I Kissed Dating Goodbye (13 page)

We can take our first step by refocusing relationships headed off course or ending those we know are wrong. To embrace all the good God has in store for us, we need to let go of past sin and mistakes. We also need a team--parents and other godly friends--who can keep us accountable and provide encouragement. Let's be humble enough to invite their correction and counsel. And let's be honest enough to admit we need protective boundaries in our lives to keep us far from temptation and

starting with a clean slate 119 compromise. Finally, let's honestly evaluate the influence of what we watch, what we listen to, and who we hang out with. Actively following the four steps in this chapter will help us put our convictions into action.

Yes, we'll still face many questions. How can we have friendships with the opposite sex without becoming romantic? What do we do when attracted to or even infatuated with someone? And how can we explain "not dating" to those around us? We'll look at these and many other issues in the next three chapters.

chapter nine keys for keeping your relationships with the opposite sex out of the "romantic zone"

You meet someone of the opposite sex. He or she really catches your eye. Uh-oh.

Then you get to know this person, and you find out he or she has a great personality as well.

Double uh-oh.

To top it all off, this person sends you that "I'd like to get to know you better" vibe.

Major uh-oh!

If you've decided to put romance on hold until you're ready for marriage, what do you do in a situation like this? If you're not going to play the dating game, what's the plan?

The simple answer is to just be friends. Easy, right? Not quite. Maybe we wouldn't struggle with this

just plain confusing

Being "just friends" is just plain confusing. In all honesty, I haven't completely figured it out. Romance runs in my veins, and it's not always easy to restrain. Even when I want to maintain a platonic relationship with a girl, I struggle with keeping myself from stepping into something more.

Where is the line between friendship and "more than friendship," anyway? Trying to answer that question reminds me of a Tootsie Pop commercial I watched as a kid. Maybe you've seen it. A little boy has a Tootsie Pop and a very valid question: How many licks does it take to get to the middle of a Tootsie Roll-filled lollipop?

He asks a couple of animals his question, but nobody knows the answer. They direct him to the owl. The owl would know; owls are smart.

So the boy poses his question to the owl, who sits in his tree like some mountaintop guru: "How many licks does it take to get to the chewy center of a Tootsie Pop?"

The owl thoughtfully takes the sucker and removes the wrapping.

He licks once. "One," he counts.

He licks again. "Two," he says.

He licks a third time. "Three."

And suddenly, crunch! Throwing patience to the wind, the owl bites into the middle of the Tootsie Pop. Handing the bare Tootsie Pop stick to the boy, the owl announces his answer to the mystifying question: "Three."

That owl made me so mad when I was a kid. I felt sorry for

just friends in a Jusr-Do-Ir world 123 the boy. Not only did he lose his Tootsie Pop, but he still didn't know the true answer to his question.

When I consider friendship with girls, I feel like

But sometimes my friendships go "crunch!" Have you ever realized that a friendship has tipped over into romance? If so, then you know how difficult it can be to avoid this situation. One moment you're pals, then all of a sudden your heart kicks into high gear. You sigh when you think of this person. You find yourself daydreaming of the next time you can spend time with this "friend." Or you're with a group of friends, and when that particular person talks with someone else you feel.. dissomething. Jealous? Possessive?

You try to reason with yourself. "Why would I feel this way? We're just friends. We're brother and sister in Christ..." You can say whatever you want, but you know deep down that you've "crunched."

friends forever

To my shame I have a whole file of my own "crunch!" stories-- friendships with girls complicated, and sometimes ruined,

124 joshua harris because we became romantic. I'll share one of these stories here to help show how "crunching" can progress.

At age seventeen, I had just gotten out of a serious, two-year relationship that had shown me firsthand the pitfalls of dating. While my former girlfriend was, and is, a wonderful person, we broke up with many regrets. But now I had a chance to start over, and I was determined to avoid the mistakes of the past. I developed a simple plan: Until I was ready for marriage and had found the right girl, I would just be friends with members of the opposite sex.

Easier said than done.

I had good intentions, but I set out with a naive understanding of the nature of guy-girl friendships. At this point in time, I thought friendship with a girl meant you didn't kiss her or officially date. I had a lot to learn.

Over the course of the camp we got to know each other, talking in the lunch line and playing tennis on sports days. We grew even closer when we and a group of students hiked fourteen miles to the top of Pikes Peak. During the trek, Chelsea told me about life in the small town where her dad practiced law. I told her about my life at home in Oregon. As we talked, I

just friends in a Jusr-Do-Ir world 125 felt elated to have found a girl whose company I could enjoy without all the trappings of being boyfriend and girlfriend.

Unfortunately, my desire for "just friendship" wasn't as strong as my old habits of edging toward romance with girls. I felt attracted to Chelsea, and instead of being content with friendship and keeping our interaction in the context of a group, I asked her out to lunch. She" accepted, and two days before camp ended, we rode the bus into downtown Colorado Springs. We spent the afternoon meandering through tourist traps full of knickknacks and cheap paintings. At a bead shop we made necklaces as reminders of each other.

This little date was Mistake Number One. In my opinion, going out to lunch isn't a big deal, but in this case it signaled my special interest in Chelsea, placed us in a romantically charged setting, and made us feel like a couple My instigation of this interaction pushed our relationship beyo: comd friendship.

But at the time, I was blind to all of this. In hct, I felt proud of myself. As far as I was concerned, Chelsea and I had been completely above reproach. Good grief! We hadn't so much as held hands! As "mature" high schoolers, we had

This was Mistake Number Two. Now, letter writing is a fine thing. I wrote to several friends, both guys and girls, after camp. But Chelsea and I did more than keep in touch. For several

126 joshua harris months, we wrote each other almost every day The relationship not only cost a small fortune in postage, it bordered on obsession. When I wasn't writing to Chelsea or poring over the letters she had written to me, I was thinking and talking about her.

To any rational person, we were obviously much more than friends. Even though we closed each letter with "Friends forever," these poetic missives dripped with romantic overtones. We scattered "I miss yous" and "I can't stop thinking about yous" heavily throughout each epistle. On one note Chelsea wrote, "I love you in Christ" in bright letters at the top of each page.

Just friends? Yeah, right.

As 1 look back, I'm amazed at how I justified my actions. "How can this be wrong?" I reasoned. "We live thousands of miles apart, have never kissed, and can't even date!" What I failed to realize is that you don't have to live next door to someone to pursue intimacy prematurely. And you don't have to go on dates to overstep the limits of friendship; the U.s. Postal Service allows you to accomplish this despite distance.

The relationship didn't end well. Chelsea and 1 became more serious. We even flew out to visit each other. But eventually we began to see that we had less in common than we had originally thought. Our romantic ardor had glossed over our incompatibilities.

When Chelsea met another guy from school and began being "just friends" with him, I became jealous.

How did it happen? When did our friendship develop into

just friends in a just-do-it world 127 something more? Could I ever be just friends with a girl, or was it entirely impossible?

the possibilities of guy-girl friendships

Though I've sometimes failed in my attempts to walk the fine line between friendship and romance with girls, I do believe guys and girls can have life-enriching, non-romantic friendships. In fact, it's important that we do. The apostle Paul instructs his spiritual son Timothy to treat younger women "as sisters, with absolute purity" (1 Timothy 5:2). Paul assumes that Timothy interacts with women daily, and because of this assumption, he exhorts Timothy to pursue a godly attitude and purity. We need to pursue these things as well.

Guy-girl friendships can be pure, inspiring, and educational. As I've interacted with female friends, I've gained insight into their perspective on life, learning valuable things I would have missed in my narrow-minded, male outlook. I remember getting a note from a female friend in which she listed several of her favorite passages of Scripture. I had been working on memorizing some verses, and when I looked up the verses this friend had listed, I realized that I had originally developed a lopsided memory plan. All my memory verses had to do with conquering the enemy, beating the devil, and overcoming temptation. Her verses focused on simple faith in God, servanthood, and trust in His goodness. Though she never knew it, her perspective on our heavenly Father helped balance my understanding of God.

Maybe you've gained something equally valuable from a friendship with a member of the opposite sex. This kind of friendship can help us see life from a different perspective. They have the potential to challenge us spiritually and encourage our growth.

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