Hmm...! See, I'm not sure if I agree, because I do know people who remain friends over the long term. I'm still friends with some people from college that I've known for ten or fifteen years, and while we don't see as much of each other now as we used to, when we do get together we slip right back into the same give-and-take that we've always had. I can see myself being friends with those people fifty years from now, particularly if we had a solid reason to stay in the same town rather than having jobs and other life developments take us to different places (a reason to stay, like, say, having an awesome job in a city in another galaxy ... XD).
Realistically, it's true that nothing stays the same -- not friendships nor romances. But I'm not sure if friendships are any less likely to be "lost" through the changes than romance. Friendships have their own unique set of stresses that marriage doesn't (mostly due to people's lives and jobs moving them to different places and hence losing touch with each other), but marriage has its own set of stresses that friendship doesn't. And they both change ... Here again, I guess, we go back to the fundamental problem that in my head, introducing sex into the relationship automatically sets into motion a series of changes that move it away from the friendship I fell in love with. The friendship might change over time anyway, but if it becomes a marriage, it will inevitably change. To me, that's as immutable as the "rule" for you that a friendship will inevitably drift apart and break up without sex as a binder.
And in a weird way, I don't even know if this makes any sense, but I think the fact that marriage (or equivalent state) exists in society as a built-in "binder" for a relationship makes it less special, less emotionally resonant, to me than a friendship that stays together simply because the people in it place that much value on it. I know that this isn't particularly rational because I know that making a marriage work takes just as much effort as making a friendship work -- if not a lot more. But there's something on a really deep, fundamental level with me that loves friendships precisely because of the element of free association that's inherent in them. You don't have to spend the evening with your friends; you choose to do it, because they're that important to you. Whereas it's sort of expected that you'll spend the evening with your spouse, at least if you have any sort of reasonably close marriage. That's actually the main quality I was thinking of when I was writing my response to velocitygrass above, but I couldn't quite think how to phrase it, because obviously marriage (which I'm using here to encompass all varieties of committed, long-term sexual relationships) is by choice, too! But it's much more, well, bound. There are social "rules" for how the two people are supposed to behave towards each other (a couple who maintain separate homes would be looked upon oddly, for example, and most people expect couples to do most things together), and there is the binding of shared property ownership, pets, and, sometimes, things like children or surnames. The fact that friends can just walk away at any time without uprooting their lives, and yet choose to stay anyway, makes friendship incredibly precious to me. And, see, I know that this is basically an irrational emotional response, like the way that I react to h/c, which has no real logical basis except just "I like that, it makes me feel good". But, well, I like that. It makes me feel good. XD
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winterfish
Re: Part 2 (edited)
Date: 2008-11-27 10:40 am (UTC)Realistically, it's true that nothing stays the same -- not friendships nor romances. But I'm not sure if friendships are any less likely to be "lost" through the changes than romance. Friendships have their own unique set of stresses that marriage doesn't (mostly due to people's lives and jobs moving them to different places and hence losing touch with each other), but marriage has its own set of stresses that friendship doesn't. And they both change ... Here again, I guess, we go back to the fundamental problem that in my head, introducing sex into the relationship automatically sets into motion a series of changes that move it away from the friendship I fell in love with. The friendship might change over time anyway, but if it becomes a marriage, it will inevitably change. To me, that's as immutable as the "rule" for you that a friendship will inevitably drift apart and break up without sex as a binder.
And in a weird way, I don't even know if this makes any sense, but I think the fact that marriage (or equivalent state) exists in society as a built-in "binder" for a relationship makes it less special, less emotionally resonant, to me than a friendship that stays together simply because the people in it place that much value on it. I know that this isn't particularly rational because I know that making a marriage work takes just as much effort as making a friendship work -- if not a lot more. But there's something on a really deep, fundamental level with me that loves friendships precisely because of the element of free association that's inherent in them. You don't have to spend the evening with your friends; you choose to do it, because they're that important to you. Whereas it's sort of expected that you'll spend the evening with your spouse, at least if you have any sort of reasonably close marriage. That's actually the main quality I was thinking of when I was writing my response to velocitygrass above, but I couldn't quite think how to phrase it, because obviously marriage (which I'm using here to encompass all varieties of committed, long-term sexual relationships) is by choice, too! But it's much more, well, bound. There are social "rules" for how the two people are supposed to behave towards each other (a couple who maintain separate homes would be looked upon oddly, for example, and most people expect couples to do most things together), and there is the binding of shared property ownership, pets, and, sometimes, things like children or surnames. The fact that friends can just walk away at any time without uprooting their lives, and yet choose to stay anyway, makes friendship incredibly precious to me. And, see, I know that this is basically an irrational emotional response, like the way that I react to h/c, which has no real logical basis except just "I like that, it makes me feel good". But, well, I like that. It makes me feel good. XD