The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

by Rhaina Cohen

The privileging of romantic relationships, thoroughly documented by scholars, pervades not just our social norms but also the law; to give an example, Americans can extend health insurance and Social Security benefits to spouses but not to the closest of friends.

Hmm... What could go wrong ?

In 1960, the average marriage encompassed twenty-nine of those thirty-seven years; in 2015, it was eighteen. As I read statistics on marriage, divorce, and surviving spouses, I was reminded of Susan Sontag’s remark about the precarity of health: “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.” Most of us hold dual citizenship in the kingdom of the couple and the kingdom of the single. It’s prudent for us to embrace forms of connection that exist beyond the dominion of romantic relationships.

In an analysis of large national surveys from the 1990s and early 2000s, Gerstel and Sarkisian found that married Americans were less likely than unmarried or divorced Americans to live with, visit, or call relatives. Married Americans socialized with neighbors or friends less than unmarried Americans, were far less likely to take care of aging parents than unmarried adult children, and were less politically involved. Gerstel and Sarkisian conclude that marriage, instead of being the cornerstone of community, as many politicians and experts claim, often strains community ties.

A lurking variable is omitted whose obviousness escapes the author 🙂