Friends First

When my husband and I met, our relationship started to grow quickly. We weren't friends for very long before our relationship moved to more of a dating status. I remember one day talking with my new "friend".  He brought up a lesson someone had taught him. He said it important to be friends first before we develop a romantic relationship, or more so a dating relationship.  We needed to have the friendship base before we started down the road of courtship. He compared it to a triangle. The tip of the triangle is a romantic relationship and the base is friendship. If we invert the triangle with the bottom being a romantic relationship, it isn't likely to be a solid relationship. An inverted triangle tends to be wobbly.

 

This has always stuck with me. Jesse soon became my best friend as we talked a lot and learned more about each other. 

Eventually the romantic relationship followed and now 6 1/2 years later, he is still my "bestest buddy" as our 5 year old calls it. I'm grateful that we developed a friendship. Now, something that I have noticed is, there are times in our marriage where our friendship isn't as strong and we have to work on it and strengthen it. We have to be reminded that we are great friends. It doesn't come as easy as it once did now that there are many other variables in our relationship, such as children and other responsibilities.

This week, in my reading of John Gottman's book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, I was delighted to find how much emphasis Gottman puts on friendship. He says the most successful and happy marriages have a strong friendship base. Those couples are good friends.I have a great desire to become even better friends with my husband even more than I do to develop a more romantic relationship. The friendship is more important to me. I know that it is the base and the romantic part will always follow.