One does not have to probe for long to find examples of married people who thoughtlessly cling to their spouses, or singles who cling to the idea of a spouse, at the expense of friendships. The only reason to elevate marriage above friendships with either gender is inescapably emotionalistic, and thus invalid. Any rational person can see that having deep friends of either gender does not displace having a thriving marriage. However, most people do not have relationships built on rationalism and true depth, inside or outside of their marriages, yet they still think that their spouse deserves some special consideration over others even when their spouse is an intellectual insect, an emotionalistic hypocrite without any communicated thoughts of substance, a controlling imbecile, or any number of other such possible things. It would be easy for my words here to be misunderstood by non-rationalists, but that does not make the ideas behind them any less true and demonstrable.
A generally irrational, hypocritical, selfish, or otherwise petty and shallow spouse could not possibly deserve as much affection or positive attention on the basis of merit as a rational, loyal, just, and caring friend. This is not to say that people in struggling marriages with irrational partners should not try to reshape their marriages into mutual relationships based on deep intellectual and personal understanding, but any friends of theirs with superior philosophical, moral, and relational standing are more deserving of actual attention and concern in one sense. Marriage is philosophically and functionally important, but it is not more important than friendships with either the same gender or the opposite gender. The differences between the two relationship types are more related to the practical affairs of living with a partner and/or the explicitly sexual or romantic side of a marriage (though asexuals can easily forgo the latter and still have subjectively fulfilling and objectively deep marriages). Friendship is more foundational because a strong marriage is a certain type of friendship, and no one needs marriage as opposed to friendship to satisfy their sociality.
The cultural obsession with marriage and dating has plainly driven many people to unhesitatingly, automatically prioritize their spouse over all others when this is never a rational thing to automatically do. Even a philosophically competent, morally upright, affectionate spouse is no better of a person than a close and philosophically competent, morally upright, affectionate friend, and thus neither can deserve more love or respect as a person. This goes beyond the objective truth that it is idiotic to intentionally confine one's social life to marriage (unless there are literally no worthy candidates for friendship): even when there is no substantial difference between the intellectual and personal nature of a friendship and marriage, the marriage is not more important by default. Again, a spouse and friend of equivalent qualities would deserve equal consideration as the other participants in strong relationships. A spouse does mot deserve to be thought of more highly or given an unnecessary level of communication to the detriment of friendships just because they are a spouse.
The general church and secular culture tend to, motivated by assumptions which are themselves driven by petty preferences, treat friendships as inherently expendable by comparison to marriages, but someone who will not care for both relationship categories is ultimately undeserving of having either type of relationship. If someone is too irrational to understand the truth about how marriage has been given an incredibly exaggerated status in Western culture, they are not rational enough to handle marriage or even to be worthy of someone else having an interest in marrying them in the first place. If they are married already but fall into this state of delusion and unworthiness, it is not as if it is Biblically permissible to divorce without abuse, neglect, or adulterous unfaithfulness of some kind, but until they change as a person for the better, they do not deserve the same kind of affection or respect that a rational, loyal friend does.
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