who we are in Christ. Dallas Willard writes in similar terms about our lostness, not something that we resolve as soon as we trust in Christ but a path we will frequently find ourselves on once again.

In a bonus track on the new Mumford and Sons album they sing: “Wanting change but loving her just as she lies, it’s the burden of man who’s built his life on love.” I could take that as how God views us.

So to me. If the only appropriate attraction we are to indulge sexually is between a man and a wife where does that leave me, a single man attracted to women. I hope that for one of those I find my heart stirred towards, that might one day be what we are to each other. But for now I find myself attracted in different ways, at various times, in degrees of intensity to different women. And not all of that can be wholesome. Not least when confusingly they overlap.

There is a goodness in some of my attraction that needs to be discerned. There is prospect for an intimacy where that attraction will be fully indulged. But for now it is as much a temptress as a guide.

And then there is this other thing. The damage we do with only associating beauty with sexual intimacy. A friend recently suggested guys need to do a better job of complimenting girls for how they looked, regardless of whether they were interested in them. And in theory I agree. But first of all I might need to get better at doing it for girls who I am interested in.