No, Friendship Cannot Replace Marriage

A dear friend of mine, Eva Andrade who runs the Hawaii Family Forum, sent me this Atlantic article this week entitled, “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?”

It is from 2020, and Eva sent it because it is a powerful example from the culture of relational relativism which seeks to make marriage just one relationship choice among many equal and “better” options, thus stripping it of any real uniqueness or importance.

I told Eva I had seen the piece, it was certainly worth noting and that I had written on it when it came out. I thought I would share that observation here with Daily Citizen readers because we must appreciate the danger of this relativizing effort and the unique power of marriage, that Daily Citizen has carefully documented here, here, here, here and here.

Marriage is a unique, divine institution that does for humanity what no other relationship does, period. No civilization in the history of the world has found a way to maintain a growing, civilized and productive culture without it. And they have tried. Its greatness consists of this: It empowers both men and women as equals through normative monogamy, gives children daily access to the two people who created them, and regulates sexuality.

The article Eva sent offered this provocative question: What if friendship, rather than marriage, stood at the center of life?

Friendship is certainly one of life’s great goods. We need people who know us, delight in us, challenge us, and walk with us faithfully through life. It is true that some friendships last longer than some marriages. Friends can sometimes show more fidelity and care than spouses. We should say that plainly and recognize that reality.

But here is where the argument takes a wrong turn. The fact that friendship is essential to human thriving does not mean it can do what marriage does. Nor does the existence of beautiful, committed friendships make marriage merely one more relationship arrangement in a crowded field of equally interchangeable choices.

Marriage is not simply a declaration that two people matter very much to one another. It is a distinctive union of husband and wife, a publicly recognized and enduring commitment that joins the two halves of humanity in a way ordered toward the generation and nurture of new human life. Not every marriage produces children, of course. That does not erase the kind of union marriage is.

This matters because marriage has a public significance that friendship, for all its splendor, does not possess. Marriage connects men and women, mothers and fathers, children and parents, and generations together. It creates kinship and obligations that extend beyond the preferences and feelings of the two adults involved. It is a small civilization, not merely a private emotional creation or refuge[MZ1] . As such, Pope John Paul II rightly said, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.”

And that is precisely why all cultures across time and geography have married parenthood as the fundamental nucleus of their culture, as Aristotle explains in the first chapter of his Politics.

None of this requires us to demean unmarried people or pretend that any marriage is perfect. Certainly not.

But we should resist the fashionable temptation to conclude that because many relationships can be meaningful, all relationships are therefore the same kind of thing. They are not. A friend is not a spouse. A spouse is not a sibling. A parent is not simply a particularly invested adult. These relationships differ not just in intensity, but in their nature and what they give to the world.

That is why marriage deserves not just our sentimental warm feelings, but our dogged defense.

You can read my commentary on this misguided Atlantic piece here.