Romantic Partnership as Friendship

This paper defends the thesis that romantic partnership is a form of friendship by arguing that such partnership is a romantic kind of close friendship. Despite its modest philosophical popularity, the thesis that romantic partnership is a form of friendship stands in need of an adequate defense, and so the paper first reconstructs and critically evaluates previous philosophical attempts to vindicate the thesis in order to motivate the need for a fresh defense of it. To substantiate the thesis, the paper then offers accounts of romantic partnership and close friendship before explaining how romantic partnership counts as a romantic form of close friendship in light of these accounts. The paper then responds to critics of the romantic-partnership-as-friendship position.