Our theme for the month of March is “I was wrong about.”

While I haven’t found an official study to back this up with hard data, a significant pattern is being reported amongst those who are actively dating: men are asking few to no questions on first dates. Is this because modern men are truly as mediocre as Sabrina Carpenter sings about? Is it a result of a masculine culture that commodifies self-glorifying accolades to impress and woo? Beyond romantic relationships, popular social media trends feature wives asking their husbands for updates on his friends after a weekend with the boys, only to find said husband devoid of any new knowledge. This prompts the pondering…are men asking anyone questions?

I am painfully aware that I’ve spent significant seasons of my life as one of these men, lacking in adequate conversational curiosity. Identifying this tool to build relationships and care for others through relevant, thoughtful, and responsive inquisitiveness is one I don’t think I actively developed until my early twenties. This tool will always need some further work, but it’s a tool that has also cared for me. Practicing it helped me grow from an ego-driven character who would compete to be the biggest, brightest, and most interesting person in the room into someone who learned to relish in the joy of a quiet side conversation, the spark of learning how a new puzzle piece fit into the complex person across from me, and the responsibility to aid them in feeling truly seen and valued for their unique being.

But my growth was missing something. As my own social maturity developed, so did my awareness of my social anxiety. All too consistently in recent years, I began reliably finding myself at the same place after significant social encounters—debriefing with my wife or a trusted peer, revisiting every question asked and every statement said. Did I phrase this question in a way that offended a newcomer? Did I talk too much with the majority about a shared topic inaccessible to the minority? Did I represent us or our community well as hospitable and inviting?

While my growth into a person who asked more questions sprouted from an altruistic seed, I had misunderstood what was actually lacking in my social approach. Some of you may have already noticed that if you revisit the previous paragraph, a consistent thread runs through the messy tapestry of my insecure wonderings. They all begin with, “did I?”

The vehicle had changed, but I had simply substituted the way in which I competed to be the most important person to someone, to anyone, in the space we shared. The drive to be the biggest, brightest, and most interesting became the drive to be the one who helped another person feel the most understood, the most seen, and the most valued. 

I’ve been working through this realization with the help of a framework my sister put me onto this past fall. She emphasized to me the spiritual practice of detachment, but not the way I typically heard about it in relation to material possessions or physical needs. What I needed to detach from was my ego. Did I actually expect it to be realistic that I meet the deepest emotional needs of each person I interacted with, or was I trusting God to do that? Did I hold myself fully responsible for each individual experience of those I shared a community with, or was I allowing God to manage those and simply let myself be a tool for him to call upon? Did I rely on my social “performance” and achievement to fill my own deepest emotional needs, or did I rely on God to give me my daily bread? 

I’ve done my best to let go of the former and internalize the latter in each statement over the past months. I’m still asking others questions, but I do think I’m asking them fewer than I was before. Instead, I’m trying to replace those questions with more important ones directed at myself. How am I seeing the Spirit at work around me in my social exchanges? When am I invited to participate in that work, and when is the Spirit telling me that, just maybe, it’s already got this one taken care of? 

If you’ve had some practice at asking those questions and receiving some answers, I’d love to learn some of your tips.

Luke Brandsen

Luke Brandsen graduated in 2019 and uses his business/HR degree to inform directing mission-focused programs. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he squints at the players on his bootleg soccer stream, breaks guitar strings, and desperately tries to recall where the last D&D session he ran left off.