What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding

Kristin Newman is a Hollywood sitcom writer for shows like That '70s Show and How I Met Your Mother who spends roughly nine months of each year in writers' rooms and the remaining months traveling the world. Over the course of her twenties and thirties, she develops a pattern she calls "vacationships": short-lived, intense romances with foreign men that provide emotional connection without threatening her independence. The memoir traces her journey through international adventures and failed domestic relationships as she wrestles with two competing desires: the longing for love and family, and the need for freedom and adventure.

Newman traces her fear of commitment to her parents' divorce. They married as young Southern California lifeguards deeply in love, but over eighteen years her mother became a workaholic international lawyer wanting to see the world while her father became a contented homebody. Their split taught Newman that marrying young is a gamble and that love inevitably dies. She also traces her wanderlust through three generations: her mother, whose restlessness contributed to the divorce; her maternal grandmother, who felt trapped as a housewife; and her paternal grandmother, who decorated her house with French art but refused to visit France for fear it would not live up to her dreams.

Newman's travel life began in 2000 at age twenty-six, when she went to Europe with her childhood friend Hope after the collapse of her six-year relationship with Vito, her college boyfriend. A therapist had suggested they used their incompatibility to keep the relationship safe, a realization Newman would not fully grasp for years. In Paris, she spent two awkward but proud days alone; in Amsterdam, the group reconnected after a friend suggested they try Ecstasy found on a coffee-shop floor. Newman returned home convinced that travel could repair her.

Two years later, while dating Trevor, a depressed, unemployed aspiring comedy writer, Newman traveled to Russia with Sasha, her best friend since fifth grade. In Moscow, unable to speak the language, she discovered unexpected calm in relinquishing her need to fill every conversation. She met and slept with Aleg, a bartender, despite barely being able to communicate with him. Back home, racked with guilt, she broke up with Trevor and discovered a wilder version of herself she called "Kristin-Adjacent."

After resolving to stay single, Newman soon dated Ben, a funny, intuitive man from a family of artists. Her familiar ambivalence surfaced, leading to breakups and reconciliations. During one split, she heard about a man nicknamed "Ferris Bueller," a fellow comedy writer described as her male equivalent. Without meeting him, her brain manufactured a genuine infatuation. She eventually met Ferris and joined his New Year's Eve trip to Paris, where she failed to spark a romance but gained something more lasting: a community of happily single thirtysomethings whose adventurous lifestyle made her single life feel full rather than empty.

At thirty-one, Newman bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires for her first truly solo international trip. She rented an apartment, took Spanish and tango classes, and met Father Juan, a former Catholic seminary student who had recently left after four years of training. They dated for two months, but Juan, overwhelmed by her intensity, kept her at arm's length. She flew to Bariloche in Patagonia, dated her Spanish teacher, and had a transformative solo day on a mountaintop, realizing she could feel bliss entirely by herself.

A year later, she returned to Argentina with Hope and Sasha, trying to recapture the magic, but the trip unraveled. Sasha's husband had just entered rehab for a painkiller addiction, and Newman prioritized chasing Juan over caring for her sick friend. Juan revealed he had a girlfriend. Newman's planned boat trip around Cape Horn collapsed when she lost her passport, but the accident led her to a group of travelers in Ushuaia at the southern tip of Argentina, including Nick, a quiet American science teacher, with whom she spent several days hiking and exploring Patagonia.

In 2007, Newman and her cousin Emma traveled to Brazil for weeks of purely physical fun. That same year brought deeper reckoning. She returned to therapy, beginning to confront an old wound: When she was nineteen, her stepmother had driven a wedge between Newman and her father, cutting off contact for four years. She had filled the resulting void with Vito, reinforcing her belief that love does not last. On a New Year's trip to the Dominican Republic, a friend accidentally drove over Newman's bare foot, requiring emergency surgery. At a beach bonfire afterward, she met Levi, a towering Finnish professional poker player.

In 2008, after her family sitcom was picked up and then cancelled before airing, Newman fled to New Zealand for six weeks. She hiked the Milford Track with fellow solo travelers, swam with wild dolphins, and arrived at a turning point on a black-sand beach at sunset: She was ready to stop doing all of this alone.

She reached out to Ben, telling him she had changed. He was skeptical, and they dated again cautiously, but he refused to fully commit. Newman traveled to Iceland with Parker, her last remaining single travel companion, who was trying to get pregnant. They rode Icelandic horses, floated in the Blue Lagoon, and discussed the costs of their respective choices. Newman reflects that everyone she knows, regardless of whether they chose freedom or commitment, mourns the path not taken. She and Ben broke up for good.

Father Juan visited Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, and they spent a blissful week together. But he left without discussing the future. Newman traveled to Israel with her friend Astrid, a lawyer, where she attended a Shabbat dinner, the weekly Jewish Sabbath meal, with an Orthodox family. Rachel, a former journalist turned Orthodox Jew, explained that love is built through giving, not through chasing a feeling. Newman, who had spent her adult life searching for certainty before committing, found this perspective striking.

In 2011, Juan invited Newman to Colombia and then to his Buenos Aires apartment for three weeks. Within days in Colombia, she knew the romance would not work. On beautiful beaches, they ran out of things to talk about. At his family's horse ranch on Easter, she tried to kiss him by the fire and he did not kiss back. He told her he thought she was falling in love and he was not. She mourned not just Juan but the loss of what he had represented: the possibility that had served as her life raft during years alone, an idea of love that let her avoid the real thing.

Months later, a friend set Newman up with Rob, a writer with two tween sons, recently separated after a fourteen-year marriage. She had never dated anyone with children because of her painful history as a stepchild. They adopted the Swahili mantra polepole, meaning to go slowly and softly. During this time, Newman's stepmother, Patty, died of breast cancer. At the funeral, Newman stood to thank the woman she once resented for giving her the greatest gift of her life: siblings. She met Rob's sons carefully, following rules rooted in everything she hated about her own experience as a stepchild. The younger boy switched seats to sit beside her at a show, and both boys created a Wii avatar named Kristin.

As the memoir closes, Newman and Rob have bought a house together in Santa Monica. She sorts through closets of plane tickets and love letters, putting away the artifacts of her single years. Rob proposes a goal: Before having another child, he wants to visit all seven continents with her. All he has left is Antarctica, the place Newman once dreamed about as dark, cold, and unexpectedly spectacular.