These days our relationships are very transactional. We have our work friends, friends we watch a game with, a couple of guys on our kids’ baseball team, a few guys at church, but none of those paths cross. Most of the relationships are siloed to the activity, and most of those activities have a shelf life.
The problem with this is that as soon as the activity is over, such as the end of little league season, the connection is severed. The convenient thing that brought the connection together is now gone, and it’s up to us to figure out how to maintain that friendship or let it pass away.
We’ve become so transactional in our relationships that they are wrapped up completely in the situation that brings us together rather than the relationship itself. Don’t get me wrong, I have some great friendships that started on the sidelines of my son’s soccer games. I’m not saying there isn’t an opportunity to turn situational connections into real friendships; it’s just that we don’t often do it.
We end up in a good conversation and afterwards think to ourselves, “That was interesting, I wouldn’t mind getting to know him better,” but we never verbalize that. Then the season ends and we don’t cross paths again until next season or perhaps never. Potential connection lost.
Of course, one could argue the question: does every interesting conversation need to lead to friendship? Of course not. Increasing the number of deep friendships you have is not scalable. But if you are reading this and connecting with me here, then that’s likely not the case. I know it’s not the case for me.
Let me pause for a second and talk about how I got here. I never had deep friendships. I grew up with a lot of shame that I carried into adulthood, and that affected how close I wanted to let people get to me. My ideal life used to look like living out in the middle of nowhere with my family, only coming into town once a month to go to Costco.
I didn’t marry a woman who shared the same desire for isolation. She is very much a people person and enjoys having a wide gamut of friendships. Through some counseling I did a while back, I also realized just how much I needed others in my life, so I started looking for friends.
This was really hard because I didn’t enjoy putting myself out there. I ended up meeting people through my kids’ sports and church, but none of them wanted what I would later learn to be known as “covenant friendship.”
A covenant friendship is a deep, committed bond between individuals, often rooted in shared faith or values, where partners agree to support, encourage, and hold each other accountable. It goes beyond casual relationships, involving vulnerability, honesty, and a willingness to navigate difficult conversations and situations together. This type of friendship is often seen as a reflection of God’s love and faithfulness, which is why I believe it’s what I deeply desired in the friendships I was looking for.
Just writing that out makes my skin crawl a bit. It’s not comfortable to get to that type of friendship. You don’t make those kinds of friends sitting next to each other in silence at a baseball game. Without work, one will never have friends who truly know them.
I wanted a few friends who fully know me and whom I could fully know as well. Why? Because we need that kind of connection. It’s that type of friend who knows what’s going on with us without any words being spoken. It’s that type of friend who knows our goals and dreams and pushes us towards them when we’re not sure we have what it takes. It’s the kind of friend who knows our junk and is still there for us anyway.
These days I think we are so afraid to be known because we assume if someone did know us for who we are, they wouldn’t want to be around us. I know that I carried that assumption. The funny thing is that these days nothing really surprises us. We’ve seen or heard it all.
What does surprise us is when we thought we knew someone but it turns out we didn’t. We likely didn’t because we never became a safe enough person to be around that someone would feel safe enough opening up to us. That should hurt more.
Relationships are hard and messy. They take time and unlimited forgiveness. You have to be intentional, and sometimes it might seem like you’re the only one trying. But if you don’t make the effort first, who will?
As our world becomes more disconnected and divisive, close friendships will become more and more important. You need people in your corner, and you need to be the kind of person who is in someone else’s corner. We were created for community, and it’s up to us to build it for ourselves.
What transactional relationship in your life could become something deeper if you were willing to do the work?