[00:00:00] Rhaina: This is not against, romantic relationships, not against marriage. But marriage might just not be there, not only for any given person, but at any given point in our lives. And that there are different seasons, particularly for older women, it makes sense for us to offer something as a society for how people find companionship and caregiving and meaning. Because, expecting that to come through a spouse until the very last breath you take is probably just not realistic.
[00:00:31] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship, or welcome back if you've been here befor., I'm your host, Nina Badzin. I've started saying and reminding people that it is a great idea to share an episode with a friend, especially if it's a topic you want to talk about with that friend. Maybe it's a topic that's hard to bring up.
And today's episode with author, Rhaina Cohen, it’s a great example. Is there someone in your life who you think of when you watch a show like Grace and Frankie or when you think about the Golden Girls? There are so many memes that go around the internet about what it's going to be like when friends can retire together. I can't tell you how many people send me pictures from Instagram and other places of friends living together when they're older and how much fun they're having, or people who have purposely designed towns, Rhaina and I actually talk about this in the episode, where retired friends can live close to each other, but in their own spaces, but still purposely plan to live nearby.
In Rhaina Cohen's book, The Other Significant Others, Reimagining Your Life with Friendship at the Center, she focuses on this idea of platonic life partners, but she does not just focus on The Golden Girls concept, Grace and Frankie. She does not just focus on waiting until you're 70s. Although we've learned since if you follow any of these memes on the internet, that the Golden Girls were not in their 70s. It looks like that sometimes to our modern eyes, but they were actually younger. Rhaina profiles platonic life partners who are at all different ages and stages of life.
Her book does have some examples of retired people who have done this platonic partnership. She also talks about younger people, 20s, 30s, 40s, who have made this decision to center their life on friendship for any variety of reasons. It could be reasons of shared caregiving, reasons of just wanting to do life a different way. We get into a few examples in the episode, but I really recommend Rhaina's book. If you're interested in this topic, she also goes through the history of these kind of living arrangements, which did not just begin today, did not just begin with the concept of the Golden Girls. There's a really interesting and rich history. However, it's not that well known. And that's a big part of the point in Rhaina's book is that there aren't a lot of models for others who are interested in making life choices this way.
There aren't a lot of labels for it. When Rhaina and I were talking about the plan for this episode, we both considered the idea of calling it more than best friends or beyond best friends, something like that. I didn't want to necessarily go in that direction because I get a lot of pushback, well I guess not a lot, but I do get some pushback on the term best friend and I didn't want to muddy the conversation with a term like that, but it really does go to Rhaina's point in her book that there aren't really terms for these kind of life partnerships, shared responsibility, expenses, caregiving, doctor's visits. It doesn't have to be all those things, but there are elements of what you might think of as a life partnership that is completely platonic that still takes on some of the elements of what you would do for a family member or a romantic partner.
Let me tell you a little bit about Rhaina Cohen. You may have seen her name a lot since her book came out. People are really interested in this topic. She was just on the Ezra Klein show. She's been on lots of other podcasts. Her book has been covered in every media you could possibly think of: New York Times, Atlantic, Washington Post, NPR. She herself has also written for those outlets Rhaina has spent most of her career working on podcasts that blend narratives and ideas, including Hidden Brain and Invisibilia. She's an award winning producer and editor for NPRs documentary podcast Embedded.
I cannot wait for you to hear my discussion with Rhaina. So here you go. Hi, Rhaina. Welcome to Dear Nina.
[00:04:18] Rhaina: So glad to talk about friendship with you.
[00:04:20] Nina: I love talking about friendship with other friendship dorks, as I call us, people who just love to dive deep into it. There's a whole group of us we could probably just go on and on and on, but I'm gonna make us stay focused. Before we get deeper into the subject of being even closer than best friends, meaning platonic instead of romantic life partners, I'd love for you to tell listeners more about your book, The Other Significant Others, Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center,
[00:04:48] Rhaina: this is a book that's about people who have a friendship that's close enough to be a life partnership and are really, I think, challenging how we think about what a friendship can be and what relationships are most important in our lives. Each chapter follows a different set of friends who have this kind of committed platonic relationship and the sorts of questions that their friendship raises, because these friendships look so similar to romantic relationships, but, are not recognized at all, they open up questions like, how do we define what partnership is? Is sex an essential part of partnership? Why do we privilege as a society romantic relationships? How do we decide who to start a family with? So each story kind of opens up these sorts of questions that we maybe don't always have to think about.
[00:05:33] Nina: And your book does such a great job of mixing research and these personal stories. And I want to tell you, Rhaina, from reading your book, I got such a sense of your unique view of what's possible. Your acknowledgments were especially touching. I actually got a little teary eyed. I'm not, an easy to cry person. Your note to Em in particular, do you mind if I read that little part? It will give people a sense of the kind of friendships you're trying to touch on. And this one's about you and your friend Em, but you know, for people who haven't read the book, there are so many beautiful friendships in the book.
And Rhaina wrote in her acknowledgments, Em, there would have been no rabbit hole to go down if not for our friendship. Thank you for letting me write about you, about us. Early on, you encouraged me to bring a sense of expansiveness to the book, to expand readers sense of what's possible for their own lives. That's what you do.You encourage the people around you to open themselves up to new feelings, ideas, and experiences, however unfamiliar or uncomfortable. My world is immeasurably bigger, richer, and more beautiful because of you.
It's just a beautiful thing to say to a friend and a powerful thing. And that's part of what I loved about your book is that the friendships you talk about, these people are able to say things like that to their friends and not feel like, am I being too much? Am I over the top? Am I scaring someone off? Cause I think people have a lot of fears about that.
[00:06:50] Rhaina: You know, I think it would have been, in conflict with the book if I shied away from really thanking the friends in my life, and especially Em, who made me want to write the book in the first place. A little fun, I don't know, like, context for that? I always knew that I was going to write something, for Em in the acknowledgements, and land on her. But there is a great book that's about the publishing process called Before and After the Book Deal. And it's very funny. There was some part about, how do you write an acknowledgment section? And it lists, the kinds of things people will put in an acknowledgment section and, in order of.
What people tend to do and it'll be like your editor and your agent and then the coffee shop that you frequent and your dog and then end on the person you're having sex with. And I was like, that's very spot on for the kinds of things that I'm interested in that people, put in the most special position, the person that they're having sex with, rather than maybe like any other person who could be just as significant, but, we have certain categories that we mark off as more important than others. And so I thank both my husband and Em, at the very end of the acknowledgements. But, I think in the back of my mind, I was, like, there's additional reason to make sure that I'm ending on Em, not kind of perpetuate something that. That doesn't necessarily always make sense for everybody when they're kind of going through who has been the biggest contributor to a project like this.
[00:08:10] Nina: That fits your book perfectly, and I agree so strongly with your point of view that's throughout the entire book, that part of the purpose of this book is so that people know about these kind of friendships. If we don't know they exist, these friendships that you know, I keep saying more than best friends. Once you've read the book you really understand best friend just feel so trite. No matter what age you are, if you don't know that these kind of friendships are a possibility, you don't even know how your life could possibly unfold.
You called it resisting defaults. Can you say a little more about that before we get into some examples of actual friendships in the book?
[00:08:50] Rhaina: there are defaults about how we set up our lives and what the relationships in our lives look like. And, the big default we're given is that in order to be a, fulfilled, successful adult, you have to be in a long term romantic partnership, potentially married or ideally married, depending on maybe the community that you're in.
It is romantic relationship or bust. If you don't have a romantic partner, we don't have any ideas in our culture really about well, what are other ways that you can find some of the things people want in a romantic partner, which is, someone who knows what their everyday lives look like, someone who is a confidant, someone who maybe they live with or start a family with. So that one idea about what your life should look like has implications for which relationships we invest in.
If it was the case that you could do those things with a sibling, then maybe people would have conversations with their siblings, or if it was with a friend, then, instead of feeling like. All you can do is date, and if you don't find a person, then you have to be alone. That those are the two choices.
Then, if people knew about this, they could have the kind of intentional conversations that I think are necessary to have this closest. I mean, in romantic partnerships, people don't tend to, like, totally fall into them. They date, or they have defined their relationship conversations. They talk about, do they want to move in together? They talk about their future. So, you need to be intentional about it. And part of being intentional is knowing what a blueprint looks like and to know what a blueprint looks like. You've got to see that people are models of this in some way.
[00:10:20] Nina: and openly talk about it with other people. Your book really is groundbreaking, and there's so many different examples. I have some I would love to talk about, but I'm going to let you choose first. What's a pairing that you would I'd be curious if it's the same one I have but what's a pairing that stands out right now that you want to tell people about?
[00:10:37] Rhaina: You know, the one that is a go to for me are these two women named Barb and Inez.
[00:10:42] Nina: that was mine, too. Yes. Yes, because it speaks to my listenership, too. I think my listenership is very highly female and skews, middle aged to older. So I think this will really be interesting for people. Yeah, so you tell
[00:10:55] Rhaina: I mean, I think it speaks to this model example for you because these are women who have been living this kind of friendship for Decades. at this point, they've been best friends for half a century. They're in their 80s. they're among the first people that I ended up interviewing for the book.
Years ago, I met them at their house, which they own together in the suburbs of St. Louis. And they bought that house together, kind of for practical reasons, they couldn't afford to live separately, they were, on the cusp of retirement, were trying to figure out what this next chapter would be like, and they had really trusted each other, and they had traveled together, and they knew that they, I think, Barb said something like, well, we'd like, you know, traveled together before, we didn't kill each other, so we figured we could make this work, if you look at them, they are partners to each other.
They go to the same doctor to make sure that they are kind of up to date on each other's health. They share, an email address. So it's very confusing sometimes to email them. If you want to email Barb, it's actually, it's going to look like it's coming from Inez.
They have taken care of each other through health issues, through tragedies, what else would you expect, when you're trying to imagine what a partnership looks like. to the outside world, if people don't really know them, they would say, well, they're friends. They're just
[00:12:04] Nina: more than platonic, right? Like that's an assumption people would make.
[00:12:07] Rhaina: yeah, and I can give you a contrast, a contrast of the implication that people might assume that they're romantic partners. This was something that came up when they moved in together that, Inez's adult son had brought up, you know, this was the, they moved in together, I think in 1998 and he was like, you realize maybe what some people might think and they're kind of like, eh, whatever.
And it doesn't seem like people have really thought much of it. And I think that has to do with kind of cultural ideas that desexualize older people. If they were in their thirties or forties and maybe. That would be different. to give you another example of, people who I profile in the book, there are these two men in their thirties named, Andrew and Toli, who have been best friends since they were teenagers and went through some very formative experiences together, including, caring for and grieving the loss of one of their friends who died by suicide when they were, just in college.
And they have had a number of people in their life not believe that their relationship is platonic. They’re straight men. They are very self aware guys who have no reason, I think, to doubt anything about their sexuality. And yet, their parents have asked questions about, Are they romantic partners?
You know, one of the people that I track in the book a little bit is Andrew's mother, who has brought up at different points, I want you to be in a relationship, and I want you to, you know, describe what she wants for him, and he's like, I have that, but she doesn't understand how you can have a partner who's, it's not romantic, which I think is very, very common, for a lot of people.
So I think some of the differences there are like, one, the age part, and two, the gender piece. Like, I think there's a lot of suspicion of straight men in particular having this kind of closeness.
[00:13:41] Nina: And then pop culturally, models we see you're right. There are older women you mentioned in the book, Grace and Frankie, and Golden Girls are both very popular shows of older women choosing to live together for a lot of the reasons you state finances, loneliness, just practical stuff like caregiving.
You wrote that Deborah Carr, a sociology professor at Boston University, says that living arrangements like Inez and Barb's could be the wave of the future, which makes sense to me knowing that women tend to live longer.
[00:14:13] Rhaina: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are just kind of crazy statistics that one third of women over 65 in the U.S. are widowed, almost exactly one half are not partnered. For older women in particular, even if you're married for some stretch of your life, and you're married to a man, there's a good chance that you're going to outlive that person, and one of the kind of big points I'm trying to make in the book is that this is not against, you know, romantic relationships, not against marriage, but marriage might just not be there, not only for any given person, but at any given point in our lives, and that there are different seasons, and, particularly for older women, it makes sense for us to offer something as a society for how people find companionship and caregiving and meaning. Because expecting that to come through a spouse until the very last breath you take is probably just not realistic. We can offer more than just having to kind of deal with life alone.
[00:15:09] Nina: And your own living situation is so interesting to me, slightly different than the context of some of the other friendships we were talking about where this friendship is so close and so intense that they can then envision a different living situation or life partnership than they ever might have imagined.
In your case, the friendship wasn't like the closest friendship you had, but then you decided to live together anyway. But as couples, can you tell us more about that?
[00:15:36] Rhaina: you know, I will say that I think working on this book helped move me in the direction of living more collectively. It's something that I've always wanted to do, but part of it was trying to think through, Oh, it actually takes some coordination. My husband and I talked to some friends about buying a home together and then we ended up having a kind of casual conversation with friends who didn't live in the same area about this, they ended up being interested in living together when they were planning to move to DC, where I am. Which kind of shocked us, they, at the time, had a young child. They, are Modern Orthodox Jewish, which means they keep a kosher kitchen, keep Shabbat, and all of the many Jewish holidays. So there are ways that they're not the obvious fit for people who would live in a somewhat unconventional way.
But we like loved these friends. One of them officiated the wedding for my husband and me. They're kind of consummate hosts, my husband and I started observing a kind of secular Shabbat, years ago, in part inspired by seeing one of the friends in this couple, and what Shabbat looked like for them. We wanted, their, the sort of glow of them as people and their lives to rub off on us. I can talk about how did it actually happen and some of the decision making there. But, it's been about two and a half years at this point. And I'm talking to you from our shared office. There are now two kids. There's an eight month old here.
You know, I think living with people does not necessarily, you don't necessarily have to be the closest of friends, you just kind of have to be low key and chill and and flexible, and I've just gotten so much closer to our friends. When you're around people constantly you learn about them, my husband and I have gotten to get to know their kids and play a role in their lives that would never have been possible, I think, even if we lived in the same neighborhood. You spend so much more time with people when you're In a shared kitchen together or hosting Shabbats often
[00:17:17] Nina: one thing you and I both know from studying friendship is that proximity is one of the major factors of getting closer to people. I always tell people when they're trying to make new friends, you could click really well with somebody, have fantastic chemistry. But if they live 30 minutes away, even, that is an impediment.
It is for real. It doesn't almost matter how good the chemistry is. If getting to see each other is a hassle, And then the opposite is true too. I think that you can have like enough in common, like a decent amount of chemistry doesn't have to be amazing spark.
Oh my gosh. You can't wait to get to know this person, but you have proximity that counts for so much too.
[00:17:51] Rhaina: well, think about, for yourself or for listeners in their own lives. What are the most intense friendships that they've had in their lives? And how did they start? And I think for a lot of people, it would be at a summer camp or when they were in school as a teenager and constantly around the other person or when they were very young and somebody was in the neighborhood the proximity enables lots of time together, and you just learn about each other in a really deep way.
And I'm all for people trying to reduce the friction in what it takes to see their friends. And one of those things is living with your friends. I can definitely recommend somebody to you, for future podcast episodes, there's, somebody out in Oakland named Phil Levin, who has, started a, company called Live Near Friends. And you can like put in your address and or put in a friend's address and it'll show you all of the rental listings or buying listings within a five minute radius, five minute walking radius.
[00:18:47] Nina: Oh, that's cool. Well, you had something in your book. It's really funny. It was, this kind of thing happens all the time where a friend of mine who listens to my podcast a lot, she actually suggested I interview you, you had already, reached out to me. So it's like, but within a day, she has like this weird sense of what's up. She's like, you have to interview Rhaina Cohen. I said, I am next week. then yesterday, you won't believe this. She sends me the article about the group of people who in 2011 built a retirement homes near each other on
[00:19:16] Rhaina: The Llano,
[00:19:17] Nina: Yes, could you tell the listeners a little bit about that?
[00:19:19] Rhaina: yeah, the Llano Exit Strategy. I had a friend also maybe send me an Instagram post maybe this is from the same place because this story has been around for a little while but it was a group of friends who hired an architect to design the Llano build them a kind of compound of tiny homes, which included a shared, tiny home, like a common space where they would retire together.
They're still not of retirement age, so I think at the moment you can rent it out as an Airbnb. But it's like on the Llano River in Texas, and it just got a ton of press because I think it tapped into a dream that people have. I have been in many situations where people talk about, when I retire, when my husband dies, I mean, seriously, morbidly, like, this is what I want, or like, as I get older, I want my friends to cluster.
And I had a colleague who talked about trying to have friends all have homes near each other and pay for a nurse that they could share between them. I think that it helped, to show this fantasy that people might have is possible. think it's so helpful to have these models because it shows that it doesn't have to just be on Golden Girls, that people are making it happen. The more that we can see examples, the easier it becomes to have those conversations and then start to like do the work to plan it out because It does take more coordination to do something that is not on the standard menu, to figure out the legal structure, to figure out how are you going to get housing when housing is built for single family units and that sort of thing.
[00:20:45] Nina: another aspect of this I want to talk about beyond living together and logistics piece, which I think is really important and interesting, I'm glad we talked about it. Kind of dialing back, rewinding to the spark let's talk about best friends and what that means. And then this spark that you describe with Em, I have felt it too with people. It's not romantic. It's like, you know, when you feel it, it's not romantic, but it shares some elements. with the same spark that happens when you like meet somebody you want to date.
[00:21:13] Rhaina: I think it's fundamentally a kind of enchantment or like curiosity to know everything you can about a person and to be in close proximity to them, to hang out with them, to learn from them. One of the things that I learned in this process is that it's really hard to know what romantic love is or romantic feelings, something that we associate with romance, like infatuation, is actually something that people can experience for a potential friend.
And it doesn't have to come with, Oh, I have a drive to kiss the person or I have, this sort of bodily sexual attraction to them that you could just have that sheer excitement and draw to somebody, which is what I experienced with Em even before we talked, I saw her across the room.
I saw like her body language and how she seemed so comfortable and loose and was making people laugh and had poise, and I just wanted to talk to her I was right that she was as great as I had, guessed from afar, but it wasn't like a oh, I want to kiss her, or I have a sexual draw, and I've experienced that with other friends too. And I know it's not so wild, but we don't really have a way to talk about it in our culture.
[00:22:20] Nina: It's true and some of the same issues come up in both cases with friends and with potential people you might want to date which is, am I calling too much? Am I reaching out too much? Am I talking about the person too much? And I've definitely had that where I you know, I've been married 23 years. I have four kids. I have a very full life, community, whatever. Still, at this age, I'm 47, I'm a bit older than you, when I meet a new friend that I'm excited about, I can hear myself, bringing the person up a lot. I sometimes say to myself, okay, stop saying that person's name, like, you're being annoying.
[00:22:50] Nina: Like, to my husband, or, you know, to my kids, they’re like, well, you know, you met a friend,
[00:22:54] Rhaina: There are terms that exist for the romantic world that I just think are so applicable here, like there's a term called limerence, which is kind of what you're describing, like this, obsessive excitement about somebody in this early phase of getting to know them or, in this sort of world of non monogamy, what's called NRE or new relationship energy, um, or just like crush, you know. We talk about having a crush and sometimes people will say a friend crush, but, it's a beautiful thing to have that kind of sense of possibility with somebody else, and wanting to know them. I think it'd be great to acknowledge and have as much fun and excitement about when we have those sorts of friend crushes or limerence for friends as we do for romantic partners.
[00:23:34] Nina: And hopefully this book will affirm that for people. Have any of the partners in the book read it yet?
[00:23:40] Rhaina: nobody has read the whole book yet. There will be final copies of the book coming out soon, which I'll be able to send to them. And I'm excited for people to get to read it. I just really feel like the people that I wrote about are kind of everyday heroes in a way that they have been charting their own course even when it has been difficult and just for them to see that their story can be really valuable to other people and that they're also part of this collective that they've been doing this all independently I'm hoping that that's rewarding.
[00:24:10] Nina: The reason I asked that is I know the book is still very new, when they've all had a chance to read it, like you said, and see that they're part of a collective, I think they're going to feel a sense of affirmation when you know you're onto something and other people are finally catching on.
[00:24:23] Rhaina: I think so, and also that, you know, as much as they are functioning as models, there are other people in the book that can be models for them. there are a couple of, men in their, around, I guess in their twenties, still at this point, who had told me that they were excited to read about the older people in the book, because they wanted elders.
That they wanted to know, what does it look like to have this kind of friendship for decades, when they you know, have been doing this for much less time and have had to navigate things on their own, have had to repurpose structures that are built for romantic partners, like they've gone to basically like a form of premarital counseling with the pastor, because that's the closest that they could get to, talk through their friendship.
So, I think that having other people to look at will also just be helpful to figure out, oh, maybe, you know, the conflicts we've had are not that unusual, or here's how people have resolved them, or here's how people have made decisions that we were thinking of making, that it, makes it not all feel like you have to do everything on your own for the first time.
[00:25:20] Nina: That's right. Is there anything else you want to add before we say goodbye, Rhaina?
[00:25:24] Rhaina: You know, I think the thing that I would want to add is why should somebody who maybe is really content with their life as it is, and is not looking for this kind of beyond best friends friendship, why should they care about this topic? I see these sorts of friendships as being a kind of case study in, and as you were saying earlier in resisting defaults, When we can see that, you know, in this particular way, how people are carving out a life that works for them, then we can kind of do a version of that in our own lives.
And it might be that you have a friend who could be this close, or it could be like the situation that I was in where my husband and I realized we could live with our friends or live near our friends, or, we could look around and see, what are the relationships that we want to strengthen and what would it look like to strengthen them?
What are things that I'm told about what a romantic relationship should be like, or marriage should be, and how much does that line up with what I actually enjoy and what I want to do in my own relationship? One story that comes to mind for me happened after I wrote this piece for The Atlantic a few years ago, which was the precursor to the book, and I think it speaks to how sometimes we can't even see what's right in front of us until we have examples laid out. In her case, she had been trying so hard to date to find a new romantic partner as a divorced woman that she couldn't see that she already felt fulfilled in her life.
And she happened to have this kind of friendship that I was writing about and hadn't been able to see it for what it was already. So, my hope is that we can all look around and see see where are we already getting nourishment, where can we deepen the relationships in our lives, and not just have one story for what it looks like to be happy.
[00:27:01] Nina: That's a perfect note to end on except will you say the name of the article, The Atlantic, which I'll link in the show notes?
[00:27:06] Rhaina: Yeah, the article in The Atlantic is called, What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life.
[00:27:11] Nina: you know how many people sent that to me? This probably happens to you also, but when anything comes out about friendship that's interesting, I mean, I get it from so many people, and I used to say, Oh, I already saw that, but I realized it was taking away the joy people had and being like, Oh, I found something I think you'll find interesting. And so now I just a more normal, gracious person say, thank you so much. That's all I say.
[00:27:32] Rhaina: yeah. I've, we probably get a lot of the same stuff sent to us.
[00:27:36] Nina: And there's been several from you. I mean, not from you to me, but that you wrote I mean, you've had some really interesting pieces out there. Rhaina, thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait for more people to read the book. I'm going to have everything linked and easy for people to find. And I know that I definitely have listeners who are fans of your work on NPR also, so they'll be excited about that.
And I end every show in a way I think you as a friendship person will really agree with and that is when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around.
[00:28:04] Rhaina: I couldn't agree more. I'm happy to be part of your community of friendship dorks. Is that what you call us?
[00:28:09] Nina: Yes, I do. Not everybody knows I call them that but we are, there’s, who cares about this stuff as much as we
[00:28:14] Rhaina: Yeah, I should show you my shelf that's right next to here and has, like, lots of books
[00:28:19] Nina: It probably looks exactly like but we could send each other little snapshots because mine's also probably got all the same books and yours will be right next to it.
So Yeah, we'll see you back out there in the friendship world. Thank you again to my listeners for being here. I always love hearing from you. I communicate a lot with listeners and readers. If you are looking to chat, you could do it directly. You could do it anonymously if you have something to say, but you don't want me to know who you are. All of those are possibilities. And they're all right here in the show notes. Anywhere you are, if you're on Apple, if you're on Spotify, if you're on Overcast, that's what I use when I listen to podcasts, by the way, I like that app but all the show notes come from the same place. They have how to join my Facebook group where we talk about a lot of friendship stuff.
Actually even more so, we talk about TV and books and recipes. It's a really wonderful group of people and you're welcome to join that. That's at dear Nina, the group, if you look it up on Facebook. See you next week.