Why modern life undervalues friendship
We are deep into the accepted cultural narrative that romance is the apex experience of human life and relationships.
But, properly understood in its appropriate context, friendship may in fact be more important.
For context, I am not married. It just didn’t happen for me yet.
But because of some grateful mystery of my life, my life also happens to be full of virtuous people married to other virtuous people.
And because of that, I recognize perhaps even more than most the gap of that relationship.
Marriage, when it’s beautiful—is beautiful. Nothing can replace the profound unity of a man and woman uniting their entire lives, selves, bodies, spirits to one another, and having that love overflow into the creation of a child. I will not tamper with the sacredness and uniqueness of that precious reality.
This article doesn’t come from a denial of that reality, but from a realistic view of its limits, as well as the sad reality that what I see in my relatively small universe is not normative at scale.
Interesting and worthy of note is that the best of marriages are also the best of friendships, although in a particular way, a la St. John Chrysostom: the greatest of friendships—“friendship on fire.” So the core of my point is that these are not in contradiction, but that overemphasis on romance is the enemy of both beautiful, deep marriages and real friendships.
That deep interplay between romance and friendship within a marriage is maybe another full essay for another day, but it highlights the center of what I will arrive at:
That most of what we are looking for in life, however we go about looking for it, is to love and be loved, to know and be known, and to find true joy, laughter, and consistent support in other human beings. Strangely, although most of us have internalized that romantic relationships are the only place we can fully expect these needs being met, these needs really can come powerfully through friendship—even the simplest, normative kind that is not augmented by a permanent vow into committed marriage.
The limits of romance and the need for friendship
For most of human history, and even now, marriage wasn’t primarily about romance.
There were always elements of attraction (which can notably also grow inside of the context of a committed marriage rather than only in the building toward it). But in a much healthier way, marriage was understood as primarily a partnership for survival, family formation, and helping to form the bedrock of a whole civilization. Emotion was not some irrelevant piece of the puzzle, but it also was not the driving force or foundation. The foundation was a willed commitment for the sake of mutual good and the good of their children, as well as broader society. It recognized the power of stability, and that the strongest form of stability for everyone is family systems.
This doesn’t mean marriage cannot be romantic, and from a fully integrated Christian perspective, for example, there is room for all elements to coalesce. But it remains a much healthier paradigm to view marriage partnerships through a more classical lens of mutual, permanent, interdependence rather than riding on the narrow experience of felt romantic love that has eclipsed the other elements.
Even in the context of good marriages—which is visibly not the norm in our culture where divorce is rampant, cheating abounds, and most people disparage both the opposite sex generally and their spouses particularly, without conscience—we understand that there is ebb and flow with regard to the more idealized forms of attraction. People are package deals, and those package deals are not always at their best. This includes us.
In strong marriages, that element of romance can remain much stronger over time, but if that experience is held up as meaning-defining and the only real source of joy in human life, people will be commonly disappointed. It is not built for that kind of weight.
The tragedy is that this disappointment isn’t really warranted.
Human life is such that loneliness is part of the experience, wherever we find ourselves. As someone who has been privy to the realities of many good marriages, it’s obvious to me now that there is no escaping this existential reality, as well as the many other trials, challenges, and sufferings that fill up the human consciousness. A wonderful spouse is an incredible gift and comfort, but it doesn’t solve the problem. In a real way, we are ever alone with God in our march toward destiny. Other people, even those closest to us, are best understood as supports to that process.
So, even in romance’s fullest capacities being fulfilled in a strong, beautiful marriage (which is also notably rare), its limits appear. Life is busy, and people have all kinds of needs—many of which used to be fulfilled much more organically in the structure of daily life prior to modern conveniences which keep us far apart.
Even people in the most nourishing, romantic relationships need friendship.
It’s healthier and smarter to accept this aloneness as a starting point, as then we can start on the solution: being grateful for the people with whom we have deep and loving relationships, and providing mutual relief of this existential state through the intentional building of all kinds of friendship and acquaintances into our daily lives.
How friendship gives meaning and belonging in ordinary life
Again, as someone yet unmarried, I’ve had a lot of time to recognize the value of friendship and truly integrate its meaning. The presence of one person in our lives (although I would argue we all need many) can dramatically shift the experience of our whole life. I have many people who shift the balance for me in this way, and for whom I also hope I shift the balance!
Although I have countless examples, one in particular comes to mind.
I remember a few years ago I was having a very hard time with many things in my life, and my inclination, as is the case for many, was to self-isolate in the sadness to try to process it all. The other alternative, which I also regularly indulged, was to call someone I could trust and talk about what I was dealing with in an attempt to share the burden.
This mattered a lot, but what was shocking to me was something much simpler: how when I met up with a couple of close friends where we wandered through Long Beach, ate Lebanese food, talked (not about the problems but casually about many things), and, most importantly, laughed until my mascara wore off and my stomach muscles ached, I was revived almost completely.
The effect would last for days.
Often, in my experience of heavy-hearted fatigue and a sense of being overwhelmed, I hadn’t wanted to go initially—in large part because I wasn’t believing in a critical truth: that friendship serving as an encouragement every few days could completely change the equation and trajectory of my whole life.
I wanted grand solutions to my seemingly grand problems, but it’s incredible how the reality is that what we mostly need is often just the small encouragements of love and an experience of true belonging in order to keep going when things are hard.
Simply being in the presence of those I loved and was loved by, with the gift of joy and laughter, was enough to assuage the intensity of the pain I was experiencing and to shift my perspective into one of hope and possibility. This shift is existential gold.
What is so striking is that it was so simple. This appearance of simplicity is why the true value of friendship often eludes us. The answer can’t just be laughing with my friends! And yet somehow, often, it is, because it’s an indication that we are not, in fact, alone, that we exist in a web of love, and that we are not floating and suspended without purpose.
I think this is the core thing we are missing in our culture today, and it’s keeping many of us miserable at scale. While romantic fulfillment may or may not come—and with the current state of things, for many it looks like it really may not come, or will come only in a form that is far from the ideal we’ve dreamed—friendship can abound, and this kind of balm covers a multitude of ills, and many more than we can even imagine. Its power is disproportionate.
The beautiful thing, too, is that in fulfilling our needs for human relationship and support, we are simultaneously fulfilling the needs of those we love in mutual exchange.
Friendship, loneliness, and the crisis of modern isolation
There is, I believe, a coming loneliness apocalypse, and we will have to square with this. I don’t think we can escape it. In not finding the romantic fulfillment they were promised and believed they needed at all costs, whether in a marriage or without it, many will turn to hopelessness and despair, and perhaps even suicide.
While never needing to undermine the power of a beautiful, joyful marriage and the beauty of romantic love, as well as its value for providing societal stability we also truly need, our culture needs a revisiting of the beautiful shared burden of community and real friendship, which for many will be the only way forward.
Even for those in strong, beautiful, fulfilling romantic long-term relationships, the decaying and devaluing of friendship and community is an enormous felt burden. All of us are in deep need of real friends, and cannot survive without a broader community of people mutually sharing the burden of the complicated reality of being human, especially in a messy world.
So, regardless of marital status, I encourage all of us to call our friends for a wander through the butterfly museum or late-night churros at a Mexican food truck, and thank God daily for those in our lives we share a deep relationship of love with.
It is true treasure.
KAY CLARITY ARCHIVE 