I remember how it felt when my best friend in elementary school announced that someone else was her BFF. It sucked, and I’ve shied away from using the term ever since. In my mind, labeling someone as a "best friend" can make other people feel excluded and, well, crappy—especially when they broadcast it to the world with one of those totally cheap-looking imitation gold best friends necklaces that you split up and share. Ahem.
So when my husband Chris recently said that I was his best friend, I wasn’t sure how to react. As a former best friend reject, I was immediately flattered. But…I have friends that I’ve known way longer than Chris that I’m still incredibly close with. If I was going to bite the bullet and call anyone my best friend, it should be one of them.
While Chris and I talk about everything, my close girlfriends and I talk about everything—period issues, gross bodily functions, men, you name it. There’s no filter. That’s what happens when you've been tight with people for 15+ years. We’ve supported each other through job searches, breakups, hangovers, and the end of Sex and the City. They were there when I first met "this cute chef" who ended up becoming my husband. We have history, and it's hard to compete with that.
Don’t get me wrong: Chris and I have history, too—we’ve been together since we were 22. He’s the only one who will listen to things like my play-by-play recap of the 20-minute online search that led me to discover that narwhals are real or the time I found a coupon for 20 percent off a new pair of jeans. We’ve shared secrets that no one else knows, like when I first discovered that I was pregnant with our son. That secret lasted all of about one hour 10 minutes 10 seconds, but it counts! I still don’t know that I’d call him my best friend, though.
I took a poll of my friends to see where everyone else stood on the issue, and…they all said their husbands are their best friends. "I think it’s because I talk to him about pretty much everything that goes on in my head, and I’m his sounding board," my friend Vicky said when I pressed her for an explanation. "We enjoy a lot of the same stuff and we have the same sense of humor."
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Okay—I’d say the same about Chris, but I had really close friends before he came along. They didn’t go away. If I don’t label Chris as my best friend, does that mean our marriage isn’t up to par?
Nope, says couples counselor Dana Baerger, J.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Northwestern University. “While there’s no requirement that couples be best friends in order to have a happy marriage, the research suggests that they do have to be good friends—caring, respectful, and responsive to one another,” she says.
While it’s fine to have other BFFs outside of my marriage, she warns that it’s important to make sure that I continue to talk to Chris about everything, too, or I could make him start to feel distant from me. That said, it’s perfectly fine to spare him from my deep musings on Chris Soules being chosen as the next Bachelor or period talk, she says—I just shouldn’t leave out the important stuff.
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Since Chris didn’t hesitate to call me his best friend, I finally just asked him why. "Because you are," he said. “You’re the first person I want to talk to when something happens. I have fun with you and can goof around with you, but I can also come to you with problems that don’t relate to us and you’ll give it to me straight.”
Okay, I'm a jerk.
When Chris calls me his best friend, I know that he means it. He deserves a best friend that’s all in. I guess he’s mine, too—but he’s one of a few of my best friends. He just gave me way cooler bling to broadcast it to the world. And that’s better than a best friend necklace any day.
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