Q&A with Natalie Pennington

Tell me a bit about the focus of this study. You looked at friendship from a very specific lens.

This is part of a bigger data set about friendship and two intersections that we were interested in: best friends and romantic partners. For the first, we looked at people who said they have a best friend, and for the second, we looked at how often that best friend was also someone’s romantic partner.

You talk a lot about the “convoy” model in this paper. What is that?

The convoy model of social relations is a perspective that helps us understand that in our lives it’s valuable to have a convoy or network of people who support us. And there might be different people at different points in our life, but acknowledging that it’s a group of people, not just one person that’s important to help with our well-being.

How did you define the “best friend” role in this study?

That’s actually something we acknowledge in the paper. We let people self-define these roles. In the study we ask people to tell us about people who they consider to be their friends. And then as they selected those people, we asked them to dig a little deeper. Here is a list of all the people you consider a friend. Is this person a best friend? Is this a colleague? Is this a sibling? Is this a romantic partner? We did not tell them what counts or not for each, we let them choose.

I’m betting there were some strong feelings about this subject. I know quite a few people who have an almost physical reaction when someone says their partner is their “best friend.”

I’ll confess I was one of those people. I definitely was someone who, when I thought about doing this study, had feelings about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. What I like about our results is that I think it supports people either way in their argument.

If you are someone who calls your romantic partner your best friend – and about 39% of our sample who included their romantic partner as a named friend did – you were more likely to report greater feelings of companionship compared to those who have a best friend that is not their romantic partner. You’ve got somebody who’ll go to the movies with you, somebody who’ll watch your favorite show, somebody who’ll go dancing.

But for people who are say, absolutely not, and they have a best friend, but it is not their romantic partner, that’s where we found that social support was a little higher for those folks. Which makes sense in relation to the convoy model. Having two people who are supporting me and the things I want to be able to do versus having just one person supporting me and the things I want to do.

So, is it better to have your best friend be your romantic partner or a platonic friend?

One of our big takeaways in this study is that valuing friendship with your romantic partner is really great in the context of your relationship. Acknowledging that you are close to them, that you have routines with them, that you like to connect – those are all good things. We would never say don’t value those things.

But having other people in your life who can also support you and be there with you, those are really important things to strive for as well.

What are the benefits and drawbacks to each?

Other than companionship and social support, there was not a big difference in the benefits of either when it came to well-being. The level of loneliness wasn’t different; life satisfaction wasn’t different; connection wasn’t different. Which is all great. We want people to have good levels of those things. It was only companionship and support that differed and in those opposite directions. So, with social support it makes sense that if I have two people instead of one person who are able to support me, then I have a greater perception that I’ve got a support network. The companionship measure, that was about having people to do things and go places with you.

An example of that is that I once made my husband go to a figure skating competition with me. And bless him, he went – and I think he actually enjoyed it. That was something that, at the time, I didn’t have a friend in the community that could go with me. But I knew I could get my husband to go. That’s where that companionship piece comes in with the romantic partner. We might feel more willing to say, you must do this thing, and we wouldn’t necessarily ask or expect our best friend to do it.

Are there certain demographics that are more likely to fall into the best friend = romantic partner category?

We did ask questions about structural or demographic factors that might make someone more likely to call their romantic partner their best friend or not. And the ones we found really made sense.

If you have a lower income, are older, or are dating (not married to) your romantic partner, you’re more likely to call them your best friend. We know from past research that as people get older that network tends to get smaller, and we also know that those with lower incomes tend to have smaller networks. In this case, having a romantic partner as a core part of that network likely explains the emphasis on being a best friend, too. In terms of dating, we also know from past studies that when people first start dating someone they tend to lose friends, partially as they focus more on that romantic partnership, so it again makes sense that we might see someone see their partner as fulfilling the role of best friend, too.

In the paper you cited some research that Americans might even be veering away from emphasizing romantic relationships in favor of platonic ones. How might this research factor into that?

One of the things that we grapple with in the paper is that, while we don’t ask people if that’s their view, in society we’re seeing a growing number of Americans who are single or unmarried or marrying later in life. So, we know that emphasis on romantic relationships is lower than it has been in past generations.

There was also a survey that the Pew Research Center did where they asked people what the most important things in life are, and good friendships were identified more often than getting married and starting a family. Those are things that Americans still value, but we are starting to have this different conversation about it.

We put so much pressure in the past on romantic relationships and even talk about these ideals of you’re supposed to get married, you’re supposed to start a family, you’re supposed to want these things. And now we’re starting to say, well, actually, we can have lots of people in our lives who serve different roles and have different ways that we connect with them. And that can be really, really good for us. This study was a chance to explore that in some ways, and we did find that compared to past studies, fewer people are calling their romantic partner their best friend.