We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Hypervigilance & Loss Without Closure

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

In this Bonus episode, Amanda answers your follow-up questions: 1. How do you take care of the person who takes care of everyone else? 2. How do you find peace and closure when you will never know the story of what really happened? 3. The weird way Amanda can only relax when her husband gets fired up. 4. The strategy that now grounds Amanda when she is most activated and afraid. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things! It's so hard out there! It is hard out there. It is hard out there. It's brutal out there. So here's what we're doing today. We are here to answer your hard questions of us. At your service, Pod Squad. At your service, what happens is that we decide what we want to talk about and then we talk about those things here. And then sometimes you

ask us questions that we ignore because they feel hard. And today, we are going to Joan of Arc, the shit out of these hard questions, meaning we are going to get on our little horse and rush straight towards the hard of the Pod Squad's questions, because there's a lot of good stuff in the questions we want to ignore isn't there Mary Abigail? There is. I feel a little bit. What's the word? I feel like a soft shell crab. Vulnerable. Oh. So that's y'all are here to support us, right? Out there with Pod Squad. Yes, absolutely. It's going to be a good one.

Okay, so Amanda, do you mind starting? It's so funny when you try to call me Amanda. So, Amanda. Well, it's always this. She's always. She's always. Exactly. Amanda.

She's going to end up being Samantha. Samantha. Here's the thing, and I want to address that. Okay. I have called you sister since forever, since you were born. After those horrific three years that I was left on the planet without you, it deeply upsets the pod squad. Okay, I'm just the pod squad loves you and they feel that me calling you sister is dismissive of every single thing you are because it's reducing you to the role that you are to me as opposed to what you are now to the world, which is Amanda in all of your many dimensions. I will never stop calling you sister outside of this pod, but I understand that.

And I want to honor that because I get it. So I'm going to try to call you Samantha on this one. I mean, on the pod. So Samantha, we're going to first hear from Ashley. I'll tell you when I don't like as Samantha. I like sister. All right, Ashley, what do you got? Hi, this is Ashley, and I was just listening

to episode 162 and listening to sister story, and I just wanted to know how it was a story about the Christmas ornament, by the way. How did you come to find peace without knowing what happened? I feel like that's something a lot of us really struggle with. I love hearing your perspectives about that, and we'll love to hear more. Thanks, bye.

Thank you, Ashley. I too struggled with that. So what Ashley is referring to, go listen to 162, but broad strokes of what she's referring to, go listen to 162, but broad strokes of what she's referring to is very quick separation with my former husband, didn't know which way it was up, why it was happening. I thought it's because I asked him to choose between his job and his marriage. marriage, but all fell apart very, very surprisingly quickly and then he vanished. And as I was trying to put together the pieces, I received in the mail to the former home that we had a baby's first first Christmas ornament that was congratulating him on the birth of his new baby. So that gave me a little clue into because you in fact were not pregnant. No, no, I was not. And how

many months later was this from the separation? After I got the gift, I looked up a baby registries and the birth date at the time the registry was made was strongly correlated with a co-occurrence of events. Got it. Yeah. So regardless, what I was talking about during that is like, I don't know what happened. I don't know, I don't know the timing. I don't know the details. I don't know exactly what precipitated what some people would look at me and say I was a fool to not wholeheartedly believe that that was happening the whole time, which explains why everything fell apart so quickly, which explains why a baby was born so quickly, which all of it. And yet, one cannot, no,

exactly what happened. So the last time I talked to him, we had two five-minute conversations about the demise of the marriage. At the second one, he walked out the door and I haven't talked to him since so that was, you know, was that 15 years ago? Something like that. So I don't have any details as to what happened. And I really actually wanted to have those details like I wanted to have a story. I wanted a narrative to be able to say what happened to me and to my life and to my marriage. And I wanted to be able to explain it to myself and other people and to draw lessons and connect some kind of dots that were there. And I think to draw some meaning and justify my sorrow, to explain my sorrow to myself. And really it felt like a dignity thing to me.

It felt like an inseparable loss of dignity to not know my own story. And so the hardest thing was to let go of the having an explanation or story. And I think I realized that I would either have to choose whether to continue to rail against this impossible unfairness that I would either have to choose whether to continue to rail against this impossible unfairness that I would never know the truth of what happened or to release it into mystery. And it actually gave me more peace to release it into mystery. And I think that's closer to the truth, actually, because the truth is that most of life is a mystery. Yup.

And that acceptance of that mystery might be as close as we get to reality, because there isn't much explanation for a lot of the sorrow that we have. Even if I had my story of what happened, even if I knew the facts and the dates and the times and the events, that would be my story of what happened. It wouldn't be his story of what happened, it wouldn't be her story of what happened.

There would be no capital to truth in that. It would just be the way that I use a story to survive sorrow. And I have a friend right now, a dear beautiful friend who is my age, who has kids my age, and who loves her kids as much as I love my kids. And she is dying right now.

She is fighting to have weeks and months with her kids and her breath. And there is no story or narrative and there are no dots you could possibly connect to make sense of that. And so this isn't to say like some kind of sorrow relativism like my divorce was less traumatizing than her fighting to live. It's about the fact that we struggle so hard to manufacture knowing what happened. And we almost always can. Until we absolutely can't. Like my friend, like the friends who are mourning and walking with her. And I just think maybe there's a little more closeness to the reality of life when we surrender to mystery earlier than when we absolutely must.

The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to find, it all keeps coming back to that. That is so beautiful and true. And when you said that maybe the surrender to the mystery of things is closer to the truth than the trying to figure out the truth. I mean, I can tell you as a person whose job has been to write memoirs of my life, the more memoirs I write, the less I know all it is is looking back from this perspective. But what if I turn a little bit and look from this perspective? But what if I turn and look from this perspective? It all changes even so, even all of that being true, which I do believe everything you just said

is the truth. Do you ever find yourself like Googling to figure it out? Do you ever become detective again? Yeah. So only God. I didn't for a really, I think I did it like once, like four years after. I don't know like what kind of begotten my bonnet

that I did that. It's relatable though. It's relatable so I appreciate it. Yeah. And to be fair, like my initial Googling, it wasn't like I want to be together. It was still trying to piece shit together. It was being a detective.

Like trying to put your life together. How does this story work then? Yeah. Is the story work that that was his true love? And there's still together, does the story work where that was like, oops, we accidentally got pregnant and now we're broken up. How does this story work?

Like, I was still trying to get the story. So it's not like I have, you know, no, not feelings. It's not about feelings at all. It's about putting a puzzle together. It's about still thinking of your life as a puzzle that you're just one piece away from putting together, which is actually makes sense. It's never gonna happen.

It's never gonna happen. And then somebody wrote into this our podcast email address and saying that they knew him which was very odd because I would not have revealed his identity or any kind of anything. And that felt weirdly... Intrusive to me. Yeah. And it felt like because of the nature of it, so Allison, who got the email first and who's been my friend for decades, called and was like, Rattle, I'm not gonna send this to you because I don't know what's going,

but do you want me to send this to you because it's like explaining some things. And I said, no, I don't want it. I don't want to see it. But it wasn't explaining things according to her. It was just kind of empathizing with him, which is great. I got that. When that person called in to offer empathy or perspective from the exes side, I'm mostly just trying to figure my own self out because I am obsessed with this

Pad Squad and I was so pissed about that. I don't know. I didn't hear the message. I don't know. I just still feel pissed about it. I feel like we are all sitting at a table where we're like each other's people, where each other's friends. And like if somebody, one of my friends, pours their heart about out about their divorce and then somebody at the table is like, yeah, but have you thought of his person? I just feel like it's a breach of some kind,

but maybe I'm in sister bear mode. How did it make you feel and why? So, a couple of things. A, the breach felt to me, like my privacy had been invaded somehow because I had not identified him. Mm, yes. I had not said this is the person.

Here's the identifiable information that you can use to ascertain who this person is. And so the that person identifying him to me before I did, this was about a year and a half ago before I'd given any kind of information. Felt like you're putting together pieces back to me that I have not invited you to do. And then you know what? And this is going to be kind of opening myself up to something here. But the way that Allison described, the email going was some of the stuff that I just

feel is so fucking tired. You know, a lot of the stuff that explained away, a lot of his behavior. So the whole really jacked up relationship with his dad, military and hard stuff overseas, and he just compartmentalizes and jacked up relationship with dad. Did I mention the relationship with dad?

Like these things that I feel like, yes, those are all very valid. And yes, we need to be aware of them when we go into relationships with people. They dramatically affect everything. It is real. And also, there comes a point in people's lives where we stop explaining and excusing behavior for decades and decades and decades based on an unwillingness to confront the issues that they're bringing to the table and ongoing choices about what they're exposing themselves to. What that means to me when people say that to me is, here, can you hold these bags for him and then can you let go of any kind of accountability you would put on him?

Like he has to hold those bags. Those bags that he won't put down, he has to hold. And they are not mine to hold. And they don't have anything to do with his ultimate decision to make the choices he made towards me. And I am not in a position to condemn. And I'm also not in a position to absolve. That is not my business. And so I don't need you coming to me anymore telling me to absolve him, then you are coming

to me telling me to condemn him. I'm not taking your advice on either of those things. Amen, sister. So good. So good. It's also the suggestion of like, I have more information or compassion than you do. Yeah.

And you were in the fucking marriage? Yeah. Like, anyway, yours is better. I'm Jonathan M. Hevar. I'm a podcast producer and I'm someone who likes fancy things. But I grew up working class. My parents were immigrants with factory jobs. And because of that, I think about class a lot. And I want to talk about it.

That's what we're doing on my new podcast, Classy. And what did you all eat? You know, trailer food. I was like, girl, we're not doing that anymore. You'll hear from people who told me awkward, embarrassing, and strangely intimate things about what class means to them. She said, you know, for the house cleaner, I hide the tag on the $6 bread.

And I just thought, don't you think she knows that you're wealthy? You're hiding the tags from yourself. Classy. A new podcast from Pineapple Street Studios. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Can we please go to the next question for Samantha? Oh God!

Hi, my question is, what can you family do to help you relax and enjoy yourself? I have been a very similar to you, so when you're not conquering the world and taking care of everybody, thanks for them because that's what you do and we've led you for it. How can we help you, Blacks, let you guys so much? Yes. I'm scared.

I know. Huh. Wouldn't that be nice if I hadn't answered to that because I don't. I think I have two possibilities. As a partner to someone who worries a lot, what you can do is worry more. Yeah, tell me. and here's what I mean by that. There is this idea that someone is holding the accountability or someone is holding the quality control or someone is ensuring that what needs to happen is going to happen, whether it's getting to the place on time, whether it's getting out to the bus,

whether it's making sure the homework's done, whether it's making sure the bills are paid. Okay, and so if the person who is usually the most like you said your husband, conquering the world and taking care of everybody's things, is often by default that person. And no one talks about it. No one talks about it.

But everybody knows that that's going to be the person who makes sure the shit gets done. Therefore, the other people don't have to. Now, if this goes to the overperforming, underperforming that we talked about in another episode, when my husband and I can tell, ever since we've been talking about this, he is starting to take that torch of being the person who is the one ensuring this happens. So for example, this morning, went downstairs, he is the one saying to the kids, it's a 19, you need brush your teeth, say 19, he was saying the things that suggests he is going to be accountable to the clock. And I was relaxed.

I was relaxed because it was not me. And the reason why I'm an asshole a lot of the time is because I'm the one doing that. And everybody else is just responding to my accountability. Yes. Oh, say that again. They're not responding to your ass holeery. They're responding to your accountability. Mm-hmm.

Interesting. And that makes me mad because I'm not allowed to just be in the situation. I'm the one holding the clock. I'm the one thinking what six steps need to be done so that this thing gets done. And I noticed that when he worries more, I worry less. And that is a crappy way of saying that

share accountability, share accountability. Yeah. So that's number one. And it's so much easier to say, I wish you'd relax. I accountability. Yeah. So that's number one. And it's so much easier to say, I wish you'd relax. I wish you would feel better like, what can I do? No friend who with the husband go take a ball

from his lap and carry that ball. Mm-hmm. And when you're carrying that ball, he will be less burdened because he won't be carrying that ball. Yes. So you take it and you let him know what you need from him to do what you need to do and what your family needs to do for you so that you can effectively carry that ball. But just looking at someone carrying 14 balls and being like, I wish you weren't so stressed,

is dick move. Yeah, and also even saying, what can I do to help when you see someone with 14 balls? Then you're giving that person another job, which is explain how this ball works. Like just take the ball and figure it out with your big grown up brain. I go back listen to the overwhelm episode.

Yeah, and it isn't true that over performers can't stop doing that because just in this microcosm of thing that happened this morning, I could, as he shifted from underperforming towards the middle, I could shift from overperforming towards the middle because I wasn't so nervous that the thing wasn't going to get done. Yeah. I had a situation with that recently with Abby, with a work thing, and it was a person we were working with. And I am always the one who's like, I don't know about that person's motives.

I'm feeling weird about this. And she's always the one that's like, let's just keep our arms wide open and trust, which makes me feel like I have to be even more careful because we're just recklessly being open-hearted and open-armed all the time. But I'm saying that ironically, you understand that babe, because I actually believe more in your way

being right in mind. So, okay. And so this thing happened, and then I actually said, how do you feel about this? And she was like, I'm worried about it. I don't feel good about this. I don't like what that person just did. And I actually got to be unactivated and consider possible, like maybe

even assigning good intent to this other person. Do you know what I mean? Like the roles? Oh, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. When John gets fired up and pissed about something? It is the oddest feeling in my bones. It's as close as I get to relaxing and feeling like a human, because I'm like, oh, you wait, so you're really fired up. So that means my job is to become. Okay, this is actually what this moment needs. So look at me, I'm calm. calm precisely because you're so fired up.

Yes. I get to be polarized from you, which if you are always so calm, that is when I am on the other side of the spectrum, waving my arms, freaking out, because I think someone needs to be paying attention. Yeah. So if you think that your partner needs to calm down about getting the kids to the bus stop, what you don't need to do is to tell your partner to calm down about getting the kids to the bus stop. What you do need to do is stop being calm about getting your kids to the bus stop. If you want your partner to calm down about something, you get uncom about that thing so that your partner can naturally calm down about it. Better way of saying that might be take a little bit more responsibility in that thing that you

want your partner to calm down it. Yes, right. I'm using the calm thing and the worry thing just because that's what's so often attributed to people like me, but I think it's passive versus active. You take a more active role so that the other person can be less activated. The second thing I think that people can do is that I realize that a lot of this worry and anxiety and hyper activation around things that people like me who feel responsible for taking care of people's stuff comes from a deep place of fear it comes from a deep place and mine comes from this deep fear that I am alone

that is all up to me, that I can't stop patrolling with vigilance because then things will fall apart. So when that happens, when that part of me is activated, my reaction is not commensurate with reality. Like it is missing the bus is just as big of a deal as some really huge thing because the burden I feel is like see it's just an example that if I'm not taking care of everything, everything falls apart. It's not reality-based. And so I am spinning in my head and it is physiological.

It's something that's happening physiologically to me. And I need to be grounded in my body is what I have learned to stop that activation so that I can approach things in a way that makes more sense and works better. So we have learned that the only thing that we found that works is that if John will take hold of my arms, like arm to arm, take my arms and look in my eyes and say, I'm here, I'm with you, we've got this. It puts me back in my body.

It does two things. It's like the physical touch somehow keeps me from spinning in the place where all I have is resentment and anxiety and freak out. And that physical touch is really important. It can't just be with words. It has to be this physical reminder, you are not alone. I am here.

Body to body. Body to body. And then the second thing it does, it is, it speaks directly to that fear, that fear of like, I am proving you wrong, that you're alone. And in a way that's even bigger than that, because he is seeing me be activated, often before I am. And the fact that he can see me be activated even before I am and can react that way shows me that he is helping me. Yes, he's paying attention and he's noticing you and yes. And that he is doing something for me that I can't do for myself.

It's good. Which further disproves this thing that it is all up to me and I'm the only one that can fix things. So if your partner also has the anxiety that comes with the like, I need to do everything, you might want to explore like what that fear is, what that, you know, thinking trap is and what you can do to help ground them and be their partner in those moments. I have a follow up for you. Yeah. That feeling of, I have to do all of this.

I am controlling all of this. If I drop a ball, it all falls apart. Your partner coming to you and holding you and saying, I've got you. You're not alone. You're not alone. We're going to get through this together. So my reaction to that is that that even scares me. Because your partner is kind of,

it's not totally true that they've got you. And I might be saying this wrong because I'm just thinking of it as you're talking. So tell me if I'm totally off. But to me, putting my, like, okayness in another person who's saying, I'm here, it's okay, I've got you, is not enough for me.

It's helpful and Abby does that sort of thing all the time with me and my anxiety, but my okayness has to be grounded in the idea that there is some force that's got this, that's beyond human being, beyond a person that can grab me and say, I've got this because at the end of the day, I don't feel like anybody else has got me

and he better than I've got me and that scares the shit out of me. So my question to you is, do you have, because we don't talk about this often with you, do you have a faith practice? Or because at the end of the day, what if I drop the ball, this is all falling apart, I don't know anybody in the world for whom that is truer, Like in all the worlds that you're in, you are the quality control, you are the

holder of the thing. I understand that that is based in a lot of reality. And there is a layer of, but I'm not God. There is a solar system here moving things. There is a million realities here that are actually not controlled by me. And we do know that control is an illusion. Like Liz said to me recently, she said this much more beautifully than I'm saying it, but she said, it's so wonderful that in your new recovery, you're learning to give up control.

But isn't it hilarious to think that you can give up control? Like we never had control. learning to give up control. But isn't it hilarious to think that you can give up control? Like, we never had control. When you give up control, you're not giving up control. You're giving up the delusion. You're giving up your struggle against your lack of control. Right, right. So like, do you have the only thing that works for me

is a return to like stillness and whatever comes there, which some people call God, which some, you know, I find it in yoga, I find it meditation, I find it in on my walks like this other being that I make contact with that is like, that's so cute, honey. You don't got this. Abby doesn't got this. Sister doesn't got this. I got this. Do you have that? Well first I'll say it's a very good point about about what it does for me when he grabs my arms like that and it has nothing to do with me thinking he's got it. It has nothing to do with a confidence like, oh, thank God you're here and you've got this.

What it is, the acknowledgement that I see you and what you're going through. So, A, you're not alone and you're not crazy. I see it happening to you. And also, the physical touch And also the physical touch grounds me back out of my tail spit in my head. So it isn't the physical touch is just what's necessary to get me back in my body. Because when I'm in that state in my head, there is no end point that is good for me or anyone else around to me.

It's a dropping back into myself in my moment so that any kind of plan or better outcome is even possible. It's not like, okay, the plan is you take it from here. That's not the plan. It's so that some kind of plan can happen or some kind of piece can happen in the process. I think the baseline answer is getting out of my head and getting grounded back in my reality of what I can feel and see and touch. That is the first step to the next step.

I also think we're missing one of the most important components about John, not just noticing, but the physical touch, is this idea that you're not alone. Because I think so much of our suffering, especially in those moments of being this high functioning person feels like you're alone. And so you call your desire to understand and surrender to not knowing what the next reality is, not having any control.

And the only way I think human being spirits can actually accept that is by touching somebody else and going, okay, we don't have any of this shit together. It's like proof, it's like a proof that I'm not a little, because you are a load in your mind. That's what's so terrifying. You are a load in there. And I think that touching somebody else

who's also experiencing this fucking weird shit that's happening down here, and we have no control. And it's just like, yeah, we're doing this weird shit together. Oh my God, it's so true, babe. Because when we're in our minds, we are alone. Yeah. It's, it, it, bodies, touching bodies being together are the only way we can actually be together.

Yeah. And I think especially for the person like this person who's saying, how do I help my husband, the person who helps everyone else? There is a deep belief by the person who helps everyone else that no one can help them. That's right. So your intuneness to that person when they start to spiral and being able to sometimes even see it before they do. And help reground them is throwing on its head the helper's whole belief system, which is that no one else can help me but me.

Hmm, I get that. Music Let's hear from Sophie. Hi, sister. My name is Sophie. I love the podcast. I was wondering what is it like to be in a heterosexual relationship when you are surrounded by lesbians and gays? I or Lennon and Avi, very, very helpful, but I also sometimes feel like it's not applicable

for my type of relationship, so I would love to have your input in that. Thank you. Love you. Bye. God, I love it when our puns water say love you. I love you too, Sophie. This is a great question, and it's a fascinating one. Well, first of all, just say, Sophie, exact same for me. I feel like I find the advice of Glenn and Abby very, very helpful.

And I also feel like it is sometimes not applicable to my type of relationship. Example. What do you mean? Oh God. So I feel there's like a spectrum, right? And so everything we talk about, like communication, okay? That is a great value and so important. And I feel like y'all are usually working on getting from 98% to 99% full communication. And then there's a whole bunch of us who would be very pleased to get from like 42 to 48 degree of communication.

And I actually don't even think that it has to do with queer and non-queer couples because I have friends in opposite sex marriages and they would probably relate to your relationship more than I would. But I do sometimes think it's aspirational in ways that are... Is it a no? No, it's not annoying. It's not at all. And I don't have like an Iota of jealousy about it. I think it, to me, it's been empowering and interesting because it kind of has an expansiveness that is intriguing and allows me to think about the ways that I might pursue

things that I want in my relationships. So the expansiveness about what you think about and what you pursue are kind of like, well, I would take that one. I would leave those for you. I don't really care about that, but that's one that I am very interested in. Whereas I feel like in some cases, if I were to look at the peer relationships of

couples around me, I don't feel tragically as inspired by those. So I think that that's huge. I also think that a lot of what you'll grapple with, specifically sexuality, is super fascinating and instructive to me, because it's just the idea of even pursuing what you want, what you desire outside of this kind of side of this kind of check the box normative way of thinking about it that like there is a whole life there that everyone for everyone not just for queer people to discover and I think that that a lot of us who who check the box early those lives went dormant, precisely because we didn't think there was anything else to explore. And so I think anyone who is queering different areas, it just is kind of inspiration.

I will just like chuckle at it because I'm like, oh my god, this is the thing you're working on. I think something that Sophie is also kind of talking about is it's easy to look at the three of us and the dynamic we have. Sister, you're in a heterosexual marriage. There are so many, like you said, it's a spectrum. But what I would challenge you, Sophie, is to not see it necessarily as the spectrum of gender, but the spectrum of things that you want in your relationship and the things that

maybe that you see in ours or that you see in Amanda's, because it doesn't have anything to do with the actual sex act that's going on in the bed. It's the kind of people who are in these relationships and what you're seeing as a byproduct of these kind of people. And if you're seeing that stereotypically two women are going to have a different communication in their relationship, then it had a resexual one, well, if that's something that's interesting to you, then explore that. But I wouldn't say, well, that's just not the kind of relationship I have. Look at all kinds of relationships and explore what is interesting about that couple and

maybe explore trying to do that in your personal relationship. Yeah. As the one tripodder who has experienced both heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage. Can we just say like queer marriages freaking me out homosexual? And heterosexual like what is that? Marriage to a man and marriage to a woman. I mean yeah, marriage to a human being who has been conditioned as a man on this planet. And marriage to a human being who has been conditioned as a woman on this planet.

It's not going to stop. Well because I think that's true. I know. I know you do. We talk about this all the time. I don't think it's real. I don't think that we have. Nothing that we have.

We haven't landed on a truth yet, though, because we're still working towards it. Point being, Bose has this amazing new book out called The Urgent Life. Actually, it's not all that. But there's my Saint John. Bose, we say, Jogger. She has this whole thing about she was married to a white man and like having to translate her blackness to a white man constantly. Okay. And she describes the whole thing so freaking brilliantly and beautifully as she always does. And I can't wait for everyone to read it. But I think that I, in my relationships with men,

struggled very deeply and had a big resentment towards always having to translate my experience as a woman on this planet to someone else. It made me feel very lonely. It made me feel like we were never having the same experience. Walking down the street, being in a meeting, walking into a bank and being treated differently, walking down the street and feeling unsafe or that person feeling safe, walking into a room with a man and just the lack of yield, the lack of like spatial awareness because

they've never had to have that. The posture of it. Every time something happened in the news, every time I heard about a sexual assault, I would have this visceral, pained emotional reaction. And it felt like the person I was in partnership with could only empathize was never experiencing it viscerally. And that was unsurvivable to me, is what I'm saying.

Yeah. To me, the biggest difference between same sex, different sex marriage is never having to, and it's not never actually, because we've had different experiences as women in the world, and you have had more more male privilege and I have had more privilege because of my them presenting self there are differences. But the bridge is shorter. The translating, my ex, we are often having the same experience, the same reaction and that having been conditioned as the same gender on this planet and that makes me feel less alone.

That's the biggest difference to me. It doesn't have to do with sex. It has to do with not having to translate myself constantly. What's sad it doesn't have to do with sex. Even in sex, I'm not having to translate myself differently. Let's think about it. I am thinking about it. I'm having sex with someone who has the same parts as me. I'm not having to translate myself differently. Let's think about it. I am. I'm having someone who has the same parts as me. I'm not having to translate.

We got where you're going with it. Okay, great, great. Right after you said, let's think about it. Okay, okay. But you know what's so interesting to me, just playing with this for a second. I agree with you, the loneliness of that and I have felt that.

And the like, they're a part of me, you will never, ever get. Just because you can't, not because it's a fault of yours. But just like there's parts of you that I will never, ever get. But the translating... I don't know that I have ever asked my husband To translate his experience to me. I Know that I have because is that the default? Hmm. I don't think I have a good old. I

Have struggled with the fact that he could never understand what it was like to watch Trump get elected And watch Hillary lose what it was like to See Brett Kavanaugh become a Supreme Court judge what it's like You know any number of things fill in the blank to get Roe to get overturned and that has felt lonely as shit But I've never Dare I say been interested Enough because if I was interested enough, I would have asked right fair Dare I say been interested? Enough. Because if I was interested enough, I would have asked, right?

That's fair. What is it like for you? And maybe it's like what you said, Abby, it's such a default. It feels like, well, you get the standard experience, and I get the shittier one. But if we're ever going to make it anywhere, we have to stop thinking that way. They are getting a very specific experience, just like we're getting a very specific experience.

And granted, it's 100% of the 70% pay that we get. And it's 100% of the opportunities of the percentage we get. I get all of that. But in the actual conditioning of what it means for them to actually be human emotional beings in the world, they are having an experience. That's right. That isn't just default. Right. Nobody is having a default experience in their own body because it's the only experience they've ever had. Yeah. This is really fascinating. I just want to say thank you so much for being brave enough to answer the hard questions from the pod squad because I absolutely freaking loved this conversation. And I'd like to apologize to the pod squad for not taking any questions from the pod squad because I absolutely freaking loved this conversation. And I'd like to apologize to the pod squad for not taking any questions from me and Abby.

We actually did plan to, but system was too wonderful. Amanda, Amanda was too beautiful and smart. Amanda. So we'll save ours for another time. We'll do ours next. Yes, we will. And I just think that there's so much to continue to explore. I love learning about you, Samantha.

And also, as well as, here's a challenge. Let's think about the one question we don't want to answer when people ask it to us and let's just think about why this week. Because it turns out there's probably some good stuff there. Yeah. And with that, we can do hard things. We'll see you next time. Bye.

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