31 WE’RE THE BEST OF FRIENDS

This is my lover, this [is] my friend.

—Song of Songs 5:16

ARE YOU AND YOUR SPOUSE friends? In an article for Focus on the Family, Alyson Weasley suggests that friendship is among the most important components of marriage and summarizes twelve ways that couples can cultivate it:

1. Recognize that friendship building takes a lot of work—and time. Cut the fat out of your day.
2. Establish a time each week to spend quality time together—then guard that time with your lives!
3. Choose to spend time together rather than apart. This may mean sacrificing good things for a season, such as small groups, ministry, or bonding time with guys or gals.
4. Explore the interests of your spouse, be it baseball, art, musical theater, gardening, or hunting. Find out what they are passionate about and then join them. Often this takes a bit of sacrifice.
5. Take time to find common interests and then engage in them.
6. Use conflict to sharpen and purify friendship.
7. Nourish and care for one another. Be gentle with one another.
8. Accountability and mutual respect, including in the areas of sexuality, finances, and relationships, should be priorities.
9. Establish daily habits, especially praying together.
10. Affirm one another every day. Be intentional in communicating the other’s strengths.
11. Be transparent with one another.
12. Communicate. Most experts agree that regular communication builds a friendship that weathers the storms of life.[23]

Did you notice anything about that list? That’s right! You’ve been putting many of those principles into practice already through regular dating.

ACTIVITY: Pick an activity that reinforces one of the concepts from Alyson Weasley’s list. If you’ve already taken part in the “Shared Interests” date from earlier in the book, perhaps you could engage in the same shared activity again. Or choose another activity you both enjoy. Have fun!

QUESTIONS: After your activity, talk about what friendship means to you in the context of your marriage. Whom did you consider your best friend as a child? In what ways is having a same-sex best friend similar to having me as your best friend? In what ways is it different? What qualities do you see as essential in a friend? How can we work to forge stronger bonds of friendship in our marriage?