Ep. 136. Rhaina Cohen: Author of The Other Significant Others: Reimaging Life with Friendship at the Center

NPR’s Rhaina Cohen is the  The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center,

 

The Other Significant Others invites us into the lives of people who have defied convention by choosing a friend as a life partner—from friends raising a child together to best friends of 50 years who live together in their retiree years. Based on years of original reporting and striking social science research, Cohen argues that we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them while we diminish friendships by expecting too little of them. At a time when many Americans are spending large stretches of their lives single, widowed or divorced, or feeling the effects of the "loneliness epidemic," Cohen insists that we recognize the many forms of profound connection that can anchor our lives. A groundbreaking book, The Other Significant Others challenges us to ask what we want from our relationships—not just what we’re supposed to want—and transforms how we define a fulfilling life

The book looks at how friendship is woefully undervalued, and we do ourselves a societal disservice by believing that a lifelong romantic relationship is essential for having a full, meaningful adulthood. Cohen makes this case through the stories of people who've built a life with a friend—raising children together, buying homes together, and taking care of each other in old age. Amid a loneliness epidemic, declining marriage rates and changing family forms, she argues that we'd benefit from recognizing the variety of relationships that ground people's lives

“Rhaina Cohen’s moving, intimate portraits of people in unusually devoted friendships upend our cultural narratives about which relationships matter. A perceptive and vivid reporter, she reveals that there are far more pathways to deep connection and fulfillment than we’ve been made to believe. The Other Significant Others is an arresting work of compassion and insight.”

 —Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and co-host of Dear Therapists podcast

 

“In her lovingly written The Other Significant Others, Rhaina Cohen does crucial work by questioning easy social categorization and the hierarchies of recognition and privilege that too often put romantically coupled pairs at the top. The Other Significant Others is energetic, open, considered, and beautifully reported. It thrums with a passion for the subject, and is powered by a historically rich, intellectually serious curiosity about the relationships that provide backbone and ballast to so many of our lives, but which have only recently begun to receive the consideration they are due.”

—Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author of All the Single Ladies and Good and Mad

https://www.rhainacohen.com