Tell me your and your partner’s Opposite Life Philosophies without telling me your and your partner’s Opposite Life Philosophies. pic.twitter.com/Cpm4EtKKhP

— Glennon Doyle (@GlennonDoyle) June 16, 2021

I nearly cried in the street yesterday listening to Glennon Doyle’s new podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things.”

If you haven’t listened yet, I recommend doing so, right now.

This week’s episode was on “Fighting Well” with Glennon and her wife Abby. I was floored by how beautiful their love is. They fight, of course. They bicker. And I had to laugh a few times at the ways in which they so perfectly capture what it’s like to be a messy, imperfect human with idiosyncrasies that can annoy the hell out of someone else.

But they also see and accept and love the person just as they are—Abby, more so, as Glennon jokes:

“One of the most exceptional things about Abby is her supernatural ability to love people exactly as they are. And without condition. I’ve never seen it before. And I don’t believe I’ll ever see it again. It is something that I would not want to change about her.” 

“Her unwillingness to change me is not something I’d change about her,” Glennon’s sister, who co-hosts the podcast, laughs and teases Glennon.

“Yes,” Glennon admits without shame.

They discuss how they approach conflict. They both have different ways of fighting and different safety mechanisms, which Glennon calls our “bulletproof jackets.”

I love how Abby tells Glennon what she needs in that moment in order to feel safe within their disagreement.

“I need to know that this fight doesn’t mean that you will leave me,” she says.

Toward the end of the episode, Abby says something so beautiful that made me realize that this kind of love does exist. That this is what I’m holding out for.

“Look. I decided to marry Glennon, decided to marry her after having learned this about her. And I think that part of what makes her so special is she actually needs it. She needs to feel like somebody else is going to take care of stuff when she has to go into this different world or realm or in her head or whatever. And there is going to be a cost that I pay. But that’s part of why I was put on this earth I think. I do. I think that there is a unique kind of person that can handle that and I was built for it. So it’s going to annoy the hell out of me forever. I know that also. But I think over time, I’ll stop caring as much.”

How beautiful is that?

What I love most about Glennon and Abby’s story is that it’s unconventional. If you don’t know, Glennon Doyle was married to a man before Abby. She found out he cheated on her, and they were trying to make their marriage work when she then met and fell in love with Abby. She got divorced and married Abby a year later.

It reminds me that it’s okay to be single at 27. That it’s okay to be single at any age. Or to divorce. Or to be afraid of never finding love again after losing love. It’s okay to be wherever we are at.

I think it is so important to love and get to know yourself, you know, all that good stuff, and I know that not everyone finds this kind of love ever in a lifetime—but I also think it’s absolutely okay to want a love like this.

I want a love like Glennon and Abby. I want my Abby.

~

Listen to the whole episode, here.