In her first book, The Other Significant Others, NPR editor and producer Rhaina Cohen presents an eye-opening exploration of the many ways friendship, in various forms, can enrich and empower lives for the better.
In 2022, Cohen attended six weddings in six months. Amidst these pandemic-deferred nuptial celebrations, where couples vowed to spend the rest of their lives together as a "we," Cohen began to question societal expectations of love and its meaning. Was sex the essential component of a truly committed relationship? Was a person's life somehow incomplete without a long-term romantic partner? Cohen, married, had always felt that a friend "could electrify my life." Thus, she began to examine the "we" of friendship: What draws people together on a purely platonic plane? What made some friendships endure, despite the parties not formally professing a long-term commitment to each other?
Cohen presents stories from her own life--along with other historical and contemporary case studies--that deconstruct diverse friendships of all stripes. These include people of varying ages, races, genders, marital states, sexual orientations, and religions. She delves into co-parenting friends; shared homeowners; friends who serve as executors of estates; and even those who act as primary caregivers, helping to shoulder the demands and burdens imposed by illness and debilitating medical treatments.
Cohen's well-researched, appealingly structured book stretches modern assumptions of love, making the case that a life bonded by friendship can hold limitless potential for a more fulfilling, deeply meaningful existence. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines