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
The Closing Vision: Permission to Love Differently
At 12:00 · chapter starts 11:40
Cohen's closing loops back to Justice Kennedy's haunting image of a lonely person calling out to find no one. Now she reframes it: this loneliness is not inevitable, but it requires us to stop limiting the relationships we recognize as real. [1] — Rhaina Cohen "We don't have to choose between romance and friendship — we just have to stop ranking them. Rhaina Cohen closes with a vision where no one …" 11:40 Her closing wish is quietly radical: that all of us feel we have permission — not just the legal right, but the cultural and emotional permission — to share our lives with whoever we are lucky enough to find, whether that's a spouse, a sibling, or a houseful of friends. It's an argument that doesn't demand anyone abandon romance; it just asks us to stop treating it as the only relationship that counts.
We don't have to choose between romance and friendship — we just have to stop ranking them. Rhaina Cohen closes with a vision where no one calls out in loneliness unanswered, because we've given ourselves permission to build lives around spouses, siblings, or houses full of friends.
