A Valentine’s Day counter-romance roundup

Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, edited by Alice Wong.

There is, of course, plenty to say about ableism and the politics of desirability in the world of dating, sex, and romance. But this collection digs much deeper than romantic partnership. In paradigm-shifting vignettes, we explore friendship, parenting, caregiving, kink, art-making, activism, and academic research as vital forms of intimacy. Like the disability field itself, this collection touches all of us. Here’s my full review.

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

With engaging real-life stories of powerful friendships that defy definition in our marriage- and romance-oriented society, Cohen poses important questions about which relationships we choose to value and why. The friends she profiles navigate school, career, birth, parenting, co-living, homebuying, dating and marriage, caregiving, and death while prioritizing each other in the way we expect of romantic couples. They often encounter confusion, resistance, and systems unable to acknowledge them, but they also find tenderness, joy, growth, security, and lifelong mutual support.

White Picket Fence podcast, by Julie Kohler

The fifth season of Kohler’s podcast dives deep into marriage, but it belongs in the counter-romance roundup for its engrossing and well-researched critiques of the institution, including its history, our current moral panic about it, its unearned privileges, and its harmful racialized narratives. We visit the history of divorce and threats to modern divorce law. How does the institution of marriage control us, shape us, exclude us? Kohler also explores non-traditional family forms, suggesting new models of connection.

Somebody Somewhere on Max

This charming three-season show (just 15 episodes) about outwardly quiet lives among queer found family in rural Kansas is an absolute winner: a gentle, sensitive story with friendship at its heart. Best friends Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) navigate loss, transition, the search for acceptance, and new loves while staying true to each other. It’ll make you laugh and cry and want to hold your friends tight.

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, by Rebecca Traister

This 2016 nonfiction book remains extremely relevant. I particularly enjoy Traister’s analysis of the role of city life in the rise of single women, but the most essential piece of this entertaining and validating treatise is Traister’s water-tight takedown of the right-wing obsession with marriage as the solution to poverty and all social ills, instead of basic policy actions that would benefit everyone. We could all choose a different way to live.

Anne with an E on Netflix

I know people might come for me on this one, but this Netflix series based on L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables far outstrips its source material. A lot of Green Gables fans object to the dark themes in this TV show, versus the classically simple and sunny novels, and I’m sure plenty of people are howling on Internet forums about the inclusion of Black, Indigenous, and queer stories in this traditionally white tale set on Prince Edward Island in the late 19th century.

Despite the treacly course of Anne’s romance with local heartthrob Gilbert, Anne with an E belongs in this roundup because of its expansive message on family, friendship, and belonging. Anne’s passionate friendship with Diana Barry figures big here, but for me, the show’s real charm is the family that the orphan Anne (Amybeth McNulty) creates with her adoptive parents, grown-up siblings Matthew and Marilla (R.H. Thomson and Geraldine James, with subtle, wonderfully textured performances), who are facing their own past trauma.

While it does contain romantic elements, the show doesn’t situate romance or marriage as the only road to connection, growth, and community status, so it stands out—especially as a period piece focused on women.

The Lonesome Dove quartet, by Larry McMurtry

This iconic American saga of mid-to-late 19th-century Texas and the Old West needs its critics, and we should grapple with the real-life genocidal role of the Texas Rangers McMurtry imagines (as a recent biography of McMurtry makes clear, contrary to the popular reception of these books, he did not intend his most famous protagonists to be heroic figures).

I first read these novels as a youngster and have re-read them all a few times since. Especially as someone who grew up with few models for intimacy outside of hetero marriage, I was fascinated by the relationship between passionate, loquacious Gus McCrae and stolid, taciturn Woodrow Call. Everyone they know, from cowboys to commanders to lovers (whether or not they like it), must relate to the men as a unit. I think the novels fascinated me because they broke my early paradigm of love, particularly in their many depictions of platonic faithfulness and intimacy between men. Today, I love McMurtry novels for their long, loyal, thorny friendships.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See

These two novels, both set in China, have very different stories. Snow Flower takes place in the 19th century, and Lady Tan in the 1400s. But the subject of friendship shines through in both.

In Snow Flower, a pair of young girls embark on a mystical lifelong bond with its own traditions and secret language, enduring through arranged marriages and eventful lives. Lady Tan imagines the life of a real person: a famous woman doctor of the Ming Dynasty, but female friendship likewise forms the story’s heart. See’s immersive novels are full of gorgeous cultural and historical detail. They carve out a world where, despite rigid patriarchal settings, men are almost incidental to the rich emotional and sensual lives of women at specific moments in history.

At top: Alaina and one of her best friends, Sara, enjoying a summer day together. (Photo by Alaina Johns.)