My Husband Borrowed Thousands of Dollars and Never Told Me

He was supposed to take over all the bills, like, you know, the rents and all these things. Then I come to find out that our rent was indeed paid on time. I only found out because my landlord put up to my house and he told me he hadn't spoken to him in a while. I guess this is harsh, but y'all have never been married. What up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney's show Happy New Year. Coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, taking calls from all over the planet. Real people going through real struggles and they're mental and emotional health with their marriages, with their kids with schools, whatever you got going on. My promise is I'll pull up a seat with you and we're going to figure out what's the next right move. I'd love to have you on the show. We get hundreds of emails a day from all over the planet and I'd love for you to send one in to johndeloney.com slash ask ASK. Send your email in. Kelly will review it. Kelly, one point. No. And she'll review it and ancient Kelly. She what happened to New Year, New Me or something? I'm done with that. Are you trying to hang on to my not swearing so much and exercising so. But you make me swear a lot. Because if you listen to the show that you produce, you would know I can't make you do anything. You get to make choices. You tapped dance on the last nerve though. Well, you should put it away. It sounds like a choice. But I'd love to have you on the show. Kelly will take your, which you ride in and she will export it to Sanskrit, an ancient language that, that's what she originally learned to read and write on. And then she'll get back to you. So let's go out to Chicago, Illinois and talk to Jennifer. Yes. I talked to John. How are you, love? Good. I'm okay. Hanging in there. Hanging in there. I'm glad you called. What's going on? So my question is, should I remain in a marriage where my husband stayed a large amount of debt within the past year and a half? That's a big question. Tell me what's going on. What did you discover? I was going to try to make it simple because it's a lot. Well, we relocated. I was the one paying most of the bills in the beginning. Then I got pregnant. I was still paying the rent, you know, the bills because I was the one who made more money. What did he do? Did he go to a job? Yeah, he was working. He was working, but, you know, he just took care of the smaller bills, like his bills. So I was paying the rent, paying my car, paying all my bills, sounds kind of crazy. But it was okay for me at the time. I was saving money to stay at home with my baby, which I think about it now. And I'm like, that's just crazy. He didn't even help me with that. But fast forward, I went back to work. He was supposed to take over all the bills, like, you know, the rents and all these things, while I was paying off some debt that I had from being at home. Then I come to find out that our rent wasn't being paid on time. I guess he was kind of stuck in something where he wasn't able to pay everything. So he was going around asking to borrow money from family and friends that I had no idea about. You know, so then I only found out because my landlord showed up to my house and he told me he hadn't spoken to him in a while and the rent was in paid. So then he kind of came clean. But I kept finding out more and more stuff from other people that he was asking for money. And he, when I confronted him about it, he said he thought he wasn't, you know, he was going to be able to catch up and that he just didn't want to stress me out. So that was the excuse for not telling me all of this, which doesn't make sense to me. But. It does to me just listening to it. And I guess this is harsh, but you all have never been married. You all have a certificate. You all may have gone through a ceremony. You'll made a human together. But just the way you just, just the way you described your original story, which was I did all of this, I paid all of this, I paid my savings, I did this. And then my chumpy little husband over here who was working full time. I made more money than him. So he just paid for this stuff. Already, I can tell you like the contempt in your home is, is already powerful. You already think you're better than him. Is that fair? Yeah, but I mean, this has been going on in the past three years. We've been together for almost nine years. And he did pay for other things here and there. Like, you know, he did pay the rent when we live in our previous place. Everything that's happening now just pretty much started in the past three years. It's not, it's not, it started, it started nine years ago. Here's why when you get married to somebody, if you want the thing to work long term, it's y'all's money that goes into y'all's account. And maybe one person hits send, but y'all pay the rent. Y'all pay phone bills, y'all pay car bills, y'all save money together. Yes. Correct. He's always been second to your to you because you make more money and you do this and you do that. And I think that's where I'm starting to build a lot of resentment because when I found out everything, I told them you should have just came to me because I can make them money for the rent. We could have just swapped. Okay, okay, okay. But you're not here. You're not here. What I'm saying. If you are, if you were truly, I'm going to ask you to be super reflective and honest. Okay. Yes. Just in the limited time we've talked together. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I can imagine a world where he doesn't feel like he can come to you and say, Hey, we're not making ends meet. And if he was calling me, dude, I'd be all over him for calling family and friends for borrowing money. Mm-hmm. But just the way you laid out y'all's story, he has gotten the message loud and clear that he's less than. You're right. And so suddenly he's trying to take care of a new baby, trying to take care of a wife, and he's not making ends meet. And like most guys, I'm not excusing his behavior. He did was wrong, okay? But I can get the sentiment that he's trying to do, trying to make this thing work so that you can have the life and his baby can have the life. Y'all's baby can have the life that you and him want. Correct. And I, and I, when everything happened, I, I even asked, and I'm like, am I can't, do you feel like you can't come to me and talk to me and tell me that you're struggling? You know, and I think recently, obviously we've been kind of, we don't even communicate. He did feel that way. And I'm trying to tell myself he did it to help me, and he did it to not stress me out, because I was under a lot of stress. Of course, yeah. And um, we just agreed that. Stop right there. He's a great husband. Stop right there. Stop right there. What does it feel like? When you uncover a big mess like this, and you look at him and say, why didn't you come to me? And he says, because I can't. Because you're going to beat me up again. Or you're, you're going to throw a fit, and then you're going to be like, well, then I've got to go bail us out so I can pay my bills. And it, like what it, walk me through with that felt like, that level of reflection. I mean, I was upset. I was upset. Were you upset? I still felt bad. I was upset with you. Because I, well, the situation and with him because I felt like. You should have told me. Okay. I know where you're telling me that I, he felt like he couldn't tell me. Okay, but I want you to stay right there. Don't run from that. Don't run from that. It's right or wrong. Just for a minute, go through the thought exercise of owning that. Yes. Oh, God, what if I created a marriage where my husband feels so marginalized and so small, because I'm always telling him about all the stuff I do that I've created a world where the man that I made a human with, my writer died, doesn't even feel safe enough to come tell me this. So much so that he has to bury his head and shame and go ask buddies for money. Correct. Is that feel heavy? It does. I felt, I did feel like crap. I'm like, okay, you know, okay, so you can't, you can't go back. You can't go back and change any of the stuff that has happened. Hearing that level of reflection, if you jump to, well, you should have, though anyway, and I can't believe you. So I'm going to divorce you whatever. Fine. My challenge to you is with this new information and the scales peeled back from your eyes, can you exhale and say, okay, the only person I can control here is me. Either I don't want to be married to you. I've always thought I'm better than you. I still think I'm better than you. And I'm going to go on with my life. I make more money than you. I can provide for me and my kid, etc. Or my God, I've got to do some work so that I realize just because I make more money than my husband doesn't mean I'm better than him or I'm somehow more important than him. We are in this thing together. And I need some skills so that I can communicate that. Can you have that level of reflection? And if not, I mean, it's fine. But that's a humbling, full ownership. I got to own what I brought to the table here. And again, if he was on the phone, you know I'd be going after him. And it's not, yeah, it's not that I think that I'm better than him. I never did. I didn't care about the money. I just want our communication to be better. And he struggles with that, which is fine. He writes, but you struggle with it too. You struggle with it too. I'm more vocal, but I think that's it. My personality is a little bit stronger, but I never want him to feel that I'm better than my never I want him to be the leader. You know, I can make the money, but let's make decisions together. Okay. Let's save money. Let's do all this. That's always been my thing. And I think he just, you know, okay, so the first thing you have to do is to change your pronouns from mine and to ours. Yes. From my bills and my savings to our future together. And it's our money. It's my 125,000 and you're 40,000. Together, we make 165,000. I make, when it comes to direct deposit, the check that's deposited, this is John Deloney on it, is way more than the check that Sheila Deloney deposits. And it is our money. It's our state. We only have one account. We have one checking account. It's ours. It's our savings. It's our kids college funds. It's our mortgage. It's our stuff. And so let me, let me, let me, let me rephrase your question. The marriage I'll had is over. The question you have before is, do you want to make it official or do you want to rebuild something new? With a guy you said is an awesome dad. And he's actually a pretty good husband. He just hid this big scary thing for me. And oh, God, I contributed to that. Do we want to decide that we are going to change how we talk to each other, how we communicate, how we do bill paying, how we do all of it from the floor up for our sake and for the kids sake? Does that make sense? It does. Because I've been waiting for him to, I want to sit and budget, I want to do all these things, but he's just, I guess he feels stuck. It's a failing factory for him. So I'm like, okay, we need to do this because we both need to, we want to, we want a plan five years from now, but he doesn't, his way of managing money is not the best. And he says it, I don't manage my money correct. You know, I've always had that issue. But I'm like, we can work together to fix that. But I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and he's not talking to me. So I think that's what my frustration and my resentment kind of builds. But then again, I'm like, maybe I should approach him and sit down and talk to him and do these things because maybe that's what he's waiting for. And listen, I'll say this one more time. I don't say it again. What he did was not right. Okay. Now I would even go as far as to say what he did was cowardly. And I get it. And your revelation, I think, is one of the most powerful revelations that anybody in a marriage can come to, which is I'm going to go first. And when you go first, if you lead with the word you, he's going to, he's going to bail again because he has to. That's how he stayed safe the last decade. If you lead with the word I, I have this, I realize that I created a world that was all about my bills and my stuff and my money and I'm sorry. I want to build something with you where we both have equal voice here about our future. And I've got to learn some new skills. I would love it if you would join me in this. Yes. And here's the, here's the scary part. He can look at you and say no. And that's terrifying. Or he could say, all right, I don't know how to manage money. I struggle with it. I get behind it and then I get scared and then I start screwing around that I've made a big mess for us. Will you help us dig out of this hole? And then you can say, I'm all in. Are you all in? I think that's what he's waiting for. Okay. If he was on the phone with me, I would say brother, you got to go first. You got to wade through your wife's volume and her excitement and her whatever. And you got to go first. And I would tell him to sit down and say, I love you and I don't know how to be successful in this marriage because everything I've done, I've been told feels like I'm less than you. That's what I would tell him to say. Yes. Yes. But it sounds like you got a guy that got in over his head trying to scramble to give his wife to finally prove to her that he had value more value than she's ever given him. And for this baby and dude, he just he made a left turn and he screwed up. And if you think that's walking away, worthy, I can't tell you to do that. Yeah, but I don't want to. Okay. Yeah, I definitely it was just such a shock something that I didn't expect. It was like now we're like hopefully my landlord renews my lease because I just wish he would have said something, but again, I mean, that's what I'm here. Yeah. It happened already. But but even even saying that, I wish you'd said something and I have to own that I've been impossible to talk to. I'm sorry. Together, we have to agree this never happens again, which means I've got to work on how I talk to you, how I talk about our future together and our earned income. And I've got to I've got to trust that you, if you ever get in trouble again financially, you're going to be honest with me. You get what I'm saying? But all of those were I statements. Here's what I need to do. Here's where I messed up and here's what I want and need moving forward. Are you in? Not with you should have told me I can't believe you did this. You screwed this like you what I'm saying? Yeah. It's a very humbling humbling position. I'm in the middle of a big research writing project on marriage and I'm overwhelmed with this one piece of data. For a marriage to work, it's a race to the bottom of the marriage. What do I mean by that? There should be scratching and clawing from each partner on who can out serve the other. Who can say I'm sorry first? Out of course outside of abusive situations, right? Or traumatic. Of course, those. But somebody saying I'm going to take ownership of my part of this. No, no, no, it was on me. No, no, no. I created a world where you couldn't talk. Yeah, but I called our friends and asked them for money. Listen to me. I created a context that you felt like that was the only move you had. Was it the right move? No, it was a terrible move. But I get it and I'm going to work really hard for us. So here's what I'm going to hook you up with. I'm going to send you some tools. I'm going to send you both a copy. I'm going to send you two copies of building a non-inxious life. And I want you all to read that and use that as a road map for rebuilding your marriage from the floor up. The second thing I'm going to send you is a premium version of the every dollar app. It's the budgeting app my wife and I use. It's the best one I think out there. It's amazing. And I'm going to send you a year subscription to it for free. I'm also going to send you all the digital financial piece university. I work for Ramsey Solutions and they have like the company was built on this idea of getting out of debt and living free and teaching couples how to communicate and build budgets together. I'm going to send you all nine digital lessons and I want you to both watch those with no commentary. Both of you watch them and then at the end of the video you'll talk about what you experienced and what you felt. And it will walk you through a step-by-step process to how to communicate building budgets together. But underneath all of that, how do we talk about our kids' future? How do we talk about our dream home? How do we talk about living free lives together so that we both walk in the front door? Both of our shoulders drop and we're happy to see each other for God's sake. And that's going to be the past. So hang on the line. I'm hooky up with all those resources. I usually don't do this, but I'm going to tell you I don't think your marriage is worth tossing. I don't think your marriage has been a full both feet in the boat. Both of you in the marriage. Or maybe it was your boat and he kept trying to get in and he got to get one foot in the boat. You kept shoving the other foot out. Whatever it is, both of you all get back in the boat and say, let's row in the same direction. And that means both of us are going to have to learn new rowing techniques because neither of us know how to do this thing right. But together we can learn together, have grace and compassion, and we're going to build the most amazing marriage in our family generations history. So day one today. I'm grateful for your call, sister. Start with the word I. Start with humility. Start with this lens of service and go build an amazing marriage. We come back. A woman asks what boundaries they should set before living with their in-laws for six months while their house is being redone. This time of year, everybody's talking about getting more organized. Less clutter, less stress, and having more peace. Well, here's one area where I want you to focus on specifically with organization and peace this year. Your digital footprint. And to do this, I recommend delete me. Listen, every time you fill out a quick form online, grab a discount code or sign up for some free thing on the internet, your personal information like your name, your email, your phone number, and your address. All of this gets collected and sold and shared without your permission by data brokers. Over time, this turns into a fire hose of spam calls, weird text, and scam emails. Delete me's team of privacy experts find your personal information on data broker sites that are selling your data and they get it taken down for good. And then they keep checking and they keep it gone. It's like setting healthy boundaries for your digital life. It's the way to organize your digital life to where you are in control and no one else. Protecting your privacy is part of protecting your peace. So this year, start fresh with fewer distractions and more peace. Go to joindeleteme.com slash deloney for 20% off your annual plan. That's joindeleteme.com slash deloney and organize your digital life this year. If you've seen me speaking on stage at live events, if you've seen me at a local comedy club, or you've seen me anywhere on social media or on the internet, you have seen me wearing poncho shirts. Why? Because I'm always wearing poncho shirts because they are the best. And right now it's cold outside and that means it's perfect for wearing my favorite poncho shirts. They're denims and flannels. Poncho denim has that soft broken infield with a little bit of stretch. Feels like you've worn it a million times, but it still looks amazing. And poncho flannels come in original or western styles and they are guaranteed to be the softest shirts you own. Somehow they are both tough and super comfortable. Poncho shirts come in slim, a regular fit, and they're built to last. And they hold up to whatever life throws at you. When you're shopping for the guys in your life, I want you to go to poncho outdoors dot com slash Deloni. You can sign up with your email and you get 10 bucks off your first order. Tell them you heard about poncho shirts right here on the Dr. John Deloni show. That's poncho outdoors dot com slash Deloni. All right, let's go out to Denver, Colorado and talk to Marie. Hey, Marie, what's up? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm doing okay. We're getting a lot of snow today. So it's time to stay warm. It's like 85 degrees in Nashville. Actually, it's not. It's freezing today. I think it's below 30 or something. Like they're shutting down the city right now. It's too cold. But good for you. What's up? So I have a question about what my husband and I should think about conversations that we should have and boundaries that we should potentially set with our in-laws as or my in-laws as we get ready to move in with them in the spring for about six months time. How can we move it in? So we're going to be selling our house in the spring and we have a two and a half year old and we talked with our realtor and she was like, I highly recommend that if possible, y'all like move into a different space while we're staging and while we're, you know, showing the house if possible, it's really hard to do all of that. And we want to take our time with buying and we're moving to a new area and so our goal is no more than six months to be living with my in-laws for that time. And so we want to be really intentional about moving in with them. I want us all to like each other when this is all over because I value that relationship with them. So I really want to be intentional about making sure that we go into this with our eyes wide open and we're doing things on the front end so that on the back end when this is all over, we still like each other. This is one of my favorite calls I've ever received on the show ever, ever. You know why? This is adults making adult decisions and dealing with adult realities. And that makes you in the top 00001% of mature humans on the planet right now. That's so awesome. That's amazing. What if when government officials were like borrowed a trillion dollars, they were like, hey, let's don't do this until we have a plan to pay it back. Like just your willingness to be like, hey, the day after we move out, we still want to love you guys. We want y'all to love us. Let's reverse engineer that. Genius, you're the best, Marie. So high five. All right, so I'm going to pretend that everybody involved is that mature, is that fair? Alfred, yeah. Well, my mother-in-law, but like, it is, because here I'm going to paint you the ideal scenario. Okay. This is the dream world. The dream world is you take that level of, again, I wish I had a different word because it sounds like I'm so paternal, but that level of maturity and wisdom and you and your husband and your in-laws, you all set up a special dinner and you all paid for it. It's really nice. And you tell them, here's the goal of this dinner coming up next week. The goal is we want to all be on the same exact page with, we want to have the same picture of what the next six months is going to look like. And it's aligning pictures. And here's what I mean by that. Have you heard me talk about pictures and words? Yes. Okay. So for people who haven't heard me talk about that, we think in pictures, but we speak in words. And so y'all all four are saying the words we're moving in or they're moving in. In all four of you, you, your husband and your in-laws have a different picture of what the words moving in look like. Maybe your mother-in-laws like, I'm going to babysit every day and I'm just going to hug that baby. Your father-in-laws like, I ain't doing any babysitting. I'm watching this game. I don't care what's going on. And maybe your husband's like, Oh, dude, we're going to get to make out of my old high school bed and it's going to be awesome. And you're like, well, no sex for six months because I ain't doing it in that hat. Like everybody's got a different picture, right? Yeah. And so it is simply aligning that picture. Okay. Here's what we think this is going to look like and feel like. And I love the way you said this. If you look at your in-laws and say, what y'all are giving us is such a generous opportunity for our two and a half year old 20 years from now. I want to make sure that we love each other more the day after we move out than today. Yes. How can we best inhabit y'all's world in your house and love and honor your hospitality? And often aging parents have forgotten the realities of life with the two and a half year old. Yes. Right. Yes. And so putting that on the table, how do you like, are y'all going to be in the same house? Are y'all going to be like in a backhouse or something like that? So we'll be in their basement. Okay. They have like, they have a couple bedrooms down there and there's like a small little like kitchenette type of thing. But there's also like some shared space that we don't want to cut them off from being able to use for that entire six months that were there. So that does complicate things a little bit. But for the most part, we do have our own space. So there's not like a door to the basement. Okay. So here's where this is important. They may have already decided between the two of them. Do that shared space is all there for six months. We'd love to give that up. And if you and your husband are already like, okay, we don't want to take this from them already. You see there's a wedge between you without in both of y'all are trying to do the best you can to love each other. Yeah. And so it is putting that out saying, here's my worries. And I'd love to hear your worries. Worry number one, I got a two and a half year old. They, I don't care how good of a parent you are, they throw tantrums. My plan is if there's a tantrum, we're going to take the kid downstairs and we're going to deal with it. Worry number two, there's the shared space. I don't want to take y'all shared space for the next six months. And all of y'all address each individual worry. And maybe a worry is we want to plan for a weekly dinner where we all eat dinner together. But we also want to preserve some just dinner with me and my husband and our new little baby together in the basement. Yeah. And having those individual, maybe if I don't know if y'all got a church, but we're going to go to this church and y'all go to yours, we just don't want to feel like, well, we have to invite them up for dinner now. And here they come down the stairs again. Like, let's go ahead and have those things out. And in a super wise family, y'all could leave that dinner and say, okay, cool Friday nights, family dinner night. Or Friday nights, they would love to babysit and you and husband go out for date night. Or every Tuesday night is all of us are getting together for dinner. And it's just on the calendar and Monday, Wednesday and the Thursday we eat downstairs with just our nuclear family. But it's getting all those things out on the table. And you're, so here's how it best works. You and your husband say in a perfect world, this is what we would love. We want to have dinner every night of week with every night of the week with them. Or we don't want to do that. We are worried about our two and a half year old drawing dinosaurs on the walls with crayons, which 100% you will do, right? Like those things and then addressing those out on the table there. Yeah. All you going first, though, and saying, here's my number one goal to honor your hospitality, because this is such an amazing gift. This is like a, like a potentially generational, generational shifting gift, six months of no rent, no bills, no, and maybe you maybe all decide it's a big deal for us to pay 500 bucks a month. And then and let them say, we're not taking your money. Are you crazy? Yeah. Or whatever, right? Yeah, I think what I'm most worried about is like my, we have a two and a half year old and she does throw tantrums and she does have one day a week where they have her for childcare. So my husband and I can work already. And so the like we want them to still be grandparents. We don't want them to become a second set of parents to her. But we also like when we're living there, we don't want the way that they, the way that they discipline or whatever you want to call it when she's there one day a week to undermine what we do the rest of the week. Now that we're living in the same space. And that would be a beautiful sentiment for your husband to say out loud. I want to make sure that me and my wife remain their parents and y'all get to have the honor of just being their grandparents. Yeah. And so we want to walk in the doors, setting the table for. We're going to take care of the discipline. We're going to take care of the kids groceries. We want to be responsible of those things because we want y'all to get to remain the most precious thing on planet, which is grandparents. Yeah. And just setting it out loud like this is what I want to do here. And the reality is your father and the all is going to be like, hey, we don't yell in this. He's going to do that stuff. And you know that your mother and all is going to be like, you should when she throws a tantrum, you just need to pinch her on the back of her cap whatever. Right. And rub some essential oils under that nose. Like, I don't know. You just, you have to know I'm going into their house and they're going to say their stuff. Yeah. Right. And you get to decide and this sounds crazy. You and your husband get to decide how much of that you let annoy you, frustrate you or make you mad. Yeah. Right. Because here's a deal. Two year olds are going to do two year old stuff. Grandparents are going to grandparents stuff. And new parents trying to prove to their mom and dad and to their mother-in-law and their father-in-law that they've got this. Y'all are going to do your stuff too. Yeah. And so hopefully your in-laws are like, dude, the fact that they sat down and had this direct conversation with us was amazing. That shows the level of wisdom. We didn't even know they had. And we're going to let we're going to do our best to let them take the lead on discipline and stuff and remain grandparents and fill in the blank. We hope that's the case. Yeah. But even the again, the fact that you're not just making this going to be great or this is going to be miserable. But you're like, hey, let's we get to choose what this is like. Mm-hmm. And you and your husband, I want y'all to also go and y'all go out and have coffee and pre-game with each other. How is the best way we can love each other when your mom says something that really annoys me? Yeah. Or, hey, when you get around your dad, you act different. And I want us to have that conversation now. Yeah. That's fair. That's good. Yeah. Totally. And so if you and him get together, as y'all map out, here's what we want this to look like. Here's how we want to honor our parents and in-laws. And more importantly, y'all talk about, hey, dude, when you're around your mom, you get real sassy. Or you get real. Or when, hey, wife, when you get around my mother, you get real performative and you try to go into. It's all perfect. It's all good. I'm just making stuff up. But we need to have a signal that we can call each other out. And we're not going to get mad and infuriated. But we're going to accept the challenge because we love each other. And what must be true? We have to over-selebrate each other. Because you can't have challenges without celebration. We're going to overly challenge each other. I'm going to keep my eyes extra tuned when I see my wife is struggling. I see you struggling. He's going to grab that two-year-old and be like, I'm out of here. You go spot-date. We're going to put a money for a spot-date. We're going to put money for, I don't know what you do. You may go to the gym. You may go to, I don't know, go smoke weed with your friend. I don't know what you do in Denver. But like, we're going to go do, we're going to have those things built in so that we can overly celebrate each other. Dude, I saw you. Thank you for grabbing the laundry last night. Thank you for getting up with two and a half-year-old. Thank you for making the bed. Those little many things so that when I have to challenge you, like, hey, you're turning into 14-year-old son again. I need my husband back. He'll be able to go, okay, I got you. I'll accept that challenge. It won't come off as more criticism. But man, you and him get together, then y'all come up to a game plan. Take your in-laws out to a nice dinner. Let them know what's coming. And y'all map the sucker out. And I'm so honored to talk to people who want to be wise about a challenging relationship season and owning. We get to choose what this thing looks like. Let's make that choice on the front end. I love it. I love it. I'm proud of you, Marie. Thank you so much for calling. We come back. A man asks how to rebuild trust with his wife after she mishandled their money. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As we head into the new year, I want you to take an inventory of all of the junk you're carrying. All those things that you think you have to do, along with all the past hurts and pains, along with past guilt and shame. Listen, when the world feels heavy, it's important to look in the mirror and consider setting down all of that old weight and not carrying it into 2026. Therapy can help you identify all that heavy stuff and move forward with clarity so you can focus on the new year unburdened by the past. If you're thinking about therapy, I recommend BetterHelp. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the leading online therapy providers in the world and they're trusted by millions and they have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. It's online so it's easy to fit into your schedule to get started. You just answer a few simple questions and they'll connect you with a licensed therapist who will fit your needs. If it's not the right fit, you can change it anytime for no extra cost. You can't feel lighter without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. BetterHelp will help. Go to BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash Deloney. All right, hey, do me a favor to the new year's 2026. Take two seconds and hit the subscribe button and let us launch out of this year in a whole new way. Takes two seconds, doesn't cost you anything. You can just hit the subscribe button, the like button, and then we are off to the races. Millions and millions and millions of you listen to this show for millions of hours and only a few of you take the time to hit the subscribe button or the like button. Please do that for me. It makes a huge difference for everybody involved. All right, it's got to Rochester, New York and listen to Liam. What up, Liam? Hey, how you doing? I'm good, brother. What are you up to, man? Just on break for work. It's about outstanding. Well, I appreciate you calling me on your break. Break your precious, man. Yeah, yeah. What's up? I should take more care of that. Yeah, you should. Yeah. No, I just, I talk about just, the way we had said things up, I had touched my wife with just overseeing the finances. I check in and everything, make sure things go on and I'd start a new job and we did everything we budgeted, did that and month and a half in. I checked and other things are good. Great. We fed our march and we're going to keep doing it. I took my hand off a little bit and then another month and a half later, I look and I saw less money in our savings than when we had started and I was like, you know, what the heck happened? So talk to her and just, I'm a texture of that morning. She comes down, she was asleep because we have two kids and another on the way and she or sleep's precious. She needs it. And comes down and she was like, well, I was trying to do this and do this and I didn't care so much that we, like I did care that we lost the money, but I was more upset about that. She's like, well, I tried putting it back before you knew anything about it, you know? Yeah. And that, that was the hard part. So that was like, well, what you're portraying to me is, you don't trust me with it or almost that you don't need me, you know what I mean? And it's like, yeah, but she doesn't. Do you know what I'm saying? What? Like you advocated this response. I mean, you're, you're acting like her dad. Yeah. Like you take care of all this. I'm going to check it on. You see how good you're doing. That's not how couples handle money, brother. Like tell me about that. Well, I mean, the way we had set it up when we first, I mean, we've been married seven years now and we've revisited this conversation on bunch. Okay. But she was like, I want to take care of this. So that's how our parents do it. You know, I was young. What does take care of it mean? She wants to make her own budget and do all stuff or she's she wanted to do everything. Me not even look at it. Not even concerned myself with it. Okay. We should be doing that out of a sense of control or a sense of she's a stay at home mom and she wants to have some purpose and value or she thinks you're done. It knows control. She doesn't think I'm dumb. She tells us that was like something I always started with and she tells me like, I'm I don't think you know, you know, you're not dumb. Okay. And she's like, I believe it's from control. Because it was just like, it's something she could do. And it wasn't, this was even before we had children. So she wasn't stay at home mom. She was working and that's just what she wanted to do. And I was like, yeah, I trust you. That's fine. Sure. And okay, don't ever do that again. Because money is too money is too much of a a like, let me go all the way back. When I was doing my practicum seeing counseling clients, it one big takeaway I had. And I'm talking about if I was talking to a single mom with multiple kids, somebody with special needs or with a multi-millionaire, they would all tell me about their sexual exploits, the number of partners, their abuse histories, no one would tell me about their money. It was that personal. And so, A, it's a very personal thing and more importantly, it's a revealer of the state of your home. Right. It's the state of is somebody out of control. It's a state of the somebody feel like they have a purpose and a role. It just matters a lot. And so that would be a line I would draw like my wife hits the button to pay all the bills. Right. So if it's like, I leave it up to her like she hits the button, she writes the checks. But we get together every month and sometimes every other week and we talk about the state of things. And we make decisions and we we high five each other and then we go forward. I deal with the investments and she deals with the like it's the light's going to stay on and all that kind of stuff, right. So, but it has to come from a to we're together on this thing. Yeah. And so if she's requesting like, Hey, I just want to do all this myself. I want you to not to worry your pretty little head with it. I would tell her, Hey, this is how couples break up and it's too big of a deal for me. And for you to for you to feel like I think she just didn't need me. That was true because she was running the whole show without you. You would just swoop in and judge her performance every once in a while. And let me challenge you on what to think. I mean, if there's a big issue in your marriage like, Oh my gosh, we're burning through savings. And my wife didn't even tell me that's never a text message. That's like an in person. We need to have a hard conversation. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So what's your what's your what was she spending money on? Well, what she said that money was spent on and I went and looked all the records and everything was they were just bills. Like they were truly bills. What we had done was we had misbudgeted and the numbers weren't lining up as what I was making to what we're spending. Okay. And so we rebudgeted all that. And now we are good. Right. But what it was was just like, Hey, I need to take this out and pay this insurance. So I need to pay this. And she had communicated that a couple times. But then it's I was doing the math and I'm like, okay, there's still $400. That's not like accounted for. Okay. And by no means do I think that she's actually a mispending money because but if you if you saw like our house and how we live, it's like she's not buying anything for herself. It's pretty smart. Yeah. So where did that 400 bucks go? Yeah. So she she she cracked it up to them. What is it? Like insurance for our cars. Yep. And then something about the phone bills because everyone everyone goes through like her and we have like a massive fan like her siblings and we all have like a massive group of cell phone service. And they just pay her their share. Okay. You're on plan, dude. You're married. You have a house. Get on your own plan. Hey, the extra 20 bucks a month, but have your own household. Yeah. But again, otherwise, you'll just be dealing with this kind of stuff all the time. But let me ask you this. When she came to you and said, Hey, we have to spend more money on insurance. What was your response to that? How'd you respond? I mean, I trusted around. I was like, Oh, okay. I guess that's what it is for insurance. That was about it. I didn't think too much of it. Okay. And the reason I'm asking is if she came to you and said, Hey, we made this. By the way, making a new budget usually takes about three months, 90 days to cycle through it. Just because stuff comes up. Like, Oh gosh, dude, I had the guys come work on the sprinkler three months ago. And they just now sent me the bill and insurance comes out of nowhere. And we thought it was in August, but it comes in June. Like that's just part of getting into the rhythm of it. And so it takes about three months to get it settled in. But if she came to you with one of those things and your response is, are you serious? Why didn't you then what you're telling her is don't come back to me with that kind of stuff. Or if you said, Oh, man, jeez, that's expensive. Well, thank you for knocking that out. We'll have to re-imagine it next month. Then that's an encouragement. I'm a safe place for you to come with these challenges. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think the path forward is, and again, you can do it how you want to. The path forward, it's similar to an earlier call we took on the show, which is, I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Unless you tell me otherwise, she was trying to do the best she could to be a team player. And all of a sudden, they got over her head. And she made a call, which is, I don't want to bother him with this. I don't feel like I can tell him he's going to go through the numbers and start asking me all these questions about the spreadsheet. And why did I do this? And why didn't do that? I don't want to fight it. And so I'm just going to pull it from savings. And I'll fill it back next month. And so the path forward is, Hey, you can sit down and let her know all the things she did wrong. Or you can take ownership, full ownership of your part of this and sit down and say, Hey, dude, I should never have put this all on you in the first place. And I know you want to do it all yourself. That's not wise for us as a married couple. So I'm going to sit here with you as we decide what's coming next to their budget. And she wants to pay all the bills. Great. But I want to be better about communicating. I'm on your team. I'm not your boss who's looking over your shoulder to make you sure you clicked every button right. Do you know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. But it's you starting with I statements, not, not, uh, you did these things statements. So your original question to me was how do you rebuild trust? I'm struggling to figure out where trust was broken here. Where's trust broken here? I don't know. I guess I more or less. I think you're just right. It was more of just, I should have communicated about how involved I want to be with it. And it's not, because I tried to, yeah, no, I just think it right. I should have just made it very clear from them because like you're saying she was doing the best for the lets you could. And like, you know, like how she approached me. And maybe I haven't handled it wrong. Because like that, I don't want that in my marriage. Yeah. You know, I want, I want that trust. Yeah. And I think it's more like she said with me than her. Tell me about that. Like I don't want you to do the same thing to me that you did with her, which is I say something bold. Like you need to go, go first and you're like, you're right. I'm sorry. And the way she was like, I want to take care of the money and you're like, okay, you're right. So tell me where you're being reflective here. Or how you're being reflective. I think I think it's, I think it's like one of those. Like my wife had a hard time growing up, like watching her parents. And I think, I mean, I know she has a lot of trust issues, like with stuff. So like you said, maybe when it was time to be like, how I should have responded does, you know, she doesn't open up like a lot about things. Sure. But it was like, maybe that was like one of those times where it's like, okay, you can either handle this with a grace and like, no, have your responsibility and try to be like open or I can completely just over analyze, over criticize. And then she's like, you said, well, not doing that again. So that was kind of what she said. And she was like, why didn't once you stress and over it? So she like, well, no, I have stressed over things before. And she's like, I'm just gonna not bother with them. Yeah. Because maybe that is like the, oh, you like over criticize and all these things. And yeah. So that's it. Sorry. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. You go ahead. And it's something it's always been hard to do my wife to like come out of her show. Yeah. And be like super open with things. Yeah. And like say, say there's times, you know, in marriage, when you get we have those arguments. It's like so often do I want to, because like, I forget things sometimes. And I'm like, I've done better about that. Like, I'll calm my fingers. Things I want to bring up like after she talks. Because sometimes when she talks, I'd jump in so I don't forget. But then it's like pointy theater to talk again. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so, um, if it is the old quote from the movie fight club from Chuck Pollan Hook, but if a conversation with your spouse is you just waiting for your turn to talk, it's not a conversation. It's a it's a competition. If you listen to the thing beneath the thing she's telling you and hear a wife that's exhausted, frustrated, has a new baby, doesn't know if you still like her thing she's pretty anymore. Or she grew up in a house that was just chaos and there was no trust anywhere and trust for her. She's a lived experience of trust getting her hurt or getting her accused. And so she's trying. And she gets the facts wrong. But the sentiment is I'm trying to connect with you. And by the way, conflict is connection. It's where it's one of the most the tension is the doorway in a marriage. That's what's beautiful about it. If you can go through it. But it's you not just waiting for your turn to rebut her things factually. But it's in that moment of I'm a safe place for you to be sad with. I'm a safe place for you to be upset with. Go for it. I'll hold the weight of the family right now. Not that you become a punching bag or get abused or anything like that. But just what I'm saying resonate. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it does. It does. And maybe the next day or two days later we come back. And if there's two or three things that are still really heavy, like, hey, you said I never helped. Can you help me? Because I'm trying to keep my eyes open about the laundry. I'm trying to keep my eyes open about the dishes. And I want to figure out a better way than I can love you in a way that resonates with you. Can you give me a map? Instead of holding on hold on right there. I did the dishes yesterday and I did the laundry three weeks ago. Like you see what I'm saying? And then what she's going to feel in her nervous system is that guys not listening to me. Because this isn't about those isolated times. It's me saying, I'm trapped in this house with a kid and I feel totally alone. I feel useless in purpose. And that's part of the wizardry of being married, which is what is the thing beneath the thing we're talking about. Otherwise laundry becomes a proxy war, right? Yeah. All of this I think if you sit down and take her hands and you go arrange for a sitter, you call somebody and use it down and say, I metaphorically, I'm clearing the deck here. I want to I want to read you some things I wrote down about how much purpose you bring to my life into this family. I want to read you a couple things I wrote about how out of my mind and love with you I am and how beautiful I think you are. And again, I don't know what her things, the things she wrestles with are, but go right at those things. And then say, I gave you all this money. I'm not going to do that again. It's too big of a deal for us. It's too big of a radar system for the health of our whole family unit. I don't ever want you to feel alone again. And I'm going to work really hard to get some new tools in my toolkit so that the only tool I have isn't criticism. Bro, now you're sitting at the table. You're you're tilling the soil that she can start planning seeds that y'all can work on together forever. And those will turn into a forest of trees. But dude, I think you're on the right track brother and proud of you. And you got the next right move right in front of you. It's time to do the courageous masculine brave thing and go do the next right move for your home. Which is to take a knee in front of your wife and say, I'm going to do this differently next time. I'm all in. I hope you will be too. Thanks for calling homey. We'll be right back. Monten and I've company makes the best knives on the planet period. You guys know that my son and I are big hunters and that my wife is a world class amazing cook. So between the woods and the kitchen, I need knives that actually hold up to real use in the real world. Several years ago, I bought my wife the chef's knife set for Christmas and she still uses it every day. She says it's one of her favorite presents I've ever bought her. And I have a number of Monten and I've company knives for me and my son's outdoor adventures hunting and fishing and just cause in general mayhem in the woods. Their knives are designed, tested and built by real hunters and real cooks. And when you pick one up, you can instantly feel the quality. They're proudly made in the USA and they're razor sharp right out of the box and they're tough enough to last a lifetime. Monten and I've guarantees that my grandkids are going to fight over these knives someday. If they ever need sharpening, you just send them back to Monten and I've company and they'll sharpen it and send it back to you for free. Give the outdoorsman and the cook in your life a knife that they will love and cherish and use forever. Go to Monten and I've company dot com to see what's available right now. You will not be disappointed. That's monten and I've company dot com. All right Kelly, the so this show goes out on YouTube Apple podcast Spotify. I don't know where else on your tin can and string system that you have at the old folks home like it goes out everywhere. But we got the Spotify numbers in today. Right. So people are hearing this show in late January. Yes, we are recording this show early December on December 3rd. And we got our Spotify wrap up today and I just have to say our listeners are awesome. They are the best. They are amazing. The best. They're in the gang. OG 17. So our top spot on the charts on Spotify. Number one. Number one. How you like dim apples? We had a 68% increase in our listen time. Our total audience 863% increase over last year. What? As the great Martin once said, damn Gina. It's a lot of people. Yes. 101,000 of our listeners. This is their number one show. 101,000 people. The rest of you listeners should be ashamed. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not listeners shaming. 359,000 of our listeners. This is top five. And then for 529,000 of our listeners, this is top 10. For somebody like me, like I listened to a ton of podcasts to be in someone's top 5 or 10, that's huge. That is huge. I'm kind of blown away by that. Yeah. And we're in some pretty big company with like the Ramsey show, Joe Roken, DAX. So we have a lot to be thankful for and we are so, so grateful for all of our amazing listeners. Yeah. It's, um, this is a rare moment of like me being speechless. I don't have words for that. Like, and if John doesn't have words, yeah, trust me, because John's got a lot of words. I don't have like, it still blows my mind. Every airport I go to, every time I'm in the bathroom, go into the bathroom and somebody wants to talk, which happens more than you would think. Like wherever I happen to like at punk rock shows in the middle of mosch pits, multiple times, people are like, dude, I listen to your like, I'm just, I'm speechless. Thank you all for being in the gang. And more importantly than you're just listening to the show, it's you choosing to share these episodes, take little nuggets of this and sit down with your husband, sit down with your wife, sit down with your kids and decide, I'm going to, I want to do something different. Call on a counselor for the first time, getting back in the gym, whatever it is, like making those life changes. It's just, uh, speechless, man, I'm just grateful. I'm so grateful. Yeah, I might get choked up here. I don't have emotions. You took all my emotions, Kelly. I love you guys for real. Thank you all for being with us and, um, buckle up because this year is going to be a wild one. Love you guys. Bye.