A Friendship Revolution with Rhaina Cohen
54:58 Share

That's how it works in Africa. It took me a while to realize most of my cousins weren't cousins. These aren't people who I'm actually biologically tied to. I'm sure Josh in the South, is it a similar thing? I've already started telling people that y'all are my cousins. South African and Nigerian British cousins.

You're listening to What Now? The podcast where I chat to interesting people about the conversations taking over our world. This week, we're talking about friendship. Why friendship matters, why we don't always treat it like it matters, and what would happen if we all started prioritizing it in our lives. To help us do that, I invited author, journalist, and friendship expert Raina Cohen onto the podcast.

Of course, along with Rainer, I'm joined by my friends, writer and journalist and professional hater Christiana Mbakwe-Medina and comedian and the most natural person you'll ever meet, Josh Johnson. Let's get into it. This is What Now? with Trevor Noah. This episode is presented by Lululemon.

Everyone has those moments where they say, not today, when it comes to fitness. I mean, I know I do. Well, Lululemon Restorative Gear is made for those days. Days where you want to max out your rest and not your reps. Lululemon's new campaign features Odell Beckham Jr. and DK Metcalf in their buttery soft, breathable, restorative wear. Designed to keep up or kick back with you.

Visit lululemon.com for everything you need to bring it tomorrow. Rest day is the best day.

Happy podcast day, everybody. Happy podcast day. Happy podcast day. Good to see you all. Good to feel you all. This is, you know, it's always wonderful to have you all, you know, in my world, in my vibe. I appreciate it. Christiana, how's the family? How's everything going? It's cool. The kids are just being kids. They're being kids and wearing me out. Would love to have more help, but...

I've read and I've heard, and I don't know if this is true, the biggest thing you have to think of when you're a parent is who your kid's friends are.

That's what I've heard. They say like, oh, the friends are everything. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like a mummy mafia, you know, LA is very hierarchical. You know, you've got to be, I'm more careful about what I say on Instagram because of my kids. Oh, the circle of mums. Yeah. I don't want to offend anyone's mums. I don't want anyone to be like, Obi's mum said this. So I'm kind of careful now. I didn't care before. The circle of friends. I've been thinking a lot about friends this week, obviously because of our guest.

Right. Like Christiana, you and I have spoken about this in depth and at length. I fundamentally believe one of the greatest scams capitalism ever pulled off is

is that it has tricked everybody out of having a village. And what I mean by that is, you know, they go, oh, move out of home. Get out as quickly as possible. You're 18 now. It's time to go live your life and buy your own house. And then you look at what that's doing to people. And people are living alone in a terrible apartment that they can barely afford. And they have no one around. And people are getting lonely, but they're depressed. And you're in debt. And you're

And then if you say to somebody, why don't you move home? They're like, move home like a loser? And it's like, well, I feel like you're living like a loser right now. You are losing is the best way to put it. There's a book that came out recently, which, I mean, the title alone grabbed me. It's The Other Significant Others.

And the book, fundamentally, it's become my new Bible. Like, you know how, you remember how when we were young, there were some people who would walk around with a Bible and then everywhere they would go, if they'd meet anyone who said anything, they'd just open the Bible and be like, let me read your scripture about what's happening in your life right now. Oh, that was me. Wait, you were the person with the Bible? Yeah, yeah, for a little bit.

Whoa, damn. Look at you, Josh. We learn something new every day. Yeah, yeah. Really, really brought that energy and no one enjoyed it. I can imagine. The only thing worse than someone being super evangelical randomly in public to you is someone who doesn't seem confident being super evangelical. If you were selling me on the kingdom of heaven, I wouldn't believe that it's actually there. Yeah.

I can imagine you saying, yeah, so if you, I mean, Jesus might save you. I mean, he could. Yeah, well, God bless you. And I'd be like, I don't know what that person was talking about, but I'm not joining that church. But anyway, before we get into that, before we get into that, please welcome to the podcast, Raina Cohen, everybody.

How do I respond to that? What do you mean? You just say hi. No, you just said that my book is your Bible. Surely I'm not the only person who feels that way. I'm sure a lot of people have said something along these lines to you. I'm just taking it in. That's all. I really appreciate it. Well, to set the stage, fundamentally, the book is about...

who you choose as a life partner and who we have been told our life partner is. And so maybe, Raina, let's start with that. How do you set out to write a book where you go, we've forgotten that sometimes the most significant others in your life are your friends? So I started from a place of just wanting to get people to understand these sorts of friendships that I call platonic partnerships. And I

over time, I realized the critiques that these sorts of friendships unlock are pretty big ones. They're about, you know, our obsession with being in a couple in order to be seen as a successful adult and that the nuclear family is the ideal and not these larger kind of village setups. So it got bigger over time. I didn't start from a place of trying to, you know, dismantle huge ideas and norms. What I loved about the book as well was you have this

Like deep research, you know, studies that have been done, you know, history, how things have evolved, why things have evolved. And one of the parts that really blew my mind was where you included the fact that like, you know, the 2015 study that found people who disperse their emotional needs across multiple relationships are happier than those who don't.

And in 2018, they measured like cortisol between people. And they found that people who are married, who don't have support systems outside their marriage, have more stress than people who have a support system. And it makes so much sense. Like in all of your research, did you find where this idea starts? Because it doesn't seem like this was always the case.

I mean, it absolutely wasn't the case. Historically, people had very different ideas about what marriage should be and on what basis you would get married, who decides who you get married to, what role they would play in your life. So, you know, in the West until the mid-1800s,

marriage was really an institution that like you would have your in-laws setting up for you. And it was pragmatic. It was not a relationship where you were expected to love the other person necessarily. That was a bonus. And then, you know, then you get to a point where, yes, love is supposed to be absolutely part of marriage. And then in the last like 60, 70 years in the U.S., you have what you're describing where one person is supposed to be your everything, where you're

you're supposed to find your soulmate, you're supposed to find your best friend in your romantic partner. So this is all very recent. People take it for granted that at a wedding that spouses will tell each other, you are my best friend. These are new expectations that, you know, you're going to channel everything into one person and that will be the ideal relationship. Could you, like, just to play devil's advocate, if somebody says, okay, I hear this argument, but I think

having somebody not be your best friend, like being married to somebody and they're not your best friend, this limits your ability to connect with them or this means like that you're not fully committed. Well, I'm not telling anybody that a spouse doesn't have to be your number one. I think it's the difference between being number one and the only one and that people are, you know, mistaking those two things. You know, I certainly am...

looking at people who have both a friend and a romantic partner, so they're kind of co-equal, but you could still have your romantic partner be your number one, but not also be the number one in every single category. Like, you're in a relationship, Josh. Do you consider her your best friend? Um, yes. Yes, yes. My best friend, my only friend. Uh...

No, no, I, this is my thing. I didn't, I didn't mean to set you up there, Josh. No, no, no. But I have realized that when I said it, I have told Sally that she is my best friend. And I say that with both of us having the understood context that as so much time as we spend with each other, like if you just played it like averages, it's like we went through the whole pandemic without like bad, bad,

bad arguments. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess my thing is one of the only two reasons that I have friends is comedy and the other one is the internet because the internet is how I found people that were like me and then we could get together and look at the floor and

at the same time. You know what I mean? So it's like, when I look at Trevor and I look at Christiana, I look at friends who I don't know if I would have if it wasn't for comedy.

If that makes sense. What do you mean? You don't think you and I would have connected in the street, Josh? I would have tried to connect. I think I would have come at you real hard, real fast. Yeah, I think this is why we're friends. You know me well, Josh. Yeah, yeah.

Because every once in a while, I'll send you something like, you know, once again, using the Internet as an example of connectivity. I will send you something that I think that you will find very funny or interesting. Yeah. And you're also a busy person. So I don't expect an immediate response ever.

But sometimes I see you again before you say anything and I'm like, hmm, that one didn't go. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I always have seen it and we always do speak about it. But Raina, I'd love to know, like, I think you have introduced a concept that could fundamentally upend everything that society has built itself on. Because, I mean, like, think about it, like needing to find somebody to buy the home with, who you raise a child with, why you raise a child. All of these ideas...

are predicated in many ways around the idea that you have to tie the knot. And then if you don't, most of life doesn't make sense. But you're arguing in many ways that it doesn't need to because you had a friendship like this, right? Yeah. You know, I have a friend who I call M in the book and

Our friendship felt much more akin to a partnership, particularly in the couple of years where we were living a five-minute walk from each other and became part of each other's day-to-day lives. Like, I would stop at her house on the way to the metro, and she would let me know when there were sales on avocados at the supermarket, and we would be plus ones to each other's

parties, you know, at the office. And I also had a romantic partner at the time and felt like those relationships were actually very similar to each other. And yet one was societally recognized and the other was not. But many of the people who I end up, you know, interviewing for the book maybe just have the friend and they feel full. They feel their life is that kind of saturation point of meaning and of support. But that's not necessarily how the world around them sees it. Right. I'll say that I think

women often getting very like intense friendships and then they combust. This is not a critique on women. I went to a girl's school. So you just see it a lot like, we're best friends, we're best friends. And then you're not best friends. And it happens in adulthood. But how did this feel? Like, this is not just an intense friendship with someone of the same gender, but this is something like a deeper platonic partnership that I want to carry through my life. Like, what was the difference there?

One of the big distinctions for me was that the emotional experience that I had in the friendship felt very much like what I felt for my husband when I was falling in love with him. And, you know, maybe for the record, like, I'm bi, I'm into women, so it's not that I was repressing, like, that there was some kind of romantic relationship.

possibility with this friend. I didn't have any of the sexual piece for it, but I had the infatuation. I had the desire to kind of know everything that was in Em's head, and I thought of her as a kind of shadow mind for me, where even if I couldn't talk to her, I could imagine what she would say. The kind of

That inexhaustibility of her presence and the kind of affection and sweetness in our friendship felt that it was either categorically different or like a notch up from other kinds of really close friendships I'd had as an adult and probably as a kid, too.

It feels like you have like a lot of language for what you experienced, but there wasn't perhaps a label at the time. I'm curious about how your romantic partner felt about this really beautiful platonic relationship that you're describing. My husband and I...

for both of us, one of the things that attracted both of us to each other was how close we were to our friends. So, you know, the fact that my husband had this best friend who actually lives in South Africa now, has for years. Oh, wow. You know, they've maintained a long-distance friendship in their adulthood and really care about each other. I think people so quickly jump to the competition part. And, you know, that says, I think, a lot about

how people conduct themselves in romantic relationships and the kind of like possessiveness and the sense that you're losing if there's anybody else who's providing support

good aspects of life or, you know, any other close relationships. But yeah. I will tell you a bit about my cultural background and lens, which explains my conclusion. So my great grandfather was a polygamist. My great grandmother was wife of seven out of 18, and they all lived on the same compound. So I say every day I live out like the results of polygamy. So when you were describing your arrangement, I was like, oh, M sounds like a great second wife. That was where I immediately, that's where...

That's where I, I was like, wow, this is a great second. I don't know, Trevor, what you think about this, but you know, like African communities, if there's a woman that someone gets on with, people are like, ah, marry her. That's the second wife because normally like the wives are fighting. But again, I guess that goes back to the limitations of,

of our cultural thinking because where my mind immediately went to was like, oh, that's someone else that could be possibly in a marriage with your spouse. And you're like trying to actually unravel all of these paradigms. Like, why don't we have a work husband, a party wife,

Do you get what I'm saying? Like a travel wife? This is a kind of core idea that I'm trying to spread, that we bundle so much into romantic relationships where you expect a romantic partner to be, you know, the person that you make travel plans with, you know, and go on vacation with, and your confidant, and your co-parent, and your roommate, and your best friend. And, you know,

What if we listed out all of the tasks and then figure out, okay, let's not assume that one person is going to do all this. Who would we want in that role? Yeah. It's funny. When I travel, one of the things that constantly fascinates me is how different people can do it all over the world. You'll travel the world, and in some countries I've been to,

Men spend most of their time together, right? It's like you go to countries where men walk down the street holding pinky fingers and they're like really like affectionate and touchy with each other. And there's nothing homosexual about it. And they're just like, this is just how they are. They spend their days. And then the women spend their time together and everyone's doing their thing and they're having fun. And then they come together for like the family moment, for the rearing, for the raising, for the household chores, etc.,

And there's almost something romantic. And look, I know it's not perfect. Again, don't get me wrong, because I know there's other sides to it. But there's always something romantic in this idea that we should be like diversifying the portfolio of our emotions.

you know, saying I'm invested in your company, of course, you know, we're married, but I, you know, I have some shares in Josh Johnson and I have some shares in Christiana and, you know, you never know. Sometimes they yield benefits and sometimes they add value to my holdings.

Yeah, like I, wow. I mean, I think one, these are a lot of mind blowing concepts to try to wrap my head around at once. I do hope that this sort of feeling and idea spreads because I think not only would it create a better world, but like, I think that everybody that sells music,

engagement rings would be cursing your name. I'll say that right now. There'll be people, they'd be telling their grandkids, April, May, I used to make a killing. All right. I used to make a killing in the 2020s. And then this book came along and then everybody started getting along. And now I sell three a year.

They're going to get into like the friend ring industry. They will. I did see someone release like a divorce diamond. It might have been like Emily Ratajkowski, I think. She released a ring. Don't worry about diamonds, Josh. They got you. Do you buy the divorce diamond for yourself? No, you take your engagement ring and then you reclaim it and you make it into like a divorce ring. Josh, your face right now. I know Josh's face right now. Raina, do you know...

Okay, I'll tell you what it is for me. Josh is flabbergasted. I know, he's so confused. I love it theoretically. I love it. I agree with you so much. I was raised in London in a Black British subculture where most people were immigrants, right? So there were Caribbean and West African immigrants. And

And we were very community based, like people looked after other kids. There was always someone living in my house and like Christmases, birthdays were all done together. And then I moved to America and like I find America is like the high place of individualism. Right. And I...

as someone that would like to have this radical approach I'm probably not as radical as you because I'm not sharing my husband I'm I'm very possessive I'm petty right so but I do like we have a friend called Dar every two months he sends us a Zillow link he's like we should buy this multifamily together he's trying to get us a piece of land we build homes and I'm kind of down but not all the way down so those are the friends we have but I have found that people kind of find it

weird when you want to do what you're trying to do. Like, I'll say to people, hey, bring your kids over. I'll look after your kids. And they're like, huh? Like, when you're in a very individualistic culture, when you try and make people more community-based, there's a lot of resistance because people have built their lives around the nuclear family. And I've actually found myself being less community-driven, or I'm actually tired of trying to build what

you're suggesting because I find that for the most part Americans aren't interested. Like how do you get rid of that kind of resistance? How do you kind of coax people into trying something different because I'm not having much luck I think. Mushrooms. Mushrooms! Trevor's like drugs!

So what you're describing makes me think of a conversation I had at a co-living community in Oakland. And I mean, some people there were trying to figure out like,

why don't more people do the thing where they live in close proximity to their friends? And what came up there and has come up with other people is that people need to experience it for at least for some period of time. I think it's so abstract and far from what people's experience is that they can't actually imagine what the benefits are versus they know what their life looks like. So one woman I spoke to who like managed to get a bunch of friends to move into the same apartment building, her strategy is to find people short-term subletts

that are, you know, inexpensive where they could just come and stay for like a month. And she says almost invariably people end up loving it and wanting to live there because they start to see what it means when you run into a friend in the kitchen and how you have someone you can talk to, you know, in a spontaneous way. And I also think that if people were living in close proximity, the kinds of things that you are suggesting that people do, like, you know, I'll take care of your kids,

might seem like less of a big deal because it just kind of makes sense in the environment you're in. To give an example, I'm working on a story actually about friends who raise their kids together. And I decided to write this after meeting this couple who had moved like 500 miles south to live next door to two other couples who are their closest friends. And they have seven kids between the three houses right now. And they're just separated by waist-high balcony barriers. And it's no...

there's no planning involved. It's just like we need someone to take care of the kid while we take this one to, you know, ballet practice and it's easier there. Yeah. I think that the like overtures to help or to like share responsibilities when you're in such close proximity just make more sense. Don't go anywhere because we got more What Now? after this. Raina, I'd love to know like when people are trying to trying to keep their relationships, you know, what I loved in the book is

You following people who have been on different journeys. Some friends literally relocated to different cities to now live their lives with their friends. Other people bought a home together. Some friends decided to raise children together. And all of these, I'm assuming, come with different complications. It's actually a lot harder than people will think to say that your friend is your significant other.

When you're looking at these stories, when you're looking at the things that people struggled with, I think many people have been in a situation where they have close friends and

people who fulfill them, who they enjoy, they travel, etc. And then they meet someone who they fall in love with. And now it's romantic. And now they're having a great time. And slowly that person starts to consume their thoughts and everything they want to do. And they want to see them. And at some point that person says to them, hey, I mean, how many times do you want to see them? Or what do you mean you're going away with them? Or how did, like, did you find in any of these stories anything?

a hack, a solution, or an idea that helped people to sort of grow a new branch to their tree as opposed to just chopping it off and growing another one? The phenomenon you're talking about is very common. I mean, there's an evolutionary psychologist, Robin Dunbar, who has come up with sort of the numbers of people that we can keep in our lives at any one time and that in our closest circle we can keep forever.

And that in general, the introduction of a new romantic partner knocks off two people in that circles. I didn't know that. Yeah. So with the people that I that I interviewed, I think the answer is just kind of find the right person.

who instead of seeing the friendship as a liability, sees it as added value. I interviewed a couple of men who are, you know, at the time in life where romance is supposed to be very important, they're in their 20s and 30s, and, um,

One of the men, his name is Nick, he has both a romantic partner and a very deep friendship. And Nick had dated a woman who really had a problem with his extremely close friendship with Art. Nick described himself as feeling like he was in the interrogation chair, having to defend the friendship or that he was on trial. And that was rough for both the romantic partnership and the friendship. And then he ends up being introduced to this woman who...

has her own chosen family and she gets it. And she was happy that Nick had this other person. So, you know, I think that there were lots of people more than maybe we know who really do appreciate friendships. And we have not been able to acknowledge that on a larger scale. So it just might take sussing out the right person who isn't so competitive and really is happy to embrace this relationship

added person in their life. Right, right. That makes sense. How much of this do you think we need to actually diminish the prestige of marriage? I come from a culture where a woman is not a woman until she's married and has children. And I very much resent that because I had friends who kind of separated themselves from me when they got married and they haven't dissented men. It just became all about the husbands in their lives. Because I do find that there is a type of woman the moment

she's romantically involved with a man, she forgets women, whereas men never do the same. Like my husband, I'll say he's my best friend. I am not my husband's best friend. He reminds me of it all the time. No, no, no. Can I tell you, I find, and maybe the data will be against me,

I actually find men are more guilty of this. Wow. Sometimes I think it's because a lot of the time guys, friend groups are generally geared around going out to get women. So maybe like once you are in a relationship, you have to quit the game. I don't know. And I think some of the data does support this. But like a lot of men are very, very lonely sometimes.

And the only friend they have is their wife or their significant other, Reina. I don't know what you found in this realm. Yeah, I was trying to pull up the stats on this. So there's, I mean, there's research in 2021 where there are a lot of questions related to friendship. And one was,

who is the first person that you would speak to if you have a personal problem? And looking across time in the U.S., so many more people say their spouse than they did 30 years ago. So now about half of people say the first person that they would speak to is their spouse, and 16% say a friend. And it was much more likely that people would say a friend. But the numbers there, men were more likely to say that they go to a spouse first for a personal problem than women.

women are. So I, you know, I think that probably in general, men are more likely to recede. But I was also thinking, I mean, Trevor, there have been some jokes on this show about how, you know, you need to have a wife found for you. And I will continue to make those jokes. Those aren't jokes. Those are statements and threats and instructions. Yes.

You know, you're a successful person. I think it's fair to say. I mean, it's made me wonder how that... I know you can laugh about everything, but what that is... Does it rankle you? Like, how... No, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. It doesn't bother me at all, right? Because I'm single. And as you say, I'm successful and that's good. The problem is, though, I'm a loser because of this, right? Society has deemed me a loser, whether I like it or not.

Because if you're not married or you haven't been married, that's the key one. Like being married is like you've served. There's a certain honor that comes with it. Thank you for your service. And if you've never been married, there's this weird thing that people do to you where, you know, they either treat you like you're not a serious person in life. Like they just go like, so what do you do?

"What do you do?" And you're like, "What do you mean, what do I do? I live life." And they're like, "No, but what do you do? Where are you?" And the other one that I find particularly interesting is that there's a little bit of ostracization because there are so many things in society that are based around the plus ones. I get invited to some events where people will be like, "You're invited." And then I'm like, "Oh, is there a plus one?" They're like, "Yes, but for spouses."

And then I'm like, what? They're like, well, I mean, we can't just give plus ones to anyone. And I'm like, this idiot got married six months ago. They don't even know this person. And you're going to tell me that I can't come with my best friend who I can tell you every intimate detail about. That's madness. Can I make the case for marriage now? Oh boy, here we go. Can I say why I would like, why I want Trevor to get married? And then I'll follow up. Okay, great. Okay.

we love your book. We think everyone should live by your book apart from Trevor. So I think that, and maybe it's the symbol of a wife or the lifelong partnership. It's the care. I think Trevor deserves to be cared for in a very intimate, like, have you been to the doctor? How are you feeling? What are you like? That type of thing that comes with the right wife, a wrong wife. It's not going to work. And I do think,

Because of the kind of society you've described and the way men are friends with each other. And I think a lot of men are homosocial. So, and it's heavy on the like social element of it rather than like the care and the nurturing and those deeper conversations. And you can outsource that to a therapist, but it's very different. Yeah, but it's not the same. That is true. When someone's physically, intimately in your space.

And I think that's why there is something beautiful about the partnership with someone living in your home. Listen, I would love him to get a civil partnership with a friend. If that's what Trevor needs, that's what Trevor should get. But I think the wife is just an emblem of that level of care that I think that sometimes you have to get from one person. Okay, I want to hear what Raina says before Josh jumps in. Yeah, well, you know, I think in a...

And the argument to get there is actually quite similar to what I'm saying in the book, but I'm trying to get to a different place. When I was trying to understand what do people think makes a romantic relationship special and worthy of that pedestal status, often what it is actually about is the parts inside of it that don't actually have to only come from marriage, like being cared for. Someone I spoke to who decided to be celibate for religious reasons said,

He was not mourning the absence of sex. He was mourning the absence of somebody who would hand him a mug of tea at the end of a hard day or who knew when his plane landed, who knew the intricacies of his life. And right now with the way that dating and marriage works—

Those are guaranteed things that you can get in a romantic partner. But what I'm trying to say is that that is not the only route to get those sorts of goods in life. And that despite having absolutely no support for it, there are many people existing right now who have found those things with a friend. Uh, tossing to me next was a very big mistake. I have nothing profound to say. Uh,

Basically, my entire take was I get what you're saying because I've been in your position in some way where if you don't have any designs on marriage and you're single at the time, you're just looked at this like unserious person with no real path. And so I understand that you're saying society deems you as a loser, but I know losers. And look –

They want to lose like you. If it were possible to lose like you, we would all be losing in a similar fashion.

So don't feel bad. I'm not saying I feel bad. There's a difference. There are people married. There are people married that wish they could lose like you. And also, I want to be clear just for the record, because we've mentioned a lot of the pressure and everything. Just for the record, I felt no pressure to say that my girlfriend was my best friend. No one was twisting my arm in that situation. It is very sincere. And I had said it before this podcast. And I will say it after. And I will see you when I get home, baby. Love you.

I've never heard a real life terms and conditions apply. You know, when you travel, Raina, and you've extensively looked at other systems and other ways to be. One of the more fascinating stories I read in the book was, you know, just how like back in the day in medieval times, like men would marry each other, but it was like a different type of what we consider marriage. It was like just like a friend wed and you were connected. Right.

You know, and you look at other parts of the world, you know, like in France, for instance, citizens can get a registered partnership, you know, which is nearly as popular as marriage, right? Obviously, there is no one way to live life, but your book is introducing an often forgotten aspect of life.

Which I think many people will appreciate. There are so many people out there who are doing well, they're healthy, their family's good, everything's going well in their lives. And you talk to them and you're like, how are you? And they're like, oh man, I just don't want to die alone.

But in the book, what we see is a lot of people who get married end up dying alone anyways. And some of the people you've spoken to are friends who have specifically decided to be there at their friend's final breath. Talk to me a little bit about that and what you discovered in that space. I mean, one of the other big points I want to make is that even for people who get married, marriage...

is not going to probably take up their entire adult lives. That's just not the case now. People aren't getting married at 18, and they are living long enough that one spouse is quite likely to outlive the other. And if it's in a relationship between a man and a woman, you can bet most of the time that it's going to be the woman who's going to outlive the man. So there is so much attention on marriage and that it's going to give you this full life. But then what happens in

if you get married at 30 or 35, what about those years of life? Like, are you supposed to be, you know, an incomplete person during that phase? And then what happens if you are, you know, the 30% of women in the U.S. over 65 who are widowed? I mean, nearly half of women over 65 in the U.S. are not partnered, and we don't really have much to offer people. But what I saw with these friends is—

that people, you know, we're providing the caregiving that Christiana really wants you to have, Trevor, through their friendship. So I, you know, the women I profile are in their 80s now. They've been living together for 25 years in a small home that they share that they bought in retirement. And they go to the same primary care doctor so that they know, you know, what's going on health-wise with each other. One of them put, like, basically a butler's

style bell next to her bed so that if anything happens in the middle of the night, her friend can hear her, that she could ring it. I mean, they did this after a health scare where one, you know, couldn't hear the other. They have medical and legal power of attorney rights to each other. They've been through it. And I've talked to other people who have taken care of their friend through cancer. One was a very important caregiver during her friend's six-year stretch with ovarian cancer, which she eventually died from. And

The unfortunate part is that in each of these stories of caregiving, friends run into barriers in the health care system, in the legal system, where the woman whose friend died was not entitled to bereavement leave, family medical leave, because she wasn't a relative. She lied at one point and said that she was her friend's wife because she was afraid of getting kicked out of the hospital while she was taking care of her friend.

I mean, they're like on and on. So I think that these are really beautiful, extraordinary stories of people's devotion. And yet their status as anything other than a, you know, quote unquote, just a friend is not appreciated. We'll be right back after this short break. There's one thing I either missed in the book or don't remember, and that was talking about

the dynamics of a friendship breakup. I wonder if you had any thoughts or if you had spoken to any people where the friendship experienced a breakup or there was like almost like a friendship divorce and is it easier to mend those? Is it harder? And what did you find in general in that space?

It was really important to me to write not just about the good things in friendship and to champion and celebrate friendship, but to show the difficult parts because I think it does not do justice to the significance of friendship to anyone.

say that it's all good all the time because no important relationship is like that. And I did talk to people who had falling outs with their friends and often found that it was harder than a romantic relationship, partly because they didn't have recognition from the outside. And it's like,

will your boss let you have a day off if you had a friend breakup? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know for a fact I wouldn't. That would be weird. If I was a boss and someone came in and like, I broke up with my friend, I don't think I would have the same respect for them

as someone who just got a divorce. That makes a lot of sense, and it's wrong, but wow. You know, there are some social scripts for what we do when someone has had a breakup. You go over to someone's house, you give them some Ben and Jerry's, you, you know, commiserate. It's not clear what outsiders should do. But even before there's any external support, for a lot of people, they can't even identify the loss as a true loss.

There's a term for this kind of experience, which is disenfranchised grief. So there are certain kinds of losses and forms of grieving that are recognized, like the loss of a relative, of a spouse. Even a pet. Yeah, even a pet these days. I mean, I kind of wonder on the ranking system, would a boss be more likely to say, yeah, take the day off because you had to put down your dog versus I had a falling out. You had to put down your friend.

If you had to put down your friend, they wouldn't give you any time off. They would probably just send you to HR. That's a really valid, yeah. I think people really do take that for granted. I'm pretty certain I'm not the only one who has lost a friend who's still alive, but like lost a friendship rather, and has never actually taken the time to acknowledge or to grieve that loss in the same way that I would have a breakup, you know?

And I think the pain of the friendship breakup, I think for me is often deeper because A, you don't want to admit that pain to yourself and B, no one else recognizes it as a valid grief. There is even like societally, it's like not an accepted construct that we can all kind of talk about. We should give it a name. We give it a name of bestie boo-boo.

I was going to say, are there going to be divorce ranks for friendship? Is that going to be the next line? Listen, I will never turn down jewelry. Well, the other thing I will say that I think is very difficult is that people find that having a friendship falling out is a mark against their character in a way that you... So one person, I remember telling me that if she says...

you know, just in passing, oh, like this, you know, this person who used to be my friend. And then people will respond to that, like, you used to? Like, what's wrong with you that you had this falling out? Yeah, why would you lose a friend? Versus saying, like, my ex would not elicit that. I mean, I think everybody understands that you can have romantic relationships that have a falling out. Yeah. The thing about friendship breakups that I've noticed, I've recently gone through one. I think they actually, like, ruptured the wider friendship group.

in a way that's more devastated than like a divorce because a divorce everyone's like we're gonna be civil we're like you kind of co-parent the friendship group and like you figure it out like I know people have got divorced but sometimes when there's a friendship break breakup it can actually like splinter a whole group of maybe seven people used to hang out together all the time and now they can't because two of those people in that group aren't speaking anymore yeah

Yeah, it's very rough when you have a friendship and then there's a falling out, but then both of y'all keep the same friends because now someone is essentially dead to you. But then every weekend you have to see a zombie and it's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like you just have this feeling of like, I hope they're not going to be there. I hope that if they are there, they don't look at me. But then you're out with people. So, of course, all the things happen as when you were friends, but now it's just horrifically awkward.

And it's actually interesting to your point, Christiana, how the shockwaves reverberate through an entire friend group because...

friendships also have a different level of like ownership. Whereas in a divorce, it's very much agreed upon that like, okay, you were with this person. You are now divorced. That is your thing. With friendships, it's a lot harder to figure out or ascertain who goes where afterwards and who shouldn't be or should be with, do you know what I mean? Yeah. Even when like a worst thing was done, like you could have a breakup and still stay friends with someone's ex. Yeah. It's like, well, they didn't cheat on me. It's like...

What are you doing? What's happening right now? But then y'all have like a little bit of a tiff, two people off together. And it's like, I can't believe you would still hang out with them after what I told you they said to me in private. Actually, to that point, Raina, if you were to give us, you know, as we come to the close of this conversation, you know, we could talk to you forever on this because everyone's got friends and relationships. But that's why you have the book.

if you were to give people a few tips on how to expand their lives, on how to expand the concentric circles that make up their emotional well-being, what would some of the tips be? You know, someone says, Reina, I'm not in a relationship and I want to build friendships, but I don't want to now lose my ability to find someone. Or I am in a relationship, but I feel a little lonely and I want to grow friendships without neglecting my relationship. I think for me, a huge...

difference between the people I'm closest to and not so close to is how much are we in the thick of each other's everyday lives? Is all that we're doing narrating after the fact what we did in the last week or month or few months? Or are we sharing life together? Are we creating memories? Are we going to see the eclipse together? Am I witnessing my friend's parenting in real time? There's always this issue of, okay, you have one great hangout and then

you know, a few weeks later, you text each other to make other plans and then you have to go back and forth. And just having something recurring and protected on the calendar, even if you have to modify it a little bit, I have absolutely maintained closer friendships with people where we already know the next time we're going to see each other at the point at which we have left one another. And maybe the last thing, which is a little, like, is harder and maybe more aspirational, is...

I think we need to take friendships seriously and put more work into them and not run away at the first sign of conflict and sort of use the tools for romantic relationships within our friendships, like maybe going to couples therapy or at least having more direct conversations. But I would also like us societally to move to a world where friendship was easier. The friend who I see every other week, we live a five-minute walk from each other, and the places that we moved to, we were pretty coordinated to make sure that we lived close by. And

It's hard to make that happen always. I think people, they move off to achieve what a successful adult life looks like, which is having your own home with your backyard and, you know, fancy kitchen. And we're not necessarily thinking about what we're giving up for that. Mm-hmm.

Can I ask you a question that's pure? I mean, I wanted to ask anyway, but I'm certainly curious. Yeah, of course. You obviously care a lot about friendship, but you, you know, what comes up in your memoir is that you didn't really have friends growing up, that you were able to like move between a lot of different social communities, but you didn't really actually feel like you have friends. So how did you get from there to here? What changed for you? So I...

One of the great discoveries of my life, which wasn't particularly genius, but I'm really lucky I stumbled into was

I learned that I did not need to be good at every aspect of friend-making. All I had to do was find somebody who would be my friend who was really good at that element. So I've always really been a loner. I've moved from one place to the next by myself. I've always done well by myself, and I've blended into groups. But there was a point in my life where I just bumped into a few key people who were great connectors.

I made like one friend, you know, who like basically introduced me to every other friend. And like one of my biggest friend groups in South Africa, you know, like Anele Kayasi's where all of them that really just came from like one core friendship that then expanded to everyone else. And, and I was, I was sort of caught up in it.

I'm great at keeping friends. I'm not good at finding friends, but I have great friends who I keep who find great friends for us to meet. So that's how I've done it. And I have like a pretty deep friendship circle now that I'm really grateful for. That's actually, I think, a great tip for people. Like find the

for friends who are the connectors. And that's, that's like advice I've given to people, like, because they, there's so much bang for your buck. Like you make one friend and then you suddenly have, it really is. Yeah. They're the Costco friend. You find one and then they bring other friends in bulk.

For the two of you, do you feel like have your, I don't know, appreciation for or thoughts about friendship changed a lot from childhood to adulthood for you? I've had some rocky friendships, but I think motherhood changed me in the sense that I started to have more patience for myself and other people. And so I'm actually going back and working on some friends that I lost in the past. And that's been very healing. Oh, that's great. But we live together now.

in uni and then in our mid twenties, we had, we had a rift over nothing. Like I can't even remember what we argued about. That's the silly thing about it. And a few years ago, she reached out to me. She was like, I really miss you. And I was like, I miss you too. She was like, shall we work on this? And we've gradually got back to it, not to where we were, but to a new place.

So that's a long way of saying that, yeah, I really do value my friends. But as a mother and a wife, now I've learned I need them in a really different way because I don't want to just be those things. I like actually being someone's friend. Yeah. I mean, I love the phrase, shall we work on this? I think that's something that a lot of people could take away from, you know, can we ask that more of ourselves in our friendships and of our friends? Yeah. In the past, I threw things away too quickly. I think...

I don't know, just, you know, consumerism. If something doesn't fit, you don't like it, you don't mend it, right? You just chuck it away. And I think I was wrong to do that with friendships. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't necessarily grow up with a ton of friends. So I treasure every friendship because I didn't really start making friends easily until I started doing comedy because...

I think when I was growing up, I had such a lack of understanding of myself, which led to a lack of understanding of people. I think that when I started to meet like-minded people and I started to meet people who understood me and would teach me things about myself. And so now...

I feel like it's easier for me to make friends. And then the internet very much helped because if there is a primer between me and being in person, I'm a kill it. Like if, like if there's, if you give me, if you give me just a couple sentences where you don't see me say it, you're going to be like this. I like what's happening right now.

This was really great. Thank you, Raina. I really appreciate you. Thanks for joining us. And again, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me on and for obviously like fairly closely reading the book and thinking through this so deeply. Thank you, Raina. Your book is great. Yeah. Thank you so much for being our friend.

Josh, she's not our friend yet. That's not how it works. No, I put friendship on people. I put it on people. Josh, that is not how it works. Sorry, Reina. We're still teaching him. If we hang out for an hour, we ganged up. You're like a friend kidnapper. That's what you're like. That's not how it works, Josh. And as I say, as your friends, we'll work on this. We're going to work on this, Josh.

Well, I did not feel kidnapped or hijacked. It's an honor. You're a lovely person, Raina. You're a lovely person. But as his friends, we will fix this. We will fix this.

She's a very smart lady. Good research. I liked her a lot. She's fantastic. Yeah. So what I loved about the book and what I like about what Raina's done here is, to your point, first of all, it's really smart. It is both emotional and fact-based because I don't think you can talk about relationships and only make them fact-based.

And she does a really great job of helping you understand the, you know, let's say the semantic side of it. It's like, all right, here's how it works financially and who lives with whom and who does this and who does that, et cetera. But then it's cool that she also, you know, she also just talks about it being like a feelings thing. Do you know what? I wanted to pitch her the sequel that I think she needs to write. And I think she needs to write it just about parenting because, like, I think that parents...

In America, in the West, there's just so much pressure on just two people. Yeah, it's too much. And your kid, like...

All your kid has is the parent as their outlet. I'd love her to reimagine like parenthood in the same way she's done for romantic relationships. I love that. We should have that conversation. We'll get the person on. And to anyone who's listening, you know, if you're lonely, if you're stressed, if you're in a relationship where you feel like it's too much, just consider for a moment that maybe you don't have to have one best friend who

who you are with. You can have other best friends as well who you're not romantic with, you know, and that's to everyone out there, not just Josh. Yeah, I mean, I'm very glad that y'all are my close friends and that I have a best friend at home waiting for me. This was a lot of fun, y'all. Go out there, have a wonderful week. Thank you to everyone for listening. Once again, this has been another episode of What Now?

What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions and Fullwell 73. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Ben Winston, Sanaz Yamin, and Jody Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Marina Henke is our producer. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Braun. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now? What Now?