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Screw Everyone: NPR Host Shares Her Crazy (But Real) Dating Stories

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Have you ever dated anyone who has 300 stuffed Garfields? NPR’s OphiraEisenberg did and she decided to write about it.

Eisenberg, host of NPR’s Ask Me Another, wrote her debut memoir Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, filled with stories about her dating life before getting happily married.

“The advantage of writing it from where I am now is that I have perspective on the stories were that when I was out dating and bumbling around and trying to figure myself out,” says Eisenberg, “And now I am actually happily married and I have to say ‘happily’ because it actually blows people’s minds.”

She says she decided to write the memoir after getting a  great reception  telling these stories for The Moth,  the New York-based storytelling collective.

“I met an agent through doing these some of these shows who helped me figure out that it was worth putting it out there and putting together a proposal,’” says Eisenberg, “But I didn’t even realize until I published it that it was a brave thing to do. Somebody was like ‘Wow, that was pretty wild you put that stuff out there!’”

Even though she's not shy about telling her stories, there were some, she says, that made her cringe while she was writing - memories like bars and houses that she would rather forget, being embarrassed by her feelings of desperation at the time.  But by looking back on these stories, she says she comes at her own story from a different perspective.

“Some of it felt like therapy at the time, and then I had to take a step back because I wasn’t going to write anything that sounded like therapy,” says Eisenberg, “I wanted to be sure that it was funny, entertaining, and fit for someone to read rather than something that’s just like ‘Wow, this girl seems a little unhinged!’”

She hopes that readers can either relate to these stories or even learn from them. “I always say that if you would be a fool if you don’t let life change you,” says Eisenberg.