Why is Friendship With Other Women So Hard?
And why it doesn't need to be
As we jump back into our series on biblical womanhood, I want to remind you of some of the things we talked about. First, we said that God created men and women at our core to be different. We as women – as ezer kenegdo – reflect the ezer character of our Lord. We are created to nurture and help, but not without first seeking the help of our Father. Only then can we be the women that God made us to be and come alongside the people around us in strength and power.
As we dive deeper into biblical womanhood, I want to address the way women interact with one another and guide you to think more critically about the way you approach your relationships with other women.
I almost guarantee you that at some point in your life, you have interacted with – or were friends with – another woman and have either felt inferior, been judgmental, or gone into a subconscious competition with them in academics, looks, or even spirituality.
I can almost guarantee that you’ve experienced these because every woman I’ve talked to has experienced these, too.
I’d rather state the obvious than let any lies linger in your soul when I say this is not God’s design for friendship.
God desires you to experience so much more, in full freedom, abiding in heavenly love and godly fellowship.
Let me explain.
Jesus says in John 15:10-13,
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
This abiding love marks the life of every person who has given their life to Christ. This is the kind of love that divides Christians from non-Christians. Yet. Even in the context of Christianity, there’s a difference between Christians in friendship and Christian friendship. Christians in friendship will be rich in the experiences I listed above (insecurities, pride, misplaced identity), but Christian friendship looks a lot freer, a lot holier, a lot lovelier – a lot like the love of Christ.
If you ever want to engage in Christian friendship, you must first keep God’s commands in order to understand what His love looks like (John 15:10). We could go back to the Ten Commandments and discuss how to engage in Christian friendship through the lens of each commandment, but I’d encourage you to do that in your own time! I simply want to focus on what Jesus said are the greatest commandments:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)
When we have a right understanding of God’s love for us and learn what it looks like to love God and surrender to Him, this drives us into deeper love for those around us – friends and strangers. We cannot learn to love people well unless we first learn to love God.
The question is, how do we know we’re learning to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind? How do we know we’re genuinely pursuing God because we love Him and not because we want something from Him, like having a better relationship with others?
We know that we love God with our heart, soul, and mind when we see God’s joy in us.
This isn’t a joy that the world could give us. This is a divine joy, one that can only come from an increasingly right understanding of who God is, and as a result who He made us to be. This joy infiltrates our entire being and spreads to every facet of our lives – including our identity as women, including our friendships with one another.
Ok. This article is on why friendship with other women is so hard – let’s get to it. Remember how a few weeks ago I said that women are created with a unique core? Well, women are also created to experience unique difficulties and experiences. As we relate to other women, we are tempted to neglect our core as ezer kenegdo. We forget that we are strong when our soul rests in God, not when we are in competition with one another.
I haven’t done this well. I’ve compared myself and other women academically, I’ve compared my fashion and looks to other women’s, and I’ve even compared my spiritual journey to others’ around me. Sometimes these women realize it or are doing the same thing, and we miss out on what could have been a sweet friendship. Other times, I’m left suffering alone, unable to fully experience friendship and love these women well.
You see, friendship with other women – even as Christians – is so hard because as soon as we forget who gave us our identities, as soon as we try to give ourselves identities in the things that are most important to us, and as soon as we feel insecure, our whole way of relating to other image bearers shifts.
Let’s say you place your identity in academic or professional success. You’ll naturally view people through their achievements and will begin to compare yourself to them: I was quicker to find an internship – I must be doing something better than they are. Our boss compliments their work more than mine – I must be doing something wrong.
What about looks? When you place your identity in how you look, you’ll start scrolling on Instagram, compare yourself against people you find prettier – or even, people you find less pretty – and you’ll judge people primarily on looks.
Now, let’s go a little deeper. Let’s say you find your identity in how well you “perform” spiritually – how well you lead your small group, how much you get out of your Bible time, or even, how grand your testimony seems. You’ll naturally begin to compare yourself to others’ faith and the stories God gave them in order to assert that you’re growing in your faith or are being used by God in a great way.
Do you see how in all three of these scenarios, we are the judge? Our worth and others’ worth is placed into our hands as we scramble to rest in how good we are or how sufficient our work is.
However you’ve struggled with comparison and competition in the past, know this: when your soul truly rests in God, when you learn to love Him more than anything else, you will begin to see people as Christ sees them. You will be able to see them as image bearers of God and you’ll be able to love them out of His abundant, joy-filled, steadfast love.
When we are so rooted in our identity in Christ, we don’t need to look to others for validation or as “checkpoints” to make ourselves look better. When we rest in Christ, we can rest knowing that He loves us enough to give us unique stories and unique talents that will all be stewarded for His glory. And even in our uniqueness, God is so good to surround us with other women who wrestle with the same insecurities we do, who can come alongside us and help us fight to see our lives and the lives of others as Christ sees us. To compare ourselves to the women around us would be a waste of time. But to champion the women around us would be a glorious way to approach friendship.
One more thing: you see, when Christ charges believers to love so greatly that they lay down their lives for their friends (John 15:13), there is no room for competition – just the sacrificial, abundant love that we learn when we abide in God.
Yes, men compete with one another in different ways, but women compete and cast aside their God-given nurturing, helpful instinct. Competing and comparing directly challenge the core God gave us. Caring and championing, not competing and comparing, are at the core of our beings.
What if women were to lay down everything – yes, including our desire to outperform one another – in order to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10)? What if women were to cast aside our prejudice and feelings of inferiority to love big with the love Christ enables us to extend? What if we, as women, could champion one another to lean into the strengths and stories God gave us as women and as unique individuals so that we could leave one another empowered to love and help the people around us?
This is only a taste of Christian friendship. It isn’t too idealistic or impossible to reach – this is God’s plan for us, that we would be united in love (Colossians 3:14) and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11) as women, yes, but also as unique image bearers with unique stories.
This is what we were made for. This is what we get to take with us into eternity.