My wife is my best friend, and she really is a friend by any definition.
Got you beat. We’ve been married four days. And yes, she’s my best friend. I’ve been married before (twice) but this one is different, and better in every way.
Quaker, eh?
Yes, she is. She wasn’t my best friend when I married her, although I loved and was in love with her. But over the years (ten, as of next month) she has become my best friend also.
My husband was my friend for eleven years before we started dating. For the last three years of that time or so, he was my best friend, and I was his. Then we started dating. Then we married. Then we had two kids, a house in the burbs, a dog, a cat. We’ve been married fifteen years. We are still best friends.
I have other good friends, but no one else I can tell everything to.
I’ve always had a tendency to center myself around just one person at a time (besides family). So that person is my husband. I categorize the kids as “family/actual parts of me”. 
I don’t really have time, energy, inclination, etc. for people beyond that.
No.
Yes.
We’re going to need a little more detail than that.
Without question.
Okay, I understand what you mean, because I have another best friend, I’ve known her since I was 11, and we became super close in high school. We decided then that it is acceptable to have:
- a male best friend
- a female best friend
- a partner best friend
So you can safely have, like, three best friends.
My husband and I went from acquaintances at age 18 to friends to best friends the following year. We were close for several months before we realized this was going to be more like the best friend #3 scenario than the best friend #1 scenario.
Our relationship is based on friendship. I think he’s beautiful and sexy and all that, but the meat and potatoes of our relationship is the day-to-day friendship. The fact that I have known him 9 years and we can still blow past our highway exit by 20-30 minutes because we’re so deep in conversation means everything to me. The fact that we’ve stayed up way past our bedtimes because we’re having a really interesting debate or a frank discussion about the Ninja Turtles, well, to me that’s friendship and that’s what I love so much about my husband.
My relationship with my female best friend is very different than what I have with my husband. She’s more like a sister right down the bickering and seeing things totally differently and we have a history that goes waaaaay back. The relationships are fundamentally different.
But I still say my husband is my best friend.
Yes, he’s my best friend and I’m his.
And we’re way ahead of whoever’s in second place.
Yeah, that. He’s the Hobbes to my Calvin, and I think that’s what got us through the rough patches of the last 15 years far more than any amount of passion.
Of course there’s a different dynamic between us and my platonic friends–there’s a difference in the dynamic between my various platonic friends, after all. Friendship isn’t some big monolithic institution, fercryinoutloud. You know people different lengths of time, go through different experiences with them, your personalities mesh in different ways, you’re going to have different relationships and dynamics with them.
Yeah, but ya kinda know a best friend when ya got one. Like you and your husband.
Calvin and Hobbes is an awesome example of that ‘best friend’ feeling. And I can think of many others. I always tease my best friend that we are David and Jonathan, and she get’s all mad because she knows I’m crowning myself King David and relegating her to ‘sidekick’ Ha. That would make my husband my Bathseba. Don’t tell him I called him that.
I think that’s the best way to phrase it!
My husband is my best friend. We spend most of our time together, love being with each other, share jokes and histories. I could sit with him for hours. And he’s pretty easy on the eyes, too… 
I’m thinking I could count on my husband to follow through in my behalf better than anyone else in my life. And I think when we were younger I would have said he was my best friend.
But somewhere along the way we both learned that it takes a lot of outside support to keep a marriage healthy in the long run. At least for us that’s how it has played out. So over time I’ve gathered up a handful of best friends to meet different needs that I have.
I’ve got my hanging out girlfriends, my comforting, deep thoughts girlfriends, a male friend for lunches and reminiscing about our shared childhoods, a friend for girl movies, plays and concerts and some wild wimmins that I ride cycle with when I don’t want to keep up with the guys.
When I depended on my husband to be everything to me it put a lot of obligation on his shoulders. And though we weren’t aware at the time of that particular dynamic it was stressing the relationship.
Same goes for him. A forty-something year marriage can be a heavy load to carry for only two oldsters.
No. And at this point… ah, never mind.
My husband is certainly my best friend in most ways. We share the inside jokes of everyday life and know exactly what each other are going through at any given time.
However, I also have a girl best friend. And it’s…different. It’s important to have someone of the same sex to share things with IMHO. When my husband is being annoying or my kids are driving me up the wall, I need someone outside of the situation to share that with. (She also has known me for 20 years and will tell me when I need to get off my pity pot if it is necessary.)
I wouldn’t say we’re ‘best friends’ at all. We do have a loving and fulfilling relationship and spend whatever time we have free together joined at the hip.
To me I guess a ‘best friend’ is a non-sexual relationship between two girls/women, with all the chattiness about shared topics of interest, giggling, and deep delving into emotional issues (on their side at least) it’s always entailed for me. I don’t have or desire that with my SO at all.
I like one comedian’s take on it. After making fun of the whole “spouse is best friend” notion, he illustrated it thusly: “My real best friend once said the most idiotic thing in the universe. [He went on to say what it was. I forget, but it was along the lines of things that the SDMB sometimes pick up from the non-Dope population and post on the board for other Dopers to laugh at non-Dopers’ stupidity.] I said to him: ‘That’s the most idiotic thing I ever heard! You’re completely full of shit!’ Now, if my wife had said that, I’d have to go 'mmmm! [obviously biting his tongue] That’s … very profound dear … '”
Now, I’m sure there’s a few people in this thread who said “yes” to the “spouse=best friend” question who could also feel they can call out spousal stupidity in that manner without fear of reprisal. But to the rest of us, could you really treat your spouse exactly the same way as you treat your next closest friend?
You brought up something I was thinking about. And the answer is “No. He would stay hurt and angry much longer than any of my friends do!” Probably because, knowing exactly where the hot buttons are, I can zero right in on them.
A good reminder to try to remember to treat this important man in my life with the same consideration I give my friends. Why do I have to keep reminding myself of that?:smack: