This episode was originally released on April 13th, 2017. You love your partner, you love your career... but they're pulling you in different directions. What do you do? Is it foolish to put your career on hold for the sake of your relationship? Or is it more foolish to give up a great relationship for the sake of your career? Or, is there a way to have both? The Sugars discuss two letters from women in relatively new relationships who are having trouble deciding what to prioritize. They have he...
Jun 21, 2025•34 min
Hi, Dear Sugars listeners, this is Amory Sivertson.. Host of WBUR's Beyond All Repair and co-host of Endless Thread . I'm here to share something special with you this week. It’s an episode of Other People’s Problems, from our friends at CBC. Normally, therapy sessions are totally confidential, but this podcast opens the doors. On this season, the host Dr. Hillary McBride explores the transformative power of psychedelics in a therapeutic setting. With her psychological expertise, Dr. Hillary lea...
Jun 07, 2025•42 min
This episode was originally published on July 28th, 2018. Dear Sugars returned to Portland, Oregon, for an epic live show. Special guests Mitchell S. Jackson and Rebecca Skloot shared the stage with the Sugars to tell stories of personal reckoning and answer letters from the audience. To some extent, every letter the Sugars receive is a kind of reckoning, as it’s often the letter writer’s first attempt at taking account of their mistakes and delusions. In this episode, the Sugars take a long har...
May 24, 2025•52 min
This episode was originally published on March 16th, 2017. The term "ghosting" may be relatively new, but the concept -- someone suddenly and inexplicably disappearing from your life -- is not. In the past, a total halt to communication with a friend might leave you feeling concerned that something bad happened to him/her. But in a time where our devices have made us more accessible than ever, it can leave the person who's been ghosted feeling rejected or unworthy. The Sugars discuss ghosting wi...
May 10, 2025•37 min
This episode was originally released October 14th, 2016. Divorce is always a painful process, but it's especially so when there are children in the middle. In this favorite episode from the archives, the Sugars discuss situations of parental alienation caused by divorce. They answer letters from a mother and a father whose daughters have cut off all communication with them after taking the other parent's side.
Apr 26, 2025•31 min
This episode was originally published on May 5th, 2018. Remembering the grocery list, coordinating with the babysitter, making food for the potluck, scheduling a get-together with the in-laws: These are some of the invisible tasks that (most) women exclusively do in their romantic relationships — and the list goes on and on. Like a modern-day Greek chorus, women from across the country wrote in to the Dear Sugars inbox echoing identical inequalities in their relationships with their husbands and...
Apr 12, 2025•44 min
This episode was originally released on June 11, 2018. Her doctor categorized her as overweight when she was 5 years old. Her grandmother always introduced her as the “chubby one.” As an adult, she vacillates between moderation and binge-eating, restricting food some weeks, and gorging on cake and ice cream during others. “It’s only when my pants are nearly impossible to button that I force myself to lose weight,” writes the letter-writer who calls herself Body Negative. “And then the pattern st...
Mar 28, 2025•42 min
This episode was originally released on May 25th, 2018. When two women in their sixties start losing interest in sex, their sex-starved partners become increasingly frustrated. Both women blame old age for their waning libidos. But is their diminished sex drive because of age or something else? The erotic lives of senior citizens are typically made invisible by our culture, which can lead to confusion and misinformation. Dr. Pepper Schwartz, the love and relationship columnist for AARP, joins th...
Mar 15, 2025•37 min
This episode was originally released on July 21st, 2018. When it comes to love, money is supposed to be no object. But there’s no disentangling love from anything in our lives, and income is no exception. So how do you assess the role money should play in a relationship, and what happens when your desires and means change over time? In this episode, five letter writers want to know how to discuss money with their romantic and familial partners. How do I stop resenting my husband for his low inco...
Mar 01, 2025•44 min
Cheryl and Steve are no longer dishing out new advice, but we're listening back to episodes we love every week. This episode was originally released November 6, 2015. ____ The Sugars get a letter from a young woman who has fallen head over heels in love. She and her boyfriend only met a month ago, but they are already in deep. Everything seems perfect, and yet the letter writer can't help but wonder if the traumas of her new love's past are hiding somewhere under the surface, threatening to resu...
Feb 15, 2025•26 min
This episode was originally released July 29th, 2017. ____ In a heated moment, a mother reveals a dark chapter from her childhood to her daughter, then immediately regrets it. What now? In this week’s episode, the Sugars tackle this and several other questions, including how to handle a brother-in-law who treats your vacation as his own free childcare; what to do when your best friend’s husband asks you to lie; and why we sometimes recoil at very public displays of grief....
Feb 01, 2025•32 min
This episode was originally released on January 5, 2017. How many times have you heard this: "I love him, we're great together, but ..."? There's always room for doubt, even in the happiest of relationships. So in this episode, the Sugars take on some of those doubts in rapid-fire fashion.
Jan 18, 2025•44 min
This episode was originally released September 23rd, 2016. The Sugars often discuss letters dealing with very specific problems or struggles. In this encore episode, they take on a broader, more existential question: how to follow your heart. The Sugars discuss with the GRAMMY-winning singer/songwriter India Arie, who shares how she learned to be her own guide.
Jan 04, 2025•27 min
This episode was originally published on July 28th, 2018. Special guests Mitchell S. Jackson and Rebecca Skloot share the stage with the Sugars to tell stories of personal reckoning and answer letters from the audience. To some extent, every letter the Sugars receive is a kind of reckoning, as it’s often the letter writer’s first attempt at taking account of their mistakes and delusions. In this episode, the Sugars take a long hard look at transgressions of love, friendship, the self and so much...
Oct 26, 2024•52 min
This episode was originally released on January 20, 2018. “I’m a 24-year-old woman who is completely and embarrassingly aroused by people who are confined to wheelchairs,” writes a woman who calls herself “Wishing to be Seen.” In her pained letter, she explains the possible origins of her isolating fetish and asks the Sugars for a way out: “I just want to have an orgasm with a real human rather than with my sad self, in my sad bed, sadly watching YouTube videos of women I feel I am objectifying ...
Sep 28, 2024•29 min
This episode was originally released on January 13, 2018. Orgies. Sex in public. Incest. These are the things that some of us think about in the dark. Taboo fantasies can be exciting, but they can also be the source of our deepest shame. In this two-part series on sexual fantasies, the Sugars read letters from people who want to turn off the thoughts that turn them on. Dr. Ian Kerner , a psychotherapist and sexuality counselor, helps the Sugars answer a letter from a woman who calls herself “Fed...
Aug 31, 2024•33 min
This episode was originally published on August 12th, 2017. When we decide to meddle, it can often backfire. The Sugars, along with the writer Meghan Daum, answer letters from people who see loved ones heading down the wrong path, but worry intervention might be the wrong move.
Aug 03, 2024•41 min
his episode was originally released on August 25th, 2018. “Dear Sugars, I’m a serial codependent. I’ve married and had children with two addicts,” begins a letter signed by “Mommy Messed Up.” Over the years, her second husband began to withdraw and stash money inside of old bottles. Now Mommy Messed Up is ready to end their toxic relationship. The only problem is she’ll have to disrupt her children’s lives for a second time. “I’m fine with breaking my own heart,” she writes. “But how do I break ...
Jul 13, 2024•43 min
This episode was originally released on August 18th, 2018. The Sugars have been thinking about what it means to say goodbye and let go. In this first episode of our two-part series on moving on, the Sugars and Claire Bidwell Smith answer two letters from people struggling to move past their grief after the death of their loved ones. The first letter comes from a woman who recently discovered that her best childhood friend died by suicide. In the wake of the news, she spent hours pouring over let...
Jun 29, 2024•47 min
This episode was originally published on August 26th, 2017. In this episode, adventures in animal ownership! The Sugars, along with Julie Barton — author of the memoir Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me From Myself — answer letters about pet dilemmas and the ways these creatures affect human relationships.
Jun 15, 2024•46 min
This episode was originally published on July 28th, 2018. This was a live show recorded in Portland, Oregon. Special guests Mitchell S. Jackson and Rebecca Skloot share the stage with the Sugars to tell stories of personal reckoning and answer letters from the audience.
May 25, 2024•52 min
This episode was originally released on May 26, 2018. In this "rapid fire" episode, the Sugars read letters from four women who each have one not-so-tiny reservation about the men they’re dating. A Black woman is dating a white man who is unwilling to talk about race issues, claiming that she’s “too sensitive.” Another woman’s boyfriend, a Christian, is having second thoughts about dating her because she’s an atheist. The Sugars tackle these issues and more, and weigh in on which can be ironed o...
Apr 27, 2024•41 min
This episode was originally published on August 12th, 2016. The Sugars hear the latest from "Head or the Heart" -- a woman who'd fallen head over heels for a man with a troubled childhood. Everything seemed perfect, and yet, she couldn't help but wonder if the traumas of her love's past would surface at some point in their relationship. "Head or the Heart" became the first letter-writer ever to join the Sugars on the show. The Sugars asked her to write to them in six months to let them know how ...
Apr 13, 2024•34 min
This episode was originally released on August 19, 2017. It’s never easy to talk to our romantic partners about their bodies, especially when it’s about weight. The Sugars, along with writer Ashley C. Ford, answer letters from people questioning their relationships because of major changes in their partners’ bodies.
Mar 30, 2024•34 min
Introducing Beyond All Repair, a new WBUR podcast from producer emeritus of Dear Sugars, Amory Sivertson. This series tells the story of a murder, but also the woman who was accused of that murder, Sophia. Sophia was newly married and 6 months pregnant when she was charged with murdering her mother-in-law in 2002. She gave birth to a son in jail that she hasn’t seen since, and for the last three years, she’s been telling me her story in hopes of getting justice for her mother-in-law, of having a...
Mar 09, 2024•25 min
Our loved ones are the people who are supposed to understand us. But what if they just...can't? Where do we turn then, and how do we fight the feelings of resentment that this lack of understanding can stir up? This episode was originally released November 11th, 2016.
Feb 17, 2024•32 min
The Sugars' conversation on friendship continues with a handful of letters concerning male-female friendships. Is there such a thing as a platonic relationship between a heterosexual man and woman? Can male-female friendships be as emotionally satisfying as same-gender relationships? What do you do when a friend crosses a romantic line? The Sugars discuss it all in rapid-fire fashion.
Jan 27, 2024•32 min
Everyone has had a friendship quandary of some sort in the past, right? This week, the Sugars take on frequently asked questions in "rapid fire" fashion – from hating your best friend's significant other, to hating her politics.
Jan 13, 2024•41 min
Whether you’re 5, 15, or 50 years old, it can be difficult to usher a stepparent in and out of the family unit. In today’s episode, the Sugars answer letters from stepchildren who have fraught relationships with their stepparents. What is a stepparent’s responsibility to a stepchild after divorce? And what can be done if you don’t like the person your parent chooses to marry? This episode was originally released on April 28th, 2018.
Dec 30, 2023•45 min
Buzz Bissinger owns more than 100 pairs of leather pants and over 200 pairs of leather gloves, having spent more than $600,000 on leather goods in the span of three years. Mr. Bissinger has a spending addiction, and he joins the Sugars to offer guidance to a letter-writer whose therapist and family don’t take her spending seriously. This episode was originally published on April 14th, 2018.
Dec 16, 2023•24 min
