Friendship Feelings vs. Romantic Feelings: Helping Your Kids Tell the Difference

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Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says:

"We have had age-appropriate discussions of same-sex attraction with our girls. Our nine-year-old is very much concerned that she might be attracted to girls because she likes certain friends or teammates and thinks they are pretty. How do we help her distinguish friend feelings from romantic attraction feelings?"

This is a really important question, and one that our culture is so terribly confused on today. Secular culture would just encourage us to encourage our children in these feelings without actually helping them discern the difference between friendship attraction feelings and romantic attraction feelings. So that's what we're going to dive down deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the Christian worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled that you've joined me for another episode today.

My first response to this questioner is that I am so grateful you have had age-appropriate sexuality-based discussions with your children. This is a huge advantage to them and a huge step forward in helping them have a biblical understanding of sexuality. For anyone who hasn't yet started those conversations, I highly recommend that you start them as soon as possible. And if you're looking for some guidance, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of our book Helping Your Kids Know God's Good Design: 40 Questions and Answers on Sexuality and Gender. It's really meant to be a step-by-step manual, walking you through 40 different sexuality-based conversations with your children and helping them see the goodness of God's good design.

If you already have a copy of that book and you have not yet hopped onto Amazon to write a review, I would ask that you go on and help us out by writing one. As you can imagine with the content of that book, it really gets suppressed in the algorithms on Amazon, so it's harder for us to get that resource into other people's hands. You also have people who bring the reviews down simply because they're commenting without having a biblical worldview, so obviously they're not in favor of what we've written. And then there's the odd review that's like, "the book came damaged," and it's like, that's Amazon shipping, that's not the book. So anyway, if you already have that book, even if you didn't purchase it on Amazon, if you could just hop on there and write a review, that would really help us get this content into more hands.

Looking Back: A Story From Middle School

As we're thinking about this question of how to help our children distinguish friendship feelings from romantic feelings, I was thinking back to a series of books I read when I was in sixth grade. They were by Lois Lowry, called the Anastasia Krupnik series. I remember distinctly in one of those books, Anastasia, a middle schooler in sixth or seventh grade, really wants to impress her gym teacher because she's not good at the activities they're doing in gym. Her friends throughout the book tease her about having a crush on the gym teacher, because the gym teacher was female. Anastasia is actually worried throughout the book, thinking, "Why do I have these really strong feelings of wanting to impress my gym teacher?" In the book, her mom assures her that wanting to impress someone you look up to at this age is very normal.

Now, this is not an endorsement of the book. I don't remember everything in that book or the series too much. However, I just remember that scene really stood out to me, because in middle school I would have those really strong attraction feelings, not romantic attraction, but just friendship and admiring attraction toward others I looked up to.

Particularly, I remember in seventh grade, I was on the modified girls volleyball team at my middle school, and we would practice throughout the summer with the junior varsity and varsity girls teams. There was one girl on the varsity team who was actually a Christian. That might not sound strange to many of you. However, I grew up in Westchester County, New York, where finding someone who actually had a relationship with Jesus that you didn't already know was so shocking. Throughout my years in high school, I really was the only Christian I knew in my high school of 800 students, until another girl from our church came to the school when I was a junior.

This girl's name was Priscilla. I found out she was a Christian because one day I came to volleyball practice wearing a Rebecca St. James t-shirt, and she said, "Oh my gosh, Rebecca St. James! I love Rebecca St. James." I said, "Oh my goodness." From that moment on, I was so strongly friendship-attracted to Priscilla. She was beautiful. She was probably 5'11", she was toned, she had this beautiful coffee-colored skin and these perfect braids. Everybody loved her. She was like the life of the party. And she was a Christian. One time she invited me to go to her youth group with her, and I just thought I had died and gone to heaven.

At that age, in seventh grade, I never ever thought I had romantic feelings toward her. I just knew that she was someone I looked up to, and I thought she was amazing, and when she gave me attention, it was like the greatest thing in the world. However, if I were growing up today and experienced that same situation, I am pretty sure that I would have had this same fear that this nine-year-old girl is experiencing. So much in our culture is saying that anytime you're drawn to someone, that means you have romantic and sexual feelings toward them. I'm so grateful that I was growing up earlier, when I didn't even have that fear. It never crossed my mind that I might be romantically attracted to Priscilla, because I wasn't. All I was doing was wanting to be like her. She was someone I wanted to be like.

Three Truths to Help Your Child Distinguish the Two

So how do we help our kids distinguish the difference between these two types of attraction? Because sometimes we're just attracted to someone as a friend, we want to spend time with them, we admire them, we want to be like them, we look up to them. And then there is romantic attraction. If you have a child who's thinking, "Oh my goodness, I really like this friend. Maybe I'm experiencing same-sex attraction," I think there are several truths we can explain to our kids to help them discern the difference.

Truth #1: We Are All Drawn to Beauty by Design

The first truth that I think is important to cover is that we, as humans who bear God's image, are all drawn to beauty by design. God is beautiful. He is the standard of beauty. We, as His image-bearers, were designed to desire Him. So when we see beauty in others, we are naturally drawn to that beauty because our hearts are ultimately longing for God.

A passage of Scripture we can take our children to is Psalm 27:4:

"One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple."

We can read this passage with our kids and ask, "What is the psalmist longing for?" The psalmist is longing to be with God, to dwell where God is, to gaze on His beauty, to be able to speak to Him. What does this show us about us as humans? It shows us that we long for God.

Then we can talk with our children about how God is beautiful and we all long for God. That's how we were designed. Just as we were designed to long for water, we thirst for water because our bodies need water, our hearts long for God, even for people who don't know that's what their longing is. That's why we humans all experience this restlessness. No matter what we desire and get, that thing never satisfies, because ultimately we were designed to be satisfied in God alone. We all have this longing for Him. Therefore we are drawn to beauty when we see it in nature, in other humans, in other things that are designed, because we're ultimately longing for God.

For the person who wrote in this question, I would encourage you: when your daughter notices that another girl is pretty, direct her to thank God for designing that girl with beauty and to ask that God would point your daughter ultimately toward Himself. For example, let's say there's a girl on her soccer team named Jessa, who's really pretty. She has tan skin, hazel eyes, a winning smile, a great personality. You can say, "Next time you look at Jessa and think, 'Wow, she's really pretty,' just say a silent prayer to God. You can say, 'God, Jessa has such beautiful tan skin and hazel eyes. Thank you for making her so pretty. Please use the beauty that I see in her to remind me that You are more beautiful than anything.'"

So this is the first thing we can do. We can help our children understand that we are going to naturally see beauty in other people. We're going to see it in people of the opposite sex and people of the same sex, and any time we see that beauty and are drawn to it, it's because ultimately that beauty is reflecting God's beauty, and God is who we were designed for.

Truth #2: It's Natural to Be Drawn to People of the Same Sex We Want to Be Like

The second thing we can do is explain to our kids that it's natural to be drawn toward people of the same sex who we want to be like. I first thought of this when I was talking with a friend of mine in the world of apologetics. He's come out of a same-sex lifestyle and is now married with children. He was telling me that one of his son's friends came to him one day. This friend was probably 15 or 16 years old, and he came to my friend and said, "I'm worried that I'm experiencing same-sex attraction, because I was changing in the locker room the other day at the gym, and I just saw this guy, and he had a really great chest, really great muscles, and I was just drawn to him."

This man asked his son's friend a question that I thought was so profound. He asked this young man:

"Do you want to be with him, or do you want to be like him?"

When I heard this, I was like, "Wow, what a profound question." Do you want to be with this person as in romantically with this person, or do you want to be like them? Because we are naturally drawn to others who we admire and want to be like. Being drawn to them usually exhibits itself as great excitement and maybe even a fluttering of the stomach.

When we want to be like someone, whether we want their character, their personality, or we're drawn to their physical appearance and want a physical appearance like them, we naturally want to spend time with this person, and we are excited when they notice us. You can share this with your child and then share a personal story or two for when this happened to you.

I remember for myself growing up, one year I was part of a gifted program at school, and I really hated being part of it simply because the teacher couldn't stand me. She couldn't stand me because my mom would frequently contact them if they were going through things that didn't agree with the Christian worldview, and my mom would contact them and want things changed. This teacher really didn't like me, so I hated being part of this gifted program.

One time, the gifted program went on a field trip to New York City, and we saw something similar to Shen Yun, where there were these Chinese dancers. I just remember trying not to be noticed the whole time, because I knew this teacher didn't like me. At the end, we had the opportunity to go up to the front, say hello to the dancers, and take a class picture with them. I was standing toward the back, and all of a sudden I felt myself being lifted up. The dancers actually lifted me up onto the stage with them and hugged me. I thought it was the best thing in the world, and I got that butterfly feeling in my stomach, that feeling like when somebody you're attracted to notices you. I got that butterfly feeling in my stomach.

I wasn't physically or romantically attracted to these Chinese female dancers. I was just thinking, "Oh my goodness, here are these really pretty, really gifted women who just performed on stage, and I'm here feeling like I'm less than because this teacher can't stand me, and they just lifted me up. They singled me out, lifted me up onto the stage."

We can tell our children stories like this. I also think about the first time I had a one-on-one conversation with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. I have followed her for years, read her books, and been so impressed by her godly character. I had reached out to her one time, and she actually FaceTimed with me for a few hours, and I just remember being so excited. We can be drawn to someone we want to be like, someone we admire, and we can still get those butterfly feelings in our stomach, but that is not romantic attraction. We're not longing to be married to this person or to be with them romantically. We're just longing to be like them and really in awe that they have taken time out to notice us.

That's the second truth we can focus on with our kids: it's natural for us to be drawn toward people of the same sex who we want to be like.

Truth #3: Even If Our Children Do Experience Same-Sex Attraction, They Can Still Honor God

There's an important third point. For some who are listening to this podcast right now, your children are going to grow up and they may experience same-sex attraction. So I think we need to explain to our children that even if they do grow up and discover that they are romantically attracted to the same sex, they can still choose to honor God in that struggle.

We need to explain to our children that we cannot control our desires. We can't control what our hearts long for, but we can control what we do with those desires. We know from Scripture that Adam's sin affects us all, that because Adam and Eve rebelled and ate from the fruit of the tree, we have all been affected. We all have a sin nature. Some of us struggle with anxious desires or angry desires. Some struggle with lust, and there's a whole host of other fallen desires. For some, those fallen desires include same-sex attraction.

In each case, no matter what fallen desire we are struggling with, we can't make it so that our hearts no longer want that thing. Now, we can do things to make sure our hearts don't grow in longing for that sinful longing, but we can't change our desires. What we can do, what we do have control over, is choosing to submit our sinful desires before the Lord and asking Him to grow our desire for Him to be greater than our desire for sin.

So I think that's an important truth for our kids to know: it's not that we just have to work really hard to avoid all sinful desires. Temptations to sin are going to come. Scripture makes that clear. We cannot control what our hearts desire, but we can control what we do with those desires. As we choose to submit those sinful desires before God and ask that He would grow our desire for Him to be greater than our desire for sin, what we're doing is not putting fuel on the fire. We're repenting of our sinful desires and trusting again and again and again in the grace of God.

This can be hard to talk through when we're thinking about same-sex attraction, because our culture has bought into the lie that sexual desire encapsulates every other desire and trumps all other desires, that sexual desires are the strongest of all. In some cases, that might be true; sexual desires are stronger than other desires. But Scripture does not present sexual desire as the strongest, or the desire that trumps all. Scripture points out what is holy and righteous and good, and it calls sin sin.

Sadly, the Christian community has often believed this lie that sexual desires trump all, and therefore many Christians have bought into the lie that asking someone to crucify their flesh in this way is cruel. I've heard so many Christians say, "Oh, how could I tell somebody that their same-sex desire is sin? That's such a huge thing." And it's like, yes, it is a huge thing. All of our sin that we are asked to crucify is huge.

In Luke 9:21–26, we read:

"And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, 'The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.' And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.'"

The Christian's call is to daily deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Jesus. This truth is revealed just after Jesus explains to His disciples that He's going to suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, the scribes, be killed, and then raised on the third day. The Christian life is a crucified life.

It's so easy for me to sit here in the comfy chair in my home office and say that, but this is what we are called to do every day, to crucify our flesh. We want to help our children know that they are going to experience fallen desires. We all do. But the call of the Christian is to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily, and follow Jesus.

The last part of this passage says, "Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels." This life is but a breath. Jesus is going to return in the flash of an eye, and He is going to make heaven and earth new, and He is going to resurrect us. We're going to have resurrected bodies. When we have been on the new earth enjoying God and the restored creation in perfect humanity forever, when we've been there for 15 million years, struggling with sinful desires for a mere 70, 80, 90 years is going to seem like nothing compared to the reward that will be received in eternity.

Another passage we can take our kids to when we're talking about submitting our desires before the Lord is Psalm 131. The whole psalm is just three verses:

"O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore."

I think we can point out this picture to our kids. In verse two, it talks about a weaned child, and we can ask our kids, "Do you know what it means to be a weaned child?" A weaned child means a child that's no longer being nursed by its mother. When children are still being nursed or still receiving a bottle, they're very squirmy and antsy when they're with their moms. Frequently, when they're with their moms, their primary thought is, "I want to eat. I want to eat." A weaned child, a child who's eating regular foods, is no longer being nursed, no longer on a bottle. That child is calmer when they're with their mom, because when they're with their mom, they're not thinking lunch. They're just thinking, "I'm with my mom."

That is what we want. We want our hearts to be content with God, not to be thinking about all the different fallen desires that we have, but to ask God to make our desire for Him greater.

Bringing It All Together

So as we're thinking about helping our children understand the difference between friendship feelings and romantic feelings, and what happens if one day they do find out they are struggling with romantic feelings toward the same sex, here are the three things I pointed out that I think we need to help our kids understand:

First, explain to our kids that we are all drawn to beauty by design. That is because God is beautiful and our hearts ultimately long for Him.

Second, explain that it's natural for us to be drawn to people of the same sex who we want to be like, that we all have people we admire, that we look up to, that we get butterflies in our stomach when we're around them or when they pay attention to us, simply because we admire them and we want to be like them.

Third, even if our children do one day experience romantic same-sex attraction, they can still choose to honor God in that struggle, because that's the call of every Christian: to deny ourselves, to pick up our cross daily, and to follow Jesus.

Well, that's a wrap for this episode. If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview Podcast, you can submit that question by going to foundationworldview.com/podcast.

As we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care find yourselves, you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.

A Resource for Walking This Out at Home

If this conversation feels like one you want to be more prepared for, or if you want a step-by-step way to introduce these truths to your child before culture introduces its own version, our book Helping Your Kids Know God's Good Design: 40 Questions and Answers on Sexuality and Gender is designed exactly for this. It walks you through 40 conversations so you're not scrambling for the right words in the middle of an emotional moment.