Brotherly love. It sounds lovely, but what does it really look like? Locking you in your room until you promise to never take up smoking, giving you a head start to run down to the mailbox only to discover at the end of the driveway that you were the only one running, holding you off the terrace by your ankles, lowering spittle that may or may not fall on your face before it is sucked back in. That is love from my older brothers, but a couple of my brother-in-laws are younger… let me add, offering you a smoothie with tabasco sauce in it!
Brothers show their love in the strangest of ways; ways that are frustrating, ways that don’t make sense. Sometimes they are kind and caring, for sure, but sometimes they are far from it.
In the Greek there are different forms of love: there’s agape, the unconditional kind of love; eros, the passionate version; and philia, meaning brotherly love or friendship.
Why on earth would they lump brotherly love with friendship? You can choose your friends; you can’t choose your family.
This week I received an email discussing the links between maintaining long-term relationships and aging. Where we maintain relationships, we tend to have a lower epigenetic age – our body functions and feels younger.
When someone hurts us and we cut them off immediately, we deprive ourselves of an opportunity to invest in the relationship and receive the long-term benefits of those social bonds.
How interesting that both brotherly love and friendship are encapsulated in one word in the Greek – philia. We can’t change our family, but we can change our friends. Perhaps the subtle invitation of philia is to maintain relationship with our friends as if they were family? Not to run away when things get uncomfortable between us, but to persevere and see if we can work through our misunderstandings to mutually respect each other even when differences arise.
Of course, there are always going to be exceptions where it is unwise to maintain relationship, but on the whole, it is possible to move from one season to another without burning our bridges on the way.
It is good to note that not all relationships are equal, and they shouldn’t be. Not everyone has access to know your deepest desires, you place a high level of trust on those friends. Other friends have access to your social time, others you only maintain because of a shared environment such as work or some other space.
Friendships have seasons, they naturally draw to a close for many reasons. You may pursue relationship beyond what would be a natural conclusion, such as keeping in contact when a workmate moves away. Being intentional in that relationship suggests that friendship carries weightier significance than merely an acquaintance. It is healthy to have different depths of relationship with different people. Another workmate might move away and after a couple of attempts at connection, the relationship fades, that is okay.
In the moment when your friend gets annoying like brothers can from time to time, you have the choice to persevere past the frustration and pursue relationship or allow distance to form.
You continually make judgments in how you use your time and who you connect with. Who has greatest access to you? Are your deeper thoughts reserved for a faithful few? Perhaps some of your relationship issues stem from sharing something personal with a friend who doesn’t have the character to carry it well. Perhaps you could maintain relationship with them at a level that is more appropriate – they might continue to have access to your social time but not be privy to your intimate thoughts.
Becoming aware of how your friends function and how you interact with them might be a breath of fresh air for some of you. If someone isn’t trustworthy and you stop sharing the deep stuff with them, they may distance themselves, but you can keep the doorway to relationship open at an appropriate level. You are not responsible for how they respond, but you can remain open to their friendship, showing warmth, giving affirmation, and welcoming them without allowing them beyond what is healthy.
There is a name for maintaining relationship, it is called faithfulness. To be faithful is to remain loyal and steadfast.
You can remain loyal to your friends and steadfast; reliable even when things are hard, even when they push you away. You cannot be responsible for them, you can only supervise your own heart, your own attitudes, your own responses. You can love with brotherly, enduring love, because however annoying they are right now, they’re a part of your story.
When you endure through the inevitable blips, you might even find that some friendships develop from philia (brotherly love), to agape (the love that accepts them as they are and thrives within healthy boundaries).
We all want to experience love.
Taking the time to listen, showing up, being annoying, or giving just what was needed; relationships challenge us to grow. Healthy relationships give us a safe space to be ourselves or to process ideas. Relationships affect our nervous system, our stress levels and so much more, so choose your friends wisely. Perseverance and the growth that follows can help us to age well. Allow your friends to get uncomfortable and annoying from time to time but work through those seasons and see if long-term you’ll come out better for it.
I have friends that I don’t see for months or years at a time, yet when we catch up it is like no time is passed at all. Why? Because the relationship isn’t broken.
In my family, my brothers and sister and their families all lived overseas for decades, one still does. I only saw them occasionally. For us, that is normal. For others, that would be unbearable. My siblings are still family despite how often I do or don’t see them. My capacity for holding relationship is fairly large, but I have friends who are not like that at all. Be aware that your friends may have a different lens on what normal relationship looks like.
How do you maintain your relationships? Like a brother, enduring through ups and downs? Or like an emotional rollercoaster, full of drama and getting flipped upside down before you get out and either quit or try it all again with someone new?
This is the time of year we observe relationships with friends and with family. We might naturally be better at one type of relationship or the other, obviously we all have different experiences of each. Yet, the Greek language lumps them together under the word philia. How might philia affect your relationships?
