New MyIQ data suggests friendship is no longer simply supporting adult life from the margins. For many people, it has become one of the central relationships through which emotional support, trust, and major decisions are now organized.
A global MyIQ survey of 13,487 adults across the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand points to a quiet but significant shift in how people structure intimacy. The findings do not suggest that romance is disappearing. They suggest something more subtle: the emotional responsibilities once concentrated in romantic partnership are increasingly being shared across close friendships.
For decades, adulthood was often imagined around a single central relationship. A romantic partner was expected to be the first phone call, the emergency contact, the private adviser, and the person most likely to absorb the pressures of daily life. The MyIQ data shows that many adults no longer organize their emotional lives around that assumption.
Nearly seven in ten respondents, 68%, said a close friendship is now just as important to their wellbeing as a romantic partnership. More strikingly, 44% said they are more likely to turn to a friend than a partner when something significant happens in their life. That finding matters because it shifts friendship from a secondary relationship into a primary emotional role.
The pattern is not limited to people outside romantic relationships. Across relationship statuses, respondents described close friends as sources of continuity, judgment, and emotional safety. Many pointed to friendships that had remained steady through career changes, relocations, separations, parenthood and periods of uncertainty. In those accounts, friendship was not a substitute for romance. It was a parallel structure of commitment.
The survey also found that 57% of adults have invested more time and energy into maintaining friendships than dating over the past two years, while 46% said they worry more about losing close friends than remaining single. Together, those figures suggest a change in priorities. Friendship is no longer being treated merely as something that happens around the edges of adult life. It is becoming something people actively maintain, protect, and plan around.
The emotional stakes are also becoming harder to dismiss. Thirty-nine percent of respondents said the end of a close friendship was as painful as a romantic breakup, while 61% said society still treats friendship as less important than it actually is. That gap between private significance and public recognition is central to the shift. Romantic relationships come with familiar scripts, anniversaries, legal categories and social rituals. Friendships often carry similar emotional weight without the same language or recognition.
Sarah Meyer, Managing Director of MyIQ, said the findings point less to a rejection of romance than to a redistribution of emotional reliance. “For decades, romantic partnership has been treated as the default centre of adult life,” Meyer said. “The data suggests many people are now placing trust, intimacy and emotional continuity across more than one relationship. Friendship is not secondary for them. It is one of the relationships through which adult life is actually held together.”
This does not make friends the new spouses. It makes the idea of a life partner less singular. A close friend may not share a mortgage, raise children, or appear on legal documents. But for many adults, that friend may be the person who knows the rhythms of their daily life, notices emotional changes first, and offers the most consistent form of support.
The MyIQ findings capture a broader reordering of expectation. Rather than asking one romantic relationship to meet every emotional need, many adults appear to be distributing intimacy across a wider network. That may make relationships less hierarchical, but it also makes friendship more demanding. Shared calendars, planned calls, intentional check-ins, and deliberate friendship maintenance are increasingly part of adult life.
Across countries and age groups, respondents repeatedly used language once reserved almost exclusively for romantic partnership: commitment, loyalty, intimacy, and long-term support. The language matters because it shows that people are not only spending more time with friends. They are assigning friendship a different kind of meaning.
The result is a quieter version of social change than the usual story about dating, marriage, or loneliness. Friendship is not replacing romance. It is absorbing some of the emotional work that romance was once expected to carry alone. For many adults, the most important relationship in their life may no longer fit into the categories society has traditionally recognized.
About MyIQ:
MyIQ was launched in 2024 and is used by over a million individuals worldwide. It is a digital self-knowledge platform that offers more than an IQ score, with over 9 million completed tests across the various test categories: cognitive, personality, and relationships, all with personalised, actionable insights. The platform offers over 25 brain games, more than 150 intelligence puzzles, over 20 hours of expert video content, and 300+ available lessons on emotional intelligence, problem-solving, innovation, confidence-building, and decision-making. Through its IQ test, full-spectrum personality assessment, and relationship insight quiz, MyIQ delivers structured, personalized feedback that helps individuals better understand their inner world and behaviour.
MyIQ was launched in 2024 and is used by over a million individuals worldwide. It is a digital self-knowledge platform that offers more than an IQ score, with over 9 million completed tests across the various test categories: cognitive, personality, and relationships, all with personalised, actionable insights. The platform offers over 25 brain games, more than 150 intelligence puzzles, over 20 hours of expert video content, and 300+ available lessons on emotional intelligence, problem-solving, innovation, confidence-building, and decision-making. Through its IQ test, full-spectrum personality assessment, and relationship insight quiz, MyIQ delivers structured, personalized feedback that helps individuals better understand their inner world and behaviour.