Andrew’s mother wants her son to have someone truly close: a person with whom he can share support and a good life. Andrew thinks he already has that relationship.
That person is Toly. Friends since adolescence, they later live together and take one another seriously in decisions about education and work. His mother’s difficulty is not the idea of her son loving a man. What she cannot understand is how two people who are not romantic partners can give each other such an important place.
Rhaina Cohen describes this disagreement when discussing The Other Significant Others. It captures a central puzzle of the book. The companionship and support the mother hopes her son will find already exist in his life. Because they come from a friend, however, it still seems as though a crucial step is missing.
We usually understand when someone changes cities for a romantic partner. If the move is for a friend, another question readily follows: is that really worth it? Should work, housing, and future plans change for a friendship? The question need not be malicious. It reflects an accustomed ordering of relationships. Romance can organize a life; friendship is expected not to interfere too much with the main story.
Cohen is a journalist, and she goes beyond saying a few kind things about friendship. Some of her subjects raise children together, some plan their later years together, and some allow friendship and romance to coexist. They are building lives that are difficult to explain to outsiders but already quite concrete. Interweaving their experiences with history and research, the book does not ask whether friends or lovers are better. It asks whether we decide too soon how far a friendship may go.
A friend can give you so much to anticipate
The book began with a friendship of Cohen’s own.
She met M at a gathering in Washington. They enjoyed talking, discovered that they lived near one another, and soon began spending considerable time together. Cohen already had a committed romantic relationship. Yet this new friend brought an unexpected excitement: she wanted to hear more, learn how M saw things, and meet again. It was not sexual desire, but it included a buoyancy we tend to associate with falling in love.
What makes this account appealing is its refusal to treat friendship as a subdued substitute for romance. We may value someone because they are dependable and willing to help. We may also simply want more time with them because they are interesting, their thoughts are fresh, or we like the way they speak. Friends are not useful only in hardship; their presence can make ordinary days worth anticipating.
The phrase “just friends” often cannot accommodate this experience. “Just” seems to set an upper limit: however close the relationship, it should not become serious beyond a certain point. Sadness when a friend moves away, or when meetings become less frequent, can therefore lead first to wondering whether we are asking too much.
Cohen makes these feelings available for discussion. In a Publishers Weekly interview, she notes the expectation that friendships should be easy and natural, without the deliberate conversations about a relationship that romantic partners may have. The result is that people care deeply but feel embarrassed to explain that care.
Back in ordinary life, no new vocabulary is necessary. When a friend is leaving, can you say honestly how much you will miss them? Can wanting to meet more often be a serious wish, rather than something hastily dismissed because everyone is busy? Recognizing friendship’s importance begins by allowing these words to be heard without treating the speaker as immature or clingy.
From helping out to raising a child together
The story of Natasha Bakht and Lynda Collins takes this seriousness into the daily work of raising a child.
When Natasha decided to become a parent on her own, she did not have a romantic partner. Her friend and colleague Lynda offered to accompany her through childbirth, then developed a profound bond with the child, Elaan. He had complex disabilities and considerable care needs. Lynda gradually assumed more daily care. She later sold her house and bought an apartment in Natasha’s building to make their shared work easier.
This happened in Canada. After years of parenting together, Lynda eventually became a legally recognized mother. The two mothers are not a couple. Their experience separates questions we rarely distinguish: willingness to raise a child together and a desire to become romantic partners are not necessarily the same thing.
The relationship’s gradual development deserves attention. Lynda did not arrive with a ready-made family plan. Through spending time with the child and helping care for him, she developed attachments of her own. Living closer made continued involvement more possible. A relationship can grow through daily life before seeking an appropriate name and protection.
This also lets us reconsider what helping means. A friend who occasionally lends a hand and someone who shares the long-term work of parenting are living different relationships. One assists with another person’s arrangements; the other has responsibilities, judgments, and a future of their own. Continuing to describe a co-parent as a helpful friend may sound complimentary while keeping her outside the door.
Such a family requires more than two adults wanting closeness, of course. The child’s needs, daily responsibilities, and lasting commitments cannot be replaced by an immediate sense of affinity. The story matters precisely because it goes beyond imagining how pleasant it would be for friends to raise a child together. It shows closeness becoming something that must be seriously undertaken.
Whether to go that far is for the people involved to decide. Readers need not reproduce this life to understand the book. The change it prompts may be smaller: when next hearing about friends choosing a shared life, ask how they arrange it before assuming it is merely an interim stage before finding a partner.
After years together, still having to explain who you are
When a shared life extends into old age, the name of a relationship may become more than an awkward matter of introductions.
In an interview, Cohen recounts an episode involving Barb and Inez, two women in the book. They had known each other for decades and shared a home for many years. During the pandemic, Inez urgently needed hospital treatment. Barb followed but was initially kept out because she was not recognized as family. Staff later confirmed that she held the relevant medical power of attorney and admitted her.
The second half of this story needs to remain. Barb eventually gained access; the authorization was not useless. Nor does this one episode establish a rule for all hospitals everywhere. The wait nonetheless exposed a mismatch. A relationship long established within two people’s lives had to prove itself anew to outsiders.
Forms and procedures need categories; that is understandable. The difficulty is that the people someone ordinarily relies on do not always fit neatly into those boxes. The person most familiar with their recent circumstances and usual way of expressing their wishes may not have the most readily recognized title. During illness or old age, when explanation becomes difficult, the difference is no longer merely linguistic.
These experiences reveal the modest respect the book asks for. If people have seriously chosen those with whom they share care, others should try to understand that choice, rather than devaluing years together because the relationship’s name is unfamiliar.
This also gives us reason to reconsider the affectionate phrase “friends like family.” It usually expresses appreciation. Yet if friendship must borrow the name of family to make its weight intelligible, the word friend still seems to lack sufficient trust. Cohen’s subjects show that depth does not always follow from a title. Sometimes titles lag far behind lives already lived together.
Taking a friendship seriously includes allowing it to change
These stories can be inspiring, but Cohen does not stand outside them selecting only examples that prove friendship’s permanence.
Her relationship with M changed too. In an interview, she describes how living farther apart ended the easy habit of dropping by. Meeting again, she would discover small things about her friend’s life that she no longer knew. They remained close, but no longer participated almost effortlessly in each other’s days. This saddened her, and for a time she struggled to explain it to others.
Such change gives the book greater credibility. A more important place for friendship does not shelter it from distance, time, or changing wishes. A relationship may no longer fit its original arrangements without either person having been insincere throughout. The value of a shared period need not depend on everything staying the same forever.
Acknowledging change cannot become an excuse to avoid conversation either. If housing, care, or parenting have been organized together, adjustments affect the other person. Seriousness involves not only making commitments but speaking clearly when one wants change and facing responsibilities already assumed. Friendship should not be treated as permission to disappear without a word because it lacks the name of marriage. Nor should past intimacy become a bond nobody is allowed to leave.
Goodreads reviewer Kelsey describes finding more than one possibility for companionship in the book, and consequently greater confidence about her own future. Her response suggests whom it may particularly suit: perhaps you do not lack important people, but those relationships do not match other people’s picture of an adult life.
Readers seeking an immediately usable set of friendship instructions may find less guidance than they hoped. Cohen primarily offers particular people and how they live. Some readers may reconsider arrangements beyond marriage. Others may continue cherishing their romantic partnerships while making more serious time for friends. Occasional meetings between otherwise separate lives can also make an excellent friendship. These stories are worth reading not because every friendship should become so encompassing, but because people who wish for greater closeness should have that possibility.
Perhaps the most worthwhile thing to take from the book is not a new search for the most important person, but less certainty about who is allowed to matter in someone else’s life. We can ask, discuss, and gradually learn what kind of life each person wants. Whether friendship means an occasional meal or a place in plans for many years ahead need not be decided by the word “just” before the relationship has even begun.