Should your other half be your best friend?
It was the farewell speech that brought tears to his ( and our) eyes, not least for outgoing President Barack Obama’s moving tribute to Michelle.
“For the past 25 years, you’ve been not only my wife and mother of my children, but my best friend,” he said during his final address in Chicago on Wednesday, praising her “grace and grit and style and good humour”.
But does a “best friend- spouse” make for a better marriage?
Gyles Brandreth, presenter
The other day I was midway through an after- dinner speech and feeling it was going rather well. I glanced down to see my wife of 44 years, Michele, seated two places away, scribbling a note on a menu. It was passed to me and, through the laughter and applause, I read her missive: “I first heard that story in 1972. Time for a new one?” A best friend accepts you as you are. A wonderful wife makes you strive to be better than you might be.
Libby Purves, journalist
However healthy your sex life, a desire to drown in one another’s eyes is unlikely to last for decades. And if there is no calmer, kinder friendship between you, enchantment may very soon turn sour. Nietzsche got it right with “Marriage is a conversation”.
Bettany Hughes, historian
A partner should be someone with whom you can discuss both the meaning of life and the best tog rating of a duvet; a combination of the monumental and mundane.
Jane Green, novelist
I had a lot of friends during my first marriage. I turned to them whenever anything in my life went wrong, or right. Now that I am remarried, I still have those same friends, but I no longer have the same needs, because I am married to a man who has become my best friend. William Wharton once said: “Love is a combination of admiration, respect, and passion . . . If you have all three, then you don’t need to die; you’re already in heaven.”
Judith Woods, columnist
After 28 years together, of course my husband and I are the best of friends, but not, crucially, best friends. He gets away with behaviour I would never put up with in a girlfriend; curmudgeonliness, sofa- based inertia, a tendency to hog the remote control, and is excused from emotional triage duties and the drinking of overpriced wine in poncey bars while cackling with laughter and, of course, complaining about our annoying, useless partners.