Can Your Wife Be Your Best Friend? Should She Be?

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I would be rich if I received money every time I heard a man say that when looking for a woman to settle down with, he wanted her to be his best friend. And yet, I know a number of marriages where the couples are not best friends, and they have no plans of separating.

What is a best friend and is it possible to be best friends in an intimate relationship? Let’s start from the simple and move to the more complex chain of definitions and concepts. Oxford defines friend as “one joined to another in intimacy and mutual benevolence independently of sexual or family love.” Aha, here is our first challenge. By definition, you can’t be friends with your lover. This is a problem in our modern era where the expectation is that your partner will be your . . . everything – including being your best friend.

This sets up a huge expectation and demand on the partners. Maybe too big a one. Let’s examine the beginning of a relationship. Even this is difficult to define today as people will be friends, friends who hook up, friends with benefits, and if it works out, may actually begin an official period where they are “dating.” Forming an intimate relationship is more complex today than it was twenty years ago. But the urges, both biological and cultural, push us to cohabitate and, for many people, to consider having children.

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Here again, we run into the first problem as the dynamic between the couple has shifted from friend to intimate partner. Modern relationships, if they survive that initial bonding process, may have more long term success if the couple were friends first. For couples that do not establish a friendship before coitus, it may be more difficult to move in that direction. However, this pre-supposes a Western cultural bias.

Societies that have pre-arranged marriages assume that knowledge of the partner increases with time after coitus has occurred. I have spoken to couples who have a deep and abiding love for one another who are together because of an arranged marriage. Arranged marriages also have lower divorce rates than self-selected marriages. Even though the statistics support this statement, there is an explanation which states that the lower divorce rate is attributable to the culture in which arranged marriages occur because it is extremely difficult, if not dangerous, for women to divorce and this is what keeps the divorce rate low.

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Let’s say we don’t like Mr. Oxford’s definition of friend, and we look up the definition online and we notice one extra word in the definition – “typically.” A friend is “typically” not a lover. There is our leverage point, and given a long enough lever, not only will we move the earth, but we can move universes to have our intimate sexual partner be our friend. Not just our friend, but our “best” friend.

A best friend is someone with whom we share intimate details about everything – things that I may not even share with my wife. Sound effect of a buzzer here. Egads, if my wife is my best friend, and there are things I don’t want to share with her (whether due to embarrassment, topics I know she has no interest in, or some other reason) who do I share it with? Can I have two best friends, my wife and another friend (for the sake of simplicity, let’s make this other best friend, male)?

I can hear some people saying, “You should be able to share anything with your wife.” One problem with this statement is that my partner may not be interested in the subject area that I want to share with her. This is true in my case. I love talking about business. Bores my wife to tears. So, this is a two-way process and I need someone to talk to about business. Guess who I see? My best friend.

Does this mean my wife is not my best friend? No, I think not. She knows my fears, my weaknesses, and my hopes and dreams in ways that no else does. She knows them with more depth than anyone, and that is a lot for which I am eternally grateful. However, it is not enough. This may come down to an issue of gender or energy. With my best male friend, I engage him in a different way that is satisfying on another level. Could a woman give me that kind of energy? Maybe. But if she could, how would that affect our relationship? How does one balance the yin and the yang?

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The way my marriage is co-constructed regarding the friend-ship, is as if we are on a boat sailing to a mutually agreed destination and we are dependent on one another for the efficient and enjoyable running of our craft. I have strengths in some areas, she in other areas. We enjoy one another’s company, however, we know we cannot be all things to the other person. Knowing this, we are OK with our partner getting their unmet needs filled with another person.

Indeed, my partner often wants me to get out the house and visit my friend when I become demanding of her in a way that she does not appreciate. So off I go. Our friendship has breathing room. I suppose all good friendships should be like this. With room comes appreciation. With appreciation comes the desire to nurture and grow the relationship and the by-product is an even greater love for one another that enhances the friendship. Or is it the other way round – the increased friendship enhances the love?

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Finally, there is the unanswered question in the title of this article. Should your wife be your best friend? There is something vaguely, not threatening, but an expectation or demandingness about it. There are lots of demands just being in an intimate relationship and now, there is this demand of being best friends. Can’t that just happen naturally, and if not, do we have to try and create it?

For, if your partner is to be your best friend, this will require more engagement than if she is not. Friendship requires attention and maintenance as do intimate relationships. Why not combine the two? Take care of your relationship, however you define it – intimate or best friend, and you win either way.

Photo: iStock

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