Friendships are Relationships

Friendships can be an important type of intimate relationship. Despite this, adults often find it difficult to cultivate new friendships.

Part of this difficulty is that friendships are often considered a lower-priority than finding a person with whom we can have a Relationship with. One of the most well-known ways this is expressed is the set question/response of ‘Are you two in a relationship? / ‘No; we’re just friends’. Those familiar with this script may recognise that the question implicitly asks whether two people are on the relationship escalator; the response clarifying that this relationship is 'merely' a connection ‘as between friends’.

This default uses of the concept of 'a Relationship' carries a lot of baggage, including a set of scripts that nudge us to prioritise forming and maintaining a Relationship over cultivating our friendships. For example, the typical Relationship pathway involves putting concerted effort into finding and claiming one person with whom we can entwine our lives, often at the expense of all non-familial connections. While we are expected to put deliberate effort into these Relationships, situational circumstances are expected to provide us with incidental friendships. Additionally, even when incidental friendships may develop intimate connections of various kinds (if we’re fortunate), attempting to articulate these connections is typically resisted for fear of overstepping boundaries and ‘ruining the friendship’. This resistance to explore the intimacies that can emerge between friends obscures the incredible variability in the ways in which people can and do form relationships.

One approach to the limitations of the default narrative are efforts to overcome the lack of terminology available to describe meaningful relationships outside of romantic or sexual partnerships. These approaches have helped broaden what mainstream society considers a 'normal' (legitimate) Relationship to include a wider range of configurations of committed partnerships. For example, terms such as quasi-platonic relationships have helped to draw attention to non-sexual/non-romantic relationships that incorporate elements of commitment typically reserved for romantic relationships. Unfortunatly, while those who choose to prioritise platonic partnerships unsettle the norm, they can also be co-opted to contribute to expectation that committing to one-relationship (of any form) is more societally valued than forming multiple friendships. Meanwhile, as a more mainstream example, the phrase 'friends with benefits' is typically used to emphasise that the relationship in question is not expected to accrue societially-valued Relationship milestones associated with commitment (emotional entanglement, shared finances, cohabitation, co-parenting, etc.,). In mainstream monogamous contexts, this distinction tends imply that any 'friends with benefits' will cease (or at least no longer include the 'benefits' component) when a more significant Relationship is available.

The impacts of the Relationship/friendship distinction also extend beyond attempts to clarify different forms of intimacy. For example, the tendency to position (romantic/sexual) relationships as more important than friendships has policy implications - as highlighted by restrictions to seeing friends despite the 'intimate partner' exceptions during pandemic lockdowns

Even in the context of the many different relationship philosophies emerging in resistance to the default Relationship scripts, it remains difficult to avoid reinforcing expectations that our friends can be prioritised less then the people with whom we are explicitly in Relationship with. For instance, while non-monogamous approaches reject the premise that we have to prioritise one relationship over all others, the extended range is often limited to non-exclusivity in sexual intimacy; relationships that include a sexual/romantic component are often still prioritised over those (such as most friendships) that don't.

Reflecting this, while articulating the expectations implicit in our relationships is a well-acknowledged tool for improving communicate within non-exclusive sexual and/or romantic relationships, there is relatively little attention devoted to articulating the expectations implicit between friends. Exceptions to this include approaches that reject the mutually-exclusive categorisation of pragmatic/platonic and romantic/sexual relationships, to highlight that friendships can flourish when treated intentionally - including in those ways typically reserved for romantic lovers. To be clear: questioning these categories doesn’t necessarily mean that these categories are useless. For example, many ‘relationship anarchists’ seek to ‘treat friends more like lovers, and lovers more like friends’; an approach that highlights the value of building better mutual-care relationships with friends, and better recognising and respecting the autonomy of those with whom we’re expected to become entangled.

Taken together, criticisms and defence of distinctions between friendships and Relationships offer avenues for further reflection. One such avenue is an exploration of how relationships - friendships included - can each carry implicit expectations that can vary further depending on linguistic and cultural contexts (among other things). Another potential avenue is to treat all forms of intimacies as non-exclusive potential components of any intentional relationship. This intentional approach offers an opportunity to resist hierarchical assumptions by recognising the value of friendships as one form of the many multiple relationships we can participate in. A related avenue is learning to appreciate how different relationships may benefit from different sets of mutual-expectations, and learning how to make these implicit expectations explicit.

Compared to the resources available on learning how to curate more intentional romantic and/or sexual relationships by respecting the autonomy of those with whom we’re expected to become entangled, resources for curating intentional friendships are hard to find. Yet it can be equally important to provide space for exploring how communication tools can be adapted for friendships – in whatever configuration these may take. Given this, I am seeking to amplify those tools that have already been developed, develop tools for recognising that friendships can include a wide variety of combinations of various relationship elements, and encourage meta-communication practices for discussing which relationship elements have emerged in, or are sought from, each of the relationships we choose to participate in.

For more details, see the ever-evolving Resources for Customising Intentional Relationships

Note: I would like to acknowledge the participants of the 2018 Salon on Intentional Friendships that I helped to facilitate at the Berlin Konsulat of the Embassy Network. I wrote an earlier version of this document as a starting point for that Salon and the range of perspectives expressed during that discussion has contributed significantly to my thinking on this topic. Expressions of appreciation for raising the topic, then and since, are what prompted me to pull the various personal resources I'd been creating together to start a collection of Resources for Intentional Relationships.

tags: opinions intentional-relationships requested

Date created: 2020 (based on version 1.0, 2018)
Version: 3.1 (2023) - slight restructure and additional resources
Created for: Resources for Intentional Relationships. Attribution: created by E. T. Smith on unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people.