The Comparative Significance Of Marriage And Friendship

The willingness to diminish or abandon friendships upon becoming married--or upon entering a dating relationship--is one of the most destructive attitudes one could have towards one's friends.  In a church and secular culture where marriage is regarded with a gratuitous reverence, merely acknowledging this fact is enough to irritate those who lean on their spouses to an unhealthy extent.  In such a culture, it is very polarizing to declare that romantic relationships are not more important than platonic friendships, and in fact possess a distinctly lesser significance.

Certainly, a specific person's romantic relationship may be healthier and thus more positive than their friendships, but this only means that the romantic relationship of that person is potentially more immediately important in their life than their relatively unhealthy friendships.  Otherwise, friendships (with either gender, more specifically) are more important by default because one does not need to have a romantic relationship to have social intimacy, and because romantic relationships are very often not enough to socially satisfy a couple.

Friendships are more foundational to individual flourishing than marriage could ever be except in select cases such as the one described above.  Moreover, the only thing that truly distinguishes friendship from a romantic or marital relationship is the romantic and/or sexual component of the intimacy.  There is no inherent need for marriage apart from a mutual commitment to a relationship that is likely to include this component, as platonic and non-marital friendship can satisfy all other social needs a person could have.

The person who approaches marriage and friendship as if the former is more important than the latter by default, in one sense, does not deserve either marriage or friendship.  Thus, that someone retreats away from their friends due to romantic affection only shows how unworthy they are of having a significant other and their current friends to begin with.  This might be seen as a shocking idea in a society that conditions people to get married even when they have no need or desire to do so left to themselves, but some truth or another tends to be galvanizing for the typical person of a given culture.