Re-imagining friendships with Rhaina Cohen
Looking to the past for inspiration in imagining a brighter future with friends
Happy Galentine’s Day, everyone! Join me TODAY at 12pm EST as I host an Instagram Live with author Katie Horwitch (@katiehorwitch) to share tips about how to be a better friend to yourself and others. Head over to the @SoundsTrue page to tune in to our chat.
Come prepared with questions. We’re here to help!
The Galentine fun keeps going. Happy pub day to the wonderful Rhaina Cohen! Her book, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center is out today and it’s available anywhere books are sold. Rhaina wrote the viral article for The Atlantic that asked “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?” in October 2020. And she’s explored this question with breathtaking depth in her debut book.
I met Rhaina a few years ago, as we’re in a virtual author support group that meets quarterly. What can I say? She’s a gem! Personally, I’m thrilled for Rhaina for her pub day, as a colleague and friend. But I’m also excited for everyone else because she’s an an extraordinary talent who wrote an outstanding book.
I recently chatted with Rhaina about her new book and why we should have the courage to re-imagine what friendships could be. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Anna: Why were you drawn to this topic of re-imagining our relationships to our friends?
Rhaina Cohen: So the origin is very personal. I found myself in a friendship that surpassed what I even think best friends are. We would see each other four or five times a week. We became intertwined in each other's daily routines and had overlapping social circles and knew each other's workplaces and families. It felt like it went beyond the boundaries that most of us are told friendship could be. And I was interested in why this really significant relationship in my life didn't even have a name. “Best friend” didn't seem accurate. And I knew people in my life who at different points had these sorts of friendships. So I knew I wasn't alone. It made me interested in trying to find other people who elevate their friendships and see what we could learn from them.
“The exciting possibility of re-imagining what friendship can be means that there are more possibilities for connection and devotion so many of us are craving.” - Rhaina Cohen, author of The Other Significant Others
Anna: What was exciting to you about re-imagining friendship?
Rhaina Cohen: I think we have these artificial ideas about what friendship can be that really limit the possibilities.
In a lot of cases, the exciting possibility of re-imagining what friendship can be means that there are more possibilities for connection and devotion so many of us are craving. That as the loneliness epidemic would illustrate, or just like the I think as the there has been increasing writing and thinking about friendship, so many people want deeper ties, and to the extent that we can set aside our constrained ideas of friendship, then we can we can get this thing that we that we want. And we don't have the social infrastructure and otherwise to think about the many ways we might find support.
Anna: How does it make you feel to see that there were so many representations of closes friendships in past cultures, but we don't seem to have many representations as now?
Rhaina Cohen: I found it quite thrilling to realize that the ways that we think about friendship now are not essential to the relationship and that we have ancestors that we can go to. I recently interviewed someone for a historical story about a pair of women who underwent this practice of sworn sisterhood about 40 years ago. And it was so moving to hear what this ceremony felt like for them, and the way that it has affected the bond that they feel to each other, and the sense of endurance, and of their relationship. And, I think the priest had even said to them that their bond is deeper than blood ties.
So I think on some level, I feel a sense of longing or a loss that we don't have more of these kinds of ceremonies or ways to honor friendship. But it also makes me optimistic to know that we don't have to totally reinvent the wheel. We can also look backwards and see what the models are for how we can maybe think about friendship today.
Anna: What do you hope people take away from reading this book? What would be the dream impact?
Rhaina Cohen: The dream impact is for people to use the book as a starting point to imagine new ways of organizing their lives and their relationships. Like, I think if I imagined something concretely, it would be for friends to end up having conversations that they might not have otherwise, and where they maybe realize––and then get to act––on a shared desire to be more invested in each other's lives.
Anecdotally, I'm aware of lots of people who want to have more intensity and devotion in their friendships, but might be too afraid of rejection to ask for what they want, which is understandable when we don't have social scripts to talk about with a friend, like, “Would you want to live together for years, if not decades? Or the rest of our lives? Or would you be a caretaking support?’ We don't have easy kind of social scripts for those conversations.
And my hope is that the extraordinary people who I profiled in the book can be this jumping off point. I would be really excited if it becomes a conversation starter for people. I’m not saying that everybody needs to go and change the relationship dynamics in their lives right this second. But I do think that for a good number of people, the status quo is not totally working.
And, it would be a dream if people down the line, years from now were like, ‘I made these changes and had the courage to open up conversations I wouldn't have had otherwise because of this book and as a result, I feel more fulfilled and connected.’
You can follow Rhaina on Instagram and you can purchase her book here.
I took so much away from this book, and this interview!