Blogging The Friendship Factor. Chapter 4

I spent a couple of hours reading over this chapter and thinking about. I have yet to pull anything out of it other than, "Well that makes sense."

Chapter 4: How to communicate warmth.

1. Rule number three: Dare to talk about your affections

2. The hard-to-get woman

3. How to generate an emotional field

“If you wish to be loved, love” Seneca

Those people who will let their hearts go and who will freely declare their admiration and affection are very hard to turn down.

When people care for us and show that appreciation with their eyes, their attention and their declarations of affection, we find a certain passion generated.

Speaking from personal experience, I will say that the last two are difficult to do if one has problems with guilt or condemnation. "How can anyone love me?" is a good way to defeat attempts to love others.

But this problem is at least partly due to self-centeredness. Loving others is getting out of the self-centeredness into something else. Hopefully, first, God-centeredness, and then allowing God to let us love others.

4. In defense of passion

5. Some traps in saying, “I love you.”

Don’t gush. Don’t pressure. Don’t be insensitive.

6. The tragedy of waiting till it is too late

“Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.” Ben Franklin

Rob talked about the friendship between David and Jonathan during the first meeting. Jonathan and David were quite expressive about their friendship and stand as one biblical model of close friends.

David had many other friends, as well. He seemed to draw people to him, who were very loyal to him. Both the son and the grandson of his “enemy,” Saul, loved him. He had his “mighty men” who followed him when he had no power or authority (or even food, at times, to feed them).