What’s funny is that the divorce itself, I said, “This isn’t working out. I’m going to move out for a little while,” and she says, “If you move out we’re getting divorced,” and I said, “Oh, whatever.” She went into the other room, she came back in with divorce papers. You can get them off the Internet, start the process. She put them down and I thought it was like a line in the sand. Like, “He won’t do it.” And I signed it and she walked out and then said, “You need to be out in a couple days.”
I didn’t really think about it very much. I ran into somebody a week after I moved out and she said, “I saw your wife the other day,” and I say, “We got separated,” and she says, “Yes, I thought it was weird because she was with some guy,” and I was like, “Oh boy, that’s not good.”
AMY POEHLER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTOR
At this age, you have to find people that are already divorced. At least once. If you’re in your forties, and you’re a man, and you haven’t been divorced at least once, there’s something up.
SARAH SILVERMAN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR
My parents became like brother and sister after the divorce. They’re like army buddies. They went through hell together a lifetime ago, and they just love each other so much. It’s really sweet. My stepmom is friends with my mom.
My mom got really sick. She has this really rare disease, and this happened in ’93 to ’94. My stepmother, who’s terrified of needles and can’t look at the sight of blood, is her blood type. She had a blood transfusion for my mom. They love each other.
My mom’s new neighbors were over, and she was introducing them to my dad and my stepmother. She said, “This is Donald, my ex-husband, and this is Janice, his beautiful and incredibly patient wife.”
Marc
Is your husband your first love?
TERRY GROSS—RADIO HOST
Now that I really know what love is, I’d say yes but …
Marc
What was the other thing?
Terry
This gets really personal. I was married once before.
Marc
For how long?
Terry
A short time and we were very close and it was a year maybe.
It makes me nervous to talk about.
I was very young. We were still in college. I was twenty, maybe. We got married quickly. I don’t know. We’d already been living together for a while. Time seems different when you’re young. A year is a really long time.
My parents weren’t okay with anything I was doing then. I did this whole “I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do and you can’t tell me,” but my heart was breaking because it’s like, “I don’t want to hurt them,” but at the same time I felt like I had to cut the string and that if I gave in that it would always feel to them like, “She’s our good daughter. Everything is under control,” and I just had to do it.
Marc
Did you marry the guy to sort of say, “I’m my own person?”
Terry
We loved each other. It was a beautiful relationship. It was good. At some point we were living with a group of people because it was the 1960s and 1970s and people shared the housework and the cooking and at some point I realized, “You know what I really need? I need to live alone.”
I just need to find out who I am outside of the group, outside of a marriage. I was too young to be committed. I think a lot of women go through this and I think when I came of age and I started college in 1968, it was kind of understood like you grow up, you get married, you have children, and even if you have a job, that’s the trajectory. I knew I wanted a different life and I knew to have that life, I needed to know who I was without picking up on what other people wanted of me or asked of me or projected on me or any of that. That required just having some room totally by myself, which I’d never had in my life.
JANE LYNCH—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, SINGER
I live with my ex. It’s great. We get along, and it’s great. We’re roommates. Well, we don’t like sleep in the same bed, we have our own rooms.
We’re like copilots in life. She’s also my assistant when I need one.
She’s really a perfect human being. She’s even more perfect than when we dated. I have several exes where that would never happen.
I think that romance is the problem. I think the expectation that comes with romance. Romantic thinking like, this is going to be something, is going to complete me. I mean, “You complete me?” It’s bullshit.
I do a live stage show. We do a medley of songs, love songs. We sing the stuff, you know we were brought up with these notions. You know, “Let it please be him,” and “I won’t last a day without you.”
I started out singing that song “It All Depends on You,” and in between each phrase I go, “You know, a romantic relationship is basically bullshit.”
I basically had a renaissance in terms of thinking, and I’m done with the romance. It’s stupid. I’m a happy girl right here, right now.
JILL SOLOWAY—WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
I still have relationships with a couple of my exes. I wouldn’t really spend a ton of time with any of them, because I don’t think it’s good to do. I’m in a new romantic relationship. No need to dabble.
That’s the difference, I think. That’s the difference in this relationship from all others. I have no interest in getting hits. I’m not trying to find out if I can fuck this up, I just actually literally want it to last forever.
Every past relationship I thought at least every day, or every week, “Is this the right relationship? Should I get out?” I didn’t really believe in the whole soul mate thing, so I just like to kind of make odd choices instead.
I actually wasn’t fishing in deep enough waters, I was sort of taking anybody. Probably people I could have control over. They all felt awesome, and fun, and they felt like love, and they were intense. If somebody caught my interest I would never think to myself, “Oh, this isn’t going anywhere.” I really didn’t believe that Mr. Right was out there, so I wasn’t trying to save myself for Mr. Right. I thought it was all a big lie. I thought it was a big fucking cosmic joke that when you meet the person that’s the right person you just know. I thought that was like the biggest fucking joke ever. I didn’t want to play in any of those little fields, trying to attract an awesome man. That seems like a dumb game.
CONAN O’BRIEN—TALK SHOW HOST, COMEDIAN, WRITER
When I came out to Los Angeles, I met all these people. In 1985 I came out here, and over time I met all these people. It’s the same cast of characters. I mean, everyone just keeps popping up, and it is funny that you’re assigned a set of characters when you’re born, and they keep showing up in your life. That’s just how it works. I do think God, and whatever God means, I really believe that there is a force in the universe that has a sense of humor. These things are just too weird.
MEL BROOKS—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR, MUSICIAN
I spend almost every other night with Carl Reiner. Three nights a week I’ll be at Carl’s house. Carl loves, more than anything, what he calls “reallies” that we do. Carl is so proud that we do them only for ourselves. We don’t do them for an audience, we don’t do them for another person. We try to really amaze each other with where we’re going with our minds, you know? We’re still pretty good at it.
Marc
You guys sit and hang out for an hour or two.