Quote · TED Talks Daily
Talks on Love Playlist (5/5): Why friendship can be just as meaningful as romantic love | Rhaina Cohen
Where this was said
'There Was No Hole': The Woman Who Had Been Happy All Along
At 10:01 · chapter starts 9:40
One of the talk's most emotionally precise moments comes from a woman who wrote to Cohen. She had been so woven into her friend's family that she had car seats for the children. She was, in every practical and emotional sense, surrounded by care and love. Yet she had been trying to find a new spouse — because she believed there was a hole. Reading stories of people who had made friendship their primary bond, she experienced a sudden revision: there was no hole. [1] — Rhaina Cohen "She realized there was no hole. She had been happy all along, but she hadn't known, been made to believe, that it was possible to have a fr…" 10:01 She had been happy all along, but no one had told her that a friend could be enough. Cohen makes clear this is the work the talk is doing: not prescribing a lifestyle, but giving people permission to see what they already have.
Rhaina Cohen doesn't just argue for friendship-as-life-anchor — she lives it. She shares her home with her husband and two close friends, and is conspiring with six more friends to buy communal property called 'The Village' where they'd raise children together. The future she describes already exists in her living room.
