A few months into Lindsay Jill Roth's transatlantic courtship with a handsome English man, he made an offhand comment that hit her like a gut punch.
But I don't know you well enough yet.
Despite hours-long conversations on FaceTime and memorable dates in London and New York City, Lindsay realized that he was right.
They didn't know each other very well.
And their budding relationship, while romantic, was hardly practical.
And so Lindsay proposed something radical.
She asked him if he would be completely willing to be vulnerable and honest and to let her ask anything that she wanted.
She dug deep, she did research and she came up with a list of questions to ask so that they could try to do this, so they could try to make this work, so they could figure out not just how to know each other, but how to know if the other person was the right person for them.
Lindsay has now taken this research, all of these questions, and put it in a book called Romances and Practicalities.
Spoiler alert.
It worked for her because the two of them are now married and living in London with their kids.
Here's Lindsay's love story, a little peek into how they made long distance work and, most importantly, how they got to know each other across an ocean.
Lindsay.
Jo.
I want to start out Can you tell me your love story from start to finish?
I could write a whole book about it, but can I tell you my love story from start to finish?
Oh gosh, no one's ever asked me a question like that before, Joe.
Oh, I love being the first.
Tell me how the two of you met.
So I was single. in New York for a very long time.
And for people who are listening to this, that's when Joe and I met, when we were both single in New York.
We were literally standing next to each other in a line to go to a restaurant.
And we started talking and both single, both with single friends, ended up all having dinner together.
And that was the start of Joe and my love story.
But it was.
You know, I love that because we were literally in line for my favorite sushi restaurant, right.
Yes.
And it always had a long line.
It was BYO.
We were just four single people waiting for sushi in our 30s.
And do you know what?
I can't tell you the last time I waited in a line to go to a restaurant, to be honest with you.
So it was really meant to be that we all met that night.
And that we also talked to each other because this was 12, 13, 14 years ago, right?
Yeah, it was pre-Nick.
Pre-NIC, pre-NIC.
But we weren't all staring at our phones either.
We just randomly talked to each other.
And I think it's such a good reminder to talk to other humans because you might become friends, might become lifelong friends.
You're so right.
And it is funny because not only did we all sit and eat together, but we kept in touch and have really shared in each other's past throughout the years.
It really was meant to be.
And actually, I have to dig it up.
I have a photo from that night.
Shut your mouth.
You have a photo from that night, so I'm going to find it for you.
Oh my God, I love it.
I love it.
Okay, yes.
So that is how we met and we were all single.
So I was single and I was walking down everyone else's aisles and I was really happy for them.
But I was not happy about it because I couldn't find my person.
And I realized that I was slipping away and I was really...
I was trying to be who I thought each of these men wanted me to be as I was dating, because I just wanted it versus the right it.
So I was... This is very short, but I ended up being set up with this British man.
It was a Hail Mary of setups.
It was not intentional.
It was like, he's single, she's single.
Let's just throw them together.
And it happened to work.
And there was immediate chemistry between this British man and me.
But...
30 minutes before our second date.
He had been in New York on an open-ended work project and he was told his project was ending.
So he was going back to London.
So boom, we were either going to never see each other again or figure something out.
And we had really liked each other from the beginning.
And I have to say that first, long distance, kind of what it forced us to do, forced us to start communicating with each other.
And we liked each other to keep doing that.
And so...
We talked and we communicated.
We saw each other when we could.
And what happened was... And this was a pivotal moment.
I don't know what I said at the time, because I didn't realize I was on the precipice of something huge.
But we were on a FaceTime and I said something.
And his response was, I just don't know you well enough yet.
In this beautiful British accent.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I love a British accent.
Right?
It just makes anything sound pretty.
And so...
I could have done at that moment what I had done in every other relationship I had been in, or when I was sort of starting to see someone, and I could have run.
But I decided to listen to him.
Maybe it was the accent.
I decided to listen to what he was saying.
He was saying we don't know each other well enough yet.
So what does that mean?
He wants to get to know me.
So I literally got off the phone with him.
I felt like I was like stabbed in the heart because I just thought I like you and I'm trying to open myself up to you.
And...
I literally, I Googled, Jo, I Googled how to get to know someone better.
I mean, I did this exact same thing when I met Nick, when I met Nick Astor and when we got engaged in three months.
I was like, how, what question should I ask?
How do I get to know someone better?
How do I, how do I speed this up?
Well, so that started my journey.
To look, we at that point were in different countries, were different religions.
He's saying he doesn't know me well enough yet.
So what religion are you in?
What is he?
So I'm Jewish and he's Church of England, which is like Protestant.
And there were things that were like God, if we are going to do this, I need to put my fears aside and talk to this guy.
And that sent me down a path of of figuring out a way for me to have healthy, long-term love which, in turn, has given this gift to so many other people, so that they can achieve healthy, long-term love by reading this book that I've created.
I love this.
I love this.
So what did the two of you do?
How did you get to know each other?
So...
I came up with this idea.
And the crazy thing is is that I called it from the beginning romances and practicalities, because I thought we've got romance.
We've got good chemistry.
There's great sex here.
But the practical things are what are going to either make or break us.
So actually, I like to say we couldn't get to know each other with all of our senses.
We only had two out of the five, right?
We could hear each other and we could see each other when we were apart.
We couldn't just... taste or smell or touch each other.
So we had to communicate.
So I said to him one day I was like hey, I know this sounds a little crazy, but I feel I'm listening to you.
And I feel like if we really want to get to know each other, then we need to be able to ask each other anything and everything like nothing's off limits.
So, if you're a game, I just want to come up with a massive list of questions we can ask each other and see what happens.
Step one for him and any other people who do this exercise is finding someone who's going to go there with you.
And he did want to go there with me.
And that was step one.
Which I think is so important, right?
Because right from the beginning, you want someone who's going to be willing to go there.
Because if they're not willing to go there before you get married, I say this all the time.
I think that prior to marriage, it should not be hard.
You know there can be challenges, but it gets so much harder when you throw kids and aging parents into the mix.
So you want a yes person going into this relationship.
Yeah, you wanna start your relationship by communicating, because it's so easy to stop asking each other questions once you're married or if you choose to be in a long-term partnership.
This book isn't just about marriage.
But you stop asking people questions because you're living in a routine, you're just getting through the day, you have kids and jobs and mortgages and expenses and life, and you stop actually curiously talking to each other.
So if you start that pattern early, then it's something that can continue.
And actually, the crazy thing was, was that it was super sexy.
Like we'd start on these conversations and we'd have a bowl of ice cream, we'd have a glass of wine, we'd be walking in the park and we'd be going home to have sex.
Because communicating, really talking to someone and looking at them and seeing them for what they are, is sexy.
It is actually sexy.
I could not agree more.
We used to do these questions before we went to bed at night and then we'd do it.
So, I mean, it just- Yeah, you'd do the questions and then you'd do the thing.
We'd do the questions because I go, I mean, much like you, I didn't have your book back then.
I didn't have romances and practicalities, but I did Google.
There was one New York Times article that I found.
It's like 40 questions or whatever to ask.
And so-
What were the hardest questions for you guys to answer?
And actually, let's take a quick break first.
And then when we get back, I want to know what the hardest questions were for you to answer.
You got it.
Okay, we are back.
You guys are going through all of these questions.
You're still long distance, right?
You're still living in New York and he's in London?
Yeah, he's in London.
I'm in New York.
At that time, his job was a little more flexible than mine.
So he was coming to see me quite a bit and I hadn't been able to see him as much.
So he was experiencing my life before I was experiencing his life.
But we were doing all the things, right?
We were FaceTiming, we were sending each other packages, we were writing each other notes.
But most importantly, we were talking to each other.
And then, of course, when we were together, we had the physical things we couldn't do when we were apart.
But So for us, now we didn't do everything right.
And this book goes into what we did right, what we didn't do right and could have done better.
But hands down.
The hardest question for us was the religion chapter, because we knew we wanted to have kids.
And it was funny.
I'm so grateful now that I'm married to someone who came from a different religion as me, because I dug deep into being Jewish and what that meant for me culturally religiously, and how it impacted my life in so many more ways than I would have done had I been with someone who was also Jewish.
So what was the hardest for us actually became such a blessing, because I now know so much more about my beliefs and my cultural system, because I was asking someone to partake in things with me.
And so we set a pattern early on of how we wanted to live our lives together as two people who shared a spirituality and a lot of the same beliefs, but who came from different religions.
And how did you resolve this?
Like, how did it end up manifesting for the two of you?
So, for example, when we were planning our wedding ceremony, I had said look, these are rituals that are important to me.
Are there rituals that are important to you?
And we both brought to the table the things that were important to us.
For example, I realized that I like the seven blessings of Judaism, but I didn't necessarily need Hebrew at our wedding.
And that's not something he can understand either.
So what we did together was we each interpreted each of the seven blessings and wrote them together for us.
So we took something that was important to me and made it important to us.
And what's so cool about that is nobody else has those seven blessings but us, yet they're based in a religious practice that I admire.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So spoiler alert, you guys get married, okay?
Yeah, we get married.
We have two kids.
You get married, you have two kids.
You move mostly to London, right?
Back up for me.
When did you know that you'd done enough questions?
When did you both finally realize, okay, we know each other now?
Well, we're still asking questions and our kids are asking questions and we've set up this really nice pattern of from questions comes touching base, right.
So we set up patterns.
So, like we talk about our finances, often we talk about our sex life.
We talk about our kids lives.
We have routines and rituals that we do.
So Once you start getting through these questions, look, there are 250 of them.
That's not meant to scare people.
It's just everyone comes at being single or being in a relationship from a different point of view.
So I wanna give everybody an on-ramp to finding healthy love.
And the hard chapter for me is not gonna be the hard chapter for you.
It's gonna be something else, whether it's animals and pets, sex, or money.
So when you set yourself up by talking about things.
Look, I always say it's easier to revisit something you've spoken about at the beginning when it comes up a few years later, than to have to broach it for the first time.
Imagine if you're unhappy in your sex life, but you've never talked about your sex life before.
That's a big one.
That's a scary one to bring up.
But I know a lot of people that that has happened too.
I do.
Or the big one, Nick and I talked about this.
We've been doing the questions.
We have a lot of friends who didn't talk about how many kids they want.
And one of them wants one and the other one wants three.
And one person wins out.
And then 10 years later, those people are pissed.
And it's so funny because the how many kids to have question, that's a money question.
That's a where and how do you live question. question, do you live in a city?
Do you live in a suburb?
Do you pay for private school?
Do you go to public school?
Do you buy a house?
Do you rent a house?
Like all of these things are actually intertwined.
So I feel like if you're not talking about something as big as how many kids do we want?
What else are you not talking about?
Exactly, exactly.
What do you think was hardest for him?
Do you think it was the religion for him?
Or was there something else that was challenging?
That's a really great question.
I wish he was here to answer it, but he's so funny, so supportive, but he's run away from any interview question.
He's such a private guy.
What would the... He's so chilled.
And I think for him, it was the initial wrap my head around.
I'm really going to show someone all of myself.
I think once he wrapped his head around the concept, which I find men do find a little bit harder initially
And then I've seen so many texts from people who have done it, from men they've done it with saying this worked.
I'm so glad we did it.
Oh my God, that was so great.
Can we do more?
So once the floodgates open up, it's like, let's keep going at this.
So I think he had to really just wrap himself around.
I found someone I wanna go there with, and I'm gonna allow myself to do that.
So you guys figure this out.
When did you finally get engaged?
How long did that take?
So we were met and married in two years, which is so funny because when you're in your 30s and you know this from your experience, and you moved faster than I did
Every minute feels like a lifetime.
But now that I look back on it, it was like it was just two years.
But to me, it felt like, gosh, we are dragging.
I know this is the person I want to be with.
And it wasn't like a movie moment.
It wasn't like in Clueless when she says, I love Josh and the fountains change colors.
And it's this outside epiphany, right?
It was this beautiful safety and comfort that I knew and felt in my heart that I had found the right person, that I was 100 million percent myself with this person.
And I'd been waiting to feel that.
And in ways I would ask my friends, how do you know?
How do you know?
And they said, you would just know.
And they were right.
But I did the work, obviously, to get there.
But I did just know.
Did you?
I did.
I did, actually.
And Also as a woman who was 34.
When I met my husband the first time I saw Nick Astor, it felt like oh, there you are.
Oh, okay, there.
But it wasn't fireworks or rollercoaster dropping.
And as we did the work, as we did the talking and getting to know each other and traveling around the world together, I was like oh okay, I did know.
And it felt like such a cliche, but I did.
Cliches are cliches for a reason.
I totally agree.
And are there questions that you've answered currently with him from the book that you hadn't talked about before?
Oh, that's such a good question.
It's so funny that you're asking me that because my brain is essentially a sieve.
Just things fall right out of it.
When we did it, we had gone through the how do you handle... finances, right?
How do you feel about debt?
I was raised by feral wolves who just spent to the limit on their credit card.
Nick's parents are very responsible.
And so we got through all of that.
We'd gotten through how many kids do you want, which we both agreed to.
And then, you know, I changed my mind and went for three.
How did you go to that conversation?
How to, whether or not to have three kids?
Or did you just let him knock you up?
I just let him, I just let him go for it.
I just, well, and you know, I told him, I'm like, you could get a vasectomy or I'm not on the pill.
So your choice.
And that just happened.
And also we were both old people.
So I thought that it wouldn't happen, but it did.
It did.
And yeah, what one of the things when we were doing it recently and we've been together 10 years, our 10 year wedding anniversary is coming up in September was do you want to parent the way your parents?
Because we're in the thick of it.
We have a seven, a five, and a two-year-old right now.
And I said, absolutely not.
And it was interesting for Nick whose parents I do think were just genuinely good and responsible parents to think of the ways that he wants to be different now.
Maybe a little more emotionally available, touchy-feely, things like that.
My kids make fun of him a lot because they say that daddy can't cuddle.
Daddy's a bad cuddler.
That's so funny how they call stuff out and they just say it.
They just say it.
They just say it.
And to be fair, he's a good cuddler with me, but he is.
He's very stiff and awkward and waspy and Midwestern with the kids.
Charlie's like, he's touching my head in this weird way and just...
He's like, I don't know.
He's trying.
We know what Charlie's going to say when someone asks him one day if he wants to parent different from his parents.
Yeah, exactly.
He'll be like, I just prefer to cuddle better, like my mom.
So that one was an interesting one.
And then also the one that changed when we talked about it recently was how does your job define you?
How do you want your job to define you?
How will you define success?
Because Nick is figuring out what to do next.
I feel like a lot of people right now.
I feel like I have so many friends with marriages where one person has been laid off and they don't know the future feels very precarious.
And one person also may have to completely pivot and do something totally new.
That's a huge thing in a marriage.
So that one brought up a lot of things.
We have a date night tonight, so we're gonna do more.
Oh, I love this.
And actually, you bring up something that's really important to mention.
And that is, I get asked this question all the time.
So you ask these things at the beginning, right?
Or can you ask them at all times?
Yes.
If you're single, you should be looking at these things, because a lot of people don't know what to ask.
A lot of people don't even think, how do I like to argue?
Or how do I argue?
Or how was the perception of my family from the outside looking in growing up different from the inside out?
Things like that you can look at when you're single and then ask when you're at the precipice of a big moment or when you've been together with someone for a while.
But the question is, people change.
And are these things that you're setting in stone right from the beginning?
Of course not.
Again, you're bringing something up, so you start a dialogue that will then continue for your whole life, so that when someone goes through a major career pivot, it's not a scary thing to bring up with their partner, because you've been talking about how success defines you this whole time and you feel safe enough to say, which is scary.
You know what my definition of success is changing, and that scares the Jesus out of me, but I want to work it through with you and you feel comfortable doing that.
So it's this dialogue pattern that you're starting and you're starting it early.
Yeah, I think that's it.
It's starting the conversation early so the conversation can continue, right?
Because conversations and talking and opening up, it's not as easy as we often think that it is.
It's hard to be vulnerable. with a person.
And sometimes I think we need permission to be vulnerable, and your book helps give us that permission.
And it gives you other stories.
We haven't actually talked about the stories, but it gives you other people's stories, as well as my transatlantic love story throughout, so that you feel safe.
My goal is for you to feel safe as you read this and comforted and like you are not alone.
And I hope people laugh and cry and identify with different things, because that is what this is about.
You're so right.
You really, you really are.
I love the stories that you have from other people in the book.
I'm in it, which, and I had forgotten what story I told you.
Yes.
That that's just how, how filled with holes my brain is right now.
I opened it up a while ago, right?
Like it was a while ago.
Yeah.
But, uh, we, we were looking for questions and I'm like, Oh, there I am.
And he's like, what did you tell Lindsay?
And I'm like, I don't, I don't remember.
I was like, but then I, then I, then I saw the story and it's a good one.
I love it.
But you interviewed a lot of people about their own stories of relationships.
Whose advice really resonated with you?
God, that's a great question.
I have to say there were two psychologists that I... Gosh, now maybe three.
I mean, I talk to great people.
So...
Dr. Nicole LaPera, for example, the holistic psychologist, a lot of people follow her on Instagram.
She has great advice.
And she and I really got down and dirty about boundaries.
And what I so appreciated about her was that she really talked about her struggles with boundaries and how she had to take a step back from her family so that she could be a whole, healthy person.
In her relationship now throuple.
And I was so appreciative that she was so honest with me about her challenges, as well as giving advice to those who are reading the book.
Someone like Lori Gottlieb, I loved this.
She and I were almost done speaking.
And then she got into the subject of money.
And she and I weren't even supposed to talk about money.
But she and almost everyone I spoke to delved into money in a little bit at the very least, because it's something that is involved in every single aspect of people's relationships.
Like you don't think people think money is just what's your salary, right?
That's a big question.
It's everything.
I think, I mean, I think that money stuff is just, it's so important.
It's the thing that we still.
It's one of the only things that we disagree on, because Nick grew up very comfortable money-wise and I grew up on on the edge of precarity.
And I, so I'm a big saver and Nick, Nick just doesn't think about it as much.
He's not a spender, but he doesn't, it doesn't dog him the way it dogs me.
And so.
People normalize when people grow up with money, they normalize having money.
So it's very hard for people who come from that.
There's nothing wrong with coming from that, but they have a lot a hard time understanding that the other side, which is where you come from, right.
Exactly, exactly.
He's like, why are you so anxious about this?
And explaining anxiety is really hard.
So yeah, yeah, that still comes up a lot.
Money is huge.
I have a belief about this though, actually.
And I don't think it's common.
And I wish people, I want more people to listen to this bit, because I think it can really help a lot of couples who come in with a disparity about money.
It's so easy for the person who either comes from money or comes with money.
Even if you're earning the same salary at the time, you still have your beliefs about money.
It's so easy for that person to say, I got you.
I'll take care of this.
Oh, you know what?
You think that restaurant is really expensive.
It's a Michelin star.
I get it.
I'll cover you.
But that actually can make the person who comes from less very uncomfortable.
But the person who has more is thinking they're being generous and and just normalizing the situation.
But it is incumbent upon the person who comes from more to not make the person with less feel stigmified because of it.
So, whether it's this, I understand that this isn't normal, but let's do this tonight and I got you, but you pick the restaurant from here on out.
It's really.
It's not In my mind.
It's not about the person who has less trying to talk to the person who has more.
It's the person who has more saying, I understand this isn't totally normal.
How can I make it comfortable for you?
Does that make sense?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And it's emotional.
Money is always going to be emotional.
And I'm so glad that you talk about it.
What was it like for the two of you going into your relationship with money?
How did you have to talk about it?
So we were pretty aligned in... how we spend, which has been great, actually.
I would say for us, money is not a big issue.
Money and we had to work out living in different countries and different banks and bank accounts and buying a home in a different country for me versus him.
So we had to talk about money in different ways, but our beliefs and how we spend is actually quite similar.
So for us, that was not a big issue.
Oh, that's good.
I will say I still struggle sometimes with wanting to contribute more.
I do well, does better.
Interesting.
Interesting.
And so, but he's a very involved parent.
We both work like crazy.
We're lucky to be able to afford help.
Like.
For us, that's a big thing that we think goodness, we're on the same page about.
We both work very hard and we are okay paying for help because we can't do it on our own and we know that right right um, we're okay saying we need some help from someone cleaning our house.
That makes us both feel good.
That's something we're aligned on.
So for us, those kind of money decisions we are quite aligned on um, so for us that's not a big issue at all.
Thankfully, Was it hard to give up your life in America to move to London.
I always say I don't feel like I gave up New York.
I feel like I gained London.
And this for us was a... It's funny.
Initially, before we had done these questions, but when I knew we were going into a, a long-term relationship.
I had said, look, some things you need to know about me.
If we have kids, they'll be circumcised and they will no matter where we live in the world.
They will go to American summer camp.
So I didn't win on all those things, but my kids do go to American summer camp.
And look, sometimes we go in and we think deal breakers are deal breakers, but when you actually look at them and why you're holding onto them, they're not.
And it often goes back to your childhood or something with a history.
But for us, we both make a great effort to live in both places.
Our kids will tell you that they're from New York and London.
And that's proof that we're making a really good effort to do that.
Will you tell everyone where they can find this wonderful book and how they can find more out about you?
I can.
You can find me at Lindsay Jill Roth almost anywhere.
This book is where books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
And please go check out your independent bookstores because we love bookstores.
And find me online.
I love hearing from people.
I'm active on social.
And if you have questions for me, please reach out.
If you do the questions and you want to talk, please reach out.
I'm so passionate about helping people achieve success. healthy, lasting love in a really fun way.
And I'm telling you, this is a great beach read meets a really fun system.
And the more people that do it, the more happy and loved people we'll have in the world.
So I think we should just get it out there.
I love that.
I agree.
And that is all we have for today.
Committed is hosted, produced and created by me, Joe Piazza.
Our executive producer is the wonderful Ramsey Yunt.
If you have a love story that you want to hear on this show, email me at joe at influentialmediacom.
Thanks for being here.
Love you all.
