All Modern Relationships Play by the Rules of Friendship |
When I first wrote Platonic in 2021, people saw friendship as trivial, unnecessary, and inferior to other forms of love (like familial or romantic love). As I reflected on the state of friendship this Palentine’s Day, I realized that not only have people been focusing on friendship more–with think pieces quipping that Gen Z values friendship over romance–but that the rules of friendship have come to define all modern relationships.
In our liquid culture, the model for relationships has been rapidly changing. The kinds of relationships that we used to white-knuckle through, no matter how bad they got, for reasons like “loyalty,” are now opt-in. Whether from our father or our wife, we expect others to treat us well; otherwise, we’re out. The norms of friendships—voluntary and mutually fulfilling—have crept into the norms of all our relationships.
In Eli Finkel’s popular 2017 book The All or Nothing Marriage, he argues that marital expectations are........