How to be a better friend (w/ Rhaina Cohen)

What would it look like if we took friendship as seriously as we take romance? Rhaina Cohen, author of the book The Other Significant Others: Reimagine Life with Friendship at the Center, talks to Chris about the value of platonic relationships. They get into everything from offloading expectations from a romantic partner onto a friend can help improve relationships to how to cope with the loss of a friend to what to do when politics divide friendships. If you want to develop your friendships, Rhaina has tons of practical tips and advice. Follow Host: Chris Duffy (Instagram: @chrisiduffy https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en | chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/) Guest: Rhaina Cohen (Instagram: @rhainacohen https://www.instagram.com/rhainacohen/ | LinkedIn: @rhainacohen https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhaina-cohen-738a1a28/ | Website: rhainacohen.com/ http://rhainacohen.com/) Links Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-other-significant-others-reimagining-life-with-friendship-at-the-center-rhaina-cohen/19995445?ean=9781250280916&next=t&affiliate=97769: The Other Significant Others Subscribe to TED Instagram:@ted https://www.instagram.com/ted/?hl=en YouTube:@TED https://www.youtube.com/@TED TikTok:@tedtoks https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks LinkedIn:@ted-conferences https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences Website:ted.com https://open.acast.com/networks/66e1e4bf9a7dcc160e617eef/shows/67572b3b2dd88df13220eb3b/episodes/www.ted.com Podcasts:https://www.ted.com/podcaststed.com/podcasts http://ted.com/podcasts For the full text transcript, visitgo.ted.com/BHTranscripts http://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Chris Duffy?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel savvy tour guide right in your pocket to let you in on all the little-known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:46Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today.

• 1:25Chris Duffy?

  Donate at N R D C dot org slash human, and your gift will be matched five times. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. My college friends always make fun of me for describing pretty much everyone I've ever met as one of my very best friends. They're like, "I actually don't think it's possible for a person to have 10,000 best friends." One time, I got into an argument with someone, and when I told them about it, their immediate response was, "Oh, no! Are they no longer one of your best friends, and now they're just one of your very good friends?" Which, I have to admit, is an excellent roast of me, a very precise and cutting zing. But it also taps into something sort of essential about me.

• 2:09Chris Duffy?

  I have always cared a ton about friendship. I'm really interested in how friendships work. There's so much that I want to unpack and to understand. What are the unspoken rules when it comes to friendship? And should those be the rules, or do we need to reexamine them? We're going to be talking all about platonic relationships with Rhaina Cohen, an award-winning journalist and the author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. To get us started, here's a clip from Raina's TED Talk.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Regardless of whether we are partnered now, we need to rely on more than one relationship to sustain us throughout our full unpredictable lives. We need other significant others. And there's an overlooked kind of relationship that we can turn to: friendship. I got the sense that friendship could be this stronger force in our lives because of a friendship that I stumbled into. We would see each other most days of the week, be each other's plus ones to parties. I went out and interviewed dozens of people who had a friendship like ours, and I wrote a book about them.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Natasha and Linda are the first legally recognized platonic co-parents in Canada. Joe and John have been best friends for many decades. When Joe was struggling with alcohol and drug use, John got him into recovery. And then John decided that to support his friend, he would also become sober. Joy took care of her friend Hannah during Hannah's six-year battle with ovarian cancer. And that included flying out to New York, where Hannah got specialized treatment. Joy had trouble actually sleeping overnight in the hospital because she was too busy

• 4:01Speaker 01

  watching to make sure her friend's chest was still rising and falling. Some of the friends that I spoke to had this friendship occupy the space that's conventionally given to a romantic partner. Some had this kind of friendship and a romantic partner. It's not either or. As I spoke to these people, I realized that they were at the frontier of friendship, helping us imagine how much more we could ask of our platonic relationships.

• 4:34Chris Duffy?

  Okay, I am so excited that we have Rhaina Cohen here with us today to dive deep into friendship and to explore the possibilities and potential of platonic relationships.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm Rhaina Cohen. I'm the author of the book The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. I'm also an editor and producer for the NPR podcast Embedded.

• 4:58Chris Duffy?

  Let's start with what is friendship fidelity? And how can that enhance our friendships?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Well, fidelity is really a word that I think we associate with romantic relationships. And when I was thinking about what does it look like to be fidelity within friendship? It's not necessarily having one friend who you are exclusive with, which is maybe the way we would think about fidelity, but caring for a friend in a way that isn't just responsive, but is also anticipating what might they want or need from you in a difficult time? It's being both a fair weather friend and a foul weather friend, like being there for all of it and not running away. Whether something is hard for that person or whether conflict has come up between the two of you,

• 5:45Speaker 01

  it's really sticking it out through all of those seasons and all of the challenges that come up.

• 5:50Chris Duffy?

  Having that idea of like, you're a fair weather friend, but you're also a foul weather friend? I feel like we often really prize that in romantic relationships, right? Like if someone said, oh, my boyfriend left as soon as things started getting hard, they'd be like, what a monster. But if someone said, oh, my friend is hanging out with me less because I've been having a really hard time. We don't have the same level of judgment, I don't think, for that person.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I do think that we have this idea that friendship shouldn't be hard. I mean, one of the people that I interviewed for my book had said that he had gotten this message growing up, that if you are thinking that much about a friendship, you're trying too hard. Like, you shouldn't even be exhausting your emotional and mental energy on a friendship. And I think that there is something a little bit, maybe unintentionally malicious, about saying that a friendship should be easy, because I think we have all experienced that the closest relationships in our lives are also the ones that are the trickiest. You know, familial relationships, romantic relationships. We get it. Like, if you are spending a lot of time around each other, if you are invested in each other's lives. That kind of proximity and time together is going to create friction.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  And the trick isn't to exist without friction. It's to figure out how do you run toward it in a way that can resolve it for the different people involved. So maybe, you know, people want to have a respite from these other complex relationships in their life and see friendship as an outlet, but that might lead to less close platonic relationships as a result.

• 7:17Chris Duffy?

  You talk in the book about how we have these very set ideas often about what a romantic relationship is, especially what a good romantic relationship is, and how sometimes that can be really positive to have like a set, clear model. But other times it can also lead to us being not actually aware of what each of us in the relationship thinks about the relationship. You talk about how there's a couple who are in couples counseling and they've realized that they had different ideas about what it meant to be monogamous and that because of that, they actually broke up because they both thought they were like doing the thing that was just a regular old romantic relationship, but the quote unquote, regular old romantic relationship was different for each of them. And you talk in the book about how not having that kind of plug and play template for friendship is a, is a strength, right?

• 8:02Chris Duffy?

  It allows us to define it for each other, but it also can make it hard to know exactly what we want or how to, how to handle those tougher conversations in that heart, those hard times.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  There are trade offs to everything and absolutely having social templates is a plus and a minus. I mean, it is, we're trying to avoid awkwardness by having social scripts and there's something that seems efficient and it just kind of like takes it out of your mind and hands to know that there are certain things you're supposed to do. But that assumes that everybody has the same expectations and people don't realize until sometimes they are deep into a romantic relationship that they are not on the same page.

• 8:40Chris Duffy?

  It, it makes me think we are supposed to get everything from our romantic partner, that they're supposed to be our best friend and we're supposed to be extremely attracted to them physically and they're supposed to be a cheerleader for our professional life and we're supposed to be inspired by their professional life and they're also supposed to be great with the kids. It's all of these things which are really not the same role over and over. And we somehow think that like the perfect partner would have all of those at the same time.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  What I've seen is that there's this kind of interplay between our expectations around friendship and romantic relationships, that I think we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them. And then on the flip side, we expect so little of friendships that we end up weakening them, or not realizing their full potential. When really, these different types of relationships, if we sort of maybe offloaded some of the romantic ones onto friendships, that could make it so that people could feel more fulfilled in their romantic relationships, because they have realistic expectations of them.

• 9:39Chris Duffy?

  For me, I feel really good about my marriage. I feel like it's a strong one. But I think that so much of what makes it strong is also that we both get pieces of what we need, emotional fulfillment, from outside of the marriage. That we have friends, right? Like, I am a comedian. I need silliness and goofiness and total, like, someone who could just do bits. And I also don't want to be married to that person. It's really helpful for me to have friends who I can go and be like, we're gonna spend an hour and a half just talking in accents, and it's gonna be totally hilarious and bonkers. But then I like that I go home and it's like, I can have a real conversation, and she's not also like, hello, girlfriend. Like, I don't want that at night. And then, a more serious piece for me is, my wife and I do different things. And so, it's really helpful to me to have friends who I can have serious,

• 10:24Chris Duffy?

  long-ranging conversations about career goals, who really totally get it. And then I'm not frustrated when she doesn't totally understand all the ins and outs of exactly what my career is. And I know it's the same for her. She gets plenty of pieces fulfilled by people who are not me. But sometimes that feels weird. I think your book clarified for me that, like, there is this very real kind of stigma to getting that from a friend, to having a super close friendship when you're in a romantic relationship.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we distinguish between certain kinds of relationships. So, romantic, familial, platonic, and have certain things that we deem appropriate, and certain things that you're not supposed to do. And I think particularly within friendship, that you're not, that's too much, that you're not supposed to ask of friends. And I guess my question is a little bit, why? You know, on what basis have we made those decisions? And going out and talking to many dozens of people who have friendships that really even break our definition of what a friendship is by going so far as to be living together, maybe raising kids together, taking care of each other through cancer and in old age. It's like, well, these people have platonic relationships and they're doing it.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  And it's not breaking the friendship and it's not breaking their other relationships. So it's not like by definition, friends can't do these things. So there's something else that's shaping our ideas about, well, maybe this is asking too much. And then on the other point that you were making about is your marriage strong enough? If you have to turn to other people? And that seems like a really insidious effect of these, these expectations around marriage. I, I think that there are people who end relationships too soon because, or end up having grave doubts about their relationships because they think that what they're supposed to do is get everything from this one person as opposed to feeling like, yeah, this is, this is a, a great situation right now that I have somebody that I love and that I can

• 12:18Speaker 01

  go home to and I can have the serious conversation with without the accents, who loves me and who's a great co-parent. And I have other people that I can go to. Like, I don't know that I would want to be married to a journalist. I think it would be shop talk all the time. I really value having different like forms of separation in my life, but maybe, you know, that means that I can't talk about everything with my spouse. And I think it's kind of creating these, these unnecessary doubts in people's minds because they're told that everything is supposed to come from this one person or like one person I interviewed called it a one-stop-shopping approach to relationships.

• 12:51Chris Duffy?

  If you'll indulge me to like read to you from your own book, I, I thought this was really kind of profound. It's like the final paragraph of the book. He said, "Experiencing a friendship like Andrew and Tally's or witnessing one can sharpen our vision, allowing us to notice the trellis," as Art and Nick put it, "that had been directing our path all along. An encounter with just one of these friendships can dislodge fixed ideas about who and how many people we can spend the rest of our lives with. The trellis may be ideally suited to some of us. In use, it's used by so many others, a source of meaning and its preset structure reassuring. But for those who have doubts or are curious, these friendships can give us the nerve to detach from the trellis and grow towards the light."

• 13:28Speaker 01

  So I'll just kind of explain that trellis idea because it did not come from me. It came from this, this guy Art Pereira. He is a man who has trained as a pastor in a conservative Christian denomination and is gay and has had a really hard time in reconciling those two things, has since done it. But it has meant that his life looks really different than it had before. He had realized all of this and he has forged this very close relationship with a friend. He was making a comparison to an ivy plant and that if you put an ivy plant on a trellis, it'll grow in the shape of a trellis. But if there is no trellis, it grows toward the light. And he felt like before he had kind of figured all this stuff out with this really close relationship that, this really close friendship that he considers a familial level relationship

• 14:11Speaker 01

  at this point, he was on the trellis and that he and his friend needed to, to break the trellis to find something that's better. And what I really want to encourage people to do and I, and what I love especially Art and his, his friend Nick's story for is that it's really about how do you figure out what you want in a world that's telling you that there are only certain things that are possible? People who have created friendships that are so close that they are life partnerships are one example of people really breaking out of this narrow idea of what's possible in our closest relationships and showing us that there are other ways. And there might be many other kinds of things that, that work for you in particular.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  So it's really kind of a call for us to ask like, what would we pursue if we thought it was possible?

• 14:58Chris Duffy?

  I imagine anyone who heard that is going to be convinced of that. How do you, how do you figure out what it is that you really want?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  It is not easy. One exercise that actually other people that I, that I interviewed ended up talking about was drawing what's called a social atom. So like you make a circle for yourself and then you draw other people who are close, you know, who are important to you in your life and you make how close they are to your bubble and how big they are and indication of sort of how significant they are in your life. Just putting that on the page can be illuminating for like, who do you want to become closer to? If in the process of drawing it, you're like, I feel close to this person, but I actually don't see them that much, that you can maybe get a sense of that gap. You know, there are also on a societal level, like it helps to have more models. It helps to have more stories of people who show you different ways of living life. And I think to the extent possible, trying to seek out the stories that maybe are like,

• 15:50Speaker 01

  A little bit different than than the ways that people immediately around you might might live can be helpful for asking questions about what you yourself might want.

• 16:01Chris Duffy?

  Personally, one thing that I really want is for us to talk so much more about all of this. But my bosses also want us to have a quick break for podcast dance. So we will be right back after this.

• 16:22Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. With the holidays approaching, it's a good time to give your home a little attention. Maybe that means making room for guests, finally organizing that closet, or finding a few things to make your space feel more festive. I personally started with my garage, which had become a real mess, a place where things go to be forgotten. I found some storage racks on Wayfair that helped me get things organized. And while I was browsing, I also checked out their selection of Christmas trees, which were beautiful and festive, and I'm really excited about having for the holidays. What I love is it's so easy to find what you're looking for using the filters, customer photos, and reviews on Wayfair. I always feel confident that I have found the right fit for my home. And if you want a shortcut to the good stuff, shop Wayfair

• 17:04Chris Duffy?

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• 17:27Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations.

• 17:58Chris Duffy?

  Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 18:21Speaker 02

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• 18:56Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. We're talking with Raina Cohen, author of the book The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. So Raina, how did writing this book change what you think a friend is?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I think the definition of friend feels much more expansive to me than it had before. I mean, one of the early interviews I did, I remember talking to a woman in her 60s, who I'd asked, like, does she wish it was a term for like, the friendship as close as hers? It was like a friendship of decades where they saw each other basically, you know, as sisters. And she was like, I don't want another term. I just want us to use the term friend to treat it with more value, to not diminish it. And I think, kind of related to that, I just see all of the possibilities that exist within friendship. And I really bristle when anybody says just friends, or more than friends. Nothing that is, I think, is categorically excluded from what a friend can do. I've seen now friends do

• 19:51Speaker 01

  just about anything a family member or a romantic partner would do. Let's say something in my life comes up, like I had, I had sort of very difficult sort of incident happen a couple of weeks ago. And to me, it wasn't like, oh, the first person I contact about this is my, my husband. It was like, who are the people who could be most helpful in, in this moment to me? And my husband was on the other side of the country, and I eventually did talk to him about it. But I went to other people first. And so I think not kind of operating by default with what are roles and, and more like, what is the... The task or the need at hand and who can best respond to that? And also, you know, if somebody, if a friend needs something, I try to ask like, what can I do? And, and that feels, you know, reasonable with, given what my capacity is.

• 20:36Chris Duffy?

  With that in mind, what makes a good friend? What makes a really good friend?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Man, simple question that feels hard. I think good friend is going to depend on what you're, like who, who you are to each other. When I think about, you know, the friends I run into at swing dance, my expectations of what makes them a good friend are very different than my absolute closest friends who I, I see all the time. But I think in general, showing care for one another, showing affection, not holding back about how you feel about one another, which is something that is very common in friendships, to let a lot of things go unsaid. Not calling it quits when someone is going through something difficult or when you within the friendship are going through something difficult.

• 21:20Chris Duffy?

  There's a comedy show here in Los Angeles where I live that is literally called My Therapist Knows Your Name. And people instantly get why that's a funny thing to name, name a comedy show because I think so many people do have this experience of like, even though these are quote unquote, not serious relationships, they often do take up so much of our mental energy and brain space.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I'm just thinking about if you were talking to a 13 year old, who you'd be like, of course you're going to spend a ton of your brain space thinking about your friends. Like peers really matter, but why is it that as adults we don't think that you should be? Like that's, that shouldn't be your focus. I mean, that it's, it, I, I think that's just, that's not the reality for a lot of people, that their friends do matter a lot. And they, you know, ground their lives and cause heartache sometimes, but there is really this mismatch between what we're told is what an adult should care about and what we actually do.

• 22:16Chris Duffy?

  This is a very particular type of millennial complaint, but I feel like it's quite common to hear people lament that we live in single family homes or single family apartments and that we don't live in like the dorm structure that would be normal if you were living in a university where you, you have your friends right next door, you have your friends down the hall, you have your friends at least within a walk away. And I feel like it's so common to hear people wish for physical proximity to friends, to, to take away some of the logistics of it being difficult. Because as you get older, there are more obstacles to hanging out and yet we also create these physical obstacles.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  The specific obstacle that I feel ashamed about is my husband and I were like thinking very seriously about moving in with a couple of our close friends. And at first, we talked about buying a home and realized that that was just not going to be feasible, given the timeline of when our friends were going to move to DC from where they had been in Massachusetts. And I was like, well, you know, if we can't buy and we have to rent, is that really a good move? Like, you know, you and I, we really, we like, we want to be able to save for a down payment. This will slow down the process because, you know, we won't have as cheap of an apartment. We had a really good deal on one, on this one bedroom. And he was like, do we actually care about buying? Is that, is that important to us? Like, what do we value here?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And it, it was immediately clear, like, oh, okay, community is this thing that we've been talking about that we value, our, our friends. And I had just put this, the idea of buying a home, this kind of adult stepping stone in front of a value that, that was the one thing that stood in, in the way. And I can go on and on about, about living, you know, with or near friends. I'm currently in the process with, there are a group of us who are trying to buy property together and we'll have some people like living, even more people living in my house at the moment to start testing out, do we actually want to be in such close proximity for the long haul? And for me, I love like coming home to having more people in the house who are playing piano

• 24:15Speaker 01

  and, you know, can run in and like spontaneously sing some songs with or coming home after a long day and having my housemate, you know, having cooked a meal. I wish the structures around it were easier. We're kind of having to figure out a lot of things as we go. I think the trade that you make is that you put a lot of work in the front end to get the support and the ease and friendship on the back end. You have to coordinate with more people to find the right kind of house, for instance, or the right neighborhood or so on. But then it means that you are able to have these spontaneous interactions and you don't have to schedule three weeks out, a one hour coffee with somebody and then you won't see them for three more months because you can't fit them into your schedule.

• 24:51Chris Duffy?

  I think that regardless of what's the primary relationship in your life, people often experience. Real, true, deep heartbreak when they lose a friend, whether that's someone passing away or whether that's a friendship falling apart. And yet, once again, there's not really a structure for like friend loss, the same way that there is a structure for a breakup with a romantic partner or for the loss of a spouse. Can you talk to us about what you can do if you're in that situation where you lose someone who's really important, but you feel like other people just don't get it?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  The first thing I want to say is that you are not alone in this. I've come to expect now, when I do any kind of a book-related event, that someone will come up to me afterward and will cry because they will tell me about a friendship that they lost because of falling out or the person passed away. And the sense of isolation that people feel because nobody took them seriously adds this extra layer of suffering that I think is completely unnecessary and is really imposed by our society not treating this form of grief as legitimate. I mean, and there's a term for this. It's called disenfranchised grief, that like there are some forms of grieving that we do not recognize as legitimate.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  If someone is suffering because a friend is gone from their life, that should be a really clear indication of how much the friendship meant to them. Not that they are making too big of a deal of it. I think as a society, we're probably, you know, we're pretty uncomfortable with grief in general, but there's a dismissal of platonic relationships that you should just, you know, it's just not that big of a deal. But the proof is in the pain that it is a big deal. The most recent encounter I had just a few days ago, where a woman came up to me crying, probably in her 40s, maybe 50s, and said that she felt like she had had a divorce with her friend and that it was devastating and that nobody understood it. And she and her friend have since reconciled. But that is the kind of thing that people have to sort through.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  So I think, to the extent possible, removing any judgment of yourself for the pain is maybe the best advice that I can offer.

• 27:00Chris Duffy?

  When you lose a friend, because it's more on the breakup or the relationship part, rather than that they've died or passed away and that's the reason for losing them. When you lose a friend, there's this weird gray area where it's like they could float back in, right? Like they could float back in and maybe it will just be like it was because we don't have as clear lines. And I think in some ways that can make it harder because you're like, am I grieving something that will? Return before I'm even done grieving? Or will it, is it gone forever? And it's, it's so much harder to know, I think, than when you are in a, in a romantic breakup.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  We also just don't have really good concepts or a language for this. I mean, I've thought about like leveling down in friendships or transitions, but the, the kinds of ways that we think about loss are really about categorical shifts. Like somebody was your partner and now they aren't. Or somebody was alive and now they're dead. This kind of gray area is a lot messier. I will say like, I have dealt with the gray area and I, and I found it really hard both to talk about because it felt like, well, maybe am I making too much of this because it's not like we're not friends anymore. It's just, we are less close than we were. But there is a kind of loss to grapple with, but also it's not like, okay, this person's

• 28:16Speaker 01

  gone from my life and now I come up with some story about how they were, you know, we were never a good fit or they were a terrible person. It's like you're having to then rework, like who are you to each other? Which means potentially ongoing conversations and each of those ongoing, each of those new conversations can itself be a reminder of the gap between where you were and where you are now. And that can create more pain, but ultimately be worth it because you still want to be in each other's lives, just in a different way. And I just think that there's much more kind of improvisation that, that has to happen and really open communication when you're not just kind of slamming a door or, or have a kind of black and white on off switch to the friendship.

• 29:00Chris Duffy?

  We're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back after this.

• 29:16Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.

• 30:00Chris Duffy?

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• 31:29Chris Duffy?

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• 31:46Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. Okay, Rena, in a world where it feels like there is an increasingly wide, social and political and ideological divide, do you have any advice for people to navigate friendships where maybe the day to day feels totally fine, but there's also this big weight of the broader political or ideological differences that two people might have?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  I have struggled with this, I think partly because I really like my friends to be friends with one another. And one of the ways that kind of political differences can play in can be like, if people have views that feel like they would be really in conflict, even in everyday life, if you're spending time in smaller groups or one on one, doing activities together, or spending time doing, kind of making memories in a way that don't poke at the things that are, that are different. It's like a gift to be close to people who are different from you. You know, I lived for three years with friends who are very

• 32:48Speaker 01

  religious. I learned a ton from them and love having a different perspective. I don't know that there was sort of like conflict over that per se, but I think in, to the extent possible, viewing the differences as something that isn't a liability, but a way that you can help sharpen each other's thinking and open your minds and to just approach the relationship with as much curiosity as possible, especially in a time where people really kind of operate in their silos. And it just feels like actually something to cherish and nurture if you do have relationships with people who are, who are pretty different from you.

• 33:26Chris Duffy?

  If, if you could give people three tips or actions that they should do to nurture and strengthen their friendships and non romantic relationships, what would you tell them to do?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  One is make a routine. Like if you have a friend that you want to see more, don't make it so that you have to plan every single activity. So I have a friend where Thursday mornings, we go on a run together and we joke that it's our free therapy session. And sometimes we have to reschedule it, but the the kind of standing event really makes a difference. The second is to rethink the idea that friendship is something that you kind of stuff into the rest of your life. Like the image that comes to mind for me is like when I'm packing a suitcase and I put the shoes in first. And that that's, you know, that's the romantic relationship or your work or your marriage. And then your the friends are like the extra pairs of socks that you you fit in wherever you can.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Like to not treat friendship as as this sort of added thing if you can can fit it in. And to consider it as something that is actually going to be an anchor or the central part of your life. And one way to do that is is really to think about how is the architecture of your life set up? Friendship can be a lot easier if you are if you are in close proximity to people. And, you know, that opens up a whole process of how do you find find your way to living in close proximity to friends? But certainly one thing is when you're deciding where to live, consider friends. Like, consider friends as part of it. I think for, you know, a lot of people, it is about a commute. Or maybe being, you know, being near family or there there are other kinds of factors. But treating friendship as something maybe worth making trade offs for.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I think it can make life more more meaningful. It allows for more spontaneous interactions. We are social animals. We need people like let's build our lives around them or at least consider that as an important factor. And the third thing is something that's just maybe on my mind right now about not expecting people to always come to you when they need something. And and not necessarily expecting that people are always going to accept your offer. When you offer something and trying to make abundantly clear that you will be there to support them. And like a conversation I had this week was with a friend who had mentioned that she has been has been really down late a couple of weeks ago. And I spent time with her and I had absolutely not noticed that because she's good at covering it up. And we talked about, you know, when she mentioned that, I was like, well, how, how can I notice

• 35:46Speaker 01

  this in the future? You know, rather than waiting for her to tell me a week after she's had a really low point, and I borrowed a, a kind of method from somebody else I know, which is that she would send like a specific emoji that meant that things were not going well to, to her close friends as a way of indicating, you know, I, I need some support. I can't really, I don't really have the, the mental or emotional space to explain it. And I think that it's an example of like friends kind of coming up with solutions for their friends. You know, once you've seen something happen once to try to get ahead of it. And, and that I think for so many people, it's really hard to ask for help. It's really, really, really hard to ask friends for help because we have these ideas that

• 36:29Speaker 01

  we shouldn't depend on them so much. So trying to get ahead of it. And in the end, I think you'll, you'll get it back to you once you model it for the people in your life. Two other things. One is to not operate from a place where you are assuming you are a burden. As people in places like the US get older, make more money, we farm out our, like the things that we need. We, we pay, like we pay for people to move our stuff. We pay for people to paint our walls. Instead of asking people around us, we, we pay for, for strangers to do it. The, the office that I'm in right now, I had two people, like two friends of mine helped me paint it and like hang up this like art piece that I'd had for years finally behind me. And they were thrilled to, to be able to do it. So it,

• 37:11Speaker 01

  it brings you closer to people. And I think, yeah, if you're questioning it, draw on your own experience. When's the last time someone has asked you to do a favor? And did you resent them? Or did it actually feel like it was an opportunity to get closer? And then the way that so many people as adults operate in their friendships is that they are doing the catch up. So they are going for a meal or something and then they're, they're summarizing their lives over the last few weeks or months to each other. Which is so different from, you know, when we were younger, we're probably making our, making memories with our friends. We are, you know, going on little adventures, even like in the woods or just scheming together. And adult scheming might mean painting your office walls. Like, that is the fun, more, most fun thing you have. But, you know, when you

• 37:56Speaker 01

  get covered in paint and you listen to some Lizzo while you're doing it, or, you know, there, there are ways that even doing the most mundane things can become these really wonderful experiences that, that you remember. But if the conversation is all about catching up and summarizing your life, it's just, it's not going to deepen the friendship in the way that doing things together that you're going to remember will.

• 38:17Chris Duffy?

  I never thought about it that way. I, I think, yeah, it's, it, you just really shifted something for me in the idea of like, it's really fun to be scheming as adults. Like, we need that more scheme. I need more scheming in my life. I think that's right.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  You know, sorry. Now I'm like, I had an idea for, the other thing, we celebrate romantic relationships. We don't really celebrate friendships. People I know have like, they celebrate the anniversary of their friendship, or they have, they do things to commemorate the friendship. That is also like a mark of really close friends. This woman and her friends, they had, they had, they had rituals, they had a secret language, they like had these notebooks that they wrote in every day that they filled. They would do, they had these like, basically like holidays that they made together and like artwork that they would make. I mean, it was, it was very elaborate. And she just felt that adult friendship was not doing it for her because like, everything felt so stale and just like, you're having a conversation over dinner. And it was just so different from what it was like in childhood for her.

• 39:14Chris Duffy?

  Okay. So the one thing I wanted to ask you about is, um, we haven't really talked at all about the way that attraction, or like a sexual relationship, or even the possibility of a sexual relationship can sometimes change the tenor of a friendship. Something that I've always kind of thought is like an interesting, funny, little strange thing is how people complain like, oh, I just got friend zoned. And I'm like, it's so hard to make friends. That's a great thing. Like you got friend zoned. Okay. Maybe you're not dating that person, but like, it's a good thing that you made a friend now. And yet I think there is this tension of like, friend isn't as good as the other. What happens when you have a relationship and there's this question of whether it would cross the boundary and

• 39:57Chris Duffy?

  become a, a romantic or sexual relationship as well?

• 40:01Speaker 01

  I've seen people navigate this, and I think the-

• 40:06Speaker 01

  One thing that I would encourage people to ask themselves is, what is driving me toward the romantic version of this relationship? I have seen cases where friends are extremely close and one of them is like, well, I like, I love you, so this should be a romantic relationship, right? Like, that is the, that is the highest expression of what love for another person looks like. And I have seen friendships absolutely dissolve over that because somebody can't put up with the possibility of, you know, being rejected romantically. Is the desire for a romantic relationship because you actually want to be in a romantic

• 40:48Speaker 01

  relationship with this person or because there is an idea that friendship is lesser? And therefore, the, the way to fast track closeness is to be romantically involved with somebody. There are different forms of attraction and romantic and sexual attraction are not the only kinds. Like, you can be really drawn to somebody. There are, there are studies on like, a lot of people have experienced forms of attraction that have nothing to do with sexual desire. And it, so it helps to know that, like, if you are really into somebody, you could, there are different ways for that to be true. But if you do, you know, end up pursuing a romantic relationship and a lot of romantic relationships come, come from being friends. I think trying to, to not feel like there has to be an on off switch.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  That if it, if it turns out that, that the romantic relationship is not kind of the best way to do things, sort of talk on the front end about how you guys can be open minded about how do you change the terms of, of the relationship?

• 41:43Chris Duffy?

  You call this in the book a, a pre-mortem. I think that's a really great idea, like before it ends, what would end it? And so we can talk about like, what would end it? And how do we want it to end when it doesn't?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Some of the things people most hate is having to imagine bad outcomes. So we like to say, like, everything's going to work out great. But if you are forced with this question to say, like, imagine a year from now, we decide, we, you know, we, the romantic relationship isn't for us. What are the, you know, the three most likely reasons? You know, what are the things that might lead to this not working out? And then you could potentially address them ahead of time to prevent them. And then in addition to that, it's like, okay, if it doesn't work out and we can't, you know, we can't do anything to prevent it. Like, what do we want our, our relationship to look like? And it doesn't, you know, you might feel very differently on the other side of it, but I just, I think particularly in heterosexual relationships,

• 42:35Speaker 01

  romantic relationships, there's this very, you know, strict idea that you're not supposed to be friends with your exes. So to enter a romantic relationship feels like you're, you're really, really risking something. And I think, you know, in the queer community, there's just much, it's just much more common because the, because you can't hate all your exes because you're going to run into them. Like at, you know, your friend's party. So I think also taking a bit of a cue from the queer community and, and how this kind of toggling between romance and friendship actually is really okay and possible.

• 43:03Chris Duffy?

  Hmm. Raina, that is such a perfect note for us to end on. We need to think really deeply about what shape of our relationship is going to work for us and then put in the time and the energy and the effort to make sure that we pursue that. Thank you for being here. Thanks for making the time to be on the show. Thank you for your book, The Other Significant Others. I really appreciate the work you do.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  It's been so nice to talk to you and yeah, really just appreciate all the care that you and the people behind the scenes have put into the questions here.

• 43:30Chris Duffy?

  That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Rhaina Cohen. Her book is The Other Significant Others. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of others who are all significant to me. On the TED side, we've got the platonic ideal of Daniela Balarezzo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Laney Lot, Tongsikasungma Nivong, Antonia Lei, and Joseph de Brine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, who cut everyone out of their lives who exaggerates statistics. Who exaggerates statistics, and sadly, that includes me. On the PRX side, they are the gold standard of friendship.

• 44:15Chris Duffy?

  Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. This show would be extremely insignificant if it was not for your support. So share this episode with someone in your life who you care about, someone who you think would enjoy it. We would love and appreciate that so much. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care and thanks again for listening.

• 44:46Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human, and your gift will be matched five times.

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• 46:32Chris Duffy?

  Hi there. It's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.