Male Friendships 1 of 3 (Rick Sessoms)

Do men need close friendships and what do we mean by close friendships?  We'll talk about that today on MemCare by Radio.

Welcome to another edition of MemCare by Radio.  I'm Scott Hollinger and I'm glad that you could be with us today.  From the earliest stage it seems boys are often told how to be men.  Too often, that means being strong, silent, and showing as little emotion as possible.  But is that normal or biblical?  Today we're going to start a series of programs that will look at an element missing in the life of many men, that of male intimacy.  But what do we mean by male intimacy?  The answers to that question are important.  They may surprise you but I believe they'll also provide you with some answers to questions that you have not been able to answer regarding relationships in your own life.  With me to discuss this very important but often missing aspect in a man's life is Dr. Rick Sessoms.  Rick has been a missionary to Indonesia, a pastor, a college and university educator, conference speaker and consultant. He holds a doctorate in divinity as well as a PhD in organizational leadership.  He has written numerous articles on leadership and organizational development.  I'm glad that Rick is able to be with us today.

Rick, a few weeks ago I heard you speak on this subject of male intimacy and it was a real eye-opener for me, but I'm wondering how did you get involved or how did you become interested in looking at this subject?

I think there are some important issues like intimacy that men of the church are beginning to talk about more and more.  I noticed as a pastor that a lot of these issues had been glossed over for a long time and there just weren't many opportunities to sit down and talk about some particularly male issues.  As a result, some men in the congregations that I served were writhing -- they were living in a sort of vacuousness and asking themselves the question: am I the only person living on the planet that is struggling with this stuff?  Am I the only person that's living with these particular sorts of pressures?  So I began to reflect on my own life as well.  I'm not a psychologist.  My background:  I've been in the pastorate; I've been a missionary and I've also spoken to and worked with a whole lot of men over the years.  So I come at this more from a layman's perspective, if you will, rather than a professional psychologist.  But I suppose one of the things besides speaking to many men about this, one of the things that got me particularly intrigued about this was reflecting in my own life and in my own background.  And as I began speaking to men about this, I found that my background was similar to backgrounds of a whole lot of men.  So my experience symbolized a significant part of what they had experienced as well.

Well, perhaps you could just briefly share with us what that background was that helped you identify with all these other men.

Well, lots of men, I think, grew up in a childhood a lot like mine.  My dad was a wonderful man.  He worked hard to provide for our family.  I would say, however, that he sometimes worked much harder than he should have and so there were lots and lots of times when he was working instead of being at home.  My dad grew up in a home that didn't teach him intimacy.  In fact, he grew up in a home where alcohol was abused.  So compared with the kind of home he grew up in, he did a great job.  But still, my dad and I had some struggles sharing really intimate things.  Back in 1995, my father had a brain hemorrhage and it incapacitated him both physically and mentally for the rest of his life until he died a couple years ago.  And we were never really able to experience at a level of intimacy that a father and son should have.  My sense is that it rarely happens among a lot of men the way it could happen.  So I want to say to the men out there - if you struggle with this matter of intimacy, then you're in good company.  There are a lot of people that are experiencing exactly what you’re experiencing, and a lot of men that are wishing that they could share something that they deeply wish to share with someone else in their life.

You talk about male intimacy.  Then you mentioned the biblical basis.  I guess that was what surprised me too - the account in the Bible that you gave as the biblical basis.  So perhaps you could share that with us to sort of give us a starting point grounded in God's Word on this matter.

As you mentioned, as a starting point, and the starting point for me really in order to generate some awareness, is the text in Genesis chapter 2 verse 18 where God had almost completed His work of creation.  And He declared, "It is not good for man to be alone."  That's obviously right at the beginning, and so there right in the creation account God introduces for the first time this matter of intimacy.  So it seems to be a very important subject that is critical for all of us, including men.

Well the account in Genesis 2 talks about the intimacy between Adam and Eve, so how does this apply, though, to the relationships with other men that we have?

In verse 24 is probably the most precise statement on intimacy in the Bible.  I think it can be broken down really into three parts:

The first is simply that intimacy begins with a de-selection.  Whether you're talking about the marriage relationship or any relationship, the first part of the process is that intimacy requires a selection.  It requires a narrowing of the field.  It has to be selective!  Leaving father and mother is an intimacy that assumes a de-selection in narrowing of the possibility.

The second thing is that intimacy involves a uniting.  The purpose of leaving, of course, is cleaving.  The word ‘unite’ in the original is an adhesive word.  It's a word like ‘glue’.  I adhere to.  I cling to.  I cleave to, because if I don't grab hold of when I leave there is, particularly in males, a likelihood of disunion of intimacy.  And I think there is particularly among men a natural resistance to intimacy.  So I think that this speaks not just to the marital relationship but to all human relationships.  It's not instinctual for men to unite but it's necessary.  When I leave, it's crucial for me to unite.

The third mark in that verse 24 of intimacy is in that statement "the two become one flesh".  Now I hope that men listen to this very carefully because I think we do this statement a great injustice if we reduce it simply to a nice antiseptic description of the sexual experience.  For years and years when I read that text, my mind went immediately to the sex thing. But as I was listening a number of years ago to Gordon MacDonald address this text, he said that before sin entered the picture Adam and Eve had intercourse on every level of human experience.  They had emotional intercourse. They had intellectual intercourse.  They had spiritual intercourse.  And each one of these experiences was just as satisfying and equally as gratifying as the most fabulous sexual experience that any of us could conjure up in his imagination.  And that's an incredible thought to ponder.

So we've looked at these three parts.  So the third part, I guess, is the one that is going to cause a lot of us to go ‘Ok, well I've just heard Rick say this.  But still, how does that third part apply to my own life?’  Maybe you can give us a bit more detail on that one.

Well, I think the problem came when sin entered the picture.  Before sin, as I said, intimacy was enjoyed on every level of man's experience but sin, I think, damaged our perfect ability to be one flesh -- with anyone.  Adam and Eve understood a level of intimacy that you and I can't imagine today, but it's an intimacy for which we were created and for which we long even today.  For where there was this kind of intimacy - and this is important - there was no loneliness, and yet when I listen to men today, loneliness is their single biggest complaint.  We're all locked into our male fortresses and we're lonely.  You talk to a group of men and if they're honest most of them will talk about being lonely.  We crave for intimacy.

What are some solutions, some basic steps, that a man could begin to apply now that would help him to move toward more intimacy with other men and closer relationships?

The first step is really to understand and acknowledge the need.  It's bad news in a sense if you come to the point in your life where you realize that there's been something missing.  But also that's good news because we come to understand our need so that we can address it.  Without understanding, it is kind of tough to address it.  But I came to the point where I realized that these kinds of intimate relationships in my life were crucial.  So one of the things that I have suggested to a lot of men, that I've done, is to seek out a mentor in our lives, a relationship. A lot of people use the word mentor in many, many different ways, but when I use it I'm talking about a relationship of older to younger or of more experience to less experience.  The relationship is most clearly expressed in a father/son relationship.  Every one of us needs to be fathered, and to the extent that we have not been fathered as we move into our 30’s and 40’s and even 50’s, we'll pay the price for it.  Where mentoring in a father/son relationship is inadequate we probably will carry the scars of that for a lifetime but it won't go away just because we want it to.  That's the bad news, as I said.  But the good news, of course, is if we face up to it and name it for what it is.  And now if that sense of loss begins to erupt in our lives we know how to identify it.  We can deal with it.  We can develop a relationship with a person that has experience with whom we can interact and that person can look into our eyes and say, “ I like what I see or I don't like what I'm hearing.”  A man who will test us to see if we are walking the walk - a man who will see us when we're drifting and perhaps making bad choices.   I want to also say that not only do all of us need to be mentored, but we need to do some mentoring ourselves, wherever in the journey we are.  Each of us needs a relationship with a younger person to whom we can be sinking these cumulative experiences of our lives as well.  I find that that's greatly missing in the church today.  In fact, there are some serious attempts at bridging this gap because so many of our younger people today are asking for this kind of mentoring in their lives.

I'd like to thank Dr. Rick Sessoms for taking the time to share with us his thoughts on this often overlooked need in a man’s life.  During our next time together, we're going to look at how the breakdown in intimacy occurs and Rick will offer some solutions to men for developing deeper relationships among men.

You're listening to MemCare by Radio.  We'd like to encourage you to listen to our other programs on this site as well as check out the other resources available to you.  Our prayer and desire is that these programs are an encouragement for you.