Your spouse must be your best friend and companion for life. With the connection of friendship and companionship, marriage will get stronger and more loving between the two of you. As you grow in your marriage, so will your friendship and companionship with each other.
My bride is my best friend and my lifelong companion as I am to her. She is my best friend and I am hers. The friendship and companionship we have is one that we can get from no other person.
When something goes good for me, she is the first one I tell. When something goes bad for me she is the first one there to help me through it. She is also my helpmate to get me through all the things that come up in life as well as being her companion and leader to help her through life.
We both complement each other and give each other companionship and friendship that we both need. There’s no one else I would rather share all of my desires, secrets, or intimate thoughts with. Melissa and I were blessed that our love for each other started with friendship with the ability of being able to talk with each other for hours day after day.
Our marriage started with the development of our relationship as friends. Our marriage was built on our conversations which developed a new friendship which then developed into a love for each other. As all friendships go, we have had days where it’s hard to be around each other because we were having intense fellowships with each other. Even though those days happen our friendship still remains because we are one in flesh.
As Paul stated in Ephesians 5: “No one ever hated their own flesh.”
Husbands are called to companionship and a friendship with their wife. The first problem in all creation was when the Lord said that it is not good for man to be alone.
Man was not created to be an island unto himself with no one there to be with him. We are all created as connected beings together and marriage brings closeness and a bond between a husband and wife.
Friendship brings honesty, companionship, vulnerability, and mutual respect into the marriage relationship.
Friends do things together shoulder to shoulder looking in the same direction with the same common goal. A successful marriage must have the friendship component be a part of it to be successful and healthy. Without the friendship of your spouse, your marriage will begin to become rigid and stale because more than likely you may not like being around each other.
Without friendship marriages can become somewhat of a symbiotic relationship rather than a marriage. Each person is there just for their own benefit and to get out something in return for what they put in. It can even become a type of business relationship where goods and services are produced for each other at a price and the original intent of marriage is gone.
Healthy marriages devote plenty of time to the friendship as well as the intimacy in the relationship. It could be going on date nights where you leave the kids at home and just the two of you go and do something fun together.
You can develop your friendship with your spouse with something as simple as playing a game of cards together or a favorite board game.
Just like any friendship, it takes intentional work to build the friendship and continue the relationship. Marriage is no different. You must work at your friendship by putting time and effort into developing a relationship with your spouse to strengthen your relationship and ultimately your marriage.