It's often said that you should marry your best friend. Because, apparently, you're only in love if you're in love with your best friend. Sure, you can fall in love with someone who is very close to you and dear to your heart, but when you get married, it shouldn't be to your best friend. When you marry the love of your life, he becomes your husband, which is an entirely different role from your best friend. The best friend and the husband fulfill two very distinct roles in marriage for specific reasons.

Who is your best friend?

Your best friend is the one who is with you through the thick and thin. They know everything about you, all of your secrets, the good and the bad, and enjoy the time spent in your company. You and your best friend have been together for as long as you can remember (or only for a few years) and they will be there for the rest of it.

The thing about best friends is that you each lead separate lives. Your best friend has their own spouse and family to take care of. You spend time with each other when you can, but their life is different from your own. Your husband is not. As husband and wife, you build a life together, not apart. You plan out your lives together, not separately.

Marriage is different and much stronger than friendship

While friendship is a very powerful bond between two people, marriage is even stronger. It is different from friendship, however, because marriage is a sacred union between two people through life and death and all eternity. Friends come and go. Your husband does not - and should not - come and go like a friend does. Your husband is there to be your rock. He should be there for you always. Together, in marriage, you must lean on each other for everything, not just some things.

The history you have with your best friend may span many more years than the time you've been with your husband, but the bond between a husband and wife is much stronger than your best friend. Your best friend has the ability to leave friendship behind, be it unlikely. But over time things change, people change, and people come and go through our lives. At the end of the day, your best friend will go home to their own family. Your husband goes home to you at the end of the day. You live together, share the same space, the same bed together. Such a bond makes it not only harder to leave, but easier to stay together, despite the differences you may have.

Your husband isn't your best friend with benefits

Having friends with benefits can already be confusing, but if you consider your husband as your best friend with benefits, it will throw a wrench in your relationship. Your husband is your husband. The man who is there for you to care for you, watch over you and grow old with you for forever and always. You are his wife. You have a love for him that is greater than anything you've ever known before - it is certainly much more powerful than the love you have for your best friend.

Treat your husband like your husband. Not your best friend. The man you're going to spend the rest of your life with isn't deserving of such a low title. He deserves to be called your husband and treated like one. The very same concept applies to how he must treat you. He must treat you as his wife, not his best friend. You too fulfill a unique role in his life that cannot be overshadowed by the relationship of a best friend.

The role of the husband and the role of the wife are very unique roles, and nothing like having a best friend. It's much more than that; it's having someone to be by your side through all of life's ups and downs, who won't and shouldn't leave you or your children behind. He will have your back, and you will have his, through it all, fulfilling the role both he and you were destined to have.