What do women give up in order to be loved?
Elise Loehnen spent years helping tell other people’s stories before turning her attention to the invisible rules shaping her own. In her New York Times bestseller On Our Best Behavior, she examines how deeply women learn to associate goodness with acceptance and what that can cost us.
In this episode, Robin and Elise explore how those expectations shape the way women move through the world and relate to others. Elise shares how envy helped her recognize what she actually wanted, why women may not lack confidence so much as learn not to show it, and what happens when anger, ambition, and honesty begin to feel at odds with being liked. They also talk about motherhood, our relationships with other women, and the difference between fitting in and truly belonging.
This conversation is about what it takes to be fully yourself without believing that love and belonging have to be earned.
IN THIS EPISODE
(00:00:57) Introduction
(00:03:29) Elise's First Experience of Love & Learning to Be “Good”
(00:11:00) What Envy Can Teach Us About What We Want
(00:19:15) The Rules of Being a “Good Woman”
(00:29:14) “Why Boys Say “I Don’t Care” & Girls Say “I Don’t Know”
(00:32:46) What Elise Inherited From Her Mother
(00:39:28) Why Women Are Taught to Be Likable, Not Angry
(00:47:55) The Difference Between Belonging & Performing
(00:49:12) Why Confidence Isn’t the Problem for Women
(00:52:26) Power, Patriarchy & the End of an Old Era
(00:58:43) Being Whole Instead of Being Good
(01:02:06) The Loss That Changed How Elise Sees Life & Death
(01:11:34) Questioning the Stories We Inherit
(01:14:25) What Love Actually Feels Like
QUOTES
“So many of us spend our lives subjugating what we want to other people’s needs, making anything we want secondary.” — Elise Loehnen
I’m okay with not everybody liking me, and I’m okay with really speaking up when I’m angry. I will use my voice. But that took a lot of years to get here.” — Robin Ducharme
“Belonging has that very important word ‘be’ in it. It’s not about doing anything.” — Elise Loehnen
“We have to back each other. We have to stand together.” — Robin Ducharme
“I think women know and have confidence. I think that we’re conditioned to not express our confidence because nobody likes it.” — Elise Loehnen
“Just because it’s always been that way does not mean it’s the right way.” — Robin Ducharme
ABOUT THE GUEST
Elise Loehnen is the New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to be Good and the host of the podcast, Pulling the Thread, where she interviews cultural luminaries about the big questions of today, including people like Joy Harjo, John & Julie Gottman, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Esther Perel. In addition to On Our Best Behavior, she is the co-author of a corresponding workbook—Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness, and the co-author of True & False Magic, with legendary psychiatrist Phil Stutz. Elise lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Rob, and their sons, Max and Sam.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eliseloehnen/
Website: https://www.eliseloehnen.com/
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