Your partner doesn’t need to be your best friend too
against an emerging relationship cliché.
I’ve noticed the way coupled-up friends, acquaintances and postbachelor influencers talk about their beloved – all year round, and even more so on Valentine’s Day, when it pops up like a herd of kudu. You’ve no doubt seen it on countless Instagram captions, and maybe you’ve even experienced it IRL. It goes something like this:
‘Happy Valentine’s Day to my partner and BEST FRIEND of 3.5 years.’
‘My BEST FRIEND asked me to marry them, and I said yes.’
‘Can’t wait to marry my BEST FRIEND in 932 days!’
The trope’s become so ubiquitous that it wouldn’t be out of place on bumper stickers, T-shirts and novelty mugs. And perhaps you’ve experienced the same confusion I have, wondering (in a Jerry Seinfeld-style voice), since when did everyone start dating their best friend? On the one hand, I get it; it’s sweet. It sounds like a pretty nice package deal – companionship, pure affection, unconditional loving support.
Plus, you get to bone on the regular. However, behind it lies a humble-braggy undertone, like a slick salesman shilling a sort of nouveau codependency with a fresh PR spin – which, I have to say, I’m not buying. The goal of a partnership isn’t to conquer monogamy wholesale, ruling all romantic, as well as platonic, territories under one flag. It’s lonely at the top, especially when you liquidate those two significant roles into one person. Balance is important, as are boundaries, which is where this whole thing seems the most precarious to me – it’s a relationship ideal that seems to valorize this exact lack of boundaries. Once, after I found myself in the fresh stages of a breakup about a year ago, I’d plummet nightly into a Youtube hole of Esther Perel videos at the behest of a friend who swore that she was the smartest relationship counsellor streaming for free. Esther’s distinctly authoritative Belgian accent and dry sense of humour were a balm for my wounded heart and woozy brain, especially when delivering one particularly wry observation about how modern relationships have become a pressure cooker – namely, that we expect our partners to be everything to us all the time, and it’s burning us out in the long run. In her 2018 SXSW talk, Esther explains how our social and cultural evolutions have shifted us from villages to urban landscapes, making us freer but also more alone. “For the first time, we’re turning to our romantic partners to help us transcend that existential aloneness. ➻
We still want all the same things that traditional marriage was about – [family life, companionship, economic support, and social status] – but now [we] also want [our partners] to be a best friend, trusted confidant, and passionate lover to boot. All this has to be for the long haul, and the long haul keeps getting longer. What we’ve created in our romantic ambition is one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide.” Our most spoon-fed romantic conventions would have us believe that True Love™ makes all this possible, but in reality, those ideals have made us more lonely, and loneliness – wouldn’t you know it – is a leading public-health crisis, comparable in harm to cigarettes and obesity. This profound epidemic has even prompted the UK to create a cabinet-level position, Minister of Loneliness, which sounds like something out of the Harry Potter universe, but is very real. The crux of the matter is this: no one person can give you everything you’re ever going to need or want, nor can you do that for someone else – not that we’re likely to stop trying. But don’t get me wrong, I love it when people find fulfilment and true authentic partnership in others – it fills my heart with pure, unbridled hope, giving worth to all other romantic pitfalls as if they were part of some divine plan all along. And I’ve absolutely felt so enamoured with partners of relationships past that when I’d try to describe the depths of my love, words failed me, or else felt like bad poetry. In the simplest terms, those exes were, for a time, my favourite person. But a best friend? No, that seat was always taken. I wonder, what it is about wife, husband, partner or spouse that suddenly doesn’t cut the mustard anymore? I understand that ‘best friend’ denotes a shared joy in each other’s company and personhood, as well as certain dynamic equity that the gendered titles historically lack, but those titles at least hold a specific distinguished hierarchy of importance in your life.
“It’s lonely at the top, especially when you liquidate those two significant roles Into one person”
Some of you may be thinking: when you meet The One, then you’ll see how they’re your best friend too. Honestly, yes, that’d be great. But this whole
‘I’m marrying my best friend’ thing has become so ubiquitous, such standard fare for the Marriage Industrial Complex Mad Libs, that there’s just no way it’s all true. Look, I’m on your side: the side of love. I want that kind of partnership too – the kind that’s fun and funny, supportive, egalitarian, stingy with judgment and generous with patience, one that allows us to both confidently grow together while simultaneously holding space for each other in times of insecurity. I’m getting better at choosing partners with those kinds of qualities, which is all we can hope for, really – that the people who we reserve a place for in our hearts will deserve it. If it all works out, maybe one of them will want to marry me, and I’ll want to marry them back. But make no mistake, when I get up to that altar, I’ll make it crystal clear to every witness in attendance that I didn’t come here to make friends.