Lindy West Thought She Couldn’t Handle Polyamory. She Was Wrong.

Modern Love

The New York Times

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

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2026

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When she was growing up, the writer Lindy West was bombarded with negative messages about being fat. The whole world seemed to think she didn’t deserve love unless she lost weight. In her first book, “Shrill,” West wrote about how hard it was to combat fatphobia within herself, in society and on the internet, where she was attacked by some particularly vicious trolls. By the end of the book, West had found confidence in herself. She also got married to the love of her life. Now, West is opening up about a conflict that was built into her marriage from the start: She wanted to be monogamous. Her husband, Aham, did not. To make Aham happy, West agreed that he could see other people, but she was terrified of what would happen to her self-esteem if he ever acted on it. This week on “Modern Love,” West talks about what happened when Aham started seriously dating someone else. Once this new girlfriend entered the picture, it forced West to rethink her feelings about her marriage, and about herself. On the other side of all that tough emotional work, she was surprised to discover a new kind of joy. Lindy West’s latest book, “Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane,” comes out March 10.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and...
0:03.1	Love was stronger than anything.
0:07.1	And I love you more than anything.
0:11.3	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. On today's show, I'm
0:18.7	talking to the writer and former New York Times columnist
0:21.3	Lindy West. Years ago, Lindy wrote a book called Shrill that puts you inside her brilliant,
0:28.1	weird, funny brain as she moves through a world that keeps telling her that being fat is a problem,
0:33.9	that it makes her fundamentally unlovable. But by the end of shrill, Lindy's feeling
0:39.4	confident in herself, and she's also found love with her best friend Aham. They get married,
0:45.1	and they're going to be together forever. Now, in Lindy's latest book called Adult Races,
0:52.0	she's opening up about a problem that was kind of built into her marriage from the start.
0:56.5	Aham did not want to be totally monogamous. And while Lindy wanted to be okay with that, really she wasn't.
1:04.7	This situation was bound to explode at some point. And today, I talked to Lindy about the moment it did.
1:15.9	Lindy West, welcome to Modern Love. Thank you so much for having me.
1:21.1	Lindy, okay, towards the end of your first book, Shrill, you get married to your husband.
1:32.0	A-Ham. Finding love, always a big deal. But when you and Aham got together, it was a particularly big deal for you. Can you tell me why?
1:38.0	Yeah, I, gosh, I haven't thought about this in such a long time, but Aham and I were just talking about
1:43.0	this last night.
1:58.5	I had always been kind of lonely and single and sad and yearning, you know, and growing up in a fat body,
2:02.2	people tell you no one will ever love you unless you fix your body.
2:09.9	And then being a woman, a very visible woman on the internet, then strangers are just telling you that every single day, which I already kind of had it handled internally.
2:15.9	You're like, I don't need the pile on.
	...

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