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In the summer our producer Christine and I drove to Braintree Massachusetts, to an industrial park, to meet a man, Kamal Reed, a local mover.
Kamal, owner of Rare Movers, has moved people out of apartments after breakups and divorces.
He's moved couples in together for the first time.
He's helped older people downsize.
I went to him for his relationship expertise because he sees things that even a relationship columnist doesn't.
Lately, I've been thinking about how much movers understand relationships.
They walk into people's lives at the most stressful moments.
Kamal tells me moving is actually the third most stressful life event you can have, behind death of a loved one and divorce.
That's according to a survey done by a moving company.
But I believe it.
Death and divorce often involve moving.
Then the other factor is the, and it goes in seasons.
As we get closer to the fall right after September, early October you have families that are transitioning into.
This will be mom or dad's last year in the house.
This will be the last opportunity for us to enjoy Christmas and the holidays together.
Kamal's staff see couples fight during moves.
They see people freak out over what to dump and what to keep.
They see single people surrounded by friends, getting excited about their new place.
The movers also see love as people adjust to a new phase of life.
Kamal knows as well as I do, just from watching other people, that communication is everything.
I think the clients that I've moved over the years that were verbal about their appreciation for one another.
I've seen them move after move, still happy.
But talking about things, communication with a partner, it's not always so easy.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Today we're unpacking, moving and relationships.
First with Kamal, an expert in moving, then with a story from a guest who's an expert on moving too much.
Why did I choose to talk to Kamal specifically instead of other movers?
Well, he's been doing this for a long time.
His company, Rare Movers, was founded in 2009, which happens to be the year I launched my Love Letters advice column.
We'll both be celebrating our 17th anniversaries next year.
The traditional 17th anniversary gift, by the way, is furniture.
The exact thing that can make it hard to move.
Anyway, Kamal is a character.
The outside of his warehouse is populated by plants.
He loves making homemade remedies and telling stories.
He's written a whole book about moving.
It's called Look What I Found Underneath the Bed.
We sit down for an interview and I tell Kamal I want to talk to him about the emotional intelligence it takes to do his job, because movers help bring people together but also help them separate.
And they have to be fast and cool about it.
I think about a friend of mine who had a process with her partner where they moved in, they moved out, they moved back in, they moved out, they got married and she used the same mover every time.
So she was like, what must this guy think of us?
He showed nothing in the face, like nothing about up you guys again, or like up, I guess you're trying it again.
Like there was like a game face that he had that was also respectful and pleasant.
And I just wonder, like, can that be taught, learned, or do you just like, you're good at it?
It has to be taught.
And you have to be prepared.
So two times out of the year I actually go through a three-week process to six-week process of training, retraining my guys.
Because again, every situation, the clients don't know what they're going to do.
Ever since 2020, Kamal's company has had to be really good at separations.
I'll throw this out.
In the midst of the COVID, we saw more divorce separation moves than ever before in my tenure.
And that's three decades that I've been in the game.
But just to go into the average home on a day in and day out basis, and it must have been close to every at least two separations per week for a span of at least 18 weeks.
Walk me through this.
You get a call.
Somebody's like, there's a move.
You walk into a place.
How do you immediately know, oh, this is another separation?
Immediately when we arrive at a location, we'll do a walkthrough.
And when you see those are his, we're not taking those.
And then you're like This is all you know as we're walking through.
All of her items may be in yellow.
You know, his items are in red.
And as you're walking through, my items will go to storage.
I don't know where I'm going yet, but we need to show this house to sell it for us to move on.
I can't imagine what it would be like to go into some stranger's house and see life disassembled.
Even in the best circumstances, it's so intimate.
My team has.
We're good listeners.
You're reading the facial expression and i have a team of veteran gentlemen.
When i say veterans, most of the guys have been with me no less than six years.
So again, we know you know how to play it right away and then it becomes listening.
You know this.
This is his room, this is my room.
His room will stay, my room will go.
Of course, not all moves involve breakups.
Sometimes they're about getting closer.
I know from personal experience that as you become more committed to someone, sometimes you need a mover to play counselor or friend, to give you reassuring facial expressions that let you know everything is okay.
I'm in my late 40s.
My significant other moved in not that long ago.
I had never lived with a significant other.
So it's like a nice day when he moves in, right?
But it's also very stressful.
We're moving in together.
And I know you will understand this as a mover, but...
There's a slot in the kitchen that a refrigerator goes into.
We had removed my refrigerator and we're putting in a better refrigerator.
He cooks.
And the refrigerator needed to be lifted over and put in the spot.
Well, they lifted it over this thing that is like eight tons basically.
And it does not fit in the slot.
And so it's like basically in the middle of the kitchen and I'm, Even though all of it was fine, I think I was like if he can't have this refrigerator, he's not going to be as happy.
Also, it's a great refrigerator.
And I just, there was something like metaphorically about this refrigerator to me in that moment.
And I was like kind of losing it.
And I remember the mover looked at me and he was like, this is going to be fine.
And here's the thing.
You'll just take down this wall.
And it felt like and that's what we did, by the way, we had to take down a wall.
We put the refrigerator to the right, we took down the wall and slid it in and it was fine.
But in that moment, like it felt like this metaphor of like there's a compromise here and it's going to work, and it's not the end of the world.
But I just kept thinking like, that was better than my therapist.
That was better than the assurances of many people who are like trained to help me with that.
And It just made me think about like how often you must be looking for solutions.
So I call it the burning boat.
So usually nothing's perfect.
And again, I think we always place ourselves in a position to pivot.
For those who don't know, the burning boat is a historical war reference.
It means burn the boats.
So there's no option for retreat.
For me, that refrigerator was going to get in there because there was no turning back.
And my mover agreed.
In the same breath that you just spoke about the refrigerator, we were actually had a similar situation.
And to her, the refrigerator was significant.
To him, it wasn't.
But they never had the opportunity to have that conversation.
And what I've come to realize over the years is the tough conversations people tend to avoid.
And if you were able to have the tough conversations good, bad or indifferent At least you're on the same page at that point.
As an advice columnist and host here, I never try to guess what will happen in other people's relationships.
I can give advice and listen, but I would never say oh, these two will never make it or those two people are meant to be.
But Kamal is bolder about predicting people's fates through their moving choices.
He says he can read the room well enough during a move to say you're going to the right place or this will be temporary.
I had a client nine years ago.
I moved them from Massachusetts out to Oregon.
Before I left them, I said to them, I'll be back in eight years.
And she goes, what do you mean?
I'll be back in eight years.
It wasn't the right place for her.
And although they moved out there to be together for his work, it wasn't right for her.
So eight years and a week later, she called me and said, you were right.
Can you come back and pick me up?
I want to come home.
I want to be with the grandkids.
That couple, by the way, is still together, Kamal says.
They just found a place that worked better for them as they got older.
Kamal tells me he's learned that people change about every seven years.
And whether they're alone or with someone else, they often need to move.
Sometimes he sees a person's relationship patterns change. based on what they're moving and whom.
And one client, she's a well-to-do individual.
And with each relationship she has a tendency to buy that new individual a car, a condo in her name.
And it always gave us the impression she was buying the person until they leave.
And We've become good friends.
But again, that's not my job to tell her what I see from the outsider looking in.
But I'm there every time she calls.
Hey, it's time to move out this person.
OK, we'll be there one day in time.
What are some of the weirder?
I just feel like people want to know weird stories.
Give me some.
I know some are private and I don't want you to, you know, sell anybody out.
But like you see some weird stuff.
I have.
And we have the older women that have the toy in a lingerie collection that they want the movies to find.
There's, oh, I packed this away, but don't look in that box.
Don't look in that drawer.
And you're going, that's the fourth time she's said that at this point.
And then I had this one client who kept pinching the box backside of one of my guys.
No yeah, she had him, she said it.
She said i have a mover fantasy, but like that's like me too.
You can't be doing that with a.
I'll go to the client i said well, i think that's overstepping the boundaries.
Again, out of respect, you know, for his current relationship, i don't think it's appropriate.
Like, no butt touching it feels respectful, and so then she goes.
Well, how about you?
And then So it becomes not what you say is how you say it.
And if you can pivot the conversation whereas I sang this so that you understand what we're saying, but I don't want you to feel demonized and feel bad based on your actions.
And again, she was the sweetest lady.
But at the end of the day, she cried and everyone gave her a hug.
And what we realized was she was lonely.
Kamal is perhaps too forgiving of that woman.
Please, everyone, respect movers.
Don't touch them.
A big thing I learned from Kamal is that when you pick up and move, you shouldn't assume that everything will be better or perfect or permanent.
It's better to think of moves as shifts instead of possible solutions or mistakes.
Sometimes you move only to realize you need to move again.
When we come back, a story about a couple who moved a lot and had to figure out why.
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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.
When I think about moving and how it affects relationships, I think about a tweet.
It was the end of 2021 when Twitter was still Twitter.
I was home.
There was a whole second wave of COVID going around, and it was a mini lockdown.
I go on social media, as you do when you're isolated and looking for any connection, and I see a thread of posts from writer Adam Sass.
I knew of Adam through friends, and I liked his books for young adults.
I didn't know anything about his personal life, but basically that night I see him in real time having a social media information dump, a feelings purge.
He's telling everybody about a move he made that did not work, one that affected his mental health and his marriage.
Adam had a lot to share about how hard it can be on a couple who winds up moving to the wrong place.
What I learned after talking to Adam in real life was that Adam and his husband had moved 10 times in 12 years.
10 times in 12 years.
I asked him to come tell a story because so many of our listeners are thinking about picking up and trying something new.
Many of us are looking around and saying, why don't I feel settled?
My name is Adam Sass.
I am a young adult author of both thrillers and romances, and I have been doing that since 2020.
We spend a lot of time talking to guests about how hard it can be for people to find love.
But Adam found the love of his life pretty easily, in my opinion.
It was actually on my 28th birthday.
I had this birthday confidence is all I can say.
We had a mutual friend on Facebook and I must have commented something very hilarious on one of her posts.
Because from there, he poked me, if you remember Facebook pokes.
Which in 2011, when this happened, was like retro even then.
The poke leads to a video chat.
Adam's living in L.A.
This man is living in New York.
He goes to visit Adam, and pretty soon after, they're boyfriends and madly in love.
The bi-coastal thing is fine at first, but they want to get to the same place.
Adam winds up going to New York while his boyfriend finishes nursing school.
They stay in the house of a friend who rescues animals.
It was us two and her and her husband, our dog Marty, and then like three dogs and It was like a big full house.
Adam and his boyfriend are in that place for about six months.
And then Adam's boyfriend says, my job can be anywhere.
Why don't I follow you?
So they go together back to Los Angeles.
It's their first move as a couple.
We will play that cheesy sound effect every time there's a move in this story to make this simple.
Adam's family has property in L.A.
So Adam and his boyfriend share the place with a few roommates, and they all cover the mortgage.
That setup works until Adam and his boyfriend don't want roommates anymore.
They can't afford to cover the mortgage on their own, so they leave for something one bedroom and affordable.
So we got this place in Long Beach.
Really beautiful place.
It used to be a hotel.
It's one of the oldest buildings in Long Beach and St.
Regis.
And it was just stone.
And I romanticized it way too much because it was like oh, there was an elevator with a grate and everything.
And it was junk.
I was so like, oh, it's like the movies.
And within a week, I was like, this is rickety and dangerous.
And there was no air conditioning.
And it was on the beach.
It was on Ocean Boulevard.
So instead of AC, it was just you open the window and you tempt in the sea breeze, which Barely.
Barely worked.
It was not tempted?
It was not tempted.
We could not convince it to come in.
They stay there for about a year, but this place is truly old and sweaty.
The search continues.
They wind up finding a better place in West Hollywood.
That building had a lot of really positive memories for us.
It was really pretty and there was... the little bungalow patios and really well kept up.
And the manager lived on site.
I had a friend who lived in the building at the time and it was just a very nice place.
And so that was kind of where we were when we got married and you know, and we got our second dog, Malibu.
Like it was just a really like growing our family time.
So I always have probably the most positive connotations to that.
It seems like they found a home, but Adam's now husband's family is in New York.
And they start thinking, wait, Are we never going to live on the East Coast again?
Maybe we should go to New York City for a bit.
We're still young.
We're mobile.
New York will be just as happy as California, right?
They decide to leave LA and make the move in 2016 to an apartment in Harlem which is way closer to Adam's husband's family.
They're excited.
But getting across the country isn't as breezy as an experience as it was last time.
They're not so young and mobile anymore.
They have stuff, lots of stuff.
When they get to New York, they realize, wait, this is not quite what we pictured for many reasons.
The cost of living in the city is high.
And even in 2016, it was high.
It's much higher now.
But it was, you kind of felt like, you felt the pull of things.
Like your check didn't stretch as far as it normally would.
I found it to be like, wow.
I would have absolutely loved rolling with this in my 20s, but I was in my 30s and I was like I'm suddenly doing a fourth floor walk-up and you know that's groceries, and I'm lugging two dogs up and down the stairs, you know, and I would get out there and there's no grass out there for them and they're used to grass.
They're used to just hopping outside and I think there was a variety of little impacts like that, that kind of added up, and I think, like moving also matters to the time in your life, because you do get used to certain things.
Amid all these moves, Adam is trying to jumpstart his career as a writer.
He's trying to find a literary agent so he can land a book deal.
It's his big passion, working on querying it to agents for years and really getting nowhere, like absolutely nowhere.
My thing was, I was like, I'm a writer.
And until I get paid for that, I'm going to work Starbucks jobs.
And I worked, Starbucks was kind of my main job for a really long time.
And then it kind of came to a point where I was like I need to be making more adult money to stretch a little farther here and take some of the stress off of my husband.
When you're in the wrong place with someone geographically, it can affect every part of the relationship, even a relationship that in every other way, is super easy.
How did this play out in the day-to-day communication during this uncomfortable period in New York of this is not working.
Were you able to be kind to each other?
Did it cause little fights?
How does that play out in the day-to-day?
It always kind of plays out in these, I guess you'd call them fights.
It was just more you could tell the other person was very miserable.
And it's not necessarily like, oh, there was anger.
It just was like, we end up subconsciously taking turns.
Like he would be really miserable for long stretches and then I would be.
And then for a while there, we were considering it.
We're like okay, maybe this is too expensive in New York, but like we could look in like Jersey City and still be close and get a and it just.
It was in like the winter and it was in the wake of the.
2017 inauguration vibes were off.
And so it just felt like we had left this safe place.
And this is my magical thinking.
We left this wonderful place that was so good to us.
And within a matter of months, the world broke.
So there was this feeling of like, I did a bad thing.
The wrong timeline thing is my fault.
I'm so sorry, everybody.
Who was the first person to say, fuck this?
It was not me. even though I probably sought it first.
But my personality, especially back then.
I'm a little more straightforward now, but my husband's a New Yorker.
So he will just be like, this sucks, I hate it.
Like, he'll just say it.
And I grew up in the Midwest and then I moved to LA where everything's just kind of vibey.
And I was trying to avoid confrontation or avoid an unpleasant conversation, because you know it would have meant him leaving his family for the second time.
So that was, there's emotion wrapped up in that.
And this was a recurring theme.
It was like each time we left Southern California, or every time we left LA, there was part of us that missed it.
In 2017, thanks to Adam's husband's courage to speak up and his nursing career, which makes him hireable in a lot of places, they make the decision to go back to Los Angeles, not too far from West Hollywood.
Yes, they move again.
It's annoying. and expensive.
But the good news is, when they return, they still love that area.
And Adam gets a literary agent and sells his book.
It's a young adult summer camp mystery thriller called Surrender Your Sons.
Adam also finds a day job doing interesting work.
And this opens up opportunities.
Being happy in a place, feeling safe and successful in a place.
Adam and his husband start having new conversations about their life together.
We were both actively now talking about growing our family, adopting a child.
A big step that would probably require a bigger place.
And we were like, well, we got to get some space.
And how do you do that?
Well, you got to sort of leave the perimeter of LA.
We ended up renting a two bedroom place in Valencia, which is north of LA.
It's near Six Flags Magic Mountain.
And it's fairly close to a lot of stuff.
So we felt like still connected.
So we had started our adoption procedure.
We had just gotten like all the paperwork you've got to like get done.
And then, at that point, even before the pandemic really showed the way to its eyes it was we were feeling that same pull of like well, if we have a kid, who's this kid going to know?
Adam and his husband have this great new place, big enough for a kid.
That's why they went to Valencia.
But now they feel like should have community and adam's brother and parents live in north carolina and at that point my, my niece, my brother's daughters were three and five, like like very young, like young enough that it was like, oh you know, they'll be around the same age, we like lived out there and they'd know each other because, like i grew up around my cousins and he grew up around his cousins, we had kind of at that point decided like all right let's, let's start thinking about North Carolina.
And so my husband was already looking at hospitals around North Carolina.
And so we were thinking that this place in Valencia was more of a stopgap until then.
And then, it was always like, and then we'll be settled.
While they're looking, the pandemic hits.
And then Adam loses his day job.
So they decide, let's go for it.
So it was just, it felt like, okay, now's the time.
On to North Carolina.
One thing about North Carolina It's a lot cheaper to buy a house there than in New York or Los Angeles.
Adam and his husband realize they can actually afford to get a brand new house right near where Adam's brother lives, around Charlotte.
They just have to wait through construction.
So that did require us to stay with my parents for a few extra months than maybe we were anticipating.
But this was like, OK, well, now they've poured the foundation.
They need to build it up.
The thing was, because of the pandemic, everything was delayed.
This is really stressful for Adam and his husband because they're not meant to live with Adam's parents for months during a lockdown.
By the way, this might be relatable to some of you.
I know many people who lived with parents and in-laws during 2020, and that year was tense.
I have a great relationship with my family.
I think it's very, very difficult to be Of a big adult age, no matter what your relationship is with your family, and live in their house day to day and not regress.
Talk to me about living in boxes.
The stress of that.
It really is a quiet killer.
Especially when you don't know when it's going to end.
Because especially that time, we didn't have a set date that everybody could look forward to.
Like, okay, that's the date.
Because it kept getting pushed back.
You could not place any faith in that date.
Worth mentioning, during this time, Adam's first book is coming out.
This should be celebratory and fun.
But this is September of 2020.
The actual book publisher can't even get the book out because there are production and shipping issues.
For the first two weeks the book was out, you couldn't get it.
And it was just a nightmare.
It was just really a nightmare.
Adam is grateful to have a loving family and housing.
But let's not forget the reason he's come all the way to North Carolina to begin with to grow a family to adopt.
And now it seems like it's not the time to do that.
There's no security or money for that.
Everything that was feeling stable is not anymore.
Surrogacy is incredibly expensive, but even adoption is very expensive.
And you need to.
There was some upfront money, but then there was going to be once you get going.
If you match with somebody, it's tens of thousands that are needed and it needs to be available that minute, and so we had reserve funds, but we were going to have to like, deplete the reserve funds and we were just going to have to live in even further insecurity while welcoming in a child.
So there was this feeling of like hey, let's just pause this until, you know, I get something going again and we just feel a little more secure and stable, and And that just kept being elusive.
I should mention, it's hard for them to be in a place that was very politically different than California.
And because of the pandemic, you couldn't even truly connect and figure people out.
It was during a very contested election.
It just was this thing where you could feel it.
Every conversation you had with somebody that was not like your immediate family, that you knew was fraught.
Adam and his husband are able to move into their brand new house that December, which they designed just right.
But as beautiful as it is, it's not enough.
This feels like the wrong place again.
They don't fit in where they're living at all.
And they don't want to wait around simply for show, pretending it could work long term.
Either we have spent six months, or we spent a year and six months in a thing that we know is not working.
So we're like, OK, but then Cut it early then.
They're packing boxes to move about a year after arriving in North Carolina and only a few months after getting into their dream house.
Adam admits that moving again makes him feel like he's failing his family and failing in general.
There was a lot of shame in that, because it was.
I think my parents probably took it harder because they were really invested in us being there.
We all have a good time together.
But it was tricky because also we weren't as able to eloquently describe why we were leaving as when we were leaving New York.
There was a very clear reason why we were leaving New York.
But then in North Carolina, it was really, it was more ephemeral.
It was more emotional.
And it was more something that, like I think people were at the time.
You can't just figure that out while you're here and gut it out a little bit.
Adam and his husband knew that they could theoretically make do where they were.
But they knew there had to be a place where they would feel truly happy.
I think we were just sick of gutting it out.
We're just like, I can't live in this.
If we're going to keep moving, if we're going to be the people who keep moving, then we're going to be in a good situation, no matter what.
And the second the situation turns, we're out.
We'll just move again.
They put the North Carolina house on the market.
It sells quickly.
Adam's husband finds a temporary nursing job in San Diego.
They move there and think of it as a scenic pit stop for six months.
And then, like magic, an apartment in the original West Hollywood building they loved opens up.
The one they lived in when they got married.
The one with the bungalows outside.
It feels like fate.
It's right before they make this move back to LA, that Adam gets on Twitter and information dumps to random people like me.
In a thread that started with, where in the world is Adam Sass Diego?
He explained that he was indeed in San Diego.
He talked about his recent moves, including the big one, to North Carolina.
Then he said something really important.
He explained that he and his husband realized after many months that they had fallen into a trap of trying to conform their lives to one model being together in a suburb surrounded by family.
They thought all of that was necessary to be a happy family.
He tweeted.
We became the gays who bought into that normative idea because we'd spent our lives being told we couldn't have that.
We never once asked ourselves if that was the life we wanted.
Then Adam tweeted, we had to become SoCal yuppie assholes again.
He said and this is verbatim from a tweet that day embarrassing shit to be pushing 40 and reveal that life chaos, but worse to be pushing 40 and letting it kill us.
Not long after, they move everything, all over again, to that same place in West Hollywood.
They get to be there for a few years, still tabling the idea of adoption, still allowing themselves to settle down.
And they now know they want to live in California.
Period.
But this nice little apartment couldn't be their forever place.
So eventually, it's time to go again.
This time with far less drama.
And the reason we moved in was just because at that point we were both working from home and it's a one-bedroom and apartment.
Life starts to pull on you.
They really want their own home.
The place they can afford one?
Desert Hot Springs, which is right outside of Palm Springs, a very yuppie friendly, happy social town.
Like we just up and visited and like, wow, it's like two hours from L.A.
So it still connects us to L.A. people.
And, you know, also my husband really, really enjoys the state of California for nursing.
It's probably the best state for pay.
It's probably the best state for upward mobility.
Desert Hot Springs it is.
They moved a little more than a year ago.
Adam and his husband are not going anywhere anytime soon, if he can help it.
Adam admits that now he's trying to get used to the fact that he might spend years there.
For a very transient person, that is weird.
He likens it to when Tom Hanks is rescued in the movie Castaway, and he's so used to being on an island that he can't sleep in the comfy bed and enjoy stability.
Like he's just sleeping on the floor. because he just can't like just sleep in a bed.
I feel like that's gonna be me with like just stability.
So I do try to kind of keep that communication with my husband and I, because I'm sure he's feeling the same thing.
We're both Geminis.
So we're both, that's the other twist of this tale is that we're both very like, sure, change it.
So we feed each other's impulses there.
So what are the lessons here?
About moving, about when you're supposed to leave a place and how to find yourself as you do it?
I'll share some takeaways from Adam's perspective and some from mine.
Number one, if you're partnered and are considering a move, be honest about how it's going.
No lying for the sake of kindness.
Adam's husband did him a big favor by saying, hey, I'm miserable in New York.
I can't imagine what it would have been like had the two of them held it in for months and months just trying to be polite.
Number two, if you like a place, really feel happy in a place, that's okay.
You can stay put.
If you remember, Adam and his husband loved California.
But for understandable reasons, they kept trying to optimize.
I totally get this, by the way.
When I was younger, people would always ask, when are you leaving Boston for New York?
Because you have to live in New York City once, right?
Especially as a young writer.
When I was 30, part of me did feel like a failure for not wanting to be in the Big Apple.
But I didn't go because it felt wrong.
And finally, a very important lesson that hit me hard as I heard Adam's story.
Adam told me he was embarrassed by his many moves, maybe even upset.
He said he would look around and see other people whose lives looked stable.
And he'd think, well, he says it best.
I know people who had never moved in 15 years and their same job for you know 10 10, 15 years.
You know um.
You know uh, I had a kid without incident.
It was really making me just resentful because I'm getting closer to 40 at this point.
But meanwhile, I know people who look at Adam's life and say, you found a partner by 30.
You found love.
You have long known what you want to do for a living.
You've understood your passion.
As a random social media follower of Adam's, I never guessed he was struggling with location, because I was comfy in Boston, which has always felt like home.
I took that for granted.
So that's the lesson for me, that sometimes we take for granted the things that come easy to us.
There's probably always someone out there who's looking at our lives and saying wow, they've figured it out, even if we're sure we haven't.
Adam is much kinder to himself about his choices these days.
He's figured out he needed this journey to know what he really wants.
Moving is a big thing. allegory for just life choices.
So, you know, should I do this?
Should I do that?
If I do this, will that be a mistake?
And I think what I've discovered is that you never know.
As much as I've been like sitting here being like, this is really draining.
And you know, this is all like, I feel good about these moves.
And I do feel like we ended up in the right place.
And I'm glad it took us to these other places.
So we know not there that it makes us feel better about our situation here, because we have lived everywhere else.
And we kind of know that you only know that through trial and error.
So I would also just remind you saying I know this is if, if I think, I think I think people who are in their twenties, maybe mid to late twenties, are especially vulnerable to this thought process, because you get very like, for some reason, that was the period of my life where I was like no, everything has to be figured out.
I need the job.
I need the man.
I need the place, i need the family, i need everything by 28, and then 70 years of nothing else happens.
I think you need to go through that, but like it it is, it does lead you into making, i think, fear-based decisions which will you would overthink yourself out of something which is like, when you're in your 20s, especially in even in your 30s, like i'm, even in my 40, like i'm just, it's not a big deal, you move there.
It doesn't work, you move back, you just come back and you'll you'll know once you're there.
As for Adam's next moves, he's put out a bunch of books and things are going well.
When it comes to growing their family, adoption is still on the table.
They're just waiting for that feeling that it's the right time.
The world is complicated right now, so they're standing still, open to being open.
It's just nice to feel that he can trust his gut to be where he wants to be.
Adam's latest book is called Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts.
It's a young adult romance about a boy who's cursed to ruin any romantic relationship.
Find it wherever you get books.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Our producer is Christina Hanatu.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Story editing by Jasmine Aguilera.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send any questions about dating divorce marriage, singlehood or whatever to loveletters at bostoncom.
And if you like the show, please leave us a review.
I was begging them to be able, I was like, please let me just work from home like two days a week.
It was just very prophetic.
It's like the end of 2019.
They're like, work from home.
It'll never happen.
And like, sorry, I caused the pandemic as well.
Your power.
I need to put this monkey's paw away.
I keep wishing.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
