We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Jen Hatmaker: Marriage, Loneliness & Starting Over

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

1. Jen describes the shock of losing her 26-year marriage overnight.  2. How, looking back, Jen sees that she knew something was wrong in her relationship well before she “knew” something was wrong – and the moment she reached out to Glennon to share it for the first time.   3. Why Jen’s friends told her she was a “human spotlight” and “cleanup crew” in her marriage – and the pain of realizing she was powerful in every role other than wife.   4. How Jen convinced herself that her marriage was enough when in reality she felt like a pot of water slowly building to a boil.  5. The common hell of being lonely inside of marriage – and why we won’t be fully honest with ourselves, our partners, or our friends about what we are most afraid of.   About Jen:  Jen Hatmaker is the New York Times bestselling author of For the Love and Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire, along with twelve other books. She hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast, is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, and leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars toward sustainable projects around the world. She is a mom to five kids and lives happily just outside Austin, Texas. To learn more about Jen, visit www.jenhatmaker.com. TW: @JenHatmaker IG: @jenhatmaker 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

Chiara. It means smart in Italian. Too bad your barista can't spell it right. So you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia. But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute. What kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca.

What does possible sound like for your business? It's more cash on hand to grow with up to 55 interest-free days. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit mx.ca slash business platinum. Today we are sharing the first episode we did

with our dear friend, the Jen Hatmaker. So in July, 2020, Jen's world imploded when she lost her 26 year marriage overnight. imploded when she lost her 26-year marriage overnight. That was a doozy of a time. I remember it well. The amazing thing is that since then, Jen has so gloriously rebuilt her life, her dreams, herself, that I started declaring it the Genesence. In this hour with us Jen just reaches deep into the pain to share an incredibly beautiful, brave, and honest conversation. She describes how looking back she sees that she knew something was wrong in her relationship well before she knew something was wrong. Don't we

all? And she talks about the moment she reached out to me to share for the first time, which I will never forget. In this episode, we discuss why Jen's friends told her she was a quote, human spotlight and cleanup crew in her marriage and the pain of realizing she was powerful in every other role in her life and the pain of realizing she was powerful in every other role in her life except for wife. How Jen convinced herself that her marriage was enough, when in reality

she felt like she was in a pot of water that was slowly building to a boil. And she talks about the common hell we've shared of being lonely inside of a marriage and why we won't be fully honest with ourselves, partners, friends about what we are most afraid of. This is a doozy and it's illuminating and I just loved every minute I know you will to thank you Jen for trusting us and the world with your heart and story. Makes a difference. Enjoy.

Okay, we're going to jump right into we can do hard things today because we today have one of my favorite hard things doers in all the land. Her name is Jen Hatmaker. And I'll just tell you that right off the bat because I know everyone's gonna get really excited about that. The crowd goes wild. And I have known Jen for a long, long time. And I've always loved Jen, but I was thinking about this quote

from both of our friends, Elizabeth Gilbert. I just asked Abby to grab it for me like five minutes ago. And it says, the women I love and admire for their strength and grace did not get that way because shit worked out. They got that way because shit went wrong and they handled it.

They handled it a thousand different ways on a thousand different days, but they handled it. Those women are my superheroes. That is Liz Gilbert. But today, she's the best. We have Jen Hatmaker, who is the New York Times bestselling author of For the Love and Fierce, Free and Full of Fire, along with 12 other books. I don't know what to say. Okay. Ridiculous. The whole bookshelf. Just of her other books. I don't know what to say.

12. OK. Ridiculous. The whole bookshelf, just of her own books. OK. She hosts the award-winning For the Love podcast, which is so freaking good, is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club.

And only Jen would write the delighted curator. OK. You know that's my phrase. Yes, even her bio is so Jen. And she is the leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars

towards sustainable projects around the world. She is a mom to five kids, only seven less books that she's written, Five kids, 12 books. Math. Thanks. And just, and lives just outside Austin, Texas. Jen Hatmaker. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Hello, my darlings. I'm so happy to see you both. And Abby, just off camera. Yeah, she's right here. Hi Jen, I miss you. I know. I miss you too.

Do you want to just come in here? But she just is so jealous that she's going to stay in the frame. Yes, Abby. Abby Wombach loves herself, some Jen Hatmaker, which I just want to say that I think the first time Jen and Abby met was backstage at a Women of Faith conference. So what I need the world to know is that I brought my lesbian soccer player girlfriend to the most conservative evangelical Christian arena event. Full of Yes. Full of evangelical Christians. And then I stood in the front row and we held hands and kissed and waved our arms to Jesus songs.

Jen, do you remember that? That's right. Do I remember? Do I remember? I remember. What were you thinking at that point? I didn't know what was, I don't think I really understood what I was proposing to that crowd of 40,000 people. Well, I was thinking how much I loved you and I knew about Abby. So, and then, you know, it only takes like about three and a half seconds of meeting Abby. And it doesn't I don't care who you are, you fall hard. You fall hard.

You fall immediately. It's irreversible. It's irrevocable. I got it immediately. I got you. I got y'all. Because of course, as you mentioned, our history deeply preceded that. We met when we were both married to men, other men. And so I immediately loved Abby and I was proud of you and I was proud of both of you. And I was, I felt like in real time, I was watching you like walk

into yourself. And it was like an honor to witness it. And then a couple years later, I got to watch you walk into yourself. We have talked previously on this pod in the context of my sister and I's divorces about how the most obnoxious question a person can ask about that horrific sacred time is, what happened? Because it's just like, I don't know, simplification, bypassing that like kind of icky curiosity.

So without asking what happened, can you tell us what happened? Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. Oh, I love it. Yeah, definitely. Also thank you for your compassion and even just discretion around what it means to tell a hard story like this. You have literally all four of us understand this.

All four of us, unfortunately, understand exactly this. Because there's us in the story, but there's a person that we were married to in the story. There's a bunch of spawn that we created in the story. There's in-laws and parents. It's complex. And to some degree, our connective tendrils go forever. And so it is complicated to give an accurate retelling, to say nothing of the fact that I have a certain version and it's mine, which means it's not entirely right. But it's the one I know, even the one I've crafted a little.

Yes ma'am. I've polished her up. But in short, I was married for 26 years and I got married, every time I say this, I just have like a stab of like horror. But I got married when I was 19. And Brandon, my ex-husband was 21. We were in college and we had, we were in a kind of a conservative Christian college environment, which is just to say it's a very strange place. It's a very strange ecosystem in and of itself. And I guess a bunch of little babies get married there.

And that seems normal. And we have real weddings. Our parents give us away. Like that's a normal thing. Like she's 19. She makes $4.25 at the YMCA. Go be a wife. You know what I'm saying?

What the hell? What the hell are we doing? I started really young. I was never really an adult a single day of my life without a man. I went straight from my dad to a boy. We built a whole life, you know, a whole life. We grew up together, essentially. And we had three kids and then we adopted two more. Ben and Remy are our youngest, they're Ethiopian, and we adopted them when they were five and eight and built kind of this entire hat maker ethos. And then in 2020, just after the pandemic started, so that was already, we were just already all flailing around and, um, uh, we started the divorce process and for us, it wasn't like a slow burn. It wasn't like a mutual, like we are devolving

or disconnecting or we've been working and working and we can't get these things resolved. It wasn't like that. It was overnight. It was shocking off. Um, it was one day, you know, something and the next day, you know, something different and there isn't recovery from it. A lot of people wanted to know, you know, because marriage and family has been the center spoke of my wheel for a very long time. And so I know people were like, I don't understand why this we're not now watching a fight for this recovery or we're not now seeing Jen and Brandon, you know, just go to the mat, um, to resolve this or to repair it. And the truth is sometimes that's not an option and that was not an option for

us. And so just like that, just like that, it was over. Um, and then there's some shit that goes on, but it was over. That was the day it was over. When I put the marker in the ground, it's July 11th, 2020. Bunch of stuff, and then we actually filed, and then we actually got divorced, but that was the day. That was the day that I was on my own in the world. Wow.

I didn't know how to be a grownup. I certainly didn't know how to single parent. I didn't know anything. I had never had a single moment to myself as an adult woman. And so it was scary. It was shocking. It was humiliating. And there was just a minute there.

I can't honestly, hardly remember it. I was just in such a fog of trauma and grief and fear. Yeah. Jen, as you know, Glennon likes to celebrate your transformation in the world as the genescence. That's right. She's branded it and it's really lovely. You don't know my excitement.

Glennon, I don't know if you've ever watched in my social feeds every time you say that word. Everybody piles on underneath it and they're like, I'm going to borrow that and I am now in the Linna-sense and now I'm in the Janet-a-sense. And I'm like, listen, borrow it from her. She's offered it to our community. Take it everyone. It's a gift.

I wish you could see every time, which may be like 20 times I've written Janissance under your things. I have to Google how do you spell Renaissance every time? And then I have to write it out. And then I have to every time. It's one of those words. Every time. That's how much I love you.

I don't know how to spell right now. I feel like if you paid me a million dollars to spell Renaissance, I would get it wrong. No, it's impossible. Even if you've done it many times, even if you've added the gen, it's, yeah. Oh God. Anyway, I'm sorry, Amanda.

No, no. There is not an apology for the gen, it's, yeah. Oh God. Anyway, I'm sorry, Amanda. I interrupted you. No, there is not an apology for the genescence ever. And so she's describing this first, the pain, then the waiting, then the rising. And I think when I went through my divorce, when you say a stake in the ground and you kind of say, okay, that was July 11th. And at first I always thought the pain was right when I

knew I was getting divorced. And like that started the floodgate of pain. But after I realized, no, the pain actually started well before then. I just couldn't either see it or recognize it in myself. But there was this like a part of me that was grieving things in my marriage before I even knew I was grieving the loss of my marriage. So do you, looking back, are you able to see kind of where the pain was there for you before the implosion of your marriage? Like what were you grieving before you knew you were grieving? Yeah, that's such a good question. By the way, please enjoy the train. You will feel numerous times. Numerous. It can't be helped or stopped.

Choo-choo, jeds come through. It can't be helped or stopped. Choo-choo, jets come through. I mean, okay. Okay. I love this question and I think that's an important one because in my now experience and then what has opened up the floodgates inside my community that I lead, I think this is ubiquitous. I think women who are losing their marriages can get just a little ways out from it.

And when they're finally able or willing to be honest, they can go backward and say, I knew, or I thought I knew, or I knew something. I don't know if you remember this, Glennon, but so July 11th, 2020, but I had your book in hand before it came out. I had the advanced copy. This was like January of that year. So we're six months before anything before I really, I knew anything that was important for me to know. Yeah. Um, I read a very specific sentence in untamed and it was essentially I can't remember it exactly, but it was something like

You gave a litany of things that might possibly be going on in our lives that were really hard to say they were embarrassing or they were hard or they were sad or they were shocking and they were carrying these things around, but we were not saying them out loud. And one of my things was embedded right in the middle of the list. And I had your book open and I just kind of like very quietly I closed it and I set it down and I sat there quietly for about one minute and I picked up my phone and I texted you and I said, something's wrong in my marriage.

I didn't understand it at the time because I was only feeling the symptoms. I bet I felt them. I felt them. Sure as shit. I felt them. I was feeling the symptoms. And so I was trying to diagnose the problem and I was partially right. I was half right. And I said, something's wrong. Nobody knows. I don't know how to talk about this. I don't know what to do. I'm trying so hard to fix it and I can't get, I can't fix it. I can't get it all back in. I'm, um, and I just need somebody to know it.

And you immediately texted back because when I'll never get a text back from you if I text you something silly, never, it's like, I never sent you a message. It's like, it's like you don't have a phone. Um, but if I sent you something important, if I send you something serious, you're Johnny on the spot. And you know what? I received this. Okay. And I actually respect it. And you texted me back right away because I had given you what I think the problem was, which you have some history with. And you sort of began workshopping it with me and what it looks like in a marriage and how I'm not alone in this. And a lot of women are like biting their fingernails off

in their marriages, but they don't know what to do. And so to your question, Amanda, I did know. And I wish I would have been more courageous. And honestly, I wish I just could have been more honest, even inside my own marriage. I cannot imagine some of the suffering and sorrow that I maybe could have avoided if I would have just told the truth, number one, to myself. That was the first person I lied to. Because I just didn't want to believe any of it. 26 years, my parents been married for 50 years,

my in-laws have been married for 50 years. I'm like, we're going the distance, man. We have five kids. Damn. Like this, just no, not us. Right? And so I just kept thinking, okay, I can fix this. Like I can, we're going to write the ship somehow. And, um, but if I'd have been more honest, and I think if I would have been more honest with him and said, we both see this thing that's happening. Like what can and should we do? I don't know what would have happened at this point of speculation. But I did, I want you to know that I told him way after the fact, after I'd hit the bottom of the ocean and just drug myself back up to the surface and we were able to speak

and talk and be a little bit more honest and tender with each other than just like radical disintegration. I'm like, I wasn't telling the truth to us and I wish I would have. And this was broken and I just wouldn't admit it. So if I wouldn't admit it, I couldn't address it. And I wouldn't let you address it cause that made it true.

And so we've kind of had that good healing conversation since, but it's true. It's hard to admit it's lonely. Like no one's in your marriage except you, you know? Like something about parenting. Yeah. For example, you get to reach sideways for that, you know? We have each other in that, and for some reason,

that feels more, that feels easier to bring our community up. And marriage, it is you, and it's that person. And so, when things are so, so broken, it's scary and it's isolating. And that's the easiest place at least for me to lie to myself about what's real. Chiara, it means smart in Italian. Too bad your barista can't spell it right, so you just give a fake name, your cafe name, Julia.

But the more you use it, the more it feels like you're in witness protection. Wait a minute, what kind of espresso drinks does Julia like anyway? Is it too late to change your latte order? But with an espresso machine by KitchenAid, you wouldn't be thinking any of this because you could have just made your espresso at home. Shop now at KitchenAid.ca. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life.

I didn't even think I'd make it to, like, my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step.

But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. Jen, you are so beautiful. I mean, just the way you tell your story and the way you honor the other people in the story, but also tell the truth. I think that was just a service to so many people. Yes, that's what I was thinking. That the, we don't tell, like we are in our marriages, but we are often just us in our marriages, you know?

And so it isn't even, I think we- You're not even with the partner. A lot of people, we're not even with our partner. We're just all- Totally. And we don't know where our partner is, because if you, because you don't say the thing, because what happens after you say the thing? That's why we don't know where our partner is because if you, because you don't say the thing, because what happens after you say the thing?

That's why we don't say the thing. Because what are you gonna find out you're right? Who the hell wants to find out they're right about that thing? And like it's not working, but it's working, right? You are still married until you say the thing. That's it. And if you're like me,

this like glass half full, hope springs, eternal type, I'm like, we're just about to fix this. You know, like it's just out of reach. There's some sort of trickery or like formula. We just haven't quite discovered. And then we're just going to be like back, like he'll be back in his own body and mind. We'll be back in this sort of relational space and we'll look back on this and be like, oh, that little bit was rough. And so I think there's also this like just this hope maybe that we hang on to because the truth is

even when divorce is literally the best thing, when it gives you back to yourself, when it returns you to your, like, highest space and it delivers you to the second half of your life, whole and healthy and good, and your partner, for that matter, even then, divorce is traumatizing. Yes, it is.

It just tears some things apart that we've spent our adult life building and putting together. And it affects so many people. The rollout of the centrifugal rings of affectation are still going on, frankly, a year and a half later. And so I think we know that and just wanting to avoid that level of just disconnection in all of our family structures makes us just kind of go, well, you know what?

I don't know. We're still paying our bills. That's right. Like our kids are in school. Nobody's dropped out yet. You know, like, I don't know, I created a version of our marriage in my own mind and convinced myself it was enough. And that wasn't fair to either one of us. It really wasn't. And so, I don't know, not many people were saying this out loud, which is why Glennon, when I was kind of reading this and untamed, I'm like, do I have permission for this? Do we get to say out loud that even this long time heralded marriage, much admired, much written about, much respected, do I get to say this is fragmenting and I am lost and he is lost and we are lost and we can't find our

way back to each other. And that was, I think, for me, the beginning of the end, probably in a good way. Really, I can say that now. I can't believe I could ever say that, but I mean it now. I'm thinking about hope when you're saying this and it's interesting this idea of hope. It's like, sometimes I think our Christian version of hope fucks us up because, you know, the Buddhist version of hope is like,

don't have it basically. Like hope will like, abandon all ye hope who enter here. But it is, it's like hope can distract you from the truth. It like keeps you from accepting what is. And hope is a beautiful thing when it carries you through the truth. Yeah.

And you match the truth with hope. But when you use hope as a spiritual bypass to what is actually happening in front of you, that's when it screws us over. That is the truest thing because you're hoping in an invention. It's not true. It's made up. I made up a story about what was actually happening,

and I made up a story about what could happen. And neither one of them were ever going to be true. Ever. Ever. I just wrote myself a little script and went, well, that is sweet. That is lovely. I like that story. It's super hard when you're also a writer. Yes.

When you also create narratives, you're like, I can do this. I can make this a love story. I mean, I think about that all the time. Yes. Did I live Love Warrior and then write it? Because I don't think so. I think I wrote Love Warrior

and then hoped that I would live into that version of the redemption story. It's so real. Like, I think I am my own self-help author. Dangerous freaking territory. Totally. Oh my gosh, me too. By the time we got to July 2020, I had told so many lovely stories about my own marriage,

which were partially true. Right, absolutely. And partially was enough for me. I was okay with partial. I'm like, I will fill in the gaps on partial with my best friends, with my parents, with partial, I'm like, I will fill in the gaps on partial with my best friends, with my parents, with my siblings, with my kids, with my work, with the women in my community, with my friends that we work alongside of each other, that will be enough for me. And so my marriage can be partial, and I can still be a happy human lady.

The shitty thing about that is it's a little true. Like it's not really true. I'm not really happy but I could run those traps. Yes. Yes. And nobody could really prove. It's women like us can. We just can. Nobody can really prove that it's not true. Like it's, you can, if I were under a lie detector test, I could still pass. Like there's part of this that feels true enough to be true. That's the problem.

But what I'm learning, like what I'm discovering right now is at least for me having been married my entire adult life, I just didn't know what I didn't know. And so what I'm discovering is that, oh, that was really partial. Now I had, you know, I was in a slow pot of boiling water. So that partial space just, it just crept up on me, you know, where all of a sudden, like if you'd have dropped me into that scenario from 10 years previous, I'd be like, oh shit, what

has happened here? Like something has derailed, but because it kind of was a slow coming, I talked myself into that being a fulfilling life day by day, right? Month by month, year by year. And as things continue to fall off, I would backfill them with other healthy relationships or spaces. And just,

I just kind of kept the balance like this, just enough, just enough. I had the capacity to do that forever. But what I'm experiencing right now in genuine wholeness and completeness, just in and of myself, like in my own soul, in my own life. I'm stunned that I would have chosen to live that way for the rest of my life. And I am now like grateful. I'm really grateful to be here. Did I wanna get here the way I got here? God, no, and I don't wish that on anybody.

And my heart for women who have been in a super similar path is just endless now. But am I sorry that I'm here? I'm not. Yeah. I'm really not. I feel like I am. This is me. I feel me.

I feel me living. I feel me alive. I feel me leading without editing and without constantly having to shape shift around somebody else and without having to keep the thing afloat. And I wouldn't trade it. There she is. You said shape shift. And that's, what do you mean by shape shift?

Because I also heard another conversation with you and Jamie Wright and Kristin Howerton. They're your dear friends and they know you and then they as you and then they know they knew you as as wife. And you just said ShapeShift and they said you were a human spotlight and a cleanup crew as a a wife. As a wife. Can you talk about those things that you can look back and see yourself as different in that role than as you were as you? And what does it mean to be a human spotlight and a cleanup crew?

And just so you know, Sister and I talked about this for an hour in terms of our own previous, like it just made so much sense to me. And I feel like people are gonna get it in their own ways. I'd like to hear both of your thoughts on that too. That was really hard to hear from my friends. And I heard it earlier. I heard it before we were divorced.

And I was shocked. I was shocked because I didn't know that there were two versions of me. I didn't realize it. And I certainly didn't know it was observable. You know, I felt like I was running a pretty clean operation. You know what I mean? Because it was my job to keep our best foot forward as a couple. And I did it. I thought I was doing it. I thought I was doing it. And I thought that when things were like dipping and wobbling and going off the rails, that

I was course correcting quickly enough outward facing so that that was either like, Oh, well, that was silly. Or we could shrug that off. Like, that's a weird day. That was a strange conversation. Those girls were with me in January, right before I texted you, Glennon, January of 2020. And that's when they told me that we were all together with all couples for four days. And they very bravely and I commend, I commend all friends who love us enough to come to us and say hard things. I commend them. I can't imagine how hard that was for them to say to me, because I didn't ask for their opinion. It's not like I said, did you guys see me absolutely shrink or no? Like, did I just go real small? Did my light snuff out or was I normal? You know, I didn't, I didn't give them any rope. They just came to me and said, we just need to tell you something

that we're seeing. And I was defensive, um, because I was embarrassed because I'm so strong everywhere in my life. I'm powerful everywhere in my life, in every role except that one. And I just didn't know that anybody saw it. You know, I thought it was internal. I thought I was just going to carry that inside me and partially make it work forever. And so this is what I've learned what Brene taught me. So Brene texts, Brene called me like in maybe week two, week one or two after DEF CON, you know,

one and she's, she told me some things to do. And when Brene tells you what to do, you do it, right? You don't get to disobey. No. Um, and, um, you know, she doesn't come in real gentle either. She kind of comes in like a wrecking ball. Like there's no hair petting. It's not like, this is a real hard time. She's like, I've got one hour.

I'd like you to sit down and grab a pen. I'm like, I've got one hour. I'd like you to sit down and grab a pin. I'm like, you will be, you will be rising strong in 15 minutes. But one of the things she told me, she gave me a list of things that I was going to do and ways that I was going to survive. Some of it had to do with my body. And just, she's like, it's radical self care time. And this is no joke. She's like, don't take this lightly. But one of the things she told me back to our point here is to get the book co dependent no more. Yeah. Melody. Yeah. We have several copies. Like six of them. Y'all. Y'all. I'm still furious.

When you come out as a lesbian, they make you read that book. It's just like part of the care package you get sent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the rules of admission to the lesbian club. It's like, actually, this is the book on how to lesbian. Yes, but it's codependent forevermore is what we call it.

Wasn't that book like just a kick in the teeth? I didn't understand codependency. I don't know if you guys did. When I hear that word, I thought that word meant you are a needy person. Like you're fragile and you don't have the muscle memory to be independent anywhere in your life. And that's what I thought that meant. And I'm like, well, that's not me. No, because you, what the listeners need to know

if you haven't picked it up for the last 30 minutes, Jen does not, that is, those are words she would not have related to. Fragile. Jen Handelit Hatmaker. Yes. Right. I'm like, fragile. Needy. Just so you know, when you describe Brene, that is certainly how I feel about you. It's Texas or something.

Maybe. Maybe it is. You know, maybe it is. And we're sorry. The state makes us this way. You see that we're, we're at a race to the bottom here in Texas. So we're doing the best we can. Okay. Okay. And you've got a lot of problems to solve. So the 15 minutes make sense and rising strong quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a recovering person, I know a lot about codependency because of recovery. We learned a lot about it in that. Yeah, totally. And that would be the backdrop to what it means to be a human spotlight and what it means to be the cleanup crew.

Because essentially, the central definition of codependency is that you just do not allow another person to sit in the consequences of his or her choices. You just won't allow it. Either you don't want them to feel the discomfort of it. You don't want other people to observe what's true. That would have been closer to me. You don't want to live with a ticking time bomb.

So you shape shift around somebody's like volatile personality just to steady the waters, right? So that you're just not constantly having explosions all around you. You're basically taking on the effects of somebody else's choices, and you are crafting an environment around someone else so they don't have to feel their own pain,

their own discomfort, their own trauma, their own consequences, or even their own responsibilities. And then I was like, well, shit. I took that book and I give it a little toss, just a little toss. I was like, you don't know me. You don't know my life. I did not know I was codependent. I thought I was just being a good person. I thought I was just being helpful. I thought I was just being in service to another person or I did not realize how much I stunted our own growth,

not just mine, but his and ours. And had I let the chips fall where they were supposed to fall all along, who knows what we could have solved, right? Like had consequences worked their magical effect, because they do one way or another, who knows how we could have grown, or what would have been possible for him inside his own like soul and his own trauma, What would have been possible for him inside his own soul and his own trauma? Or how we could have learned to relate to one another in healthy, mature adult ways as two whole people, not two half people trying to make one whole. Right?

Yes. And so that was really hard to learn. And I took that to my counselor and she was like, this is your work. She's like, I promise you, this is not Brandon's fault. It's not. She's like, this is your work. She's like, I promise you, this is not Brandon's fault. It's not. She's like, these are your choices. You made these choices one by one because you preferred a steady, stable environment

over whatever was true. And if you don't deal with these behaviors and responses, you will 100% walk them into your next relationship. Wow. And she's like, you're probably already behaving this way with your kids. I'm like, you will 100% walk them into your next relationship. Wow. And she's like, you're probably already behaving this way with your kids. I'm like, you're mean. Like, I'm paying you $150 an hour

to not talk to me like that, right? What, have you been trained by Brene Brown or something? No, seriously. I'm like, I'm hurting. Like... Like... Sure enough, when I decided to, decided to put that overlay over parenting, I was like, oh no. Yes.

Nuts. Yes, nuts. And so that's been a lot of my personal work for the last year and a half is figuring out how to let other human people just be human people all the way. Good, bad, hard, making good choices, making terrible choices, because they're a person and that's their life and it's not my life. And so I am only, I'm at about the 54% mark on this, you guys, if you want to grade, I would still give it a kind of an F minus. I've pulled up from zero. So

we're going to call it progress. We'll take it. What is your experience here with co-dependence inside these relationships? Like specifically, because they manifest there differently than I think they do with our work partners or with even our kids or our parents, but inside like a marriage? Oh Lord, that can sink a ship. Yeah. I have a lens when I think about this, that is just a question. I don't know if this is true or not, but I found these journals. I can't believe I'm about to admit this out

loud. Oh my gosh. I know. I found these journals from like 15 years ago or something. I don't know. And they were, I was writing to myself, to God, I guess. But I was saying things like, dear God, please help me let Craig be the spiritual leader of my family. Please help me be less loud. Please help me be less, less, less, less. Okay. Like I'm sweating again every time, but like that is who I was trying to be less. And when I think about the way the cleanup crew manifests in like a social thing to me is like,

the person says something dumb ass. And like, you just don't let everybody experience and him experience the discomfort of having said something dumbass. You jump in and go, the dancing monkey. Like you try to distract everyone from what just happened. You try to put it in context real quick for everyone else. You just, you're like a gazebo or what is that called?

The, the, at a hockey game in the middle. Oh, a Zamboni. Zamboni. You guys get it. Which is almost exactly like a gazebo. Pretty close. I mean, I tracked, to be honest with you, as soon as she said hockey, I'm like, I'm there.

Okay. It's fine. So you're a gazebo is what you want. So the cleanup crew, I see it with like literally almost all of my friends and me. It's like so the giggling, the making okay what you just said. Yeah. Is just, it's terrible actually.

It's so gross. But that's the spotlight thing is what I'm really interested in, especially with you. Because, and what I was just writing about my journal. It feels to me like it's perhaps set up in patriarchal marriages, especially inside of Christian marriages or any marriage where the man is supposed to be the thing. The problem is that doesn't work because people are just people and there's going to be somebody

who's shinier, who's bolder, who's probably a little bit wiser, who's the leader. And it might be the man and it might not be the man, it might be the woman. But when the woman is as shiny and bold and wise as you are, in order to fulfill the deal you made, which was to always allow him to be, you have to become a human spotlight. You have to become dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and try to make him shine. Because you've not only broken the rules by being as successful and effervescent and beloved and admired as you are, you've already fucked up the whole deal you made, which was

to allow him to constantly be better than you. Hmm. It sucks so bad because it's so true. I internalized that narrative so deeply. I didn't really have another one until I was a grown person with critical thinking skills. By that point, I'd already screwed it up. I'd already gone out on my own ledge. I'd already created my own world and couldn't understand the tremors that that was creating.

And so I was trying again to fix it. Like I can be as powerful as I am in all these places. But when I come back over here, I need to put a lid on that shit. Like, because it's causing some problems and I don't get it. And also, what sucks about that about me just constantly kind of shrinking so that I didn't, we didn't get too out of whack here, you know, it's can't be like this can only be like this. Is that that's like not even fair to him. What a shitty arrangement. Like, look, you're married to a smart, wise,

powerful person, literally damn. Like, let's fit into our spaces correctly. We could flourish like that, like literally flourish. And so even the effort to try to sort of pony up this ethos that you don't even have, right? To be a thing, to match or supersede this, what? That's exhausting. And shameful. I'd be worn out.

It's shameful. It shames the dude. I can just imagine Craig in his little journal being like, dear God, help me be the leader. Like he didn't want to. It shames the guy who maybe doesn't. It does. It also happens in lesbian marriages. My marriage was, this is that too.

Yes, you made yourself small, small, small. I had to make myself small to feel like that there was like some sort of balance. It was a RuPaul-yif like childhood thing too. Youngest of seven. I think what I've learned is that it comes down to stepping into my full humanity and loving myself fully enough. Cause there was a part of me that felt like, oh yeah, I should dim my light for you.

That's what a good partner does. And really it's just about self love. Like it was self hate. I was hating myself in doing that. God, it's so true. And. Like it was self hate. I was hating myself in doing that. It's so true. And then I think what happens when we like sign on to this agreement inside a marriage or any kind of partnership where we sort of agree with one another, I'm going to shrink so you can expand. I'll clean up, I'll clean up and I'll shine the spotlight.

That does create a lot of shame in both partners. It creates, it does. That's a, that's a shameful practice. And so shame is when we make our worst choices. When I am operating out of shame, that's my grossest self. That is when I say, and I do things that if I were looking in on that from the outside, it'd be like, Jen, behave.

No, we don't talk like that. We don't say that. We don't posture ourselves like that. That sort of shameful agreement made us mean and it made us punish each other. And we did that in different ways. I think he would say this, Brandon punished me with aggression and dominance and anger, which has a catastrophic effect on me,

just the way that I'm built. That is already, take out the context, that's gonna make me sort of freeze. Just the way that I'm built. That is already take out the context. That's going to make me sort of freeze. I freeze like that. Um, and then I punished him with withdrawal and withholding. And so I will just go dormant. I won't respond to this. I won't engage you. I won't, I won't even try to make this better. I'm just absent. I just, the gin has left the building. And so we just got in this circular pattern of like aggression and withdrawal,

and we just couldn't find each other anymore. Like I've had so much resentment around this so much. I was buried in resentment for ways that I was choosing to respond, my choices, right? At any point I had the tools, I had the resources. I instructed other women how to do better in that scenario. To do as I say, not as I do community. And I just couldn't access it. Now, like my counselors helped me identify shame when it's coming in. It's not a life sentence responding out of shame. We are not stuck in that.

That is not a prison that we have to stay in. It is work to learn how to identify shame, how it feels in our bodies, what it actually does to me physically, where my thoughts start going when I'm in a shame shame spiral and I can grab that by the tail. I'm learning to grab that by the tail and say, Oh, this is instruction. My body is instructing me right now that I am getting pushed into a shame space. And so let's take a minute. Let's take a beat. Let's get in front of this.

Let's talk about what's true here. What's not true. Cause shame is always constructed on something that's not true. Some sort of lie. Whether it's fear based or reality based or both. Something in here is not true and it's not going to serve me. And so let me take a deep breath. Let me go put my feet in the grass. Let me drink some water and let me pause before I start to respond out of this space and regret it tomorrow morning.

And so that's hard work kind of. I'm also medium at that. But I think that's what happens in our marriages when we continue to shame each other by either shrinking or expanding when that was really never how we were meant to fill a room. Yeah, that's beautiful. When I think about women who have good friends, I think that you, to me, are an example of one of the people in my life who values, who puts the energy in.

The depth and the realness and the family of friendship that you have created in your life is freaking beautiful. Here's my question. Why in the hell don't, why do we share everything with our friends except for the marriage shit? Because did you? Like, did you share? You didn't, because they had to come to you. Only half.

Only half. Yeah. I did half. So like, what would you share and what, and then tell me why do we do this? Why do we leave each other alone? Why? Why do we? Why do we?

Because we're so good at getting down into the dark tunnels with each other. We're so good at it. Like I know this experientially when I am like capsized by something in parenting or in work or in a relationship with my parents, my friends are like excavators coming down to get me and like grabbing me by the, you know, I know that this is our magic, that this is the power of women in relationship with each other. The marriage piece, it's so interesting for me to look back on the year prior and go, hmm. I did pull my friends in at about the 50% mark.

And the parts that I shared were the parts that were palatable. The ones that felt like I could garner compassion for my friends, not just for myself, but for Brandon. I didn't want him to be non-redeemable in my friend's eyes. And I needed to keep him above board enough so that we could eventually hit that elusive recovery phase that I was waiting to happen and that everybody could still love him and love us. And so I think had I been more honest, which I was after, oh, it was so hard to say some things that had been real and true and just like,

that had been real and true and just like, of course, how has it met with nothing but open arms? Nothing, nothing. It's not a disconnector, it's a connector. I've discovered this in my own community of women online that I lead because I just, you guys are kind of like this too. I don't know, there's not a second version of me. Do you know what I mean?

I wish there was. That would make things so much easier on everyone. For real. I just only know how to be mostly this one me. And so I didn't know how to suffer privately. I didn't know what else to do except for just live my life like the way it was really going um kind of in the public eye and I was like well let's just see how this goes

like I don't know what this is going to mean for me um having talked ad nauseam about marriage since Facebook existed um right shit God what could go wrong What could go wrong? Everyone's going to love this. But what was interesting was to find out as always, God, we know this. How many times do we have to preach this before we believe it? Which was what it actually became that level of vulnerability, of like raw, unprotected, exposed pain that I just said out loud and

put in front of my community. What it was, was an invitation for connection. And it's exactly what it became. And something happened in my community over the last year and a half. I mean, it just experienced depth that we've really never had together because this is not rare. It's not. People are hurting and they're hurting specifically inside of their marriages.

And my story is not new. It is old and boring. I'm saying, please, men, can we get a new story? This is so boring. Why make a new one? They one's so boring. Make a new one. They all want to be so cliche. Good. What else could there have been?

You know what I mean? Like some sort of different shock and awe. I don't know. Be more creative. I love that whole thing where we protect our people from the version of the truth because we are afraid they won't be able to take our people back. It's like that thing I say to my people, you know, I would like to be friends with you, but I already told my sister what you did. So we're done. Sorry. Forever. I

think it's beyond that though. I think if we're being really honest, it is about our people and about how you're going to look at them from now on. And are we going to still be able to like go on that group vacation because now you know who he is. But actually, it's about your view of me. Because as much as I can't handle you viewing him like that, I can't handle you viewing me as the kind of person that's going to stay with that. Yeah, totally.

Because the cardinal sin in our culture is someone who settles, someone who's fine. So if you say, this is the situation of my marriage, and also I'm not leaving it. It's like your respect for yourself has gone down, but also the respect that you perceive that they have for you feels like it goes down. And at least for me, that is hard. You know? It's so real. And that's always mattered to me disproportionately. What do people think of me? This is one of my monsters to slay. And it has an outsized effect on my choices or has. It has for sure.

Which is something, a lovely little side gift that this kind of public divorce gives you. Guess what? You get to fix that. That's dead. So I think you're right, Amanda. And what sucks about this whole thing is that what's actually true is that when we are standing kind of naked in front of one another,

and we are just stripped bare of all of our pretenses and all of our posturing and all the ways we polish our gross stuff up and all this pretending that is really where the magic is. That is where real connection is. That is where real community is. Ironically, that's where real hope comes from, the real kind that really has, it's based in reality. And I don't know why we run away from this so much. I really don't. The self preservation thing has a terrible ROI. Yeah, just terrible. It doesn't even work. No, it doesn't even work. I'd love to see us tear this down brick by brick. And I think

what happens when people like us who have a lot of eyes on us more than makes sense and more than I like frankly I don't think we're necessarily built for this kind of attention and I it kind of has a corrosive effect anyway whatever that's a different ball I think when we can dig deep enough to stand like that in front of our communities without defending, without justifying, without making it a little better than it really is, without anything. Just being true. It has this contagious effect. And I think it has a ripple effect through our communities that is so healthy and it's so good.

And we start showing ourselves to one another. And because every single time, I mean, God, how many times I have to say this, there's nothing new under the sun. Every single time it's a me too, me too, me too, me too. Every time, I don't care what your thing is. I swear to God, I don't care what it is. However weird, outlier little situation

you feel like you were in, you are not. You are not. You are not. You have a weird little club that you belong to. Congratulations. You don't want it. Me neither, but we have it. And so it's so good for us to do this.

And so I know that we are all committed to continue to live like that as often as we can because we're also just human little people and we'll go into our little hidey holes and get weird. But as often as we can, I think leading with that sort of vulnerability and truth telling is going to have far reaching effects that we'll probably never even see. It's the commitment to say, okay, I'm okay with you admiring me a little bit less because I want you to love me.

So true. And it's the only cure for loneliness, right? I mean, it doesn't matter what your situation is in your marriage. The universal experience when you're struggling in any way in your marriage, whether you're admitting it or not, is a profound loneliness. And then, when you are able to hear

the truth about other people's marriages, guess what that does? Makes you feel less lonely. Yeah, it's so real. And it takes away the shame of it too. The deep shame that seeps into our bones. It's a mean shame because it's not fair and it's not warranted. But that sort of connection inside shared pain, it just seeps out that shame bit by bit and it just loses its power over you.

I mean, it really does. Shame is so powerful in the dark, so powerful. It could just convince us of all sorts of things. And so to me, that is an incredible antidote. It is literally a healing property to choose to not stay isolated in our own suffering, but invite people into it. Like that alone is 80% of it.

I mean, I get 80% there, just simply not being alone in it anymore. So I, I do believe in that. And I love the community that you build and host, which literally almost enforces this. You just, you know, we're not setting tables where people have to just put on their prom dress in order to fit at it. You know what I mean? It's just a messy, sloppy mess. It is. So here's what we're going to do. I assumed that during this 50 minutes,

we were going to get through the pain, the waiting and the rising, okay? Of Jen's life. Apparently the pain, the waiting and the rising takes longer than 50 minutes. So today I think we got to the pain. So what we're going to do. So we've never done this before in the history. We can do our things.

But I'm gonna beg Jen to come back and we're gonna do a part two because I, we must, Jen Hatmaker, talk about how you during the waiting and in the rising just got your shit together like I have never seen. Just figured out how to do life as a whole person. You had your there she is moment, but it was you. It was there she is Jen Hatmaker. Genesense. The genesense. Part two coming.

Damn American hero. An American hero. American hero. This is enough. That's a lot. This is a lot right now. I don't think so. Okay. Jen, you do hard now. I don't think so. Okay.

Jen, you do hard things and we love you. Same. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then

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