How Do We Close Our Open Marriage?

The last 10 years of our marriage we've been open or swinging. I've always had a just kind of a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it was wrong. We're both moronogram Christians, we both grew up very conservative, met at Bible College. Who brought it up? He brought it up of course. No way really? Yeah I know it's shocking. Hello everybody this is John with the Dr. John Deloni show coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm a real person, not a robot. I'm a real person talking to real people who are going through real challenges whether with their relationships, their mental and emotional health, their kids, their marriages, dating, whatever they got going on in their life. They pull up a seat and we figure out what's the next right move and that's what this show is about. If you want to be on the show I'd love to have you John Deloni, D-E-L-O-N-Y, JohnDeloni.com slash ask, A-S-K fill out the form and we will holler back or I'll let you and get you on the show. And yes I get DMs from all over the planet. We do take calls from the UK, from Australia, from Canada, from all over the place right. Wherever you're calling in from we'll figure out a way to get you on and love to talk to you about what's going on in your life. Alright let's talk about your marriage. Right now we have February and October weekends on sale for the money in marriage getaways. The best marriage retreat on the planet. Tickets start at $749 a couple. Get yours at ramsysolutions.com slash getaway. Let's go to Baltimore, Maryland and talk to Catherine. Hey Catherine what's going on? Oh hi Dr. John thanks for taking my call. Of course what's going on? Not much. I had kind of a question that I wanted to bounce off of someone and I'm a big fan and I thought maybe you could give me some good advice. I would love it let's go. So my husband and I have been married for 20 years. We've got four kids. We're very happily married. We've got issues but nothing earth shattering or out of the ordinary I guess. We do have for the last 10 years of our marriage we've been open or swinging. Okay. And since that started I've always had a just kind of a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it was wrong. And we're both born and grown Christians. We both grew up very conservative. Met at Bible College. We were virgins when we got married so this is obviously a huge step not in that lineup for us and it was. I mean we went a bit out of the norm. A series of conversations over months and months and months before we even got to the place where we were willing to even try something. So who brought it up? It has, he brought it up of course. No way really? Yeah I know it's shocking. He was a big researcher. He loves to read. He loves to study. He keeps a very early study time like he did in college. And so he loves to read and loves to learn and in his learning and reading after we had kind of gotten out of a very strict legalistic conservative background. He was reading about how sex is maybe a little bit different in the Bible than what we were taught which is basically it's bad unless you're married and then that's basically the end of it. So it took him on a really wild journey of studying just everywhere in the Bible that talked about sex and he was like I don't think sex is as cut and dry as we've been led to believe it is. So that led to a lot of questions on his part and maybe a pendulum swing to the other direction where he thought was thinking that we could open our marriage as long as we were both consenting adults and there was no lying and everything was up front. And I wasn't so excited about that. I definitely felt that I had everything I needed in marriage and that I wasn't interested in exploring anything. And he basically over several months kind of convinced me that maybe this was a good idea and as the conversations continued. I realized two things. I think he was going to do something anyway and maybe maybe he needed to or felt like he needed to have some experiences outside of me that he was very curious about. And he didn't want to do it without my knowledge or consent. So this was maybe a way to do that. I don't know. It's been very... We've talked a lot about it in a lot of circles anyway. I'm sure you have. By the way, I want to pause here. If he was on the phone, we'd be having a radically different conversation about... I'm trying to give him very a lot of benefit of the doubt and as much as you. I don't know whether you're delusional or you are honoring. I don't want to talk about somebody with a knot sitting here. Yeah, I'm sure. Either way, awesome, cool, and we won't talk about... We'll get into his... Well, let me stick with my own side then. There you go. Awesome. His deconstruction in anyway. I was not convinced that it was a good idea. Okay, but you went along with it. And eventually I decided to kind of go along with it and see what happened basically. Hold on. When you say go along with it, was that you finding people to be with too or is it letting him do his thing and still come home? So it was very much a two-way street. He did not want it to be one and not the other. Okay. He wanted... He actually said he kind of felt bad for me that I was his only experience or that he was my only experience ever with anything and intimacy wise. And I told him I was just really happy with that and I wasn't really curious. And he was like, yeah, but I think he might be. I'm like, okay, maybe a little bit, but not enough to go do something about it. I'm curious. But for him, he wanted to go sleep with other people and for it to be okay for him, he needed you to sleep with other people so that he could sleep at night. I think so. Okay. And we were in a place in our marriage where he was traveling a lot for work every week. I was home alone with the kids. He would come home very sexually frustrated after being gone for so long. We would always fight, you know, because the tension was just ridiculous. And the solution was if we just both slept with other people, then that tension would be gone. It didn't start that way, but it ended up being that. And actually, I think really helped us a lot. And he didn't... He was very fair. He didn't want to be going out having fun without me having something at home. So he worked very hard to make sure I was comfortable and like knew what was going on. He didn't think around. Our communication improved because we were talking a lot about sex and what we wanted and trying to be very honest with each other. And in that honesty, I did realize that I was just having all these nagging feelings of doubt and guilt about all of this. And I brought that up to him and he... We talked about it many times and he was kind of like, are you sure you're guilty because you seem like you have a lot of fun in the moment. I was like, I do have a lot of fun in the moment, but then I feel empty like trying to survive off 20 is like it's just not fulfilling in the long run. It's fun, but it's not a need, I guess. It's just fun. And that's what it's become. And just through my own personal study of scripture, I'm really at the point where I feel like it's wrong and I don't see it as being God's prescription for a healthy marriage. And I want to be God like myself. And I think he would be honoring of that if I want to bring it up to him, which I will be eventually. He'd honor me not participating. But of course, I would prefer him not to participate either. And I think that is where I come up to a problem because all this time I've had this nagging feeling about it being wrong, but I've agreed to it anyway. So, why am I like standing up for it now, I guess? Yeah, gosh. The gas lights are burning so brightly in your home. It's blinding. And let me... Let's take sleeping with other people off the table, right? Because consensual nominogamy is this big thing and it's people rationalize it in a million different ways. And we're just two grownups and we can do whatever we want, blah, all that stuff. Right. Give me another example in your house where you feel strongly about a thing. Raising kids, how you spend your money, going on vacation, dealing with in-laws, whatever. Where you have a very strong feeling about it. And he, because he's quote-unquote studying or he is quote-unquote smarter than or he's a great wordsmith, has convinced you that the way you see this thing is inaccurate. Okay. We've been going to church our whole life and we've moved from church to church to church more times than I care to remember. And usually because something has been taught or handled in a way that he doesn't think is healthy, which I agree with, but I don't agree that it's the reason to leave. And so... Give me something not faith-related. What's that? Give me something not faith-related. Okay. That's really hard to find. Really yell or in total alignment on everything else? Oh no, no, no, no. But just kind of faith is like the line through everything for both of us, not that we are in agreement. Here's what I'm hearing. Kids in discipline. Great. We'll talk about that. You have a thing in your guts when he yells at your kids or he spanks your kids or he like walks away from your kids, whatever. And there's a nagging sense as a mother, this is not right. Or I don't like it like this. And he then throws a Bible verse at you or I've been studying this and this is the way they, whatever. And there are a few things like that. I believe it's our job to be the parents and the children are the children and we should be the ones making the big decisions in our household. And it is not the responsibility of the children. And on certain issues, he will say, okay, the kids, what do you think? And let's pull the ideas, which for some things is okay. Like what game do we want to play tonight or one movie? Should we watch? That's fine. I mean, we're talking big decisions like moving to another state or things like this. And I'm like, this is not their decision. Right, right, right. And he's like, well, I just want to see what they think. I said, yeah, but now our daughter is upset because she thinks because she agreed to the move and she's moving away from her friends. It was her fault for agreeing. Exactly, yeah. That's not her responsibility. We shouldn't be putting that on them. And he kind of disagrees. And I don't know if it's because of the way he was brought up or whatever. He usually doesn't throw a Bible verse in it. He's just like, I want to know what they think. So here's what I'm hearing. So it can be very much a preference. And I would say this if he was here and not actually not even in a judgy way, but just in a fact way. He has an allergy to maturity. He has an allergy to discomfort. And what he will do is use any tool at his disposal, children, the Bible. Anything that will justify him not doing a thing that he finds not pleasurable or uncomfortable. Huh. Of course, sleeping with people is feels good in the moment. It's sex. Right. And when I look at you and say till death to his part, I do, I am anchoring into bedrock, into concrete. That you are my person. And my pushback is you don't have to have sex with other people to work hard on your communication. Right. You don't have to have sex with other people to deal with the root of the issue, which is you work a lot when you're gone and you're not present in the home. And I'm stuck here in the house with these kids when you're off. And by the way, my life is very similar to that. I'm on the road all the time. I get that. I get being frustrated. I get being lonely. I get coming home and to the rhythm of a household that is moving on without me because I'm gone. And we have to figure out ways to come back together. And you don't have to go bang other people for that. You know what I'm saying? And it is hard. It was hard looking at my two kids saying, hey, y'all have a community. Y'all have friends. And I am got a new job. I am moving y'all across the country and watching them cry, watching them be sad, watching them struggle, meeting new friends. At a new school, watching my wife have to figure out because I'm right on the road again. Like how to like internet service and light bills and why is this company. Right. But that's mine to own. Not to put it on them too. So they have to carry a little bit of it also. Right? It's my job as a husband and as a dad to co-create a world with my wife where my life isn't. In fact, it's the opposite of comfortable all the time. I have little glimpses of comfort amidst great discomfort because that's what I took on. Right. And this is a person. And by the way, this is the pot talk in the kettle on this one. I bounce from church to church to church because at some point in a faith community, faith requires accountability. And when the pastor would say something or the Sunday school teacher said something that might be in the Bible, but I don't like it, then I can, I'm a good word, Smith. I went to a lot of grad school classes. I can work my way around it. Hmm. And so when I got to Nashville, you know what? This was the big moment for me. When my daughter was born after multiple miscarriages, years of us trying, I reached out to a couple of men that were kind of paternal figures for me. In my church growing up when I was a little kid. And I realized in that moment, oh, my arrogance and my not wanting to be held accountable by the community. By the way, I signed up for, I signed up for this faith community. I've robbed my son of these relationships because I keep moving every six months to a new building, to a new building, to a new building. Right. Not trying to find truth and not trying to find growth, but trying to find comfort. Hmm. Right? All that to say is you can't change any of that for him. Right. What you have to do for the first time in your marriage is say, I am finished. And here's what I am finished means. I'm not sleeping with anybody else. The marriage we had is over. I want to build a new one where fidelity and integrity means something. Where we are the adults in our house and we work hard together doing hard things, feeling uncomfortable for a greater good. Hmm. And that also means I'm not going to be married to somebody who is having sex with other people, whether you tell me about it or not. Hmm. Because I am selfish. I want you for me just like we promised ourselves at the altar. Hmm. When we're going to make big decisions about moving across the country or taking new jobs or changing schools or going on Christmas vacation, we as the adults are going to own that. And we are going to tell our children what we're doing. I'm not going to make them carry a piece of that because their little backs and legs can't carry that kind of weight. Yes. Right. And you know as well as I do, that's 55 different things. Being a part of a faith community means purposely putting yourself in a position to be uncomfortable because that's the only way you get stronger and grow. Hmm. It's like going to the weight room and taking all the weight off the bar. Right. You can do 500 reps in a gym if you don't have any weight on the bar, but you're not going to get any stronger. And there's academic ways around everything these days. Look at our government right now. It's still shut down as of this recording because one side is saying this is true and the other side is saying this is true. Right. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. So I want to free you of this is the way we've done this stuff. This is what I agreed to. And I appreciate you being like a grownup saying I didn't like it, but I said, okay. And not only did I say, okay, I wouldn't slap other guys. I've done, I've participated in this and it ends today. Yeah. And you have to hold true that he may walk out the door on you because his sexual appetite with other people is more important to him than fidelity in your life. And you're not going to get married. Yeah, he might. Yeah, that's a hard one to follow. I know he might. And so it's you saying, okay, I'm an adult. And by the way, I'm so proud of you for owning your choices, like owning them, not just being like, he made me. You're saying, nope, I did that. I went to another dude's house on multiple occasions and stuff. Other days. Cool. And as of now, that's over. Tell me what scares you to death about making that stand for yourself and for your marriage, for your kids, for honesty. I'm afraid it would end everything. Okay. If that's the case, I want to tell you that the marriage you think you're holding onto is already over. It's over. You're just getting dragged behind it. Okay. I'll tell you, man, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for owning it. I'm proud of you for standing tall as an adult. And I'm proud of you for saying, I want things to be different going now. The marriage you had is over. And by the way, it's been over for a long time. The question is, can you sit down and say, moving forward, I'm done with this world. I'm done with this life that we've been leading. And here's what I want for us going forward. I hope you will rebuild the marriage with me. And standing in the hurricane of whatever the response is going to be. My hope is he says, I'm with you. We're going to figure this out. I get by your silence that he probably won't, but you're worth that. You're worth standing on the truth. And finally, for the first time since you were a little bit of girl, saying, I'm going to do what's right for me, which I think ultimately will be what's right for you all. Thank you so so much for the call. Appreciate it. You're a brave, brave woman. We come back, a woman asks how to tell her daughter about her mom's past affair without hurting everybody's relationship. This time of year, we're giving our time, our money, and sometimes without meaning to, we're giving away something way more personal, our data. That's why I recommend, delete me. I like a good deal as much as the next guy, but I want you to remember that every email click, every newsletter you sign up for, every time you put your personal information on the Internet, it's another chance that somebody else behind the scenes is going to get your personal information. 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All right, the holidays are a time of traditions. Some traditions are great and some traditions have run their course. It's a great time to reflect on those traditions and what they really mean to you and to ask yourself, is it time to begin to create new traditions on your own? Therapy can give you space to create new traditions, reflect on the old ones, and most importantly, take time for yourself. If you're thinking about therapy, I recommend BetterHelp. They've served over 5 million people globally with an average rating of 4.9 stars out of 5. BetterHelp is totally online so it's easy to fit into your busy holiday schedule. To get started, just answer a few simple questions and they'll connect you with a licensed therapist who fits your needs. And if it happens to not be the right fit, you can change therapist at any time for no extra cost. This month, start a new tradition by taking care of you. Visit BetterHelp.com slash DELONI to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com slash DELONI. Okay, let's go up north to Toronto, Ontario and talk to Elizabeth. Hey Elizabeth, what's going on? Hey, thanks for having me today. I really appreciate your help. You got it. What's going on? Yeah, so my daughter is 15 and she's very perceptive about people and relationships. She's a really intelligent kid. And I recently learned from my husband that she overheard a conversation between some family members about some sort of quote unquote mistake that my mom made in the past. That was an affair, but she's not aware of that yet. So I know that she doesn't know all the details. She didn't hear all the details. But she went to my husband and basically asked, Did grandma make some sort of mistake in the past? So my husband came to me. He said to her that it wasn't a story for him to tell, but he would talk to me about it. So, but that kind of brings us to present day and we haven't gone back to her to say anything because I just feel really puzzled about, first of all, what would be appropriate. And I'm also just concerned about her relationship with her grandmother. And yeah. I love this question. I'm going to talk at a 30,000 foot view real quick and give you a landscape of how important this is and then give you some tactics. Okay. Okay. Here is the 30,000 foot umbrella that we need to make sure we tackle ASAP. Okay. Okay. This amazing 15 year old girl that you have over her to family secret. Every family has them. Yeah. And she did an amazing thing which tells me that you have, you and your husband have done a really fantastic job of creating a relationship with your daughter. Bravo. Okay. Because this 15 year old came to one of you and said, Hey, I heard this thing. Is this true? Mm-hmm. Okay. So the meta, the umbrella concern I have right this second is every minute y'all don't respond back to this 15 year old. She's getting the message that some things are not okay to ask mom and dad. Right. And then what happens next year when her boyfriend pushes her a little bit too far? Or when she's heading off to college and she maybe doesn't want to go to college, she wants to take a gap year. She knows in her nervous system, there are some things the bigger they are, the more I cannot go to mom and dad. Mm-hmm. And so we want to do is go directly through the middle of this. And so when you and your husband sit down and talk to her, and I think it's important that y'all go unified on this one because she went to him, is y'all say, we want to take back what just, how this played out. Mm-hmm. You can always come to us and I want your husband to have the courage to say, and by the way, I have said these exact words in my house, by the way, is to look at, and I have a 15 year old too. Look directly at your 15 year old and say, you came to me with a big thing and I kind of wimped out, I'm sorry. I froze. You can always come to us and this is us making this right. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I would add on the things I just said. And you can hop in and say, there's going to be a boyfriend and you're going to have a bad experience with him. And I want you to know you can always come to us. You're going to learn other family secrets and you can always come to us. One day you might accidentally stumble on text messages, flirty gross ones that your dad sent me and you're going to freak out and I want you to be able to come to us. Right. Yeah. And so it's starting there. The second part of this is the tactical part and that is this. You can't protect your mom from her past decisions. Yeah. What you can do is protect your daughter and your relationship. And you can do that in an honoring and dignified way. And the only way to do this is take these words with you and put them, etch them into stone. Facts are your friends and calm is contagious. Mm-hmm. Okay. Mm-hmm. It's as simple as, so you overheard about the big secrets about grandma, what you hear. I don't know. I just heard that grandma made a big mistake one time and this and this. And actually probably based on your husband's reaction, she's probably going to say something like, it's no big deal, mom. I don't need to know. And it's for you to say, actually, yeah, you do. You're 15. It's time you learn. Mm-hmm. Grandma. Yeah. It's kind of, I figured, I mean, we're kind of at the point where she, I feel that she does kind of need to know some of what the fabric of our family. That's it. So what we're going to say is, we're going to say facts are your friends. And what do we mean? Grandma, I don't know what the story is. I'll make up one just for fun. We lived in a small town and there was a really handsome farmer that came over and cut hay for us. And grandma had eyes for another farmer and she had a fair in our little town and it caused a big ol' stir. And your daughter's eyes will get huge and say, grandma made a mistake. Now, when I say facts are your friends, I'm going to say grandma had an affair. Grandma made a mistake. We're not going to say grandma was and we're going to throw in a bunch of character assassination terms. Right. And what you're going to get, and you're also going to be able to say, and grandma, I don't know if she, did she make it right? Did she say she was sorry? Did she bury it? I don't know if you were in a huge city or in a small, like, how, how, what was the, what was the jet blast after, or the blast radius of all of this? Well, it was pretty far reaching because it was the pastor of our church. Gosh, nice, nice. Okay. Even better. Yeah. So, I mean, if she didn't hear it through one of us, it might come some other way to her. It will. And in addition to it coming to her, she's also going to have the added burden of, I have no one to talk to about this. Yeah. And in this day and age, you know what she's going to do? She's going to go to chat at GPT on how to deal with it. Yeah. Or worse, she's going to say, oh, my parents think I'm stupid. My parents think I don't understand these things. My parents think I don't know anything about filling the sex, fill in the blank. And I mean, she's listening to enough Taylor Swift song. She gets it, right? Yeah. And so. She's really smart. Like she, maybe in a 15 year old kind of way, she is, like I said, pretty perceptive about relationships. But also in a 15 year old way, I feel like she's kind of in her era of thinking she knows everything and a little bit judgy about everything. She's supposed to. So, I can't, yeah. But I kind of worry about like her getting this information right now, like what it's going to do to strain the relationship with my mom. Here's what she has to work through. Oh, my gosh, this person did a thing one time and this person is really amazing to me when I show up every, every time I see her. This person made a huge mistake one time. And also this is a great opportunity to talk about power dynamics. And this might be when your husband leaves the table and you're able to say, hey, there's going to be men who want things from you and you're not going to see it coming until it's, it might be close to too late. And if you want to be a real gangster, this is a time when you tell about a thing that happened to you once, not in graphic detail. Yeah. But maybe you dated the quarterback in high school or maybe you dated the coolest guy in the band in college. I don't know. But suddenly you found yourself on a date and this guy wanted more. Yeah. And this is when your daughter's eyes will get real big, but she'll begin to see you as a person. And then she gets to see you. What have you done? You did the next right thing. Yeah. And so you telling her, yep, grandma did this thing with a, with the minister of the church and maybe he got fired. Maybe he didn't. But you get to see sometimes men in powerful positions get to keep their jobs and it's the women who get shamed and it shouldn't beat that way, but that's the way it is sometimes. Well, yeah, that's a little bit how it played out. It usually does that way. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. He was not able to continue as a pastor, but then my mom was the one who carried the weight of apologizing to the entire church community. That's exactly right. She's the one that seduced the poor pastor. Yeah. It's evil. It's evil. Yeah. It's evil, but that's the role. And good God Almighty, there's not a more important conversation for you to have with your daughter right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, unfortunately, we've also seen it play out in our own church. Of course. With another family. And so maybe telling her. There are really great people and great amazing leaders at churches. And also there's some not good ones. Yeah. And I want a 15 year old to immediately default to her judgment. That's what 15 year olds are supposed to do. They're supposed to be all on balls of emotion. Just fireballs of, oh my gosh, you're the worst. You're the best. They're supposed to all be like, that's the way it is. But I want you to be able to say grandma made this huge mistake. And I don't know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 25 years ago. And she's been an amazing woman of character since then. And she's right now the best mom I could ever have. She's the best grandma I could ever have. Or best grandma you could ever have. But that's where we're going to say facts to your friends and calm as contagious. So when she goes, oh my gosh, oh my. You'll be able to say, hey, she's an amazing woman. She screwed up. And when the whole community turned on her, she held her head up high and she did not even the next right thing, just the thing that the unsupportive community demanded of her. And then might be a good time to talk about maybe your dad was an amazing guy who stuck by her. He was. Yeah. So she gets a context of everybody screws up. Sometimes screw ups become very public and sometimes screw ups. The consequences of the mess up one person carries disproportionately. Often in faith communities, the woman carries it more than a man does. Yep. And by the way, if you haven't processed this, you need to do that too. Yeah. Were you a little girl when this happened? I was 19. Oh, geez. And I watched it happen for a couple years. Yeah. Yeah. And so you telling your 15 year old daughter, I was about your age when this all happened. And I learned at a young age to not say anything. I kept quiet. I didn't question things. And I watched my poor mother get dragged through the ringer. And I want you to know right now, never don't ask the question. I think you can be, I'm trying to think if I was in the exact same situation here. Other than very graphic, they would sneak behind in the pastor's office. By the way, I've had that conversation with people before. Or when dad was out of town, the pastor would come over for a quote unquote church visit. And they would like outside of very graphic specifics, a 15 year old is old enough to know about everything. Okay. But more important, you are 19. You're about to her age. And if you learned anything from about sexual fidelity about, I'm never going to see something in my life and not say something, if any of those kind of things that this is a great moment to teach her right now. Yeah. And telling her, I learned a lot. Yeah. And what an amazing opportunity to not let that anything be wasted with that thing that happened when you were 19. This is a way to continue to make all things new. This is changing your family tree. Right. Right. Right. Thank you. And if you want to be a gangster, a super gangster tonight, ask your husband to take care of bedtime and you go to a coffee shop and you write 19 year old, you a letter about what that poor girl experienced, how if you could go back and if you could see her right now, you would give her a huge hug and tell her that none of this was her fault and all that embarrassment and shame that was on the family that was on you, that you had to go to church with your head held low, put all that in writing. And if you want to be a real gangster, read it to your daughter. Here's a letter I wrote to myself. Yeah. Because teenage girls often carry a ton that nobody knows is going on. Yeah. And it's Tuesday, you all need to have this conversation this week. Okay. Don't let any more time go by. It'll be good to get it off my chest. Yeah. But don't get it off your chest and hand it to your daughter for her to carry. It's you saying, I've been carrying this big secret and we need you to know you can always come to us. And sometimes the thing you ask is real big and we're not going to handle it super right out of the gate and your husband can be like, yeah, that was on me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But also you come to us with anything and we're going to tell it all to you. And it's okay for you to think back to 25 year old grandma and go, oh my gosh, how could she do that? But don't forget grandma is amazing and she loves you. Yeah. It's both and. And you could tell her part of being an adult is carrying the both in the end. Mm-hmm. That's true. Right. Yeah. You're a pretty awesome mom. Your husband's pretty awesome too. Thank you. And this doesn't come in any of the parenting manuals, which I hate for us all. But yeah, we're going to go right through this one with a 15 year old. If you have a seven year old and they're asking the same question, we're not going to give near the level of detail. We're going to say something like, yeah, 25 years ago, grandma made a mistake. We're not going to. We all make mistakes. Hey, what do you want for dinner? Right. And we're going to acknowledge it. We're going to own it and we're going to go on to the next thing and we're going to let their questions guide our responses unless we know they know something and they're just not asking questions. Then we're going to approach them and we're going to put on the table because we're adults and that's what we do. We can handle that. They can't. But 15 years old, haven't heard some things. Yeah, she's old enough. And by the way, she's experiencing some of this on the periphery, sexualization, weird boys, internet, all that stuff. And as we're increasingly moving to a world where you can just get any answer in any response, digital relationships, we're going to teach her right now. I'm always a safe place for you to come ask hard questions. I'm going to tell you the truth, even when it's hard, even when it's hard. You're awesome. Best of luck to you. I don't know how this conversation goes. So if you would do me a huge favor and write us back and we don't have to read the response online, but I just want to walk alongside you guys as you all have this conversation and the ones that will follow. By the way, this will be conversation one. I'm sure there'll be more questions coming. And if you'll ever need anything, feel free to holler. I'm really honored to talk to you all. We come back. A woman asks how to cope with her death related nightmares. We'll be right back. The holidays are here and it's my favorite time of year and it can be a challenge to just slow down and be present with all that's going on. 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If you don't love them, return them hassle free. But I'm telling you, you're not going to want to. Head to cozyearth.com and use code DELONI for 20% off your entire order. That's cozyearth.com slash DELONI, use code DELONI. Let's go out to Memphis and talk to Sarah. What's up, Sarah? Hi, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I really appreciate your time. Of course. Thanks for calling. I appreciate your time. What's up? So I'm just having a lot of death related nightmares pretty much every night and it's kind of progressed to during the day, death related anxiety and basically like thinking that I'm about to die during the day. And my previous cozy mechanisms that I used last time that this happened were no longer an option for me. So I'm calling to get your insight on how I might be able to work through it, especially as my work caseload increases because it is definitely because of my job that I have. Oh, wow. Any of these issues. What's your job? I'm a death investigator for the medical examiner. Oh, you work at the Emmy's office. Very cool. The medical examiner. Sorry. Geez. Yeah. So there's that. I will tell you, Sarah, having shown up, I can't count how many homes I showed up to where people had passed away or died. Natural causes, self-inflicted violence, whatever, car wrecks, whatever. The job I never understood how people could do was the Emmy. Yeah. And it's like, it makes it compounded and it's probably going to sound morbid to say, but this is actually my dream job that I worked for. Totally. Absolutely. For my whole life. Yeah, totally. That also adds to it. Yeah. So for people who don't know, here's how this works. Let's say somebody calls 911 and they walked home and their 80-year-old husband has just had a cardiac event. They've had a heart attack and they've died in their home. Or they got home or they got a call from a roommate that a 22-year-old has died by suicide. Or you get a call from a screaming mother that her four-year-old is choking and has just passed away. Like the whole gamut, right? The police show up. Hopefully, if you're in a well-resourced community, folks like me would show up, like those who are here to help with the psychosocial part of this, like the, here's what you do next and the crisis counselor is right, the victim services unit, which is also part of, we'll show up and sit with you. And then the white van shows up. Do you all have a white van in Memphis, Sarah? Yeah. Okay. So the white van shows up and here's what the white van does. The white van has usually two people in it and their job is to get the actual body out of the house after all the photographs are taken, after all of the investigation part is done. And by the way, police show up at these scenes no matter what it is and they work it homicide back, right? Yeah. And so they want to make sure there's no foul play and they work it back. Sometimes it's really easy to tell and sometimes it's a little more complicated. But you, Sarah, and your team show up in the middle of the night, 2 a.m., 4 a.m., Christmas day, whenever, and you all get the body out of the house and into the van and down to the morgue or to a holding place, right? Yeah. Ugg. Yeah. And for my job, it's, I'm not simply just removal. I'm the one who takes the pictures. I'm the one who interviews the witnesses about what happened. I'm the one who writes the report. If there's a video of the death happening, I have to watch the video and write it down for the doctor to read. So yeah, I'm intimately involved. They call us like last responders because we're the last ones to show up. And can I, if you are particularly sensitive and you're listening to this, just hit the little, the little 15 or 30 second pass button on this. And I'm going to ask you this, Sarah, directly. You've got experiences where you're taking photographs of really graphic images, right? Yes. You've got, you've had to photograph children, right? Yes. You've had to photograph really gristly scenes, right? Yes. And those will burn a hole in your spirit, right? Honestly, that's the part about this that confuses me because it doesn't bother me in the moment. That's what makes me feel bad. No, no, no, no, no. I think that makes me good at my job. It makes you amazing at your job. It doesn't bother me in the moment. And I, it is my dream to help figure out what happened to these people and write the last chapter of their story. But even though it doesn't bother me in the moment and I don't struggle to do my job, I guess when I come home, my brain holds on to the things I see and then I dream about them at night. Yes, yes, yes. So here, here, the title of the book says everything by Dr. Vander Kolk. The body keeps the score. And I'm with you. I don't know why. If I go buy a house when I sit down and I'm signing the paperwork to buy a house, I'm in full fight or flight, total panic mode. I come up with every scenario about how I'm going to not be able to pay off this house and my kids are going to be starving in the street. I go to bananas. But if I walk into a house and there's four people who have just been shot and killed, like I can do that just fine. Some of the, and this is awful to say, some of the hardest laughing I've ever done in my life to the point that I had to go outside because I was laughing so I was going to throw up was in those homes. And it makes you feel insane, right? Yeah, because you have to have a really dark black hole sense of humor to get through those situations or some people get really stoic and really clinical, right? Yeah. And you have to have defense mechanisms and that's what makes you really awesome at your job. That's what made me good at my job and our bodies keep the score. And I don't know about you, but I've gone to some crazy grotesque, violent situations, just out of body experience situations. And it's all good. Fine, talking, laughing with the cops, helping move bodies, taking pictures, cleaning up scenes. And it's when I get home and I lay in bed that my heart starts racing. Yeah. Or I crashed dead asleep and it's when you wake up and you're like, there's no way that just happened, right? Yeah. And for you, it's nightmares. Yeah, pretty much. Very vivid ones. I have a vivid imagination. Correct. That's right. That's right. All right. So here I'm going to give you a couple of things to do and I want to tell you at the outset, okay? I want more people like you being willing to do this kind of job. The way you just said that was so poetic and beautiful. I want to be the person who will write an honorable last chapter for a person. What an amazing heart you have. Oh, thank you. And my fear for somebody like you is that sense of I'm going to find beauty in the ugliest. If you're not careful, you will burn out like a flame, right? Like a flash. And you'll have to go do a dumb desk job and then you'll die slowly inside because you were put on earth to sit in people's ugly mess, right? Yeah, and I work with people who are like past that point. Oh, yeah. And I see like what I could become. Yes. And I just don't want to end up like losing my soul to this job. Yes. But I also love this job. Okay. Awesome. All right. So here's one thing that I want you to hear. The big picture is you have to have an unflinchable. Don't care how tired you are. I don't care how awful the scene you just came from or honestly how benign the scene what just came from, right? Because you've also shown up to houses. The person was 65. They were 300 pounds overweight. It's like a natural cause and effect here, right? Yeah. Yeah. You've been to those two. Yeah, that's happening all the time. Yeah. And I want you to honor those the same as when you're photographing the kid who just died from SIDS, who's two and the mom is screaming in the next room. Both of them. Yeah. Yeah. I always try to do that. I want you to have a unflinchable, unshakable routine or practice for what happens after you hit send on that final report. This is a thing I do every time because here's what's happened. Your body will attenuate to we can cycle this trauma through because I don't care how good you are showing up to your job. By the way, this happens for surgeons. This happens for preachers. This happens for attorneys. This happens for nurses. Anybody who works in the messy pain therapist of other people. Okay. You have to have a process that you do every single time, every time. And it's annoying, but it's a part of the job. It's an essential part of the job. Okay. Here's what that might look like for you. This has been a great help to me is writing. It can be 10 sentences. It can be three pages. Writing a letter to the person who just died. Okay. And it can be on a yellow. I would recommend it not be typed out. I'd recommend you handwrite it. And there's a whole bunch of research about why that's important, but I want to connect your physiology, your body to the processing of this thing. Because you're good at shutting off your mind, right? You're good at burying emotions, but bringing those emotions back through your body through just a simple act of writing. Dear Susan, I just finished writing the last chapter of your life. It was such an honor that I got to be a part of the last bit of your story. Here's what I want you to know. I saw six people tattooed up bald headed dudes crying in your living room, which tells me you are a person people they could count on. Dear Timmy, two year old, I was just a part of your last chapter. And I made sure your mom had somebody to hug. She's going to miss you so much. Okay. Okay. I could do that. I know. I know it's going to be just hearing that is hard, right? Because here's what you're doing. You are consciously letting your body feel this thing and use its own innate processes to metabolize what you just experienced. You can keep these in a secret folder that's only yours. And by the way, I think legally speaking, I would write at the top of that folder private notes that way they're not subpoenaable or anything like that. But I would write them by hand so they're not in a computer anywhere. And this is you processing. I used to set mine in a fire, but I was always having fires in my house. Like I was out of fireplace was awesome. And so I would always put them in there. That was part of my little ritual, but I let them go. Okay. Okay. Here's the second part. You have to have a yoga practice, a walking practice, an exercise practice of some sort. And when you go on this, I want you to be very intentional about the following. I see the trees. That tree has 17 branches low. I'm counting cracks on the sidewalk. Look at that sunset and the colors are orange and red and pink and purple and or it is pitch black outside. I'm going to count street lights. And what you're doing when you do that is you're bringing your body back from what it's starting to spin out and plan for your future death and reverse engineer it to I'm okay right here right now. This is done best with skin to skin contact. Are you married? Yes. Okay. If you just got up in the morning, because also how about this? Have you ever gone to do a thing at 2am? You come home at 430 and you get back in bed for 45 minutes and then your husband gets up and he's like, what's up? And you're like, yeah, that happens every day. Mine too. I used to be having coffee and my wife would be like, Hey, can you get so and so? And I would look up at her and be like, I would never say anything. You have no idea what I just did last night. None. In fact, I would get home and get back in bed and my wife hadn't even moved. Yep. Okay. So here's the thing. You probably learned like I did. I can't just use my wife. If you can't use your husband as a trash bin to dump all of this on. Yeah, I don't want to do that. But if you keep secrets, you're going to put a huge wedge in your marriage. I did that and it almost cost me my marriage because I realized I created a whole life that my wife wasn't a part of, which meant my need for connection began to not involve her. And I did that. I started out as a way to protect her, but saying, Hey, I was out last night. I need you to take a 10 minute walk with me and we're going to hold hands and we're going to point out five beautiful things on the walk. Okay. And here's the third thing. When you wake up in the morning or right before you go to bed in the morning, there's research on nightmares where right when you wake up after a nightmare, you have a small journal by your bed and you write six or seven sentences, but you take that nightmare and you end it well. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to honor my body. Your body is just trying to get your attention and you're at the early stages. If you're not there already of a pretty anxious sea life, I want you to honor that anxiousness by going directly through it on a plane. Sometimes that's breathing exercises. Most people listen to podcasts on planes. You know what I listen to? I'm going to do one of my general beats because I have a meditation practice because I don't like flying occasionally. I'll watch John Wick or whatever on the on a movie. Like, right? That's fine. But like most of the time I'm pretty spun up and I have big headphones on the signal to the world. Don't talk to me and I exhale and breathe through it and it usually takes me about three minutes now because I do it all the time and I'm through it now. I've let my body know we're okay right now here. When I chose to go on this plane, if it goes down, there's nothing I can do about it. Yeah, that's me at all. That's the bargain I made and it's probably not going to go down. But you can only critically think like that when your body is not spinning out in fight or flight, when your body is not trying to get your attention about a threat right now and it's having a process. It is honoring those people, not only you honoring them, but think of writing them a letter as a way of them honoring you. It's them saying thank you for being there for the last chapter of my life. I don't know why but that makes me feel uncomfortable. It does because you have worked really hard to divorce your emotions from the person in front of you and when you're on scene, you have to do that. A surgeon cannot be thinking while they're cutting, this is a four-year-old little boy. They can't. They have to think. Trachea, trachea, trachea, heart. That's the only way they can get through it. Yeah. And then the surgeon needs to exhale if the kid makes it and say, write themselves a quick note, dear Tom, it was an honor that I got to work on you today. I've given you a new lease on life. My hope is you use that new lease on life or, Timmy, I did my absolute best today and you didn't make it. I'm going to live my life 5% more adventurous because I've got another life to live now and that's yours too. And I want you to know I hugged your mom and I held your dad while he wept. If you don't break that wall, your body will break it for you. Okay. Or you'll be like some of your Emmy colleagues who are way overweight, who are completely burned out. They have no emotion for themselves, their kids, their spouses, life. And you know those guys who get three double cheeseburgers on the way to a scene and they stop at Taco Bell on the way home and they watch Netflix till they pass out. Yeah. And that's not the life I want. I want you, can I be honest? I want you to be the person that shows up when I die because I can tell by your heart and spirit you will honor my wife and my kids. Oh yeah, I always try to do that. And I can tell by your spirit you're going to make sure that if I was doing something stupid nobody knows about it. I'm just kidding. I know you got to write it down. Well, I got to write it down. I know you got to write it down. I'll be tactful about it. There you go. There you go. But your body is keeping track of all of this whether you consciously are or not. And I want to say thank God that your body loves you enough to try to keep you safe too. And it's true. And when you bust open in the middle of the night, and this is for anybody suffering from nightmares, if you bust awake in the middle of the night, I was falling or I was about to drown. I'm going to finish that story right there. And then the guy from EMS showed up, unhooked my husband or he unhooked me. I reached over and I hooked my husband. My husband grabbed me and we swam to surface and we got big gulps of air and we smiled because we made it. Thank you, body and mind and spirit for trying to keep me safe. I'm good now. And I'm going to put my foot under the covers and I'm going to touch my husband's foot, skin to skin contact. I'm going to go right back to sleep. And the research tells me that nightmares begin to slowly dissipate. They don't go away forever, but they slowly lose their power over you because your body knows oh, she's in control. You are a modern day Saint Sarah. People who walk into messy to bring light and to find beauty. My God, we need more of you in the world. I'm grateful for you. My prayer for you is you do the things to take care of you and your marriage so that you can do this long term because we need people like you. Thank you so so much for the call and thank you for the work you're doing. We'll be right back. So you can see and hear what's happening in real time. That kind of clarity and control over your home can help you have peace of mind, especially when you're away traveling for the holidays. Cove lets you customize your security system with a quick online quiz so you only get what your home actually needs, not a bunch of pushy salesmen and women trying to sell you extra stuff that cost you a ton more that you'll never use. Cove setup is simple. You can do it yourself. It usually takes about 30 minutes and every system comes with a 60 day risk free trial. December is the perfect time to protect your home with Cove. Right now Cove is offering an exclusive holiday sale for my audience. Visit CoveSmart.com and use code DELONI at checkout for up to 80% off your first order. 80% it's the easiest decision you're going to make this year. Go to CoveCoveSmart.com and use code DELONI. Alright we're back. Let it rip Kelly. What's up? Alright so we got an email, follow up email from a caller that I wanted to read. So back in March of 2022 so. Dang Gina. It has been a minute. We had a woman that was considering, she was single and she was considering using a sperm donor to have a baby. Okay. And in the conversation a lot of it came through talking about her getting some counseling. Kind of there was a lot of kind of what was causing her to want to go into this without a partner. You know just looking at the reasonings behind it and kind of what was she trying to fill. Okay. Some trauma and stuff like that. Cool. So we got an email from her. Did I give her a good answer? You did. Okay. She's yes. Phew. Okay good. Especially back then because it was only a couple years in. I didn't know what I was doing back then. So she said, my segment was single and considering a sperm donor. At the end of the call, John said when I actually have a baby to please send him the photo and I said that I would. During the call, John made me promise to call a new counselor following our call, which I did. In March of 2022, I began working with a new counselor that walked me through healing my past relationship traumas. Then I met my husband in August of 2022. Oh yeah. We got married in May of 2024 and now our parents to a sweet baby girl, which we are putting a picture of. So if your lists are watching, you can see this. I truly believe calling it to the show was the stepping stone to healing that I needed and I wanted to thank John. It honestly changed the direction my life was going. So little baby Sloan Alice was born on July 24th. Dude. And I told her so whenever she sent me the email was the show after you and I had a conversation about the name Sloan and what a cool girl name that was. I do have a like. I know. I have a thing. I told her that I said you're not going to believe this, but literally yesterday, John and I had a conversation about what a cool girl name that was. It's the coolest. Yeah. I don't know why. I just think if you're a girl named Sloan, you are awesome. You're going to have a cool sleeve tattoo and you can drink beer out of a bottle and you're going to be the coolest. She's only a few months old. Okay, fair. So maybe not yet. Fair. But, but she's obviously going to be a cool girl. That's so awesome. So we are posting a picture of Sarah, Chris and Sloan and just so very happy for them all. Dude, look at us. Look at that. I don't want to take credit for anything, but like good on you for doing the healing work. Good on you for getting back out there. Good on you for meeting that guy. Dang Gina and good for little baby Sloan. Oh my gosh. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. That was one of the, my favorite ones that I've gotten. It was just so great to see that and I was so happy to be able to, I asked her, I do have her permission by the way to share the photos. I did ask. I am going to be happy all day about that. Love that. I don't know anybody who doesn't have the tension, whatever it is, the conflict and turn and face it, especially when you need to get with the right professionals to walk through it. That isn't glad they took that journey. Amazing. Amazing. I love that whole day. That's probably never been said by you. So I think we should end on that note. I will stop talking and just let this one be a first. A first. Love you guys.