Sneak Peek! of Americans in Love
Love Advice & Stories from Rural America
Well, we never need an excuse to talk about love here on Love Spells, but I’ve whipped up a special little sumtin sumtin for you all today. It’s a cake-batter-lick-off-the-mixing-spoon, sweet sneak peek of Americans in Love: Love Advice & Stories from Across Rural America (please excuse the working title - suggestions welcome!) book I’m working on. So turn off NPR, pause that doomscroll, and take a minute to submerge in some stories of connection from folks I met cycling the backroads of America.
I want to acknowledge - briefly- that the past few weeks have been incredibly challenging for some of us, me included in that “us”, and as much exhilarating for others. Some folks are probably just confused, and I feel hard for them. Last time Trump took the presidency, I has the worst migraine of my life (as I recall it lasted 4 years). This time, well, I’ve been sick for about a month and my lungs just don’t want to take in this American air anymore. They hack it right back out like it’s poison.
Today, it felt good to get outside politics and my own struggling body and focus on this common experience of Love. No matter how different we are, our hearts still beat the same blood. We’re still all social animals out here, seeking connection. Seeking mates. Seeking love. When Ryan Van Duzer & I collected this love advice, we were looking to connect with a part of America that we just didn’t understand. We knew that connection and understanding were the way out of a political situation that made too many Americans feel scared for their lives. They were key for moving forward to an America that works for all Americans. I still think it’s possible. We just have a LOT of work to do. And it doesn’t have to be unpleasant. The biggest part of that work is just what we’re doing right now—learning to understand each other. Finding the common human places. We care for what we love.
Having these conversations and hearing theses stories from folks who I would likely never encounter in my day-to-day liberal bubble life really helped then, and reading them still helps me today. I hope they can be something good for you, too. Thanks for being here. Your presence with another human’s life is a spell that opens the gates for love.
Love,
Ali
Matt
Washington State
Married 19 years
In 20 years, when you're different people, remember you still love each other ‘cause your life will change and you will be different people. My wife and I talk about it all the time. We recognize that life changes, and we made a commitment to stay with each other.
She's so polar opposite of me that I never know what's going on in her head. So she's always interesting. And if I knew everything, she would be boring. And then we probably wouldn't like each other. And we are completely opposite people. I'm a devout Christian. She's an atheist, but we raised two beautiful children.
We are completely opposite people. I'm a devout Christian. She's an atheist, but we raised two beautiful children.
We actually used to be multi-millionaires at age 23, and we lost every dime. And we went through losing everything we owned. And we lived in a trailer for a year, and we look back on it, and we remember it was hard and it was a struggle, but we don't remember being unhappy because we were committed to each other.
And now we're doing well again in life, and a little bit more cautious. But yeah, I don't know. Happiness is when you look at your children, you realize that they are better people than you.
You never know what the Lord is going to throw at you. And it always comes out of nowhere.
Change is normal. You’ve got to have a willingness to understand that life is a crazy thing, and you never know what it's going to do. I'm glad I learned it young, because it's just freed me to be completely happy.
My daughter and I do a trip like this once a year. It’s absolutely incredible. You know, we have the headsets so we can talk to each other, and you get out in the middle of the desert, and there's nothing. And, so we'll talk and get some things out of the way that you're too busy to get into at home to, you know, it just gets pushed off.
Farmer Dan
Mayville, OR
Married 43 years
Just be Nice.
Don’t cheat on anyone! That’s the worst thing there is. If you start cheating on someone, you’re cheating on yourself. The old saying is, grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but it’s not. It’s not. You live long enough you know damn good well. Things are the same as this side as they are on that side of the fence. They just look different.
Eric
Kalispell, Montana
I was very afraid of marriage. All my life, I’ve only seen divorce, and I never wanted to go through that. And so when I started dating Lisa, all my buddies basically circled around me and said that they’re gonna beat the crap out of me if I didn’t commit. So I made a deal with them, and myself, that if it went well for a year, I’d marry her.
On our five month anniversary of dating, I started doing the math. I have seven months left. I started a hyperventilated and physically passed out. Now she’s freaking out, going. What are you doing? What’s wrong? And so then I tell her about the deal.
“You have 12 months total before I’m out of here or decide to marry you.”
So at that point, I took it very seriously, and I started to basically test her in every situation I could come up with. I took her rock climbing. She’s afraid of heights. She said, “Well, just make sure I’m on a nice ledge, and I can stand there and it’s not to exposed, and I’ll be fine.”
So we went to Talkeets, and I found a multi-pitch with absolutely no belay station, I just hung her there on three pieces of gear. And she’s crying, and what I was looking for, was how was she going to deal under stress? Was she going to attack me? Or was she gonna keep belaying?
Basically all the way to the very end, I was testing her. I didn’t want a real maintenance woman. So I let her pick out her own ring. And I had a certain dollar amount, that if she went over it? Not for me. I’d end it.
And, So $29.99 at target was the ring that she wanted, and that’s what she got. And then she lost it. And so I bought her a $19.99 from Walmart. And the next one will be out of a gumball machine.
Jared & Jillian
Dubois, WY
Jared: We're, like, the same person.
Jillian: Yeah. It's really hard to describe. We made up our own word for it.
Jared: We have our own language, and we have our own religion and you know the Hawaiian guy, Israel, like, he's like the big Hawaiian guy? We worship him.
Jillian: Well, not really! We just sing. We listen to it in the car. Whenever something crazy happens, we're like, oh, Israel did that. It's a joke that we have.
Jared: We don't want to offend anyone else's lifestyle. We love everyone. But we see sort of like a formula that everyone follows? Where it's like you're born, you go to college, you get married, you have kids, you go into a retirement home, and you die.
And for us, like, we're going to college and are pursuing filmmaking and journalism. But we want to like take our own path and we want to travel. And we like we're obsessed with other people's stories, we want to share other people's stories. And we think people are like, naturally ignorant to things. So we want to, like, go to places in the world that people don't know about and share their stories and so hopefully people in like in Wyoming who have no idea about someone's life in Africa will like, see their story and be like, okay, like I can like connect with that.
Jillian: There's a theory of love languages. And there's five different ones. There's quality time, gifts, words of affirmation, physical touch. For us, the most important one is quality time. We don't really give gifts or anything.
Jared: We give each other $5 rings that we can find at, like, swap meets, but we lose them because we don't care. It's a material thing. But like, just going in, like having five minutes in a tent together at night?
Jillian: Just going to a grocery store!
Jared: Yeah! Like, we go to Arizona and we find an Asian market and we're like, ooh, it's squid. And we spent four hours in a grocery store. Just like looking around.
Jillian: We call our relationship benkonaship. Benkona means friend in Icelandic.
Jared: it means like, feminine friend.
Jillian: But we've created a new meaning for it, like, Life Partner.
Jared: Life partner. When we're together, we name other people things and we remember them for the rest of our lives. So like in that restaurant, there was Regibell, and that was our waiter. And we loved, we loved him. And 30 years from now, we're going to talk about him and be like, Regibell, served us the best elk sausage! We loved that sausage.
Each person to us is iconic. And we remember moments through remembering people.
Sarge
Payette, ID
Married 33 years
Get drunk & fuck a lot.
Brett & Brianne
Dayville, ID
(Married 4 days)
Brett
We just got married. We eloped and ran off to the beach. Hell, we didn't tell anybody.
I think the biggest word (for love) is honesty, 100%. You have to be honest. And listen. You have to listen to what the other person is telling you. Because if they're taking the time to be honest, you have to take the time to be open and really listen to what they're saying.
I just don't think you can love somebody without being honest.
I've been married twice before, and my wife has been married three other times. And we kind of, took a step back and looked at it for what we'd done wrong and what we weren't doing right, and opened our minds up a little bit more to, being more honest with each other. It seems to be working pretty good now.
Brianne
You need to look at things from their point of view and not your own. It’s selfish if you’re only looking at how it affects you personally, and not how it's affecting them and what they're going through.
Like he had said, I've been married three times. My last marriage was ten, 11 years. We were actually going on our 12th year. And the connection that Brett and I had was completely different than any other relationship I've ever been in. It's kind of like we've known each other for a long time, even though that wasn't the case.
Farmer John
Unity, OR
The main thing is to keep God in your life. That’s my advice. Keep God in your life and it’ll work out great for you.
READ
I never knew that one could be a volunteer baby cuddler. New life goals. Denise Delanni’s experience in the NYTs Modern Love will fill your heart and break it: When Your Only Job Is to Cuddle
ACT
There is a lot going on right now, and it can be overwhelming knowing how to make your voice heard. One simple, effective action you can take right now is to let your congressperson know your thoughts. 5 Calls makes it easy to contact them, including by providing contact info & call scripts for the latest actions in politics.
Oh my!! These stories (and wonderful photos) bring back so many great memories. Thank you for putting this together. A lot of people will find value and inspiration in their stories. Remember the little song we came up with one day? something something...Searching for love on the back roads of America!