Friends can be as close as spouses
As heterosexual marriage rates have sputtered, some public intellectuals have mounted new arguments for the virtues of marriage. Regardless of whether their claims are correct — they’re fiercely contested — there’s a less recognized reason marriage isn’t a cure-all for our society: Even among married people, most spouses cannot count on the institution for the entirety of their adult lives.
Rather than being a forever commitment, marriage is typically only a temporary status of adulthood. With the current median age of first marriage at 30 for men and 28 for women, many Americans are unmarried for upward of a decade of adulthood before heading to the altar.
It has become increasingly common for couples to divorce in later life. And in marriages that last, one spouse often outlives the other by several years; roughly a third of American women age 65 and older are widowed.
The fixation on marriage
Clearly, the culture could stand to move beyond its fixation on marriage. One way: recognize those we deem the significant others in our lives — regardless of whether those relationships involve sex and sparks.
The United States’ privileging of marriage through its omnibus package of more than 1,000 federal rights and benefits fails to address not only the time people spend single before or after marriage but also the record- breaking share of Americans who have never married. It also fails to acknowledge that some people simply aren’t that eager to marry, including the many who are single by choice.
One woman I interviewed, Barb Buettner, who is in her 80s, told me that after an emergency surgery left her unable to have biological children, her desire to marry dropped off. Yet Buettner has not lived life alone. She has a robust circle of friends — chiefly, Inez Conrad, who has been her best friend for a half-century.
Conrad got married and had children but eventually divorced. She moved to a new state to live near Buettner, who helped take care of her two sons. About 25 years ago, on the cusp of retirement, the friends bought a house together and merged lives, complete with a joint debit card and a shared email address.
I’ve interviewed many dozens of people with committed friendships, people who tend to each other through tragedies and illnesses, providing the same forms of care and companionship that spouses typically do. Yet these platonic relationships aren’t widely admired for their mutual support and devotion. Instead, these people are often dismissed as “just friends.”
They’re also legal strangers. Joy Loughry, who took care of her best friend, Hannah Friedrich, during Friedrich’s sixyear battle with ovarian cancer, was never entitled to family medical leave because she and Friedrich weren’t related. For the same reason, when Friedrich died, Loughry wasn’t entitled to bereavement leave.
Or consider Anne Quinn, who raised three young children with her longtime friend Terry McKeon. During the years Quinn was the primary caregiver for the three children, she could not qualify to access McKeon’s health insurance unless she was willing to marry her friend.
Closest companions
U.S. policy can better match the reality on the ground and reflect the many ways people find support and sustenance, in platonic and romantic partnerships.
Legal changes could bring dignity to more relationships. The vast majority of U.S. states offer no form of legal partnership other than marriage. Yet for decades, activists have been calling for legal alternatives to marriage to ensure protection for people’s closest companions.
Several legal scholars see a little-known Colorado law as a possible template for states across the country. Colorado’s Designated Beneficiary Agreement allows any two adults, regardless of the kind of relationship they have, to exchange important medical and financial rights and protections.
State Sen. Pat Steadman, a principal architect of the law, deliberately made access broad. “We didn’t want the designated beneficiary law to make the same discriminatory choices as the marriage code,” he has said.
In some places, there is growing momentum for these alternatives. Several cities in Massachusetts, for instance, recently passed domestic partnership ordinances, designed to support multi-partner families and platonic partners.
And there are other ways to protect a wider array of committed relationships.
States and employers could follow the lead of the federal government, which allows its federal employees to take leave to care for “any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.” Across the country, elected officials could repeal zoning laws that prevent unrelated people from living together.
Respected relationships
These changes would not only assure protections for people in committed platonic relationships, but might also psychologically liberate singles: If we could rid the culture of the idea that you’re not “complete” until you’re married, single people wouldn’t so often internalize the belief that their life, no matter how fulfilling, can’t truly be whole until they find a spouse.
A society in which our most important relationships are respected — on paper and in practice — and not dismissed? That’s the kind of world we deserve.