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From “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love.” This year marks the 20th anniversary of the “Modern Love” column. 20 years — can you believe that? Two decades of essays that have made us laugh, made us gasp, broken our hearts, reminded us of the fundamental goodness of people. And let’s be honest — a lot of these essays should come with tissues. It’s kind of our thing here, making you cry.

To mark this big anniversary, we’ve got a conversation with “Modern Love” founder Daniel Jones. Dan has edited around 1,000 essays since the first one ran back in 2004. And when you spend all your professional time contemplating human connection, that work doesn’t stay at the office. It impacts you in profound ways. So, today, Dan shares the three essays that have changed the way he approaches love and relationships in his own life. And at the end of the show, stay tuned for a very exciting announcement about the rest of our season.

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So, it feels strange to say what I say to guests on the show, which is welcome, because, really, you welcomed me into this universe. So instead of saying welcome, I’m going to say, Dan Jones, hello, and thank you so much.

It is great to be back here.

The “Modern Love” column has been around for almost 20 years, which is a long time. And I do not say this in a rude way, but that also means that you are 20 years older than you were when you started it. Is there anything that’s happened in your life over those two decades that has changed your approach to the work or reframed it in some way?

I’ve gone from being young to less young over that time.

Delicately put.

I started the column with children who are now very much adults and have gone through their own breakups and traumas and all of that and got out into the world and gotten jobs. My marriage of 29 years came to an amicable end. My father died two months ago, and there’s been a lot of tough family time since then. But I feel like my life was pretty stable during the family child rearing years. And then, oddly timed to the pandemic, I have to say — [LAUGHS]

As happened to many, yeah.

It just like opened up, and it was like the column was saying to me, OK, you’re going to experience the whole range of what you’ve been putting out there. And interestingly enough, I feel like working on the column for all these years has given me sort of touchstones and tools — and not just for me, for other people, too — to be able to navigate difficult times in life. It feels like this churning reservoir of human experience that sort of feeds into your veins if you are open to it.

I love what you said that you gave so much to the column. And now you’re in this place in your career and your life where it’s giving back to you. I mean, what a —

It’s like an annuity program.

It’s like — yeah, it’s like a 401(k). [LAUGHS]

Right, right. Exactly.

It’s like a Roth IRA.

It’s the “Modern Love” 401(k).

That’s a sexy way to say it, right?

You know? I’m withdrawing. I’m getting close to the age where I’m going to be forced to withdraw. So, it’s a good thing.

People are loving this metaphor. OK, so that’s where you are now, but when you were starting the column, did you see yourself as an expert in relationships or in romance?

I wasn’t great at romantic relationships. I was like, how does this work? How does this work? I was really terrible at it in high school. I was really terrible at it in college. I still found it really hard. My first girlfriend in grad school.

Took you a while.

But very slow learning, very shy. But I think just the weightiness of romantic relationships is a scary thing.

Hmm.

And I wasn’t paralyzed with fear or anything. Like, I just — I assumed I’d get married and have a family. Like all those things were just assumptions and didn’t seem all that hard to make happen, in a way. But the complications of relationships and loss and just all those big things, I felt like those were things that happened to somebody else. Those were out there and were these deep, dark wells that I hadn’t really experienced and didn’t have a sense of how to navigate.

Hmm. How did the people in your life react when you told them like, hey, I got a new gig. I will be covering love and relationships at “The New York Times.” How did people react?

Some people were just — they were surprised that that would be my subject and that would be my beat, in a way. To me, I don’t think of love and relationships as being a beat. I think of it as being like the center of all life. It’s like, it’s not off to the side.

Say that, mm-hmm.

It’s the center of things. Honestly, I don’t like the word “romance.” It just feels like shallow and —

Schlocky.

— schlocky and whatever. But the word “love” has it all. It’s like that’s the core of human existence, it seems to me. It’s the stuff of life and loss and death and yearning and dreaming and all of that stuff.

Mm. Have you come to that understanding of these stories about love are really stories about life? Did you enter into the column, the early days of this column, with that understanding, or has that been worked out over 20 years of editing these pieces?

We started that way a little intentionally. We made it clear that the stories were not just about romantic relationships. It was family relationships and friendships and parenthood and the whole sort of gamut of human love and bonds. And in coming up with a title, “Modern Love,” we wanted an umbrella that was sort of wide enough to encompass love.

And the “modern” part of it could mean a lot of things. To me, it meant something that was contemporary, like a way we connect that we didn’t use to, the way we use technology, the way we have children that we didn’t use to, all of those ways that are now. And we just thought “modern” would cover that piece of it.

OK, so, another big part of the column is that it’s totally based on reader submissions, meaning anyone can send in their idea for a story, and you select the ones you want to edit and then publish. Why did you go with that submission model, as opposed to commissioning stories from famous writers or other well-known people?

I just thought, let’s just open the floodgates and see what comes in. I didn’t realize at the time what a great idea that was because —

[LAUGHS]: I realized later, I’m a genius.

I’m a frickin’ genius for coming up with that, but not like it’s any kind of new idea. But for this kind of a forum, it was essential. And as an example, just a few weeks ago, we published a story by a Bangladeshi immigrant who’d been a taxi driver in New York, in an arranged marriage from Bangladesh. Had won the visa lottery and moved here, and they settled in Queens. They had a daughter. She became a doctor.

And I asked him, what made you write this story, your love story from 30 years ago and bringing it up to now? What made you submit it? And he said, oh, I’ve been reading “Modern Love” for 20 years.

Oh.

You know? I’m reading it every week. And he wasn’t a writer. He’d just been reading the column and thought —

Wow.

— I have a story. All these people who have stories, they read stories, they think, what about my story? And that’s something I was late in realizing, that it was just — it had drawn stories out of people who otherwise would not have told them. It felt a safe space for them. They thought, well, other people have done it.

Totally.

So I could do it, too.

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When we come back, Dan chooses the three essays that taught him the most about love, with a little help from Jake Gyllenhaal and Connie Britton. Stay with us.

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All right, so, Dan, can you please kick us off with the first essay you want to talk about?

Yeah, so this is an essay. It’s called “One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, Please.” And the writer is named Alisha Gorder. And this is a story that begins with a young woman working in a flower shop describing the kinds of customers who come in, the kinds of flower bouquets that they’d buy and for what reason. And you think you’re in this light, airy story about a flower shop.

And then about halfway through, it takes a plunge into this really troubling backstory where her high school boyfriend had died by suicide at age 18, and it throws what she’s talking about and the flower shop into a whole new context. And in the end, it turns into a meditation of why flowers, why are these the things that people rely on for these important transitions and moments in life, and comes to a wisdom at the end that has just stayed with me ever since.

And longtime listeners will remember that this essay was featured on the podcast years ago, back when we had celebrities and voice actors read the essays. Let’s hear a part of this one performed, I think, really tenderly by the actor, Kerry Bishé.

There’s a picture I took of him just days before I left for college, two months before he died. It was the summer of chips and guacamole dinners we shared, sitting on the living room floor. He’s standing in the kitchen wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, one perfect half of an avocado cradled in his hand. His face is turned away, hidden from the camera, but I like to think he’s smiling.

I remember the song we were listening to, the chatter of frogs through the screen door, my bare feet on wood. Precious moments made all the more precious by the fact that they have already come and gone.

Now I measure months by what’s in season — sunflowers in July, dahlias in August, rose hips and maple in October, pine in December, hyacinth in March, crowdpleasing peonies in May.

A favorite of mine is tulip magnolia, the way the buds erupt into blooms and the blooms into a litter of color on lawns, all in a matter of weeks while it’s snowing cherry blossoms. How startlingly beautiful impermanence can be.

You said that it’s that ending and, in fact, it’s that final line that really speaks to you. Can you tell me what you learn or take away from that line?

It’s sort of grown on me how startlingly beautiful impermanence can be. It’s not that love or connection is beautiful and impermanent. It’s beautiful because it’s impermanent.

And the fleeting nature of any connection is what makes it precious and what makes it beautiful. And the way that she saw this in petals on the ground that are soon to dry up and go away, but the beauty is in that it won’t last.

I mean, there’s this section, I think, a little bit earlier than that when she even poses the question quite directly, like, why flowers? Why do we give these things that are going to shrivel and die?

Just to throw away, yeah.

And I love what you’re saying. It’s not despite the impermanence. It’s really loving because of it, because our time is —

Mm-hmm. That is the arc of life. It’s shortened with flower blossoms, but that is it. It sometimes lasts a long time, sometimes a short time. But it will always feel fleeting in a way, that level of beauty.

What does this essay make you think about in terms of your own life or your own relationships?

To me, it’s about — I mean, it’s a buzzword we always hear about, but here, it really comes home to roost, is presence, is being present. And it’s always the hardest thing, for me, for a lot of people, appreciating what you have now, and not thinking about what you’re building toward and what you’re accumulating wealth for and what’s to come, but the connections you have now that are beautiful in the moment, and not fearing that you’re going to lose them — because you are. That’s a certainty.

But just being able to be present and appreciate them and the fact that it’s this young woman who was able to artfully, in the midst of grief, compose such a beautiful piece that teaches that is just miraculous to me.

I mean, you mentioned earlier that your dad recently passed. Did you return to this essay then? Was it in the back of your mind as you were processing all that?

It must have been because I was scrolling through the archive and saw that illustration and clicked on it. And I did see it in a new way. I remembered how much I appreciated it at the time, but I was able to hold it together here. But when I read it aloud to a friend who obviously was sitting there when I was rereading it, I couldn’t get through the final lines. I was really broken up by it.

It sounds like this piece resonated with you and spoke to you in a different way years later, which is really powerful. Do you want to talk about the next essay?

Yeah, so this one is called “Nursing a Wound in an Appropriate Setting.” It’s written by Thomas Hooven, who is a doctor. He’s not a writer. But you would never know that —

No, you would not.

— from reading this incredible essay. And I think about this essay all the time. This was published in 2013. He describes his relationship with his longtime girlfriend before he goes to medical school. They knew each other for 12 years. They were both the children of divorce and of unstable households that were scary. And they gave each other a sense of safety. He describes their relationship as being no fighting. Fighting was what their parents did.

Fighting would threaten their equilibrium, yeah.

Fighting would threaten their love. And so, it was a sort of a flat, safe relationship. They were together for 12 years. They got engaged. He was about to head off to medical school. And then, she abruptly broke up with him. I think there were only a few weeks from their marriage —

Three.

— from their wedding.

Three weeks.

Three weeks, OK.

What?

And he was just — devastated doesn’t begin to describe it. And he goes off to medical school or his residency, and it’s sort of his boot camp in feelings and complications and devastation and real life, like real life. And then after this sort of time in the wilderness in his residency and going through all this, he learns what real love is.

Yeah, I mean, his idea of what real love is at the end of the essay is so powerful. This essay was also featured on an early season of the podcast. So here’s Jake Gyllenhaal reading Thomas Hooven’s essay, “Nursing a Wound in an Appropriate Setting.”

Yeah, this one is so great.

My ex and I are not in touch. Our relationship, so long in the making and so quick to end, was like an ornamental piece of crystal. Aesthetically pleasing but lacking resilience and, once shattered, irrecoverable.

Looking back at the various romantic and not so romantic dating experiences I had afterwards, it’s hard to separate my growth as an emotionally conversant partner from my development as a capable physician. Both happened simultaneously and gradually through stretches of triumph and sorrow. There were no Eureka moments, and neither ever really ended.

The turmoil I experienced as an intern left me with a deeper understanding of how pain works, how it feels, how it ebbs, and how it leaves you less naive. I also learned to open up to important facets of life that my previous relationship had locked out — unhappiness, uncertainty, and regret. Comfort around feelings like these is crucial in both medicine and intimate relationships. It’s the basis of empathy.

I didn’t understand that before my ex left me, and I learned it the hard way.

By the time I met my wife, I was a changed man and a real doctor. And our love developed differently from any I had ever experienced before. Less like a crystal vase, more like a basketball, our relationship is made for bouncing, for good and sometimes rough play that modern professional lives generate. We do have fights — oh, yes, we do. But they do not threaten our foundation — they deepen it.

Tell me what you take away about Thomas’s articulation of what real love is. What is he saying?

Well, this is one of these essays that I feel like mirrored my experience in a way. Like, I didn’t come from a family of turmoil. But I’m afraid of conflict, total fear of conflict. Don’t like to fight, don’t like to argue. My idea of a successful, romantic, loving relationship was being in a harmonious space all the time — or not all the time. Sometimes you’d be bored, but you wouldn’t be fighting.

And so, this idea that fighting can bring you closer is revolutionary to me. It still is revolutionary to me. And not only that it can bring you closer, but it’s the only thing to bring you closer and the only thing to deepen your relationship.

Fighting can lead to end a relationship definitely, but the only way forward and the only way deeper is through conflict and resolving conflicts to a new understanding of the relationship and who you’re with and the person you’re with and getting to know them better and all of that. And I don’t know what business he has writing this well about —

You’re like, listen —

It’s not fair to be like a doctor —

— you’re already a doctor.

— and — I know, and also to be able to write this well about and understand love this well and loss and conflict and depth. It’s remarkable.

Mm. So are you like fighting all the time now?

No.

I still need to learn how to fight better.

Let’s talk about the final essay. This is an essay by Elizabeth Fitzsimmons. It’s called “My First Lesson in Motherhood.” Can you tell me what that essay’s about?

Yeah, so this is a piece that ran on Mother’s Day way back in 2007. And it’s yet another one that takes a really dramatic turn — several dramatic turns. And it’s an essay about bravery when you didn’t think you had the capacity for it. It’s a couple who are having trouble getting pregnant and decide to adopt a baby girl in China. And they specifically fill out forms saying, we’re new parents. We don’t want any disabilities. We can’t deal with anything, basically, except for just a perfect, little, healthy baby.

And they get a baby who’s chosen for them. By the time they get there and meet with the baby and are alone with her for the first time, they discover alarming physical problems, a really bad rash and a scar at the base of her spine and hear a horrifying diagnosis that the child will be paralyzed from the waist down, will be incontinent, will have serious, serious problems. And unbelievably, they talk to the agents from the adoption agency, and they say, oh, well, we’re sorry about this, and essentially offer a swap for a different baby.

Yeah, that’s a moment that is kind of unbelievable in this piece.

The view of human life in that circumstance.

So this essay was read by the actress Connie Britton in 2016. And you can just hear the emotional stakes of this story in her performance. Let’s listen to it.

Yeah, she’s really perfect for this one.

I pictured myself boarding the plane with some faceless replacement child and then explaining to friends and family that she wasn’t Natalie, that we had left Natalie in China because she was too damaged, that the deal had been a healthy baby, and she wasn’t. How could I face myself? How could I ever forget? I would always wonder what happened to Natalie.

I knew this was my test, my life’s worth distilled into a moment. I was shaking my head no before they finished explaining. We didn’t want another baby, I told them. We wanted our baby, the one sleeping right over there. She’s our daughter, I said. We love her. Yet we had a long, fraught night ahead, wondering how we would possibly cope. I called my mother in tears and told her the news.

There was a long pause.

Oh, honey. I sobbed. She waited until I caught my breath. It would be OK if you came home without her. Why are you saying that? I just want to absolve you. What do you want to do? I want to take my baby and get out of here, I said. Good, my mother said. Then that’s what you should do.

I mean, I’m tearing up.

Me, too. So, the lesson in this piece to me is sort of about a test. It’s really a test. It’s like, what are you capable of? What kind of devotion, what kind of sense of responsibility, what are you going to take on? And they have to decide in the moment, are they going to stick with this child with this horrifying set of health complications that could control their lives forever? Are they going to push that baby aside and accept a healthier baby? And then, how do they live with themselves if they do that? Neither choice is an appealing choice.

No. This essay — I mean, all of these essays bowled me over, and this one just made me — I mean, I quite literally called my mom after this. It is such a moving testament to just the completely inexplicable, immediate bond between parent and child. Yeah, I’m still kind of crying. I mean, it’s just — it’s remarkable. Tell me what you’re taking. I mean, you are a parent. Like, tell me what you’re thinking about when you read this essay.

Well, first of all, I’m thinking — I think anyone reading this thinks, what choice would I have made?

Of course.

And you would like to think that you would make the choice of keeping the child. But honestly, one of the most moving things and tragic things that happened in the wake of publishing this essay is, we got emails from people who’d faced this choice and —

Wow.

— made the opposite choice and either left with a healthy baby and struggled, and struggled, and struggled with having done that. More common was giving up on adoption entirely and just walking away, and walking away from that child or any child. But she’s just like, I’m going to walk into this. Like, I’m going to just walk forward into this, and it’s going to be what it’s going to be. And miracle of miracles — like, within a year or so, all that stuff has gone away. They see a specialist —

I know. The kid is fine. I’m going to cry again. It’s like, after making this decision, they go home, and she heals. Oh!

Yeah, and she recoiled at thinking that was a reward for making the right choice. Like, she said, it’s not about that. It’s not about we were generous or we were good, and therefore, our child turned out fine. It’s not that at all. It just happened that way. But it’s yet another lesson in you can’t predict a smooth path. You just have to walk forward and be brave.

I often say with “Modern Love” stories that are really about choices and hard choices and how it’s sort of ordinary people being incredibly brave, I mean, I often wonder, what creates the person who can make the brave choice versus the person who shrinks from it. Like, what is that magic sauce? Or what is that childhood experience or what is the parenting that they have?

Totally.

Because there is a divide. Like, there is a divide often in those circumstances that we saw in the outpouring after the essay.

We see instances of bravery in all three of the essays that you’ve shared today — bravery to embrace the brevity of love, bravery to engage in fighting in a relationship, bravery to make a choice. Would you define bravery as like a core act of love?

Yeah, a core act of love and a core act of life. People’s bravery has been my biggest takeaway over 20 years of doing this work. It’s never a person who says, I am brave. It’s almost the opposite. It’s people who say, I’m not brave. I’m a coward. And yet —

Totally.

And the lesson, just sort of the lesson of that, life, it’s going to be a mess one way or the other. You just sort choose your mess. But that is what it is. That is life. You’re not going to avoid it. There’s such a school of life that is about trying to make your life as clean and tidy as possible. And it’s really a struggle to do that. And I’m not sure it’s well-directed energy.

What do you think we should direct our energy to? And now this is just truly me asking you because I want you to give me life advice. If not to cleaning up our life —

I’m not an advice giver, Anna.

I know, but just please —

You know that.

— put on the hat for one second. Like, if not to direct our energy towards cleaning up our life in your 20 years of doing this work, like, what is the more worthwhile thing to direct energy towards?

This is not exactly new advice, but it’s really the wisdom from Alisha Gorder’s essay, which is be in the moment. Value the people you’re with now. Don’t think I’m planning for 10 years from now. Get your 401(k) out of your mind. Contribute to it, but put it out of your mind. It’s the now. It’s the now that is the work.

Dan, I love that. It’s the now. I feel like so many listeners right now are clinging to every word you’ve said, trying to figure out what you’re looking for in a “Modern Love” essay pitch. And by the way, you can send those submissions to [email protected]. Dan, can you give us a few quick tips on what makes a story stand out in your inbox?

Well, a bad subject line is “Modern Love submission.”

You’re like 80 percent of people who submit. And a good subject line would include an attempt at a title, which would be like, “Please, Lord, let him be 27.”

Please Lord.

I read that — yeah, I read that subject line. It was funny. It was smart. It was vulnerable. I just prayed the essay would deliver on that promise.

And it did deliver. We actually featured it on the podcast a few seasons ago. So, a good subject line is very practical advice, but what about the essence of a story? Like, what are you looking for there?

A harder to define quality is a sense of humility. Like, there’s a sense that you’re not the smartest person in the world, but you do have something to offer. And in the world of pitching and of trying to get published, there’s an overriding sense that you have to act confident. You have to sell your product. You have to say, this essay is going to be perfect for you.

And that’s just the wrong approach. That kind of confidence is not what a hard experience leaves you with. It can leave you shaken. It can leave you wise. But it doesn’t leave you cocky. And I think it’s important that the stories aren’t really about answers. They’re about a search for answers. And they don’t need to come to a conclusion. But they need to present a problem in an interesting way that makes you think about it.

Well, now you’re going to get even more submissions that can fuel the next 20 years of “Modern Love.” Dan, thank you so much for the conversation today.

Thanks, Anna. It was a lot of fun.

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So, listeners, at the beginning of this episode, I told you we have an announcement about the rest of our season. In honor of 20 years of “Modern Love,” we’re launching a special series that’s really an ode to the early years of the podcast that so many of you love so much.

Starting next week, our favorite actors, musicians, writers, and artists will read hand-picked essays from the “Modern Love” archive, and we’ll talk with them about how those essays relate to their life and their work. We’ve got a truly incredible lineup that we can’t wait to share with you. So, happy anniversary, “Modern Love” listeners. We are so excited for this season-long celebration. See you next week.

“Modern Love” is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Djossa, Reva Goldberg, and Emily Lang. It’s edited by Jen Poyant and Paula Szuchman. Our executive producer is Jen Poyant. This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show was recorded by Maddy Masiello.

The “Modern Love” theme music is by Dan Powell. Digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nell Gallogly. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Kate LoPresti, Davis Land, and Lisa Tobin. The “Modern Love” column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of “Modern Love” projects. I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.