From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. And today Susan

Gellis' Modern Love essay in its entirety. It's a story about putting yourself

out there in order to find love and how daunting and excruciating and cringy

that can be. Especially for Susan, because Susan went to Singles Mixers. Here

Susan Gellis reading her essay, single and surrounded by a wall of men.

Sometimes I play a kind of game where I think about how different my life would

be if I had made other choices. One thing leads to an unforeseeable other.

After spending my 20s as a would-be musician, I attended law school in New York City. I graduated

owing about $100,000 in student loans. Luckily, I found a job at a terrific but demanding law firm,

where I was assigned to share an office with an associate named Daniel. Daniel and I bonded

like soldiers who have a trench during wartime. We were both shy, but working together on

days, nights and weekends has a way of breaking down reserve. He would send me fake emails

from terrifying law partners and I'd jump out of empty offices and startle him. We had

no romantic connection, but we talked each other through our relationship messes. We agreed

that socializing in unstructured settings was particularly frightening. So we hid in our office

and avoided the firm's weekly cocktail hour because schmoozing with unfamiliar co-workers

put both of us in a defensive crouch. But even the best of wartime alliances eventually weekend,

after three years, Daniel left the firm and moved to another city. It took me another two years

to pay off my loans and soon after that I fled the battlefield and joined the legal department of

a slower paced publishing company. With more free time, I gathered my courage and signed up for

a singles event run by a group that held regular mixers. I was 37 at my life's midpoint

and it looked like a dull downward slide from where I stood. So I squashed my misgivings and

...