Happily Friended with author Rhaina Cohen
04/30/24 • 25 min
15 Listeners
Society treats marriage like the end goal of human intimacy. Platonic friends can never be as important as romantic partners.
What would life look like if we made friendship the goal? Journalist and producer Rhaina Cohen tackles this question in her book The Other Significant Others. She tells the stories of people who made platonic friends the closest people in their lives, doing things together like buying houses, executing a will, and raising children.
I wanted to talk with Rhaina because redefining what friendship means in our lives lets us connect in new and deeper ways outside the rigid boundaries of a marriage or relationship. And it might take the pressure off our romantic partners to fulfill every one of our social needs.
This...is A Bit of Optimism.
To learn more about Rhaina and her work, check out:
her book The Other Significant Others
Society treats marriage like the end goal of human intimacy. Platonic friends can never be as important as romantic partners.
What would life look like if we made friendship the goal? Journalist and producer Rhaina Cohen tackles this question in her book The Other Significant Others. She tells the stories of people who made platonic friends the closest people in their lives, doing things together like buying houses, executing a will, and raising children.
I wanted to talk with Rhaina because redefining what friendship means in our lives lets us connect in new and deeper ways outside the rigid boundaries of a marriage or relationship. And it might take the pressure off our romantic partners to fulfill every one of our social needs.
This...is A Bit of Optimism.
To learn more about Rhaina and her work, check out:
her book The Other Significant Others
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Transcript
As we grow older, we hit our thirties and many of us aren't married, and yet society puts pressure on us, and we put pressure on ourselves because we have to conform to this model that marriage is the goal. But what if we can imagine a world in which friendship is the goal.
Speaker 2Stay tuned for more.
Speaker 1I have never been married, and a lot of people
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