Category Archives: Family

On the Decline of Hugging

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A reflection by Lindsey

Everyone who knows me knows that I love hugging. I regard Lindsey hugs as a global public good. Hugging can tell you a lot about people, especially if you’re lucky enough to embrace another person who knows how to speak the language of Hug. Yes, I firmly believe that hugging is a language. And unfortunately, hugging is quickly on the decline.

I have some hypotheses as to why people have stopped hugging. However, I don’t find any of these possible reasons especially convincing. So I wonder, why are people so willing to send hugging to the margins of acceptable touch?

The word acceptable gives us some clues. Somehow, some way, an untold number of westerners have bought into a cultural myth that hugging belongs only in one’s family. You can hug your mom, dad, aunts, uncles, grandmas, cousins, siblings, grandpas, and anyone else who might receive regular invitations to your family reunions. Venture outside of these limits of acceptable hugging, and all of a sudden, you’re somehow indicating a romantic interest.

I’ve been in plenty of venues where I find myself asking, “What message is this hug sending?” But more so, I wonder what the other person is communicating to me. Is he/she nervous, confident, stressed, jubilant, comfortable, completely weirded out, or some other mash-up of various emotions? When one speaks Hug, one can learn an untold number of things about another person from a single embrace. Hug speakers expect that no two hugs are ever the same because no two people are ever exactly the same. It’s not enough to know that, “Bill likes to have every last bit of air squeezed out of his lungs,” and, “Sam would always prefer a high-five over a hug.” Huggers need to be adaptable, adjusting their hugs to meet people wherever they are.

Good hugging requires a high degree of emotional awareness. You need to know what’s going on in yourself, read what’s going on in another person, and make adjustments accordingly. Good hugging is hard. It allows the two people a level of connection they may not otherwise experience. And I think most people just aren’t comfortable with that much vulnerability. After all, if you’re going to hug someone properly, you have to share physical space for a bit. It can be easier to keep your distance from others.

I think the world is a better place when huggers can hug. I do understand that not everyone is a hugger and I wouldn’t want to pressure anyone to change his or her hugging style. However, I do think many Western cultural contexts frown mightily on hugging and put huggers in a proverbial straight jacket: keep those hugs to yourself! Many people would caution celibates to avoid hugging lest hugging lead down the slippery slope of sexual temptation.

From my perspective, freedom to hug is part of the wonder and joy of my celibate vocation. I see hugging as an overflow of radical hospitality. It’s a part of my vocation I’ve always been good at. I remember working at Scout camp and giving good night hugs. Some weeks, the campers literally lined up for my hugs. The trend has continued. It’s rare for me to visit friends and not spend a good chunk of my day giving hugs. I love it when people say, “Lindsey hugs are the best part of these gatherings.”

It’s never quite computed in my mind why people assert that a celibate vocation means cutting oneself off from all forms of intimacy with others. I believe that celibate vocations open us up to the possibility of deep human connection. For me, that connection frequently comes through hugging. Something about hugging helps me feel deeply connected to myself and to another person. I’m able to come alive in a different way than usual. Not everyone has the same appetite for hugging, but different people can meet the same need in other ways. For Sarah, that same sense of connection comes from long, energetic, enthusiastic conversations. I occasionally experience a desire to be incredibly excited for long stretches at a time. There are some select friends I’ll share those experiences with because I want to be accepted exactly as I am in those moments. But my intimacy needs aren’t the same as Sarah’s, so Sarah’s way of connecting with others doesn’t work quite as well for me as hugging.

I have to wonder if hugging is quickly on the decline because people would prefer to avoid being vulnerable with one another. It’s humbling to be asked for a hug. It can be even harder to ask for a hug yourself when you need one. No one wants to be the emotionally high-maintenance friend. We avoid conceiving of ourselves as interdependent on anyone, making occasional exceptions for our close family. However, when we draw firm and static lines around who we can be vulnerable with, we also find ourselves talking about “acceptable” people to hug. I think those lines do much more to hurt us than to help us. And so, one hug at a time, I hope to create more space for people to share their vulnerability with me and experience acceptance.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

The Need for Better Conversations about Traditional Sexual Ethics, LGBT Suicide, and Parental Acceptance

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Any LGBT person can tell you how hard it is to talk about all the hurtful ways the LGBT community has experienced traditional sexual ethics. Because of how often people from conservative Christian traditions have used their beliefs as weapons, straight Christians often feel torn between expressing theological convictions about sex and marriage and showing love to the real LGBT people they know.

In discussions about the risks of alienating LGBT loved ones, activists and allies frequently cite the work of the Family Acceptance Project. We’ve heard many friends and acquaintances call attention to a 2009 finding that “LGB young adults who reported higher levels of family rejection during adolescence were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide, 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression, 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs, and 3.4 times more likely to report having engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse, compared with peers from families that reported no or low levels of family rejection.” We’ve also heard much about the 2010 findings from the same group: “LGBT young adults who reported high levels of family acceptance during adolescence had significantly higher levels of self-esteem, social support and general health, compared to peers with low levels of family acceptance,” and, “High religious involvement in families was strongly associated with low acceptance of LGBT children.”

In no way do we want to minimize the importance of effective suicide prevention work. We thank God for every person who dedicates his or her life to preventing the tragedy of suicide, and we are especially grateful for organizations like the Trevor Project that operate suicide prevention services especially geared towards young people in the LGBT community. Every time we hear from a person in crisis, we direct him or her to call 866-488-7386. The Trevor Project operates 24/7 with trained counselors, and we’ve never known them to turn anyone away for being older than 24.

Statistics about LGBT suicide rates have been circulating since 1989. The shocking numbers have lead to widespread calls to do something — anything — to prevent people from choosing suicide. Even in 2014, we see many stories about youth who attempt suicide as a result of being bullied over real or perceived sexual orientation and/or gender identity. These stories cut us to the heart, and we grieve. As a couple, we do everything possible to promote safe environments for LGBT people while readily extending hospitality to any of our friends who may be in distress. We do not want to see anyone become another suicide statistic. Yet, we are also saddened by the way statistics get used to make an argument that essentially comes down to, “Having a traditional sexual ethic means you are driving your LGBT child to suicide.”

Here at A Queer Calling, we’re not interested in apologetics. We’re not out to convert anyone. We are writing on this topic because we have many readers who are parents with a firm belief that sex is a gift reserved for heterosexual marriage and an absolute commitment to loving their children no matter what. They have sought counsel from many different places, and they manage to find our blog at some point along the way. By the time they write to us, they tell us that they’ve heard the only way to love their LGBT children and protect those children from suicide, depression, and other mental health problems is to adopt a progressive sexual ethic that affirms gay marriage and supports medical transition for transgender people. Because we’re not in the business of telling people what to believe, we struggle to know what to say to these folks. Our hearts ache for them and their families. We want to do everything we can to help them show love to their children. It makes no difference whether their sexual ethics mirror ours. We hear and try to empathize with their earnest questions of “How can I continue actively parenting my child now that he or she has come out to me? Must I sit back and simply affirm all of my child’s choices if I want to keep him/her in my life?”

We are not parents, but this confusion makes sense to us. When we hear people shouting from the rooftops, “LGBT kids are committing suicide because of what conservative Christians believe!” we have to wonder if that shout goes up as a kind of trump card. If statistics about LGBT suicides get shared every time a traditional sexual ethic is mentioned, we wonder if these statistics are being offered as attempts to prevent LGBT suicides or as attempts to silence anyone who holds conservative beliefs but genuinely wants to show love to their LGBT friends and family members. When it comes to parents supporting their kids, why do people seem ready to conflate believing that marriage should be between one man and one woman with rendering one’s child homeless, depressed, and dejected? We don’t want to minimize the pain anyone experiences as a result of conflict with his or her family. We’ve been there, and it’s incredibly hard to manage. But we are skeptical of the claim that embracing a progressive sexual ethic is the only way to love and accept one’s LGBT child.

Part of the problem that arises when discussing this very sensitive issue is that many conservative Christians who believe they are “speaking the truth in love” are actually enacting violence upon their LGBT children. When one’s typical response to any discussion about sexuality with an LGBT child or family member is, “Being gay is a sin,” or “God’s plan is for you to become heterosexual,” or “We love you and want you to be ‘normal’ and have a family someday,” the person on the receiving end is going to experience those comments as rejection. If you’re never willing to listen as your loved one shares his/her experience of life, and if you cannot see your loved one in any way other than “sexual sinner” or “potential sexual sinner,” you’re creating a recipe for disaster.

But these are not the ways that all people with conservative beliefs on marriage and sexuality interact with their LGBT children. We know some conservative parents who have strong relationships with children who have come out to them, whether those sons and daughters have grown up to become celibate or non-celibate. These folks are determined to love their family members unconditionally while acknowledging that they may not agree on sexual ethics. Parents we know personally have taken different approaches. Should their sons or daughters decide to enter same-sex marriages, some have opted to attend the weddings even amid theological differences. We also know people who have decided not to attend their children’s wedding services but still welcome partners to all family gatherings as members of their families. Additionally, we know of families who make a special point to ensure that their single and married LGBT children can attend all extended family gatherings and major life moments for their nieces and nephews. We aren’t advocating any of these as best practices. Again, we are not parents, and our only knowledge of this topic comes from interactions with our own parents and the parents of LGBT friends.

While we acknowledge that many LGBT people might struggle to see some of these actions and attitudes as “affirming,” it’s very difficult for us to conceive of any of them as outright rejection and hatred. Disagreeing with one’s son’s or daughter’s approach to sexual ethics does not have to mean belittling his or her life experiences. Disagreement does not automatically render a person hateful. It also does not necessarily mean a person is trying to show love while doing things that are oppressive. We know from our two very different sets of experiences with our own parents that what one person sees as an insufficient show of love, another may see as a warm embrace. We believe that generally, it’s best to let parents and children determine for themselves the best ways to handle differences of opinion regarding what is “affirming” and what is not.

The claim, “Holding a traditional sexual ethic means you are driving LGBT people to suicide,” shuts down meaningful dialogue about how traditional sexual ethics help people to understand marriage, celibacy, sexuality, and gender in positive ways. This claim doesn’t leave space for an LGBT person to hold a traditional sexual ethic, or for an LGBT person with a liberal sexual ethic to have a healthy relationship with his or her more conservative family. It hides the myriad ways LGBT people and our families reconcile disagreements over faith and sexuality. There is considerable diversity within the LGBT community about reconciling these issues; parents should be empowered to undertake a similar journey. As much as we need to have real conversations about bullying and LGBT suicides, we also need to offer people with traditional sexual ethics space to explore how the faith they hold dear could help them to love their LGBT family members better.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

10 Misconceptions about Celibate Partnerships

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Even as we thought about naming our blog before we began writing, we knew there would always be people who misunderstand our way of life. There are many misconceptions about celibacy in general, and it’s understandable that there are even more about celibate partnerships like ours. Seeing as we already spent some time clarifying the nature of our relationship last week, we thought that it might be a good time to expound upon some misconceptions we’ve encountered about celibate partnerships since beginning our writing project together.

1. We entered into celibate partnerships because we are lonely. Without a doubt, this is the most common of all misconceptions we hear. Whether it’s the suggestion that we are to be pitied because “it must be so difficult to get through life alone” or oppositely, the assertion that we need to suck it up and realize that being lonely is just our “cross to bear” as LGBT people, we hear some form of this on a regular basis. We can’t speak for others who have decided to pursue celibate partnerships, but our decision to do life together was in no way related to fear of or difficulty coping with loneliness and isolation. To understand more of what we mean, read the post we wrote on that topic.

2. We are trying to imitate marriage. Some of our acquaintances have asserted that the only way to understand words like “couple” and “partnership” is within the context of a pathway to marriage. Because we have shared that we are not interested in a sacramental marriage and would not be eligible for one within our faith tradition even if we did want that, we’ve heard it said that we must be imitating marriage. Frequently, we have noted parallels between the marital vocation and various celibate vocations, stating that certain aspects like intimacy and vulnerability are present within all types of vocations. Seeing parallels between our kind of vocation and another kind does not mean that we are attempting to imitate the other. Within the past week especially, we’ve discussed this further with our friends who are also in celibate partnerships, and no one we’ve ever talked to about this has seen his/her celibate partnership as an imitation of marriage.

3. We endanger our partners’ personal commitments to celibacy. Again, we can’t speak for other people here, but as for the two of us, we find that doing life together strengthens both our personal commitments to celibacy. Though we often hear folks wondering why we don’t see the life we share as a near occasion of sin, the possibility that   we might encourage each other to abandon celibacy seems totally unrealistic to us. We learn a great deal from each other, and we see each other growing in virtue as a result of living together and sharing in various aspects of life.

4. Our relationships are sexually abstinent, but not truly celibate because there must be some element of eroticism. Some folks have the idea that because we consider ourselves “partners,” we must be struggling against lust for one another. From there comes the assumption that celibate partnerships may be sexually abstinent, but not celibate in the most honest sense of the word. Speaking from personal experience, our relationship has never been based upon physical attraction, arousal, or desire. Near the beginning of our relationship, we had many conversations about what does draw us toward each other since neither of us remotely fits the physical type to whom the other is attracted. We saw easily that our common ties were commitment to doing life with another person who also feels called to celibacy, similar intellectual interests and capabilities, and willingness to help each other grow in holiness. Eroticism has never been part of the picture for us.

5. Only women enter into celibate partnerships. Sometimes we hear it posited that only women–and more specifically, only women with low sex drives–would be able to maintain celibate partnerships. We do know several other celibate LGBT couples, and believe it or not, none of them are female. All other celibate LGBT couples whom we have the pleasure of knowing at this time are men, and some have been together far longer than we have.

6. We choose “liberal, unorthodox” spiritual directors who will tell us only what we want to hear about our relationships. This misconception is one of the most frustrating because it implies that 1) no theologically orthodox spiritual father would ever support our manner of living for any reason, and 2) individual spiritual fathers cannot be trusted to guide those who seek their counsel. The two of us see receiving strong, theologically orthodox spiritual direction as absolutely necessary. We would not feel comfortable seeing a priest for confession and spiritual direction if he were advocating that we do whatever we want or see ourselves as exceptions to the expectations of our Christian tradition. Our respective spiritual fathers are fully aware of our relationship to one another, and both have offered us great encouragement. They are also committed firmly to upholding traditional Christian teachings, and we’ve never had any reason to doubt their orthodoxy.

7. Our relationships are defined by exclusivity. An objection to celibate partnerships that we’ve heard more recently is that it’s inappropriate for two unmarried people to have an exclusive relationship with one another. We’re going to say something controversial here: we don’t think any healthy relationship, celibate or otherwise, is entirely exclusive. Certainly, marriages within Christianity would view sex as one specific area of exclusivity, but even our married friends (at least those who see their marriages as thriving) don’t view their spouses as their everything. It’s impossible for one person to meet all emotional and spiritual needs for another. That goes for us just as much as for people living other vocations. We don’t see our relationship as exclusive. In fact, we’re confident that it wouldn’t work if we didn’t also have other important people in our lives whom we consider our family of choice.

8. Doing life together is nothing more than a matter of convenience. This misconception comes in two variants: 1) the idea that we chose to share life because it’s convenient, and 2) the belief that if we don’t view our shared life in this way, we should. To address the first variant, we’ve stated in numerous places that our doing life together was an organic development. But that doesn’t mean there was no intentionality behind it. Though we do know some celibate LGBT couples who have begun sharing life merely for the sake of convenience, we view our own relationship as focused first and foremost on helping each other to grow closer to God. To address the second variant…well…we’re actually confused by this one. Why would it be better to live together for the sake of convenience than to live together because we feel called to helping each other journey toward Christ? Is this intention suitable only for married couples and monastics? Were someone to answer “yes,” we would heartily disagree.

9. We are actively seeking to redefine traditional Christian teachings. We’ve written in other places on the blog about just how hurtful this assumption is. Based on our own experience and those of other celibate LGBT couples we know, nothing could be farther from the truth. Every celibate LGBT couple with whom we are personally acquainted has expressed a strong desire to live fully in accordance with traditional Christian teachings on marriage and sexuality, and this is true even for couples we know whose decision to pursue celibacy is not rooted in a belief about sin.

10. We don’t see each other as friends. We find it troubling how often people attempt to place all relationships within a “marriage” and “friendship” binary. In the near future we hope to do a full post on this topic, but we find it rather insensitive and condescending when people tell us, “There’s already a name for what your relationship is, and that’s ‘friendship.'” That said, there seem to be just as many people who want to tell us that we see our relationship as a marriage (or imitation) because we clearly don’t view ourselves as friends. This isn’t true. As we’ve said over and over again, finding the most fitting terms for describing our relationship is a struggle for us, and probably will be for a long while if not for the rest of our earthly lives. But other terms we may use–partners, couple, family, team–do not negate the fact that we are also friends.

Are there other misconceptions about celibate partnership that we did not discuss in this post? Is there something you are interested in knowing more about relative to myths and realities about celibate partnership? Feel free to leave those and any other relevant discussion items in the comments section.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Why the Brother-Making Rite Isn’t Right for Us

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Adelphopoiesis (from the Greek ἀδελφοποίησις), also known as the brother-making rite, is a ritual with historical roots in the Eastern Christian tradition. Medieval Byzantine manuscripts offer evidence that this ceremony was performed in order to unite two people of the same sex as “brothers” in a way that was formally recognized by the Church. Adelphopoiesis did not garner significant scholarly interest until the 1990s when scholars such as John Boswell (Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe) began exploring the idea that this ceremony existed as an early form of blessing for same-sex unions.

Since long before we began this blog, people who have known about our celibacy have been asking us, “If you had the opportunity, would you participate in the brother-making rite or something analogous to it? Would this ceremony be a good way to acknowledge your commitment to each other?” Even though this rite is no longer performed, we get these or related questions at least once a month, so today we’re taking some time to offer a full answer. We do not see the brother-making right as appropriate for our specific circumstances for the following reasons:

We don’t consider each other “siblings.” Though we do acknowledge that all members of the Church are united as brothers and sisters in Christ, we aren’t inclined to think of our relationship as being first and foremost a form of siblinghood. The brother-making rite was used to make the two participants “brothers,” and we are mutually uncomfortable with applying this kind of language to our situation. A large part of understanding our celibate vocation involves seeing it as a mature, adult commitment. Though we don’t know exactly what these terms meant within the context of adelphopoiesis, to us the term “brothers” or “sisters” suggests that two people are under a common authority in the form of an adult parent. This seems inappropriate for our circumstances in that each of us already has a relationship with our own parents who raised us. One might argue that God could be understood as the parental figure in this instance, but it wouldn’t seem fitting for us to participate in a ceremony for the purpose of uniting us as siblings under God as a common parent when we’re already bonded to each other in this way by virtue of our baptisms.

How and in what circumstances this rite has been used historically remains unclear. Adelphopoiesis has not been a regular practice of any Christian tradition for several centuries. Despite Boswell’s argument that the brother-making rite was form of same-sex union similar to marriage, there are a lot of unknowns regarding exactly how it fit into the Church and society in the 9th to 15th centuries. What we do know is that this ceremony involved certain symbols that were also present in Byzantine marriages of the same period and contained references to pairs of saints who shared especially close relationships with one another. We also know that medieval Byzantine marriages involved several stages and the brother-making rite occurred within the context of a single ceremony. However, we don’t have complete answers the following questions: what motivated two people of the same sex to enter into this type of relationship with one another? What was this type of relationship in the first place? What did it look like? How was it understood within Byzantine society? Were there limits on who was or was not permitted to participate in this ceremony? Some sources suggest that the brother-making rite existed to create peace amongst families, and others posit that its purpose was to formalize chaste spiritual brotherhoods for a variety of possible reasons. Regardless, the particulars of its use, purpose, and meaning for the broader Christian community remain ambiguous. As such, we believe it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest adelphopoiesis as a suitable ceremony for honoring our own relationship.

Since Boswell’s work on adelphopoiesis, mentions of this ceremony have become associated with the movement for marriage equality. One need only perform a quick Google search using the search term “brother making rite” to see that discussions of this topic frequently involve the question of whether it was equivalent to marriage. Over the past few years, a number of popular news sources and online LGBT Christian resources have published articles on adelphopoiesis, implying that we can know it was indeed a type of marriage ritual, or we can at least be reasonably certain. Boswell’s work on this topic has been controversial since its publication in 1994, and now his name is associated with almost every mention of the brother-making rite in the modern West. As a result, even mentioning this ritual has become enough to suggest one’s association with the American political left and/or efforts to change the current teachings of some Christian denominations on same-sex marriage. The two of us are firm believers that LGBT couples should be extended the legal protections that enable the partners to be recognized fully as family to one another. However, we have no interest in calling our relationship a marriage, becoming involved with political movements of any kind, or advocating for change in our own Christian tradition’s teachings on marriage and sexuality. Even if adelphopoiesis ceremonies were still being performed today and the other factors we mentioned were not problematic for us, we believe it likely that participating in this ritual would cause more confusion than clarification for others on how we understand our relationship.

Finding ways to honor and celebrate our relationship with friends, family, and community is one of the many challenges we face as a celibate couple within a Christian tradition that teaches a conservative sexual ethic. This specific challenge calls for some creativity along with lots of prayer and support from those who love us. In the future, we would like to take up “ways we celebrate team Lindsey and Sarah” as a topic for exploration here at A Queer Calling. But for now, we hope today’s post has shed a bit more light on why we feel that adelphopoiesis, even if it did still exist, would not be the right choice for us.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Cultivating Emotional Intimacy

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When someone you know is going through a hard time, it’s natural to ask that person whether he or she has adequate support. As our regular readers know, the last several months have thrown many challenges our way. We are continuing to stand firm because we’re able to support one another. Many people have asked us what our intimacy looks like, and today we’d like to address a question we’ve received: “How do you cultivate emotional intimacy in a celibate relationship?” In most ways, our response is no different from what we would expect to hear from a healthy, non-celibate couple.

Upon coming into relationship with one another, we fell almost immediately into a natural pattern of cultivating deep emotional intimacy, and we’ve seen that continuing as our relationship has grown. There’s something about our personalities that has allowed each of us to “get” the other, even though we’ve both experienced being profoundly misunderstood by many people in our lives. Sometimes, two people can just click.

Our friendship blossomed because we were willing to be vulnerable with each other. As we’ve shared before, we believe that vulnerability opens the door to intimacy. When we were just beginning getting to know each other, we shared random facts about ourselves and our lives. Lindsey learned that Sarah used to wear mismatched socks to express Sarah’s individuality in elementary school. Sarah learned that as a kid, Lindsey worked to save money so Lindsey could attend Space Camp three times. These micro-stories gave us opportunities to share an incredible number of life experiences and the various emotions associated with these experiences. We each saw bits and pieces of the other’s personality, and came to appreciate some similarities while acknowledging some real differences in our pasts. Our selections were truly random, spanning from the deeply significant to the absolutely trivial. In addition to helping us get to know one another as people, sharing these stories laid a foundation for our coming to trust one another.

Early on in our friendship, we made a commitment to being completely honest with one another. Honesty is one of the highest values for both of us, and we’ve both experienced past relationships in which we or our significant others have had difficulty with being forthright. Because of this, we’ve challenged each other to be radically open about our thoughts, feelings, and mistakes when there’s a problem. Within the first month of our friendship, we had already started to see this pattern emerging between us. Though at first Lindsey considered the topic embarrassing, Lindsey shared openly with Sarah about Lindsey’s writing anxiety and the kind of support needed in order to manage it. Since we’re both writing doctoral dissertations, that type of information has been vital to ensure that we’re accomplishing our goals without sacrificing our emotional needs. Since the time Lindsey first opened up to Sarah about writing anxiety, Sarah has been able to check in with Lindsey about it and provide comfort and encouragement when Lindsey needs it most. Equally humiliating was the first time Sarah told Lindsey about Sarah’s eating disorder history. Because many people assume that these conditions are merely attention-seeking devices for wealthy, white, teenage girls and not legitimate medical conditions that could affect someone Sarah’s age, it has been a struggle for Sarah to be authentic about the need for support. But when Sarah did open up to Lindsey about this for the first time, Lindsey was unimaginably supportive and impressed by Sarah’s commitment to living a recovery-focused lifestyle even during the hard times. Examples like these have built upon our foundation for trust in one another.

Over the first few months that we knew each other, we learned a great deal of information, including the most painful and hidden parts of one another’s lives. A crucial piece of our emotional intimacy has been accepting each other’s emotional pasts for what they are and being able to appreciate that, by virtue of our humanity, we both carry deeply-rooted wounds. Whether it’s related to an issue that occurred during one of our childhoods, ways we’ve experienced hurt within the Church, Sarah’s trauma and the resulting PTSD, negative messages Lindsey received in ex-gay ministry, or something else entirely, we know that there will be space for conversation and respect for that experience’s symbolic meaning when we’re ready to talk about it together. Cultivating empathy for each other’s brokenness–that which we share in common and that which varies individually–has helped both of us to feel safe in being completely genuine with one another, regardless of how ugly that might look sometimes.

While emotional lives are built over the entire lifespan, all people experience their emotions moment by moment. We tend to regard in-the-moment emotional experiences as slightly unpredictable because emotions can vary, especially when people are under a good deal of stress. We have made a practice of affirming one another’s right to feel in the moment, even if the other doesn’t understand exactly why that particular mix of emotion is present at a given time. Our commitment to opting in 100% as we do life together has helped us develop a strong emotional intuition. When Lindsey experiences a panic attack, Sarah can usually tell whether Lindsey would benefit most from reassurance and empathy, some clear direction to start problem-solving processes, or a mixture of approaches. This emotional intelligence goes both ways in our relationship. One day recently, Lindsey just held Sarah as Sarah started crying hysterically after a conflict with Sarah’s nutritionist. Given that Sarah had been in a car accident the day before and Sarah rarely gets upset to the point of tears, Lindsey knew something was up. Nevertheless, Lindsey sat in that space with Sarah until Sarah was ready to share the specifics of what had happened. We’re profoundly grateful God has opened up to us a space of grace to be able to discern what emotional response would best draw us into a deeper relationship with one another, even though we’re still learning.

While some aspects of emotional intimacy have come naturally, other aspects of emotional intimacy are more difficult. We’ve struggled with and will continue to determine the best pathway through the difficulties associated with being open about our spiritual lives and places where our spiritualities differ. On some levels, our spiritualities are incredibly compatible: we both value intellectual honesty, placing life in the Church in its historic contexts, cultivating a prayer life, and being shaped within our specific Christian tradition. On other levels, we’re continually surprised at just how hard it’s been to honor our natural spiritual inclinations when developing our own sense of tradition. Lindsey’s faith journey has been profoundly influenced by mainstays of the Evangelical tradition, as Lindsey’s faith began to blossom in college while Lindsey was participating in Intervarsity and playing on the worship team of a nondenominational congregation. Sarah’s personal spirituality and formation has been tied to more liturgical traditions, as Sarah has naturally grown in faith through partaking of the sacraments and engaging in robust intellectual reflection. Even though our spiritualities may look very similar at first glance, we’ve learned that we value incredibly different facets of the spiritual experiences we share. We have welcomed the opportunity to learn more about each other even though we’re still learning the best way to have these conversations. That said, we should also note that we have high expectations and hopes that we will find our way.

The emotional intimacy that we’ve been able to cultivate within our partnership has also manifested in spillovers into other relationships. We find it easier to be compassionate when others are going through hard times. We can affirm other people’s emotions and create space for whatever feeling happens to be in the room. We’ve learned that matching appropriate responses with how a specific individual experiences emotion can be hard, so we try to respond first with empathy. Cultivating emotional intimacy in all one’s relationships is a lifelong process, and we’re glad to take in whatever wisdom the journey may bring.

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