Reviews

The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen

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alihewitt's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0

koreanlinda's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.25

My close friend recommended this book to me, and I am grateful for their recommendation. I already knew a lot about the expansive meaning of couples, families, and relationships through my experiences as a queer person (bi, pan, poly), but this book brought me added insights about the various shapes of relationships people are building in the US and the obvious limitation in our legal and economic system.

I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about relationships. It will challenge your inherited ideas such as couple supremacy and heteronormativity. It will also warm your heart to see how people find love in unexpected places and make tremendous amounts of effort to cherish their rare finds.

Since I read my first polyamory book, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love by Janet W. Hardy, Dossie Easton, there have been more and more books published on various relationships other than a man and a woman marrying each other. I enjoyed reading one of them: Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman (also recommended by the same close friend). I'm happy to see this trend where we open our minds to the infinite possibility of forming loving and caring relationships in our lives however they fit our individually unique needs.

Review by Linda (Any Pronouns) in June 2024
Personal essays on DefinitelyNotOkay.com
Artwork on Instagram @KoreanLinda

mdcrabbyreads's review against another edition

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Couldn’t connect with the stories.

evehmaher's review against another edition

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inspiring fast-paced

3.75

Marriage is archaic!!! I love my friends!!!

pdestrienne's review against another edition

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informative inspiring medium-paced

3.5

At first I thought this was going to be all rose-colored glasses and bragging about the author's wonderful friendship with M, but in the last 1/3 it gets more nuanced, and talks about friendship breakups and some very interesting analysis of how laws could be (and have been in some places) changed to acknowledge that there are important relationships other than marital ones.