Modern Love

When Ross Showalter turned 18 and began dating hearing men, he found himself communicating with them on their terms: using spoken language. Years of speech lessons and lip-reading practice forced Ross, who is Deaf, to conform to a society that favors sound. All of these men made the same promise: to learn sign language, only to never follow through. Then, on a spring day in the midst of the pandem...

They were standing in a Walmart parking lot when William’s wife turned to him and asked, “Are you gay?” Those three words catalyzed the end of their marriage, and the end of a 22-year partnership filled with many joys and rituals, including the haircuts William’s wife gave him. But those words were also an opportunity for growth — and a chance for William to heal. In this episode, William Dameron...

“Everyone deserves an orgasm” is a fair way to express Diana de Vegh’s attitude toward life. Diana is a firm believer in the pursuit of pleasure — of all sorts — for all people. As we kick off a new season of Modern Love, our host, Anna Martin, gets Diana’s advice on how people can infuse sensuality into their day-to-day lives. (Hint: a chilled beverage, a warm bath and a juicy mango.)We also list...

When Victoria Rosner was seven months pregnant, her husband filed for divorce. He “decided that he couldn’t be married anymore, not to me, he said, and probably not to anyone,” Victoria wrote in her Modern Love essay. A couple of years later, while they were living many miles apart, he reached out to her with a request. He had been diagnosed with a cancer that had metastasized to his bones, and he...

When Meher Ahmad first saw the movie “Bend It Like Beckham” as a young girl, she was transfixed. Watching the main character, an Indian woman who looked like her, kiss her white soccer coach, she saw a vision of her own romantic future. While she felt pressure from her family and her culture to be with a Pakistani boy, the movie opened up her lanes of attraction — from white boys to, eventually, “...

The year was 2006, and Damon Young had just met a woman on MySpace. Their back-and-forth was witty, flirty and easy. They went on a first date at Barnes & Noble, where they browsed books and continued to vibe. Things were going great, Damon thought. That is, until she called off their second date. Damon was confused, but he had a hunch about what fueled her sudden disinterest: his teeth. Damon...

Ayad Akhtar’s parents met in Pakistan in the early ’60s, when they were both medical students and “ridiculously attractive” — or so their friends say. Despite having a love marriage (against the wishes of their parents), theirs was rocky from the start.“By the time I was 4, I already knew my father had ‘other women,’ as my mother used to call them,” Ayad wrote in his Modern Love essay. But it wasn...

In his early 20s, Kevin Renn moved to New York City with dreams of making it as a playwright. When money got tight, he decided to fall back on a familiar option: babysitting.“The question, though, wasn’t whether I would be a good nanny, but if anyone would let me — as a Black man who is over six feet tall,” Kevin said in his Modern Love essay. Kevin soon became a nanny to Lucas, a 4-year-old boy w...

Yvonne Liu knew from a young age that she was adopted, but she didn’t know the details. All she knew was that she had been left by her birth mother in a busy stairwell in Hong Kong. It wasn’t until she was 30, on the night before a critical surgery, that she was given a handwritten note in Chinese that transformed her understanding of where she had come from. Meanwhile, Lynn Domina had never envis...

Nora Johnson had been making weekly visits to older man after he suffered a mild stroke. But he wasn’t just any older man. “We had the worst marriage in the history of human relations,” Nora wrote in her 2014 Modern Love essay. “Dysfunctional doesn’t even begin to describe it.”During her visits, the memories would coming pouring back: the fights, the vacations, the plunging bank account. But Nora’...

Heather von Rohr had moved to Los Angeles with aspirations: to make it as a screenwriter and to fall in love, marry and have a child. In need of a day job, she took an entry-level position at the research library of a prestigious film academy. At the library, she met Nick — who was 13 years younger than she was and in no position to support a family. Today, we also meet Edgar and Beatriz , a coupl...

Mansoor Adayfi was only 19 when he arrived at the prison camp at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Growing up in a tiny village in the mountains of Yemen, “I didn’t know much about the world,” he said. “Now my world was Guantánamo.”For a period during his 14 years there, he and his fellow detainees organized informal classes for one another. There was a cooking class, taught by a former che...

When Mike Rucker and his partner, John, moved in together, they purchased a sofa they affectionately named Miss Bee. “I didn’t just feel grown up buying this sofa, I felt sophisticated,” Mike wrote in his Modern Love essay. Miss Bee had low arms, wooden legs with brass wheels and a white denim slipcover. Miss Bee was not only a provider of comfort, but also the anchor of Mike and John’s home life....

We have exciting news: We’ll be back on Wednesday, June 1, for a new season of stories. In the meantime, we invite you to listen to a mini episode featuring Ariana DeBose, who recently won an Oscar for her role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of “West Side Story.” A few months ago, Ms. DeBose read a selection of her favorite Tiny Love Stories at a Modern Love virtual event. Today, Anna M...

What’s the song that taught you about love as a teen? When we asked this question at the start of the season, your anthems came pouring in. We heard from present-day teens, and we heard from listeners who have been with their partners for over 50 years. There were stories of Nat King Cole and One Direction, adrenaline rushes and loneliness, and many lessons in matters of the heart. (“Don’t let you...

It’s 2022, the year of matrimania. Roughly 2.5 million weddings are expected (a bump not seen since 1984), and other trends are wildly taking off — ceremonies for pets, weddings on weekdays, a revival of epic poofy dresses. While the business of nuptials is evolving, we revisit Pauline Miller’s essay from 2017 about one tried-and-true approach: tying the knot at City Hall (a decision fueled by Pau...

Alexandra Capellini has been on the dating apps for about four years. Dating is already a fraught process, but to top it off, Alexandra has to decide if, when and how she should explain that she wears a prosthetic leg. Today, we listen to Alexandra’s essay about navigating the apps — and realizing that it’s not her responsibility to “make other guys more comfortable with meeting me.” Then, our hos...

Garrett Schlichte was exactly twice the age of his sister. When he was 28 and his sister was 14, she would dish to him on the phone about her teenage love life. But the feelings she was experiencing — like electric attraction and aching jealousy — were unfamiliar to Garrett. When he was a queer, closeted teenager, Garrett turned to romantic comedies to grasp the emotions of a real-life relationshi...

Genevieve Kingston has carried a cardboard box with her throughout her life, filled with gifts for major milestones — childhood birthdays, her first period, graduation. The gifts are from her mother, who died of cancer just before Ms. Kingston’s 12th birthday. In her final days, she prepared postcards for the future and filled the box with her love. In today’s episode, we listen to Ms. Kingston’s...

Three months into the pandemic, Haili Blassingame was crafting an email to her boyfriend of five years, Malcolm, with the subject line “My Terms.” She wanted to break up. Haili had met Malcolm in college. At first she was “giddy about the cute guy with the deep voice who looked like Obama,” she wrote in her Modern Love essay. But as they started dating, she found that their identities were intertw...

Ariel Sabar was visiting his parents in his childhood home in California, when he awoke one morning to high-pitched giggles coming from his parents’ room. He opened the door to a Norman Rockwell-type image: his father, 70, riding his stationary bike in his pajamas; and his 6-year-old son perched on its frame, cheerleading for his grandfather. Ariel was stunned: “As a boy, I’d seen this house as a...

What are your dating non-negotiables? For Hyla Sabesin Finn, it was smoking — or so she thought. Hyla met Larry in college. She was 17; he was a 21-year-old law student, puffing away outside the library. Hyla had been “indoctrinated by parents whose cocktail parties were littered with ‘no smoking’ signs back when smokers still mingled freely in society,” she wrote in her 2005 Modern Love essay. In...

Before Andrew Limbong went off to college, his mother cautioned him about the dire consequences he would face if he hugged a girl. Andrew grew up in a strict Christian household, and his parents are Indonesian immigrants, so they never spoke about sex at home. When Andrew was 20, he met his first girlfriend, Sam. He felt his cultural and parental influences putting “pressure on my blood vessels, n...

We’re back for a whole new season of stories. In today’s premiere, we introduce our new host, Anna Martin, who has a question for listeners: What’s the one song that taught you about love when you were a teenager? We listen to “What Lou Reed Taught Me About Love,” an essay about a young woman’s summer romance with a floppy-haired “rocker kid” and the records they would spin. Then, we hear from Tim...

At age 11, Julissa Arce came to the United States from Mexico on a visa that expired three years later. For more than a decade, she lived as an undocumented immigrant, fearful of revealing her secret to anyone. “Every phone call or email I got from human resources would make my blood run cold,” she wrote in her Modern Love essay. And when it came to love, she would lie to nearly every man she date...