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Talks on Love Playlist (5/5): Why friendship can be just as meaningful as romantic love | Rhaina Cohen
Where this was said
The Marriage-Centered Problem: Who Gets Left Out?
At 4:14 · chapter starts 3:10
Cohen's opening is a kind of conceptual judo — she starts by quoting Justice Kennedy's celebrated Obergefell opinion, which frames marriage as humanity's answer to the fear of calling out and finding no one there. It's a beautiful line, and it wins immediate agreement from the room. Then she turns it: what does this say to the record-high share of Americans who have never married? [1] — Rhaina Cohen "Record-high unmarried adults in the US: The percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a record high, making the roman…" 03:35 What does it say to the roughly 30% of American women over 65 who are widows? [2] — Rhaina Cohen "30% of women over 65 are widows: In the US, about 30% of women over 65 are widows, illustrating that relying solely on a spouse for lifelon…" 03:50 Partnered people, she warns, aren't off the hook either — statistically, any of us is unlikely to have a spouse at our final moment. The implication is uncomfortable and clarifying: we have built an entire cultural and legal infrastructure around a relationship that cannot, on its own, sustain us across an unpredictable life.
Justice Kennedy's opinion recognizing same-sex marriage speaks of marriage as a response to 'the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there.' But what does that say to the record number of Americans who have never been married? Rhaina Cohen points out that the most celebrated statement about human connection is actually a statement about exclusion.
Any one of us is statistically unlikely to have a spouse until our last breath. Rhaina Cohen argues this makes friendship not a backup plan but a necessity — a genuine 'other significant other' that modern culture refuses to validate.
The percentage of American adults who have never been married is at a record high, making the romantic-partnership-as-default model increasingly misaligned with reality.
In the US, about 30% of women over 65 are widows, illustrating that relying solely on a spouse for lifelong companionship is statistically unreliable.
Rhaina Cohen's book began with a friendship she stumbled into — one where holding hands was a reflex, where they saw each other most days, where the boundaries between romance and platonic love blurred. She went out and interviewed dozens of people with similar friendships. What she found reshaped how she thinks about love.
