The Kind of Pain She Wanted

Modern Love

The New York Times

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

4.4 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For her entire life, Grace Hussar has been an overthinker. No matter how much she wanted to be in the moment, she always felt as if she was just outside it. But when she took up endurance running, she realized something: Extreme pain turned her thoughts off. She wanted more of that feeling — more pain and less overthinking. As a mother of two with a happy partnership and a career in finance, what she explored next surprised her. On this week’s episode of “Modern Love,” Hussar talks about her essay, “The Kind of Pain I Wanted.” Hussar shares the story of how she discovered that rope play and kink were the keys to newfound presence and pleasure in her life. Here’s how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times. Here’s how to submit a Tiny Love Story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now and...
0:03.2	Love was stronger than anything.
0:06.6	I feel of love.
0:07.8	And I love you more than anything.
0:10.4	What a love?
0:11.3	Love.
0:12.2	There's to love.
0:13.2	Love.
0:14.2	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
0:20.0	This is Modern Love. Today I'm talking to a writer about how she discovered that pain and BDSM were key to her being fully in her body and in the moment.
0:30.9	In the most important moments of my life, my brain was instead focusing on how do I remember this so that it's perfect.
0:40.6	For her entire life, Grace Hussar struggled to stay present. She was always a little outside
0:46.3	of the moment, and it bothered her. As a fellow extreme overthinker, I have to say, I related
0:52.2	to this hard. For example, this detail really stuck out to me.
0:57.0	Grace told me about how when she was telling her boyfriend she loved him for the first time,
1:01.7	she got so in her head about it that she couldn't even remember what it felt like when he said it back.
1:07.2	I wish I could just go back to that moment and feel what it felt like to hear those words from him instead of watching his chin shake, instead of waiting for the right response or worrying over the wrong response. I wish I could go back to that moment and just feel that feeling.
1:26.7	All of this started changing when Grace became a runner.
1:30.3	And not just any kind of runner, an ultra runner.
1:33.8	This is extreme endurance running, 31 miles, you heard that right, 31 miles or more.
1:41.1	She was pushing herself to her limit or beyond it.
1:44.0	You become an animal.
	...

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