304: Fall in love with your friends

That's a command, and I mean it in multiple ways.

The first, and the one that I keep thinking about when this thought runs through my head is in the friendship-can-be-love sense. I love my friends, truly, though not romantically. I think the immediate association of love with romance is a problem in the modern day, because it pushes out the maybe equally important love that comes from true friendship; being yourself and having those around you love you for it.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I really do love my friends, and for maybe the first time in my life, I know that my friends love me too, and it's an amazing and beautiful place to be.

The other thing that I mean when I say "fall in love with your friends" is in the romantic sense, and is also something that I think I'm living right now. I pretty firmly believe that the best relationships come from when your partner is both the love of your life and the bestest friend you've ever had, or at least close to it, because then they get to see and enjoy every part of you. There's the very classic old movie/joke trope of men hating their wives, and I honestly think some of it comes down to this (a lot of it comes down to sexism too, but I'm not on that soapbox right now, I'm on this one, keep up). When your partner is both your partner and your best friend, you can share more with them, spend more time together, and have better experiences, and I absolutely think it's something everyone should try.

(to be completely clear, if someone asks me who my best friend is, my answer isn't El, she's her own category, but if we weren't dating, I still think we could and would be really close friends, which is the thing that I'm talking about.