When Joanna and Carol met as college freshmen living across the hall from each other, they clicked instantly.
They were part of the same friend group, stayed up late making snide jokes and shared a connection that felt effortless.
But it wasn't until their senior year, after many years of near misses and what are we doing glances that they finally fell into a full-blown romance.
And then life happened.
Joanna moved to London for grad school and carol stayed in ohio, and what began as a deep and magnetic love story unraveled in the quiet, painful way that long-distance romances so often do, especially when you're young, unmoored and still figuring out who you are.
The two of them went nearly two decades apart.
Joanna married someone else and had children.
Carol moved to california, pursued a music career and got married too, But every so often their paths would cross and the chemistry was definitely still there.
Then, one night, nearly 18 years after they first met, they found themselves in the same bar, and this time the timing was finally right.
This is a story about first love, lost love and the long, complicated road back to the person who always felt like home.
So I am so excited to be here talking to you both today.
You know I have my own.
I think of it as a second chance love story myself that both inspired my novel and inspired me to want to do this podcast with Joe to hear other people's stories of reconnecting, you know sort of later in life.
So I would love to hear your story.
Let's You know, sort of the beginning and take us back however many years ago that was.
I guess that starts when we're 18.
So we met when we were living on the same hallway at our freshman dorm at Oberlin College.
On the second floor, a fair child dorm.
And we were friends that year and going forward.
And then in our senior year is when we started uh, going out.
We met actually on the first day of school, like the first.
Kiro doesn't remember this, because he has a different sort of memory than i do.
I have a worse, i think.
I feel like christina i don't know if you understand this i feel like i have the novelist memory, so i remember like tiny details, like i ate this and this is what this felt like, and so we were both um early to arrive at school, I think because we both have like really weird parents.
Maybe that should be edited out.
But we both have parents who like, for whatever reason needed, to get us to our dorm like as soon as they could.
I think, yeah, they probably interpreted the guidelines in the strictest way possible.
In this very, like, yeah.
And so we both were there before anyone else.
And... like the dorm was kind of empty.
And I remember walking out into the hallway.
It was this, by the way, like perhaps one of the ugliest dorms.
Oberlin is a very beautiful college and it was one of the ugliest dorms ever.
And I had been so excited that I got a spot in this dorm because I was told that it was like the place where people who did like theater and art and music lived.
And then I got there and it's this hideous like brick cinder block building and there were all these beautiful like Victorian buildings and we were in this very ugly building.
So I was a little bit shell shocked right, but I chose it because it was across the street from the conservatory music where I was.
He was in the con and yeah, I don't remember the first day seeing you.
So yeah, I remember, I do remember orientation seeing you.
But yeah, we both definitely were like people who are not into like orientation games and just were kind of sitting there like ugh um, as people like I don't know, like passed around like a talking stick or whatever we had to do like trust games.
It was a roll of toilet paper.
A roll of toilet paper.
Oh my God, see, you remember this.
I've always written details.
And what I remember is that like we spent a lot of time together in the first weeks of college.
And there was this kind of group of freshmen on our hall who were all friendly.
And or, in fact, like some of us like were friends, like hated the others, but we pretended we were all friendly.
Um, and the girls on our hall, I feel like I can call them girls.
Cause we were like 12 years old.
Um, at the time we could not be called girls at Oberlin.
It was like very like anger inducing.
You had to feel like women.
And, um, and they, you know, we're all constantly like, what is going on with Kira?
Like, you know, like he's in love with you, whatever.
And I was like, nothing, I don't think that's true.
You know, we're just friends.
So was it true?
I didn't hear that part.
It was very true.
And we um this one night like we had been in sort of groups together a lot, but we would kind of like take ourselves away and just kind of like make you know, snide remarks about things to each other.
We still do.
Exactly.
And um, And one night I don't remember what happened, but we took a walk kind of late at night and Oberlin is a small town, you know, and even though you know there were tons of students there, somehow you can take a walk and it can feel totally deserted.
And so it did.
And it's actually really.
I still remember that feeling from all of college of walking around late at night and there's almost no one out and everything was closed because it's a small town in Ohio, except for the subway.
And Kirill was like, you know, are you hungry?
And I was like, I'm a little hungry, you know, but I don't want a sandwich or something.
And so we went in and he bought me a cookie and we sat in Subway the most not romantic place you could ever like with the horrible lights.
We were the only people there.
And it was actually very delicious, warm cookie.
I had never been to a Subway before.
I actually didn't know what it was.
So college, time for new experiences.
And I sort of felt like something is going to happen this night.
And despite the subway, it felt very romantic.
But then it didn't.
And it felt kind of like the moment was lost.
And I have no memory of this one.
She has no memory at all.
The subway cookie, no.
Yeah, it's become a joke in our family.
Well, I was going to ask if that constitutes your first date then.
But maybe not.
I think both people have to remember their first date.
Yes, exactly.
And so, yeah, then we were friends. for all of college, basically.
And I went away second semester, junior year.
And Kirill, by the way, had a super, super serious girlfriend that he was quasi-married to.
It felt that way.
But you also had a boyfriend.
Well, not as long as you did.
But there were a few different boyfriends.
No, well...
I dated people like in a non-serious way, just like briefly in college.
Nothing like you.
Like Kira was like quasi married to this person.
And, and I was always like, she's wrong for you.
Like I would actually be like, she's stupid and annoying.
Like, and, and she would defend her like really half-heartedly.
And she just felt like not smart enough. and like not cool enough for Kirill.
And my friends and I would be like, why is he dating her?
She's dumb.
And then I got back from my junior, like my semester abroad.
And I was actually at school like early, like Amy Rose, my best friend and roommate, who Kirill also knows like had not arrived yet and went to register for classes on my own and ran into Kirill.
And then we just kind of like started dating.
He lured me back to his house.
With a Subway sandwich?
With the threat of a bike, with the idea of a bike.
Like I went to register.
It's just so funny.
We're probably approximately the same age, how you had to register in person, like using these like paper, like cards.
And I remember I had had a bike like all through college and it was stolen while I was away.
And I lived on one side of campus and, And the place where you had to register was on the other.
And it was probably like a five-minute walk.
But I felt like I was like walking for miles.
And I was like, I need a bike.
And so I registered.
I saw Kirill.
After I registered, he was like, what are you doing now?
And I said, I have to go buy a bike.
I'm going to go to the bike shop.
He's like, there's a bike in my house.
I will sell it to you.
I think it was my bike.
No, it was a female bike.
It came with your house.
Oh.
Like someone had left it there.
And so you were profiting.
You were selling me this free bike.
Did I charge you?
I probably did.
You did.
I think it's time to pay that back.
I don't know.
I think he's paid it back.
He's paid it back.
We both are in need of bicycles.
We do.
Yes.
Anyway.
Okay.
So that's what happens.
We dated that whole year and we were kind of inseparable.
Yes.
What do you think changed?
Because it sounds like you had such a solid friendship and there is this, you know push-pull, and obviously some attraction and some wondering is something going to happen here, starting from even the moment you met?
So what took so long, do you think?
I think for me, freshman year, I was just a moron.
I just didn't know anything.
I had no real experience with having a girlfriend and didn't.
Amusingly, I thought that Joanne was too cool for me.
And now I realize...
But I'm not cool at all.
But she presented as, you know, in a certain way.
In the world of Oberlin, like, we had both, like, we're from pretty similar places.
We both grew up in the suburbs of New York and went to like that kind of like I don't know like John Hughes movie high school sort of thing where, like everyone was like very like normal.
And I had somehow become...
I don't know, around age 12 or 13.
Not to be so serious, but I've been really badly bullied in elementary school.
Really, really horribly bullied.
And Kirill somehow was cooler than me as a child and was not.
I was not cooler than you.
Despite... I was less of a target for some reason.
For some reason, yeah.
Or maybe where I grew up was a little bit more cutthroat.
And I somehow decided that I'd had enough when I was like maybe 12 or 13 and reinvented myself as like an, like you know, an 80s style alternative kid, like whatever, like Leah Thompson in some kind of wonderful or something like, and was like this is how I will not be a target.
And definitely like, I think like my normal personality is like very cheerful and open.
But I think I, you know, tried to make myself less of a target by having, you know, like Doc Martens, with steel toes and you know, t-shirts from like angry bands and that kind of thing.
And like very dark lipstick and dye black hair and whatever.
And so I carried that.
That's why I went to Oberlin and I carried that there.
But then at a certain point, I was like, wait, I don't need this anymore.
Like, I don't have to pretend to be cool.
No one is, like you know, kicking me in the back, like during chorus or whatever, like pulling my hair at recess.
Like I can just be a normal person in jeans and a t-shirt now.
I think that's what's so interesting about college and then college romances, right?
When you meet so young, we are all trying to figure out a personality and trying on different personalities.
So if you're in the middle of that kind of identity process and you're trying to connect with another person who is doing the same thing, right.
That can feel a little bit chaotic.
You're either on a journey to kind of do it independently or together.
And I think that's a challenge of you know, trying to navigate a relationship in college and your 20s.
And so did you guys find that to be the case?
It sounds like it was so.
Or when you finally you know settled into yourself later on in college.
It seems like that was part of the catalyst for being able to get together.
Yeah.
I guess I would add that she also was intimidatingly beautiful.
Which also, I think for me, also, I was like, why would she be interested in me, this person?
But I think by senior year, I guess, yeah, certainly both of us had changed in different ways.
But I guess I got over being intimidated by that point.
Was there one moment that you can think back on, like the Subway sandwich moment of earlier?
But one moment that you could think back on, that was the moment where you both thought junior and senior year, like we're a couple.
Or did you just feel like you, you know, kind of fell into this romance?
I think, yeah, senior year, she came to my apartment and we listened to Xenakis, right?
And that's when we first kissed.
So it was... unromantic music possible.
And that was it.
Right from then on.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's true.
Like just that moment.
I think we... My feeling was that it was like this inevitable thing.
Like I think I had thought for the whole time, the previous three years, that like Kirill was kind of like my person.
Like whenever...
Like we didn't make that many plans to get together, but it is a very small school.
And so whenever I ran into him, you know, I would be like like I would feel like this kind of relief of like oh, I can just say anything, like be myself, you know.
And, you know, it was always like very excited.
Like as soon as I saw him, I just wanted to kind of like talk with him forever.
And smelled me, apparently.
He smelled really good.
Always.
I love that.
And I'm sure the smell can take you right back to like, you know, smell is such a nostalgic scent.
So if you had a, you know, cologne of the era or whatever.
It's just like his skin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because like you've worn all sorts of different soaps and hair things.
It's just like the way you smell.
Hi, Christine Pride here.
After writing two books with your friend in mind, Joe Piazza, I've written a solo debut novel.
All the Men I've Loved Again is a coming of age love story about a woman who dates two men back to back in her 20s and then the same two men again in her 40s.
It's a heartfelt tale of first love and second chances and I hope you'll check it out.
All the Men I've Loved Again is available on July 8th wherever books are sold.
So what happened from there?
You guys are dating senior year.
You're ready to take on adulthood and graduate and life is laid out before you.
What, what happens next?
Part of it was we were on a slightly different academic schedule.
So I, um, was in both the college and conservatory there.
And so it was supposed to be a five-year program.
Um, And through AP credit, I was graduating a semester early.
But in any event, it was four and a half years.
Whereas Joanna was more traditional, a four-year calendar.
And so she graduated before I did.
That was part of it.
And then you can say what you did when you graduated.
I actually had so many AP credits that I could have graduated in three years.
And I decided not to because I wanted... I didn't want to.
And... do you remember this?
That I was part, I went, I went to school part time our senior year.
Um, and just like had two classes.
It's so weird.
Why did I do that?
Looking back on it, I should have taken more classes, but anyway.
But I think that yeah, it gave us.
The thing that is interesting is it did give us so much more time to spend together than if I had been taking a full load.
That's a good reason to take AP credit, I guess.
Yeah.
More time to think.
And, and I somehow had like, I had finished every possible requirement.
So I was able, like my senior year, I took classes that I had always wanted to take and sort of been too afraid to take.
Like I took this studio art class which my parents had kind of prohibited me from ever taking studio art.
You know, they were like, you must be taking accounting and like pre-law classes.
And I did it without their permission and spent a lot of time like making sculpture, which I really loved, you know, just as like doing something that I like to do, which is again weird looking back on it.
Just doing something just for fun as an adult.
It's like, what?
But anyway, or at least in our life, we have so much to do that like, but anyway, but it meant that we had more time together.
And I think I had a lot more space in my brain than I had in the previous years of college.
I think I had actually taken very heavy course loads until then.
And we've been just like working frantically all the time.
And yeah.
But you graduated.
But yeah, sorry, I graduated.
And I think if we had graduated at the same time, things would have happened differently.
Yeah, definitely.
But basically, like I had it in my head that I wanted to get a doctorate and like basically, go back to Oberlin and teach.
That was my dream.
And my advisors, I don't want to dwell on this because it's just like so embarrassing to me.
And I'm like, why was I so stupid?
But my advisors at Oberlin were like, do not do this.
Like they clearly saw that it was not the right thing for me.
And maybe that I was like, not good enough, you know, to make it that I was not.
And they were like, why don't you get a job at a magazine?
Like, why don't you get a job in publishing?
Like they were, like They clearly.
I clearly could not write in academic language in the way that I needed to, even though I had.
You know, I had like been accepted into the honors program and like whatever.
Anyway, we're not going to dwell on this embarrassing thing.
And so I applied to doctoral programs and I didn't get into any, I was waitlisted at two.
And, on a whim, I had applied to a master's actually two master's programs in London, and And I had lived in London on my semester abroad and loved it there and was like okay, I'm going to do this.
And like everyone was just like, this is a stupid thing to do.
Like a master's is not going to in English is completely stupid.
It's a pointless degree.
You did not say that to me.
I guess you didn't know, but everyone was like, do not do this.
But I basically saw it as a way of like going to live in London and for a year um, that was like socially sanctioned and I think, if I'm honest, like I was like a very, very like fearful person who you know had grown up I think we grew up in pretty similar families but somehow you were more able to like break out on your own.
Um, like I had grown up in a very conventional middle-class family.
Like my parents were first generation Americans.
It was very like, go to law school, go to medical school.
And some people are able to be like, I'm not going to do that, you know, whatever.
And I was not able to be like, I'm just going to be a writer or whatever.
Like I'm going to get a job at a magazine, because that wasn't something that was acceptable to my parents, but going to graduate school was.
So I did this and I left for London early, like in the summer and Um and cause my parents were like you can do this, but you have to make money and support yourself.
And so I somehow actually it's so weird looking back on it again I had to like mail things away and like do all these complicated things?
Like last night my son was, like I don't want to write an email about like this class I want to take in college.
And I was like, dude, you have no idea.
Like In my day, we had to walk across campus.
Oh my God.
It was like endless paperwork.
So I somehow got a work permit.
I went to London.
I lived in a hostel with a bunch of sorority girls and worked at a pub to earn money to sort of subsist on while I was in school.
So I was there and I went.
I guess the thing that happened maybe it's just like too hard to talk about, but I went to visit Kirill before I left.
He had stayed in Oberlin for the summer and was working at the library and living in this like very depressing house.
He had been living in, like, a cool house with friends, but they graduated, right?
Just one, yeah.
I had a roommate, and then he graduated.
Wait, didn't you live with Dave and Reynolds?
Nope, just Reynolds.
Just Reynolds.
Yes.
And he graduated.
He graduated, and I moved into a house with, like, of nine people.
The most depressing people ever.
But they had a space.
Yeah, and it was like an attic and it was like 4,000 degrees.
And Kirill just like, it was a terrible trip.
Like I had driven there.
It's a very long drive.
It's like nine hours.
And like, it's crazy.
Like I would never let one of my daughters do this.
I don't know why my parents let me do it, except that I guess they loved Kirill and they were like yes, you should visit him, marry him, whatever.
It was a bad visit.
And Kirill just did not seem like himself.
And I was very freaked out on this visit.
And eventually, many years later, it became clear that he was suffering from depression.
Is that okay to talk about?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, like actual clinical depression that may have been brought on by this medication that he had taken while traveling in India.
Well, I think you're confusing.
No, I'm confusing two different things.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, he was just suffering from depression.
Forget I said that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that when Joanna graduated, like it really felt like an end.
Like I did not see what was going to happen next.
I mean, also she wasn't moving out of Oberlin and I was staying behind.
It hit me very hard.
And then, yeah, I went from this amazing year to something that was much less amazing.
And I do think, I mean, we didn't really have a plan.
No, and looking back on it, I feel like why didn't you just come back home?
Because we lived very close, like we grew up very close to each other.
And if you had come home, like I went home and I worked in my dad's office before I went to London.
Like if you had gone home and lived with your parents, We could have seen each other.
Yeah.
No, you don't think so?
Oh, I don't know.
It's just hard to kind of go back there and reconstruct what was possible.
Yeah, but we didn't, we didn't like say like, let's do this.
Like you were just like, I'm doing this.
And we did talk about like my going to London and you were like excited about that.
And we're like, I'll come to London after I graduate.
And so we had that part of the plan, but we didn't make a plan together to, I do like, it's weird.
I feel like kids that I see today, like so many of them are so much more together than we were.
So I mean there was not that the technology that would enable long distance romances in the same way?
So basically you left and like there were no cell phones.
There was like a phone in our houses that we could talk on.
There were letters we could write, but, um, That was it.
And we talked on the phone, but you're not like a phone person so much.
And, and so, you know, and also I think you were not in a good place.
Like your friends were all gone.
Like your it wasn't just me like your friends, your real friends had left and you were kind of by yourself with these people that you did not love.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we had these kind of like.
I think the technology part is a big factor, though in early, you know 20 years ago long distance relationships.
Right.
Because when you can't text or be in touch or remember when it was, you know, 75 cents a minute.
Yeah.
Yes.
You're trying to keep in touch.
And so it can just feel daunting both to figure out how you're going to live the rest of your life as an individual and getting started with jobs and graduate programs and what have you?
But then to add the added layer of logistics of how will I even visit and keep in touch with this person.
You know, that's a lot.
I feel like that's probably a lot of weight for two.
Well, I know it is because I experienced it myself, right?
That's a lot of weight for two 21 year olds, you know, to try to handle and navigate.
I also think that you know that senior year was just so magical and wonderful that there's a huge just let down, just crash yeah, particularly for me who stayed behind.
And so yeah, i mean it was not a good summer visit and you going off without really having a strong plan.
I would come, and then, once you moved to london, i mean you were living yeah, in a dorm that had a phone on the hallway right, there was no phone in her room um, it was yeah, very hard to stay in touch, Yeah.
And I.
It was hard for me to like, even though I was happy to be in London, but and I think I'm a person who like, is always trying to like make the best of things and like focus on the positive things and throw myself into things
But you know, I was living in this dorm and essentially, like the people on my dorm were like horrible.
There were like a bunch of like essentially like football hooligan type people who were like horribly anti-Semitic and racist and would literally leave piles of pennies outside my door, meaning I'm Jewish.
Like, hey, Jew, here are some pennies for you.
And just would say the most horrible things to me.
It was truly nightmarish.
I've never actually experienced anything quite that bad.
They would pick the lock on my room and come in and try to mess with me in the middle of the night.
Yeah, it was horrible. it was so horrible.
And I you know, and then they also like, would say these like weird, rude things to me, like about like American girls.
Like it was just awful.
And I was a grad student and I was like, why did they place me here?
There were some grad students in the hall, but anyway, it was awful.
And I felt like extremely isolated.
Like, what am I doing?
Like, this was supposed to be this incredible thing that I'm doing.
And I had imagined that, like I have this idyllic idea about like what England would be like and what graduate school in London would be like, and that it would be like really much more kind of like intellectual and exciting than undergrad.
And then it was not like that at all.
And it also was this totally different system where there was a seminar once a week and then you just did work on your own and without really any supervision or guidance.
And I, as an American, like just, I didn't really know how to do this.
Whereas all the other kids had come from Oxford and Cambridge and they felt like 10 years older than me.
And they were all from these super wealthy families.
It's like one of them was like Lucian Freud's daughter, you know, and like they all.
She like published a novel while, literally like while we were in the program, and like they just seemed like real grownups.
And I felt like this child and like I was really in over my head and I didn't know how to tell anyone about this.
And I didn't know how to navigate these systems.
And again, I think about kids today and they have Google and they could just be like what do I do if I'm experiencing hate crimes in my door or whatever?
But there was nothing like that.
And I didn't know how to tell anyone.
And it again, like I talked to my parents for like five minutes a week.
I just recently found my parents saved all of my letters from that time.
And there are like hundreds of them.
Like I wrote to them like every day, but I didn't tell them any of the you know, it was all like I wouldn't just even have it.
You know, it was all like very superficial sort of like stuff.
And I think that there's a way in which my point is really that, like I think I felt like this kind of distance from Kirill because I didn't want to tell him what was going on.
And so I actually think that I sort of like the combination of that like bad visit and then my being in this situation that like was supposed to be amazing, but wasn't, um, like made me sort of pull away from him.
And I didn't even realize that he was really coming.
And And then one day he essentially was like I mean, I knew, but I was like a little bit like what?
Yeah, I mean, definitely over the summer, even before that trip, I had felt you pulling away.
And that made me kind of grasp for even more, which made things worse.
And so and then she did go away and then communication was impossible.
But then I did go.
Yes.
Yeah.
And I remember he showed up.
I had been able to move out of that horrible dorm and move into like a university house with really nice people.
And like a really hardcore drug dealer who was my neighbor.
But other than that, it was all these very nice people.
And I remember that, like Kirill showed, like he arrived in the morning you know you take an overnight flight and he arrived on the doorstep and I just, you know, let him into the vestibule and just like started crying and they could not let go of him.
But in terms of depression, so in January.
So I graduated in December and then January went to India with my parents on a trip.
His father is Indian, I should explain.
It wasn't like random.
No, so that was his first trip back since he graduated college and my first and only trip there.
And you know in retrospect yeah, took mefloquine, which is an antimalarial which I guess is also depression inducing, and uh had a very hard time there.
And then, I mean, can we talk about what you revealed to me before I came?
I think so.
Okay.
And then yeah, I think, talking to Joanna before coming it, you know she'd drawn more and more away.
It came clear that she had been seeing someone else.
Um, and that was always very, very hard, um, And I think I learned that before I went to India.
Is that right?
And so that was kind of stewing on that.
But I did go, nonetheless.
I was like, all right, I'm still going to go and try to work it out.
And did you guys consider I had broken up with this person long before Kiro came?
But Yeah, I didn't learn.
I mean, I guess, yeah, I was just naive.
And I should have seen the signs, but did not.
Well, it's not even science, too.
It's hard because I feel like you know, when you have so little ability to communicate, both in terms of logistics and technology, but also in terms of just being young, and how hard it is to, you know, have these kind of conversations and hard conversations, and would we join conversations?
So much goes unsaid and uncommunicated.
And that, you know, leads to its own issues and challenges.
And so...
In this time period, sort of part one, shall we say, what was kind of the end?
What was the point that you guys sort of officially parted ways or drifted apart?
So I had applied to graduate school in music composition and ended up going to UC Berkeley.
And so I had like a work visa to live in London for like six months.
And so once that was up, I moved back.
And I think, Joanna, you stayed on a little bit longer.
I had to stand to finish my degree, to take my exams and stuff like that.
And then that summer I moved to California.
And I think, did we even talk about it?
Or the assumption was that you would come?
Yeah, we never had a conversation.
The idea was just like that I was going to go there and move there.
Right. with me.
But we never had a straightforward like there was never like a what should we do?
Like you're finishing this like I need to get a doctorate.
What should we do?
Where do we want to live?
What are our plans?
Like we never discussed this.
Yes.
Yeah.
And so I moved there and I think I did come to visit eventually and it was also a terrible visit.
Yeah.
Yes.
And well, the thing that I just want to back up and explain is that When Kirill was in London, we actually had an amazing time.
And he sort of came and was a little bit like, I'm going to make our life amazing.
This is going to be amazing.
And he found us an apartment.
It was like, we can't live in this place.
He found us this beautiful apartment.
And he got a wonderful, fun job.
And we had an amazing time.
Um, but two things like.
One is that I felt that there was this weight of like us not talking about so many things like, especially the future, and like what we wanted, like from life.
And I think I felt a bit like Kirill in college.
You know had been a composer who was really thought of as like a genius and like was such a star and like winning all these awards and having all these performances.
And like I And he knew what he wanted to do and like was pursuing it, like single-mindedly, without any doubt.
And like I did not.
Like I was not like that.
Like I had had something that I had sort of truly wanted to do.
That had been like the thing I wanted for a lot of my life.
And... it became clear in college that like, I wasn't going to do that.
Like I had wanted to be an actor and it just became clear that, like it wasn't going to, I couldn't do it.
It wasn't going to be possible for me.
And I think, you know, I think I just was, I had this kind of like inchoate desire to, to write.
I had always written, but that felt like something that you couldn't do.
You know, I don't know, it felt like something that other people did and I didn't know how to do it.
And I guess I just felt like subsumed a little bit by Kirill's genius.
And in college, where I had a million friends and I had a whole life and people thought that I was like talented and smart and whatever.
It was okay.
But then in the real world he was like this hugely successful, like person who had gotten into the like Berkeley and whatever.
And I was just this person who had been like rejected from all these doctoral programs and like didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and whatever.
And I think I felt it made me very confused, like I felt like we weren't like a team, like figuring out life together.
It felt like Kirill had his life figured out and I was just kind of like tagging along.
And that made me feel really horrible about myself.
And so that manifested itself as my being like, really irritated with him, you know and, but I couldn't talk about any of it with him.
And here again, like I see, my kids, who are like my older kids, are teenagers and they're so like emotionally sophisticated in certain ways and like so aware of things like this.
And I feel like I was not at all.
And like also, coming from a family where, like no one ever talked about anything like feeling wise, like I just did not have the ability to do that, to tell him any of this.
And I didn't even have the ability to figure it out for myself.
So I a little bit feel like, in some ways, like I blew up our relationship by having these feelings that I couldn't quite articulate even to myself, much less to him, kind of.
Like, I just was dumb.
Yeah.
And we were both, I would say, terrible communicators.
In different ways, we were both terrible.
And so, yeah, I mean, the single-mindedness of being a composer started in high school.
And in retrospect, it was also a very, I wish I hadn't done it.
In that way, you know, I wish I had explored other things and tried other paths.
And there's a way in which it was just like the safe option in a weird way, because I had some talent.
Because it's so easy to be a successful composer of classical music.
It's totally safe.
It's just like being an accountant.
But I didn't know what that meant as an undergraduate.
I was totally naive in terms of the job aspect of it, or even graduate school.
It wasn't really until the end of college i realized, oh so the next step is graduate school.
I did not know that um, and and now i i definitely regret it.
You know, i wish i had explored other options and pursued other things.
What do you wish you had done?
I don't know, i don't know.
Uh, i think i'm a smart race car driver.
I just have no idea.
I think i'm a smart guy.
I can do lots of different things and obviously, and uh Yeah, and that composing didn't have to be the solution.
I was just going to say.
I think that's one of the themes that you know I was trying to explore in the novel too, where I think you get to a certain age, like you know, some plateau in middle age, where you're looking back at all these roads not taken right.
And so much.
Of middle age is both.
You know, this kind of pungent combination of nostalgia and regret and analysis right of how did I get here and what, how did it have been different?
And certainly that comes down to careers and jobs, but also, you know, love interest.
And so I think that it's really interesting right when you can circle back and kind of get to some degree a do-over in a lot of ways that doesn't happen in other aspects of life.
So what did you guys think about your quote do-over, if you even think about it that way but this period between you know sort of breaking up and then reconnecting how did that come to be?
How did you come back into each other's lives and after how long?
I mean, I guess we did stay in contact off and on for many years in different ways.
I was in New York frequently for different purposes.
Occasionally we'd see each other.
There were periods where we saw each other very frequently when you'd have to be in New York a lot.
But then she married this guy who I did not understand at all why she was doing this.
And I was like, okay, well, she's chosen to be with this person.
I have to respect that.
And again, Duran has a much better memory of reconstructing the chronology of all of this.
But I mean, the 10,000-foot view is she got married, she had kids.
I eventually got married, did not have kids.
I got divorced.
And yeah, I was in Cambridge.
I had a job here.
And obviously, we're both very active as artists in different ways.
And...
I was just going to meet a friend I had met at Yaddo a few weeks earlier, at this writers' conference that was going on that I knew nothing about, other than Yeah, it was a writers' conference in Boston.
And I went to meet these friends for a drink.
And then... And how many years later was that then that you reconnected?
Uh...
We should do the math.
Or ballpark.
I mean, 2010, you know, just give us a ballpark.
Like, less than 20, more than 10.
So it was 2013, and we had basically broken up in, like, 1995.
But the thing I just want to explain though, that like there's so much that happened before then, like in that, you know, we sort of like never officially broke up.
Like I feel like I should explain that, like I sort of there was this like never articulated idea that I was going to live in Berkeley with Kirill.
I went out to visit him really thinking that I was going to do this.
And then it was like horrible.
It was a nightmare.
Like it was like me surrounded by all of these like male classical music people who were like having extremely boring conversations about like I don't even know what, like the bassoon or whatever.
Like the bassoon part in, like some like obscure piece of music.
And that's what last night was like.
I was at an event last night, which I was supposed to go to.
And thankfully she did not.
I was like, this sounds so boring.
I would rather make pasta for our children and eat it with them.
And like, and I was corrected when that was more fun.
And so, you know, it was such a bad visit.
And also, I guess the other thing is that Kirill seemed like his depressed self rather than the self you know, his regular self.
And he had found this very depressing apartment that had no light at all in this very depressing apartment building.
And it almost felt like a cave and like he was like dwelling in this cave.
And I was kind of like, let's do things, show me things, whatever.
But there was nothing like he would sort of go to class and I would be left in the cave and And I would walk around Berkeley, which is not my favorite part of the Bay.
My family actually lives in the South Bay.
And it became clear that everyone thought the South Bay was horrible.
And my family were superficial monsters for living there.
Everyone at Cal hated Stanford.
My family is all Stanford people.
And I just felt very like, what am I doing?
This is crazy.
What is my life going to be like?
I realized that like, this was also a recession.
This is the mid nineties.
And it felt like the only job possibility for me would be to like literally work in a coffee shop.
And I just was like like I sort of what I wanted was to work in publishing or at a magazine or something like that.
And there was nothing that was not possible.
And just the idea of living in this.
You know, the thing is that I felt like you weren't happy to have me there.
Like you didn't seem happy.
You seemed just sad.
Like I remember lots of moments just like lying.
You were just like lying on the bed in the dark bedroom, you know?
And I'd be like, what should we do?
And you'd be like, I don't know.
What do you want to do?
And I'd be like, but I don't live here.
Like take me, you know, anything.
Like let's go get a burrito, anything.
And you just seemed very, very like I think you were worried about money too, because it was very expensive there.
Anyway, it was a horrible visit and I felt like tied up in knots.
And essentially what happened was that I was actually offered a job in New York working on a film, as a PA on a film.
And I decided to take this job and it was just for a few months.
And then I ended up never going back to Berkeley.
And we like.
So I never was like I am breaking up with you because I still was in love with him.
But I guess I felt like, is like, which person is Kirill?
Like, is he the person lying in the dark bedroom?
Or is he the person who like, moves to London, finds us a gorgeous apartment, gets this amazing fun job.
Like goes to hear, like operas and plays with me every night.
Like wants to?
Like eat every form of sausage he can find in the entire city of London?
Like which person is he?
And I I felt like I don't know.
I didn't know how to take care of the depressed dark cave.
Kirill, you know.
And I think I just ran away.
And anyway, but we got back.
We stayed in touch for so long.
And like, I worked in publishing.
I like... you know, went to Columbia for grad school and we were in touch throughout a lot of it.
I got married, we were in touch throughout a lot of it.
There was a period where Kirill had to come to New York all the time for rehearsals and we would like spend all this time together and I would and like crying like with my head on his shoulder, and be like I just want to be with you.
And he would be like I remember, like there's this period where this kept happening, and you know.
And he would say like, well then, leave your husband, but you can't leave him for me.
You have to leave him and be on your own.
And I would be like, and then I wouldn't do it because I didn't quite know how to do that.
And I also felt like my parents would be really upset with me and I was really like in the thrall of my parents.
And you know, a lot of things happened along the way before that night, including a couple of years before that night, when I walked into this bar and found Kirill there.
Like my first book had come out and I had come to Boston and he wrote to me and said like I see you have an event right in my neighborhood.
Can I come?
And I was like, okay.
And he came and I like almost died.
Like, I don't know how I got through my reading that night.
It was crazy.
And then we saw each other all the time for like, I don't know, six months or something like that.
And he had a girlfriend at the time and was basically like I need to give this relationship a chance and I don't want to break up your family.
So we decided to like not speak to each other ever again, basically.
And, and so there was this year, year and a half where we didn't speak to each other at all.
And during that year increasingly, like every night, I would have this dream, the same dreams, repetitive dream, over and over, that I took the train to Boston and went to his apartment, which I had never seen.
And like, got to his apartment.
And he said, you know, I'm making dinner, but I have to go get a few things.
And I was like, okay.
And I would just get into bed and fall asleep.
So I basically had a dream about going to his apartment and going to sleep for like a year and a half.
So how long have you guys been back together at this point?
It's been 12 years.
12 years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We were apart for 18 years and now back together for 12.
And what is the same or different the second time around?
What have you learned about yourselves and your relationship with this, you know, sort of take two?
I'm having really extreme frizz problems in this weather.
You look amazing.
I was gonna say like, how do you do this?
I mean, I think they're totally different experiences.
I mean we were just kids at college versus adults now with lives and jobs and children and all that sort of thing.
So yeah, I think we are much better about communicating.
Yeah um, in general, I think we both I mean, we both were married to other people and I think that experience, I think we knew that we were with the wrong people with the wrong people and that we're each other's people, but I think it made us understand the value um, fully and so it.
I feel like we, other than like certain, you know, obviously like real world, like stress moments, like we have had like honestly, like an unusually hard Thirsting hours or so with this one child.
But other than like very stressful moments, I think a lot of the time we, our time, is pervaded by like a sense that we're lucky to be together.
And one interesting thing that like we talk about, but we haven't talked about straightforwardly so much, is just that this is a moment when a lot of people that we know are actually going through like marital crises, like people who got married much younger than we did, like maybe like, let's just say, in their mid thirties or that kind of thing.
We definitely know a decent number of people maybe me more than you other people who are like alone, unhappily at our age and filled with regrets about like, not having children or whatever all sorts of things.
Or people who are struggling in their marriages or getting divorced or having affairs or just all sorts of crazy things.
And so we.
I think it's a constant reminder of how lucky we are that we have each other and that we, I think, have a lot of fun in our When we find the time for it.
I think the day-to-day is perhaps more fun than other people we observe.
I think it's true.
So my daughter from my first marriage Pearl, who's like a very, in many, many ways, like a very like wise kid,
Like when people have always been said to me like, oh, she's an old soul.
Like when she was a baby, people would be like, she's an old soul.
And she recently in a letter to me, said thank you for showing me what love can be and what a good relationship is, for modeling that for me with Kirill.
So I think there are a lot of kids of divorce who feel this kind of anger and resentment for their parents and wish their parents would get back together.
And I think that she...
Interestingly like maybe because she sees us enjoying each other's company all the time, doesn't feel that way?
She understands why we're together.
And, you know, she's very close with Kirill too.
And they sort of have a similar personality in certain ways.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
I do think that we both sort of blew up our lives 13 years ago, Joanna more so than I.
Otherwise, in my own way, yes.
I feel like we're still feeling the aftershocks of it, that it has always been a lot of crises, starting with your divorce and then coming out from there.
But we, I think, have weathered all of them together, perhaps in a more successful way than ever we had been together in our 20s.
I don't know.
I think it's true.
I really do.
I think that maybe we both felt very alone when we weren't together.
You know, alone in our marriages, alone in the world.
And I think we both also focused really really radically on are carving out careers as artists in different ways.
Like we both attained.
I now understand like kind of unusual levels of success early for people in our worlds.
And maybe because we both, because we were apart, we were able to kind of be so driven in our fields and channel all of that kind of lonely energy or missing each other.
I think for me, it's true.
Like I really, I miss Kirill all the time, constantly, even from the very beginning.
Like I felt very much like I had made this mistake.
I destroyed my life by leaving him and there was no way that I could ever.
He would never forgive me.
And so a lot of that energy I sent into writing books and just furiously, like I was going to make up for it with my art and career.
And so I think maybe we both feeling very settled in our work allows us to be happy and content together like, and we don't have to strive as much professionally so that.
But we do sometimes both think that if we had like, if I had moved to Berkeley and lived in the apartment with the orange carpeting and like worked in a coffee shop and, you know, somehow tried to like make friends and done whatever, I don't know what would have happened to me.
Like, would I have become a writer?
Would have I don't know what, but we both, I think, feel like we're not sure we would have weathered that time that, even though it's really sad and upsetting to think about, like maybe we needed to be apart and to be unhappy without each other.
Maybe not for quite as long.
Yeah.
Maybe like 10 years.
Even like five years.
I do feel some regret of like not having spent like our mid to late twenties or thirties together, which is such a fun time in some ways, you know, without kids and exploring more together.
But we're a little bit trying to make up for it now and also like without the financial responsibilities that you have when you have three kids.
We have a, we have my two kids from my first marriage and then we have a daughter together Izzy, who is nine now, and and so we've never you know, as adults we've never been together without kids and we and never without like the kind of tremendous financial responsibility of kids and a house that is actually like falling apart and you know, just normal, normal like life, middle-class person things.
But last summer for we also.
The other thing I should mention that I think possibly a lot of listeners might relate to is we also have never been together without aging parents and the responsibilities of that.
And, you know, my parents were quite elderly and my mother passed away about a year and a half ago.
And a strange thing is that that actually allowed us to do some of the things that we didn't get to do together in our 20s and 30s because we had not actually fully realized it.
But her care and our sort of needing to visit her and Kirill's parents, who don't live near us every single moment that we had, that the kids had off from school or anything, took up a lot of all of our time.
And so just recently we've been able to.
I think we've made a big effort to do things that we didn't get to do together.
Yeah.
I love that.
I mean, I think we all have that feeling of making up for lost time.
And sometimes that happens in our relationships too.
And I think the other thing is people really seem to romanticize the high school sweetheart relationship or the college sweetheart relationship, right.
All these relationships that have gone the distance from youth for 20, 30 years.
But I think you know, listening to your story and the stories you know some other of the couples that Joe and I have talked to there is something very romantic about reconnecting with somebody and making so much more of a conscious choice, and an informed choice, based on you know who you are and what the circumstances in your life are as a bona fide adult.
And though it makes it much more complicated, in a way the complexities add up to the meaning of it, meaning you're having to overcome and deal with so much more right coming together in your 40s and 50s than 20s and 30s.
And I think we should...
I don't know, idealize and romanticize these same relationships, right?
In the same way, because no matter when you find love or re-find it, it's a really special, magical thing that I think then you know to even appreciate more.
And so that really struck me in your story that you really seem to appreciate your relationship and appreciate each other.
And you know, some of these second chance romances feel to me a little faded right.
Everyone talks about, you know, I had a sense from the beginning that this was my person, right?
And life gets in the way, but it's still like that, that feeling deep in you, that you have found, you know, another human and soul to connect with.
And you know it's nice to think that the universe is somehow recognizes that and brings people who have that powerful connection back together.
So like you, so thank you guys so much.
Is there anything that I haven't asked you or that you would like to add before we go?
I think it just helps that we have similar senses of humor.
I think that's something that has maintained us for decades.
Yeah, it's true.
Yeah, and also I think that humor is really central to both of us as people.
So we're able to find humor both of us, I think, because of the way we were raised, or who knows why.
And so we're able to find humor even in things that are not even remotely funny.
Grab your copy of All the Men I've Loved Again wherever books are sold.
Committed is executive, produced and reported by me, Joe Piazza and, in this case of Recommitted, by Christine Pride.
Our show is executive produced by Ramsey Yount.
And if you have any Recommitted or Committed stories, you can email us at joe at influentialmediabiz.
Have a great day.
