Why Your Best Friend Could Be Your Life Partner =============================================== Romance isn't the only real partnership, and Rhaina Cohen proves it. We get into platonic life partners, chosen family, and why friendship might deserve the same commitment as marriage. ---------------------------------------- SAM: Hey there, welcome back to 7 Minute Books. I'm Sam. Today we're cracking open Rhaina Cohen's The Other Significant Others. So Sophie, I have to ask, has there ever been a friend who felt like way more than a friend, but not in a romantic way? SOPHIE: Hi there Sam. Honestly, yes, and I think most people have one. That's exactly who this book is for. Rhaina Cohen calls them other significant others, platonic life partners, and she makes the case that these bonds are just as real and meaningful as marriage. SAM: That phrase alone is worth the price of admission. SOPHIE: Right? She calls the problem amatonormativity, and she traces it to philosopher Elizabeth Brake. It's the assumption that an exclusive romantic partnership is what everyone should want, and that it's superior to every other bond. SAM: Right. The default, not a choice. SOPHIE: And because it's so baked in, we don't even see it as a preference. We see it as the only way to build a life. SAM: So she's not saying romance is bad. SOPHIE: No, not at all. She just wants to expand the menu. She talks about the romantic escalator. It's the expected sequence where you date, then become exclusive, then move in together, then get engaged, then married, then have kids and grow old together. SAM: That pressure is so real. SOPHIE: Right. And platonic partnerships are free from that script. They can deepen slowly, change shape, and they don't have to hit any particular milestone. SAM: That freedom sounds kind of beautiful. SAM: So a platonic partnership is not just a very good friendship. It's more like a lifetime commitment. SOPHIE: Yes. A regular friendship can live in the margins, squeezed in around work and romance. But Cohen profiles people who make a friendship the center of their lives. They have joint bank accounts, own property together, and describe themselves as we and us. SAM: There's a striking example about two women who decided to have a child together as co-parents and life partners, and romance wasn't part of the arrangement. SOPHIE: That story challenges the idea that a child needs a romantic mother and father. What a child needs is a stable, loving, committed parental unit, no matter what it looks like. SAM: That part honestly made me question every story I've internalized about the nuclear family. SOPHIE: Same. Then she goes bigger with chosen family. For many people, especially in the LGBTQ community, chosen family is survival. But Cohen says it's a need for everyone. SAM: Because the people biologically related to us aren't always the ones who know us best. SOPHIE: Right. And the point lands hard. A biological relative loves you because they have to. A chosen family member loves you because they want to. SAM: Okay, but the world is not built for this. The whole legal system assumes your romantic partner is your next of kin. SOPHIE: That's where the book gets heartbreaking. There's a story of a woman denied access to her dying best friend in the hospital because she wasn't a legal relative. That's a systemic failure, not a rare exception. SAM: That story is going to stay with me. SOPHIE: So people work around it with powers of attorney and wills. But those are band-aids. Cohen argues for expanding legal recognition so committed platonic partners get the same protections as spouses. SAM: That would be a real change. SAM: That would also help with the big stuff, like illness and caregiving. We assume a spouse will be the one taking care of us. SOPHIE: But she profiles friends who have cared for each other through cancer and through old age. Their love isn't lesser than romance. It's different, and it runs just as deep. SAM: Then there's grief. If you lose a platonic life partner, you're basically invisible. SOPHIE: Yes. That's what the book calls disenfranchised grief. There's no ritual for losing a friend who was the center of your world, and no language for the platonic widow. SAM: That's a painful kind of invisibility. SAM: I also appreciated that she doesn't pretend these relationships are easy. There's no script. How do you set boundaries, or handle jealousy when one person gets a romantic partner? SOPHIE: She gets into all of it. A lot of the people she profiles felt like they were failing at life because they didn't want what everyone else wanted. The book says that struggle isn't personal failure. It's living authentically in a world without a map. SAM: Honestly? The whole book feels like permission to treat friendships more seriously. What if I asked my best friend to actually plan a future together? SOPHIE: That question only sounds radical because we've been conditioned to think romance is the only road to a shared life. SAM: I think the one thing I'm taking away is that friendship deserves the same intentionality as romance. I want to stop waiting for a crisis to treat my best friends like they're actually my people. SOPHIE: And if you want to go deeper, the whole library is over on 7minutebooks.com/app. There are more than 6,000 fiction and nonfiction titles you can read or listen to in any language, and many titles include infographics. It's $2.99 a month, $9.99 a year, or $19.99 once for lifetime access. SOPHIE: The book's whole point is that your chosen people are your significant others, and treating them that way might be the most radical love there is. We'll see you in the next one.