The Dr. John Delony Show - Caller: “My Husband Can’t Accept My Boundaries”

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

🔥 Microhabits for a better marriage. Download the Together app.   On today’s episode, we hear about: A wife whose husband won't accept her boundaries A woman wondering if her marriage can work despite what social media says A mom struggling to convince her daughter to talk to her dad   Next Steps: 📚 Read Henry Cloud’s Book, Necessary Endings.  📋 Get on the same page before the week begins. Download Dr. John Delony's free weekly marriage check-in.  ❤️ Join Dr. John Delony at Money & Marriage Getaway 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John’s Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch   Connect With Our Sponsors: Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. Go to Capstone Wellness to learn more. Get up to 20% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth. Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. Visit Hallow for a 90-day free trial. Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! Go to Joi + Blokes and get 65% off labs and 20% off products. Working knives for working people—go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors! Get 25% off your order at Thorne. Visit Zander Insurance or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today.   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights  🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💰 George Kamel 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My husband is an alcoholic. We've been married for 10 years and around year three. He started drinking and it quickly progressed. He's not violent or abusive, just very absent and a little rude, which leaves me to clean up every mess, financial, emotional, physical, and be a married single mom. What up? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

Thanks for being here. I hope wherever you find yourself, Today's going pretty smooth. And pretty smooth would be a win for all of us these days. And so I hope wherever you happen to be, wherever the show's popping up in your earphones or in your car, or somewhere in your house, wherever you happen to be,

hope things are going well for you. This show is about your mental and emotional health, your relationships. I'd sit down with real people and talk about real things going on in their lives. And we try to get to the next right step. If you want to be on the show, I would love to have you.

click the link in the show notes and it will send you right over. And if you have an Apple, this is going to say an Apple phone, some call it an iPhone, right, if you're hip with it or whatever. My wife tells me I was born in the wrong century. But if you have an Apple device, I would love for you to consider going over to the App Store and getting the Together app. I'm biased, but I think it's the greatest marriage app on the planet. And we are constantly making some, pretty amazing improvements to it, but here's the deal. Here's what it is. It's a micro habits for your marriage. It's an action plan for you and your spouse. You can do it in one player mode or two player mode and your spouse can join for no extra cost. In the cost of the thing is so low anyway, I just

want people using it. That's the main goal. But it's micro habits. It's a small action step you can take every day. Plus, we've added new learning tracks, new frameworks in there for dealing with conflict with communication. We've added so much more cool stuff, and there's a ton left to come. But it is pretty extraordinary. And the feedback we've received from thousands of people all over is that this thing is working well. So go over to the App Store and check it out. And you Android folks, we're coming for you. We're coming for you. It's got to Santa Barbara, California, and talk to Danielle. Hey, Danielle, what's going on? Hi, Dr. Delaney. How are you? Awesome. How are you? I'm okay

What's going on? I wrote down my question so I could get this out coherently and give you a little background if that's okay. This show is probably not the place for coherence because I don't usually make two sentences work together

but you know what? It would be good if one of us was coherent so yes, that's perfect. Go for it. Whatever you feel comfortable. Got it. My husband is an alcoholic. We've been married for 10 years

and around year of three. started drinking and it quickly progressed. I know why he drinks. It's a coping mechanism for severe childhood trauma and stress today. He's not violent or abusive, just very absent and a little rude, which leaves me to clean up every mess, financial, emotional, physical, and be a married single mom. It's our biggest marriage battle and I really believe all the small ones can stem from it too. about three weeks ago I laid out an ultimatum, stopped drinking or I'm leaving. His response was, I'll think about it. That response itself, of course, was a gut punch.

The next night, I came home to him having a case of beer, and he explained to me that he needed one raft, who-rah, and then he quit. Night two, he's still drinking, but asked for time to wean off as he knows the dangers of alcohol withdrawal. We don't have health insurance, and I cannot afford a medical detox. So I agreed to a one-month plan of waning. We're living like roommates. Any conversation turns into a fight and him walking away from me. I used your verbiage of laying out what I need to feel love,

but I see no effort and the drinking doesn't seem to be flowing. How do I get through to him that I don't want to leave? But my kids and I need a sober, present dad, and he's going to have to start having some hard conversations with him. I'm so sorry. Oh man So if he was to go to A.A., one of the first things the One of the first parts of that process is

admitting that you're powerless. And for you as a spouse, this is heartbreaking, but you too have to admit you're powerless. Yes. You can't change him. Well, I've tried. I know.

I know you have. And I would even go as far to say, you know what, I don't know if this is helpful. I'll say this, take it with a grain of salt, okay? It's not every situation, but it's enough of them over the years that I've sat with people. His not getting sober instantly for you is probably not about you. you. And I know it's it feels very personal and the way you framed it made it very personal and I would have done the exact same thing, okay? But my gut tells me that it's less about you and more about the sheer terror of the true and honest feelings that will come rushing like a tsunami through

him the moment he kicks his crutch out. That's fair and probably very true. And so I only tell you that, not to minimize it in any shape, form or fashion, but to depersonalize it in a way that hopefully frees you to do the next right thing for you and your kids. Because I don't know many, if any, successful folks in recovery that quote unquote got sober for their kids or got sober for their wife. sometimes that's the only tiny dull light they can see through the haze that is their life

and that's what they say initially but my experience has been sitting with folks in recovery it only works when you decide i'm worth being clean it's just too hard to do it for somebody else for too long yeah and you're powerless to get him to to that realization so so i don't know I just, I just referenced this book on another show. A buddy of mine, Dr. Henry Cloud, he's kind of an OG. He's somebody I looked up to before I had this podcasting thing. He wrote a book called Necessary Endings. And it's oriented towards a business audience.

How do you know when to keep an employee or let him go or to stay in a job or leave a job or close your business down or keep your business? going right but it also has some really powerful powerful insights and principles for relationships of all kinds especially romantic relationships but at the end of the day so i i strongly recommend you read that i used to make all my students read that book it's just it's a masterpiece but um one of the most important takeaways from that was the difference between a hope and a wish and a hope is wrapped up in evidence. Is there movement from a documented plan? Is there movement towards tomorrow being different than today?

That sounds like good things to anchor into. And when a relationship of any sort, professional, personal, romantic, when a relationship is devoid of hope tomorrow, because one or both of us will refuse to go do what we need to do, when a relationship is devoid of hope, that's when there's a period at the end of that sentence. And my challenge to you would be, there are so many, especially in California,

there are so many resources available to folks who don't think they can afford any number of programs. There is a lot of financial resources, but he would have to make it a part-time or full-time job. Yeah, you have to put it in the work. I got to, and like I say, he might not be able to stop drinking right now, but he can put himself in a situation

where he can begin to heal and get the skills he needs. It's not only to stop drinking, but to then deal with a nightmare that's waiting for him behind that curtain. Okay. And again, the heartbreaking part of this call, like, you can't make him do any of that. That's not what I wanted you to tell me.

I know, I know. You've got to be the driver in the seat that is your in the front seat of your own car. And so when you made that ultimatum to him, what was your and then what plan? Where were you going to go? Or where was he going to go? Honestly, my plan is to tell him to leave

because we have two children and a home and it's not fair to uproot my kids into someone's bedroom and someone's house until I can figure life out. I feel like he needs to leave if he's making the choice. Can you afford that house? I've done a lot of things in my life that I didn't think I could. I honestly, no, but if we ended up separating and sold the house, I could afford something smaller. Okay.

So I want you to reframe this, and no matter what decision you make moving forward, I want you to hear me clearly, okay? Okay. The greatest gift for your kids right now is a healthy, well-regulated mom. and dad, but they're not going to have that right now. The greatest gift for them. Let me put this way. What you think is stability, same front yard, same windows, same doorknob?

There's some truth to that. But kids can endure a lot if they are bound to regulated adults. Yes. Right? kids will anchor into things when there's not people to anchor into. Yeah. And so I want you to dispel with the, I'm not saying y'all should leave. I'm just saying if you found yourself having to leave tomorrow and you all went and the three of you went and stayed and how old are your kids?

15 and 10. Okay. Yeah, that'd be awkward for three of y'all to live in one bedroom of somebody's house, right? But yeah. If you'll have to make due for a season and you did the next right thing your kids are going to anchor into you. Yeah.

Okay. What does your kids take on their dad? Well, my 15-year-old, my son is actually his stepdad. My son is from her previous marriage. And they have an okay relationship. And then my daughter thinks her dad's home to me. Yeah. but I'll also do a really good job of protecting all the chaos.

That's right. And so part of doing whatever the next right thing is, if you choose to leave, it's weathering the opinions and insights of 10-year-olds and 15-year-olds. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And we could hope and pray that your husband would be a man of character. and when the kids say,

Dad, why did mom leave that he won't say, because she's a terrible woman. He might. Or he might have the courage to say, your dad's real sick. I didn't do my part. I've known folks who struggled with alcohol who were that honest.

I'm not sure that would be the case. So it's just knowing I'm going to be not liked by my husband. I'm going to be not liked by my husband. going to be not liked by my kids, but I'm going to do the next right hard thing. I've done hard things before, and I'm going to do this incredibly hard thing. And by the way, you cannot do this by yourself. So I'm going to reach out to resources, which is the worst asking for help, right?

Right. But I'm going to because I'm worth it. My kids are worth it. And maybe this is the elusive rock bottom that my husband needs. But I can't count on that. I mean, I can't do anything about it. Right. okay

so I just have to stand strong to my or wet which is the hardest part yeah I mean it's somebody called your bluff I'll just say I need to say it out loud it is a proverbial spitting in your face to come back the next day with a 12th pack yeah

so so hear me say that's disgusting and it's ultimately deeply deeply deeply disrespectful. Yeah. I felt it. Okay, but I want you to know you're not nuts. Okay?

At least not about this. Yeah, fair, fair. Fair. Okay. Well, I mean, there's something to be said for, because I've known this exact situation, somebody got an ultimatum and they left and they drank somewhere else. And that was a big deal.

and that was a violation of the or what or the ultimatum all that well and good. But deep down there was enough respect that I'm not going to bring that home to her. I'm going to at least do it somewhere else. Yeah, that's not the problem. I mean, he's already,

he just is alone in the garage. He's already not there, so it doesn't really matter where he is. It's the fact that he's not there. Yeah. And if you listen, Listen to this show more than 30 seconds. It's full of me talking to folks who grew up in the home of somebody struggling with alcohol.

And it's a nightmare. It's a ghost because they're there. They're right there. But they're not there. And kids' nervous systems unspool because there's an adult that they're trying to plug into and that plug, I mean, the electrical system's off. There's nothing to plug into. And those kids end up thinking, they're the problem. And man, that's a nightmare for them too.

But you've been dealing with that for so long for yourself. So yeah, calls on you. But pick up that book. Pick up Dr. Cloud's book. Necessary endings. But be honest with yourself and say, okay, we came up with a plan. I gave a roadmap. And the next day he brought him a 12-pack.

And the day after that, he said he's going to wean himself off, which has a success rate of close to zero. And now he's quit winning himself off and he's just backed away. He just needed to placate you for a couple of days and then it was going to go back to the way it was. I can do what I want. You do what you want. We'll let's move on. So you get to decide, am I going to hold a line here?

Or am I going to just accept what this marriage is? But hope requires evidence. Otherwise it's a wish. Does tomorrow have a chance to be different and better than today? Thanks for the call. I wish I had better news or outcome for you. You got a tough road ahead of you, sister. Thanks for calling.

We come back. A woman asks if her marriage will thrive when she's a funeral director and her fiance is a police officer. We'll be right back. This summer has been a wild one for me. I've been to eight different states visiting several states more than once. I made a 40-hour round-trip drive across the country and I've been camping and staying in different places all around my home state of Tennessee.

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slash Deloni and click on Vine and Root to learn more. That's Capstone Wellness.com. slash Deloney. All right, Orlando, Florida. Let's talk to Anna. Hey, Anna, what's up? Hey, Dr. John. Doing good. I'm excited to be talking to you today.

I'm excited to talk to you. What's up? So my question is, what advice would you have for a lasting marriage between a funeral director and a cop? Oh, man.

Y'all are going to be, without a doubt, the coolest couple to have at dinner parties. I know it. I look forward to those. You all two will be able to melt dinner parties, which will be incredible. Not a lot of people want to hear our stories, but...

They don't, but they kind of also do. You know what I mean? There's a reason murder podcast to dominate the medium because people are like, oh my gosh, that's awful. I want to listen to all of it, right? Yes. Let me Are you and your husband

Do y'all, are your fiancé, are y'all married yet? No, no. We've been together for about 10 months And not to get really gushy with it But this is the best relationship Gross! Gross! He's pretty awesome

He's amazing Very kind and attentive Just an overall, great guy. Dude. So you're like thinking and there's a future here. Absolutely. And when he sat me down and said he wanted to be a cop

to better support our future family, I was like, dude. For all you gentlemen listening, that's a good line right there. That's a good line. Wow. So yeah,

he sounds like a keeper. Do you all, and I ask this not like poking, only this is inside baseball for first, responders and those who work around just the dark arts, as they say. Do you all have like a pretty black hole sense of humor? You're all able to laugh together? Yes, very much so. Tell me about it. So he actually, go ahead, go ahead. I interrupted you, go ahead. Well, he actually worked with me at the funeral home. That's where I met him. So we've been around the same sort of stuff together. And

we really cut up about just very inappropriate things together. And I say this not in jest, but it's going to sound ridiculous. Y'all too need to have a special relationship that if other people heard y'all talk, they would probably try to have y'all institutionalized, right? Love that. There's got to be a place where you all release steam together because coming back together after these two difficult jobs will just be it will be your your relationship will have a layer of stress to it that others don't right and so having a sense of a share and the reason that like a dark

sense of humor is important is obviously it's it's humor is just good for really dark situations anyway if you can if you can get there but also it gives y'all what I would call a secret shared language inside y'all's secret world right nobody else gets this part of our lives but us right and also i'm going to talk out of both sides of my mouth you're going to have to make a commitment to have friends who are not cops friends who are not in the dark arts and i keep on dark arts that's it inside like in the funeral industry and you're going to have to have friends who are school teachers and accountants so that you otherwise your world will shrink really fast and that's a way that the bell curve of your life will shift.

It can make you very insulated into there is light, there is joy, there's laughter, there is warmth, there's fun out there. But if the world y'all inhabit becomes one negative story after another negative story, it's really quick for your default setting to shift pretty dramatically. Right. That's really what I'm afraid of. And, you know, I've been struggling a lot with my own. anxieties around his career move because I know we both have our own sites that we see but I

you know just just knowing you know what what he would go through on a daily basis and it just it just makes me nervous you know not that to mention too you know the unsolicited advice received from family friends and even my social media algorithms kind of starts that whole spiral for me like what like what tell me some advice you know you get. I can't wait for this. This ought to be great. Well, the social media algorithms come up ten reasons why you don't want to marry a first responder, you know, all those things, family telling us, you know, why doesn't, why not become an electrician or a plumber? Why, why this career path, you know, it's not good for marriages. They often end in divorce,

you know, things like that. Just delete social media. You can't delete your family. You just got to put up with those kind of nonsensical things. But here's the truth is, yeah, it's a hard job. The truth is there's a lot of infidelity. There's a lot of infidelity and a lot of jobs. The truth is also that two people who decide to make a go of right or die till death to us part, we're going to be married and we're going to do this thing,

can have an extraordinary life regardless of what you do for a living. It's going into it wide-eyed, right? And so, like, your concern. I'll tell you in my house. My dad was a policeman for most of my childhood. And one request my mom made when I was heading off to college

was please don't go into law enforcement. And I was like, why? Because I just saw it as such an amazing service. My dad was always putting himself out there for folks. He was on the SWAT team, all this stuff. And she said, because every day he goes to work, I hold my breath until he gets home.

Right. And that was a, I remember going, oh, I didn't even know that happened. I didn't know she did that. Right? Now, if I'd gone into law enforcement, she would have been my biggest supporter in the world, right? But that was just her whispering to her son about to head off into the world. So your concern, your nervousness, that's real.

And so own that. And then you can do one or two things. You can try to go around that angst. You can run around it. And then you can meet an accountant, and you can be anxious about whether AI is going to take his job. And then you can break up with him and you can meet a lawn care guy who owns a big lawn care company. and you can be worried about rainfall. Like you can choose to do that,

or you can feel that angst and run right through it and say, okay, I'm nervous. So here's what I want. Here's what would make me feel loved. If when you get done with a scary call, you text me one emoji, then you'll pick one,

a key emoji, a googly-eyed emoji. And that's just you telling me you're safe. Okay. If, um, there's a, it's part of the Deloni family lore, but my dad had like a high speed chase and it ended with a huge wreck, like a big wreck. and my dad's got all his front teeth knocked out, broke his nose, a whole thing. But he ran to, if you hear him tell the story, your husband probably will not be in that situation. There was a lot of factors there.

But one of the greatest gifts that my mom still talks about to this day and she's in her 70s was my dad went and found a pay phone and he called her first. So that two police officers didn't show up at her front door and she had a heart attack. and he said, hey, two cops are about to come to the door. I'm okay. I'm completely fine. I don't look as handsome as I did a few minutes ago, but I'm good. And I'll be home after a while. And so when they came, she already knew they were coming, right?

So there's things like that that you can speak out loud. Here's what I'm anxious about. And I'm going to put this out there. And here's a way you can make me feel loved. If something ever happens, I want someone to call me. And I want to hear about it from you first, if possible. And if not, I want one of your partners to call me, even in violation of protocol.

I want you to call me. And by the way, I have made a call to a parent when the protocol, when the sergeant said, you can't call that family. I have to run it through this person who's got to run it through this agency. And I said, you tell your supervisor to call me. I'm calling that dad because I know that dad. And I did. And it worked out. It was all fine, right?

And I wasn't in there, Chan of Command anyway. But all I'd say is be honest about here's the parts of this job that make me nervous. And then by the way, the truth is he's probably got things he's nervous about your job. Mm-hmm. Right? And so putting those things on the table and then coming up with a plan together, what's the best way we can love each other

through this hard job? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think being a police officer nowadays is one of the most noble things a person can do. It's a hard, scary job and it's even scarier when people,

everyone wants you around but everyone wants to yell and scream that they don't like you. Right. Right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so it might be you

just turning the media off, the noise off. Yeah, probably no more police body cam videos for me. Probably wouldn't watch those at all, right? No. Because the other thing about police body cam videos is they don't show the other 97% of police body cam videos, which are pretty innocuous back and forth and people leave. Right. The ones that make the social media accounts are the ones where something goes bananas. Right. And so we're not going to, that's what I'm talking about shifting the bell curve. If that's all you consume, that's all you talk about, and all you talk about, talk to is other morticians and other police officers and other first responders, then that just becomes y'all's world.

And it's a real easy to believe everybody's out to get everybody all the time. It's all dark. It's all bad. And it just slowly turns the light out on your life. And so you all have to be intentional about, hey, we got dark jobs, right? We got dark jobs. Neither of us have a job if everything works out for everybody, right? That's true.

And so since our jobs are showing up in people's most difficult, most awful moments, then we have a responsibility to make sure we're injecting our life intentionally with as much light as possible. We're going to have breakfast together as often as possible. We're going to, I just found out my buddy Grant roast coffee with his wife and they do it together. We're going to do that. We're going to brew beer together. We're going to go to concerts together when we can. And if he shows up in uniform, he can get in for free.

It'll be awesome. Right. So, but we're going to consciously be injecting life. We're going to swear off murder podcasts. We're going to not watch whatever law and order, San Francisco, Miami Division slash Nevada, look, whatever seasons up. Like, we're going to watch the office on rerun forever, right? So we're going to be intentional about those things.

And can I tell you one more thing? Absolutely. If in your guts, you know. Not, I think, I don't know. I know I cannot be married to somebody who is in that line of work. Have the courage to tell him now.

Right. I don't think that that's the case. I don't either, but I just want to put that out there. Yeah, yeah. But also, I don't want you to already 10 months in with a pretty amazing guy. I don't want you 10 months in already beginning to silence yourself. Yeah.

Because when you have your first kid and your son, second kid and your third kid and your ninth kid i don't know don't have i mean nine kids a lot um have have four or five but nine's a lot um but like the silencing that will go on in the middle of your chest will just grow and grow and grow and so let's don't start out our relationship not saying what we want not saying what scares us let's begin to practice as a couple we we do we can put anything on the table no pun intended that was a good joke that was a good joke that was my only mortician joke of the day. I think your marriage can be, I think your marriage can be amazing if y'all are super intentional about it. Right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm super excited. If you would do me

a favor, a favor, and when this guy does propose, if you'll send us a, like an engagement photo, that'd be awesome. I'm ready for it. But if he does it in some like creepy, weird mortician way, Oh, dude, tell them to not do that. It has to have flowers and sunlight and stuff like that, like nice stuff. Actually, I don't care. Do whatever you want to. That would be amazing. That would be amazing.

But no, I think every marriage and every profession is going to have different types of challenges to it. It's not about avoiding and being anxious about those challenges. It's going right through the middle of them together and saying, okay, this is our reality. Since this is our reality, what must also be true for us to have a whole good and well life? Thank you so much for the call. The advancement of AI has made it easier than ever for scammers to get a hold of your personal information. And with technology like voice matching, scammers can now use what they know about you in ways that are almost impossible to detect. The scammers already have your home address, your kids' names, your past jobs.

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All right, Providence, Rhode Island. Let's talk to Ellen. Hey Ellen, what's up? Hi, Dr. John. Thank you for taking my call. Of course. Thanks for calling. So my 16-year-old daughter has decided to go no. contact with her father, who is an alcoholic. And it's been two years. So the event, let's call it, happened two years ago when she was 14. He was coaching her softball team. She was in middle school, and they took a trip to a game and he was completely wasted during the travel to the game, made a fool of himself, embarrassed her.

She was mortified. These are 12 to 14-year-old girls that were texting their parents, taking videos, I mean, the whole bit, as you can imagine. And so she was just traumatized from that whole experience and decided to completely block her from her life and does not want to talk to him, no contact. and I'm in the middle of, you know, trying to mediate because he feels that. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? He feels that I am not being a good mother by not talking, not talking her into forgiving him. Let me re-frame this. My concerns with you, and it sounds like I'm coming at you, okay?

And I'm going to tell you my bias. My bias, I'm hyper-protective of children, okay? And I'll just leave it at that, okay? So I want you to know I'm with you on this, okay? Okay. But I'm also, we don't have a couple hours of spent together, so I'm going to be pretty direct. A 12-year-old shouldn't be put in the situation of having to make that decision. What that 12-year-old needs is a fierce mother.

or father stepping in and saying that will never happen again. She was 14 at the time. 14. So what I would, if I could rewind the clock when that 14-year-old came through your front door, I'm assuming you and dad aren't married anymore? Correct. Okay. When that 14-year-old crashes through your house into your front door, bawling her eyes out,

telling you about all that that happened, that's when you grab both sides of her face and you say you never have to see that man again. Not, well, you got a big decision to make 14-year-old. Right? That is way too much pressure for a 14-year-old. Way too much. And then we call the attorney, and I don't know what your custody agreement is,

but we make sure there's at least a year of, he's not going to be around her. He put her an incredibly unscernedly, safe situations. Right. But that 14-year-old has to know both objectively and subjectively, like in her soul and watching you go to work, you don't have a decision to make here because you're 14. I'm the adult.

I'm making this call. And so you're being gaslit every which way to Sunday, making you somehow begin to wonder if you're a person of. character and integrity because you're not trying to force your 16-year-old to be around an incredibly unsafe man. Right. That's bananas. That's bananas.

Right. I 100% agree with that. And, you know, I've taken enough abuse myself from him, you know, during his, the time that we were together, you know, and that. he claims he's sober, but, you know, texts still come through with, like, maybe you should check what type of human being you're raising there. You know. Does he have any custody with her? No.

Okay. Block him. Mm-hmm. Stop taking his calls. Because you're like somebody in recovery, but you keep a secret stash of. bourbon under your sink. Right. And every night you go in and take a little sip.

Stop reading those messages. If he says he's sober and he wants to be re-engage with his daughter, he can go get an attorney and prove to the courts that he's changed his life. And the courts can petition you and your attorney for a further conversation. Right. But you've got to block him. And you have to look at your daughter and say, I let you down.

It's my job to protect you, and I made it your choice. You don't get that choice. When you're 18, you can do what you want to. But from now on, I'm proud of you for taking the stand that I should have taken for you, and it's you and me, right or die, and we're going to be heartbroken because every single daughter on the planet deserves to have a dad who adores them more than life itself, and she doesn't have that. No.

I mean, he claims he does. But, you know, I don't know that he does enough to show her. And, you know, he wrote her a letter saying that he was sorry for, you know, for making the wrong decision, making a bad decision at that time. But that now he, you know, it's time for her to forgive him and move on. And, you know, and I am in complete disagreement with the whole thing. I, you know, I don't think that, you know, you can just tell your daughter to just forget what she lived through, you know, the embarrassment in front of her friends. Yeah, but, you know.

That's, here's the thing. That wasn't a one-time thing. Right. That was the, that was the whipped cream on top of the whole banana split. This has been going on for her whole life, right? Yes. Yes. And she's watched her mom get abused.

She watched her mom get demeaned and disrespected for all those years. Correct. And whether she remembers it, like, if she has, like, real lived experience memories or the stuff just encoded in her nervous system, she's lived it. Right. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I'm going to ask you, please, on behalf of your daughter, behalf of yourself,

on behalf of your daughter, pour all the bourbon under the sink out, block him, cut them off, be done with it. Uh-huh. Yeah. And then have a talk with her. When you're 18, you get to make some grown-up decisions. Right. And that's only a couple years away.

That's right. Yeah. But what that girl needs more than anything is a mom that says you and I are worth more than this. And if you've listened to the show for two seconds, you know I'm always overly so about redemption. I wish the best for this guy. I hope he goes and gets his life turned around and whatever. But I can tell you if he was completely like a change demand enough to where he could enter into my daughter's life again, there would be way more humility. Right.

Way more understanding. He feels entitled. Yes. He feels that because he is her dad, she needs to speak to him because he pays. you know, child support. Yeah, because the court freaking made him. Right. Not because he's some saint.

Right. Right. The government had to step in and make him be partially a dad. Yeah. So don't, yeah. That's just bull crap on a stick. Like, man, dude, I don't, I haven't gotten fired up in a while. Ellen, I, you've, you've got to take the reins here.

And by the way, this is going to say. sound even crazier. I think she should forgive him. And here's the deal. Forgiveness is for her. Right. That she's not going to carry around the burden of an abusive alcoholic father. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's exactly what I told him. But that doesn't mean that forgiveness doesn't mean full access. Right. Forgiveness doesn't mean just waltz back in. Forgiveness is me looking at somebody who hurt me and saying, I'm not carrying your injustice around anymore. I'm not carrying your pain anymore.

I refuse from this day forward to continue to be your victim. You victimized me once or for a long time, that ends now. I'm setting this brick down. That's forgiveness. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean I'm going to sign up and you get to do it again. Right.

Oh, yes. And there is that too, right? Right. And so listen, you have to give her a record so that when she turns 17 and you start talking to her about, hey, in six months, in nine months, you're going to have some big choices to make.

You be able to slide your phone or that you slid your phone when she was 16 and you said, I've blocked him so he can't continue to poison her family. Yeah. And you can look at your daughter. She's 16 now. She's old enough to get this.

And you can say, I miss him. I miss what I thought we had. But I don't miss the abuse and I don't miss the heartache. Right. You know what I mean? Yes. Yes.

And you can say it grieves me because my dream was to have a unified family and he took that away from us. Yeah. And you're right. And you kind of can tell in between the lines here that I left because of the situation. Right. You know, I left him many years ago because I just couldn't live with the lies and, you know, everything that came with the alcoholism.

So I left. And she was very, I could tell that she was proud of me for doing that. Were you proud of you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Absolutely 100%. Then hold your head up high. Mm-hmm.

And stop letting him back in your house. He does not come here. I'm talking. He does, sure as crap does, he comes in there on your phone line. Oh, well, yes. Comes in there on your text messages. He comes in there on your, through your mailbox. Mm-hmm.

Right. A 14-year-old, she's already got enough guilt in her system about what she should or shouldn't be doing. Mm-hmm. She's already got 14 years of asking herself, what was so bad about me that he had to do that? Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't also need the burden of, oh, and it's also your job to make this old man feel better about himself. Mm-hmm.

That's not her job. No, you're right, absolutely. She's a child. Yeah. No, you're 100%. I agree with what you're saying. So in the same way you had the courage to stand up and protect yourself, I want you to do the same thing on her behalf now.

Yes. And that means in some sense you're going to take away some decisions. You're going to risk her being furious at you when she turns 19. and get some sob story from her dad that he was this amazing changed man and mom kept her away and risk, take that risk. Because right now she needs a mom that says,

I'm not giving you the option. He's a man who hurts you and hurt you for years and then blamed you for not waltzing back into the fold. Yeah, right. That really cleared my mind. Awesome. Yeah.

So just parent to parent here, okay? Mm-hmm. This is me just, you and I talking as, like, we are as equal as they could be. Mm-hmm. Stand up for your daughter, okay? Yes. And I know she's 16 and she's reaching for more and more autonomy. I got a 16-year-old, too.

I totally get it, man. Mm-hmm. And it's hard for us, but it's our job to navigate that tricky. balance of autonomy and also this is unsafe. Right. And for me, I'm fortunate. What's unsafe for my son is driving too fast or driving too late at night. What's unsafe for your daughter is her dad?

Yes. And that shouldn't be that way. And I sometimes I just wish that I had made the decision sooner. Let's spend zero time and energy on that thought. Because you can't change it. I can't. Let's max it. Because all that does is take away from the time you have left with her.

Yeah. Let's pour every ounce of energy into, we got two years left before she's off out in the world. Or maybe she'll stay with you for five more. Who knows? But let's pretend it's 18. Mm-hmm. We got two years to just make sure there's no tread left on the tires of our relationship. We're going to have fun.

We're going to laugh. We're going to do silly things. We're going to have breakfast together. We're going to have dinner together. Mm-hmm. And that means I'm not to say no to some things that she wants to do because I know that her having a rooted relationship with at least one of her parents is going to pay lifelong dividends for her. Yes, absolutely. Right. Game on.

Yeah. Game on. All right. It's been an honor to talk to you, Ellen. Thank you so much for calling. I'm grateful for you. We'll be right back. When I'm cooking at home, chopping up vegetables, trimming a venison or T-bone steak, or when I'm feeling a little bit extra dramatic and cutting up a nice fruit tray,

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And these knives will still be sharp when my great grain kids are cooking with them. Head to mkc.com to see what's available right now. And one thing you should know, Montana Knife Company knives sell out fast. Sign up for email and text alert so you can be among the first to know of new releases. That's mkc.com. All right, so I got to set the stage for everybody. listening right now Peyton is here and she is producing the show but Kelly is sitting right behind her just straight judging her like she does me she's right out from behind the camera so you can't

see her she's right there I see her can you can you because people are going to think I'm making it up oh she is hiding right Kara so Peyton be careful at least I have this double pain glass between me and Kelly always I mean it's a great time we're having a great time right just keep saying it over and over and over All right, so what's up? We got something cool happened? We do. We have Elizabeth from Saginaw, Michigan, and she wrote in, Not a question, just something cool. I moved several states to marry my now husband one year ago, and along with all of the regular first year of marriage struggles, adjusting to a new place was very difficult for me. I was lonely, but found it difficult to be motivated to put down roots, partially due to the fact that we found out that we were going to move again this year. Thankfully, I started to listen to the show a few months before the move, and because of John's advice to many listeners to take ownership of their lives and choices, I decided this move was going to be different.

Instead of passively shutting down and retreating from the challenge, I have already joined a church group, gotten a gym membership, and embraced go first and be weird. Yes. By asking someone from church out for coffee. In the past, I have really struggled with confidence in myself, but listening to John has helped me to both identify the problem and given me practical skills. to help myself. Thank you so much. Awesome. Go first and be weird. I love it. What was her name? Elizabeth. Elizabeth. Elizabeth, you're a hero. You're a modern day hero. I'm proud of you. Good, good call. And when y'all move again, be sad and then gin it back up and let's get rocking and rolling. That's awesome. And I also have to say this. Peyton, you have the most soothing voice ever. It's like an audible Xanax. It just kind of brings the room down.

Kelly's voice is like an audible What is it? Methanphetamine. It just makes the whole room Just more excited It's not a bad thing. Meth is... According to you, meth is great.

So there's that. But well done, Peyton. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. All right. Hey, thanks for being with us. We'll see you next show. Love you guys. Bye.