Emmy Rossum reads a story about a 12-hour relationship. On an airplane.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Modern love. The pad cast is made possible with support from living proof. If your hiring, you know can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. You just hope the rate Canada comes along, but not when you use it for cruder zipper. Critters technology finds qualified candidates, for you then actively invites them to apply. In fact, four out of five employers who posted zip recruiter, get a qualified candidates within the first deck chided free today at zero cruder, dot com, slash, and why t that Sippar, cruder, dot, com, slash and Wide t zipper
or the smartest way, the higher living proof strike amp, who is so good at actually cleaning hair that you can take a spin class and not washer hereafter use the code, love at living proof, dot, com for a free travel size, dry, shampoo, with your twenty dollar order. We are the science, you are the living proof and by square space, providing tools that help people showcase their passions with a cost,
eyes, landing page website or online store, also offering domains hosting and twenty four seven support. Get your free trial at square space, dot, com, slash, modern love. You should squares
ass from the New York Times and W B you are Boston. This is modern life stories of love, loss and redemption. I'm your host Magna tracker Bernie, let's face it. People love to judge millennials
especially when it comes to relationships. You know millennials, as the haters would have it they're all hallo and shallow. Well, Emma Court is going to change.
your mind? Here's Emmy Rossum reading Emma's essay a Millennials guide to kissing.
When a total stranger kissed me under the,
official lights of an airplane cabin somewhere above international waters. My first thought was of the orthodox
the woman sitting to my left. I hoped she was asleep. It was a twelve hour flight from TEL Aviv to Newark and I wanted to nap too. But how could I now the kiss coming out of no
There had turned me into the heroine of a bad romance novel heart, fluttering weak need every nerve electrified
My stranger and I were returning from birthright Israel trips with groups from our respective universities, Birthright Israel as a free ten day trip to Israel for young jewish Americans, and I had wanted to go before I graduated last winter, before my final semester of cholera
I finally had because there are so many young people on Birthright Israel trips. There often mocked as an attempt to spark a connection to Israel through the bedroom, and plenty of that had happened on my trip, but it hadn't happened to me
until that moment spoiling the perfect narrative
Two strangers meeting on an airplane. I admit that we had met before just once briefly:
When I bumped into a friend from high school during a stop in Jerusalem, one of her friends had been cute. I had remembered- and now here he was behind me as we boarded the
plain, then, bending his tall frame into the aisle seat. Next to me, ass, he lifted his backpack into the overhead compartment. I marveled at my luck.
the tweet
sprang the kind of instant intimacy fostered by
when personalities in tight quarters, we spoken spurts about the gossip on our trip
and what we had done during the days spent in Israel. We flirted we kissed that first time and then we kissed again
Splitting a pair of headphones, we listen to the red hot chile, peppers and terror swift. I liked how easy he was. How ready to talk. I liked his laugh and his dark eyes
is it seemed torn from the back of a Nicholas, sparks paperback
southern science, major from a small liberal art school and the north.
And humanities major from a huge pre professional university meat in the sky.
It's over the Mediterranean. The heat between them is palpable but less romantic detail.
Persisted. I was a senior about to start my second semester with plans to head to Dallas after graduation he was a sophomore with a swaddling
Third of knowing, where he'd be for the next few years, but it didn't matter anyway, I did it.
in twelve hours. We be back on paths that let us in opposite directions.
Meeting was.
just a romantic interlude from our real lives, and if it did mean anything, we were college students. We knew how to pretend it didn't on the plea
the lights came back on and the breakfast card appeared reality set in as we sipped orange juice, from tinfoil covered cups and for the first time had little to say to
during the bumpy landing. He distracted me by talking about famous airplane crashes,
and then, with a final jarring thump. We were back on the ground.
As we gathered our belongings from what had been
temporary home. I wondered what would happen next. We bought tickets,
At the train terminal lingering on the automated buttons, after as we were about to board trains heading in different directions, we stared at each other
He rested one arm on his rolling suitcase bewilderment in his dark eyes. I hugged him
brisk no nonsense goodbye. We didn't exchange numbers by he shouted down the stairs. At my back see you never
I couldn't tell if he was serious or joking
even imbracing the more positive at the possibilities it still stung and that should have been it
a story. I told giggling to friends until the details, faded and
He was just a boy whose name I didn't remember, but I saw his name on my Facebook Newsfeed in a batch of
Does our mutual friend had uploaded and I couldn't resist. I clicked add friend and one day he messaged me: hey, hey, I typed back how life it went like this for days
but talking to him made me feel like a time traveler spliced between the snowy pads of my campus and the dark
airplane we had shared. I was
in class or at meetings at the local campus cafe
in my readings, in the library.
And then a message on my screen would tug me back. I didn't like the way
set, my balance.
Far away and powerless. It made me feel
Mass media has a fascination with hookup culture among people around my age. Meriting
depth investigations and contentious opining about what it all means
but they often mrs simple fact, there's nothing.
Particularly knew about trying to avoid getting hurt,
is that my generation has turned this avoidance into a science perfecting the separation of the physical from the emotional we truncates, whenever possible, texting over calling meeting over
rather than in person. We leave in the early morning without saying goodbye. Being casual is cooler than intimacy vulnerability, or so we think
having the last word was once a sign of one's wits and smarts. It meant that your comment had gravitas and staying power, but today having the last word is the ultimate weakness. It
ins being the person who doesn't merit an answer,
Leave him hanging than risk the same happening to you. Keep it shallow to your heart, isn't on the line.
Being aware of all this does not grant immunity from its effects. One night my roommates hook
world over in the dark and asked her and a half murmur. Is this a special thing confused
rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She asked him to repeat himself: she wasn't certain she'd heard him correctly, never mind. He said.
Later, she worried she had missed a crucial moment, one that she would never get back
but if she had misunderstood she
It's showing her hand by revealing that she wanted him to stick around in the morning. It was too scary a prospect, so she never said anything
Was my airplane interlude? A special thing with things have been different. If one of us had had the courage to say something other than goodbye before heading to our trains on the platform walking away from him
I had decided that the whole affair was just one of many half
formed romantic liaison the trail you and your use, but maybe that attitude was also the problem. At the time I had had an
inexplicable comfort level. With at all, I only realized later why it had been such an oddly familiar feeling
My generation treats every liaison as if it's happening on an airplane as if we have
leave that one night and there is
tomorrow I don't know what else could have happened, but I wonder what we collectively lose as we try so hard not to care. He and I don't communicate anymore. He moved on, and so did I. But in my head I go back to that train platform. I turned to him, say goodbye and then recalling his parting words. I say them right back see you never
MM. I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in sorry. That may have happened again,
I have one friend
I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words and I was getting nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that.
me and my dad. We like to play fun together, and I wish the out I forgot to see it. J, a c k, p o t jack,
yeah yeah now run nice,
I'm same as earth's sky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try, spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com, slash games, awesome reading I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together, I mean sitting next to each other.
playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed. Sorry, it may have happened.
I have one friend
I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words that I was getting nervous. I sent it to my parents or something like that.
me and my dad. We like to play fun together and I wish color out. I forgot to see it J, a c k, p o t Jack
Yeah yeah
I'm same as the sky, the digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com, slash games, Emma Court's essay, the millennials guide to kissing the
I see you never, he said, but was that really the case we'll find out from Emma Court after the break the I'm Katy at living proof? And we get love letters all the time like this one dear living proof, I've used so many dry shampoos, but my hair still gets greasy and I wear a ponytail by day three. Your dry shampoo has my hair, so clean and full of body that it's sold down on day. Four. This is the most effective dry shampoo. I've ever used love cat. You can use the code, love for a free travel, sized dry shampoo with your twenty dollar order
living proof that come we're back its modern love, the pod cast a magnet Accra body and now a post script. From the author of this week's essay Emma Court and modern love editor Daniel Jones, so Emma Courts, peace came in as part of our colleges.
On to us, which bring in anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand essays from college students nationwide and what I think Emma did so well with how she compares every relationship that she and her friends have as being like a relationship, the tape
placed on an airplane as though there's no tomorrow
as though we are not talking about anything in the future and for them at filters down too well. We're not gonna call this anything we're not gonna having expectations and that really takes at all. So when I wrote the peace, I think the place that I was coming from was this sort of like me, and my friends, eating branch income
cleaning that guy's sort of place where I felt like this was something that a lot of women were experiencing. But what really surprised me with the reaction to my piece was how many guys reach out to me and said you know they understood they felt the same way it used to be more
of the stereotypical man was the person who didn't want to commit, and the woman was the person who did and now.
I just see much more equality in that
but it means that no one can really make a move. So the sort of anti climactic part about my piece is that I did actually speak to see you've, never a boy. So before the piece came out, I thought that it was only fair to let him know that it was coming out. He asked if he could see it, so I sent it to him. I was pretty nervous about it, but he actually really liked the piece and he said that it had changed the way he thought about relationships, and perhaps he had been a little bit callous in sort of saying goodbye in the way that he did, and I think that he understands perhaps how the other person could feel- and I think that's something we could all stand to do a lot more of in relationships on the whole. The way that romantic relationships are portrayed in mass media does a real disservice to everyone, men and women alike. We don't see relations,
in their like full complexity. We see them sort of boiled down to something that makes an interesting plot right, which is this sort of lake cartoonish version of how men and women behave. What cultural influence comes up more in these college s eyes and anything else is Disney movies,
you find the right person? You see each other, your eyes get really big and then that's it and that's love
So when you're, young and you're fed Disney fantasies, you think that's what I'm going to
of you know right now, I'm just doing this gritty mess of like trying to be with a guy.
with a girl or whatever, and that's just because I haven't found real love
and they think of real love as being something separate from whatever this experiment.
Is that there, in the middle of that that Israel love, you know that
is what it is, and there is no one person out there where everything is going
come easily traps. People just need to talk.
All a little bit more openly. I think that's kind of that was the intent of my peace was to try to take something that I thought. A lot of people felt pretty
there. Instead of an honest way,
Emma Court on her s,
a millennials guide to kissing and modern love, editor Daniel Jones,
special thanks to Emmy Rossum for reading this week's essay, you can see her
right now in the tv series shameless on Showtime, what we asked you for your stories about
in big love in unusual places and here's a little of what you ve sent us so far. I met my great love at a castle in the Netherlands, I met her in my neurosciences one hundred class. I met the love of my life,
at a Strip club will be featuring some of those stories in a bonus episode that will release early next week, so stay tuned. For that and
next week on modern love. After five loving fulfilling years with my boyfriend drew, I suddenly found myself online looking to meet a woman, modern family's Jesse, Tyler Ferguson brings us the story of one gay couples. Complicated road
to fatherhood? Modern love is a production of the New York Times and W B. U R Boston's NPR station. It is produced directed and edited by Jessica, Alpert,
contrariety and Amary Sivertson
here for the modern love POD cast was conceived by LISA Tobin. Iris Adam
is our executive producer Daniel Jones? Is
or of modern love for the New York Times, an adviser to the show music for the pod cast his courtesy of eight p m and special music this week from Luke Kirkland,
by the way before I sign up for this week, I'm gonna get that you ve got some strong feelings about this pod cast, so leave us a review
itunes- and let us know what you think, I'm Agnes opera body will see you next week.
Transcript generated on 2022-04-17.