This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be “Good” with Elise Loehnen | 388

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

What if being a “good woman” isn’t actually virtuous — but conditioned? In this episode of This Is Woman’s Work, Nicole Kalil sits down with Elise Loehnen, New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good, to dismantle the centuries-old rules that still dictate how women are expected to behave, desire, rest, earn, and lead. Together, they unpack how the seven deadly sins — yes, those — quietly shape modern women’s lives, ambitions, bodies, money stories, and relationships. Pride, envy, greed, sloth, lust… turns out they’ve been weaponized against women for generations, rewarding self-sacrifice and punishing visibility, appetite, and power. This conversation goes deep — into patriarchy, good-girl conditioning, reputational harm, money shame, envy as information, and why women are often both the enforcers and the casualties of these ancient rules. If you’ve ever felt exhausted by trying to be good, likable, selfless, and low-maintenance all at once… this episode is your permission slip to stop. Because goodness that costs you yourself isn’t goodness. It’s conditioning. Thank you to our sponsors! Sex is a skill. Beducated is where you learn it. Visit https://beducate.me/bg2602-womanswork and use code womanswork for 50% off the annual pass. Shopify has everything all in one place, making your life easier and your business operations smoother. Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial today at shopify.com/tiww  Connect with Elise: Substack: eliseloehnen.substack.com  IG: https://www.instagram.com/eliseloehnen/  Book: https://www.eliseloehnen.com/onourbestbehavior  Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pulling-the-thread-with-elise-loehnen/id1585015034   Related Podcast Episodes: 136 / Mean Girls with Caroline Adams Miller How To Defy Expectations with Dr. Sunita Sah | 271 From Mean Girls to Hype Women with Erin Gallagher | 353 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. And friend, we simply cannot do that without examining our internal beliefs around what it actually means to be good. Not good as in grounded, whole, or integrity filled. Not the kind of goodness we feel from the inside. I'm talking good as in compliant, contained, self-sacrificing, the version of a, and I put in air quotes,

good woman that's been sold for centuries like it's the secret to moral superiority. Because many of us have absorbed the idea that sacrifice is the currency of goodness. Then when we think about the things that matter to us, we almost immediately associate it with sacrifice, marriage, motherhood, success, sacrifice. sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. Image, God forbid we don't sacrifice. And listen, compromise is part of being human. But what I've seen modeled is not compromise or mutuality. It's women absorbing the cost of all of that sacrifice. Women bending so someone else can stand tall. Women stabilizing an entire emotional ecosystem so no one else has to feel discomfort. Somehow being good became the gold star you earn for making yourself smaller, but only if you do it with a smile, of course.

What I didn't realize, though, at least not consciously, is that so much of this conditioning can be traced back to a very old moral framework that wasn't designed for us, but absolutely shapes us. And that's the seven deadly sins. Yes, I'm talking about pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. A list created back in the fourth century that somehow still dictates how women behave in 2026. A list that whispers, or if you happen to be on social media, screams, don't want too much, don't rest too much, don't eat too much, don't desire too much, and definitely don't ask for too much. Ultimately, don't be too much. And we internalize these rules young and then enforce them on ourselves and each other like we're trying to win some sort of invisible merit badge

for good womanhood. And then we wonder why we're tired, resentful, undernourished, and disconnected from our own appetites, desires, ambitions, or needs. So maybe the real question isn't how do I be good, but why does being good in today's society require me sacrificing for everyone else's comfort. So today's guest has been asking and answering that question and many more with a level of clarity, research, and cultural insight that honestly makes me rethink my entire internal operating system. Elise Lunan is the New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior, the price women pay to be good. She's also the host of the brilliant podcast pulling the thread, where she tackles the big questions shaping our lives with some of the sharpest thinkers of our time.

Elise has co-written 14 books, five New York Times bestsellers, and previously served as the chief content officer at Goop, co-hosting both the Goop podcast and the Goop Lab on Netflix. Her work sits at the intersection of cultural, psychology, spirituality, and lived experience, and she's here to help us examine unlearn and ultimately liberate ourselves from the ancient rules that keep us small. Elise, welcome to the show. I have so many questions. So I'd love to kick us off by asking you to clarify what you mean by being on our best

behavior or being good. How do you define good girl conditioning? Well, first, that intro was amazing. Thank you for that. I could not have said it or written it better. So essentially, I think you put, you nailed it, which is this idea. that I think that we are good. That's like an inherent reality

of what it is to be human. I think we all operate with a certain amount of shadow. Some people have more shadow than others, but I think that goodness is an inherent intrinsic quality. And yet, as you describe, women are trained to look to peers, professors, priests, parents,

to adjudicate our goodness for us and to seek, approval out there. And there's really good reasons for this. You also said it. It's the patriarchal culture, an order under which we've been raised. It's not necessarily how it's always been, but it's certainly how it's been in our lifetimes. And it could be something different going forward. And when we think about goodness, so that's one of the first things, one of the first questions I often get is like, isn't it good to be good? I'm not talking about that sort of internal worth or value or wanting to see beauty and goodness reflected in the world, wanting good things for people,

wanting a better tomorrow. I'm talking about the way that we are conditioned to perform goodness as a quality or as a behavior, not necessarily as an internal quality. And to be a good mother, a good friend, a good coworker, all those labels that we strive to live up to that are cultural condition, program, scripted, handed to us in a way that I think really curtails our own expression and ironically curtails what the future that we're trying to build. And that's a future in which we're all bring our entirely unique gifts, capacities, points of genius to bear. And most of us are not doing that because we're trying to abide by a culture that wants something else. There are a lot of good things in what you said, but a few things jumped out to me.

First, this sort of conditioning that we have that we want to outsource an internal feeling. As you described, goodness and seeing goodness, that's something that's mostly an internal thing, but we've been taught to outsource it to other people's opinions, beliefs, proving ourselves, people pleasing, all the things. Yeah. You also said something that made me think about how we often as women think that being good is the same as being all things to all people. Yeah. And it reminds me of a feeling that I've had and I think a lot of women have experienced of if I'm not good, I must be bad.

Like it's this one or the other as opposed to at the beginning you talked about like we all have shadow. We all have tough times. We all have challenges. We all have things we don't love about ourselves. This idea that it's so black and white is nonsensical. Yes, but it's the air we breathe, right? We live in this entirely dualistic binary world. If you're not good, you're bad. If you do something bad, you can't possibly be good. And I think many of us live our lives, particularly because, you know, in the book, I write about how women are conditioned for goodness while men are conditioned for power. And the patriarchy is very deeply wounding to men as well and by extension through them to us. But when your entire identity is staked around these ideas of goodness, you are so susceptible to reputational harm. That's what, that's all we do in our culture is say that a woman is a bad mother, abusive, even if there's no actual infraction, it doesn't, it, if she's not nice, right to everyone, then she just won't bear up under our scrutiny. So you just see these women

being canceled, left, right and center. That's also the sin of pride, bringing too much attention to yourself. And women are participating sort of in these pylons too because it makes us so deeply uncomfortable. But when you are so susceptible to reputational harm, it becomes entire, your safety, your security is staked on having the approval. of everyone else. So it's this like weird self-fulfilling prophecy that we find ourselves in that's incredibly scary and real, even though it's not, but it feels as like restrictive and existential as it is. Meanwhile, we all do terrible. I mean, like the reality is we are probably half as kind as we think that we are, right? Like we all know this. You watch your friends. You

recognize their wholeness, the times when they're grumpy and mean and short. It's like part of what it is to be human. Yeah. You said something really important in there and that, that I believe too, is that the patriarchy harms all of us, except for maybe a small percent of the most powerful men. They're all miserable, though. I mean, look at them. Like, fair.

I don't know anyone who is not harmed, even the most powerful and the wealthiest. Still not enough somehow. I think, though, the distinction that you made that is important is where it impacts men most obviously is it feels a little more narrow. It's because it's defined under power, success, provide. Whereas for women, it feels, and I don't know if the research backs this up, but it feels so much more all encompassing. It's not just how we show up in these narrow subsets. It's literally how we show up everywhere with everyone in. every aspect. Is that a fair statement? Does the research back that up or am I just? No, I think that's

completely fair because I think that there's, it's interesting, you mentioned sort of like the protect narrative that men get around power, right? And it's always circling, whether it's in the manosphere or it's being put forward by more progressive men, like Scott Galloway, for example, in his new book, it's the same strumming of the guitar that like, that men are kind of for war worrying. And what is James Hollis has three descriptors? War worrying and can't remember. But like, yeah, protect and provide.

And that this is somehow, this is the inheritance of men. And it goes back to this like idea that men were these valiant hunters while we were in the caves dusting, you know, in prehistoric days. And the reality is like that's not actually. what happened. We were highly affiliative. Women of all generations gather 60% of calories, but we were also hunting. Often in different ways, like when they look at the evidence, men were more likely to throw spears. Women were more likely to use like a bow and arrow or a knife. But we were all out there surviving, as you would imagine. Like put yourself back there. You're not

like shopping from the Sears catalog. You're busy and like the sustaining of life. Men were nurturing. caretaking. So there's no evidence back in the day that we were this patriarchal culture. That's a relatively recent invention. But I think that the truth is that when you think about the way that our culture, particularly with this resurgence of patriarchal values, often coming from women who are somehow liberated to not abide by those patriarchal values, even as they're telling the rest of us to like get home and take care of our kids, it flies. against what it is to be a woman and a human, which is, of course, we are caretaking, protecting and providing as well. And we're not just doing it within the constraints of these

four walls. So I think for women, it's like there is actually a confrontation in the same way there would be for men. And there is for men, I think emotionally when you say, no, you're, you are not supposed to be, you're not supposed to love your children. right? You're not supposed to be present for your children. They'll prioritize them over your success or whatever. But I do think because humans are, we are engaged in all of these activities that for women, it feels like the conscription is more all-encompassing in that way that you described. whereas I think for men, there are fewer restrictions on them.

It's mostly around this. Like, you have to be powerful. Yeah. You can't be feminine, weak, et cetera. Sorry to break in, but this part matters. Rate the show, share it, and support the sponsor so I can keep making episodes worth interrupting you for. Every January, women feel pressure to fix themselves.

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examples of how this shows up in our world today. Yeah. It was surprising to me too. Honestly, I felt like Dan Brown as I was working on this book. Yes, totally. I was picking up these clues from the culture and I'm like, how do these things all connect? They have to connect. But, you know, I was like trying to trace it back to where did it start. And so it very much felt like that sort of conspiracy, even though I don't know that anyone ever knows what they're actually creating in the moment. It's hard to, you know, it's hard to say, oh, this is what you were trying to create. But I knew in my own life that despite being raised, I'm from Montana, these two progressive parents. My father's Jewish. My mom calls herself a recovering Catholic. I grew up in some ways

way outside of this culture with the drumbeat of like, you can do anything, you can be anything. That was definitely not only inculcated in me, but expected and supported. And yet when I turned 40 and wrote this book, in part it was because I was like I've never felt farther from the finish line, even though I have achieved so much in my life and I should feel safe. I should feel secure. I should feel like I've made it and that I'm good enough. And yet I'm breathless. I feel terrible.

I feel fucking terrified. Yeah. And what is happening? And what am I, like, what is this audience that I'm performing my life for? And that was sort of the starting point. And then through this excavation of this question of like, why do I not feel good enough? And what does that even mean? What is goodness?

How is it determined? How is it gendered? I came to realize that I have been abiding by these seven deadly sins, even though I only knew them because I worked at Goop and had seen the movie seven, you know? Like, it wasn't in me. And then I didn't go to Sunday school. And so then, of course, I'm like, okay, well, where are they in the Bible? Like, let me go to the scripture. And that's when I realized, and most of my friends who were raised as Catholics do not know this.

They were not in the Bible. They're not in the Bible. They do not appear as a set in the Bible. As you mentioned, they came out of the Egyptian desert in the 4th century at the hand of this ascetic monk named DeVagrias Ponticus, who's also credited as an early father of the Enneagram. and there were these set of, they were eight demons, demonic, meaning distraction, these thoughts that would keep these priests out of prayer and are out of a direct relationship with God. And then it made it through the desert.

And then it wasn't until 590 that Pope Gregory, the first, in a homily, which is famous to fans of Mary Magdalene. this is the homily in which he turned, he said Mary Magdalene is the same woman who annoys Jesus' feet with her hair, different woman, and that woman is a penitent prostitute. He just invented that wholesale. And he said Mary Magdalene is the one who carries these cardinal vices. At that point, they had become seven, the seven that you listed, the eighth that was dropped with sadness, which I include in the book, because that's what I think is lodged in the minds of men in the context of power, a fear of feeling their own feelings. And that's what set it in motion, as far as I can tell, that the most famous, aside from Mother Mary, the most important woman in the gospel,

who obviously has been somewhat scrubbed out, but if you read her gospel and you know anything about the Gnostic Gospels, you would know she is really the apostle, the first apostle, the one to whom she gets the first teaching, she brings it back to the apostles, and then she's deemed a whore. I mean, it's very modern. It's very modern, Nicole. And it wasn't until recent years. It's wild.

It's a movie script. Yeah. And I just want to reiterate, I didn't know we were going to go there, and I'm always fascinated by this. But there is no historical way that Mary Magdalene could have been a whore. She wrote back then only the most wealthy, the most prosperous, the most connected families would have a daughter learn the skill of reading and writing. Therefore, she could not have been what they made her to be. evidentially, it's a wild story and it's so interesting how it was either the virgin or the whore. Like those are two available options.

Sorry. Yeah, it's a story. No, but a story with really long teeth, as we know. And it speaks to this reputational damage that happens to women and you just can't shake it. Right? We see it all over our culture. It's enough to say, like, Nicole's kind of a bitch. You know, she's really toxic and mean to her employees.

that's enough. Yeah. There might be no, no alterc—no evidence, nothing that's actually happened. It's just even saying it is enough for us to say, she's done. Yeah. Often women, you know, we're sort of our own grave diggers.

We'll take ourselves off the scene. But with men, it's like they have to do something, even if they do something truly terrible, it's cool. We don't care, as long as we perceive them as powerful. but they are not reputational damage, it doesn't matter. It's wild. It's actually wild.

Okay, so what are some of the most surprising ways these seven deadly sins or these old rules are showing up in modern women's behaviors? Like, how do you see that still playing out today? I know there are a lot of examples that are obvious, but maybe some of the more surprising ones. Yeah. I mean, the obvious ones, I don't think any of us are oblivious to the fact that you cannot have a quote, unquote, bad body in our culture and be okay, right? Like gluttony reigns supreme. And it seemed like a minute, for a minute, like we were moving past it. And then everyone was like, oh, GLP1.

So we'll just like, there's just literally no excuse, right, for to have an undisciplined appetite. Well, and I would also add too. you can have the most disciplined appetite, but if your body doesn't project the way people think... Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's... Oh, yeah.

Yeah, that's a great lie. I think all women also know this lie, even though we keep believing the lie, which is this like, oh, it's a game of discipline and counting calories, and it's calories in equals calories out, and it's your fault that your body doesn't abide by whatever the standard is. Women know that lie. I mean, it's a joke.

Right? Like the math doesn't math. It's never mathed. But yeah, so that one's, that was the easiest chapter to write money, you know, this idea of greed and women's aversion to talking about money, having money, having anxiety, whether they feel like they have too much or not enough. It's rare to meet a woman who's incredibly comfortable with money who isn't simultaneously explaining all of the philanthropy or the good things that she does to sort of sanitize. that money, whereas money is really a neutral, it's a neutral energy, right? We just endowed with a lot of meaning. And men are not tripping over themselves to justify their wealth, while women are just terrified of being perceived as having too much. And because, but women, meanwhile, are more philanthropic. They are more generous. We need women to have money desperately. Money is one of the closest things, right? power in our culture. We need more more women with more money and more power. And yet our, you know, refusal to talk about it, our fear and anxiety around it, we're better investors.

We're better with it. So that one is also, I think, quite over and pernicious. And we talk about things like the wage gap, which are obviously a lot more complicated than how they're often served to us. But the wealth gap is really dramatic, which is the amount of money that men have and invested in savings account, savings accounts, et cetera, compared to women, that's a really, really massive difference and quite terrifying when we think about, like, what does give you a little semblance of security and safety. I think the one that's the most subtle and the most important, though, is envy. And I think that's the gateway to the other sins. I think it's a source of women on women hate. I think if we could get comfortable with our own envy and

start to decipher it actually is an internal compass showing us what we want. And that the other woman's not bad, we don't need to shame her, deprecate her, judge her. That's actually our unconscious envy. We don't recognize it because we're so scared of it. We shove it, suppress it, project it. But if we could start to say, why is this woman bothering me? Why do I feel like I need to tear her down? Why do I need to criticize what she's doing? Oh, maybe she has some. something that I want or is doing something that I want. And I actually need to pay attention to that, model myself after her, study her, and use her as a beacon for what's possible for me and not as an obstacle or deterrent. I think we could dramatically change things rapidly. I just want to reiterate

the power of what you said there is like looking at our comparison or envy or jealousy as an opportunity to go inward. What does this tell me? about me, about my desires, about what's missing, about an experience that I'm looking for. And agreed completely that we have now people that we can learn from, model after, but also in some cases, I may not want to learn from or model after or, and I can choose that. But this tells me more about me than it tells me about this other person. and if I don't have anything nice to say, then shut the fuck up type thing. Yeah.

Well, and I think that there's a really important distinction because people say, well, like, are you just telling people that they have to like everyone? And no, not at all. But the way it showed up for me, you mentioned I had ghost written. I don't even know how many books. I have 14, 15, 16 books. I do like doing it. When I started working with my own envy before I started writing on our best behavior,

I realized that I actually wanted to write a book. I wanted to have my own podcast. I wanted to stand for myself, by myself, outside of any brand, because I started to trace my envy and watch my own projection and start pulling those projections back and examining them. You know, I would find myself saying, like, why do, that book sucked. Like, how is that book a number one New York Times bestseller? Like her voice is annoying.

Why does she think that she can have a show? Like, who is she to stand up her own shingle, et cetera? I've been operating almost exclusively behind other people and their brands. And I would not allow myself to stand up for me. And so I needed to recognize, oh, that's envy. I am just, it's envy. And yes, that makes me so incredibly uncomfortable. and yet it's showing me exactly what I want.

It is my soul saying, pay attention to this. I'm going to hold up a mirror to you and make you so uncomfortable until you start stepping into what's calling to you. And you claim what you want and you start moving in that direction. And it was a powerful shift change in my own life. And now I'm very accustomed to using it to navigate.

Like, why is this person bothering me to quote Richard Schwartz, a tour mentor? there's some information for me. It's not about them, not about them. This is entirely about what's happening in me. If you do this with your friends, you find that different people stoke your friends versus you because you want different things. But it's like the best divining rod. Why am I so agitated? Why is this working on me? What's happening in me? How can I use this? What's trying to come out of me? and it's complex, but envy dovetails with pride, with dovetails with scarcity.

But I think the more that women can start working with that envy and to recognize because you have it is actually an indicator that I could have it to rather than there's only one of us who can survive, which is sort of what happens. The more we can move with that energy, I think the faster more of us, we start to see the halls of power. changed. We start to see the podcast charts change, et cetera. Okay, so you gave several very good examples, and I'm curious about pride because it feels like a funny one to have in a sin category where I know feeling proud of myself is really important. But then I also know, like a lot of women, I tend to want to downplay accomplishments or play the modesty game. Talk to us a little bit. but about pride. Yeah. So, and I think the original intention of the idea of pride is actually quite beautiful, which is it wasn't about sort of self-aggrandizing. It was about feeling like

you didn't need God. That was the original energy behind, in the Vagrius Ponticus time, standing aside from God, which I think is like a kind of a beautiful, I'm not a religious person, but I think that that's a beautiful reframe of actually like, we're, all co-creative, we're all working with the universe in some way, and owning that, I think, is important. But pride, as it shows up for women, is being willing to stand apart and being recognized and seen as having some sort of particular talent or gift or skill. And there's a lot of anxiety that I think comes up for women. You know, if you think about Carol Gilligan's work, if you think about developmental psychology

and the models that suggest that women are really pushed into this relational zone where to individuate, separate, and stand apart is sort of a kind of death, right? The reality is boys and girls need to individuate and be in relationship in a back and forth, back and forth or in a cyclical way, right? But boys are conditioned to separate and individuate.

girls are conditioned to not, to stay in relationship as the most primary currency. And so I think pride is like, it hits that core wound of, I'm going to step apart and I'm going to be destroyed. I'm going to lose approval. I'm going to lose belonging. I'm going to be shunned, ostracized, et cetera. It's tall poppy in the poppy field. So it's another one of these existential fears. The reality is, I think we all know, looking at our culture and how chaotic and scary and how many things seem to be pressing in on us from all sides. This is like an all hands on deck moment in our culture. And we are all uniquely gifted. And we all need to be showing up with those unique gifts in the world. And your gift might be baking bread. It might be taking care of children. It might be leading a 500,000 person company. It

might be building AI models. It doesn't matter, but it is incumbent on all of us to show up and express ourselves in very unique, differentiated ways. Most of us struggle to do it. Yeah. Well, and one of the ways I talk about confidence and how it plays out in our life is knowing who you are, owning who you're not, and choosing to embrace all of it. And I think that's that opportunity that you're talking about for all of us, like letting go of the things that we're not meant for and that aren't meant for us and being good with, like, this is my unique gift and ability. It doesn't make me too big for my britches. It doesn't make me think I'm better than everybody else. It's just me operating in my gift and letting go of all of the other things I'm supposed to or should or, you know,

make me good in the eyes of others. Easier said than done, though. So my Okay. Last question, it really is a big one. It's around, okay, if we're starting to recognize that we've been unconsciously operating under these seven deadly sins and that they've been guiding our lives, how do we examine, disconnect, and maybe the most courageous part is choose to be true to ourselves, knowing it might fly in the face of what other people perceive. receive as good or, you know, there might be some backlash. Like, how do we do this? Yeah, it's really hard. And I did, I wrote a workbook with a friend who's a coach for this purpose to help people even start to identify some of these stories because some of them are more insistent for, I have a lot of money stories, for example, whereas I don't have as many, maybe gluttony stories. So it's difficult. I think the main thing, though, is the most important, or, you know, the most important impactful thing you can do is start to identify that you're telling yourself a story about what

maybe a good woman or a good friend or a good mother would do. And separating that from fact in the workbook, it's called choosing wholeness over goodness. We do fact versus story, which is a fact is something that can be recorded on a video camera. It's irrefutable. Everything else's story. So even I'm a good mother is a story. Right? Or I'm a really good coworker story. I need to do this thing, story. And so the more that you can not operate from fact, stories incredibly important, it gives us meaning, it gives us culture, it gives us statehood,

it gives us everything. But choosing your stories or recognizing, oh, this is a story that's running my life. So, for example, this will be relevant. One of my big stories is, I'm the only one who can do things right, so I should do them all. And this is a story.

story a lot of women have. For me, and this is a process, it process is done in the workbook, but I'll do it quickly. It's a story that is very easy for me to come by. You know, I go out of town. My child doesn't do his homework fact. I'm the only one who can do things right, so I should do them all. Like, I got to take over this parenting thing, right? And then I behave in a way to make that story true as close to a fact as possible. So with my husband, who is perfectly competent, Nicole, but I will do whatever I can to ensure that I'm the only one who can do things right, which means guarding passwords, being the first person to pick up the phone, so the school automatically thinks that I'm primary and that I'm the person they should call,

managing all the relationships with doctors, you know, all the things, right? Like, I am doing that. Not because he is insisting that I'm doing that, but because I'm trying to prove out this story to myself. Now, if I slow down and I say, what's that story about? It's a deep, it's, there's a profound fear, which is a fear of loss of control, fear of loss of approval, and ultimately fear of loss and safety and security. And it comes down to, and this is program I picked up from the culture, probably from my parents, from, from everyone, which is, who am I? Why would anyone love me or be in relationship with me, if I'm not making things so easy. My competency is my calling card for keeping people relying on me, dependent on me, and in relationship with me. And it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Meanwhile, if I really examine that story, is it a fact? No. My husband didn't marry me because I'm so good with Google Calendar. Right. And doctor's appointment. No. I am self-soothing. through promoting the story in my own life. And there's a lot, there are a lot of tools for doing that. And then, but part of it is like, wow, this story sucks. This story is not self-supportive. This story is burning me out. It got me really far. I love this story in some ways. I thank it for a lot. And then also I need something else. And I need to be modeling something different. I don't have daughters. But one of the practices in this workbook is to teach a class on making this story true. and you start to just see, oh, this is how contagious this stuff is.

We do it for each other on Instagram, right? We do it in office shares. It's like we watch each other. I'm like, oh, in order to do this, I need to do this, like this person. We're not conscious of it, but I'm trying to be more careful about the stories that I'm running because I don't want other people to structure their lives in the same way. Right. Okay.

I said that was going to be my last question, but I have to follow up. with, I think, examining the story that we're telling ourselves, does it serve us? In what ways does it serve us? And what ways does it not? What are the costs? Like, these are important things. But one of the thoughts that kept popping in my head is also that reminder of my story isn't the story, meaning even if I choose something to be my story or it feels real and true to me, that doesn't mean that it's a story that I get to put on other people. I have this belief that it isn't just men or even predominantly men at this point

that are keeping the patriarchy and business. It's like women on women crime that's happening the most. It's this almost like in order for me to feel good or to feel like my story is good, it has to be applicable to everybody. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, first I'm with you. That's one of the reasons I wanted to write the book is that I was looking for sort of, I was trying to draw a triangle like life. And I was like, clearly it's the men, right? Like the men are the problem. Like that's the dominant narrative. And then I was like, oh, interesting. When I look around in my own life, I see a lot of some real nefarious fucks. Yeah, but also some incredibly loving, supportive men who prop me up and gave me big breaks and taught me how to negotiate. and mentored me.

And I saw some women who were horrible and some wonderful women, to be fair. So I was like, this is a simplistic thing. And I could recognize the way in which I, that the patriarchy was alive and me, not only was I policing myself, but I would police other women, right? And all the ways we were talking about envy, like that sort of unmitigated criticism of not real things, but just how someone made me feel and I would blame them for making me feel that way. So I think that I agree with your story that patriarchy is, we're supporting it in our own behavior and perpetuating it on ourselves and on each other as much as men are, even though they may seem to benefit from it more.

I think we benefit from it in a different way. And because I think that it's a heavy is the burden, right, that wears the crown. like you think about how the psychic toll of oppression is not a good outcome. Right. I don't think I answered your question, though. No, you did. And it's complex. And it's, you know, I think we have a tendency to oversimplify or want to oversimplify these things.

And the reality is, is complex. And what works for one person may not work for another. And it requires a lot of internal. Self responsibility. Yes. self-authorship, like it's easier in many ways to just blame other people than it is to say, okay, well, which part of this do I own? And which part of this can I change?

And if I shift, will this shift to? It's more work, but it's, yeah, like it's significantly easier to follow the script than it is to write it. Yeah, it is. And that's ultimately what we're talking about here. And there are costs associated with following the script. And I think, you know, we've mostly been unconscious to a lot of it. So, Elise, very rarely do I wish we had two-hour episodes. This is one of those times.

I can ask you one million questions. This was so fun. But I want to remind our listener that if you, like me, want more of Elise and her work, we're going to put the link to Elisa's substack in show notes. You can also listen to the Pulling the Thread podcast. Or go get her book on our best behavior and the corresponding workbook, which is called Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness. Elise, thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this important work. And thank you for

modeling all the things that you're talking about, even though I know it's so hard. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Okay, friend, what I hope you walk away with is permission. Not from me or at least or anyone else, but from yourself to re-examine the rules that you've been obeying without even knowing it. To question the scripts that tell you to want less, rest less, need less, be less. You and I were never meant to fit inside a framework that punishes our ambition, pathologizes our appetite, or moralizes our exhaustion. We get to explore the edges of our own wants, our own boundaries, our own hunger for more. We get to question everything we were told that was sinful and ask, is this actually wrong or just inconvenient for someone else?

Goodness that costs you yourself? Well, that's not goodness. That's conditioning. Because we We are meant to live fully, speak boldly, want generously, rest deeply, to be human. And that, my friend, is woman's work.