What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life? | Hacker News Reader

What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?

theatlantic.com

191 pointsnickwritesit400 comments

This 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.

Externally, 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.

I 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.

I'd extend the shared goals bit to include difficulty. Physically challenging, life risking, risk of failure etc... I've seen far too many "team bonding" setups fit all 3 of your criteria, but fail dismally to result in bonding.

Out of curiosity, what's the context of those team bonding exercises?

I'm curious if the failure is due to short duration and knowing you can revert back to your normal mode in a few days. Humans are creatures of habit, after all, and I don't think what I see in most corporate team-bonding exercises is enough to overcome that in most people.

> unable to leave easily for months on end

Ah yeah, i think i missed this on first pass. Yes they were typically < 1 week.

>You are friendly toward each other

Many civilians are aghast when they see how Marines act toward one another. The constant shit-talking and physical fighting probably wouldn't be described as "friendly" but definitely "brotherly"

The way I've heard it described in the British Army is "We will laugh if you fall down but we will help you up"

> Our only recurring issue is which of the six will have to die alone.

Hire someone.

I'm not kidding. Hire someone as a nurse/caretaker/doula now, integrate them into the group, and then you've solved your remainder problem. You can use a trust to pay them out on the death of the last member of the group.

Think of it like anti-loneliness insurance. Even if you're the last one standing, you'll have someone to chat with and play cards with who you've known for years.

> Hire someone.

There's no guarantee that the such hired individual will outlive the last of the original six - or that their life priorities won't change.

No but usually people in their eg 40s outlive people in their 60s.

Life is risk.

"seldom duplicated elsewhere"

I hear this same sentiment from marines, cops, fireman, and fraternity members. I also hear it from Masons, Elks, Shriners, etc.

I don't understand why men have to think they've "discovered" something about lifelong bonds that is exclusive to just men's clubs. My guess is that men are taught not to have strong emotional bonds with anyone but their mothers or wives, and then think it is something magical when they are allowed to have these feelings under the guise of life-threatening situations, or secular drinking clubs.

For each person, finding those bonds is a remarkable and life-changing event.

Yeah, for a lot of people finding good friends is always a life-changing event no matter the outer circumstances surrounding that bonding.

The interesting part of the discussion though is how often those bonds are misattributed to causation from the concomitant circumstances (violence, special secretive clubs) as opposed to correlation and just raw, "boring" proximity. The general loss of consistent "third places" to encourage proximity among potential friends somewhat makes it seem even more "causitive" that people (especially those socialized under today's idea of masculinity) misattribute the wonder of forming a new friend bond to "requiring" ugly circumstances such as shared violence or special secretive clubs, rather than just being a healthy and natural outcome of social proximity (and emotional "closeness") among our aggressively social species that doesn't need to be forced through pain or sweat or hazing or forced philanthropy or secret handshakes.

I think you're just over-analyzing the words a bit. When I hear someone say "seldom duplicated elsewhere" I don't think they're convinced it's unique all throughout the world. They know there are millions of other soldiers out there who make similar bonds. They just mean seldom duplicated with other people within their own lives.

One of the things that distinguishes the first three groups in your set is shared hardship. Many in the military (and elsewhere) think this is a necessary component to form those kinds of tight bonds. So it's not that they are "allowed" to have these feeling under life-threatening situations, it's that dire circumstances foster those feelings.

Fraternity hazing is (was) supposed to create those bonds, but it's been drastically curtailed at most universities, and I'm not sure how well it ever worked (was never in a fraternity). In many cases it was just "here drink all this liquor and if it doesn't kill you, we'll initiate you"

There’s hazing in the military too. But rites if passage is different than what I’m talking about. Hazing in particular isn’t shared suffering, because it’s one person or group doing it to another while not going through it at the same time. I wonder if there may also be an aspect of suffering needing to be coupled with purpose.

Its shared, just not simultaneously. Its more a shared experience of «we all went through this suffering earlier»

Understood, and that's what I was pointing to with the slightly different idea of a rite of passage. But I think there's an important distinction that impacts the bonds that are formed. For example, all Marines went through the roughly equivalent rite of passage of boot camp. Given that, a Marine who served in Iraq may still feel some camaraderie when meeting a WW2 Marine, but probably not to the same level as another veteran from Iraq because the bond from the latter has closer, shared experience. And when it comes to someone who served in the same unit, the bond will likely be greater still. I think there's an aspect of psychological distance that is relevant to the bond.

Men haven't rediscovered it, they're simply enumerating that deep bonds are forged in shared struggle and suffering [1]. There is no Disney ending, and life is not a fairytale. Life is about shit getting real and hoping the people you need are within arm's reach. Maybe that's friends, maybe that's a partner, maybe that's both. It does not just happen, it has to be cultivated intentionally.

@BJBBB: Solid plan.

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761454588...

> > I don't understand why men have to think they've "discovered" something about lifelong bonds that is exclusive to just men's club

It's special because you risk your life together. You kill the enemy together while it's conspiring to kill you and your friends, but you manage to outsmart them and get to live.

Also Nature, when Nature comes at you and you find a way to dominate and resist the elements and ride it out, so that you make it home.

Men are not made to bob their heads in a club, they are made for "close call" type of scenarios and situations, if it doesn't come down to a close call with very high stakes on the line then it's kinda boring and pedestrian which is the prelude to depression and feelings of worthlessness

Going out to talk to random strangers and dance triggers that “close call” juice too. The problem is the restrained head bobbing.

I’d take it over all my adrenaline-junkie hobbies. Something pure about the charged verbal joust. Once I get a little taste of that sweet sweet validation (usually imagined), I just keep building myself up until I decide that I’ve taken over the club (as a poorly dressed middle aged sober married man who doesn’t touch anyone or take any numbers), then I move on to a new challenge and feel the party energy die as I leave and just laugh at the poor thirsty masses I leave behind.

Nope, it's got nothing to do with being discouraged and everything to do with culture and identity. The problem is that men don't bond over nothing. Sitting around watching TV, drinking beer or whatever are nice, you can make good friends just because you share a hobby or whatever.

Our ancestors went out into the world together and killed animals. They taught each other's sons how to fight. Our social organization is ingrained, we evolved this way. Men need more than just physical proximity and shared interests to form the deepest of bonds, we need a shared identity built around a core way of life, we need a tribe.

Hm. I'm man. I don't need to kill, fight, or some paleolithic tribe narrative to forge deep lifelong bonds.

I just tell the men in my life that I care about that I love them and will be there for them if they ever need me, and then follow up on that promise. That's all it takes to forge a bond. None of this Rambo death fantasy that 90% of the replies to my post keep blathering on about.

I'm curious. Are you a man? If so, Have you ever told a male friend that you loved them, without needing the excuse of shared extreme duress? (And not that apey thing that bros do when they hug-slap each other vigorously and say "luv yuh brah" because actually saying the words clearly and not smothering it with mild physical violence is just too scary?)

Yes and yes. But it's not the same, you've never experienced the strongest of bonds between men.

It's not about killing, it's not about paleolithic shit, it's not about apey dudebro stuff. You don't understand it, what you're doing when you discount it is the same thing your caricature of these men do when they want to avoid emotional situations. You're dismissing, youre cringing, you're making light of it so you don't get seen behaving that way. No different than a "tough guy" pretending he doesn't love his wife or whatever. You're closing a part of yourself off same as them and pretending it doesnt exist same as them and you are missing out on something so overwhelmingly engrossing that is at the core of being a human.

You'll note, in the comment of mine you responded to, I never said anything about extreme duress.

This used to be much more common, for men too. You don't have to go too far back in history to find a time when intense male friendships were not at all unusual, complete with holding hands and writing love letters to each other.

Of course, some of these were gay relationships, hiding in plain sight pretending to be socially acceptable non-sexual intense male friendships. But gays wouldn't have been able to hide that way if the concept of a socially acceptable intense male friendship hadn't existed in the first place!

Maybe the Marines and the like are the few holdouts in modern society where this really positive part of pre-modern masculinity is still alive and well.

Is it really positive in today's context though? When OP said only one spouse out of this whole group accepted these special friendships, I'm guessing that the time spent maintaining these kinds of friendships is getting in the way of marriages. If hardly any women will stay married to a guy with friendships like this, that's kind of a problem if he wants to be married.

Given the benefits of cultivating social circles and the risk we see in those who don't have a good social circle as they age, it's probably positive.* The "getting in the way of marriages" may be true, but only in the context of how we've changed our definition of what a marriage should be. One argument is that it's a relatively new phenomenon that we look to our marital partner to be the end-all-be-all of our social circle. There is a modern expectation that our partner is our best friend, confidant, partner in raising children, sexual companion, and everything else under the social sun. I'm not sure that's entirely healthy, especially when a marriage fails.

* side note: I don't think most of the veteran suicide that we see is how we tend to mentally internalize it as a troubled veteran returning from a fresh deployment. The average age is close to 60, meaning these are veterans who have been out for awhile. I suspect the lack of social community, particularly as they age and no longer have the typical social aspects like work to define a social circle, may be part of the issue.

I have read that physical affection in male friendships is paradoxically more accepted in societies where homosexuality is punished by death, simply because no one is worried they might seriously be signaling or receiving sexual interest when expressing affection towards other men.

As 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.

How 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.

How 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.

>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.

Communicate? 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.

>> We are not a society where children are naturally surrounded by other children in their 0-4 years.

That's shocking to hear. We live out in the sticks, about 25 minutes from the nearest town (of ~10k people) and we make sure our kids get some social time a couple of times every week. From homeschool coop groups to random meet ups/activities planned by parents via Facebook to farmer's markets, library/museum trips, churches, parks, visiting neighbors... seems like my kids are always doing something which seems to help them socialize. I think it would be sad if they just stayed home all the time. I suppose being in a traditional marriage where I work and the wife raises the kids helps contribute to this being able to happen.

> From homeschool coop groups to random meet ups/activities planned by parents via Facebook to farmer's markets, library/museum trips, churches, parks, visiting neighbors

All of these other than visiting neighbors are exactly the things nightowl means when saying they're not naturally surrounded. You're having to arrange the homeschool co-op, you're arranging playdates on Facebook, you're taking them to the famers markets and museum trips. You're facilitating them going to these places, probably by way of car.

Comparatively, growing up most of my childhood days other than school and one weekly extracurricular most of my time was just naturally playing with the kids in the neighborhood. We'd all just play in each other's yards, we would just go to the playground ourselves, etc. These days you would have CPS called.

The question then becomes why; it's not some random fluctuation where every single person happened to fall on the left side of the spectrum of socialization. Have to look at systemic issues for that.

"people just suck at socializing" is no explanation at all. It is just an observation of a state of affairs. In fact, I don't think people are any worse at socializing than we have been in the past. What has changed is that our entire social lives are mediated by parasitic technologies meant to maximize engagement and our entire economic lives are mediated by a market ideology which only incentivizes maximum flexibility in order to meet our economic needs. Social phenomena do not materialize out of thin air, nor are the cause of evil wizards plotting somewhere. It is, as the saying goes, the economy, stupid.

It's bizarre because it's distinctly not happening. The number of married couples in the US has been trending up since the 1960s [1] and only very recently has shown a plateau.

Which is to say their doesn't seem to be any indication that "marriage is failing" i.e. there are less people in marriages. It's also notable that the rate of cohabitation has tripled over the last 20 years[2] (included because it's a worthwhile proxy for things which are long term relationships but might not be recognized as marriages).

Where I can point to fertility rates across the Western world falling to below replacement and say "yeah we've got a problem", the notable thing is that it seems thoroughly uncorrelated with people being in long term relationships. People might not have time for friends, but there are more committed relationships around then at any time in history - by the numbers.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183663/number-of-married...

[2] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/09/unmarried-par...

Just want to point out that with population growth, your stats show that over the past 20 years married couples per thousand population has gone from 202/1000 in 2001 to 185/1000 in 2022 which is a 10% decline.

Noticed that which is why I looked up the cohabitation data, since I'm not sure how "marriage" is being defined - over that same period cohabitation rates tripled.

I suspect that accounts for a decent chunk of people not getting married, but still being in long-term relationships unless there's some evidence these are substantially different types of relationships (i.e. not intimate).

> married couples per thousand population has gone from 202/1000 in 2001 to 185/1000 in 2022 which is a 10% decline.

This probably understates things, if anything; as you get older, you're more likely to get married, and America's population has been aging.

> Which is to say their doesn't seem to be any indication that "marriage is failing" i.e. there are less people in marriages.

Pew data shows that marriage is down 14% since 1990.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-...

I agree with you. I suppose if peoples' goals don't include marriage and they are happy then what exactly is the problem?

Saying these people fail because they don't get married feels like imposing a certain viewpoint on others. I'd say it's a problem if they want to get married and can't find a partner. Incels are a problem. People who are happy with their life aren't.

maybe they are failing for good reason? I am in split worlds of being from traditional society and adopting a western outlook. I constantly feel the push and pull between both worlds.

Yes; and unfortunately there has yet to be a critical look at this phenomenon with the same skill as Quigley or Toynbee (at the very least, none that I can find).

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

There is more than one kind of relationship!

It's exhausting to constantly hear about romantic commitment as if it's the barometer for all relationships. That's absurd!

Did it truly never cross your mind that a person can have more than one meaningful relationship in their lives? No wonder people are so lonely!

You don't need one or the other: you can participate in a close friendship and casual sex. You can have several of each.

No relationship must last forever, either; or be started at the same time.

Relationship isn't what we are, it's what we do.

It’s a barometer not because it’s the only important kind of relationship but because it’s the easiest to measure. Close friendships are dropping too: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/11/friendships-less-is-n...

That sounds pragmatic, and it is. A partner is also pragmatic. Why dismiss one while promoting the other?

Someone can have good friends and also someone they spend everyday with for 50 years.

I don't think it's either-or. If you're not a friend to your life partner, it's not going to be a very rewarding partnership in the long run.

You can spend every day for 50 years with someone whom you relate with deeply and meaningfully.

That doesn't have to be the same person every day. It can be 50 different people. It can even be your self.

I'm going to have to agree with GP on this one: this line of thinking is an excuse. 50 different people with is not a replacement for a partner who is wholly committed to you and you are wholly committed to them. You will never be able to give or receive the same level kind of love and security with a network of that size.

you can participate in a close friendship and casual sex. You can have several of each.

The casual sex "choice" doesn't apply to the majority of adults (most straight men don't have the option of multiple sex partners, most women don't want them) so it's difficult to see its relevance here.

If you mean throughout their life rather than concurrently, that doesn't really affect the idea that marriage itself is of special significance.

You'd be surprised what happens when you are kind and a good communicator with a healthy social life. I thought the same thing when I was younger but now I'm in the prime of my dating and casual sex life. I try not to hold tightly to expectations but can see this path in life leading to some new close friendships with the possibility of closer partnerships ahead.

The trick is to prioritize the people around you, rather than material gains for yourself.

> can see this path in life leading to some new close friendships with the possibility of closer partnerships ahead.

Just a few more pulls and the big payout will come. You've spent so many quarters on the slot machine, it'll definitely pay out at any moment.

> thought the same thing when I was younger but now I'm in the prime of my dating and casual sex life.

I had a very charismatic friend who ended up in this situation of being a sex partner to 4-5 very attractive women in this sort of poly relationship thing.

Just like the first time you go to the bar and it's full of alcohol and people, it was fun. Genuinely good looking women and he just had to have sex or sometimes fun adventures with them. None of the "gunk" of relationships, none of the work.

Well that fun doesn't last very long. Pandemic happened, everyone isolated and went to their "nesting" mate and uh.. it wasn't him. He wasn't anyone's #1. He was just a convenient sex toy who bought dinner.

He still isn't anyone's #1.

> Just a few more pulls and the big payout will come. You've spent so many quarters on the slot machine, it'll definitely pay out at any moment.

You sound like someone who has won at gambling.

Your success is not the only possible or valid path.

What you have shared may be wise advice, but advice itself is never a guarantee.

The age-old adage "luck is preparation plus opportunity" is relevant here.

I decided a while ago to be better at being with people, and started preparing myself toward that goal. It's taken a while but I'm doing well now. Also I've set myself up for success by living in a place that attracts and fosters the kinds of folks I like to spend time with -- this is really super important, people aren't the same everywhere you go. Then as summer began coming on this year and people seem to have dropped all those pandemic-time idiosyncracies I've been giving myself ample opportunity to mix with extended friend groups and random meetups (mostly bike rides and races in my case) to great benefit for everyone involved.

My point is that I'm not worried about winning or losing the lottery. I'm not playing. I'm not missing out, either.

The expectation is that I'm filling a void with casual relationships; and that that void is a single committed romance.

I never had that void to begin with. I sincerely am fulfilled by uncommitted relationships. They aren't casual to me: they are as serious and meaningful to me as monogamous partnership is to my parents.

The most important part to me is empathy. I crave new ideas and perspectives: I get them by empathizing with more people.

The way the previous comment came across to me was as from a cynical incel type rather than a more reasoned MGTOW-adjacent approach, sorry for the misunderstanding.

This is the failure of threads: we section ourselves off into pairs, but each of us is still listening to the room.

Casual sex can mean multiple things, I suppose, from one-night-stands to consistent fuck-buddies/FWB situations. I tend toward the latter, because I'm picky and it's hard for me to get involved with someone I don't have a deeper connection with.

> The casual sex "choice" doesn't apply to the majority of adults (most straight men don't have the option of multiple sex partners, most women don't want them) so it's difficult to see its relevance here.

How much of that is social expectation? I can see the circular reasoning here: can I get out?

That is a challenge. Social expectations set boundaries: changing those boundaries takes a lot of work. It's still possible, though. To me, it's worth the effort.

there are plenty of societal pressures against family life. and societal expectations are against faith and trust in the other person

> societal expectations are against faith and trust in the other person

That implies a need for faith and trust in a person. Where does is that need come from? Committed romance.

If that isn't my goal, what do I have to fear?

i believe that need is an intrinsicaly human need

And I don't. Have you considered my position, or did you just want to express your own?

hard to argue with a guy who thinks he is socrates

Because you don't have an argument of your own?

I'm not here to belittle you personally. I'm here to confront your ideas.

What are you here for?

You are probably correct, watching what people DO rather that what they SAY. Just look how fast America went from conservative christianity to flying Pride Flags over the the American Flag.

It's clear there is no separation between church and state. People just debate the religion of the "church".

i am not sure if we are talking about the same thing so i want to say that i strongly believe family relationships precede religion. i am from eastern europe and i think people had better family lives during socialism then they do now, which is ironic given the very strict seperation of church and state

> How much of that is social expectation?

Yes, we can change social expectations and boundaries. We did change social expectations and boundaries. It was called the "Sexual Revolution" and it happened over half a century ago. It's old news. This is where we've ended up since then.

I'm still trying to find the waves of that revolution. Maybe I just need to get the fuck out of Utah...

I could really use an aftershock.

It sounds like you're more of a sex pest that places far too much significance on the act rather than the relationship before it.

Because I have a different perspective than you, I am a pest.

This is precisely the issue at hand.

I'm not pestering you for sex; in fact I am not pestering anyone at all! Yet here you are pestering me for expressing an interest in it.

Am I a pest for leaving the Mormon Church? Am I a pest for drinking alcohol at home?

Whatever happened to the religious freedom y'all keep telling me about? Can I have some?

> Am I a pest for leaving the Mormon Church

No but there does seem to be a strong correlation between people who were raised in strict religious households and a strong predilection towards sex. I kind of already assumed that you were ex-religious before you said so.

You are free to believe and do whatever you like, but don't presume that everyone else is a prude because they don't look at sex the way you do. Or that your perspective should be the norm. People overwhelmingly choose and hope for monogomy despite society largely accepting casual sexual encounters as "normal". There's no telling the extent of the damage that has done to people's ability to pair bond successfully and develop interpersonal relationships.

> You are free to believe and do whatever you like, but don't presume that everyone else is a prude because they don't look at sex the way you do.

I won't. I'll assume they are a prude when they call me a "sex pest".

> Or that your perspective should be the norm.

I just have to accept the inverse. Got it.

> People overwhelmingly choose and hope for monogomy despite society largely accepting casual sexual encounters as "normal".

I would like to live in that society please. Oh right, you want to vilify it because casual sex offends you; and you are not alone, which is precisely the source of my troubles.

I have plenty of deep and fulfilling interpersonal relationships. I'm quite good at that, as it happens.

What the fuck do you want from me? Do you want me to pretend I actually crave committed monogamy? Wouldn't that make me the actual pest?

That doesn't sound any different from asking my trans friends to pretend they are cis or my gay friends pretend they are hetero.

I would much rather be honest. Unfortunately, this social situation you are holding over my head is making it a lot easier to just stay silent. Thanks for that.

Utah is like the most successful place in the country now. In 500 years, the country will be Latinos, Muslims, and Mormons.

Don't forget the Mennonites.

Yep. We changed social expectations and allowed women to choose partners fully based on whatever they deemed attractive rather than coerce them into marriages they didn’t want. (Either initially or ever)

Straight women’s sexuality is drastically different from gay men, lesbian women, and straight men. It’s not much of anything like the rest. There’s a desire for the attention and approval of straight men (probably due to patriarchal reasons) but there’s often a missing desire for the straight men as they are. (I assume this is more biological) It’s why we see so many straight women being completely content with living an asexual lifestyle whereas straight men are completely miserable.

I know plenty of straight women who are not content living their asexual lifestyle.

My theory is that this dynamic is mostly narrative-based, but partly physical:

Our social narrative says that a man's sexuality is dangerous, and that a woman's sexuality is fragile. It also says that safety comes from commitment.

The physical difference (that applies to sexual intercourse) between cis men and cis women is genitalia. The penis is homologous to the clitoris, and the vagina is homologous to the prostate. When a cis man has sex, he probably uses his penis, but when a cis woman has sex, she probably uses her vagina.

Most people who have mastered prostate stimulation can tell you it requires a completely different mental approach (headspace) than penis stimulation. This rules out most cis men, to whom the prostate is usually on a spectrum from unfamiliar to taboo: that gives queer/gay/trans people kind of opportunity advantage.

The headspace I'm talking about here is more of a yearning for connection (to connect with the prostate/vagina), as opposed to feeling impressed with and excited by someone's figure (to connect with the penis/clitoris).

The feeling of safety and commitment that can be found in a monogamous relationship is a really effective way to get into that headspace. This means that the utility of a committed romance can be directly applied to a cis woman's sexual experience, in the same way porn can be applied to a cis man's experience. This is where goals can be misaligned categorically along the boundary of sex.

this sounds like you think you are saying something entirely novel. it is actually just common sense. see it is true there are many kinds of relationships, but there is only one type of relationship that resembles having a successful marriage and family, and it is quite special

If what I am saying is just common sense, then why is what you have to say "quite special"?

In all sincerity, it sounds like you're just talking out of your ass. The world exists around you, not inside your own mind. You are no more or less special than me.

i didnt claim what i said is special. i said that a particular relationship is special, a family relationship, and particularly that of marriage. i also think that this claim is common sense, and hope it continues to be common sense

Sure, you can have a bunch of friends and sex partners.

Those can never fulfill what a life partner is.

Friends are great. Casual sex can be great. Neither of those give you someone who is so close to you they become part of your identity.

Casual sex especially can be deceiving if one person is using that as a vehicle for emotional investment and the other isn't. That's how people get deeply hurt.

Relationships end. Even the most loved partner eventually dies. Your friendships and casual sex friend relationships probably end more frequently, are shorter and never have the chance for depth.

Maybe you find the right person and get deep quickly, but that's like giving up a savings account hoping to win the lottery.

You are assuming that my social experiences are shallow. They are not.

You know that sex is not exclusive to intimacy. Do you know that intimacy is not exclusive to sex?

I have found the right person many times. I don't stop when I find them. That's like putting all of your investment into one stock.

Maybe you did win the lottery. That's great! Should I be expecting the same experience? I don't.

> Casual sex especially can be deceiving if one person is using that as a vehicle for emotional investment and the other isn't. That's how people get deeply hurt.

That's what a lot of marriages are. The only resolution to this situation is communication.

Why is that communication difficult? We have a strong social expectation for exclusive romantic commitment. To pursue non-committed romance is to break that social expectation. It's difficult, but not impossible.

We would all be better off without that expectation. If people felt free to pursue casual relationships, they would be more likely to self-select away from the dating pool of serious-commitment seekers.

Instead, we have people being dishonest and subversive about their relationship goals, because they feel it is the only way to fulfill their need for sex and intimacy. They end up in a relationship with someone who depends on their commitment, but that very commitment is a lie: a lie told to the other person, and often even to themselves.

Friendships outlast romantic relationships on a consistent basis. Ask anyone who has ever gone through a break up. I'd also consider that there is an entire universe of romantic relationships between "life partner" and "casual sex", and it's between those two extremes that most relationships exist.

> There is more than one kind of relationship!

Trying to equate them all as relationships is a misdirection. Relationships with your friends, parents, children, and spouse are not going to be comparable ever. They each have their place. We are trying to flatten them out to how they make us feel. This is an obtuse hammer for an intricately shaped interior.

Example: children are about the future, friendships are not commitments, parents are a compass, spouse is life insurance. (I am simplifying to make a point.)

If you try to expect your spouse to give you the same feeling like your parents do or your children do, that’s a disaster. If you try to think of your spouse in the same way as your friend that’s a disaster too. Spouses require commitments. Friends require recognition. Children require care. Parents require service.

Reality is that much of society has forgotten what a spouse is supposed to be and tries to reinterpret it as friendship. It’s the reason why we are so broken.

> Example: children are about the future, friendships are not commitments, parents are a compass, spouse is life insurance. (I am simplifying to make a point.)

If you're simplifying you're missing the point of this. But I suspect you're not just simplifying to make a point, but this is actually what you believe.

Maybe you've never had a really close friendship that you've felt obligated to keep alive. That requires work to fix something about it. It's absolutely a commitment. You can make any level of commitment to anyone. It's not a sexual commitment, but for example how many people have you wronged if you sleep with a friend's spouse? It's not just your own spouse.

You've also wronged your friend in that. And I can tell you, if you have children, that the fallout from that likely means you've wronged your children. The same act functionally affects all of those people in a similarly meaningful way. That makes them all reasonably commitments in the same way that you see marriage as a commitment.

There are pieces of a friendship that you are agreeing to or the friendship will end. That makes it a much weaker contract, but also means it requires a lot more work to keep alive. Parents/family are the opposite of that. Because the contract of parenthood/family is so strong, it's a lot less work to keep that bond well. But you can absolutely fuck it up and cut people loose.

> felt obligated to keep alive

Back to the point made before, relationships are being defined as feelings like feeling obligated to keep it alive. You are kind of bottling the definition of relationships to just "feelings" and ignoring relationships formed with explicit terms, like marriages are made.

Some relationships are defined by blood and some by a contract (like a marriage contract) and others by history. Some relationships are friendly. Some relationships are self-serving and when the needs are met or if they change, the relationship disappears. Virtually all non-blood relationships are bound by an implicit "trade". If the trade ceases, the relationship disappears.

The rest of the points you made are lost on me. I don't know which direction you are going in. It might be etiquette and courtesy, which are governing principles of respect. And respect is also a form of trade.

Yeah, first off there's nothing special about "blood" relationships. It's just the people you grew up around, so you're more partial to those people, because time in = time out.

My siblings and I aren't close because we're related. The proof of that is my parents and I aren't close. They rely too much on thinking they don't have to show up for the relationship because "they created/raised me." My siblings, friends and romantic relationships know I could end the relationship if I'm unhappy with it. They are all the same, and all invested in it. They don't think they deserve anything special from me. They know they have to earn it.

I don't feel obligation to keep these relationships alive. I just do because I've gotten good things out of them in the past. If you think there's something special about the contract of marriage... I gotta tell you, that divorce is a thing.

There is no difference between any of these. I can join or leave any of these relationships as I like, and I do for the same reasons. Maybe not the exact same reasons, but the same general reasons of "I'm getting less out than I am putting in".

Depending on the laws of the state you live in, divorce is not exactly a thing you can pick off a shelf.

Sorry that your world is so deeply broken where blood relationships don’t mean anything to you. Family is family and that matters more than friendships. Even if you find greater acceptance in other social circles, family is always going to be different.

Joining and leaving relationships isn’t the only kind of relationship that exist. Some are bonds that you cannot break. Some are contracts that you enter into. And some are transient and fleeting, like you described.

Virtually all relationships are a trade. No trade means no relationship.

1. Yeah, so? Different people live in different states. That doesn't make my point about divorce less valid. 2. Who said my world is so deeply broken? That feels like an unnecessary assessment to force your worldview to match why my outlook is so different from yours. Frankly it's a little rude. I have meaningful familial bonds. They aren't inherently different from friendships just because they're family. I am closer to my siblings because we all understand that there is nothing more special about our bond than what we have already put into our relationship (which is a lot). I have less of a relationship with my parents because they don't understand this. I live a pretty happy and good life as I see it, partially because I've learned this. 3. Every bond is breakable, it's just that the more you put into it, the harder it is to break (or more extreme the action that would break it).

4. I don't know what you mean by all relationships are a trade, but it's the most similar thing I see to my other assessments except that you have a strange carveout for points 1-3.

You are too young to know any better. And too angry to understand what everyone is saying to you. You make your own world of explanations to feel like everything is ok.

This person is angry at you. This is because you are being rude to them.

But this single conversation isn't representative of the entire rest of their life! Just because they are angry with you does not mean they are angry with everyone else! If you can't see that, it's because you are a narcissist.

You think what you are saying is what everyone is saying? On the contrary! I'm a person, and I'm right here saying something else!

> You make your own world of explanations to feel like everything is ok.

We've just illustrated that is what you are doing right here. This is a pretty clear-cut case of projection.

Are you just too old to know any better? I don't buy that sentiment at all: if you can read, you can learn.

And obviously you are angry too. Whether it be at me or at someone else, rationality does not follow. The subject triggers. The disagreeable responses trigger. At this point, the best thing to do is disengage.

> Whether it be at me or at someone else, rationality does not follow.

Nah, I'm angry with you, as a rational reaction to your narcissism. You should do something about that.

Rationality does not follow.

You seem to think you're an emotionless robot. And I think I have found that the people who think they are emotionless rational robots, are the must subject to the whims of emotions.

Something to consider working on...

At minimum, a person should be capable of keeping their emotions separate when drafting text.

If you can’t, that’s something to work on.

I mean, I'm not taking advice on this from you. You have done nothing to convince me you're worth listening to.

same can be said vice versa.

lol, wasn't angry to begin with, but I definitely was angered by the dismissive response. Like if I'm giving them the time of day, it would be nice of them to at least pretend like they're gonna give it to me...

> And too angry to understand what everyone is saying to you.

Just gonna jump in here and say, I was not angry in this post. So that's just a wrong assessment...

> You are too young to know any better.

I don't know how old you are, but if your argument depends on me being in a specific age range, I'm going to guess you're too conceited to have an actual conversation with. In practice, I think the signs of this were there from the start but I engaged anyways, so that's my bad. But uhh, stop being rude on the internet? It sounds like you should know better for however old you might be...

I too have felt “not angry” even when I was. It was cloaked in something else far more damaging to personal growth. I feel you suffer from the same.

Careful you don't hurt yourself getting down from that high horse of yours. I guess alternatively you could just keep living up there, but it sounds lonely.

OOC, what in the initial message makes you think I was angry when I'm telling you I was not? (Oh all-knowing-being who can tell me what's inside my head that I cannot even see)

the other person also thought you were angry.

You said it first, they were responding. That's not an answer to the question.

they still thought you were angry.

Right, the question was, "what made you think I was angry?"

> Trying to equate them all as relationships is a misdirection. Relationships with your friends, parents, children, and spouse are not going to be comparable ever.

Certainly not with that attitude!

I don't require commitment, therefore I am not interested in a spouse.

Remember: I am not you.

You are human. And humans are social creatures. Every human requires five social elements: Communication, Mentorship, Teamwork, Dependence, and Servitude. Commitment is just a framework holding some or all of the five elements.

It's "a" framework, not "the" framework. Therein lies my entire point.

Your argument was, you are not me. But you are.

I'm so confused how this could be the case unless you're actually arguing with yourself across 2 different accounts.

The alternative is definitely that you don't understand that people are different from you, which is pretty wild to me.

Obviously the individual is unique. Nevertheless some common rules pervade across all individualisms. The OP tried to argue certain rules don’t apply to everyone because everyone is different. I think the OP is wrong on which rules don’t apply. Social creatures are social, and even if a person is an unsocial natural hermit, that person still must be a social creature. No form of individualism or uniqueness can take that away. The OP tried to argue he was different. We are the same.

Relationship isn't what we are

You don't see it this way, but unfortunately, "traditional" marriage & gender roles, including having lots of kids has become an ID pol issue for political conservatives and the religious right. In the past, we see conservatives attacks on abortion and espousal of replacement theory. Very recently, we've seen legislation come up to try and do away with no-fault divorce. Also see the tradwife movement.

I'm intimately familiar with this reality. I'm here to confront it.

that is apparent from your comments.

Thanks for the advice. By the way, how old are you?

Heh. Let's revisit this in a decade.

Is that what you would have told me if I said I was 19?

Surely if age has made you so much more wise, you would be prepared to express that wisdom.

On the other hand, if age has inflated your ego to the point you are unwilling to even consider a different perspective, then why are you here?

I'm absolutely able to consider a different perspective! I simply disagree with you. Maybe in ten years, I will have changed my mind. Who knows? We'll see.

If that's the case, then what are you waiting for?

I can understand you disagreeing with me. That's fine.

But where is the substance of that disagreement? All I see right now is indifference: you have discounted my opinion, not rejected it.

The purpose of discussions like this is objectivity: we don't need to wait around to be proven wrong when we can confront the ideas head on now.

You are absolutely right! I'm not even engaging. That's because you're 29, and I have the illusion that I know a few things you don't, which can be got into your head (if they can at all - some people are born fools) only by experience, not by argument.

> As advanced countries' systems for marriage and child-rearing continue to fail

US divorce rates are at a 50-year low.

That's not a complete argument though (not to say the conclusion's wrong, I have no idea) - what's happened to marriage, non-divorce separation, death, and birth rates?

Marriage rates are also there, so that statistic is not really that surprising.

Most of the people who would have been getting divorced in the 1970s, today look like a relationship that fails after a few months or years, before reaching the point where they would have decided to get married.

US marriage rates are at a 120 year low.

> As advanced countries' systems for marriage and child-rearing continue to fail, there is a constant demand for cope.

Make childcare not a choice between living in poverty and not, and people will have children again. Many of my generation including myself can't afford children despite us wanting to.

The worst problem is obviously housing costs and cost of living in general, coupled with wage stagnation. We don't want women to be stay-at-home mothers for good reasons, but society as it is hasn't caught up with that - not to mention it's financially impossible. Our parents generally could afford that, as even simple factory jobs paid enough for a good home (that they owned and could build equity for themselves by mortgage, no less) and the mother to stay at home to actually raise the children.

The US also has the problems of healthcare cost and a rise of anti-abortion laws that place the life of a fetus before the life of the mother, I can completely understand anyone not wishing to risk death from childbirth.

The thing is that even countries with excellent social safety nets and childcare benefits (like northern and western europe) have seen their birth rate fall in the last 50 years. In fact the most common correlation is that as countries get richer & more prosperous, birthrates drop.

50 years also roughly aligns with the development of chemical birth control.

> We don't want women to be stay-at-home mothers for good reasons, but society as it is hasn't caught up with that

I don't think we should want women to be anything in particular. Saying they shouldn't be stay at home mums is wrong, just as saying that men shouldn't be stay-at-home dads is wrong, if they can afford to be. And society has caught up in the sense that house prices are driven up by bids from two-person incomes.

> We don't want women to be stay-at-home mothers for good reasons, but society as it is hasn't caught up with that

not all women—my wife, for example—agree with this sentiment.

we bought a house and got married, but my income alone is not enough to pay our mortgage, bills, food, etc.

we want to have children as soon as possible, but unfortunately we don't know when that will be, purely due to financial constraints.

in the meantime, my wife must work to supplement our income to keep us afloat, and to accumulate some savings for having children later on.

I'm a full-time-employed programmer for our local school district. in an ideal world, my salary alone would be enough to support raising a family. but, today, this is not the case.

fortunately, we may have a solution that could work for us, as it's presently working for a close friend: have the wife run a small, in-home daycare for a few other children, in addition to taking care of our own.

it's a less-than-ideal solution—we'd love to have the mother of our children spend her full time and attention on just our own kids—but that's not really feasible in today's society, unless you are lucky to have generational wealth or some such.

and, of course, this is all from the perspective of someone who doesn't have any sort of temporal limit on my ability to procreate—I can only try my best to understand how my wife feels, living through her prime fertility years anxiously waiting for the Right Time To Birth Children, purely based on financial constraints.

but anyway, believe it or not, there are women out there who would love to do nothing else but raise children and take care of the family home, while the husband provides income through work. it's really unfortunate that we've chosen, as a society, to sideline the desires that these women have for their lives, which were the unquestioned societal norm only a few short generations ago.

> Make childcare not a choice between living in poverty and not, and people will have children again.

If you're a resident of a developed country in the year 2023, I guarantee you that the vast majority of your ancestors were poorer when they had their children than you will be if you have children now.

>. What if we learned to love being single?

Now, you may not need to be married as per how it's defined by the state, but there are some number of benefits especially related to health when it comes to long term partnership. Trying to say being single is fine, then dying a few years younger may not be the best way to evangelize your idealism.

Seems like you're making assumptions about the way the causation flows here.

There's 2-3+ groups of unpartnered people though.

- Wanted to be partnered - unsuccessful at finding that long-term partnership.

- People who didn't want to be partnered - and there's likely subgroups here:

- People who aren't desiring of much social contact at all.

- People who are highly social but not desiring that long-term romantic partnership, and have a lot of relationships of varying degrees of attachment throughout their lives and strong social ties to others - including close friendships.

------

Most literature I've seen on the "unmarried people die younger" doesn't really seem to look at anything beyond maybe splitting the never married | divorced | widowed groups.

It can be a true statement for that as a whole but not necessarily true for the "unmarried by choice with an extensive network of close friendships + social connections" group being suggested by the article and by most "learn to love being single" people.

They likely don't look a whole lot like the lives of the "unsuccessful at finding a partner" or "dislike social contact" groups.

------

To counter-argue myself though - the average number of close friends + social connections has been shrinking overall in the population. I don't know if it's great advice for the average person, since they're objectively doing worse at building those possible alternative connections than prior generations. And I'm not sure it's because they're too laser-focused on a partnership.

What if fixing friendship fixed marriage as well in an indirect way that is difficult to predict or accept now?

I think it’s deeply sad that people expect to be consumed by a marriage as a culmination of their social life, rather than having it be just one of multiple co-equal familial relationships. (Close friends, relatives.)

Framing this as “cope” (why the Reddit language?) just spits in the face of friendship.

Is it the collective version of listening to an alcoholic explain why he doesn't have a problem, or the version of an air-breather explaining why breathing air isn't a problem?

Humans are social creatures. Meaningful interaction is literally as important as eating, drinking water, and breathing. We don't say we're addicted to those things; those things are just necessary for life (well, I suppose with eating there's shades of gray).

The concept of "exclusively pairing off with a romantic partner" is one of the most pervasive and universal patterns across all of humanity. Any culture. Any location. Any time. There are exceptions (polyamory shows up every once in a while), but they're vanishingly rare compared to the norm. Its not just cultural; its absolutely biological. Some would say its related to reproductive drive, but what's fascinating to me is: wouldn't one male / multiple female polyamory maximally optimize reproductive outcomes? I'm content in saying: I don't know why, but pairing is absolutely a biological need.

Loving yourself is important and great. But that's different from "loving being single". There's a long list of human needs, and there's really strong arguments that trying to shed them will just force you to look to fill that void elsewhere, sometimes worse (the most compelling one I've heard is how religion fills an amorphous-need-for-spirituality in humans, and without it we've turned to spiritualizing things like tech companies / cars / capitalism in general).

Biological necessities for life != institutions that a majority of people participate in within most historical/cultural contexts.

There have always been adults who never paired off into romantic partnerships. Not so with breathing.

Most of our problems are too-many-people problems. So I think your metaphor is upside down. It's the sober guy trying to convince the alcoholics that partying sober is actually fine.

I'm in a relationship now, but I spent a vast majority of my life single. And the thing I learned from being single, was how to be okay with myself and love myself in spite of the world thinking I was "broken" for being alone. I feel strongly that this independence has fostered a confidence and understanding in all of my relationships that makes me a better person.

And I feel this way because I see people all the time who are the opposite of this. They have to be in a relationship. The moment someone is out of a relationship, they have no coping mechanism for it, until they get into their next relationship. They take no time to process it. They are dependent on the relationship, and can't function without it. I have seen this from men and women. These people disappear when they're in a relationship. Like, I have friends who are only my friend when they're single.

That's not healthy. That's people conflating sex with being loved/important, (and I can absolutely confirm I've seen people do that as part of this). If you don't know what loving/being loved is, it's real easy to assume that whatever you experience that's closest to it is what it is.

There's a Daniel Sloss quote that "If you only love yourself 20% someone can come along and love you 40%, and you'll think 'WOW that's so much that you love me', but it's literally less than half of you that you love. Your self esteem is just so low that you're letting people love you less than you should." (Paraphrased). That's what we risk in people not learning to be okay with themselves as a single people.

I feel like I'm living in the other side of that coin.

I have a great relationship with my self. I'm not enough to fulfill all of my needs.

I'm great at platonic intimacy. I'm super empathetic, and can (and do) get into deeply meaningful friendships very quickly. Sex isn't in this picture.

If I honestly wanted to, I have no doubt that I could find a serious committed romantic relationship. I don't want to. I know that because I know myself.

What I'm good at has solved many, but unfortunately not all, of my problems.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's impossible. But I think it's a lot harder to learn to love yourself if you're always depending on external validation.

I have long questioned the "deeply meaningful friendships very quickly" thing.

A while back I set up a model of relationships that's something like a probability cloud. When you first meet someone they have whatever your standard probability cloud is of actions they might take. The only way someone can really hurt you is by acting outside of that probability cloud. As you get to know someone the list of actions that you expect in their probability cloud changes pretty dramatically.

I have a 'friend' who isn't a close friend, but I was friends with both him and his partner. He cheated on his partner (probably, I don't know for sure, but it's sorta moot, and I believe that he did). And I remained friends with both of them, in spite of feeling like this was a really shitty thing for him to do, because at the end of the day it wasn't really outside of what I expected for him. He didn't wrong me, because he consistently acted in the way I expected him to.

That said, I also don't have a deep friendship with him, because at a certain point I realized that it wasn't the kind of friendship I would want with him.

My relationship with my self is just fine without external validation. It's in my relationship with everyone else where that comes into play.

Your friend broke a commitment to your other friend. In doing so, they proved a level of disrespect to commitment itself, and that damaged their friendship with you.

But what if they didn't make the commitment in the first place? What if they knew that they wouldn't be any good at monogamy, and said so upfront? Could they have avoided this entire situation, and upholded a respect for commitment; all without changing their behavior?

Our society has an implicit expectation that romantic relationships be based on commitment. That's not the only thing a relationship can be built on: your relationship with your friend was based on respect.

I want to build my own romantic relationships on respect instead of commitment. Is that really such a batshit insane idea? If not, I could really use some external validation.

No, I think that's pretty reasonable framework for any relationship.

TBC, I'm still friends with the person, probably because I never respected them for their commitment to others in a romantic relationship in the first place. I also don't have any strong feelings to uphold monogamy, so I definitely need to have an expectation that someone cares about monogamy before that's something I will judge them against. While I think this person definitely subscribed to the cultural norm around monogamy, nothing about their personality told me they were invested in it.

Looking at it through your framework of respect, I didn't feel like they lost my respect for cheating on their romantic partner, because I didn't really respect them enough in the first place to think they wouldn't. :D

It definitely wouldn't be how I would approach respect for a romantic relationship, but I also would just never be in a romantic relationship with the kind of person that I hold in such low regards.

Someday, maybe we'll figure out that maybe age-old institutions -- marriages, families, churches, communities, nations -- have irreplaceable roles for the well-being of humanity.

agree with most of those, but nations are a relatively new concept. Till 100-200 years ago in most regions, people had little loyalty to the concept of a nation. They were more loyal to their tribe, religion etc

More like 300-400 years, but sure.

You can see it as the modern extension of the tribe (lingual dialect, culture, religion), but over a greater area due to homogenization.

(Though perhaps we have gone too far in that respect...the USA in particular is a very large diverse country.)

We'll probably collapse first.

The question is--will the market self-correct, or will it stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent?

I 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.

Not everyone gets that lucky, though.

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.

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.

I 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.

> 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!

That's a super interesting perspective, I hadn't thought about that -- thank you for sharing!

I also think the focus on romantic sexual relationships as the only viable path to support and love creates a lot of neuroses that ironically make partnering harder. People are obsessed with their looks, get jealous over their romantic partners' attention, etc. In the lesbian and gay community, it's also common to either deal with abusive relationships or commit too early because unless you're in a large city, this might be your only chance at partnering and if partnering is your only chance to be loved or supported, you just put up with it. (Bisexuals usually just date the opposite sex).

There are certainly benefits to having your 'person' be your sexual partner: Sex helps with intimacy and hopefully creates a part of your life where you associate each other with pleasure. If you're of opposite sexes, you can have children that reflect both of you which makes parenting easier. It can also compensate for weaknesses in one's family or community of origin: somebody leaving a cult can find love.

But there are benefits to other types of primary relationships as well. For me and my sister, for example:

- No worries about the bedroom. We don't have to worry about staying sexy enough, our partners losing attraction to us, etc. Sex drives change over time and are finicky and hard to control.

- We've literally known each other our entire lives. You can find this in a romantic partner but most people aren't marrying people they've known since they were four years old.

- Related to the above, we come from the same environment and have a lot of the same touchstones which makes communication way easier. Instead of having to explain my entire childhood history and why I would be reacting a certain way to something, I can just say, "You're being like Mom. :( " and it's automatically understood.

- Sibling bonds aren't dissolvable and are relationships of equals. You can hate your sibling, but you're always siblings. Marriages and romantic partnerships end. Parental bonds have power dynamics encoded in them.

- Practically, us living together and pooling resources allows for maximization of inter-generational wealth building. Whatever our parents have - if anything - when they pass won't be split.

I agree with your take here. I have a partner that anyone in this thread would label as a #1 but my two siblings are essentially on the same plane of intimacy. If my partner left my life for whatever reason, I'd still have my siblings and while losing someone is hard it wouldn't destroy me because of that support. Its a fairly normal dynamic in my family. I had two uncles who lived together their whole lives, even through relationships that didn't end up working out even though they had children. My grandmother lived in the same apartment building as her brother for 30 years and her other two siblings lived in the same neighborhood. Her husband (my grandfather) died a few years into their marriage and her siblings (who never got married) always fulfilled the role that a partner would play.

That doesn't always happen though. I feel the most lonely when I'm alone with my wife. We can only have a back and forth conversation on topics that interest her, or the day to day of the house/kids, anything outside those things is just never discussed or is a one-way conversation that just dies.

I was friendless and grew up with the same 15 boys until the end of highschool, never fit in. Married the first girl who showed me attention, because whatever she had going on was better than the nothing social life I had. Breaking up with her would put me back being the lonely awkward kid at my parents house.

So now two kids and a mortgage later... realizing that being married to a 2/10 friend is very lonely. The Venn diagram of what I like to think and talk about covers what she likes to think and talk about, but we never talk about or do almost anything in my section of the diagram.

Apparently this problem has been happening since time immemorial - from a This is Love podcast...

Phoebe Judge: Many people say the first ever advice column started in the 1690s in England in a publication called The Athenian Mercury. People wrote in with very big questions like, is there a large part of the world still left to discover? The answer was just one word — yes. Someone wrote, “Who are wisest, those who marry for love or for convenience?” The answer was:

There is no degree of wisdom in either, but they're both fools if they marry for one without the other. Love without the necessary conveniences of life will soon wear threadbare. And conveniences without love are no better than being chained to a post for the sake of a little meat, drink, and clothing. But if we compare the small degrees of each together, much love and moderate convenience is far better than the most plentiful estate with little or no love.

Dude, this isn't "normal".

"I'm most lonely when I'm alone with my wife" -- that is not healthy or good. I don't think your situation is applicable to the OP.

As a counter, I feel most comfortable when I am alone with my wife. She is my best friend.

Same. My girlfriend of going on 7 years is whom I'm most comfortable around.

Haven't popped the question yet because, a)I want to build my business first, and b) in my experience and observations at least 5 years of dating someone is great for knowing if things will be good going into the future. Know too many who have rushed into failed marriages, and only a few who rushed into successful ones

>Dude, this isn't "normal".

That is debatable. What's not debatable is that it's not healthy. Unfortunately a lot of marriages are not healthy so what is 'good' and what is 'normal' significantly differ.

I grew up around a lot of evangelical religious people and there was a massive amount of pressure on people to get married. Conversely there was no pressure to make sure you got along with the people and were going to be happy. This lead to pretty much all my friends having short marriages that ended in divorce.

Marriages are like diets. Some people eat healthily and get the benefits from it, a lot of people have no idea how to eat healthily and suffer because of it.

It may not be "normal" but it's pretty common.

Congrats.

Yeah but then again why would your marry and commit to a "2/10 friend" who doesn't share anything with you ?

I know a couple who have been together for close to 20 years, they love being together, talking together, going out together, &c. and they're just thinking about getting married now, and they're only doing it to simplify some paperwork for something unrelated

Marriage isn't a checkbox, it's an option if you find the right person and want to legally bind your things to their things in case of death/disease/&c.

When you've never had a really close friend or someone really care about you, 2/10 seems pretty nice in the beginning.

In most cases it doesn't start out that way. Either the relationship feels stronger than it really is because you haven't had many relationships in the past, or the relationship drifts apart over time as people grow, or some of both.

In my case I thought we had a lot of shared interests, but after a few years into the marriage my wife had decided that she really liked the idea of those things more than the reality, or that it was just a (nearly decade long) phase she was going through. We still get along well enough personality wise, but we can't find anything for us to do together. Our relationship feels more like good roommates than a marriage.

At the same time I can't really think of any good reason why we should end it. We don't fight hardly at all. Neither of us want kids, so that isn't an issue. AFIAK, I'm not craving another romantic relationship. If we were roommates, I wouldn't want to kick her out. So we just continue on with her being one friend among many.

Are you you me?

Marriage is more than that. Marriage is a contract of obligations. On that contract, is a foundation for everything else like inheritance, leadership, responsibility.

A marital relationship without leadership and responsibility is not a “functional” relationship even if it works well.

She probably sees it differently than you do. Because when she wants socialization or interaction with you, she gets it.

"S does what she wants and J deals with the consequences" is one of my common sayings - and you're right, me saying that makes no sense to her.

We have differing levels of desire to do things with other people. When we're in a group setting, she's an extrovert - but it drains her. At home she's always been happy with a book, puzzle, or now, doing sudoku or a paint-by-number app on her phone. I find the paint by number app maddening - it'll take a picture of a parrot and subdivide it into thousands of squares. You pick a shade of green, track down and touch all the squares that are that color - and then pick another color - track down and touch all those squares.... She's done hundreds of these and the end result is just a picture on her phone. I suspect autism, but she's super verbal and outgoing which I think masks it.

I like what Steven Covey writes: "Love is a verb".

I find that both my wife and myself, and myself and my kids get closer by doing things together that we all enjoy. This ranges from trying out a new restaurant in town, to going to a museum or themepark we all enjoy, to going on holidays.

What I am trying to say is that experiencing things together may help you bond more and experience pleasant feelings together.

That's part of our struggle. We had an unexpected gift of $1,000 as an anniversary present from her parents. We have free childcare available anytime we want it. We had the entire summer of 2021 to find and go do something together that we could both enjoy. We didn't come up with anything.

We're compatible roommates, but we have very different languages of play. I like to explore, she prefers to stay home - if you gave her a choice of 'the same thing we did that you enjoy' or 'the new thing that you might not enjoy or is mildly inconvenient' - she'll choose 'the same thing' every time.

We've had kid-free Friday nights for years, we've only went for a 1 mile walk around the neighbourhood less than 5 times, never left our small town to go to something. Most date nights are spent sitting on the couch and failing at choosing a movie or show we'll both enjoy.

She did say I could pickout the movie once, no complaints. So I chose Airplane. She said, oh, I don't want to watch that - which then kills any Airplane related jokes you could ever make. Pinocchio was also rejected as being too weird. She'll watch entire seasons of TV shows, on her phone with headphones in, as she does work around the house. She made a reference once that a song sounded like the theme to XXXX show. She'd watched all 5 seasons and I'd never even heard of the name of it.

So, ya. Find things to do together has been well explored.

that sucks man

> realizing that being married to a 2/10 friend is very lonely

Piece of advice:

One (or both) of you will significantly change your personality and interests, or you will split.

Figure out which option you prefer.

How about a $800 mortgage on a $1 million house and $2,500/month buys you a one bedroom basement apartment 45 minutes away from where your kids and ex-wife live. Or both of you sell and split the house and now live in an apartment building in different areas of town instead of in the single family home beside the park where your kids grew up....

It's lonely, but financially and logistically splitting up is unaffordable.

So. Option 3. Stay and regret it 'til my dying day.

Whether your life as you describe it is normal or not I don't know. I'd say it isn't among most couples based on my experience at least, but even if I'm wrong by virtue of anecdote, it's definitely not good, remotely healthy or remotely a recipe for how to continue during the one single life you have.

I'd suggest doing everything in your power, even if it means completely breaking your obviously well-fortified comfort zones of personal conduct, to change how you live your own life. Find new activities for yourself, try to meet new people (friends I mean, but don't exclude the possibility of someone that sparks your romantic side) and create a new personal internal and external dynamic of interesting experiences for your mind and body. Work at these persistently, and if after having made progress in these things, you still can't make yourself connect with your wife on some deeper level that goes beyond the banal nightmare your describe, then leave her. You will be cushioned at least somewhat, by having already made inroads into your own self-improvement over the life you've lived so far and the type of life you described from before meeting her.

The economic costs of this will be heavy maybe, but they're nothing compared to, as you say in another reply, living like this "till your dying day", because that would be a miserable day indeed and at the end of a whole miserable life of missed opportunity for new textures of experience that were likely always within your reach.

Having children certainly complicates the above, but you absolutely can escape your situation and still work to keep a good relationship with your kids. Millions of divorced people do it over a lifetime, and usually without major traumas or loss of quality experiences with their own kids.

I don't really get this. I'm a 'wife guy' too, but I have no fear of the idea of having other close relationships. Obviously there are elements of my relationship with my wife that are exclusive to that arrangement, but almost by definition, having strong social ties to more people cannot hurt you.

What the parent is describing is not a "close" relationship, it's probably more binding.

To pull out weird analogies, a mother and a fetus share the same system, they're different people but work as a single unit and need to survive together. I think some marriages are in that level of symbiotic relationship, and when it works it's incredible, when it fails it's really really messy.

But it's pretty hard to explain to people that you're seeing the other person as an extension of yourself and think of their well being literally as your own.

You're correct, here. We're so close as to be one, which is wild. We are actual extensions of one-another, infinitely on the same page. It's really good stuff.

The mother does not depend on the fetus for survival.

Perhaps not, but to answer Cher's question in the negative, I don't really believe in life after love. It really does feel like we're made for each-other, and I don't really want to experience life without her. She makes it all worth it.

Most people don't know otherwise. For much of history family was secondary to public life

In what country? By public life, do you mean politics?

You don't necessarily have to get that close to other people. But your wife probably shouldn't be your only friend, either - or you hers. You can squeeze the life out of a relationship trying to make it the one and only thing in your life. People can't be that to other people.

Instead, have your wife be your best friend. That's wonderful! But also have other friends. Keep making new ones as old ones drift away. And keep the friendship with your wife alive.

I 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.

This 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.

Part of this normative coupling of "number one" is incorrectly weighting sex as the most important (or even a top 3 thing in our life)[1].

Tim Keller (whom recently passed away) wrote an excellent book "The meaning of marriage" in which he points out that one of the primary functions of such an intimate relationship is to have a safe space/mirror to discover ones flaws (our own, not our partners). The bonding mechanisms of sexuality can make it so that we can have that level of vulnerability (we're bonded are less likely to leave, and less likely to be rational / play political games). It's a religious book and uses the word sin, but I think it's fairly secularly compatible if you can simply read it through the lens of "Sin" meaning "Stuff about me that sucks" ... If you think you have none, then humility is the thing you lack.

[1] I'd say health, purpose, and emotionally supportive community (or for some, "family") are more important than having "good" sex, or even sex at all.

I think you will have serious eggshells to walk across when faced with simulating the kinds of issues every married couple has to go through.

Once your romantic relationship involves one or more children it feels like it would be hard for it to be second or co-equal to other relationships. If we reframed this to, like, “dad spends most of his time with his buddies instead of his family” I doubt judgments would be favorable.

> I have a cohabiting sexual partner.

That's a girlfriend.

Its like saying I have mechanical machine which uses 4 tires to move forward, its a car.

Even disregarding gender issue (it may also be boyfriend, or one wants to use gender-neutral term), girlfriend/boyfriend generally implies romantic involvement, while cohabiting sexual partner could be just cohabiting FWB without romantic part.

I suspect people who reject this silly notion tend to still get slapped in the face with it. As in the article, when you are forging another relationship with someone else, their attitude and opinions about your existing relationship are going to matter. When something goes wrong, they can't just ignore your other relationships, they'll have to form some kind of opinion as to how they factor in. It is straightforward to feel threatened by them.

If you have 3 people with strong relationships (between at least 2 of the pairs), you have a classic triangle. If there is a two-person activity and A chooses to do it with B, and C wanted to do it with A, then there is some level of conflict.

I'm not saying it's an impossible situation by any means. The triangle problem only comes up when the interests of the pairwise relationships overlap. (If C hates watching Gerbils On Fire, then C is unlikely to be bothered by A and B binging season 3.) But they'll often overlap at least somewhat. (C was hoping to watch Knitting With The Rats that same evening.) And it's not like pairwise relationships lack similar problems, so you don't need to compare to perfect.

It's just that "giving up on this silly notion" isn't enough to erase the problems. A may not raise his relationship with B over that with C, but there will still be situations where both relationships can't occupy the same space or time.

As 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!

Also: "work spouse"

https://www.google.com/search?q=work+spouse

Immortalized in King of Queens S1E20!

I had a bunch of those! Finding one is a necessity, if you ask me.

It'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.

That 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.

Indeed. There's a huge gap between an identity that you apply to yourself and an identity that is wielded against you. The labels used to be "normal" vs "illegal", and you can still see weaponized labels being chucked around ("groomer" and "paedo" especially).

It's the gap between being forced to wear a pink star as a prelude to being taken to a concentration camp vs in a freer society choosing to wear one.

I think this is an interesting hypothesis considering that many non-heterosexual sexual orientations have only been given concrete labels in the past ~100-150 years, and non-cis gender identities in the last ~50-100 years despite them all existing in some form throughout history.

>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.

I think where I would differ in your reasoning this isn't just that people don't identify or want to be labeled as something, it's they don't want to be caught in the negative stigmas and social outcastings around these identities that have sprung up in the last ~100-150 years

I think there has been a terrible loss that is rarely acknowledged in that men in the western world can no longer have intimate friendships without having to defend their sexual orientation. Seinfeld's "Not that there's anything wrong with that" became a catchphrase for a reason but the line of thinking still exists.

I watched the "Tollywood" film RRR and it was startling and refreshing how much affection the two main male characters showed for each other. I don't know how Indian audiences reacted to it, but I guarantee that a lot of American viewers thought "so they're supposed to be gay, right?" The idea that male affection is merely a cover for closeted sexual attraction is pervasive in US culture.

It is one of my longstanding pain points, as my favorite authors ( Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Wodehouse ) show unabashedly close relationships between male characters and all my life I've heard insistences that the characters are actually gay and the authors were too repressed/cowardly to say so. It's tragic and I wish it was talked about more.

Men are under so much pressure to bottle up their feelings, and I think the negative side-effects of that are around us.

Doesn't it go the same way when you had to defend male/female relationships as "just friends" and people would blanket deny that such thing could even exist in this world ?

I think the cat's out of the bag, and as a society we'll have to make peace with people mislabeling relationships and keep in mind that it's always complicated.

It depends on how successfully people are "making peace". In the US, I think a lot of bad things are happening because a lot of men can't meet the expectations that they think society has put on them. They are afraid to seem feminine or gay because they're afraid of the reaction around them, and maybe justifiably afraid considering the laws being enacted where they live.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/03/against-heterose...

<<There are practical reasons to be wary of heterosexuality as well. Because our post-Freudian world associates all physical attraction and interpersonal affection with genital erotic desire, intimate same-sex friendship and a chaste appreciation for the beauty of one’s own sex have become all but impossible to achieve. (Freud, by the way, was one of the most influential architects of the vicious orientation-essentialist myth.)

For “heterosexuals” in particular, getting close to a friend of the same sex ends up seeming perverse, and being moved by his or her beauty feels queer. To avoid being mistaken for gay, these days many self-proclaimed straight people—men especially—settle for superficial associations with their comrades and reserve the sort of costly intimacy that once characterized such chaste same-sex relationships for their romantic partners alone. Their ostensibly normal sexual orientation cheats them out of an essential aspect of human flourishing: deep friendship.>>

When I was working at Starbucks ages ago, my best friend would come on by regularly. We're both tall men.

Coworkers thought I was gay, and had a sexual relationship with him, because it was and still is a strong bond.

In actuality, Im bisexual, and we weren't in a sexual relationship. But men aren't "allowed" to have close bonds with other men. There are exceptions: military, police, mens social clubs (masons, shriners, etc). Outside of those, society thinks you're just gay.

As for me, I don't particularly care what "society" thinks. I'm not going to trade my agency for some vapid "society groupthink". Did I let my coworkers think I'm gay and dating my best friend? Sure did. And it had a cool other effect - women coworkers treated me more like one of 'them', and was much less defensive than around the other men who worked there.

Disclaimer: I do not live in a red state or a red city. My impression is that in red states or red cities you would not have had a the same level of acceptance.

Maybe I read too much sensational media, but the situation seems to be getting worse and worse for men who don't care what society thinks.

To be fair, I was working at the Starbucks in a red state, in a red city.

However I would also agree that overall decorum has definitely deteriorated. It used to be someone who disapproved would either grit their teeth or just leave. Now, I've seen shouting matches over that sort of stuff.

I guess it could always have been that bad, just not for "normies". And now with less decorum, those normally quiet harassment is now blatant and in your face.

I don't think it's just your perception of social media.

I am very much pro-gay in general, but I do wish the community would stop retconning every example they can find into 'actually gay'. I don't mind their headcanons or fan fictions, but there is a layer of meaning you can get from Holmes/Watson if you read it as an intense but non-sexual relationship, of the kind that A. Conan Doyle and his readers would have recognised.

Same for Frodo/Sam, also Tolkien was very religious, so I doubt he intended any sexual subtext.

The phenomenon you describe has gone down two different paths for two different sets of people. In my world, most straight men I bother to associate with are not afraid of showing emotion or admitting to non-masculine traits/experiences or being called gay. I assumed, hopefully, that this was the path the entire country was going down, in terms of male-male relationships. But it seems that has not been the case, and a different segment - one that I don't interact with much - has doubled-down on defining themselves with traditional masculinity and continue to suffer through the whole universe of insecurities that comes with.

Oddly, a lot of “traditional masculinity” actually involves close male friendships. I think the husband/wife as best friends thing is a relatively new development, and the “neo-heteronormativity” of being a “wife guy” or “ride or die girl” is relatively new - see boomer humor that revolves around multiple types of relationship/friendship, wherein a night out with the boys/girls is sacrosanct and the desire to wall off your partners social life to “only people I also want to hang out with” is seen as controlling or gross.

As 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.

Well said - the hierarchy might be the issue, not who happens to be at the top of it.

To 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.

Euro 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.

This 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.

Only 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.

Plenty of Americans stay put, they're just poor, so you are ignorant of them

American 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.

>an idealistic fantasy, not something that really happens much

Marriage as often presented is an idealistic fantasy, not something that really happens much.

Anecdote but I have had the same friends since I was 4. Like kindergarten friends. I have new friends as well but my kindergarten friends know me even better than I know myself. It's awesome every time we hang out. We basically laugh at everything. We learned to laugh with each other and literally created each other's sense of humor and social personality.

I honestly feel so lucky.

One of them moved 6 hours away but we talk and game every week on discord.

I'm from small town canada. People here are notoriously less ambitious than Americans or at least than big city Americans.

The one college friend of mine who moved to silicon valley I don't get along with anymore. He's just tuned to a higher frequency of activity and we can't share time effectively. It's like the SV lifestyle created ADHD in him. We can never just do nothing. We always have to be discussing something "important" or doing something "cool".

Sometimes I like to sit on my deck for an hour and let the thoughts creep by.

I used to feel envious of his wealth, power and prestige. But now that I have a wife and child and can see my distant future, I do not envy him.

> It's like the SV lifestyle created ADHD in him.

I'm not in Silicon Valley, but I am in tech, and I notice myself slipping towards this as well. More and more, I find myself letting the current hot topic of the day run through my mind non-stop, over and over. I am unable to simply take a break from it all. I no longer have the patience to just sit on a deck for an hour with my own thoughts, I have to be reading news articles or learning a new skill or I feel like I am "wasting" my time.

I am envious of you and your kindergarten friends. Most of my high school and college friends have moved away, and I don't reach out to them enough.

Turns out being bored is a skill that needs to be practiced. It’s kind of like mediation except not cool.

I'm almost forced into it now that I'm a parent cause I simply don't have enough energy to do anything. It was kinda hard at first, but now I'm tuned to actually enjoy purely doing nothing. Like we're talking sit on a lawn chair on the deck for 45 minutes at the end of the day before I go to bed.

Have 4 kids. Yes.

Don't fool yourself into thinking NYC represents the US.

Most people don't move away from home in the US.

This doesn’t ring true to me at all. My Irish high school friends have scattered to the winds.

And in my adopted European city everyone I know is from somewhere else. Europe isn’t one thing though maybe where you are your scenario is the norm.

It is true. Only around 60% of Americans reside in the state they were born in.

Whereas the median foreign born population in the EU in total is around 10-15%, and an even smaller percentage of that is internal EU migration.

In both cases it's going to be migration from say New York to New Jersey, or The Netherlands to Belgium. So in terms of tearing up your roots it's not much of a move.

But Americans routinely move from say Miami to Seattle or whatever for a job. Distance-wise that's like Ireland to Greece or Turkey.

We Europeans simply don't do that at the same rate, although it's gradually on the increase.

I’m not sure that’s like for like. Moving state in the US is not comparable with moving between European countries because of linguistic differences.

Moving to another city in the same country is popular. And even in terms of not moving city the image of people settling down in the same part of the city that they grew up and all being near their high school friends is just not reality.

It's not in general, but the topic here is keeping in touch with your friends and family, not the relative culture shock of moving domestically or internationally.

The real metric you'd want is travel time to "home base" in hours. I'm just suggesting that inter-state/country moves are a useful fuzzy approximation of that.

This really is the thing.

Most Americans live within driving distance of where they grew up. 60% within 10 miles, 80% within 100 miles.

Your statistics are for age 26.[1] And 100 miles is not halfway across the country but not nearby.

[1] https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2022/CES-WP-22-27.pdf

I'm in Canada and 750 km from my family and friends I grew up with. Same province. Ontario is vast.

160km sounds pretty close. Near by, even. I can make that drive happen at a much higher frequency than a 750 km drive.

160 km is radius not diameter. But even 160 km is 4 hours roughly for a round trip. Maybe you would drive it every week for a very close friend. Or several friends in a 16 km radius 160 km away from you. But probably you would move closer if they were at the center of your life.

The ultimate is what my childhood friend has done: the entire set of friends minus myself have moved into the same block of flats. Everyone is taking care of each other's kids, they celebrate stuff together in the yard, they catch up with each other every day. Nobody even has a car.

While I’m sure this is charming to some the thought fills me with despair. Horses for courses I guess.

Well, the majority of people don’t actually do that anyway. But yes that’s probably a factor. Then again, I didn’t really want to see anyone I knew in high school again by the time I graduated and I don’t feel that much different now. Being able to start over is a luxury.

As 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

I 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.

Don'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.

Are you a "generic" American?

I'm simply asking to get a better understanding of your view.

No, I’m half-and-half.

You need to maintain your friends relationships from younger days. You need to check-in, maintain a social circle, etc. It takes work.

The magic is if you keep your core group close (and it's easier today with the Internet to keep in touch) then when you are able to get together (may be once a year!) you'l just pick it up like you hung out yesterday.

I want to maintain these friendships and relationships but after a point, I’m tired of being the first one to reach out all the time, the one word replies, and all the anxiety surrounding their very late replies. There is no such thing as busy, the average American checks their phone 96 times a day. If they want you, they’ll make time for you. It’s heartbreaking when it goes to this from a point where we’d talk for hours. It’s clear they no longer value the friendship and have moved on. Relationships need active effort from both sides to maintain, it’s over the moment one loses interest in maintaining it

I think sometimes you get into a vicious cycle where it’s been a while and then it feels like you’re imposing to reach out or answer a message you let sit too long.

Remember, you don't know what they're going through. Try calling at a time of day that makes sense. It's direct and synchronous. Ask them how they are and what's new in their life. Try and find time to meetup.

Life gets really busy for people and they might see the commitment it takes as something they just don't have time for right now. Or maybe you've grown apart.

You can always ask them if everything is alright between you both.

I'm often very late to reply, but somehow my friends put up with that. Late thirties, many friends for decades. Also I find it easy and fun to restart friendships after years of no contact. Perhaps my social circle is weird...

But many of us didn’t, or didn’t have a great youth network in the first place. So you know, hopefully that’s not the only possibility.

Yeah, that's a conundrum to be sure. It sort of feels logical that if you weren't successful at making friends during the prime years for that (youth, young adulthood) then there's not much reason to believe you'll have more success in the more difficult years.

For example, I sort of maintain 2 friend tiers. Tier 1 friends are the "friends for life" I've made along the way. We all maintain a chatter and we may not see each other frequently but we do when the opportunity arrises and we just pick it up, totally natural, etc. This group is pretty much immutable at this point besides the death of friends along the way to our own death.

Tier 2 friends are more like "friends of convenience". These types will drop in and out of your life for a variety of reasons. They're the kinds of people that are your wife's mom friends' husbands, work friends, neighbors, etc. You socialize on your better behavior and although you enjoy each others company, you're usually just meeting because of some convenience, like a BBQ or child's/their birthday, community event or w/e.

Because the truth is this - most guys, by the time they either have created a family or are looking to create one, aren't looking for new friends. I'm not interested in trying to build new, deep relationships with other guys at this point. I have the family I've built, my core friends that I have real bonds with, and my acquaintances that we enjoy each other's company and would attend each others's funeral, but wouldn't speak at it.

I think joining an organization is your best bet. Getting involved in something and becoming an active member in it. You need something that forms a common bond with other people looking for that sort of thing.

> I think joining an organization is your best bet. Getting involved in something and becoming an active member in it. You need something that forms a common bond with other people looking for that sort of thing.

This is a great way to make friends (well, sometimes. Not always) but I think most of them are going to be "type 2" friends in your schema. You're probably right, not that many people are looking for new, deep friendships in adulthood if they're not transplants. But... that kind of seems like a flaw in TFA's premise as well. You can't just unilaterally decide you're going to orient your life around your friends if your friends aren't on the same page.

To be fair I don't think I was "unsuccessful" at making friends when I was younger but for various reasons I didn't end up being able to stay in the same place as them and most friendships kind of wither if it's a whole trip that has to be planned to see someone.

> You can't just unilaterally decide you're going to orient your life around your friends if your friends aren't on the same page.

And that's the rub. It's really difficult to find "bro's for life" that plan on being that way for most people, for a variety of reasons, will move out of that phase. I believe it's because we hang with a pack when we are in our mate selection phase of life and after that occurs, people have different ambitions for their life. Hangin with friends all the time is generally very different at that point.

> To be fair I don't think I was "unsuccessful" at making friends when I was younger

Indeed, there's many reasons someone may not form lasting bonds with friends in their youth and it's not necessarily because they were not good at it.

Not sure why you're being downvoted here.

I 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.

Why have a center at all?

Relationships are what we do, not what we are.

Given 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".

Activities 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.

You 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.

> You clearly don't have kids/family and that's OK.

1. It being OK is my point.

2. I do have family: I'm just not a parent. I have parents and siblings and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and cousins. I know many and am very close to several.

There are many kids in my life. They don't belong to me, but do they truly belong to anyone?

We all have different circumstances. I understand if you can't relate to mine. Even so, my experience does exist: it is not defined by yours.

Honestly, 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.

I 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”…

May I ask what religion?

Traditional 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/d928b0db53cc2a4bacf37d4e45543...

I'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?

Catholics don't really take the bible as literal as many protestant religions do. Some fundamentalist Catholics do but the Catholic Church (capital 'C') does not and has not for a very long time. Pope Benedict XVI in 1993 when he was a Cardinal:

“Fundamentalist interpretation starts from the principle that the Bible, being the word of God, inspired and free from error, should be read and interpreted literally in all its details. But by "literal interpretation" it understands a naively literalist interpretation, one, that is to say, which excludes every effort at understanding the Bible that takes account of its historical origins and development… The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem… Fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.”

So because of that it isn't really necessary to logically evaluate it unless you want to poke holes in a Protestant and Fundamentalists cheery picked parts. I want to be careful to not run into a "No true Scottsman" thing here, but Catholics by and large have tried to adapt the Bible to modern problems, not dissimilar to Reform Judaism.

Unfortunately, Benedict is conflating fundamentalism with literalism here. It's a common mistake (and "fundamentalist" has become essentially an epithet) although one that I am surprised to hear from someone as otherwise erudite and thoughtful as Benedict. Theological fundamentalism came out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 1900s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93moderni...) and none of its earliest and strongest proponents (Machen, Van Til, etc.) were literalists. In fact, they were quite the opposite.

While certain strains of fundamentalism have literalist tendencies, there is nothing implicit literalist in fundamentalism. Some might look at the Five Fundamentals [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93moderni...] and consider them implicitly literalist, but most of them are contained in the creeds and confessions that Catholicism and Protestantism hold together and so denying any of them would place one outside of either Catholic or Protestant doctrine.

That's very interesting, thank you for the color there. Especially clarifying the literalist and fundamentalist part. I'd always just sort of assumed that they are one and the same.

I'm not particularly religious but over time I've come to respect the erudite and philosophical side of it. It's so easy to just dismiss the entire thing when looking at the worst of it which IMO tends towards protestant church's that are more a political organization than a spirituality center. Or of course the scandalous and criminal history of the Catholic church covering up so many bad things.

>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.

A Christian would say the same of themselves, because through Jesus, they have eternal life in Heaven.

Am an atheist that grew up Catholic and studied at a Catholic school for 10+ years; Jesus was more like someone who knew he had a deep connection to God but didn't know he was a part of the holy trinity until his resurrection. He experienced serious moments of doubt exemplified on the cross when he shouted, "Father why have you forsaken me?" He was intwined with local hookers and is thought to have had a relationship with Mary Magdalene.

That would make his moment of sacrifice an entirely human experience. imo, that but was designed intentionally because Catholics believe that everyone is a somewhat lesser version of Jesus in that way. Everyone has "original sin" and conflicts and doubt, but can be saved by the intent which they live their lives, not mere acts.

Then your Catholic school did you wrong.

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/could-jesus...

That reads like an opinion piece and the etymology of the website is decidedly so: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Answers

Catholics, in fact, are not a monoculture just because they follow the pope. If you travel the coasts, through the South and Midwest you'll see very stark delineations of Catholicism and their beliefs.

The only relevant part of the article is the quote from the Council of Chalcedon:

> Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity; "like us in all things but sin". He was begotten from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the Mother of God.

This is one such stark delineation. All Catholics are required to be inside it.

Sure, I agree that it's dogma within the church, that's why I mentioned the Holy Trinity.

The holy trinity wasn't known to Jesus at the time of his life or death. It became apparent that he, the holy spirit, and god were the same post resurrection. That's what separates Jesus from other canonical characters like saints and disciples - he was destined to become one because it was God's manifestation of himself. The others are just humans with extraordinary presence whom God chooses to act on the world through. It was pretty clear Jesus perceived himself as the latter.

Anyway, I could be wrong. I learned all this nearly 20 years ago and only remember it because it was beat into me.

> The holy trinity wasn't known to Jesus at the time of his life or death. …

If this was beaten into you the school you went to was not Catholic or even Chalcedonian, which is a low, low bar. This appears to be some form of the heresy of kenoticism and your parents deserve a refund.

A monseigneur was in charge of the school and it was registered with the diocese as a parochial school with a church attached. I assure you that it was Roman Catholic. You can stop questioning that now.

Catholic history, canon, etc were all part of our education. Beatings (corporal punishment) were part of Catholic education going back decades in the states. If you don't recognize this as part of Catholic history you're fooling yourself. What we had was less than corporal punishment, but having erasers tossed at you and being hit with rulers were expectations year over year.

As I said, I may have some details wrong but I'm 90% positive this is what we were taught.

I’m sorry, it never occurred to me that you’d think I was questioning the beating part. I was entirely addressing the teaching. If they were teaching you heresy, they were outside the Catholic Church by definition.

Jesus was tempted on the cross by Lucifer and Jesus had free will to choose. God risked it all in that moment.

Uh. Catholicism calls for you to love everyone to the point of torture and death. It is weird that you missed this message.

The Catholic line would be something like "God created marriage as a kind of metaphor for your relationship with all people, as a kind of easy arena where you can play out the kind of love that you should extend to the entire world."

Jesus, after all, did not die for a wife except in this very metaphorical sense. He died for sinners, lazy shits, prostitutes, tax collectors, etc, etc, etc. That is what the calling in Catholicism is.

Catholicism calls for one to commit to at least one Sacrament of Service: Holy Orders and/or Matrimony.

So? That isn't even a necessary condition for being a good Catholic. It certainly isn't a sufficient one. The message is clear: a good person, from the point of view of Catholicism, is one willing to sacrifice everything, even in a gruesome fashion, for the lowliest person.

this is an enormous oversimplification of a complex system of beliefs.

" Catholicism calls for one to commit to at least one Sacrament of Service: Holy Orders and/or Matrimony. "

And this isn't?

I listed one of many beliefs of the faith, whereas you claimed to boil the entire faith down to a single phrase—I'm having trouble understanding the supposed contradiction.

There isn't any contradiction, per se, its just that observing that Catholicism says something about holy orders or marriage doesn't actually say anything about what Catholicism also says about relations outside of these sacraments, which is the question at hand here.

While it certainly is a gross summary, saying that Catholicism calls on people to sacrifice (everything, if necessary) for any person, is accurate and pertinent to the idea that it only suggests this for one's spouse. Being willing to sacrifice for your spouse is necessary but not sufficient to be an optimal catholic.

Consecrated life and holy matrimony are supererogatory.

Re your gist post, the hypostasis had a human nature from the beginning, and not just from the time he was born.

The 1970s/GenX/latchkey have entered the chat.

as an 80s kid raised by a helicopter stay-at-home parent, i've always been deeply envious of the independence afforded to latchkey kids

The latchkey kids did not find it to be a bed of roses. Turns out that a lot of kids miss parents when they don't have them.

> It seems like we've failed a whole generation of adults with good examples of what a relationship should be like.

... the good examples are like your relationship I assume?

In some cultures parents are number 1, and the expectation is your elderly parents outrank your wife in terms of the devotion and love you should show them. Is that disrespectful too, or does it only apply to close friends?

Who are you to judge here?

well the parent to child relationship is not a procreative one. New family units have to form that are procreative or that society will eventually crumble. So it’s not simply subjective. The marriage relationship is procreative and a bedrock for society. I don’t think a society having greater / lesser deference to parents as authority figures takes away from that reality. The parents themselves are in a procreative relationship, and are matriarchs and patriarchs to their line. And clearly the cultures that demand “more” love to parents than a spouse, do not (cannot rightly) demand intimate love. So I would question what “more” love is.

Why would monogamous relationships be better for society from your perspective? Shouldn't you be arguing that marriage is holding our "new family unit" generation back?

Well after procreation comes child rearing. We don’t abandon human children to the wild.

I don’t believe the benefits of monogamous marriage are simply cultural. One would have to pose a better ideal for generating and raising children (because nurturing the next generation is a key part of societal survival) that leads to human flourishing. Is it polygamy, or casual hookups, or absentee fathers?

That said I do think there is more to the marriage relationship than procreation. That 2 people are becoming one. With that comes life long friendship bound by a vow that weathers the storms of life, close intimacy etc.

parent to child relationship is not a procreative one

How so? Are you certain that your parents have no genetic interest in helping you and your offspring thrive?

In the sense that there is no non-incestual physical relationship where a parent can generate new offspring with their own offspring

I feel like this is demented, frankly. If you loved your wife, then you would only want her to flourish. It seems necessarily disordered to think about your expectations of your partner in terms of "I should be her top priority." You should expect that she treats you with respect, obviously, and that might mean different things for different people, but I think centering the idea of "she must see me as Numero Uno" is a bad way to think about a lifelong relationship.

A healthy relationship is one where each partner is dedicated selflessly to the flourishing of the other partner.

In any case, the idea of a "number one person" is also really two dimensional and limiting.

> A healthy relationship is one where each partner is dedicated selflessly to the flourishing of the other partner

This sounds co-dependent to me, not healthy at all.

It would be if each partner we dedicated exclusively to the flourishing of the other partner. But in this relationship neither partner would find that an acceptable state of affairs.

it's the opposite. What the OP is describing is simply altruistic love. You love someone for who they are, not how they relate to you. That is the only form of relationship that involves no dependency.

Any relationship that makes your feelings for someone dependent on their feelings for you is effectively a complicated form of bargaining.

If she told you that, and it was true, how is it disrespectful? What would would do in that situation? Demand "respect" and decree you must be her number one?

“I think you are a fat, ugly sow and I hate you” might be someone’s true feelings but it’d be hard not to feel disrespected hearing it.

What is this? Just because you stopped finding friends after getting married doesn't mean that if she finds new friends it means any disrespect to you. Just because someone gets married doesn't mean they have to start depending only on their spouse for everything, just to keep that spouse at that "number one" spot.

It’s not about friends being bad so much as the “you’re always second fiddle, deal with it” part.

Kids are the center of your life. They are a lot easier (especially during the younger ages) to raise with a committed partner.

So 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.

This 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.

Ha ... 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.

As they age, you're going to find a whole different level of arguing about how to raise kids on an every-other-week rotation with conflicting influences/decisions. Trust me, I've seen it. It can work, but you're gonna need to put in some work on the relationship with the other parent to get through it and find decent compromises.

Respectfully, the last thing I'm going to do is put in work with my ex wife. When the kids are with me I'll do whatever I want. Those types of discussions are one of the reasons why we're no longer together.

You're going to love it when the kids reach puberty.

Yeah, I believe you :) I'll with that in 10 years.

I don't understand all this drama. My kids have reached teenage without many horrors or fights between any of us, and I think that we're all pretty normal.

Seems like a different situation if Mom and Dad are not on the same page and completely unwilling to cooperate with each other.

That seems to be a mum and dad problem though, the kids may merely be collateral...

Sure but the kids are going to catch on and be unhappy, eventually.

Speaking as someone who's been on the child side of such a relationship: be careful not to berate your children over what they do when with her, and don't put the other parent down in front of your kids. They'll grow up policing their own behaviour to avoid a parent-parent confrontation and that might trigger anxiety issues.

As a single parent with one young kid, the "admittedly only every other week" makes a world of difference. I wish languages had different words for single parents like you and single parents like me.

You are talking past me.

Kids are not the center of my life.

We all have our own interests and goals. That includes kids, too. Get used to it.

It'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.

Conversations 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.

I 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.

This 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)

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-so...

>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

> '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.

marriage when women were property and marriage now that women are being treated as humans (though rights are being taken away) are two different things.

Women where not always and everywhere property. Yet they still married. You suffer from the illusion of history linearly advancing to better times.

If 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.

In 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.

Do I come from an alien universe where people in committed relationships still have friends?

Propably. 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.

i'm not saying you will - but you might be surprised about that friendship after you broke up.

So 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!

losing 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.

So, you think only women have difficulties with break ups? Men don't? What are we, emotionless rocks or ice cubes?

How many data points are you using to come to this conclusion about “men” and “women”?

Depends how much she misses you.

I 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.

I 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.

> 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.

How 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.

Only 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.

> only meet them a couple of times a week

You're very, very lucky

Why you place your side projects above your friends?

i 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.

seriously

hobbies can be serious! i take all my hobbies more seriously than my career at this point.

but they're for fun.

For me it's not a pseudojob, I code tools for myself to help me in my endaevours. Perhaps I will publish some someday, maybe I won't.

Firstly - because I'm an introvert and I more often feel like doing something interesting or necessary alone or together with my spouse, secondly - this list is not really sorted by my priorities, I actually put my education (which mostly is self-education in areas mostly unrelated to my job) much higher.

You send them memes regularly.

Serious. I have a bunch of social circles that I keep live just by doing this from time to time.

Seeing your friends a couple of times a week is more than what I think most people do.

I feel like I have an abnormally large group of close friends and I basically only see them on weekends.

No, you're just reading an article written by someone in a tiny social bubble, common among the single, middle-aged in large urban centers.

Many 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.

Each 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.

I 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.

My 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.

Very true, each relationship is different. Been with my wife since I was 20 and mid 40's now. So far so good :)

I completely get where you are coming from though. I think for me once I started dating my now wife, all other relationships became less important and drifted away. Not a positive thing, just the reality of what happened. Wouldn't change it for the world though.

In 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.

It'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.

What questions does it raise?

The 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.

I 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.

That's such a weird way of thinking to me. I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just super alien.

I 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.

If 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.

You can live together with someone, have kids and move with your kids without marriage, those things seem orthogonal to me.

In 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.

Still, I don't have a very hard time imagining living alone (even though I'm in what we have just decided to consider "marriage" and we have kids), that seems a perfectly fine life to me, which would have also a center, which marriage would not be, even with this definition.

Even in my situation, I would argue that the kids are more in the center than our relationship, as our parent-kids relationship is inalienable and forever, unlike our relationship with each other, which will last only while we are both happy about it.

Yes, but notice you have to imagine yourself single for this other reality to make sense.

My 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.

"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

A 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!

Theres 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.

I 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.

For 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

> 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.

I just tell everything to my wife.

Soooo if you got married and prefer your friends you should rethink your marriage.

I'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).

Used 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.

I 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?

In 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.

A 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.

Friendships 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.

I 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.

This 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.

It 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.

Then 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

Dan 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.

I’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.

I 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.

Sounds like something Epicurus would say.

Imagine 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...?

In fact, it's difficult for you to distinguish the boundaries

Who says marriage is at the center of life??

I don't see that anywhere in my environment.

Why not both?

family 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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com