NUIT journal · English translation
We love each other. When are we meeting?
Making room for friends in our plans: a book and two podcasts offer starting points for discussing what we want to build together.
French original: 23 October 2026
You can care deeply about someone and still offer them only the evenings left over after everything else. When it is time to set a date, friendship hangs on the hope that next month will be quieter. That gap interests us at NUIT: what place does a relationship have in the decisions we make?
There is no quota of dinners to fill to prove affection. People have schedules, sometimes children, tiredness and distance to manage. But we may want to talk about friendship in a way that goes beyond regretting that we never meet. A book and two podcasts in the selection provide starting points.
Make room, even without a wedding
In Nos puissantes amitiés, Alice Raybaud investigates ways of living together, making families and growing old with friends. Interviews meet social-science research. As presented by La Découverte, the book argues for giving these bonds a more important place in our lives.
What draws us to that approach is the possibility of making plans. Moving somewhere with a friend, keeping a room for visits or discussing how we want to grow old: these questions can be opened without committing to share everything. A friendship can have its own calendar and projects.
What matters is finding out what each person wants. Living together does not suit everyone. A friendship can matter enormously without becoming a shared household, and wanting more time together also means being willing to hear an answer different from your own.
Small sentences matter too
A starting point closer to everyday life is the words we exchange. Fracas includes a series called Les petites phrases about words that have stayed in the memories of the people who heard or said them. Its scope goes beyond friendship.
This turn towards speech seems useful before discussing big plans. How do you say that you feel left out? How do you ask for time without making an invitation a test of loyalty? You might express a specific wish, such as setting aside a Sunday, and leave the other person space to discuss it. These questions extend the podcast’s theme here; they are not advice taken from its episodes.
There is more than one way to make a family
Quouïr gives LGBTQI+ people space to speak. Its early seasons address coming out and same-sex parenting; the documentary Au Nom du fils then tells a story shaped by a homophobic upbringing. The accounts and their contexts differ.
We place it alongside Raybaud’s book to keep questions about family and the people around us open. That does not mean all these accounts describe a chosen family. The podcast offers particular lives, wishes and obstacles, rather than asking one family model to answer for everyone.
A question before reorganising everything
Who would you like to suggest a project to that goes beyond the next night out? Keep that question with you while reading, or choose an audio account before discussing it. The profiles below explain the subjects and limits of the three works and link to their sources.
Works and sources
- Nos puissantes amitiés · Alice Raybaud · Official source
- Fracas · Created by Charlotte Pudlowski · Official source
- Quouïr · Rozenn Le Carboulec · Official source
NUIT’s perspective draws on the works’ official presentations, consulted for the French article on 23 October 2026. It is not a review based on reading or listening to the works in full. The linked podcasts are in French.