Podcast Summary:

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
Episode 388: On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be "Good" with Elise Loehnen
Release Date: February 18, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode, hosted by Nicole Kalil and featuring guest Elise Loehnen (author of On Our Best Behavior), delves deep into the complex and persistent ways that women are conditioned to pursue "goodness"—specifically, the type rooted in compliance, self-sacrifice, and approval-seeking—instead of authenticity, ambition, and self nourishment. Drawing on themes from Loehnen’s bestselling book, the duo explore the ancient origins of "good girl" conditioning, particularly via the Seven Deadly Sins, and offer guidance for unlearning these inherited scripts. The conversation is practical, insightful, and frequently vulnerable, aimed at helping listeners interrogate the subtle (and not so subtle) forces shaping their choices.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Does It Mean to Be “Good”? (01:05–07:15)

• Nicole opens the conversation: "Somehow being good became the gold star you earn for making yourself smaller, but only if you do it with a smile." (03:55)
• The difference between being intrinsically good (values, wholeness) versus performing goodness for external validation.
• Elise explains: Goodness is inherent in humans, but women are externally conditioned to prove their goodness through compliance and self-sacrifice.

  “Women are trained to look to peers, professors, priests, parents, to adjudicate our goodness for us and to seek approval out there.” (05:15)

• The deeply patriarchal roots of this conditioning, and the distinction: women are raised for "goodness", men for "power".

2. The Black-and-White Trap of Womanhood (07:16–11:10)

• The conversation touches on the binary framing: "If I'm not good, I must be bad."
• Elise: “If you’re not good, you’re bad. If you do something bad, you can’t possibly be good... when your entire identity is staked around these ideas of goodness, you are so susceptible to reputational harm.” (08:18)
• Societal “cancellation” and the fear of stepping outside the approved lines, especially for women, resulting in hypervigilance and exhaustion.

3. Gendered Scripts: Conditioned for Goodness vs. Power (11:11–14:12)

• Nicole reflects that the pressures on men, while damaging, are narrower (power, providing), whereas for women, the script permeates every role.
• Elise: “We were all out there surviving… in prehistoric days... there’s no evidence back in the day that we were this patriarchal culture. That’s a relatively recent invention.” (12:11)
• The conversation challenges traditional gender narratives—in history and modern culture—and advocates for a partnership model.

4. The Seven Deadly Sins as an Invisible Rulebook (16:53–22:39)

• Nicole: She was struck by Elise’s argument that the Seven Deadly Sins framework is still influencing women’s lives, consciously or not.
• Elise: Tells the origin story of the Sins, not from the Bible, but from a 4th-century monk; later institutionalized and gendered by the Church.

  “It wasn’t until 590 that Pope Gregory the First… said, Mary Magdalene... is a penitent prostitute... He just invented that wholesale... and that’s what set it in motion.” (19:09)

• The story of Mary Magdalene as feminist cautionary tale: a false dichotomy—virgin or whore—with immense staying power.

5. How the Seven Deadly Sins Shape Modern Women’s Lives (23:33–31:14)

a) Gluttony & Body Politics

• Obsession with “controlling” women’s appetites and bodies persists; discipline is demanded, but the playing field is never level.

  "All women also know this lie, even though we keep believing the lie... the math doesn't math. It's never mathed." (24:28)

b) Greed & Money

• Women must justify their financial success—often through philanthropy—while men are not burdened with this expectation.

  “It’s rare to meet a woman who’s incredibly comfortable with money, who isn’t simultaneously explaining all of the philanthropy or the good things that she does to sort of sanitize that money.” (24:42)

c) Envy (The "Gateway Sin")

• Elise: “If we could get comfortable with our own envy and start to decipher it actually as an internal compass showing us what we want... I think we could dramatically change things rapidly.” (26:42)
• She openly shares how acknowledging envy (envying authors with bestsellers, for example) revealed her own ambitions and catalyzed her growth.

  “I needed to recognize, oh, that's envy. And yes, that makes me so incredibly uncomfortable. And yet it's showing me exactly what I want. It is my soul saying, pay attention to this.” (28:45)

6. Pride: The Double Bind (32:46–35:49)

• Nicole asks about pride as a sin for women. It's "funny," she notes, that self-celebration is fraught for women.
• Elise: The original theological notion was separation from God, but now pride means women risk connection and belonging if they stand out.

  “To individuate, separate and stand apart is sort of a kind of death... there’s a lot of anxiety that I think comes up for women.” (33:33)

• Nicole reframes confidence: “Knowing who you are, owning who you’re not, and choosing to embrace all of it.” (35:49)

7. Breaking the Rulebook: Unlearning "Good Girl" Stories (37:08–44:19)

• How do we stop operating unconsciously by ancient, damaging scripts?
  • Elise: “The most important or impactful thing you can do is start to identify that you’re telling yourself a story about what maybe a good woman or a good mother would do and separating that from fact.” (37:40)
  • She illustrates with a common example: “I’m the only one who can do things right, so I should do them all”—and how it drives burnout, not connection.

  “My husband didn’t marry me because I’m so good with Google Calendar.” (40:24)

• Nicole underscores that our stories are not universal: “Even if I choose something to be my story…it’s a story that I get to put on other people.”

8. Patriarchy, Internalized and Perpetuated (42:23–44:19)

• Women play a powerful, often unconscious role in upholding patriarchal standards—for themselves and for each other.

  “Not only was I policing myself, but I would police other women... that sort of unmitigated criticism of not real things, but just how someone made me feel, and I would blame them for making me feel that way.” (43:05)

• Both agree: real change will only occur when we practice “self-authorship” and question the default scripts, despite the discomfort and risk.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nicole: “Sacrifice is the currency of goodness... Women bending so someone else can stand tall.” (03:10)
• Elise: “We’re trying to abide by a culture that wants something else... Most of us are not doing that because we’re trying to abide by a culture that wants something else.” (06:47)
• Elise: “You just see these women being canceled left, right and center. That's also the sin of pride, bringing too much attention to yourself.” (08:44)
• Elise: “Women of all generations gather 60% of calories. But we were also hunting, often in different ways.... Men were nurturing, caretaking. So there's no evidence back in the day that we were this patriarchal culture.” (12:19)
• Elise: “It’s a movie script... it’s a story with really long teeth, as we know.” (21:39)
• Elise: “Money is really a neutral. It's a neutral energy... Men are not tripping over themselves to justify their wealth, while women are just terrified of being perceived as having too much.” (24:29)
• Elise: “Envy…if we could start to say, why is this woman bothering me?... Maybe she has something that I want and I actually need to pay attention to that, model myself after her, study her, and use her as a beacon for what's possible for me and not as an obstacle or deterrent.” (26:42)
• Nicole: “My story isn’t the story… it’s a story that I get to put on other people.” (41:25)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:05–05:03 — Introduction & definition of “good girl” conditioning
• 05:04–07:15 — Outsourcing goodness and people-pleasing
• 07:16–11:10 — Black-and-white thinking and reputation risks
• 11:11–14:12 — Goodness (women) vs. Power (men) and partnership in history
• 16:53–22:39 — The secret history and persistence of the “Seven Deadly Sins”
• 23:33–31:14 — Modern-day manifestations: gluttony, greed, envy
• 32:46–35:49 — The sin of “pride” and the cost of standing out
• 37:08–44:19 — Tools for unlearning old scripts and internalized patriarchy

Final Takeaways

The episode closes with Nicole affirming that the “permission” to question, rewrite, and burn inherited scripts does not come from any authority (or even from Elise or herself), but from within. She reminds listeners:

"You and I were never meant to fit inside a framework that punishes our ambition, pathologizes our appetite, or moralizes our exhaustion... Goodness, that costs you yourself, well, that's not goodness. That's conditioning." (45:08)

Nicole and Elise leave listeners with this call: to examine their own “good girl” stories, celebrate their complexity, and live, boldly and unapologetically, on their own terms.

Resources mentioned:

• Elise Loehnen's Substack & Podcast: Pulling the Thread
• Book: On Our Best Behavior: The Price Women Pay to Be Good
• Workbook: Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness

For further exploration, see nicolekalil.com.