December 8, 2025 • 42 mins
Rhaina Cohen (author of The Other Significant Others) joins us to reframe how we think about friendship: past, present, and possible futures. Rhaina explains why intense platonic bonds once held public, ritualized importance (think “sworn brotherhoods” and romantic friendships of the 17th–19th centuries), how marriage’s role shifted to demand emotional everything-ness, and why that cultural shift squeezed out space for friendships.
What you'll get out of this episode:
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The friendship that inspired Rhaina's book
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Historical models of deep same-sex friendship and how they differ from modern assumptions
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Why modern romantic relationships often eclipse friendship and why that harms us
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Real-life choices Rhaina and her husband made (communal living, prioritizing friends) and practical tips to preserve friendships
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How to be a better friend: rituals, calendars, play, and honest conversation
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Handling jealousy and myths about opposite-sex friendships
If you want to build stronger platonic connections, rethink where you live and who you share life with, or simply appreciate how friendship can anchor a life, this episode is for you.
📕 Get The Other Significant Others on Amazon
📲 Follow Rhaina Cohen on social media: @rhainacohen
📲 Follow the podcast: @takethispersonally
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Personally Fuelsman. Last week, I was talking to therapist Amanda
I all about social media and the impacts it's been
having on our real lives, including in our friendships and
how we're interacting or lack thereof, within our own communities.
So I'm giving a totally opposite perspective this week with
Raina Cohen. She's the author of the book The Other
(00:34):
Significant Others, and she walks the talk by communal Living,
and she's going to share how our romantic partnerships don't
have to be the center of everything. She's giving perspective
on the importance of friendship and platonic bonds, along with
rewriting the script for how some things have been sold
to us when it comes to partnership and friends. Joining
(00:58):
me this week is Raina Cohen of the book The
Other Significant Others.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Rena, how are you so glad to be able to
talk to you?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'm excited to have you on because this book is
really cool and I love anything that challenges a normal narrative,
and I feel like your book is really doing that
and trying to open our minds just that much further
to say, Hey, let's look at life a little bit differently,
and one of the main things that this is focused
on is friendship. So having this book and writing this book,
(01:31):
I'd love to know where the beginning of this started
and why you wrote the book.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It started because of a friendship that I have that
really made me ask fundamental questions about what friendship even
is and what it can be. So my friend, who
I refer to as m she and I, especially at
the beginning of our friendship, it felt like we weren't
even just best friends, like that was too small of
(01:57):
a term to describe how intertwined we were in each
other's lives. We lived right near each other, so we
saw each other three, four or five times a week.
We were really integrated into each other's day to day lives,
but also the bigger things. We were often default plus
ones to each other's events, and you know, we both
(02:19):
had this period where we were like, what do we
call each other? And do we use a term like partner?
And I knew of other people who had similar friendships.
And then the big thing is that I knew that
in history there had been more intimate friendships. So the
combination made me want to find people who today have
(02:41):
such close friendships and to kind of tie them to
history as well, to see does friendship have to be
the way it is now? Has it always been the
way it is now? And what might be possible?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, and you mentioned history, and I would just love
to know some of those examples of seeing you posts
some of them and talk about some of them before,
but because again I don't even think I know some
of these things.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
When I saw your videos, I was like, wait, what so.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Some of those examples of things happening in history that
maybe we didn't quite get the full story?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Can you share some of those?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah? Well, I guess one thing is like, let's start
with how we think about friendship now, and we think
of it as this secondary relationship that is behind marriage.
It's not kind of your most emotionally intimate relationship, and
it's often temporary, and that was not the way things
necessarily were in the past. So one example that I
(03:34):
find kind of incredible is this process called horn brotherhood,
where across the world men would go into churches and
they would be blessed by a priest and put when
they would put their hands on the gospels, and they
would pledge to a friend, a male friend, to become
brothers for life, and some of those men ended up
(03:56):
being buried together. And there are versions of this all
across the world. And that was a former friendship that
was publicly recognized, which we don't do now, and it
was really treated with a lot of gravity. And you know,
the other example, which is the one that I had
known a little bit about at the time when Am
and I were trying to understand the nature of our friendship,
(04:17):
is called romantic friendship. So these lasted from you know, seventeenth,
eighteenth to nineteenth century. You would see these very intimate
same sex friendships, both between men and between women, and
there is a level of gushing, is one way to
put it, and open heartedness that I think would strike
a lot of people as today in a place like
(04:39):
the US is quite remarkable, especially when you see in
among men. One of the lines that I remember from
a letter exchange between two men is this man saying
that the last pulsations of my heart will vibrate for you.
And this was no big deal if you just put
it in a letter. And one of the kind of
issues today and that happened around the turn of the
(05:01):
twentieth century, is that any kind of same sex intimacy
has been coded as potentially queer like as homosexual desire,
and that was just not the case for.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Centuries and centuries.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
It created more opportunity for both men and women to
have intimate same sex friendships without there being any kind
of suspicion or consequences or stigma attached to it. So
friendships got to flourish more.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, when you say that and you're talking about these
things in history that obviously we're way back.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
When why is it now.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
That we're so focused on our live centering around our
romantic partnership being out of the cineria?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
What changed?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I kind of imagine two lines criss crossing where you
have friendship is diminishing and its importance as the closeness
in friendship becomes suspect that you have all this basically
the mention of homosexuality and heterosexuality around the turn of
the twentieth century. Like we think of those things as
always existing, but they didn't in the way that we
(06:01):
now think of them as as identities. So friendship is
on the decline, and marriage, which used to be a
really transactional based relationship that's basically like an economic trade
where families are getting new in laws and there's a
kind of exchange happening between husbands and wives. Then we
(06:22):
start to think about love as being not just a
bonus in marriage, but actually something that's foundational to it.
And if you fast forward to the last few decades,
it's not just that we expect marriages to be filled
with love, but also that person is going to be
your best friend. We've really like eclipsed to the role
(06:44):
of friendship and made that part of what a romantic
relationship is. See the way that marriages and friendships have
changed as happening in tandem or very connected to each other.
Because the larger the role that marriage plays, the last
role there is for friendship and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And do you think it's because we've really intertwined the
two that it has had such an impact on us thinking, Okay,
once I find this romantic partner, then I don't need
friends or I don't have time for friends. Has that
been that change that you've studied and experienced of I
have this, now I don't need this, when I know
(07:21):
personally that's not the case.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Those things are not interchangeable. The kind of.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Underlying logic that there is this one person who is
going to make you fulfilled, who will turn you into
a successful adult. I think it's very rare that if
you're hanging around, let's say you're like a big family reunion,
are people really going to ask about who are your
closest friends these days? Are you like feeling fulfilled in
(07:46):
your friendships? Or we'll see being fulfilled in your friendships
as a mark of a good life, even though when
you actually ask people about who matters to them, they
will probably talk about the friendships in their lives. I
think there is a bit of a disconnect between what
a lot of people experience and what we are told matters.
(08:07):
And if your spouse is supposed to be your best friend,
that just doesn't leave a lot of room for your
best friend. And if your spouse is supposed to be
the person who you share everything with, then the idea
that you go off and have other hobbies with friends,
or that there are other things that you really connect
other people over, then that might be as a problem
(08:29):
to connect with people who are not your spouse in
a way that really matters. And that's where you get
sort of things like an emotional affair or I think
possessiveness is also connected to this, that people expect their
partners to be the one and only person and that
they should have access to them at full at all times,
that there's a competition for anybody else who might grab
(08:51):
their attention.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So I'm curious, because you're writing this book and you
talking about this, how did you make sure you didn't
fall into the trap. I don't want to call it
a trap, because some people might be super happy, but
for lack of a better trap, where we fall into
the same experience that we've been conditioned to believe is.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
The only experience. How did you not fall into that?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You live a lifestyle that is very much you're practicing
what you preach.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think of a couple of early memories.
One that really set me on our trajectory. I think
to be very intentional about not letting a romantic relationship
be the only relationship that really mattered in my life.
When I was a teenager, I saw a relative end
up in a long romantic relationship and it ended kind
(09:38):
of surprisingly, and he, after those years of being with
that partner, didn't really have anybody else because he'd put
everything into that one relationship. And then you know, when
I was in college, a friend that was very close
to basically disappeared as as a friend when she entered
into a romantic relationship, which I found hard, and then subsequently,
(10:01):
any time we spent together she would bring her partner.
And so I thought, with those two experiences, want I
didn't want the fragility of putting all of your eggs
in one basket. And then on the flip side, I
didn't want to do to other people what I had
experienced being done to me, which was being basically demoted.
And I didn't necessarily think that was great. It wasn't
(10:23):
great for me, and I didn't necessarily think it was
great for the friend. So and this all predates working
on the book, but those experiences made me really want
to nurture friendships, and I always cared a lot about
about friendships. And then I think with the man I
ended up marrying, we had really similar values. And one
of the things that drew me to him from the
get go was how close he was to his college
(10:44):
friends and how much work he put into those relationships.
And we made a point like we didn't spend every
night at each other's apartments, like we had time for
ourselves and have adopted a principle from other people know
that the individuals together and to nurture our community. So
our romantic relationship is structured around having other people that
(11:08):
we are close to and cultivating and encouraging those relationships
with one another or encouraging each other's relationships kind of
beyond our marriage.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, and you mentioned this, and because you guys even
went a step further than that, you were doing this
in the beginning stages of your dating. You guys got
married and you live with some of your friends and
their kids, and you're experiencing communal living, which is out
of the ordinary to most people when they hear it.
So you guys really adapted this entire lifestyle change that
(11:43):
you're preaching genuinely.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And I'm so curious what that experience.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Has been like for you to do it, because I
think talking about it is how we open up minds
and people start to understand and see what their options
could be.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
So, yeah, my husband and I have lived in communal
setups for I guess four years now and in a
couple different configurations. So for three years we lived with
two close friends and they're initially one kid and then
they had a second child while we were living together,
and we knew that was a kind of limited time
situation because our friends were going to have to leave
(12:17):
for their jobs eventually, which they did, but we still
have a group chat that we were all texting in
and we're going to stay with them in a couple
of weeks, and we're getting dispatches about the kids. And
we really loved that experience and wanted to continue living
with close friends if we could, and basically recruited a
friend of ours to come and move to DC and
(12:37):
move into the house that we've been in, and then
we had another. Anyway, it's just grown and now we
have two more friends all living together, and then we
continue to enjoy the experience and now are in a
group of people, including my current housemates, who are looking
to create a sort of I guess community or I
was gonna say compound, but that makes it sound maybe
a little crazier than They're a group of us who
(13:00):
want to live together and then also be a sort
of anchor for a neighborhood where we could get more
friends to move very close by. And part of that
is there are several people who want to have children
and want to do that in a way that doesn't
feel isolating, and parenthood is one of the hardest times
to maintain friendships. And we've seen how people who have
done a lot of work on the front end to
live near their friends have had much more support and
(13:22):
much more fun in what can be a kind of
isolating time of life.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, for sure, I think it's so cool what you
guys are doing, and I think it's awesome that you
can share your experiences and people can feel more comfortable
about making choices that are different than what we are
used to, and that's how we change normal. That's how
we change this definition of well, this is normal and
that's not normal.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
So I think it's really cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I'm curious your thoughts for those people who say you
had the experience with your friend where they got into
a relationship and you never saw them again, or they
had kids.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And they never saw you again.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
How do people avoid that happening in their friendships and
relationships and.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Why is it necessary to avoid that happening.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You can't control other people's behavior if they disappear, But
I think what you can do is take seriously what
you feel, and that's not necessarily going to be kind
of endorsed by the world around you. But what I
found when I was talking to people who would experience
losses in friendship, whether it was falling out or like
a friend falling off the space of the earth when
(14:34):
with a romantic relationship, is that they were not getting
from the world around them any kind of recognition that
the loss really hurt and it was hard for them
to appreciate how difficult it was, and that they've sort
of felt like, I've just got to get over it,
and that makes the whole situation worse. So I think
if someone is on the receiving end where friends disappear,
(14:59):
to honor that that's difficult, and once you do that,
it becomes possible then to maybe open a conversation with
the friend and not see it as inevitable.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
And let's say.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
It's the situation where there's a romantic partner who comes
in and you can say, I'm excited for you. I
know there's this really thrilling honeymoon period, but I also
think our friendship is really important and I want us
to maintain it, and I want you to understand where
I'm coming from, and I'm saying this because I really
care about our friendship. So I think in order to
(15:32):
ask something of someone else and to tell them that
you are having a hard time, like you need to
tell yourself that it is okay to be having a
hard time and that it's not just the way things
have to be. And then if you are in the
position where, let's say you enter a romantic relationship, you
can choose not to isolate yourself and you can make
choices to nurture friendships. You can make it a value
(15:53):
within the romantic relationship that you are going to have
other people in your life who really matter to you,
that it is also good for the relationship. There is
research on this that romantic relationships are stronger when people
have other close friends that they can turn to. Diversify
your portfolio in all areas of life. So those would
(16:14):
be some of my recommendations so that people both don't
kind of undermine their friendships and don't undermine their own
experiences of hardship in friendship because it really can be difficult.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
I'm so curious the studies on this because I'm thirty one,
I'm now in a relationship, but I wasn't for a
really long time, and I struggled a lot with the
fact that I had so many friends who really saw
their relationships as the end all be all and their
life couldn't exist without it, And I was just sitting
there like, well, we have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
We do a lot of cool stuff. I don't understand
why this is just the end all be all kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So I always did have this different mindset of, well,
it'll happen when it's supposed to happen, and until then
and after then, I will be just fine and I
will have all the things that I have right now.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
But that's not a very common mindset to have. And
I'm curious one on the research of making sure it's
important for your relationship to continue these things, because I
feel that way. But I'm also just curious your thought
process for all of my single people out there who
may have been in a similar set of shoes that
(17:27):
I was in. And I really struggled with that because
nobody was understanding me, which is also how and why
I stumbled on you. I was like, I need to
bring her on to have this conversation.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
There's a way that American society really belittles single people
and treats them as not quite full adults and that
your life will arrive once you have found a romantic partner,
and that is it terrible is a terrible way for
society to be you people, and then inevitably you internalize
some of it, like what is wrong with me or
(18:00):
my life hasn't really started yet. I just think a
really unfortunate and unfair way for single people to have
to live. It's just wrong. Like you can have a
full life without a romantic partnership, you can also have
a really sad life with a romantic partnership. I think
there's the focus on quality rather than do you check
(18:21):
this box is probably a wiser thing to do. And then,
in terms of people who might benefit from thinking a
little bit differently about the role of a romantic partner
in their life, there is research, for instance, showing that
people who have kind of robust support networks outside of
their marriage are happier in their marriages than those who
(18:42):
do not have those support networks. There's also a research
that checked how stressed people got in marital conflicts, and
people who had these other close relationships in their lives
experienced less of a spike in cortisol, the stress hormone
than people who did not have those sorts of robust
support networks. So it's not good to expect that one
(19:06):
person is going to be everything. And I think that
if people recognize that about their own romantic relationships, it
might help them not belittle the people who are not
in romantic partnerships and provide so much sustenance to their lives.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And so it leads me into this next moment of
how do we become better friends?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
How can we show up better? How can we be the.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Friend that we wanted to have that you and I
are speaking on experiences of we wish we had a
better friend in that moment, how can we ensure we
are being that friend?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Sort Of related to what we've been talking about. I
think one thing that's really helpful is not to create
these really strict lines between what does a romantic partner do,
what does a friend do? What does family do?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
And to really to.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Think about I have friends going through some very difficult
things at the moment, and instead of trying to figure out,
like what is the role that I should play according
to my title, it's more what do these people need
and do I care about them, and what can I
do that I have capacity reasonable capacity to do to
support them and not treat friends like well somebody else
(20:22):
who's closer to them should figure it out. Like being
a friend means being there for the difficult times as
well as the good times. I also think being a
good friend means making time like that is where what
you put on your calendar, I think is where your
values are. And I have found it is much easier
to become close to people and therefore know what is
(20:44):
happening in their lives when you have regular contact. And
one way to do that is just to put regular
time on the calendar with people. I mean this sounds
extremely simple, but it makes a difference between actually being
a part of someone's life or or having them be
intermittently involved. And the distinction I like to think of
is are you moving through life together or are you
(21:07):
narrating life after the fact, So either frequency or just
making decisions about how you spend time together, like you're
going to go on grocery runs or you're going to
do things where you're out in the world spending time
together where you're going to have experiences that you will
recall and you get to sort of be entangled in
the day to day versus every six weeks, we're going
(21:28):
to have coffee and we're going to tell us tell
each other what happened in the last six weeks, rather
than experiencing something in an active way.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Oh I love that saying that you just said. That
hits home because there are some friendships where you recall
and it's so beautiful, but you aren't connected in everyday
life and there are these different experiences that you're having.
And I think it's really awesome that we as people
can choose to have this ability to show up in
(21:58):
the ways that we need too, Like you ultimately get
to make the decision and the choice of how you're
going to show up for people. And you just reiterated that,
and that saying really did that. And I also noted
for myself because me and all of my friends on
a day to day basis, when we catch each other
on a phone call or a text, we're like, Okay,
put it in the calendar.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
When are we seeing each other next? Like, put it in.
We're not.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
I don't care if it has to be two weeks
from now. Put it in and then it's in and
we can't go back on that. Like it's in the calendar,
it means it's happening. And it's funny because as an adult,
I never would have thought I'd have to use my
calendar as a social calendar as well, like physically social calendar.
But it's been really important to ensure that I am
always there and I'm always showing up even when I
(22:46):
do show up in other ways and in the normal
moments and talking to everybody each day or interacting with them,
it's no put it on the calendar. So I make
sure I see you face to face no matter what,
and that has made us significant difference for me and
being able to show up as my whole self and
for them to show up in a way. So it's
(23:06):
funny that you mentioned the calendar.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
The other kind of suggestion I would have is be
more like like a kid in how you approach friends.
One thing that is I've described already one part of this,
which is go experience things together rather than talk about
it after the fact. I mean, so many of my
friendships as a kid was like coming up with games
together or like going on adventures. And then another part
(23:33):
of it, I think, maybe especially for girl you know
they might have had experiences with is really like celebrating
the friendship in the way that we are used to
celebrating romantic relationships. People celebrate anniversaries. There are rituals around
romantic relationships, and as kids, there often are rituals around
friendship again, and probably more so for girls and for boys.
But like friendship bracelets, you know, there might like secret handshakes,
(23:58):
other kinds of playful ways is that kids will come
up with. And I think bringing some of that, that
ceremony and that sort of excitement about the friendship as
an entity that you want to talk about and preserve
is also a really great way to enrich a friendship
(24:19):
as an adult.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I just had some of my best friends visiting, who
we all now live in different cities, and we were
sitting at dinner and talking about the sisterhood of traveling pants, and.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
We were like, what can be our pair of genes?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
What can we start sending to each other and sending
back and forth and it be this very exciting You
get snail mail every so often, and it's this thing
that we're passing back to each other to stay close.
And we had just talked about that and that movie
is such a good example of finding ways to connect
even if you can't connect in the most normal, everyday ways.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think there's like a kind of aig zoos about
friendship that you see in like among adolescents, and like
young kids do that maybe it doesn't feel like as
okay to express as an adult. And yeah, if you
love your friend, it's like love your be clear about
that and spend a lot of time on it and
(25:20):
come up with ways to feel connected and come up
with things that feel special between the two of you
or the group of you.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
When speaking of connection, I had seen you say opportunities
for career and connection are often hidden in plain sight,
and that really resonated with me. So I'd love to
have you expand on that a little bit more because
I do often think, much like we always say in
romantic relationships.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
You'll find somebody when you're not looking.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I do think similar things happen when it comes to
other aspects of our life.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Well, what this makes me think of is like when
on Saturday is I take off from technology. I don't
use my phone, and it makes me a little bit
of an observer of the rest of the world, where
I just see everybody head down, looking at their phones
and not interacting with the people around them. So I mean,
one obvious thing is if you're getting out of your house,
which I hope people are spending time like not just
(26:18):
in their homes all day. There are people that you
can interact with, who you can chat up, and is
certainly an opportunity to get to know people. But I
think there's a chance not just to meet new people,
but to have closer friendships. And maybe we have been
told and that involved was taking some risks and maybe
inviting people to spend time together or doing things basically
(26:42):
to escalate the friendship that might get you rejected. And
we know that rejection is part of the process for
romantic relationships, but we're not really like given the same
expectations I think about friendship that you have to make overtures.
I think if someone came to you and said I
really want a romantic partner, but like nobody's asking me out,
(27:03):
no one's approaching me, you'd probably say, like, well, are
you getting out of dating app are you asking anybody out?
What are you contributing? But I have heard for friendship
a lot of you know, well, nobody nobody talks to me,
or like, nobody's asking me to hang out, and it's like, well,
what are you asking people.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
To hang out?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Are you setting up gatherings? Are you taking risks? So
I actually think that one way to kind of make
friendships wrong or is to take some of the expectations
that come from the rewards and difficulties of the dating
world and applying that to friendship.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And so much of what you're talking about too, just
reminds me a lot of my friendships and how they
have formed over the course of time. One friend formed
because I started talking to her. She was a trainer
at a gym I started working out at, and we
just slowly kept having more and more conversations. And one
of my best friends that I've known for over seventeen
(28:00):
years is somebody who we were dating the same guy,
and then we teamed up and we're like, yeah, we
don't need this guy. We've been best friends ever since.
And so many of my friendships have similar stories of that,
where they were just coming from unexpected places and had
I not been open to the idea of just accepting
a new person, And these were all different phases of
(28:22):
my life.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
None of them were one and the same.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
They weren't all when I was a kid, or in
college or now as an adult. They're all over And
had I been just closed off to so many of
those experiences as a human being, I wouldn't have these
incredible friendships who have gotten me through so much of
my life.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well yeah, I mean I loved two women dating one
man and they're like, yeah, let's throw this one out.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, it's our funny friendship stoy that we still love
telling you the stake because we're like, had we both
not dated a really stupid idiot, we would not be
best friends. And honestly, that's just meant to be for
how life works out. Sometimes it is one of our
favorite stories.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And I just I.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Love this importance of friendship and so much of what
you're focusing on, because truly, I do look at my
friendships and there are so many parts of my life
that I don't know that I would have genuinely made
it through had I not created and fostered and really
supported those friendships. Even when I'm super busy, there's still
(29:26):
moments of my life where I'm like, how do I
check in? How do I show up even if I
can't show up in a way that I really want to.
How do I make sure this person knows that I'm
always here and I'm always going to support them. And
that's been such a big piece of who I am
as a friend that and people will ask me all
the time on social media, how do you do it?
How do you make it all the time? How are
(29:47):
you doing this?
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I'm like, I have to.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
These people are a priority for me and if I
don't do this, I would be lost without them. And
I think that's pretty uncommon for a lot of people
to say say about friendships.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I do think some people feel this. I certainly know
that people believe their friendships, especially if they talk to
people who are older, who they really lived through a
lot of life, like they have deep appreciation for their friendship,
but the messaging out in the world does not align
with the experience that so many people have. So then
(30:25):
for those who are maybe personally have not had such
close friendships, and it's confusing to them and it feels
like an outlier. But we aren't necessarily widely talking about
how much our friends mean to us, and you just
sort of get locked into these cycles, like when you
are catching up with somebody, do you ask them about
their romantic partner, how they they're doing? Probably do you
(30:49):
ask how their closest friends are doing? Maybe, like in
my life, I do. But I think for a lot
of people wouldn't necessarily occur to them that knowing about
their platonic social life is an essential part of understanding
where that person is at the moment, what matters to them.
And if you're not asking the questions, you're not getting
(31:09):
that information, and you're not necessarily understanding what other people's
experiences might be. And that maybe you should go out
and try to invest more in the friendships in your life.
And I can see how people might be surprised because
we don't really have the conditions to see if this
is a relatively common thing.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, and you say that, And it's funny.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
The friend that I was mentioning and telling you the
story of how we met dating the same guy.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Every time that we talk.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
To each other, we don't live in the same city,
but every time we're like, Okay, well, how's.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Your family, how is so and so?
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And we'll mention each other's friends that live in those cities,
what's going on with them?
Speaker 2 (31:47):
And until you just said that in this moment, I
didn't realize that wasn't normal. I thought we were supposed
to talk about what was going on in each other's lives,
and part of that is your friendships.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah, some people do, it's like if you, but it's
not necessarily an instinct for everybody. And there's certainly people
in my life who are very maybe centered around their
romantic partnerships, and they would ask about a partner or
are you dating? And family and work like that's the trifecta,
and it wouldn't necessarily occur to them. I mean, at
this point, people know friendship matters to me, but like
(32:20):
I know, for some people just it just would rise
to the surface. And again, like they're not necessarily getting
depictions in pop culture that's say, to have a good life,
like you really needed to be paying attention to your
friends or your friends or an essential part of your life.
Or when you think about where you're going to live,
you don't just think about your job and your family,
you can also think about where your friends are. It's
kind of coming through different channels. We're not necessarily getting
(32:42):
the reinforcement that this is a really essential part of
a good life.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And I thought of something as you're sharing this, and
I just love your take on it. Based on this
entire conversation, there's obviously this really narrative around opposite sex
friendships and people not being able, like boys and girls
can't be friends, they can't just be friends.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
What are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Because that's a hot topic that a lot of people
just really love to nail in the coffin.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yeah, wasn't when Harry met Sally like thirty years ago,
and we're still having this conversation. One of the piece
feedback or outreach I've gotten very commonly after the book
came out was like, do you have stories of opposite
sex friends who have this kind of really intense friendship,
which is like the focus of the book. And I do.
I have examples, but I think what people are particularly
(33:37):
interested in, or like friendships between a straight man and
a straight woman and how those fair. And some of
the messages I've gotten from people or people coming up
to tell my stories or like I have this really
close friendship but other people don't understand it, or the
wife was jealous and we had to scale back, or
whatever the case is, so it's been an a little
(34:00):
shocking to me that this is still such a big issue,
and it feels kind of inextricably connected to the idea
that your romantic partner should be your everything, because it
creates a sense of competition that let's say there's a
husband is jealous of a wife's best friend who's a man,
that if you didn't have this idea that they're that
(34:23):
you're failing as a partner, if you're not everything to them,
that it might not be seen as so threatening to
know that there's somebody else that they're close to. And
the other thing is that I came to understand and
working on the book, is that we really conflate different
forms of attraction and connection. And I learned this from
the talking to people in the asexual community. So people
who don't experience sexual attraction that they really have this
(34:45):
language to disaggregate what sexual attraction is romantic attraction, which
might be more like the you know, flutters that you feel,
which I feel for friends often, but it's not necessarily
attached to sexual desire that you might have. You might
be into actually attracted to a friend, or like emotionally
attracted to somebody and so I think one of the
things that it gets in the way when you have
(35:07):
straight men and straight women and who are really close
and the sort of judgment is maybe coming from the outside,
is that there is this assumption that sex underlies everything,
or sexual desire underlies all forms of connection, when actually
it can be separate from those And then I think
that's kind of the outside judgment. Some people might not
end up in these friendships because they buy into these
(35:29):
ideas themselves that they're inviting trouble or they don't trust
this the other person. But I think the queer community
really shows that people who are of sexual orientations that
are attracted to each other can be close friends. And
this is sort of straight people issue that continues. I'm
like amazed in twenty twenty five are still trying to
(35:50):
grapple with this, but for some people it remains an issue.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, yeah, this is why I wanted you to hit
on it, because unfortunately that's still a very hot topic
and it's I heck, you go in comment sections on
videos and it's still being used so very prevalent.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
And it's also sad that you would cut off half
the population. Basically, you're a huge portion of your potential friends.
You're like, Nope, not considering them because like, this will
threaten my relationship, it'll threaten their romantic relationship. Maybe they'll
come on to me that, Like, I don't think it's
a healthy thing to sort of word off so much
(36:27):
of the population and to sort of slap on these
assumptions about how things are going to turn out rather
than respond to the individual person. The line that comes
to me, some of my best friends are men, which
sounds kind of ridiculous, but it's like my life would
be much much less rich if I didn't have those
close male relationships. And yes, men and women can be friends.
(36:49):
And to those who have trouble with it, we got
to like reworker ideas about what romantic relationships should look
like and what attraction involves.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yes, we definitely do. And I'm with you on that train.
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
I see my boyfriend has lots of female friends, and
I'm always like, Okay, how can I become friends with them?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
You're friends with them? I want to hang out with them?
What are they like?
Speaker 1 (37:10):
It's more of a I want to know what that's like,
and let's invite them in further and I do think
so much of it is also attached to insecurities of
our own and our own experiences that have created a
specific narrative.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
That it can't exist.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
So and there's plenty of movies and stuff out there
too that show us this is a storyline, but.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It keeps sort of coming back to this idea of
like competition and scarcity versus a mindset that much more
centered around abundance, and that having more people who you
are close to is good for you as an individual,
it's good for a relationship. And I think people should
be concerned if they either have a romantic partner that's
(37:54):
trying to narrow down the number of you know, close
relationships in their lives and saying people are off limits,
and or if you have that impulse that you know,
it's worth asking where is this coming from? And it
is trying to control the other person? Really the right
way to address whatever kinds of fears you have, and
(38:14):
are there other ways to address those fears that don't
make another person's life have to shrink.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, that's a really important thing and I'd love to
end on that, but that's not how we end this podcast.
How we typically end it is that I want you
to share something, whether it's a piece of advice or
inspiration or something that maybe we just didn't get to
that you feel is super important.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
But I loved that. That was really good.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
So we're still going to end though on something that
you want to. So I just give the four over
to you and you share whatever you want in this
moment of time.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Well, that's something I was thinking of earlier in the
conversation when you were saying, like changing our idea of
what normal is? You know, to me, this whole project
it is about friendship, but it is all so about
trying to ask ourselves what is it that we want?
And maybe if you have never asked yourself the question
(39:09):
who do I want to live with, you've maybe just
thought obviously, I will live with the romantic partner, and
if I can't do that, I'll live alone, versus like
I having the moment to stop and ask what actually
fits for me might end up leading you to make
decisions that surprise you and make you much more satisfied.
I think of a friend of mine who got her
(39:30):
own apartment because she was like this is she wasn't
in a romantic relationship and was like this is what
basically the next step is. As an adult, I like
live alone, right and was unhappy pretty quickly and realized
that no, actually I really like coming home to people
and loved living with friends and abandoned her life to
(39:50):
make that happen. And I think sometimes we operate on
autopilot and we think that if we are not happy
when we do the things that we are supposed to do,
that it means that there's something wrong with us. But
actually what might help is really first making sure that
the thing we're doing is actually is in fact what
(40:11):
we want. And that is really hard in a world
that tells you there's a certain set of things you
want and there's a certain sequence in which to get
those things. But I have just found, by talking to
people who who have really unconventional friendships and unconventional ways
of living, that asking those questions and sometimes fielding the
confusion of other people is so so worth it.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, well, that's an even better thing to end on,
because that's a great question for people to start asking themselves,
because it is.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I don't know that I've ever asked myself that.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
But I'm also super happy and I love living with
my dog and cat and fostering animals, which is a
whole nother zoo situation that I bring on to my world.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
But I think that's a really great self reflection piece
to make.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Sure that you're living your life as full as it
could possibly be instead of maybe not doing it just
for the sake of others thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
And maybe the one thing I would add on to
that because I always like to think about it from
your vantage point and also what are you experiencing and
then also how are you seeing the world. Like if
there were people who you are inclined to judge because
they're doing things differently, just take a moment to ask, like,
why are they doing this? And is there anything that
I could learn from it? Is there anything worth admiring here?
(41:29):
Is there anything to be curious about? And I think
that when we are less inclined to judge others, we
might also become more open ourselves to doing things that
don't necessarily feel like they are endorsed by the world
around us. But we again, like might actually like if
we gave ourself space.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
See, this is why you're an author, RNA.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
This is exactly why you're sharing the things that we
need to be hearing, and I'm so happy that you
came on just to share your story and share why.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
You wrote the book and everything.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
If you need something to try or want to open
your mind a little bit, I definitely suggest her book
The other significant Others.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Randa, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Yeah, thanks for the conversation.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
I've got another holiday episode coming up for all of
you guys. If you have holiday struggles to share things
that are hard in this particular season, I want you
guys to send them my way. I'll post on the
podcast Socials and you'll send in a voice note that
I'll play back during the episode. It's one you guys
loved last year, so making it happen again. And then
some episodes all about babies in motherhood with the help
of my sister, a new mom that's Taylor. So like
(42:35):
and subscribe because that also helps me out and you
won't miss those episodes. Happy that you're here, thanks for
spending an hour with me. I'll yap with you guys
about the holidays next week.
Personally Fuelsman. Last week, I was talking to therapist Amanda
I all about social media and the impacts it's been
having on our real lives, including in our friendships and
how we're interacting or lack thereof, within our own communities.
So I'm giving a totally opposite perspective this week with
Raina Cohen. She's the author of the book The Other
(00:34):
Significant Others, and she walks the talk by communal Living,
and she's going to share how our romantic partnerships don't
have to be the center of everything. She's giving perspective
on the importance of friendship and platonic bonds, along with
rewriting the script for how some things have been sold
to us when it comes to partnership and friends. Joining
(00:58):
me this week is Raina Cohen of the book The
Other Significant Others.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Rena, how are you so glad to be able to
talk to you?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'm excited to have you on because this book is
really cool and I love anything that challenges a normal narrative,
and I feel like your book is really doing that
and trying to open our minds just that much further
to say, Hey, let's look at life a little bit differently,
and one of the main things that this is focused
on is friendship. So having this book and writing this book,
(01:31):
I'd love to know where the beginning of this started
and why you wrote the book.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It started because of a friendship that I have that
really made me ask fundamental questions about what friendship even
is and what it can be. So my friend, who
I refer to as m she and I, especially at
the beginning of our friendship, it felt like we weren't
even just best friends, like that was too small of
(01:57):
a term to describe how intertwined we were in each
other's lives. We lived right near each other, so we
saw each other three, four or five times a week.
We were really integrated into each other's day to day lives,
but also the bigger things. We were often default plus
ones to each other's events, and you know, we both
(02:19):
had this period where we were like, what do we
call each other? And do we use a term like partner?
And I knew of other people who had similar friendships.
And then the big thing is that I knew that
in history there had been more intimate friendships. So the
combination made me want to find people who today have
(02:41):
such close friendships and to kind of tie them to
history as well, to see does friendship have to be
the way it is now? Has it always been the
way it is now? And what might be possible?
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, and you mentioned history, and I would just love
to know some of those examples of seeing you posts
some of them and talk about some of them before,
but because again I don't even think I know some
of these things.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
When I saw your videos, I was like, wait, what so.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Some of those examples of things happening in history that
maybe we didn't quite get the full story?
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Can you share some of those?
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah? Well, I guess one thing is like, let's start
with how we think about friendship now, and we think
of it as this secondary relationship that is behind marriage.
It's not kind of your most emotionally intimate relationship, and
it's often temporary, and that was not the way things
necessarily were in the past. So one example that I
(03:34):
find kind of incredible is this process called horn brotherhood,
where across the world men would go into churches and
they would be blessed by a priest and put when
they would put their hands on the gospels, and they
would pledge to a friend, a male friend, to become
brothers for life, and some of those men ended up
(03:56):
being buried together. And there are versions of this all
across the world. And that was a former friendship that
was publicly recognized, which we don't do now, and it
was really treated with a lot of gravity. And you know,
the other example, which is the one that I had
known a little bit about at the time when Am
and I were trying to understand the nature of our friendship,
(04:17):
is called romantic friendship. So these lasted from you know, seventeenth,
eighteenth to nineteenth century. You would see these very intimate
same sex friendships, both between men and between women, and
there is a level of gushing, is one way to
put it, and open heartedness that I think would strike
a lot of people as today in a place like
(04:39):
the US is quite remarkable, especially when you see in
among men. One of the lines that I remember from
a letter exchange between two men is this man saying
that the last pulsations of my heart will vibrate for you.
And this was no big deal if you just put
it in a letter. And one of the kind of
issues today and that happened around the turn of the
(05:01):
twentieth century, is that any kind of same sex intimacy
has been coded as potentially queer like as homosexual desire,
and that was just not the case for.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Centuries and centuries.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
It created more opportunity for both men and women to
have intimate same sex friendships without there being any kind
of suspicion or consequences or stigma attached to it. So
friendships got to flourish more.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Well, when you say that and you're talking about these
things in history that obviously we're way back.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
When why is it now.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
That we're so focused on our live centering around our
romantic partnership being out of the cineria?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
What changed?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I kind of imagine two lines criss crossing where you
have friendship is diminishing and its importance as the closeness
in friendship becomes suspect that you have all this basically
the mention of homosexuality and heterosexuality around the turn of
the twentieth century. Like we think of those things as
always existing, but they didn't in the way that we
(06:01):
now think of them as as identities. So friendship is
on the decline, and marriage, which used to be a
really transactional based relationship that's basically like an economic trade
where families are getting new in laws and there's a
kind of exchange happening between husbands and wives. Then we
(06:22):
start to think about love as being not just a
bonus in marriage, but actually something that's foundational to it.
And if you fast forward to the last few decades,
it's not just that we expect marriages to be filled
with love, but also that person is going to be
your best friend. We've really like eclipsed to the role
(06:44):
of friendship and made that part of what a romantic
relationship is. See the way that marriages and friendships have
changed as happening in tandem or very connected to each other.
Because the larger the role that marriage plays, the last
role there is for friendship and vice versa.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And do you think it's because we've really intertwined the
two that it has had such an impact on us thinking, Okay,
once I find this romantic partner, then I don't need
friends or I don't have time for friends. Has that
been that change that you've studied and experienced of I
have this, now I don't need this, when I know
(07:21):
personally that's not the case.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Those things are not interchangeable. The kind of.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Underlying logic that there is this one person who is
going to make you fulfilled, who will turn you into
a successful adult. I think it's very rare that if
you're hanging around, let's say you're like a big family reunion,
are people really going to ask about who are your
closest friends these days? Are you like feeling fulfilled in
(07:46):
your friendships? Or we'll see being fulfilled in your friendships
as a mark of a good life, even though when
you actually ask people about who matters to them, they
will probably talk about the friendships in their lives. I
think there is a bit of a disconnect between what
a lot of people experience and what we are told matters.
(08:07):
And if your spouse is supposed to be your best friend,
that just doesn't leave a lot of room for your
best friend. And if your spouse is supposed to be
the person who you share everything with, then the idea
that you go off and have other hobbies with friends,
or that there are other things that you really connect
other people over, then that might be as a problem
(08:29):
to connect with people who are not your spouse in
a way that really matters. And that's where you get
sort of things like an emotional affair or I think
possessiveness is also connected to this, that people expect their
partners to be the one and only person and that
they should have access to them at full at all times,
that there's a competition for anybody else who might grab
(08:51):
their attention.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So I'm curious, because you're writing this book and you
talking about this, how did you make sure you didn't
fall into the trap. I don't want to call it
a trap, because some people might be super happy, but
for lack of a better trap, where we fall into
the same experience that we've been conditioned to believe is.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
The only experience. How did you not fall into that?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
You live a lifestyle that is very much you're practicing
what you preach.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think of a couple of early memories.
One that really set me on our trajectory. I think
to be very intentional about not letting a romantic relationship
be the only relationship that really mattered in my life.
When I was a teenager, I saw a relative end
up in a long romantic relationship and it ended kind
(09:38):
of surprisingly, and he, after those years of being with
that partner, didn't really have anybody else because he'd put
everything into that one relationship. And then you know, when
I was in college, a friend that was very close
to basically disappeared as as a friend when she entered
into a romantic relationship, which I found hard, and then subsequently,
(10:01):
any time we spent together she would bring her partner.
And so I thought, with those two experiences, want I
didn't want the fragility of putting all of your eggs
in one basket. And then on the flip side, I
didn't want to do to other people what I had
experienced being done to me, which was being basically demoted.
And I didn't necessarily think that was great. It wasn't
(10:23):
great for me, and I didn't necessarily think it was
great for the friend. So and this all predates working
on the book, but those experiences made me really want
to nurture friendships, and I always cared a lot about
about friendships. And then I think with the man I
ended up marrying, we had really similar values. And one
of the things that drew me to him from the
get go was how close he was to his college
(10:44):
friends and how much work he put into those relationships.
And we made a point like we didn't spend every
night at each other's apartments, like we had time for
ourselves and have adopted a principle from other people know
that the individuals together and to nurture our community. So
our romantic relationship is structured around having other people that
(11:08):
we are close to and cultivating and encouraging those relationships
with one another or encouraging each other's relationships kind of
beyond our marriage.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Yeah, and you mentioned this, and because you guys even
went a step further than that, you were doing this
in the beginning stages of your dating. You guys got
married and you live with some of your friends and
their kids, and you're experiencing communal living, which is out
of the ordinary to most people when they hear it.
So you guys really adapted this entire lifestyle change that
(11:43):
you're preaching genuinely.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
And I'm so curious what that experience.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Has been like for you to do it, because I
think talking about it is how we open up minds
and people start to understand and see what their options
could be.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
So, yeah, my husband and I have lived in communal
setups for I guess four years now and in a
couple different configurations. So for three years we lived with
two close friends and they're initially one kid and then
they had a second child while we were living together,
and we knew that was a kind of limited time
situation because our friends were going to have to leave
(12:17):
for their jobs eventually, which they did, but we still
have a group chat that we were all texting in
and we're going to stay with them in a couple
of weeks, and we're getting dispatches about the kids. And
we really loved that experience and wanted to continue living
with close friends if we could, and basically recruited a
friend of ours to come and move to DC and
(12:37):
move into the house that we've been in, and then
we had another. Anyway, it's just grown and now we
have two more friends all living together, and then we
continue to enjoy the experience and now are in a
group of people, including my current housemates, who are looking
to create a sort of I guess community or I
was gonna say compound, but that makes it sound maybe
a little crazier than They're a group of us who
(13:00):
want to live together and then also be a sort
of anchor for a neighborhood where we could get more
friends to move very close by. And part of that
is there are several people who want to have children
and want to do that in a way that doesn't
feel isolating, and parenthood is one of the hardest times
to maintain friendships. And we've seen how people who have
done a lot of work on the front end to
live near their friends have had much more support and
(13:22):
much more fun in what can be a kind of
isolating time of life.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, for sure, I think it's so cool what you
guys are doing, and I think it's awesome that you
can share your experiences and people can feel more comfortable
about making choices that are different than what we are
used to, and that's how we change normal. That's how
we change this definition of well, this is normal and
that's not normal.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
So I think it's really cool, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I'm curious your thoughts for those people who say you
had the experience with your friend where they got into
a relationship and you never saw them again, or they
had kids.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And they never saw you again.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
How do people avoid that happening in their friendships and
relationships and.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Why is it necessary to avoid that happening.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You can't control other people's behavior if they disappear, But
I think what you can do is take seriously what
you feel, and that's not necessarily going to be kind
of endorsed by the world around you. But what I
found when I was talking to people who would experience
losses in friendship, whether it was falling out or like
a friend falling off the space of the earth when
(14:34):
with a romantic relationship, is that they were not getting
from the world around them any kind of recognition that
the loss really hurt and it was hard for them
to appreciate how difficult it was, and that they've sort
of felt like, I've just got to get over it,
and that makes the whole situation worse. So I think
if someone is on the receiving end where friends disappear,
(14:59):
to honor that that's difficult, and once you do that,
it becomes possible then to maybe open a conversation with
the friend and not see it as inevitable.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
And let's say.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
It's the situation where there's a romantic partner who comes
in and you can say, I'm excited for you. I
know there's this really thrilling honeymoon period, but I also
think our friendship is really important and I want us
to maintain it, and I want you to understand where
I'm coming from, and I'm saying this because I really
care about our friendship. So I think in order to
(15:32):
ask something of someone else and to tell them that
you are having a hard time, like you need to
tell yourself that it is okay to be having a
hard time and that it's not just the way things
have to be. And then if you are in the
position where, let's say you enter a romantic relationship, you
can choose not to isolate yourself and you can make
choices to nurture friendships. You can make it a value
(15:53):
within the romantic relationship that you are going to have
other people in your life who really matter to you,
that it is also good for the relationship. There is
research on this that romantic relationships are stronger when people
have other close friends that they can turn to. Diversify
your portfolio in all areas of life. So those would
(16:14):
be some of my recommendations so that people both don't
kind of undermine their friendships and don't undermine their own
experiences of hardship in friendship because it really can be difficult.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
I'm so curious the studies on this because I'm thirty one,
I'm now in a relationship, but I wasn't for a
really long time, and I struggled a lot with the
fact that I had so many friends who really saw
their relationships as the end all be all and their
life couldn't exist without it, And I was just sitting
there like, well, we have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
We do a lot of cool stuff. I don't understand
why this is just the end all be all kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
So I always did have this different mindset of, well,
it'll happen when it's supposed to happen, and until then
and after then, I will be just fine and I
will have all the things that I have right now.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
But that's not a very common mindset to have. And
I'm curious one on the research of making sure it's
important for your relationship to continue these things, because I
feel that way. But I'm also just curious your thought
process for all of my single people out there who
may have been in a similar set of shoes that
(17:27):
I was in. And I really struggled with that because
nobody was understanding me, which is also how and why
I stumbled on you. I was like, I need to
bring her on to have this conversation.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
There's a way that American society really belittles single people
and treats them as not quite full adults and that
your life will arrive once you have found a romantic partner,
and that is it terrible is a terrible way for
society to be you people, and then inevitably you internalize
some of it, like what is wrong with me or
(18:00):
my life hasn't really started yet. I just think a
really unfortunate and unfair way for single people to have
to live. It's just wrong. Like you can have a
full life without a romantic partnership, you can also have
a really sad life with a romantic partnership. I think
there's the focus on quality rather than do you check
(18:21):
this box is probably a wiser thing to do. And then,
in terms of people who might benefit from thinking a
little bit differently about the role of a romantic partner
in their life, there is research, for instance, showing that
people who have kind of robust support networks outside of
their marriage are happier in their marriages than those who
(18:42):
do not have those support networks. There's also a research
that checked how stressed people got in marital conflicts, and
people who had these other close relationships in their lives
experienced less of a spike in cortisol, the stress hormone
than people who did not have those sorts of robust
support networks. So it's not good to expect that one
(19:06):
person is going to be everything. And I think that
if people recognize that about their own romantic relationships, it
might help them not belittle the people who are not
in romantic partnerships and provide so much sustenance to their lives.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
And so it leads me into this next moment of
how do we become better friends?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
How can we show up better? How can we be the.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Friend that we wanted to have that you and I
are speaking on experiences of we wish we had a
better friend in that moment, how can we ensure we
are being that friend?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Sort Of related to what we've been talking about. I
think one thing that's really helpful is not to create
these really strict lines between what does a romantic partner do,
what does a friend do? What does family do?
Speaker 2 (19:56):
And to really to.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
Think about I have friends going through some very difficult
things at the moment, and instead of trying to figure out,
like what is the role that I should play according
to my title, it's more what do these people need
and do I care about them, and what can I
do that I have capacity reasonable capacity to do to
support them and not treat friends like well somebody else
(20:22):
who's closer to them should figure it out. Like being
a friend means being there for the difficult times as
well as the good times. I also think being a
good friend means making time like that is where what
you put on your calendar, I think is where your
values are. And I have found it is much easier
to become close to people and therefore know what is
(20:44):
happening in their lives when you have regular contact. And
one way to do that is just to put regular
time on the calendar with people. I mean this sounds
extremely simple, but it makes a difference between actually being
a part of someone's life or or having them be
intermittently involved. And the distinction I like to think of
is are you moving through life together or are you
(21:07):
narrating life after the fact, So either frequency or just
making decisions about how you spend time together, like you're
going to go on grocery runs or you're going to
do things where you're out in the world spending time
together where you're going to have experiences that you will
recall and you get to sort of be entangled in
the day to day versus every six weeks, we're going
(21:28):
to have coffee and we're going to tell us tell
each other what happened in the last six weeks, rather
than experiencing something in an active way.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Oh I love that saying that you just said. That
hits home because there are some friendships where you recall
and it's so beautiful, but you aren't connected in everyday
life and there are these different experiences that you're having.
And I think it's really awesome that we as people
can choose to have this ability to show up in
(21:58):
the ways that we need too, Like you ultimately get
to make the decision and the choice of how you're
going to show up for people. And you just reiterated that,
and that saying really did that. And I also noted
for myself because me and all of my friends on
a day to day basis, when we catch each other
on a phone call or a text, we're like, Okay,
put it in the calendar.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
When are we seeing each other next? Like, put it in.
We're not.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
I don't care if it has to be two weeks
from now. Put it in and then it's in and
we can't go back on that. Like it's in the calendar,
it means it's happening. And it's funny because as an adult,
I never would have thought I'd have to use my
calendar as a social calendar as well, like physically social calendar.
But it's been really important to ensure that I am
always there and I'm always showing up even when I
(22:46):
do show up in other ways and in the normal
moments and talking to everybody each day or interacting with them,
it's no put it on the calendar. So I make
sure I see you face to face no matter what,
and that has made us significant difference for me and
being able to show up as my whole self and
for them to show up in a way. So it's
(23:06):
funny that you mentioned the calendar.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
The other kind of suggestion I would have is be
more like like a kid in how you approach friends.
One thing that is I've described already one part of this,
which is go experience things together rather than talk about
it after the fact. I mean, so many of my
friendships as a kid was like coming up with games
together or like going on adventures. And then another part
(23:33):
of it, I think, maybe especially for girl you know
they might have had experiences with is really like celebrating
the friendship in the way that we are used to
celebrating romantic relationships. People celebrate anniversaries. There are rituals around
romantic relationships, and as kids, there often are rituals around
friendship again, and probably more so for girls and for boys.
But like friendship bracelets, you know, there might like secret handshakes,
(23:58):
other kinds of playful ways is that kids will come
up with. And I think bringing some of that, that
ceremony and that sort of excitement about the friendship as
an entity that you want to talk about and preserve
is also a really great way to enrich a friendship
(24:19):
as an adult.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
I just had some of my best friends visiting, who
we all now live in different cities, and we were
sitting at dinner and talking about the sisterhood of traveling pants, and.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
We were like, what can be our pair of genes?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
What can we start sending to each other and sending
back and forth and it be this very exciting You
get snail mail every so often, and it's this thing
that we're passing back to each other to stay close.
And we had just talked about that and that movie
is such a good example of finding ways to connect
even if you can't connect in the most normal, everyday ways.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I think there's like a kind of aig zoos about
friendship that you see in like among adolescents, and like
young kids do that maybe it doesn't feel like as
okay to express as an adult. And yeah, if you
love your friend, it's like love your be clear about
that and spend a lot of time on it and
(25:20):
come up with ways to feel connected and come up
with things that feel special between the two of you
or the group of you.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
When speaking of connection, I had seen you say opportunities
for career and connection are often hidden in plain sight,
and that really resonated with me. So I'd love to
have you expand on that a little bit more because
I do often think, much like we always say in
romantic relationships.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
You'll find somebody when you're not looking.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I do think similar things happen when it comes to
other aspects of our life.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Well, what this makes me think of is like when
on Saturday is I take off from technology. I don't
use my phone, and it makes me a little bit
of an observer of the rest of the world, where
I just see everybody head down, looking at their phones
and not interacting with the people around them. So I mean,
one obvious thing is if you're getting out of your house,
which I hope people are spending time like not just
(26:18):
in their homes all day. There are people that you
can interact with, who you can chat up, and is
certainly an opportunity to get to know people. But I
think there's a chance not just to meet new people,
but to have closer friendships. And maybe we have been
told and that involved was taking some risks and maybe
inviting people to spend time together or doing things basically
(26:42):
to escalate the friendship that might get you rejected. And
we know that rejection is part of the process for
romantic relationships, but we're not really like given the same
expectations I think about friendship that you have to make overtures.
I think if someone came to you and said I
really want a romantic partner, but like nobody's asking me out,
(27:03):
no one's approaching me, you'd probably say, like, well, are
you getting out of dating app are you asking anybody out?
What are you contributing? But I have heard for friendship
a lot of you know, well, nobody nobody talks to me,
or like, nobody's asking me to hang out, and it's like, well,
what are you asking people.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
To hang out?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Are you setting up gatherings? Are you taking risks? So
I actually think that one way to kind of make
friendships wrong or is to take some of the expectations
that come from the rewards and difficulties of the dating
world and applying that to friendship.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And so much of what you're talking about too, just
reminds me a lot of my friendships and how they
have formed over the course of time. One friend formed
because I started talking to her. She was a trainer
at a gym I started working out at, and we
just slowly kept having more and more conversations. And one
of my best friends that I've known for over seventeen
(28:00):
years is somebody who we were dating the same guy,
and then we teamed up and we're like, yeah, we
don't need this guy. We've been best friends ever since.
And so many of my friendships have similar stories of that,
where they were just coming from unexpected places and had
I not been open to the idea of just accepting
a new person, And these were all different phases of
(28:22):
my life.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
None of them were one and the same.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
They weren't all when I was a kid, or in
college or now as an adult. They're all over And
had I been just closed off to so many of
those experiences as a human being, I wouldn't have these
incredible friendships who have gotten me through so much of
my life.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well yeah, I mean I loved two women dating one
man and they're like, yeah, let's throw this one out.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, it's our funny friendship stoy that we still love
telling you the stake because we're like, had we both
not dated a really stupid idiot, we would not be
best friends. And honestly, that's just meant to be for
how life works out. Sometimes it is one of our
favorite stories.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
And I just I.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Love this importance of friendship and so much of what
you're focusing on, because truly, I do look at my
friendships and there are so many parts of my life
that I don't know that I would have genuinely made
it through had I not created and fostered and really
supported those friendships. Even when I'm super busy, there's still
(29:26):
moments of my life where I'm like, how do I
check in? How do I show up even if I
can't show up in a way that I really want to.
How do I make sure this person knows that I'm
always here and I'm always going to support them. And
that's been such a big piece of who I am
as a friend that and people will ask me all
the time on social media, how do you do it?
How do you make it all the time? How are
(29:47):
you doing this?
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I'm like, I have to.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
These people are a priority for me and if I
don't do this, I would be lost without them. And
I think that's pretty uncommon for a lot of people
to say say about friendships.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
I do think some people feel this. I certainly know
that people believe their friendships, especially if they talk to
people who are older, who they really lived through a
lot of life, like they have deep appreciation for their friendship,
but the messaging out in the world does not align
with the experience that so many people have. So then
(30:25):
for those who are maybe personally have not had such
close friendships, and it's confusing to them and it feels
like an outlier. But we aren't necessarily widely talking about
how much our friends mean to us, and you just
sort of get locked into these cycles, like when you
are catching up with somebody, do you ask them about
their romantic partner, how they they're doing? Probably do you
(30:49):
ask how their closest friends are doing? Maybe, like in
my life, I do. But I think for a lot
of people wouldn't necessarily occur to them that knowing about
their platonic social life is an essential part of understanding
where that person is at the moment, what matters to them.
And if you're not asking the questions, you're not getting
(31:09):
that information, and you're not necessarily understanding what other people's
experiences might be. And that maybe you should go out
and try to invest more in the friendships in your life.
And I can see how people might be surprised because
we don't really have the conditions to see if this
is a relatively common thing.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, and you say that, And it's funny.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
The friend that I was mentioning and telling you the
story of how we met dating the same guy.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Every time that we talk.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
To each other, we don't live in the same city,
but every time we're like, Okay, well, how's.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Your family, how is so and so?
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And we'll mention each other's friends that live in those cities,
what's going on with them?
Speaker 2 (31:47):
And until you just said that in this moment, I
didn't realize that wasn't normal. I thought we were supposed
to talk about what was going on in each other's lives,
and part of that is your friendships.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Yeah, some people do, it's like if you, but it's
not necessarily an instinct for everybody. And there's certainly people
in my life who are very maybe centered around their
romantic partnerships, and they would ask about a partner or
are you dating? And family and work like that's the trifecta,
and it wouldn't necessarily occur to them. I mean, at
this point, people know friendship matters to me, but like
(32:20):
I know, for some people just it just would rise
to the surface. And again, like they're not necessarily getting
depictions in pop culture that's say, to have a good life,
like you really needed to be paying attention to your
friends or your friends or an essential part of your life.
Or when you think about where you're going to live,
you don't just think about your job and your family,
you can also think about where your friends are. It's
kind of coming through different channels. We're not necessarily getting
(32:42):
the reinforcement that this is a really essential part of
a good life.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
And I thought of something as you're sharing this, and
I just love your take on it. Based on this
entire conversation, there's obviously this really narrative around opposite sex
friendships and people not being able, like boys and girls
can't be friends, they can't just be friends.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
What are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Because that's a hot topic that a lot of people
just really love to nail in the coffin.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yeah, wasn't when Harry met Sally like thirty years ago,
and we're still having this conversation. One of the piece
feedback or outreach I've gotten very commonly after the book
came out was like, do you have stories of opposite
sex friends who have this kind of really intense friendship,
which is like the focus of the book. And I do.
I have examples, but I think what people are particularly
(33:37):
interested in, or like friendships between a straight man and
a straight woman and how those fair. And some of
the messages I've gotten from people or people coming up
to tell my stories or like I have this really
close friendship but other people don't understand it, or the
wife was jealous and we had to scale back, or
whatever the case is, so it's been an a little
(34:00):
shocking to me that this is still such a big issue,
and it feels kind of inextricably connected to the idea
that your romantic partner should be your everything, because it
creates a sense of competition that let's say there's a
husband is jealous of a wife's best friend who's a man,
that if you didn't have this idea that they're that
(34:23):
you're failing as a partner, if you're not everything to them,
that it might not be seen as so threatening to
know that there's somebody else that they're close to. And
the other thing is that I came to understand and
working on the book, is that we really conflate different
forms of attraction and connection. And I learned this from
the talking to people in the asexual community. So people
who don't experience sexual attraction that they really have this
(34:45):
language to disaggregate what sexual attraction is romantic attraction, which
might be more like the you know, flutters that you feel,
which I feel for friends often, but it's not necessarily
attached to sexual desire that you might have. You might
be into actually attracted to a friend, or like emotionally
attracted to somebody and so I think one of the
things that it gets in the way when you have
(35:07):
straight men and straight women and who are really close
and the sort of judgment is maybe coming from the outside,
is that there is this assumption that sex underlies everything,
or sexual desire underlies all forms of connection, when actually
it can be separate from those And then I think
that's kind of the outside judgment. Some people might not
end up in these friendships because they buy into these
(35:29):
ideas themselves that they're inviting trouble or they don't trust
this the other person. But I think the queer community
really shows that people who are of sexual orientations that
are attracted to each other can be close friends. And
this is sort of straight people issue that continues. I'm
like amazed in twenty twenty five are still trying to
(35:50):
grapple with this, but for some people it remains an issue.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah, yeah, this is why I wanted you to hit
on it, because unfortunately that's still a very hot topic
and it's I heck, you go in comment sections on
videos and it's still being used so very prevalent.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
And it's also sad that you would cut off half
the population. Basically, you're a huge portion of your potential friends.
You're like, Nope, not considering them because like, this will
threaten my relationship, it'll threaten their romantic relationship. Maybe they'll
come on to me that, Like, I don't think it's
a healthy thing to sort of word off so much
(36:27):
of the population and to sort of slap on these
assumptions about how things are going to turn out rather
than respond to the individual person. The line that comes
to me, some of my best friends are men, which
sounds kind of ridiculous, but it's like my life would
be much much less rich if I didn't have those
close male relationships. And yes, men and women can be friends.
(36:49):
And to those who have trouble with it, we got
to like reworker ideas about what romantic relationships should look
like and what attraction involves.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yes, we definitely do. And I'm with you on that train.
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
I see my boyfriend has lots of female friends, and
I'm always like, Okay, how can I become friends with them?
Speaker 2 (37:07):
You're friends with them? I want to hang out with them?
What are they like?
Speaker 1 (37:10):
It's more of a I want to know what that's like,
and let's invite them in further and I do think
so much of it is also attached to insecurities of
our own and our own experiences that have created a
specific narrative.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
That it can't exist.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
So and there's plenty of movies and stuff out there
too that show us this is a storyline, but.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It keeps sort of coming back to this idea of
like competition and scarcity versus a mindset that much more
centered around abundance, and that having more people who you
are close to is good for you as an individual,
it's good for a relationship. And I think people should
be concerned if they either have a romantic partner that's
(37:54):
trying to narrow down the number of you know, close
relationships in their lives and saying people are off limits,
and or if you have that impulse that you know,
it's worth asking where is this coming from? And it
is trying to control the other person? Really the right
way to address whatever kinds of fears you have, and
(38:14):
are there other ways to address those fears that don't
make another person's life have to shrink.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Yeah, that's a really important thing and I'd love to
end on that, but that's not how we end this podcast.
How we typically end it is that I want you
to share something, whether it's a piece of advice or
inspiration or something that maybe we just didn't get to
that you feel is super important.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
But I loved that. That was really good.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
So we're still going to end though on something that
you want to. So I just give the four over
to you and you share whatever you want in this
moment of time.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Well, that's something I was thinking of earlier in the
conversation when you were saying, like changing our idea of
what normal is? You know, to me, this whole project
it is about friendship, but it is all so about
trying to ask ourselves what is it that we want?
And maybe if you have never asked yourself the question
(39:09):
who do I want to live with, you've maybe just
thought obviously, I will live with the romantic partner, and
if I can't do that, I'll live alone, versus like
I having the moment to stop and ask what actually
fits for me might end up leading you to make
decisions that surprise you and make you much more satisfied.
I think of a friend of mine who got her
(39:30):
own apartment because she was like this is she wasn't
in a romantic relationship and was like this is what
basically the next step is. As an adult, I like
live alone, right and was unhappy pretty quickly and realized
that no, actually I really like coming home to people
and loved living with friends and abandoned her life to
(39:50):
make that happen. And I think sometimes we operate on
autopilot and we think that if we are not happy
when we do the things that we are supposed to do,
that it means that there's something wrong with us. But
actually what might help is really first making sure that
the thing we're doing is actually is in fact what
(40:11):
we want. And that is really hard in a world
that tells you there's a certain set of things you
want and there's a certain sequence in which to get
those things. But I have just found, by talking to
people who who have really unconventional friendships and unconventional ways
of living, that asking those questions and sometimes fielding the
confusion of other people is so so worth it.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah, well, that's an even better thing to end on,
because that's a great question for people to start asking themselves,
because it is.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I don't know that I've ever asked myself that.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
But I'm also super happy and I love living with
my dog and cat and fostering animals, which is a
whole nother zoo situation that I bring on to my world.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
But I think that's a really great self reflection piece
to make.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Sure that you're living your life as full as it
could possibly be instead of maybe not doing it just
for the sake of others thoughts and feelings.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
And maybe the one thing I would add on to
that because I always like to think about it from
your vantage point and also what are you experiencing and
then also how are you seeing the world. Like if
there were people who you are inclined to judge because
they're doing things differently, just take a moment to ask, like,
why are they doing this? And is there anything that
I could learn from it? Is there anything worth admiring here?
(41:29):
Is there anything to be curious about? And I think
that when we are less inclined to judge others, we
might also become more open ourselves to doing things that
don't necessarily feel like they are endorsed by the world
around us. But we again, like might actually like if
we gave ourself space.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
See, this is why you're an author, RNA.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
This is exactly why you're sharing the things that we
need to be hearing, and I'm so happy that you
came on just to share your story and share why.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
You wrote the book and everything.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
If you need something to try or want to open
your mind a little bit, I definitely suggest her book
The other significant Others.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Randa, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Yeah, thanks for the conversation.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
I've got another holiday episode coming up for all of
you guys. If you have holiday struggles to share things
that are hard in this particular season, I want you
guys to send them my way. I'll post on the
podcast Socials and you'll send in a voice note that
I'll play back during the episode. It's one you guys
loved last year, so making it happen again. And then
some episodes all about babies in motherhood with the help
of my sister, a new mom that's Taylor. So like
(42:35):
and subscribe because that also helps me out and you
won't miss those episodes. Happy that you're here, thanks for
spending an hour with me. I'll yap with you guys
about the holidays next week.
Host
Morgan Huelsman
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