Modern Love The Podcast is supported by...

From the New York Times and WBUR Boston, this is Modern Love.

Stories of Love, Lost, and Redemption.

I'm your host, Megna Chakrabardi.

In the beginning of a relationship, we walk in blissfully ignorant,

with no knowledge of the skeletons that may lurk in a lover's closet.

But the true test comes when the doors fly open and those skeletons rattle out.

This week's essay by Carrie Sandberg takes us into the closet and back out again.

Tony-nominated actor Megan Hilti reads us Carrie's essay,

You may recognize her voice from her work on Broadway productions such as Wicked and Noises Off.

Here's Megan Hilti, reading Carrie Sandberg's essay, On the precipice, Wings spread.

On paper, Theo appeared to be the worst boyfriend possible.

41 to my 19, a recovering alcoholic and father to a spirited teenage daughter who lived nearby with his ex-wife.

But I didn't realize any of that when we met in the summer of 1992.

At the Westchester County Health Food Store, where I was working while home from college.

All I knew was that he looked like a young, fit, Jeff Bridges,

was a graduate student in landscape architecture at Cornell, and like weird seaweed crackers.

Butterflies flapped in my stomach every time he approached my register.

One morning he commented on the Count Basie album I was playing on the store stereo,

and we discovered our mutual love of big band music.

The next afternoon he walked in and handed me a mixtape.

That Friday we went on our first date.

...