Marriage Messes Up Good Friendship?

It is your prerogative. Well the argument is not unlimited PTO is better than limited vacation days.

The argument was economic benefit is manifold when there is trust, goodwill and loyalty. Companies are adopting unlimited PTO to show they trust their employees. It has proven to increase business performance

 

I don't think I have anything to differ from your response. i agree with what you said

 

I know that I am very late to comment here. Sorry that I could not read all the responses above, but this is my point.
I think in the reverse. Since I had a love marriage to my best friend, I think a good friendship messes up the marriage.
I mean, a good friendship is definitely a hindrance to live the socially accepted way of marriage.

Let me share my case here.

I only had two best friends in my life, and both happened to be guys, not girls.
The first one has been my friend since childhood. I think since kindergarden times, and he used to be our neighbor too.
We are still friends, and of course best friends.
The other one became my friend only during college times, then this friendship turned out to be very special; hence we became best buddies for sometimes before we fell in love.
For sometimes, we did not know what was this feeling about. It took us sometime to figure out that we are actually in love, thus we should get married.
After that, we got married and our life is known to many of you via my threads here.
Its' been 8+ years already.

My siblings, BILs and cousins are all married now. Some had love marriage, and the other had arranged marriage. But none of them married to their best friend.

Our friendship did not die or mess up after marriage. He is still my best friend, and treats me the same too. I am very much comfortable to share anything with my H than anyone on this earth.
The best part of our marriage is this comfortability. It feels really great to have someone who understands you, and accepts you as who you are. There is absolutely no need for any kinda make up or fake up in our relationship.
But on this go, I miss a HUSBAND.
I wish for a husband who makes some conscious and serious effort to make me feel special. Just like how my bro or BILs do for their wives. And I don't really like when he takes me for granted, or treats me equally as his best buddy.
For ex: My bro and BILs treat their wives as their complete dependents. They make such efforts to provide for them, satisfy them, and give them a life.
My bro would always think and act for the betterment of SIL, as he knows SIL would be nothing without him.
Whenever they go out on a trip or something, he ensures SIL is comfortable etc... and SIL has no problem to be the complete dependent on her H.
This is the same in almost all the families, that I know.
However, in our family, it is different.
It is like two best friends are on a track or hiking or trip. One wouldn't think the other is his/her dependent, but they just go out together. Both would treat each other the same. Unless one needed any help, the other wouldn't bother to treat the female gender as someone below them or dependent to them. So, I miss a protector or a care taker in my case.
Of course it would feel odd in a family outing with others.
When everyone is concerned about their wives, my H would crack jokes and pull my leg and treat me as if I am yet another man in that gang.

Same happens at home front too.
Again, I give you the examples of my bro and SIL here.
Whenever my bro returns to home, SIL would take care of him in a special way. She gives him tea, and cooks specifically for him. He would depend for the wife to serve for him. SIL does almost everything to my bro in the house.
So if SIL goes out of town, my bro would feel miserable. Although he had lived almost all his early adult life alone, he couldn't miss her much.
We all know that.
But in our place, it is different.
I don't treat my H as special. We do the chores together, and share our lives.
I don't do any special effort for him, because he is my husband. I treat him the same.
He can make his tea, do his laundry, cook a dish or help me in the kitchen... and specially he would not control me or blame or held me responsible if I don't treat him special at home (like serving, washing his plates, washing his cloths etc).

Well, we do treat each other special in all the possible ways too. But that is not mandatory or routine unlike in other's place.
Even if that is my H's expectation, I would put it down with a joke, as I could never take it seriously from him.

My other best friend and I are almost the same, except for the romantic and kids part of our marriage. I feel very free with him, and he treats me as equal as him.
But he is married in an arranged way, and getting all the special respect and Husband like high treatment from his wife though.

This is not a huge problem compared to so many other problems that I have survived in the past. But I feel, it would have been better if we are just H and W, and not best friends.

 

Thank you for this thread and I am happy to see this thread though I am a little later to the party. This is one topic I feel comfortable giving my two cents as I married one of my good friends and he is now my best friend. We both believe that any relationship has few basic rules upon which the entire premise is built - mutual respect, trust and open communication. We are friends for 23 years and married for 18 years and have a 5 year old child. We have survived our PhDs, job search in the same city, infertility issues, health scares and now, working together and collaborating in projects. I think our friendship is the main reason that helped us strengthen our love and our love has enabled us to be BFFs. We starting as friends makes us listen to each other, not to take each other for granted and not expect the other to change. We have very strong, diametrically opposite views in nearly everything and so every decision made is after major arguments, intense fights and sometimes hurts. But, fundamentally both of us accept good reasoning and logic, which we believe, owe to our training and work in science. We both love a good fight however maddening it is. It is not always easy, we go little off -track, hurt each other a little, but sooner or later we are back on our track. Because we both know that we always have each others ears irrespective of our views and prejudices.

We both have been earning almost equally and all our finances are joint and any spending above a small discretionary amount is totally thrashed out from all angles. This arrangement was never planned ahead but fell in place during our relationship. Fortunately, money is the only place where we both have exactly same views - we don't worry much as long as some minimum security is there. I don't question what he does for his side of family and he doesn't question mine.
So to answer your question after much rambling, in our case, friendship and marriage have a mutual, positive feedback and made us better friends and spouses.