Friendship

                             Why Can't We  Be Friends

    Do you have close friends of the opposite sex? I do, from way back in my life, and I appreciate them. They have shaped my life in positive ways. I particularly appreciate the friendships I have had with women a few decades older than I, many which began in school, they the teachers, and I the student.

      So, I welcome Aimee Byrd's book, but in reading the negative reviews, I find I agree with most of their content. This does not stop me from my sincere appreciation of my cross-sex friendships, but it makes me realize just how rare they are, and look backward to try to see common elements, to discern how I, we, got it right.


    What did I do to be blessed with such friendships? Well, my parents protected me early on by instilling within me a strong respect for marriage, and an understanding of women and men as holding basic, general psychological differences worthy of respect and love. This is counterculture, but I do not mind. I have been counterculture all of my life. You get thick skin when your heart is set on Jesus, and you find you stop apologizing for it.


    Another advantage was that learning under women in a classroom was an excellent introduction to friendship. In a friend, you find something you respect, I think, and that was easy to do in an intellectual format. Trouble is that they keep dying on me, dropping left and right, being so much older than I. What are you doing to do?

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