Support for modern love comes from living proof. How long can you, before the work messages begin to pour in? Let's give ourselves a good morning? A good morning is a moment to pause and ease into the day. It's a moment to run and chase the sunrise or it's a gently settle into your in a good morning as a moment to be present, to find clarity and be grounded for the day had good days start with good mornings and good mornings start with Yogi T Yogi T tease me to do more than just tastes. Good. Go between washes. Keep your hair cleaner longer, while washing less for beautiful, healthier hair use. The code, love at living proof come for a free travel size, dry shampoo, with your twenty dollar order. We

Science. You are the living proof and by helix sleep working with the world's leading sleep scientists. Helix sleep has developed custom mattresses that bring a reported thirty percent improvement in overall sleep quality visit, helix sleep dot, com, slash, Intern to get fifty dollars off your order, oh from the New York Times and w you are Boston. This is modern love, the stories of love, loss and redemption. I'm your host magnetron puberty, yeah. We have an encore presentation for you this week the old saying that the right person is worth waiting for. But how can you,

I for sure what right even means and how long are you supposed to wait? Hannah Selinger shared her story with modern love. Here's stay for me from the new Warren Beatty film rules don't apply, reading as that say, friends without benefits. I met him when I was twenty. Two Squandering a year of my life and liver quality work as a waitress in Massachusetts, hometown. I was an Ivy league graduate who'd always had a plan and Suddenly I had no plan all my if I had been regimented disciplined and very very good, but I didn't want to be that girl in the front row raising my hand with the right answers anymore. So I traded in my sharpened pencils for an apron and a pair of clogs and started serving tables five nights a week at a local pub. It took a lot less time than anyone expected for me to shed my preppy college ways and adopt the freeway

Lifestyle of restaurant work, the guys in the kitchen labeled me Colombia. An omage to my now distant seeming academic career, my Massachusetts accent, return with a vengeance. and I learned to negotiate the distance between a post work, six pack of bud light and the crooked mile long drive home as all local drunks. Inevitably do he had at the pub high school then returned when one semester short of graduating from college. He dropped out. He was two years older than me and that's the kind of natural looks that made me nervous. I was surprised when you wanted to be friends and opened up his life to me and a boozy and parliament fueled night in his apartment. but I was not surprised that someone as good looking as he was chose not to kiss me when the evening ended. We carried on and nodded up friendship for two years. We go to bed many times but never touched. He pulled me into his world only too

scarred me any night. A pretty young thing showed up for the taking knowing. I think that I had fallen in love with him and that I was only waiting for him to realize. I had been there all along for those years. We practically live together. Our friendship was of the it is fight it out variety, so much so that people often said we were in love. If he was in love with me, he didn't exactly show it spiriting off one eye to sleep with my best friend behind my back, and asking my roommate to be his date to a wedding we both attended. but I was consumed by him. I had forgotten how to breathe. On my own, we circled each other constantly picking up the messes piece in our friendship and whatever else remained back together. He knew I loved him with his cousin to get his attention and afterward He looked at me in the sly way of men who know Have you under their thumb, who knew

You can do nothing to resist good for you. He said that could have been our mantra good for you. Years later, he would confess to having loved me all along, but while, I stood waiting for him to happen to me he was always looking for the next best thing. I apparently made too good of a friend for him to justify anything more significant, which my young brain could only interpret as a criticism to me. It felt like a matter of time. He would come around I push hard against the girls he brought home. I slept on his couch and in the morning shouldered angrily past blonde college students who do not understand my rage. Who was I anyway, a friend a roommate, a drunken neighbor with no,

Sleep did even I know who I was one night. He and I finally cross that boundary. He had so carefully maintained between us. It was in Germany. a few years after we met and I moved to Boston, to go to graduate school. I remember a cold night and unexpectedness of our coming together in the quiet of the house. And the light from a neighbouring street lamp filtering into the bedroom. I remember how fast my heart was beating and how I could not seem to catch. My breath very was in my bed like old times.

it wasn't platonic anymore, and suddenly there were a million questions we needed to ask. It was perfect and crazy and it changed us- and I thought the roller coaster coaster finally ended that we could settle down together. At last, he confessed that he had loved me the whole time but had been afraid of intimacy shared between people who know each other, so well when the first light crept in demanding our attention of this most recent entanglement, he kissed me and left. later. He called to say that he loved me and that it was a mistake. We talked for what felt like forever. Circling the same question: what are we? He wanted? Nothing and I wanted the world

stayed there all weekend unable to move paralyzed by the knowledge that now it was over. Even our friendship was too damaged to repair. This is what happens I learned when, happily ever after does not happen. I moved to New York City that spring I met another girl, he loved one that probably knew him a little less well, they married two years ago, but I wasn't invited when I saw him after the fact. He told me not to take it personally, but we both knew that with another twist of fate, it could have been us up there at the altar. I couldn't help it take it personally. It's ways personal from time to time. I would see him at parties and be reminded of what was missing the whole. He left behind even less frequently he would call in a cold winter evening, with a set of stock, apologies, possibly ignited by a fight he was having with someone else. He knew he had hurt me and he knew.

One of the worst things I ever did in my life was make that phone call. He told me once even after he had married, but there was no time to excavate such deep and abiding to excavate such deep and abiding ones when he and his wife had a baby last year. I knew he was gone forever in the way that you feel that you're three of life, changing even when you want it most to stay the same then, a month ago, my phone rang. It was him a voice, still familiar and all too long in the shape of my daily life. Why call now? I wonder, though I already knew his wife was leaving him. He said he needed to talk.

I found myself back home for a weekend walking a hurricane ravage beach with no shoes. Next to this man, I had loved so much listen to him talk about the dissolution of a marriage. He wanted advice and would listen to anything, and it would have been easy to send him toward the certain precipice of divorce. Given our history, but instead I stayed silent and watch the uneven motion of the waves grey matter shaken from the store.

We followed the crescent of sand for miles before he took my hand soon. We were back at my mother's house and the guest suite downstairs and love again, the only for a moment. I had to close my eyes to kiss him, because otherwise I could not convince myself after all those years that this was really happening. I couldn't fall asleep in his arms. What would happen? I'm sure we were both asking ourselves when the days continued on him here or me there with the wife and a baby still in the wings. What good could come from any of this now? Really the jesters futile the pain so deeply, embedded that I am prone to always making the same mistakes I messed up, he said hoping. I think that I would come back and save him. The way I always had before. Put him first choose him over me.

Now his immediacy to overshadow my own. Yes, I said yes, you are I put on a sweater. I went outside with him for a parting cigarette and kissed him good by and for giving October air we had met in October to and at once it seemed like a very long time ago and only a whisper like all too really at thirty two. I finally did what I could not all those years ago. I let, if you're hiring you

feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. You just hope the rate Canada comes along, but not when you use the procurator zipper. Critters technology finds qualified candidates, for you then actively invites them to apply. In fact, four out of five employers who posted zipper cruder, get a qualified candidates within the first day. Try it free today at Sippar, cruder, dot, com, slash and why T that Sippar, cruder, dot com, slash and wide t zip recruiter the smartest wait, a higher I love falling 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 that 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 is risky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at an why times, dot com, flash Games Taissa farmiga and cylinders benefits friends without benefits Hannah truly, let him go we'll find out after the break.

living proof, products make life easier, just ask Aaron from formulae I go to hot yoga and because of living proof, dry shampoo. I don't actually have to wash my hair after Ioga Yoga. I mean I still body shower it's not totally gross but go to work and no one will even notice, because the dry, shampoo is so amazing use the code, love at living proof, dot com for a travel size, dry, shampoo, with your twenty dollars order, we're back. It's modern love the podcast, I'm Meghna Chakrabarti, and now a postscript from modern love, editor Daniel Jones and the author of this week's essay Hannah Selinger. I wish I could, of for the symmetry of the wrote that I wrote and heart, maybe my heart, that.

is the goal and to my relationship with the subject, but in truth we did have one more romantic encounter. We were friends after that and then for a long period of time. We were not friends when the piece came out in the times as it happens, his divorce was finalized literally the week before this piece came out, so I think he was particularly sensitive to just all of it. I think it packed an emotional punch for him, we've sort of been on and off. As far as communication goes for the past couple of years. I guess we've both allowed the relationship to go by the wayside, but I'm of the belief that you know some friendships grow with you and some friendships don't and, and I'm okay with. However, it ends up. And I'm ok with, however, it ends up, is the story of the friendship that you're afraid to turn into a relationship, but I also like about hands. I say just how much time passes.

The this guy remains the one who got away goes on his if goes on me marry someone else, and he has a family and all this time, she's thinking should that have been me and I'm always intrigued by how that spell gets broken. It so easy to keep that romantic fantasy in your mind, as long as you're, not with the person but as soon as you reconnect and of serve reminded of why it didn't work out in the first place that spell gets broken and you're released How you know something is overs is really more of a gut reaction than anything else. For me, I think I woke up at some point in decided that I had to stop chasing things that we're just unavailable, and I had a pattern of relationship that I was used to and I had a pattern of relationship that was come.

Psychologically. I think it was both rewarding and unrewarding. You know the chase was interesting, the pursuit was consuming, but in the end I never really got what I want. But in the end I never really got what I wanted, and I did it. run over and over again, which I guess is the definition of insanity right, but I think with him when things finally, through to a close after really a decade, it occurred to me that there was probably a better way to go about all this. Is a I lesson this when you is a real lesson in when you really need to stand your ground and insist that in relationship be defined, when both people, they don't relationship, are afraid, fine it they don't know who they are in relationship to each other, which both prevents them from calling the relationship anything but also prevents it from ending because there's nothing to end. It really represents a kind of relationship that that happens so much these days.

These with people in their they're who don't feel like they're ready for that big commitment and don't know. This is the right person, but don't let's go either because they might be Just lingers we to each world of what didn't To each other, but Hannah didn't linger for too much longer in the three years since her to was published, she's moved to the island. beans on New York's long island, where she's a sommelier and a freelance writer. She lives there with her boyfriend and their three dogs and they have a baby on the way Hannah says her current relationship taught her a lot about what was missing before. I certainly wouldn't want to tell someone not to wait around, but my experience has been now that I'm in the best relationship of my life and were having a child together and moving forward with our lives, and I love felling, my boyfriend and I often play felling, be together by together, I mean sitting next to each other playing

eventually 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 fairy may have happened. I have one friend, I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I was getting nervous, something like that to my parents or something like that and I wish cause it out. I think I got gotta see it J, a c k, P, o g jack. We hit the jackpot. Panic Yeah yeah, I'm nice, but for the New York Times you can try, spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com, slash games very positive and aspirational way that there wasn't one. Second, in my current relationship where I felt like I had to wait around,

where I felt like I had to wait around there wasn't a minute from the he didn't want to be with me, and I hope that everybody can find that kind of thing and I do believe revenge confined that kind of thing, and I do believe that it exists once you expect. that kind of relationship with that kind of love. You realize that you shouldn't be waiting around for anybody, Tanner Selinger, author of friends, without benefits we all, heard from modern love for Dan Jones special thanks. You I use a formula for reading this week's essay. You can see her now in the film rules. Don't apply with Lily Collins and war and baby stay with us. There's more after the break.

Helix sleep working with the world's leading sleep scientists. Helix sleep has developed custom mattresses that bring a reported thirty per cent improvement in overall sleep quality visit, helix sleep, dot, com, slash, modern answer, a few simple questions and they'll create your completely customized mattress, starting at just six hundred dollars and ship. It right to your door for free, Six hundred dollars and jib right, your door for free. You get a hundred night risk free trial and for you modern couples they can customize each side, go to heal, exley, dot, com, slash modern and get fifty dollars off your order that helix sleep, dotcom, slash, modern Next week on the podcast actress, Hayden Gwynn reads the story of a it's the story, actress, Hayden Life reads: the story of a life touched by the mental illness of quietly, that, my father, an optimist quietly, but my father, an optimist. The end was able to ignore it, believing that it would get,

We did and how In our house, questions about dead and how we felt went on asked reversed unanswered. Modern love is a production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston, NPR station, its produced, directed and edited by Jessica out; John Ferrari and a Marie Sivertson dear for the modern podcast was conceived by LISA Tobin. The editor of modern love for the New York Times Daniel Jones is the editor of modern love for the New York Times and adviser to the show music, for the part,

asked courtesy of a p m. I'm making a check or body see you next week Steve Almond, I'm Cheryl strayed and were the co hosts of dear sugar, radio, a podcast from W B. You are for the last lonely and heartsick. We take your questions, no matter how deep and dark.

Take your questions, no matter how deep and dark and offer radically empathic advice subscribe to dear cigar radio on Itunes, your favorite passed out.