‘Modern Love’: How to Stop Asking ‘Are You Mad at Me?’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Am I in trouble?” “Am I secretly bad?” These are questions Meg Josephson, a therapist and author, grew up asking herself. She was constantly trying to anticipate other people’s needs, worried that she was letting other people down. And it wasn’t until she found herself standing in the aisle of a Bed Bath & Beyond, trying to remember her favorite color, that she realized her desire to please everyone was eroding her sense of self. On this episode of Modern Love, Josephson talks about how that realization led her to confront her tumultuous childhood, and what it took to stop “people pleasing.” She then reads the Modern Love essay “My Three Years as a Beloved Daughter” by Erin Brown, about a woman who found a type of love in her best friend’s parents that she had never experienced before, and what that taught her about her own parents. Josephson’s book, “Are You Mad At Me?,” is available Aug. 5, 2025. For more Modern Love, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone, Natalie here. As you've probably noticed, we've been sending you episodes of our colleagues' great show Modern Love on the weekends on Sundays, a show about our relationships and how wonderful and also complicated they can be. I hope you've been enjoying them as much as we always do. We're going to be doing this for a few more weeks. And I just wanted to jump in to set up
0:22.8	this week's show with Modern Love host, Anna. Hi, Anna. Hey, Natalie. How are you? I'm good. Tell me what
0:30.1	the show is this week. So I have a question for you. Do you ever find yourself wondering about
0:36.3	people that are close to you, do you ever find yourself
0:38.1	wondering, are you mad at me? Literally every day, unfortunately, multiple times a day.
0:46.3	Okay, well then this is the episode for you. This week, I talked to a therapist named Meg Josephson
0:51.8	who helped me understand where that question comes from,
0:55.4	why we ask it, and maybe how to stop.
0:58.7	Okay, I'm so excited for this.
1:00.8	I'm going to be sending this to four or five of my friends.
1:04.7	Good, good.
1:05.6	Everyone, Anna Martin,
1:07.3	and this week's episode of Modern Love.
1:12.0	Love now and all.
1:13.5	Love was stronger than anything.
1:17.5	And I love you more than anything.
1:21.6	There's to love.
1:22.3	Love.
1:25.7	From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
1:28.4	This is Modern Love.
1:30.0	Every week, we bring you stories about all the messiness of relating to other people.
1:34.7	Any time my boss would slack me, can we chat or do you have a sec?
	...

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