The title of this blog is intentionally worded to mislead you in a grab for your attention, as are many cultural issues of our time. But speaking of time, before I waste yours, please reread the title of this blog and make sure the adjectives are the ones you're interested in investigating.
Having struggled with girl friendships through my teenage years and struggled with intimacy through my early years of marriage, I discovered a paradigm recently that has given me a powerful viewing lens for the world of relationships. I'm specifically referencing guy-girl relationships in this sense, but the rigidness of this paradigm can certainly spill over to other common liaisons. Nevertheless, to put my own experience bluntly, my girl struggles were bottom-of-the-pecking-order severe. As a guy, elusive was the attention of certain girls that crisscrossed my hallways, classes, youth groups, and camps growing up. After my initial honest attempts and failures with girl friendships, an inferiority complex developed that leeched my confidence for years to come. Take for instance a girl named Katie in my extracurricular, sixth-grade, Bible-study club at my public school back in 1997. I considered her the most beautiful girl in the world at the time and had nearly exclusive, chaperoned attention for a semester with her and her two best friends. All was boyishly hopeful until the day it was my turn to lead the Bible study. Even at the start of my activity, the future looked bright, but midway through, Katie’s attention sunk like an early sunset. I blame the revulsion now on my innocent and obtuse Bible study lesson, a flat one where I had everybody search for the six verses in Psalm 119 that made no reference to the Torah—and we found all six. There is life after death by the way, and posthumously, though alive, I felt invisible to Katie and her friends. Then after sending one aimless love note months later, one that went unanswered, I kept my crush hidden from Katie through graduation...through twelfth-grade graduation. It’s rather freeing to confess this here and now, eighteen years later. I was young and that is my consoling excuse, but this sinking attention was a recurring issue that kept exposing its confounding face for me. As I close my eyes, I can count at least six instances of these times, and I cringe thinking through my clouded history. Think of a flat rock skipping across a smooth pond. The skips get shorter and more floundering with each progressive skip until the rock flips out and sinks outright with a swallowing plump. That is my dismal history with the pecking-order paradigm I grew up believing. With remorseful dismay, I am caged like everyone else and have no way of reliving my life under this new paradigm, but I do know it works for guy-girl relationships, at least it does after the surge of puberty has detached from the N.A.S.A. rocket (N.A.S.A.—Normal Adolescent Social Adventure). In short, it works for me now as a happily married guy that is married to a beautiful and faithful girl. And you don't need to take my word for it, nor do you need to risk your next relational experiment on it to see if it works. I have observed it, and you can objectively observe it too before you test drive. In other words, there are no blind leaps or 97% off $1000 offers to be found here.
I have read many books, and no doubt, many authors, counselors, pastors, parents, schools, communities, religions, and cultures have broken down the same physical, emotional, and spiritual elements of relationships. I will not be so proud as to advise you to toss aside their wisdom, but here's a few old-to-ancient oak trees that credential the landscape. Gary Chapman wrote a notable book about five love languages, aptly called The Five Love Languages. Dr. Emerson Eggerichs wrote Love and Respect. John Eldredge wrote Wild at Heart. His wife, Stasi, wrote Captivating. Elizabeth Elliot wrote Passion and Purity. Admiral William H. McRaven, who is mesmerizing, wrote Make Your Bed, although I haven't read it, I’ve only watched his phenomenal graduation speech. There is the StrengthsFinder assessment by Don Clifton. There is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. There is the Enneagram. There are zodiac wheels (not an endorsement). There are Bible verses: Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 7:9, 2 Corinthians 6:14. There is prom. There is Match.com. There are arranged marriages. And the list goes on. The landscape seems like a black night, but people readily rush into this starless abyss with fervor because the need is real. How do we find, form, and tend relationships? I feel rather puny in the shadow of this rich history of analysis, like I'm a kid marketing a kaleidoscope, but read this blog through and see if it brings your critical world of relationships into focus.
CRT — Critical Relationship Theory
Authenticity is where I will start. Guys vs. girls, needs vs. wants, Hero vs. Found, and needy vs. amaurotic is what I'll present. And selfless servitude is where I'll conclude. All rhymes are free as is the advice below this long theory…
…Authentically
As with any of the books or theories listed above, the information is often harvested for manipulation, the cultural practices are mostly agenda driven, and sadly, the espoused secrets are more often than not abused for selfish purposes. The hammer that is needed to bust up these concrete words (manipulation, agenda, and selfish), words that no genteel person wants to be accused of or fall prey to, is authenticity. People have authentic needs and desires, and authentic needs can be met with authentic attention. Authenticity starts with the sender and is interpreted by the receiver. This puts the burden for being authentic on the instigator of a relationship. But seeing that a relationship is a two-way street by definition, both participants will quickly be judged by this attribute of authenticity. Keep it real. Keep it genuine. And keep it pure.
Guys vs. Girls
The answer to the CRT question of How do we find, form, and tend relationships? is buried like a riddle in the very spelling of the words, guys and girls. My premise presumes that guys and girls share a glorious commonality (Genesis 1:27) but also that they are ideologically different (Genesis 1:27). Like this establishing ideology, both words, guys and girls, share a commonality. Both begin with -G and end with -S, and as abstract poetry, this could illustrate how both genders were created by YHWH and will be judged by YHWH, the beginning and end. I personally find this parallel both beautiful and sobering, but it's not the eureka to my riddle. The eureka is a stretch, but if you believe every word in the English language has the potential for a doggerel slant, you'll see it like I do. Look and see that the middle letters of the word "girls" sound like a guy's name (Earl). I know it sounds ridiculous, but if this concept is understood poetically, it will practically be more useful. When a girl calls a guy's name, the needed-guy's ears perk up, usually. Rewind with me to the primal story of creation for the first-ever example of a guy being called to attention (Genesis 3:9). After Adam and Eve had sinned and hidden themselves in the Garden of Eden, YHWH calls out to Adam, the guy. Yes, calling out a person's name is not a gender specific trait, but keep this comparative idiosyncrasy in mind for a second: girls call for help, "irl!" Guys then, being instinctively different, naturally respond with the nominative case pronoun, "uy?" which sure sounds a lot like the answering question, "Who me?" or "I?" So, laugh with me for a second-second while I try to make some sense of my word puzzle. When girls call for help, "Earl!" guys respond, "I?" Guys and girls are similar on many levels but there is a part of each, ignoring the obvious external elements, that is unique. But enough with riddles, poetry, and lacking explanations.
Needs vs. Wants, Hero vs. Found
This paradigm hit me after listening to the relationship counselor and dating coach, James Bauer, or more so after listening to his sales pitch for his "Hero Instinct" book called His Secret Obsession. His theory hooked me completely, even before I finished listening to his sales pitch, but it also made me jump out of my seat upset. I was upset because I saw that this secret intelligence at face value was jarringly true but also was prime content for manipulation, and I hate manipulators. I so hate manipulators! I will let you decide whether or not to investigate James’ book to see if he redeems his manipulative method with some form of authenticity, but having fifteen-and-a-half years of marriage to examine for establishing credibility, I had no need to dig further. I was convinced that James Bauer was in possession of at least fifty percent of what would solve most guy-girl relational disgruntlements. Yet, as a guy, I happened to be sitting on the wrong side of James’ lopsided equation, so I will continue his thesis here with two unoriginal-original, cute-and-tidy phrases.
One: Guys ("Who me?")…guys want to be needed.
And two: Girls ("Earl!")…girls need to be wanted.
Like I have simplified here, James describes that, at the instinctual level, guys subconsciously, desperately want to be needed. He dubs his theory the “Hero Instinct”, and so as to not infringe upon his creativity, let me goo-be-gone the trademark label: Every guy...well no, generally speaking, guys respond to calls for help. They naturally fit into the Hero costume. They like saving the day and earning the psychological reward for doing it. And if you scrubbed away all of the extraneous words I just wrote, you would be left with Guys—Hero. Short and sweet. (After all, a paradigm has to be able to fit into your pocket like a phone to be useful, right?) This is where James Bauer stopped, and where I cried foul. Stop at teaching girls twelve phrases that will spark a man's sense of heroism so that a relationship might be rekindled, and I cannot not see straight-up manipulation. But I sat back down as I remembered that guys are far from innocent in this regard. In fact, I don’t even need to begin to list examples of the all-too-raw relational crimes from the flip side of this manipulation coin that heap a load of hurt and distrust into the hearts of girls, trauma that can ripple deep into subsequent relationships. How about instead, I let John Eldredge's better half tell you from their co-written book, Captivating, about a girl’s primal need. Stasi Eldridge says it all in her subtitle: "Unseen, Unsought, and Uncertain." This alliteration colorfully brings my kaleidoscope into focus. If a girl feels unseen and unsought, she wants to be Found like a guy wants to be Hero. And believe me when I say, guys at large know what to say to make a girl feel Found while hiding their ulterior motives! So, obviously these concepts can be put to misuse in bilateral directions, but assuming pure motives for now, I am confident that girls need to be wanted like guys want to be needed. That is the patent, pickled, parasitic paradigm. (Now that I'm writing this, I kind of want to reread Wild at Heart and Captivating.)
Needy vs. Amaurotic
Needy verses ama-what? Am-au-rot-ic: amaurotic means a partial or total loss of sight, especially in the absence of an injury, and I’m dancing with figurative language again, I know. But follow me here. What happens when a relationship moves past the star-struck stage and into the stage of boredom? Rhetorical question. The guy can become amaurotic to the point that the girl again feels unseen and unsought, and the girl responds by making that oversight known (Earl's definition of acting needy). A girl that starts acting needy misses the target of Guy–Hero altogether, and depending on the severity of the neediness, the guy could easily become more infatuated with other less needy life areas such as hobbies, friends, and work, or he could feel trapped enough to be begin looking for a way out of the relationship altogether. This amaurotic behavior can then whirl around like a tornado, triggering the girl to increase her rate or intensity of demands and thereby more intensely pushing the guy to seek shelter in more rewarding quarters. The cycle described here is palpably presented in the book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. He calls it the "Crazy Cycle". But if we are honest at the end of the stormy day, the girl just wanted to stay Found, and the guy just wanted to stay Hero. So, maybe a little “James Bauer” manipulation could be an overpass to this torrential issue after all.
Selfless Servitude
If authentically calling a guy for help triggers his primal instinct of feeling needed, and someone rushing to a girl's aid fills her need for feeling wanted, we could forget the genders and apply this principle to the broader sense of friendship, to serving customers, or even to improving employee-employer synergy like the popular personality assessments do. But to keep the focus of this blog narrower for sake of comprehension, let’s finish on a trait that needs to be present if a guy-girl relationship is to be pure, long-lasting, and manipulation-free. The phrase "You have to love yourself before you can love someone else" is cliché, but it sets the scene for the fuller picture of selfless servitude.
Selfless servitude is what relationships are founded upon. Close your eyes and see this foundation as a word picture (then put the toothpicks back in): relationships, like church buildings, start at the foundation and end at the bell-tower, not the other way around. This is easy for me to say now but was rather difficult for me to understand at age twelve. The culminating bell tower in this case represents a bride and groom becoming one. And this formal jump to marriage shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who is reading this Whole Bible Believing blog because oneness imagery is used throughout the Bible, not to mention throughout history, to describe this difficult concept of selflessness. Having investigated the doorstep of this humble church myself, I believe Elizabeth Elliot in Passion and Purity wins the award for describing it best...or at least as it pertains to adolescents transcending the thunder created by their N.A.S.A rocket (Normal Adolescent Social Adventure, i.e. puberty, coming of age, or whatever it's called...learning to live a lucid life). She writes inspirationally about the importance of preparing yourself for marriage whether it comes or not. Admiral William H. McRaven also convincingly presents a related concept in Make Your Bed. It is the step of preparation that differentiates the worthy guys and the worthy girls, the so-called winners amongst the throng, because this preparation is the self-love that empowers the selfless servitude in a relationship. With an independent foundation established while in the design phase of development, a noble girl can authentically call for help when she needs it. Likewise, with an independent foundation, a guy can show authentic interest in others and more so when a girl he finds most beautiful crosses his path. In this utopian scenario, the guy would then have no psychological reticence when this critical opportunity of letting the girl know that she is wanted as co-bell-ringer arrives. And equally, when the girl who is Found allows the same guy the opportunity to be her Hero, the befitting construction thereafter is matrimony. Why matrimony and not loose-fitting, ambiguous, cohabitating arrangements? Because after the honeymoon stage of the relationship, when the weeks come where work takes precedence, where dishes and clothes have piled up unapologetically, the girl has an assuring, committed foundation on which to mitigate the spread of her neediness. And for the guy too, when say the needy, cramping, seven-day period of the lunar month comes…every month, he can persevere by the manner of having given his word rather than by relapsing to his amaurotic instinct.
Not to Go X-Rated Frivolously
Speaking of independence, the sexual drives of both guys and girls are similar to this CRT discussion but are also completely independent of it. Sexual drives are similar to Hero vs. Found, ironically, in that they are observably different and yet instinctively complementary. They are independent of this discussion because sex is a biological craving on its own scale. Yes, guys and girls (mostly guys) often mistake the craving for sex as the instinct of wanting to be needed and needing to be wanted, but it is a separate desire. I flash a strobe light on this adult topic because I got this backward from the get-go. The reason I got this backward? Puberty. At twelve-years-old, I was convinced by a craving on my insides that relationships must flower out of this fluttery feeling. Yep…backward (sorry, Katie). If I had of been instructed to make "independence day" my first and only goal, then to get on the N.A.S.A. rocket, then to answer the debutant calls for "Earl" that I might hear further along in the journey, and then to restrain and save my sexual drive for marriage, in that order, there would be less heart wreckage from failed rocket launches strewn across the United States today.
Those who have experienced true sexual intimacy know that I'm not lying when I say it is the most rewarding experience I have experienced in this experiential life. Figuratively, this sexual intimacy is not the fountain, it’s the water in the fountain, and to carry this analogy through to completion, without the fountain (marriage) to contain the water, the water is just rainwater and drains quickly to the gutters, potentially leaving the guy dry to be amaurotic, the girl thirsty for attention, and a tornado approaching.
The Practical Part: How to Find, Form, and Tend Relationships
Guys:
Don’t fall for the pecking-order style of guy-girl relationships like I did from the sixth grade onward. Each time, from my closet-crush on Katie to the other girls that I met, I got close because I happened upon getting close, but not once did I understand or prioritize these girls’ true needs. Rather, I zeroed in on my self-diagnosed insecurities and let lack of confidence fillet the friendship. So first, understand that there is no need to find a girl for a relationship to work. If you see a girl, that girl wants to be found, and you should start every relationship by authentically introducing yourself.
Form girl friendships from the foundation up instead of the bell tower down. By removing this unrealistic must-be-marriage-material prerequisite, you’ll be able to hear your girl friends’ callings for Earl when the time is right. Be there when they do. And when you arrive in your Hero rocket, let them know that you notice them. Otherwise, love yourself first by improving yourself first.
Tend your special relationship by assessing your selflessness. Remember, she’s more than likely not using this paradigm. So, have you met her need to be wanted before you expect her to reward you for your heroism? Your honest answer will guide you to properly tend the relationship.
Girls:
Surround yourself with noble guys to find noble guys. If you have a noble father, start there. If you don’t, find a community where the guys exude genteelness and independent purpose. Are they building their own house or are they not interested in construction? Your observation of their general behavior will dictate whether you hang or whether you bolt for a safer community.
Form a special friendship by calling for help after and only after proving to yourself that you aren’t able. This practice of trying first provides instant authenticity. Then, when that noble guy responds, “I?” don’t micromanage, but do offer an appropriate reward for his heroism (think The Five Love Languages).
Tend this special relationship by checking your calls for “Earl” and by serving him first. (Humbly I submit to you: having a standing need-you-to-do list is disqualifying). Also, and more importantly, have good likeminded friends on speed dial to fill in the lonely gaps.
At the end of my CRT (Critical Relationship Theory) investigation, I saw reason starting to outline the intimacy frustrations that I had struggled with for so long, struggled with even after consuming the library of literature on the topic. CRT was the lens that brought the picture into focus for me. Thus, I propose that you observe others through this CRT lens and see if James Bauer and Josiah Hutchison are presenting the whole practical truth. With careful planning and execution, a N.A.S.A. launch can be spectacular and exciting to watch, but if you put yourself in the pilot’s seat, witness the countdown, and keep the stars in focus, you’ll get to see the blue marble at its breathtaking best: She needs to be wanted; she needs to feel found. He wants to be needed; he wants the hero’s reward. Applying this paradigm to the already laid foundations of independent people, will make for wonderful bell-ringing friendships, co-ed and beyond.
Keep it poetical,
JH
Photo Credit: Eugene Kuznetsov on Unsplash
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