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

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Daily – ‘Modern Love’: To Share or Not To Share? How Location Sharing Is Changing Our Relationships

Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Daily titled “‘Modern Love’: To Share or Not To Share? How Location Sharing Is Changing Our Relationships,” hosted by Anna Martin and produced by The New York Times, the intricate dynamics of location sharing in modern relationships are explored. Drawing inspiration from the Modern Love column, the episode delves into personal narratives and listener stories to uncover the profound impact of location sharing on trust, boundaries, and emotional well-being.

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1. The Language of Love Through Location Sharing

Timestamp: 00:37 - 02:03

Anna Martin opens the conversation by sharing a heartfelt anecdote about her father’s nightly ritual of checking the Find My Friends app. This simple act of verifying that his daughters are safely at home serves as his way of expressing love and maintaining a connection despite geographical distances. She recounts:

“It's a way he expresses his love. And it's made possible by location sharing.” (01:30)

This ritual underscores how technology can facilitate emotional bonds and provide peace of mind within familial relationships.

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2. Diverse Experiences with Location Sharing

Timestamp: 02:03 - 05:00

The episode transitions to a series of listener-submitted stories illustrating the varied effects of location sharing:

• Positive Uses: Couples sharing locations to ensure each other's safety, parents tracking their children’s whereabouts, and siblings maintaining connections.

  “We've been together for about three years. We've shared locations since the start.” (02:09)

• Challenges and Negative Impacts: Instances where location sharing breeds insecurity, jealousy, and anxiety. One listener describes how sharing locations with friends led to obsessive monitoring and strained friendships.

  “She started just obsessively checking our locations, and we'd get a text. Hey, didn't realize y'all were hanging out tonight. Why didn't you invite me?” (04:08)

These narratives highlight the double-edged sword of location sharing, where its benefits are often counterbalanced by unintended emotional consequences.

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3. Personal Journey: Anna Martin’s Struggle with Location Sharing

Timestamp: 05:12 - 18:07

Anna Martin takes center stage, recounting her personal experiences with location sharing within her family. Growing up in rural Alabama, she enjoyed the freedom of childhood exploration, a stark contrast to her parents’ need for assurance through location tracking.

• Initial Acceptance: When Anna and her husband first shared their locations during a cross-country drive, it was a gesture of safety and care.

  “She would be like, well, I see you're in Arkansas, or it looks like you're getting close.” (12:57)

• Emerging Tensions: The situation deteriorated when Anna’s mother began expressing unwarranted concerns based on location updates, leading Anna to discreetly disable the feature.

  “Then she was like, hey, I can't see your location anymore. You know what happened?” (14:19)

• Emotional Conflict: Anna grappled with guilt and the burden of maintaining peace without addressing the underlying issues. She reflects:

  “I felt like I owed it to her... especially after my brother Paul went missing.” (16:35)

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4. Family Tragedies Amplifying the Stakes of Location Sharing

Timestamp: 18:07 - 26:22

The narrative deepens as Anna shares the harrowing experiences surrounding her brother Paul’s mental health struggles and subsequent disappearance.

• Paul’s Struggle: Paul’s battle with cannabis-induced psychosis led to erratic behavior and multiple troubling incidents, highlighting the fragility of family dynamics and the desperate need for support.

  “He was in that water trying to wash the poison off of his skin.” (22:57)

• Father’s Passing: The sudden death of Anna’s father from a heart procedure compounded the family’s grief, creating a complex emotional landscape where location sharing became both a tool and a source of tension.

  “At Dad's funeral... I prayed that God would show us where he is.” (25:31)

• Impact on Mother: Anna describes the profound sorrow her mother endured, further complicating the relationship dynamics around location tracking.

  “She starts to put her bag up on the machine. And the sadness overwhelmed me.” (29:03)

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5. The Complex Dance of Boundaries and Grief

Timestamp: 26:22 - 33:07

Anna reflects on how the intersection of grief and the need for boundaries transformed her relationship with her mother and influenced her decisions regarding location sharing.

• Emotional Boundaries: The constant monitoring led to emotional exhaustion and a sense of being controlled, prompting Anna to reassess the necessity and impact of sharing her location.

  “It felt easier to just keep going through the process of turning it off than having a conversation about... boundaries.” (16:48)

• Reclamation of Freedom: In moments of intense grief and responsibility, Anna sought solace in reclaiming her autonomy, realizing that constant tracking was counterproductive to her emotional healing.

  “It's just so much more than toggling a little switch.” (32:05)

• Ultimate Decision: The episode conveys Anna’s difficult journey toward establishing healthy boundaries, balancing the benefits of location sharing with the imperative to protect personal well-being and familial relationships.

  “It definitely feels like an act of love.” (33:14)

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6. Conclusions and Reflections

Timestamp: 33:07 - End

The episode culminates in a profound reflection on how location sharing transcends mere technological convenience, profoundly influencing the fabric of personal relationships. Anna and host Arlen J. Staggs discuss the necessity of navigating these digital connections with mindfulness and intentionality.

“Location sharing has changed something fundamental about our relationships. Whether you opt in or whether you opt out, someone in your life is probably going to feel some type of way about it.” (05:12)

The episode underscores that while location sharing can strengthen bonds and provide security, it also necessitates clear communication and defined boundaries to prevent emotional strain and preserve trust.

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Notable Quotes

• Anna Martin on Expressing Love:

  “It's a way he expresses his love. And it's made possible by location sharing.” (01:30)

• Listener on Insecurity:

  “She started just obsessively checking our locations... Why didn't you invite me?” (04:08)

• Anna on Setting Boundaries:

  “It felt easier to just keep going through the process of turning it off than having a conversation about... boundaries.” (16:48)

• Reflection on Boundaries and Grief:

  “It's just so much more than toggling a little switch.” (32:05)

• Final Insight:

  “Location sharing has changed something fundamental about our relationships...” (05:12)

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Conclusion

This episode of The Daily masterfully weaves personal narratives with broader societal implications, offering a nuanced exploration of how location sharing reshapes our relationships. Through Anna Martin’s poignant story and various listener experiences, the discussion illuminates the delicate balance between connectivity and privacy, love and control, ultimately emphasizing the need for conscious and compassionate use of technology in our personal lives.

For those interested in further exploring these themes, the episode encourages listeners to reflect on their own use of location-sharing technologies and consider the emotional landscapes they navigate.

Transcript

[Robert Vinlowen]

Hey, I'm Robert Vinlowen. I'm from New York Times Games, and I'm here talking to people about wordle and the wordle Archive. Do you all play wordle?

[Anna Martin]

I play it every day.

[Robert Vinlowen]

All right. I have something exciting to show you. It's the wordle Archive.

[Anna Martin]

What?

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Okay, that's awesome.

[Robert Vinlowen]

So now you can play every wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles.

[Anna Martin]

What? Wordle Archive.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Oh, cool.

[Anna Martin]

Now you can do yesterday's wordle if you missed it.

[Robert Vinlowen]

Yeah. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle archive. Find out more at nytimes.com games.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Love now and did you fall in love last fella?

[Anna Martin]

Love was stronger than anything for the.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Love love and I love you more than anything there's to love love from the New York Times. I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Our show is inspired by the Modern Love column and by all the messiness of trying to love, trust, and stay connected. One way my dad likes to stay connected is with a ritual he does basically every night before bed. He pulls out his phone, fires up the Find My Friends app and sees that me and my two sisters are at home in our apartments. And when he sees that, he sends a text to the family group chat that says something like, ah, my three little chickadees at home in their nests. It's simple, it's sweet. It's a way he expresses his love. And it's made possible by location sharing. We recently asked you to tell us how location sharing affects your relationships. And you filled our inbox with stories about the people you're sharing your location with and the people you're not. I share my location with a bunch of my friends and my parents and my brother. We've been together for about three years. We've shared locations since the start. My ex husband and I are still sharing location.

[Anna Martin]

My children are out and about at night and we're trying to see where they are late, if they're past curfew, for example.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

At first I didn't even want to do it because I just kind of felt icky about it.

[Anna Martin]

Right now I don't need to know where my girlfriend is 24 7.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

I'm happy that we were sharing location services because I got to find out very early that he was cheating on me.

[Anna Martin]

He is getting married in two days and still shares his location with his ex girlfriend.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Why not? What is there to hide? Your experiences with location sharing were there's kind of no other way to put this all over the map. A handful of you absolutely, unequivocally refused to share your location with anyone, anywhere, ever. But a lot of you said it adds something really valuable to your lives. On multiple occasions, my mother has called me to say, I'm lost. How do I get to wherever it is she was going? And I could look at her location and tell her how to get there. She loves the feeling of being taken care of that she gets from having me watch her, which is the exact opposite of how my adult children feel about sharing their location with me. My brother David has Down syndrome, and when I see him every once in a while, he'll just, like, open up his phone, and he'll show that both of us are in the same place, and he'll just burst out in happiness. Probably about 45 minutes or so into the hike, I realized I was pretty lost. I couldn't make heads or tails of the map that I had. So I ended up calling my partner. He was actually able to locate me on the map. I was so, so grateful that we had the tracking device available to us because I don't think I would have found my way back. So I would recommend it for couples who maybe directionally challenged like myself. On the flip side of that, there were stories like this next one, where location sharing started off okay, but took a bad turn.

[Unnamed Friend]

I moved to a new, much larger city. So I was a little nervous about being away from my hometown for really the first time, away from all the people who would typically know where I should be and if something terrible happened to me. So it was a relief to make two really good girlfriends and all agreed to just share our locations with one another. But it definitely ended up feeding into one of the friends. Just insecurity, jealousy, the fact that she could always check our locations. She started just obsessively checking our locations, and we'd get a text. Hey, didn't realize y' all were hanging out tonight. Why didn't you invite me? Or, hey, I see you're at my favorite coffee shop. Would have loved an invite. So I had to end the friendship basically over that.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Being able to see someone's location is almost like having a superpower. But like any superpower, it must be used responsibly. And sometimes that means just turning it off.

[Unnamed College Student]

The relationship kind of ended on uncertain terms. And in this uncertain period of kind of breakup kind of knot, I started very obsessively checking her location at all hours. We're on a college campus in a very kind of contained radius, and it started turning into like not just like psychological anxiety, but like a physical manifestation. Like I just would not feel comfortable around her or even anywhere because I knew exactly where she was. And one night I was walking alone on the street and it was dusk and I had my headphones in and was listening to some sort of melodramatic music and opened my phone and looked at her location and all of a sudden there was just kind of a snap of like, I need to stop. I want to feel free.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

It's clear that location sharing has changed something fundamental about our relationships. Whether you opt in or whether you opt out, someone in your life is probably going to feel some type of way about it. And everyone seems to need their own roadmap for where to draw the line. Today on the show, I talk to a modern love essayist who has wrestled deeply with drawing his personal line around location sharing, and he tells me how a family tragedy made the stakes of that decision feel exceptionally high. Stay with us. We all have moments when we could have done better. Like cutting your own hair. Yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen. So now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Coulda done better. Same goes for where you invest Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education and human help when you need it. Learn [e-mail] hi, I'm Megan Lorum, the.

[Megan Lorum]

Director of photography at the New York Times. A photograph can do a lot of different things. It can connect us. It can bring us to places we've never been before. It can capture a story in a universal visual language. But one thing that all these photographs have in common is that, you know, they don't just come out of the ether. We spend a lot of time anticipating anticipating news stories, working with the best photographers across the globe. These are photographers who have spent years mastering their technical craft, developing their skills as visual chroniclers of our world. You know, getting certified as a scuba diver and learning how to shoot underwater to document climate change, or tremendous cardiovascular training in order to ski on the slopes next to Olympic athletes. This is an effort that takes tons of time and consideration and resources. All of this is possible only because of New York Times subscribers. If you're not a subscriber yet, you can become [e-mail] subscribe.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

When Arlen J. Staggs was a little kid, he had a lot of room to wander.

[Anna Martin]

Whatever you picture of a boy growing up in rural Alabama, that's exactly what it looked like in the 80s. There were all of these trails through the woods and creeks, and our Parents never knew where we were.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Arlen was the youngest of three boys, but his older brothers, Paul and Hank, they still let him in on a lot of the action.

[Anna Martin]

We had a great childhood, especially for boys, because we were throwing rocks at each other, shooting bottle rockets at one another. I mean, it was dangerous, you know.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Boy stuff, throwing rocks at each other.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

And just like that 80s movie that's probably playing in your head right now. Arlen could always hear his mom's voice in the distance. When it was time to come running home again.

[Anna Martin]

I could be half a mile away in the woods and I could hear my mother's voice calling me. She would go out on the back deck and just yell. It was like a wild, animalistic mother calling her, trying to find her young out in the woods.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

As Arlen got older, he started to feel a need for a different kind of freedom. His parents were religious and conservative, and he felt like he didn't quite belong in their world, especially as he realized he was gay. So he decided to put some distance between himself and his hometown.

[Anna Martin]

I remember driving to college and playing my U2 cassette. I remember singing at the top of my lungs. I remember the roads were windy and taking those sharp curves just like, you know, with abandon. And I think that was kind of the first moment I felt free.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Eventually, Arlen landed in California. He came out to his family, which in time they accepted. Then he got married and built a life on his own terms. But even many years later, he still had lingering feelings about what it meant to be the son who left. And he told me that when his mom started tracking his location, things got more complicated. Arlan J. Staggs, welcome to Modern Love.

[Anna Martin]

It is my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

So, Arlen, after growing up in this tight knit family in Alabama, you decide to leave the south and go live in California. How did your mother feel about that?

[Anna Martin]

She was devastated. You know, my parents ended up teaching at the high school that they graduated from. They lived in the same hometown their whole lives, which, there's something very sweet about that and I love that for them. But I think just California was so. I mean, in distance, yes, it's far. But just in mindset and culture, it's so far away for them.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Did you feel guilty for moving so far away?

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, in some ways I still do. It's almost like there's an agreement we all had and I broke that agreement. Even though we never stated that agreement. Nobody never said, you know, we never sat down and said, okay, in this family, you're not allowed to move to California. Does everybody agree? But I knew I wasn't supposed to do that.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Can you tell me about how you first started sharing your location with your mom? Whose idea was it?

[Anna Martin]

I remember it being her idea, but I was not resistant to it at all. So Drew is my husband. He and I had a vacation rental in Florida. We lived in San Diego, but we would drive back and forth. And the first time that we did it, my mom was like, can you turn on your location on your phone so that we can see you? So I thought, this is a great idea, because if something did happen, somebody would know where we were. And I think she found a lot of peace in kind of following our daily progress. It was kind of fun for her to see how far we got each day. And it took about four days to drive across the country. She would be like, well, I see you're in Arkansas, or it looks like you're getting close, or you made really good time today, or whatever.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

But then at some point, location sharing with your mom started to become kind of a problem. Can you tell me what happened with that?

[Anna Martin]

I think when I started to notice that she would see me in a location and then make up a concern about it, then it became an issue. So one time, I took Chip, my dog, to the vet. And my mom called later that day, and she was like, is everything okay with Chip? And I was like, yes, he's fine. Why? Like, why? And why are you asking?

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Do you know something I don't know?

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. Yeah. She said, well, I just noticed that you were at the vet's office today, and I worried that something bad happened. And by the way, nothing was wrong with him. It was literally just like an annual checkup. That was the first time I was like, okay, that's a little bit too invasive. Stop watching me. Like, you know, like, it's none of your business that I'm at the vet. And so I waited probably a few days, and then just kind of once I knew she was. Had gone to bed, and it was late in Alabama and maybe still early in California. I just, you know, discreetly unshared my location.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Did she notice?

[Anna Martin]

Yes. Yeah, but. But it took her a while. I turned it off, and maybe two or three weeks later, she was like, hey, I can't see your location anymore. You know what happened? So after that, I turned location sharing back on. And then one day, I'm running errands. My phone was in my pocket, and I was unknowingly butt dialing her, and I did this probably seven or eight times, which, by the way, I'm very familiar with, because since my name starts with A, this happens to me a lot.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

You're talking to an Anna, my friend.

[Anna Martin]

That's right. No. Do you get butt dialed a lot, too? Yeah, but for me, I don't ever assume the worst. I just turn my phone off or whatever. But when I got back in the car and I realized that she had. I think she had even maybe called back each time, and she had texted me, like, what's going on? And why do you keep calling me? And so I called her, and she had made up this whole story about how she was afraid that I had been kidnapped and locked in a trunk or maybe I was in a ditch somewhere and the only way I could communicate with her was, like, butt dialing for help.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

She could see your location, Couldn't she? See that you were in.

[Anna Martin]

Like, she saw me in the Sam's Club, so I think she thought I was in the parking lot tied up in the trunk of a car.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

I mean, you're laughing now, but it sounds like she was really scared.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how committed she was to that interpretation, but that was the interpretation she had. And it was clear to me at that point that she's really going to a dark place about it. And I don't know how much it serves her to know where I am. And after that, I turned location sharing back off.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Were you just turning on and off and on and off and on and off your location sharing for, like, years?

[Anna Martin]

Maybe for a year.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Okay, okay.

[Anna Martin]

I usually blamed it on technology. That was my go to scapegoat.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

What do you mean is.

[Anna Martin]

I would say. Well, I would say, oh, my gosh, my phone must have updated again, or, you know, and it must have turned my location off. Let me turn that back on for you. Like, I would blame the iPhone. I would never say, yeah, well, I turned it off because.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Why?

[Anna Martin]

This is one of those questions I have to think about, because I don't know, really. I guess it felt easier to just keep going through the process of turning it off than having a conversation about. Felt more efficient to press a button than to sit down and say, mom, let's talk about boundaries. Let's talk about what's okay and what's not okay. And there's this history of I left. Where I'm from, I left home. So I don't know if I just took on that, like, I was the bad son that didn't stay, or it was never about her seeing me at the vet and getting upset about what might or might not have happened to Chip. It was always about this unresolved kind of broken agreement.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Hmm. That does not seem like something your mom was saying to you, right? Like this was something you were saying to yourself.

[Anna Martin]

Absolutely.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

So in addition to location sharing maybe not being so helpful for her anymore, it strikes me that it also was not so helpful for you. Right. Like, it's making you talk quite unkindly to yourself.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, for sure.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

But part of you. I really want to understand this. Like, part of you felt like you owed her this information about where you were.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, 100%. I felt like I owed it to her, I think especially after my brother Paul went missing.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

We'll be right back. Arlen, can you tell me what happened with your brother Paul?

[Anna Martin]

I guess the. The catalytic moment or the. The catalyst of. For all of it was when my mom got a phone call from the Alabaster, Alabama Police Department, and they had picked my brother up on Interstate 65. He had pretty extreme paranoia. He was hearing voices in his head and he was running from people he claimed were trying to kill him. And, you know, this was a very shocking phone call to get because Paul had always been a little troubled. And as a kid, I just remember him being grounded a lot and, you know, lots of teenage door slamming and loud 80s metal music playing from his room. And that just kind of continued through his life. You know, like, he was just constantly unsettled, but he was never at that level of, you know, a mental illness. And so that was kind of the first moment that kind of, in a sense, woke us all up to, like, something deeply troubling is going on with Paul.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Did you eventually find out what was.

[Anna Martin]

Happening with Paul at the time he was diagnosed with cannabis induced psychosis.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Okay.

[Anna Martin]

Um, and what doesn't make sense about that to me is from what I've read about that is most cases, they can be that severe, but then it kind of goes away, it tapers off, and his did not. His continued and even got worse.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

When you say things got worse, can you share a little bit about what that means?

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, he. Well, they got a little better in the beginning because they gave him some medication, which helped. And he lived with my parents for a while. And the deal with my parents was they said, you can live in our home as long as you need to, but you have to take your medication. And one day he just said, you know, I don't want to take it anymore. I'm going to leave. And he Did.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

And then what? Did you know where he was?

[Anna Martin]

No. I mean, we would get these calls. The first call that mom got was from Tallahassee. And the authorities in Tallahassee had essentially rescued him from some kind of pond or swamp. I remember they mentioned that there were alligators in the body of water that he was in. And he always called the people that were trying to kill him the goons. And he was claiming that the goons had put poison on his skin. So he was in that water trying to wash the poison off of his skin.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Oh, my gosh.

[Anna Martin]

And then they got a call from Tyler, Texas, and it was a psychiatric hospital. And the nurse had a conversation with my mom. And I remember mom said that her brother, the nurse's brother, also had a similar condition. And she was like, unless they take their meds, there's really nothing you can do. And, um. And that was the last call that mom got, I think.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

What was it like not knowing where Paul was? What was that like for you, emotionally?

[Anna Martin]

I'd like to say that I had this deep concern for Paul, and I really wanted to go out and help Paul. But I think Hank and I both became very protective of mom because she was worried about Paul enough for everybody that I was starting to see her lose herself in that loss. And she would get lost in telling us all the specific details over and over and over again. We would go all the way back to Alabaster, Alabama, and exactly what the police officer said on the phone, exactly what the receptionist at the hospital was wearing, exactly what the muffin tasted like in the cafe where she bought a muffin. I think it was her way of saying, this is how we got here, and I need to make sense of how I lost my son.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Arlyn, not too long after that, your family experiences a really sudden loss. Can you tell me what happened?

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. Yeah. My dad went in for a heart procedure in 2022, and he was just going to have, like, a stent replaced. It's supposed to be a very easy procedure. You know, they don't even use anesthesia. But when they were done with the procedure, they fixed the stent, and he coded, and he didn't make it.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry.

[Anna Martin]

Thanks.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

That is so much for your family to go through.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. Well, I remember at Dad's funeral, my brother Hank and I both gave a eulogy. I just remember stopping in the middle, and I asked the congregation if we could pray for Paul. And I prayed that God would show us where he is. And four months later, he was found dead in Las Vegas.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

How did you find out about Paul's passing?

[Anna Martin]

I got a call from the coroner's office in Las Vegas, like, on Tuesday. I get the call. My mom's birthday is Wednesday, and then Thanksgiving is on Thursday.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

My gosh.

[Anna Martin]

So I called Hank, and I said, we need to go and tell Mom. I was in Florida at the time. He was in Nashville. So I get in the car, we meet at my mom's house in Alabama. And, yeah, I remember turning on my location while you were doing the drive.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

You were doing the drive?

[Anna Martin]

While I was doing the drive. And we were gonna have dinner with her, celebrate her birthday, and then tell her. And.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Yeah, when you did tell her, what was that? Like.

[Anna Martin]

I don't have the word for it, but when dad passed away, it was what I would call a very pure grief. Like. Like when we say grief, what we're talking about. When Paul passed, there was definitely grief, but it was mixed with relief and closure. And.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

You knew where he was?

[Anna Martin]

We knew where he was. And. And I remember both of us just holding her. She just cried and cried and cried for what felt like a really long time. And I remember I was. The position of my body was so uncomfortable. My leg was falling asleep, and my back was starting to hurt, and. But I could not break that blob that we made by hugging her.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

What a word. I mean, it's just. Yeah, in a blob. You said when you were driving back home to tell your mother about Paul's passing, you turned your location back on.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Did you ever turn it off again?

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. I mean, maybe I had gone on one of my trips to reflect and grieve and pray, and I don't know what prompted me to turn it off, but at some point, I did turn it off again. And then a few months later, mom comes to visit me in Florida. And I was taking her back after her visit to the airport, and then I come in, and I kind of walk her to the TSA line. And I remember I hugged her, said, goodbye, I love you. I'm just kind of standing there watching her, and she hands her ID to the officer. She starts to put her bag up on the machine. And the sadness overwhelmed me. That scene of her doing all those things all by herself. I just felt like somebody should be getting on that plane with her. Somebody should be putting her carry on in the overhead bin for her. Somebody should be there with her. She's just kind of always been surrounded by these strong men, and now she's doing all this by herself. And by the way, not to. She's an incredibly strong woman.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Of course. Of course.

[Anna Martin]

Not to invalidate her at all. And she wasn't falling apart. I was.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Anna Martin]

And then, you know, what's there underneath it all is just all the years that I had run away to California in all the years that I wasn't there, and the birthdays where I just called and sent flowers and I wasn't there for the party. I went back to my car and just sort of allowed myself to cry, to cry about dad, to cry about.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Paul.

[Anna Martin]

To cry about her. And that was the moment when I'm sitting there in my car in the airport parking lot where I needed to share my location with her. Like, I needed it. And I almost felt like. Almost like being a little boy again, like there was lost in the woods. And I'm gonna say, here I am, and you don't ever have to wonder where I am. And that's when it started to give me peace, to know that she could get peace by looking at that.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

You know, Arlan, it's interesting you say that, because we've been talking all this time about location sharing, but it strikes me that, you know, really what we're talking about is your family relationships. Right. Your complicated, joyful, devastating, beautiful family relationships. I mean, it's. It's.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah. And we're also talking about this dance between boundaries and grief and how the two interact, you know, because it was the grief that had the boundary fall away. And I think it's almost like. I think the simplest example of that is it would be really weird for me to pass you on the street, Anna, and then just grab you and hug you. But if I were to pass you on the street, and I know you just lost your dog, it would not be weird for me to grab you and hug you because you're. Because the grief changes that boundary. And I think maybe that's what we're having a conversation about.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Yeah. It's just so much more than toggling a little switch.

[Anna Martin]

It is. It definitely feels like an act of love.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

Arlyn J. Staggs, thank you so much for this conversation today.

[Anna Martin]

It's been my pleasure. I've loved it. Thank you.

[Arlen J. Staggs]

If you'd like to read the essay that inspired this episode, you can find the link in our show notes. The modern love team is Amy Pearl, Christina Josa Davis Land, Emily Lang, Jen Poyant, Lynn Levy, Reeva Goldberg, and Sarah Curtis. This episode was produced by Reeva Goldberg. It was edited by Lynn Levy. And Jen Poyant. This episode was mixed by Efim Shapiro with studio support from Maddie Masiello and Nick Pittman. Fact checking by Will Peichel. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Alyssa Moxley, Dan Powell, Marian Lozano and Pat McCusker. Special thanks to Mahima Chablani and Jeffrey Miranda. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we have the instructions in our Show Notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.

[Robert Vinlowen]

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[Arlen J. Staggs]

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