Friendships With the Opposite Sex Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen
Back in newsletter #25 I talked about platonic friendships between men and women and why I personally have a policy to never have 1:1 personal friendships with women. A lot of Christians advocate these friendships, but I’ve rarely seen them lead to anything but disaster.
If you aren’t convinced, look at what just happened to Dallas megachurch pastor Matt Chandler. He’s been placed on leave for text messages (actually, Instagram DM messages) sent between him and a woman who was not his wife. According to the church, the two were not having an affair, the messages were neither sexual nor romantic, both of their spouses knew about the messages, and Chandler himself is the one who told the church elders about them. But he was still suspended and may well end up sacked.
This should give you a sense of the risk of having any sort of opposite sex friendship.
Ironically, one of the big advocates for opposite gender friendships is Jen Wilkin of Chandler’s Village Church, who actually argues that not only can we have these relationships, but we must have them.
There’s dangers for both parties, but in a #MeToo world, the danger is especially high for men. Even if you objectively do nothing wrong, simply being accused is to be convicted today, even if it’s for something totally subjective like making a woman feel uncomfortable.
We don’t have the full story on what happened with Chandler. Maybe he did say something he shouldn’t have. Or maybe more stuff will come out. I’m sure the advocates of opposite sex friendships will say something like, “Just don’t do bad things, and you won’t have and problems.”
Well, a) that’s not necessarily true and b) any approach that depends on the perfection of human behavior for its success is one that is, at its core, not Christian.
You don’t have to be a religious man to realize that you are playing with fire when you put yourself in these situations. We can’t and shouldn’t try avoid all risk in life. Sometimes we need to take on very high risks. But given the lack of any real possible upside, this is a crazy one to take on. As I wrote:
Some of these may be remote possibilities. But if one of these “black swan” events happens to you, it could be life-destroying. Given the instability of male-friendships as a “just friends” situation, a negative outcome of some sort appears to be the most likely scenario. Very bad outcomes are not uncommon.
There’s one interesting detail in this case, namely that this was based on social media direct messages. My phone number isn’t that hard to track down, but most people don’t have it and so can’t just text me. But anyone can “slide into my DMs” as they say. Because of the nature of my work, I leave mine open to anyone so I can be sent information. But if you don’t need strangers to be able to contact you that way, locking down your DMs to only people you follow might be a good idea.
It’s your life and you get to make the decisions about how to live it. It’s a free country and I fully respect people’s rights to make their own choices. But this Chandler situation validates completely my approach and what I sad about the dangers of opposite sex friendships back in newsletter #25. I even cite Matt Chandler in it!
Are you speaking strictly of platonic friendships where at least one of the suspects, I mean protagonists, are married?
Sadly, I'm not. With that on the table, I've had more than a few "mere" friendships with women. I'm in my 60s so I have a track record. It can be tricky and the risks are real, but for me the idea of not having 1:1 personal friendships with women is about as odd (no offense intended) as watching old movies and noticing all the office workers are men. My perspective may be skewed by my singlehood.
I won't go into all the variations but navigating a friendship with a married woman can *definitely* be tricky--though I've pulled it off. I have several good friends like this, including some college pals. These are enormously supportive, rooted and also respectful friendships. I always tell myself that job number one is to be on good terms with the husband. I'd add a fourth woman to that shortlist but she passed away some years ago.
As for my unattached female friends, I won't say that any ended in disaster, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that a couple of them resulted in some heartbreak on my end when I tried to change friendships into dating situations. Of course--that's not a crazy path to marriage.
Anyway I won't write a novel here, but for whatever reason for much of my life I found it easier to form friendships with women than with men, and even though I'm better at the latter now, I'd be desolate without some female companionship. Of course most of what I'm referring to is outside the workplace, and #MeToo and the woke hysteria is a whole 'nother ballgame there. And though I'm still working, I haven't been in a major leadership position for years, another risk factor.
As a woman in a very male-heavy field (and with a husband-colleague too), I have come to similar realizations about the general perception of male-female relationships - after 12 years of schooling in this field, where my male peers were also my friends, I'm now in a very different phase in work where that is not the case in the same way - not only because of various age differences, but being married to one of their colleagues, and the obvious physical differences with periodic pregnancy. Of course if my male colleagues want to hang out, and can only invite one of us because of watching our kids, they are going to ask my husband - it would be weird not to.
That being said, I would say I'm somewhere between a good colleague and friend to all of my male colleagues (and they are almost all male, and we are a tight-knit group). I think this has some benefits regarding the predominantly-female trait of vulnerability. From my outsider perspective, it seems to me that society encourages a very stoic view of masculinity, where feelings and struggles aren't shared outside of married relationships (and even then, it is difficult!). But, I find that a few colleagues will periodically open up to me in a more personal way - about the intersection of work and life/health challenges, or - for my one unmarried colleague - his struggles with loneliness and failed relationships (which he has said is cathartic). Maybe these aren't really friendships - maybe it's more like a service. It's not something I seek out or encourage, and it is definitely a bit of a cross given that I know I won't ever be a "hey, let's go out for dinner", 1:1 friend, not to mention I'm pretty stoic myself. But I've seen it as a lonely privilege to provide my service in our group in this way by virtue of my femininity.