Questioning of amatonormativity in Trying Out Marriage With My Female Friend

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We've been following this scanlation by knight heron of Onna Tomodachi to Kekkon Shitemita (Trying Out Marriage With My Female Friend) by Usui Shio, and we've been really enjoying it - it's a cute and sweet story. And we want to talk about it, because we don't know where it will go, but we know one place it shouldn't. Because this isn't just a story about friends getting married, it's also a story about blowing past the "Romances Only" sign on Emotional Intimacy Highway in your friendship car and a little bit worrying that someone's going to pull you over.

Trying Out Marriage With My Female Friend takes place in a world which puts up those signs, and was made in a world which puts up those signs, and it has things to say about those signs. It's a story about beginning and developing life partnerships and a story about being and becoming good roommates, but it's also a story about caring more than you're 'allowed' to and that being a good thing.

The story starts with Kurumi thinking, "Ruriko and I are married, but ... we're not lovers. We're just friends." And people talk a lot about how complicated a thing love is, but they don't really recognize how complicated a thing friendship is. The concept is tossed about quite cavalierly, as if it is easily contained in a box of "more than mere acquaintance, but less than romantic passion" ... or, to use a sharper edge, "to be prioritized over acquaintance, but deprioritized relative to romantic passion".

Which is why a marriage of "just friends" is seen as peculiar. Which is why people reading Kurumi's articles about her marriage leave comments like "Wow, sucks for that poor friend", "They're definitely going to break up", "She's just using her friend to sell her essays", ... and "How nice, I want to marry a friend, too..." and "This kind of thing happens too, huh". Which is why "Trying out marriage with my female friend" is a nice clickbait title for a magazine, one which promotes lots of engagement. Marriage isn't supposed to be something you do on a whim with your friend because hey, you weren't married to anyone else, so, why not? "Just friends" are not supposed to matter like that.

And that 'supposed' is the heart of the whole thing, because the other definition of "friend" is "someone I want in my life, who wants me in theirs". And that wanting doesn't actually have borders. It's a relationship, and relationships are defined by the people in them for each other and themselves.

Ruriko, in the middle of severe ambominal pains, did not want to interrupt Kurumi going to the concert she looked forward to, so she ignored the part where Kurumi said to call her if the pain got worse. Fortunately, another friend took her to the hospital, where she was put on antibiotics for a case of appendicitis ... but Kurumi still had something to say, there, about how she defined their relationship:

"There's nothing more important to me than you, Ruriko. We were just friends who decided on a whim to get married, but ... I wouldn't be this happy with just anyone. It's because I'm with you. So don't think you're bothering me or getting in my way."

...and Ruriko had something to say, months earlier, when telling her parents why she was getting married to her friend:

Mom, Dad. In all my life, I've never met anyone I respected more than Kurumi-san. That's why I want to marry her.

Ruriko and Kurumi live together. They like each other, and make each other happy. They want to spend more time with each other, and they don't want their time together to end. They communicate about their wants, their feelings, and their needs, as best as they can, and form agreements to support their relationship.

And honestly, I think the clearest and most central way that amatonormativity appears in the comic is in the rule that they put on their list of relationship rules that shouldn't've been there:

5. If either of us falls in love with someone else, we'll go back to being just friends.

It felt like a good idea at the time, but ... it is also the clearest token in their relationship of the pressure of that 'just'. The internalized sense that their relationship must be inferior, must be lesser, must be a fragile compromise to be broken should a ✨real✨ relationship intrude. It makes them afraid, because neither of them can imagine a relationship they want more.

Trying Out Marriage With My Female Friend knows what it's about, is the thing. It knows about the hierarchies of relationships enforced by its society, and ours. It knows about amatonormativity - this isn't an accident. And as of Chapter 23, its thesis is pretty clear: amatonormativity is wrong, and this friendship marriage is good.

So no, we don't know where it will go, but we know one place it shouldn't. Because what it's saying so far needs saying.