Dear Sugars

Friendships are different from any other type of relationship in our lives. They are purely voluntary, and so can feel more tenuous. Do you tell a friend if you are unhappy with the relationship, or do you just leave? And if you do leave, how do you break up with a friend? In this episode, the Sugars field questions from two letter writers who both feel exhausted by a friendship, and want out.

The Sugars respond to a letter from a woman whose teenage son has discovered her high-school yearbook — filled with stories of bad behavior from her past life. In answering the letter, the Sugars are joined by the poet and author Mary Karr, who has written three memoirs about her reckless youth and raised a son who was intimately familiar with those years.

In this short episode, the Sugars take a question from a young man whose ex-girlfriends have felt blindsided when he ended the relationships. He is questioning his intuition - having ended the relationships because he felt there wasn't a future with these women, but wondering if he just wasn't articulating his needs to them.

The Sugars field questions from two letter writers in polyamorous relationships, facing two very different challenges. One woman is feeling guilty that she is taking more advantage of the arrangement than her husband; the other has fallen in love with her polyamorous boyfriend and now longs for monogamy.

The Sugars take a question from a woman whose brother has recently come out to the family. He and his boyfriend sit on each other's laps and kiss in front of the family - which bothers the letter writer's sister, who doesn't want to explain homosexuality to her two-year-old son.

Many of us spend huge amounts of our emotional resources hiding the things we feel guilty or ashamed about. In this episode, the Sugars field questions from two letter writers beginning to acknowledge some hidden shame - a woman who is obsessed with the time she spent caring for a sick friend and a woman who has spent 15 years uncertain if a sexual encounter was rape.

The Sugars take on the pain that comes with being judged for one's work, and the ways in which we can learn from even the most brutal of judgments. They're joined by the writer George Saunders, who helps field a question from an author feeling crushed by first reviews. Saunders recalls his own first experience of being publicly condemned, which sent him down to his basement for three days.

The Sugars field questions from a new mother who walked in on her alcoholic father relapsing in her home, and from a woman grappling with how to be childless in a society in which parenthood is so revered. They're joined by the writer Elizabeth Gilbert, who made the decision not to have children.

The Sugars celebrate Valentine's Day by fielding questions from a married woman whose long-dormant passions have been reignited by an old high-school boyfriend, and from a young woman struggling with whether to leave behind her cheating, closeted girlfriend.

The Sugars explore the deal killer — the thing that turns out to be the limit, that is too much for a relationship to withstand. They field questions from a woman tiring of her boyfriend's severe anxiety, a grieving young woman whose boyfriend is jealous of her dead ex, and a man deeply ashamed of his obsessive desire to make a woman pregnant.