We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life's 20 Questions

by Glennon Doyle

So what do you do? You can’t yell at it. You can’t just throw it against a wall. Somebody’s going to get hurt if you do that. So what you do is, you gently turn toward it, you find out its name. Its name in this case might be Loneliness. It might be Insecurity. It might be Distrust. And then you ask: What does it need in order to move out of your bed and free itself?

Glennon: It’s like: Is it so hard for me to apologize to you because I’m so sure I’m right? Or is it actually so hard for me because I’m sure I’m doing this all wrong and I don’t want you to discover that? I think it’s hardest to be sorry in the moments and relationships in which we’re the least secure. Apologizing takes strength, security, and confidence.

My husband, who is deeply good and wants to help, used to always ask, “How can I help?” Which made me rageful and made me realize: If you’re asking how you can help, it means you don’t have the ticker. Because I never have to ask what’s on the to-do list; I’m the one spending a hundred hours of invisible labor figuring out the ten steps required before an item even makes it on the to-do list. If you are in the privileged position of just taking items off the to-do list, it means you are not a cocreator, architect, and carrier of the ticker. And you need to be.

It’s not just a simple “sex drive.” Your sexual mind has a dual control structure made up of accelerators and brakes regulating your desire. Usually when people are struggling, it’s not because there’s not enough stimulation to the accelerator, it’s because there’s too much stimulation to the brakes. Getting rid of stuff that’s hitting the brakes is more important than activating the accelerator.

Hotel sex is the best sex. Why? Because there’s nothing around to remind you of your crushing mental load: no piles of laundry, no lunches to pack, no bathrooms to clean. So in a hotel your brakes are more likely to be turned off, and you can be more responsive to your accelerators.

3 Provide options. Instead of asking, “What do you want?” which puts all the mental load and effort on someone else, give options. If I ask you, “What do you want for dinner?” it’s a little annoying. But if I ask, “Do you want Mexican, or do you want sushi?” it’s easier to pick.

4 Lower the bar. Rather than thinking: What’s going to make me orgasm? I like to think: What’s something that I’m curious about experiencing right now? So maybe it’s just “I would love for you to kiss me a little bit softer” or “I would love for us to pick up the pace a little bit.” So it’s not about: What’s going to bring you the maximum level of pleasure in this moment? It’s just: What’s something that sounds kind of good right now?

Tap into curiosity. I don’t like the question “What’s your fantasy?” because it makes it feel like the only acceptable answer is an elaborate scenario. Instead, I like “What’s something you’re curious about trying?” It lowers the bar. You can be curious about something as simple as making out more passionately or listening to music during sex.

Practice tuning in and communicating. Sensate focus is a classic sex therapy practice. Person number one touches person number two head to toe for about fifteen minutes. Person two is relaxing into the touch and is giving some gentle feedback, either verbally or nonverbally. Now the giver of the touch becomes the receiver, then the receiver becomes the giver, and it’s repeated a number of times. The next stage includes breast and genital touch, but the goal is not to create arousal or orgasm; the goal is relaxing, tuning in, and communicating. We know that sensate focus is useful for most sexual problems or struggles in a couple. We can always stand to learn something about how the other person wants to be touched.

That is the ultimate taming—the idea that we have to live not to disappoint our parents—that we have to live their lives, their ideas, their values, instead of discovering and living our own. I was talking to Liz about this awhile back, and she told me to think hard about the word disappoint. If you’re scared of disappointing your parent, that means you’ve already “appointed” them the guide of your life. So to disappoint is actually dis-appointing them and re-appointing yourself.

Children need their parents to see them, help them understand what feelings are, and help them understand themselves. But emotionally immature parents struggle to self-reflect. They tend to be defensive and self-centered, interact very superficially, and they aren’t capable of empathizing. They won’t go back and attempt repair by apologizing or sharing empathy for something they did that was hurtful. And that ability to repair is so crucial to any kind of relationship, especially the parent-child relationship. Kids of emotionally immature parents learn that they have to supply the empathy to the parent, so they stretch to develop a level of empathy that they’re not prepared for. They become vigilant. They feel emotionally lonely. Lindsay C. Gibson

Sometimes when I’m really stressed and overwhelmed, it’s tempting to fantasize about letting it all go—moving my family to some gorgeous tropical island and just tending a garden. As if gardener me would be a different me. But the truth is, tropical island or not, I am going to find a way to project manage my life into a whirlwind. I am going to be the most productive, maximizing, stressed-out gardener in the history of gardeners. You can bring an overachiever to the island, but you can’t make her chill.

I understood my tendency more clearly when I read Kate Bowler talking about “possible futures.” She said her problem was “failing to love what is present and deciding to love what is possible instead.”

I’m trying to recognize that it’s enough. It’s just enough. And that I never just rest. I win an award, and literally five minutes later after I’m notified, I’m on to the next thing. I have not enjoyed it. I haven’t acknowledged it. It’s just a blip in my day. And once I started noticing that, I was like: Oh, no, we’re going to have to work on this.

When we enter into conflict with someone we love, we feel vulnerable. We’ve gotten into the conflict because we feel hurt or sad or fearful. But hurt, sadness, fear—those are very soft, vulnerable emotions. So we throw on our armor, some sort of stronger emotion or way of being that makes us feel less vulnerable. My armor is always anger and rightness. Glennon

Anger is the quality that is under boundaries. For many of us who have a hard time with boundaries, we actually probably don’t know how to feel anger in our body. And anger is not violence or destruction or oppression. Anger is a little bit of heat, usually in our chest and jaw and hands. It’s literally just nerve activation, a nervous system response. And it is because of that anger that we get a sense of clarity about what doesn’t work for us and what we need to do.

As Prentis Hemphill says, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love both you and me simultaneously.” Glennon

In Judaism, we use the word teshuvah to talk about repentance, which means “return.” It’s about coming back to the best version of you, your integrity; it’s about coming back to the path that you wanted to be on before you started screwing up and harming out of ignorance, pettiness, laziness, sloppiness—out of all the reasons we hurt people. Do you want to be a harm doer? Probably not. So we need to do work to change that.

What if we started calling them acknowledgments instead of apologies? Acknowledgments don’t require something of the person who was harmed. There is something beautiful in expressing “It’s been a lot of years since this happened, and I just want to say…I didn’t act right.” With that kind of acknowledgment, we honor the person in a way we failed to honor them before—without asking them to do anything for us or to absolve us of that.

When I’m in an anxiety spiral, I know I’ve accidentally time traveled again. My anxiety is usually the result of my mind launching me into a scary imaginary future. So the antidote is to return to now, where I’m usually safe and okay.

Here’s a common exercise that helps me: Grab something, an object close to you. Notice how it feels in your hands. Next, notice something you can see. Now what’s something you can hear? Are there any smells that you notice? I return myself to the present moment by deactivating my imagination and activating my senses instead. It works every time.

Accelerators are all the sex-coded information in the environment that sends a turn-on signal to your brain—everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, think, believe, or imagine that your brain codes as something related to sex. Accelerators can include seeing your partner naked, watching a sexy movie, wearing or seeing lingerie, being shown nondemanding affection, feeling confident in your body, and having a memory of a great sexual experience.

Brakes are all the good reasons not to be turned on right now that send a turn-off signal to your brain—everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, think, believe, or imagine that your brain perceives as a potential threat. Brakes can include stress, anxiety, loneliness, distracting noises, body shame, trauma history, repressed rage, your to-do list, your risk of pregnancy, a lack of privacy or safety, performance anxiety, and relationship struggles.