41. LANDING IN LOVE: Is the settling-in phase the best stage of love?

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Hi, everybody.

You came back to We Can Do Hard Things.

We're thrilled about that.

Today, we are answering your questions, but we're going to start today by talking a little bit more about love.

Our last episode was all about falling in love and the wild experience that that is, and then the landing in love,

which we discussed as the second part of love, when the chemical imbalance of falling in love starts to rebalance and we're left with ourselves once again.

When the real love starts.

And how, if we don't know better, we could think that love has ended when really it's kind of like the work of love actually begins.

So one of the things that people ask us a lot

is,

when did we know?

Like, when did you know that you were in love

with me?

And sister is doing the air quotes.

The air quotes because she doesn't believe in knowing or anything.

She doesn't believe in anything.

She just, you can start the sentence that doesn't believe.

She just doesn't believe.

Yeah.

Like if sister were Ted Lasso, she would have a big sign over the locker room that says, don't believe.

Odds are we'll definitely lose.

Right, right.

I have, I've calculated the odds and they're against us.

So just everybody be effing realistic.

Okay.

Do you have a moment, babe, that you could?

pinpoint that wasn't that first night that we first met where we were just like, what is happening?

That wasn't when we we knew we just knew something was up but we didn't

when did you know well i think we knew in retrospect like thinking about what was going on that night because there was a lot of confusing feelings happening like what is this like why do i what's going on here may i interject for the listener because it sounds like you had some like hot sweaty amazing night this was at a librarians conference where they just happened to notice each other from across the way.

So, I mean, that's what we're referring to here.

Not like that night in the way that most of us understand what that means.

No, no, we literally had zero time alone together.

We were in front of thousands of librarians discussing books.

I mean, it was the hottest thing I can imagine.

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, it was like there is a God.

God would definitely set up my meet-cute

with my storms of angels descended upon you in the form of librarians.

I think that

we spent months, months and months apart.

And right.

After that first night, we never saw each other for many, many months because we both had lives that we had to untangle ourselves from in some ways.

I think that during that time, we spent

time, some time talking on the phone, but not much.

But mostly we were just emailing and texting.

And I think

you sent me a picture

of you going to

a wedding with the babies.

And something had happened to Amma.

I had no idea what happened, but somebody took a picture of you holding Amma.

Now, I don't know why.

I don't know why this hit me, but it struck me so.

It was just the most tender

thing I'd ever seen in my life.

The way that you were holding this child.

And I know this is going to sound so bizarre, but like I could feel that that was also my child on some level because she came from you.

And it was just this cosmic,

I don't know, is this this picture?

And every time I see that picture, I'm like completely reminded, oh, yeah, this is when I knew that I was in love with you.

And this is when I knew that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

You were just, you are radiant in this photo.

And you, I, I could see straight into your soul.

I don't know.

It's, is, I have no, there's no like factual, it's just how I felt.

And I was like, yep, that's the person I'm going to marry and be with for the rest of my life.

She's holding my child.

Like, what the hell is that about?

I don't know.

Well, I would say

this, I've never told this story before, I don't think.

Yeah, I was going to ask,

you've never actually even told me, I don't think.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I had a few different moments.

I'm, but,

and truly, a lot of my moments were with myself in the mirror.

Like, holy shit, are we doing this?

Like, they were come to Jesus moments with myself.

But there was this one day where

you sent me, it was the first like gift that you had ever sent me.

It was a package, and I got it at the door and it was a package from you.

And I was like, oh my God, I don't know.

I just felt like

so intense about it.

And I took it into my closet and I sat on the floor and I opened up the package.

And this, first of all, this smell came out of it.

Okay.

This like, it was whatever you used to wear back then.

And it was like very masculine and feminine.

It was just the smell that was so, oh my god, I remembered it from the first night when we met, and it was.

I still wear it now, just so you know.

Oh, okay, she can't smell it anymore on account of the euphoria is gone, yeah.

But euphoria's gone, so now it just smells like effing cologne.

All right, whatever, she's just covering up her body odor, right?

But back then, it was as if like magical fairies had escaped this box, and this smell was just like

and then, um, and and then I picked up the next thing.

Well, you had sent me a t-shirt to sleep in covered in your,

so I was just smelling this t-shirt.

And then

I picked up this, it was like this big

booklet, like stacks of paper, stacks.

And it was this, it had to be four inches and it was a stack of computer paper.

Two reams.

Two reams of paper.

Two reams of paper.

And it was every single email that we'd ever sent each other, which was wild that it was that thick already, by the way.

I mean, we used to write to each other for hours and hours and hours, but you had printed out every single email, stacked them with a thing, and then I don't know if you remember this, babe, but you had

tied it with this precious, colorful twine,

and then it was tied in a bow, and then there were three little

letter cubes, like almost like plastic scrabble pieces that you had weaved onto the twine and it said G-O-D

tied into, and I was like, what?

First of all, it was the most,

that was the moment where, first of all, why did you do that?

Like, what was the G-O-D?

I still have that twine sitting on our,

the God twine sitting on our

bookshelf upstairs.

But can you just tell me?

Because I actually don't know that story.

Like, why, where did you get these plastic letters?

Why did you choose G-O-D?

Were you at a freaking craft store?

Like, how did this happen?

Well, I was putting together a gift box for you.

And

I don't know.

I was at this store and I just felt like,

well, to go back, I You have up until this point been talking to me about your God.

And for the first time time in my adult life, I started to consider that maybe my definition of God was changing.

And I felt like everything that we were communicating to each other in these emails that

I had printed out and I wrapped up and I sent to you,

I felt like it was holy.

And

also

your

first initial and your last initial is G D.

So I thought, oh, this is kind of sweet that her first initial and last initial is G and D.

And I could just throw an O in there.

And that would be like really special.

Because I felt like everything that you had said to me.

And I don't know, it was just such a beautiful time for me,

not only to experience that falling in love, but also to experience

God in a different way that felt more comfortable, I guess, or felt more

believable,

for lack of a better word, and loving.

And I don't know.

I just, I have always just felt like you had like this portal, like this portal to the divine that I've been so curious about and in some ways jealous of.

Like, how do you believe all this shit?

So, so, so

effortlessly.

You know?

The only thing I do effortlessly.

Well,

that's amazing.

I think there was something for me about opening that box that was so specific to you.

And also, it was my first understanding of this feels so feminine.

Like, this is love, feminine love.

Like the twine and the letters and the smell and the detail of, I just, I can't explain it.

I just remember thinking of, oh, this is what it's like to love a woman.

Like, this is, I've landed in the right galaxy.

I don't know.

It felt like it was finally living in the right planet of love for me.

Like,

the gift was something that

felt like love to me.

Whereas gifts I'd received from

other gender always just felt like something I was like, thank you for this thing that there was too much of a gap between it or something.

Then all of this mystical shit we've just been talking about wears off.

And now we're just like arguing about toothbrushes and have this different level of love, which we actually think is realer than the beginning.

Like the beginning phase of landing in love was kind of difficult for us.

I don't know if you remember.

Yeah, it was awful and terrible.

Well, we struggled.

We were in a power struggle because for a lot of reasons, but I think you lasted falling in love a little bit longer than me.

And that was like hard.

Like we, we weren't in the same plane at the exact same time and that was confusing it was really hard and and then the landing in love period

i don't know that's just that that beginning phase was hard like we were fighting we were like nagging and fighting and like i can't believe it's almost like i can't believe you've been this person all along Exactly.

I got bamboozled.

That's how we felt.

What the fuck?

We got bamboozled.

We were, it was like somebody drugged us.

We were shrooming.

And while we were on a trip, somebody let us get married.

And now

we've got these papers and we're just starting to get to know each other.

And it was a power struggle in the beginning.

Yeah.

We had so much to work through

with really getting to know each other.

We'll talk about that another time.

We'll do a whole thing about that.

about that phase and what that constant power struggle was like in the beginning.

But now we have different moments where we're not, you know, in mystical situations with fairies in closets.

But

I will tell you that I had a moment recently with you that I felt like was a landing in love moment.

And it was, I don't know, really late at night.

I was already in bed and so tired.

So it's probably like 8:30.

And

you had just taken Hattie out, our dog, for a walk, and you noticed that she had something in her paw that was bothering her.

Okay.

And

you brought her back in.

So I'm laying in the bed watching you in the bathroom on the floor with Hattie and you're like curled up with Hattie with this whole set of tweezers and all of these tools.

And you just spent like a half an hour on the floor with Hattie getting her paw free from whatever was hurting her.

And

that was, I just was watching you like, oh,

wow, that's love.

And I, and my thought was I would not do that crap.

I would just wait till this thing just gets, I would just not do that at this late at night.

I would not have that level of tender care that you are giving this dog.

And then remember you asked me to do one job

while I was in bed.

Do you remember what I just just.

while telling the story, I remembered this.

Do you remember what you asked me to go get?

Okay.

You said, Glennon, I just can you just do one thing for me?

And I was like, Okay,

you said,

Can you just go get me some salt?

Oh my gosh,

because you needed it so her pal wouldn't get infected.

Yeah, so I very heroically got out of bed and walked upstairs.

And do you remember what I ate?

You brought the sugar, you brought the freak.

No, you brought the pepper.

You brought the pepper.

I brought pepper

because it was.

I sat it next to you, got back in bed.

You said,

Honey,

this is pepper.

And I was like, well, I think it'll still work.

So that's what landing in love is: it's somebody on the floor getting poop out of your dog's paw, and then your partner bringing you pepper, and you somehow finding love in the midst of all of that.

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Babe, have you had any landing in love moments?

So I actually started this podcast telling all of us about recently

Glennon.

Okay, recently I have gotten Glennon and I into it.

I have a tendency to get us into things because

as you may remember on one of our podcasts, I sometimes say too many things.

I can't wait to hear this.

I don't even know this story.

I say the thing and then

a lot of times I'm like, oh,

shoot.

I did it.

I did it again.

And now we're in it.

And now we've got to find our way out of it.

And Glennon is often always the person that solves the problem I've created for ourselves.

She's the problem I've created for ourselves.

That's so good.

And recently I've got us into it again because I just, I'm working on it.

I'm trying.

I'm just still not yet there.

Like a family thing or a work thing or a neighborhood thing?

It's a friend thing.

It's how do we describe this without describing it?

It's, you know, sometimes when I overthink what I'm going to say.

Okay.

So I think, how is this going to, what is the other person going to think when I say this?

Like, what, what's going to come out of this?

What's going to happen?

How does it implicate the entire ecosystem of our life?

Exactly.

What is that person going to think about my wife if I say this?

What is I'm overthinking it?

And here are the things that I go through in my process.

That's it.

Nothing.

I go through no process.

I go through this.

So sometimes something is said and I'm like, oh my God, like you can't just say that.

The other person, like she said something that made another person really excited about something that we're never going to do.

Okay.

So it's like, it's something that I wouldn't have said until a year

of

consideration.

And of course, I didn't even talk to Glennon about it.

But I will say that it was in a conversation where she just like said something.

And then afterwards, I was like, babe.

What are we going to do now?

Like, what, what's going to happen?

Like, Like, that per, and she said, well, everybody knows I was just kidding.

I was just kidding.

But, sister, I need to tell you that what she said was the thing.

And then she said, also,

I am totally not kidding.

Like, literally, those are the words.

So, so we're in it.

And now,

what's the rest of the story, love?

So, the whole point of the story is the way you have responded to me getting us in it again

makes me know that we are landing in love because

this feels like a part of my personality though it's just a behavior that i'm working on it feels like

i am flawed and yet you still love me

the way that you're responding to it it feels like you're responding to it in a way that makes me know you're not trying to change me anymore and just trying to like love me through some of my faults or failures or little,

little, little nits that I get us into.

And I just think that it's not a flaw.

It's just a shadow side of a beautiful thing.

Everybody's,

I don't think it's any bad or good thing.

It's like, oh, I overthink things.

Everything I'm going to say, I'm thinking about beforehand afterward, blah, blah, blah.

That's like, I guess, good in some ways because I'm always thinking about everyone's feelings and terrible in some ways because then conversation

can feel very controlling or manipulative or not in the moment.

Your situation, sometimes you get us into it.

That is for sure as hell true.

But also, the positive side of that is that you're the most present,

fully yourself.

You're not like presenting different sides of yourself all the time.

It's what people love about you the most.

It's a beautiful thing.

And I think what happened to me during that particular situation, and I'm starting to think more about the fact that sometimes I care about other people's feelings more than I care about my family's feelings.

Like that's how it feels.

Like I feel like you said this thing, Abby, that now this person that's not even, it's like they're going to have their feelings hurt.

Well, okay, but like, am I going to hurt your feel care more about that person's feelings than my wife's?

Also your own feelings.

But if I like shame you about it, then I'm valuing that person's experience more than yours because I know that you didn't do anything with bad intentions.

Yeah.

And also, I mean, I understand like there's impact on what I do.

And so I already feel bad.

Like I already know that I'm in it, you know?

So, I mean, long story short.

I just think that like us landing, I feel almost every single day, I feel like there's a, there's a moment where I'm just like, wow.

Wow.

This is just really something.

And I can't believe, because this is the part of love that I've never experienced.

I've had the in-love bit.

I've gone through the wild stages of it, but I've never successfully landed in love, like truly landed in love in a way that I know that this is.

that you are actually in fact the one.

Do you think?

Okay, here we go.

Do you think that

love,

like we talked about this last night?

If somebody could, if somebody asked us, what is the one strategy to make love work?

I would say

working on yourself.

That that's it.

Like, I know there's not one strategy, but if I had to boil it down, it would be

like a relentless pursuit of

dealing with your own shit.

Do you agree with that or disagree?

Yeah, I think that I agree with that, but there's equal parts of dealing with your own shit and also inviting your partner to participate in that journey.

That's something that I'm, I value so much about you, Glennon, is you never force me to like evolve or growth or work.

Like you just do it yourself.

And that is like this beautiful, gentle reminder.

And then I see things like actually work.

So I'm like

engaged and enticed in some ways to do this work on myself.

And I think you know that I've been kind of afraid of myself my whole life.

And

being as gentle as you are in our love makes me feel like, you know, we're five years in.

I'm like, oh, okay, like I can start working on myself now.

Good on you.

Sissy, what do you think about all this?

Well, another way to say

the most important things to work on yourself is

to

say

stop looking for everything

for the answer to everything you need

and the culprit for all of your qualms in the other person you know i feel like Yeah, I feel like it's so often like

if you're a partner in life and something in your life life isn't going well,

they're the obvious person to be like,

if things were different, I wouldn't be feeling this way.

And obviously that's on you.

Or if I feel uncomfortable right now in this conversation, in this day, in this life.

That's you.

I think that's especially true with right now when we've been so cooped up in our houses.

You know, we're used to having these outlets with friends who meet certain needs, family who meet certain needs, activities and things that meet certain needs.

And we've been

in this

very weird period

where our only outlet has been the person we're with.

And that's just a setup.

Like that's just, it doesn't work and it never has worked.

The reason our relationships has worked is because we've had this whole supplemental life surrounding our units And that whole life was taken away.

And now we're looking at our people and being like, this isn't going to cut it.

But that's not sad or unromantic.

It literally another, you and one person were never supposed to cut it the whole time.

Like you always had a full life to make it work.

And I just think that to me, it's just

realizing that is helpful because it doesn't necessarily mean that this isn't going the way it should.

It just means that this was never supposed to be the only thing that kept things going.

Yeah, it's good.

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All right, let's get to some love questions.

And by the way, for any of you who, I don't know how many of this, people this has happened to, but if you're somebody who has never fallen in love,

I didn't, I didn't fall in love ever in my life until I was 40.

How old was I, 40 when I met you, babe?

So I don't know what I want to say about that other than I get it.

I get it.

I get what it's like to not

have that particular experience.

And

I had a really full life without having had that experience.

I just want to say that.

I had all different kinds of love in my life.

Yeah, you fell in love with the babies.

I fell in love with the babies.

I fell in love with my work.

I felt I had always had this God thing going on.

I fell in love with my sister.

I fell in love with friends.

I fell in love with books.

I don't know.

I just think there's a lot of different

kinds of love

that make up a full life.

Agreed, but they're still only the one.

All right, first question.

Let's hear from our beloved pod squad.

My name is Elizabeth.

I wanted to see if you could dig deeper into

that year of your life after you met Abby and you were exchanging emails and falling in love with each other.

How much did you wrestle with the decision and

how did you

come to the conclusion that you were in the same place?

I'm going through something similar right now, and

I'm scared that the guilt

of pursuing joy

is going to ruin the potential of the future relationship.

Thank you so much.

Oh, Elizabeth,

The guilt of pursuing joy is going to ruin.

I would agree with Elizabeth that the guilt of pursuing joy does ruin

everything,

right?

It's just that it's not the pursuit of joy that ruins things.

It's the guilt.

of pursuing joy that ruins things.

And I do believe that the guilt of pursuing joy is something that, well, for everyone is especially deep in women.

I remember saying to a friend

when I was deciding what to do about Abby is just saying, I'm not going to, I'm not going to do it.

I'm not going to leave my marriage.

I'm not going to go.

I know this is going to hurt.

This will probably be the most painful thing I've ever gone through, but I also know that I always learn from pain.

That

the most painful things in my life have been the greatest lessons

afterwards.

And so I will learn from this.

And she said,

yes, Glennon, you have always learned from pain.

What if you could also learn from joy?

Thank you.

What if that's the first plan?

Yeah.

Learning from joy.

And then that that we just default to the pain because we didn't pick the joy because we deeply, and somewhere in us, have the misbelief that the suffering

is

what we deserve.

So we have to find the lessons there because we keep picking it.

I

am still waiting each day because of my deep beliefs to be struck down somehow for pursuing joy, for choosing joy instead of suffering.

But I got to tell you, it hasn't happened yet.

I have not been struck down.

And

the people that I thought I would

be hurting the most, like,

my God, I can't pursue this joy for myself because it will cause pain for my people, for my kids, for my parents, for Craig, for sister, for everybody.

What I will tell you is that there is some pain in the beginning because women have created ecosystems where their denial of self is what makes everybody else's lives run

what we consider smoothly.

And so, when a woman does choose joy and does choose her own

self,

her own path, everybody does have some disequilibrium in the beginning,

which they might consider pain.

And then

what happens is that everybody in that ecosystem watches the woman choose joy and slowly learns, oh my God, we get to choose joy.

What?

Watches the woman come alive, watches the woman refuse the narrative that the woman is the martyr and slowly disappears for the rest of her life.

and watches the mother or the sister or the wife or the whoever come to life.

And that woman choosing joy, like a ripple effect, grants permission for everyone else in her circle to choose joy.

And that is how freedom and the pursuit of joy becomes contagious.

So,

what I would say to Elizabeth is: please do not be afraid of the pursuit of joy, but please be

avoidant of the guilt

of pursuing joy.

Okay.

Hi, Glennon and sister.

My name is Hannah, and my hard thing is falling in love.

My marriage fell apart last year, and I'm now divorced, and I found myself unexpectedly falling in love with an absolutely wonderful person.

It's been incredibly difficult to make myself vulnerable again, and I find myself wanting to be absolutely sure that it's right this time before I let myself fully dive in.

And when I say absolutely sure, I mean beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's going to be good forever, which is something that I know I can never have a guarantee on.

Also, I'm doubting myself because I got it so wrong last time.

Do you have any advice about letting yourself fall in love and be vulnerable after heartbreak?

Thank you so much.

Bye.

Hannah is my favorite.

So I just need to know how to be absolutely sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is going to be perfect until the day that I die.

So if you could just tell me that.

Yeah.

This love needs to come with a lifetime warranty.

I can return it whenever it breaks bad.

I love that.

Oh, God.

It's so hard to trust again.

It's because it's hard to trust yourself again, right?

Like, why do we keep entering into these

things that could crush us, could annihilate us completely?

Does anyone have any good words for Hannah, sister, or Abby?

I feel like I really...

am interested in the part that she said

one of her key struggles is based on the fact that she got it so wrong the last time.

And that resonates with me a lot because I think after my first marriage and everything that came with it, the first couple years after were completely,

it was hard to trust, but the hardest part was trusting

myself and my instincts and my judgment because clearly I had very consciously chosen this person.

Clearly, I had, you know, not seen what I should have seen throughout it.

I started to think of it a different way.

Like, I'm not sure I did get it wrong at all.

You know, I think it's, it's kind of like what we talked about in that last

episode about if your whole life is a love story and you're just,

you're just telling stories, you know, you're just, this is what happened.

This is the way I felt.

This is what they chose.

This is what I chose.

I mean, it, we're so fixated on

deciding what's right and what's wrong and

attributing

how it ended to cover the whole chapter.

And I just don't necessarily, I think if we let go of that, we could really let go of a lot of

the problems that we have for ourselves because

I just think,

I think maybe you didn't,

maybe maybe you got it wrong, but maybe you didn't.

Maybe that was just a love story that ended how it ended.

And maybe there were a lot of really great things about that.

And maybe there was a reason you ended up there.

And

there's a reason where you are now here.

Nothing has to be wrong and nothing has to be right.

It's just like, here you are.

Are you chapter?

It's just a chapter.

And

I don't know.

I think we hang a lot on that.

That is, is not necessarily helpful to us.

I get avoiding, wanting to avoid pain and avoid the kind of crushing blows that come with things.

And I would say to Hannah, I like to think of what I can control, what I can't, right?

So, so Hannah, what I can't, I cannot tell you whether this person is going to like abandon to you ever.

emotionally, physically, whatever.

But what I can suggest to you is that you make a commitment to yourself that you're not going to abandon yourself.

Okay.

So when you say things like fully dive in,

that's like romantic bullshit language.

That's the kind of thing that we tell ourselves when we're like, okay, should I go unconscious?

Should I just do the thing where I just am in love and I'm just in it and I'm whatever?

No, we're going to stay awake.

We're going to not abandon ourselves.

We are going to not turn our intuition off.

We are not, we can trust this, we can trust trust relationships if we trust ourselves to stay conscious,

to admit when we see a red flag, to not allow our boundaries to be crossed, to stay awake.

You can trust other people to the extent that you can trust yourself

to when things start and if start, things start to feel wrong,

to say it.

to not completely lose ourselves in any relationship.

So I guess what I'd say to Hannah is like, I can't tell you what this other person's going to do, but I can tell you, Hannah, that you can be a woman who's not going to abandon yourself.

And if your gut is telling you that this is right for you right now, go in,

knowing that you will go out the minute it stops being right for you.

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Okay, let's, I want to go finish with this write-in, y'all.

This is what Ginny says.

Dear Glenn and Amanda and Abby, I love your story of falling in love and the family you've built together.

The most amazing part is how easily your children and ex-husbands seem to accept you and your relationship, but sometimes it seems too good to me.

Many of us are not surrounded by people who are accepting and understanding, and we risk real anger and damage in choosing us over them.

My question is, what do you do if you fall in love, but that love risks the loss of your children?

A while ago, a friend of mine told me she was in love with me.

It was a shock as neither of us had been with a woman and she was married with kids.

Since then, we have fallen deeply in love and have built a very strong and amazing relationship that is based on trust, acceptance, and love.

I can honestly say it is the most beautiful thing I have ever been a part of.

We struggle with one outstanding issue.

Will we be accepted by her children, or will our relationship cause a rift that we cannot repair?

They are teenage boys and her ex is openly unaccepting of the LGBTQ community and voices this around them.

She cannot live without her children and I do not want that either.

But he is a very dominant and controlling man.

So we struggle with how to move forward if we cannot be open with the only people who matter.

In telling them, she risks losing them.

In not telling them, we can never be whole.

We have spent many hours crying over this reality and cannot see a way through it.

Yeah,

I read this a few days ago and I've been thinking about Ginny.

Every night when I go to sleep, I think about Ginny.

And I want, I really want to hear,

Sister and Abby, what you have to say about Ginny's situation.

But what I keep coming back to

is this.

There's two situations here?

She uses the terms, I think, controlling and dominating.

Is that right?

So, my first question is: Is this man abusive?

If this man's abusive, then there's a whole nother set of things we need to do.

The second option is that he's not what they would define as abusive, but is clearly controlling, dominating, intolerant, bigoted,

is what I'm reading here.

I just keep thinking that

this family needs a hero,

that somebody along the way is going to have to break this pattern

of this person who is living, who is controlling this family with bigotry,

with anger, with domination.

Somebody's going to have to break that pattern.

This sounds like the family including Ginny's love

and those children, those teenage boys, are living in captivity of this unhealthy controlling pattern.

And I just keep thinking, like,

is Ginny's friend going to allow her children to be the ones who have to break that pattern?

Like, does Ginny's love, this woman, does she want her boys to be able to live their lives?

free from this oppression,

even if those lives are what, are not what this dad would deem acceptable,

does she want freedom for her sons

one day from this dominating, controlling man?

If she wants that for her sons, what a beautiful time to be the model of that now,

to be the pattern breaker.

Because we cannot expect our kids to do what we will not do.

So isn't it, if not now, when does Ginny's love

decide to model for her children that we do not cower and defer to bullies?

Like, isn't it

not, isn't it to me, it feels like now is the time

for Ginny,

Ginny's love, to change the pattern of this family.

to stop, even if it causes all kinds of destruction first, because reconstruction always causes destruction first.

And I just think at the end of the day, this isn't a story about gayness.

Like I just want to say, like

being controlled by a, by a dominating and controlling and bigoted man is not okay.

Yeah.

Like I just want to say that.

Like this is not okay to be held hostage for a family to be held hostage by one dynamic like that.

And I just can't,

like she said, Ginny said, I can honestly say it is the most beautiful thing I've ever been a part of.

Like, just please, even if it's hard, you pick your heart.

There's, it's hard to stay in a family where there's a dominating, scary presence that controls everything.

That's hard.

It's hard to break free from it, but both are hard.

So pick the beautiful hard,

right?

Don't give up the most beautiful thing you've ever been a part of to maintain something ugly.

And it might get,

it'll get harder before it gets better for that family.

I mean, the reality is they're teenage kids and they'll be half of the time with a dominating, controlling bigot

who is bashing

their mom and their mom's partner.

So, I mean, the reality of it is, isn't going to be like, tell the truth and it shall set you free.

And these teenagers will be like, we've been waiting for this moment of liberation where we can cry.

Well, under the, you know, what the reality is, is that they're going to be living with him and it's going to be very hard.

I mean, if it's hard for their mom, it's going to be hard for them to

deal with that.

So, but they are teenagers, right?

So they're going to live with a lot of turmoil for the next few years while they have to navigate their dad's disgust and disdain with their love for their mom and they're trying to accept their mom's new partner and it's going and they're going to navigate that.

And, but that isn't to say that exactly right, Glenn, that they're not going to see glimpses of, holy shit, I can't believe mom's brave enough to do that.

She's taking the arrow so that we can see a way.

If you don't, if you don't stand up to the bully, then you are basically handing down

the legacy that we don't stand up.

We don't stand up.

And if she's, if she's sending,

she has to share those kids with that scenario, at least she's showing them another way.

If she's, at least they will see two different ways.

If we just stay in the one way, that's just the water the kids swim in.

They don't know anything different ever.

They don't have anything to choose from in the future.

And I think that she's doing the thing that mothers do, which is I'm not going to overcomplicate my kids' lives.

I'm not going to make my kids' lives that much harder because the truth is, it will be hard for them to hear their mother bashed by their father.

It will be hard to, to, you know, navigate dealing with that with their dad and having to, you know,

I don't know if he's going to make them choose and make them condemn their mom.

Like, who the hell knows?

So that is hard.

But

so there is some

her living openly for the next few years.

as opposed to waiting till they're 18 and on their own and they can make their own choices when they're out from under their dad's control

is putting them in a position to navigate that.

It's also putting them in a position to, exactly what you said, see

that it is possible

to

go against

this controlling way.

And also, I just keep thinking, God forbid one of these kids is gay.

One of these kids is in a classroom.

with other kids who are gay and passing on their dad's bullshit.

Like this family, for many reasons, needs somebody to say this is wrong.

And we're not doing this here anymore.

Well, and also any kind of difference, like it doesn't even need to be about gayness.

It's just like any, if these kids are different from their parents in any way, they've learned to swallow it and to not ever express that difference.

I mean, there's a million things, a million hard things about it.

And to me, the right kind of hard

is to face it now.

Change the pattern now.

Let the chips fall.

Okay, let's hear from our pod squatter in the week of the week because I'm completely obsessed with them.

Hi, super women.

My name is Robin.

I want to share the latest thing with you because I feel like I have all of you ladies to thank for it.

So

first I'm going to say, do yourself a favor and listen to the song Turn Me On by Nora Jones.

I was just doing that.

And as I was was singing it because it's an old favorite

I started to sing it to myself.

I sing it to my fucking self because of you ladies.

I am the only one

and I'm realizing this now.

I am the only one that can turn myself off

and I'm also the only one that can turn myself back on.

And holy shit, it's liberating.

Oh my gosh.

I feel so grateful.

I feel so excited about this revelation where my mind was just blown to have that self-autonomy.

I can turn myself on.

I love you, ladies.

I thank you for the hard work you're doing, paving the way for all of us who want to do hard things too.

Love, love, love all of you.

Bye-bye.

I hope you guys listen to the song.

Did you just hear the freaking life in Robin's voice?

Let us all find the life that Robin has found.

I'm going to listen to that Nora Jones song again.

What is it called?

Turn me on.

Turn me on by Nora Jones.

Okay, do you know it?

Do you know that song?

Going to do it.

Of course I know it.

Nora Jones, early 2000s.

She just

mind blowing.

Some fresh ass ice.

Yeah.

It's a really, really good song.

2003.

I was driving in my Jeep in Washington, D.C.

New professional athlete here.

Chill.

I mean, it's like that.

Is Nora Jones?

She's kind of like the jazzy.

She sounds kind of like jazzy, like full of soul.

Yeah, piano, jazz.

All right.

Well, you all, here's your homework.

We're all going to listen to Nora Jones, I guess, today.

We're going to turn ourselves on.

I love all of you.

We will see you next week, at which point we will discuss more hard things.

And in the meantime, take it easy on yourselves.

All right.

We love you.

Bye.

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