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Sounds like I'm bragging and I am.
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Marvel movies i mean, i'm more of a dc comics girl, meaning batman superman, harley quinn but i do enjoy a good marvel story.
I am very here for iron man, black panther spider-man ant-man, especially when there's a big team up.
This is not a hot take, but in my opinion, one of the best moments in cinematic superhero history comes after 9 000 marvel films, when it is finally the 2019 movie end game.
Suddenly, all of these superheroes are together on a battlefield.
And Captain America says... Avengers!
Assemble.
No!
Avengers Assemble.
I remember seeing this in a theater and being like, hell yes, team.
Be friends.
Wear tight pants.
Work together. save the world.
I bring up the Avengers not to get too far into comic book lore, but to talk about how many people it can take to get through something difficult.
Sometimes you only need one friend to help you past a bad day.
Other times you need lots of people, all of whom show up with their own special gifts and talents.
That's what today's story is all about.
Let's assemble, shall we?
From the Boston Globe and PRX, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Today's guest is a woman we're going to call Sophia.
She asked us to protect her privacy because of the sensitive nature of her story.
Sophia is in her early 30s, lives on the East Coast, and works in the field of healthcare data.
She reached out with a story about all the people who helped her in her relationship life.
I was deeply moved by it and asked her to tell us everything.
But before we get going, a quick warning.
This episode includes discussion of abuse.
Sophia grew up in a tight-knit family.
It was her mom, her dad... and a couple of siblings.
They immigrated from South America when she was young, eventually settling in a Midwestern city.
My family moved around quite a bit.
It felt like the closest community that we had were each other.
And so that was something that was really emphasized.
A lot growing up is like we look out for one another, like kind of like this idea that we're all we have.
And I've always thought about it, like it's felt easy for me to kind of pick up and go and move somewhere else and start new because of that.
But it also means I don't have super longstanding relationships.
When you were young, what did you think would happen in your own romantic life?
I did know that I like the idea of having, like starting my own family.
I definitely would say my parents were the biggest relationship model that I had.
And I think generally there were a lot of things that I thought were like nice about it and kind of comforting and sweet.
And then there were some things that I wasn't too fond of or that I didn't necessarily want to replicate in my own life.
Sophia has some little crushes when she's young.
Then her first real relationship in high school.
I think we're together about a year, maybe not quite a year, maybe a little more than a year, something like that.
And then I didn't date throughout college because I was so focused on school.
And I really was in a mindset where I thought, I just don't have time.
Like I am so occupied with other things that even thinking about having a relationship was going to not really add something positive to my life.
But like take away time.
Sophia pursues a STEM major in college, which takes up most of her brain space.
Like, I was never good at chemistry.
It felt like that required extra time.
There are certain calculus courses that are also super challenging for me.
And then there was also a lot of extracurriculars that I felt like were really important.
There was, like the Society of Women Engineers that I was involved with and that felt really important to me at the time.
But academics are not the only reason Sophia isn't dating in college.
She also has a lot going on at home.
Sophia's mom had been diagnosed with cancer when Sophia was in high school.
So Sophia isn't having that carefree college experience that many of her peers are.
She's a devoted student, daughter, sibling, and occasional caregiver all at once.
I was living at home during college also.
That was just another piece of the experience that felt like it required energy and time.
It isn't until grad school, when Sophia is in her early 20s, that she heads out on her own to another Midwestern city—.
Leaving is not an easy decision, because her mom is still getting treatment and the prognosis isn't clear.
I was feeling like I really wanted to be in a different place.
And it was really hard also because I think there was a sense of responsibility to the family that moving away was going to, you know, make it hard.
I was going to feel guilty about it.
I know that for my mom, she was really upset about the news that I was going to be moving away.
I think that made her really sad.
At the same time, I think we, in our family, like pursuing a graduate degree was really valued.
And so I think you know, despite it feeling hard to move away, there was also just like an understanding that this was like an important move for me to make.
So in 2012, Sophia starts this graduate program in STEM, far away from her family, in a different state.
With this new independence, she finds more room for romance.
After about a month...
Sophia meets a man we'll call Mark.
We were enrolled in the same program so there were opportunities for folks in the same program to socialize.
We had some friends in common.
There was banter that I enjoyed, you know, between us.
We kind of hit it off in that sense.
And then, of course, we shared a lot in common in terms of like just in graduate school and the program that we were in and the different faculty members that we were interacting with.
Can you tell me how the relationship progresses?
In some ways it felt like we moved a little bit fast emotionally because there had been some tension at the beginning.
There was a misunderstanding about me spending time with somebody that I had very briefly dated.
And then Mark had kind of thought there might still be something there.
And it caused like a very big kind of explosive conflict that kind of caught me off guard.
It's like when I think about it now, I think like, oh, that was probably a red flag.
But at the time, there was something about it that felt a little familiar.
And I think it was a little bit too easy for me to, at the time, step into a place of really trying to comfort him and convince him that The concern that he had really didn't have much to stand on because there really wasn't anything going on with this other person.
So I think it felt like there was some closeness, initially because of this conflict and then having to kind of work through it, but not really working through it at the same time.
At one point, Sophia has to move about an hour away for her research.
For about a year.
She and Mark have a mini long-distance relationship and they see each other mostly on weekends.
It's during this time that Sophia loses her mom.
Mark is very supportive.
Then, after Sophia moves back, Mark moves to another state to finish his degree.
That keeps them in a longer distance relationship for another few years.
They visit each other about every three months.
It's frustrating, but that's all they can afford.
Then he moved back to the state where we had met, and we decided to move in together.
And I remember that feeling a little challenging because it kind of felt like There wasn't like a very intentional conversation about whether we both wanted to move in together, whether we both were ready for it.
But it was more like a matter of convenience.
Like he needed to move back and like money was a little tight.
And so we just ended up making that decision.
After living apart for so long, finally being together feels like a relief.
They get to wake up next to each other every day.
They get to figure out their favorite restaurants as a couple.
But sharing space also comes with its own challenges.
I remember him sharing.
He felt like he was fitting into my life.
Like I had activities that I was involved with or friends that I would like to go see.
And sometimes it felt like he would have liked me to spend more of my non-working hours with him and maybe not so much with some of these other people or other groups.
One of the things that helped me was we decided to move out of that apartment and into a new apartment that we chose together.
So after they're in this new apartment, they start talking about marriage.
Sophia wasn't born in the United States, so she and Mark worry about what will happen to her immigration status when she's done with school.
It seems best to get married before she finishes her program.
They've been together for five years at this point, so marriage is something that feels like a natural step anyway.
But as they plan for a small wedding... things are pretty volatile at home.
They're in this better, new apartment that feels like something they both chose.
But the arguments continue.
The fights became more frequent and more intense.
One of the things that was hard about our dynamic was he would go out to drink and then afterwards would kind of come home, be inebriated and then be more likely to be upset about something or want to discuss something and just not be in like a clear head space to do it.
There were some pretty hurtful conflicts that we had that made me second guess whether we should even get married.
That's when I sort of started reaching out to people.
Like I'd reached out to my brother and told him, like you know, we kind of had this conflict and he like called me names and it was really offensive.
But when I was talking to my brother about it, I remember him saying that you know he was trying to comfort me, I think, and saying like well, you know, couples sometimes just fight and you don't really mean the things that you say.
And so I thought huh well yeah, maybe that's part of it is like sometimes we do say things that we regret.
Sophia decides to try counseling. to figure out why she and Mark are having so much trouble.
She goes to group therapy on campus.
She tells strangers in the group about these really bad fights she's having with Mark.
She wonders, what are people going to think about this?
The two therapists that were overseeing the group never really said anything about it.
And so I thought well, you know, it must be like a workable level of unhealthy, because nobody's sort of saying like well, wait a minute maybe.
You want to talk to somebody about this.
Then before the wedding, there's a huge fight.
There was an incident that was pretty intense after he had gone out drinking and come back.
And that was the first time that I physically felt unsafe in my home.
And we were like arguing at like three in the morning.
It was just like the environment was like very stressful in a lot of different ways.
But I remember leaving super early in the morning and just going to work.
But when Mark and I came back together, we talked about it.
He shared that he didn't really remember much of what had happened.
And that was pretty frustrating.
But at the same time, he was a really good listener.
And he was really hearing me share my experience about everything that happened and how I was feeling about it.
And so I really felt like, okay, he finally heard me this time.
It feels like he is really in a place where he wants to really work on making this better.
Maybe work on the drinking, maybe work on communication.
Mark agrees to go to couples therapy.
Sophia and Mark go through with the marriage in the fall of 2017 because she decides okay, they're working on it.
The wedding is a small event.
And early in the marriage, there are good moments, some honeymoon-style feelings of connection.
But over time the fights return.
It's hard for Sophia to guess what her marriage will be like on any given day.
Now that Sophia and Mark are in couples counseling, Sophia starts thinking.
I wonder if this mental health professional is going to tell me that this cycle of fighting and reconciliation is really unhealthy.
But the therapist doesn't say that.
So Sophia figures, again, this must be normal, or at least something we can work on.
Then, one night in early 2018, After yet another fight, Sophia goes online and reaches out to a domestic abuse prevention hotline.
This time, the response is different.
Maybe because the specialist she's talking with is trained to recognize signs of abuse.
I remember sort of chatting with somebody about that like oh, I'm not sure if this is what I'm experiencing, but like here's what happened.
And that experience felt affirming.
The way I've described it is it kind of felt like I had foggy glass in front of me.
And that, like this conversation through chat with this person, like kind of helped shatter that foggy glass.
At that point, I was kind of feeling like, okay, I probably need to really consider this.
It was.
It felt like I was seeing things a little bit more clearly, but I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with that information.
Sophia is still doubting herself.
There's a part of her that thinks, maybe we can work through this.
Maybe we can get to the other side.
Then she and Mark have another blow up.
One morning, she's finally at wit's end.
I remember I had driven into work and I had parked in the parking lot in the morning and I just started crying.
Like, I was so overwhelmed.
She calls her couples therapist and asks for help.
The therapist recommends that she go to walk-in hours at the office to speak to a crisis counselor on call, because it's clear that Sophia needs to talk to someone right now.
So that's what I ended up doing, and whoever was on call that day, who I hadn't met before, I just remember.
Kind of I was so upset and
And just telling her I feel like, And just expressing to her that I felt so frustrated because I was doing all of these things.
I was doing one-on-one therapy, group therapy, couples therapy.
And I just needed somebody to tell me if I was in an abusive relationship or not.
And I remember the counselor asked me well, why do you think it would be helpful for you to know that?
And I just remember feeling so frustrated about that.
And so I ended up telling her that if I knew that that was the case, then I could stop feeling so crazy.
I needed to say that to her, I guess for her to then offer me this resource, which is called the Power and Control Wheel.
And she like had a handout and she pulled it out from her desk and she's like well, have you ever heard of this?
And I was like, no.
The Power and Control Wheel is a domestic abuse intervention tool that helps people identify what's happening in their relationships.
The wheel highlights power dynamics that might be harder to see as controlling behavior or abuse.
It mentions how someone can use jealousy to justify bad actions.
It talks about name calling, isolating a partner from their loved ones, using money to prevent a person from maintaining their own freedom.
Some of the stuff on the wheel has nothing to do with Sophia's experience, but other things feel pretty familiar.
I just remember getting this handout and then seeing so much on it that was relatable.
And so from that session...
She said she could connect me with a specialist like an interpersonal violence specialist that they had on their team and like a caseworker.
I think this was really the moment where I was like, okay, this is what needs to happen.
I need to leave.
She'd asked me if these like incidents or these fights were happening more often.
And I said, yes.
And then she asked me if they were becoming more intense in some way, they're getting worse.
And I said, yes.
And so then she explained to me that it's not going to get better.
And I really heard that.
I heard that in the moment.
The worker on the domestic violence chat line, the counselor who brought out the power and control wheel.
I'm going to call these two people Sophia's first two Avengers.
More are coming.
A team is forming.
And because of these people and Sophia's own strength, her story gets powerful and great.
We'll continue after the break.
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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.
Okay, we're back.
So Sophia had grown up in a close family that didn't rely much on outside community.
At this point.
She's in her late 20s and she's been in a long relationship that's left her isolated and afraid.
As she realizes that her marriage is not good for her, she considers how her entire world and philosophy has to change.
The answer becomes clear.
More people, more help.
This is when her team starts to take shape.
First, she starts working with an organization that helps her build a plan to exit the marriage.
They assign her an advocate, group therapy, and individual therapy.
They never judge that.
She's also worried about Mark's well-being, because the feelings here are complex and the experts understand.
I was feeling like, if I do this, I'm abandoning my partner and we've come so far and like he's the only partner that's ever met my mom.
And it's just like a lot of different complicating things.
There's like this one, like storyline that I kept holding on to, which was well, you know, when we first started dating at the time I was I kind of had this perspective like oh, things were so much worse then.
But like here we are six years later and like things are better.
Like I can see like progress.
Right.
And in the way that he communicates with me or is a partner with me.
And so one of these one on one therapists had told me.
You know, that can be true.
Like it could be true that he's on this path to becoming, like quote unquote a better person, a better partner, a better communicator.
But you don't need to be there to see him reach the end of his journey.
Beyond the professionals, Sophia starts to let other helpers in.
And this is new for her.
She realizes that It doesn't have to be people who've known you forever, or people who have pledged best friendships, or people who will stick around for the rest of your life.
It's about finding the right assistance and company for the moment.
The first of these great supporters is a friend of Sophia's we'll call Kit.
Kit is a relatively new friend, but she offers something crucial to Sophia.
She tells her hey listen, if you ever need to get out of the house, you're welcome to come over to my place.
I just remember really appreciating that, like really appreciating the option.
And so I remember doing that and she had got all these little paint canvases and paints and we just painted and just had a really fun time.
We cooked together.
She had been in charge of part of the dinner.
I had been in charge of another part of the dinner.
And one of the points of tension with Mark had been sometimes he would be kind of critical of my cooking.
And there's something that felt really good about being able to cook with a friend and have them tell me just oh, that was amazing.
You did such a good job.
Do you remember what you cooked together?
I think like the whole meal was roasted cauliflower with red onions.
There were chickpeas that we sort of cooked over the stovetop with spices.
And then there was like a tahini dressing and then chopped parsley.
And it was the first time that I had made that dish, but it's like one of my favorite dishes to make for like large groups of people.
I think that dish just brings back so many nice memories that, yeah, that I really like to make it.
The next friend to lend a big hand is a woman we'll call Soli.
Soli had moved out of the city to the country with her husband.
She offers Sofia a place to crash for a few days if Sofia needs it.
And so I said you know, actually it could be really helpful for me to come here as I'm going through this transition.
You know like once I leave my home, it might be nice to come spend a couple of days here, if that's OK with you.
One of the things that was clear to me was I wanted to be able to leave when my partner wasn't there.
Like I didn't want to have a confrontation with Mark about this.
I didn't want to like have a conversation about whether we should end the relationship.
I just wanted to be able to go.
And that in the summer of 2018, is what Sophia does.
She summons the courage, packs up her stuff, and goes to Sully's house.
And so I left him a letter and then left.
And then that night, I remember having a panic attack.
It was just very high emotions.
And so it was nice to be able to do that in a safe place with people that cared about me.
After a few days in Sully's house, Sophia moves on to her next Avenger.
This time, it's her aunt, who lives in Canada.
Once Sophia decided to leave Mark, she wanted him out of her immigration process, in part because she wanted to do it all on her own, but also because she wanted him to know that their relationship never had anything to do with her trying to take advantage of his status as a US citizen.
One of his concerns was that I was only with him for this benefit.
And even after being together for five years, that wasn't something he ever really shook.
And so I also was feeling really clear that I didn't want to see the process through and then terminate things, because I think it would have confirmed that fear that he had.
I think it would have really been hurtful to him.
She calls the immigration lawyer she's been using and stops the process.
I had already graduated, and so I was no longer covered by a student visa.
When I knew I was going to have to leave the country.
Then I reached out to my aunt and told her a little bit about what was going on and asked if I could stay with her while my work visa came through for the next job that I already had lined up on the East Coast.
And so she said, yeah, no problem.
And so...
I drove from the Midwest, from my friend Sully's house, to Canada and stayed with my aunt for about two months waiting for that work visa process to finish.
I imagine it's a very different way to spend time with a relative, in a much more intimate, peer-like way.
I don't know what your relationship was like with her before this, but can you give me a sense of what those two months were like?
Well, definitely my aunt and I hadn't connected in this vulnerable way before.
But she had gone through her own kind of tumultuous relationship that she had ended not too long before I had ended mine.
There was also something fresh in her mind about an unhealthy relationship that I think we could connect on and support each other with.
I mean, she was really wonderful and never made me feel like I was overstaying my welcome, but I always felt like I was overstaying my welcome.
But it was also like a sweet connection time to get to know her children a little bit better.
So my cousins
And yeah, it was just helpful to be in a brand new environment.
I should mention that as far as family goes, Sophia's dad was also a key part of her support team.
He was the first person in the family she'd told about leaving.
I remember feeling a little bit nervous about how he was going to receive it.
And it also felt really, really vulnerable because at this point, like my mom had already passed and my mom had been such a like big presence in our nuclear family and such like a big focus, especially when she was sick, that I didn't have much of a deep emotional connection with my dad.
But He did such a wonderful job of just like listening and not questioning anything.
I need to say too, that Sophia's brother might not have known exactly how to advise her when Sophia first called him about her fights with Mark.
But even if a person in your life doesn't know how to help you at first, they can rally and be important to you later.
Sophia's brother and her dad are offered to pick her up and drive her across the country.
Both her brother and her dad also respected her need to make her own decisions.
Instead of showing up to battle on her behalf without her permission, they followed her lead.
When I was driving from the Midwest to Canada and I was checking with my family, my dad had said you know, it'd be great for you to check in with us along the way.
And I remember having this moment where I was like oh, I need to decide how often I want to check in with them, because part of that process just felt really like liberating, like being able to just drive and just do everything on my terms.
At the end of Sophia's time in Canada, it's the fall of 2018.
She has a job lined up in an East Coast city back in the U.S.
No major connections there, so it feels like a fresh start.
After I sort of went through the border and they checked my documents and all those sort of things, which is always a stressful experience for me.
I feel like, once I got past that point that I felt like oh like, here I am on my way to something totally new and exciting.
And I was excited to create like a new life for myself that didn't include anything from my past relationship.
One of the first things I did when I got here was found therapists, you know, and like I knew that that I was gonna need like support and like working through all the things that I could work on for myself that didn't involve anybody else.
Like work that I felt like I needed to do that wasn't dependent on a partner, or like my dynamic with a partner.
And so a lot of that work had to do with understanding boundaries, like what boundaries even are.
Like I remember being so confused about that concept.
In therapy, Sophia talks about all sorts of things like her new job, when she might want to date again.
Also, how family history influences what we expect in relationships.
We kind of had this joke in the family, like my mom's kind of a matchstick, you know, she kind of like will fire up.
And like certainly when I was younger, there'd be like nervousness around her reaction to things.
And my dad was somebody who was kind of like, try to be calm in response.
And so I remember there being a moment of, oh, maybe some of this is a little bit familiar.
Like.
The way that Mark is reacting is maybe a little bit familiar to the way that my mom might react to something.
But I think, in sort of compensating for not wanting to be the matchstick version in this relationship, I kind of felt like to the other side where I was calm but really I was very dismissive of my experience of everything.
In her new city, free and on her own, Sophia starts to make friends.
She has crushes.
She tries new restaurants.
Things feel a bit lighter.
She gives herself permission not to date for a long time, until in late 2022.
She decides she's finally ready.
I hopped on the apps for the first time ever and I had been so resistant to doing it, but I finally felt very open to it.
She has some dates and short relationships.
And in the freedom she's found since leaving her marriage, Sophia discovers something else about herself.
I think another added layer of getting to know myself was feeling comfortable dating as a queer person.
Yeah, and so in May...
Of this year, I started dating a woman for the first time.
And so that's been a really new experience, a really positive one.
The way that I feel with her.
It's like.
It's very different in a lot of ways from my relationship with Mark.
I think it's like a breath of fresh air to be in an intimate relationship with someone where my body's just telling me all the time that I'm safe there.
I wonder if you might speak to any lessons about coming up with a team of people in your life, not just for the bad times, but for the good times too.
I think part of what it taught me is That I think sometimes you cross paths with somebody for a very specific reason, in a very particular way.
And that doesn't mean that that's the way you're going to be connecting with this person forever.
I think sometimes when you ask for help at least for me, because it's something I don't do often, something I'm practicing
I think it's kind of like you're opening a box of surprises every time.
I don't exactly know how... how somebody is going to show up that day.
And so I think, sometimes just making the ask and seeing where that person is and if they can meet you where you are.
And I think for me it's also helped like understand that I don't always have capacity to show up for people in all the ways that they might want me to.
I have to say that when Sophia says this, it really affirms something for me.
I always feel guilty when I can't help people to the same extent they've helped me.
Like I owe them something.
When I think about, like when I lost my mom, like because I was younger than a lot of my friends I was in my 30s but like they all helped me and now all of their parents are aging.
And I'm like I have to return the favor for like 100 people who, in many years, like it's just like a really interesting thought about who's just around.
But and I think there needs to be like a lot of flexibility there.
Like I often think about like a web and how there's just like pushes and pulls and redistribution of effort.
And yeah, I think that's something that community has really taught me is it has to be flexible.
It has to be like nimble that it can't like be overstressed in any particular person or area.
Yeah.
Or it doesn't work.
People get burned out or resentful, which is what happens to me sometimes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sophia says she's working on community and helping.
Avengers theory, as I'll call it, becoming just the way she does life.
The philosophy is that over the course of our journeys, we will have many needs.
We can and should ask for support from many people.
We can also assist others, or decline to, based on our own capacity.
Not to be too cheesy about this, but we all need help sometimes.
Even superheroes.
You can find support in unexpected places.
But I think a lot of it is.
It feels really important for me to not put so much pressure on the nuclear family, to be providing all the support.
It feels super necessary for me to be able to spread that out among lots of different people.
In some ways it's kind of forced me to expand my view of community, but in a really beautiful way that I feel really connected to now.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe and PRX.
Today's episode was produced by Jesse Remedios and Scott Hellman.
Ned Porter does our audio mixing, sound design, and mastering.
Maddie Mortel does our audience engagement.
Love Letters illustrations by Ali Riza.
Special thanks to Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
We are an advice column.
Please send us your questions because it helps other people figure out theirs.
You can reach us at lovelettersatboston.com.
We're online at loveletters.show.
My therapist is constantly saying to me, like, check in with your body.
How does your body feel?
And I'm always like, oh, no, it feels like it's just like a fist.
But anyway, if she listens, she will she will love what you have to say.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
