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Many years ago, not long before Halloween, Rory Uphold was in one of the spookiest places on the planet, Los Angeles.
More specifically, she was on the Universal Studios production lot for Halloween Horror Nights, a scary event held every year.
Basically, it's a massive park of themed haunted houses where part-time actors hide behind corners doing jump scares.
They hold fake chainsaws. they terrorize you as you try to escape.
It's extra scary because it is held on a Hollywood lot, so the special effects are pretty excellent.
Rory is a person who despises jump scares.
She does not want to be inside a haunted house ever, but she's here at Hollywood Horror Nights, frozen in a room that is medically themed.
There's this figure on a gurney And I know at any point like some crazy mad scientist doctor whatever, demonic nurse is going to jump out at me.
And lo and behold, the figure on the gurney springs up and I scream.
I mean, they must have heard me in Vegas.
And part of me thought okay, I know that that's going to happen every what?
Five minutes, two minutes.
Why don't I just stay in this room?
I'm good.
Like I've lived through this horror.
I know what the frights are in this room.
I'll just stay in here.
As Rory waits for the body on the gurney to pop up and scream again, she thinks this is not a good night.
Then she has another revelation that the scariest thing about the evening might be the guy who convinced her to meet him here.
This man isn't coming to get me.
He isn't holding my hand.
And I am now forced to walk through this park by myself.
And very quickly, I started to realize like, oh, the real monster is my date.
Like the real monster is my date.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
When I was in college at Syracuse University, I took a class called the History of Horror Films.
I loved this class partly because it was a lot of sitting around and watching movies, but also because the professor helped me realize that the horror films I loved as a teen, even the silly ones, were real art text to be analyzed.
I watched everything that semester, from slasher films like Nightmare on Elm Street, where Freddy, a villain who has blades for fingers, into your dreams.
To movies like Child's Play, the one about the doll who is possessed by a serial killer and absolutely terrorizes you.
My favorites were the horror films that turned real-life fears about human relationships into nightmare scenarios.
One of the most upsetting movies our professor showed us was from 1987.
It was called The Stepfather.
Like the title suggests, it's about a very upsetting stepdad.
He's a wonderful man.
And he wants to care for us.
I don't know.
I just... There's just something about him.
That movie did not make me any happier about my mother's boyfriends.
One of the big lessons in that class was the one about... the final girl.
This is a big trope in many horror films.
For those who don't know, a final girl in a horror film is the girl who survives.
She's often the brainy one, the innocent one, the clever one.
My friend Rory, who you met at the start of the episode, can explain.
She is the girl that lives in the end.
She is the Jamie Lee Curtis of Halloween.
She is the Nev Campbell of Scream.
She is the one to live to tell the tale.
Rory and I met years ago through a mutual friend.
She's a writer producer, actress and she hosts a podcast called Crimes of the Heart, which is all about relationships.
So we like to talk about the same things.
One day, she told me she was writing a book about her love life, but within the context of horror.
Basically, the book would explain how she had become a final girl in love.
She learned to conquer the ghosts, the zombies, the menacing clowns, and the haunted houses.
She wanted to explore why navigating single life can feel so literally horrific and how we can all learn to make it to the sequel, to survive the ending.
And I thought, this is perfect, because Rory is, in my opinion, that final girl.
She takes risks.
She outsmarts the bad stuff.
She is resilient after scary things.
Rory does not believe final girls have to be girls, by the way.
I personally think a final girl is a spirit.
It's a quality that you have.
It doesn't necessarily have to be gendered.
And in the context of what I am talking about, I think it's anybody that has the will to see it to the end of their romantic journey.
Today, Rory's going to tell a story that is beautifully on the nose when it comes to love and horror.
And as we listen, let's think about the metaphor of it all.
What we mean when we say dating can be a horror show, when we say it's scary out there.
Let's also consider the moments when we might realize, as Rory puts it, the call is coming from inside the house.
So we begin our tale.
Rory is living in L.A. where she was born and raised.
She's in her early 30s at this point and she's been dating a lot.
So much dating and so much of the same experience over and over.
She's experiencing dating fatigue and a strong desire to just rest for a bit, to find a way to be coupled, even if it's not forever.
In short, she just wants a boyfriend.
This is when she meets a guy she calls Chad.
Well, technically she re-meets Chad.
Rory had met Chad through friends and they met again several times, again and again.
And every time he kind of didn't remember her.
But in an L.A. way, their paths collide again.
And this time, Chad asks her out.
And she thinks this is a possibility.
Chad is probably 5'10".
He's a brunette.
He writes for late night television shows.
So he is in the comedy world.
I saw him and I thought, hmm, he could be cute.
Like, maybe.
Like, I was curious.
To be very honest, Rory doesn't feel like she could fall madly in love with Chad.
He's cute enough.
She likes a sense of humor.
They do have mutual friends.
He's this up-and-coming comedy writer.
But he's not aspirationally someone she wants to be with forever.
They don't click in any monumental ways.
But that's kind of appealing because it's stressful to pursue someone you're super excited about.
It's almost like by being a fairly interesting guy, good enough for now, Chad, seems safe.
I had again had this year of kind of like feeling like I was going through these rotating doors that I just couldn't get out of this cycle of like what is with what is with this?
These fuck boys.
Like, I just want to settle down and kind of be with somebody for longer than a couple months.
So when he asked me out, I just figured, eh, why not?
Like he's a great layover. before my final destination.
Final destination.
Another fun horror film.
Anyway, Rory and Chad start seeing each other.
It starts in the summer and moves into fall, which is a lovely time to be coupled.
It's a fun season to be a we.
Like, oh, we love that restaurant.
Or, we would love to go to your party.
We were obnoxious.
We were the couple that was making out in the bar.
And then you know, he was coming over to my house and I was playing like I don't want to say housewife because we were not there, but we were playing house and I would throw like a party for 20 people carving pumpkins.
And yeah, everybody got to be like, this is the guy that I'm dating.
And we had established that we were not boyfriend and girlfriend, but we were exclusive.
What's the difference?
That's such a great question, Meredith.
And the difference is nothing.
But I guess it is.
And the difference is a title.
I don't know how many letters are in boyfriend, but that's the difference.
Really, though, it's all good.
Because Rory likes the idea that she's settled, even temporarily.
Then it's October.
One night, Chad calls Rory and says he has VIP tickets to you guessed it?
Halloween, Horror Nights where Universal Studios becomes a maze of haunted houses.
Chad loves Halloween Horror Nights.
He has plans to go with some comedy writer friends, but one of them has backed out.
So he tells Rory, you should come.
This is when Rory explains to Chad why she does not want to go to Halloween Horror Nights.
First, she's not a girl who's She was attacked when she was younger.
And truly, the trauma of that means she can't find all of this Halloween stuff to be whimsical.
So she tells Chad, thanks, but no thanks.
You go and have a good time.
But Chad doesn't really take no for an answer.
He is like, no, like, it'll be so fun.
It's not that bad.
Like, I'll be with you the whole time.
I'll hold your hand.
I think part of me didn't want to be scared.
And also part of me believed him when he said, like, I've got your back.
You don't have to do this alone.
And so I thought, OK, sure.
So that night, Rory arrives on her own because she has something else to do first.
I had an event before.
I don't know if you know Susan Miller from Astrology Zone, but I am that girl.
Because again, I'm from LA, so I drink the green juice.
I love the crystals.
And I was at an event with Susan Miller.
And so I was coming from that to Halloween Horror Nights.
And Chad was already there with a bunch of his friends.
Now, the friends that he was with were more like comedy darlings.
And that does matter because I didn't realize how much he cared about their opinions.
So Rory gets there and they go back and forth about where Chad is.
He's already inside.
He's like, come find me.
And that's not quite what she was expecting.
He had been offering to meet her at the entrance and hold her hand.
And now he's basically telling her walk through this place you hate alone until you catch up with the group.
And Murray's like, okay, I guess.
I get in and I realize, oh no.
I am immediately aware of the fact that I am in over my head.
It is so dark in the park, I can't even read the map.
I'm terrified.
I am now by myself, This is exactly what Rory did not want, to be alone in a place that upsets her.
And it felt like a foreshadowing.
It did feel like that moment in many horror movies where the blonde girl gets like a warning that she ignores and then continues to walk like down the dark hallway.
That was basically me.
Like if we were in the audience, we'd be like, girl, don't go in there.
Yes.
Don't go in there.
And you're like, well, I guess I keep going.
100%.
This place is exactly what she expected.
A literal horror show.
I don't know where I'm going.
So I just try to blend in because I know that every year some girl goes viral because she gets too scared and there's video footage of it.
And I'm like, that's not going to be me.
Not going to be me.
So I'm kind of trying to like walk near groups and seem like I'm with them, so that I'm not being like picked out or picked on.
Rory starts stalling.
She goes to the bathrooms.
Then she gets a drink.
I kind of feel like the more alcohol, the better in this situation.
Just anything to kind of subdue myself.
Is that healthy?
No.
But I feel like, if you've been listening to this story, you already know that I've missed several warning signs.
We're not healthy is not really the phase of life I'm in.
Anyway, I get a phone call from him as I'm like getting my drink.
And he's like, where are you?
Like, I'm by I'm by this ride.
And he's like, I don't know where that is.
And like, we're all waiting for you.
Get over here.
What are you doing?
He's like barking at me.
And I'm like, wait, this is rude.
Rory asks Chad, can you come find me?
But he says he's at a part of the park with flames coming out of a big metal thing.
A huge special effect he figures she won't be able to miss.
He's like, come find it.
So she takes her drink and does.
So I...
Eventually, she finds Chad.
It's not the happy reunion she hoped it would be.
He's more worried about his trendy comedy writer friends than Rory.
The group approaches one of the haunted houses, and Rory has this sense of, like, shit.
I have finally found my way to Chad, but now I have to keep going through these haunted houses.
I'm, like, panicking.
You know, I am... It's like, fa-thump, fa-thump.
I am hoping that the Xanax I have pounded and the beer that i am trying to drink as fast as humanly possible is like gonna do its thing, because i am scared and i try to let the group know like, hey guys sorry, if i like freak out like this isn't really my thing.
I'm scared and i like one girl was like you'll be fine, and another guy rolled his eyes and chad was like why don't you just go last then?
Oh cool yeah, i know, that sounds So fucking fun.
I can't wait to do that.
Yep.
And they all go in and I walk in with Chad and then like, I don't know what happens.
There's like a gust of like smoke, whatever.
And he's gone.
And now I'm in this haunted house solo and I'm being passed up by tweens.
Right.
And I have this out of body terrifying experience of that.
When I look back on I realized was kind of like a metaphor for my love life, and especially my love life at that point.
How does Rory survive?
Who winds up saving her from the monsters?
She'll explain when we come back.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now, we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
We're back.
So to catch up, it's years ago.
My friend Rory is in a relationship with Chad, who she's currently with at a haunted house in LA.
And this is about the time in a horror movie where you get the main character's backstory.
So let me fill you in a little.
Rory has experienced a special kind of nightmare of a home life.
She has really wonderful, loving parents.
And those devoted parents are also wonderful and loving to each other.
My parents are still married on my parents' 25th wedding anniversary.
My dad surprised my mom by flying in her whole family, got down on one knee and re-proposed with a ring that was twice the size and asked her for another 25 years of marriage.
That was my normal.
So I thought that that was what love was.
I thought that was really like what was out there, because I lived with this kind of fairy tale relationship in my home life.
And then I would watch movies and rom-coms that sort of echoed that same behavior.
So then I went out into the world and got my ass handed to me, because that was not what dating was like.
I know Rory's family story is actually very nice, but you can see why Rory in her early 30s is extra horrified about how bad it is out there and why she winds up saying you know what, for the sake of ease and taking a break from the misery of looking.
I'm just going to be coupled for a bit and have a nice time with a fairly middle-of-the-road guy.
But of course, we've learned this man Chad maybe isn't a middle-of-the-road anything.
He has brought her on a date to Halloween horror nights, even though she has told him she does not like to be scared.
I know what you're going to say.
Rory did say yes to this evening that she's the one who walked down that horror film hallway, literally in this case, even though her gut told her not to.
But Chad did say he'd help her through it.
And now, in this house of horrors, he is gone.
And this is when Rory finds herself in the room with the gurney where she was at the start of the episode.
She's basically frozen in this room waiting for the body on the gurney to pop up every few minutes and scream.
Because at least that's a jump scare Rory can expect.
She's standing there.
She's miserable.
She is alone.
She is contemplating her choices.
She would like to not be here anymore.
Not here, not with Chad, not in this narrative.
The problem is that the only way out of this full haunted house experience is through it.
So Rory forces herself to walk to the next spot.
That next spot happens to be an area which is themed for the film Trick or Treat, a 2009 movie where there's a villain who is a pumpkin with a burlap sack over his head.
That pumpkin enforces the code of Halloween.
Not scary at all.
The premise of that movie is that there are certain rules.
Break the rules, you die.
Some of the rules of that movie include always wear a costume and never extinguish a jack-o'-lantern's flame before midnight.
And it got me thinking that like I wish that there were rules that I could follow to make sure that I found love.
Like, I want what my parents have.
And I wish that there was like a guide or a set of rules that I could follow, that you know, you do X, you do Y, you do Z, you get the happy relationship.
In some ways, thinking about the rules of this horror world felt oddly comforting.
All of this is final girl behavior, by the way.
Trying to see the whole obstacle course of horror from above.
Her whole situation from above.
Of course, you're probably asking, where is Chad?
I go through this entire haunted house and I don't see Chad until I come out of the haunted house.
And then he's with his friends and then he makes a snide comment.
And then we go through a couple more.
Do you remember like, was he like, what took you so long?
Like what kind of snide comment?
Yeah.
It was like, you know, for somebody who hates this stuff, you sure took your sweet time in there.
Yikes.
Yeah.
That's what I thought.
I thought, Ooh, he might be a scarier monster than what I just went through.
Rory and Chad eventually leave the event.
But she doesn't break up with him.
Because in her mind, there is this looming thing that's still scarier.
Single life after Chad.
For Rory, the devil you know, seems less scary than a dating app.
Who ended it?
He called me and he broke up with me.
He was supposed to be my date to a movie premiere that I was.
I was in this movie and he was supposed to be my date to the premiere and he called and broke up with me two days before the premiere.
And I'll never forget what he said.
He was like, it doesn't feel like you want to date me.
It feels like you just want to date someone.
And I was pissed because of the timing.
Grateful in hindsight, but I was upset because he managed to read me.
Chad was very much right.
Rory picked Chad because she was looking for something safe and maybe there's no such thing.
That's what Rory says at least.
Part of the issue was that, because she believed that Chad didn't matter that much, she accidentally let him get away with not great behavior.
I think safety is a myth.
I think that I really miscalculated, because I didn't have crazy feelings about him or dreams of this becoming my future husband, that I thought that I one wouldn't get my feelings hurt, or two that it wouldn't do any damage.
And that was both wrong, because I think that when you settle and you compromise, you open yourself up to a way scarier op and it's you chipping away at your own self-confidence.
And I think, like what I realized was The scariest thing about that night was not the monsters in the park, not the behavior from my date, but how much of a willing participant I was.
And that is what I took away from that that being single had been like demonized in a way where I was willing to kind of take crumbs and try and build a five course meal out of it.
I think about final girls in movies like Scream, where they realize the guy they've been clinging to is actually the problem and that maybe they were ignoring signs they saw all along.
I asked Rory in that haunted house moment did she look back and say wait, there have been a million horror film red flags here.
Yes, I did.
I, at one point, was in one of the haunted houses.
And I was thinking about if my love life actually was a haunted house.
What room had I walked into when I started dating Chad?
And I realized that the room that I had walked into was all facade and probably rotting underneath, because the thing that I had started to realize about Chad was that he was a raging alcoholic.
And that is why he didn't remember me all for a year.
That is why I had so many weird interactions with him, even though he had met me and wanted to ask me out for a year.
When I would run into him, he was blackout drunk and I just never realized it.
Which is interesting because I'm not Pollyanna.
I have unfortunately been around a lot of addicts and alcoholics in my life.
So when I realized this, I went, oh, this is like a deep issue.
And then a lot of little things started to line up and make sense.
Like the fact that he had financial problems, the fact that his dog was not potty trained, like the fact that he would be angry, kind of out of nowhere sometimes.
One of the things that confuses me about love is that I don't know how brave we're supposed to be.
To be clear, I have never felt haunted by a fear of singleness.
In fact, the opposite always looked scarier to me.
Horror films have never helped with this.
Most final girls find out the nice guy they're with has been the problem the whole time.
But we should be open to believing that we're in a romantic story as opposed to a horrific one.
So how do we know when we're walking down a scary hallway?
Rory says all you can do is pay attention.
Maybe don't lie to yourself.
When you're not happy, take action.
I did not want to have to walk through that park by myself.
Like, cause it was, it was scary.
Like just to, to why didn't I leave right then?
But like, why didn't I break up with him that night?
Because I was being pathetic.
And I say that with like, not judgment, but love to myself.
We all have skeletons in our closet.
But not everybody is going to be scared by them.
And some people are going to be attracted to them because again, we are attracted to our patterns and to what we know and what is familiar.
That doesn't mean that it's good or healthy because you can be attracted and feel safe in chaos.
If Rory has a message to the girl she was who was so scared of having to be single again, it's probably this
If you're single, like you need to ask yourself, what if?
These are my last single months that I will ever have.
Like what if I'm only going to be single for three more months and then I'm never going to be single again?
How do I want to spend them?
Do I want to spend them feeling sad and sorry for myself?
Or do I want to take advantage of all the benefits that come with being single?
Because there are benefits.
It is awesome.
And a lot of it is like not to go super woo woo, but I believe that words are like spells, right?
So we have to be very careful about how we talk to ourselves.
It's like cast positive spells.
And I think a lot of my journey was like a self-love journey.
And realizing that like I always at any point in my life deserve the love that I want.
Like there is no layover.
Fuck a layover.
Either make being single just so awesome that when somebody that's lukewarm comes into your life, you don't even want to give that up.
Rory and I talk a bit about this weird tie between things that are loving and things that are scary, how the best horror films can take something that seems comforting and twist it into something spooky.
I am not surprised that some of our best horror films right now involve people experiencing normal things like the horrors of not having money or the horrors of being a parent to kids who won't stop saying play with me.
I think about the fact that being in a couple can be horrifying.
Consider the summer movie Together, which was about a couple that fuses to each other to become one person.
I think as a society, we don't really want to talk about the shadow side of a lot of things.
And yet, If you do, if you're honest about them and you bring them into the light, it's like there is a reason why evil can't grow in the light.
Evil grows in the dark.
And so I think the more we talk about some of these unsavory or depressing sides of love and life, the better off we're going to be.
Rory Uphold's podcast is called Crimes of the Heart.
Her book...
A collection of stories and lessons about the horrors of relationships is called A Final Girl's Guide to the Horrors of Dating.
Find it anywhere.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Our producer is Christina Honitou.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Story edit, mixing, and mastering by Jasmine Aguilera.
Sound design by Christina Honitou.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any questions about dating divorce marriage singlehood whatever, to loveletters at bostoncom.
Find our newsletter at boston.com slash Meredith.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
I don't know what the name would be.
Is that the horror version of you or is that the winter version of you?
I think it might even be the summer version of me.
But, like, it would be like, come inside.
There's nothing dangerous in here.
Mmm, yes.
We can eat the same thing from the Cheesecake Factory every night.
Every day.
Every night.
And no one will find us.
Yeah.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
