Maybe I’ll just wed my bestie
My best girlfriend and I always said we’d marry each other if we were both single at 35. We know how to reconcile after fights. We make the other laugh so hard we choke. And maybe, just maybe, we could actually buy a house . . .
Her dreams definitely involve the leafy suburbs, cooking dinner parties with a Le Creuset set and inviting anyone who works in marketing. And I could do that. I grew up in one of those households and wouldn’t mind building one with her so I had something to rebel against.
We were always kinda joking. But a lot of young people increasingly aren’t, especially among young Queer communities and millennials overseas, where there are benefits to being legally married. Although there are no official stats into how many people do it, it doesn’t take much poking around the internet to find the thriving threads, chat groups and online sub-communities increasingly popping up for those marrying their besties.
A recent New York Times feature on the phenomenon cited reasons including wanting a stable family separate from your rocky romantic life, being disenchanted with love, or you already trust your best friend most in life and make all the big decisions with them anyway.
And to be clear, this isn’t just a flatmates-onsteroids situation. It’s a life partner. Nor is it a life without romance. You still date – just not your spouse. It’s just an approach based on the so-old-school-it’s-medieval logic that marriage is a strategic union, not a love match.
And you know what, it seems to work. One of my girlfriends, one of those women who’s so glamorous she seems to walk everywhere in slo-mo, bought her house with her platonic bestie a few years ago. They also share bank accounts and all financial and major life decisions together. It’s for all practical purposes a de facto marriage, just without the sex.
And when I asked whether this puts off meeting potential romantic partners, she immediately sighed in relief, ‘‘God, no. It’s great. It means I can work out if I actually like someone without worrying if they make enough money or want to buy a house or can clean a shower.’’
She makes the clarity of it all sound so deliciously, refreshingly simple. What if you took away the internal probability-of-domesticcompatibility calculations we have to make in our romantic relationships currently? You could see them with clear eyes. Do you actually like this person? Or do you like their ability to give you the domestic dreams you want?
And it could be a huge source of relief for our romantic relationships long-term. Sex therapist Ester Perel, currently the author du jour for every married woman’s book club, argues that we crush passion in our romantic relationships with increasingly heavy expectations of partners.
We expect them to be our Casanova, our bestie, therapist, domestic teammate, career coach and personal Dalai Lama-esque source of meaning in life. So what if you separated out the roles? Give the sensible stuff to the trusted bestie and let your romantic life breathe a little?
Ultimately, my bestie and I had to accept it wouldn’t work for us because we’ve both drunk the heteronormative Kool-Aid and still want all of this from Prince Charming on a white horse.
But at the same time, my generation is cash strapped, awash in a sea of softbois, increasingly hopeless about home ownership, and envious of a dual income . . . so you can see why we’d start to reconsider.