About that post on a single woman changing church

I feel like I owe blogworld an apology, for the worst post ever last week (the deleted version — and I thought I didn't do "emotive", "venting" or whatever else posts, but I proved myself wrong, and I am disappointed, to say the least, over that). But, since I have begun on this regrettable topic, I thought I'd continue and post one thing further. I actually thought I had thrown this article away, and was lamenting that fact, but discover that I haven't (too much stuff on my desk obviously!). So, here is a little thought by Andrew Cameron, which is one of the things that was rattling around in my head, from the Southern Cross magazine in March, which I read on the bus home from Overcomers Outreach. I'm sure this isn't meant to be any sort of comprehensive work from him, but was an answer to a question in a piece on church called ‘Hospital for broken hearts’. I can't find it on line, so I will copy it here:

Andrew, in general you advocate a holistic approach to supporting families and singles in church life. How can we support each other in our marriages or singleness?

I would actually be quite careful, if I were single, about helping an ‘insecure’ married couple. In fact I’d generally say ‘Don’t’, except to point them back to pastors and counsellors.

It is too easy for someone in a difficult marriage to short-circuit their pain by starting a too-close relationship with the single person, when the married person really needs to engage in the hard business of growing closeness in the marriage. It will be important, during periods like this, for a single person to signal some friendly boundaries and some appropriate emotional distance.

Singles at their best also help couples and families to remember that a wider world exists beyond the marriage or family. Married couples and families can spiral into self-absorption, but singles can bring an outside focus to our attention: the missionaries, ministries or local communities that need our help. Often, the best tonic for a marriage is to share a task together, and singles can introduce us to useful tasks that could do with our help.

I believe singles need to have a wide network of relationships. Families can show hospitality toward singles, but I don’t think the single person should let one couple or family become their main or only place for social support. The freedom that singles have is to spread themselves between a number of relationships, and it’s good for everyone when they use that freedom well.

Essentially I agree with all he says, and I think Andrew Cameron has said some great stuff re singleness (some of which I gathered when I was working on this book for the EQUIP book club). It’s true that single people shouldn't delve too far into other people's marriage problems. But reading that through the lens of a single person, one of the things I was feeling/realising at family church is that married women were not going to choose me to talk to about their "stuff". Because why would they? I know that wouldn't be the most logical thing to do. (I don't think single people should never have anything to say about marriage, and can be an objective outsider who might not be coloured by their own experience, but they'd need to be mindful how they went about it.) And note that he doesn't state that it's cross-gender relating he's writing about, though of course that could be more problematic (however, as an aside to that, all the statistics show that the people having affairs are largely having them with other married people, so the idea out there that single people are somehow more dangerous around marriages is most-part myth). The thing is, that's also how women build close relationships — they share stuff. So, part of the whole feeling a little relationally useless around married people, is knowing that you are perhaps removed from a good sphere of their “stuff”. And keeping ‘boundaries’ and ‘emotional distance’ can be isolating, even when you acknowledge the necessity of it (and that's probably where other friendships with single people come in).

I don't entirely know if I am grasping what he is saying single people are useful for — is it that single people can point married people to outside happenings, that will then be a tonic within their own marriage if they work on them together as a couple? I don't know.

I also agree that single people shouldn't be trying to get too far into the pockets of, or leaning too heavily on, any one family or couple, for support, and they have freedom to have a wide network of friendships. But through the lens of single person again, I have some struggles with that. Maybe just because I am an ‘introverted, idealist, soulmate’ sort of person, who prefers to have two or three close friends, and the rest are extras. The idea that I could spend time this Saturday with this person, the next Saturday with that person, the following Saturday with some other person, doesn't really do anything for me. And I think single people will need some relationships that have a level of intimacy and continuity, if they aren’t to be fundamentally lonely (wide networks doesn't always mean you know more people well). Perhaps the wide networks are possible to sustain if they are undergirded by a few of those deeper friendships, which Andrew does seem to be suggesting be with other single people. (That is one reason why it's difficult if church demographic splits make this almost an either/or scenario for the single person.)

So, that was another spin on why it can be hard for single people to feel relationally useful around couples and families, and why I think that, as a single person, when it comes to church as a 'hospital for the broken', I probably have more to contribute to the “stuff” of other single people.