ALMOST

THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY Episode 13 ALMOST podcast This is Almost. A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Reserve was about a person who returned during collapse and left during stability, and the cost of organizing your availability around that rhythm. This one does not return at all. The One Who Got Away exists entirely in retrospect. He is not coming back. He may not even kno...

THE RESERVE Episode 12 ALMOST podcast This is Almost. A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Relapse was a cycle. Both people returning, both people leaving, the pattern sustained by a mutual preference for the familiar weather of a known ending over the uncertainty of something genuinely new. This one is asymmetrical. In The Reserve, one person has built a life elsewher...

THE RELAPSE Episode 11 ALMOST podcast This is Almost. A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Ex You Still Sleep With was about the route that stayed open after the decision had been made. The body keeping access alive while the mind maintained the fiction of closure. This one is further along the same road. The Relapse is not a single return. It is a pattern of returns....

THE EX YOU STILL SLEEP WITH Episode 10 ALMOST podcast This is Almost. A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. Part Three of this series is about what remains. The types in Part One existed before anything had been committed to. The types in Part Two had hardened into routine, into domestic weight, into the texture of something chosen without being named. Part Three begins aft...

THE REVIEW PERIOD Episode 9 ALMOST podcast This is 'Almost.' A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Mutual Hostage was about two people who both knew the ending and waited for the other to say it first. This one is earlier in the sequence. The Review Period is not a relationship in decline. It presents as a relationship in progress. There is warmth. There is investment. Ther...

THE MUTUAL HOSTAGE Episode 8 ALMOST podcast This is 'Almost.' A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Convenience was held in place by inertia. Nobody chose to stay, exactly. Nobody chose to leave. The relationship ran on its own momentum until momentum was the only thing left. This one is different. The Mutual Hostage is not passive. Both people know what the relationship ha...

THE CONVENIENCE Episode 7 ALMOST podcast This is 'Almost.' A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Borrowed Time contained a real relationship inside a confirmed ending. The intimacy was present. The grief was earned. This one is quieter and harder to justify leaving. The Convenience contains a real relationship inside a genuine absence. Nothing is wrong with it....

THE BORROWED-TIME Episode 6 ALMOST podcast This is ‘Almost’. A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Between-Thing was about two people who used each other as waiting rooms during a transitional season and stayed past the transition. This one is different. The Borrowed Time has a full relationship inside it. The intimacy is real. The domestic weight is real. The problem is st...

THE BETWEEN-THING Episode 5 ALMOST podcast This is 'Almost.' A field guide to the relationships that don't have names. The Situationship was a relationship with every load-bearing feature intact and the word removed. This one is different. The Between-Thing has the word available and declines it anyway. Both people know, somewhere under the warmth, that neither is the destination. This is the arra...

THE SITUATIONSHIP Episode 4· ALMOST Podcast This is 'Almost,' a field guide to the relationships that don't have names. Part Two of this series is about the arrangements you are actively living inside. The almost-types in Part One existed in potential, in the space before anything had been committed to. These ones have hardened into routine. They have domestic weight, shared history, the texture o...

THE SECRET Episode 3 of the ALMOST podcast The Almost lived in future tense. The Orbit lived in managed distance. This one exists in full, in private, and disappears in public. The intimacy is real. The visibility is rationed. Both people know the arrangement. Only one of them is paying for it. This is the almost-relationship built on relationship ambiguity that operates in two registers simultane...

THE ORBIT Episode 2 · ALMOST Podcast The Almost was about a relationship that lived in future tense. This one is different. The Orbit has a present tense. It has regular contact, shared social geography, a history long enough to have accumulated texture. What it does not have is a conversation. This is one of the more familiar almost-relationships: the relationship pattern where proximity stands i...

THE ALMOST Episode 1 · ALMOST Podcast The almost-relationship that existed in potential, in ambiguity, and in the space before commitment. This is ALMOST, a field guide to the relationship patterns that don't have names. The first type in this guide has no shortage of practitioners. The conditions for it are everywhere: a person who keeps things open, a person who accepts that opening as somet...

Welcome to ALMOST, a podcast about almost-relationships. The word almost places pressure on the future. It asks you to treat what has not happened as though it is already in motion, to inhabit possibility with the conviction of fact. A relationship can live there for a long time. Most of us have lived inside one of these arrangements before we had the right word for it. I'm Aleks Filmore, auth...