I'm So Glad You Asked

From the renowned psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone—which has sold over 3 million copies and been translated into more than 40 languages—comes a powerful exploration of the questions that shape our lives.

How do I let go of the past?

How do I reveal a truth that could change everything?

How well can I really know the people I love?

Why is there a gap between what I want and what I do?

As a psychotherapist, Lori Gottlieb spends her days working with people in their most intimate moments—moments of grief, joy, confusion, longing, heartbreak, hope. Some of the struggles she sees are universal and timeless, while some belong distinctly to the modern world we inhabit, influenced by shifting norms and the accelerating pace of change. In her beloved columns—first at The Cut and The Atlantic, and now at The New York Times—Gottlieb brings readers around the world her signature insight and understanding, applying her disarmingly perceptive therapeutic lens to the private dilemmas we rarely share but need to untangle. And beneath it all—­­the decades of patients and thousands of letters—lies the same essential question: How do I make sense of my life and the people in it?

I’m So Glad You Asked: A Therapist on the Questions That Shape Our Lives offers readers a sweeping tour of our emotional landscape, uncovering what Gottlieb calls the “story beneath the question”—the hidden patterns, assumptions, and fears that often lie outside our awareness. Moving from the families that formed us to the friendships we struggle to sustain; from love, betrayal, and unfinished business to money, aging, grief, and the selves we are still learning to accept, Gottlieb shows how one person’s dilemma can uncover something strikingly recognizable in our own.

Again and again, she shifts the frame, challenges the stories we tell ourselves, and reveals possibilities we couldn’t see from inside our own lives. By turns intimate, provocative, moving, and unexpectedly funny, I’m So Glad You Asked transforms the seemingly ordinary dilemmas of everyday experience into profound revelations that can change how we understand ourselves and those around us.

No one who reads this eye-opening book will see their relationships—or themselves—the same way again.