Wednesday, Mar 23, 2022 • 15min
Confessions of a Late Bloomer
Play Episode
Garrett Schlichte was exactly twice the age of his sister. When he was 28 and his sister was 14, she would dish to him on the phone about her teenage love life. But the feelings she was experiencing — like electric attraction and aching jealousy — were unfamiliar to Garrett. When he was a queer, closeted teenager, Garrett turned to romantic comedies to grasp the emotions of a real-life relationship. While his sister could revel in her teenage crushes, he had suppressed his like a secret. In today’s episode, we listen to Garrett’s essay about missing out on the thrills and challenges of young love — and what he has yet to learn. Then, we hear a Tiny Love Story about a woman who longs to get closer to someone who has grown emotionally distant.
Read more
Talking about
Speakers
(3)
MacLeod Andrews
Lucy Mae Coulson
Anna Martin
Transcript
Verified
Break
Anna Martin
00:33
From
The New York Times
. I'm Anna Martin, this is the modern love podcast.Share
00:43
So, I've been watching A lot of Romcoms these days and my thing is like I watched them, and I'm like "this dating advice is awful".
Share
01:04
Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
Share
01:09
What exactly does third base feel like?
Share
01:11
Like warm apple pie.
Share
01:14
Sometimes you have to show a little skin, this reminds guys of being naked, and then they think of sex.
Share
Anna Martin
01:21
I'm not taking this stuff seriously. But when I was younger, I kinda did when you're young and impressionable without much romantic experience, you can sometimes rely on movies to give you a sense of what dating and love might be like. At least that's what Garrett Schlichte did, he is the author of this week's essay, and it's read by MacLeod Andrews.
Share
MacLeod Andrews
01:50
"I don't know, Garrett". My sister said over the phone, "I just really like him, I freak out every time I see him, you know". "Oh yeah, I know girl", I said, "been there" but had I?
Share
02:12
My sister is 14 and just started her freshman year of high school. I'm 28 and in the lower rungs of my professional ladder, still trying to figure out what I want my life to be.
Share
02:24
My sister is exactly half my age, but we seem to be growing more alike mentally and emotionally with every conversation we have. Which actually doesn't bother me in the least, a lot of teenage girls these days strike me as being more evolved, more powerful, and more in touch with their emotions than the average person.
Share
02:45
The way I see it, the more I'm like a teenage girl, the greater the likelihood I could be a better person.
Share
02:54
On that day, however, I had never felt more distant from the person on the other end of the line. We made eye contact, she said, and then he waved at me and I waved back, and then I just had to turn around and walk away because I was definitely blushing.
Share
03:12
By the time she finished talking, I had started to cry. I made A clumsy excuse to end the call, something about finishing up work, and then sat on my bed, head in my hands, and let the tears flow. Dropping from my cheeks onto my gold painted toenails. "Thank God I painted them, I thought or this would look absolutely ridiculous". Why was I crying?
Share
03:45
My sister was only four when I left home. I visit often, and we talk on the phone a couple times a week, but there are some things digital communications simply can't compensate for.
Share
03:58
It's better, I'm not there to help with math homework, which I'm terrible at, but I wish I could be there for reading, comprehension and picking out her homecoming dress.
Share
04:09
I was also crying out of thankfulness that she still wants to talk to me about this funny love stuff. But mostly I was crying for myself, for the 14-year-old me who never got to experience what my sister was going through.
Share
04:30
In second grade, I once got in trouble for asking a girl to marry me via an orange piece of construction paper cut into a heart. She had worn a pair of leopard print platform shoes to my birthday party, so naturally I assumed we were meant to be together.
Share
04:45
When her parents and mine got called into a meeting with our teacher, they laughed about it. I don't know if my father was more relieved or proud, at least I had stopped talking about the leopard print platform shoes.
Share
04:58
As a closeted, queer teenager, I just wanted to make sure I didn't have a crush. For me, there was no note passing with friends in class, no flushed faces after brushing hands. I used movies and music and books to mourn the loss of my adolescent love lifetime and again.
Share
05:18
Without the opportunity to personally experience romantic relationships, I was left on the sidelines to receive master classes from the greats. I learned from Julia and Reese and Bet and Angela and Sarah Jessica and Mindy and Meryl and Diane.
Share
05:36
I memorized scenes from romantic comedies and recited the dialogue in the dark in my bedroom, door locked, tears streaming down my face as I tried to summon emotions. I yearned to experience in real life. I would perform the scenes in the mirror,
Oscar
worthy moments that left me feeling empty, when I woke up the next day.Share
06:00
I was trying to capture a version of love that was innocent and new. When you're a teenager, you get to learn about romantic feelings without the pressure of the rest of your life. You live in a world where questions about settling down and who the exes are and when you might move in together are largely inappropriate and inapplicable.
Share
06:23
My sister can embrace and revel in her teenage crushes, so she'll be able to develop an emotional skill set that I lacked into my twenties and still lack.
Share
06:34
She will be able to process electric attraction and aching jealousy, a decade before I even allowed myself to admit I had those emotions. She will sing out about her first love instead of choking it back like a secret. Our parents will pepper her with advice and concern and be there to comfort her the first time she gets her heart broken. A rite of passage I had aged out of by the time I needed it.
Share
07:07
The first time I had an actual relationship fight, I was 24, and it was about something as silly as my boyfriend making us late to a movie. I had zero skills for how to deal with conflict, any conflict in a relationship, and I knew it.
Share
07:24
"I'm sorry", I wanted to scream, I'm sorry, I don't have any practice at this. I'm sorry, all those movies and songs don't help when it comes to the real world. I'm sorry I didn't hold someone's hand until I was in my early 20s and that I didn't kiss anyone I cared about until then too. I'm sorry you're the person I have to learn this with now. I didn't say any of that, though, I just sat there wishing I had experienced a different adolescence.
Share
08:02
The movies and television shows I learned from were full of wonderful women, but they were all straight characters, all straight relationships, all straight love stories and all straight rules. Yes, love is love and yes, love wins sometimes, but also, yes, love and relationships are different for queer folks and so are the rules that govern them.
Share
08:26
While I am grateful for an ever deepening pool of queer love stories, watching them in adulthood does not say the deep thirst for direct experience I felt in my youth. Watching a love story does not compensate for participating in your own.
Share
08:45
The last time we talked, my sister said "I have straight A's, and now I think someone else has a crush on me". I felt an immediate urge to give her advice, to tell her she should put grades ahead of romantic interest at her age. But I stopped myself, we should be perfectly capable of being able to celebrate two exciting things simultaneously without having to shame one of them. Anyway, who am I to give relationship advice?
Share
09:14
"I don't think I like him back", she said, "but I think we could be really good friends, I'll figure it out". Yes, she will. Yes, she will. I'll probably have to wait another half decade before I can give any useful relationship advice to my sister, and by that time she'll probably be so far ahead of me she won't even need it.
Share
09:42
Until then, I look forward to learning right alongside her, separated by age and distance but connected by the idea that we each may one day find our perfect crush.
Share
Anna Martin
10:05
When we return, we'll hear a Tiny Love Story about longing to be closer to someone you love.
Share
Break
Lucy Mae Coulson
11:52
I'm just gonna check this is still going, okay.
Share
11:59
Hi, my name is Lucy Mae Coulson, this is my Tiny Love Story.
Share
12:08
I look at his girlfriend with envy, she knows him like I wish I did. "Tell me about him", I want to say, tell me how he likes his coffee, when he last cried? How he looks when he's sleeping? Tell me how he says goodnight, if he writes poems, how he is with your family? Tell me what he said about his childhood, his parents, his sister. Tell me if he wants children, a dog, house in
Japan
. Tell me about his theories about life, his nightmares, his secrets. Please, I want to say, tell me about my brother.Share
13:09
My brother's name is Declan. He is three and a half years younger than me. I am 29, just to 29, and he is 25. Growing up, we were, we were super close, we used to right before Christmas and Christmas Eve, we would sleep in my bed and I remember when that stopped happening, that was kind of when things started to change alone.
Share
13:36
In my mind, I feel like we had a childhood together, and then we skipped the middle part, there's kind of a good five years where I didn't know him at all. He was about 16, 17, so I would have been about three years older than that. He started struggling with an addiction and he just kind of pulled back a lot from his life. He was not really there anymore physically, and mentally I guess.
Share
14:09
And in the middle of that I decided to go on exchange to
Copenhagen
. And when I moved to Copenhagen
that just kind of made, the, I guess emotional distance physical because suddenly we were 15,000 km away from each other, and he's not the best at communication. I mean, at least digitally. So that was really difficult because all of a sudden I had moved away, and we didn't talk anymore.Share
14:44
I didn't know him at all, and I would come harm about once a year for a few weeks, and he and he's always done very well with the ladies. He's never had any issues there, he's A bit of a charmer.
Share
14:57
So every year essentially I would come home and there'd be a new girlfriend and I remember just kind of looking at them in awe almost like, wow, like, you know, so much, you know, so much that I couldn't even dream of knowing about my brother. I don't know, yeah, like how he, how he talks to you and what he's like when his family isn't around.
Share
15:22
And that's kind of where that story was born.
Share
15:26
So I think our relationship kind of came into the second phase. All I guess you could call it the adult phase, it was maybe around the time that this story was published. He was really affected by it, I think it was a bit of an awakening for him in a sense.
Share
15:47
I can remember we were texting about it and he kind of went quiet, then I got some messages from him where he was just saying that I deserved better and that he wishes he could be a better brother. And I also made it sure to kind of let him know that I didn't blame him for anything that had happened between us.
Share
16:06
Since, we've gotten closer to each other. I don't necessarily think many of the questions that I was asking have been answered, but in a way they haven't needed to be, I know that we're past that, and I don't need to know his secrets, I don't need to know his lifelong goals because it's just knowing him is enough, now.
Share
Anna Martin
16:43
Modern Love
is produced by Julia Botero and Hans Buetow. It's edited by Sara Sarasohn. This episode was mixed by Elisheba Ittoop. The Modern Love
theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music throughout this episode by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Digital production by Mahima Chablani. And a special thanks to Ryan Wegner at Audm. The Modern Love column is edited by Dan Jones. Miya Leee is the editor of Modern Love
projects. I'm Anna Martin, thanks for listening.Share
Add podcast
🇮🇹 Made with love & passion in Italy. 🌎 Enjoyed everywhere
Build n. 1.36.0
Anna Martin
MacLeod Andrews
Lucy Mae Coulson