This post is about my belief that friendship in committed and romantic relationship is a sentiment that not only will enrich the partners in the relationship but also carry it well into the future.
What is friendship? I often think of the meaning of a friend and what makes their friendship meaningful to me. I know that different friends inspire and evoke different feelings and experiences; some provide warmth and happiness, others provide intellectual stimulation, with some I feel at home and others remind me to stay grounded and what it means to be a friend. Sometimes friends offer a hug and sometimes practical solutions.
Each friendship is fulfilling in its own way. No one person can be all that I wish them to be – nor should they be. I believe that in many ways, I am the union of all my friends.
I let my friends influence me in ways that run deeper than words. Watching and listening carefully to their behaviour and words help me to understand who I am – it is through my friends that I become who I am.
Who am I for my friends? Influence in relationships is reciprocal, that is, a relationship can only be the outcome of the engagement of more than one person. I participate in my friendships and to assume that I have no or little influence is to deny the friendship of its true power.
To define a friendship is no easy thing, like most things of value, a friendship is a feeling, a behaviour, an action, and experience; something that is co-created endlessly and is felt more than defined. Paradoxically, it is often only recognised when it is lost.
The philosopher Kieran Setiya says that the value of friendships ultimately flows from the unconditional value of the people who are friends. A friendship matters because my friend matters and so do I. “True friends cherish each other, not just the friendship that connects them” writes Setiya. The philosopher Michael Stocker writes that concern for the friendship is not the same as concern for the friend.
This brings me to friendship in committed and romantic relationships. The English poet and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, once wrote that “Friendship satisfies the highest parts of our nature; but a beloved, who is capable of friendship, satisfies all”.
Good friends nurture trust, care, love and create a sense of a shared future. They value the people in the relationship despite whatever faults they bring with them. Romantic partners who feel each other as friends would naturally want to be in the relationship and nurture it – the only predictor research suggests why some relationships last longer and do better than others. It is because the partners in it matter to each beyond the relationship.
