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In this week’s episode, I’m talking to the brilliant Rhaina Cohen.
Rhaina is an award-winning producer and editor for NPR's documentary podcast, Embedded. Based in Washington DC, she’s produced, edited, and reported stories for shows across NPR, and written for various publications including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. Her Atlantic article, “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?” was named a “Best of 2020” article by Longreads.”
Rhaina’s first book, The Other Significant Others, tells the stories of people who make a friendship the central relationship in their lives—owning homes together, raising kids together, or caring for each other for decades. Like romantic couples, these friends form a “we.” The book comes out on 13th February 2024.
Topics that Rhaina & I cover are:
- the friendship that inspired Rhaina to write her book;
- the history of friendship including ‘sworn brotherhood’ and ‘romantic friendships’;
- how expecting one relationship to fulfill all of our needs puts too much pressure on it;
- how there are many ways that people can find fulfillment, other than a romantic relationship;
- the female friends in Rhaina’s book who raise a child together;
- the meaning of the word partnership;
- best friends, Barb & Ines, in Rhaina’s book, who bought a house together and have lived there for 25 years;
- how laws and policies tend to be set up to favour married people;
- how all the people that Rhaina interviewed for her book found a way of organising their lives around a friendship;
- how the end of a friendship can be equally, if not more, painful than a romantic break-up;
- Rhaina’s unconventional living situation;
- the idea that we should perceive our previous relationships or friendships as people we’ve reached the height of intimacy with, rather than a failures.
Follow Rhaina on Instagram
@rhainacohen
Follow Rhaina on Twitter:
@RhainaCohen
Buy Rhaina’s book (US):
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Significant-Others-Reimagining-Friendship/dp/1250280915
Buy Rhaina’s book (UK):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Significant-Others-Reimagining-Friendship/dp/1250280915
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