Who counts as a significant other?

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're gonna find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, significant others who matters most to us us in our lives? We start with a different kind of love story. It does feel a little like a movie cliche that I spotted her across the room at a bar. And I knew I wanted to talk to her just from her body language. This is journalist Reina Cohen. She had recently moved to D. C. When she met someone you might call her soulmate, who she refers to as Em. She was leaning in, was making people laugh, and I could feel the confidence from her and also lightness. And I eventually struck up conversation, had what could have been a pickup line where I was like, you're a singer, aren't you? Because she has this voice that is melodic. Anyway, we just talked to each other very quickly and then found out we lived a five minute walk from each other. And before long, the two of them were inseparable. We'd see each other three, four times a week. I would stop by her house on the way to the metro when I was commuting to work. We were just really integrated into each other's lives. They'd hang out all the time, cook together, share stories, ideas. I think I just wanted to know everything she thought kind of at all times. She just has a way of observing the world and observing human dynamics that I wanted to absorb. They even went to each other's office holiday parties. Reina often caught herself mentioning Em in conversation. It felt very quickly like I had fallen for her in a way that felt familiar because I had fallen in love before. Yeah. Because when you describe that, I mean, it sounds like, oh, she had charisma that you were attracted to. You guys had chemistry. Yeah. But it was a platonic kind of love. It just didn't feel like what was driving the connection was something that was sexual, something that had, a a kind of conventional romantic relationship, undertone. I mean, part of me thinks, oh, that is so beautiful. That's so nice. You have this incredible relationship, almost like a sister, it sounds like. But it also ended up leading you on a a kind of journey to write a a best selling book about connections that push the boundaries of what we typically think of as …