Hey everyone, this is Jo and you are listening to Committed.
Or actually, you're listening to Re-Committed.
Because right now we're bringing you a very special series on the Committed feed of Second Chance Love Stories.
And it's inspired by a very good friend of mine's own Second Chance Love Story that also inspired her new novel All the Men I've Loved Again.
Today I'm joined by my co-author, my former editor and a dear, dear friend that I love so, so much, Christine Pride, to talk about her own second chance romance, which inspired All the Men I've Loved Again.
Hi, Christine.
Hi, Jo.
So happy to be here.
I'm so happy to have you.
I mean, I could sit and shoot the shit with you all day long.
For the purposes of this podcast, I'm going to have to pretend that I haven't lived this love story with you.
Side by side since the beginning.
Side by side since the beginning.
And many of you know that Christine is my longtime editor.
She was my longtime editor, who then became my longtime book collaborator.
And I've watched her fall madly in love over the past few years.
And I've watched her juggle the same two men that she dated in her 20s Again, in her 40s.
And this is my favorite kind of second chance romance.
Because it's just got plot out the wazoo.
You see why I had to write a book about it.
I mean, I will say I think I was one of the first people that was like this is a novel and you're gonna write it.
You were but that's how your mind works, right?
This is content to go do it.
But it was very inspiring.
And in fact Joe, this book wouldn't exist or this romance wouldn't exist without, without you, and we are not like them.
Because I mean spoiler alert, but the reason that my partner and I reconnected and have this second chance romance is because I joined Instagram solely because we were publishing this book.
And then he ended up reaching out to me on Instagram.
So it is really kind of surreal how these dots have connected over the last five years.
It's a little bit sliding doors, it's very.
No, it's not a little bit sliding doors, it's very sliding doors.
Okay, so I mean, that's my pitch for the screenplay.
I don't know who's writing that or who's gonna write that, but I've got ideas for this transition to the screen.
Yeah yeah, totally all right.
So let's start at the very beginning, though.
You're Christine Pride, you're in your 20s.
What was going on then?
Who were you dating then?
So this is 1999.
So we have to go back to last century.
You know, with the flashback hands.
And I had recently graduated from college.
So I was still dating my college boyfriend.
And we were together the last two years of college.
And we were trying to figure out how we were going to make our romance last in the real world without suddenly these adulting complications.
And he was going to law school and I was looking to move to New York.
So we were together, but in that kind of chaotic period of what happens next, what happens now.
And then I came up to New York to interview for a job at NBC News.
And I'm in.
I want to set the scene that I'm in my powder blue limited, If you like.
The limited, the limited, the limited, of course, everybody is.
You know, fashion.
Late 90s, early 2000s, fashion icon.
It really wasn't powder blue, though, is maybe more Smurf blue.
But you get the idea.
So I'm feeling very fancy, Joe.
I'm in my power suit and I take the train up from DC where I was living still with my parents after graduation.
And I hop on the Acela and I come up to New York to interview for this job.
And the person who interviews me is, much to my surprise, a cute nerdy, smart Black guy who I thought was so much older than me because he lived in New York and had a job.
But turned out he was only four years older than me.
And it was just one of those situations where you know it was like the immediate sparks fly.
This is a job interview, but what's going on here?
Type of vibe, which I love uh, and would probably not be allowed in 2025 right, exactly.
Well, you know, I think when you go into a job interview, obviously you're in one mindset, but you, you know, it's like a, a bad porn set up, or at least a bad rom-com set up, where you know the, the cable guy knocks at the door and happens to be hot.
You're not really expecting the person who interviews you for a job to necessarily be a romantic prospect, by any means.
No, not at all.
Not at all.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So, so what happens next?
So, spoiler alert, I don't get the job but to go back to DC and I'm still intent to um on moving to New York.
So I find another job.
Uh, I moved to New York months later.
So now we've, we've entered the 21st century.
Um, and I moved to New York and we had, um, you know, sort of kept in touch via email, the polite, Oh, thank you.
You know, for the opportunity.
Email kind of morphed into a more um friendly, shall we say, email exchange.
And so when I moved to New York, we started, say, hanging out.
And we dated for a few months from there with a lot of other complications.
9-11 happened in the meantime.
There was a lot going on in that period.
And obviously, things were still complicated with my college boyfriend too.
So there was a lot to sort out So did you finally go on dates?
We did.
So we went on dates when I moved to New York.
And actually, maybe... I think we'd only been on a couple dates.
It's so hard because on one hand, it feels like it's yesterday.
But on the other hand, this was over 20 years ago.
So remembering the details and the timing and everything has been a little bit of a challenge.
But one notable thing that's very memorable that happened is he left to go to Paris for three months on sort of a work sabbatical.
And while he was there, I mean we'll go back in time.
Joe, remember this is before texting, before even cell phones were easy to use, meaning it was like roaming and the 75 cents a minute charges and all of that.
So what did we do?
We wrote letters back and forth in Paris, like actual letters when he was there.
And so that looking back is such a memorable and meaningful part of you know sort of the time we spent together which again, a lot of it was separated since he was gone for those three months.
But there's something as you and I have talked about.
There's something really special about writing letters.
It just hits different.
It just hits different.
Are there any things that you still remember from some of those letters?
Well, here's the thing.
I do not have my letters anymore.
I don't know what happened to them.
I mean, I'm pretty sentimental, so I can't believe I hadn't kept them.
But I also have moved a lot and, you know, life happens.
But he still has them.
So he has my letters that I wrote to him.
So I've read some of those and it really is so fascinating to have this time capsule of my 23 year old self, you know, and my 23 year old voice, and what I was thinking about and caring about at 23.
Um, it's really.
It's really fascinating and it's very touching that he kept the letters all these years too.
That's so sweet.
And I want to get back to him keeping these letters because.
But first I want to talk a little bit about what was going on with your college boyfriend at this time.
So he went to law school in Texas.
So there was also the distance situation.
And you know, what's so funny about that time period is, and this is, you know, something that I really try to capture and talk about in the novel, though all of this is fictionalized, but the themes are still really there, which is
You're changing so much in your early 20s really trying to figure out you know sort of who you are and who you're going to be.
I mean these big high sticks, decisions about what jobs you're going to get and where you're going to live, and you know sort of what kind of life are you going to have, what kind of person you're going to be.
I mean, these are very intense soul searching times.
And it's really hard to do that with another person.
I mean, some people obviously make it work and marry their college sweetheart and live happily ever after.
But for us there was a lot of how are we going to figure out how to merge our lives, and what is that going to require of the other person?
Right,
Moving and sacrifices.
And, you know, we just weren't ready for all that.
And that became clear eventually. in those first, you know, months and years after college.
So that we were obviously still very connected emotionally and we loved each other very much.
The practicalities of how to make it work were overwhelming to us.
And so you know, it didn't in the end at that time period, but it always felt like, Like there was a little bit of unfinished business there, you know, which then makes sense for what happens next.
But it never felt like, okay, you know, this is over and I'm never going to see this person again.
And then what starts happening with Ian?
He goes to Paris.
You guys kind of have a little thing.
But spoiler, you don't end up with either of these guys in your 20s.
I don't.
And for those reasons that we talked about or I just mentioned I think it was just I was in a state of really trying to find myself.
And I mean, you remember what that's like.
It's just so daunting to think about how you're going to build a career.
I was very ambitious.
I had just moved to New York, which is a hard city to find your way in, period.
And so I was just focused on that.
So it just...
They say that timing is everything.
And that's the one of the biggest cliches there is.
But it's a cliche for a reason, because it's true.
It just did not feel like the right timing on either account.
Okay.
I want to take a quick break.
And when we get back, we're going to fast forward 20 years.
I'm going to do like the Wayne's world, like, and you're gonna see these guys again.
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. okay, we're back.
Christine, when we left you, it was the turn of the millennia.
And you had been vaguely dating these two dudes but stopped dating both of them because you're trying to find yourself as a busy career girl in New York City.
This part of it is the setup for a Hallmark movie, is what it is.
And then fast forward 20 years later, you found yourself in so many ways.
Who were you then?
Yeah, so 20 years later, you know, it's the blink of an eye kind of thing.
If you see the movie montage, right?
It's like I had built this great career as an editor working at.
You know several different publishing houses publishing great books, including yours.
I had this great set of friends, you know, really close girlfriends from all aspects of my life.
I had been, you know, perpetually but happily single.
I often joke that in my 30s, I probably went to 35 weddings, no joke.
And you know all of them single.
It's a little bit like, you know, always the bridesmaid, never a bride type situation, except luckily I wasn't a bridesmaid in all these weddings because I would have gone broke.
But being single and this is something you and I have talked about was, you know, sort of the kind of defining characteristic right of my life and to some degree I still identify as a single woman.
But It's just, I had this independent spirit and my life felt very full.
So it wasn't like I was actively, you know, sort of trying to find a romance, except the pandemic hit.
And, you know, we were all doing some, I don't know, wacky things in the pandemic.
It sort of shook everything up in all different kinds of ways and caused people to think what am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
Et cetera, et cetera.
And in that context I reconnected with my college boyfriend who in the last 20 years had gotten married, had two kids and then gotten divorced.
And so we found ourselves both single in 2020.
And so we we reconnected in the pandemic, you know, when everyone was having the, the long wine fueled zooms with, with all of their family and friends or, in my case, long lost lovers.
That's what we got up to.
So that is happening in the pandemic.
And I was here for this part.
I was around.
We were working on some, we were probably working on some books.
We are not like them.
I know, but I think we were probably, I think, yeah, we were working on that.
And then, you know, thinking about the next one.
And we were doing so many things.
And you're traveling to connect with this ex of yours.
Yes, on empty flights.
I remember it was like, I don't know, that spring, maybe.
I can't remember, summer 2020.
Remember when traveling was so shameful, right?
You were like sneaking around because it just seemed terrible that even though quarantine was up but there was a lot of judgment about traveling,
Oh, there was so much judgment.
Everyone was traveling and everyone was lying about it, okay?
Yes.
Yes.
So I was on.
I just remember being on this.
I mean this huge, you know American Airlines flight LaGuardia to Houston that maybe had eight passengers on it.
It felt like a very surreal experience.
But yes, I was flying back and forth to Houston, you know, to sort of give this second chance a real go.
And in the middle of the pandemic and you and I working away on our projects.
And then fast forward just a little bit, our book came out that fall of 2021.
And, as I mentioned, I had only joined Instagram or any social media at all for the first time, So I was like very new still to Instagram.
Underdress.
Underdress.
Yeah.
You didn't want to do that.
Kicking and screaming, as you know.
But Ian had reached out to me then on Instagram.
You know, what did the kids say?
He slid into my DMs?
He slid into your DMs.
You know that's what the kids say because we wrote it in the younger book.
Totally.
But you know, I can't ever say that as an earnest expression.
I almost have to say you know what the kids say, because I feel too boomerish saying.
And then he slid into my DMs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It doesn't sound right coming out of your mouth, actually.
Never say it again.
Wouldn't be great.
But that's what happened.
So he reached out and this was, you know, the whirlwind.
I mean, do you remember just that time or...
Tour sitting down with Deborah Roberts for GMA.
It was such an exciting, hectic, wonderful time.
And that was that late October then.
And then in November, I was going to visit my family for Thanksgiving in the Maryland suburbs.
And he happens to be from the Maryland suburbs as well.
So he was there and we decided to meet up fully masked at... where else?
A cheesecake factory at the mall.
I mean, obviously.
And at that point, we hadn't seen each other in, I mean, over a decade.
There was a time when he had had a business trip to New York.
And, you know, I think we saw each other for a very casual lunch or dinner or what have you.
But We reconnected then, and sort of the rest is history.
The rest is history.
So you guys reconnected, and you were still kind of connecting with your college boyfriend.
How did you make the choice?
Actually, no, wait, because I'm not going to spoil this.
Who did you end up choosing?
Yeah.
What you're really asking me, Joe, with that timing question is how messy are you?
I see you asked it the polite way.
Because I'm polite.
Because I'm polite.
No, you're not.
You're just trying to make me look good for the podcast, which I appreciate.
True.
No, but really though it kind of happened the same way it happened, you know, 25 years ago, where it was more of a kind of back-to-back situation.
My college boyfriend, I think...
You know, in reconnecting we sort of both realized the same kind of complications existed between us.
I mean, the distance, namely.
But you know also, when you kind of pick up where you left off, you can see the same fault lines, right?
Or you can see the same things that you might have stumbled upon as a couple before.
Right still exist.
Um, but there was also logistics that he ended up.
I feel like these stories sound so dramatic, but he ended up shipping off to Kuwait um for a a JAG deployment.
Um, and so that was also a little bit of a factor um, which is funny, because when Ian and I first were dating and uh, Back in the day when I mentioned 9-11, Ian had gone to Afghanistan for a long stretch of time after 9-11 happened.
And so there's a good amount of strange international geopolitical upheaval involved in both of these relationships.
So...
You do end up reconnecting with Ian.
Ian is your current partner.
It's been five years, which seems crazy.
Because sometimes when I tell the story, I'm like and then Christine just reconnected with this guy.
And now they're together.
And I'm like, oh, no, it's been five years.
It's been half the time of my marriage.
That's so funny.
I mean, but it's... Time is so abstract at this point.
And I think our timing or time got all wonky during the pandemic.
And I sort of haven't recovered from that.
And...
Time also passes differently in middle age.
I don't know.
It's very strange.
But all to say, I'm with you.
It feels like it was yesterday that we reconnected.
And it also feels like yesterday, We Are Not Like Them came out.
I mean, it's so weird that it's been five years.
It's so weird that it's been five years.
So you guys reconnected.
Did you think it was going to be a long-term kind of thing?
Or were you like, okay, this is a fling?
Yeah, that's what's interesting when you're, you know, sort of date to people back to back, particularly people that you know so well from your past and that you, you know love, and respect so much.
In a way, it was just clear to me where my heart was and it was clear to me that this is my person.
And I think that's so interesting to the couples that we've talked to in this podcast that keeps coming up.
And I find that fascinating where, no matter how many years they've been apart, they have described this feeling of well.
That was my person.
Or I always kind of knew life had gone in different directions, but there was something in them that recognized that this person was, I mean, maybe you could say a soulmate, if you believe in that kind of thing.
But there's something significant about this connection.
And for me, it presented as almost like a recognition.
I mean, I had this very strong, very powerful sense of this.
Is it which is something heretofore I had only, you know, heard about in rom-coms or, you know, Hallmark movies or thought it was like a little bit of a romantic urban legend that you really get that feeling?
But I definitely did.
Okay, we are going to take one more quick break.
And when we get back, I want you to tell us about where you're at now.
Okay, we're back.
You have the same love triangle in your 40s that you did in your 20s.
You choose one of the guys.
It's been five years.
And now you're in it.
You're in the thick of it.
And you're even publishing a novel called All the Men I've Loved, Again loosely based off this whole situation.
Where are you at now?
What is your romantic status, your relationship status, if we still did that kind of thing on Facebook?
Yeah, it's complicated.
Actually, it is complicated.
Only because you know this also came up with the couples that we talked about.
When you connect with somebody, whether it's a reconnection or you just meet somebody for the first time in your 40s 50s 60s, there are just so many different complications and different factors than in your 20s, right?
You're at different places in your careers, presumably farther along, where there are more demands of your you know time.
And Practical logistics play a huge role.
And that has come up too with these other couples that we talked to, where most of the time they were not living together, right.
Or living in the same place.
When you reconnect, often you have scattered to, you know, in our case, different coasts.
And so there's just logistics, real estate.
My partner has a daughter.
There's, you know, We'll need family considerations.
There's just a lot to navigate.
You know, caring for aging parents, losing parents.
You know, the last five years has brought a lot.
And so it's not I wouldn't say it's not quite as simple as merging lives or growing together in your 20s.
It's just very... different.
There are different complications.
And so we are navigating all that but, you know, in a very meaningful way, and all the challenges that come up in our relationship feel certainly surmountable.
But also, you know, this is just what grown up relationships look like.
Totally.
Just so much more work.
But also I think the payoff is bigger when you're a grown up.
One of the things that we are asking couples that we are interviewing in the next couple of episodes is do you think it would have worked if you'd gotten together like really gotten together in your 20s?
Or do you think you had to live a life first before getting together with this person?
What do you think about that question?
I really think that timing matters. is everything.
And I mean, again, such a cliche, but so true.
And I, this is where the sliding doors factor comes in.
I mean, who knows?
And you know, part of the, the beauty and agony I think of getting to middle age is looking back and wondering about all your decisions, right?
If I had chose differently here or there, what would have happened?
Like your life is a choose your own adventure.
But, For me, I think everything unfolded exactly how it should have.
I don't have regrets about that.
It's a little bittersweet to think of time lost meaning we could have been spending.
You know we could have had more years together.
But at the same time, who knows, right?
We might have... gotten married at 26 and divorced at 32, you know?
So it's an impossible question obviously, to know the answer to, but my gut instinct is that the people that we are and the life experiences that we've had have strengthened each of us and made us a better couple than we would have been 25 years ago.
I love that.
How does Anne feel about you writing the book?
Mixed feelings.
He is a much more private person than I am, of course.
But the... Which is why he's not here with me talking about this right now.
But, you know, you get into completely confessional people, I guess, in a relationship.
And the whole opposites attract thing, I guess, is true there.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, Nick Astor just accepts who I am.
I guess to some degree it's a hazard of being with a writer.
I know, I know.
He meets people all the time that are like, oh my God, I feel like I know you.
And he's like, I know you do.
It's funny.
But in that I was really cognizant in writing this book, Joe.
That though the initial premise is, you know, based on my life.
So, you know, a woman dates two people in her 20s and two people in her 40s.
But beyond that everything else is so heavily And that was really important to me, because I am not writing a memoir.
I had no interest in writing a memoir.
And so it really had to be, the story itself had to be very far from my actual life.
And that meant really making Cora, the main character, very different than who I am.
We are very different people, which was, you know, fun to create.
But in that regard then, Cora as a fictional person, would then not be attracted to or connect with the same type of men.
I would right.
And because we're different people.
And so then the next step to that was really creating fully formed love interests, but out of whole cloth.
And the challenge was, of course too, to make them both appealing and viable.
Right part of, i think, the beauty of the story and you know what i experienced in real life is to be truly um torn and to, for the reader in this, you know, going along the story, to really not know um who Cora is going to choose.
And to, I hope the reader has strong opinions about who she should choose, right?
That they feel very invested in team Aaron or team Lincoln.
And so that's been fun to see when early readers have.
You know, as we know, Joe readers have strong opinions.
And so it's so fun when they have strong opinions about Cora's love life.
I love that.
I love that.
And I think this book tour is going to be really, really fun for you.
And I know that this mini series of Committed Recommitted is going to be fun for us because we have a lot of fun couples who first met in a lot of different ways and who then lived a life and somehow found their way back to each other.
And I'm just so excited to share them with you guys.
Yeah, these couples, I mean, I loved each of them and I love how different their stories are.
I mean, obviously everybody's love story is so unique, but I love the common themes that kept coming up between them.
And it's just such a celebration of love and fate and timing.
And that's also why I'm excited to go on tour again.
Because I want to hear everybody's stories of you know first love and the one that got away, and people's crushes.
And the one thing that kept coming up for me as I took myself back right to college and falling in love for you know in a real way for the first time, is how impactful that is right.
Your first love really leaves a mark and it kind of shapes and affects every love that comes after it for better or worse.
It's such a heightened, profound experience um, and it was really fun um, to revisit that experience on the page and i think i've done it in a way that people will relate to and, you know, remember their first loves from back in the day.
I don't know if you want to tell us about your first love joe, but You know I don't have to.
I'm good.
I'm good.
We didn't really reconnect.
Although I did actually.
Funnily enough, I did recently find pictures of him when I was cleaning out my mom's house.
And there were pictures of like his family pictures from when he was growing up.
And I forget why I had them, like a little kid's soccer picture and stuff like that.
And so I reached out and I was like, I should probably send these to you.
I don't want them.
And so I am mailing them to him.
Wow.
Yeah, but I'm happily married right now.
But I think that's, but it just goes to show you though, and with technology and everything in this day and age, we really don't lose touch with people anymore, right?
It's just like so easy to know what people are doing and find them.
And, you know, like you say, I found this and I want to send it to you.
And that would have been unthinkable, you know, 20 years ago even.
Totally.
Well, my high school boyfriend is not on social media at all.
So I have no idea what he's been up to.
And his email address is the same Yahoo address that he used in high school.
It's a crime for our exes not to be on social media.
It's unfair.
It's not right.
It's not right.
Actually, none of mine are.
Yeah, I do not like that.
One of my exes has a very, very, very common name.
And so it's almost impossible to Google.
But, you know.
I just even not romantic like people in high school.
I just I want to be able to know what everybody is doing.
I want to know what everybody's doing all the time.
Okay.
Also, it doesn't seem fair because I'm the most public person ever.
And so people know what I'm doing.
I deserve to know what they're doing.
I totally agree.
I don't know how to make it happen for us, but I totally agree.
All right.
Get everybody or get ready.
Everybody buckle up. for Recommitted.
It is going to be a joyous ride and we can't wait to go on it with you.
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.
