Rewriting the Rules by Meg John Barker

Author:Meg John Barker
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

What if we treated our lovers more like friends? Privileging romantic love puts pressure on lovers. Think about starting a new relationship. This person hasn’t spent as much time with you as some of your oldest friends. You haven’t yet told them about all the major events of your life. But somehow because you’ve had sex, you expect them to telepathically know how you’re feeling and to respond perfectly to every situation. Also, we can handle our friend having opposing attitudes to us on some of the things we hold most dear, but a lover can disagree with us on something as simple as whether it’s okay to miss the movie trailers30 and it’s a major issue. It’s easy to take lovers for granted. We may not be as grateful when a lover puts themselves out for us as we would if a friend did the same. We might not be so appreciative when they give up their evening to comfort us when we’re low. We might take our irritations and frustrations out on them by being snappy, unfriendly, or quiet without explanation in a way we’d never do with a friend. Perhaps we should take few moments, each time we’re being irritable with a lover, to ask ourselves ‘how would I treat a friend in this situation?’

What if we treated our friends more like our lovers? Might it be good to put a bit more romance into our friendships? With lovers, we often celebrate by making a big thing of anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, or by spoiling them on their birthdays. We show our appreciation for them with little gifts and cards. We leave them a note when we depart in the morning after an enjoyable night together. We make time for them. Many of these things could be incorporated into friendships. We could send a friend a homemade card or playlist when we hear they’ve been low. We could schedule a regular lunch date. We could send a bunch of flowers to an old friend to let them know we’re thinking of them even though we haven’t seen each other in a while. We could arrange a day with a friend each year to specifically focus on our friendship, perhaps going away for a weekend together doing something we both enjoy, maybe acknowledging the day we met or cemented our friendship in some way. Perhaps friendships could also benefit from some of the ‘state of the relationship’ discussions we may have with lovers. It might be easier to let friendships drift or to avoid talking about a problem because we’re not generally expected to reflect on, or work at, our friend relationships.

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