‘Modern Love’: How to Stop Asking ‘Are You Mad at Me?’
The Daily3 Aug 2025

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

“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.

Find new episodes of Modern Love every Wednesday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


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