Committed

Arthur and Ben met in church in the nineties. Both men grew up thinking that they might not find a church that accepted them as gay men and that they might not even find love as gay men. But one day in the pews of St. Bart's Episcopal church they found one another and they started a life together. They both wanted to be fathers and they tried open adoption and then regular adoption and fostering but there were so many road blocks....

This episode is the story of three decades of love, how these two found one another in the chaos of the AIDS crisis in the nineties, how they flourished in careers as a lawyer and a scientist. And how they ultimately both chose to leave those fancy careers and serve the church that first brought them together by going back to school. Today Arthur is a priest and Ben is a deacon. They both serve different churches in Georgia. This is a story about resilience and love and God and science and how all of those things come together in messy and beautiful ways.

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Shannon and Jerome Schwartz are married television writers. But up until a few years ago they had never collaborated on a project. They had their own separate careers and they were very content in their own spheres. But then a project came along that felt like the right thing to do together. And that project was to try to turn the Committed podcast into a television series for ABC Studios.

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Larry and Sarah Nannery didn't know that Sarah was autistic when they first met and fell in love. They knew their brains worked differently and sometimes that was frustrating, but very often it was also incredibly interesting. They had their miscommunications, but they made figured them out. And then after about seven years of marriage Sarah got a formal diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. I found Larry and Sarah through their book, What to Say Next, where they break down how they communicate as a Neurodiverse couple. This is a love story about learning how your partner's brain works, how every single person's brain is different and unique, and there are lessons in here for all of us.

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One wife writes romantic comedy novels for a living. The other wife works with the world's most famous relationship guru and had her on speed dial throughout the early days of their relationship and engagement. Does this pairing make for a perfect union? Sometimes it does. But no relationship is perfect. Lindsay and Georgia work at their love every single day and they are the first ones to tell you that it takes a village of other humans to make a marriage succeed.

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Tim and Susan Bratton found their path to being intimacy experts because their own marriage was falling apart. Tim was cheating on Susan. Susan didn't enjoy sex at all. So they dug in and went to counseling and workshops and they became experts on the subject. And along the way they fixed their own marriage. Today Tim and Susan are two of the most sexually open couples I have ever met. They are in an open and polyamorous relationship, they have a thriving sex intimacy business and they're ridiculously happy and in love.

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Christina and Ryan Hillsberg are a real life Mr and Mrs Smith. They met and fell in love while they were at the CIA. Their time as spies shaped who they are, but it also shaped their marriage.

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Lauren and Cameron got engaged before they ever set eyes on one another. They met on the reality TV show Love is Blind. If you're not familiar with the show it involves 15 men and 15 women going into this experiment where they see if they can find love through a wall. An actual wall. The two of them fell for each other in just ten days and got engaged without ever touching. It sounds crazy, but they're still together and still really happy. Maybe there's something to being forced to fall in love with your partner's mind before anything else.

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Joe served half his life in prison for taking the life of another man. Sheila met Joe while he was serving his time. She was 20 years older than him, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, a mother, a homeowner and she fell in love and married a man in prison. Joe was behind bars for twelve years of their relationship. I first learned about Sheila and Joe's love story in an incredible book by Elizabeth Greenwood called Love Lockdown: Dating, Sex and Marriage in America's Prisons. Sheila and Joe's story got under my skin for a lot of reasons. I couldn't imagine how someone like Sheila would fall in love with someone incarcerated for murder. But she did. And their love thrived behind bars and is still thriving today.

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When Ash met Chip he was a part of the furry community, a community of people that enjoys an interest in anthropomorphized animals, that often likes to dress up as cartoon animals, sometimes in social situations. Ash had no idea what to expect from this new person that she was very attracted to. She had no idea how to dive into the furry community herself. But she did. Finding the furry community through Chip helped Ash learn to express herself in totally new ways. For the two of them the furry community is so much more than I ever could have imagined. This interview completely blew up any misconceptions I had about this world and how we choose to express ourselves from the inside out.

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Committed is back for Season Seven on November 17th!

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