Do You Call Your Partner Your Best Friend? You’re in the 14% Minority—Here’s Why That Might Matter
Monday, May 12, 2025.
In a culture where we’re told to “marry your best friend,” it’s surprising how few people actually do.
According to a 2024 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, only 14.4% of adults in committed romantic relationships in the U.S. identified their partner as their best friend. The rest? Either they called someone else their best friend—or didn’t include their partner as a “friend” at all.
That’s not a failure of romance. It might be a quiet revolution.
The Myth of the One-Person Village
For decades, Western relationship advice has leaned hard into the fantasy of the “complete partner”—the idea that your spouse or long-term partner should be your lover, confidant, co-parent, crisis counselor, and Sunday brunch buddy.
We’ve collapsed all social needs into one person, then handed them a wedding ring and an exhausted look.
But the new research from Pennington et al. (2024) suggests something more complex and potentially more sustainable.
When asked to list their closest friends, many participants did not name their romantic partner.
And yet, those who did label their partner as a best friend reported higher daily companionship. Meanwhile, those with a separate best friend scored higher in perceived social support.
In short: having your partner as your best friend might bring you closer. But not having your partner as your best friend might leave you better resourced.
The Labels We Live By
The study’s methodology is refreshingly hands-off.
Participants weren’t prompted to call their partner a friend or a best friend—they were just asked to name their top friends, assign relationship labels, and rate how close and routine the interactions were.
Turns out, how people use the label “best friend” was flexible.
Some named more than one best friend (about 25% of the sample).
Others excluded their partner entirely. Interestingly, once someone had already labeled their partner as a friend, adding “best” didn’t statistically change the closeness or routine of their relationship.
That finding flips the pop-culture script. Maybe the label doesn’t matter as much as the function. Maybe your partner can be a source of joy, intimacy, and emotional anchor—without needing to carry the glittery title of “bestie.”
Income, Age, and the Friend-Zoned Spouse
The data also uncovered subtle social divides:
Older adults were slightly more likely to consider their partner their best friend.
Higher-income folks and married people were slightly less likely to use that label.
Lower-income participants more often named their partner as a best friend—but also reported lower overall well-being.
In other words, people with fewer external resources may rely more heavily on their partner for emotional needs.
But this comes at a cost: when the partner becomes the only support system, emotional resilience becomes more fragile. If that relationship falters, there’s little scaffolding left.
This dovetails with the convoy model of social relations (Kahn & Antonucci, 1980), which suggests that we move through life surrounded by shifting rings of social support—intimates, confidants, friends, colleagues. Shrinking that convoy to one overburdened passenger is a risky design.
Best Friend? Or Best Backup?
Here’s where it gets thorny.
People who labeled their partner as their best friend reported more companionship—but not necessarily more well-being. Those with a separate best friend reported more perceived social support. The nuance here matters.
Companionship is who watches the movie with you. Social support is who helps you survive the plot twist.
The study supports a growing trend in relationship therapy: decentralizing the romantic partner as the sole support hub. Instead of one superhuman emotional Swiss Army knife, modern well-being seems to depend on a networked model of care—spouse, friend, group chat, therapist, book club, cat.
The Trouble With “Everythingness”
Relationship therapists have been raising quiet red flags for years about the “everything partner” fantasy. Psychologist Eli Finkel calls it the “all-or-nothing marriage,” where expectations have skyrocketed while communal supports have eroded (Finkel, 2017). Marriage becomes the only bucket, even as the well runs dry.
The American Friendship Project’s findings align with this cultural drift: more friendship, less fusion. Pennington herself notes how the label “best friend” might not carry the same social weight it used to. It may be more about behavior than identity.
Therapist Take: For Couples—and Their Convoys
As a couples therapist, I’ve seen the beauty and the burden of calling your partner your best friend.
When my client Ivy calls Ben her best friend, she lights up. She means “he knows all of me, even the weird bits.”
But when Ben hesitates before using the same label, it’s not a betrayal.
It’s a signal: his best friend is his brother, the guy who texts him dumb memes and helped him grieve their dad.
Therapists might consider the following prompts in session:
What emotional needs do you expect your partner to meet?
Who else helps carry your emotional load?
Do you feel ashamed for needing people other than your partner?
When you call someone your best friend, what does that mean to you?
Instead of debating whether your partner should be your best friend, ask if your emotional ecosystem is working. Is there joy, support, oxygen in the system?
Rebuilding the Friendship Bench
Ultimately, this research doesn’t say that friendship in marriage is irrelevant.
Quite the opposite. It suggests that when we de-center the partner as the only emotional pillar, we make room for healthier attachment.
The goal isn’t to demote your spouse. It’s to promote your social life.
As Esther Perel once said: “Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy.”
Except now we might add a bench between them, where a few friends can sit and keep you sane.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Finkel, E. J. (2017). The all-or-nothing marriage: How the best marriages work. Dutton.
Kahn, R. L., & Antonucci, T. C. (1980). Convoys over the life course: Attachment, roles, and social support. In Life-span development and behavior (Vol. 3, pp. 253–286). Academic Press.
Pennington, N., Wolfe, B. H., Hall, J. A., Holmstrom, A. J., & Schaffer, S. T. (2024). What’s in a label? Exploring the intersection of relationships with best friends and romantic partners with well-being. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.