‘Modern Love' Podcast: You're Probably Thinking About Boundaries All Wrong
'Asking your mom not to talk to you about weight in and of itself is not a boundary, it's just a request.'
KC Davis is a therapist and author known for her practical, empathetic advice on dealing with clutter, even when you are feeling like too much of a mess yourself to take care of the mess in your home. Her TikTok videos on the subject have been viewed millions of times. But lately, Davis has been talking and writing about our relationships not just to the objects in our lives, but to the people, too.
In her new book, 'Who Deserves Your Love: How to Create Boundaries to Start, Strengthen, or End Any Relationship,' Davis tries to disentangle the popular understanding of boundaries, saying the concept is widely misunderstood. She offers a guide to forming and keeping boundaries that help readers better navigate their conflicts with other people.
On this episode of 'Modern Love," Davis tells us what she thinks we get wrong about boundaries and how we should be thinking about them instead. She reads the Modern Love essay 'Is My Husband a Doormat?' about a sudden argument between a couple 20 years into their relationship and talks about how boundaries can help defuse such situations. Davis also tells us how boundaries helped heal her own relationship with her father.
The author of today's featured essay, Lidija Hilje, has a new novel coming out in July called 'Slanting Towards the Sea.'
For an upcoming episode about location sharing, the Modern Love team wants to hear your location-sharing story. Did something happen that made you regret sharing your location with someone? Was there a moment when you were thankful that you had? Where were you? What happened? How did your relationship change as a result? The deadline is May 1. Submission instructions are here.
Here's how to submit a Modern Love essay to The New York Times
Here's how to submit a Tiny Love Story
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‘Materialists' Review: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal Bring Affecting Soulfulness to Celine Song's Perceptive Romantic Drama
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The writer-director finds a playful entry point by starting not in Manhattan but in a majestic rocky landscape where the only signs of life are a hot caveman returning from foraging and placing a makeshift ring on the finger of the woman waiting for him. Unless there's a Cro-Magnon stylist at work somewhere, his meticulously trimmed beard is a giveaway that this fanciful prologue is the product of someone's marriage-obsessed imagination. Romantic unions generally prove more complicated in present-day New York, where Lucy's consultation with a pair of clients she matched suggests the gulf in partner requirements that can yield two radically different responses to the same first date. 'I would never swipe right on a woman like her,' says the guy indignantly, pointing out the ways in which she didn't quite adhere to her profile. The woman, Sophie (Zoë Winters), thought the date went gangbusters. 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Harris Yulin, actor who perpetually played the bad guy, dies at 87
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