561. Love and Money with Meredith Goldstein from the Love Letters Podcast

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Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 561 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today Meredith Goldstein is joining me. Meredith is the host of the Boston Globe’s Love Letters podcast, and she’s been writing their “Love Letters” advice column for years. The newest season of Love Letters has just arrived, and this season is all about money and how money affects relationships. So we are going to talk about the stories from the couples that are featured in the season and what she’s learned about love and relationships writing an advice column about love and relationships for so long.

I will have links in the show notes to where you can find the Love Letters podcast, where you can find the advice column, and where you can find Meredith.

I love – love, love, love – doing podcasts with podcasters. It is so fun, because I get to make sure that everyone knows about a cool show and I get to have cool conversations! So I hope you enjoy this episode.

Hello and thank you to our Patreon community. In the recent bonus episode for the Patreon community I mentioned that it’s a really scary and dark and crappy time in the media world, where every day there’s news of more layoffs and publications closing and that kind of thing, and the support for this show means so very, very much, especially right now, so thank you to the Patreon community for keeping me going and making sure that every episode has a transcript – hello, garlicknitter! [Hi, Sarah and Patreon members and transcript readers! – gk]

I have a compliment this week, which is so much fun.

To Melissa R.: Two people who do not know each other just wrote long journal entries in two different languages, and both entries are about how much they wish they could be friends with someone who is exactly like you.

If you would like a compliment of your very own or you’d like to support the show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, and Patreon community members get a really lovely Discord – hello, Discord folks! You get bonus episodes, and you get to help me, you know, ask questions to different guests and cause all kinds of mayhem on the internet. It’s really fun, so if you’re interested, please have a look.

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All right, let’s do this podcast episode: on with my conversation with Meredith Goldstein.

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Meredith Goldstein: I’m Meredith Goldstein, the long-time advice columnist at the Boston Globe, who also hosts its Love Letters podcast! And I also –

Sarah: Yay!

Meredith: – write, write some books, some of which are a little romantic.

Sarah: What are your books? Please tell us the books!

Meredith: In reverse order they are the Young Adult novels Things That Grow and Chemistry Lessons, and then I have a memoir about being an advice columnist called Can’t Help Myself, and my first novel was called The Singles in 2012, which was very much about being single at a lot of weddings.

Sarah: Ohhh, yes. And there was a very specific time when books about being single were extremely popular. I wish they would come back!

Meredith: Yeah, it’s funny; when I think about that book, it was literally called The Singles, which as a Gen X person I was like, But there’s a movie called Singles, and I had named the book The Minus Ones, for plus ones, and I still wish that had been the title because I just feel like everything I got in that era of my twenties at that point was like, Who’s your plus one? Do you have a plus one? Am I getting a plus one? And yeah, it seemed like we really wanted to explore that experience.

Sarah: I think The Minus One is a great title and you should keep, hold onto that title. Like, don’t give that…

Meredith: I’ll just call it that. Yeah, I’ll just, exactly.

Sarah: So congratulations on the latest season of Love Letters. I know that each season focuses on a different element, and tell me about season eight, and also, congratulations on eight seasons.

Meredith: Eight seasons! I mean, I’m, I’m really excited. I, so when I was approached to do a podcast by the, the Globe I was, like, very tech not-savvy? [Laughs]

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Meredith: I wasn’t listening to that many podcasts, and I wasn’t listening to them, to them correctly, and I’m such an old-school advice columnist, right? Like, I, I just was like, I get a letter; I answer it; the end! And I didn’t want to do that in a podcast –

Sarah: Right.

Meredith: – like, just riff, riff on a letter. I mean, Cheryl Strayed was doing that; there were other people doing that. So we really wanted to tell these, like, juicy narrative stories where people really told me from start to finish a thing that happened to them, and I remember looking at everyone at the Globe that was involved and saying, I want the entire first season to be about getting dumped, and I said, I want it to be like Serial but for getting dumped. And they all looked at me, ‘cause Serial was really in its, you know, first heyday, and they were like, I don’t know what that – like, Serial for getting dumped? Right, like, What are you investigating? What’s happening? And I was like, Nonono, I want every aspect of what it feels like to go through a breakup to be covered. And they actually said to me, I don’t think there’s enough there, and I was like, Oh, there is.

Sarah: Whoa! No!

Meredith: Oh, there is! And, and so I could have done three seasons on breakups, but we only did the first season about breakups, and the second season was about how to meet someone. I mean, we really hit all of these different topics over the years, including lessons learned at different ages and big changes, but for season eight I was like, The thing that we keep not talking about that, that is so there is money.

Sarah: Yes

Meredith: And it’s something I’m not that great with. Like, I’m not terrible with it, but I’m not great with it, and people are struggling, and sometimes they’re not struggling at all, and there’s a lot of shame around it. You know, they say that a lot of marriages break up because of sex and money, and I wanted to sort of talk about whether that’s true, and I did a call-out for stories about money and love, and –

Sarah: Oh, and I’m sure no one had anything to say at all. Everyone was like, Money? That’s not –

Meredith: Well –

Sarah: – a problem for anyone at all! No!

Meredith: – it’s, it’s interesting because this was the first time that when I put out the call-out, my own friends and family, people in my life, texted me and said, Boy, do I have a story to tell, if I felt comfortable telling it, which I don’t.

Sarah: Oh wow!

Meredith: So this was the first – these are people who are willing to say anything on my podcast to them, to each other, to themselves, but this crossed a line in a really interesting way of, like, Well, I would never talk about that. And that’s why I knew it was going to be a really good season, because the people who are willing to share – and I have to be so grateful for them – are talking about something that, that just is awkward and sometimes really cringey and scary, and I have noticed that a lot of the people who are most ashamed are the people who have the most, because they know they have the most. So, you know, this isn’t just about wealth and who has it and who doesn’t, but, you know, our first episode, for instance, is about financial infidelity. So how do you even define that, and what is it, and what does it look like, and is it forgivable?

Sarah: Oh my goodness! I have a bunch of questions now.

Meredith: Okay.

Sarah: First, why do you think there’s a line that people are not comfortable talking about money?

Meredith: This is something they grew up maybe not knowing about their own household, their parents. This was the ultimate We Can’t Mention It thing, and in fact, so many of the people I’ve interviewed said, I thought we were one way growing up, with money, but it turned out we were in a different position. I thought we didn’t have anything, but it turned out my parents were good savers. Like, they didn’t know! They didn’t ask, and it seems like a grownup thing that you don’t talk about, and then it’s rude. And this is, you know, transcends into do we talk about our salaries now?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: One of the, one of the most awkward and wonderful parts of making this season was two producers in a room with me, we’re all Boston Globe employees, and a guest asked us, Well, how much money do you all make? And my instinct was to say, Oh, we can’t talk about that. That seems weird. I, I – my instinct was to, to say, I don’t know if we’re comfortable sharing; we’re colleagues, and what if we make different amounts, and what – and we did share –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Meredith: – and it was very cathartic, and it wasn’t actually that surprising in terms of what we made and how it stacked up. There is a certain sort of, Is it rude? Is it my business? And what if people find out that I have more?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Meredith: Or feel bad about, you know, not having what I have. So I think, I think that’s it. I mean, sex is still pretty up there –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – in terms of not just what’s taboo, but when you’re not having sex it can be difficult to talk about?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: When you’re having it it’s, like, kind of amazing to talk about sometimes. [Laughs]

Sarah: Or if you have problems with having sex or you don’t understand an element of your sexuality or your physical body doesn’t do the things that you expected it to do. That can be really difficult to talk about as well, because you feel like –

Meredith: Absolutely.

Sarah: – like you said, you feel like you’re not enough. You don’t have enough, you aren’t enough, and that’s a very difficult feeling to articulate past.

Meredith: I also think it’s interesting that right now we’re in the golden age of television about rich people? And –

Sarah: Oh my gosh, have you noticed that everybody is super wealthy! It’s like, it’s like Dynasty with angst.

Meredith: Yes, and it’s, and, and some of it is, is mocking this wealth gap, and then the next second it is making you remember that you can have all the money in the world and be completely devastated as a person, so I, I wonder about pop culture and its ability to make just a regular guest on my podcast feel ashamed that they didn’t have student loans.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Meredith: And, and even the, the national conversation about debt and, and different kinds of debt, we’re just very aware of it right now! So I think it’s a perfect time to do this season, because people are already thinking about, well, what does it mean that I don’t have enough? Or what does it mean that I do have enough?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: And, and always, you know, there are people who are on the podcast who legitimately have enough –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Meredith: – and they say, You know what? I’m, I’m, I’m in the middle; I’m somewhere in the middle; and they know that, but they don’t see the, the big, vast middle that there is.

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: And –

Sarah: They’re comfortable. Oh, okay? Does that mean you’re comfortable –

Meredith: Yeah, and, and –

Sarah: – flying privately? Like, how, how are you comfortable? [Laughs]

Meredith: Right! Or are you in an area where you’re uncomfortable, but it’s because you are in that area? So geography is a huge part of this too.

Sarah: Oh, absolutely!

Meredith: A lot of this is just, though, about personal philosophies with money and people realizing what’s important to them.

Sarah: Yes.

Meredith: So the episodes really just get into, even if you never think about it, you have a philosophy about what you treat yourself to, whether you allowed yourself to have credit card debt, where you come from, and how that affects how you love and who you love.

Sarah: And money is really hard, I think, to talk about because it’s tied up in class and it’s tied up in a sense of self worth, and it’s also tied up in, you know, all of the horrible colonialist white supremacy that we’re still trying to untangle as well. It’s very thorny!

So I, I am very curious: what were some of the most interesting stories from this season, and what is financial infidelity? Is that spending money that you’re not telling your, your partners about?

Meredith: It’s, yes, and it is, you know, basically lying, you know, and, and acting without consent in that way, but also just hiding, hiding the truth really can be any sort of financial infidelity, and in our premiere episode, which I adore, and it is actually quite a feel-good episode, a person who is a long-time reader of my column explains in great detail how specifically responsible they became with money over time. They had a job growing up and spent too much –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – mostly on, like, I imagine them going to Hot Topic? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! Oh!

Meredith: You know, they were, they were a teenager, sort of early twenties, like, buying a bunch of stuff they couldn’t afford, and they realize that they have to do better, and they become maybe too much better. Like, they become the person at the group dinner in their twenties who says, I only had a water. They are so concerned with saving they, they’re, they’re all these responsible things that I, you know, fundamentally was not? And when they couple up, they get married, they have a wonderful life set up, they negotiate a very difficult negotiation of non-monogamy in their relationship, so they have wonderful communication skills with their partner about complicated topics, about boundaries and, and how, how to, how to set up a life.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Meredith: And then they found out that their spouse has thirty-three thousand dollars of secret credit card debt. And this is interesting to me –

Sarah: Uh-oh!

Meredith: – this is an interesting piece of the story, which is that the fact that they’re able to negotiate many things that others don’t even try to negotiate –

Sarah: Right.

Meredith: – this idea of how do we set up a marriage where we live together, where we see other people? When is that okay? Things that other people might have difficulty talking about –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – but they still were not talking about money, and they knew it. They knew it; they knew that one of them was always a little bit short and broke and, but, but he was making more money, so what was happening there? And finally – and it’s better listening, ‘cause they tell the story so much better than I can – they get to a place and they say, What is the secret? What is the secret? And the secret is there’s thirty-three thousand dollars of secret credit card debt. And they are married at this point, and this was the first time that I really realized that you can be a married couple and have the joint bank account and the two separate bank accounts, right? Like, that’s a, a way a lot of people do it.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Meredith: We’re going to put in the thing, you know, and – but you’re still married, so that debt’s yours. You can play it any game you want, unless you have some other contract that says it’s not – and they then have to figure out, well, how much of a betrayal is this?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: Can we get over it, and how did this happen? And I don’t want to spoil it, but I think I was waiting for this big answer to what the thirty-three thousand dollars was spent on. Like, was it a secret addiction, problem, this, that? And all I can say to hint is that these are two people who enjoy LARPing, as in Live Action Role Play?

Sarah: Ohhh! Oh dear! That –

Meredith: And that LARPing comes with costs.

Sarah: Yes, it does!

Meredith: That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Sarah: Yes, it does.

Meredith: So –

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Meredith: I have been thinking a lot about if I were in thirty-three thousand dollars of credit card for something I adored to do, like, or collect, what would it be, and I’ve just decided it would be coats.

Sarah: That seems like a –

Meredith: Like, really great coats.

Sarah: Solid, absolutely.

Meredith: Yeah.

Sarah: Solid, solid choice.

Meredith: So, so that episode is, is important to me because it, it seems like – I mean, there’s a happy ending at the end of this: this is a couple that is together and adores each other, so –

Sarah: Aw!

Meredith: – how do they get there? How do they get over that lie? Especially when one of them is so fundamentally, like, you know, worried about money all the time.

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: The other episode – you talk about the patriarchy and things we’re trying to escape – this one sort of really affected me. I wanted to do a story about the cost of being single, because, you know, we’re talking about this a lot of like couple philosophies and how do you deal with this coming from two backgrounds as of a team, but a lot of people are just doing this by themselves, and the cost –

Sarah: And there’s definitely a tax on being single. Things cost more for one –

Meredith: Oh!

Sarah: – that are just silly!

Meredith: So much more, and just the little things add up, and you get a different kind of freedom with that –

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: – and as somebody who has never lived with a significant other, I will tell you that it’s nice to not worry about what somebody else wants in a couch. Like, I’ll pick the couch I want, thank you very much, but I have to buy the couch by myself. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Meredith: So it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s, it’s difficult. But I was shocked: I wanted to talk to two Gen Z-ish people; I wanted to talk to people in their twenties about dating now, and this was the episode where we talked to two straight people who are on apps, and it is a very, you know, this is a, not just one monolith of an experience, but we talked to a, a woman and a man, and what they both said was the man is expected to pay.

Sarah: Oh boy!

Meredith: And I, at forty-five, was like, Still? Like, I really thought that in a Venmo culture where things are easily divided, they were going to tell me like, This is a thing that happened to you that doesn’t – or that ha-, that is part of a different generation –

Sarah: Ohhh!

Meredith: – and I am sure there are exceptions to this rule, for sure, and that – but I was shocked that two people from different regions of the country, different places, you know, in, in their worlds, it, they said they felt like this was a tradition that stuck –

Sarah: Wow!

Meredith: – and they don’t know why it hasn’t gone away. So, you know –

Sarah: ‘Cause it’s a very old idea that you’re demonstrating that you have the resources to care for another person who’s going to move from their family’s house into your home and run your house for you, and you’re proving that you have the –

Meredith: Yeah!

Sarah: – the funds to do – that’s a very, very old expectation!

Meredith: It, I felt like I had gone into a weird time machine and that I thought, this was that moment of, like, how, how come certain things just don’t go away? And yet, these are two people who are looking for love pretty aggressively. They want to couple up; they want to be partnered, which is very normal, and they’re like, The cost of this, you know, is very difficult. And we talked about the, one of the beautiful things that came out of a difficult time of 2020, of people taking walks?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: And having these free dates ‘cause people couldn’t go anywhere?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: And how to bring that back –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Meredith: – especially when the weather gets nice. Like, what if we just got a coffee and walked in a circle?

Sarah: Yeah! 

Meredith: But this, like, this was a great thing we learned?

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: Yeah! So that is another one of my favorite episodes of just my shock that some of these traditions remain and, you know, everybody could be saving a lot of, lot of money, to be honest.

Sarah: It’s really wild, because I’m, I’m in a, a, a Discord community, and someone was talking about how they’ve had a much easier time finding a therapist than finding a partner.

Meredith: And it’s not that easy to find a therapist these days, so –

Sarah: And it’s not that easy to find a therapist, either, but –

Meredith: Wow.

Sarah: – it’s so hard! [Laughs] It’s so hard!

Meredith: No, it, it’s difficult and, and not surprising to hear that based on the kind of letters I get –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – and the kind of stories I hear.

Sarah: It’s wild that this season is coming out because a couple of days ago there was that article that went absolutely bonkers viral about women who earn more than their male partners and the division of household labor and un-, unspoken labor, emotional labor that falls on them, and that it’s, it’s a giant struggle. Is that something that you talk about as well?

Meredith: It, it is, and we happened to find this great story – actually, it’s somebody I know in my real life, and she is, very hilariously admits that sometimes she wishes her husband, who got an MBA, would be the kind of guy who made a ton of money with an MBA. Like, he likes his job and he makes a good salary, but he’s not like a, you know, he’s not bringing wealth into the home.

Sarah: Right.

Meredith: And she feels awful for having these feelings about him and has shared them with him sometimes and, and then what becomes very funny is we go through all of the types of labor that happen in their house.

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: They have two children, right, so, and what becomes absolutely clear is that he is doing all of it. Not all of it, but a lot of it: that he is –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – the primary caregiver to the children, that he is cooking everything, that he is cleaning everything, and so this was like this wonderful exception where she had a moment of, Oh; well, if he was the guy –

Sarah: Oh!

Meredith: – who made all that money, maybe he would not be emotionally available for all of these things.

Sarah: Yeah! ‘Cause, like you said, the labor of house and home and childcare and just managing a bunch of people who live in the same place? That’s a lot of work, and it is not compensated, but it has great value, and when you take it away, you, you, it’s still hard to quantify unless you sit down and really look.

Meredith: Yeah! And some of it is actually quantifiable when you talk about, you know, caretaking for a home.

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: It can be very quantifiable, and then there’s this extra, this extra support that’s provided just being there –

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: – and being in a good mood!

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Meredith: Which is of value! You know, this is something she counts on, this spouse that makes her laugh and listens to her ideas, and all of that might go away if he were making four times as much money, and I’m not sure it would be the trade-off she wants.

Sarah: No, I, I would be willing to bet no.

So I understand from my correspondence with your team that your reading of Regency romances had some influence and, and informed this season. Tell me, how did your reading of romance and Regency romance inform this season?

Meredith: Very, very directly, and, and I have to say, just because, you know, I’m a fan of what you do and –

Sarah: Oh!

Meredith: – and I, I can imagine that your audience is exactly who I want to hang out with, like, on a Saturday night –

Sarah: Come hang out!

Meredith: – I got to Regency romance in a really roundabout way, and I never thought I would like it, because I’m a vampire girl. And –

Sarah: Fair.

Meredith: – you could talk about the economics of, of vampires all night. I think a lot about how much money different vampire romance families would have, generational wealth my, times a thousand. Like, for – [laughs] – it’s like –

Sarah: Imagine the worries, though. Like, all right, the market’s going down and I’m literally going to live forever. God damn it! [Laughs]

Meredith: Yeah, what do you do, right?

Sarah: What do you do?!

Meredith: But your, but your accounts probably look pretty good. So I went from vampires to werewolves because you, you hit the wall, and then from werewolves – there’s something about werewolves that can carry over to people writing about Scotland? I have –

Sarah: Oh, absolutely!

Meredith: I, I, I can’t quite give you an A to B on that, and you probably can tell me, but – so then I’m like, Well, I like this author, and I can’t remember the first author, author that made me go over to, like, Okay, I’m a Scottish werewolf; now I’m just Scottish. [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay!

Meredith: And it’s 17-whatever, and now it’s 18-whatever. So there’s this weird, like, gateway drug vibe of werewolves into Regency romance that I’m sure someone smart has written a paper about where I was like, Well, maybe I’ll try this series, then that series, and then the next thing you know I’m like, you know, waist deep in Tessa Dare novels. What I also found in discovering Regency, which many readers know, obviously, is how delightfully modern they are and, you know, Sarah MacLean is brilliant at this, right, of, of read, you know, you read a page and you’re like, Oh, well, that’s like now. [Laughs] Oh! Well, that’s like what it’s like now!

Sarah: Yep!

Meredith: And this concept that a love match is a rarity or an exception to the rule or not guaranteed, and it makes you think of, well, that’s all we get married for now – so we would say. But these books make no secret of the fact that these are financial agreements –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Meredith: – that they are business arrangements, and of course they have the horribleness of women’s property and rights being tied up not to them.

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: Which, which, which can kind of exist now in many different forms, but –

Sarah: Which definitely exist now in different forms, yeah.

Meredith: But, but they call it what it is, which is, in doing this, we are making a little business, and how is that little business going to run, and who’s going to run it? And I love when these books talk about the children, like, not being present. They’re elsewhere, they’re with staff, and, and then you begin to think about all the people that manage the Bridgerton home. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, and the, the homes, they have a whole crew, whole staff.

Meredith: Sure, right? And, and you have, like, your little, like, you know, kingdom of properties and help to run them and tenants and, you know, most of the time these stories focus on the people who have the most, and we don’t have to worry about many other people, although I can think of characters who are brought into this world who have nothing and the romance is that they get to be a part of it, right? But I love the honesty about it, because I wish that, in whatever form we do it now, it’s still a, a contract. And we can have a pretty wedding, and we can wear amazing things and have our best friends stand next to us as wedding party members, but we’re still signing something that ties us like a business to each other.

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: And there’ll have to be a dissolution of that business if it doesn’t work, and I think that if we spoke about that with more realism –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – and talked about the love almost in its own column, as, as a, as a fuel for this, but, but it is not fully tied to the agreement we’re making.

Sarah: Yeah. There’s, the, the love between the people involved is part of the why this is happening, but you also have to acknowledge the other elements of the why this is happening.

Meredith: Yeah, and for a lot of these characters, the love was never part of the why or never an expected part of the why –

Sarah: No, ‘cause –

Meredith: – so, you know, we’re in a world where we don’t have to do this to own property or to have a property, period, so the love is the why.

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: Sometimes.

Sarah: Sometimes.

Meredith: Not, not for everybody, but sometimes, or for a lot of people, they like to think it’s the why, and I, I just thought, I want to talk about this the way these characters do, where they, they are saying to each other, Well, if I marry you, the spinster school I’ve been running isn’t mine anymore. I mean, I love that kind of story, right, where you have a, an independent woman in Regency times who has somehow found her way to independence through the death of a relative; through, you know, through the death of a relative; through someone in her life handing her something –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – that she might not otherwise be entitled to, and then she has to decide, Do I want to give up this independence to couple? And what does that mean? And I think that’s a reality too, that when we get together and we tie ourselves to someone, or more than one person, we are saying, I’m going to, I’m going to bet on you, in an interesting way. So it, it’s really, I don’t mean to make it sound unromantic, ‘cause these are romance novels and they’re beautiful, and, ‘course, everything works out in the end, but I love that Regency in particular just gets right into the contract of it all.

Sarah: Yeah! Because it is first and foremost a contract.

Meredith: Yeah!

Sarah: And you have to consider money and wealth, station, property, class. Marrying across –

Meredith: Yeah…

Sarah: – class lines is a big ol’ deal.

Meredith: That system of, in, in a, in a season where people are shopping for spouses –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – it’s so unromantic and yet so true and so important –

Sarah: Yep!

Meredith: – to call it what it is.

Sarah: And how many seasons of The Bachelor do we have now?

Meredith: Oh my gosh! Like a zillion!

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: And, and that’s act-, you know, that may, you may have just given me the fuel I need to find a way into The Bachelor? Because as an advice columnist, people always assume, oh, well, you must love The Bachelor, and, and I find it, like, I get very anxious and –

Sarah: Oh, I cannot.

Meredith: – I can’t do it, but maybe that’s the way in: maybe if I think of it in those terms I can, like, find something to appreciate about it, but I, I, I don’t know. [Laughs]

Sarah: It, I can’t because one of the foundations of reality television is to make sure that you have people who will play characters, who will create conflict, and because the conflict is being generated partially by the producers and then partially by that contestant/character, I don’t trust that there’s a resolution that is going to be satisfying or healthy or even something I want to watch? And also, I get terrible secondhand embarrassment, and a lot of The Bachelor is just secondhand embarrassment in high heel shoes, and I cannot.

Meredith: Yeah. I will tell you that I do love the show Burning Love, and I can’t remember what that’s streaming on now, which is a parody of –

Sarah: I’ve heard about it.

Meredith: – The Bachelor, which is wildly funny and so well done, and I have also read Bachelor Nation, which is a book about The Bachelor, which I found enlightening, and, and it speaks to –

Sarah: It’s fascinating, right?

Meredith: – what you’re talking about, about what these contestants go through, and they’re cut off from realities, and they’re plied with alcohol, and it’s like this –

Sarah: Yep.

Meredith: – this, you know, fight or flight –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – time in their lives.

Sarah: It’s like Almack’s on steroids.

Meredith: Oh yeah! And so I, I actually found a lot more interest in reading about the experience of doing it than watching it?

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: But yeah, I don’t know if it’s for me, but that might be my way in, of considering it a Marriage Mart kind of, comparing it to the Regency books.

Sarah: So based on this season and on prior seasons and all of the, all of the advice that you’ve given, what are your most effective pieces of advice for people about love and relationships? What’s, what things do you find yourself saying, other than, Okay, you need to talk about money – [laughs] –

Meredith: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: – to a lot of people?

Meredith: Yeah, I think the, the You Need to Talk About Money thing applies to a lot of, of, of moments in life where –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – you sort of just swallow this thing that is too hard to say. I think my big thing after doing this many seasons and also just, you know, reading advice column letters for so long –

Sarah: Writing a lot of advice columns.

Meredith: Yeah – is that I think people are really hard on themselves and hard on each other, and I hear the word failure a lot: failed marriage, failed relationship. I hear wasted time –

Sarah: Yes!

Meredith: – and I don’t, I have been dumped a lot of times, and certainly not pulled off relationships well –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – in the past and, and also failed – well, here I’m using it too – not been great at dating. Gone years at a time without paying much attention to it, not given it the investment, and I’ll look back, and just like letter writers I’ll say, Well, I really, you know, I was, I was failing at that. And I don’t see any of these things as failures. I don’t see divorces as failed marriages. I, I –

Sarah: No.

Meredith: – I think, you know, there’s this expectation that we’re all going to, like, curl up and die like at the end of The Notebook, holding onto one partner who understood us and, and, you know, this, thank goodness, thank, thank goodness every day that we are not in a Nicholas Sparks book for so many reasons.

Sarah: Oh dear God!

Meredith: Like, let that be a, a, a gratitude point of, of all of our lives! [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you for bringing me here to this life that I’m not a Nicholas Sparks character, amen.

Meredith: Yeah, it, it is –

Sarah: That’s a very righteous prayer right there! [Laughs]

Meredith: It, it is! It feels real good to me to say.

Sarah: Yes.

Meredith: Yes, let us all be characters in some – like, I’ll slip into a Tessa Dare book, actually, while I’m here and talking about her, but –

Sarah: Why the heck not?

Meredith: Yeah, with some more rights, probably, to, you know, may-, maybe with an inhaler – [clears throat] – some, some modern-day medicine. But I think that, you know, hopefully we live a long time and we have to do a lot of stuff, and we can’t possibly do all the romance stuff right and stick with it; otherwise, we would never get to the next thing.

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: So anytime people feel like, Oh, I really blew it with that, and now I, you know, I, I failed. Anytime you feel like you’re using that word, it’s really not true?

Sarah: No.

Meredith: Like, I – and even when you feel like you’ve failed someone else or you’ve hurt someone where you’ve let them down, like, you can apologize and be better –

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: – next time, and so I just, I, that’s what I, I would say, and I think with, with this season in particular, so many people are very quick to also say, Well, I, I failed with money, or I failed at sharing, and they just learned something, and it’s, it’s not, it’s not forever. It’s, it’s not so black and white, and we’re kind of all just moving along, figuring it out.

Sarah: Yeah! One of the, one of the most impactful things I read I think last year was, Just because something ends doesn’t mean that it’s a failure.

Meredith: Yes! Yes, and, and I have to catch myself, like I had to catch myself in this conversation of, of saying that I was failing at dating, and I think the letter writers are just so hard on themselves, and in these stories they can start one way –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – and end in a much, much better place, so I, I’m grateful for the time with these people to really go through and say like, Well, what – but, but what did you learn here? And then they learned all these beautiful, wonderful things!

Sarah: Yeah!

Meredith: And now they’re teaching us, so, you know, not to sound too hokey about it, but it, it, it is a, it’s, it’s always much better, and sometimes people are learning things on our behalf so we don’t have to, and what a nice thing for them to do! So –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Meredith: – yeah.

Sarah: No question!

What books are you reading that you would like to tell people about? I always end with book recs.

Meredith: So I’m, I’m always about to do a reread, for vampire purposes, of Single White Vampire. There is something about that book that every few years, it just makes me laugh really hard.

I have been reading Kelly Bowen for the first time, who, it’s –

Sarah: So good!

Meredith: So this is the thing with Regency where, like, you’ll see these authors that are recommended for you and, and you just have to dive into that first one, and – I’m forgetting the name of it, but your listeners will know of, of, it’s, you know, a character, sort of a fixer, and, you know, there’s a, a ship captain duke who walks in on her trying to get rid of a dead body, and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Meredith: – what a meet-, what a meet-cute!

Sarah: Yep!

Meredith: And so I am, like, really having a good time in, in that moment and, yeah, then I’ll redo some vampires for a bit.

So I, I just saw the news, you know, very recently about the Twilight rebooting as a TV series and went on an emotional journey?

Sarah: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Meredith: And, and, but what it reminded me was that there are a lot of series I love –

Sarah: Oh –

Meredith: – in the romance genre that I would like to revisit. Well –

Sarah: And it’s fun to go back!

Meredith: It is, and, and it reminds me of where I was in the moment –

Sarah: Oh –

Meredith: – when I first read the stories of, like –

Sarah: – for sure.

Meredith: – what did, what did it help me through, what is it helping me through now? And I remember in 2016 I was really into – I’m just forgetting names right now! – but the, the vampire series, the Brotherhood with the biker gang and –

Sarah: Oh, J. R. Ward, the, the Black Dagger Brotherhood, yeah.

Meredith: Yes! So every few years I have to revisit one of those series that has fifty thousand books where this could go on for a long time and really keep me happy for a bit.

Sarah: I have a recommendation for you.

Meredith: Oh, please, please!

Sarah: Right, there’s a writer named Theresa Romain, like the lettuce romaine.

Meredith: Okay.

Sarah: Originally published by Kensington – I think she got the rights back, but getting the rights back meant she needed to re-title the book. So a book originally called Season for Surrender is now called The Earl’s Holiday Wager.

Meredith: Ooh, okay!

Sarah: And it is a Regency Christmas house party romance –

Meredith: Ah.

Sarah: – with a guy who is fake, faking being a carousing, debaucherous rake and has a house party over Christmas, and there’s a, there’s a, there’s a wager, there’s a bet about whether or not he can defile the most innocent, proper woman of the season, and he’s like, This is terrible, but, but all right, fine. And they meet in the library?

Meredith: Oh my God!

Sarah: She gets invited to the house party. It’s –

Meredith: You –

Sarah: – it’s, it’s like all of my catnip.

Meredith: You’re so close to telling me there’s only one bed that I’m – [laughs] – I’m so excited!

Sarah: Yep! It’s, it’s lovely; it’s one of my favorite, favorite historical romances.

Meredith: Thank, thank you for that!

Sarah: You’re welcome!

Meredith: Thank you for the recommendation, because I, I am, I’m all about a house party, so –

Sarah: Oh yeah! So –

Meredith: – wonderful.

Sarah: – where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Meredith: So the podcast is just Love Letters. It’s got a, you know, a big heart; you’ll see it. Says the Boston Globe on it –

Sarah: Yep.

Meredith: – wherever you get your podcasts, and then if you want to read the column it’s loveletters.boston.com, and, you know, feel free to send your quandaries, your, your questions.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you again to Meredith and her team for setting up this interview. I will absolutely be linking to all of the places where you can find Meredith, but if you search Love Letters and you’re using a podcast app right now, it should be there, and you can give it a try. It’s a great binging podcast: you can do a whole season and it’s pretty fabulous.

As always, I end each episode with a terrible joke, and this joke comes from my fifteen-year-old, but I have to tell you, my fifteen-year-old went and told his father this joke instead of coming directly to my office to tell me, and I had to find out about this joke by overhearing it. So this is an eavesdropping joke. Are you ready?

What do you call someone with no body and no nose?

Give up? What do you call somebody with no body and no nose?

Nobody-nose.

[Laughs] I would say thank you but, you know, this joke wasn’t brought to me. I just had to overhear it – not that I’m bitter. [Laughs more]

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[end of music]