To Elizabeth Brake, a philosophy professor at Rice University whose research focuses on marriage, love, and sex, Sonderman’s experience is not just tragic but unjust. Because friendship is outside the realm of legal protection, the law perpetuates the norm that friendships are less valuable than romantic relationships. This norm, in turn, undermines any argument that committed friendships deserve legal recognition. But if, for example, the law extended bereavement or family leave to friends, Brake believes we’d have different social expectations around mourning. People might have understood that, for Sonderman, losing Hebner was tantamount to losing a spouse.

With no legal benefits or social norms working in her favor, Sonderman has felt most understood by other people who’ve had an intimate friendship. Sonderman described one such friend who was an especially attentive listener. For two hours, he and Sonderman sat in a car, engine off, in a grocery-store parking lot. She talked with him about Hebner, cried about Hebner. Her friend said, “It sounds like she broke your heart.” Sonderman told me, “That was the first time that anybody really got it.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/people-who-prioritize-friendship-over-romance/616779/

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