Should Your Romantic Partner Also Be Your Best Friend?

Quick, without thinking: Who's your best friend?

Did you think of your college roommate? Your buddy you met at work years ago? Or, did you think of your romantic partner?

Perhaps surprisingly, it's the rare person who thinks of their romantic partner when they're asked this question (Pennington and colleagues, 2025), even if they and their partner are happily together. New research considers the interesting overlap between romantic partners and best friends, revealing what happens when people fill both roles with the same person.

Romantic Partners Versus Friends

The boundary between friends and lovers, on one hand, seems quite clear, but from a different perspective, it can be a bit blurry. The most obvious distinction is that friendships are typically platonic, whereas romantic relationships tend to include a sexual component. This distinction usually does well to differentiate between people in "friendships" versus "relationships," but fails when we think about romantic couples who do not engage in sexual intimacy or friends that do (friends with benefits). In other words, it's a general distinction with exceptions.

Source: Eugene Chystiakov / Unsplash

Next, friendships and romantic relationships have critical overlapping features. Both, for instance, can be key sources of companionship and closeness. We might turn to either for emotional support or to share good news, and we entrust both friends and romantic partners with information about ourselves, expecting that they want to know the details.

The overlap between what defines a "friend" and what defines a "romantic partner" may help explain why, today, about two-thirds of romantic couples are believed to begin as "friends" (Stinson and colleagues, 2022).

Your Best Friend Doesn't Have to Be Your Partner

If we're close with friends, we're closest with a best friend. We spend more time with them, bring them into our latest news more quickly, share confidences with them more readily, and, in general, feel closer to them than to other friends. Best friends might even call each other such, as an outward sign of their mutual fondness for each other.

If someone's best friend is not their romantic partner, and assuming they also have a close romantic partner, they may have more people in their close social network. This might be helpful, according to the convoy model of social relations (Antonucci and colleagues, 2014). The convoy model suggests that people's close others, that is, their convoy, are a fundamental source of support and companionship moving through life.

Collapsing the category of "best friend" with "romantic partner" might mean there are fewer people to turn to during difficult times.

It's Rare for Romantic Partners to Be People's Best Friends

New research focused on responses from about 900 individuals in relationships who were part of a larger U.S. representative sample for a friendship study (Pennington and colleagues, 2025). They showed that only a third of people spontaneously reported their romantic partner to be a "friend," with about half of these people saying their partner is the "best friend" (14 percent).

When asked to list their friends, most people in romantic relationships (over 60 percent) did not spontaneously list their romantic partner (Pennington and colleagues, 2025). What makes people more likely to list their romantic partner as their best friend?

• Being unmarried. This might run counter to expectations, but married people were less likely to perceive their romantic partner as their best friend.
• Being older. As age increased, so did the likelihood of seeing a romantic partner as a best friend. Every 10 years of age equated to a 4 to 5 percent increase in this likelihood.
• Being less wealthy. Financial data revealed a link between income and seeing a romantic partner as a best friend. With every 10K increase in income, logistical analysis revealed an almost 3 percent decrease in having a best friend and a romantic partner be the same person.

The Social Experience of Best Friends as Romantic Partners

While it may be rarer, those who perceive their romantic partner as their best friend reported an easier time getting their companionship needs met (Pennington and colleagues, 2025). This finding was based on an analysis that controlled for age, relationship type (married or unmarried), and income. Interestingly, these same analyses suggested that social support might be harder to come by when your partner is also your best friend.

Too Many People, Too Little Time

Relationships take time to cultivate. When time and energy are at a premium, having a romantic partner who also fulfills the role of best friend may be a highly efficient way to structure your social world. One person, many needs filled.

But, as the study suggests, this arrangement may have some downsides, such as when you need social support (Pennington and colleagues, 2025). Spreading your need across a partner and a separate best friend, for instance, might give you access to more advice, more opportunities to talk it out, and less concern about overburdening one person with your troubles. More, in this case, may be the merrier.

Friends Essential Reads

A Surprising Secret to Maintaining Friendships

Wicked's "For Good"—Memory, Friendship, Music of Becoming

Facebook image: Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock