I feel sad for people whose spouse/partner isn’t *one of* their best friends, but I also feel sad for people whose spouse/partner is *their only* best friend. It’s unhealthy at best and rife for (or caused by) predation at worst
Pardon how pedantic I’m about to get, but I think the obsession with getting married young that gen z is currently experiencing is a direct result of macro-level liminality. Much like the 1950s was a societal liminal space that was influenced heavily by rapid and intense change (WWII and all the Everything associated with it), I think the 2020s are a societal liminal space. And in the 1950s, we clung to a nonexistent suburban ideal as a source of stability amid a terrifyingly uncertain landscape. It makes sense that young 20-somethings are jumping the gun on marriage right now – it feels like control and accomplishment and Doing Life Correctly.
I really liked this. Clear, eye-opening. I see a lot of the sunk cost fallacy in social circles… and the desire to feel celebrated that the wedding industrial complex allows a woman to demand to be celebrated (in contrast, perhaps for some of these posters, to how they’re normally taken for granted.)
Oh man. You might recall that I'm an old school wedding blogger, and back in the late 00s, I was shocked when I ran a reader survey and realized that fully a third of my site's readers were not engaged, not working in the wedding industry, but just wanting to get engaged. They called themselves "ladies in waiting" (🤢) and saw reading a wedding blog as a way to day dream about what could be someday....
Now, sometimes that was sweet! For example, young queer folks living in conservative areas, dreaming of moving to the big city and being able to have the gay wedding of their dreams!
But sometimes it was just heartbreaking. I felt extra weird about it when folks would send in their wedding stories to be considered for publication, and they would say things like "I've been reading your site for years, way before I met my husband even, and I'm so excited to finally be featured!!"
I was always like oh wow did you rope this man into a relationship just so the quirky Wes Anderson theme wedding you've been planning since 2008 could maybe be featured on an alt-wedding blog?? It made me feel really gross and sad for these folks. (Many of whom, yes, would go on to get divorced. I know because they would write me years later asking me to delete their weddings from the site.)
I think what I learned is that our cultural fantasies about marriage aren't limited just to mainstream cis-het folks. Queers, neurospicies, pan-poly folks, freaks, geeks, and more: a LOT of us think marriage will save us.
I wish relationship types weren't so tied to hierarchy with marriage and partnership as the "most important" of them all. This ideology is a disservice to women because I feel we wait until we have partners to dare to claim our wholeness, instead of grabbing onto what is our birthright. A partner will never make you feel whole. at least in my opinion
oh the end note about all the comments from women claiming to have egalitarian relationships ...! I have a friend who will straight up explain how she does all the cleaning and most of the cooking (checks out with what I've observed as a house guest!) but then when I casually bring up this research she's like "I'm so glad *I* don't have one of those unequal relationships!" like the math doesn't add up....
I couldn't agree more. It's been a while since I came across an article that enhanced my critical thinking and opened my eyes. I couldn't thank the author enough for putting all the knowledge, references, and harsh truth into this beautiful piece. You have saved many lives.
Thanks for this breakdown, it's great! It really helps to understand this phenomenon through the lens of "if he won't respect me, the least he can do is legitimize me so that others will." I've been perplexed by women's seemingly widespread pursuit of "shut up rings" ever since romance reality shows switched from VH1 dating competitions to being highly polished and laser-focused on marriage (Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, The Ultimatum, etc).
I'm also fascinated by how popular these new shows are among left-leaning and secular women, given the aggressive conservatism of selling marriage to men as the key to a happy life. Please note I'm including myself here, as I too am fascinated by human behavior and relationships! Makes me wonder if that inclination is quietly driving the trend
"I fear someone is lying" made me cackle out loud alone in my room. Reading this essay made me upgrade to a paid subscription because I refuse to be denied even one sentence of your content. All my love!
you have no idea what this means to me! "My Ego Dies at the End" was my number one most played song on Spotify in 2022- I feel like I said this on TikTok but needed to reiterate it, haha. I'm a huge fan of YOURS and knowing you read my work made my whole evening!
A lovely read as someone who doesn't want to get married - I screech to a halt inside when I see people wear down their partners that eventually, usually apathetically so end up marrying them just so they have to stop hearing about it. I wish generally people had enough self esteem to know what lines to draw, when they're crossed, and when they're trying to drag someone across it with them. I know there's still a lot of ambiguity across cultures of how much work you should really be putting into a relationship/marriage, but I've never seen it exist where you have to flay yourself alive just to get mr. big to marry you.
It feels like anymore people truly believe you're about to hit retirement age at 25 and if you haven't married/kids/FIRE before thirty then you're already a foot in the grave of your social life. I wish people would take that energy elsewhere to friendships (not sure why people have the idea you can't be single in a friend group of married people?) and nurture those instead of fighting for someone with glaring incompatibilities.
The best friend debate is interesting to me as someone who is coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary this year (plus 5 years dating previously). We have 3 kids and are still happily married. Wouldn’t it be weird if he wasn’t my “best friend” after all these many years and shared experiences together? If you can’t say that your spouse is your most emotionally intimate friend and confidant, it’s probably a bad sign about the relationship imo.
Of course! Congratulations, by the way. I also think my approach to this discourse is colored by my age- I'm seeing people in their early thirties marry people they've known for 18 months, way before they can categorically say they've "done life" together. Obviously being married for two decades creates its own category of relationship, but I think trying to throw everything under the bucket of "best friend" lessens all of the categories individually.
Ooo, I am so excited by this topic. I was hoping for a hint more armchair psychoanalysis of the r/WaitingToWed types, but this was still a great article.
I've been attracted to that subreddit in the past, like a fly to a lantern, as I'm on the other side of this dynamic and find the thought processes of these women so interesting. Specifically, I'm a man in a long-term relationship, not married, but very serious and frequently waffling on my feelings about marriage.
I can't help but think of the institution of marriage as archaic and fundamentally tied to a cattle-like ownership of women. Yet, opting out isn't such a simple choice. It's ahistorical and impractical to not recognize the laws that dictate our society's regime of private property ownership, and opting out ultimately yields an asymmetric benefit for the male partners like me who benefit from the patriarchy and a less fickle biology.
Marriage -- one tiny word that contains the heights of our most aspirational sociological designs and the deepest depths of suffering from our worse chronic illnesses.
That Reddit fascinates me! And Ossiana also wrote about it this week. I had no idea we were all reading it.
The experiences of women in that group are completely alien to me. My husband and I both knew we wanted to get married. I cannot fathom staying in a relationship that’s otherwise (unless you are also a person uninterested in marriage).
The goal should not be marriage. The goal should be to find a person you’re compatible with.
Just leave the guy who isn’t looking for the same thing. Go find someone who is!
Is it that single people can’t make friends with people who aren’t married? I keep seeing all this stuff about declines of couples so it seems odd that single people are the only single people in their friend groups. There should be more single people to hang with according to the stats, right?
I know you mentioned the decline in overall friendship, but I wonder why people don’t take advantage of their time being single to invest more in friendship.
I am single and about 80% of my friends are married (to varying degrees of relational success). Most of these friendships span at least 25 years and I value this sense of community and longevity that these secure relationships have provided (and do still provide to some extent). However, over the last few years I have built more new friendships with other single people because it can be quite frustrating when suddenly all of your social interactions are focused around a family home,which in my experience the single person visits time and time again, with said family rarely returning the favour. I have found that the maintenance of these relationships often falls on the single person because their life is seen as easier somehow and their time less precious. I love my friends but have had to assert that my free time also has value, because in my experience married women have so many expectations placed on them by their partners and children that their one to one friendships fall to the periphery- until they have enough of their partner's needs and look to said single friend for support.
This is not the case for every relationship but does seem to be a pattern. Another pattern is the sense that I am somehow unlucky because I don't have this family unit. I can't recall the number of times that married friends have given me that pitying 'oh poor single you' look after having spent the previous 3 hours berating their lazy partner and demanding family life. Don't get me wrong I'm not immune to the feeling that there is something deficient about being single, society is designed for married relationships- from the financial benefits, the joy of having someone to help with the crippling mundanity of household chores and simply the comfort of shared companionship. Yet, all too often this seems to be a lie sold to young girls to maintain the fiction that women are better off married. As a modern, single woman I feel privileged to be able to choose whether to marry or be in a relationship. For thousands of years (and still in many parts of the world) women were barred from owning property, education, sexual freedom and all the rights that men have experienced for millennia. I don't think we should underestimate the effect that these long held prohibitions have had and still have on the female psyche. I am happy as I am for now but who knows what the future holds.
I know, I always wonder about these people who complain that it’s difficult to make or maintain friendships. It makes me think they’re just not a very good friend. No one wants to be friends with someone who is so single minded about their love life. They’re so disinvested.
I suspect that there is a selection bias here. Generally speaking the most durable friendships are forged during childhood and college, it’s a natural cohort of people you spend a lot of time with and you have a decent amount in common with.
For the college educated cohort, their college friends form a durable social circle that serves as a yardstick for life. People graduate together, often cluster to the same city and stay in touch. In such a circle, being the last person who is single can be tough.
And unfortunately, life in your mid to late 20s makes it much harder to form durable friendships because life is significantly more transient. People move, change jobs, and just generally have less time to invest in new friendships.
So if your audience is predominantly college educated, this is the group of people who still partner up, and that statement is still true for.
You might be interested in a book called Wife, Inc.: the business of marriage in the 21st century by Suzanne Leonard from NYU Press. She goes into the “aspirant wife” portrayals in culture as well as deeper data
I feel sad for people whose spouse/partner isn’t *one of* their best friends, but I also feel sad for people whose spouse/partner is *their only* best friend. It’s unhealthy at best and rife for (or caused by) predation at worst
Pardon how pedantic I’m about to get, but I think the obsession with getting married young that gen z is currently experiencing is a direct result of macro-level liminality. Much like the 1950s was a societal liminal space that was influenced heavily by rapid and intense change (WWII and all the Everything associated with it), I think the 2020s are a societal liminal space. And in the 1950s, we clung to a nonexistent suburban ideal as a source of stability amid a terrifyingly uncertain landscape. It makes sense that young 20-somethings are jumping the gun on marriage right now – it feels like control and accomplishment and Doing Life Correctly.
I really liked this. Clear, eye-opening. I see a lot of the sunk cost fallacy in social circles… and the desire to feel celebrated that the wedding industrial complex allows a woman to demand to be celebrated (in contrast, perhaps for some of these posters, to how they’re normally taken for granted.)
Oh man. You might recall that I'm an old school wedding blogger, and back in the late 00s, I was shocked when I ran a reader survey and realized that fully a third of my site's readers were not engaged, not working in the wedding industry, but just wanting to get engaged. They called themselves "ladies in waiting" (🤢) and saw reading a wedding blog as a way to day dream about what could be someday....
Now, sometimes that was sweet! For example, young queer folks living in conservative areas, dreaming of moving to the big city and being able to have the gay wedding of their dreams!
But sometimes it was just heartbreaking. I felt extra weird about it when folks would send in their wedding stories to be considered for publication, and they would say things like "I've been reading your site for years, way before I met my husband even, and I'm so excited to finally be featured!!"
I was always like oh wow did you rope this man into a relationship just so the quirky Wes Anderson theme wedding you've been planning since 2008 could maybe be featured on an alt-wedding blog?? It made me feel really gross and sad for these folks. (Many of whom, yes, would go on to get divorced. I know because they would write me years later asking me to delete their weddings from the site.)
I think what I learned is that our cultural fantasies about marriage aren't limited just to mainstream cis-het folks. Queers, neurospicies, pan-poly folks, freaks, geeks, and more: a LOT of us think marriage will save us.
Spoilers: sadly, it won't ❤️
I wish relationship types weren't so tied to hierarchy with marriage and partnership as the "most important" of them all. This ideology is a disservice to women because I feel we wait until we have partners to dare to claim our wholeness, instead of grabbing onto what is our birthright. A partner will never make you feel whole. at least in my opinion
oh the end note about all the comments from women claiming to have egalitarian relationships ...! I have a friend who will straight up explain how she does all the cleaning and most of the cooking (checks out with what I've observed as a house guest!) but then when I casually bring up this research she's like "I'm so glad *I* don't have one of those unequal relationships!" like the math doesn't add up....
This article is a great example of clear thinking and writing.
I couldn't agree more. It's been a while since I came across an article that enhanced my critical thinking and opened my eyes. I couldn't thank the author enough for putting all the knowledge, references, and harsh truth into this beautiful piece. You have saved many lives.
Thanks for this breakdown, it's great! It really helps to understand this phenomenon through the lens of "if he won't respect me, the least he can do is legitimize me so that others will." I've been perplexed by women's seemingly widespread pursuit of "shut up rings" ever since romance reality shows switched from VH1 dating competitions to being highly polished and laser-focused on marriage (Love is Blind, Married at First Sight, The Ultimatum, etc).
I'm also fascinated by how popular these new shows are among left-leaning and secular women, given the aggressive conservatism of selling marriage to men as the key to a happy life. Please note I'm including myself here, as I too am fascinated by human behavior and relationships! Makes me wonder if that inclination is quietly driving the trend
"I fear someone is lying" made me cackle out loud alone in my room. Reading this essay made me upgrade to a paid subscription because I refuse to be denied even one sentence of your content. All my love!
you have no idea what this means to me! "My Ego Dies at the End" was my number one most played song on Spotify in 2022- I feel like I said this on TikTok but needed to reiterate it, haha. I'm a huge fan of YOURS and knowing you read my work made my whole evening!
to add to your footnotes..isn't it also SUR Restaurant and Lounge? Like Sexy Unique Restaurant Restaurant? lmao insane
A lovely read as someone who doesn't want to get married - I screech to a halt inside when I see people wear down their partners that eventually, usually apathetically so end up marrying them just so they have to stop hearing about it. I wish generally people had enough self esteem to know what lines to draw, when they're crossed, and when they're trying to drag someone across it with them. I know there's still a lot of ambiguity across cultures of how much work you should really be putting into a relationship/marriage, but I've never seen it exist where you have to flay yourself alive just to get mr. big to marry you.
It feels like anymore people truly believe you're about to hit retirement age at 25 and if you haven't married/kids/FIRE before thirty then you're already a foot in the grave of your social life. I wish people would take that energy elsewhere to friendships (not sure why people have the idea you can't be single in a friend group of married people?) and nurture those instead of fighting for someone with glaring incompatibilities.
The best friend debate is interesting to me as someone who is coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary this year (plus 5 years dating previously). We have 3 kids and are still happily married. Wouldn’t it be weird if he wasn’t my “best friend” after all these many years and shared experiences together? If you can’t say that your spouse is your most emotionally intimate friend and confidant, it’s probably a bad sign about the relationship imo.
Of course! Congratulations, by the way. I also think my approach to this discourse is colored by my age- I'm seeing people in their early thirties marry people they've known for 18 months, way before they can categorically say they've "done life" together. Obviously being married for two decades creates its own category of relationship, but I think trying to throw everything under the bucket of "best friend" lessens all of the categories individually.
Ooo, I am so excited by this topic. I was hoping for a hint more armchair psychoanalysis of the r/WaitingToWed types, but this was still a great article.
I've been attracted to that subreddit in the past, like a fly to a lantern, as I'm on the other side of this dynamic and find the thought processes of these women so interesting. Specifically, I'm a man in a long-term relationship, not married, but very serious and frequently waffling on my feelings about marriage.
I can't help but think of the institution of marriage as archaic and fundamentally tied to a cattle-like ownership of women. Yet, opting out isn't such a simple choice. It's ahistorical and impractical to not recognize the laws that dictate our society's regime of private property ownership, and opting out ultimately yields an asymmetric benefit for the male partners like me who benefit from the patriarchy and a less fickle biology.
Marriage -- one tiny word that contains the heights of our most aspirational sociological designs and the deepest depths of suffering from our worse chronic illnesses.
That Reddit fascinates me! And Ossiana also wrote about it this week. I had no idea we were all reading it.
The experiences of women in that group are completely alien to me. My husband and I both knew we wanted to get married. I cannot fathom staying in a relationship that’s otherwise (unless you are also a person uninterested in marriage).
The goal should not be marriage. The goal should be to find a person you’re compatible with.
Just leave the guy who isn’t looking for the same thing. Go find someone who is!
Is it that single people can’t make friends with people who aren’t married? I keep seeing all this stuff about declines of couples so it seems odd that single people are the only single people in their friend groups. There should be more single people to hang with according to the stats, right?
I know you mentioned the decline in overall friendship, but I wonder why people don’t take advantage of their time being single to invest more in friendship.
I am single and about 80% of my friends are married (to varying degrees of relational success). Most of these friendships span at least 25 years and I value this sense of community and longevity that these secure relationships have provided (and do still provide to some extent). However, over the last few years I have built more new friendships with other single people because it can be quite frustrating when suddenly all of your social interactions are focused around a family home,which in my experience the single person visits time and time again, with said family rarely returning the favour. I have found that the maintenance of these relationships often falls on the single person because their life is seen as easier somehow and their time less precious. I love my friends but have had to assert that my free time also has value, because in my experience married women have so many expectations placed on them by their partners and children that their one to one friendships fall to the periphery- until they have enough of their partner's needs and look to said single friend for support.
This is not the case for every relationship but does seem to be a pattern. Another pattern is the sense that I am somehow unlucky because I don't have this family unit. I can't recall the number of times that married friends have given me that pitying 'oh poor single you' look after having spent the previous 3 hours berating their lazy partner and demanding family life. Don't get me wrong I'm not immune to the feeling that there is something deficient about being single, society is designed for married relationships- from the financial benefits, the joy of having someone to help with the crippling mundanity of household chores and simply the comfort of shared companionship. Yet, all too often this seems to be a lie sold to young girls to maintain the fiction that women are better off married. As a modern, single woman I feel privileged to be able to choose whether to marry or be in a relationship. For thousands of years (and still in many parts of the world) women were barred from owning property, education, sexual freedom and all the rights that men have experienced for millennia. I don't think we should underestimate the effect that these long held prohibitions have had and still have on the female psyche. I am happy as I am for now but who knows what the future holds.
I know, I always wonder about these people who complain that it’s difficult to make or maintain friendships. It makes me think they’re just not a very good friend. No one wants to be friends with someone who is so single minded about their love life. They’re so disinvested.
I suspect that there is a selection bias here. Generally speaking the most durable friendships are forged during childhood and college, it’s a natural cohort of people you spend a lot of time with and you have a decent amount in common with.
For the college educated cohort, their college friends form a durable social circle that serves as a yardstick for life. People graduate together, often cluster to the same city and stay in touch. In such a circle, being the last person who is single can be tough.
And unfortunately, life in your mid to late 20s makes it much harder to form durable friendships because life is significantly more transient. People move, change jobs, and just generally have less time to invest in new friendships.
So if your audience is predominantly college educated, this is the group of people who still partner up, and that statement is still true for.
You might be interested in a book called Wife, Inc.: the business of marriage in the 21st century by Suzanne Leonard from NYU Press. She goes into the “aspirant wife” portrayals in culture as well as deeper data