I Love My Husband, but I Don’t Like Him Anymore

You talk a lot about through the course of marriage you're married to, like a lot of different versions of your person. Yes. And I feel like I'm trying to reconcile, like not loving this version of the person that I love. All right. So tell me about this, this new version. Did he get leather pants and a motorcycle? Oh, no. No, no. It's the opposite, actually. Hey, what's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm glad you are joining us from all over the planet. We sit with real people going through real challenges in their life. If you want to be on the show, I'd love to have you go to johndeloney.com slash ask. A-S-K, fill out the form, and Kelly will go through all the messages we get from all over the world. the country, all over the world. And we'll have you on the show if we can fit you in. JohnDeloney.com slash ask. Let's go out to Cincinnati, Ohio and talk to Lynn. What's up, Lynn? Hi, Dr. John. How are you doing? I'm doing awesome. How about you? Good. I'm in cold Ohio sitting in front of my fireplace. Oh, that sounds awesome. I'm in a cold studio getting stared to death with cold lasers by Kelly. So I'm envious of you. She just flipped you off because that's what she does. She didn't actually. I did not. She didn't. What's up? So you talk a lot about how through the course of the marriage, you're married to like a lot of different versions of your person. Yes. And I feel like I'm trying to reconcile like not loving this version of the person that I love, if that makes sense. Is it okay? Is it not loving or is it I don't I love this guy, but I don't like this new version. Yes, that's exactly it. We are like, so I want to, I'm going to do the caveat thing that everyone does, but like we are in it forever. He's a great man. We're really happy. Blah, blah, blah. Okay. Blah, blah, blah. Right. Right. So tell me about this, this new version. Did he get leather pants and a motorcycle? Oh no, no, no. It's the opposite actually. So he's a teacher. Okay. He is exhausted. Like he, and I feel like when we got to three kids, we reached his capacity and I just feel like he is a little disengaged, a little, yeah, he just is tired all the time. And I feel like I need more from him and I want more from him. And he'll like the words, we had a good little argument the other day and the words he ended it with are like, I just want to be loved for who I am and not who you want me to be, but I like want more. I want more engagement. I want more communication. I want more presence. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. So a couple of things here, and I'm going to throw one thing out that I don't think I've ever thrown out initially like this. How old is he? Yeah, he's almost 40. Okay. I want you to, and I have no affiliation with this company. This is just who I use. Yeah. I want you and him in the new year. We're recording this right before New Year's, but this will be out like in late January, February. I want you all to go to a function and get your blood work done. Okay. Okay. Because I want him to check several things, including his testosterone and free test. And I want you to see how he's doing. That's number one. Yeah. Okay. Okay. There is a falling off a cliff at about 40 for some men. Okay. And it feels like the world's coming to an end. Yeah. The world's coming to an end, not psychologically as much as I literally can't do the things I used to be able to do. And it's been transformative for me. It's been transformative for some of my buddies. And so go check that out. Okay. That's number one. Yeah, that's great. All right. So put that over to the side. And most, I'll just say this, most men won't do that. Yeah. They'll say, I'm fine. Relax. Uh-huh. And the path forward would be, I want us to do this together. I'm going to do it. We're entering into our 40s, and this is when things just start to change. We have to live a little bit differently. Yeah. And so ask him, will you do this for me? I'm doing it, and I want you to be brave and go first and ask him if he'll do it too. It's a couple hundred bucks. They're awesome. And they are not a sponsor of this show, but their program and their platform is world-class, super easy to read, all that kind of stuff. I feel like I'm doing an infomercial for somebody. But all right, so that's number one. Here's number two. What does he teach? He is teaching eighth graders, like a psychology class. Okay, great. He's an amazing teacher. Yeah, I would expect nothing less. And so how many kids do y'all have? Y'all have three? Three that are 11, nine, and six. Okay. So fun ages. Like, I think it's so fun. I feel like we're right in the middle of the activity chaos. I'm like all in. And he just gets tired. Okay. Where does he win? Well, I think school is a place he wins. He's an amazing teacher. But even that is a place where you might have connection with young people. And by the way, I was a high school teacher. It's still my favorite job I've ever had ever, ever. It was so fun. Yeah. And then I was with college students for 20 years. Like it's so fun. And you can win with the human interaction with those students, but you lose with every parent, you lose with every administrator, you lose with every deadline, you lose with every social media post saying education's killing everybody, like all that, right? Yeah, yeah. So you can make space for human connection inside of a really poisonous environment. Yeah. Where does he win at home? Yeah. We have a really good intimacy life. I think that's the place that's good and happy and exciting. So that's a good win. um does he feel like that yeah he wants he always wants more i think he wants me to want him him yes in that capacity more or more outside of the bedroom like i feel like within the bedroom it's awesome but he wants me to want that 24 hours a day like that's what he wants our texting to be about like that's the place he finds connection with me okay and i feel like i want connection other places like where like where uh like i want him to say good morning when he comes down in the morning instead of like going straight to the coffee pot or i want him to come home from work and like hug all of us before he sits on the couch and looks at his phone okay you know what i mean yes yes so and i feel like when i say that kind of stuff pretty clearly to him he like hears it for four days you know what i mean yep or like we'll kind of think in his head like I just need to get through, like appease this for a couple of days and then we'll go back to status quo. Okay. And I feel like a word I've been kind of hovering between is like, I think he feels really content. Like, I think he feels like we live this happy, we do live this really happy suburb life. But I feel like there's this fine line between content and apathetic. Does that make sense? It does. But I'm trying to get you to tell me what you're missing from him. Yeah. I think I'm missing conversation and I'm missing like, yeah, emotional engagement and some spiritual engagement too. Like, I think we got married under this premise that we both really value like Bible study community, Christian friends. And that is like not something he's seeking in his life. Okay. Um, my question for you is y'all, are your bills covered? I mean, y'all, y'all aren't starving. Okay. Okay, so financially, you all are okay. Your sex life is great. You have a husband that still wants you all the time. Yeah. And you're in a season where things are good. So let me ask you, put him off to the side. Uh-huh. What is the thing you are missing in the middle of your chest? I think I'm missing feeling seen. There you go. Continue with that. Yeah, like I think I want him, someone, to like ask me about my day and want to sit and talk with me and like want to, like when I'm sad, want to like reflect back what they hear me saying and just like care about that. Yeah. Does that make sense? Totally. where are you seeing where else are you not feeling like you're being seen i mean our kids are hard right now they're the best it's so fun but they're fighting all the time i feel a little bit like their punching bag um so they don't see me that well um who else what about your girlfriends i have great girlfriends but i feel like uh my own spiritual like i have a great little bible study that i love but we are like inconsistently meeting kind of texting every day, getting together when we can. And I know they'd be there in the drop of a hat if anything happened, but it's like nothing structured. Yes. So we could go down this road for a while, but here's, here's two things I'm hearing. Yeah. Number one is in the marathon of life, your husband's looking at you and saying, I'm, I'm, I'm doing everything. Yeah. And the finish line keeps moving. Yeah. And so when I say I'm super intense, well, it's not about that. Like he married an intense woman, like, and he loves that. But what I'm saying is it's, um, the, the, the words behind closed doors. When I talked to men all over the country from, from high school teachers to CEOs is home becomes a failure factory. Uh-huh. There's not a thing I can do to where my wife is good with me. because when I do it, the fit, whatever the thing is, there's another thing. And then there's another thing. Yeah. And what I hear often is, and again, this is not about blame. This is about just, and I'll, I'll walk you through how to do this, but like, it's just reestablishing, Oh, here's where we are right now. Yeah. It is a sense inside our own chest that I'm not okay or I want more and slowly when you get three kids and you're almost 40 and you got a house payment and you got electric bills and you got a dog poop and everywhere like you have all the stuff then what happens is we end up putting all of our needs onto one person yeah yep and they can't carry it all and so every connection he every connection point on the planet for him is having sex with you because that's how most men connect. Yeah. Yes, that's true. And there's a weird passing in the night where men often need to do something physical to let their bodies know it's okay to be vulnerable emotionally. And for all of human history, sex for women meant maybe pregnancy, which meant maybe death. Yeah. And so before I can do something physical with you, I have to know you're going to be there. I have to know there's emotional safety here. Yeah. And so you end up going in this figure eight where I need emotional safety to be physical and I need physical to be emotionally safe. Physical safety, yeah. And so he picks up his phone and numbs out and you just slam the cabinet doors. Yeah. Right? I'm intrigued to that. Yeah. And so somebody – you've heard me say this a lot, and so I'm trying to be better about explaining exactly what I mean. Somebody has to go first. Yeah. And turn the lights on and turn the music off and say, I love you till death do us part, ride or die. And let's clear the deck. And here's the path. Okay. It sounds so simple. It's like, how do I lose weight? Diet and exercise. You're like, thanks, idiot. Right. It's that simple, except it's that hard, which is I have to see you and I got to know you. And then I have to be your number one cheerleader. I got to celebrate you. And then I buy myself permission to challenge you. and when we're exhausted and we got kids everywhere and we're running and gunning and we got 50 million things going on we just assume that everyone's seen and known and they're like i did your dishes of course i'm celebrating you i brought him a paycheck of course i'm celebrating you i had sex with you of course i'm celebrating you and we go straight to challenge you need to why don't you we never can you yeah you know what i'm saying okay can i ask a question a hundred percent i like he He grew up with a mother, with a mom, my mother-in-law, who really would use words pretty manipulatively. Like she would affirm to get something. So I feel like he doesn't hear me or he feels manipulated when I try to like verbally affirm him. You know, like, so I'll like try to enter a conversation like that to a lot of the like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for cooking dinner the last three nights. It would be amazing if you just hug me when you get home from work And I think he just feels kind of manipulated Does that make sense Totally So I don know how to hear him on Well I want you to clear the deck So we're doing this right before New Year's. I want you all to plan a half day out. Okay. On January 2nd, 3rd or 4th. Okay. Plan a half day. And I know you're going to be like, I've got to get babysitters again. Yes. You make a call and get some babysitters and you plan a half day. Yeah. And here's the question. Or here's the statement. Yeah. The marriage we had is over. I want to build a new amazing marriage. We've never been married before. We have three kids who are heading into middle school. Yeah. And then here's one of the magic questions. How can I love you in this season? Yeah. And then say here is, and all you're doing is providing each other a roadmap. Okay. Can I push back a little bit? 100%. That feels like so much work to him. And I think that's where that like apathetic piece, like I'll try to do that. Like the weekly budget meetings, like what do we need to grow in? And it just exhausts him. Like, he's like, I don't want to do a business meeting with you. I just want to enjoy you. Can we just like go to a movie? Like this is work for me. Does that make sense? Yeah. But he's got to get over himself. That's just being immature. Yeah. That's like saying, I don't want to do a budget. I just want to spend money. Can we just go buy a horse, right? Or a couch. And it's like, of course you can buy a horse and a couch, but you got to figure out, do you have enough for the light bill too? Right. And I don't know how to challenge him on that without like fighting. You know what I mean? Like what's content and what's apathetic. And I think he would say like, can't we just be like, it's good. We're good. We don't need to grow anymore. Like we're fine. Yeah. And I feel like you're just kind of apathetic. Like I want to grow. I want to. I know, but you've got to grow towards a thing. Okay. Unrestrained growth is called cancer. Huh? And most people are dissatisfied with like they have a sense in their chest that life could be quote unquote more than it is. And so we just say words personal growth. I want to grow. I want to keep growing. I want to keep growing. I want to grow my faith. I want to grow my fitness. I want to grow my sex life. And it's like for what end? Where are we going? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if it's like I sit with too many good jillionaires who are like, dude, I grew that and I lost all of it. Mm-hmm. And so what I want you to be able to reverse engineer for yourself well enough that you can pass this along is, here's what growth is going to get me. Yeah. And if you have an inconsistent group of friends. Yeah. He can't solve that from you by hugging you. Yeah. Yeah. And he needs to put down his damn phone and hug his wife. Yeah. Yeah. Both are true. Yeah. Who are we going to be in this season? Who do I want to be in this season? yeah and then if you say something along the lines of i feel loved when you walk in and you don't plop down the couch and pull out your phone yeah and he says i'm gonna do that well then there's an illumination that your marriage isn't as strong as you thought it was yeah yeah and if he says i feel loved when i walk in the door after being surrounded by 120 high school eight i mean eighth graders, middle school, eighth graders. I just need 30 minutes. So what if he says like, I just need three hours. Like sometimes I feel that. Like on Saturdays, he wants to like be left alone and I don't, and not always, but I feel like I'm dragging him along. Like he'll do it. You know, I'm like, Hey, we have one. We're going to go to zoo lights at 5. PM. We got nothing until then. And it's like, okay, okay. Let me get, you know, I feel like I'm dragging him along through those things. But sometimes you're going to have to be able to say, I would love for you to be here with us. The kids would love you to be here with us. Yeah. Right. And if he goes most of the time, that's awesome. And if he says tonight, I'm going to prop my feet up and just stare off in the space. Sometimes that's got to be okay. Yeah. And I think part of it is that like, he throws all the frustration of that on me. Does that make sense? So like when we get there and meet friends, it's like, he's great and happy. But the four hours before I feel like I have this very, like, why are we doing this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like kind of grumpy version of him that I don't want to to carry. Yes, but he doesn't want to carry you when he walks in the door and you're like, hey, what about this? Why don't you do this? Hey, what about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. And so y'all are both dumping everything on each other and you're both like, I don't carry that. But a part of maturity is showing up and doing a budget meeting, showing up, going through calendar, showing up a few times a year to say, how are we? How are you? How can I love you in this season? That's not like, dude, I don't want to work. That's part of being a grown up, dude. part of being a grown-up you do those things you set those guardrails so you can go live a fun reckless adventurous peaceful restful life so it's all of it but somebody's got to go first and since you call i'm i'm designating you as the one that says let's re let's let's reimagine this thing let's make it as awesome as possible and if you think it's as awesome as it could possibly be right now. Cool. I want to hear you talk to me about that. Tell me about it. And we have to go through the details of living an adult life. That's just part of it, man. We've got too much going on. Thanks for calling. Hey, hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of Building a Non-Anxious Life. It is about anxiety, but it's a path that I think every couple can use. And I'm going to send you a year's worth of the Together app. It's the marriage app that y'all two can do together that will nudge each other towards actions, showing each other here's how we can be loved. Thanks for the call, sister. All right. When we come back, a man asks how to deal with the guilt of passing on a genetic mutation. It's tough. We'll be right back. I joke all the time that I hate being online, but the truth is I don't like being online, but I'm everywhere. I'm on podcasts, social media, YouTube. And because of that, my personal information is all over the internet. And this is why I joined Delete Me. Just because you're not a podcaster doesn't mean that your info isn't also all over the internet. All of us, everything is everywhere right now. 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That's CozyEarth.com slash Deloney with code Deloney BOGO. All right, Chicago, Illinois. Let's talk to James. Hey, James. What's up, man? Hello. What's up? Not too much, as you said. Dealing with the, and I would even stress, the phenomenal guilt of having passed on a... Do me a favor, brother. I need you to talk in the phone. I can't hear you. Yeah, oh, having passed on a genetic mutation unknowingly to my daughter and then the guilt associated with that. Yeah, tell me about that. I can go into specifics about the condition. Sure, tell me about it. Yeah, it's called neurofibromitosis. It occurs in about 1 in 3,000 births. So it's not phenomenally rare, but rarer. And it's highly, highly variable condition in that what it does is it makes tumors all over your body. Now, you can Google search this, and then what you're going to see is a car wreck. And in most cases, people describe this as a fender bender. I did not know about this until I was 35 years old and I had a tumor that was actually secreting adrenaline, causing high blood pressure. And so they said, you know, you have this. And I said, no, I had no idea. And then they looked into it further and they found out that I have this condition unknowingly for my entire life. Most people are diagnosed, you know, when they're five, six, seven years old. So when my daughter exhibited some of the same manifestations, little marks on her skin, I put two and two together and I came up with this. Now, granted, everything with her so far is okay, but any instance in which she says that she feels pain or whatever is an immediate trigger for me in that I think that there's some kind of growth or something in her, and I cannot get over the fact that I did this. I guess where I would challenge you on is you didn't do anything but I feel as though I had I should have known you know like now that we can go into all these clinical things but more or less would you have not had what I what no well that's the thing I I say maybe I shouldn't have had I known I shouldn't have gotten married. I shouldn't have had children. Where are these shoulds coming from? I don't. It manifests itself in anxiety, too, that I cannot. I realize no one's perfect. I realize that. I know, but you've been dealing with anxiety outside of this your whole life. Where does that come from? Oh, yeah. I don't. Since I can remember, I've always had anxiety. Always. And I don't, I can't, I cannot tell you where it came from. Who told you you should be doing different things at all times growing up? No one. I'm the one that told me that. I don't know. There wasn't crazy expectations for me. Parents, they liked that. They were hands-off. They let me do whatever. I don't know how it manifested. Even I would describe this as a pretty high form of obsessive compulsive. Yeah, I was going to say, this sounds very OCD. And I want to put the county on there, too. I get super irritated when people say, oh, I'm OCD. I'm like, no, you have no idea what that means. No, no, that's what I've been diagnosed with that before. I get it. Yeah. And it loops and it loops and it loops and it loops and it loops. Have you ever received clinical treatment for OCD and anxiety? Other than people just wanting to shove drugs down your throat and say, this is the best you can do. so you've created a world for yourself where you can't be successful yeah there's nothing that's yeah you know it's more or less it i am right i'm destined for failure okay i want to tell you that's false so i'm going to say this as boldly as i can your feelings in this situation are incorrect they giving you poor signals and so until you decide to do some to feel what you feeling and then go do the next right thing you going to stay on this loop Because I think you have a pretty freaking amazing daughter. Fair? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And if you sat on her bed next to her and said, well, I found this out in my 30s. I've got this thing. And you've got this thing. Just like we have the same color hair or we have the same long toes or whatever. And we're going to have different challenges than other people. And it's going to make us incredibly compassionate. And the world will desperately need us in a world taken over by robots. It's going to need folks like me and you that feels things really big. but you can't tell her that until you come to terms and begin to believe that yourself. Right. And I, I, you know, she's only 10 and, um, you know, she's getting into that age where now looks are going to be important to her. And I, I know this sounds crazy, but I, I mean, again, you, you couldn't, if I came up to you, you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't know me from Adam as far as this condition, but it does have the possibility to manifest itself pretty significant disfigurement. I know, I know, I know, but listen, listen to me. You've got to hear me, brother. You are casting a shadow over your daughter that's not fair. And you're casting a shadow over yourself that's not fair. I can't stop you from doing it, but I want to tell you that the shadow doesn't have to exist in the way you're casting it on everything. Because I remember one of my first counseling sessions when I decided I'm going to go right through the middle of this. I can't keep checking the locks 500 times, and I can't keep having these negative thoughts that spin and spin and spin and spin. the obsessive parts and the compulsive parts. And I remember a therapist telling me, you're right, John, it might. And also, it might not. And that was one of the truest things anyone ever told me. And so if you're going to spend a bunch of energy on it might all go bad, to be a person of integrity, you have to own it also might not. And you've been through hard stuff in your life, fair? Sure Okay, and you're here on the phone with me Are you married? Yeah You found someone that's going to ride or die with you until the end of time And what that tells me is you've been through hard stuff and you have overcome And so why in the world would you take that from your daughter? i i i i want to no i i i haven't even talking to the phone man talking i haven't even disclosed any of us i know i know but let me promise you with all of my guts she feels it yeah she feels that you don't feel like she's enough or that you did something to her she feels it and she's either going to back away from that electric fence or she's going to spend her whole life trying to solve it. And neither of those things are her job. She's 10, man. No, I, well, again, I know this sounds crazy. I feel that she's going to blame me later in life. Nope. That's your voice. That's your voice. you think she's going to be 25 and going into surgery and say dad i wish i was never born look what you did to me well yes i mean that thought crosses my head okay it probably will not happen what i'm trying to tell you here is every parent i've ever sat with who has a kid with special needs deals with some sort of existential guilt. And that's real and it's good. It's right. And it's okay. That's normal. But you have a layer beneath that, which is you struggle with anxiety and you've already wiped out the fact that you live in a tiny little sliver of history where they have some amazing life altering medications, both temporarily. Mine was temporary. I took it for about a year or two. And what that let me do was turn the alarms down so I could go do the things that I needed to do to teach my body that I'm okay, I'm safe. And if you have a tumor on your adrenal gland, you may always be spun up a little bit, and that's okay. But you're going to need to learn, I feel this thing, great, I feel it, I'm going to metabolize that feeling, and then I'm going to go do the next right thing. yeah but if you really want to be in service to loving this 10 year old little magical girl well you have to look in the mirror and say i'm worth being on the other side of ocd and on the other side of anxiety and by the way there are certain things i've just made peace with now i check my phone when i check the locks i don't care i'm not going to fight that. But also, the obsessive thoughts are almost all gone. And I'm not telling you that because I'm tough and strong. It was years of work, but man, there's peace on the other side of this that you have never known. That's what I strive for. I wish. But you're not, brother. You are just sitting around thinking about ways that you could be more peaceful instead of going to do things. striving for peace would be sitting down with a therapist and saying, I'm willing to follow an exposure plan that's going to help me be less anxious. I'm willing to go sit down with somebody. And if they say, I'm going to put you on a low dose something for a season and see how your body responds to it, that you can say, I don't feel like taking drugs. Brother, I sat at my kitchen table and wept because I thought I failed my family. I was holding the prescription bag. I get it. And now I don't take anything other than supplements. Right. I mean, you summed it up there, though. You said that, that, that, yes, I mean, essentially you're, you described feeling like a failure. Yes. And that is a lie, dude. It's not true. Yeah. And so if no one's ever told you, brother, hear me say, I love you and you're worth more peace than you have right now. And peace will not come from intellectually ruminating over things for the rest of your life. it will come from taking the next right actions yeah so here's what we're going to do i could walk you through all this and we could spend the next two weeks meeting every day and give you a bunch of strategies and stuff we don't have time for that on the show i'm going to do a couple of things for you okay all right i'm going to send you two copies of building a non-anxious life it's the number one best-selling book it resonated throughout the world okay it's a different path towards healing an anxious body and I'm going to send you two copies. I want you to read one and I want your wife to read one. Okay. Okay. That's number one. Number two, I want you to make me a commitment that in 2026, you're going to sit down with a counselor and say, this is the year. Yes. Number three, I want you to sit down with your daughter and I want you to be honest with her about, hey, we have pretty special bodies. They have this weird thing And I don't want you telling her You may one day wake up with a big tumor On the side of your face That's not helpful to a 10 year old But sitting down I'll tell you the conversation I had with my daughter I sat on her bed and it changed her life When I said God gave you and me Really humongous feelings They feel so big and so you and I have extra work to do in terms of making relationships being kind to people knowing when we need to back away and be alone that's just a lifelong struggle and those big feelings allow us to have a radar for hurting people that will make us a blessing in almost every room we ever walk into and I wouldn't trade my personal big feelings for anything because that means the universe chose me to be one of the guys that gets to sit with hurting people and I looked at my daughter and said you got chosen too yeah and dude she grew about two feet when we had that conversation so hang on the line I'm gonna hook you up but I want your commitment that you are gonna take a step towards you this year Tension is the doorway. I want you to walk through the hard stuff this year. Sit down in front of another person or two and say, whew, all right, here we go. I'm going to dump all of this box out on the table, and we're going to work through it. This is your year, homie. We're going to solve for peace. And dude, call me anytime this next year. I'll be with you every step of the way. We'll have you back on the show. One, two, three, I don't care. We'll keep having you back. I'll walk with you. I've been there. And I'm telling you, there's peace on the other side of this thing, but you got to go through what feels like a minefield. And you're going to find out that it's not what you've been feeling. Thanks for the call, brother. I love you and I'm glad that you called. Today's day one. We come back. A woman asks how to handle her parents drinking over the holidays. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you feel like you're the one holding everything together in everyone's life while you're slowly falling apart, I want you to hear me for a second. You can keep thinking that you don't have time to take care of yourself and that you're anxious and you feel stuck and you're overwhelmed and that's just the way things are going to be. And all the time you keep saying, I just have to take care of everybody else. I'm going to get to me later. Listen, that works for a while until it doesn't. Talking with a licensed therapist gives you a place to slow down, get honest, and sort through what's actually yours to carry and what isn't, even if you don't have all the right words. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that matches you with a licensed therapist based on your goals and your preferences. You can message your therapist and schedule sessions through the platform, and if the first therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch at any time for no additional cost. When you start putting words to your thoughts with a trained guide, you feel more grounded, more connected. You know what the next right thing to do is, and you become more hopeful. You're not weak for wanting help. You're wise for choosing to talk to someone. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. All right, Athens, Georgia. Let's talk to Clara. Hey, Clara, what's up, lady? Hey there. I'm calling to ask about an issue we're going to probably have over the holidays. My parents have a pretty notable drinking problem. And I'm, yeah, I'm just kind of wondering like what to do. Man, okay, so we're taking this call. Well, yeah, we're taking this call right before the holidays, right before the Christmas and New Year's holiday. And so this episode will be coming out after the holidays, but this is good for all of us. All right, so when your parents drink, tell me about that. Well, this is kind of an issue that's probably about 10 years in the making. I don't know how much you need to hear about that. But yeah, so just kind of recently over the last year, they've drank so much that they've both been hospitalized twice. Yeah, it kind of started out like, like I said, this started about 10 years ago. My mom had had like just kind of a freak accident happen Like you know couldn have seen it coming Wasn her fault Just sometimes life hits you with a stick and that happened to her She recovered from that physically Mentally, she never really bounced back. And, you know, she was recommended that she go to therapy after that. She didn't really engage with that much. And so just kind of, you know, over time, drinking kind of got worse. And I think that kind of gave my dad permission to also partake. And so now we're at this point, you know, many years later where they will get absolutely sloshed. You know, the hospitalizations were the worst examples of it, I think. But, you know, that wasn't the only thing. Like, I'd call them on the phone and, you know, they were obviously drunk, like slurring speech, getting kind of belligerent. We've had them, you know, apartment sit for us and like, you know, we'd come back, one of them was passed out, the others wandering around in their underwear. I mean, it's not good. Yeah. Um, do you have kids? Also, uh, no kids to see that. Thankfully, how old are you? Um, I'm a 42 and how old are they? Uh, they are in their seventies. Okay. Here's, this is a hard, scary, frustrating truth. I'm just going to put it on the table. Okay. Okay. You can't make them do anything. Zero things. Yeah. Yeah. And the problem you're going to run into with them right now is alcohol works. Mm hmm. It works. Alcohol helps your mom deal with the terror that she relives and it helps your dad live in that home. Yeah. Well, yeah, it does. And so the challenge you're going to run into, it works and it's also killing them. yeah right and they're not who they once were no just think like the people like if they the people they were 10 15 years ago could see them now i mean they'd be horrified i know but that's part of what makes this so hard that that is an exercise in futility yeah because those people aren't there anymore yeah and so the path forward for you is what are you going to do next and it will look something like one of a few things hey mom and dad i'm really worried about your drinking and when we come over for the holidays if you're drinking we're going to leave okay yeah hey mom and dad you're welcome in our home but you cannot bring alcohol into this house well then if you don't want that that's fine and anytime y'all want to get help i'll be the first guy i'll be the first woman at your door yeah yeah i mean they had kind of a little bit of a a little bit of clarity i think maybe about their drinking after their second hospitalization and actually i'd said something kind of similar to that like i can't control your behavior but i can't control what me and my family do. And so like, if this continues, you know, we're not really going to talk to you. We're not going to come up for Christmas. And part of what I'm concerned about is they've actually done a bit better after that talk, but now kind of, because I think like Christmas was really something that landed with them. Like they'd be very upset if we didn't come up for that. But now, you know, Christmas is going to happen and then what? Well, then you have to be willing to, I mean, they're going to call your bluff. Yeah. A boundary is only a boundary if it holds. Otherwise, it's just talk. Yeah, it's just hard because, I mean, when they're sober, they're wonderful people, but my God. Yeah. And so the step you're trying to skip here is grief. Yeah. Grief is the gap between what we wanted to have happen and what reality has presented us with. Yeah. What is. And so you have to be willing to spend some time just being sad, heartbroken, that your 55-year-old parents would be horrified. We know that. That they're not who they once were. And it's tempting. This happens in abusive relationships. This happens when you have friends and loved ones who are struggling with addiction. We see glimpses of them. They're hilarious. They're funny. They're so loving. And it's tempting to think, oh, there they are. I just have to get underneath all this other stuff. And we have to hold both of them. The reality that most of the time they're not that person. Most of the time they're mean or they're intoxicated or they're belligerent or they're fill in the blank. And so we have to be willing to not create a fantasy in our mind that there's some magic sentence we can say. There's some magic thing we can do. There's something we haven't said that they're going to be like, oh, you're right. They've been hospitalized twice. And so behavior is a language. I'm going to – I told you. Here's the boundary. And if you show up to their house and they're drunk, then you can leave a note so they can read it when they're sober because they won't hear you when they're drunk. and trying to argue with a drunk person. I used to show up to residence hall rooms and students would be hammered. And I would have well-meaning RAs and friends wanting to have big, deep conversations until 2 a.m. And I would come in and say, everybody get out. This kid's going to the hospital. We'll have the big, deep conversation tomorrow or the day after when they're sober. And so if you show up and they're drunk or if you show up and they pull the bottles out and you say, mom, dad, if y'all start drinking, we're going to leave. Are you serious? Yep, I'm serious. And then you're going to go to a hotel and you're going to be sad because that's right. But if you're not willing to hold your ground on the boundary you put up, then it's not a boundary. And you can do that. You can do whatever you want. But it's always coming back to what am I going to do next? And if the thought of not being with you at Christmas was enough to get their attention, that's amazing. Maybe you're going to show up. If you show up and they're not drinking, it's going to be tense. It's going to be they're going to make some comments about you. Cool. I'll weather those all day long. You're my mom and dad. I love you. Y'all can be grouchy and grumpy with me if y'all are making some pretty powerful behavior change just just just for the opportunity to see me. That's awesome. But have a hotel ready and be willing to call it. The only people you can affect here is you. And by the way, leaving a note lets them read it when they're sober the next morning. Hey, we'll be back today at noon. Y'all were intoxicated last night, and as I told you, I don't feel comfortable being around you guys when y'all are drunk. And we'll be back at noon. And if they're drunk again, then we're going to head out again. And then you've got to start making other plans. I hate this, hate this, hate this for you. It's hard to be compassionate and hold the line, but when you realize holding the line is the most compassionate thing I can do for myself and for them, then it becomes the way forward. We just can't skip grief. We can't skip being sad. thanks for the call, Claire. I wish you guys the best, and I hope they hold it. I hope they're willing to white-knuckle their way through Christmas because they love you so much. I hope so. But also have a hotel in mind that you can hop out if you've got to hold that boundary. We'll be right back. All right, you all know that I use Hallow, and right now you can try the app for free for three months. That's 90 days of the number one Christian prayer and meditation app in the world at no cost. And this offer is only for my audience. Go to hallow.com and check it out. And listen, here's why I use it. My life's busy. Family and work and everything else that the world throws at me. And if I'm not anchored spiritually, I'm untethered everywhere else. Hallow helps me start my day grounded before the chaos comes. And this year, Lent starts early. Lent is a season of reflection and fasting for Christians. but honestly, anyone can benefit from hitting pause and resetting with purpose. Halo walks with you through that process with daily reflections and guided prayers that bring clarity and peace. Halo helps you breathe again. It just creates space to be present. So if you're ready to quiet the noise and reconnect with what matters, check out Halo. Remember, when you sign up at halo.com slash Deloney, you get three months absolutely free. That's hallowed.com slash Deloney for three months for free. All right, we're back. I got a money in marriage question. This is anonymous question left at the money in marriage marriage retreat that me and Rachel Cruz have a couple of times a year. Here's the question. What is the best way to prioritize our marriage after we have our first child? It took us 10 years. So it's just been the two of us for that long. Number one, congratulations on having a new kid. Number two, the marriage that you had is over, doesn't exist anymore. And that can be a scary, terrifying thing, especially if you're unintentional and it just slowly starts slipping away from you. Or it can be awesome. Awesome. As one of my colleagues in grad school once said, it's just a different kind of awesome. It's fun when you're all by yourself. It's fun when you have a kid. It's hard when you're all by yourself. It's hard when you have a kid, when you have a second kid, a third kid. And so what we're going to do is we're going to go out and we're going to have a couple hours in the morning, a half day retreat together. And we're going to clear the deck and look at each other and say, I love you. We're ride or die. We've had a decade of just fun and decadence and wildness, whatever. Great. Now we're parents and we've never been married as parents before. What do we want this house to feel like when we walk in the door? Who are we going to be together? And we are going to know that the best thing we can do for our kids, number one, is love each other recklessly, intentionally. And so how can I love you in this season? What do you want? What does love look like? What does love feel like? What is marriage? Not even like love. What are the hard things? What do we need to get done? And let's reverse engineer that. Here's the things from our old marriage I want to make sure we keep. Makeout nights, date nights, a weekly budget meeting, or we've never done a budget. We didn't have to. We were just two income couple just living life. Cool. Now we've got to start making plans. We're going to have to go over our calendar once a week because we've got a kid now. Maybe one of us is staying home or one of us is working part time. So our finances have shifted. Great. Cool. We're just going to plan for it. It won't be fun, but we're going to plan for it because we're adults. We're grownups. And this is our new reality. and hey uh used to be we could just sit on by each other on the couch and watch tv while also scrolling our phones and then we would just go to sleep or make out or whatever that's gonna be a little bit different now so we're gonna turn the tv on just tuesday nights and friday nights that's it and then we're just gonna stare at each other we're gonna have to figure out what to do next but here's the word intentional the marriage you had's over let's build a new one based on this reality. And if you're new parents, I say build a new one every 90 days because a toddler changes that fast. And then once your kid gets to be five, six, seven, then we're going to change it every six months, every year. And we're going to build it and build it. We're going to build it, take it apart, build it, take it apart. And I'll tell you right now, my favorite thing in the world is building a new one. It's become part of the adventure. Not trying to hang on to what was, But all right, cool. What's this season going to look like? And it's not always pleasant. It's not always like the best feeling thing, but it's true and it's honest and it's whole. It's good. So that's what I'd recommend you do. Congratulations on having a new kid. And then the adventure starts now. And weirdly, you're going to find if y'all are intentional, you thought you loved each other. You'll have no idea what love feels like and looks like now. You thought y'all were ride or die. wait till you see your wife at 2 a.m. holding your baby wait till you see your husband down on all fours wrestling with a nine-month-old then you're like oh there's another chamber in my heart i have for that person that that i didn't even know existed amazing hey i love you guys um it's already kelly when does this show come out this one comes out on the 4th of february 4th of February. All right. So we're already a month into the new year. Everyone's already blown all of your new year's resolutions. Go back to the things y'all agreed on. Go back to the things you wrote down. It's not too late to start over again in February. And you're going to start over again in March. And then we're going to get this thing going. Life changes with a bunch of tiny decisions made every day over and over. Love you guys. Bye.