Relationships Talk

Leslie Morgan Steiner was making books before she could write.

At 4, she would draw and scribble, then staple paper together, eager to tell stories. She was laying the groundwork for what would become a successful and meaningful career.

Today, Steiner has authored three books, including New York Times bestseller Crazy Love, a memoir about surviving her abusive first marriage. (She also delivered a popular TED Talk on why domestic violence victims don’t leave.)

Her other two titles—Mommy Wars and The Baby Chase—put a spotlight on women’s issues related to motherhood, careers and surrogacy. She’s working on her fourth now.

A mother of three, Steiner finds the intimate stories of life as an American woman and mother fascinating. Telling them, she says, is her calling.

Here, she shares the lessons she’s learned as she lives life on her terms.

Regan Walsh: You’ve lived with fear, and your guts overcame it. How so?

Leslie Morgan Steiner: The two times where I had to dial up guts over fear were the end of both of my marriages. I’ve been married twice to men I’ve really loved. But each time when I made the decision to end the marriage, it was the hardest and scariest thing I’ve ever done.

Walsh: Your first marriage was abusive. What was that relationship—and leaving it—like?  

Steiner: I’d been with him four years, and he was going to kill me. He’d been terribly abused as a child, and he beat me from five days before our wedding until the last day we were together. And you would think that it wouldn’t be scary leaving him—that it was scarier staying with him. But it was incredibly painful to leave that and to give up on him, because I very much wanted to help him. And it was terrifying, because in the final beating, he came very close to killing me. There was a lot of ugliness involved, and I was only 26. So I really had to be very strong in ways that I had no training for.

Walsh: What was your second marriage—and leaving that one—like?

Steiner: When I ended my second marriage, which was a very different circumstance, we had been together 20 years and had three kids together. From the outside, things looked so wonderful. He was a stable man and seemed very kind and loving. But he’d been incredibly emotionally neglectful and undermining to me. I had given up a corporate career to raise our kids, so I was worried about my financial future. And I was quite terrified that it would hurt the kids.

Walsh: I image that leaving him was still scary, yes?

Steiner: I find voluntary transitions the hardest because there’s some choice involved, and you really have to access your own strength. Both times I didn’t know if I was going to make it. But one of my favorite sayings is, “Leap and the net will appear.” That is a really hard thing to do. It always feels like there’s no net, but in both of those cases, the net was my female friends. It goes back to why I write about women.

Walsh: What is the most challenging “should” you have shed?

Steiner: The hardest thing I shed was this idea that there was some definition of the perfect wife and the perfect mother out there. I think this comes from my mom. It really mattered to her that everything looked perfect on the outside. She was beautiful and knew which fork to use and was a great athlete and was effortlessly skinny her whole life. She was an expert at looking like the perfect wife and mother. She was the president of the PTA and threw great parties for my dad’s law firm. I grew up with this idea that if you made it all look perfect on the outside, you’d live happily ever after.

Walsh: Yes, the unattainable perfection. The idea of it trips so many of us up, doesn’t it?

Steiner: I struggled a lot with realizing there’s no value in perfection, especially when it comes to the kind of wife you are and the kind of mother you are. If you try to be perfect as a mom, all you do is convince your kids that perfection matters, and you give them a massive inferiority complex. I’ve been a really imperfect mom. My kids will attest to this. I think it was really important to shed that and to say, “I’m not going to do it all right.” As women, we get very strong messages that there’s a set way to do things. It’s like wallpaper in our lives—no one comes to us and says, “You have to do it this way.” But we just absorb those messages all the time. To jettison all of that is a much better path to success, personal happiness, and motherhood.

Walsh: Now that you’ve shed those relationships as well as the idea of perfection, where are you?

Steiner: In some ways, I feel my entire life is a circular journey to get back to the little girl I was when I was 8 years old—carefree, confident, goofy, and whimsical. I’ve tried so hard to get back to that place. And by ignoring the shoulds and being gutsy and feisty and listening to my own inner voice, that’s led me to be a mom in ways that some people think is rather unconventional. And it’s led me to an unconventional career. But these things give me an inner happiness, peace, and joy.

Walsh: What’s the best part of living life on your terms?

Steiner: Something that I used to say when I was writing Mommy Wars was, “Moms are like snowflakes.” Everybody does it differently. And there’s great joy in that—in living life the way you want to live it. We’re given all of these messages that if we’re unusual or a little whacky, we’re not as lovable and we won’t fit in. I’ve loved casting all of that off. And the good news is, it gets easier and easier as you get older. Being a woman is an incredible adventure.

Walsh: What advice would you give others looking to live life on their terms?

Steiner: It’s easiest if I think about giving advice to my daughters. I say all the time that they are great the way they are. They get this relentless message that they have to be thin and beautiful and that there’s great value in this stereotypical idea of female perfection. It’s a cliché, but it’s true: You’ve got to take your own side. It’s Feminism 101, but look yourself in the mirror and say, “I did a good job today.” That endless voice that says we’re not enough is so destructive. And the worst part is that it somehow feels good—like if we criticize ourselves and push ourselves harder, we’ll somehow be better. And it’s not like that. It’s a complete waste of energy.

Walsh: You say you’ve spent a long time learning how to be assertive—but you’re now learning how and when to dial that down. Can you explain?

Steiner: I, like most women, have spent my life learning how to be assertive. What’s kind of tricky is that once you get really assertive, you learn there are times where you have to dial that back. The cues I’m getting from my children are now’s the time to be less assertive with them, to listen more. And that’s hard. It’s like I’ve been training to express my opinions and be in touch with myself, and now the lesson is to find the value of hanging back and listening—listening both to the people in my life, and to myself, discovering the power that comes from remaining quiet.