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

theatlantic.com

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

#271

Post by emodendroket »

nemo44x wrote: post #235
ri45 wrote: post #18

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,…

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.

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.

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

#272

Post by emodendroket »

DamonHD wrote: post #141
senko wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#273

Post by noizejoy »

vorpalhex wrote: post #166
BJBBB wrote: post #120

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 s…

> 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 wit…

> 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.

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

#274

Post by emodendroket »

kgwxd wrote: post #87
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.

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.

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

#275

Post by emodendroket »

teolandon wrote: post #196
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.

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

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

#276

Post by emodendroket »

forty wrote: post #108

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…

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.

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

#277

Post by emodendroket »

delfinom wrote: post #2

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

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.

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

#279

Post by rocketbop »

avar wrote: post #69
rocketbop wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#280

Post by [deleted] »

nineplay wrote: post #140
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 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…

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