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

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

#111

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #59
dash2 wrote: post #23

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.

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…

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...

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

#112

Post by willis936 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #59
dash2 wrote: post #23

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.

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…

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.

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

#113

Post by ausbah »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #17

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…

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

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

#114

Post by sammywater »

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).

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

#116

Post by Mezzie »

mydriasis wrote: post #48
layer8 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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!

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

#117

Post by mschuster91 »

dash2 wrote: post #23

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.

> 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.

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

#118

Post by pixl97 »

dash2 wrote: post #23

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.

>. 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.

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

#119

Post by bluefirebrand »

nathan_compton wrote: post #80
ragnot wrote: post #6

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 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 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.

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

#120

Post by BJBBB »

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.

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