The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him" - Genesis 2:18
It is apparent from the above verse and further work of theologians that humans are relational beings. McMinn continues this argument as he discusses the relational nature of human kind as being made in the image of God:
"The imago Dei is verb rather than noun: it is not so much that each individual human being contains the image of God, as is postulated in structural views - but that we collectively image God as we engage in loving relationships with God and one another".
The difficulty I see in many of the couples who sit in my counselling room is that they have lost the ability to be relational: at its most simple level, they have lost the ability to be friends with each other. When this is lost, they become more and more separate, and the resilience that is needed to maintain the relationship when there are stresses has gone. The "emotional glue" that could hold this relationship together when they face the pressures of raising children, redundancy, dealing with aging parents or troublesome adolescents, is absent.
The emotional glue of friendship arises out of shared joys and sorrows, not just going through these experiences together, but also through the capacity to share and be present to each other's feelings and emotions about the experience. We see this form of friendship-building happening well in adolescent girls who spend hours chatting to each other via the latest medium of communication. They share with each other in great detail the minutiae of their day to day lives. They laugh together and they cry together.
For the couples I see, either they have never really developed this ability (maybe the bonds are one sided and only one of them is able to be open with the other), or the bonds may have been weakened over time (life has got too busy, or one of them is too focused on work or ministry or a leisure pursuit).
These bonds need to be looked after - friendships need regular attention to be growing and vibrant, and are vital for surviving the inevitable storms that most relationships experience at some time.
What are the ways in which you keep building the emotional glue in your relationships? Maybe you would like to share some of those to help us all in our time poor world!
