AD Watches a Revoice Session From PCA Youth Pastor

The Friendship That Became a Household

It started developing to where we realized, okay, we're family, what's that mean? And Nick started feeling more and more called, like, I remember this one day specifically, I was like crying about the weight of celibacy, like coming home from work and having no one to like sit down with after a long day at work, and I'd gotten like attacked at work that day, it was just the worst.

And I just had no one, and Nick's calling me and I'm like crying. And I remember you going like, well, it's, it's really important to me that you wouldn't just come home to no one every day. And I'm like, well, that's great, but like, what does that mean, right?

So over the past two years, two years, we've developed kind of our vision for what life's going to look like. And this friendships become what became a family and then became a household. So it's been a lot of time together and a lot of hard conversations, but we moved in together 10 days ago, 10 days ago, which by the way, if you struggle with insecurity, a two year lease is such a great way to lock someone in, highly recommend like a legal contract and his security deposits in my name.

So like I got his money, he's, he's staying like he's, he's mine, but we, we, we consider each other brothers. We're deeply committed to each other, which has taken me some while to trust that, but it's really cool that now I can, but we're planning on sharing life together for the rest of our lives, which we're not totally sure what that looks like.

Obviously Nick is straight and he does plan on getting married, but we're totally committed to finding a way to live together and function as a household. And there's different ideas of what that looks like, right?

There's a lot of details we don't know. Do I live in a house with them or do I live next door? My dream world is to have a hobbit hole out back, like an actual hobbit hole. And I just like go retreat to my hobbit hole every day.

Also I don't want to live with screaming kids. So that sounds awesome, but no offense to anyone with kids. Kids are a blessing from the Lord, just not for the seldom man. So, um, you know, but we, we've got a few things worked out, which is that we don't move without each other.

Um, if he moves, I move, if I move, he moves. And we make decisions together as a family, uh, whatever, like big, like if we get, if I get a job someplace and that means a change of location, that's a decision we make as a family.

Uh, when he has a wife one day, she'll make those decisions with us. We're starting off by disagreeing. So this is a good start. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Um, well I'm Art. This is Nick. I'm Nick. Um, I'm gay.

I, uh, I'm celibate. When was the last time I went on a date? Like four or five years ago. Um, I'm 29. I'm a youth pastor in New Jersey.

I'm Nick. I'm straight. And I'm also a youth pastor in New Jersey. Um.

How Their Friendship Began in College

Yeah, we did a lot of weird Q and A beforehand. So, uh, if you missed that, I'm really sorry. There's a lot of deep things discussed already. Uh, but so we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to start with telling you guys a little bit about the, the story of how we became friends.

Just to get some context, um, kind of where we're at now. And so we're going to do that. Then we're going to talk about some challenges in our friendship, and then we're going to wrap up by talking about some practices that, um, some practices and principles that we have that help us navigate friendship.

Uh, and we hope you have a bunch of questions. Um, feel free to ask them in the chat and then we'll, we'll do Q and A at the end. So we're really excited about that. Um, but I'll start by telling you a little bit about the story.

We're going to interrupt each other a lot. So just, um, be expecting that, but we met in college. My last semester at our college was Nick's first semester. We went to a school called NIAC, tiny little Christian school outside of New York city.

Um, so I was a senior and Nick was a sophomore transferring in, and I was really intentional about getting to know the younger guys in the youth ministry department at our school. We both studied youth ministry and there was, there's this thing that would happen sometimes where I was always praying for God to show me like who to invest in.

And sometimes I would meet someone and God would just give me like deep, deep, deep love for them. And we happened to have that happen when we met. Um, I met Nick cause we were hosting a bunch of the younger guys in the department in our dorm and Nick showed up and instantly I was like, Oh, I love this person.

And I'm supposed to like have a friendship with them. And I felt like I called to him, but it was pretty one-sided for a while. Nick wasn't really looking for strong friendships. He spent a lot of time with his girlfriend.

He spent a lot of time off campus, but we both enjoyed time together. Um, but there was some ebb and flow. So I'm like, oftentimes people meet me and then they, they like trust me, which is really cool and really helpful ministry, but has created some weird dynamics.

So like really normal situation in college was like, I make tea for someone. They cry within an hour of meeting me and like, it just, it can be pretty intense. So that happened with Nick. He comes over for tea, ends up sharing way more than he planned.

And then like, don't hear from Nick for like two or three weeks. I'm like texting him like, Hey man, let's hang out sometime.

I was like, I was, I was definitely, uh, like I was remember I was coming in as a, uh, like in the spring semester. And so it was kind of hard for me to find people to, uh, like get involved with. And so I kind of let life happen to me a little bit.

I was a little bit unintentional, but like there was more at play than just unintentionality for me. There was kind of this like outpouring of like, we'd, we'd grab tea or grab a meal. And then like, uh, that thing would happen and you would pull all this stuff out of me.

And then like, I'd feel like, uh, I, I can't do this again. And like, uh, there was kind of this ebb and flow of like experiencing that vulnerability and then like being afraid of that. Uh, and so like that would happen somewhat frequently where I would like, I would just kind of disengage.

And so that was kind of my own stuff I was wrestling with at that time.