Reawakening to friendship

Other significant others might just be waiting to happen.

Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1875. Source.

When I was 10, I wrote my first story about five friends who go adventuring in the Amazon jungle. It was, of course, a little self-insert-ish.

Forget plot, character development, publication potential or even the accuracy of the jungle’s topography; I had only one aim: to imagine and experience the thrilling exploits you could have with a close-knit group of friends. Admittedly, The Famous Five had given me exaggerated ideas about the knotty situations kids could get out of.

As I grew up, my imagination about friendships sustained, but its scope was no longer as big as having larger-than-life adventures and making pacts with each other. The most I could come up with was going on occasional three-day trips and a foggy happily-ever-after where I continued to be close to my dearest friends despite time and distance.

The Other Significant Others by Rhaina Cohen showed me that there were people who had not scaled down their imaginations so drastically as they had grown up. They had not let friendship turn into an afterthought. Instead, they had remained sensitive and open to its possibilities and had built a life—house, kids, routines, memories, rituals—with their friends, or rather, platonic life partners.

There is the story of Andrew and Toly, physicists who were roommates for years, made intentional decisions so they could do their Ph.D. at the same university and now run a government transparency nonprofit together; Natasha and Lynda, friends in Ottawa, who live in the same condo building and co-parent Natasha’s kid, Elaan, along with Lynda’s partner, Justine; Barb and Inez, retired friends who have known each other for 50 years, and now share a home nicknamed The Hermitage in Missouri where they care for each other through heart diagnoses and mystery book club reads.

When I borrowed the book from the library, I was looking for something that could knock on my mind, (re)introduce me to how important friendship was and the space it could hold in a person’s life. I had not always needed such reminders, but cultural messaging has a way of defining the meaning of life and one’s priorities without any conscious input.

Fusion and fission

In India, getting married is viewed as the crowning achievement of your 20s. As you grow up, the search for a significant other becomes a common obsession. Older people in the family start inquiring about your prospects after a random but mutually agreed-upon age. Songs and movies are dedicated to the glorification of ‘the one.’

Sometime in my teenage years, I accepted this culturally heralded goal with verve and set about writing poems and prose of pining, first inspired by Taylor Swift and then the uncommonly common experience of falling for your best friend. I wasn’t alone in my quest and tribulations, though; everyone around me had their eyes on the same brand of prize.

And yet, as the years passed and I finished college and started working, it was not the failed romances but the vanished friendships that haunted me. Losing friends, it turns out, uncorks a special brand of dejection, one that isn’t as openly discussed, sung about or depicted on screen as what you face in the aftermath of a breakup. 

Cohen writes:

“You can part ways with a monogamous romantic partner believing they’re a wonderful person, but you simply weren’t compatible enough to wake up next to each other for the rest of your lives; it’s more disheartening when someone drops you as one of their many friends, as if you’d failed to pass a much less demanding text.” (p. 186)

For all the associated shame, however, friendship endings aren’t unusual. In his 2009 study, sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst concluded that you lose about half of the people in your close network every seven years. Although the sample population for the research was Dutch, I can look at my social circle from 2017 and say, yep, more than half of those bonds have been cut. Anne Helen Petersen explores the phenomenon in an American context with a comparatively bird’s eye view in her essay The Friendship Dip.

In school, I never felt a lack of friends because I changed my friend group as I changed (which was fairly rapidly). In college, I formed more stable friendships that I thought would last. Surely, the days spent having fun, speed learning for exams together and constantly staying connected through WhatsApp chats would translate to longevity? Alas.

In hindsight, I can see how these friendships were mostly the result of a shared context. When we no longer had to be in the same college building at the same time every day, the connection fizzled out to reveal no actual grounds for commitment. And with diverging career and lifestyle paths, there was no intersection where we naturally ended up reconnecting at.

The vacant space didn’t remain so for long, however. Childhood friends, hopeful creatives, fringe connections and work colleagues came together in an unexpected burst to form a web of friendships that stretched across time and space—just like I had imagined in my hazy dreams growing up.

Critical mass and chain reactions

Now, in a different culture with its own set of possibilities and values, I am assessing what I want my life to grow into beyond the consequences of chance and fate. I have spent time, culturally encouraged, thinking about what I want in a romantic partner. But now, I am opening up again to dreaming about friendship and platonic connections. 

What is common between my long-standing friendships? What are the values of the people I usually make good friends with? Most of all, how big a part do I want friendship to play in my life, and what can I do to ensure the platonic connections continue to thrive?

Part of ensuring longevity is to define the desire for it. Cohen notes:

“When we’re getting to know a new friend we’re not taught to extrapolate to a shared future.” (p. 249)

I would say we’re not taught to do this even with friendships that are decades old. There is a lot of relying on ‘shared, unspoken understanding,’ which, yes, can feel easy and magical. But it can also rob us of the satisfaction and solidity that comes from knowing how much you mean to another person and what you can build with them.

That said, at no point in the book does Cohen ignore the speedbumps that come with a choice as societally divergent as platonic life partnership. 

While a lot of people profiled are queer, some of them aren’t, and for them, building a life with a same-sex friend raises questions about their sexuality. Andrew and Toly regularly had to field such questions from family, friends and colleagues. Natasha and Lynda had to go through lengthy legal processes to be recognized as Canada’s first platonic co-parents. And when Inez was driven to the hospital in 2020 with a case of hernia, Barb was denied permission to go inside for thirty minutes because she wasn’t a relative. She had to prove that she had Inez’s medical power of attorney rights to be by her friend’s side.

In highlighting the wins and trials of these and six other pairs, Cohen ensures that no unrealistic expectations are set and that platonic relationships aren’t seen as a trouble-free replacement for romantic ones.

From the introduction:

“The intimate portraits of friendships in this book are not a call to replace existing norms with a new imperative or a new hierarchy. Nor are they a how-to guide for platonic partnerships. Rather, these stories are an invitation to expand what options are open to us.”

And that is what happened as I read the book. 

The badge of societally-sanctioned successful adulthood demands a sacrifice of imagination. To be a proper adult is to do certain things in a certain way. But with each story, research study and historical fact, my view of what is possible widened. I finished the epilogue with a fuller view of what friendship can be and a resolve to be more intentional with non-romantic relationships in my life.

This isn’t to say that platonic partnership is my new ideal. But, it is nice to know that you can still experience commitment and love if you keep the door open, that meaningful relationships don’t only begin with romance and end with children, and that part of being a successful, fulfilled adult is living your definition of success and fulfillment even if it diverges from the norm.

Certainly makes for a better story than the Amazon one, doesn’t it?