Rejecting relationships?

Alan Bright explains why we should ditch this modern concept.

‘Therefore God gave them up…’ is sobering. Romans 1 says that, as people suppress the truth about God, God lets desire run riot — and misery follows.

People suppress God’s truth when it comes to ‘relationships’. And the suppression of truth starts right there, with the very word. In the Bible, there seems to be only two statuses: married or single (there might be a third status: ‘engaged’ or ‘betrothed’ — but that seems temporary and describes a moving from ‘single’ to ‘married’). But we now have this new institution called a ‘relationship’.

Sitcom seduction

Future historians may well see the American sitcom Friends as responsible for the wide acceptance of the concept of ‘relationship’. In the sitcom, relationships were something where adults had exclusive sex with each other until one of them no longer wanted to and told the other — usually. Even then, one person might think they were in a ‘relationship’, whereas the other person was not so sure.

And that is because, unlike marriage, who can say when relationships start, when they end, what are the rights, what are the responsibilities? No one is really sure and people move from ‘relationship’ to ‘relationship’ never getting these basic questions sorted out. Former cast members of Friends are now experiencing in real life the mess of ‘relationships’ that they acted out: Jennifer Aniston, a cast member, married in 2000 after several ‘relationships’. The marriage lasted only five years and Miss Aniston has been in other ‘relationships’ since. Joey LeBlanc, another cast member, married in 2003, acquiring stepchildren (from his new wife’s previous ‘relationship’). That marriage lasted only three years.

Confused celebrities

And it’s not just celebrities who suffer from relationship confusion. Newspapers carry stories of ordinary people: ‘I’ve been with my boyfriend for a couple of years and want to have children. He says he does too, but wants to work on our relationship first. I feel angry, and very sad’ appeared in The Observer in February. ‘I feel it was all a lot easier 30 years ago when men couldn’t delay marrying for as long as they felt like’.

The paper’s agony aunt, Mariella Frostrup, wrote, responding to a similar letter: ‘I grew up in the 70s and watched the adult relationships around me crumble and fail in the face of the challenges they felt compelled to place in their path. The grown-ups were coupling and recoupling, having threesomes and sharing spouses, smoking dope and paying lip service to the new “liberated” society in which free love was as good as compulsory. Well, their offspring certainly paid a price and, looking at many of them now, so did they. Marriages collapsed, teenage sex became the norm, and everyone was afraid of seeming like a prude.’

Teaching our children

So what are we to make of this as Christians? How should we respond? How should we talk to our children about ‘relationships’ — and how should we talk to colleagues, neighbours, friends and family members who are not Christians?

Whatever we say should be based on firm foundations — and we should firmly reject the modern concept of a ‘relationship’. To the extent that we are able — i.e. depending on our relationship (see, the word is useful) with the person to whom we are speaking — we should gently challenge definitions of ‘relationship’. We should certainly help our children to think what the words ‘boyfriend’ and girlfriend’ mean. For example, how should one complete the following sentences: ‘S/he is my girl/boyfriend, therefore s/he can… and therefore cannot… therefore s/he should… should not… therefore I can… cannot’? Then drop the ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ bit. What then is the difference between a girl/boyfriend and simply a ‘friend’ — and can we justify any difference biblically?

A promise to care

As a parent, I do not want any boy (or man) telling my unmarried daughter what she may or may not do — or, indeed, thinking he has any exclusive rights over her. The only person who has that responsibility is her father and, in due course, her husband. With rights come responsibilities — and only if a man has publicly promised to care for and look after my daughter for ever should he ever have those rights. And similar applies to sons.

We should certainly help our children reject the concept of ‘relationships’: you are either married or not; you are single or not; the Bible recognises no other exclusive ‘relationship’, so neither should we. The concept of boyfriend and girlfriend is fraught with problems due to the lack of clarity. But how about the wider world — where relationship confusion is rampant?

We should not barge uninvited into people’s lives and tell them where they are messing up, but if we are friends to people we may find them opening up (over the years colleagues have asked me about long-lasting marriage). We can point out the fragility of non-marital cohabitation and get people to consider why it might be so.

Marriages bring stability

Some would say that stable marriages are caused by the stability of the relationship between the couple — but causality does run both ways. The very fact of being married produces stability: society regards married people differently and immediate family tends to provide more support to a married couple than to a couple simply living together for apparent short-term convenience. Also, a looming public ceremony concentrates minds: if someone is wary of publicly promising life-long care and faithfulness then that illustrates their unsuitability. Yet women (especially, it seems) stay in such ‘relationships’ hoping that something might change.

Sex without responsibility

But why have we seen the huge growth in non-marital, sexual ‘relationships’? One cause is, as hinted at in the desperate letter above, the rise of contraception. Originally intended as family planning — i.e. to allow married couples to limit the number of children without limiting sex — it has become a great boon to men who want sex without responsibility. Of course, there are also women who want irresponsible sex, but the weight of numbers seems to be on the male side, partly because men know they are unlikely to end up ‘holding the baby’ — literally (and financially). To come up with workable solutions we need to look at the underlying causes of problems — and, while we will always end up at Adam and Eve, there will be some intermediate causes that we can address and, at least to some extent, tackle, as mentioned above — that is, gently pointing out the drawbacks and results of ‘relationships’.

As Christians we need to think clearly about ‘relationships’. It has been one of the great suppressions of the truth regarding God’s way of ordering society. We need to be able to talk clearly yet compassionately about the nonsense of ‘relationships’ and free our children and wider society from the confusion that is all around.

Alan Bright is a member of a lunchtime congregation at St. Helen’s in the City of London, and has been married for 25 years.