Friendship Before Forever
Friendship Before Forever
Our first dates were not especially impressive.
Patience and I grew up in small towns in western North Dakota. There were no elegant restaurants or endless entertainment choices. Most businesses closed early, neither of us had much money, and I did not even own a car.
A date usually meant a school activity, bowling, church, driving around town, or sitting somewhere and talking.
At the time, I probably wished I could offer Patience something more exciting. Looking back, I am glad I could not. With so little entertainment to carry the evening, we had to find out whether we actually enjoyed each other.
What Patience Remembers
Our first date was a high school play at my school in Zap. I remember being pleased—and relieved—that she had said yes.
Patience remembers the details I forgot: the hard, gray concrete bleachers, my white athletic socks, and the question of where to sit on the wide front bench seat of my parents’ car.
Sitting close beside me felt too intimate for a first date. Sitting against the passenger door seemed unnecessarily unfriendly. She chose a place in the middle and discovered that the middle was directly on top of the seat-belt buckle.
On the way home, I took a winding gravel road instead of the highway. Rural North Dakota had plenty of dark side roads where young couples could pull over and “talk,” so she watched every turnoff and wondered what I had in mind.
What she did not know was that one headlight was burned out. I had chosen the gravel road because I was afraid of getting a ticket.
I was not making a romantic move. I was avoiding law enforcement.
Neither of us remembers much about the play. We remember the ride, the awkwardness, the conversation, and the sense that we wanted to do it again.
What Friendship Was Building
One of our early dates was bowling. We rented shoes, found bowling balls, and tried to knock down pins in a small-town bowling alley. I do not remember who won, although I suspect I would remember if it had been me.
What I remember is talking.
We talked between frames, after gutter balls, and on the drive home. We laughed at ourselves and probably tried to look a little more capable than we were.
We were not having a profound discussion about marriage. We were learning smaller things: what made the other person laugh, how each of us handled embarrassment, whether silence felt awkward, and whether we still liked being together when nothing important was happening.
We were becoming friends.
Romance brought excitement to the relationship. Friendship gave that excitement somewhere to settle.
Because there was so little to do where we lived, we spent a great deal of time in the car. We drove around town, parked somewhere quiet, or sat in front of her parents’ house long after the date should have ended.
I processed much of my life out loud. I still do.
Patience listened carefully and spoke more slowly. She usually wanted to know what she thought before she said it. I had to learn that her quietness did not mean she was bored or holding something back. Sometimes she was simply thinking.
She had to learn that many of my thoughts came out of my mouth before they were finished.
Music gave us another reason to be together. I could sing, and Patience was an accomplished pianist. We attended church together and began making music together. Later, in college, we joined the same Christian campus group and traveled with a weekend singing group.
The music mattered, but much of the friendship grew around it—in rehearsals, car rides, waiting for something to begin, and talking after it was over.
There was nothing fancy about it. There were simply many ordinary hours in which we came to know each other.
Can We Carry Ordinary Life Together?
There is nothing wrong with a special date. Thoughtfulness matters, and shared adventures can become wonderful memories. But knowing how to entertain someone is not the same as knowing how to share ordinary life with that person.
Marriage has anniversaries, vacations, and romantic evenings. It also has grocery shopping, bills, dirty dishes, tired conversations, medical appointments, home repairs, and the nightly question of what to eat when neither person wants to decide.
Most of married life is ordinary.
During courtship, Patience and I were unknowingly asking a useful question: Do we enjoy being together when nothing remarkable is happening?
For us, the answer was yes. We liked talking. We enjoyed making music together. We laughed at small things. We were interested in each other’s minds and stories.
By God’s grace, we were not only falling in love. We were beginning to learn how to share a life.
When Marriage Becomes Mostly Management
A couple can spend a great deal of time in the same house and still stop living as friends.
After the wedding, conversation can become almost entirely practical: Who is picking up the children? Did you pay the bill? What time do we need to leave? What is wrong with the dishwasher?
Those conversations have to happen, but they cannot carry a marriage by themselves.
Friendship may be getting crowded out when nearly every conversation is about a task, a problem, or another person. You may know what your spouse did today but not how the day felt. You may spend your free time beside each other while rarely doing anything together.
That does not mean the friendship is gone. It may simply have been buried beneath responsibility for a while.
A Small Way Back
You do not need to recreate your courtship or plan an expensive evening. Begin with one ordinary hour.
Take a drive. Go for a walk. Sit together over coffee. Return to something you once enjoyed, or try something new that neither of you has to be good at. Put the screens away, and do not use the hour to solve a household problem.
Ask each other:
What has been taking most of your emotional energy lately?
What have we stopped doing together that you miss?
When do you feel most like my friend?
Listen without correcting details, defending yourself, or turning the answer into a plan before your spouse has finished. Then choose one small thing you would both enjoy and put it on the calendar.
The point is not to pretend you are still the people you were when you met. It is to stay interested in the people you have become.
Romance may begin a relationship, and covenant keeps two people committed through the years. But friendship gives them a place to live together when the music stops, the bowling shoes come off, and ordinary life begins.
We do not look back and congratulate ourselves for producing a good marriage. We are grateful. God gave us each other, then gave us years of conversation, mistakes, forgiveness, laughter, and ordinary days in which the friendship could keep growing.
When you genuinely like the person beside you, ordinary life does not feel like something you have to endure until something better happens. Ordinary life becomes part of the gift.