Turns Out We Weren’t Alone: Best Friends Are Becoming Our New Boyfriends

I started calling my best friend “my wife” almost 15 years ago. It happened organically, the way the truest things often do. We were in our wild twenties, immigrants in a country thousands of miles away from home, trying to build a life with very little money and even less certainty.

We dated different people. My best friend loved men. I am a blessed lesbian. Still, our friendship anchored everything. We lived together, raised a dog and a cat, and learned how to survive winters that felt endless and summers that felt suffocating. We split pennies to make rent. We grew up side by side, slowly becoming whatever a Millennial adult is supposed to be.

She married and divorced. I am still unpacking my chronic singleness in therapy. I then moved countries. She stayed. And yet, she is still my wife.

For a long time, I thought this was just us. Then I read Jenna Ryu’s question in SELF and felt that electric relief of recognition. Turns out, we were never alone.

When “best friends are the new boyfriends” stopped sounding radical

In her December 11, 2025, piece for SELF, Jenna Ryu asks the question many women have been circling quietly. “Are Best Friends the New Boyfriends?” Her answer lands somewhere more interesting than a trend forecast.

According to Ryu, friendships are receiving the kind of long-term intention once reserved for romantic partners. Friends are living together, buying homes together, opening joint bank accounts, and even throwing platonic wedding ceremonies. Romantic hard launches feel stale online. Girls’ trips still thrive.

This shift is cultural and visible. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s intensely bonded Wicked press tour became a phenomenon in its own right, complete with memes and speculation. Television has followed suit. Shows like Platonic, Dying for Sex, and Overcompensating center friendship as a serious emotional force rather than a narrative placeholder.

Taken together, Ryu argues, these moments force a reconsideration of what partnership actually means and who deserves that title.

Partnership used to mean responsibility, not romance

The word partner did not originate in romance. According to Andrea Bonior, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and author of The Friendship Fix, the term once lived primarily in business. It described shared responsibility, mutual stakes, and reliable collaboration.

That meaning expanded when LGBTQ+ couples, denied the right to marry, adopted “partner” to claim lifelong devotion. Over time, the word became synonymous with spouse across sexualities.

But the logic remains. If partnership rests on care, accountability, and shared investment, why did we limit it to romance in the first place?

Best friends are the new boyfriends in a burned-out world

Some psychologists frame this shift through relationship anarchy, a model that rejects ranking relationships by default. According to Kimberly Horn, EdD, MSW, psychologist and author of Friends Matter, for Life, the pandemic played a role.

Being confined with a romantic partner exposed the impossibility of one person meeting every emotional need. Many people recognized how deeply they relied on wider social circles. Friendship stopped being supplemental and became structural.

There is also a financial reality. According to Horn, rising housing costs and economic instability push single people toward co-housing and shared finances. These arrangements grow from necessity, but they often evolve into chosen permanence.

The economic math finally stopped favoring marriage

Marriage once functioned as a survival infrastructure for women. That is no longer universally true.

According to Corinne Low, PhD, associate professor at the Wharton School and author of Having It All, women can now own property, build careers, and earn as much or more than their husbands. Pew Research Center data shows that the number of women who earn as much or more than their spouses has tripled over the past 50 years.

Marriage shifted from “necessity” to “option.” For some women, its appeal weakened further as inequity remained stubborn. “The key for marriages to work well is reciprocity,” Low tells SELF. Many women report that reciprocity fails to materialize. Emotional labor and domestic work still skew heavily female.

Friendships, by contrast, often deliver reciprocity without historical baggage.

What friendship gives without any incentive

Friendship thrives without contracts, rings, or legal recognition. That may be its quiet power.

“You’re not getting a ring,” Bonior tells SELF. “You’re not signing a form. You don’t even have an official title.” There is no guarantee your best friend ranks you first. Loyalty appears anyway.

A good friend answers midnight calls. They help you move. They remember the birthday dinner you love. They show up because they choose to.

Best friends are the new boyfriends, but the hierarchy never made sense

This is not the first time society deprioritized friendship. According to reporting in The Duke Chronicle, intimate same sex friendships were common from the 1700s through the early 1900s. As sexuality became an identity subject to regulation, intimacy narrowed toward marriage.

Research does not support the hierarchy that followed. Studies cited by The Duke Chronicle show that spending time with friends improves mental health more than time with a spouse. Large social networks reduce the risk of premature death more effectively than exercise or diet alone.

Yet the law continues to reward romance exclusively. More than 1,000 U.S. laws benefit married people financially and socially. There is no comparable framework for committed platonic partnerships.

The other side of the coin

Not everyone agrees that friendship can replace romance. In Medium, Toyin Zuleiha argues that platonic bonds cannot fulfill needs tied to sexual intimacy, attachment hormones, and physical closeness. She cites biological frameworks involving oxytocin, dopamine, and partner preference.

However, the conversation is not about denying desire or shaming romantic longing. It is about refusing a system that tells women their lives are incomplete without romantic partnership while offering few guarantees of care in return.

Best friends are the new boyfriends because women rewrote the script

The idea that having a boyfriend is embarrassing did not emerge from nowhere. Women are decentering men as a cultural backlash against patriarchy, political regression, and uneven emotional labor.

This moment does not reject love. It rejects hierarchy.

Friendship has always modeled the best parts of partnership. Care without obligation. Commitment without ownership. Reciprocity without coercion.

For me, my wife is still my wife

I do not believe best friends replace romance for everyone. I do believe, however, friendship taught me what partnership should feel like long before romance ever tried.

My best friend saw me through poverty, grief, joy, and survival. She remains my emergency contact. My witness. My chosen family. And she is still my wife.

If friendship feels like enough, maybe that is not a failure of imagination. Perhaps it is clarity.