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There's no Milo here.
Who picked up my son from school?
I'm going to need the name of everyone that could have a connection.
You don't understand.
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Hey everybody, it's Meredith.
You kind of get a bonus episode today.
Sort of.
Let me start with the biggest piece of news.
We are now collecting stories for the next season of Love Letters.
I am so excited about that.
So please email us your story to get on the podcast.
You might say, Meredith, what are you looking for?
What makes a good love letter story?
Well, you might tell us about a relationship moment that was extra happy or extra sad.
Those tend to make great episodes.
You may tell us how you answered a question about your relationship life, or about a question you've never been able to answer like.
Will I ever be able to meet someone if I live in a town with a population of 800 people, all of whom I went to high school with?
That's an excellent question.
Some of our best stories are about what happened after a breakup, like how you rose like a phoenix and made yourself amazing, or how you still hope to do that, but are not quite amazing yet.
I will tell you I happen to love stories about technology.
If you've abandoned technology or all social media and it made you happier in love, I want to know.
Or maybe you went the other way and now have an AI boyfriend.
Tell us about him.
I also adore stories that involve problem solving in general.
Like maybe you couldn't decide whether to get back together with someone who wronged you and then you did and learned it could be okay.
Or maybe you tried to decide whether to be non-monogamous and something happened to help you decide whether that was a good idea.
Anyway, you know what I like.
You listen.
To submit your story for the next season of the podcast.
Email loveletters at bostoncom with your tale.
Put my story in the subject line.
Tell us the best way to reach you.
That's loveletters at boston.com.
And please put my story in the subject line.
Now for a bonus episode, or more accurately, a rewind.
I'm going to replay a season two episode today.
It's a primer for next week's new episode.
For some of you, this is going to be brand new.
For others, you might remember that season two featured a series of stories about how to meet someone.
It was very public service-y for the single people.
This particular episode, which we called Beware the Fairy Tales, was very special to me for reasons you'll be able to guess by the end.
Anyway, take a listen to one of my favorite episodes and get ready for next week, when you'll get a new related story.
Here we go.
One day in college, Kat agrees to help out a friend in film school.
This friend is making a spoof of a 1940s noir film featuring a hard-boiled detective and a femme fatale.
She's trying to seduce him.
Pat shows up to the set thinking she's playing some small role.
But when she gets there, surprise, she is the femme fatale.
Playing the detective is this guy she doesn't know.
He was already dressed in costume in the tan overcoat and his hair was slicked back and very kind of dark, brooding man.
So I was quite immediately very attracted to him.
In the final scene, they kiss.
Their bodies are locked together on a leather couch.
Kat does not mind this one bit.
Then the director yells cut.
And that's when they notice it.
My fishnets were actually caught in the fly of his pants.
So our crotches were literally stuck together.
Sitting on the ground, sort of like mutually spread-eagled with someone else trying to disentangle your crotches.
There's kind of little left to the imagination.
From the Boston Globe and PRX, this... is love letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Today, I'm going to explore one of the biggest tropes of dating.
It's this idea that a cute origin story is somehow meaningful or necessary to a successful romantic relationship.
And if you don't have one, well, you're doing it wrong.
This is something I hear a lot from people.
Everybody wants a meet-cute story.
It's like they've watched so many rom-coms, seen and heard so many narratives that involve these perfect introductions that anything less feels like a letdown.
I even had one letter writer tell me she didn't want to meet someone online, that she'd preferred to meet a guy at the library.
She made it clear that she thought an adorable first connection in the book stacks would, I don't know, make for an amazing relationship, that it might feel more like fate.
Let me tell you what happened with Kat.
So she's on the ground with this guy she doesn't know and she tries to free her stockings from his crotch.
I remember that my face was red and we were crying and laughing and there's not much else you can do in that situation other than go with it.
Can you describe sort of what was happening in the two minutes of being stuck together?
Did you know you were having sort of a bonding moment?
It was, I think, a bonding moment and kind of broke down the tension that would have normally been there when you're meeting a stranger or shooting a weird scene like that.
I mean, how much more awkward can things get?
After a couple minutes of super cringy fumbling, Kat decides there's only one thing to do.
I think eventually I just grabbed it and ripped, because at some point you've just got to, something's got to give.
And sometimes that something is fishnets.
And then we dated for five years.
Maybe that's what makes those moments special is when You happen to have opened your eyes at the same time someone else opens their eyes.
And in that moment, that's when that connection is made.
One might say it was a pretty cinematic start to a relationship.
But in the end, Kat and the detective break up.
They're different people who like different things, she says.
He's quiet, prefers dinners at home.
She's more social and outgoing.
But she'll always love the funny romantic story of how they met.
For me, it's a tale that raises a key question.
How important is the origin of relationship anyway?
When we're trying to meet someone, does it really matter how we do it?
I mean, I often tell letter writers that it does not matter.
But I also know a great story can spark a great relationship.
To get into the psychology of meet-cutes and our craving for them, I went to a source I knew would have a lot to say on the subject.
I'm Katie Kutugno.
I write messy, complicated feminist YA novels, most recently Nine Days and Nine Nights.
So if somebody were to say to you, what is a meet cute, how would you answer them?
A meet cute is a trope that I think of as coming out of romantic comedies, whereby our two romantic leads meet in a way that is sort of unlikely in real life but delightful in a contrived sort of way.
You know, you get into a cab from two different sides of the car or you round the corner and bump into each other and drop your papers.
The meet cute scenario figures in some of Katie's own novels.
In fact, she's a contributor to the YA anthology that's actually called Meet Cute.
When I ask Katie for other examples of meet cute stories, she brings up a classic, the movie You've Got Mail from 1998, starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
So You've Got Mail is the story of Kathleen Kelly, proprietress of Shop Around the Quarter, which is a tiny bookstore on the Upper West Side in New York City, and Joe Fox, who is the CEO of Fox Books, which is... a Barnes & Noble-esque.
This is obviously very much a movie of the 90s because the horrifying villain is Barnes & Noble.
Now all we want to do is root for Barnes & Noble.
I bought so many Christmas presents at Barnes & Noble this year.
What is it about the meet-cute in You Got Mail that appeals to you?
I think it's the idea of meeting someone in real life and not knowing that they are the person that you are already so intimate with in so many other ways.
The idea that anybody that you meet could be the person that you already sort of think is your soulmate.
Katie and I talked about how online dating has only made this yearning worse.
Our app experiences can feel so empty and dehumanizing that we end up pining for a good, old-fashioned hands-on-the-same-Starbucks-order kind of moment.
She talks about online dating this way.
It can sort of feel transactional.
There's an element of feeling like we are both on this app because we are trying to meet someone and potentially, you know, either hook up or have a relationship or whatever.
But it has less of a feeling of sort of magic and happenstance, I think, for some people.
And that's why we sort of fetishize the meet-cutes.
I usually think about meet cute stories a lot, maybe because my family is full of them.
Let's start with my parents.
It's the early 1960s.
My now late mom Leslie, and my dad Dave, are both teenagers living in different places outside of New York City.
She's in Yonkers.
He's on Long Island.
They both attend this weekend music program at Juilliard, the performing arts school in the city.
She's a pianist, a prodigy, some would say.
She had come into the orchestra to do some piano thing, and that was the first time I saw her and my heart went a little pitter-patter.
What do you remember of what she looks like?
She had hair your color.
She did?
Maybe a little darker.
Okay.
And she had a good butt, a great butt.
That's what I remember.
Did she walk in backing up?
No, she just walked in.
They don't actually talk while at Juilliard.
He's too chicken to approach her.
A year passes.
The next summer, they both enroll in a music program at Dartmouth College.
At this point, my dad is 15.
My mom is like 16 or 17.
So what happened?
Oh, so we did talk.
And before long, we were boyfriend and girlfriend for the entire summer.
She was in the girls' dorm.
I was in the men's dorm.
And you courted each other.
We courted each other.
Went out. did everything, practiced in the same practice rooms, had a great time this summer.
You played music together.
We played lots of music together.
When the summer ends, they return to their respective hometowns.
My dad doesn't have his driver's license by this point.
In order to see my mom, his family has to drive him there.
My Aunt Nancy, my dad's much younger sister, remembers their whole family piling into the car together.
Nancy tells it like this.
So we all went along for his romantic dates, at least a few times, I remember.
To me, they looked like an adorable couple.
Once my dad finally gets his license, he borrows my grandfather's car for a proper date with my mom.
She had a whole day planned.
It was wonderful.
We were going to go visit a friend of their family and we're going to drive up there and spend the day.
P.S.
The day was raining.
And it was four leaves all over the ground.
And we weren't on the road for three or four miles when the car naturally I was probably speeding and it hit the center divider.
It slipped into the center divider, which pushed the fender right into the wheel, which made the car impossible to steer.
So we careened off one divider to the next divider and back again to the center.
And the car was totaled.
Fortunately, we were not injured in any way.
This accident doesn't help the long-distance relationship.
Both families are pretty pissed.
My parents do meet again once more in New York City, but that's it.
The young romance peters out.
Several years go by.
My dad goes to Butler University in Indianapolis.
He plays with the Indianapolis Symphony.
But he decides to come back east.
He's accepted into Juilliard to continue his training.
And lo and behold my first, or possibly second day at Juilliard.
I walk into a required class called secondary piano.
And who's there?
But Leslie, my old girlfriend, your mom.
And, like his first day, he calls home and says Mom Mom, you'll never guess who my piano instructor is.
The odds were incredible, and I was absolutely, totally flabbergasted the third time.
It almost seems like a sign at that point.
It was.
To me, it was a sign.
We'll be right back after the break.
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OK, so this is adorable, right?
My parents happened to reconnect to Juilliard years after first finding each other because my mom is teaching the piano class that my dad has randomly been assigned to.
It was like, holy mackerel.
I don't think it was two days and we were dating.
The only problem is she's faculty and he's now a student.
And that is against the rules.
And you know we'd be the huggy bear and kissy face in the elevators when no one was there and hiding out in the hallways like little kids.
And it was quite amusing to a lot of people.
I perceived it as like the perfect kind of romance because they were both musicians.
They met again after so many years.
That just seemed like, you know, out of a fairy tale.
My mom was like my best friend.
She died in 2013.
But I remember her telling me this meet-cute story when I was younger, how it felt like fate.
No matter how many times my dad disappeared, he seemed to be put in her path again until it stuck and they got married.
I'll come back to this story in a minute.
First, I want to get to another family meet-cute.
This one involves my sister, Brett.
So Brett had been through this terrible breakup with this guy she'd met at a holiday market in New York City.
She was so miserable after getting dumped that a year later, when she passes another holiday market in the city, she knows it could mean terrible memories.
But my sister can't help herself.
I love Christmas.
Like I am like a Jew that was deprived of Christmas.
And I love Christmas, as you know, with all my heart.
Like I would have a tree in here for like seven months out of the year.
Then something happens at the market.
She sees a guy.
I look in front of me goddamn right in front of me and i see my now husband who looks just like seth rogan which was like hashtag marriage goals staring off into space because he's probably super baked.
And i remember thinking that guy brit goes for it.
She just talks to him, turns out he's a glassblower named ben.
They eventually fall in love.
When people ask Brett how she and Ben met, she's happy to tell the whole story about how she almost avoided the holiday market, about how something compelled her to look.
But otherwise, she says she doesn't really think about that day.
What meant more, she says, is everything that happened after they met, which was much more work and more boring, but far more essential to their marriage than their initial meeting.
Ben is 10 years younger than Brett.
Initially, he wasn't ready to commit.
Once we got together and once and look, he would break up with me every six to eight months and be like I'm not ready for this.
And I would like lower my way back into like, you know, being, I would talk my way back into it.
Eventually I said to him four years in, you know, you're not ready for this.
If this is not your thing.
And by then we were living together.
Go do your own thing, because I don't want the HPV and I don't want to deal with this anymore.
I can't, I can't have you do both at the same time.
Just go off and do your own thing.
I will live with a broken heart.
Then he like came back later with a, with a, with a ring, and proposed and we're married.
Now we have a really, really good marriage.
So really i don't live in memories at all when it comes to ben.
I would think about that that, that first sparkly christmassy moment.
More if we had more shitty times now.
But we don't.
Let's go back to my parents.
They had that fairy tale start But in the end they did not have a great marriage.
After many rocky years and a whole lot of family misery, my dad moved away and they got divorced.
As relationships evolve, they evolve many different ways.
People fall out of love.
There are things that happen.
Sometimes you meet people and you fall in love and you never really know who they are.
So you know, the meeting and the love and that flame and the chemistry you know, can go either way either a lifetime relationship or one that doesn't last forever.
My dad wound up remarrying a woman he met through a friend.
As for my mom, the most in love I ever saw her was with a man she met on a dating website.
There was no traditional meet-cute, just some awkward messages and then coffee and then more.
I mean, think about all the other people on Tinder or Hinge or OkCupid today.
Think about how many of them are on those apps at any given moment.
What are the odds that two people will see each other and swipe right at the same time and then get along in person?
If that happens, isn't that cute enough?
As I thought more about our obsession with meet-cutes, I wanted to get one more perspective.
So I talked to Valerie Complex.
She's a film critic and screenwriter in New York.
I think it's fair to say that Valerie Complex is pretty down on pop culture meet-cute stories.
She has problems with how inaccurately they depict real-life impressions of courtship and love.
I think rom-coms are a way for us to escape, but the reality is that romanticizing romance isn't always a good thing, because it doesn't always stay like that.
I asked her to pick some movies that do romance better.
She mentions Five-Year Engagement. the Jason Segel-Emily Blunt comedy from 2012.
Like these people who are already engaged and it's like how they stay engaged and then they are not engaged anymore and then they get back engaged and get married.
So it's like, that's interesting.
Like I don't, like how you meet is interesting.
What is it about the relationship that's keeping you two together?
The plot actually reminds me a little of Brett's story.
You have these two people who have to work so hard in the early years of relationship just to keep things afloat, only to be made stronger by that process.
Because a lot of meetings and origin stories can be nice and then you can't function as a pair.
Or it's hell, it's abusive, or you know whatever.
You just don't know.
So I think it's important to not just look at how you meet, but look at the person and you know, really hone in on who they are.
I get that.
I mean, I am a sucker for vampire romances —
But I will concede that once you get to know your undead significant other, they might want to eat you.
And then it's game over.
Okay, now that we can kind of agree that meeting on apps can be just as romantic as anything else, let's check in with Erin.
On our last episode, Erin and I got on OkCupid together and I began sorting through potential suitors for her.
After a few days of swiping, I have to admit, I started getting secondhand dating fatigue.
There were just so many faces.
And for whatever reason, so many photos of men holding fish they'd just caught.
And there were also so many people who like rock climbing.
I don't think Erin wants to do much rock climbing.
I found myself logging off a lot.
Luckily, Erin was swiping too.
And she was not deterred, even though she was the one who originally got fed up and quit all of the apps.
It was Erin who pressed on when my interest waned.
Her persistence paid off.
She got two dates within just a few weeks of being back on OkCupid.
Hey, Marinus, it's Erin.
So it's Saturday night and I'm about to leave for the first of two dates of the weekend.
Date number one is with someone we'll call Garlic Guy.
Before they meet, Garlic Guy sends Erin some videos on how to slice garlic because Erin is looking to perfect her knife skills.
Erin finds this charming.
I'm actually looking forward to this one, which is probably a mistake, seeing as I get burned so many times.
But I feel like I can be excited for this one.
He seems interesting.
He seems interested in me.
And so I'm hoping it goes well.
I'll check in after the date.
He'll let you know how it went.
All right.
They have drinks at a couple of different places, and it goes okay.
Not terrible, but not great either.
I'm calling you on Saturday night after date one of two.
It wasn't the worst.
It wasn't the best.
There was some questions asked of me from him, but...
It was mostly just me going oh yeah, oh okay, which is fine for a while, and then it just gets exhausting.
So I wouldn't really make the effort to see him again.
But I'm glad to have gone out and it was good for our sort of.
I guess this was our first, my first date from our OkCupid adventure together.
So we'll see.
Date number two is tomorrow morning, Sunday morning.
We're going to the Harvard Art Museum.
So I'll check in before that and after that, and I'm hoping it's a little bit better.
Night.
Date number two is what the guy will call Art Dad.
He has kids.
We had a really nice time looking at art and talking about art.
I hadn't done that in a while, so it was nice.
And then we had coffee and had a nice two-way conversation which is refreshing for a lot of these dates.
So he's someone I'd like to see again for sure and see more art and talk about art and possibly go to see some music.
I give Aaron credit for getting back on the apps and making these dates happen.
I mean, if Aaron does succeed in finding a guy on OkCupid, fantastic.
I'd feel no different if it happened at a library or the supermarket or at some beautiful holiday stroll during Christmas time.
When Erin meets someone and I really hope she does it will be a great story, no matter how it happens.
If you want to hear more about my sister Brett, or about how my family turned me into an advice columnist, check out my memoir.
It's called Can't Help Myself.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe and PRX.
The podcast is produced, edited, and engineered by Amy Padula.
Audio mixing, sound design, and mastering by Ned Porter.
Music by APM.
Our executive producers are Scott Hellman and Janice Page.
Special thanks to Linda Henry and Brian McGrory.
We want to hear your stories of dating and meeting people and not meeting people.
Email us at lovelettersatboston.com or tweet at us using the hashtag loveletterspodcast.
On the next episode, I explore a different reality of dating.
How much it Sometimes love is not cheap.
Be sure to subscribe to Love Letters on Apple Podcasts Spotify, Radio Public or wherever you listen.
And if you like the show, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or online at lovelettersshow.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
And, as Joe Fox says in, You've Got Mail.
I just want to say that all this, nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.
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