Quote of the Day: Sharon Gless on Daily Inspiration

In the late 1990s, as “gender wars” punchlines bounced between talk shows and sitcoms and workplace equality arguments moved from the margins to the mainstream, blunt one-liners about men and women traveled fast because they felt like shorthand for lived tension. That atmosphere still matters in 2026, when dating apps, shifting roles at home, and louder conversations about emotional labor have made the old frictions newly visible. Into that ongoing churn drops Sharon Gless’s dry, disarming verdict: “All men are difficult.”

Read literally, it’s an overreach. Read like real life, it’s a confession: relationships often feel like a negotiation with an instruction manual no one received. “Difficult” isn’t the same as “bad.” It points to complexity, misread signals, mismatched expectations, emotional guardedness, and the stubborn ways culture teaches people to perform masculinity. Gless’s line works because it captures the weary comedy of intimacy: you can love someone and still find them exasperating.

The danger, of course, is the seduction of the sweeping generalization. “All men” is a shorthand that can harden into cynicism, the kind that turns curiosity into verdict. The better use of the quote is diagnostic, not prosecutorial: if you keep meeting “difficult,” ask what patterns you’re tolerating, what conversations you’re avoiding, and what boundaries you’ve been afraid to name. Difficulty can be a prompt toward better communication, or a warning that you’re trying to build closeness without shared effort.

Sharon Gless, celebrated for the hard-edged intelligence she brought to roles in Cagney & Lacey and later Queer as Folk, spent decades portraying relationships under pressure. She knows how power, tenderness, and misunderstanding can coexist in the same scene, and the same home.

On a February Sunday like this, the practical takeaway is simple: treat “difficult” as information. Laugh where you can, but don’t outsource your love to stereotypes; ask for clarity, offer it back, and let reciprocity, not resignation, be the standard.