David Mitchell is probably the only male on the planet who could get away with defending mansplaining, so that is what he has done. “I feel there’s an unfairness to the term, which is taken to be men explaining things in a boring way to women,” he told the Sunday Times. “Because they do it to each other, and they take turns, and that’s what men call a conversation.”
In the same interview, Mitchell and his comedy partner Robert Webb are asked how each counselled and supported the other through various personal challenges. They are confused and slightly aghast at the idea that they might have discussed such matters. What do men talk to one another about, then? “Well, yes,” says Mitchell. “That’s a question [my wife] Victoria’s asked me many times. And I never really know.”
This insight came in the same week Rylan Clark revealed what he has learned from hosting his podcast How to Be in Love. “I never really understood when people said, ‘my partner is my best friend,’” he admitted. “Because I thought, well, my partner is not my best friend – my best friend is my best friend. I didn’t get it. But I’ve realised that your partner can be that.”
Hmmm … can they, though? As so perfectly illustrated by David Mitchell, men and women communicate in extremely different ways so, if you are in a heterosexual relationship, the odds seem stacked against you. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule but, if my husband went to the pub with a mate whose entire family had just been abducted by aliens, there’s a very real chance it might not come up. There have been many instances where something huge is happening in the life of one of his pals and I’m waiting patiently for the next instalment, but he comes home clueless. “Didn’t you ask?” I’ll shriek, brandishing my rolling pin. And he will look bewildered, somehow unaware he was meant to.
Meanwhile, I know my friends inside out, and vice versa. From their deepest dreams, hopes and desires, to how they feel about themselves and everybody they have ever met via what they fancy for lunch. We check in, we keep up, we don’t have to be reminded to enquire about the plot twists in each other’s storyline, we are living and breathing them together. How can these opposite ways of relating, of transmitting and receiving, mesh successfully so both parties get what they need?
But perhaps bigger, and more important, than the question of whether it’s possible to be best friends with your partner is if it’s a good idea in the first place. Isn’t that a lot of pressure on one person, and also too great a shift from romance towards roommates? Love aside, I do like my husband, we are friendly, but I’m not sure he’s my best friend, nor that I want him to be. It feels co-dependent and insular. A bit Stepford, tradwife, like we might share a toothbrush or, worse, an email address.
Then I asked my husband who his best friend was, and his answer, and my reaction to it, surprised me. He thought for a second, and then gave a male name. He had been best man at our wedding, so the clues were there, but I was oddly hurt. “Not me, then?” I clarified, in case he had mixed me and this guy up or something.
“Well, I’m not yours, am I?” he replied, immediately reeling off five people and one cat who would definitely be ahead of him in the queue. All fair enough. Except … it turns out that although my husband isn’t my best friend, and I am fine with that, I want to be his. Want and expect. Oh, and I’m increasingly outraged not to be, the longer I ponder it. Welcome to marriage.
The disparate ways the genders relate are also the reason widows are “way happier” than widowers after the death of a spouse, says Harvard professor, author and happiness scientist Arthur C Brooks. “Widowers do really poorly generally, men do very poorly, and part of the reason is because – this data is disputed but more or less it’s directionally correct – 60% of 60-year-old men say their best friend is their wife, 30% of their wives say their best friend is their husband,” he mansplains … sorry, explains. “Women have more relationships, they have closer, deeper love relationships with non-related kin and with the adult children, typically, than the husband does.”
My husband, the outlier. Clearly, I will have to die before him, out of spite, to teach him the error of his ways. If he dares to call me his best friend in his eulogy, please feel free to heckle.