Why does society use the expression, "I married my best friend???"
I was hanging with one of my best friends last night, having a belated birthday celebration for me. I don’t know how your nights go when you hang out with one of your besties, but mine, especially with Pietro also end up with us discussing our relationships. Luckily for the two of us, we’re in incredibly healthy, loving, strong relationships. And even though we both are, we still don’t get the expression that so many people use; “I’m so lucky. I married my best friend.”
Come again?
Why do you believe that. Nobody has married their best friend. And before you get all freaked out and email me telling me; “you don’t know my relationship I totally did marry my best friend. We tell each other everything.”
I’m going to pull a Kanye West and stop you right there.
No. No you did not marry your best friend. You married the person you love more than anything, the person after all the dating you’ve done in your lifetime, that you’ve determined is the best fit for you. The person who tolerates you at your worst and loves you anyway. And the person you do the exact same thing for. You married your lover. Hell, I might even give you the fact that you married your soul mate.
But best friend. No.
I don’t even call Yannick my best friend, and we’ve been together since we were eighteen. YB is most definitely my favourite person. Given a free night to do anything, go anywhere with anybody, I’m always going to pick him first. He is my number one draft choice. I love him. I prefer to be with him over every other friend I have.
But I won’t say he’s my best friend, in the same way my friend Pietro won’t call his partner Machael his best friend either.
Let me explain why he and I won’t say this about our favourite people. We don’t call them “best friend” because where we come from, a best friend knows every single thing about you. LIKE EVERYTHING. The good, the bad, the ugly. There are things I don’t share with Yannick, these things are usually matters that I feel a male perspective would be no help with. Sometimes I only tell my besties because I know that their perspective is the one I need for too many reasons to even begin to list. Men and women come at the same situation so completely differently that talking certain issues/matters over with Yannick is only going to cause me to feel frustrated. And to be honest, even all these years later, there are some things that I just don’t want him to know about me. Areas of myself that are a little too twisted and bent for me to understand, that only a really good girlfriend can understand. There is a reason after all why they say “Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars.” We just don’t need to tell each other everything. That’s simply how I feel. This is not deceitful. It isn’t holding back, for me it’s just some things are not meant to be shared with your lover.
I’m sure Yannick’s not going to tell me how hot he found another woman while out and about on his day today. He won’t because I’d punch him in the teeth. I’m kidding. I wouldn’t punch him in the teeth, I’d punch him in the eye so he couldn’t look so easily the next time. I wouldn’t do that either. There are way too many incredible looking humans out there, he’d be walking around with permanent black eyes and we’d be homeless, because he couldn’t be Murdoch if his face was bashed in.
But this is precisely my point. We don’t need to tell our partners every single thing that crosses our train of thought. It isn’t always the healthiest thing for a relationship. Listen, what it comes down to, and I said this to Pietro last night, is that we only show the sides of us to every person in our life that we want them to see. Best friends know one side, and a life partner knows another. We’re not the same full person to everyone that we’re close to. It’s just how it is. But I’m not a fool, I know full well, and I’m completely okay with this, that there are things in my husband’s head, and in his past that are none of my business. I’m alright with knowing that I don’t know every single thing about him. I know he’s given me all the information I need, and all that I can handle, and I love him all the more for it.
So people can we please agree to stop saying; “I married my best friend…”
PHOTO CREDIT: @thekittyholland
