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The Daily

‘Modern Love’: To Share or Not To Share? How Location Sharing Is Changing Our Relationships

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When the Modern Love podcast asked listeners how location sharing is affecting their relationships, the responses they got were all over the map. Some people love this technology. Some hate it. But either way, it has changed something fundamental about how we demonstrate our love and how we set boundaries around relationships. In this episode, the Modern Love team shares a few of their favorite listener responses. Then, host Anna Martin talks with Arlon Jay Staggs, a Modern Love essayist who has wrestled deeply with whether to share his location. At first, location sharing wasn’t a big deal for Staggs and his mother. He took a lot of long drives, and it made sense for her to keep tabs on him. But when he realized his mother was watching his little blue dot too closely, and it was causing her stress when she needed peace of mind, Staggs decided the sharing had to stop. He just couldn’t figure out how to tell her. And when tragedy struck his family, the stakes of his decision to share or not share became a lot higher. Today’s episode was inspired by the essay “Every Move I Make, She’ll Be Watching Me.” 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

Love now and...

0:02.6

Love last night.

0:03.5

Love was stronger than anything.

0:06.6

And I love you more than anything.

0:09.8

Modern love!

0:10.6

There's to love.

0:11.4

Love.

0:12.0

Love.

0:16.0

From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.

0:21.9

This is Modern Love.

0:23.5

Our show is inspired by the Modern Love column

0:25.7

and by all the messiness of trying to love, trust,

0:29.5

and stay connected to other people.

0:32.3

One way my dad likes to stay connected

0:34.5

is with a ritual he does basically every night. Before bed, he

0:39.5

pulls out his phone, fires up the Find My Friends app, and sees that me and my two sisters

0:44.6

are at home in our apartments. And when he sees that, he sends a text to the family group chat

0:49.6

that says something like, ah, my three little chickadees at home in their nests.

0:56.5

It's simple, it's sweet, it's a way he expresses his love, and it's made possible by location

1:03.4

sharing.

1:06.3

We recently asked you to tell us how location sharing affects your relationships.

1:12.4

And you filled our inbox with stories about the people you're sharing your location with.

...

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