The question about friendship being more important than relationship or vice-versa it’s a more nuanced question than people might believe.
I understand why people tend to be way too much on one camp or another, but the truth is that it changes in time and differs from one person to another.
I will try to give in this article a few different points of view to make you understand why friendship is more important than the relationship for some people while for others there is no doubt that it is the exact opposite.
I’m a married man, to put things in perspective. At the same time, I started this blog because I consider that people, especially adults, are not putting enough effort into keeping their friendships or making new ones.
Friendship and social life are something that I discuss a lot with my wife, so I would do my best not to be biased and explain why both are important and when one is more important than another.
Friendship or relationship, which is more important?
Friendship usually is more important than a relationship if you don’t have serious long-term plans with your partner. When you have long-term plans, marriage, and you want kids with your partner, a relationship can/should become more important than friends.
I would say that it doesn’t matter if your plans will come true or not, but when you have them, and you really want them to happen, you should pay more attention to your relationship than your friends, that doesn’t mean you have to ignore them or anything like that, but you have to set some boundaries with them and make them understand that your time and priorities are different from now on. I have an entire article about hanging out with friends while in a relationship, in which I explain in more detail how a relationship affects your friendships.
However, you should never be put in the situation of choosing between friends and relationships, if someone is pushing you to do that, it is probably them being possessive and insecure. Even if they want your best, putting you in this situation is emotional blackmail, you have to choose without being pressured. I have an article about choosing between family and boyfriend/girlfriend in which I touched on this topic in a bit more detail.
This is how I see those things, so it is not that all the time, one is more important than another, but instead, some circumstances can affect which one is more important.
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3 Things to consider when you decide if friendship is more important than relationship or vice versa
1 Age
One pattern I noticed from almost all people around when we are young, we prioritize friendships a lot, and we put effort into keeping our friends and hanging out with them as often as possible. However, these priorities drastically change when we have the first job and the first serious relationship, for most of us in our 20s.
Most people tend not to put any effort into their friendships anymore and take them for granted, leading to not having so many friends at 30 and fewer and fewer as we get older.
So it is quite obvious why people consider relationships being way more important as we get older. I tend to agree with that, but the reason for that is not a good reason. People tend to say that relationship is more important than friends because they don’t put any effort into keeping their friendships anymore, while the partner is there with you, you can’t ignore them.
I consider that the relationship is more important because we should put more effort into being happy as much time as possible, so having a healthy and happy relationship matters a bit more than friendships because I spend way more time with my wife than with my friends. However, I do my best to have a great time with my friends when we are together and to make sure that we hang out when our schedules allow us. I have a pretty active social life even if I work from home with my wife, so I’m not neglecting that. But if I had to choose one, I would choose my wife over my friends now, this wasn’t true when I was in high school or college if I had to choose between a girlfriend and friends, and I don’t consider that it was wrong that way.
2 Long-term plans
This is a bit tricky because you can’t have long-term plans with someone you barely know, but you can get there if you give enough importance to the relationship.
The thing is that who is more important between friends and relationships can change even with the same person. So you shouldn’t feel guilty because you consider your friends more important than your partner in the beginning, and this changes over time, it is what happens to many people when they start to get the relationship more serious. That being said, make sure you don’t push your friends away at that moment because this is what many people do, you should talk to them and let them know that you will have less time for them, but you still love them as friends and want to hang out with them when you can.
3. Why are you friends in the first place?
This is a question not many people want to answer, but there are friends that keep their friendships only because they don’t have anything better to do with their time. It’s quite obvious that they will consider a relationship more important than friendship when they have one because friendship wasn’t that important, to begin with.
Even if that’s not the case, for some of us, our life partners are also our best friends because we have an easy time opening up, being personal, and talking about anything. So the incentive to hang out with friends just to have a chit-chat is not there anymore since you can always do that with your partner with less effort from you because they are already there. That is why we also tend to hang out less often with our friends and consider them less important when in a relationship, especially a healthy one where you feel like you can talk about everything without repercussions.
Also, being in a relationship might give your partner a chance to realize that your friends are a bad influence on you, but you don’t see those things since you are emotionally involved. You should be careful because sometimes your partner might just be possessive and will try to do anything to distance you from your friends, but sometimes they are right, so you have to consider their opinion at least and try to be more objective.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, friendship is more important than a relationship for many people at the early stages of the relationship, but this can change as we get more serious. That doesn’t mean that everybody thinks the same, this is just what I noticed from other people around me and doing research on this topic.
Every relationship and friendship is different, so it’s not easy to answer this question clearly, but I hope this article helped you understand this topic better.
