I Tried Everything to Escape My Heartbreak. Only This Worked.

Modern Love

The New York Times

Storytelling, Nytimes, Nyt, Redemption, New York Times, Society & Culture, Loss, Essay, Love

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lauren Bans was seven months pregnant when she realized she needed a divorce. Suddenly, she found herself heartbroken, terrified, and completely unable to make decisions or think about the future. One day, her sister suggested they visit an escape room. As the door locked and the countdown began, Bans found herself enraptured by the puzzles, forgetting her reality for a moment and feeling like herself again. She was hooked and went back to escape rooms over and over. This week on the “Modern Love” podcast, Bans tells Anna Martin about her unique cure for heartbreak, and how making decisions in a fictional puzzle room helped her feel capable of making them in real life again, too.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, it's Anna. Before we start the show, I've got a question about AI. We want to know if AI has changed a relationship in your life in some big way. And we want to know how. Maybe you and your partner kept having the same fight, so you let AI listen in as a kind of couples therapist. Maybe you discovered a friend's chat history and figured
0:22.2	out how they were really feeling about you. Or maybe you needed to impress a girl who you couldn't
0:27.4	believe was texting you back so you used AI to draft up some witty responses and then you had to meet up
0:33.3	for a real life date. We're interested in all types of relationships, romantic, friendship, family, work.
0:40.4	Tell us how you've encountered AI in your personal life, how it changed a specific relationship,
0:45.6	and what you've learned or taken away.
0:48.2	Record a voice memo and email it to us at Modern Love Podcast at NYTimes.com, and we might use your story on the show.
0:55.8	Again, that's Modern Love Podcast
0:57.8	at NYTimes.com.
1:00.4	Thanks.
1:01.0	We can't wait to hear from you.
1:02.7	Now, here's today's episode.
1:05.6	Love now and...
1:07.1	Love now and...
1:08.0	Love was stronger than anything.
1:28.2	For the love love. And I love you more than anything. There's to love. Love. Love. From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Look, I have tried lots of things to get over a breakup. I've done the classics. I've gotten a new haircut.
1:30.3	In my case, I also bleached my hair.
1:32.2	I've gone on shopping sprees.
1:33.1	I've taken trips.
1:37.0	I've eaten entire family-sized bags of salt and vinegar potato chips and had extreme mouth irritation for days after.
1:40.7	But my guest today found herself going through a breakup
1:43.1	that no haircut or family-sized snack could heal.
	...

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