Endless Thread - Remix: Four Love Stories From The Wild World Of Reddit

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

In honor of Valentine's Day, we took our favorite love stories from previous episodes and created one epic love-centric monster mix. xoxo

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the ILAP at WBUR, Boston. Hey, Amory. Hey, Ben.

I think your voice changed. Just kidding. Amory is out on vacation with her husband, probably doing something very healthy. So it is just me and Josh Swartz in the studio today. Me and you, Ben, and love is in the air. Yes, it is. Valentine's Day this week, and since we are technically on a break from publishing new episodes,

we are going to play you some of those endless thread greatest hits for Valentine's Day. It's going to be like a monster mix of stories about love, a love fest, if you will. Sure, I will. All right. Josh, you got engaged recently, which I am telling everyone right now. True story, true story. And before we launch into our monster mix of past stories about love, I'm going to tell you about a story that happened just the other day on Reddit. You ready?

I'm ready. So you're getting married, and I really appreciate you hiring me as your wedding planner. That's really nice. Kind of seeing you more as a ring bearer, but, you know, we could work out the details later. I will be that golden retriever wearing the weird handkerchief with the ring on it for you. But so this is a story about a wedding, because you and I were talking about, like, the madness of wedding planning, and you were, can I say you were asking my opinions? Oh, I need all the advice I can get.

So I want to tell you about an approach when it comes to the wedding party. All right, I'm ready. Okay, so here's a rule that you may or may not know. All of the women at your wedding are not, except for your fiancé, are not supposed to wear white. Did you know this? This is one of the few things that I did already know. Okay. So there's this woman. Her name is Audrey Moore. She's an actress, apparently, and recently a bride. And she had a wedding, pictures of which she posted on Reddit that went extremely viral. And she and her, presumably her husband, basically invited everyone to wear their past wedding outfits, including wedding dresses, to her.

and her fiance's wedding. That seems like it breaks the only rule about weddings that I know. Egregiously breaks the wedding rule. But the result was like kind of awesome because you had all these people wearing these dresses. This is one of the other things that's weird about weddings is like you buy a suit or you buy a tux or you buy a wedding dress. And the women, even more than the men, basically never wear that again. They spend like this crazy money on this one piece of clothing that they never wear again. And so these people kind of flipped the script, and that's pretty cool.

It could also be confusing if you weren't sure who was wedding you were at. True. That priest had a rough time. But I think this is a good reminder, a good story and a good reminder that, you know, sometimes love doesn't have to go the way that you think it has to go. That's sweet. I like that. Yeah. Josh, are you going to ask me to wear my tux to your wedding? Ben, you can wear whatever the hell you want to wear. Oh, okay. Maybe I'll wear my wife's wedding dress.

I look forward to seeing that. Okay, well, without further ado, some stories of love on Reddit. First up, a wrestling love story. Connie and Travis are redditors from Missoula, Montana. They are a couple. And when people ask them how they met, they usually lie. Let's see. I like to tell people, the one that I've been using lately,

We met at a coffee shop when he took my coffee, you know, when they call out vanilla latte, and they sat on the counter, he took my vanilla latte, and so he had to buy me a new one. Dog park. Neither of us have dogs. That doesn't work. We're lying anyway. That's fair. All lies. Where did they actually meet? Squared circle.

That is a reference to a wrestling ring. It's square, but it's a ring, so it's a squared circle. Squared Circle, that dating app for wrestlers. Just kidding. It is a community on Reddit for wrestling fans like Connie and Travis. So what happened was there was this big thread, and it was everybody posts where you're from or where you're living so that maybe people can find other people to watch wrestling with.

And I was scrolling through, and I saw a comment that said Missoula, Montana. And I said, oh, my God, no way! Because what are the odds? You know, it's a small tag. in a big country and a big subreddit. And so I was super excited. And it was Travis.

Did you guys move pretty quickly to, you know, the next step in your relationship, aka watching wrestling together? So we took the step to watching wrestling together pretty quickly. I meet this guy from the internet, and then like three days later I'm just over at his studio apartment, sitting on a futon, drinking beer, watching wrestling. If you guys could describe your relationship in one wrestling move, what would it be? Rainmaker.

Wow. Sorry, this is a question I never thought I would be asked in my life. Describe our relationship in one wrestling move. I mean, Travis was pretty quick. The first thing that came to mind was gator roll. So a gator roll is you and your opponent are both kind of on the ground. ground. It's just like a little transitional move, but I love it so much. And you've got your opponents like arms in a weird thing and their face kind of in a lock. And then you're both

laying on the ground and you just kind of roll together and you're rolling the other guy along with you. And it's just so simple and fun. How did your friendship progress and when did it turn romantic? So what happened was we were watching wrestling hanging out three, four nights a week and then one night at the apartment. Somebody made a move. I don't remember who made the move. There was a move made. Wrestling moves? No, romantic moves. Are you talking like gatorole?

Is that what we're talking about? That's basically what started it, yeah. Yeah, essentially. Do you guys think that, like, as pro wrestling fans in a relatively small town, do you think you would have eventually found each other? That's hard to say. Honestly, we probably would have met each other two years from now, and wrestling would have never came up,

so we would have never crossed paths again. I think that Reddit is, a big reason of why we're together because if it hadn't been for that and it hadn't been for a space to share that interest, then we wouldn't have ever met up or found out what we had in common.

Connie, Travis, thank you very much for telling us your crazy wrestling romantic story. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thanks for talking with us. Next up, a story about getting dumped and making a drastic life change in the wake

of that breakup. Hey Ben, do you recognize this music? Oh man, I know this music anywhere. It's Skype. It's that music that tells me we couldn't find a cool studio for someone to be in or that we're calling overseas.

Yep. Hello. This is Ross Simpson. My username on Reddit is Yo, it's Yoko. I'm originally from Liverpool and now I live in Canterbury in the UK.

Eight months ago, Ross wrote on Reddit looking for help buying an engagement ring. Sweet, right? Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, so a few months after that, Ross got dumped. But I hadn't really taken it very well, and I was just getting myself down. And I was working my office job trying to stick it out for sort of two years and do the responsible thing. Ross works in the corporate world.

And then I had a meeting, a bit of a progress meeting with my CEO in work. I think he could see me drift in office. He was talking. He said to me, oh, Amory, does this story start with Ross getting dumped and fired? Nah, just dumped. Ross says he was actually killing it at work. His boss told him that he would probably become a partner in the company pretty soon. What more could you want from a progress meeting?

I think just him saying that just made me think, God, like I'm living this corporate lifestyle. And maybe this isn't exactly what I want. So, yeah, then when I went home, I was just about to go to bed. And I thought, you know, I'll put this post out on Reddit and just see if anyone's sort of crazy enough to come and join me. And, yeah, that was the start of everything. Okay, so before I tell you what was in the Reddit post that Ross made that night, Ben, did you ever have a really bad breakup? I had loads of them. So what did you do to get over it?

Like, did you listen to some sad songs on repeat, eat your feelings, watch some bad movies? Yeah, I just, like, played my guitar in the corner, slipped my hair around, you know? Oh, boy. Okay, so Ross probably did some of that, too, but he also wrote this on Reddit. You know, my girlfriend broke up with me and now I'm planning a 1,600 mile run from the UK to Sicily. Is anyone crazy enough to join me? Okay, a 1600 mile run. That's bananas, Ross.

That sounds actually crazy. So where did this idea even come from? You know, I've always been a person who's not really too focused on career and, you know, I want to travel a lot. And then this crazy idea was just hatched and I didn't. I didn't really think too much of it. That's a pretty nonchalant attitude for someone who is about to drop everything, run 1,600 miles or so, and start a totally new life on the other side. Right? So you'd think there'd be a chorus of Redditors shouting in unison.

Wait, Ross, no! And then actually it was the Reddit post, really in the support that I got from there that made me think, actually, maybe this is possible. Okay, so the mission improbable here is not. not just a 1600-mile run, which for me I think would be a mission impossible, but also he's starting in the UK. He knows about the English Channel, right? Yes. He's aware.

He broke down his route for me, which he realized is actually not a 1600-mile run. It's a 1,780-mile run. Even better. I'm going to be leaving Canterbury where I live now, once I've got rid of all my worldly possessions. and from here I'll run to Dover. So then I'll be taking the ferry over to Calais in France. And then from Calais, it's kind of a direct line across France to the border of Switzerland.

He'll make a semicircle around Lake Geneva, Bangalooie up into the Alps, and then back down into Northern Italy. And then I'll go down through Tuscany, through Siena, into Rome. He'll go past Naples, hop a ferry to six. Sicily and then run the coast road to Palermo. And I might, if I have time, do a sort of traverse of Mount Etnair as well. You know, if he has time. No bigs. How long is this going to take Ross? So he's scheduled it out to take 102 days.

So going between 16 and 17 miles a day. That actually sounds like a plan that requires you to be a serious runner. Oh, definitely. Which is why Ross posted this in the running community on Reddit. But that actually brought. brings us to a tiny detail that makes Ross's epic adventure all the more improbable. Are you a runner already? Were you a runner before you got thinking about this? Well, I thought of myself as a runner.

Don't we all, Ross, my man, don't we all? Last year, I'd spent some time training for a half marathon, but then the winter came around and I sort of just lost a bit of momentum with it all and kind of gave up. So maybe January this year, I was still struggling through five-kilometer runs. Emery, this seems like a very bad sign. Actually, you know, within two months, I'd run my first ultramarathon. How far of a distance is it?

I know it's 50K. Do you know what that translates to in miles? It's like 30. Maybe 32 or something along those lines. It is technically only 31 miles. Oh, yes. Only 31. But no, this is a big deal, Ben, because a typical marathon training schedule is about four months. And you know this, we should say, because you, Amory, also run marathons. Hell yeah.

Hell yeah. Which is why it's crazy that he trained for a 31-mile race in only two months. I mean, that's just a beginners ultra-marathon when you venture into that world. But luckily, you know, through Reddit and through the support of other runners, I just managed to get through it. And then that sort of gave me the extra boost to think I can actually do this. So there was the morale-boosting variety of support. like the comment, mate, do it, do it.

It's a crazy idea, sure, but the best ones always are. And then there was the more sobering, practical support and advice. Like packing, Tiger Bomb, Vaseline, Zengokai, sunscreen, Nielsporin, duct tape for blisters, and other essentials. Duck tape for blisters? Damn, that's some real talk right there. Yep, straight from the mouth of Miriam Diaz Gilbert, known as Ultra Miriam on Reddit. She's run a ton of races, including six. 7, 50-mile ultras and 3, 100-mile races.

So, yeah, she had some thoughts on supplies and on what to eat. Appocados, dark chocolate almond milk, coconut milk, eggs, bacon, and smoothies made with fresh fruits and vegetables. A high-fat diet, basically, which other ultra-running Redditors agreed with. You know, try and just eat things like solid butter, cheese, oily fish for my joints, you know, proteins to sort of mediate some muscle loss. Emery, butter, chocolate, cheese, avocados. I think I just decided to become an ultramarathoner.

Okay. But Ross's plan gets more intense than that been. Or perhaps I should say more intense. There's a few subreddits out there are ultra-light, which is about ultra-lightweight camping. So I've just been scouring some people's posts on there, which has been really, really helpful. Oh yes. Did I mention he's camping along the way? So he's running with a tent on his back and sleeping on the ground every night, basically? Pretty much. But he's got a couple more weeks of sleeping

in a real bed. What is really driving you to want to do this? You know, it's not just so much about physical things and that you're going to look good if you run all time. But, you know, it's a good way of finding mental fortitude and teaching yourself that you can. can keep on going, even when you think that you should stop. And, you know, your limits are much higher than you think that they are. And, you know, I've had some times in the past where I've been quite low and depressed and, you know, spent long times just doing nothing. But, you know, I'll be out there breathing to other people that you can get out there and do something, you know, even if you feel like sad and alone. What would you say to someone who would say,

dude, you are literally running away from your problems right now. No, I like that, actually. I didn't think about it that way, but no, I think it's about starting a new life and a new identity is the person that I've always thought that I could be. And yeah, so I feel like I'm running towards something, not running away from something. What do you hope to get out of this? Like, what if you get to Sicily and you just meet another person who breaks your heart and you get another corporate job.

I mean, I think that you just learn things, don't you? Each time that you're in a relationship or each time that you do these things and you gain new perspective. And I think the perspective of someone that's run across continents is definitely going to be a more empowered perspective than what I have now. And to be honest, you know, I would never would have done this run in the first place if I hadn't been in a bad relationship. So if it does and it leads to something else good, then bring it on.

By the way, since we published that story, Ross did completely. his massive running quest, and I don't know whether he's still in Italy or finding meaning in life as a single dude somewhere else, but we will do an update with him one of these days. Whatever the case, it is a good reminder for those of us out there who don't have someone to squeeze on Valentine's Day. Remember, you can always strap on your kicks and go for a run to Italy. Back in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into

other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world a new.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. All right, we got two more stories for those of you trying to get in the Valentine's Day spirit. First, a story about a kindergarten crush and a long-lost love letter. My first real crush was in fourth grade, but compared to Richie, I was a late bloomer. Do you remember when you first noticed Camille? Oh, definitely. I don't think it was any past the first hour, honestly, that I was there. There, in this case, is a grade school in Minnesota.

I just thought that she was really cute. She was a small blonde girl with freckles, and I thought the freckles were adorable. Yeah, I remember it like it was yesterday. It wasn't yesterday, of course. It was like decades ago. But something happened that burned this whole experience into Ritchie's memory. There's evidence in the form of a note. Do you remember actually writing this thing?

Yep, I remember actually writing it. So there were some boys in our class that were teasing me about liking Camille. And she was right there while they were teasing me. And I didn't want to say because I was too embarrassed. So I said, no, absolutely not. I don't like Emil, no. Yeah, I hate her. I hate her.

I hate her. Blah, gross, cooties. So she heard all of that. And then I just thought about it for the next couple hours, and I just felt so bad that I said that in front of her, and I just wanted to make it right. So I tore the little corner off of my pink notebook paper, and I wrote on the notebook paper to Camille from Ritchie.

And on the other side, it said, all misspelled. I was too embarrassed to tell you, but I really do like you. How did you spell embarrassed? It was I-M-B-A-R-I-T. Embarrassed. Already rough. I know. And when you're a kid, everything just feels that much more intense and important.

You're like, I'll never live this down. Right. And Richie makes a strategic error by trying to fix this because that only makes things worse. So right after I gave it to her, I put her under her school box and she didn't notice it right away. But there was a girl in our class named Layla. And Layla just right away, probably 10 seconds after I put it under there, she saw me put it under there. She goes under Camille's school box and takes it out and then reads it and so starts laughing. and then she takes it to our teacher, Ms. Winters.

And she read it out loud before she read it to herself. And she wrote, I, it was too embarrassed to tell you, but I really do like you from Richie. And that just, gosh, that embarrassed me so bad. And Layla now has a great career at the National Security Agency. Probably. Two years later, Richie is still hurting from his public humiliation. But he gets a restart.

His mom gets a new job, far from Minnesota. So my mom got a job down there with a company that was called Scientific Atlanta. Yeah, we moved down there when I was 10. And then I lived there for 14 years, I think it was. And Richie lived happily ever after having left behind his epic childhood, I-M-B-A-R-I-S-M-I-T forever. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. Time for some Camille.

So I think we were 16. he messages me on Facebook and we weren't friends on Facebook. He just sent me a message and said, hey, remember me? And I didn't. I had no idea who he was. I remember looking at his profile, seeing that he was from Atlanta and thinking, remember me. I've never been to Atlanta. I don't know anyone from Atlanta.

This is weird. So I basically just said, nope, I don't remember you at all. He messaged me back and he said, oh, no, we went to second grade together. Like, I'm from Minnesota. I went to Echo Park with you. check your yearbook, look at it. And so I did, and he existed. He wasn't, I always say he wasn't like that creepy guy on the internet.

Your grandma's trying to tell you about all the time. Did you ever think that he was that creepy guy on the internet? 100%. Right? I mean, he told me, like, I know I had a big crush on you in second grade. I think he told me about the note pretty early on. Kind of tried to trigger my memory about that. And I was like, nope, no idea.

I don't know who you are. And then he told me that his family, some extended family, still lived in Minnesota. so he made trips up here every once in a while. He made some references to, like, an amusement park that's here and said, is that still there? We should go there sometime when I come up to Minnesota. I was like, wow, this kid is really forward. Like, I've never met you before, and you're trying to take me to Valley Fair.

But we just kept talking. Valley, take me to Valley Fair is not a euphemism, right? Nope. It's not. Valley Fair is an amusement park. Okay. Just check. That I guess he remembered from second grader, whatever.

Yeah, so we started talking, and I was pretty hesitant, I would say, at first. I was honestly kind of mean. Like, we've pulled up those Facebook messages from way back when, and I am not very kind. So it took a while, but they got to talking. And surprisingly, kind of hit it off. Ritchie was funny. Camille thought, there's no harm in talking online. I mean, we were just talking, and it kind of progressed to, like, oh, we're more than talking.

We're talking about how we like each other and the good things about each other. flirting and eventually I think in December he'd asked me out but we'd never seen each other. We'd never spent any time together other than in second grade, I suppose. And I said yes. So we were officially dating as of December of our junior year of high school having not seen each other since we were eight years old. Eventually though, Richie made good on the promise to come visit. But they were just teenagers, so it was tricky. My parents didn't know he existed. So I I snuck around for that whole weekend that he was here. I had a car, so I picked him up and we drove around and we went to the mall.

We went to one of my friend's houses and watched a movie because we couldn't go back to my house because my parents didn't know he existed. They thought I was at my cousin's house. Snuck around all weekend and we hung out. I dropped him back off at the airport on Sunday night and said goodbye and did not know the next time we'd see each other. Why didn't your parents know? You know, 16, 17-year-old me had never had a really, like, serious dating relationship. I'd, like, kind of dated guys. But my family wasn't super open about, like, mushy-gushy-gushy-feeling stuff.

So it felt kind of weird to say, hey, there's this guy that lives in Georgia, and I really like him. So I'm dating him. How long did that go on? Two weeks after he came to Minnesota that first time. Okay. The guilt got to me. And my mom said, oh, yeah, I knew something was up. And she didn't mean just that weekend.

She meant, like, over the last five months, she could tell there was something different. And I was like, what? How did you know? I've been so sneaky. And she was like, no, you've been different. I can just tell. I'm your mom. I knew something was up.

Richie's family had a different reaction. They didn't think it was creepy? No, they didn't think it was creepy. They thought it was romantic. And that's how I see it from my side, too. Romantic, sure. But this was the beginning of a six-year-long distance relationship that pretty much nobody thought would last.

I remember once we were visiting some of his extended family and it was the first time I'd ever met them. And I remember at one point a couple of his cousins were saying, gosh, Camille, we really like you and we really hope you stick around, but this is going to be tough. This is going to be a tough relationship. And we hope you can do it, but who knows, kind of throwing out that sense of doubt. And I think we drove away from that house going, we're going to prove him wrong. We're going to show him that this is hard, but we're going to, we're going to show him that this is hard, but we can also do it.

Yep, I've always said, like, when we heard stuff like that, I always would tell her, like, it doesn't matter. We know what we've got. There was one thing they didn't know they had. Camille is in college, and one day her mom takes her aside and says she has something to show her. And she pulls out the note that we'd been talking about since the beginning of our relationship. I mean, everyone knew this story about the note. And I was flabbergasted.

I could not believe that that had resurfaced. No one knows how it ended up back at my parents' house. I don't know if, like, Ms. Winters gave it to my parents at conferences, thinking it was something they'd want to hang on to. My mom doesn't remember having it or why we had it, but there it was. It's funny because you talk about your parents not being very, like, sentimental or whatever, and yet your mom saved this note. That's true.

I think she's kind of, like, secretly sentimental. Like, she does, she has feelings. We just don't know what they are. You guys got married last summer? We did. And you put the note on display? Yes, it was there. We had it in a little frame.

Camille doesn't usually post a Reddit, but she saw the Ask Reddit question, what is your true love story? And she answered. And this is one of the only times that I was like, yeah, hey, I want to say something because I actually have something to contribute, and it panned out. Do you guys have anything you would say to each other at the end of this conversation? We keep looking over at each other and smiling. I would honestly just say like, there you go, you know, we prove the world wrong.

We said we would. Here we are. We're in a place right now where our relationship is thriving. It couldn't be better. We absolutely love our lives. And, you know, there's a ton of love in our household. I never imagined that at the age of 17, I would begin my journey with the man I intended to marry. and if we can be long distance for five and a half six years, then we can do anything,

because that was probably the hardest thing that we've done, or probably will do, I hope. So that's something I said in my vows was if we can do that, we can kind of prevail through anything. And I really believe that. So I would say that to you. Let's keep prevailing. Richie, how do you spell embarrassed? E-M-B-A-R-A-S-S-E-D. Well done.

Is that right? Two R's, two S's? Yes, there is. Wow. I'm glad you didn't ask me that. I went from zero to hero in the spelling game, that's for sure. Camille Carlson Ortiz and Richard Ortiz, thanks a lot for talking with us. Thank you.

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having us. We have one more story for you. We called it Love in Transition. And just a heads up. story mentions suicidal thoughts. Fair warning. By the way, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255 if you need somebody to talk to. How did you two meet? Well, and this is Samantha. We met almost 15 years ago at the University of Arizona,

and we were both in the marching band there. I played the trumpet, and I had marched for a couple years, and this was her first year marching. Yeah, and this is Laura now, and I actually, my primary instruments are flute and piano, and a friend of mine talked me into marching trumpet because he didn't think I would like marching piccolo. So I learned the basics of the trumpet and joined the trumpet section, and we met, and then kind of the rest is history, I guess. When people say the rest is history, there's a suggestion that we've all heard this before.

Maybe even that the story itself is typical. But obviously, you haven't heard this story yet. Samantha and Laura live in Phoenix, Arizona. They're both moms. They both work. Blah, blah, blah. The rest is history. But Samantha and Laura's story is actually pretty extraordinary.

The question is where to start. Emory, lots of different starting points, but I think we should start at one of the moments when it seemed like Samantha and Laura's story was finished. You wrote in your story, you read a comment, I think that this had become a life or death situation. It had. I had a plan to end my life in October of 2016.

And to do it in a way where it wouldn't necessarily look like a suicide. Okay. I had an opportunity to go hiking at the Grand Canyon with some friends. You know, mistakes happen out there. And I had to develop a plan basically where I would have. end up in the Colorado River, which is a very dangerous stretch of river, and not find my way out of it. It would look like an accident, and that would have been the end of it. But Samantha had a change of heart.

She had one of those deep camping trip conversations with a friend about family and life, and she stepped back from the edge. And the reality of the situation was it's not that I ever wanted to go. But in that moment and under that stress, and after that... after so long of hiding and doing a very good job of hiding it, it seemed like maybe this would be better than actually dealing with the situation. The situation. The situation for Samantha started when she was a kid, maybe even before that.

But it really started to present itself when she was about to get married. For the first time, 12 years ago, she got cold feet. If you're thinking right now, wait. Who is marrying whom in this story? Samantha is marrying Laura. twice, actually. Here's how Laura remembers what happened the first time. During those few days that we were thinking about postponing the wedding, of course I was devastated. And I went to a counselor and I talked to them about the situation.

And I thought it was kind of wrapped up in the depression that I'd seen her fight in the time we'd been together. Because it was always there. It would come. It would go. It would be really bad for a while. It would get better for a while. And so I described all this to the counselor, and she said, well, before you get married, you just need to know what you see is what you get. And I kind of laughed to myself now because she couldn't have been more wrong. There was a big change coming in Lauren Samantha's relationship, a change that was the reason they basically got married a second time. That end, they needed new pictures. Did you use the same photographer?

We did. Did you? That's cool. Yeah, we actually did. We really loved his work the first time. around, so we reached out to him again and had him back. And when Laura married Samantha back in 2006, Samantha was wearing a suit. Samantha was assigned male at birth, but she had this feeling, this thing she was ignoring

because it scared her, and ignoring it was tearing her apart, which is why, 10 years into their marriage, things got tricky. There was no doubt in my mind that I loved Laura and wanted to be there with her and was absolutely committed to her. I was just terrified about this other side of me that she really didn't know about. And I wasn't sure if it was something I could put away or if it was something I had to deal with.

In 2006, Laura married Samantha, her college sweetheart from the University of Arizona marching band, even though her sweetheart had suffered a bout of cold feet. When she said, no, I'm ready and let's move forward, I didn't question it and I didn't push it, I just said, okay, let's do it. There's footage of that first wedding. It looks like a traditional wedding between a man and a woman.

The love is clearly there. Yeah, when the efficient says you may kiss the bride, you are now married. May kiss retract the bride. The kiss lasts long enough that someone in the audience says, Easy, Tiger. Which is part of why, for a while after the wedding, everything seemed fine. But then the depression Laura had known about in her partner, ramped up.

and in 2015, 2016, it started to get really, really bad. And I had no idea what was going on. I just assumed that it was the stress of our lives. We have lots of young kids. Four young boys, actually, which is a lot. And they all fall on different points of the autism spectrum, which is more than a lot. The diagnoses were starting that same year,

and so I just assumed it was wrapped up in that. and so I was pushing her to seek counseling and I don't know if you've ever been through that process but you call your insurance company and they give you a list of 30 therapists or something so I'm going down this list I'm calling all these therapists and each one I talk to I get a little info about their background and I describe it to her and she says oh no that doesn't sound like the right fit no I don't think that one's a good fit and of course in my head I'm thinking

what is the right fit and so finally I get to the end of the list and I'm like well that's it there are no more names on this list. And so she sends me a list of three names that she found. So I said, okay, so I called all three. I found an appointment, got it all set up. And I thought to myself, after the fact, what is so great about these three therapists that's so much better than all these other ones that I had called? And so I googled all three of them, and they all listed LGBT in their expertise. And I was like, no, that can't be what's going on. There is no way, no possible way that could be what's happening.

Well, I always felt different growing up. I can remember being six, seven years old and laying in bed and just wishing that, you know, I wish that I'd wake up as a girl. And, you know, come to find out later, that's not something that most people wish for at that age. And as puberty kicked in and as I, you know, entered my teens, I was devastated by the changes that that brought to my body. It felt incongruing with who I was. It didn't match. It didn't feel right. None of it was right. So one example, I remember, you know, body hair. When that first started coming in, I know this is kind of a silly story, but, you know, my legs were hairy and they were starting

to show, I was devastated by that. I wanted to shave my legs so bad. But I was told, no, that's not what boys do. You can't shave your legs. You need to leave it and you know you'll get used to it. I had to make a decision at an early age, or at least in those teens, that this I just need to keep close to the chest. This is something that I don't want to share. If I do share it, bad things could happen,

or it seemed like bad things could happen. Of course, if you push that stuff way down, other bad things can happen. That crushing weight of being stuck in the wrong body. Over the 10 years of our marriage, it was just a slow crescendo that, entire time, basically, just slowly getting worse, slowly becoming more present, slowly consuming my thoughts. It was in every waking moment, you know, on weekends I was stuck in bed because it was just

so overwhelming that I have to get up and I have to pretend to be this person that I'm not. This is around the time that Samantha plans and then bails on suicide. Laura says even though she knew something was wrong, she couldn't have guessed what it was. There were no clues. There were no hints. I lived with her day in and day out for 10 plus years, and I had no idea. Nobody had any clue because she hit it so well. Until Samantha gave Laura that list of therapists.

Just about a month after the trip to the Grand Canyon. And after this, Laura takes a big step towards her partner. And I just said, so I noticed all the therapists have something in common. We were in the car at the time. She's looking straight ahead. She won't even make eye contact. She's like, uh-huh. Like, well, they all list LGBT.

Uh-huh. I'm like, so do you think maybe you might have a gender issue? And she said, maybe. Maybe. Probably not the answer Samantha wanted to give, let alone the answer Laura wanted to hear. So then my heart just started beating out of my chest and my head was spinning. And I'm like, okay, have a good reaction. Be calm.

Be coherent. Don't freak out, you know. Laura, was that, I mean, presumably that was pretty scary for you. Yeah, I mean, it was definitely unexpected. And in those initial hours, right when I first found out, there was a tiny sense of relief, to be honest, because it was like, okay, this is the thing. This is the thing that has been causing the depression all these years. This is why she's been so miserable. And so in that way, it kind of made a little bit of sense.

But then when I started to think about, well, what does this mean for our marriage? What does this mean for the kids? What does this mean for family and friends and work and all the other parts of our lives that were going to be impacted? It was definitely overwhelming. And we talked nonstop. We stayed up. It was like we were dating for the first time again.

We were up until 2 a.m. every day trying to talk through things. And some of those conversations were very positive and some were very emotional and very difficult. I was going to say it sounds like fun. Yeah. You know, their early days of dating, staying up until 2 a.m. talking about your feelings, but, but I think there's, yeah, that's a great analogy to it. In a lot of ways, we had to start a relationship over from scratch.

I mean, this is such a game changer in how we saw each other and how other people see us as well. Samantha, do you remember any sort of detail from some of those early conversations that was particularly hard or revelatory? You know, I think what was really important, from that very early point in time is that Laura told me that she wasn't sure she could stay, but she loved me and she wanted to be there for me. And I think that's really one of the best things she could have said in that moment. My biggest fear was that not only did I have to deal with this, but that I would lose everyone and everything along the way.

So when she gave me that reassurance, that first night, that was a huge relief for me. Even though it wasn't necessarily a final answer, it was an answer that I'm willing to try and I'm willing to hold your hand. And that was so important at that time. Now, obviously, we can't see into the future to know if things are going to get better in our own relationships. But Samantha did have something to offer Laura. So I had actually registered on Reddit about two years before I came out to Laura or before she found out. and a big reason why I created the Reddit account in the first place was to have better access to the transgender communities that were available.

And Trans Timelines was one of those subredits. And if you're not familiar with it, it's a subreddit where people can post photos of before and afters during their transition. And what's so incredible about it is everyone there is so normal. These are people going through their everyday lives. You know, some have children, some are married, some have significant others. And they're open and willing to share their stories about that. And that really opened my eyes in a lot of ways.

The trans communities of Reddit gave Samantha a roadmap she hadn't found elsewhere. Real people like her going through the same challenges. And not just challenges of the trans experience, but challenges of the experience of couples going through this. Samantha shared this stuff with Laura as well, which was good, but also hard. I can actually remember within the first week of finding out, I was watching one of the videos that she sent me, and I had to stop it part way through because I was just sobbing uncontrollably because it was just so overwhelming. It's like she had this whole other side of her life that I just had never known anything about.

Yeah, I'm sure that hurt, right? Yeah, I mean, it definitely hurt to be kept in the dark. I will say I don't equate it to lying or cheating or anything like that. It's not the same thing in my mind, but it definitely hurt. It really wasn't clear whether the relationship could withstand the reality of what Samantha and Laura were experiencing. Laura decides she's going to give it a year. So Laura and Samantha are going through this pretty fundamental challenge to their marriage, their relationship, and the future of their family. But they've found a pretty vibrant set of trans communities on Reddit that's giving them some.

some guidance. And one day, they have a breakthrough. Samantha finds this post on Reddit's trans-positive community. It links to a photo album called Alex and Tessa Get Married. There are two brides, one of whom Tessa is trans. Samantha shows the album to Laura. And I'll never forget. It was this beautiful black and white photo, and the caption just said, sometimes everything really does work out. And I thought, okay, someone else made it through this, so maybe we can too. And so that year was up last November, and I'm still here, so that's good. But I just, I felt like for me personally, she's my soulmate, my best friend, my favorite person, the love of my life.

And I felt like I owed it to myself and to our relationship in the life we built to really give it a good try before throwing in a towel. And not to say that I wouldn't decide one day that I couldn't stay, but initially at least I decided to do. to stick it out and see how it went. Laura's decision to stay was the main thing. But maybe the trans community on Reddit, where people were talking about their own experiences, good and bad, could help them find a path. Hey, Tessa.

Hey, Alex couldn't make it in case you didn't hear. Oh, no. Yeah, got stuck at work. Okay, so there's been some seat swapping in the studio. Laura, Samantha's wife, has traded places with Tessa. Nice shirt. Thank you. What does Tessa's shirt say?

I survived testosterone poisoning. It's pretty amazing. Tessa is trans, and she was one of the brides from that wedding album on Reddit that Samantha sent to Laura, with the black and white shot that inspired some optimism about things working out. We had a lovely wedding. I wore this gorgeous blue and yellow dress, and, you know, I posted it on some of the Reddit threads because, hey, I wanted to celebrate, and this was something that you don't see a lot. in media, or even necessarily on Reddit, that not only do sometimes partners stay with people

or transitioning, but their relationship continues to evolve. A picture of Tessa might inspire optimism, but meeting in person is a heck of a lot better. Shortly after coming out, Samantha joined a support group called Trans Spectrum of Arizona. Those first early group meetings that I went to, I was just barely, or actually this is before I was even presenting female. This is me trying to figure out more information and find doctors for hormones and things like that. And I see her sitting across the room and it's like seeing someone from television, right? It's like, I know you.

Turns out, Samantha and Tessa both live in Phoenix. Samantha came up to me and say, hey, I saw your pictures on Reddit. And I'm like, oh. And she was like, yeah, they were really helpful. And I'm like, oh, I'm glad to hear that. That's why I put them up. And what are the odds of that in the grand scheme of things on a Reddit post, which is worldwide, to then be sitting in a room with someone five chairs over

that served as a giant inspiration for you being there in the first place. It was such a wild coincidence, and there she is. Tessa had used Reddit much the same way Samantha did when she was beginning to explore her gender identity. It was a lot of, okay, this is what's happening to me? What does it mean? You know, I feel this way about X, Y, and Z. You know, is this weird?

Does this mean I'm trans? Or if I am trans, you know, what identity will be most comfortable for me. You know, how does this play out? What are the effects of hormones or whatever? So there are a lot of questions. Can you describe the trans community on Reddit? It's very, very welcoming, and it's also very diverse. It's probably one of the largest on the internet, which is particularly helpful for me because it helped me realize that, you know, you have sort of the stereotypical narrative for a trans person or a trans woman, especially, you know, out in the media, and it turns out a lot of people don't fall into that, yours truly included.

Samantha described that stereotypical narrative about trans women as putting them all somewhere between a Jerry Springer special and CSI crime scene investigation. In other words, creating this idea that trans people live constantly in America's seedy underbelly. Maybe part of the kind of intolerance that leads to unfortunate moments like this. Probably the biggest one was a family wedding that came up fairly early in my transition right after I had come out publicly. And I was asked not to attend the wedding as Samantha. And that was tough to have to go through that, to feel that rejection.

So there are difficulties. But for Samantha and Tessa, trans life is at long last, well, pretty normal. She's kind of amazed. Your hair is still straight at this point. I know, right? Yeah, I mean, what did you straighten that? Like? Sunday? Sunday? Wow. I know. This is probably the last.

So much of transition is just in the dark. You know, you're going forward, but your path isn't lit. And seeing those stories and talking to those people that have been there before you, help light the way. And part of what I've done with my account there is try to pay it forward. You know, this is just my story. And, yeah, it's hard work to get here, but it's possible. And it's very, very possible to be. happy through this.

Samantha and Laura and Tessa and her wife, Alex, are all friends now. When Samantha and Laura renewed their vows earlier this year, Tessa and Alex were there. And it was Tessa and Alex's wedding album that made Samantha and Laura want to post their vow renewal photos on Reddit,

along with a photo from back in 2006. Yeah, remember in the beginning how we mentioned that Samantha and Laura used the same wedding photographer for both of their ceremonies? Well, both sets, went up on Reddit, but in the new shots, Samantha, got to be a bride. Samantha, what was it like to put on a wedding dress?

Oh, it was so beautiful. You know, when you find the dress, here come the tears and all of those feelings. But putting on that dress and just seeing it and just feeling so beautiful and feeling so centered, you know, that's what was missing for so long was that congruence of mind and body. Having that together. is just so amazing. It makes life just so much more beautiful. And Samantha says that looking like she felt all this time makes it easier to deal with some of the unexpected challenges

of their new life that come up every day. Going out to dinner, for example. So when the two of us get a date night out, it's almost inevitable that when our server comes up to us at the end of the night, they ask separate checks because it's not assumed that we're actually there as a couple. Wow. And after being in a visibly heteronormative relationship for so long, that's sort of a shock

to have those little experiences come back and remind you, oh, right, things are different. Another difference? An elephant in the room for any couple that stays together through a transition. Sex. But again, Laura and Samantha are almost uncannily calm and adult about this. They say it's all about clear communication and patience, and really a commitment to each other. Samantha identifies as a lesbian now because her attraction to Laura has held steady. And Laura says that she has gone from identifying a straight to pansexual, a more fluid identity when it comes to gender and attraction. This is because she has discovered through the process that she's just as attracted to Samantha as ever.

Something that was maybe easier than expected was explaining Samantha's transition to their four young sons. They told their oldest, who's now seven, with a story. What would be like a line from that? I don't know. I can't really say a line from it without like dead naming you, and I don't know how you feel about that. No, don't dead name me, but the old name, for example. Dead naming. When you use the name that someone went by before transitioning.

Probably something to the effect of, dead name feels like a girl on the inside and is going to start wearing clothes and makeup that look more like a girl, but they're still going to do Legos with you and chase you and tickle you and things like that. So it's basically like, you know, the outside packaging of the person that you love is going to change, but this person is not leaving and it's still going to do all the same things with you they always have. And so he's very, our seven-year-old, he's very literal, he's very black and white. And so about three days later, we're putting him to bed and he's in tears. And it's like, oh my goodness, what's wrong? And he says,

well, Mama hasn't chased me yet. And because it was in the story specifically that she was going to chase him, he was worried about it. So, of course, she ran and chased him around the house and he laughed and it was fine. And not to say as he gets older that there won't be more issues that come up.

I'm sure there will be in social situations in school and things like that. Our hope is that this whole experience can help him be a more kind and compassionate and understanding person of anyone who's different in any way from the quote-unquote normal. It must have been so challenging, though,

because you're describing this process of basically like re-acquainting yourselves with each other. And then you have to do that with your kids and then you have to do that with your friends and families. It's definitely, like I said before. Yes, it's been a very big process for sure. I mean, I didn't know the phrase dead named

until just now. Like that, I just learned that. Right? Like, you must, that must be your whole lives. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, and different people that go through this are different. Some people don't mind their old names. For me, it just represents a lot of that sadness and a lot of that pain that I went through.

So if I can avoid it, I prefer to. Sure. But it's not like it didn't happen. You know, I'm not denying who I was or anything like that. And it's especially interesting transitioning at this point in life. I'm 35 years old. Now I started transitioning at 33. And, you know, there's a lot of life that happened before I transitioned.

And a lot of that life was beautiful. The birth of our children and our wedding, buying our first home together. It was so beautiful. It just happened to be tragically sad just below the surface for me. and something that's so fantastic about this process is that now Laura knows all of me and it is so freeing to just be able to be me and to not have to worry about this anymore

if I could have done it again the only thing I would have changed is I would have told her sooner. What's been funny? Like is there something that you're able to laugh at that happens to you now or that is part of your life now that wasn't part of it before?

This is Laura. I think for me, it probably is about once a week. We'll just kind of look at each other and I'll say, you just look so beautiful. And she'll be like, oh, thanks. I'm like, it doesn't make any sense, but you just look so beautiful. It's like, how did we get here from? I mean, you've seen the picture on Reddit. But she's just had such an amazing transition that I can't picture the person from before.

I can't picture the mannerisms, I can't picture the voice, any of it. It's just all so different. And so I think that sometimes it's just kind of like laughing internally and thinking, huh, I can't believe this is real life, you know. Well, it's funny because there was so much fear and there was so much unknown at the beginning. But now when I look back at those early days, I have to laugh at just how timid I was, like the first time going shopping for clothing. And I couldn't even muster up the energy to grab the clothing off the shelf.

I'm gesturing to Laura, pick this one up, pick this one up for me. Yeah, she's like nodding her head. Like that one over there. Like it looked like we were shoplifting or something. But, I mean, it was, it's funny to laugh at now just because of how far I've come. We asked Samantha and Laura, after everything they've been through and everything they're still figuring out, when they thought they might reach some stability. or at least feel like the big bumps in the road of their relationship might be clear.

Again, this is a couple that really seems to take it all in stride. Here's Laura. Yeah, I think we're mostly there. Pretty much all aspects of the medical transition are done now. The name changes are official. All the documents are updated. So all of the kind of business side of transition is done. And so I kind of feel like we're at that point now,

so now we just have to figure out what our new normal is. And that's what we're working on. For me, probably the biggest joy has just been that the black cloud of burden has been lifted. And finally, I can see true joy in the person that I love the most. Laura and Samantha, thank you very much for talking with us today. Thank you. Thank you. By the way, Samantha and Laura introduced us to a nonprofit called Trans Lifeline.

It's an organization dedicated to the well-being of trans people. and they run a hotline for trans people by trans people. That number is 877-565-8860. You can also go to translifeline.org. Thank you for listening to our stories about love, Monster Mix. If you miss us terribly, go spin through our back catalog. There's good stuff in there. Or, I don't know, write us an email while we are on break.

Tell us about how much you miss us or something. We are at Endless Thread at WBUR. We'll be back soon to keep your feed warm friends. In the meantime, eat all that Valentine's candy and don't feel bad about it.