Best Friends

Previously, I wrote about good girlfriend relationships, and the balancing act of good male-female friendships. This time around, I want to ask you this: Who’s your best friend in the world?

Lots of us would say Jesus, but I’m intentionally drawing a distinction here. God’s our best friend in heaven and earth, but while we’re in the world, if we’re married, we’re given someone to walk with more closely than anyone else.

This can be a painful topic.

Marriage is not always best-friendship. Resentment can build up, interests can diverge, careers can cause distance and differences. For us women, the key thing is a sense of sanctity. While men tend to define intimacy in physical terms—how time is spent concretely (together or on other people, working at the same goals or conflicting ones), women define intimacy by what belongs to the two of us alone.

In marriage, the nexus of sexual harmony is where what belongs to the two of us alone meets time spent together working at the same goal (which we will not bother to define beyond that generality!). While our husbands may feel that time spent talking or doing things for one another should suffice to build the marriage and the companionship, women may not feel the same way. When our sense of sanctity—of unique and personalized understanding—feels violated or (more commonly) ignored, the friendship aspect of marriage falters.

I have a habit of tapping my husband on the chest. It means, “How’s your heart?” Initially, he took this as a prompt for him to work at compiling an accounting to me. I was aware of his struggle, but wasn’t sure how to explain to him that I wasn’t out to require a tabulation of his spiritual and emotional successes and failures. I was looking for a specific kind of conversation that I knew he would only have with me, because we’re each other’s closest confidantes. That sense of unique and private understanding created intimacy between us.

So, if we’re wise, we recognize that conversation is foreplay. When our conversational energy is redirected into non-sexual friendships, it can drain our marriage of intimacy because we forget to focus on building sanctity with our spouse. When conversational energy is redirected into a cross-gender friendship, we run the risk of accidentally engaging the emotional component of sexual intimacy. It’s important for us to recognize the specific qualities we’re looking for in our friendship with our spouses, and cultivate them intentionally.

Here’s my challenge to you for the next eight weeks, while spring and love are in the air: Tell your husband one thing each day that you tell only to him. It could be important or unimportant, large or small. But don’t stop there: tell him that he’s the only one to whom you want to say it. If things are raw around the edges, start small—but definitely start now.

Build sanctity, and find the best friendship of your life.