Why can't we be friends?

A while ago in moho blogoland there were some posts about friendship. That got me to thinking and my thoughts have been simmering on the back burner for a little while now and I think I’m ready to serve up a helping. One common theme I’ve noticed in moho blogs and in groups I’ve been a part of is the desire by moho’s to find that one best friend “that totally gets me”. I remember feeling that as well. I wanted that one best friend that was just like me and who I could do everything with. I felt very different from other guys at school (because I wasn’t interested in the same things and was attracted to them instead of to the girls) and thought my life would be much better if I could have a BFF just like me. I’m aware, by the way, that this isn’t unique to homosexual Mormon men.

As a result, my approach with friendships became the chameleon approach. I was Julia Roberts character in the Runaway Bride. My friendships involved me trying to become the perfect fit for whoever my current friend was. I was always just along for the ride. My friend KaRyn coined the term “come along friend”. Or maybe it was Alie? The term wasn’t coined specifically for me, but I was classified as a come along friend.

Martha Beck talked about this idea in an article of hers that I read on CNN a while back. I copied the article into a word document but sadly didn’t copy down the URL. Sorry. Anyway, she had the following to say about romantic relationships, but I think what she says is also applicable to friendships or family relationships.

There's a thin line between a romantic statement like "I love you so much, I want to share my life with you until death do us part" and the lunatic-fringe anthem "I love you so much that if you try to leave me, I'll kill you."

People who say such things love others the way spiders love flies; they love to capture them, wrap them in immobilizing fetters, and drain nourishment out of them at peckish moments. This is not the kind of love you want.

The way you can tell real love from spider love is simple: Possessiveness and exploitation involve controlling the loved one, whereas true love is based on setting the beloved free to make his or her own choices.

Perhaps you are neither a spider nor a fly, but a chameleon who morphs to match the one you love. Or you may date chameleons, choosing partners who conform to your personality. Either way, you're not in a healthy relationship. In fact, you're not in a relationship at all.

If you're living by the "We are one" ideal, it's high time you found out how terrific love for two can be. Follow your heart in a direction your partner wouldn't go. Dare to explore your differences. Agree to disagree. If you're accustomed to disappearing, this will allow you to see that you can be loved as you really are. If you tend to dominate, you'll find out how interesting it is to love an actual person rather than a human mirror.

At some point I began to realize that my desire to have a best friend who was just like me was more about wanting to validate myself because I didn’t feel good about who I was. If I found a best friend just like me, then it would be ok to be me. In the meantime I would try to morph myself to try and be exactly who someone else was. This was back when I saw my uniqueness as a bad thing and not as a good thing to feel confident about. Fortunately, that has all changed.

The bad thing about how things were before it all changed though, is that I couldn’t ever really accept the love I got from others, because they weren’t loving me…I didn’t really even know who I was. I was an amorphous personality. If people said they loved me or paid me some compliment, it always just bounced right off my amorphousness.

Now, however, I’ve explored who I am and opened myself up to let others in and take a tour, even of the stuff that I swore I would always keep secret. I have a better sense of who I am and let others see it, and as a result I’m able to accept the love and compliments I get from others because I’m able and willing to recognize it in myself. I also know that these kind expressions are coming from people who know all of me, even what I considered to be the darkest parts of me. I can no longer use the excuse, “they only say nice things because they don’t know about this or that.” They know it all and yet these people are willing, even anxious, to see the good in me.

As a result, I’ve also noticed I’ve become much more able to feel the love of God, or what I identify as the love of God. It’s difficult because he’s not a tangible person that we can be in the same room with and audibly hear speak to us. I really believe it’s our more tangible earthly friendships and relationships that help define our relationship with him, so it should probably come as no surprise that as my earthly relationships have deepened and become more meaningful, so has my relationship with God.

Any post that starts with a picture of Paris and Nicole and ends with my relationship with God has to be a good one, right?