Let’s be Friends; Navigating love in friendships
Let me begin by saying, I love love. I am a hopeless romantic who has always wanted to find that one person who makes me want to drop everything and climb Mt. Everest to profess my love for them from the highest peak on the planet. Desires like this are stamped on our hearts. Not necessarily the deadly mountain climbing part, but the desire to love and be deeply loved is woven into the fabric of our creation. God has created us to love and to be loved, and it is only in relationship that we experience love. Relationships and love take on various forms be they families, friendships, romantic love interests, the list goes on. But, what happens when one of those lines is blurred and you find yourself navigating an unrequited romantic love when you thought you were “just friends?”
It can be difficult, awkward, unnerving, weird, and honoring all at once when someone you have only ever seen as a platonic friend tells you that they “like you, like you.” With the help of a friend, we have composed a list of advice for scenarios like this to help navigate the relationship.
First of all, don’t panic; acknowledge it and address it. This person has revealed a beautiful part of their heart to you and that piece of them deserves to be honored and treated with the utmost care. One of the most loving and honoring things we can do for that person is to be clear with how we feel and not try to “nice our way out of it.” Clarity itself is the best form of love in those moments and although the fear of things in the friendship changing is a real fear, it would be more detrimental to beat around the bush and offer false hope or a sense of insincere reciprocation. The last thing any of us wants to do is string someone else along because of a sense of validation that their presence and romantic interest can provide for us. For these reasons, clarity in how you feel and what you communicate from that point forward needs to match the disposition of your heart.
Once you have clearly communicated how you feel, it is okay if you need to take a step back from the friendship. It is then that we are called to figure out our boundaries and what both people need in order to move forward in a healthy way. It may seem counterintuitive to provide yourself and that friend space and time, but it is often the healthiest way to live out the virtue of chastity. Chastity itself is not solely about sex, but it is also about honoring yourself and the other. In situations such as these, where the feelings are not reciprocated, time and space offer an opportunity for healing and re-establishment of the friendship in the future.
If you find yourself not knowing if you should approach a friend about how you feel toward them, let me begin by saying, don’t be afraid of your desires and attractions toward someone. There is good in that and those desires are meant to draw you out of yourself to action.
Every call to love is a call to love all those around you; it is a call into community and communion with others. We learned on mission that if you want to give one person flowers give everyone flowers. If you feel drawn to one person more than others in your friend group, continue to do things as a group while you discern your feelings for them and then once you know how you feel about them don’t be afraid to let them know and have that daring conversation. Don’t let fear stop you from doing the good things!
C.S. Lewis says it best,
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
In the end it is not about the fear of unrequited love, but about the calling to learn how to love best through the various stages and facets of our relationships.
