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From Kissing One Guy in 20 Years to 11 in a Month

“I just need it,” he said, tears in his eyes. After three months of silence, I flew east to... It took him minutes to get the words out. Afterward, we sat shivering on a bench in McGolrick...

NYTIMES 입력 2026.04.24 13:02 0

From Kissing One Guy in 20 Years to 11 in a Month

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Modern Love

From Kissing One Guy in 20 Years to 11 in a Month

My husband leaving nearly broke me. I tried to put myself back together by dating for the first time in my life.

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Brian Rea

Erin Chack

April 24, 2026,

12:00 a.m. ET

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I met my husband in a park in New Jersey when I was 14. Twenty years later, we broke up in a park in Brooklyn. He had moved out of the house we owned in Los Angeles three months earlier, in September, under the guise of a trial separation. But when he packed up his car to drive to our hometown in New Jersey, he took a vase his aunt had given him.

“Why do you need a vase for a few months’ separation?” I asked.

“I just need it,” he said, tears in his eyes.

After three months of silence, I flew east to try to talk to him. He refused, and in early December, I received an email that he had filed for divorce. At the time, I was standing in a lingerie store in New Jersey, holding a pair of lacy blue panties and wondering if he would ever see me in them. My panic attack was so severe that mall security had to help me find my car.

A few weeks later, while I was still on the East Coast, a friend tipped me off that my husband was in a bar in Greenpoint. I found him by the pool table and demanded he say to my face that he wanted a divorce. It took him minutes to get the words out. Afterward, we sat shivering on a bench in McGolrick Park and officially ended things. Two decades wrapped up in two hours.

One of the last things he said to me was, “If you write about this, please be kind.”

“I’ll be honest,” I said.

I haunted the holidays with grief so radioactive my family walked around me in 10-foot arcs. But around New Year’s, I gave myself permission to start dating. I had never been on a proper first date in my entire life. As a teenager, dating looked less like dinner and more like meeting up in random public spaces to hold hands under picnic tables while friends lit objects on fire with stolen lighters.

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