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What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?
- delfinom 3y agoDo I come from an alien universe where people in committed relationships still have friends?
- hef19898 3y agoPropably. Also, I do consider my spouse to be a lot more than a spouse, you know like also a friend on top of everything else.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoi'm not saying you will - but you might be surprised about that friendship after you broke up.
- hef19898 3y agoSo far I lost more friends in my life than spouses, but I get your point. If it ever comes to that, I at least hope any break will be more or less amicable. No huge interest in finding out so!
- 2-718-281-828 3y agolosing friends is in my experience a somewhat dynamic and historically plausible process while break ups turn a switch in a woman's brain. i know this won't fare well with many folks to put it that way - but men don't have that switch. a woman turns from one minute to the other into someone else the moment the relationship is over and the only thing you have left to hope for is that this someone isn't going to be your new archenemy - especially if you have a divorce looking forward to.
- hef19898 3y agoSo, you think only women have difficulties with break ups? Men don't? What are we, emotionless rocks or ice cubes?
- lotsofpulp 3y agoHow many data points are you using to come to this conclusion about “men” and “women”?
- hydrok9 3y agoDepends how much she misses you.
- emaro 3y agoI had quite the opposite experience. We're still friends since we ended our 6 year relationship. She is still the person I trust the most, and no one knows me as well. It requires a lot of honest communication. If one betrays the other, obviously that doesn't help. Relaitonships are complex and diverse and there are many counter examples to what you describe.
- gattilorenz 3y agoI broke up with women after being together for years, and we're still pretty close friends. We just realized it wasn't working for us but we still found each other's company pleasurable and stimulating, and we knew so much about each other... why would we give all of that up? So, I'm sorry if it went horribly wrong in your case, but even assuming you handled everything perfect (behavior, communication), extrapolating to all women is really not reasonable.
- scns 3y ago> like also a friend on top of everything else I'm happy you have this, it is the fundamental quality a relationship needs to work IMO. Having a child only needs animal magnetism, falling in love helps too, speaking from experience.
- qwerty456127 3y agoHow do you have time for friends besides your spouse after you do jour job, chores, fitness, sleping, education, side projects and random tasks which emerge every now and then? I do have some great friends but only meet them a couple of times a week even though they live very close to me.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nogridbag 3y agoOnly a couple of times per week? I found this statement kind of funny. Now that I'm married with kids, and my best friends have kids, im lucky if I see them once every few months! Right now I spend more time with my kids' friends families than I do my personal friends.
- stef25 3y ago> only meet them a couple of times a week You're very, very lucky
- barelyauser 3y agoWhy you place your side projects above your friends?
- parpfish 3y agoi always get a kick out of how HN people talk about their "side projects" rather than their "hobbies". just let your hobby be a hobby instead of turning it into a pseudojob.
- whateveracct 3y agoseriously hobbies can be serious! i take all my hobbies more seriously than my career at this point. but they're for fun.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- refurb 3y agoNo, you're just reading an article written by someone in a tiny social bubble, common among the single, middle-aged in large urban centers.
- emodendroket 3y agoMany people have friends but I think it’s probably true for most people that these relationships are not nearly as deep as the marital one.
- baq 3y agoEuro perspective: sounds like an american problem of people moving halfway across the country instead of usually settling down nearby with their highschool friends doing mostly the same thing.
- spicyusername 3y agoThis is definitely a big factor. Another big one is housing in America is very difficult to obtain, so even if you live in the same city as your friends, it's difficult to live near each other because people live in the houses they were able to get, and American cities are very sprawled out. It's very common to have to drive 30+ minutes in different directions per friend, which makes spontaneous meetings difficult.
- saiya-jin 3y agoOnly if you are well-off due to your parents, or lucky, or lazy. I've moved around, and folks I've met everywhere definitely don't fit into this description, including me. I ended up in Switzerland, a country full of EU (and other) immigrants where almost nobody fits that description, even locals we know come from various parts. Depends on what your ambitions are in life. Which goes back to first sentence.
- bkjhfrjk 3y agoPlenty of Americans stay put, they're just poor, so you are ignorant of them
- nradov 3y agoAmerican perspective: the more affluent European cities that I've visited are full of young people that moved from halfway across the country or even other countries entirely in order to find better jobs. In the less affluent cities, people who are unable to move out often end up stuck and marginally employed. The idea of settling nearby with their high school friends doing mostly the same thing is an idealistic fantasy, not something that really happens much anymore.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
- ragnot 3y agoHonestly, if my wife said I wasn't the number one person in her life then I would find that pretty disrespectful. She is my number one after all. It seems like we've failed a whole generation of adults with good examples of what a relationship should be like.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoI grew up in a religion where I am expected to love my wife to the point of torture and execution if it would protect her from harm (or at least, that’s the ideal). I doubt any “platonic life-partner”…
- abosherid 3y agoMay I ask what religion?
- gjsman-1000 3y agoTraditional Catholicism. “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it.” Doesn’t take more than a minute of reflection to figure out why we interpret it this way. Edit @avar to your question ("posting too fast"): https://gist.github.com/gjsman/d928b0db53cc2a4bacf37d4e45543535 https://gist.github.com/gjsman/d928b0db53cc2a4bacf37d4e45543...
- avar 3y agoI'm an atheist, but this is an honest question: does it? My understanding of catholic doctrine is that Jesus was part of the holy Trinity and knew it before he sacrificed himself. Therefore when he sacrificed himself for humanity he wasn't in the sort of personal danger or at risk of eternal damnation that a mere mortal in his shoes would be. I've always understood that as God making a grand gesture of some sort, not that Jesus was in personal danger comparable to that of a mortal in his shoes. Of course being tortured for days before being guaranteed a seat by God's side in heaven upon death would royally suck in the short term. But I'd think an internally cotsisconsistent interpretation of doctrine would call for a personal sacrifice short of that of Jesus in his last days from a mere mortal, the odds being stacked in the deity's favor. No?
- sf4lifer 3y agoKids are the center of your life. They are a lot easier (especially during the younger ages) to raise with a committed partner.
- saiya-jin 3y agoSo true, but I had to actually go over the process to fully realize this. They take over everything in life, work, hobbies, passions, sleep. Its so god damned hard to raise them, yet extremely rewarding. There is really me before kids and a different person afterwards, envying the previous guy all the freedom and cool stuff he did, but not really wanting to switch place. The thing is, they eventually leave the life to forge their own path, maybe a bit and maybe almost completely moving away, while partner and friends are for longer and closer.
- bombcar 3y agoThis is so true that people who do not have kids cannot understand how much it affects every aspect of your life; if your friends are not also in the settling down and having kids portion of their life, you will inevitably drift apart (not saying you won't remain friends, but you will go from not having to work at it to having to consciously schedule "play dates" if you will). And you will find you have new friends unrelated to your interests and driven by your children; because you will be at the park watching them play with their friends and end up being friendly with the other parents.
- stef25 3y agoHa ... recently single with two young kids. I find it actually easier to raise them (admittedly only every other week). No more arguments about "who's turn is it to put them in bed", "why do I always have to do this" etc ... They may seem like simple questions that can easily be answered but it's really quite complex: "Had a tough day at work, could you do it?", which leads to score keeping and different views on what's a "tough" day. Now I know I have to do 100% of it. I prefer that than to argue about it, clash over differences on how kids should be raised etc Honestly, the way average people with an otherwise good life have to pay 150$ an hour to a therapist to help them sort out who's turn it is to do the laundry is nothing short of depressing. Try explain that to say, a rice farmer in Vietnam. And yeah, it's not actually about the laundry but a power play between the mom & dad but that doesn't make it less depressing and certainly not easier to solve.
- hansc 3y agoIn my family and friends group, friendships and partners can often orthogonal: You do different things with different people and they add to life experience, not substract. I can imagine that if you state to your partner that they are number two and always will stay, it might already put a strain on the relationship: In a sense a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoI don't know how to find the center of an irregular multidimensional volume. Surely for different purposes, different people matter differently. E.g. My spouse doesn't ride a bike (not like I do). For that activity she's nowhere near the 'center' of my life.
- llarsson 3y agoIf their romantic significant others are fine being number two in this way, and it's all consensual, then they should do it and move their lives the way they want to. I would personally not be OK with this setup with a romantic partner (neither as one who would see a friend as my number one or if the romantic partner did with someone else), but that's obviously not supposed to limit them in any way, since I'm not part of their equation. All relationships could do well with clear boundaries, understanding, and a ton of communication to continuously maintain that as relationships evolve.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoAs June rolled around today, I was just reflecting on the history of sexuality, and the philosophical shift that has occurred relatively recently, from "lifestyle" to "orientation" to "identity" and all that comes with it. People in the past did not consider themselves to have sexual orientations, to be gay or straight or something else. Even someone who was committed to a same-sex romantic relationship wouldn't have, or want, the terminology to describe and identify themselves in those terms. It was... behavior. Passions. So it's not difficult to see that this lack of labeling and identity would also be a lack of barriers to intimacy and romantic talk without necessitating or implying sexual behavior. If a bro is too proud to sit next to me on a bus bench today because he needs his personal space, perhaps he's afraid of being labeled or branded as something he doesn't like. I like the fact that the subjects of this article have gone beyond "best friends" terminology and come up with some neat new terms. "Boot-camp besties"! Yeah!
- asah 3y agoAlso: "work spouse" https://www.google.com/search?q=work+spouse https://www.google.com/search?q=work+spouse
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoImmortalized in King of Queens S1E20!
- hef19898 3y agoI had a bunch of those! Finding one is a necessity, if you ask me.
- nkjnlknlk 3y agoIt's interesting that you put the people with those "behaviors" or "passions" as the agents who have switched to "identity". In reality, it's the oppressors who "identified" them.
- kgwxd 3y agoThat is such an excellent summary of a concept I've only recently started to realize and it seems so obvious in hindsight. I'm pretty sure it's never going to get through to the people that would need to hear it in order for the world to change though.
- ri45 3y agoAs an adult, friendships keep passing by. All of a sudden a good friend "gets busy" or "life just happens". I really do not believe it anymore, even if people are genuinely busy, the least they can do is spare a few seconds of their day to reply back to a text? After what can only be described as a long "sliding window" of maintaining multiple friendships, seeing one tail expire and me actively trying to build more, I am genuinely tired of this or being so emotionally invested with them. I just don't feel its right either talking to so many this devotedly to someone I have no intention of marrying. I'm looking for something deeper, as this article shows, a monogamous romantic relationship. I would like to have many children too. I don't think humans are built for multiple deep friendships. It also invites jealousy with the romantic partner. Being religious, "till death do us part" being expected out of marriage, I doubt these deep friends would go that far without the benefits of marriage. Marriage and kids seem to be the center of life in this otherwise busy world
- bombcar 3y agoI remember an old joke, here as mentioned on SNL: > “It’s hard to make friends when you’re an adult,” Mulaney said. “I think that’s the greatest miracle of Jesus. He has 12 best friends in his thirties, and they weren’t his wife’s best friends’ husbands.” You're lucky to have some "friendly acquaintances" (which you might call friends, but not speak to for years until you meet up again) - but one or two life-long friends seems to be a relative maximum unless you really set down roots in a small area.
- rgbgraph 3y agoDon't read into this question more than necessary: are you a "generic" American (non-immigrant, born and raised, family has been here for more than 3 generations, no strong ethnic ties) or primarily surrounded by "generic" Americans? I've found most of my long-term, "deep" relationships in the U.S. to be with immigrants/foreigners. With the "generic" Americans, I can get to the point of a friendly and jolly relationship -- but it never feels like "strong bonds" are part of their value system. For example, go to Latin America if you want a stark contrast to this. People are part of the value system.
- 3y ago
- LocalH 3y agoI don't like the idea that there is a singular "center" of life. Everyone's center is different. Assuming that it's the same for everyone can cause a whole host of problems in people's lives. Societies are so far off from what's truly important in existence, that I fear we may never collectively reach that day where we truly get it right.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoWhy have a center at all? Relationships are what we do, not what we are.
- fluoridation 3y agoGiven that time and energy are finite and must be allocated, it makes the most sense to dedicate the most to just one or two activities so that they have the most chance of success (by whatever metric the person sets) than to evenly distribute resources among all of them. That one or two activities could be called the person's "centers".
- thomastjeffery 3y agoActivities are not infinite. Given the number of days we live, it makes plenty of sense to spend different days on different activities in different places with different people. The only constant here is self. The question is, what experiences fulfill your self? Experiences with one committed partner, or with several friends? I understand that many people prefer the Cathedral. I prefer the Bazaar.
- nemo44x 3y agoYou clearly don't have kids/family and that's OK. What you've mentioned in a few places in this thread is just not appetizing at all to people with kids and are doing the whole family thing. I don't think everyone needs to do that as the 1 fulfilling way to live a life - although it is incredibly fulfilling and I understand why so many people do it, or dream of it. But a networked-communal lifestyle is just not appealing to me and probably most people. It's not a social change thing. I mean, I've done it when I was younger and it was fun but I don't know, I think you just grow out of it. Being a dude in his 40's and trying to maintain some large network of meaningful relationships and experiences - it sounds awful and lonely, tbh. People are different from their younger days where you want to socialize like this to where you don't. I don't know, maybe you find a committed group of lifelong lone wolf friends but my experience says most of them will pair off and look for different things than just having fun with friends.
- carapace 3y ago[flagged]
- dash2 3y agoAs advanced countries' systems for marriage and child-rearing continue to fail, there is a constant demand for cope. What if we learned to love being single? What if we substitute friendship for marriage? 64 ways to enjoy retirement on your own! This is the collective version of listening to an alcoholic explain why he doesn't have a problem.
- XorNot 3y agoHow exactly is "marriage" failing? This notion that two people being in a long term relationship can somehow suffer systemic failure or attack is bizzare. No objection re: children though. We've done an absolute number there via cost of living.
- scarmig 3y agoHow is it bizarre? It seems the same category as saying friendship is failing, which also is a reasonable claim; see the entire bowling alone thesis. I'd probably group them all under the umbrella of social connections failing, which I'd consider one of the biggest issues of US society today.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>social connections failing I have to wonder if people, and newer generations in particular, just fucking suck at socializing. Humanity has very literally never had it easier to communicate and socialize, and yet somehow the vast majority consider themselves isolated.
- nightowl_games 3y agoCommunicate? Yes. Socialize? No. It's easier to socialize when you are physically beside someone. There are less kids playing in the street. They are no arcades. As a parent you must bring your child to other children. You must encourage or mandate extracurricular activities. We are not a society where children are naturally surrounded by other children in their 0-4 years. We are not a society where adults are naturally surrounded by similiar adults outside of the in office work space. Its a matter of proximity and what is the default state.
- mydriasis 3y agoI don't like anyone as much as I like my wife, straight up. It's incredible to have a partner that acts as my actual 'other half'. We are two sides of the same coin. It's an amazing thing. I can't, nor do I want to, get that close to other people.
- layer8 3y agoNot everyone gets that lucky, though.
- mydriasis 3y agoAnd that's a shame. I truly think that there's someone like that out there for everyone. I also think it's sad when someone doesn't find that person. I wish that fortune for everyone. And you know -- maybe some people just aren't programmed like that. I happen to be. Maybe some people _do_ get more out of friendships than they would out of a relationship. Really very different strokes, you know? Wild.
- layer8 3y agoI don't think the numbers are balanced. For any person A there may exist a great match B, but also there may be many other A' for which the same B is a great match, but perhaps not as many other alternative B'. Even if the numbers were balanced, finding each other is a major hurdle if you're not a mainstream type. In addition, people change over time, which can affect how good of a match two people remain. So most people compromise in one way or the other, and some for which the compromise would be too big stay single.
- Mezzie 3y ago> And that's a shame. I truly think that there's someone like that out there for everyone. I also think it's sad when someone doesn't find that person. I wish that fortune for everyone. Centering marriage and romantic relationships means that most people only consider romantic partners as their 'person'. My person is my baby sister. We live together, have co-mingled finances, make long-term plans (including possibly fostering or adopting children), etc. If we were more open to different relationship priorities, more people would find their 'person'. The focus on romantic sexual relationships above all else keeps people from finding their person because they don't consider all the possibilities!
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- trabant00 3y ago> 'Chesterton's fence' is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. Marriage is the product of how many generations worth of experimenting with social contracts? You have to be either very young or lack a healthy dose of humility to think you can come up with a better system (in general, not just your case). Or, as I suspect, it's just rationalizing for not being able to build a strong, healthy, life-time relationship. I am in that category myself, as are many people of my generation from where I come from. But I don't need to fool myself I found something that works better. Even just in theory: a friend simply does not take on the responsibility of taking care of you. He is not invested in your household's success. And I could go on but arguing theory is mostly pointless. Even if your arguments against sound perfectly logic you're missing something for sure. Because in practice marriage is just like democracy: the worst system except all the others. It has stood the test of time in practice. And if your partner tells you that you're not number 1, that's not really your partner. Run. Now.
- nkjnlknlk 3y agomarriage when women were property and marriage now that women are being treated as humans (though rights are being taken away) are two different things.
- trabant00 3y agoWomen where not always and everywhere property. Yet they still married. You suffer from the illusion of history linearly advancing to better times.
- Connor_Creegan1 3y ago[dead]
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIt's... not? Three years ago, in my neck of the woods, the men typically worked in offices and the women typically worked in labs and classrooms. Then COVID happened and now the men work from home and the women... still work in labs and classrooms. They come home socially exhausted, and at the same time we're starved for social interaction. There's no animosity in it, they just need more introvert time and we need more extrovert time. So we invite them out, but they frequently don't come. And it's enough if a pattern that we end up talking about it. At least among my friends there's consensus that we'd be incredibly lonely if our wives were the center of our lives. The school year is over now, and I'm overjoyed to have mine back for a while, but when she's unavailable again, thing will probably change back again. It's not perfect, I wish there was more we could do in support if our wives because it kind of feels like they're getting the short end of the stick, but it's not so bad to lovingly leave somebody alone because that's what they need right now.
- jacknews 3y agoIt's a valid question I suppose, but we learn that the two women besties are ex-marines. Nothing wrong with that of course far from it, but it does raise some questions about the exact nature of the relationship, and their other romantic relationships.
- pseudalopex 3y agoWhat questions does it raise?
- kristianbrigman 3y agoThis is not really about marriage vs friendship, but two kinds of friendship imho… this could just as easily have gone the other way (new friend attacking her romantic partner). But (also imho) no one really knows what marriage is anymore anyways.
- LatteLazy 3y agoIn my experience this is a matter of entropy: if you have a partner at home, you are guaranteed support, so you neglect your friends. Your friends then need to either pick up the slack, or the group fails. So they pick up the slack until they have other options (like a partner at home). Then everyone stops bothering. Then people act surprised. I've seen this happen multiple times now. No one makes an explicit decision to kill the friendship. They just stop maintaining it. Another way to look at this is the tragedy of the commons or "privatising the profit, socialising the losses". It's the same as a lot of social things, from public transport to pensions, from relationships to workers unions. People often end up with suboptimal outcomes by optimising for themselves blindly. And no one person can stop it.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoI prefer the Bazaar to the Cathedral: a distributed architecture for relationships. I'm not interested in focusing all of my energy on one person. I have several friends who each provide deep connection in my life; and not always at the same time.
- indymike 3y agoMy wife is my best friend (and hopefully, the reverse is true). That's the only way I can think of marriage working in the long run anyway.
- keiferski 3y ago"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes an unhappy marriage." - Nietzsche, who was ironically single his entire life
- moomoo11 3y agoI think it’s more the big O of failing that scares people these days. The out is a divorce. And it’s unfortunately really common (isn’t it like 50%?). Not sure why but that’s just how it is. So I think people worry about the legal and opportunity cost of a failed marriage. I’ve never seen people who weren’t somewhat psychopathic who seemed fine after a divorce. Like really fine. There’s people like this one eng director guy who married four times, has like 9 kids, and now has a girlfriend. He’s a player, and that’s how he rolls. Most people however seem broken emotionally after their divorce and seem to be a shell of their former selves. Most that I know who remarried divorced again. There are a few normal happy folks but I don’t personally know any besides what I read on internet.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skim_milk 3y agoA strange proposition considering this is the current state of affairs for the current generation below age 25 - casual sex and uncommitted relationships (Lisa Wade). 60% of this population cheat habitually. Dating is down 60%. First-time marriages end in divorce almost half of the time, and around 80% of the time to the next marriage. Lifelong singlehood is extrapolated to be the most common relationship option in the younger generation. Most literature on the topic of the younger generation notes that sex has been robbed of all intimacy and is about meaningless and anonymous masturbation with another's body. Relationship skills, intimacy skills, emotional intelligence are in serious decline (Twenge, Campbell, others). This is does not seem like the hallmarks of a generation with an increased capacity to generate and form relationships of any type! Could we have possibly got something wrong with this initiative? The author seems to have forgotten to ask what the next step in human evolution thinks about their situation!
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y agoFor guys at least it is. You'll never be happier than the age 14-19 when you are with your mates on a daily basis. One solid block against the world. Against the teacher, against the principal, against the bullies, scoring weed, scoring alchol, scoring pu*y , against everybody who wants to prevent you from scoring weed, alcohol and pu*y. The problem is that this lifestyle is subsidized by parents who are the wage-slaves in the whole equation. And also in this period the stuff is less important than the people you are experiencing it with, then growing up somehow it's the stuff which becomes the core of the effort. Placing too much attention on the stuff then makes you become a wage-slave and lose contact with your friends. Marriage becomes something to alleviate the mysery not something done with enthusiasm
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago> Marriage becomes something to alleviate the mysery not something done with enthusiasm Speak for yourself. That was not the way I approached marriage, not by a long shot.
- stef25 3y agoAs someone who departed a miserable marriage and now find myself very alone with very few friends the only advice I can give is take very, very good care of your marriage and take very, very good care of your friendships. Comparing wife / husband to friends is like apples and pears. It's like asking which of your children you like the most. If friends complain about the time spent with your partner, ditch them and if your partner does the same about your friends, ditch them as well.
- thenoblesunfish 3y agoWell said - the hierarchy might be the issue, not who happens to be at the top of it.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoTo each his own. I really enjoy my divorcee life and I am annoyed when one of few remaining old friends calls me. I think people like me will proliferate.
- forty 3y agoI never thought marriage was at the center of life, and I'm a bit surprised to think some people think that way. In my book marriage is a contract whose main purpose is to agree on what will happen when the spouse divorce (which happens for more than 45% of marriages in my country, and growing). It's not clear to me why it should be a the center of anything, and of life especially. Friendship on the other hand feels important.
- cm2012 3y agoThat's such a weird way of thinking to me. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just super alien.
- forty 3y agoI understand, that's kind of my feeling from the other point of view too. I guess it's complicated stuff, probably often very linked to spiritual and/or religious beliefs too, so it's probably hard to really understand how others are feeling about it if you are not thinking similarly.
- emodendroket 3y agoIf I were thinking about moving (as I’ve done a few times since marriage) my wife and my kid would be coming along and nobody else would. So it seems pretty natural.
- forty 3y agoYou can live together with someone, have kids and move with your kids without marriage, those things seem orthogonal to me.
- emodendroket 3y agoIn this case let’s consider “marriage” a stand-in for “committed, long-term romantic relationship between two people” since that’s really what’s being compared throughout the discussion.
- sammywater 3y agoI've never thought "Marriage is the center of [my] life." nor relationships in general. I'm a male though. I suppose for women it's much more common to consider marriage & childbirth as the "center" of life. For me, it's being around friends. But I've never explicitly thought "Friendship is the center of my life." I think the "center of one's life" simply means "number one priority or goal" and that it changes depending on one's focus. For a while, learning to become a developer was the center of my life, and then getting a job as a programmer. I suppose I don't have one now. I suppose it's learning a new skillset and getting back to working (laid off recently).
- BJBBB 3y agoThis is an edge case. Marines in particular, and the military members in general, will form a special bond that can seldom be duplicated elsewhere. And that has been my experience. I was among a group of six that met at the schoolhouse after boot camp. We did not get sent to the same units, but we were all PCS'd to the same base. Two of us (not myself) made a career of the corps, and the others went to school after separation to get various STEM degrees; all four of us attended two schools within 60 km. After graduation, our physical distance slowly increased with each new job, but we never stopped talking to each other and typically met in person one to five times per year. The singular spouse that accepted our special friendships and our strong sense of mutual loyalty to each other, is the marriage that endured over the last 35 years. My wife is very special to me. She is the center of my immediate world. But these, now five, friends would have been there to pick me up if my wife had ever kicked me to the curb. Epilogue. The five of us are now, at least, semi-retired. The other four are now single. Three of them are building another house on my property in which to live out the remainder of their time. They have accepted my wife is the sixth member and as a 'principle'. Our only recurring issue is which of the six will have to die alone.
- willio58 3y agoExternally, it seems this bond could be explained by: 1. Everyone is together, away from distractions, and unable to leave easily for months on end 2. You are working toward shared goals 3. You are friendly toward each other It's a recipe for a strong bond. Another example of this is famous bands. They're constantly traveling for work, together, trying to write more music and become more famous as they go.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI think it's more than that, it's the extreme psychological and physical challenge of going through boot camp together. I have not gone through it but understand it to be beyond anything a "normal" person ever experiences. This bonds people in a way that's closer than ordinary friendship or in many cases closer than even biological brotherhood.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
- JohnFen 3y agoIt kindof is for me. My close circle of friends have been friends for over 30 years. Various people in the group have been married and divorced (some more than once), but the circle of friends remains.
- jdowner 3y agoSounds like something Epicurus would say.
- JC770 3y agoIn fact, it's difficult for you to distinguish the boundaries
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y agoA mix of both? I share a lot of hobbies with my wife, life wouldn't be as fun without her. We can talk about trivial things together such as "did you kill the frog boss yesterday? How was it?". That's something I would do with a friend (and still do), but my wife can also cover that role.
- medo-bear 3y agofamily is a spontaneous and natural form of human bond of which marriage (monogamy) is a centrepiece. from housing, working hours, career drive, tertiary education, pure capitalism is constantly creating conditions that put enormous pressures for families to succeed. pieces like this, i think, are only an attempt to rationalize or moralize something that is causing huge alienation of humanity from itself
- aeturnum 3y agoConversations like this, and the pockets of earnest polyamory / ethical non-monogamy feel driven by the failure of a relationship mono-model to keep up with reality. Even if one, in theory, would like to be married to one person and build a deeply shared life with them - life does not wait for them to show up. My parents tell me stories of finding bay area housing by walking down the street in the marina district and doing a handshake deal with someone who had a room for rent - which simply wasn't the reality I faced when I struck out on my own. People who are in their mid-to-late 30s now often went through a focused process of peer selection and devoted life-intertwining in order to simply live and work over the last decade. It's no surprise to me that people in our generation are more devoted to that network of relationships that previous generations did not require in order to "make it." I am personally really curious to see what will become of this tend. It seems to me that economic conditions will continue to reward people for banding together and pooling resources to get access to housing / work spaces / childcare. I don't think it's right to say that the economic pressure 'causes' these social shifts - more that it allows people to recognize that they could live another way if they so chose. The US has historically been pretty disdainful of living situations that aren't nuclear families - but I hope we are entering a period of greater openness and recognition of the diversity of arrangements that work for those in them.
- psychoslave 3y agoThe center of life is life, a tautology that will prove reasonably right for any of the many meanings one can put on such a polysemous term. I love my wife so much, any poem I write to her still seems ridiculous to me compared to the feelings that she is inspiring me for 18 years now. I love our children so much, I didn’t expect I would ever feel something so powerful. I have few friends that I love, though admittedly that’s also very different. As with any complex phenomenon, there’s good chances that there is no measurable point that stands as a center of human emotional and social experiences. I wish everyone the force to cherish anything that make us growth as a common harmonious humankind and release us from toxic behaviors.
- Barrin92 3y agoThis is really yet another article that stumbles over the artificiality of the American nuclear families. Not just friendships, but kinship and familial relations in most cultures on earth right now are already the center of life. This idea of the marriage partner as quasi-mystical figure in the center of your life was cooked up not so long ago. In most places marriage is practical, arranged for reproduction, and people are embedded in wide networks of friend and kinship relations. If your whole life centers around your spouse, you are the WEIRD one (https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/qa-weird https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/qa-weird) Also funnily enough of course even in the Western classical tradition the most iconic relationship is the male companionship. Hephaestion and Alexander, Achilles and Patroclus. The Iliad's not exactly La La Land. Another one of my favorite pieces on the topic comes from Vonnegut, a little too long to paste: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300997-ok-now-let-s-have-some-fun-let-s-talk-about-sex https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/300997-ok-now-let-s-have-so...
- jollyllama 3y ago>Also funnily enough of course even in the Western classical tradition the most iconic relationship is the male companionship Yes, this is the thing to consider. Modernity has atomized us and destroyed the ancient understanding of friendship which was key to how they navigated the world. People retreated to marriage, which now also is faltering. I believe reclaiming friendship would radically transform our world in such a way that many other ailing institutions would be restored to health. "A man without friends is like a man with one arm." -Serbian Proverb
- whateveracct 3y agoWhy not both?
- anon291 3y agoIn my experience, many women (not my wife thankfully) police their husband's social life to a point that would be considered abusive should the sexes be reversed. As a society, we've kind of accepted this sort of control over the husband by the wife as normal, even though the opposite is (rightfully) stigmatized.
- bscphil 3y agoI liked this piece a lot. However, I think one failing, which is also tripping up many of the commenters here, is this insistence on ordering one's relationships. Who's my number one? The moment you ask that, you end up with the social norm that one's sexual-romantic partner must be the number one. So you have a ton of people in the comments here who are very defensive of that norm, and you have people like those in the article who are consciously opposing it - they have a different number one - by finding an intimate friend or platonic life partner. But what if we gave up this silly notion? I have a cohabiting sexual partner. We're sexually monogamous, because as with most human beings that works best for us. Is my partner my "number one"? I genuinely don't know how to answer that question, if I seriously think about it. There's a strong inclination to just say "yes", because that's the expectation when you have a partner like this, but I'm looking for something deeper that would ground such a response. My partner and I care for each other (the action, not the emotion) more than for anyone outside the relationship; we know more of each other's secrets. But I have friends with whom I have an enormous amount of emotional intimacy, who understand me better in many ways than my partner does. I love them very deeply; I argue less with them, and sometimes building intimacy with them is easier than with my partner. While I fall mostly into the norm, I don't feel compelled to compare these relationships to the one I have with my sexual partner. Each of them is important. They're all "friendships" of one stripe or another. I think that's the solution here: to the extent that marriage is the "center of life" it's because marriage is just a friendship like any other. What the article is really about is the American norm that one's marriage be one's only deep, emotionally intimate friendship.
- skipants 3y agoThis is what I felt as well. It just feels silly to rank people and tries to distill your relationships into a black-and-white that doesn't really match the greyness of the world. I would be upset if my partner wanted me to pick them over my best-friend AND vice-versa. It has nothing to do with ranking... it's hard to describe what it is exactly. I suppose more of a disappointment that people close to you would act so immature is how I would feel if it happened. Luckily I don't haven't had those types of people in my life since my teens. And I think those people have since grown out of that, as well.
- 3y ago
- Zemtomo 3y agoI just tell everything to my wife. Soooo if you got married and prefer your friends you should rethink your marriage.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoImagine being so developmentally hindered that you need an Atlantic article to tell you to prioritize long-standing platonic friendships and avoid codependency, like this is some revelation. "You don't have to abandon your friends to date someone!" Uh, yeah...?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andrewclunn 3y agoUsed to be family, then people became estranged from their parents and many didn't have kids. Then it was romance and marriage, but fewer people can even find those, let alone keep them into their old age. Friendship is the next in the line of "good enough" bonds people might accept to avoid completely loneliness. Of course there's always AI and pets as the new "true companions" for 2040. Readers of the Atlantic seem like exactly the sort of people who will need this copium going forward.
- standardUser 3y agoI have at least a dozen close friendships that have outlived a series of romantic relationships over the years. Friendships are and have always been the the backbone of my social existence. Romantic relationships are comparatively ephemeral, even if they sometimes supplant friendships as the most important relationship in my life. Just to offer a different perspective. Also, what is your dig at Atlantic readers all about? Got an ax to grind?
- dathinab 3y agoWho says marriage is at the center of life?? I don't see that anywhere in my environment.
- red_admiral 3y agoThen songs like this would be in the charts :) If you wanna be my lover You gotta get with my friends Make it last forever Friendship never ends
- chrisbrandow 3y agoI keeps seeing so much evidence that in the US at least, we have so few social/communal institutions in our lives that leave each of us working so hard to figure out how to live a life. While the last century is filled with examples of how institutions have failed us, I think we have lost a lot in terms of community living. How many in-perosn, built-in friendships and relationships do any of us have outside of the college experience, or for those of us with kids the child-rearing institutions where we can mingle with other parents? We can obviously "join a club" or whatever, but there is so little by default, so we are all trying to figure it out anew. This isn't to blame anyone in particular, but I grieve how much isolation feels built into our daily lives.
- wonderwonder 3y agoEach to their own and more power to these people, though not sure why any potential husband would accept a romantic interest saying: “I need you to know that she’s not going anywhere. She is my No. 1.” For me that is a non starter. I would wish her well and move on. My wife is the most important person to me and the only one I can generally be myself around. Getting married should be a lifelong bond and commitment (or at least that should be the intent, obviously things change). While I almost never ask for help, I know that if I ever needed it she would be there at the drop of a hat. I am relatively emotionally numb but I am genuinely happy when she is happy. A day where she smiles is a good day. A long term marriage is also a place to be sexually (monogamously, at least for us) open in a way that most relationships are not. You learn what the other likes. Friends can come and go but I anchor my world around my wife and kids. The only thing that would break it is infidelity. I don't have any close friends, but honestly I dont miss having them either. I'm pretty comfortable on my own and as long as I can spend time with my wife and kids at the end of the day I am perfectly content.
- standardUser 3y agoI keep reading versions of "friends can come and go", which makes it clear that my experienced with friendship is not universal. I have many friendships that are far longer-lived than my longest relationships and have outlasted several multi-year relationships. Every friend I have consoled during a major break-up - and there have been many - was relying on a friendship that predated and outlasted their serious romantic relationship. Yes, some romantic relationships can go on indefinitely, but that is not a universal experience. Then again, lifelong friendships are not universal either.
- emodendroket 3y agoMy experience has been every time I’ve moved I’ve mostly lost touch with friends and when I see them again we don’t have all that much to talk about. I guess a lot of people just don’t leave their hometowns so that isn’t a consideration in the first place.
- wonderwonder 3y ago
- emodendroket 3y agoI’m struck by the number of divorces here, especially counterposed with the chin-scratching about marriage being an unsustainable model compared to having a really great friend near the end.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tasuki 3y agoFriendships are great. They are voluntary and aren't transactional. Romantic relationships tend in the direction of transactional (and what can you offer me?) and that makes for a strange dynamic. > "she will be there after you" That's... not cool to say? A self fulfilling prophecy: I'd leave instantly.
- thenoblesunfish 3y agoDan Savage uses the term "companionate marriage", which might mostly apply here, except for the part where usually it was ostensibly a sexual relationship at some point in the past.
- Connor_Creegan1 3y ago[dead]
- friend_and_foe 3y agoTheres a line between someone who expects you to drop your friends and prioritizing your partnership over friendships. Usually that line is time and a good understanding of the motivations of your potential partner. I've known women that prioritize their friends over their partners. They wind up taking each others advice to leave their men, they wind up lonely, raising children by themselves, resentful of one another and with a lot of regrets. They end up settling for men they don't respect just to stave off the loneliness and all the relationship problems that come with that. If you want a family, prioritize family. That means being selective of who you choose to partner with, making a conscious choice to be good to that person, and telling your friends to get fucked when they think they can tell you how to live your life.
- Preyamartin 3y ago[flagged]