AN: This fic is from Chandler's POV, and jumps from subject to subject, but it's done on purpose. Chandler/everyone friendship, Chandler/Kathy (post break-up) and Monica/Chandler.
Chandler doesn't trust women. He doesn't trust their lies; their habits; their gay jokes that aren't really jokes, and the way they always go to the bathroom in herds; like cattle.
He doesn't understand why they are offended when he points this out.
There's only three women he has ever trusted, and that's because they aren't women. They're Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel, and that's all they'll ever be. He might think of Ross and Joey as "the guys" that he hangs out with, but Monica Phoebe, and Rachel will never be anything but Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel.
It makes sense to him, and that's what counts.
Monica once teased that he'd never been in a long term relationship, and he remembers thinking that he's had several long-term relationships, all of them still going on.
Monica doesn't understand the difference between relationship and romance. Chandler understands it all too well.
Joey and Chandler were always just that; Joey and Chandler.
Like all the girls that Chandler doesn't trust, Monica sometimes jokes that they actlike an old married couple, but Chandler doesn't mind because Chandler knows that what he and Joey have is a relationship, not romance, and even if Monica doesn't understand the difference, she knows, too. She just uses different words.
Friendship isn't strong enough for Chandler; soul mates is too tacky.
Chandler sometimes had visions of the future. They'd started sometime after Janice went back to her husband. She had been the first girl he'd really loved, and he thought that he might be able to marry her someday, if she miraculously lost her voice.
It wasn't a typical post-marriage future. Instead of small Chandler-and-Janice hybrids running around, there were the five of them (Monica, Joey, Ross, Rachel, and Phoebe) sipping coffee in Central Perk. The only way he could even tell it was the future instead of the present was that everybody was paired off:
Chandler and Wife. Monica and Husband. Rachel and Husband. Phoebe and Husband. Ross and Wife # 2. Joey and Girl of the Week.
Sometimes their spouses had names and faces, but the core was always six of them, with Gunther bobbing along in the background, riding the wave of the profits he made from their tips alone.
There were twelve people in Chandler's future, but only half of them mattered.
When Chandler and Kathy broke up (officially), Monica found out later than the others. She'd said things that wouldn't be sincere if they came from anyone else ("Kathy's a slut!") and doing things to comfort him that wouldn't work if anyone else had tried (organizing his sock drawer).
And nothing hurt as much as it should.
Because Chandler was the king of his own little world, and Kathy (had been) the queen, but Monica was a queen too, of a different kind, and she ruled Chandler's world as much as Chandler did.
Chandler thought it had something to do with her always wanting to be the hostess.
But whatever the reason, it was yet another thing Monica wouldn't understand; or call something different, so Chandler never tried to explain.
The word Monica would call it; this; them is constantly on the edge of Chandler's mind, slightly fuzzy, but large and looming in the way that makes it all too clear.
Friendship isn't strong enough for Chandler; soul mates is too tacky.
And maybe friendship isn't strong enough a word, but that's what he has with all of them, to such an extent that he can't choose a favorite. It's just MonicaJoeyRachelPhoebeRoss.
And maybe he doesn't have a favorite, but one of his friends is in two categories. Both of these labeled with words that only Monica would use, because relationship is too broad for her most of the time.
Chandler likes how broad a word it is. What he doesn't like is her terminology, and how it cages in his emotions. Monica likes everything to be neat, labeled, categorized, and cross-referenced. She doesn't understand why Chandler would want to dump so many files in a large box in his head called relationships.
Chandler doesn't bother to try and make her understand. Because then he might have to mention his two categories, and she would inevitable ask who was in the second one, and why it was labeled soul mates when he insisted it was a tacky word.