If you’ve ever asked yourself if you and your partner are compatible, you’re not alone. If I had to choose the most common question couples ask us, I’d say it’s some version of “are we compatible?” A very underused avenue to try and shed some light on this question is actually right in front of us. Always available, but not used as often as they should be, of course, I’m referring to our best and closest friends.

For some reason, we still haven’t fully woken up to the fact that relationships have changed from a contractual agreement between a man (the dominant party) and woman (the subordinate party) to a friendship between two equals. The implications of this change are immense and it’s only natural that a substantial amount of time is needed to truly embrace this change. However, we will go a long way to speeding up this shift in our perception of relationships by finally realising that they are no longer a completely different entity to friendships; they are simply a subset of friendships. They represent (or should represent) the subset of friends that time has proven to be the closest as well as the most enjoyable to live with.