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 they’re not, then who is? And why? Is it because they are the opposite sex and you need a same-sex best friend? Or are they 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 their 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 this 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 interfering, respecting their privacy, treating them like independent grown-ups. You only have to look around to see couples who treat each other like small children, nagging, scolding, arguing, criticizing, nit-picking. They wouldn’t do it with their friends, so why do they do it with the one person who is supposed to mean heaven and earth to them?
I’ll give you an example. You are a passenger in a car being driven by a friend. They make a foolish error (though not a dangerous one). You would probably start teasing and laugh a lot. Now imagine the same scenario but with your partner who has messed up. Do you:
- make them feel very small?
- not let them forget it in a long while?
- tell everyone else?
- take over the driving for a while on the grounds they’re not to be trusted?
- treat them the same as you would a friend and laugh a lot?
Hopefully the last one, but watch other couples in similar situations and see what they do.