‘No Ordinary Love’: John Paul Brammer on whether love is fated

John Paul Brammer has been giving relationship advice through his column ¡Hola Papi! since 2017. He’s held people’s hands through some of the toughest situations romantic love can offer and, in the process, almost forgot that magic can happen along the way. After partnering up with Hinge to write the love story of a real couple, Maura and Jon, for the No Ordinary Love anthology, Brammer feels excited about his own dating life again (and has redownloaded Hinge). No Ordinary Love is an 80-page anthology of modern romantic prose challenging love story tropes and cliched narratives by celebrating the plot twists of real love. It features the stories of six real couples who met on Hinge, written by six groundbreaking authors: Roxane Gay, R. O. Kwon, Oisín McKenna, John Paul Brammer, Brontez Purnell, and Isle McElroy.

You can read Maura and Jon’s story now at No-Ordinary-Love.co or grab a physical copy of No Ordinary Love in New York or London from September 23-30. Ahead of the release, we spoke to Brammer about the role of fate in relationships and finding new hope for his own future love story.

What’s a love story you wish you wrote and why?

John Paul Brammer: To this day, my favourite love story is Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. It’s a poetry book told in verse about the myth of Herakles, who, when completing his tenth labour, killed the red monster Geryon. But it’s told from the perspective of the monster, who is a sad little gay boy in this book, and Herakles is the one who breaks his heart. I could have never written it. I honestly don’t understand how to write poetry, but it’s the one I think of.

This isn’t your first time writing about real relationship dilemmas. How was this process different from your previous work?

John Paul Brammer: In my day-to-day job, when I’m writing about love, I’m doing it in my capacity as an advice columnist for ¡Hola Papi! That’s very different because I’m often dealing with people in some flavour of unhappiness with love – trying to console, comfort, and be a shoulder to cry on. It was interesting for me to write about a happy love story in which everything is going well. The challenge for me became: do I know how to write when things are going well? I’m also a very personal writer; I like writing about sad things and exploring themes like solitude. What I liked about writing this story is that I got to write about how much fun it is when you fall in love with someone. 

What surprised you the most about Maura and Jon’s relationship story or timeline?

John Paul Brammer: Every couple will probably tell you how unlikely their coming together was. In retrospect, we can appreciate just how narrowly it happened and how all these little factors had to line in a perfect way to make it come true. But, in this case, they both had tattoos on their forearms that commemorated their childhood homes and the streets that they grew up on. That’s something you can look at and appreciate as being incredibly unique and strange. Life is stranger than fiction. If I had written that into a book, people would have been like, ‘Yeah, right,’ but the texture to this is that it’s true. 

You started the story at Maura and Jon’s two childhood streets. What made you want to set the scene with their hometowns?

John Paul Brammer: One of the challenges with this story was finding a way to take an individual love story and really broaden it out into something that other people can read. Even with my column, it’s not really about addressing one specific person; it’s about making a piece of writing that invites other people into the party. What I loved about both Jon and Maura telling me about their childhood histories is that they both hold nostalgia and love but also feelings of unease because it was complicated or chaotic. That’s something so many people can relate to. Starting with two streets in America reminds you it could be anyone. What’s so appealing both about love and using a dating app is that your love story could just happen to you one day.

The story involves a missed date and then a rematch-turned-relationship. Why do you think the idea of fate and (almost) missed connections is important for conversations around dating and romance today?

John Paul Brammer: Maura told me a lot about her philosophies of fate and sort of mysticism in the universe, so I wrote in the story that she was romancing the universe, she had candles, she was kind of witchy, and she was kind of goth. That’s how I’ve been, too, especially when I was in high school. I’ve always had this belief in the mystical or magical. In a world where we’re at the behest of so much information and so many different ways to meet each other and yet are still feeling so lonely at the same time, the universe kind of hovers over that, as both a friend and an impassive deity. We turn to this idea that maybe it’s written up in the sky somewhere, and we start turning to things that can provide simple answers in a mystical, fateful way. As someone who uses the apps quite a bit, I do hope and wonder if he’s out there somewhere, and the idea that the universe has him waiting for me is a comfortable thought.

What alternate ending do you think you’d be writing if the two had met on Valentine’s Day?

John Paul Brammer: If I could just lie and not go based on what actually happened, I would have written it completely differently. I would have said things wouldn’t have worked out between them because if they had met on the first date, neither of them would have been in the right place. But the doubt in my head is somewhat symbolised by the tree in Maura’s childhood home. The tree was cut down, but it grew anyway, and maybe that would have happened with their relationship. 

You’re known for giving out relationship advice. Did any advice come to mind for Maura and Jon while you wrote it?

John Paul Brammer: I’m single, and they’re not, so maybe I shouldn’t be giving them too much advice, but the difficulty with giving advice in general is that you don’t always know what the best answer is. Sometimes, to get a good ending, you have to engage with things that feel like mistakes. Like Maura doing a social media cleanse, which a lot of people suggest, and the idea that you should remove people who didn’t give you the right time of day. It was good that she didn’t because it reminded her that he existed. Sometimes, we make exceptions here and there, and that squishiness and indecisiveness can actually lead to a future that we much prefer. Life is complicated, and the moments when we act a little bit out of character can change everything.

What makes a digital connection a compelling starting point for a story?

John Paul Brammer: I read a lot of scripts for rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally, and I think that with dating apps planted firmly in the contemporary world, it can be harder to romanticise today and easier to think of how glamorous things used to be. But we get the idea that things ran more smoothly or were more authentic than they were, so I like turning that idea on its head and writing a compelling love story that starts out on a dating app. You can roll your eyes, but it’s more subversive and interesting to engage with and embrace it.  

Did you learn anything new about your approach to relationships while writing Maura and Jon’s story? 

John Paul Brammer: It inspired me to redownload Hinge, for one. I want to sheepishly ask for the premium for this story because what about my story now? I deal with so many breakups and people disappointing each other, but it’s nice to be reminded that people find happiness out there, too. It made me excited for my own life in a way. It can feel like the worst thing is always conspiring to happen, and we can't do anything about it, but whether it's fate or not, good things are possible. Next time, maybe someone else will be writing my love story.