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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?

#191

Post by 015a »

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.

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).

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

#192

Post by skipants »

bscphil wrote: post #188

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…

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.

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

#193

Post by whateveracct »

parpfish wrote: post #88
barelyauser wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#194

Post by pjc50 »

nkjnlknlk wrote: post #83
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…

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.

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.

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

#195

Post by ddj231 »

tremon wrote: post #129
ddj231 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

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

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

#196

Post by teolandon »

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.

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.

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

#197

Post by pseudalopex »

jacknews wrote: post #63

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?

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

#198

Post by skipants »

XorNot wrote: post #27
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.

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.

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.

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

#199

Post by nineplay »

makeitdouble wrote: post #168
nineplay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mai…

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.

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

#200

Post by volkl48 »

pixl97 wrote: post #118
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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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