Our Secret Sauce, My Recipe - Four Parts Friendship

Our Secret Sauce, My Recipe - Four Parts Friendship

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. —Friedrich Nietzsche

STEVE AND I MET on the phone. Because my employer sold and supplied products to the company he worked for, we transacted business for several months, becoming business buddies before we ever met face-to-face at a Christmas party. Then, out of the blue, Steve started showing up at our offices to pick up sales materials. (So much for the honesty factor; he was putting this stuff in the trunk of his car! He was using this errand as an excuse to see me. How naive I was—it took six weeks and two male coworkers to clue me in.) But we first became friends during our phone time.

Everyone talks about love being the center of a relationship, but Steve and I disagree. The first ingredient in our secret sauce is friendship. And two of the most important elements of friendship are taking turns and using your kind voice.

Take turns. Steve and I love to hang out together. We enjoy most of the same things. Notice I said most. But we do just about everything together because time is required to build a strong relationship. Steve is a music nut and enjoys live entertainment. I’m not crazy about late-night concerts, since the main act comes on way past my bedtime. Steve goes to fewer concerts than he’d probably like and picks venues that he knows will be congenial to me. We go together and have a great time. That’s what friends do.

Remember when you were ten? Sometimes you played what you wanted to play; the next time your friend got to pick. It’s Friendship 101: in order to build and maintain a solid friendship you must (a) spend time together, and (b) do things that are important to each of you.

Use your kind voice. We speak to one another as we would a dear friend. We never yell. We never attack. We never nag. We never chastise or embarrass one another in front of friends or family. That doesn’t mean we always agree—sometimes we agree to disagree, as friends do. Respect is a key component of friendship, and we demonstrate our respect for one another with the words, tone, inflection, and body language we use. We always say please, thank you, and could you?/would you?—just as we would with a friend.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. (1 Corinthians 13:4-5)

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