My struggles

Have been updated.

"It Is Not Good That the Man Should Be Alone": The Virtues of Community and Friendship

A few years ago, I spent a summer in China doing research with an environmentalist group. With research faculty and students from a number of American universities, I was excited at the prospect of working alongside such a diverse group of intelligent and capable people. And I wasn't disappointed. Many students came from some of the best universities in the country; it was a challenging and stretching experience.

But with this anticipated blessing and opportunity came a likewise anticipated challenge: I was the only BYU student and only Latter-day Saint in the group. Not only would I be unique among my research companions with respect to religious worldview, but I would also spend a large portion of the summer in a region—primarily Xian and surrounding areas—where there was no Latter-day Saint presence to speak of. And I was a bit nervous about the prospect of being so spiritually isolated. Coming from BYU, I was accustomed to enjoying a strong sense of spiritual community and spending my time with people who understood and shared my faith and values.

The summer proved to be an exciting growth opportunity, both academically and spiritually, particularly as I found myself needing to turn more inward and Upward for the strength I needed to stay close to the heart of my faith and to feel God's presence with me. Also, while those in my group were intellectually and academically inspiring, and while I thrived in many respects in those associations, I still felt very much alone and isolated in other respects. The majority were quite liberal in both tongue and behavior. I thirsted for my faith community. I longed to be with those who shared others of my core values and beliefs.

Finally, toward the end of the trip, we spent a few days in Beijing where I was aware there was an established expatriate branch of the Church. I found out when and where the branch met and, the one Sunday we spent there in the Chinese capital, I secured permission to leave the group and to attend worship services. Being in a place as far from home as I had ever been, I felt like I was indeed home! It was a fast and testimony meeting, and I can't remember a time when the faces and testimonies of those who spoke seemed more beautiful. As expressions of testimony of the person and atoning power of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the restored gospel were shared, the Spirit of God and of covenant community quenched a very thirsty soul. I was lifted and encouraged and inspired in my efforts to live the gospel away from my faith community for the remainder of the summer.

Shortly before the Prophet Joseph's death, his brother Hyrum said, "Men's souls conform to the society in which they live, with very few exceptions, and when men come to live with the Mormons, their souls swell as if they were going to stride the planets." My experience in China that Sabbath day is only one of many times when this concept of "swelling souls" has rung deep and real.

In fact, I believe that open, intimate, and authentic community with good people who share any number of similar circumstances in life, who will mourn and comfort and rejoice with us, is vital to healthy living. As God created Adam, he said, "It is not good that the man should be alone," and he created Eve to be his partner and his equal (Gen. 2:18). While the context of that divine declaration was the marital union of man and woman, I believe the principle applies equally to healthy and intimate human relationship and community in general. God desires for us to have companionship and intimate friendship. In the increasingly hyper-sexualized culture we live in, however, too many equate intimacy with sex and romance when nothing could be further from the truth. One can have sex without intimacy and experience intimacy without sex or romance.

Whether or not the blessing of marriage and conjugal intimacy is realized in the timetable we would prefer—and even if that blessing isn't realized, for the faithful, until the next life—it is God's will, I believe, that no one be alone in their life, isolated and without loving, nurturing, relationships with other men and women, brothers and sisters, around them. And to those who consider a delay in marriage and family an unfair loss are given comfort of knowing that in the Divine Design, there are no "ifs"—given the single provision of our faithfulness—when it comes to all the joys and blessings the Father desires for His children. Only "whens." The Prophet Joseph Smith taught, "All your losses will be made up to you in the resurrection, provided you continue faithful. By the vision of the Almighty I have seen it" (TPJS, 296). Paul similarly taught, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (1 Cor. 15:19).

Beyond this promise of the eventual fulfillment for the faithful of all the Lord's desired blessings, we can also take comfort in the knowledge that the longing for human connection, human intimacy, including with those of our gender-mates, is not "wrong" or "broken" but, on the contrary, divinely implanted. I believe our Father in Heaven desires us to seek and nurture such connections and will guide us as we seek His aid to do so. President David O. McKay referred to man as a "social creature"—that we are created to live in and draw strength from relationships and communities that will build and lift and inspire us. Similarly, the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of 'Mormonism'; [it is designed] to revolutionize and civilize the world, and cause wars and contentions to cease and men to become friends and brothers" (HC, 5:517).

Sam Keen, a noted American author, philosopher, and former contributing editor of Psychology Today magazine, said the following about the virtue of friendship: "Friendship may be the surest source of satisfaction in a fickle world, better than sex, money, or power. The Greeks valued it about romance or reputation and gave it an honored place in the pantheon of love.

"Friendship, philia, brotherly love, the affection that exists only between equals, is at once the most modest and rugged of the modes of love. It is quiet as an afternoon conversation, but strong enough to survive the acids of time. And while it draws us into our emotional depths it demands not romantic frenzy. No howling at the moon, no explosions of contradictory feelings. No jealousy. Friendship creates gentle men and women. It depends upon nothing so fragile as a pretty face or fancy figures in a bank account, or so irrational as the thick sinews of blood and kin. It is based upon the simplest of the heart's syllogisms: I like you; you like me; therefore we are friends. And while we can imagine a satisfying life without the juicy overflow of sexual love or the sweet burdens of family, we know intuitively that without a friend the best of lives would be too lonely to bear…

"'Normal' American men are homophobic, afraid of close friendships with other men. The moment we begin to feel warmly toward another man, the 'homosexual' panic button gets pressed. It makes us nervous to see French or Italian men strolling down the street arm in arm. Must be queer! From a cross-cultural perspective it is we who are odd; close male friendship is the norm in most societies and is usually considered a more important source of intimacy than romantic relationships. The celebrated friendships of David and Jonathan or Achilles and Patroclus reflect a valuation more typical than the American pattern of acquaintanceship or a quick slap on the butt after making a touchdown. In most nontechnological cultures, friendship makes the world go round, not money or sex.

"A predictable result of our homophobia is that men become overdependant on women to fulfill their need for intimacy, or swallow the romantic myth hook, line, and sinker. We grow up expecting that some magic day it will happen. We will find the one special woman who will take away our loneliness and heal our alienation. The two of us will fall in love and be all things to each other; lovers, companions, helpmates, and best friends. And then we are disappointed and feel betrayed when it doesn't happen. But any single relationship that is expected to fulfill every need will become claustrophobic, cloying, and swampy. We need same-sex friends because there are types of validation and acceptance that we receive only from our gender-mates. There is much about our experience as men that can only be shared with, and understood by, other men. There are stories we can tell only to those who have wrestled in the dark with the same demons and been wounded by the same angels. Only men understand the secret fears that go with the territory of masculinity.

"Friends alone share the consolation of knowing and being known. Most of our days are spent among polite strangers, colleagues, and casual acquaintances with whom we interact in role-governed ways. We wear masks, playing the part we are expected to play—doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief, father, lover, banker, thief. Only with our best friends can we get off the stage, stop the show, quit performing, and allow ourselves to be seen as we are" (Fire in the Belly, p. 173-75).

Cultivating the virtue of friendship in our lives—this "grand fundamental principle of 'Mormonism'"—is something that each of us can do, with or without the blessings of marriage and family. It provides a unique blessing and opportunity, particularly those who don't feel able to marry, to re-enthrone this virtue in our lives and in our culture. I dare suggest that most men and women find the cultivation of deep and meaningful and intimate friendship rather difficult.

One of the goals of North Star is to foster this kind of supportive friendship and community among Latter-day Saints dealing with issues around same-gender attraction and who embrace the doctrines and teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ. Our hope here is that those who feel alone in the world—and, heaven forbid, alone within the community of Saints who have covenanted to bear one another's burdens—will know that they most certainly are not. That they will know that there are others who understand—on some level—the reality and the depth of their experience. Ultimately, there is only One who can fully understand and succor us in our need—only One who can be our Friend in the richest and most meaningful sense of the word—and of that Name we bear our witness, but in addition to this, the ability to connect and share with others who understand some of the more nuanced and varied aspects of our mortal experience instills the confidence and hope that makes real the injunction of Lehi to his son Jacob that "men [and women] are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25).



By Ty Mansfield