Bro, Please Cover Your Emotional Cleavage!

Grace Sangalang Ng

“It seems like every girl who I have a deep conversation with ends up being attracted to me,” my guy friend told me over lunch. “It makes it really difficult to be friends with women, when they all seem to start liking me. But, it seems that they are only attracted to this one part of me. It’s like the equivalent of how men are attracted to women with big boobs.”

“So, maybe you shouldn’t show your emotional cleavage, and then girls won’t be so quick to attach to you,” I challenged. “While men are turned on by the physical, women are turned on by the emotional connection. In the way women need to be wise in dressing modestly, and not exposing full frontal for all to see, men need to be careful in how much they expose of their emotional depth to women. I know you enjoy deep, meaningful conversations, which are good things, but maybe you just need to be careful how much you share with women. ”

“I’m sorry, Grace, but when it comes to emotionality, I’ve got to rock the two piece suit,” he snarkily remarked.

Since having this conversation with my guy friend, I’ve been thinking more about the differences between men and women. It’s good to have these kinds of conversations about our differences, and there’s also the necessity to be wise in dealing with opposite gender relationships in light of our differences. While I don’t have clear-cut answers about girl-guy friendships, which are often times difficult to navigate, this conversation made me think more about boundaries, and how to be wise in relating to the opposite gender. In the Church, where we are part of a bigger Family, and are considered brothers and sisters, I wonder about how we can best care for each other.

This conversation also  inspired me to start reading His Brain, Her Brain: How Divinely Designed Differences Can Strengthen Your Marriage by Walt and Barb Larimore, where they discuss the intrinsic differences between men and women. Even in our genetics, brain structure, and chemical makeup, there are distinctions between men and women. In a culture where gender differences are sometimes seen as being socially-constructed, this book shows the biological nature of our gender makeup, and how this affects us in the way we view the world, communicate, and relate to others. As a single woman, this book has helped me understand the different ways we’re wired to better relate to my guy friends, the men in my family, and my male coworkers, who are so different from me.

There’s that age-old question about whether girls and guys can just be friends. While I think there can be genuine platonic girl-guy friendships, I think there is also something that attracts one to the other, and for girls – sharing deeper emotionally breeds a deeper connection and attachment. So, we do need to be careful in how we approach these relationships, but also be open to the benefits of being brothers and sisters of one Family.

Grace Sangalang Ng
Grace recently completed an EdD at Biola University. She received her B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her M.A.s in Bible Exposition and Spiritual Formation from Talbot School of Theology.

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6 responses to “Bro, Please Cover Your Emotional Cleavage!”

  1. shayan

    a fair warning! thank you for the poking.

    both genders ought to draw boundaries that honor the Lord, respect one another’s sensitivities and are above reproach. anything short of that is selfish at best and evil and idolatrous at worst.

    perhaps platonic friendship needs to be further defined. one video survey of numerous college age students across various campuses show that when asked the question whether men and women can be just friends, the majority of women answered yes while the majority of men answered a resounding no. that should mean something.

    genuine friendship and affection for one another as brother and sister could be achieved but often times we fail to see what that picture looks like. how wisdom and self-control should be exercised without self-deceit! in this day and age where shameless immoral living and godless thoughts are rampant and pervasive through *all* media, our standards are at an all-time low and our discernment level is near freezing point. We mingle and hang out and play with each other (note i did not use the word “flirt”) with absolutely no discretion nor forethoughts. and we wonder why there are so many broken hearts and lives out there.

    Christian liberty today has taken on a new level of challenge. and who knew it’d take such an inordinate amount of courage and humility to admit the fragility of our flesh and the subtlety of all sorts of pride and mischieves? be honest. we hate rules.

    well. i should think that old schools aren’t always bad schools. because i bet they once were rebels themselves.

    “all things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful.” “for you brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (1 corinthians 6:12; galatians 5:13)

    Reply
    1. Grace Sangalang

      Thanks for your comment, Shayan! I have seen that YouTube video about whether girls and guys can be friends, and perhaps, girls and guys do have different definitions of what platonic friendship is. It’s true that often times, there might be an attraction on one side or the other, or both, which is what makes two people gravitate towards each other in the first place. While friends may have an attraction to one another, the next question of whether to act upon it or not, is another point, so it becomes platonic. Yet, I think that there are people who don’t ever have that attraction to the other, and those friendships are truly platonic.

      I agree that our culture and world make it hard to see what genuine friendship between girls and guys looks like, and how to go about it. We do need to be wise and discerning in how to go about these relationships, and we are often self-deceived. I think bringing community and accountability into our relationships helps us see clearer, and helps us live as a family – so that we can truly be brothers and sisters of God’s family. I do think that we can have healthy girl-guy friendships, we just need to be careful in how we approach them.

      Reply
  2. Matthew

    I don’t really agree with you on this, or at least I feel like it’s a little too much of a black and white distinction in what you’ve established here.

    I think about the equation of male emotionality with female “big boobs”. If a woman with large breasts were complaining about men hitting on her all the time, it wouldn’t exactly be okay to recommend that she bind her chest and wear baggy clothing. And yet, by suggesting that men shouldn’t show their emotions to women so much, I feel like this metaphorical baggy clothing is the onus you place on men. Some men are quite rightly accused of being unable to control their impulses and hitting on well-endowed women. Could it be that some women are likewise immature in their inability to control their impulses and chasing after certain traits in men? I don’t accuse this of all women, but then, I don’t accuse all men of being lust-crazed knuckleheads either.

    Compounding things, contemporary American culture generally defines some emotions as okay and others as inappropriate, especially for men, which tends to result in significant repression and disavowal. Such splitting results in alienation from self and others and can produce psychological distortion and disorder of various kinds. You have to be careful about telling anyone, but particularly men in this kind of environment, to not share their emotions because it can simply feed into the cultural messages that already surround us. Men probably need to be encouraged to be aware of and honest about their emotions more than to be reticent with them.

    Your means of responding to this friend was also very prescriptive, and that certainly has its place, but it sounds like here it became an issue of attack and defense. Rather than prescribing what to do, I wonder if it might have been more helpful to explore with him his motivations behind sharing as he does. What does he get out of sharing his emotions like that? And is it only with women? What is the underlying need?
    I find that many men who are so free with their emotions can be looking for psychological containment and nurture, but they typically don’t know this overtly and go looking in not the best places. Perhaps he has an unhealthy or at least immature longing for mothering, and he instinctively attracts women who are unhealthily or immaturely attempting to be “mommy”. But by being told that he simply needs to stop sharing so much, this or whatever else that’s motivating him never surfaces, and when that fails to happen, the root continues to lie hidden and untouched. He either represses those emotions to result in leakage or ignores the admonition so that the cycle continues.

    I hear that you don’t want women to dress provocatively and likewise don’t want men to share emotion too deeply, but by the same turn, I don’t want men around all provocatively dressed women to say, “I can’t help it,” and give into their lust, not do I want all women in the presence of a vulnerable man to say, “I can’t help it,” and give into their own attractive emotional responses. All four of these action are not only failures to discipline oneself, but they are also very likely signs of distorted psychological patterns, needs that have gone unmet or have become patterned to be met in unhealthy ways. There needs to be an understanding of what’s going on underneath and a process of restoration to health and holiness rather than an exhortation to behave differently. To steal a line from John Townsend, if “Stop it” were all that we needed, the Bible would have stopped at Exodus 20.

    The church ought to be a place where love is shared, which requires personal and emotional vulnerability, but the simple statement that one needs to be careful what one shares can stifle that vulnerability. There needs to be nuance to it. Who are the right people to explore with? What is the motivation for such vulnerability? Where are appropriate places and times to open up? Boundaries are good, even crucial and necessary, but within those boundaries, there needs to be an opportunity and impetus to unpeel the heart. There’s more going on in all of this than just a failure in male-female relationships and cross-gender understanding. There are deep hearts in your friend, in the women who are attracted to him, and in all of us that need attending to.

    Reply
    1. Grace Sangalang

      Hi Matthew,
      Thanks for your response. I appreciate your thoughts, and thinking about the issues that came up in my post.

      To be honest, I never meant to create a black-and-white distinction or have an all-encompassing analogy or prescription for girl-guy relationships. I used this one conversation that I had with one friend as an illustration into a few aspects of the dynamics of girl-guy relationships. I’m not trying to provide a clear prescription for every situation. It’s true that I didn’t go into the nuances of all the many psychological dynamics at play in this conversation. It was just a small snapshot of one moment, that I made some observations about. I think that men and women both need to be careful in approaching girl and guy friendships, and that both need to have wisdom and discernment in the best way they can. We won’t have perfect perspective, because often times, as you’ve said, our unconscious psychological dynamics are at play. Yet, I think we can still be discerning to the best of our ability, and also be graceful in the way we approach these relationships.

      I appreciate that you are considering the many dynamics at play, and see there is deep brokenness in all of us – which all need healing. It’s true that we all need safe places to share ourselves, to truly be known, and to be loved, and I hope the Church can be provide these safe places, as we share Christ’s love with one another.

      Reply
  3. Josh Carroll

    Great post Grace! I also appreciate your above response. Sometimes it is more than appropriate to call out a friend with the assumption that you are willing to go through the deep stuff with that person. It takes discernment and patience but the initial frying pan upside the head encounter is worth it.
    It is interesting to think about the different ways people emotionally leak out on others, trying to fulfil their inordinate needs with things unhealthy for both parties. I appreciate that you looked at this issue from an angle that we would not normally expect. Of course there is more to the story (I don’t expect you to cover every aspect of this extensive psychological and formational issue in one short blog) but you captured an aspect that I, and many others, don’t normally think about. Great job!!

    Reply
    1. Grace Sangalang

      Thanks for your comment, Josh! I appreciate it!

      Reply

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