Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Preventing Grace

Home
Evangelical
7 Reasons To Be “Best Friends” With Your Spouse

7 Reasons To Be “Best Friends” With Your Spouse

Last updated on: November 21, 2019 at 9:29 am by Anne Kennedy

7 Reasons To Be “Best Friends” With Your Spouse 2019-11-21T09:29:36-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Bonus #8: He loves the internet as much as you do.

Matt destroyed my peace this morning by sending me this, and then, as usual, posting it on facebook for its outrage factor. Basically a really kind and lovely Christian man takes issue with the claim made by many other Christians that their spouses are their “best friends.”

He frames it this way,

Several years ago, if you asked me whether my wife is my best friend I would likely have been a little perplexed by the question. It seems weird to me, mainly because my wife belongs in a category that goes beyond friendship. How does a man compare his wife with several of his male friends, as if she is first but there is a second, or third best friend behind her? He doesn’t. He shouldn’t. We take away something from our marriages when we talk in this way, and we take away something from our friendships with people of the same sex when we speak like this.

Asks these surprising questions,

Is Hallmark to blame? Is our increasingly effeminate culture to blame? I don’t know, but I worry that men and women do not have strong friendships outside of their marriage, so their spouse wins by default. I don’t want my wife to win because, well, I just don’t have much to compare her with. I don’t even want her in the “race”, so to speak.

Quotes C.S. Lewis and Carl Trueman,

“My happiest hours are spent with three or four old friends in old clothes tramping together and putting up in small pubs – or else sitting up till the small hours in someone’s college room talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes. There’s no sound I like better than adult male laughter.” Or, similarly, Carl Trueman: “Drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular basis might be the best investment of time you ever make.”

Also says this,

There’s something else that strikes me as I think about this topic: when I’m around some of my closest friends, there is a sense in which my wife doesn’t quite get how we talk and act the way we do. From her perspective, we’re sometimes like immature kids, laughing our heads off about things she either doesn’t understand or in which she fails to see the humor. Or she just isn’t interested in some of the things we love. But, you see, that’s the point: because of the radical differences between men and women, my wife isn’t supposed to fully understand the nature and dynamic of my friendships with men. I only expect her to appreciate that they can give me something that she can’t – and she can be content in that because God designed matters that way. I am more than happy to admit that her friends offer her something I can’t.

And concludes this way,

So if you ask me if my wife is my best friend, I would answer, “Of course not. She’s my wife. Most of my best friends are balding.”

I have several objections.

To begin with, I think this kind of writing is the result of the Age of the Internet. One of the problems of being a “content provider” is that you have to come up with fodder. This is my angst every day. What vaguely controversial but unimportant position can I take that will get some clicks but also not blow up the world? It’s the Problem of the Blog—I must Say Something, and say it quickly. This has produced, in turn, the Christian Advice Giving Grind. It probably started with Josh Harris, but it has ended with every single website in the world trying to think of three ways you can better enjoy the holidays with your partner (another post I read this morning that was so dumb I won’t link it). I’ve had a thought, we of the internet say, I will put it online.

Which leads to the second problem—making laws for everybody out of your thoughts. I was tempted to do this yesterday. I’ve been trying to work out regularly, mostly because I’m vain, but also because I have always a sharp pain running down my arm in the morning that is exacerbated when I approach my keyboard. The only thing that makes it go away is a certain level of desultory weight lifting. I’ve concocted several exercises that dissipate it almost entirely but I have to do them every morning for them to work. I don’t, of course, so that I am always in the place of “beginning again.” I thought, as I was doing my stupid stretch thingy with the weight that I should blog about this and give advice about how to “begin again.” That would be a great post. Then I would tell you that you should do it—there are some spiritual and godly reasons why you should always “begin again.” It was going to be fantastic, but then I was distracted by some other things and didn’t bother.

Christians love to take their own experiences and make laws out of them for all other Christians. Actually, everyone in the world loves to do this, but Christians should know better.

Are you not “best friends” with your wife? That’s great. You don’t have to be. Men the world over do not expect to have any friendship with their wives. In some cultures, it is unseemly to be observed talking or joking with your wife. Women, in some contexts, barely even have souls and certainly don’t have minds, and it would be a waste of time to cultivate friendships with them. Here in America, friendship is complex and difficult category, often, as the author rightly points out, confused by a culture confused about sexuality.

This is rather akin, I think, to the turning of the “Pence/Billy Graham Rule” into a universal law for everyone. Are you anxious about sitting down to the groaning luncheon table with someone who is not your wife? That’s great. You don’t have to. Likewise the people who insist that those who do “follow the rule” ought not to because it dehumanizes women. The insistence that the rule must not be followed is itself another law. It’s possible that many good and godly people will decide for themselves who they want to lunch with, and that will be ok. There are perhaps a few men I would be willing to spend an hour over a burger without my husband or their wives being there to crumble the bun onto the table. On the other hand, I have a whole mental list in my head of people—actually men and women in this new brave age—to whom I would say, “Oh sure, we can have lunch, but I’ll be bringing my husband,” adding quietly to myself, “you weirdo.”

Here’s why you should be friends—even best friends—with your wife, especially in a culture where she is imagined to have a mind and a soul.

One, you are a painfully shy introvert who loathes small talk and has an utter horror of a “night out with the guys.” This does not make you effeminate or a lover of Hallmark movies. It just means you have a very small social bucket that is quickly filled up and slops onto the floor, and not in a good way.

Two, your wife’s intellect is superior to everybody else’s of your immediate acquaintance and you enjoy talking to her about everything because you and she share the same interests.

Three, she is your refuge from the slings and arrows of the world—both spiritually and intellectually. You don’t have to argue with her, but you can, because she has taken the trouble to know that you like to argue.

Four, if your friends know you as well as your wife knows you…that is potentially weird.

Five, I guess Adam was not as holy as Lewis and Trueman and was also a lover of Hallmark movies.

Six, I guess maybe Jesus’ “love of the church, his bride” is not really a friendship love? I’m not sure. I thought maybe the Christian’s friendship with Christ was a rich, nuanced, deep thing that could be reflected even in marriage.

Seven, men who bare their souls to their wives more than to any other living creature make good churchmen. This is primarily because they want to be with their wives all the time which mitigates against the natural pull of the sexes away from each other. I have a horror of too much sex-separated ministry. It’s fine, of course, to have a men’s bible study and a women’s bible study. There are a lot of embarrassing things in the Bible and life that are easier to talk about without a lot of the other kinds of people wandering through the church hall. That said, evangelicalism seems to have a special love of the Let’s-Never-Do-Church-Altogether phenomenon. There’s the women’s this and the men’s that and the children’s special something. Why can’t we have Christian Education altogether (except for the children, who have theirs, for reasons of sanity)? Why are we always having to be divided? As a clever person commented on Matt’s post early this morning, evangelicals love to make much of the huge differences between men and women, as if they are not even of the “same species.”

I mean, of course it is quite an unreasonable expectation for all people in all time and space to be “best friends” with their spouses, and marriage is stressful enough anyway. There is no reason to add to the law. Most people starting out in marriage don’t know each other well enough, nor themselves, to apply that term to their spouses or to anyone. But marriage is a great and terrible narrowing, a stripping away of so many layers, until the soul and body are bare. The author is right that this is a greater and more encompassing category than simply friendship. But, I would argue, the friendship portion comes more sharply into focus the more you go away from all the cares and preoccupations of the world and towards each other, which is why it is such a beautiful image of Christ and the Church. Every moment spent away from the other gradually comes to feel like a burden. But, you know what? This is not a law. If you never experience marriage this way, that’s totally fine. If your closest friend is someone else, that’s ok. There’s just no good reason to insist that all other Christians experience their marriages the same way you do.

Men are Human

Marriage

Previous Post

November 20, 2019

Witless Wednesday

Next Post

November 22, 2019 7 Fractious Takes

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: Gideon defeated the Midianites with an army of just 3,000 men.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »