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The Friendate
by Camerin Courtney
April 5, 2006
I'm driving to meet someone in a restaurant across town in a carefully selected semi-casual outfit. My hint of nervousness inspires an impromptu prayer, "God, please give us good fellowship and conversation. Help us to hit it off, and if we don't to just get through this lunch OK and part ways peacefully. Thanks for this new relationship possibility."
When I arrive at the agreed-upon time and place, I check my lipstick in my rearview mirror and affix a hopeful smile. Then I wander into the diner to meet … Christine.
I met Christine a month prior in a membership class at my church. I'd taken one of the few empty seats next to her, and during the break in our hours-long meeting had struck up a conversation in which I discovered she's a fellow singleton and an English prof at a nearby Christian college (a fellow word nerd!).
We'd exchanged business cards for possible professional connections. But that next week I found myself e-mailing her a tentative and carefully worded e-mail:
Christine-
It was great meeting you at church last weekend. I enjoyed our conversation and was thinking it would be fun to meet for lunch sometime. Let me know if you're interested and, if so, when you might be free.
Thanks!
-Camerin
Then I pressed send with a bit of trepidation, hoping these overtures of friendship wouldn't be interpreted as stalker-ish or, worse yet, gay.
Just weeks before, I'd joked with a couple of single friends at work about how pursuing friendship at this age, especially as a single person, feels not so unlike asking someone on a date. You have to somehow get the person's contact info, then achieve the appropriate level of breeziness in a phone call or e-mail invite. Then, if the person agrees to get together, there's the hope you'll have good conversational chemistry and won't spend the entire hour over sandwiches or mochas staring at one another in awkward silence. Is the friend-potential open to new relationships or suffering from a too-full roster? If it's a work contact, does he believe in keeping work and social life separate? If the person thinks you're a goober, will it be weird every time you run into her at church?
I've seen articles written on this phenomenon that have coined new phrases like the "girl crush" or the "man date." While it's interesting to read about this phenomenon, and to know I'm not alone in my fumbling attempts at new friendship, I also roll my eyes at such labels. They all feel like they're exacerbating the issue, making much ado about next-to-nothing.
But then I watch another close friend move out of state or meet another word-loving, large-living, Christ-emulating woman at a conference and wonder if she'd be a fun addition to my friend roster and how on earth to get her there without seeming freakish.
Let's face it, maintaining community as a single person in our transient, independence-loving, I-can-do-everything-from-grocery-shopping-to-date-finding-in-the-comfort-of-my-own-home society isn't easy. As I watch friendships fade or disappear altogether into inter-state moves, marriage, or parenthood, I scan my relational horizon for replacements. And this side of classrooms and dorm living, I don't meet those potential replacements just every day. So when one seems to cross my path, I feel compelled to act. To risk giving my business card or even a "we should do coffee sometime." And this can feel downright risky for borderline-introvert me.
A few months ago I took such a risk with a woman at a local singles conference. After my initial you-seem-cool, I-promise-I'm-not-a-stalker, let's-meet-for-lunch e-mail, we've since met for dinner twice and coffee once and she recently included me in her blanket e-mail invite to a roller derby and her upcoming birthday bash. Who knows what other friend potential may be lurking in the other folks at these events?
I also offered a similar invite to a woman at my church with whom I carpooled to a retreat with mutual friends a couple years ago. When I discovered we shared the same obscure favorite movie, I thought she was good friend potential. But I didn't act on this inclination until I recently discovered she's going through a divorce. When she asked me what it's like to be single in the church after a recent service, I finally suggested we do lunch sometime. This friendate was delightful, and she reciprocated by inviting me to her monthly gathering of the young married chicks in our church. That's how I found myself sharing nachos and conversation with ten married women in my church this past Friday night. Not only was that a great cultural experiment (one that I would have feared a year ago, prior to these friend excursions), it was a lot of fun, too.
Risk by risk, invite by invite, the holes in my shifting relationship landscape are filling in. And in the process, my paradigm is expanding and God's bringing new opportunities and voices into my life. And somehow in all of this brave new friendship pursuit, I'm finding the sting of that one elusive "it" relationship lessening. I'm taking charge of at least one aspect of my relational world, and that feels empowering and good.
I also think this newfound openness and anticipation is probably more like the kind of attitude God would like us to have toward relationships—just open to whatever he wants to bring into our world each day. And in so shifting, I realize that much of what's come before in my life has been somewhat closed and cliquey and safe. And how the occasional goodbyes and dry spells and lonely seasons of the single life have helped open me up—both out of necessity and maturity.
I'm realizing this is the way to approach people and relationships and life. Expectant. Asking God each day to help me spot the ones to pursue, to have the courage to do just that, to hope the other person is open, too.
And that in the openness and risk and willingness to try, we get that much closer to what we really crave at the root of it all: community.
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