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Modern Love
First Love Mixtape: Side B (Encore)
00:22:01
In last week’s episode, the Modern Love team shared the songs that taught us about love when we were young. But in this week’s episode, we hear from you, our listeners, about the songs that helped shape your ideas about love. We heard from present-day teens streaming their anthems on repeat, and we heard from listeners who have been with their partners for over 50 years. There were stories of jazz and rap; adrenaline rushes and loneliness; and many hard-won lessons in matters of the heart. (“Don’t let your friends choose your boyfriends,” Amy from St. Louis said.) We share a compilation of some of your songs and stories in the first half of our episode. And we finish our episode with an essay about the end of love. After more than 50 years of marriage, Tina Welling decided that she wanted a divorce — a decision that turned out to be liberating. Thank you to all of the listeners who sent us their teenage anthems. We’ve compiled them into one glorious Spotify playlist. [You can l...
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- [00:00]
Lori Leibovich
Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible, overcoming high Interest Credit Card debt. It requires merely one a SOFI personal Loan. With it, you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed rate monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a SOFI personal loan. Visit sofi.com stunt to learn more. Loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 hi Modern Love hello.
- [00:32]
Robert Vinloen
Hi.
- [00:33]
Ankit Syed
Hi, I'm Gonzalo. I'm calling from Buenos Aires, Argentina. From Granby, Colorado, From New Jersey, calling.
- [00:39]
Robert Vinloen
From Sydney, Australia, Spain, Calcutta, India hi, good morning. Hi Modern Love.
- [00:48]
Anna Martin
From the New York Times. I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Last week we brought you an episode from a few years back where we asked the question, what's the song that taught you about love when you were a teenager? In that episode we shared some of our stories, but we also wanted to hear from you, our listeners, about your own songs. And so many of you responded. I've Got a Feeling from the Black Eyed Beast When a man loves a woman Tainted love Tiny vessels Bridge over troubled water My song is Love Story.
- [01:22]
Helen Koskarin
Dear John by Taylor Swift.
- [01:24]
Anna Martin
If we're going to call this our young Love mixtape, then last week was side A and today we've got side B full of your stories about love and music and feelings. So many feelings.
- [01:40]
Michal Vanicek
When I was 14, I wrote the lyrics to Ghost by the Indigo Girls on my Converse high tops. The song is this whole tortured look back at a love that starts in adolescence and I wanted so much to be destroyed like that. I wanted something huge and big that would just sweep me out of this tiny, small, conservative town that I was in this love with a woman that would change my life so much. And there are lyrics about how this love starts like a pinprick to the heart and then the person is swept away and starts to drown. The immensity of it, even if it was loss and pain, was so deeply alluring to me and I wanted it so badly. Of course, having no idea how hard and difficult and extremely excruciatingly painful actual heartbreak would be years later. I loved it so much and I kept it so close. And I still have those shoes.
- [02:50]
Ankit Syed
Hi, I'm on kit. I am a sophomore at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. So when I was 16, I met a girl. We went to different schools in different towns, but she got my Snapchat and she started snapping me. And it was all day, pretty much every day for at least a week. And one Night she called me. I'm in the dark in my bedroom. My parents are, as far as I hoped, asleep downstairs. So I kept my voice quiet and we talked about our friends or school, our lives. And she asked me what music I listened to. And I said what I was really listening to at the time, which was fight music by D12. Fight music is not a romantic song, but I sent it to her and she sent me back a video on Snapchat of her with her wired headphones in the dark, like me, nodding along to the whole song. And she was smiling. I had never felt like this before, that this girl, she liked me for me. I didn't have to pretend.
- [04:15]
Robert Vinloen
I listened.
- [04:16]
Anna Martin
To that song on repeat, on repeat, on repeat.
- [04:20]
Robert Vinloen
Rewind, rewind, rewind on my tape deck. So my boyfriend made me a tape of I'll be missing you by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans, and we agreed to play it in our Walkman's every morning at the same time. As lovesick teenagers, we only cared about the chorus lyrics.
- [04:39]
Michal Vanicek
Every step I take, every move I make.
- [04:49]
Anna Martin
We adopted this song as our song. On repeat, on repeat, on repeat.
- [04:53]
Robert Vinloen
Rewind, rewind, rewind.
- [04:56]
Anna Martin
When we come back, more of the songs that taught you about love when you were teens. Plus a modern love essay from a woman who learned something new about love in her 70s. Stay with us.
- [05:10]
Robert Vinloen
High interest debt is one of the toughest opponents you'll face unless you power up with a Sofi personal loan. A Sofi personal loan could repackage your bad debt into one low fixed rate monthly payment. It's even got superspeed since you could get the funds as soon as the same day you sign. Visit sofi.compower to learn more. That's s o f I.com power loans originated by SoFi bank and a member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891. Hey, I'm Robert Vinloen.
- [05:42]
Ankit Syed
I'm from New York Times Games and.
- [05:43]
Robert Vinloen
I'm here talking to people about wordle and the wordle Archive. Do you all play wordle? Yeah, I have something exciting to show. It's the wordle Archive.
- [05:50]
Anna Martin
Oh, oh, and you missed it.
- [05:53]
Robert Vinloen
I can like go back 100%.
- [05:55]
Anna Martin
Oh, that's sick.
- [05:56]
Robert Vinloen
So now you can play every wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles. Oh my God, I love it. Amazing. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle archive. Find out more at nytimes.com games.
- [06:21]
Helen Koskarin
Hey, I'm calling from Dublin and my song is work Song by Hozier. In the summer of 2015, I was working for a volunteer wildlife expedition. And it involved hiking over the mountains and camping in tents. And I was feeling very sorry for myself because I was away from my girlfriend and works on is this really slow, mournful love song. He's talking about his love. He's like pining for. I was listening to that album on repeat that summer. On one of the last weekends, I got just blackout drunk with everyone else and I made a terrible mistake and I slept with someone else. Cheating on my girlfriend. Working through it. We stayed together, but I really hurt her. And I realized years later after talking to people about it, that I didn't strictly speaking consent to what happened. And as much as there is a stigma about cheating and cheaters, there's as much about being victimized like that. I guess I find it quite hard, quite hard to say that when referring to myself seven years ago, I didn't have those words. I don't know. I still really feel something when I listen to that song. And I. I still enjoy it. You would think I wouldn't. But I like listening to it still. But it's very conflicting.
- [08:27]
Michael
Hey, I'm Michael. I'm calling from Brooklyn. And when I was 16, 17, I was. I was dating this guy and we really had this on again, off again relationship that was every time I met him, I was, you know, over the moon. And then he did something terrible to me and then he didn't call me and I was just. I'm so stupid. Like, why am I doing this to myself? And the song that I really felt that described my situation perfectly was I Love the Way youy Lie by Rihanna, Part two. Play that song on my speakers very loud. And I would. I would sing along, you know, because you some. You need to scream, you know, you need to cry. You need to go verbal with it. The lyrics, it's so. Especially the bridge because Rihanna sings there. Maybe I'm a masochist. And I try to run but I don't want to ever leave.
- [09:38]
Anna Martin
I don't wanna ever be too.
- [09:41]
Michael
There was such a vibrating feeling that was so exciting, even though it was so wrong. Or maybe because it was so wrong and when you're 16, you kind of want to do something wrong.
- [09:59]
Sarah Molinaro
My name is Sarah. I'm calling from Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is the summer of 1996. I am running. I'm a camp counselor, northern Minnesota. I have just broken up with my boyfriend. He has cheated on me. We've written each other angry letters. And I'm running with my mom's yellow Sony Walkman. I am listening to Duran Duran cassette single Ordinary World on one side, come on down on the other. I am running, the tape is flipping toggling back and forth. And I would just, you know, pound these roads, have all these feelings, just working out all these emotions I had around him. And then back in high school, fall of 1996, I remember very vividly seeing him on the stairwell and just having this moment of he looked at me and I looked at him and there was this acknowledgement that we still had feelings. And then It's December of 1996, we got too cold and we ended up back in his bedroom. He put on Come Undone by Duran Duran. Simon Levon is singing to us as the music swells. Ben says from his bed, are you coming over here? We start kissing. And then we were together for a year after that.
- [11:26]
Robert Vinloen
When you come.
- [11:32]
Anna Martin
Thank you to every single listener who sent in a story. We took all the songs that were submitted and we pulled them together and made a giant playlist. It's full of bangers. You can listen to that First Love mixtape in all its glory at the link in our show notes. Okay, now we're going from first romantic experiences, the very beginnings of love, to what happens when love comes to an end. Coming up, a modern love essay about a woman who decides after more than 50 years of marriage that she wants a divorce. That's after the break.
- [12:15]
Robert Vinloen
FOREIGN.
- [12:25]
Lori Leibovich
Today, we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible, overcoming high interest credit card debt. It requires merely one thing, a SOFI personal loan. With it, you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed straight monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a SOFI personal loan. Visit sofi.com stunt to learn more. Loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891 hi, this is Lori Leibovich.
- [12:57]
Tina Welling
Editor of well, at the New York Times. There's a lot of misinformation in the health and wellness space, but at the New York Times, no matter what the topic, we apply the same journalistic standards to everything we write about, whether it's the gut microbiome or how to get a good night's sleep, even if we're talking about something like, is it bad for me to drink coffee on an empty stomach? Everything that our readers get when they dig into a well article has been vetted. Our reporters are consulting experts, calling dozens of people doing the research. It can go on for months so that you can make great decisions about your physical health and your mental health. We take our reporting extra seriously because we know New York Times subscribers are counting on us. If you already subscribe, thank you. If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe.
- [13:55]
Anna Martin
Tina Welling was married for more than 50 years. That's so long to be married. But after decades together, Tina knew she needed to be on her own. And here's a big she and her husband actually managed to have a good divorce. Tina's essay is called no Hearing Aids, the no Marriage. It's read by Suzanne Torren.
- [14:23]
Robert Vinloen
Who celebrates her 52nd wedding anniversary and then, six months later, files for divorce. Me. My husband and I were in our 70s. We'd made a life in Jackson, Wyoming. Our split was set into motion one Saturday evening when he and I were out to dinner. I'd come prepared to keep the conversation flowing, because I knew that old joke, how can you tell? It's a married couple dining out. They have nothing to say to each other. The night had started well. We were dressed up and feeling especially pleased with our plans, so it felt like a good time for me to ask, are you happy these days? What's important to you lately? My husband was happy, he reported, but I knew our lives held little togetherness other than love of our family. And trading talk about our day. And talk was getting increasingly frustrating for us because of my husband's difficulty in hearing. For a couple of years he had planned to sell his motorcycle and use the money for hearing aids, but despite not riding it the past two summers, he hadn't followed through. That night I ran out of questions before our salads had even arrived, and I was dismayed with how many times I'd had to repeat myself so he could hear me. I finally said, which would you rather have, hearing aids or a motorcycle? A motorcycle. Definitely an answer I already knew, even if I'd been in denial about it. But I was surprised by what happened next. An awareness rose within me that we had come to the end of this phase of our relationship. We'd completed our marriage. My feeling was hard to find words for because words weren't involved. No weighing of pros and cons, no argument, no anger, just the full body sensation of, oh, we're done. It choked me up. I'd known this man Since I was 17, a freshman in college, wearing knee socks and plaid skirts. He was the mystery man on campus, an artist, a sport parachute jumper, a few years older than my friends and me. The first place I'D seen him was in a dining room while sitting at a table with my girlfriends. I stared at his reflection in a window across the room. It took me a minute to realize that he was staring at me in the window's reflection, too. We smiled at each other. I remembered another restaurant meal, dining in Florida with my parents, who at the time also had been married more than 50 years. My mother was quite deep into Alzheimer's disease, and yet my father had rouged her cheeks and combed her hair for our evening out. I sat beside my mother in the booth, my father across from us. He reached for my mother's hand and said, we're partners, aren't we? My mother was incapable of responding, but I teared up. There was a truth in his remark that went far deeper than my father had intended. My mother had wanted my father's undivided attention more than anything else in life, and she never felt she'd received it. Now she received it from the moment he brushed her teeth in the morning until he tucked her into bed at night. My father was affected so deeply by my mother's condition that he freely wept and often hugged her and me, where he once used to leave the room in a huff if I became emotional and thumped me on the back as his way of demonstrating physical affection. He now overflowed with emotion and had no trouble showing it. So yes, they were partners in marriage. They helped each other in some mysterious way to each receive what completed them. This was my role model of what a marriage meant in its most mystical sense. Partners meant two people who shared the experience of becoming their full selves. I had hoped to hear from my husband an answer that would bond us. Instead, I got a motorcycle. Definitely. As I sat across from him, poking around my food, I wondered if partnering was what I had experienced in my marriage. Over the years I had matured, become a mother, an entrepreneur, a writer, all within the companionship of our relationship and with this man's support. In return, I had supported him artistically and in the small business we had run together, a retail shop at the base of the ski resort here. Now we had completed all we were going to in the way of that exchange. That evening I didn't talk about my new understanding of the state of our union. I decided I would live with this new awareness. As I watched my thoughts and emotions, I would talk to my husband about it on Wednesday. On Tuesday I called to make an appointment with a lawyer, because I knew if I couldn't do that, I couldn't follow through at all. I called just before closing time. The office paralegal answered. What would you like to discuss with the lawyer? She said. Now I had to say divorce out loud. I stuttered. How long have you been married? 52 years, she gasped. My spirit had gasped with her before Wednesday. I also had imagined what a caring and thoughtful separation might look like. Although we had completed the marriage part of our relationship, I intended to honor and love him until death do us part. So I approached the subject from that perspective. Later, he and I sat together, his arm around my shoulders, my hand tucked into his, as we worked out the practicalities. I suggested we keep our house and live in it together. We both loved our home and neighborhood, so we decided we would split the house into two apartments. We would call a contractor to make the necessary adjustments and divide the dishes and silverware. Three years later, we had separate bedrooms, baths, kitchens, living spaces, studios, garden areas and porches. One of my friends called it an elegant solution. It felt good to us. Once in a while we walk our pups together along the Snake River. Occasionally we go out to breakfast. We share newspapers and melons and celebrate birthdays and holidays. More than a friendly divorce, ours was a loving divorce, liberated from the expectations, routines, and baggage of marriage. We can be friends. And if we ever need each other, all we have to do is walk next door and knock.
- [23:39]
Anna Martin
This episode was produced in 2022 by Julia Botero, Hans Buteau and and Mahima Chablani. It was edited by Sarah Saracen, additional production and editing by Sarah Curtis and Lynn Levy, production management by Christina Josa. This episode was mixed by Alicia Bitup and Sonia Herrero, with studio support from Matty Masiello. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Hans Buteau, Dan Powell, Marion Lozano and Sonia Herrero, digital production by Mahima Chablani and a special thanks to Ryan Wagner at Autumn I also want to thank all of our listeners who shared their stories and their songs and their time with us. A big shout out to Kate Mitchell, Ankit Syed, Helen Koskarin, Michal Vanicek, and Sarah Molinaro. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we've got the instructions in our Show Notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.
- [25:00]
Lori Leibovich
Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible overcoming high interest credit card debt. It requires merely one thing a Sofi personal loan. With it, you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed rate monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a SOFI personal loan. Visit sofi.com stunt to learn more. Loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.