Life Kit - When a partner keeps a financial secret

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

How do you cope when your partner keeps a secret that impacts your personal finances? Meredith Goldstein of the Love Letters podcast from The Boston Globe talks with a couple who worked through financial troubles in their marriage that threatened their hard-earned sense of security.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Dear Life Kit. I'm reporter Andi Tagel, and I have with me here Meredith Goldstein, host of the Love Letters podcast from the Boston Globe. Hey, Meredith. Hey there. We are such big fans of your advice column here at Life Kit. It's great to see you again. It's been years. Yes, it's so wonderful to be advised by you through a few really wild years. So thank you for giving me so much to listen to. Yes, absolutely. In every season of the Love Letters podcast, you explore one big theme in love and relationships. And this season, it's all about

money, money, money. Tell me why. Well, part of it is that I'm very interested in just how much money people make, how much money people have. I'm just like, I don't know. It's just a curiosity when someone, you know, tells me about their life, or I go go into their house and I'm like, how do they figure this out? How do they do this? It's like the thing that we kind of don't talk about. And, you know, I just realized money was the thing that was sort of in the background of every story we've ever told. And I just wanted to focus on it and bring it to the forefront, no matter how awkward. And that brings us to the episode we're sharing today.

Without giving too much away, could you speak a little on the story that you're sharing? Well, this is a couple who, you know, in every way that is important, they are in line, they are in love, they have a beautiful story, they like the same stuff, which does involve nerds. They met LARPing, that's live action roleplay for the non-geeks listening. And yet there is a secret in their marriage that they find out, and the secret involves finances. And I think it's very relatable. This episode speaks to so many good, hard questions about our financial lives. Thank you so much for sharing it, Meredith. Thank you for letting me share. One night in January of 2020, Alex, a young professional who lives in Massachusetts, musters up the courage

to confront a marital problem. A marital mystery, you might say. Alex turns to Tim, the husband in this story, and asks him, what the hell is going on? I finally said, if I didn't know you better, I would think you had a drug problem. I don't understand where your money goes. And he left the room and he came back in like five or ten minutes later looking kind of white as a ghost, face fallen. And I was like, oh no, what has happened here? What had happened? Well, it's a long story.

A story about love, money, trust, and whether a relationship, even a strong one, can survive a certain kind of infidelity. He kind of did the, like, I have to tell you something. And I didn't know what he was going to say at that point. From the Boston Globe and PRX, this is Love Letters. I'm Meredith Goldstein. Welcome to Season 8 of Love Letters, which is all about money and how it relates to love and relationships. I need to say right off the bat that this topic is close to my heart and my soul. Or should I say, close to my neuroses. As I told my financial advisor in the previous episode, money really freaks me out.

Both how it plays into romantic relationships and how it affects single people seeking a partner. Money was a big source of stress in my household growing up. And that really shaped how I think about relationships. The thing about money is it affects pretty much every relationship we have. I've realized over the years that it's been a central part of pretty much every story we've told on this podcast. There was the woman from season two who'd hired a matchmaker and had to get thousands of dollars from her parents to pay for it? Or what about the couple from season four, where the husband decided he needed to build a ball pit in his basement for himself at a cost of several thousand dollars? Even the recent episode about Roz and Ralph from

last season, it was such a beautiful love story about people who met and fell in love late in life. But when you think about it, they were able to meet and travel to see each other because they had the means to do that. This season, we're going to tell all sorts of stories about love and money. I promise all the other ingredients will be there too. Romance, dating, breakups. But finances will be a key part of each narrative because they always are, whether we admit it or not. We're going to start with the story of Alex, who you heard from at the start of the episode. I should note here that the names Alex and Tim, the main characters in today's story,

are both pseudonyms. Hi, I'm Alex. I'm 36 years old. I am a technical support engineer from southeastern Massachusetts, and my pronouns are they, them. A cool thing about Alex is that they've been reading my Love Letters advice column for the entire 14 years that it's been published. In fact, they're one of the original commenters on the column. Alex, like many readers, would weigh in on the letter writer's problem, sometimes agreeing with my advice, sometimes not. Back then, before the column became a bit more national and before it became a podcast, a lot of those commenters were local to the Boston area.

It almost became a hobby that I would read love letters every day and comment with my opinions and met a bunch of people through that, including you, Meredith, but also a number of people that started going out to get dinner together or do karaoke or things like that. I would make these grand assumptions about people who commented, especially before I had met them. What do they look like? You know, what did they do? Who were they? And it's like, I always feel like when I'm talking to someone who has commented, I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity, kind of. We felt that way, I think, when you would end up coming to things. It was like, oh my gosh, Meredith is going to be here. Like, I think it's funny because usually you don't have that two-way

parasocial feeling, but it feels like that's kind of what happened is like, you thought that way about us and we were thinking, oh, it'd be so cool if Meredith came to this event, you know? Right. And I always felt like not cool enough. Right. So Alex had grown up in Massachusetts, in a middle-class household, in a family with clear priorities. I thought that we didn't have a lot of money because I wasn't wearing, this is the 90s, I wasn't wearing Abercrombie & Fitch. And mostly we were shopping at like Kmart, Bradley's, Ames. And what I only realized when I was older is it was because all of the money was going to our extracurriculars. We rode horses, we did dance

classes, voice lessons, all of those kinds of things. So it was summer camp in the summers. It was experiential stuff that the money was going to. I wasn't allowed to get a job until after I graduated high school because my parents were very invested in school. The summer after Alex graduates from high school in 2004, they find a job at a Wendy's in a nearby town. And it was an experience. I really think everyone should have to work in fast food and or retail at some point because it gives you perspective on how to treat other people in some ways. So at 17, Alex is making money for the first time. Minimum wage at Wendy's. It feels very adult. Except Alex doesn't quite know how to handle this money. Pretty quickly,

the job actually starts costing Alex money. Despite the fact that I had a job and was bringing in paychecks, I had to ask my dad for gas money back when you could ask for like five bucks for gas and that would get you enough to get to work. And he was not thrilled with the fact that he was getting asked for gas money by someone who had a job. Where is the money going? Well, Alex is spending it pretty immediately on stuff, very important stuff.

I'm going to categorize it as nerd shit. I would buy anime DVDs. I would buy manga. I would buy Japanese snacks called Pocky and Japanese soda called Ramune. I bought plushies of the characters from the shows that I liked. Everything was very anime at that time. I just want to make it very clear that I feel entitled to call this stuff nerd shit, because I also love and need nerd shit. I too have spent a fair amount of money on it. My nerd shit is like Twilight collectibles and Batman dolls. I have a David Bowie action figure from the movie Labyrinth that talks. I have a bunch of Baby Yoda figurines in my house. His real name is Grogu, by the way,

not Baby Yoda. The point is, I say nerd shit with genuine affection. But Alex's dad, not such a fan of spending money on nerd shit. He started taking my paychecks and said, here's what we're going to do. I'm taking this much for your phone bill, and we're putting this much every check into a savings account. Because I really had no concept of the value of money at all or how to save it because I'd never had any. We wrote a contract. We had an actual written out contract of what he was going to do with my paychecks. And I only had some little amount that I could, you know, use as that plain money anymore. These lessons about saving and how to make a budget really sink in for Alex. They become an expert at living within their means.

So shame is an extremely powerful motivator for me, it turns out. And I did not continue to suck at money once my father sternly made me learn how to manage it. I went in the opposite direction, and I went to the point that I made a 30 or 40- 40 column spreadsheet budget. I started a blog in my early 20s about being in your 20s and saving money. It was really sanctimonious now that I look at it. When I first lived on my own, I spent $20 a week on groceries. I don't know how you did that.

Even years ago, what does $20 on groceries get you? I never ate boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I ate chicken leg quarters, bone-in chicken thighs, whatever was the cheapest chicken, dried beans that I would then reconstitute and make a soup with the chicken. I know it's really hard to spend within your means in your 20s, especially when you're trying to build a social life and you're going out with people. Like, how did your peers react to the way you dealt with money? Probably with some side eyes occasionally, because I was that person who would say, well, no, I ate this sandwich and I had a water, so I'm paying for that part of the bill.

It's a little embarrassing to think of quite how careful I was. I felt like it was out of necessity, but usually it was that I was also saving money. It wasn't like I didn't have any money on top of what was in my budget. It was that like, well, that would cut into my savings for the week. So I couldn't touch that. All this time, by the way, in their teens and 20s, Alex is dating and learning about what they want in partners. I was never one of those people who like had a vision of their perfect wedding that they were going to have someday. My mom had owned multiple houses before she and my father got together. So my real thing that I thought of myself as was a person who was going to have a house of their own at some point. But it didn't necessarily correlate to, like, the human who would be involved in that.

Alex has a relationship with a woman after college. They move in together. We did a little bit of the stereotypical U-Haul earlier than was necessarily the best idea. But I, the same way that I did with my finances, I did that with kind of everything in my life after college. I was very invested at winning at being an adult. Like, I was going to be the greatest at being a grown-up, and I pushed myself a little bit too hard. The relationship falls apart because Alex is so focused on being a grown-up. It just doesn't work. Too much, too soon. Almost immediately after, Alex starts seeing a married guy.

This becomes another adult lesson. Dating someone who is cheating on his wife is a bad idea. The relationship starts to crumble. Alex knows it has to end. Right around this time, a new person enters the picture. We'll call him Tim. And Tim, like Alex, also enjoys nerd shit. That's how they meet.

I met him at a live-action role-playing game. We were both in full costume. I was in full makeup. And I was like, wow, this guy is really tall and has a really cool voice. His character had a Russian accent and he just like was a really good LARPer. He was really good at staying in character. He was impressive to watch acting and fighting and doing spells and all of those things. For those who don't know, LARPing, like L-A-R-P, stands for live action role play.

What was your LARPing character? And tell me if I'm saying that wrong. This is my first time saying LARPing. No, no, no, LARPing is correct. LARPing is correct, right? But I don't know, like, does everybody pick their own LARPing character? Like, what was your character? Yeah, so my character was Morgana Dumort.

Morgana was an iron elf who was a rogue. So I went around backstabbing people. And we were both in this sort of, like, moral gray area with our characters. But Morgana was... Morgana. A pain in the ass. Morgana, who has conquered finances.

Yeah, yeah. Morgana with Pain in the ass. Morgana, who has conquered finances. Yeah, yeah. Morgana with a spreadsheet. So you meet, was there immediate interest? Another friend from the LARP had actually gotten us both referred into the same company to work, and that was when we started, like, talking more. He had been single for, I think, two years at that time. I think I was kind of trying to, like, hey, you should get yourself back out there. Like, you're cute, and you're talented, and you're cool,

and I'm sure that there are people out there who'd be interested. And he said, you know, I don't really, like, I don't really hook up with people that I'm not in a relationship with. And I said, if I was single, I would try to break you of that. Actually, no. If I was single, I would be trying to date you. Alex and the married guy break up. And then Alex and Tim start dating. But Tim tells Alex he doesn't want to be a rebound. Tim really wants them to take their time so they don't screw this up. He was like, I can see this going places, and I don't want it to be that you're just using me as a, you know, as a fling after this relationship you were in for two years.

So Alex and Tim take it a little slowly at first. They try, at least. They officially start dating July of 2012. It was pretty quick that we got pretty serious, and he actually moved into my apartment in October 2012. So it was not very long between starting to date and moving in. So I might just have U-Haul tendencies regardless, but we figured out pretty quickly that we were very compatible.

A few months after Tim moves in, Alex buys a house. This had always been the plan, coupled or not. Alex's mom had set the example, and all that savings had been partly for this. Tim moves into the house Alex buys. Then, a few happy years later, they start talking about marriage. They have a ceremony in 2017, and the wedding party is full of nerd shit. There was a board game room, arcade cabinets. Alex wears a Disney dress. There are Lord of

the Rings books, just in case anyone needs them. The marriage starts out great. They have fun together. They get better jobs and build community. They decide they want to be in a committed, non-monogamous relationship, and they figure out the very specific boundaries about how to make that work. But over time, despite being such good communicators that they can figure that out, one thing they're not really talking about, honestly and transparently, it's money. Something feels off to Alex about the way Tim always seems kind of short on resources. Like a lot of couples, they have separate bank accounts for their own stuff, and they both contribute to shared goals and expenses. But Alex can't figure out the math of what's happening with Tim and his paychecks. It seems that any time that any expense that was

big in any way needed to be done, so a car repair or a home repair or a vacation that I would be paying for it up front and he would be paying me back for his portion. And that didn't really make sense to me because he's a software engineer and I am a technical support engineer, which there is a significant difference in our salaries and I am not the one making more money. So I started to kind of wonder at various points what was necessarily causing me to have so much more money saved than he had. And it was always this, oh, well, I have the student loan still and I have my car loan. And I just kind of accepted it because he's a very caring and gentle and trustworthy human in general. And I just for many years went, okay, I guess that's what's causing you to not have any money saved. I think on some level, Alex also knows they were unusually careful with money. Like, of course, Tim had not also spent his 20s eating boiled chicken and only paying for exactly

what he consumed at group dinners. But it continues to be weird. Alex feels like Tim is hiding something. So one night, Alex finds the courage and just asks. We're sitting in the living room of my house in January 2020. And we were just, we were talking, I don't remember if it was thinking about buying another house or vacations or what it was, but it was the same conversation we'd had a number of times not knowing why he didn't have any money saved. This is when Alex says, Tim, if I didn't know better, I'd wonder if you had a drug or gambling problem. Like, what is going on? Tim leaves the revelation was going to be here. I really was completely in the dark on it. And he said that he had an awful lot more debt than he had told me that he had, to the tune of like $33,000 of credit card debt. For Alex, who still writes down every tiny expense on their trusty spreadsheet, this is bad.

I was really upset because by this point we'd been married for just over two years. So legally speaking, our finances were entwined at that point. I was upset because I did not think of him as the kind of person who could have lied to me, especially on an ongoing basis like that, where the lie continued for as long as it continued for. Alex immediately starts questioning what this means for their marriage. They also wonder, how did it take me this long to figure out what was going on? Then there's the practical issue of, how will this debt be paid? And, of course, Alex is asking,

what the hell did Tim buy that his credit card debt is up to $33,000? Their story continues after a short break. Okay, we're back. So for those keeping track, we're at $33,000 in credit card debt. That's what Tim has been keeping from Alex, the big financial secret. Alex is desperate to know how this could have happened. But before we get to how this plays out, let me rewind for a quick beat. Not long after Alex and Tim started dating seriously, Tim actually told Alex that he had some credit card debt. Tim had been laid off,

he had expenses that had added up over time, and he said he hadn't yet wiped the bill clean. Understandable. Back then, Alex, the super saver, offered to help. Alex figures, they're getting serious as a couple, so why not fix the problem? I loaned him somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 because I knew he had some credit card debt. And I asked him how much, and I loaned him that amount, and he paid it back, and that was supposed to be that. That was about $1,000. About $1,000 at the time that I was making about $39,000 a year. So it was a large amount of money for me at that time. And it was like, I felt really good because I thought I had helped him pay off his debt. I was like,

you know, now we can just not have to worry about that anymore. Now it's like eight years later, and Alex is staring at Tim and thinking, oh, there was probably way more than $1,000 of debt back then. And Tim hadn't been honest about that. It makes the betrayal seem even bigger. I really trusted him to the point that I would never have thought that he would have done anything like that. And I mean, we agreed very early in our relationship that we were going to be honest with

each other and communicate very openly. There was not going to be any of the, I'm fine if I'm not fine, you know. I just didn't ever think that there could be anything big that would put especially me at financial risk because he knew how important it was for me to be financially solvent. How did he explain what had happened? So he explained it as, you know, when he had lost his job years before we had started dating. He was depressed and didn't want to change his lifestyle, still wanted to get to go out with his friends and still have his hobbies. So the debt just kind of builds up when you're paying for everything on credit cards. And then the interest just keeps building up over time. And he had at some point just completely compartmentalized it away,

where it almost, to him, he didn't feel like he was lying to me because he had told himself that it wasn't real. I had a hard time understanding that, but plenty of people have explained to me that that is a thing that happens. Oh, it's a thing. Yeah. I mean, he understood why I was upset, but he explained the way that it happened as, like, it wasn't some conscious choice he was making to lie. It was just that he had decided that was not a real thing and it was out of his mind. And I said in explaining why I was so angry, this debt is on me. If you died tomorrow, I would have to pay all of that money back. And he said, well, I have life insurance through work that would pay out a year of my salary,

which is way more than that. And I was like, okay, but that doesn't make it okay. Can you tell me what happens next like immediately next i think we sat apart for a bit he went to another room or something and i messaged him and i said look like i i need you to leave for some time i don't know how long i can't tell you how long but i need some some space to myself here to figure out how i even feel at this point and to understand how to move forward from this. So I kicked him out of the house for what ended up only being a week, which didn't really feel unreasonable to me, but he, I know, had a hard time with because it was where he had lived for many years. And it was our house. It was technically

my house, but it was our house that we lived in together. And he went to a hotel for, I think, a night or two. And then he went up to his friend's house and stayed there for the rest of the week. Was there a part of you that was thinking this could end the marriage. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was really unsure if this was going to be something that my, that sort of my brain said, you know what, I can't trust you ever again. So what does happen in your brain as the days go on and eventually you tell him to come home? I think in that week, I definitely missed him. Like, I definitely missed having him around.

I might have even done some reading about, like, financial infidelity. This is actually, there's a term for it. That was when I learned there was a term for this, and it's called financial infidelity. I realized it wasn't that uncommon. And I realized that a lot of people had gotten through plenty worse in their relationships, and I started thinking, like, okay, you know, this might be something that I can get past. So after Alex invites Tim back home, they start working on a plan. We did two things immediately, which were find therapists for both of us separately. He also set up You Need a Budget, which is not the style of budgeting that I use, but it's really popular with a lot of people.

And he connected all of his accounts to it, and he gave me his login. So I could just go into that one spot and see all of his financial information at once. I honestly didn't do it that many times, but knowing I could was a big deal. Tim begins paying off the debt. They work on improving their communication around money. They try to figure out a better system that plays to both of their strengths. They talk openly about spending habits. Because Tim has been buying a lot of stuff. This is a good time to bring in Tim.

To start, I asked Tim how this happened. How getting a $1,000 loan from Alex to pay off credit cards early in the relationship winds up being $33,000 of secret debt less than a decade later. The answer is basically, as the old saying goes, you go into miserable credit card debt very gradually and then all at once. I had a few moments over the course of our relationship where I was like, this is it. This is going to be the year where I really get my life on track and my spending is under control and I save up money and I pay off that debt that I don't like to think about or that I don't even remember exists if I'm not thinking about it. And I had enough sort of false starts on that where, you know, it was this is the year. And then that that failure, every time I failed, it became more of a shameful personal failure and also more and more of a bit of a nightmare that I didn't really want to confront that like, hey, maybe I can't fix this without help.

It was in that funny space where like it, it was present and it surfaced, but it wasn't, like, always present. I wasn't always thinking about it and always haunted by it, but it would pop its head up, and I would have that sense of dread and anxiety about it and then usually end up kind of shoving it down if there wasn't anything I could actively do about it at that moment. Your spouse says to you, I need some time, I need some space, please go.

Can you tell me what your reaction was to that? It scared me a lot. It was kind of a feeling of rejection in a way because I felt not good about taking the step of sharing that and asking for help, really. But it was a relief to say like, hey, here's the thing I haven't been confronting and that I clearly need help with. But having it be, you need to go somewhere else so that I can be away from you entirely. And it was also, it sort of felt like asserting their power in the relationship in that this was their house that I lived in. I didn't have a claim to my own space. I was a tenant. And so it sort of very much felt a little bit like I was being kicked out of their space

that they had earned through their own financial responsibility because I wasn't worthy of being there. It felt like a signal that maybe I wouldn't ever be coming back. One of the things about marriage that's always scared the shit out of me is like the idea that I would be potentially governed by somebody about buying stupid shit I love to buy or treating people to dinner or like spending money the way I want to in a way that brings me joy and I like sometimes can't even imagine like well what would that look like um I want to know if disclosing all of this and working on this together and giving them access to your accounts, like, took away some of the whatever mystery was left about the two of you as partners or took away fun or took away romance. Like, to truly partner, not just as people who love each other, but almost as like the co-presidents of the business of marriage, because that's kind of what it is. Yeah, there definitely was almost the

business aspect of it. It did kind of feel like, okay, in order to move forward, we need to formally establish how our business relationship between our two independent financial entities is going to exist. I did need to know, quite specifically, what was Tim spending money on? It's two categories that are pretty distinct. One is just the luxury of ordering dinner or buying something that we need or whatever without thinking about the budgeting implications. You know, buying the brand name over-the-counter meds instead of the CVS brand or whatever. Category two is something else. Tim has had a lot of hobbies, and he needed his own nerd shit. Alex has their anime.

I have my Baby Yodas. Tim has all of this stuff. Both of these microphones represent one piece of a hobby being fulfilled through financial investment. And that's just one example. I built a modular synthesizer. I got really into enthusiast-level flashlights that required special battery chargers and batteries and that I could modify the firmware on. I got really into a project where I was building open source software for a MIDI controller to control the volumes on my gaming computer. And I also got really into microcontrollers and bought a bunch of stuff so that I could go solder them. You know, this was LARPing too. This was all of the paraphernalia for LARPing. It's very expensive because it's niche.

I mean, we're talking very fancy-looking, foam if it wasn't affordable or well-budgeted. Tim had had some health problems, some scary ones, in 2019. He'd gotten a cancer diagnosis and then surgery to remove that cancer. Things are okay now, but he says he went in extra on some of these hobbies and related expenses when he needed to feel good. I was doing everything I could to invest my brain energy in things that were not the scary thing. I don't want to make it out to be that I only spent money irresponsibly when I was stressed out by other things.

It was also when I was really excited about things. If I had it all to do over again, obviously, I would try to make better decisions earlier. But given the same circumstances, you know, I would I would hesitate less to to share fully the things that I wasn't even wanting to face myself. In 2020, after the big conflict and recovery, Tim is able to pay off his credit card debt. In fact, it only takes him about six months. Part of that comes with the privilege of remaining employed and home. Two months after the debt is paid,

Alex and Tim buy a bigger house together with a new understanding of how everything works. They now live there with all of their wonderful nerd shit and new hobbies and new trust. Tim credits Alex for this. One of the really wonderful things about them is that, you know, they've got my back. Like they're a really supportive partner and are really driven to find those paths to success in tricky situations. Thank you for sharing this because even though it was scary, you make it seem a lot less scary. I know it's not easy to talk about. So thank you so much. Of course.

I think people will learn from it. Awesome. Alex, meanwhile, says they work hard to manage finances without becoming the boss of Tim. The two of them are supposed to be partners, so that's the goal. I wonder, you have this dynamic with your dad that goes back to childhood, and I wonder how do you stop yourself from becoming that person with your spouse? Because suddenly you're doing some checking and observing and make sure you pay and like how does that not ruin the dynamic of like a peer relationship where there has been independence and and trust i kind of refused to let it be something that i put a schedule on that i was going to be

really over his shoulder all the time but i I did have some of that kind of parental voice for a bit, I think. Like, I do think that for a while I was probably, controlling is a heavy word, but checking in more often and honestly, like, making some bitter snipey jokes about it. Because it's, there was a lot of shame for me in how did I not push this earlier? How did I not notice it? That goes back to the same stuff with my dad, who hopefully doesn't listen to this podcast. Hi, Dad. Hello, Dad. Hello, Dad. Another thing Alex can now name as a personal priority is generosity. The minute they started making more money, Alex began buying dinners for others,

giving instead of just saving. Not every time, but sometimes. They still use the very same spreadsheet they invented after high school, but they give. Once I started having more money, I remembered the times that people had supported me when I wasn't making a lot. I, you know, I was in a wedding where we went to look at bridesmaids' dresses, and I didn't realize that that was the day you also paid for them. And I couldn't. That was back in the early smartphone days. And I was like frantically trying to open my spreadsheet budget going, oh my God, I won't be able to make rent this month if I buy this today. And the bride's mother bought me the dress and the shoes and the purse and everything. I remembered those kinds of things that people had done for me. And I wanted to, as much as I could, make things easier for other people in that way. So I very much

became the, you know, we all go out after a show and I pick up the tab and like quietly pull the waitress aside and, you know, pass over my credit card. As for Alex and Tim, I really wanted to know, what has all of this meant for their marriage? This is a cheesy-ass question, so get ready, but has this made you stronger as a partnership? I honestly think it probably did make us stronger because it did take a lot of work to get past, you know, feeling like I had been really betrayed. And he did put in a lot of work himself as well to get his spending patterns under control and still does. Like, we still both have therapists, you know? Like, that was one of the first things my therapist asked me about when I talked to her was like, do you still want to be married to him? And I was like, you know, I think I do. Like, you know, like it wasn't, when we initially had the conversation and it all came out,

I'm not sure if that was the answer, but thinking about it and deciding that, yeah, like that is something that I want. It makes you think about why you are in a relationship with that person and do you want to fight for it? And we decided that we did. Thanks, Alex, for telling your story.

Of course. Thank you for having me. 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. Devin Smith and Maddie Mortell do our audience engagement. Love Letters illustrations by Ashanti Davis. Check them out on the Love Letters Instagram. Special thanks to Linda

Henry. Our music is from APM. We're now on Discord, where we'll pop in to discuss episodes. Sign up for the Love Letters newsletter and you'll get the invite link, along with more content. Just go to boston.com slash loveletters and sign up. If you like the show, please follow us on Apple Podcasts. We're online at loveletters.show. During COVID, I always thought this would have been the time that I should have been a D&D person or a LARPer person. Like, I just feel like I need a little push because I just feel like it's

like only a small jump from being a theater kid. Yeah. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll brainstorm some names. Okay. I'm Meredith Goldstein. Thanks for listening. From PRX.