I used to think that if someone was my partner (or I was someone’s partner) there was an obligation. And that the difference between a friendship and a partnership, no matter how strong the friendship, is that with the partnership, I would be obligated to say yes. I would owe it to my partner to stretch myself to show up for them. And I think this definition worked for a little bit, but not for very long. It breaks down in all kinds of social constructs where your friends show up for you and your partners aren’t in a place to do so.
In a world where sex is not exclusive to partnership, and the distinction between romantic love and platonic love are just getting more blurry, I have never been able to — and I continue to not be able to — explain the difference between my closest friends and those I would call my partner.
For a while I thought it was about role. My partner is someone I can refer to in society as a romantic partner, and since they fit the definition and they play all the parts of the role that society expects, they are my partner. It’s a circular definition! I live with someone, and I have sex with them, and I claim to love them (in public), and I stretch myself for them, and I show up with them in social situations, and I introduce them to my family, and I lean against them when I’m tired, and I expect them to skip work to take care of me when I’m sick, and I do the same for them, and I let their fights affect me, and I let my fights affect them. Then we’re partners, right?
But I do most of these things with my friends anyway.
A friend quoted an Urdu poem that I don’t remember the exact words to, but it went something like this:
Burn all the letter I’ve written to you, read and unread
For they contain the evidence of my love
You can extinguish that flame of the letters with some water
But how can you extinguish the one in my heart?
And my answer immediately was indifference.
The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. I didn’t break up with my most recent partner because I hated him. I broke up with him because I felt like I stopped mattering to him.
A partner, then, is someone that you cannot be indifferent to, someone who sticks around, whose every action, opinion, and thought changes the way you exist. It affects your comport, and any decision you can make. That’s a big responsibility. This definition feels lofty, but it makes sense as a descriptor to the relationships I’ve seen around me. It is something I can align with in my existing relationships. So I think for now, that’s the definition I will go with.
Obviously there are a lot of fallacies here. There’s lots of people who I cannot be indifferent to. My boss, for example, or the Prime Minister. But maybe your partner is someone who you don’t let yourself be indifferent to, who you commit to hearing and supporting, or who you commit to letting influence you. I think that’s my definition for now.