While I see her positive outlook and understand it, I also don’t agree with it. (Bare with me, I’ll get to my point and explain it in detail.) My issue is that ideally, while in a perfect marriage in a perfect situation this would work. But none of us are in a perfect marriage. None of us are in the perfect situation. All of us walk into our marriage with issues (small or big, we all have them). And of course there are outside factors. Are you living with a parent/taking care of an elderly parent? Do you have a high enough paying job to live comfortably? Do you have bills that you worry about? Did your car break down the other day on the way to work and you suddenly need a lot of money you don’t have to fix it? Did one of you lose your job due to no fault of your own? You see where I’m going with this, right? No matter what, our marriage is not perfect because we are not perfect and honestly there is no “perfect”.

But while we don’t have the elusive “perfect” life, we all do our best to make our marriage run as smoothly as possible. Saying that, most couples have found their way in their relationship, they have found the way that makes it all work for them. It’s not perfect, it has many flaws, but at the end of the day, the good mostly outweighs the bad. They have a system that works for them. Maybe you aim to have the best equal partnership that you both can manage. Some people are great at working together on everything to make it all happen. Others, not so much. So for the sake of this argument (discussion?), I will use my own marriage as an example:

Chris and I will be together 9 years on May 31st of this year. We will be married 3 years on September 5th of this year. We were engaged for two of those years. We have lived together for almost 5 of those 9 years. We are a fairly easy going couple and the bulk of our fighting has emerged with the stress of infertility. We fight like any couple but usually its a bit of bickering and we move on. Or aim is to be equals in the marriage. And for the most part, we can be. But we have learned that by being equal in the partnership, we have not come to that by me being completely submissive to him, or him be completely submissive to me, or even us sitting down and talking about everything together and coming to a decision as a couple. We have found our stride is making sure that all big decisions (buying a house or car, deciding to have kids, seek help for our infertility…) we make as a couple. We weigh the pros and cons and make the most informed decision we can. But in doing that, we have also learned to let each other be the “leader” where their strengths clearly are far more superior to our own. We don’t buy groceries together, he has no say, its all me. Again with the kitchen, all me. Where he clearly leads, he takes the lead. Organizing our bills, paying the bills and setting up a budget are his strong points.

You are probably agreeing with some of this and saying, sure Kim, that’s normal. We all do this. But I also would ask to take the discussion just a bit farther. We do not just have our strong points where we become leaders, but we also have periods of time where one is clearly the leader over the other. For instance, my husband is recovering from a bad break in his ankle, that required surgery. Since he hurt himself, I have clearly stepped into the leader role. I take care of everything. I am the breadwinner in the family right now and I am caring for him, therefore I am in the leader role. I don’t really want to, but I am. This also happened with my mother when my father took his heart attack 7 years ago and required a triple bypass surgery, followed by an emergency corrective surgery and a lung surgery just 3 months later. And last summer, I was also the leader while my husbands anxiety disorder got out of whack and his meds needed to be changed and adjusted. If I had relied on him, we would have been lost. But during other times like when we got our infertility diagnosis or I lost my job and felt hopeless, he took over the leader role. We simply transition in and out of the roles as we need to. And sometimes, you need a leader instead of a collective partnership when it comes to decisions.

So that’s where I disagree with both the speaker at the church and the author of the article. I think for a marriage to really work, its a lot of give and take. But, it’s also a lot of switching roles as necessary in order to keep things running smoothly. Things can’t always be resolved as an equal partnership. Sometimes, I think, you need one person to take the reigns and make the decisions on behalf of the two. I think some form of leadership is necessary, but not in a submissive way. What are your thoughts on the article and my interpretation of the article? 

But while collecting my thoughts for the response to the article, it brought me to another thought. Many people who claim to use an equal partnership role for everything tend to always state in their response, “well my spouse is my best friend! We don’t make any decision without consulting the other for their opinion first!” (as a side note, I have no scientific proof to back this up, just my experiences alone) And sure my first thought on that is on the sarcastic side and I tend to come back with, “well, do you ask your husband for an opinion on what book you are going to read next, or what webpage you are gonna visit next? What about supper? Do you always ask your husband’s input on what to make before you actually start supper?” And sure, maybe some people do that. But I don’t. But what grabs me immediately is usually the statement of  “my spouse is my best friend”. And here’s my thing, I don’t consider my husband to be my best friend. And I never have.

I have not once labelled my husband as my best friend and my husband does not consider me his best friend either. I have best friends, as does my husband. But we do not play that role for each other. My husband is many things in my world without being my best friend. He’s my spouse, my lover, someone who helps me make decisions, someone who makes me happy, someone who I love with all my heart. We have a very tender and loving relationship. But we are not best friends. My best friends are people who simply play a different role in my life. I know in some cases where your spouse has been your best friend as a child and grew into more, but for many you meet your husband later in your life. Friends are the people that play a specific role in your life. Generally, they are the ones that have been there through a growing period in our life. They are helpful and caring and loving. We are close and love each other for who they are but that love is so different from the love that I share with my husband. But with Chris, he just doesn’t fit that title. My husband is so much more than a friend. I wouldn’t even go so far as to label him my soul mate either (mostly because I don’t believe in soul mates), but he is important to me (so very important to me) in a way that bears no comparison to my friends. It’s like comparing apples and oranges, cats and dogs or black and white. Sure they have a common factor but they fill such completely different roles that they simply cannot be put into the same category. Now, as I finish off this post, I feel the need to point out that I don’t think my way of thinking is right or wrong, just my thoughts. To each their own. But that leads me to ask: Do you refer to your spouse as your best friend? If so, why/why not? Do your thoughts differ from mine? Please share your thoughts in the comments, I welcome any discussion as I’m curious as to what you think about it as well.