If I have sought depth in my relationships through vulnerability, seeking intimacy to feel loved, then why have I felt so rejected whenever someone does not trust me and open up to me?
The Male Stereotype
Often, in our American culture, men are afraid to be deep and intimate with others (men and women) not because they dont have a desire to be loved, but because they have bought into the false assumption that men are weak if they give way to their feelings (this would be a fear of inadequacy).
Ever since I was young, have altogether rejected this assumption about what a true man is, and have fought vehemently against it so that I would never become that. I have hated the caricatured man depicted in TV sitcoms like According to Jim or Modern Family. I have fought hard to never be the childish, immature, unaware, anti-emotional, unintelligent, aloof, lazy, irresponsible jokester of a man.
So, therefore, I have pursued knowledge and insight. I have sought what it means to have healthy integrated emotions and passions. I have followed spiritual things of God that have eternal significance (there is a devastatingly severe lack of good Christian men in the church and in ministry) instead of seeking temporal gratifications that this world has to offer. I have desired depth and intimacy in relationships.
I have taken my quest for depth and intimacy to an extreme. At one point in my life, before God had really taken hold of my life, that meant pursuing improper relationships with women. But Im not even talking about physical intimacythis blog is about emotional intimacy.
I pushed so hard against the male stereotype that I plunged myself into seeking emotional intimacy (for I knew that the Bible clearly spoke against physical intimacy outside of marriage).
Yet I found myself coming up against all sorts of walls and roadblocks. I would so often want to go deep with people, but usually others would not want to (or seem to be able to) reciprocate. My going deep wasnt even anything improper, it was just wanting to have more-that-superficial conversations (see my previous Emotional Intimacy blog).
Slowly, I discovered something about myself: Whereas most people typically go through a process of building relationships (trust) through commonly shared, superficial activities as a starting point to get to know people, the way I get to know people is by wanting to jump into the deep stuff first, then, after weve talked through that I would be willing to do the superficial things with my new friends. This was a major discovery for me, because this explained to me why I seemed to scare off so many people, coming across as too intense.
I learned that I need to step through that process of building trust with other people first. Without building that trust, people will never allow themselves to get to those places of vulnerability (again, see my first blog about Emotional Intimacy). It has only been recently, though, that I have learned that I need to walk through that process willingly without agenda. If I try to spend time with people doing what I think is superficial only so that the other person will go deep with me, people can see right through that. However, I need to just love people for who they are where they are at without agenda, not trying to get them somewhere else. As long as I am just loving them with the love and truth of Christ, the Holy Spirit will get them where they need to be how they need to get there. I need to walk this out in humility, not pride.
So, back to my original question:
Why have I felt so rejected whenever someone does not trust me and open up to me?
Ive realized something else recently. Ive realized that because I skip the step of building trust and want to jump right into vulnerability to intimacy, I assume trust. But not everyone easily or readily trusts. In fact, many people have been badly hurt by others before.
Most people have either learned through experience not to trust or they have not learned through experience that they can trust. What I mean by that is for some, they have been badly hurt by someone close to them that they have trusted. So, they have built up walls to protect themselves. For others, they have not had positive examples of people that they can trust.
This has been most evident to me in cross-gender relationships, especially with women. Many women have learned through experience not to trust men. They have been emotionally hurt, physically abused, sexually taken advantage of, humiliated, demeaned, devalued, objectified, and cast asideoften times by those closest to them (fathers, brothers, boyfriends, classmates, etc.). For others, they have not had consistent positive male colleagues. This does not mean that they necessarily have had poor male counter-parts (often times they have had quite good families, friend groups, etc.); they just havent had exceptionally great ones.
I realized this when, after asking my team how I could better foster trust and vulnerability, several of the girls on my team said that it is just easier opening up to other girls rather than guys. At first, this really offended me.I felt rejected. I felt like I couldnt be trusted. I felt like they were saying, We cant open up and talk just because you are a man.
But then I realized how this might be the first time that they have been able to have safe, consistent, brotherly love from men. Perhaps they have bought into many of the male stereotypes, and this is the first time that a lot of those might be exposed and worked through.
So I had a decision to make. Was I going to be offended and angered by this and then operate out of a spirit of rejection, or was I going to see what might possibly be the case and choose to operate out of a spirit of love? Was I going to react the way so many other guys havewith anger and frustration and then try to prove myselfor was I going to treat them with acceptance and compassion, the way I long to be treated and the way they deserve?
But this raises another question.
Can men and women be friends?
Ive heard this question asked many times. The time that stood out to me most was when a guy, frustrated by some problem he was having with emotional entanglements in a friendship, said, Dudes and chicks just cant be friends! Some have said that there is just too much risk for emotional entanglement between guys and girls, so at most they should just be casual acquaintances, with the exception only being in marriage. Others have seemingly denied any significant difference between men and women, so pretty much anything is okay.
I agree with that dudes and chicks cant be friendsbut men and women can.
You see, the fact that my friend said that dudes and chicks cant be friends demonstrates in itself the lack of maturity in the language used. There needs to be a certain maturity in friendships, especially across genders. Men and women need to know who they are, what their identity is, otherwise, it can be too easy for one to base their identity (their worth, value, affirmation, affection, etc.) on the other person. Likewise, all people tend toward their comfort zones. Guys and girls dont like to venture much outside of their safe area when talking about more personal things. But men and women know the value of and appreciate what the other gender has to offer.
I do absolutely believe that not only can men and women be friends, men and women should be friends, partners in ministry, ministering to each other. Without that, we both are lacking a valuable perspective on life.
God made us in his own image and likeness, male and female. We each express attributes of God in masculine and feminine ways. If guys only stay with guys, and girls only stay with girls, then we are at risk of missing out on an expression of God. If we believe that men have something valuable to offer and that women have something valuable to offer, then shouldnt we seek that out?
I do not clearly see the Bible limiting mens and womens reactions with one another in terms of friendship, so I am very hesitant to make rules about something that the Bible does not seem to make clear rules about.
