As a single mother and professor, I raised my 2 daughters...
Living on a 1,000-acre college campus in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, my children had the freedom to walk past a herd of cows to get to the bus stop, eat in the cafeteria, and wade with friends in the Swannanoa River. The only place they weren't allowed to go was into the…
My coworker dated 3 other women in the office before we...
In 1995, I took a job as a copyeditor just outside Denver. When I first met my new coworker, Quent — a tall guy in glasses — I thought he was cute. But I had a live-in boyfriend, and Quent was just a few months divorced from a woman he’d met in the office. I recall…
I struggled to learn the language when I moved to Italy....
My wife and I moved to Italy in 2019 and I knew I'd have to improve my skills with Italian.But when I got there, I had a hard time learning the language. After adopting our dog, people were friendlier and it became easier to learn conversational Italian. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in…
I’m taking my husband to write a will for Valentine’s Day....
I've been with my partner for almost a decade. Over the years we've spent Valentine's Day doing a lot of traditionally romantic things, like eating candlelit dinners at our favorite Italian restaurant and treating ourselves to a couples massage at a local spa.But this year we're celebrating our first Valentine's Day as new parents. Instead…
My coworker was 17 years older than me and was too...
“This is going to be difficult.” That’s the first thought my former coworker and now fiancé had the first time he saw me pop up in my Teams video tile as part of his regular work meeting.It was March 2022, and I had just joined the marketing company where he was a senior account executive…
I make 4 times more money than my husband earns. He...
This as-told-to essay is part of our series Splitting the Difference, which examines the financial lives of couples, and is based on a conversation with Karina F. Daves. It has been edited for length and clarity.I had been working as a social worker in higher-education administration when I decided to start a podcast called "One…
I’m poly and live with my husband and boyfriend. We make...
This is part of our series Splitting the Difference, which examines the financial lives of couples.I'm a millennial, which means I, like so many in my generation, have had a rough time financially. I'm facing student loans, high inflation, and stagnant wages. The cost of living is high, and unfortunately I'm not a trust-fund kid…
My fiancé is 17 years older than me, and we met...
Marrying a remote colleague from Idaho who's 17 years older than me was never on my 29-year-old to-do list — but then again, most things in life aren't.My fiancé, Collin, and I met at work. He was a senior strategy consultant for a Nashville marketing firm where I was brought on as a freelance writer.…
It’s hard to make friends in Palm Springs because, in my...
I moved to Palm Springs from Silicon Valley in my 50s for a change of pace. Though I like it here, many people are already retired, and I've had a hard time making friends. Some early friendships fizzled out, but I'm not giving up on meeting new people. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in…
I thought drinking until I blacked out most nights was normal....
When I attended my freshman orientation at Dartmouth in 2007, I met Keggy for the first time. Portly, gregarious, and prone to spontaneous dancing, he was both an outsize presence and a perfect distillation of our school spirit. His name was Keggy the Keg because he was a life-size, well, beer keg, and he was…
