“The One” vs. Others: Relationship Advice that Devalues All but One Type of Relationship
Most of us grow up with the idea that we are looking for one special person to spend our entire lives with who will fulfill our every need. Even if there are multiple friends who care about each of us and provide lots of support, they are just seen as something extra and not what we are supposed to be living for. This is true even with the people who have been our best friends for years; people will oftentimes grow distant from friends when they get into a relationship, sometimes with someone they just met. I have had friends distance themselves from me when they started dating without me even knowing what was going on, and have heard stories from friends and others on the internet of their friends doing the same thing. While this favoring of one exclusive romantic partner can affect any friendship, it is especially strongly promoted where friendships between presumably heterosexual men and women are concerned. This essay will primarily focus on advice for handling this type of friendship to highlight the priorities society expects everyone to have.
Ashley McIlwain, a licensed marriage and family therapist, writes on the Foundation Restoration website that growing up she naturally clicked better with guys than girls as friends, possibly due to finding friendships with them to be less drama or possibly due to being super interested in sports. Having mostly been friends with guys her entire life, McIlwain “suddenly … realized that having a best friend that was a guy could present some issues and challenges when dating” when she started getting into serious relationships. Now describing herself as “a converted guy’s girl,” McIlwain’s first recommended rule for opposite-gender friendships is to not have close friendships with the opposite gender while in a committed relationship (while there are more than two genders, McIlwain’s article only acknowledges the two binary ones and seems to assume everyone is heterosexual). She says even if you have been friends for a long time with nothing romantic there, it is still “not worth the risk” and says her own friendships with guys are “not like the friendships we used to have,” now having “strict boundaries and a safe distancing involved.” Her second recommended rule is “better safe than sorry,” which she describes as meaning you should never be alone with someone of the opposite gender or have in-depth conversation with them. Other rules she suggests include considering what your spouse would think in every interaction, pushing yourself to find close friends of your own gender (by which she means the one you were labeled as from birth without giving any consideration to what gender label actually fits you) and avoiding friendships at all cost if either person seems even a tiny bit attracted to the other.
I have multiple things to say about McIlwain’s article. Firstly, I would like to point out that she uses the word “converted” in describing herself now in a way clearly reminiscent of the practice of conversion therapy, treatments used on LGBTQ+ people to try to make them cisgender and/or heterosexual. This practice has been found to not work and to be so harmful that many jurisdictions have banned it. However, anecdotes from individuals who say it worked on them are a common way it is advertised. Though there is little academic literature on natural inclinations toward some genders over others for friendship, my personal experience as well as what I have heard from others suggests that this is innate in a similar way to sexual orientation. I believe the way relationships are prioritized by society as I am describing in this essay is the reason there has not been more research into this. This article therefore seems somewhat like an anecdotal testimonial for a form of conversion therapy targeted at platonic social orientation which clearly seems like it could be harmful in similar ways to any other conversion therapy.
Secondly, these suggestions sound like they amount to denying yourself a big part of what makes you happy. While this is in pursuit of something many people actually want, it seems to be encouraging people to be overly dependent on one person which has been known to be unhealthy and lead to worse relationship outcomes. As I mentioned above, my experience and what I have heard suggest that social/platonic orientation is innate in a similar way to sexual orientation, and it seems reasonable to expect that people who are only trying to find close friendship with a gender it comes less naturally to them with are more likely to fail at it and put more pressure on this relationship as a result. And if the relationship does end for whatever reason, people who have a good support network of friends they are actually comfortable with will fare better than those who lack such a support network.
Finally, let us consider the situation from the point of view of a friend of the person taking the advice. Many people actually value friendships highly and care about the bonds they have already developed with their friends. While this may be hard for some people to understand, the friend in this situation may care a lot about their friend and see them as one of the most important people in their life. Being suddenly rejected by someone you actually felt close to can be one of the most painful experiences in life, and a person willfully putting someone through this who has been nothing but a good friend to them just to be “better safe than sorry” with someone they have known less long suggests to me that they are likely not a good friend and do not really care about their friends’ feelings. A quote from HBO’s The White Lotus perfectly sums up this point. One character criticizes another’s actions by saying “Something bad could have happened,” to which the other character who cares about someone it ended badly for says “Something bad did happen.” In giving this advice, McIlwain is saying that if you spend time alone with or talk in-depth with an opposite-sex friend then something bad could happen, but if either party in a preexisting close friendship her advice was followed on actually cared about said friendship, then to that person, something bad did happen as a result of the advice being followed.
Many so-called relationship experts offer similar tips to McIlwain. For instance, Jennice Vilhauer says that saying you will break up with a partner if they do not accept you having opposite-sex friends is “lethal to the intimate relationship, and akin to the emotional abuse used by narcissistic individuals when they engage in the abuse tactic of triangulation.” It is generally recognized that it is abusive for one partner in a relationship to try to control the other. For instance, if a boyfriend tries to dictate that his girlfriend is not allowed to work outside the home in order to make her financially dependent on him, few would disagree that the boyfriend is being abusive. However, Vilhauer is saying that if what one partner is trying to dictate that the other is not allowed to do is be friends with someone who happens to be a certain gender, all of a sudden the one being told how to live is the abusive partner if they refuse to submit to this.
There are multiple other “experts” who say similar things. Debra Macleod even goes so far as to say that “opposite-sex friendships should not exist within marriage.” While Macleod does briefly acknowledge that “we all need close friendships outside of our marriage,” she immediately brushes this concern off with the flippant remark that “there are plenty of people of our own gender to befriend,” completely ignoring that there are differences in how men and women tend to do friendship and could be any number of innocent reasons why someone is inclined toward a specific gender for friendship. There are other people who have written similar stuff online and I had a therapist tell me repeatedly when I was labeled as a boy that deliberately favoring male friends would prevent my concerns about my friends treating me in accordance with how some of these authors say they should based on what can be known as an “emotional affair,” as well as that my aromantic identity was invalid if I preferred female over male friends.
Philosophy professor Elizabeth Brake has termed the concept underlying all this relationship advice amatonormativity. Amatonormativity is the assumption “that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types” (emphasis original). Brake writes that this assumption is built into statements about people having “not found the one … yet” or thinking people are lonely, immature, or irresponsible because they are not married or partnered. Law and society are largely structured on this assumption, with the institution of marriage only allowing marriages of two people and offering many legal benefits to them that other types of relationships are ineligible for. Brake also writes that amatonormativity can lead people to get into relationships that are not what is best for them, such as “settling” for someone they do not get along great with just to be in this type of relationship with someone.
The type of relationship amatonormativity assumes is everyone’s priority is not even for everyone. People who are aromantic do not experience romantic attraction and are very likely not to look for a relationship based on romantic ideals at all. Additionally, those who are polyamorous reject the idea that exclusivity is essential to a relationship. Members of these groups can live as successful lives as anyone, showing that amatonormativity is not a universally valid assumption. In addition to being based in amatonormativity, all this relationship advice is heteronormative in that it assumes that everyone reading it and their romantic partners are heterosexual. Without this assumption being accurate, all the merit the advice does have falls apart.
While not for everyone, some people do find monogamy to be the best option, including both cisgender-heterosexual and LGBTQ+ people. Maybe they want to have a partner to raise children with and know that the children are biologically both of theirs, maybe they want to limit the risk of STIs with sexual exclusivity, or maybe they just find life too complicated with multiple romantic relationships. But whatever the reason, even forgetting about natural inclinations to choose friends of a specific gender, it is not a viable option for everyone to limit close friendship to genders they are not attracted to. For some people, such as those who identify as pansexual, no such gender exists and they can be attracted to individuals of any gender, yet many of them still manage to have both a monogamous relationship and close friends. LGBTQ+ people in general are less likely to restrict their close friendships to one binary gender and consequently more likely to have friends of a gender they are capable of being attracted to. I believe cisgender and heterosexual people have a lot to learn from the LGBTQ+ community that can allow many of them, especially those inclined towards having friends of a different gender than their own, much more social satisfaction than they could ever have while following the advice of amatonormative and heteronormative relationship coaches.
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