‘I proposed to my two male best friends. We’re platonic, but we’re getting married’
On a picturesque hillside in Slovenia, 32-year-old Karam Nwilati is preparing for the ultimate declaration of love. Nervously, he gets down on one knee and opens an engagement ring box. Inside are three rings. Nwilati is not proposing to one person, but two: his best friends and platonic life partners, Kristian Naydenov, 29, and Santeri Lehtonen, 36. There’s one ring for each of them. For Naydenov and Lehtonen, the answer was always going to be yes. The three of them have lived together in Berlin since the Covid-19 lockdown, and they have spent the past four-and-a-half years building a community that exists outside conventional relationship ideals. Their “friendship wedding,” a non-legally binding ceremony celebrating their commitment to each other, is planned for October, when they’ll gather their closest friends on the roof of their Berlin apartment. Nwilati, a content creator, shared a video of the engagement online, which has now received more than 480,000 likes. The reactions have been mixed – the more negative ones ranging from judgmental to hateful – while others have hailed …
