Chris Duffy

Okay, I am so excited that we have Raina Cohen here with us today to dive deep into friendship and to explore the possibilities and potential of platonic relationships.

Let's start with what is friendship fidelity and how can that enhance our friendships?

Having that idea of like, you're a fair weather friend, but you're also a foul weather friend.

I feel like we often really prize that in romantic relationships, right?

Like if someone said, oh, my boyfriend left as soon as things started getting hard, they'd be like, what a monster.

But if someone said, oh, my friend is hanging out with me less because I've been having a really hard time, we don't have the same level of judgment, I don't think, for that person.

You talk in the book about how we have these very set ideas often about what a romantic relationship is, especially what a good romantic relationship is, and how sometimes that can be really positive to have like a set clear model.

But other times it can also lead to us being not actually aware of what each of us in the relationship thinks about the relationship.

You talk about how there's a couple who are in couples counseling and they're

They realized that they had different ideas about what it meant to be monogamous and that because of that, they actually broke up because they both thought they were like doing the thing that was just a regular old romantic relationship.

But the quote unquote regular old romantic relationship was different for each of them.

And you talk in the book about how not having that kind of plug and play template for friendship is a is a strength, right?

It allows us to define it for each other, but it also can make it hard to know exactly what we want or how to how to handle those tougher conversations in that heart, those hard times.

It makes me think we are supposed to get everything from our romantic partner, that they're supposed to be our best friend and we're supposed to be extremely attracted to them physically.

And they're supposed to be a cheerleader for our professional life.

And we're supposed to be inspired by their professional life.

And they're also supposed to be great with the kids.

It's all of these things which are really not the same role over and over.

And we somehow think that like the perfect partner would have all of those at the same time.

For me, I feel really good about my marriage.