Dan J. Brennan

Embracing Vulnerability: When Friends Betray Their Spouses Part One

Well, let's pull up your chair and grab yourself a beer or coffee as we discuss one of the biggest fears facing evangelicals on the issue of intimate cross-gender friendships: when platonic friends who are not married to each other become romantically enmeshed and choose to end their current marriages over romantic absorption. 

This sober potential is the greatest vulnerability for those of us who are nuturing deep beauty and relational richness in transmarital friendships. Friends who move from sweet and solid trust within their personal community to the heavy hellishness of spousal betrayal, broken homes, and devastated innocent children caught in the dramatic chaos.

There is this thick communal overcast of clouds hanging over spouses, children, surrounding family members, neighbors, and friends when two people believe their romantic couple chemistry should trump all other relationships--and they are married to other people. The dark side of inappropriate romantic infatuation is that two people steel themselves against this heaviness by turning inward instead of a chosen vulnerability outward. 

Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism Pt. 1

 

Okay, here I go. Can I be honest with you? I've been reluctant to plunge into the subject of the GLBT community for several reasons:

1. The enormous heat present among Christians. It's an issue with intense emotion on both sides. The minefield of language, rhetoric, arguments, debates, makes it exceedingly difficult to simply carry on a conversation. 

2. I did not want to draw attention away from the issue in my current book, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions. The gay issue clearly is drawing much more interest and energy in our culture than the complex issue of intimate male-female friendships. I think cross-gender friendships are an important issue though.

3. I have good friends on both sides. I don't want to lose any of them. I have conservative friends who support SUSP and "progressive" friends who support same-sex mariage who also support SUSP.

I've already stated in a previous post that I believe that I believe marriage between a man and woman is an expression of authentic sexuality. I believe that male-female bodies matter when it comes to authentic sexuality. Male-female married sex means something. I don't believe that same-sex marriage means the same thing as male-female marriage. But, before I lose my friends on the other side (if there is any from the other side reading this), I ask for your patience and read on. I don't fit into Dave Fitch's three categories.

The Sexualized Child

While I was aware of the rampant sexualization in our pop culture and advertising, I was not privy to the sexualization of children until I came across two books: So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Child by Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne and The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It by M. Gigi Durham. 

Both books were real eye-openers to me. 

Jesus, Married Women, and Discipleship

There are several texts in the Gospels suggesting mystery, paradox, and some social and marital ambiguities when it comes to Jesus and extramarital friendships.  These are texts are normally not viewed through the lens of Jesus and cross-gender friendships--especially among contemporary evangelicals.  But I suggest if they are understood in their original context, they do warrant further reflection.

About the Book

So, I received this substantive, good, encouraging email from Edith Humphrey about my first draft manuscripts.  Deeply encouraging.  One of my obvious goals for the book is to provocatively push the conversation about marriage and friendship.  I want to deconstruct evangelical romanticism and idealism of marriage.  Here's the way I look at it.  If I do that well, it will make many people upset and will look somewhat familiar with the entire emerging conversation in the church.  In other words, people are shocked and wonder if there is anything left of faith when you take away techniques, marketing, Enlightenment certainty, etc. from the faith.  Sure there is.  Just different boundary markers of faith.  Similarily, I want to deconstruct marriage.  If anything, this, more than anything else about the book, makes me think evangelical publishers won't touch it. 

Asian Americians and Interracial Intimacy: Taboo or Groundbreaking?

Until very recently interracial dating and intimacy shared a common ground with cross-sex friendships:  many communities deemed them as inappropriate relationships grounded in some kind of view of created and social order.  A recent article in the Asians in America Magazine highlighted this cultural phenomenon in "Culture: Still a Deciding Factor for Dating?"

That article prompted another question about churches and interracial marriages.

I know Kathy Khang and dj chuang as Asian Americans have had to think about this  issue.

Like cross-sex friendships, personal relationships forming out of interracial relationship face challenges in culture, community, and churches.  It hasn't been that long when interracial dating was considered socially inappropriate.  Interracial dating/marriages and cross-sex friendships challenge deeply embedded cultural stereotypes about what is appropriate and inappropriate in personal relationships.

Women Leaders, "True Feminine" and Leanne Payne

I've read two different women in the past few days: Leanne Payne in her excerpt from her new autobiography and Kathy Escobar's fine post on, "who does she think she is?"

Leanne Payne writes, "Generally speaking, a woman, when happy to be herself, and not overly influenced by today's feminism and political correctness, does not seek a cutting-edge public ministry.  Rather, her gender drive with its strong desires lead her to seek a loving husband, children, and a home.  Until fairly recent times, especially as a Christian, she valued the comparative "hiddenness" and needful protection that goes with such desires, knowing home and hearth to be her special sphere of greatest joy, influence, and effectiveness.  This view of woman may seem to contradict all we see and hear around us today, but in gender healings we see these deeply rooted yearnings unearthed." 

Although I sincerely respect Payne, women who wrestle with what Kathy writes, come up against this essentialist view of women leaders. 

The Centerfold Syndrome 2

Brooks explains his five elements of the syndrome:

Romantic Myth and Marriage 4

When Christians are absorbed in the romantic myth their counsel looks like this:

The Romantic Myth and Marriage 3

"More often than not, falling in love puts us inmarriage, but is not a foundation...Hard work is required to sustain spontaneous attraction and natural affection...When romance is the linchpin of a relationship or a marriage, then the couple, after the first wave of passion is gone, will have to work a great deal in order to conjure up passion and spontaneity.  The romance is likely to die because one or both partners become tired of working to restore what is supposed to be spontaneous passion.  When marriage and life are not dependent upon romance, the couple is free to be spontaneous and passionate.  The couple is free for passion because romance is something extra, a delight rather than a requisite for the very existence of their life together.  When a couple has a practical bond, they are free to be less clingy.  They will not fear diverting their attention from the romantic gaze.  Because sentiment is not the whole of their bond, they will be more open to other intimate friendships.  Other friendships will be considered an asset rather than a threat."

David Matzko McCarthy Sex and Love in the Home