The Right to Fail at Marriage

Modern Love

The New York Times

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

4.3 • 9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2021

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2004, the comedian Cameron Esposito sat on the steps of Boston City Hall and watched as some of the first legally married same-sex couples in the United States emerged victoriously as newlyweds. Thirteen years, three boyfriends and 10 girlfriends later, Cameron was ready to marry the woman she assumed she would be with forever. “I expected to perfectly navigate marriage like some sort of lesbian phoenix that never stops rising,” Cameron wrote in her 2019 Modern Love essay. But when she found herself alone and knocked down, failing at marriage, she developed a new understanding of the privileges she had long been fighting for.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love now.
0:03.0	Just love.
0:04.0	Just love.
0:05.0	Just love.
0:06.0	You should never love anyone but yourself.
0:08.0	You're the love.
0:09.0	And I love you more than anything.
0:12.0	Just love.
0:14.0	From New York Times, I'm Mealy.
0:16.0	And I'm Dan Jones.
0:18.0	This is the Modern Love Podcast.
0:20.0	Today's episode is about divorce and about how things can break even.
0:27.0	If you have the best intentions and make the best effort.
0:31.0	Yeah, it's about the equality of love but also the equality of heartbreak.
0:41.0	The essay is called New Hope, New Pain, Same Old Divorce.
0:46.0	And it's both written and read by Cameron Esposito.
0:57.0	One of the last things I did before leaving the home we had made together
1:02.0	was pull the five foot portrait of our faces out of the closet.
1:09.0	What is one supposed to do with oversized portraiture in the event of adversity?
1:16.0	The picture was a gift bestowed by network executives when we became the first married,
1:23.0	same sex couple to co-star in and co-create a television show.
1:28.0	Take my wife.
	...

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