Safe

Writing by Jennie Allen

I have lost friends because I haven’t done what I’m telling you to do. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to remember how the conversation came about or why we were talking about such a deep and meaningful thing in the first place. As best I can recall, my friend Jessica and I were wrapping up an interview for my podcast by talking about how much we missed each other after my move to Dallas. I think she said she was worried about losing our friendship across the miles. “You’ll never lose me,” I said to her, meaning it. She was one of my most beloved friends when we lived in Austin, and we barely had a three-hour drive separating us; I figured we could keep a good thing going for years.

We were both laughing in that sentimental way that women do when they’re saying something important, but don’t want to start crying when I pose the question, “Jess, tell me how I can be a better friend to you?” I thought she’d reply with something along the lines of “oh, I don’t know, how about we set up a weekly phone chat, or get a girls weekend on the calendar, or text me more often than you think you should.” I thought she would answer my question with a task list of sorts, a few things I could do for her.

She didn’t answer that way at all. “You never need anything. You never need me. You never need anything from me. I want you to need me more.”

All the oxygen was emptied from my tiny recording closet. Tears filled my eyes as my hands fell to my lap. My mouth was hovering over the microphone, but no words were coming out. What was I supposed to say to that? What could I possibly say? One of my dearest friends needed from me wasn’t more attention, more camaraderie, more support. What she needed from me was more of me.

The one problem? I wasn’t sure I could say yes to that.

As badly as the end of that conversation went, the worst was yet to come. Stopped at a traffic light on my way home that afternoon, a haunting feeling came over me. I’ve been sickened by Jessica‘s response because it told me that the entire time we’ve been friends, she felt like the road between us was something of a one-way street. But more agonizing than this first realization was the second realization that hit – I’ve had the same conversation before. Jessica‘s words were painfully familiar. I’d lost other friendships for the same reason.

Many months earlier, another friendship I had blew up. And the reason she sided was the same one Jessica articulated now – “I hate that to know what’s really going on with you, I have to read your Instagram. You never need me.”

She went on to say that she needed a break from me, saying she didn’t think she could be in a relationship like this, where she’s the only one being authentic and having needs.

I remember being confused. Am I really such an impossible person to be friends with? Is this her deal? My deal? Are we entirely to blame? For days, weeks, maybe I reeled. I felt embarrassed. I truly thought she was one of my closest friends. And, I felt ashamed. How did I become so closed off to the people I cared about? We had the transparent part of me gone – and when?

I appear to be extroverted, chatty, inclusive, outgoing, generous with my time and heart, loving, caring, a connector, great at parties, comfortable with people, content in my relational world, but here is who I really am: all those things until it goes deep. Then I hedge. Or distract. Or bail.

Don’t get me wrong. I love going deep with you. I’m just not interested in divulging my truest parts of me. It feels somewhat selfish, somehow. Greedy. Needy. Wrong. It feels like I’m wasting your time, or sucking up too much oxygen, and/or saying more than is prudent, and/or talking when I should be listening. I guess maybe, too, I hate not being understood. What if I share the deepest parts of me, and you look at me confused? Or worse, you try to fix or change me?

These are all my reasons for asking you the probing questions and listening with sparkling eyes, shoulders touched, towards you, an interest, mind hanging on your every word, but the fact is, I’m guarded. The truth is, I’ve been hurt.

Over time, after relational hurt stacked itself high enough, something in me hesitated when someone really wanted to know me. Advertently, I started a building project. Without much thought, I erected tall walls with locked doors around my life. I’d reveal it enough, so people felt close to me, but not enough that anyone would use it against me. I’d cut out little windows here and there, so people felt like they knew me, but I lost my open-heartedness and began to live in a protective way.

It would be easy to keep reading about my friendship and dysfunctions and not apply them to anything in your life.

And so, I ask you – what are your past relational pains? And what ways have you been hurt?

- Have you opened up to a friend, only to have that friend use what you shared against you?

- Have you drawn close to a group of friends and eventually found yourself on the outside of that group?

- Have you felt you didn’t measure up to some standard, spoken or unspoken?

- Have you shared a struggle only to receive a sideways glance of judgment, making you feel like you’re the only person who really struggles?

- Have you invited and invited and shared and shared and invested and invested, and when you need something, no one is there?

Vulnerability is the soil for intimacy, and what waters intimacy is tears. Real raw gut wrenching honesty about the fight that made you want to leave your spouse last night or the addiction to pornography or sex that is eating you alive, or the abortion you’ve never shared or the small stuff that makes you cry, anxiety you feel when you think of your kids going to college, or the heartache you feel not to be married.

I wish I could tell you it all worked the other way. I wish I could tell you that a friendship based solely on laughter, fun, lighthearted gatherings, and good times would stand the test of time and nourish the needs of your soul. I am good at all that stuff, you know, but bear my soul intimacy? Not so much.

We all crave friends in the trenches who call us mid cry and whom we call mid cry, friends that don’t quit and don’t judge, friends who make us feel understood, seen and challenged, and remind us of our God and our hope, friends who compel us to get out of our robes and into lives and callings, and none of that is possible until we risk letting our walls fall.

We must respond to have this kind of deep connection in our lives.

- Writing by Jennie Allen condensed for content.