Treat Your Partner Better Than
Yo u r B e st Fr i e n d
I was talking to a friend about this Rule the other day, and she
disagreed with me emphatically. She said you had to treat your
friends better because you knew them better and you owed
them more loyalty. I then went on to talk to another friend,
and she said that wasn’t the case. You treated your partner
better because you knew them less well. Intriguing. My point
is you should treat your partner better than your friends
because your partner is both lover and friend. And ideally best
friend.
If your partner is not your best friend, then who is? And why?
Is it because your partner is the opposite sex and you need a
same-sex best friend? Or your partner is the same sex and you
need an opposite-sex best friend? Is it because you don’t see a
lover as a friend? (If you do answer yes to this, what do you
see your partner as...what is his role or function in being your
partner?)
Again, all this is about being conscious. Treating your partner
better than your best friend means you have given it some
thought and made a conscious decision to do so—or not if it’s
the case.
I would have thought treating your partner better than your
best friend would have been a given. This means not interfer-
ing, respecting his privacy, treating him like an independent
grown-up. You only have to look around to see couples who
treat each other like small children, nagging, scolding, argu-
ing, criticizing, nit-picking. They wouldn’t do it with their
friends, so why do they do it with the one person who is sup-
posed to mean heaven and earth to them?