How many times have you heard at a wedding from the bride or groom, “I married my best friend”? Or have at least heard this phrase thrown about? If you’re in a relationship and this isn’t the case, you might be questioning if your partner is the one since they aren’t your best friend. If so, don’t panic. You’re actually in the majority.
A Colorado University study on friendship found that only 14% of people considered their romantic partner as their best friend. The research team looked at the data drawn from a national survey on friendship in 2022. The participants they analyzed were 940 people in romantic relationships, aged 18 to 85, from a wide array of backgrounds that had said in their survey that they had at least one person they considered their best friend.
In the survey, each participant was asked to list up to seven people they considered friends, without being told whether to include romantic partners. Each person they named could be assigned multiple labels such as “close friend,” “romantic partner,” “best friend,” and others. Other data that was collected included the participants’ routine interactions with each person they listed along with well-being outcomes such as loneliness, social support, and stress.
Out of the group, around 36% included their romantic partner in their friend list. Within that sample, 39.5% gave their partner the “best friend” label, translating it to 14.4% of the total group. The rest of the people in the survey either didn’t list their partner at all or didn’t give them the “best friend” label. On top of that, there were some participants who did label their romantic partner as their best friend who also named other people as their best friend, too. So if you’re concerned about having your old college roommate, your lifelong pal from high school, or Alan from work as your best friend and not your spouse, it’s a not a true sign of trouble.
@faganchelsea God bless his bffs because i will not be watching formula 1 with him
“It is not technically the main focus of the study, but I did think it was interesting that some people (about 25% of the sample) labeled more than one person their best friend,” said Natalie Pennington, the study’s author, to PsyPost. “Sometimes socially I think there is this feeling of ‘I can only have one best friend’ and so I liked seeing that people didn’t always adhere to that.”
The results of this study can show that we don’t have to put our romantic relationships at the highest, isolated pedestal and that it probably isn’t very healthy if you do. Being in a married or committed relationship also doesn’t address the growing loneliness epidemic in the United States, which is considered a public health risk.
There are some benefits to solitude, but many mental health experts, including Arthur Brooks, an expert on happiness and professor at Harvard University, believe that having a mix of different friendships is key to feeling happy and balanced. This includes utility friendships (think your work buddy or the cashier you always chat with at the grocery store), pleasure-based friendships (the guy you invite to the party because he always makes you laugh, or the woman who likes true crime podcasts like you do), and “perfect” friendships (the friendships that grow from the first two into a relationship in which both persons are invested in the well-being of the other).
If your partner is your best friend, that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all though. However, regardless of your relationship status, if you’re not feeling fulfilled and are feeling lonely, it might be worth your time to look for other connections. There’s likely someone looking for someone like you as you are searching for someone like them.
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