Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

Without much thought, I erected tall walls with locked doors around my life. I’d reveal enough so people felt close to me but not give anyone enough to use against me.

To me this is just smart. It’s what I have learned. Once bitten twice shy and all.

We all crave friends in the trenches who call us midcry and whom we call midcry,

NO WE DON’T! Not everybody wants that. I don’t want to call someone when I cry and I don’t want someone to call me crying unless they are already a long-standing friend and something huge happened. Why does she keep insisting everybody wants that??

God wanted them to come out of sin and hiding and shame and come back into relationship with Him. But God is just and righteous, and He could not tolerate sin with no consequence. Sin required payment, and the price was death.

*That* silly story again…

So we go back to hiding and the cycle spins on. How do we break free?

Simple. Stop trying to be Insta-Friends with every Tom, Dick and Harry that crosses your path. Develop friendships slowly and carefully, so you’re not all wrapped up with someone before you figure out that they are problematic people you don’t want in your life.

I sat across from her, trembling and crying. She told me how I had hurt her and why she had pulled back. She told me things that were true, and I understood how hurt she must have been. She told me that she vividly remembered one time when I came over to her house and I cried and sat on her bed telling her my hurt. She said she’d never felt closer to me than she felt that day. But the rest of the time it was exhausting to be in a friendship where she was the only needy one.

This is so weird. I hate this kind of thing!! Freakin hate it! I don’t want to do this with people at all; once in a while I have to go through this with a kid or my husband and I *HATE* it! I literally have a goal to never go through this with a friend ever again for the rest of my life. If you’re not a good friend to me? Au revoir. If you’re going to tell me all the ways I’m not the kind of friend you want me to be, au revoir. I’ve been there, experienced it, and want nothing to do with it again as long as I live.

Talk to people as they walk by and invite them to join you!

Once again, she seems to think everybody lives in a suburban cul-de-sac, where people jog by with their Goldendoodles. Nobody passes by my house unless they are drunk or lost. Or a farmer planning the land.

The fact that it feels uncomfortable doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. In fact, it probably means you’re doing it right.

This is terrible advice. I can see it when people are trying to do this forced intimacy thing and I will resist it very directly. It feels uncomfortable because a LOT of people HATE IT. They have no interest at all in showing you all their bloody guts.

These are only a few of the dozens and dozens of Bible verses that speak to the importance of submission, accountability, and both receiving and giving loving correction.

No. I don’t tell other adults what to do (unless they ask) and I don’t want them telling me what to do (unless I ask).

Auntie Alice and Pastor Fred were always with us and always correcting him and instructing him, teaching him, exhorting him to be his best.

Badgering him, IOW

Nobody thinks they want that experience, but we do. We actually crave it.

No, we don’t. You know what’s one thing I dislike about the premise here? It’s that I don’t want to be advised by my peers who have many weaknesses of their own. I like to think I readily accept instruction from someone who has some skill or knowledge that far surpasses my own. But if you are, let’s say, my friend Jenny and, while I like you just fine, I think you have a huge blind spot with your daughter who has you snowed, telling you she’s working overtime hours when she’s secretly meeting her boyfriend for an hour, (which btw, I’m not telling you that unless you express doubt and ask what I think)…and *then*, you, Jenny, mom-of-the-wayward-daughter say something to me like, “Your problem is you don’t trust your teenager to make good decisions….” I don’t need to hear your assessment of my parenting because I already know you’re not doing such a hot job yourself. You have no authority because your results are crappy and you’re so busy with your rose-colored Jesus glasses you don’t see your own parenting flaws. And! I definitely don’t think there’s any good to be gained if, stung, I wheel around and say, “Oh really? Well at least I actually know what my teenager is doing, unlike yourself.”

It’s all nonsense. Why?

No. No it is not nonsense to permit other ADULTS to make their own choices. Yes, even if you think your way is better. Even if you see a potential pitfall they don’t see. Even if you think they are just plain wrong. Why? Because I also want to make my own choices without someone preaching at me about how they think I should live my life. It’s different if I ask. It’s different if I say, “What would you do about XYZ?” Or even, “Am I wrong?” Which yes, I have asked. But to simply give an open invitation for people to critique my living? That’s a big, fat Nope for me.

We need to be in community with people of differing ethnicities, backgrounds, perspectives.

Finally, something I agree with her in. And yet…I don’t like it when people act like they are collecting non-majority friends so they can demonstrate how very inclusive they are. Like, “hey, that lady can be my black friend, and that one can be my lesbian friend and that other one can be my disabled friend!”

It is altogether a different thing to sit across from a friend who is teary about how to raise her child of color in a world fixated on hate.

I hear you on that.

Sure, they love Jesus, but they have experienced the world and see it in ways I grow from and respect.

I wonder if she would extend her diversity to non-Christians? Hmmm

No one has wounded me more than the people who are closest to me. And sometimes my imperfect people speak harm and not correction. Sometimes they don’t understand or empathize. Sometimes they use my sin against me. Sometimes they gossip about what I have shared. Sometimes they leave me in judgment. Sometimes they reject me because I was honest. Sometimes they shut me out for good.

Right. So why would you continue to set yourself up for that again and again? Why would you invite people who may have less self-awareness than you do, let alone a decent ability to constructively criticize beneficially; why would you hand them the gun again and again?

few months in, the leader matter-of-factly said something like, “Next week we’re going to lay out our finances for each other, including numbers, and talk about how we can hold each other accountable in our generosity, spending, and debt.” Wait, I remember thinking. You want to know what?!

That is absolutely bat-shit bonkers to go along with. I would not, could not, Sam I am. My family’s finances are absolutely not the business of people in my church group (if I were still in a church group). It reminds me of cult control. Actually, maybe a lot of this books reminds me of that.

First, look for healthy people and become a healthy person. Counselor Jim Cofield shared with me once some basic qualities of a healthy friend.[7] Ready?

Here’s the thing, though: IMO, people who do the things she is recommending, especially if done with “new” friends you zeroed in on and decided to collect for your people-finding project, are not likely to be such emotionally healthy people.

Soon enough, both places lacked community, connection, anything more than superficial interaction. No wonder loneliness showed

I just don’t buy this entirely. Unless your marriage is terrible, you have no siblings/parents/cousins around AND your kids are assholes, there’s no reason people *with spouses/life partners/ family/kids* should be so lonely. That’s part of the effing point. It’s literally a reason aside from sexual enjoyment and monetary benefit why people bother partnering up at all; because sure, most people do want someone around who will listen to them gush on and on about Secrets of Dumbledore, even if they don’t really get it. Most people do want someone who will make pizza with them and laugh about inside jokes with them and who will make soup when they have a cold. I just don’t understand why a married lady with four kids is making such a hard sell on the idea that it has to be *other* people. You have to collect up the dog groomer, the baseball coach and the lady who live on the corner as well. It’s nutty.

It’s as if we’re trying to live simultaneously in three separate realities. No wonder we’re exhausted and frazzled. We’re running in fifteen different directions day by day, bumping into scores of people, even as we feel utterly alone. Then we spend our spare minutes scrolling Instagram, where everyone looks perfectly connected and happy,

Here she is doing that same thing I hated so much I that dumb Rachel Hollis book: applying *some* people’s lives to everyone’s. *I* do not live this way. *I* do not “bump into people” all day, every day. I live in a non-neighborhood on ten acres in the woods and work in a tiny office with one attorney and no other staff. I usually eat my homemade lunch at my desk. I don’t belong to a gym. My kids are mostly grown so, no more soccer games and homeschool co-op and Mom’s Club. And I never scroll Instagram.

But what if I gave you permission to simplify?

Lol! Yes, please give me permission. 🙄

You want to know one of the biggest problems we face when it comes to friendship? We mistakenly think friendship is about us.

Indeed. She does it throughout this book.

I 100% do not want to do this scene. I will - have - done it with my spouse. But that’s it. I had a friendship like that; we’re enemies now.

Conflict isn’t the enemy to our friendships; conflict is fodder to make them grow. Conflict is inevitable in the kind of deep community we are talking about here.

Okay. Look. It is true that we can’t have a deep relationship with another human being and never have a single conflict. That’s true. But! OTOH, I have no interest in having friends (or a partner for life) who has a bunch of fragile specifics about “what they need” for us to get along. I *had* a friend who tried to do that. As I said, we are no longer friends and are pretty much enemies. Sadly I still have some obligation to interact with that ex-friend because we are related. So that’s unfortunate. But our relationship came to a head when this person tried to dictate what I had to do for us to be friends. Basically tried to demand from me what is only going to happen naturally when I *trust* someone, and that person destroyed my trust so…Pfttt! We’re done.

Once a week is excessive to a truly bizarre degree. I mean, I know I’m a bigger peacenik than average but still…screw that. It’s way too much drama for me. If I had conflict with someone I love every week, I could not go on. I would die or move away.

The actual words that came out of his mouth were, “Jennie, village life sounds great until you realize you’re surrounded by a bunch of cannibals.”

Lol! I like her BIL! And I think he’s right!

That’s why we need relationships with God at the center and united in a shared mission.

No. She’s wrong. The whole myth of God fixing everything that’s broken really gets on my nerves. Experience has told me otherwise and, to not learn from the past is foolish in the extreme. This entire book repeats the theme that you will be damaged, hurt and misunderstood if you do it the way she says. What kind of endorsement is that? It’s like saying, “Broken bones heal stronger than the original bone so everyone should break a couple bones per year.”

This is just not right. It does not have to be this way. Look at a group like my bunco group. Other than a little dust-up with one very unreliable member, we have been friends for two decades. It is true each person is not perfect, super-close friends with each other person, but everyone continues to be friends in spite of disagreement that happen once in a while. I’m just saying - not every damn thing requires a summit to cry about and then rectify. It’s possible to just roll your eyes and mutter, “Well, that’s just Denise, thinking she alone is busy…”

So first put something regular on your calendar. It takes the work out of this. Schedule it like I did with my friends in Austin. Pick the time and place where you’ll all show up.

This may be the only thing I agree with in the whole book. To establish friendships, you ideally should see them on reliable intervals. It’s why I started the Adventure Club, and it’s why I stayed in Book Club and Bunco so long.

Leave your laundry out on the couch and ask them to help you fold.

No

Ask if they’ll pick your kid up on their way over.

I would do this with certain friends and only if they are going right by where my kid is.

Stop by someone’s house unannounced.

PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS! I think it is the *worst* advice in this whole book! In the first place, I may not be home. In the second, I am not sitting at home hoping someone will drop by. I have a fuck-ton of stuff I have to get through every day and I do NOT want someone dropping by to shoot the breeze. The only instance in which I would be okay with this is if an emergency or severe trauma happened. But not just stopping by because *I* (Me! Me! Me!) need to see a friend.

Also a TERRIBLE idea!!! If someone does this, I will be totally confused. I cook or my husband does almost every night. If someone brings a meal out of the blue, I’m going to be like, “Uh…what do I do with the ingredients for pepper steak that I’ve been marinating all day?” We will already be preparing to eat whatever we planned. Why would I ever want someone to bring a meal *unexpectedly*?

Ask to borrow clothes for a special event instead of shopping for a new dress.

In general, my policy is against borrowing and lending. It’s easy for expectations to be uneven in the lens/borrow duo. And there is always the possibility of damaging/losing/ruining the borrowed thing.

Ask to join someone else’s family dinner.

Same as the other thing: this is a hard no for me. You don’t invite yourself into someone’s meal except for the rarest of reasons with the best of friends/relatives. For one thing, you are obligating your friend to finance your meal and some people could actually find that difficult. Not to mention it’s just intrusive. It is true that meals are great bonding things; it is why I have done family dinner nearly every night for my kids’ entire growing up years. But the reason I have protected meals is so that I bond to my family, not so random friends can disrupt that. BTW, someone did try to do this to me; they tried to invite themselves to my pizza night tradition. I laughed it off as if I thought they were not serious. I made a joke about it being a sacred tradition, haha. But I think they really meant to barge in on my pizza tradition. 🙄

(That last one’s truly bold.)

Or just crazy…

“He found that it took about 50 hours of interaction to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to move from casual friend to friend, and more than 200 hours to qualify as a best friend.”[5]

But it TAKES MORE THAN JUST HOURS. Just as not everyone you date is “marriage material” and out of the small number who are marriage material, you still have to find a good dynamic, which is not true for every candidate. And with roughly half of all marriages ending in divorce, seems true that even if the dynamic seems good, it might not work long-term.

wrote my dad a six-page letter, three pages of gratitude and three pages of wounds, and read it aloud. It felt important. I had done the work, including years of counseling, but I had never shared with him the hurt that some of his behaviors had caused me.

Know what? I did something like that too, years ago, when I was going through a trauma. And I wish I could un-do it. It was not worth it. It resolved nothing. It just convinced me that I could not have a real relationship with my dad and mom.

So, if you have a broken relationship with your parents or other family members, is it hopeless? In anthropology, there

Pretty much!

The term fictive kinship—which I think is a fancy term for “find your people”—refers to strong social ties that aren’t established by marriage or by blood.[4] Interestingly, some researchers assert that the happiest people are those who have the strongest fictive-kinship bonds: their own family was a disaster, so they went and formed a new one to call their own.

I have something to say about this too. I have seen people - and they are always Jesus people - who do this and it is enormously hurtful to the actual family members. For instance, I knew someone whose mom was dying of cancer. The dying mom would lavish praise on her “spiritual daughter”, while her *actual* daughter had to experience this diminishment. Now, having said that, I think it can work fine to have an “uncle Paul” who isn’t really an uncle but fits into your family so completely that the kids don’t even realize that until they’re twelve. So those things are okay. But I think it’s wrong to bestow terms like “spiritual daughter” and “spiritual mother” on people when the actual relative of that name is still in the picture.

Whenever we make statements like this, we give ourselves permission to start a construction project that erects sky-high walls.

Walls are helpful. Not building walls where you need them is dumb. You know what I’ve learned? I’ve learned that lots of people do not deserve access to my inner sanctum. They don’t get to come in. I can be just dandy “friends” with people who do not get to have access to my inner sanctum. In fact, if you are a friend who has been let into that tiny room, you are a very special person and I have known you for years. Throughout this book, Jennie Allen continues to speak about “your people” as though anyone who happens to be nearby can become that. I disagree. I am big on waiting while I see what someone is truly made of before I make any attempt whatsoever to deepen that friendship. And, I have never regretted keeping someone at arm’s length while I watch how they are unfold, but I have regretted it the other way: when I let some gushy gush-ball become my immediate friend and then I realize they are a total headcase and getting out is much harder. (Like that crazy lady I met in Lamaze class!)

don’t know if you’ve ever been in conflict like that, in which even though you’re trying, even though you’re sitting down and going through the steps of resolution, it feels like resolution just can’t be found. When I read that verse above in Ephesians, I realized the problem wasn’t my friend. The problem was the enemy who was trying to divide us.

Give me a break. It has *nothing* to do with “Satan”, no more than it has to do with the Tooth Fairy. Here’s the thing it took me a long time to learn, having grown up bathed in Christian context: not everyone will like you, and you won’t like everyone. And that is OK! Some people are just never going to be your cup of tea, and some people will not deign to be kind to you no matter how much ass you kiss. Some people are just JERKS! Or your values are too different. It’s not a sign that evil forces are sneaking around putting curses on you. It’s just a FACT that you won’t get along with every and everyone will not get along with you.

Codependency develops when we look to other people to meet our needs instead of looking to God. It usually begins as people pleasing—or the converse, expecting people to meet all our needs.

The first part of this book totally seems to endorse this though. Remember all the “I need…” stuff?

Relationships always go wrong when God is not in the center.

Demonstrably false.

When you are unusually upset that a person didn’t call or that person wasn’t loving enough toward you or didn’t invite you to something, ask yourself, Am I putting unfair expectations on this person to meet my needs?

That’s totally how the first part of this book looks to me…nobody invited you for pizza? Barge over their house and eat pizza…

Find the lonely college girl in your town. Please. Today.

Yes, that’s bound to go over well. Just start randomly asking people who are wearing McDaniel College sweatshirts if they need a friend or mentor…

Bethany, Ali, Christi, Cassie, Courtney, Emily, Jen, Amanda, Pam, Katherine, and others are the best investments of my life. That’s just a few I’ve poured into, and those few have discipled others, with exponential, immeasurable numbers of people they have discipled behind them.

Ain’t you special?

The truth is, if gossip didn’t feel good, we wouldn’t do it.

It’s always extroverts that love gossip.

So sit your friends down and say, “Hey, guys, we’ve been gossiping and we’ve got to stop. I don’t feel safe with you. I don’t think you all feel safe with me. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to assume the best about each other, and we’re never ever, ever going to speak ill of other people or of each other.”

You know why this is, as she says, an awkward conversation? Because it comes across so holier-than-thou. You have to not be a gossip in the first place. Otherwise, your friends, whom you have heretofore gossiped with about someone/someones will be rightly taken aback like, “Wait a second! *Where* does she get off? She has suddenly formed a conscience against talking trash about ‘Susan’, so *now* she’s going to abruptly make us all stop?” Also, I have found there’s a fine line sometimes between talking to Person A about absent Person B, to understand something about Person B vs straight gossip where you just want to trash the person behind their back. I used to avoid *ANY* talking about someone absent but I have learned that this is unwise. If you don’t have the conversation, Person A will not understand what’s going on and *YOU* will be the one who looks like a crappy person, because observers think you dumped Person B for “no reason”.

My friend Callie taught last night at our church, where I also teach frequently. She was glowing and brought such an incredible word to the women. Not one part of me compared myself to her as a Bible teacher. I took joy in cheering on a teammate who was up at bat.

🙄

When I hugged her after the event, she said, “Your texts were blowing up my phone during my whole talk.” She had her notes on her phone! Oops.

Hmmm…subconscious sabotage?