Modern Love

Brandon Kyle Goodman never knew his father, but he did know his Uncle Ronnie. Uncle Ronnie was Brandon’s godfather, originally his mom’s college bestie — and essentially, her sibling. Uncle Ronnie owned a hair salon, used words like “fabulous” and “honey” and was “the only person who never questioned my effeminate nature,” Brandon said. But when Brandon became an adult, their relationship changed....

An A-student, a striving employee and a loyal friend, Terri Cheney is the sort of person who seems to have it all together. But, beneath her glowing facade, she faced the highs and lows of bipolar disorder. She kept her mental illness separated from her personal and professional lives, but she could not conceal this part of herself when it came to dating. After Terri’s essay, we peek into another...

What are the boundaries of an open marriage? What happens to them when your wife’s boyfriend has an accident that puts him in a coma? And what do you tell the kids? Today, we’re revisiting Wayne Scott’s story about his open marriage — and a motorcycle accident that tested its boundaries. Then, we hear from Wayne and his wife, Elizabeth Thielman, about the dynamics of their “creative arrangement” a...

Rex and Katharine met on a trip in South Dakota. She wanted a baby; he did not. Could he be a sperm donor? No problem. The agreement was simple. They would both get what they wanted: Katharine would raise her baby in California, and Rex would continue his life as a builder and tinker in Michigan. Then, they fell in love. After hearing Katharine’s story, Anna Martin, our host, talks with Rex about...

Ari Diaconis knew a bright future lay ahead of him. He was a gifted athlete with a well-paying job at a Wall Street law firm, and a partner, Dunia, with whom he shared a deep connection. But a neurological illness shifted his vision for the path ahead and shined a spotlight on the present — snuggles in bed and time spent in their apartment — a life raft from the city downstairs. In 2018, Ari died....

Amy Pittman was thrilled about her first pregnancy. She immediately downloaded a pregnancy app, and she was charmed when it showed her baby had grown from the size of a lavender bud to the size of a chocolate chip. When she miscarried, she deleted the app and the chocolate chip avatar, but the internet never caught on. Seven months later, Amy received a sample of baby formula. Although she had del...

Her whole life, Putsata Reang (Put, for short) was accustomed to exceeding her parents expectations. She excelled in her career, paid for her parents to go on trips together and maintained a tight connection to her siblings and community. Yet a fundamental part of Put – her identity as bisexual – was enough to crack the foundations of their relationship. When Put’s mother did not attend her weddin...

Today, we’re revisiting the story of Bette Ann Moskowitz, who lost her husband of 56 years on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic. When Bette first met her husband, she was taken by his “smoldering looks and banked fires.” He was from Brooklyn; she was from the Bronx. They had little in common and their “prospects were not good,” as Bette put it, but they got married anyway. Bette’s husband died i...

Growing up in Brooklyn, Sonia Pérez recalled how her father would drink beer, sit on the sofa and lose himself in records from Puerto Rico, where he grew up. One day, he stopped listening. Sonia and her siblings wondered why.   On the other side of the world, in Ireland, Grainne Armstrong recalls the moment she experienced her daughter’s love for the first time, set to a soundtrack of opera and bi...

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 lis...

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’s t...

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 was...

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...

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 ch...

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....

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...