Marry your best friend?
I think there are multiple factors that have contributed to the trend of the last decade that has seen women combining the ideal mate with the best friend.
Online dating, social media, texting and sexting have ironically made people feel more disconnected and anonymous in some ways. It’s entirely possible to link up with others and present yourself to the world without anybody ever getting to know who you really are. Life can be very lonely unless you have family or friends who know you and love you.
We’ve also had the phenomenon of friends with benefits for quite some time. It doesn’t work for everybody. But I think the idea of combining friendship and sex has filtered into our consciousness.
Our divorce rate has been soberingly high for a long time. It might now be starting to go down. The upsetting and expensive reality of divorce has made many people think long and hard about how to beat the system. It’s widely accepted that romantic and passionate love alone as a basis for marriage has let us down. It seems like the perfect solution to strengthen it with the reliability and endurance of friendship.
- “How to Support a Friend Going Through a Divorce” Article in Womanista
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