«Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close» by Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman:

It’s impossible to say exactly when the shift happened. Our mutual friends started joining our names with an ampersand, a sure linguistic sign that you are publicly tied to another person. Ann & Amina. Amina & Ann. We became a vital part of each other’s daily support system, and we were grounded in the intimately mundane.

We had keys to each other’s apartments. We often made each other dinner after a long day at work. And any time difficulties with our families of origin cropped up, we would remind each other, “Ugh, this is why chosen fam is everything.”

Chosen family is not a label we invented. For decades, the LGBTQ community has used the term to describe people who decide to play significant roles in each other’s lives for the long haul. When most people think of a family, they often still think of getting married and having children—two life choices that have historically been denied to LGBTQ folks. 

The use of “chosen family” was first studied by the anthropologist Kath Weston, who was researching kinship in the gay and lesbian communities in San Francisco in the 1980s. She published her research in a 1991 book, Families We Choose, which describes the way these chosen families shared resources, co-parented children, and supported each other through illness, notably during the AIDS crisis. At the time, some critics pointed out that because many of the people who pioneered the use of the term “chosen family” were rejected by their families of origin, they did not have much choice in the matter at all. 

The psychology professor Karen Blair notes that, for queer people in the late 20th century, the choice to create alternative bonds outside of one’s biological family was often “borne out of necessity.” But for us—and for many other people who use that term to describe their kinship bonds today—“chosen family” describes intimate relationships that are freely selected.

We listed each other as the emergency contact on our HR forms at work. We hosted parties together. We planned Friendsgiving menus. We were in our mid- and late 20s, peak wedding years among our large and far-flung friend groups. Without romantic partners to split expenses with, we were feeling the financial strain. And so, as our friend circles overlapped more and more, we increasingly attended weddings together. We shared hotel rooms. We coordinated our looks for the ceremony. (Animal prints for Kate and Brant’s. Pink florals for Phoebe and Eric’s. Chic black for Gabe and Michael’s.) We gave wedding gifts jointly, signed, “Love, the Sow-Friedmans.” 

Of course, you can be super close to a friend even if you aren’t attending weddings as a pair or listing each other as an emergency contact. No two Big Friendships are alike. But this was our way of being a chosen family. We didn’t need a lavish ceremony to tell the world that we were a duo.