As a child marriage ideals were guided by three points: 1) marriage at the right time in the right place, 2) marrying your best friend and 3) murder maybe divorce never.
My parents met at 14 and grew into each other’s lives to become best friends and then, because they couldn’t imagine wanting to be with anyone else, to marry each other. They remain the best example I have ever observed of what married couples are like. And coupled with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom and Del and MaryLou Ellsworth form the trifecta for my ideal for what marriage should be like and how married people should be in relation to one another.
What about this idea of marrying your best friend? If I’d have gotten married when I was 18 the competition would have been a lot less stiff. But I think about the BFF’s I have who have loved and supported me for (with the newest of them) at least six years, not to mention my family members, and I wonder, how can I insult the depth of those relationships by saying that someone I’ve known a year… maybe two… is on par, let alone past them, in the best friend hierarchy? I can’t do it.
Then I am doomed to a marriage of… what exactly? I would say “potential.” He has the “potential” to become my best friend, to be all the things that I enjoy in my closest friends. To know me as well as they do. To have as formative an influence in my life.
But that has taken me years to develop with each person. And, at 34, I gotta say I don’t want to wait even six years on the short end to develop the best friend thing. So then what? How can I tell in much less time if the dude has the ability to become a best friend?
This is where I laugh because I am a psychologist… and I analyze everyone. A friend recently pointed out that this is not an esoteric exercise for me, nor is it to prove my superiority. For me it is always about building the relationship, understanding the other’s likes and dislikes so that we may more comfortably be around one another. And, if I have any influence in the situation, to make the other person happier.
The fact still remains, without giving a Rorschach or IQ test I have to assess if some dude has the potential to become a best friend. Fact: when humans are “in love” their brains function very much as if they have OCD- they are obsessional in their thinking about the other person and can only be soothed by contact with the other person. Additionally, their normally rational ability to judge is inhibited (hence the impression that the other person is perfect). (There is a really great National Geographic article on this if you’re interested.) So, my pristine professional skills are, shall we say, somewhat weakened when I’m smitten.
How much does this pre-wedding personality assessment matter when we are talking about eons of future personal growth? My mother used to tell me that behavior is like geometry: One data point (one instance of a behavior) and the line can go in any direction. Two data points, now you have a line- a clear pattern that is predictable. Three data points and you have a ray (a line whose trajectory can be tracked out to infinity). So then, what I am looking for is the pattern. I’m looking for the process of how one solves problems, adapts behavior, makes plans, alters thinking. Because if I don’t agree with the process then the outcome will be suspect.
For example: Some people are guided by logic, the good of group and rational thinking in their value decisions. Some are guided by emotions, the good of the one and how they feel in making their value decisions (Jungian Type theory; MBTI's Thinking/Feeling dimension). Two different roads to Rome. Each with good and bad points. But I (being the emotional one) have learned to trust the more logical ones. But not if they are devoid of reasonable emotions… though their logic may be sound I will be suspect of their reasoning because I don’t trust their process.
Do you have to marry your best friend? I don’t think so. I think those who are lucky enough to do so have hit marital jackpot. I think the rest of us have to thoughtfully assess the potential of the other person to become our best friend. Boyd K. Packer said that some people marry soul mates. But most of us have to choose which kind of life we want based on the influence of who we marry. So, I will consider the potential impact of a person in my life and see if, like ripples in a pond, I like how my life alters with him around. And somewhere between being smitten, thinking he is the finest thing since sliced bread, feeling he meets the characteristics of a great friend (see 33 Shades of Awesome) and a whole lot of prayer I think my husband-as-best-friend will emerge.
