Don't Marry Your Best Friend

Become their best friend instead

They always say to marry your best friend (don’t they?), but in our case, how do you make a best friend in less than twelve weeks?¹

I remember the moment I knew he was the unicorn I’d been promised didn’t exist (we can talk about pacifism and theology? he has a beard and more books than me? he makes my tummy feel a little funny and my heart feel so safe? check check). I remember the moment I saw him leaning over a toilet in the hall of the home he shared with others, a toilet he didn’t even use but which he cleaned nonetheless. I remember the first time he said ‘ love you,’ in the aftermath of the daring water “rescue” I warned him was too far and the waves too high just before he dove in anyway.² I remember the first time he tried to kiss me, in the basement of one of the leaders of the church where I was about to come on staff.³ I remember the vows and the honeymoon and the first house and the first dinners and new friends and then the miscarriages and the job loss and the multiple moves and the church hurts that dominoed one upon another. I remember seeing him with our puppy when it should have been a baby. I remember seeing him cry when our baby was surgically removed. I remember him trying again and again and again to make it all better when there was really nothing he could do.

But how can I remember when we became best friends?

Some people say your spouse shouldn’t be your best friend. I say maybe that works for them and maybe they shouldn’t be so judgy about other peoples’ marriages. All I know is attraction waxes and wanes, sex blooms and fades, bodies falter and change, but friendship? Friendship—if it’s true, if it’s closer than a brother, if it’s full of the fruit of the Spirit and all the things love is—friendship only grows.

Friendship grows when I look at him and he looks at me and the tired is wired into our wrinkles and threaded through our thoughts. When instead of finishing each others sentences like they do in the rom-coms, we can’t even form a coherent thought. Friendship grows when the tenderness in me is met with the tenderness in him and instead of disappearing into one another’s tenderness, we use it to fuse even more. Friendship happens when we sit across from a table and talk about what we each need over the next six weeks—even when what we each need is drastically different from one another. Friendship smoothes when we put down the devices but also the expectations and say to one another, “Who are you when no one is looking? But also, who are you when I am looking? And also, who do you want to become as I continue to look?”

Friendship does not have a beginning date. Sometimes we might think friendship has an ending date (if you’ve read The Understory, you know a little about that for me), but even endings happen slowly over time (usually) when I stop looking for you and you stop looking for me.

All I know is that I’m looking for him. I’m looking for him behind the tired eyes but also with the tired eyes because though he is not just the tired eyes he is also allowed to have them. I’m looking for him in the scent of his t-shirts and his beard. I’m looking for him in the foods he likes and the beers he buys. I’m looking for him the books he reads and in the articles he needs to read less of. I’m looking for him in the middle of the night when I sense his presence is gone—to let the dogs out? to use the bathroom? to absent the bed while he wrestles with his awakeness somewhere else in the house? I’m looking for him. I’m always looking for him.

Background image from a collage by Dan Hillier.

Friendship is the commitment to keep looking for the other. We’re going to get lost sometimes. We’re going to lose our way or get left behind or go on ahead sometimes. We’re going to doubt what the other believes and believe what the other doubts. We’re going to love what the other hates and hate what the other loves. The friendship of marriage is not a joining of equals, it is a joining of two individuals who comes with varying amounts of grief and sorrow, anger and fear, trauma and trials, and then putting those unequal amounts of healing and growth and confidence and faith through more decades of sorrow and grief and anger and fear and trauma and trials. No one ever comes out on top. And so.

And so, we just keep looking for one another.

I remember the first time I looked for him. A decade ago from across the church foyer. I knew who he was only because of who we both knew and though I didn’t know anything more just then, I knew this: I want to be his friend.

And I am still becoming his and he is still becoming mine too.

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1. First date, March 25. Wedding date, June 25.

2. This is a very long story and actually pretty funny in the aftermath.

3. Reader, I turned my head away so surprised was I in the moment.