Introduction

Yourself and emotions …

A very important subject in a boy’s life, written in a series of booklets by Dr. Adel Halim,
who majored in this kind of marital and nurturing studies, on a scientific, an educational
and a church basis in a constructive spiritual way that our teens have taken comfort
and made use of.

Dr. Adel has thought that the publishing of these studies in a series of booklets to make
easier to read and obtain...

The author deals with the following subjects in the series:

1. Young Emotions
2. Love is Life
3. Colors of Love
4. You and the other sex
5. Emotion and Attraction
6. Emotion and Friendship
7. Friendship between opposite sexes
8. Positive Emotions
9. Sanction of Emotions
10. Mind or Heart?
11. Emotion and Commitment
12. Emotional intelligence

I hope for the blessing of the author and reader of this book with the prayers of his holy
Pope Shenouda the third and God’s blessing be with us all.

Bishop Moussa
The concept of friendship in general

Friendship is a tight bound relationship between two people, with common intellectual
directions. It’s a relationship packed with understanding and mutual trust, honesty
without faking ….each one of them accepts the other as he is with his flaws and
benefits. Also their difference in opinions makes them special, this way each can
perfect the other …When they become closer friends and trust between them grows
each one becomes the others’ chamber of secrets.

Friendship often starts between two people’ but it’s not limited to them but it grows and
opens to others to include a group of friends have similar minds connecting them a
mutual lifestyle, like a group of young men attached to one church and living together
the life of sharing.

Between friends and colleagues

A colleague is a person that you’re related to by similar circumstances like study or

work, or a common goal, and this relationship might end if the circumstances change
or this goal is lost. However a friend is a person that is close to you.. Friendship goes
beyond outer circumstances.. Friendship is a lot deeper and more sustaining than a
relationship between two colleagues because a person look at his friend as an
important individual while looks at his colleague through the circumstances that bring
them together, therefore a colleague is replaceable with another colleague whereas a
friend is hard to dispense because he is unique and exceptional no one can fill his
space. Circumstances are what lead to spending time with a colleague whereas
friendship is based on a personal decision, we choose our own friends with no hurry and
it might take a few sacrifices to keep a friend.

Whatever applies to your colleagues and friends is the same whether they’re of the
same sex or a different one, where we find a man and a woman are colleagues at
school or at work, and find them friends trusting each other however there must not be
a worthless love relationship between them as long as they’re both mature adults with a
clear purpose in their lives.
How is Friendship constructive??

A very important question …. There is the kind of friendship that supplements and
enriches me, assists in developing my personality and there is the kind of friendship that
conducts me towards negative behavior learning of bad habits and damages my
personality’s mature growth. Of course this depends on the type of friend you make.

There’s a friend who builds my personality through respecting my point of view, giving
me space to express my views and respects my privacy…

And then there’s a friend trying to control me, oppressing my opinions, invading my
privacy, tempting me into sinful and wicked behavior that will affect my life and my
future, ruin my spiritual life and pulls me away from an eternal life I’ve always looked up
to, where I can share life with God.

Then it is essential to be selective when choose a friend, instead of being carried away
in an emotional current… A young man might be attracted towards a dominant
controlling personality and he may prefer to follow this personality, look up to it which
takes away his independence weakens his personality making him an unoriginal copy!
He may even take on some qualities from this person as if he were wearing some one
else’s clothes that don’t fit properly with his body shape, which makes him loose his
sense of individuality. This way friendship to some could be a reason for misery whereas
Friendship in its true meaning is a blessing, it helps build the mind and emotion, maturing
of the personality and improve social relations.

Be yourself!!

“I want to live my character!” It’s the scream within each one of us wishing to achieve
the great humane unique picture that God put the seed of in us... and to achieve that
he has to pursue developing it day by day vowing to be patient and caring.

“Comparison” with others almost always obstructs the growth of the personality: “I wish I
was as stylish as that man!” or “I wish as graceful as that lady!” or “Why can’t I have
financial abilities like my colleague?!”

Comparison may push me towards putting more effort, not to be like the other but to
evolve myself into a better person keeping my original self to be “myself” not some one
else. I desire to be better than just a copy of other people without making other people
a research for me to move along their paths.
 What makes friendship between opposite sex special?

1.Sexual Attraction:

Friendship between opposite sexes is different than between the same sex, we should
not forget that sex represents an important part of our human essence… And because
humans are of 2 genders, male and female, there is a natural sexual attraction from
both the man and the woman towards each other, this attraction leads to two
purposes:

1.General purpose: which is achieving intimacy between the two genders which assists
in intimacy between the two genders which contributes in psychological growth and
social maturing for both the boy and girl, where they both feel a kind of perfection
when they se a new face that shares being a human yet differs at some features.. And
when they deal, they’ll discover that the other has characteristics that are missing from
their personality, as well as being projected to situations where the personality is
strengthened and accomplish a kind of psychological balance.

A woman sees in a man a kind of courage, confrontation, determination, serial thinking,

planning, caring about social and political matters, finds protection and shivery (these
characteristics are neither specific to the man alone nor to the woman alone, but exists
in one more than the other and there are exceptions).

However, a man finds in a woman sensitivity, emotion, tenderness and deep care of
human needs, patience, endurance and soft emotions… This way each of them is
enriched with traits from the other through pure discussion and a healthy heart.

2. Personal purpose: which is through natural attraction towards the opposite sex, it is
preparing for the future to make a personal connection, which is the connection of
marriage, when the right circumstances happen in order t make a life-changing
decision which is marriage.

Here we are in front of two notifications:

Friendship between the two sexes is different than friendship between the same sex… A
man doesn’t look at a girl the same way he looks at a man like him, and the opposite is
also true, since each of them sees the other as a different person and each person feels
a natural attraction towards the other.
It was found by experience and practice that attraction towards the other sex is going
in the right direction as long as the relationship between the boy and girl is away from
privacies, in order to achieve the general goal of sexual attraction, which is making a
kind of perfection between the two sexes, which needs personality matures.

A bigger role for emotions:

Special Male Perfection Special Female

Characteristics Characteristics

Natural Sexual Attraction Natural Sexual

Magnetism Magnetism
+

Emotions of Support Emotions of

young man young lady

Healthy Friendship between two sexes

Sexual Magnetism is connected deeply to emotions, it makes emotions between the
two sexes more active and intense than emotions towards some one of the same sex,
therefore friendship between the two sexes has an emotional nature whether they want
to or not.

As long as emotion has it’s own character between the two sexes, friendship between
a boy and a girl is more likely to turn into increased attention and attachment, which
the youth usually call “Love” but it is actually a series of feelings and sentiments that
haven’t matured yet and in which the will to possess overcomes the will to care for the
other…
What the movies show as “Love” is in reality a case of emotional stress in which one tries
to get from the “other” a cure for their psychological hunger, where each receives in
the presence of the other a feeling of comfortable emotional feeling or a physical
fullness in way or the other.

The feeling of comfort in the presence of the other is not wrong, it’s a gentle humane
feeling… But this feeling should not push me towards trying to have the “other” as a
source of regular relief, because in that I would have just turned them into a comforting
device!

Then why don’t I have that feeling, so that I don’t limit to this one person, so that I’d
allow my emotional self to mature, then these feelings would turn into real mature
stable love??

3. More conservation:

A girl cannot be sincere to a boy at every detail of her life like she is with another girl
friend, because there are certain things that she knows a boy wouldn’t comprehend
and the opposite is also true…

That’s why friendship between the two sexes contains an amount of conservation, in
addition to that this friendship could have some mystery and fear. “Mystery” is due to
the feeling of each that the “other” is a riddle that still has some unrevealed secrets,
which generates a type of “fear” of dealing with the other with complete freedom,
which is a fear of being lost in the other’s world that we may look at as we look onto the
unknown.

We find in friendship between the two sexes a conflict… there’s a desire to deal with
the other gender moved by sexual magnetism yet at the same time there’s the fear of
the unknown and tension, that’s why a mixed feeling of desire and fear is generated,
desired and feared at the same time…

From here a feeling of predicting weakness in front of the opposite sex is created,
therefore spontaneous conservation appears in friendships between the opposite
sexes… maybe that prediction of weakness comes as a result of the way a person was
raised which ruins the reputation of the other sex making of it a source of temptation
and bad behavior, which may make their friendship feel like a sin.

4. Simplicity of special attachment:

As long as dealing between the two sexes contains a special flavor of sexual attraction
(resulting from the sexual magnetism and the desire to achieve perfection) and with a
bigger role for emotions, these factors make friendship between the two sexes is
subjected to enter an uncomfortable phase, which may result into a “romantic love”
where there’s chemistry and very busy thinking about them to a degree that some
youth get sleepless nights (insomnia)or loss of appetite or distracted easily where our
loved one gets all the attention, in this case it’s called infatuation, which is an emotional
experience that some youth go through and ends quickly. This kind of emotional
attachment may not last very long because it results from an emotional mood swing
which is on its way to mature.

Emotional Mood Swings

It’s often noticed that emotion hides behind relationships between the two sexes in all
aspects of social interactions, whether it’s at college work or church… This needs the
interactions between them to be simple and spontaneous so that it’s possible for some
one to be enough emotionally matured and a well-balanced personality so that he
doesn’t stumble in relationships later on… Most of the time relationships seem serious at
first but then some juvenile directions are revealed and some one may be hesitant
about their emotions moving from one person to the other and from one emotional
attachment to the other…

Let’s listen to what this young man says:

“I’m a student at the doors of college, my problem is I’m unstable emotionally. I’m very
sociable and I love making new friends, in addition I do get into many emotional
relationships with girls… I just meet a girl and directly start to be fascinated by her and a
love story starts inside of me and it happens repeatedly, the circle never ends. Is my
behavior temporary? Is my fascination with the other sex wrong to begin with?

And to this young man we say: This phase that you’re going through now is a phase pre
social and emotional maturing. It’s a phase characterized by emotional instability and
having unsettled social relationships, especially those involving the opposite sex.
Sometimes the person is very social and others he’s very isolated, but the important part
is knowing how to point your emotions towards maturing and settling down.

You like being involved in social relationships and you would love to have many friends
which is good… And because there’s sexual strength at this age you always tend to
deal more with the opposite sex, which is also good…

But why do you have the intentions of creating your relationships with the other sex
relating to what happens in the movies??

And why can’t we deal with the other sex without having the thought of marriage in our
heads, as long as we’re still too young to get involved in an emotional relationship that
needs emotional, social, spiritual and financial maturing?? Why can’t we have a
relationship with the other sex based on good intentions and a pure heart, through
serious constructive activities under the title of the church, social life…etc

Interacting between the two genders can be useful to achieving psychological

balance and constructing a perfected personality, if that happens in a respected
social way and contains a humane and Christian feel to it. However it could be
destructive to one’s personality maturing if it happens in the picture of juvenile
emotional adventures!!!

Commenting on previous questions:

Dear Brother: We recommend you to not focus on one specific girl, try to make your
meetings in groups. About your question: Is what I’m doing now temporary? Is it normal
natural behavior? What you’re doing actually isn’t a normal natural temporary feeling,
otherwise boys would do like you do then their relationship grows as time passes, but
the opposite is true. These repeated emotional attachments could intensify and
increase in aggressiveness as time passes, as the boy’s heart fills with desire to show off
his strengths, abilities and heroic actions in that field. And of course the same applies to
the girls.

To sum up: Hesitation at the time before maturing is natural, but for a boy or a girl to let
themselves get loose into having multiple pointless juvenile relationships it’s a perversion
of emotions and an insult to love…

And from here we are suppose to rise with emotions and have sexual attraction through
culture sports and earning experience through constructive and useful interaction with
others, also gain a simple innocent look onto the other sex. This last one is a natural
result for a spiritual life and a real relationship with God, where emotions turn into love,
love that does not ask for what is for itself.

Two kinds of attraction:

Being attracted to others is not wrong, but the way of attraction may be negative or
positive, whether with the same or the opposite sex.

A student may be attracted to her college professor, she finds his way of thinking
logical, his talk interesting and from here she tries to obtain these characteristics into her
life in a positive way, this way her attraction becomes a positive attraction,
constructive, useful and has the ability to change someone’s attitude as much as that
person is willing to change.

Also an attraction may turn into a desire to possess, she wishes she had a husband and
keeps on dreaming… This is a negative attraction. The moral then is in the way of
attraction.
As mentioned before friendship between the two sexes has to include mutual respect,
a pure look to the other sex, being realistic and staying away from day dreams.
However if both people are mature and well prepared for marriage then interaction
between them will take another practical direction, following into blessed steps towards
a sacred marital life together.