Is your SO your best friend?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The question posed in the thread title is pretty simple, but I’d like people to expound on their answers.

I bring this up because of a rant a good friend of mine made online recently. He said essentially that he thought it was silly that so many people automatically refer to their spouses and significant others as their best friends. He stated that he had a best friend before he was married and that marriage didn’t change that (granted, he’s also just out of a bitter divorce from that marriage – take that as you will). I spent a lot of time thinking about his words, partially because they were, I believe, directed at me. He and I were certainly best friends prior to my getting married, and although we’ve drifted apart here and there, we’ve remained good friends. In theory, I agree with him in that I don’t think that having a spouse lessens my friendship with him.

On the other hand, my wife IS my best friend, and that’s not an automatic statement. It is why we became as close as we did and ended up married to one another. My wife has an understanding of me that no one else on the planet does or could. And I believe a lot of that came to be true before we were even dating, really.

So I guess this is a poll, but again, I’d ask you to explain your answers a bit. I want to know:

  1. Male or female?
  2. Do you consider your spouse or SO to be your best friend, and why or why not?
  3. What is your take on my friend’s statement about the automatic elevation of a spouse/SO to the “best friend” position?
2
  1. Female.
  2. Yes. I really doubt we could stand to spend so much time together if we weren’t best friends (on the other hand, I have a few other, older ‘best friends’ but have yet to rank them)
  3. To each her own, I guess, but I really don’t understand the kind of people who don’t consider their SO(s) their best friends. Why else would you be with them? Just sex? Just to have a partner (I know some of those)? To split the rent? I feel like the old version of bride and groom just no longer applies, especially with women in the work force. Because women have options other than traditional marriage I feel like they’re less likely to settle down with a stranger who can support them. Anyway, you can have a dozen ‘best friends’ with each ‘best’ in a different situation (going on vacations, shoulder to cry on, squash partner).
3
  1. Male
  2. No
  3. I agree with your friend - to me, a “best friend” can not be my wife - I am specifically looking for a person outside my marriage so:
    • I can talk with them if I need to work out issues regarding my relationship with my wife
    • There’s no burden of commitment - we aren’t married, we have no kids together - we just happen to like hanging out. I think this can lead to a different type of relaxing friendship - I know we are just hanging out to hang. With my wife, we can go through tough periods and we have to work it out, which can be difficult at times. In other words, to be in a long-term relationship with my wife, I need to be open to work, self-examination and compromise - with my best friend, I do not have similar investments (or at least not nearly at the same level).
    • I can have a geeky basis for fun conversations. My wife and I start off conversations by coordinating on kid schedules, making sure we are okay on a practical basis. With my best friend, we start off geeking on music, baseball, books, etc…

Please note that I enjoy fun, friend-type conversations with my wife all the time. The point I am trying to make is that I consciously look for a best friend outside my marriage because I am looking for my best friend to play a different, complementary role to my relationship with my wife. To be clear, however, my wife and family come first by a long shot…

4
  1. Female
  2. Yes, absolutely. NOBODY, including my female best friends I’ve had for years, understands me the way he does, and shares as much with me.
  3. No, BUT. Why on earth would you marry someone who isn’t your best friend? Sex? Doesn’t require marriage. “Romantic” love? Doesn’t always last, and is frequently only infatuation anyway. True love, IMHO, has a strong foundation in friendship and shared values, goals, and experiences (and yes, good ol’ physical attraction is a component as well.) :cool:

eta: I still have my other “best friends” to share things he’s not interested in, or that I don’t want to discuss with him, but he’s my bestest best friend. :smiley:

5

Kinda difficult if your “best friend” is the person you complain about your SO to. :wink:

6
  1. Male
  2. My wife was my best friend before we even started dating. Even before her, I never really had a “best friend” as close as we were pre-romance.
  3. :shrug: I know not everyone considers their spouse to be their best friend (or they consider it a different “category” somehow). That’s just the way it is for some.
7

  1. Female.

  2. Yes, as a matter of fact he is.

  3. I think that it would be wrong to elevate someone to “best friend” status solely because of their status as your SO.

However, I find that I’ve always bonded better with men vs. women - I have twice as many close guy friends vs. close girl friends. Given that I like men romantically as well, this opens up the possibility that someone I am very compatible with on a friendship level could potentially be someone that I am very compatible with on a sexual/romantic level as well. It’s the best of both worlds, IMO.

For the record, not every SO I’ve had has qualified for title of “best friend”. Just this one. That’s what makes him a keeper. :slight_smile:

8

Not currently in a relationship, but for about 80% of my past ones…

  1. Male or female?

Male

  1. Do you consider your spouse or SO to be your best friend, and why or why not?

Absolutely. What is a best friend, anyway? Someone with whom you can share your most intimate stuff? SO and best friend are perfectly congruent in that way.

  1. What is your take on my friend’s statement about the automatic elevation of a spouse/SO to the “best friend” position?

Automatic? No. But if she doesn’t soon become that person naturally, then there’s something seriously wrong with the relationship.

9
  1. Female
  2. No. While my spouse is one of my best friends, he is not my best friend. There are simply some things I do not share with him.
  3. I agree with your friend – marrying someone does not automatically elevate them above everyone else. Of course, I know a few people who married their best friends and that’s different.
10

  1. Female

  2. Yes. Part of the reason that we ended up together is that we share a lot of interests, and I have more fun with him than I do with anyone else I know.

  3. I wouldn’t say it’s automatic. I can easily envision a situation where someone could have close friends other than their SO whom they would consider their best friends.

11

1. Male or female?

Female

2. Do you consider your spouse or SO to be your best friend, and why or why not?

Not really, though I understand what most people mean when they say that. I just don’t think of it that way. I am not in general wild about the notion of “best friends”, I associate it with social pecking order rituals which are appropriate in certain kinds of group dynamics but not appropriate to my life as it is now. I don’t rank my relationships in a hierarchal structure and I don’t really understand the need to do so.

I consider Dearly Beloved to be my only spouse, not my best friend.

3. What is your take on my friend’s statement about the automatic elevation of a spouse/SO to the “best friend” position?

I think a lot of people do say that their SO is their best friend, and I think a lot of them say it because it is expected. I think most of them really believe it, and ditto. I think in general that it is a mistake to expect your spouse to be your everything – your best friend, your mother, your lover, your priest, your sounding board, your past and future. It closes the circle of your community in ways that I could not manage and it demands a great deal of a person who is in the end just a person.

But I also know, as I say, that the notion of one best friend is not really something I can get my head around.

12
  1. Male
  2. Yes she is. I have other friends who are good friends, but I feel my wife is my best friend. I have lots of good friends that I use similar to the way WordMan describes his best friend–I just don’t consider that person my best friend. In my last marriage, I did have one I considered a best friend. But my current wife is in that position now and not just because we got married. My old best friend is still a good friend–but we aren’t as close as we once were. Part of it is location and kids and life, and part of it is that I am very close to my current wife. She actually became my best friend before we got married and the marriage has just solidified that aspect.
  3. I agree that just getting married doesn’t elevate your spouse to ‘best friend’ status.
13

  1. Female

  2. Yes, he is my best friend. I’ve always gotten along better with guys than with women anyway–I don’t really have any close female friends and haven’t since high school/early college. I can’t imagine being married to someone who wasn’t my best friend.

  3. No, I wouldn’t say it’s automatic, particularly in more “traditional” relationships. As hard as it is for me (a geeky tomboy with decidedly nontraditional tastes on most things) to understand, there are some marriages where sex/having kids/building a family are more important than spending your life with your best friend. I think these are the kinds of marriages where the guy has his guy friends and the woman has her woman friends, and the two of them don’t really interact that often outside the traditional roles. I suppose that type of marriage can work for the right people, but it certainly wouldn’t for me.

14

Do you know, we actually do this sometimes. I have been known to say to Dearly Beloved that my husband is making me nuts because of something or other. He then responds exactly as though he were just a very insightful third party. The reverse is also true, now and again he goes on about his marital woes with his wife.

It’s our own peculiar way of breaking out of our roles with each other I suppose. It usually end with everybody laughing.

15

For the record, I agree with the folks that say that their spouse (or their best friend, for that matter) can’t be everything to them to the exclusion of all other people. There are some activities that my wife isn’t interested in that I specifically enjoy with certain other good friends of mine – both male and female (bowling and attending baseball games being the easiest examples off the top of my head).

Still, there is no friend of mine to whom I feel closer, whom I trust more, with whom I have more fun, more laughs, more inside jokes – whom I would want to be part of my every day – than my wife.

16

  1. Female

  2. Yes, he is my best friend…he was my best friend before we hooked up.

[long explanation]
However, I do not consider him my only best friend. I’ve known my other best friend since 4th grade, though we weren’t close until 11th grade band camp (really.) (Note: we long ago came to the conclusion that it’s at least okay to have a girl best friend AND a guy best friend at the same time.) Now when I say these two are my best friends, I’m in now way devaluing the connotation. I feel that my girl best friend prepared me for my husband, because I did not believe that true love could exist or that anyone could really love me for who I am until I became close to her. We ‘‘fell in love’’ with each other in a completely platonic way, and are still in love 8 years later. When I got married she was basically passing on the mantle to my husband: Go forth, and love olives. Love silly, weird, crazy, irrational, wonderful olives.

(By the way… she is the reason for my user name)

My husband, on the other hand, I met when I was 18 at college freshman orientation. It took us a year to start hanging out regularly, but only about a month to become incredibly close friends, and a couple more to consider one another best friends. We were so comfortable with one another, and such good friends, that I actually almost didn’t think I could ever be attracted to him.

This was actually the way I decided to hook up with him. I remember thinking, ''God, he’s my best friend. I love hanging out with him. But could I ever be ATTRACTED to him?" I seriously doubted it. And I imagined us remaining platonic and spending every moment of college together, and how that would be just fine with me, just having him there to hug.

And then I imagined him getting married someday, and me getting married, and realized that eventually someone was going to become more important in his life than me.

And I thought, at this imaginary wife of his, Oh, hell no, bitch.
And I married my best friend.

[/long explanation]

  1. I’m in the camp that can’t imagine NOT being best friends with the person you married. I imagine racier relationships exist than my marriage, but we seriously stayed up in bed until 2am over Christmas Break this year talking about Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles. I kept waiting for someone to walk in and say, ‘‘You kids go to sleep!’’ I actually LIVE with this person who will talk to me about ninja turtles at ungodly hours of the morning. There are no words.

(Oh, and before you label us as ‘‘geeks’’ you have to know Ninja Turtles isn’t the only thing we talk about. We also talk about Star Trek.)

17
  1. Female
  2. No
  3. Automatic? Well no, I think all marriages are unique so there’s a huge variety of things that work well for different couples. To be completely honest, I thought more like your friend when I was a bit younger, and less flexible in my world view. I knew several people who married their “best friend” and then divorced their “best friend” within a few years. Hey, I might have gone through a few different boyfriends in those years, but at least I kept my best friend!

I feel very fortunate that I have a best friend who was my childhood best friend, and we have maintained a very close (both emotional, and geographic) relationship ever since. She is absolutely my best friend. For me, I think our shared history is very important. She’s known me at all my terrible ages. We knew each other’s grandparents, who died before we met our respective spouses. And she is the person who would be there for me if anything terrible ever happened to Mr. Del. I can’t really imagine what my life would be like without her, but in the abstract, I think it would be less likely that I would have a ‘best friend’ that I met as an adult, especially after establishing a relationship with Mr. Del.

18
  1. Male
  2. She’s my closest and most trusted friend. I don’t subscribe to the notion of a “best friend.” All my friends contribute something to my life, so I don’t feel like ranking them.
  3. See 2. My closest friend prior to meeting my wife remained as close as ever; she just didn’t happen to be my wife. Sharing a life has a different dynamic than sharing time.
19

  1. Male

  2. Absolutely, yes. I’m a very private person and I don’t make friends very easily, and she’s the same way. The English would consider us a rather young version of Darby and Joan. We have very similar personalities, including senses of humor (actually, especially senses of humor now that I think about it), and we tend to spend all of our free time either together or in front of a book or computer.

Including Mrs. Fresh, I have three people whom I would consider close friends. One is in Korea, and the other retired last year, so I don’t see or hear from them very often. My wife isn’t the only person I would feel comfortable coming to with a problem, but she is the only person I would feel comfortable coming to with any problem no matter what. She likes to joke that we could never find anyone else to marry, because we’ve thoroughly warped each other.

We don’t go to parties very much at all. Hell, we barely go out to eat. We’re not misfits. We’re just . . . private. We’re into our own thing, which makes a living hell out of networking to find another job, but I digress.

  1. I suppose I can understand it. I’m aware that I’m kind of the exception to the rule, and it’s certainly possible to be married to someone who’s not your best friend. Still, unless one marries for money or status, I can’t see how s/he could be anything less than a really, really good friend without destroying the marriage.
20

1. Male or female?
Female

2**. Do you consider your spouse or SO to be your best friend, and why or why not?**
I don’t have a spouse, but I’ve had several SO’s and I’ve never considered them my best friend.

I already have a best friend (who happens to be of the opposite sex) and I feel like the “best friend” status exists on a different plane than “significant other.” He’s contractually obliged to do duties for me that I haven’t yet been able to need/want from an SO - mainly, being my sounding board against my SO. There’s no breaking up, no divorces. I’ll never find him too needy or clingy. There’s no fear of cheating, no fear of getting old or unwanted. We have shared things together that can never be experienced with an SO because they were “moments” that obviously won’t ever happen again. No matter who I end up with, I will always have been “with” my best friend longer.

He happens to be married, to the woman he calls “the best friend I am married to” and I call “my other best friend.”

Maybe someday I will have someone to call “the best friend I am married to” also but the title of “best friend” is already taken.

3. What is your take on my friend’s statement about the automatic elevation of a spouse/SO to the “best friend” position?
I don’t mind it. Plenty of people have given good answers already to why their spouse is their automatic best friend. If I didn’t have a best friend right now, I’d totally want my SO to be my best friend and wouldn’t have it any other way. Or perhaps if I did not grow up with and stick with this one guy as my best friend, I would want to marry my best friend.

If you don’t have some unbreakable bond with someone that you consider your “best friend” before you get hitched, I’d like to think your spouse can fill that role. It’s an important role to have in your life.