The Dr. John Delony Show - Caller: “I’m Too Tired to Work on My Marriage”

Episode Date: July 22, 2026

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do my husband and I prioritize our marriage while we're caring for our son with a severe disability. He has a condition called H-I-E. We have two other boys as well who are three and two months. Oh, wow.

Yes, that one was a surprise. What up? What's going on? This is John, the Dr. John Loni's show. Coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, taking real calls from real people going through real challenges and the real lives. That's a lot real.

So we do here on the show, we pull up a seat and figure out what's the next right move for you, for you and your family, for you and whoever you're sitting next to. If you want to be on the show, click the link in the show notes,

and don't forget to pass this episode on to a friend that you think it would be of benefit to. And hit the subscribers and all that shenanigans. All right, let's go out to Chattanooga,

Tennessee, right down the row ad from me and talk to Elizabeth. Hey, Elizabeth, what's up? How are you? Doing great. How are you?

I'm hanging in there. Hanging in there. I'm glad you're here. What's up? So my question is, how do my husband and I prioritize our marriage while we're caring for our son with a severe disability? Oh, man. Tell me about it. So he had a very traumatic birth.

Pregnancy was great, but his birth didn't go well. So he has a condition called H-I-E, which is, essentially means he has a brain damage from oxygen deprivation. And so he has a feeding tube. He's not mobile. He doesn't talk. He's 19 months old. And that has also led to a cerebral palsy diagnosis.

I was wondering if that was the ultimate diagnosis of CP. Okay. Yes. Yes. So essentially he's going to live with us for the rest of his life or our life, whichever comes first. and that's another thing that we're having to kind of navigate in our marriage. So I just, I'm kind of trying to be a little proactive here.

My husband is wonderful. He is like, he is the best man I know. So I just want to make sure we protect what we have while also caring for him. We have two other boys as well who are three and two months. Oh, wow. Yes, yes. That one was a surprise. So what's your little boy's name?

Walker. Walker. Can you do a couple of hard things with me? I know we just met just now, but would you do a couple of hard things with me? Yes. Go back to a month before Walker was born. And imagine yourself laying in your bed next to your husband, and you're at that place where you don't think you could get any pregnant

and because you already have an older one, you know that, oh, yeah, you can. And your husband's laying by you and he's got his hand on your belly and y'all are thinking about adding a second son to your family. Yeah. The dreams and the excitement and the,

oh my gosh, I can't believe we're doing this and how are we going to do this? We have a two-year-old and just peeing everywhere, except in the bathroom, right, in the potty, right? And then the chaos and the trauma and the madness and the scrambling and now the fog is starting to lift on the reality, right?

Mm-hmm. Yes. It's a it's a, it's a, neuroprotective measure, which is a dorky way of saying it's right and it's normal and it's good to immediately go 70 years down the road and try to solve for that. Yeah. But what that also allows you to do

is not feel the weight of the grief right this second. Yeah. And we're going to solve, we're going to get a special needs to trust. We're going to start thinking about new jobs and where we're going to live and an ADA accessible. All these things helps us at least in the moment, wallpaper over. It's not supposed to be like this. Yeah. Yeah.

Right? Mm-hmm. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm sorry for Walker, I'm sorry for you, I'm sorry for your husband, I'm sorry for your other kids, I'm sorry for all the chaos. All right? Sorry. Don't you dare apologize to me.

Don't you dare apologize? Okay? Mm-hmm. If nobody's told you this, it's okay to really be sad and it's okay to cry and it's okay to look at your son on a feeding tube, unable to roll over on his own, and be mad and angry and upset. all those things are right and okay. You're not a bad mom, you're a good mom, okay? And you're allowed to be short-tempered, and you're allowed to, out of nowhere,

start sobbing, and you're allowed to, out of nowhere, just want to smash the cabinets off the wall, all of it, okay? And my husband tells me that as well. Good. I think I just, I worry that eventually he's going to get tired of dealing with it. I don't know. I think it's not very logical, I guess. But hold on, grief never is.

It's not supposed to be logical. It's a big dark hole. Yeah. And you have to honor it by spending time in it or it will chase you forever. Those shadows will cast themselves over your entire life. Yeah. How do I navigate that with him too?

Because I feel like he's holding it together so much better than I am. He's not. He's just, he's gone into fortify mode. which means he's a good man and a good husband and a good dad. Yeah. But I promised you he's wrecked too. Because he had dreams of run around with two boys in the yard also. Mm-hmm.

And he had dreams of two boys kicking in screaming in a deer stand and he was trying to keep him quiet. And he had dreams of who's going to get married first. He had all those dreams too. Yeah. He's doing what has to be done. One of my closest friends who went through unimaginable grief, I remember him saying,

right now there's work to be done and that's where your husband is. And so I would exhale in the space he's providing for you and also give each other the love and the grace to have space where y'all can talk and we all can share. Because that fortification that he's, I mean the work he's doing can also become anesthetizing too, which is yet another dork word for, it can become a drug. It can become a way to avoid. Yeah.

And I don't think he sounds like he's a good enough man. I don't think he's ever going to get tired of you, but he might get tired of hurting. You might get tired of silence. You get what I'm saying? Yes, I do. So here's a couple of things y'all can do, all right? And this is going to sound counterintuitive, some of them.

Some of them are going to sound eye-roly. The steps forward are a whole bunch of little bitty steps, not big sweeping fireworks shows, okay, which makes it feel like you're not getting anywhere, but you're going to look up in one year, two years, ten years, with whatever Walker's medical journey takes you guys on, whatever happens, you're going to realize you've come a lot further than you thought you were walking, right,

that you thought you were going. I want you to today get a worry journal. Okay. And honor yourself, honor Walker, honor your marriage, honor your husband enough to, when you start worrying about stuff, write them down and get them out of your head. Okay.

Okay. And I want you and your husband to create a weekly check-in that includes worry time. Okay. And this can be very, very real worries. These can be ridiculous worries. These can be irrational worries. However you want to label them. This is, and I want him to get one too.

I want your husband to get one too. And the magic here is, A, writing the stuff down. and getting out of your body, getting out of your head. And B, here's the real magic, sharing it with each other. Okay. Okay. Like, I'm going to read you, my top five worries. You read me your top five worries. And this is a weekly check-in when you would go over calendar stuff,

doctor appointments, if hopefully you'll keep a budget together. Like, what's our budget look like this week? You've got three kids under two now. So you're going to have to put things like buying coffee and milk and pumping and sex. You're going to put everything on the calendar for the rest of your life, right? So we're going to do that on a weekly check-in,

but you're going to carve some special time just to say, or are you on the same page here? Okay. And the third thing with that worry journal is I want you all to honor each other by asking two questions. Are these worries true?

And can we do anything about them right now? Okay. All right? Mm-hmm. Will you all need a special needs to trust? Yeah, you will 100%. Yes. Okay.

So is that a thing you can do at 8 o'clock on a Sunday night or 2 a.m. on a Tuesday morning? No. Yeah. Right? Can you set an appointment to meet with an attorney? Absolutely. Who, if you're like most families, if you're like I was with two young kids, you don't have anything to put in a trust anyway, right? Do you all need term life insurance?

Absolutely you do. Yes. And so we're going to put that on the calendar. We're going to call Zander. We're going to get that done. Okay. Right. But, again, I haven't even like, oh, I'm sorry.

That's part of the worry journal, right, is are there things we can actually do? Yep. I can do them tomorrow at 10 a.m. We can't do them right now. It's midnight. And what you'll find is you'll brain dump a lot onto this journal initially, and then over time, it will get less and less and less. The things you write down may get more and more serious, but they'll get less and less and go ahead. I cut you off.

Oh, no, you're fine. Things like the term life insurance and the trust, like, I feel like I haven't even had time to sit down and think about that stuff because we're in, we're seeing specialists constantly and therapists. And then I had a new baby two months ago. Yeah. And so it's just survival mode. And I just want to be with my husband, but then I have other things to think about. And those things that you think you need to think about, get them out of your head and onto paper.

Okay. Okay. And here's, okay, so let's set worry journal aside. That's going to be a part of your life for a season, if not forever, okay? I'm an anxious guy. I still have one. Here's the second one. The greatest gift you can give Walker and your other two kids

is to have an anchored, starting marriage. What does that mean? That means you and your husband create a secret world that those kids don't come inside of. Okay. That means you'll protect your time together first. And that sounds dismissive. That sounds like, you don't know what's going on in my house.

Like, what I'm telling you is all the data I have in front of me says, the greatest gift you can give your kids is to love each other really well. Okay. And so when you and your husband are looking at the week ahead, what goes on that calendar first is time together. Okay. Okay. Mm-hmm. Is it just any time together or is it like we're going to go on a date or?

Y'all get to decide that. Right now a date feels like it would be overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. Right? But paying a local high school kid to call. watch the infant and you're three-year-old, and right now you don't feel like it's wise or safe to, if Walker can get in a stroller to leave him alone, so we're going to walk with him,

and we're going to go on a long walk together. We're going to sit on the back porch and tell our three-year-old, you got a big, big job because you have a little two-month-old brother, and your job is just to sit next to him for 30 minutes with this teddy bear. He would love that. Of course. And let me tell you, I learned this from one of my professors. One of the greatest things you can do to kind of put the breaks on sibling rivalry

and bring the family together is to start referring to the younger two brothers as his kids, his brothers. Okay. It'll give him ownership. Okay. That's the other thing I've been worried about too. I know, I know. And here's the thing. Your body's working perfectly.

because you've been through an unimaginable, unexpected, completely out of left field, everything's perfect until suddenly it's, everything's wrong. Yeah. And so your body's going to worry about everything because everything's now a threat. Because even the most, you'd had a good pregnancy before. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. And so you're not crazy.

I want you to start every day with your husband. to the best of your ability with this question. These two questions, what's our picture of today look like and how can I love you today? And I want him to ask you the same things. And I don't want either of you to pass it off and say, I don't know, I don't know. It might be as simple as doing all the bedtimes.

It might be as simple as I need a cup of coffee. It might be, hey, will you leave me a note by my bed that tells me I'm doing a good job as a mom? Okay. Will you just hold me for a while? Will you take this doctor appointment on Tuesday because I don't think I can walk into another doctor's office and be talked down to?

How can I love you today? Okay. Mm-hmm. Yes, sir. A thousand little bitty steps. And can I tell you one more thing? Yeah. You probably won't be able to hear this right this second,

but I want you to never forget what I'm about to say to you, okay? Okay. Walker's situation is not your fault. Okay? And I know you don't believe me. I know that your body doesn't want to accept that right now because it's trying to make sure this never happens again. It's not your fault.

It wasn't your fault. It will never be your fault, okay? Thank you for calling and pulling up a seat and sitting with me. For sitting with me. Call anytime, okay? And if your husband wants to call, I'd love to talk to him as well. You'll have a long, hard, hard road ahead of you. No question about it.

but your anchor point comes first there'll be times of joy and laughter and great, great grief and sorrow and right now more grief and more sorrow than anything else remember the anchor point you're lucky to have each other he's a good man and you're a good mom when we come back a man asks

how to find alternative ways to cope with depression instead of eating his feelings in bed. We'll be right back All right, so it all started with cozy earth towels, these amazing giant super absorbent, comfortable towels. And then I got a cozy earth comforter and I got some cozy earth blankets and they were amazing. And then I got some cozy earth socks. And now cozy earth is in every nook and cranny of my house. It's even on my body.

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All right, let's go out to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and talk to John. Hey, John, what's up, dude? Hey, Dr. John, thanks for taking my call. Thanks for calling, brother. What's up? Well, I wrote down my question, so I didn't go too crazy here. How can I find alternate ways to cope with my depression instead of retreating to my bed and eating my feelings? Ah, man.

Tell me about it. Tell me about your depression. Well, I've kind of always, not I won't say always, but more in the past few years kind of developed a depression. It's not an uncommon thing in my family. But it's gotten worse lately, I'd say. So this is going to sound like a strange question. And for you, you know this, but for, for, you know this. listeners, depression has a pretty strong genetic link, right? A body's like when it gets faced with stress and all kinds of environmental challenges, it has a default mode,

which is I'm going to shut things down. I'm going to get under the blankets, right? Yeah. What over the last couple of years, what recently, has your body been depressing away from? Well, I guess just different, like, relationships, I would say. Okay, tell me about them. Well, I was in a, I was say, a long-distance relationship with an old friend for a while, and that all kind of fell apart and threw me off for a couple weeks. Yeah, like, I can't figure out of phrase this properly. Just let it rip. There's no way to just just just just just just just vomit it up.

Yeah. So my friend who moved states, I want to say about a couple months ago, um, she, we had started kind of talking and then she moved and we figured we can try the long distance for a while and then some other factors from her side just led to it not working. out. I don't want, it's not my story to tell, but, um, sure. And it just kind of fell apart and we haven't really talked since. Um, what feels heavier to you, the heartbreak, the romantic heartbreak, or you lost your friend or both? I would say the loss of the friend because it was a significantly longer time than the romantic side of it. I'm sorry that happened, dude. How old are you? Yeah, I'm 19. Yeah, that's a big one.

That heartbreak is the worst, man. Yeah. Tell me about your job. Tell me about school. What are you doing outside of your home? So I'm a C&C machinist for a local shop in town. Excellent. I'm kind of in between some school stuff right now,

going back in the fall to kind of get a piece of paper for my job. proving I can, if we do it at some other shops, but. So if you have this picture of the man you want to be at 25, paint me that picture. I guess I don't really know. Rattle some things off. Do you still live with your parents? I do, yes. Okay.

Do you want to have your own place? Yes. Okay. Do you still drive your parents' car? Well, that's a complicated thing. My parents run the shop I work at, so. Ah, okay. Basically, yes.

Okay. Do you want to be independent from them and have your own boss who's not also telling you what time to be home and to take out the trash when you get, when you get there? Yeah. Okay. Tell me about your, you mentioned that you, in the call that you eat your feelings, been there. When you look in the mirror, tell me, describe to me what you see. Well With that

Yeah my weight's always been kind of a struggle for me Okay And just kind of seeing Sad and lazy all the time When I look in the mirror Where do the judgments Come? Like whose voices are those judgments

My own Yeah but they came from somewhere Well Middle school kids Have you always been the kid in hustling? as your mom always tried to put you on a diet. Where does that come from? Yeah, I've always been the stereotypical, you know, the fat funny kid.

Okay. But, yeah, and a lot of my family is kind of the same way. And, yeah, I hear it from my folks a lot. Okay. And I try and then stuff happens and then the cycle continues. Yeah. I hate this for you, man. The beautiful thing is you live at a time when there's some great challenges and you live at a time when there are just an endless amount of, endless amount of support and solutions, if you will.

The challenge for you is answering the question, are you worth the work? Because here's the path you're on, and then I want you to answer that question for me. Any path you take from this point forward is going to be hard. It's going to be hard to work for your parents, live in their house, have them threaten you with your cell phone plan, have them tell you you need to lose weight, make comments about you. That's going to be hard. Then at a family business, either family business is like it tends to barbell, either they overpay you or they underpay you, right? Right. So that's going to be a hard path.

Another hard path. And by the way, going home, closing your door and having the only space that you're, yours that's technically your parents but you close the space and you can sit in your bed and you can scroll the internet and you can eat yeah right and it takes it takes the sharpness off the pain a little bit until you wake up the next morning wake up go to the bathroom you see yourself in the mirror and that shame spiral starts over again right right and you put your clothes on you drop your head a little bit you get in your dad's car and you drive your dad's office to work for your dad right right that's a hard path man yeah and deciding this fall i am going to absolutely grade a bust my butt

in school and not just get a certificate but i actually learn these skills make myself the most marketable version of myself by the way i'm going to take advantage of my student rec fees and i'm going to go see the nutritionist on staff i'm going to go to the counseling center because i already pay for it and get a handle on a generational challenge of my body depresses when things get scary or hard or frightening. I'm going to use the gym resources and I'm going to slowly but surely take a hard path and change my family tree starting with that guy in the mirror. That's going to be hard too.

Yeah. So the path before you is which hard do you want to choose? I guess I would say, you know, the path where I'm a little more. you know, independent. You're not at a place where I think you can do a little of anything. I want you to consider, and it's rare for me to say this, I want you to consider you're at a fork in the road. Is there a possibility, and you don't have to announce this to anybody,

that by Christmas, we're in the middle of the summer here, by Christmas, you're down 25 pounds, you're seeing a therapist regularly, you're working at another shop. you have a small one bedroom apartment or a two bedroom apartment with roommates you pay your own cell phone bill that you see this light at the end of the tunnel and it's not an oncoming train but it's actually a path to freedom independence to strength to i'm worth the life i want to create for myself or put another way i want to feel good when i wake up in the morning aesthetics is part of that not having a sugar crash hangover from the night before

that's part of that yeah but I just want to feel good I want to feel good my own skin right I could see that being a possibility there so it's not just about gaining a little bit more independence it's about standing up as tall as you can

and saying I'm going to take to kind of go sideways on the Robert Frost poem I'm going to take the road less traveled here for my family for me I'm going to create something different so that my kids and my grandkids have a different picture of what life looks like. And there's going to be a bunch of forces

pushing against you on that. It's going to be hard. I, for one, think you're worth the hard. The hard path that's going to get you where you want to go. Do you think you're worth that? I would say yes. Sometimes, obviously, not all the time, but I would say majority time.

I would say yes. Okay. I've said this a thousand times in the show. I'm going to say it a thousand times more. A sentence that changed my life was from my buddy, Sal the Stefano. And he is one of the founding members of Mind Pump. By the way, I'm going to give you any mind pump workout that you want, okay?

Any of their exercise programs. They've graciously offered to give it to callers on this show. You can get online and find whichever one you want, and then let my team know and we'll get you hooked up for free, okay? And you can carry that paper into the local university gym. Local college. Okay? Perfect.

But here's the thing. Here's what he told me. He said, if you think you're gross, if you think you're overweight, if you think you're fat, if you think you're lazy, if you think you're a bum, and you go to the gym to punish yourself because this is what you get. If you don't eat that whole pizza, if you don't eat ice cream in bed, and you white knuckle your way through it, if you don't deal with your depression, because this is what I get, you will always crash. but if you look in the mirror and no one I know is super happy with where they are on their journey. We all want to be further along down the road, right? But I'm worth feeling good when I wake up. I'm worth working for myself or working in somebody's shop.

I'm worth having parents who their only job in my life is to be my mom and my dad, not my boss too and my landlord and my financiers, right? I'm worth feeling great. About where I am now and more importantly where I'm headed, you'll do that for the rest of your life because it's coming from a place of worth, not a place of punishment. And so in those moments when you don't even believe it yourself,

I want you to hear me say, you're worth being well, you're worth being loved, you're worth laughing, you're worth feeling good when you wake up in the morning, you're worth having your own place, you're worth getting to decide from a variety of different places, what shop you're going to work in,

you're worth all that stuff, man. You're worth my experience being around guys who labeled himself as the fat funny guy is there's a deep, deep insecurity, deep pain there. And they want to make sure that everybody else is doing okay, that they're laughing, that they're having fun, because they don't want anyone else to feel

the way they feel inside. I want you to hear me say you're worth feeling well too. Yeah, I guess I've always been told I've always been the fix-it guy for people around me. All right, so love yourself enough to go inside and start working on you first so that you can be available to walk alongside any number of other people, right? Yeah. So this week, we're going to call a counselor, and if you've already enrolled in school, I want you to call and see if you can start seeing a counselor this summer.

Some of them work on nine-month contracts, but a lot of them are on 12-month contracts. and they just sit in their offices in the summer. I want you to reach out and see if you can start going now. Depression's a very real dragon, and I want you to face it head on. But you can't face it by yourself. You've got to get real professional help. This doesn't mean you're broken.

This doesn't mean something's wrong with you. It means that your body's got a possibly genetic, biochemical, any number of things. Way of dealing with the world. And so we're going to face it head on. And there's amazing peptides. There's amazing medications. There's so many.

amazing things, not to quote unquote fix you, but to support you along the path towards becoming the man you want to become. And it's a thousand little steps over and over and over again. You're worth it, all of it. You call a professional this week. I want you to reimagine your schooling. I want you to create a path for yourself so that at Christmas you've got options, options where you live, where you work, all of it. And surround yourself with good young men who are also on their path to becoming the men they want to be and not just surrounding yourself with family members who have their own negative stories about you.

You're worth all of it, brother. Thank you so much for the call. I'm grateful that you reached out. It's a brave thing to do, my man. Call me at Christmas because I don't have you back on the show, and we're going to see where you are, and we're going to be cheering you every step of the way. We come back.

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and there's a new drop this week. It's going to sell out super, super fast. So go to montananinevecompany.com. Right now. That's montananknife company.com. All right, let's go out to Houston, Texas, and talk to Sarah. What's up, Sarah? Hi, how are you?

Great, how are you? I'm doing good. What's going on? So I am getting married in a couple months. Gross! To who? The love of my life. Are they awesome?

Yeah, he's fabulous. I love it. And also, ew. Good for you, Sarah. That's awesome. Congratulations. All right, so what's up? Thank you.

So up to this point, we have decided to have a dry wedding. because my family is very against drinking. So we don't really want to have a dry wedding, but I fear that it will hurt my relationship with my family if I do decide to have alcohol in my wedding. Does your family not want to be around alcohol for moral or religious reasons or because they're in recovery? Yes, moral and religious reasons.

Yes. and for them that that choosing to go to a place that has alcohol or an event that has alcohol and just not participate just choose to not drink but they're willing to sacrifice their relationship with you

on the altar of their beliefs I'm not sure to what extent it would hurt a relationship but I do I do know they would be me very differently afterwards. How old are you? I'm 25. 25, okay.

Do you still hide all the wine when they come over? Yes, everybody, we all do. Clear the fridge. I mean, here's the thing. You want two things that are competing interests. You want your family to celebrate you and love you for who you are, celebrate you on your big day and you want to have alcohol at your wedding.

You get to choose whether you, A, which one of those wants is more powerful. And B, you get to choose how you frame it. Yeah. Right? It's really that simple. I wish it was more complicated than that. I can choose, you know what?

I don't think alcohol is wrong, but I also want to honor my parents and I want them there, so I won't have it here. Is that a bummer? Yeah. Are we going to have an after party? For sure. But I want everybody there.

That's a bigger deal to me than whatever. Yeah. Or, no, this is my party. It's my wedding. I want to celebrate me and my husband and our union and our friends however I want to. And if you all don't want to be a part of that, I respect that. I'll break my heart, but I'll respect it. And then I'm going to choose to do, have the wedding.

that I want to have. And then any story you tell yourself on the back end of that in a weird way is a choice, whether you're going to be happy about it or be miserable about it. Yeah. Right? The story you can make up about your parents is, man, they're so convicted. This is such a big deal to them. They don't even want to be around it. There may even be stuff I don't know besides their espoused moral and religious beliefs. I'm going to honor that. That's a strong conviction, but I want you all here. So cool. Or you can be like, I can't believe they're the worst. They're two-faced. One time that you can do that too. One of those will lower your blood pressure. One of those stories will raise it. Yeah. I just have concerns of, they're obviously

two of the most important people of the day, but two people like basically dictating the whole day. Yeah. Well, you know, you're 25, you're about to get married, is there come a point when you sit down with your parents and have a conversation, or are they so bullheaded? They can't even hear that. Yeah, I'm not sure they could hear it. What makes you think that? Just how strongly they feel about it and how. But do you know how strong they feel about you? That's fair. Because they may run their mouth a lot about this thing or that thing or this belief or this value. I'm pretty outspoken about credit card points, okay?

I talk about it on national radio. I talk about it all over the world, right? I don't use a credit card for credit card points because I don't want people who are struggling. I don't want single moms. I don't want dads who just lost their jobs. I don't want them and their late payments paying for my free hotel rooms. It feels gross to me. and every single friend I have on the planet uses credit card points.

Right? And so if we're out to dinner and one of them says, hey, I'm grabbing the dinner. I don't fight them in the parking lot. They've made a different judgment than I have. They have a different set of moral values than I have. And they think I'm dumb and I think they're mean. Right?

And they're also, I love their kids and they love my kids. And I love their friends. and they're like so it coexists together but i think that i think for you at some point you're gonna let me let me put this way there will be a showdown at some point i would rather there be less of a showdown and more of you standing up and saying i'm about to be a married woman i'm 25 years old um i want to sit down and have an adult conversation with my parents and then we all get to make adult decisions about what happens next and if they act like immature brats then you get to decide what what you do next.

And maybe if you sit down and say, I want you all to know I love you and I honor you and I know you'll have some very strong beliefs about some things. I'm planning my wedding. I'm paying for it. We've put this together and we're choosing to have alcohol at the wedding.

I know that's a big deal for you. It would mean the world to me if y'all still came. Okay. Here's what you're doing. You're taking away all the... How many imaginary conversations have you had with them about this very topic? A few, but yeah, I feel like I just know how it would go.

Okay, let me back out and ask you another question. How, what other parts of your life are they still trying to control? I don't think any other aspect. Do they love his boy you're marrying? They do. Yeah. Do they still pay your cell phone bill? Yes.

Are you serious? You're 25. Get your own cell phone plan. Do they still pay your gas, your insurance? No. Okay. Like I said earlier, a showdown's coming. When you'll have your first kid and they say,

my kids are going to go to this school and you're like, we can't afford that. Or that's not in our value system. Or when they say, hey, we're all going on this trip and you're like, we can't make it on that trip. We're, we have different financial priorities. Like a showdown's common and honest, dignified, treating them with highest respect.

Conversation. I don't know. It seems worth it to me unless you just, you know them better than I do. unless you just no, no, no, this is going to cause World War III. I think it's worth having a conversation. You're right. Why do you think they're going to, like, they may not come to your wedding.

Why do you think they're going to judge you differently? I think they would come, but I think they would act sour. And because they judge everybody else. Ah. Very, yes. And you think that judgment would extend to it? do you? Yeah.

You're like, oh, yeah. Absolutely. I've heard it my entire life. Yeah. So. Could you lead with that? I'm afraid y'all are going to judge me and think less of me, but y'all did a good job with me.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Don't do this because I'm saying, I think you should. Do it because you think it's going to. I have a rule that I don't have conversations with people that can't hear me or that won't hear me. I just don't.

I don't engage in it. And so. if you don't think they're going to hear you, if it doesn't matter how compassionately and respectfully you approach them, it's just going to end with them being disrespectful back to you, then you make that decision for yourself.

I would rather somebody think that, I'd rather somebody know that I had alcohol at my wedding than think I'm a dishonest person or know that I lied to them. and so I just don't want to be in the business of lying to people that I also crave their respect and their care and their love. And so I hate it if they saw the totality of the woman you're becoming at your wedding and they chose to put you in a bucket that said, worthy of negative judgment because she had champagne at her wedding or whatever, had a dance at her whatever. I would hate that, but you can't control that.

All you can control is you. But I think being a person of integrity, now and forever, is always the right move. Thanks for the call, sister. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Summer's a time when people escape. Whether it's relaxing, going on vacation, we've all been sold this lie that if we could just get away from it all, everything will magically work itself out when we return.

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I do. So recently there was a video that came out of... Like on the internet somewhere? On the internets, yes. There was a young father that took his daughter into a restroom at a gas station. Ah. And she, I don't know, five or six years old. And he took her into the women's restroom.

And it was one that had multiple stalls. And according to later talks with the father, he had said, is there anybody in here, you know, brought her in there to avoid taking this little girl into a men's restroom where she could see things that she's, that need to see right now. I would take my daughter to Sharon Noble just for a play date before I would take her into a men's restroom and a gas station. So the video ended up

being a woman, I guess, or not I guess. A woman was walking into the restroom and this man is standing there helping his little girl wash her hands. Okay. And she went and got her husband and he starts filming. So they're

standing in the restroom filming this guy and this man is yelling at this father. And he won't get out and he's ignoring me and I call it he called the cops and this dad is standing there trying to help his little girl who is freaking out and terrified because she hears that the cops are being called you're going to get arrested someone's yelling at her and she's terrified and the video is this dad very gently it's okay honey just wash your hands let's get them washed and everything trying to ignore the situation to get his daughters cleaned up and out of the restroom.

Now, it did come out that later, the cops came up and they were like, nope, he did the right thing. Yes. And then the man that was filming, his employer saw it, and he ended up getting fired from his job. But there's been a lot of question on the internet of, did this dad do the right thing? Yes, in every way imaginable. If you're in that situation, you know, what do you do? Yes. And then some of the, I guess, devil's advocate type, discise,

is, well, as a mom, if I've got a little boy, I take him in the women's restroom. But then I thought this was a good point. Somebody said, yes, where all the stalls are separate. Yeah, there's not, there's not just like in a men's restroom, if you don't hang out there regularly. Not normally. Usually one stall and two or three or four glorified holes in the wall. And yeah, when you go into a women's restroom, they've, got safe little houses that you can go to the bathroom in with locks on the doors. Totally, totally different.

It's not, it's not apples to apples. Here's what pisses me off about what you just told me. I'm so sick. Because here's the thing, I would have being a guy who's worked with young people in my whole life, being the dad of a daughter, if my wife, who I trust with my life, comes out and says, there's something not right in here, the first thing I'm going to think to do is not grab my phone. It's to walk in and say, is everybody okay in here? Make eye contact with that little girl. Are we good? Because I get the impulse. Did a strange man drag a girl into a strange

gas station bathroom? That's a fair impulse. I get that. You don't record it first. You go on behalf of a child. You go, you go say, hey, is everybody okay in here? And not, I'm telling on you, and I'm recording it and start screaming and freaking out. That makes me so enraged. That's our culture now. There's no intervention. There's no support. There's no hazer.

But okay, it's, I'm going to get a lot of likes and views. Or I'm going to get this on record. Madness. Madness. So yeah, Dad did exactly the right thing. Perfect right thing. And I hate that grownups are acting like children these days. And a couple of the women that responded were,

and I remember having this, we were to baseball game. and I took my son to the restroom and he was younger, you know, and he's like, Mom, I don't want to go in the women's restroom. And I was like, oh my God, I got to sit in. Standing outside the men's restroom and call it like to make sure I could hear him.

And I remember yelling in, if anyone touches my son, I will kill you. And all the men in there were like, we get it, we get it. And as they all came out, the moon would be like, he's washing his hands, he's doing okay, you know, he's, all this. but, I mean, standing there outside that door ready to, you know, charge the gates of hell with a water pistol. Of course.

If I hear one thing or if my son's not out here in 30 seconds. Yeah, of course. But that's different. Yeah, then taking a little girl in there into a men's restroom. With no question. Right, because just the way the restrooms are set up, 100% different. And, yeah. And forget, let's just be ridiculous.

Not ridiculous. Let's just be factual for a second. The data is pretty clear. there are way more men who abuse kids than women who abuse kids. And so even if you want to look at a risk profile, that's gender profile. It's just math. It's numbers. It's data.

So, yes, there's a higher risk. Get over it. And in fact, if you walk up on that, tell that dad, if you're a concerned citizen, pull that dad aside and say, that daughter won the freaking lottery, getting you as his dad, getting her as your dad. Like, well done, man. That's awesome. Y'all go grab a couple of coax because they're on me.

Like, see a dad trying to do the right thing and support him. My gosh. Because, you know, you're concerned for the child. You're not. And so then you're the one terrifying that poor child who now thinks the cops are going to come get her dad. Right. Because she had to pee. And shout out to the police officers for responding to a potential child abuse situation.

and looking at this moron and saying, what are you doing? This guy's being a good dad. He's trying to take care of his kid and get back on the road. Cool video, dork. Jeez. Put your phones down to gauge in life, people. What else?

You get anything else? None, my blood pressure's all up. I'm trying to, like, be more chill these days. I can check piss off John off my list today now. I'm good. That's a daily activity for you. And the good thing is, is I'm able to check that off most days. Most every day.

Well done. Love you guys. Bye. Thank you.