Conflict is essential to a good story, and human beings just can’t seem to coexist without some sort of conflict. There’s always a protagonist and an antagonist (or sometimes just two antagonists, let’s be honest).

Sometimes conflict forges the strangest of friendships between both explicit and presumed “enemies.” While all the warm feelings about political “frenemies” between lawmakers from opposite sides of the political spectrum may make some question just how serious lawmakers are about their stances, other connections have changed the course of history.

Some of these pairs and their conflicts speak to deeper issues related to how our societal morals and ideas about sexuality and politics fuel these dynamic personalities in history.

For International Friendship Day, we’re highlighting some political and ideological “frenemies” and iconic friendship duos that have shaped our cultural understanding of the role of religion, sexuality and politics in our society.

Let’s get to know these five unlikely pairs:

George Bush and Michelle Obama

Former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Michelle Obama’s friendship became a hot topic on social media after a clip of Bush passing Obama an Altoid during Sen. John McCain’s funeral in September 2018.

The moment was shared on social media and created a host of memes and hot takes about what it means to have a connection to someone whose political views differ.

“President Bush and I… we are forever seat mates because of protocol, that’s how we sit at all the official functions so he is my partner in crime at every major thing where all the formers gather,” the former first lady explained. “So we’re together all the time, and I love him to death. He’s a wonderful man. He’s a funny man.”

Bush said he was “shocked” people were surprised to see them having an ordinary, polite exchange.

“I think it’s a problem that Americans are so polarized in their thinking that they can’t imagine a George W. Bush and a Michelle Obama being friends,” Bush added.

Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt

This friendship between legal and ideological foes was a surprise to them both. Megachurch pastor the Rev. Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flynt in 1983 after the mature media mogul ran a completely fictitious parody interview in his magazine Hustler in which the evangelical leader (and head of the Moral Majority) confessed that his first time having sex was with his own mother while drunk.

Falwell didn’t think the parody was very funny, so he filed a lawsuit asking Flynt to pay $45 million for libel and “emotional distress.” Flynt won the case in a landmark victory in the Supreme Court, which protected the right to publish satire works, no matter how distasteful.

Over a decade after the Supreme Court ruling, the two would sit down together for an interview on “The Larry King Show.” They went on to host a series of debates at colleges around the country about free speech and even exchanged Christmas cards and would meetup anytime they were both in Los Angeles.

In a 2007 op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times shortly after Falwell’s death, Flynt referred to the man who took him to court as “My Friend, Jerry Falwell.”

“I’m sure I never changed his mind about anything, just as he never changed mine,” wrote Flynt. “He was definitely selling brimstone religion and would do anything to add another member to his mailing list. But in the end, I knew what he was selling, and he knew what I was selling, and we found a way to communicate.”

G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary debates

Speaking of traveling road shows and opposing views, G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary took their debate on “

about LSD around America.

Leary was the psychologist turned LSD evangelist after having his own profound experiences with the substance in his lab. Leary lost his job at Harvard University for giving the substance to students. Both of the men went to prison, however, for different crimes. Liddy was a main player in the Nixon Watergate scandal and went to prison for crimes related to that.

Cleopatra and The Roman Empire

You may argue this one isn’t a platonic friendship, and thus doesn’t meet the requirements for “National Friendship Day,” but I invite you to expand your mind about Cleopatra. She was far more than the seductress portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1963 film “Cleopatra.”

Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh of Egypt, ending a 5,000 year reign of one of the most powerful societies in history. She and Julius Caesar were the parents of Ptolemy–one of the first nepo babies born of one of history’s greatest power couples.

This unlikely pair–instead of being opposing world powers–had a vision to band together.

Unfortunately, their union wasn’t all peaceful or the most sucessful. Egypt and Rome eventually fell, as ancient history goes.

The Netflix series on Cleopatra was interesting and a far cry from the 60s film, but some experts say the show still took a little too much liberty with Cleopatra’s story.

Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt

This friendship between world powers has been called the friendship that saved the world. When Winston Churchill was the last standing force against the Axis forces in World War II, he knew U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the key to addressing the war.

Jung and Freud

These two psychiatrists started as friends, but their academic disagreements made them opponents by the end of their lives.

Freud’s stance that sexuality was the main driving force behind human behavior eventually became the breaking point in their relationship, and the two became somewhat of psychological opponents when it came to matters of human motivation.

Nonetheless, both of their works live on as markers of our understanding of the human experience and the various perspectives through which we understand ourselves.

What about that whole thing about this being problematic?

To be clear: this post is not necessarily a celebration of these relationships, but an acknowledgment of them. Unlikely connections have existed since ancient times, and those dualities coexist.

Did I miss an iconic anti-duo you think deserves more attention? Send me an email at [email protected].