![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2013\/02\/emotional-intimacy.jpg\" "\\"emotional")
<\/a>A guest post by Molly<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\nPart III of\u00a0An Open Letter to Joshua Harris<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBefore two people are ready for the responsibility of commitment, they should content themselves with friendship and wait on deep emotional intimacy. Exercising this patience will not handicap them relationally. In friendship, they can practice the skills of relating, caring, and sharing their lives with other people. In friendship, they can observe other people\u2019s characters and begin to see what they\u2019ll one day want in their mates\u201d <\/em>(78-79).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dear Josh,<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know about our readers, but relating to my friends, caring for them, and sharing in the joys and sorrows of their lives sounds like a fairly good definition of emotional intimacy. I don\u2019t draw a boundary between \u201cfriendship\u201d and \u201cemotional intimacy,\u201d yet I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/em> assures me that \u201cfriendship is about something other than the two people in the relationship; intimacy is about each other. In a true friendship, something outside the two friends brings them together\u201d (130). As we discussed earlier with using one\u2019s trust in God to deny one\u2019s active participation in building relationships, waiting<\/em> to build emotional intimacy isn\u2019t enough. You have to work<\/em> on it. Emotional intimacy is the point in any relationship\u2014between friends, or lovers, or a parent and child\u2014where your attention is fixated on the two of you as a cohesive unit, a merging of interests, enthusiasm, and caring. In the case of potential mates, such a relationship can (and should!) happily exist before marriage, require continued nurturing throughout your lifetimes, and won\u2019t be limited to just <\/em>your future spouse. And while we agree on that point, Josh, you seem to see the development of emotional intimacy as a linear process that originates from an initial commitment. [1] I believe that the development of emotional intimacy and commitment works as a progressive cycle; you cannot have one without pursuing the other.<\/p>\n Emotional intimacy is necessary for commitment, and commitment triggers a desire to deepen emotional intimacy. [2] You quote C.S. Lewis as saying \u201cwe picture lovers face to face, but friends side by side. Their eyes look ahead\u201d (ibid). I want friends (and perhaps eventually a spouse) who are equally comfortable looking me in the eye as we confide in each other, at my side for our next grand adventure, and at my back for whatever battles we face.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re raised to expect a fairy tale\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>They\u2019re girls from my past,\u2019 he answered sadly<\/em>. \u2018Anna, they don\u2019t mean anything to me now\u2026but I\u2019ve given a part of my heart to each of them.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I thought your heart was mine,\u2019 she said.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>\u2018It is, it is,\u2019 he pleaded<\/em>. \u2018Everything that\u2019s left is yours.\u2019<\/p>\n A tear rolled down Anna\u2019s cheek. Then she woke up.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>Anna told me about her dream in a letter.<\/em> \u2018When I awoke I felt so betrayed,\u2019 she wrote<\/em>. \u2018But then I was struck with these sickening thoughts: How many men could line up next to me on my wedding day? How many times have I given my heart away in short-term relationships? Will I have anything left to give my future husband?<\/strong>\u2019\u201d (14).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Josh, I\u2019ll start by giving some credit where it\u2019s due: none of your books (to my knowledge) contain blatant references to the fairy-tale narrative so prevalent in Christian purity culture. Christine Gardner\u2019s book Making Chastity Sexy<\/em> contains a large section about female speakers at abstinence rallies (like True Love Waits) describing their courtship in details that echo a Disney script. The narrative usually details the female being swept off her feet by her \u201cprince\u201d on horseback [3] and galloping through the woods, being wooed with roses and poetry, and acquiring the \u201cperfect dress,\u201d [4] arriving at the ceremony by horse-drawn carriage, and culminating\u2014in theory\u2014in happily ever after. You don\u2019t endorse the fairy tale. In fact, you cite your experience as a wedding videographer to remind us that this narrative is \u201cbeautiful and romantic, but it\u2019s not reality\u201d (166). And I thank you for that admission. You tell your readers that good marriages \u201crequire work, patience, self-discipline, sacrifice, and submission<\/strong>\u201d (172). And\u2014from my limited knowledge\u2014that seems to be true.[5] While I appreciate your realism and your omission of the fairy tale narrative, I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>emphasis on remaining \u201cemotionally pure\u201d is far more troubling than daydreams of slaying dragons and climbing towers.<\/p>\n In the autumn of 2011, Libby recalled her experience<\/a> with reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/em> as a teenager:<\/p>\n What I gleaned from Joshua Harris was that I should only ever have a relationship with one <\/em>person, else I would be giving away pieces of my heart and would end up with marital discontent and problems. I should \u00a0\u00a0 marry the first man I loved, the first man I had a relationship with, for only then would my heart be intact and pure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The concept of emotional purity has strong ties to the fairy tale narrative and our previous discussion of the problems inherent with trusting God to manage one\u2019s social calendar. When young women are taught to believe that their \u201cPrince Charming\u201d will be (or has been) sent, delivered, and ordained by God, there is tremendous<\/em> pressure to make the relationship work, even when it\u2019s clearly not working<\/em> because breaking up will result in not only a broken heart, but a heart that is no longer whole.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve come to believe that purity culture views emotional intimacy as the most dangerous kind of relational intimacy\u2014even more so than sexual intimacy\u2014 because our basic ability to feel affinity for another human being<\/em> is seen as a constant threat to our bodily integrity and emotional well-being. You seem to think so, Josh, quoting Jeremiah 17:9\u2014\u201cthe heart is wicked and deceitful; who can know it?\u201d (179).<\/p>\n When I first read descriptions of failed relationships in I Kissed Dating Goodbye,<\/em> I thought I was reading the testimonies of teenagers rather than adults of marrying age because of the ubiquitous descriptions of emotional devastation following the breakup of a short-term relationship, and I cannot help but think that growing up with an emphasis on \u201cemotional purity\u201d could do anything but compound the pain surrounding the dissolution of those unions. (I mean, sure, breakups can be devastating regardless of the philosophy you were raised in; that\u2019s part and parcel of being able to feel emotion.)<\/p>\n So let\u2019s be clear about a few things, Josh:<\/strong><\/p>\n If you are raised to believe that human relationships are condemned to imperfection and dissatisfaction because they cannot compare to God\u2019s divine love, you\u2019re not just setting high standards for your future lover; you are setting impossible standards. You are setting yourself and your partner up for failure.<\/em><\/p>\n If you are raised to expect that, from day one, your life\u2019s partner has been chosen by God for you and will someday end up as your spouse, you have been, despite the well-meant intentions of others, set up for failure.<\/em><\/p>\n If you are raised to believe your motives are inherently selfish, that you are not in control of your own physical impulses, and that harboring a crush on another person skews your priorities so badly that it can damage your relationship with a God who is ever-loving and everlasting, you have been set up for failure.<\/em><\/p>\n I think the ideal of emotional purity is downright blasphemous because it assumes that love<\/strong>\u2014which I\u2019ll define as philia<\/em> (friendship) striving for agape <\/em>(the unconditional love attributed to the Divine) with a periodic scoop of eros <\/em>(lust) thrown in for good measure, if you\u2019re lucky\u2014is a finite resource. <\/strong>The doctrine takes the patient, kind, humble, calm, protective force that 1 Corinthians 13 tells us surpasses even hope and faith in its strength and tells us to lock that force away, to keep our emotions under constant control, and to feel only the \u201cright\u201d things. Hillary McFarland, author of Quivering Daughters<\/em> is correct to remind us that to \u201cguard [one\u2019s] heart is to protect its worth, not ignore it<\/em>\u201d (90). Josh, I think our hearts are big enough (and, with time, well-protected enough) that nothing can be truly, permanently \u201ctaken\u201d from us when we give parts of it away. I think God designed it that way in order to give us the closest approximation of divine grace we could have without us catching fire from the inside out due to the sheer ferocity of that love [7]. No one \u201cwill know we are Christians by our love\u201d<\/em> if we insist there\u2019s a finite limit to how many people that our love can touch. While I appreciate I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/em>\u2019s emphasis on community service and volunteer work, Christian service is more than working with others. It is being willing to empathize with others, to share in their story, or, to strike a middle ground between our viewpoints, to exchange a piece one\u2019s heart for a bit of someone else\u2019s. Christ\u2019s narrative is one of self-sacrifice and loss out of love, and it is an unfortunate\u2014but very true\u2014fact of the human condition that each relationship we build contains an inherent certainty of loss.<\/em><\/p>\n Purity culture doesn\u2019t prepare people for loss beyond \u201c\u2019til death do us part,\u201d yet it\u2019s not just death that can part us. Distance, priorities, and maturation manage to do that just as easily and (possibly more) frequently. Kissing \u201cdating\u201d goodbye in exchange for \u201ccourtship\u201d doesn\u2019t prevent loss; it only (hypothetically) reduces the number of opportunities to experience loss.<\/p>\n And tomorrow\u2014or whenever the next installment is posted\u2014we\u2019ll finish the discussion of emotional intimacy by talking about loss, healthy self-care, and the types of fear you find in relational intimacy.<\/p>\n Molly<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n Gentle (and Not-So-Gentle) Readers: Come back soon for Part IV<\/a> of\u00a0I Hugged Dating Hello<\/a>, where I will\u00a0write about both the importance of self-care and the fear of sex evident in <\/em>I Kissed Dating Goodbye.\u00a0<\/em>~ Molly<\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n Notes:<\/p>\n <\/em>[1] Emotional intimacy exists with more than just your spouse (thank God, or, if that\u2019s not your thing, thank your brain chemistry!). As far as I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/em> goes, however, marriage is the most important human relationship someone can have because you\u2019re sharing a person\u2019s body as well as his or her heart (28-29).<\/p>\n [2] \u201cCommitment\u201d nearly almost always connotes eventual sexual intimacy in I Kissed Dating Goodbye<\/em>, despite (to my mind) all friendships and family relationships being a form of devotion and commitment.<\/p>\n [3] A public safety announcement: Based on the description of this feat in Gardner\u2019s book, the groom is more likely to suffer a spinal fracture than to be rewarded with an assent from his intended betrothed. Incorporating large, fast, spookable animals into your wedding proposal is a risky venture. Please don\u2019t do it. Thank you.<\/p>\n [4] Women are also constantly depicted as lost and needing rescued while men (and their faithful steeds) are always capable of providing rescue.<\/p>\n [5] Aside from the \u201csubmission\u201d part, which is a troublesome term we\u2019ll be dealing with when we talk about intellectual intimacy.<\/p>\n [6] McFarland, Hillary, and Megan Lindsay. Quivering Daughters: Hope and Healing for the Daughters of Patriarchy<\/em>. Austin, TX: DarkLight, 2010. Print.<\/p>\n [7] I mentioned in the comments of Part II my perceived necessity of using religiously-loaded language to debate religious conservatives, so for the sake of this not blowing up into a huge creationism\/evolution debate: \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n Molly grew up in southern Louisiana and, after spending college partially\u00a0(emotionally and physically)\u00a0frozen in Iowa, somehow ended up in seminary where she\u2019s cuddling her inner demons by moonlight and wrestling her faith by daylight. She likes bellydance, historical combat, 80s cartoons, Pema Chodron, and wants to use her M.Div to found the Bene Gesserit sisterhood.\u00a0She doesn\u2019t have a blog yet, but maybe Libby will be generous enough to provide trackbacks when she does?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A guest post by Molly<\/i>. I\u2019ve come to believe that purity culture views emotional intimacy as the most dangerous kind of relational intimacy\u2014even more so than sexual intimacy\u2014 because our basic ability to feel affinity for another human being is seen as a constant threat to our bodily integrity and emotional well-being. You seem to think so, Josh, quoting Jeremiah 17:9\u2014\u201cthe heart is wicked and deceitful; who can know it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,12],"tags":[361,484,129],"class_list":["post-12607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","category-purity","tag-guest-post","tag-josh-harris","tag-relationships"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThis <\/em>seminarian understands the creation accounts in Genesis to be beautiful etiological myths (that are especially pretty in Hebrew!) \u00a0She\u2019s usually <\/em>not too bothered by other Christians reading Genesis literally; on an individual level it\u2019s kind of cute. And then it makes its way into public schools and a generation of kids in Louisiana is growing up learning we rode dinosaurs and dragons were real and Daenerys Targaryen is the rightful ruler of the Iron Throne and NO, STOP, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.<\/strong><\/p>\n