Tag Archives: singles

God Has Someone For You – Really?!

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One of the most annoying things you hear as a single person is when someone says the words, “There’s someone out there for you”.  Ok, well that’s great. Even worse is the Christian version, “God has someone out there for you,” or other fun variations like, “God will bring the person in His timing,” (thanks Calvin), or one of my favorites, “God is just getting them ready for you.”  That one makes me laugh.

I’ve heard some of these from the pulpit believe it or not and of course at conferences when I was younger as well as from many well meaning friends (all married of course).  But well meaning as it may be it isn’t a good idea.  It touches on some things we’ll talk about more such as, thinking God owes you a spouse, thinking that it is all God’s fault you are single, thinking that it is all about you, feeling that God is holding out on you, the whole “This is God’s plan that you are single” thing, and worst of all, having your spirituality tied up in this stuff.  But there are more immediate problems for this post.

First of all when someone tells me that God has someone for me I want to say, “Really?! You know this for sure?  You’ve prayed and God has told you that He has someone for me?  Tell me more.”  Look, I think a lot of people say this stuff because it makes them feel better and/or they hope it will make the other person feel better but it usually doesn’t. Now of course if you’ve actually prayed and felt like God gave you a word about this for your friend then by all means share it.  (I’ve had this happen to me actually – crazy story).

But otherwise this is not great advice.  For starters it’s not Biblical.  No where in the Bible are we promised a spouse.  You can’t read the Bible and think, “God has someone for everyone”.  Now to be sure marriage is set up by God and is a great thing.  It is also part of the original plan and it happens pre-sin so to speak (more on this later) but the problem is there are all sorts of people in the Bible who aren’t married.  There are people called to singleness.  And frankly, we did sin.  And friends, that screwed up every single aspect of creation, including this one.

We should not assume that we, or teach anyone else to assume that they, will get married. It’s just not a good starting point.  This has all sorts of ramifications.  I’ve had a couple of friends recently say to me, “Should this change what I tell my kids growing up?”  My answer would be yes.   As single people we need to have an attitude of submission to God in this area.  “God what do you want for me here?” would be a great starting point. It’s scary because we might not like the answer (either answer can be scary) but we need to ask it.  According to Jesus both marriage and singleness seem to be a calling of sorts. Maybe we should be working that out.

I think about how many times in my twenties that I prayed for God to bring me someone or for that matter to help me land a particular someone.  I don’t remember even really considering if He called me to something different.

We need to ditch the cliche answers that sound nice and actually engage the first questions first.

The Singleness Glass Ceiling

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A few posts ago I talked about the fact that your pastor doesn’t get it (the singleness thing that is).  But today I want to take that a step further.  Here is a real question that I think merits discussion.  Is there a glass ceiling for singles in church leadership – and if so should there be?

In other words can a single person hold an elder, deacon or other leadership position?  At first glance this may seem like kind of a weird question but think about your church – or for that matter any ministry.  How is it set up?  Think of the elders and/or deacons at your church – are any of them single?

Now one of the reasons is obvious – through recent history most of the older folks who would lead most churches were married.  So it really wasn’t much of an issue.  But times are a changing.

Now the Church has no problem with married people leading single people (obviously) so the real question is, can single people lead married people?  I think there are three answers from the church.  1. Yes, 2. No, 3. Biblically yes but we don’t know how to handle it, so practically no. (Perhaps 4. If a person is called to singleness then yes – but we aren’t going to help anyone determine that.)

I think the Yes group is smallest.  This would be a church where you see all sorts of people in leadership (assuming the other qualifications of course).  I think the 2nd group is the next largest.  This is the group that would point to 1st Tim. 3 and say that Paul is saying that if you haven’t managed your wife and kids then you can’t manage the church.  To me this isn’t a very good argument – although at least they have the guts to make it.  They would say Paul’s point is, how can an unmarried person mentor/counsel/lead others with families if they haven’t experienced it.  Based on this argument though almost no one could lead anyone.  How can I lead a person who is homeless if I haven’t been homeless.  I haven’t experienced it, how can I understand.  I get it, I just think it’s a reach.

This leads us to group 3 – by far the the largest.  This is the church where anyone can lead but yet no single person ever mentors a married one. It is the one where even though they know they could have single leadership they don’t know how to integrate it.  What if an elder dates someone in the church, or worse from another church, or worse yet if they break up?  Or what if they mess up and have sex or give in to sexual sin (because that’s never happened to a married elder).  They don’t know what to do even at a small group level.  Can a small group of mostly marrieds be led by a single person, or gasp, by two single people – that aren’t dating?  Should they just lead other singles (and marrieds just lead marrieds)?

Some would say that single people don’t typically want to lead, or volunteer at that level.  I think there is some truth to that, especially as it has related to age in the past.  But I also think that they aren’t asked as often, and many of them just assume they can’t do it.  If they look around and see all married people in leadership why would they think they can do it? (It should be pointed out that there are some less “grown up” ministries that it seems only single people can lead).

There are about to be more thirty and forty something single people than ever before in history.  Right, wrong or otherwise, it’s going to happen.  So every church and ministry had better ask this question.  What can single people lead?  If the answer is not certain things -that’s fair, but have the guts to say it.  If the answer is any position, then we need to figure out how to integrate it and build the leadership community together.

There Is No Biblical Dating Plan

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When I was coming up into my early 20s there were a series of books about “Biblical Dating.”  Now the funniest part about this is that the number one book was written by Joshua Harris who was 22 when he wrote it.  He got married right after that which leads me to two conclusions. 1. It worked for him so way to go Josh and 2. Harris was never really single.

The general idea of these books was that dating as we know it was wrong and unbiblical. They suggested “courting” because that was biblical.  The idea was that dating/courting is always about figuring out marriage (with them so far), that physical and emotional intimacy should be saved for marriage (ok, still with them at some level) and essentially if you did this right you would get married and not get hurt along the way (whoops!).

There was one book (not by Harris) that went even further.  It literally had a chart in it for how far you should go, emotionally, spiritually, and of course physically, at each stage of the “courtship”.  Yes that’s right – a chart.  Here’s the best part – when I was 26 I dated (courted, talked with, got to know. . . whatever it was) a lady following this exact formula. We talked about it, I read the book and we followed the rules.  But, lo and behold, it turns out that I was not the only one this person was courting (or being courted by as the case may be).  So a few months into this “relationship”, she said basically, “So, I’m going to marry this other guy.”  I wish I was joking.  When I was hurt she said something to the effect of, “I don’t understand why we don’t all feel the same thing.”  In other words, why didn’t the formula work?

There’s so much here I’m not even sure where to begin.  First of all there is no formula to get married.  Every marriage story is different.  Secondly there is absolutely no correct Biblical dating/courting plan.  I mean try to find either in the Bible.  It’s just not there.  Think about ways people in the Bible found mates.  Some examples: Work 7 years for one wife and then 7 more for another, send your servant to a distant country to wait by a watering hole and pick one out, purchase property and get a wife thrown in.  It goes on and on.

The Bible doesn’t tell us how to find a mate.  It does give us important guidelines for our sexual behavior (much more on this later), it gives us some direction on the type of person to marry, and it does, maybe most importantly, teach us the right way to interact with people. But it just does not give us a plan on how to get married.

But the worst part about these books is that they create an illusion that if you did it the way they tell you (it’s Biblical after all), you will find a spouse and no one will get hurt.  This is of course, ridiculous.  This idea that if you do it God’s way then all will turn out the way you want it.  This isn’t true in any area of life and marriage/singleness is no exception.

No matter what you call it, dating, courting, or whatever, it is only going to work out one time – if ever.  And most of those other times someone is going to get hurt.  That’s ok. That’s part of trying.  It can be part of learning that at the end of the day Jesus has to be our number one love.  That’s true even if we do get married.  That’s Biblical.

Marriage Is Hard Blah Blah Blah

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Remember the scene in Billy Madison when Adam Sandler comes back to the elementary school and visits his young friends from the week before?  They ask him how life in high school and he grabs the kid by the cheeks and says “Stay here!  Don’t ever leave!”  That is essentially the message that a lot of married people give us single people about marriage.

“Be sure.”  “It’s really hard.”  “It’s not what you think (not all romance, not all sex, hard work, my wife/husband is always. . . . etc).  It’s like this constant warning that makes it seem as if marriage is some sort of prison.  The funniest part is many of these same people are always setting us up on dates etc.  So it’s hard, but you have to have it.  What?!

Sometimes this can be helpful. The truth is that many people have marriage as an idol and it is always a good idea to knock down idols.  So many of us as single people are whining about it and acting if we just got married our worlds would be fixed.  That needs to be killed.  But this can go bad in several ways.

First if you’re not careful it can dishonor your spouse.  Second it makes a couple of assumptions.  It assumes that I as a single person have no knowledge of marriage and the things that go on there.  That’s usually not true.  It also assumes that singleness is easy which it’s not.   I think a lot of times it’s said to try to make us single folk feel better – I’ve been told so many times, “enjoy your singleness cause when it’s gone you lose the freedom to . . . ”

But the worst part about it is that it makes us not want to get married.  No lie, I would say I’ve been affected by this.  I think one of the reasons we have a higher rate of singleness in our culture (including the Church – oh Church please wake up to this stuff) is that married people are always degrading marriage.  And to be honest it makes me not want to get married.  Why would I want that?

Now this doesn’t mean don’t be real with your friends.  If we are really going to talk about life and your marriage and what God is doing and all that is going on there then I say bring it and game on.  I love you and I’m in it with you.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  What I’m talking about is that this seems to be one of the many default answers married people give single people about their singleness. It’s a lot easier than actually doing life and helping your single friend navigate what is going on.  I think some of us need to be told, “hey you need to get married, even though it is hard”.

Billy needed to go to high school and grow.  Most single people need to move toward marriage and learn how to grow there.

The real question about marriage is, is it worth it?  Most of my friends would say yes.  And that is a lot better answer.  Something along the lines of, “Marriage is hard but worth it, I love my spouse” in the same way “having kids is harder but man I wouldn’t give one of them up”.

We need to be real about marriage to the point of killing the marriage idol.  But we don’t need to be degrading of marriage to the point of pushing people away from it.  And for sure we need to respect each other’s context and it’s unique challenges.

Quit Deciding Alone

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A few years ago I was in the midst of a major decision about my future.  I felt like it was time to move.  In the midst of this a job came open on another state.  I went and scoped it out and it was a pretty good situation.  But as good a it looked I just wasn’t sure.  So I brought it to my community.  We all spent time praying about it and I asked for their thoughts.  To a person they all said that they didn’t feel good about it.  Even though it made sense on paper I decided they were right and turned it down.  But we kept praying about it.  A few weeks later my boss called me and asked me to consider another job.  It was a harder scenario but still a lot of upside.  This time everyone was in agreement – take the job.  I took the job and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made personally and professionally.

I share this story because one of the traps of singleness is that too many times we make decisions alone.  One of the advantages to being married (assuming that you are trying to do it right) is that you have someone else in the decision process with you.  You kind of both have to come to agreement in order to move etc.  As a single person you are often on your own.  But it shouldn’t be this way and it doesn’t have to be.

We need community.  We need people that are in it with us.  I think we know this.  It’s important for so many reasons, not the least of which is we are sinful, as already discussed in the Most Sin Happens Alone blog. But in Christian community we kind of get the idea of accountability when it comes to sin.  However I don’t think we really get it when it comes to decision making.

We need counsel.  We need agreement.  In fact I want to go so far to say that we don’t really have community until we are making decisions together.  As long as I’m going to do decide alone regardless of what everyone else says then I’m not really in community. Accountability and community don’t happen without submission.  Making every decision on my own destroys community.

I don’t care how big the decision is, one of the first things to ask is, who is in agreement with this?  This of course has many benefits.  When I first took the new job it was a total mess.  But I knew that it was right because we had all agreed.  I mean I guess we could all be wrong but it’s a lot less likely.  This is why Jesus says,  “if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.”

The idea is that I need more than just myself listening to God.  I’m emotionally involved and it’s hard to hear clearly.  I need a team, a Justin team, to help me.  And when we are single this is just plain huge.  Think about this.  Who is your counsel?  Who if they told you no would you listen to? Have you ever decided no because everyone told you no?

This is actually really important to have even when you are married but at least then two of you have to agree.  Who knows everything about you?  Who knows your whole story, hopes, fears and all?  Who knows your finances and where you spend your money?  I know small groups that would talk about every sin but would never put their finances on the table.  This becomes extremely important in crisis.  Making decisions alone in crisis is a terrible idea but we do it all the time.

I get that this is hard.  It’s hard to find people who will be in with you at this level.  It’s hard because it takes humility and submission.  It’s just hard period.  But without it we are alone.  And even if we are called to be single, we are not called to be alone.

Are You Dating Anyone?

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There’s a group of older business men that I get the opportunity to meet with a few times a year.  These are men that I look up to and frankly most of the time I have no business being in the room, but hey they like me, and if they invite me there is no way I’m not showing up.

But a funny thing happens every single time.  After all the hand shakes and back slaps as we sit down with a drink or cigar or whatever, when the conversation turns to me the first question every time is “Are you dating anyone?” or “So hows the love life?” It’s always without fail the first question.  Now these guys love me and they are genuinely interested. They’re not just making small talk.  They are being intentional and asking for real, which I appreciate and am honored by.

However, I feel like this is often the first question married people ask single people in Christian community.  And if its not the first question you almost never leave without it being asked.  There’s this assumption that if I’m single then I must be wanting to be married and I must be wanting to talk about it.

There are some serious problems with this.  First of all while most single people do desire a spouse, it is not all that we are thinking about and doing with our life.  For example I have a lot going on in my ministry and in other areas of my personal life.  It would be nice to be asked how some of that was going first.  Heck ask me about my new car or how is stuff at my house.  Part of this by the way is that we never ask each other the deep questions like how we are doing with Jesus, what are we fearing right now, what is hurting us or firing us up etc.  We like to ask the easy questions. (Are you dating anyone is often an “easy” question as is how’s the wife and kids – especially when really we often don’t want the real answers)

Secondly we as singles have to fight against having our identity in our singleness.  We have to fight to follow Jesus first and have our identity in that – let’s talk about that.  We need your help here.  We have a lot going on besides our desire to be married – ask us about it.

Now before you go being mad at married people for asking this question all the time it’s a good idea to ask yourself if that is what you always talk and think about.  If it is always what seems to be most important to you, then the people who love you will always be asking you about it first.

What I’ve realized with these men is that over and over again it’s what I’ve brought to them. In fact they have walked with me through a lot of my relationships and lack there of.  If when they ask me how I’m doing, I always lead with that area of my life, then I have no right to be frustrated by the fact that they always ask about it.  In truth there have been many seasons in my life where the “search” has dominated my thoughts, emotions, and identity. I’ve set them up to ask about that first.

The point here isn’t that we don’t need to spend time talking about this area of our life because we most certainly do.  It’s just that we need to ask more questions about more things.  We need to have some conversations where we don’t talk about it all.  We need to not fall into a default mode of talking about dating and/or lack of dating and therefore accidentally defining ourselves or others by it.  Single people need to not be defined by singleness and to be honest married people need to not be defined by marriage.  We need to be defined by Jesus.

Married people – what do you ask your single friends about?  Single people – do you always lead with your dating life?

North Oak Trafficway and The Church of the Hot Chick

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I went to high school in a small town about 30 minutes north of K.C.  There wasn’t a lot to do there so when my friends and I got our licenses we would cruise down to North KC. We would hit the mall or whatever but eventually, almost without fail, we would cruise North Oak Trafficway.  Now the reason we did this is two fold, first we were bored but also it was to see who else (i.e. girls) were also cruising around.  We’d pull up next to a car of girls and then they’d drive forward and we’d cruise by and so on.  Rarely did we actually talk to them, just kind of window shopped.  We’d do the same thing by stopping at places like Sonic where there was a girl on skates that we could look at  – again not really to do anything.

We were kind of like the dog that chases cars.  Great idea, really attracted to the car, but no idea what to do if we actually caught it – and we’d probably just get run over anyway.

The amazing thing is this same thing happens in our church communities all the time. Especially in what I call the Church of the Hot Chick.  These are the churches where all the “hot” young single and married people in town hang out.  My church is one of these.  Now what happens is that we guys know that available women go there and then because more guys go there, even more women go there etc.  The problem is that for the most part all we do is look at each other.  People literally drive 30-40 minutes to come to church so that they can sit in the same room with the Christian “Hot Chick”.  But they don’t do anything about it.

I’ve had this conversation with a few different women.  I asked one twenty something friend of mine who I think is really attractive, “So is it kind of like a meat market for you at our church?  I mean do guys always ask for your number and stuff at church?”  She just stared at me and said, “No because it’s not like any guy is going to actually do anything about it.” I had the exact same conversation with a woman I went on a date with who attends one of the other “hot person” churches in town and she said the exact same thing. She said, “I’ll be sitting there in Church with no one next to me and no one ever sits next to me or says hi.”

Why is this?  Now maybe part of it is not wanting to “hit on” anyone at church, which is fair. But the reality is that most guys are scared.  We have grown up knowing how to look but not ever really being taught how to approach, and certainly not how to talk to, women.  It’s like we are still cruising the road – except now it’s sit in the back so you can see them, watch them during the communion line, or stand in the foyer in the back and hope for a reason to talk to them.  It’s the exact same thing, except now you are 25, 30, or 35 years old. Hows that working out?

Look I’m not suggesting that you go and get numbers at church. I’m not saying we should see a church service as a singles bar, and for heaven’s sake I’m not suggesting you should ask out a new girl from church every week.  I know there are guys that do that (I’ll get to you all later) but what I am saying is that we need to learn to engage the opposite sex in a normal, non threatening way.  And if we can’t learn that in our church community then where exactly can we?

We Are All Wounded

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One of the promises of Jesus is that He will make all things new.  From Jesus’ very first sermon in Luke 4, all the way through the gospels, Jesus is bringing a message of renewal. (This is different by the way than making all new things – that is not the promise – it is making things new, putting things right, making it the way it was supposed to be).

But if this is the promise then there is also an assumption that things are not right – both in the world and in each person’s life.  Otherwise why would we need to be healed?  Yes Jesus came for the forgiveness of sin, but that is not the only reason He came. It is the first necessary step – but not the last step.

This is so relevant to the topic of singleness.  Because if we are wounded then guess what, that is going to play out in how we live.  We are wounded by our others and our own sin. We live in a broken world and we have the scars to prove it.

Our first wounds come from our family.  I don’t care how great your family was they were all human.  There are wounds from that.  This affects how we think about our world, ourselves and most importantly God.

There are a lot of reasons to not see or deal with our wounds.  Sometimes it’s hard and we just don’t want to.  Other times we don’t even realize that we are messed up because it’s really all we’ve ever known.  This can be even more dangerous if we have a good family because we think, “well it all was pretty good”.  Also many times we don’t want to be mad at anyone and rather than deal with it we just let it go.  But that doesn’t solve anything.

I was once in a random bar (called The Coyote Catina – how great a name is that) in Colorado with three guys I had just met.  We were talking about this exact thing.  One of the men said something that was incredibly wise.

He said, “Look at it this way.  Let’s say that you are in the kitchen.  I break into your house, steal a knife and stab you.  This would be horrible but you would know what to do.  You would do your best to fight me off. Then you call 911 and the police and ambulance come. I’m arrested and you go get treated for your wound.  It’s clear I’m the bad guy and you can forgive me or not – but the situation is clear.  Now let’s say that instead you and I are best friends and we are hanging out in your kitchen making a meal together.  I have a knife in my hand.  Then I slip or you slip and I stab you.  You scream in pain.  I say ‘Oh my gosh I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to’ and you say, ‘I know you didn’t mean to’. But here’s the thing – you are still stabbed.  You still have to call 911.  You still have to get treated for the wound”

The point is it isn’t about blame – but it is about getting treated for your wounds.  Because if you don’t you will keep bleeding.  As a single person this can be harder to see.  As a married person a lot of stuff comes out in your relationship and you (hopefully) have to start to deal with it.  If you have kids it is massively apparent and (again hopefully) you start to deal with it.  I think as a single person it is easier to hide from our woundedness.  But we’ve got to deal with it.  Because if we don’t we keep bleeding and we take an even bigger wound into our 30’s, and if we do get married, into our marriage and family.

I have much more to say about this but for now let me ask a couple of questions.  Do you know where you are wounded?  How does that play out for you as a single person?

Don’t Be Content In Your Singleness

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One of the Myths of Singleness is the idea that if you are content in your singleness that you will then somehow find someone to marry.  I don’t how many times someone has told me things like, “I wasn’t looking and then I met my wife” or, “stop focussing on it and then it will happen”, or my favorite, “when you are content in your singleness, then God will send you someone.”

Now there’s an underlying truth here that is good – and I’m going to get that – but on the surface this is kind of ridiculous.  And it is even worse when it comes from married people – so marrieds should pay attention here as well.

Now there would be nothing wrong with being content in singleness.  It is ok to be single and sometimes God calls us to singleness.  This can be for life as a second vow – in other words you make a vow to walk with God and then you give your life to ministry – as a priest, nun, single pastor, or lay single person.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Paul talks about it.  For many years (as in over a thousand) this was seen as a higher calling than marriage in the Church.  But if you are called to it then you are not looking to find a spouse – you have vowed to not get married.  You can also be called to be single for a season.  Sometimes God calls us to certain things for certain times.  (It would be good by the way to ask God about this stuff – don’t ask if you have the “gift of singleness” but more “God are you calling me to be single?” or, “Do you want me to get married?”  Those are brave prayers in our Christian culture but worth asking).

But striving to be content in order to be ready or good enough to find a spouse is not good. First of all it’s a little dishonest.  If I’m trying to become content so that I can get married then I’m not really content.  Secondly what about every person who gets married early in life without really entering singleness – were they content in singleness first?  I’m gonna say no.

Now here’s the underlying truth that many of these people are getting at.  When you are working on who you are as a person (which we all should be) and focussed on following Jesus and becoming who He has made us to be, then guess what – you are way more confident, comfortable, and attractive to the opposite sex.  This is a good thing.  If we are focussed on finding someone to marry or constantly letting that impact every decision we make, it can begin to control us – which makes us desperate, needy, and unfocussed on the Lord.  That is of course unattractive and gets in the way.

But we have to be careful of the “I’m not going to look” line of thinking.  It can lead to at least two dangers.  First we can just shut down rather than actually working on our own lives. In other words it can be an excuse to hide from real reasons we are single.  Second it can cause to grow cold and not pay attention to people around us that might be potential spouses – kind of a self protection plan gone wrong.

What we need to do is work on finding our identity in Jesus regardless of marital status.  As a bonus (not as the goal) it makes us way, way more attractive.

Sibling Interaction

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I find myself in all sorts of amazing random places.  About 10 years ago I was having a lunch meeting with a guy who I’ll just call an Old Testament Scholar, although that doesn’t even begin to describe the intensity and knowledge of this guy.  I was with him for about two hours and we had maybe 6 different very intense conversations.  I want to share just one.

We were in the car driving to lunch and talking about dating etc.  He asked me about my family and what siblings I had etc.  I told him I had two married parents and a younger sister and brother.  He said, “So you know that you are supposed to learn how to interact with the opposite sex in your family right?” Silence. He went on, “That’s where you first learn how to treat girls by how you see it in your family.  So how did that work in your family?”

Boom!  I was kind of in shock and we weren’t even to lunch yet.  But you know what, he was exactly right.  One of the reason’s many of us are single is that we don’t learn how to properly engage and interact with the opposite sex.  We need to think about this.

Now let me say that I came from a great family over all.  But this area was shaky.  I was the oldest and my sister was two years younger than me.  Now in many ways I was a pretty good brother, but when it came to honoring her as a girl, well, not so good.  I think this really started when we were little and we would play.  I of course always wanted something with competition (and since I was the oldest I set the rules ha). What would happen over and over was she would want to stop playing.  She just wanted to do something different.  But I would be mad – I would say she was quitting etc.  Here’s where the femininity thing came in.  My parents would always say she was younger, or tired, or something like that.  There was never really a sense of, “Hey she is a girl and girls might do something different.”  Not only that but most of the things that were applauded were guy centric stuff.  This put a lot of pressure on my sister and meant that I didn’t really learn to interact on her level.

This played out all sorts of ways later.  One big example I can think of is that for many years she had a horse.  She loved that horse.  She rode competitively and even had some events.  But, I never one time in all those years went with my sister to where her horse was kept, let alone went riding with her.  I had about zero investment in anything that my sister cared about.  In high school I distanced myself from her and certainly didn’t honor her.  I was not a good big brother, and it wasn’t expected.  I’m telling you that not learning how to interact well with her affected not being able to interact well with women.  And remember, I had a intact, solidly moral family.

How you interacted in your family as a kid affects how you interact with people now.  This includes your comfort level with the opposite sex.  It includes how you treat and understand the opposite sex.  It affects everything actually.

So how did your family interact?  How was femininity (and for that matter masculinity) treated in your household?  What was honored?