The Dr. John Delony Show - Caller: “My Wife Discovered My Secret Porn Addiction”

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

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Brought to you by my friends at Churchill Mortgage. If you're looking to buy or refinance, check them out. I've used Churchill, and they are great. Go to Churchillmortgage.com. We've been together 11 years. She made it clear at the beginning that she was not okay with pornography and, you know, wouldn't use for quite a while. And then from time to time when I felt rejected or lonely,

and she finally called me about a year ago, and it blew our world to peace. So what if pornography, this sounds counterintuitive. What if it wasn't the issue? What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, comment to you from Nashville, Tennessee, taking real calls from real people on all kinds of things going on in your life. Your mental and emotional health,

your marriages, your kids, your relationships, whatever you got going on. I'd love to have you on the show, pull up a seat, and we'll figure out what's your next right move. Click the link in the show notes, wherever you're watching this or listening to this, and a form will pop up, and you can fill out what's going on in your life

in that form and it will go to Kelly. And speaking of Kelly, this is super embarrassing. We are wearing the same shirt. So shout out to show listener, Josh. We got busted. Kelly and I don't hate each other in real life. And we were at this concert together.

Me and Kelly and a couple of other folks that we work with. And by the way, it's this band called The Strike. Now, I'm a punk rock kid. I'm an OG metalhead. And I love the Avid brothers and Frank Turner. but this ban the strike is how would you describe them kelly um to me they sound like they could have been in the 80s um you said that it reminded of stranger things and to me they sound like they could be in any john hugh's film especially when they with the sacks i could put them in st almost fire

in a heartbeat and it just warms my cold black dead heart yeah i didn't know you had a heart until I saw you singing along with all of your guts. Every word and dancing. I mean, I danced my backside off for an hour and a half, and it was fantastic. Even I started dancing. You totally were dancing. My shirt almost took itself off. I know I had to.

Luckily, I was right there. The producer, just so people know the producer duties never end. My shirt started taking itself off. They were so good. But I stopped it. And somebody leaned over and was like, are you getting Adam Levine vibes from this lead singer? And I instantly was like, no.

because I think Adam Levine is faking. This singer of the strike believes what he's saying. And if you listen to him, I want everyone after the show, just go to wherever you get music and put in the strike and just stream it. And you're going to be like, Deloney likes this band?

Yes, they rule. They do feel like a bit, like they're from stranger things, like a soundtrack to stranger things, but also all the music I listened to growing up. But they are so great. They are. They're getting ready. So this was the last show on their kind of East Coast tour,

and then they're taking, I think, a couple weeks off, and then it's the West Coast. So if you were on the West Coast, do yourself a favor, go see them because I'll tell you, I had seen them before. And so I knew how great they were alive. John had not, and you were convinced

that they weren't going to be very good. Well, in the first two songs, I was like, all right. And then, by the time that show was over, my inner middle school girl just broke free. And, man, my hips were not lying. They were lying, but they were giving it their best shot to tell the truth. That's what I'll say.

I just smile. But here's the thing. This guy busted us. Like, I don't know. I think by the time I walked in from the door to the merch table, I took five pictures with people who just love our show. And one guy was like, is that Kelly? And I was like, dude, if you tell anybody that we hang out outside of work because we're supposed to hate each other. That's our whole thing.

He's like, all right, I won't tell anybody. I won't tell anybody. So shout out. We got busted. Yeah, shout out to Josh. She was super sweet. It was a great, great show. It was good for my soul.

Yes. Now, back to way to wear the same shirt as me. So embarrassing. Genius. All right, let's go out to Austin, Texas and talk to Martin. What's up, Martin? What's up, Dr. John? How are you, brother?

I'm doing all right. Excellent. What's going on, dude? Well, I rode in asking how I can create a better environment for my partner to heal from my secret pornography use. Okay. Tell me about him, man. Well, I'll try to give you a short run now. We've been together 11 years.

She's a little older than me, got more experience than me. Are you married? Two small children. We're married. We've only been married for a year and a half. Okay. But I have the story behind that. But we do have two small children.

She made it clear at the beginning that she was not okay with pornography. And I chose to minimize that, downplay it, ignore it. you know, wouldn't use for quite a while and then from time to time when I felt rejected or lonely or all these other, you know, lame excuses, I would make bad choices. She finally called me about a year ago and it blew our world to pieces.

And, yeah, you know, we've built on a lot of work to heal from it and I've got a list of all that stuff if you want to hear, but, you know, try to rebuild trust and work on our marriage. And I think we made progress, but there's still just a lot anger, resentment. And I think I wonder if, you know, our marriage is forever tainted. I can just see the way she looks at me, you know, the way that how many our life is. It's just different now. And so, yeah, I'm looking for ways to, I think more like, a lot of stuff

I hear is more early on after this kind of stuff. But, you know, a year later, we're obviously still dealing with it. I've been very careful not to put a time frame on this and just be here and sit with her in it. But looking for ways to step my game up. a year later and do the right things. So dude, I want to shut you out, man. The finding yourself over your head, getting caught, getting busted, whatever, not only with the pornography, but just the deception. And like, I love the word you use, just minimizing a thing that mattered to your wife, right?

And this type of stuff always comes with lying and hiding and secrets. And probably, in addition to, like, whatever disgust she has, whatever hurt she has because she felt like you lied to or whatever. Often what happens with affairs, with pornography, with all sorts of secrets, if you will, inside of a marriage is, or inside of a romantic relationship, y'all guys been together for years,

is a person can look back and, in this case it's your wife, she can have felt that gap that she felt there was a distance between you for a long time. And often partners, spend years trying to figure out what they're doing wrong. Sure. Right. And so there's a, there's an anger, a frustration, a rage sometimes. I thought all these years the problem was me and I've been trying to figure out what's so

wrong with me. Why am I not likable? Why am I not desirable? And it turns out my partner was keeping the secret. So there's a lot build up there that's not just pornography or not just the dishonesty, but there's a, what kind of person? person am I that I missed that for all these years, right? So there's a lot of identity and she may not feel shame, but it's very common. I mean, she may not say out loud. I feel ashamed too,

but it's very common that the person has to look in the mirror and say, what about me miss this? Or what about me didn't ask these questions, et cetera, right? So there's a lot here. And there's two paths, I think, are important here. Number one, there's obviously, if you have any behavior, you want to stop, right, then there is the, I'm going to stop this behavior, right? I'm going to stop this action. I'm going to drinking. I'm going to stop looking at pornography. I'm going to stop fill in the blank of any number of maladaptive behaviors, right? That was a dorky way of just saying anything, any behavior that's not serving me well or serving my relationship well. But often with pornography especially, there's a there is a feeling dead in your own skin. This is a cheap, easy, easy,

to get some sort of a live feeling for just a second. And so my question for you is, okay, you're working to rebuild trust. You're working to become a person who doesn't default to pornography. All that's great. What are you doing to create a sense of aliveness inside your own skin? Sure. Well, that's definitely like a topic. I'll simply would touch on.

I will say I haven't used since that day. And honestly, it has not been difficult for me. To me, it really feels more like a choice that I was making. And, you know, my mindset has changed since then, things like that. So it's like I've really struggled with, I guess, the addiction side of it or whatever. Maybe that's just my personality, kind of able to say, yeah, this is, I'm done with this. I don't need this in my life and walk away from it. I think for me, like, the question that kind of comes up, and I think for her, like, she wants to see me working on my

myself, you know, and it's kind of touching on what you're saying. And then I've been to therapy, done things, and I guess it's like, well, what childhood trauma do you have? And I have childhood trauma, so does she, you know, it's all who doesn't in these days and things like, but, you know, what trauma have you dealt with that calls you to do this? And to me, it's felt more surface level and more of our day-to-day. And I think what I've, at least the way I've understood it, and I'm totally open to something different is that I just carry around resentment and for saying, not not speaking up in our relationship, not speaking how I feel about things, kind of just rather not bring things up and, you know, make a scene about something and I just bottle things up and just

walk around with resentment and anger and chose to deal with it in that way. Yeah, yeah. So, so this is a strange question to ask, but what if pornography worked, right? So what if pornography wasn't, this sounds counterintuitive, what if it wasn't the issue? It was a solution. Yeah, I think that feels more accurate to me, obviously a terrible solution, and it destroyed my life. Stay out of the pile on for pornography for a second.

Sure. It sounds nutty what I'm about to say. What if we could say thank you to pornography, for however deranged or unhealthy or unhelpful or destructive it's been in your relationship and in your own mind and in your body, all that? What if we said thank you for being an outlet, a very unhealthy outlet, but an outlet?

Sure. And then we had to reverse engineer. And dude, yeah, like, man, I wrote a whole book on it. Going through childhood trauma is important, figuring out where these stories, like, originated from can be very helpful. But often it just is, it's like a cauldron, like a witch's cauldron. And if you just spend all of your energy on those conversations and on those going backwards and trying to mine for the past and all that, it's just like it's just stirring a cauldron endlessly sure and nothing nothing really ever changes you your your body heals you transform yourself through the next right actions

and sometimes digging into the past freeing yourself doing bodywork doing all those things are important but you have to ask yourself okay what are the next steps i'm going to take sure and so working on yourself doesn't is often not endlessly therapy forever and ever and ever amen it's not more podcast and more books although those are helpful it is taking those things and then choosing minute by minute to live a different life sure and that's what i mean about finding aliveness in your own skin have you decided i am a person who will speak up i'm a person who hangs out with a group of guys once a week and i go and fill in the blank i don't care what activity pickleball golf for god's sakes

fishing, comedy club, movie club, I don't care what it is, or fence building, y'all just go to each other's houses once a month and build stuff. Do you have a sense of aliveness in your own skin? I do. I feel like I'm an active person, hobbies, you know, lately like the last year, I've got more and more into guitar, which I've been playing my whole life. Are you playing by yourself, though? Yeah, yeah, but I learn to play. Aliveness can't be found alone. Sure. Rest and restoration and reflection can be.

Okay, sure. But you have to bring these things to other people. And if you go play guitar by yourself in your basement for two hours, that's awesome. I actually love doing that myself. But it has to be in service to when I show up to jam with a group of guys, I got the song down. Sure. Right? Or that will become your new pornography a way to numb out for.

from, y'all have young kids, you said? Correct, yeah, four and six. Okay, so if you have a four and six year old and a wife who's consistently frustrated and angry with you or who leans on you enough that you don't speak your own mind, it's just easier to not say anything in your house, then you're just taking yet another numbing avenue instead of heading into the boredom and the frustration

and the failure factory that many men feel in their own homes, right? It just becomes another numbing. agent. So what I want you to consider is what does a living a non-num life look like? Sure. Well, John, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention that, you know, I'm just historically smoked too much weed and use that as a numbing agent as well. And it has definitely been a lot better in the last year. And I think my wife's noticed some differences there. So what if you could, what if, what if we looked at weed the same as porn? It works. And as of today, it's over. I'm going to choose to live in the for a season and let my body truly talk to me yeah well i'll be honest with you and

the listeners that's a hard one for me um yeah but i hear what you're saying but but here's the thing you're walking through life with a winter coat on and you don't ever get to feel the crispness of the cold air you don't ever get to feel the heat of the sun you're just walking through life with all these layers on. And my guess is, yes, you haven't looked at pornography. Great.

I can almost guarantee you've moved on to other hiding, numbing behaviors. Whether it's silence. Go ahead. No, I haven't.

And I feel like, you know, to your point earlier, like the secrecy was a really big problem here. And that's really, the lying is something that's really been hard for her

and, like, that I've had to come in terms with, you know, and I think a lot of that's related to my childhood. But, I will say, like, you know, I've gotten rid of all secrets and really try to pose on transparency, but I have found myself struggling to still speak up, struggling to sit down and say, hey, I want to have a difficult conversation with you today.

You know, right? We're having a good day. Last thing I want to do is ruin it. And then find myself struggling to bring those things up or bring something up. But I've not resorted to any secrecy is the last thing that I'm involved in at the moment. And we'll never be. I don't want to be, you know. Sure.

I think that's something that our relationship just cannot afford. and more of it. And it's honorable to hear that. And sometimes it's as simple what you're bringing up is we're going to go ahead and put on the calendar once a week. We're going to just do a check-in. And so it's already on the calendar for any big conversations you're going to have. Y'all both, it's already on there. It's part of your rhythm for a season for three months, for six months, for a year, that once a week we get together, we go for a long, long walk. We, and if you listen to my my show, you know people are going to go, what, huh? You just turn on a show for your kids and you give them chicken nuggets and you'll go on the back porch because that's the time we have and we can't afford

a babysitter. We can't afford going out to eat right now. Great. But we're going to sit with each other and what you're doing is practicing transparency. If you look at it as a skill set instead of a moral failure, it's much easier to dig into. Sure. I will say we do that weekly. We try to do it more daily or every other day and it's a struggle, but I would say we definitely accomplish that weekly. We have a weekly date night. We bring your cards or we sit down and talk about yes, and serious stuff. I just know that I could feel like I could step my game up on that regard on bringing difficult conversations up or even past frustrations that I still not brought up, you know, things that I've kept bottled up for years. And if you think of the things you kept bottled

up as further dishonesty, part of becoming a person who's honest is a person who tells the truth. when I'm struggling, when I'm not doing well, when I'm frustrated. Now, let me give you the other component here, and this is a huge component that your wife's not on the phone, but she's going to have to own. Have you learned over time that she's not a person who can hear hard things? After being with her for a little. Definitely not feels to me sometimes.

Sometimes I struggle to feel hurt and seeing, you know, feel like she's defensive and, hey, I'm sure I do the same thing, right? We all kind of do that. No, no, no, don't defend her right now. I'm just asking you, if you've learned over the last 11 years when I'm frustrated about something, when I feel lonely, she beats me up for it, she's mean about it, she dismisses me the same way you dismissed her, then she's going to have to take ownership that she's not a safe person to sit down and talk to.

So she can blame you all day long for not connecting with her, but if she's not able to receive and also give connection to, that the finish line you're trying to achieve this thing called connection the finish line will just keep moving on you so she's going to have to

also practice hearing hard things she's going to have to practice the discomfort of my husband isn't doing whatever I want him to do and more importantly he's not feeling the way I think he should be feeling

all of the time that's her job that's her work sure yeah I think it's felt to me like I don't really you know, I don't live in a house that I, it's okay for me to express anger. You know, I think that's something that I've learned in therapy.

And, you know, I want to take accountability on my end of that as much as I can. But I do think there's some truth in what you're saying there. There's probably a ton of truth of what I'm saying. And until you're honest with yourself about it and then honest with her about it and you say it in the language she can hear, right? And until she's able to receive it, your body's going to be doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing which is protecting you sure and i yeah and i agree with you and i think for what i what i see at least there's just a lot of anger and resentment around the deception and what i've done that it's really hard for her i see her trying but it's hard for her to hear me so so what she's going to have to do and she's on

the phone here so you can play this episode for when it comes out when anyone has been is the aggrieved spouse somebody broke trust somebody lied somebody had a secret gambling account somebody had an affair somebody had a pornography like issues right um and then the partner says i'm in i'm going to stay and i'm going to work on this and you look up and it's a year later they have to make choices that when that image of you hunched over the computer screen in the dark pops into their mind they don't meditate on that when they're wondering is he telling the truth now they can exhale and their body starts to defend her body starts to defend her body starts to defend her And she says he's actually doing exactly what we, he's fallen the roadmap to rebuild trust that I gave him.

Clear as kind. I have all his pass codes. We're honest. We meet once a week. We talk. We hang out. We're redeveloping our friendship. I was deceived before, but I'm not being deceived now.

She can't keep, she can, but it's going to be destructive to your, to you're rebuilding your marriage together. She can't, it's fruitless for her to keep. the ace of spades in her back pocket of yeah but one time you hurt me part of rebuilding is she tears that ace of spades up and she risks getting hurt again by putting both feet back in the same boat that you're in she can't just stand on the shore with their arms crossed and say keep rowing keep rowing and expect you all to reconnect sure i think for me it feels like it's coming to a head and we kind of come to that crossroads and it's got to be that or or separate like it doesn't You know, at some point we can't stay in this limbo.

So here's the framework. I'm going to give it to you, okay? You ready? I got a pin. It is, number one, it's been a year. And here's the progress that I feel like I've made. And here's the roadmap you gave me, and here's the things I've done. And here's still where I'm struggling.

And I continue to feel ashamed in my own house, I continue to feel small in my own house. And the story I'm making up is fill in the blank. You are never going to be all in with me again. The story I'm choosing to make up is, you can't hear my frustrations, you can't hear my anger, you can't hear my wants inside our own house

that we're co-creating together. and that makes me feel hopeless, that makes me feel apprehensive, that makes me feel nervous to be honest with you because you keep asking me, be more honest, be more transparent, and when I am, the story I'm making up is it's always met with defensiveness, it's always met with anger, it's always mess met with, yeah, but one time you. And so, and then the next one is, so here's what I would like to be different. I would like to be able to communicate with you in a way where I, I can be open and honest and transparent, and you can hear it and feel it.

Even if factually it's incorrect, you will honor my feelings, not dismiss them. And so here's what I'm going to do next. That's the last step. I'm going to begin to be more transparent, more honest. I want to be a member of this house. I don't want to feel like a failure in my own house. And when you meet me with defensiveness, when you meet me with contempt, when you play that ace of spades, Yeah, one time you, one year ago, two years ago, five years ago, one time you did that,

I'm going to point it out. I'm going to do it respectfully and with honor, but I'm going to point it out. And put that framework in front of her. Tell her the stories you're making up and let her respond to those stories. Thanks for call, brother. We come back. A woman asks how she and her husband can find common ground on screen time for the kids. We'll be right back.

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slash deloni. All right, let's go out to the first Noel in Portland. Hey, Noel, what's up? Hi, I'm doing all right. I'm running on the grace of God and too much caffeine. How are you? Excellent. That sounds like a good way to start a day out there on the West Coast. What's going on? So my husband and I are disagreeing on how much screen time is suitable for our kids. Okay. And I'm wondering, number one, if this is a big deal and if I should speak up more or if this is something I should just focus on my own time with the kids with. Tell me about the disagreement. So we have screen time in our house.

It's present throughout the day. But the rub is that I am working in the evenings and on the weekends. and on the weekend sometimes. And often when I'm gone, they'll do screen time. Pretty much most of the time I'm gone. And that can be two or three hours in the evenings and up to six hours on Saturdays. And I feel like that's a little more excessive than I'm comfortable with.

So what's beneath the screen time? I think I know, but I want to see if you can tell me. Well, I think I would, like my husband, to spend more time with the kids. There you go. That's the fight. That's the fight. Is not being present, not playing games, not rolling around on the floor.

Right now, as I'm recording this show, my toenails are painted all sorts of different colors. Because my 10-year-old wanted to have a spa day or something. And I was like, yep, we're doing it. She fixed my hair with clips and we're doing it, right? last night we played karate something or other with Lego figure. I don't know. Honestly, I have no idea what game we were doing,

but we were doing it. And then the dog would come through as a big monster and destroy it. Like, you're talking about connectivity. And your husband being an active participant in the lives of his kids. And that can be very boring. That can be very silly. That can be eye-roly.

And that's a part of being a connected parent, getting into the world of your kids. or doing cool things and bringing your kids along with you, right? But that to me is, like, screen time is the proxy, is the proxy fight, the real fight is, you're not connecting with the kids. How does that conversation go? Well, that definitely makes sense.

I haven't phrased it in that way to him. Like you said, I think it's been the screen time as the proxy. I don't really know how to tell him that without fear. feeling like or sounding like a micromanaging his time with the kids or how he parents. I'll give you the same framework I just gave the last caller and that I've given a whole bunch of people over the last few months. It's you and him sitting down and you telling him, hey, I want to have a kind of a big picture conversation about our kids. And he might be a guy who rolls his eyes like, oh, here we go again. Or he might be like, sweet, I'm all in. But you giving him a

heads up and then saying the screen time is hours in the evenings hours on the weekends and then here's the magic the story I'm choosing to make up is you would rather just outsource your time with the kids and not be engaged with them the story I'm choosing to make up is I work harder here trying to connect with those kids than you do the story I'm choosing to make up is fill in the blank and that way instead of you lobbying grenades at him, it's you taking ownership of the stories you're telling yourself. And then he gets to respond and say, that makes me feel sad for the kids,

that they're missing out on this great guy that I'm married, that makes me sad for the kids that makes me sad for you, that you don't, they're going to look back and at your funeral, they're going to be like, yeah, me and dad watch a lot of TV together. Right, so it's you taking ownership of the stories, you take an ownership of how you feel, and then you taking ownership of,

here's what I'd like to see next. Yeah, that's good. I'd like screen time to be something that's special for all of us. I would like screen time to be a last resort. Yeah, that's a good shift for it. Would it be helpful? Do you think, or I guess, I don't know if we could talk about it together, me and him, if I should be leaving activities for them to do?

No, he's a grown, good God, he's a grown man. How old are your kids? 10 and 3. Yeah. I mean, you're talking a stick. and a drill and some screws and some paints in the backyard. You know what I mean?

Like it's not it's not rocket science. If he looks at you and says I feel like a failure in my own house I don't know how to connect with them. I get bored really easily. I'll tell you as a husband, I've been there. I had no experience being around young kids like this

especially real, real young kids. I had zero experience. I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that my kids got bored. They got annoyed. I got bored. I didn't know what to do. And I'll also tell you this.

It's underneath the screen time thing. Can I tell you one of the things I need sometimes after, or not need, that I want after a long, exhausting day of recording and writing and interviews and all that? You know, one of the things that makes me feel whole is, my 10-year-old daughter curling up in a ball next to me while we watch some stupid show together. It makes me go, all's right with the world. And so I have found myself repeatedly falling into the pattern of I can connect with her in a way that's in a weird way healing. And it was the big light bulb for me. That's not her job to heal me.

And in fact, she's going to learn over time, I have the power to, heal or not heal my dad and no kid should have that sort of responsibility placed on their shoulder because they're kids. Right? And so it may not even be that he's being lazy or whatever.

It may be that he feels a sense of connectivity with his 10-year-old. Or it's really hard to find things for a three, I have a big gap between my kids. It's hard to find things for a three-year-old and a 10-year-old to stay engaged with, right? Definitely.

And so all that's hard, all that's messy. And if you all want to work together on, here's a few things that you've done that helps with success, right? That's always super helpful. But no, you leaving him a curriculum, I mean, that's a bit much.

Yeah, I'll leave it there. But I think it's the screen time thing. It's a contentious conversation. Every couple I know has tension there. The tension's to be expected, right? um the usually the conversations beneath that are what's important and by the way in my house um when my wife's out of town my kids know we're going to watch more tv and we're going to eat more silly foods they know that and my wife and i have had conversations about making sure i don't

tip the balance to where i become the real fun parent and she becomes the the fun ruin her parent and there's a lot of fair that's a fair critique for her right Because I'm like, dude, let's go spray each other with a water hose and let's watch four movies in a row. And she's like, hey, somebody, you'll have to eat dinner and you'll have to bathe. And I'm like, ah, boo, right? So there's that balance there, but that's beneath the screen time. Best luck to y'all. I would have this hard conversation beneath, talk about the thing beneath the thing and be honest about the stories you're making up.

And hopefully he'll respond not with defensiveness and not with contempt, but with, yeah, you're right. I feel powerless. I feel like I don't know how to connect with these kids. I feel like I'm bored to death. I feel like they just want to do silly things. And sometimes dads need to be invited into their kid's world or give them permission. Hey, enter into your kid's world for a few hours.

And you'll find great boredom for sure, but also great connectivity and deep, deep relationships there. We come back. A man asks how to support his parents when his dad refuses to get help for his mental illness. Nobody wants to talk about dying. I get it. And that's why so many of us avoid talking about life insurance because it forces us to imagine a world where we're not here anymore.

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That's X-A-N-D-R dot com. All right, let's go to Rochester, Minnesota, and talk to James. James, what's up, man? Hey, man. Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. You got it, brother. What's going on?

So, yeah, I guess my question is, how can I best support my mom while my dad is going through a severe mental health crisis and how can I best manage my own kind of frustrations and emotions around the situation while living two hours away? Yikes. What's he experiencing? What's going on? Yeah, so I can give you just a little bit of background here. So growing up, he was always a bit of a drink.

anchor most nights was four to sixish drinks kind of zone out and not be very present up through high school we were i mean we were hold on hold on i'm gonna i want to interrupt them break the story a little bit okay is that cool yeah yeah absolutely and here's two two reasons one or one main reason often when i asked somebody to tell the story there's a there's a you've you've told this story a lot especially in your own mind and there if you think of a railway station a railway station there's a train that just leaves a track and it just goes down that And so I want to interrupt that track every once in a while. Is that okay? Absolutely.

Okay. So your dad was not a bit of a drinker. He was an alcoholic. Yes. Yes. He was an alcoholic. And that's a hard, hard life for a family. It's really hard for a spouse.

It's really, really hard for a kid trying to connect with their dad. Yeah. Right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was. And I think we were definitely closer while I lived at home in high school.

I'm graduated college into the real world now. I'm 24. You know, we were relatively close. He was my soccer coach. We fished a lot. Had a relatively good relationship aside from that. Fast forward to now, you know, where you've definitely grown apart and now they live two hours away, I think it's fine when we see each other, but I would go, it wouldn't be

uncommon to go two weeks without hearing from them. Talk to my mom every other day, but I went hear from him very often. So kind of always had an odd kind of feeling about him, looking back, price them from alcoholism. He's always pretty socially awkward. I think he dimmed my mom's light socially quite a bit. Fast forward to today. Started back on Mother's Day this year. All of us kids were back in town celebrating Mother's Day. I'm the oldest of three siblings. My sister's out of school and my brother just graduated high school. But we were all home for the first time in a while. My dad kind of sat us all down after church and brunch. And he got really emotionally. He apologized

for his drinking during a childhood, basically said that he was three weeks sober and planned to start a sobriety journey. Later that week, I got a phone call for my mom saying that wasn't necessarily the truth and he'd left a lot out. He had been to the hospital earlier that week and been diagnosed with your anxiety and depression

and the further action needed to be taken medically. From that point, a pretty wild and sudden spiral took place. He really started saying, like, he sucks at his job and he was going to get fired which we know was not true from people where he worked. He was really paranoid about the IRS coming to kick us out of the house and arrest him for some back taxes stuff.

He claimed he mishandled estates, a grandparents, and he was going to get arrested, stuff like that. My mom convinced him that he needed to go on FMLA so he could speak so he could go to more intensive treatment without necessarily permanently losing his job. The doctor he went to wasn't very familiar with his case. It was six months or so to see his normal doctor. went in there. He didn't sign the paperwork. He then went into his HR department at work.

We don't really know what was said in the meeting, but he walked out of there having resigned from his job, and that really kicked off kind of the rest of the spiral. The next week or so after that, suicidal self-harm talks started. He kept saying he's done irreversible things with family. There's no way out. There's no hope, no solution. I, myself, went home kind of emergency on a Sunday and had a four-hour talk with them and it just pretty much talked in circles for four hours. It was really sad and really frustrating. The crisis team was at the house at least twice

along when I was there. I was responsible for getting firearms out of the house. That's kind of where things were at that point. Psychotic stuff kind of started after that, psychotic kind of talk. My sister went on a trip overseas while this was all going down and he was telling people like our friends and stuff that she wasn't actually overseas, and he doesn't know where she is, but he's going to find out.

He claimed that my girlfriend and my sister boyfriend were FBI spies for the IRS, stuff like the Wi-Fi router's recording him, asking him where the cameras were, et cetera. So he's decompensating rapidly. Yeah, on my, and I mean, other than the alcoholism, which he had actually, over the past couple years had really done a really, he noticeably done a really good job of, getting treatment and getting help for it. And he was really down to, I mean, he was very rarely drinking, if at all. And he had done a really good job.

And I think he had maybe a bad night, kind of like a relapse that might have triggered all this. And that's what triggered that first conversation. Well, so let me, let me jump in here. Here's what's important, okay? Becoming a junior detective is, it's a misuse of energy right now. yeah okay and i i say this with all due respect only because i've sat in these homes i was on those crisis teams that showed up to your family's house okay um you have no idea how he tried to self medicate if he got something from a co-worker if he bought something online if he like who knows

what's happened yeah yeah and what i would do is not spend energy on trying to reverse engineer how we got here, you have a very acute situation on your hands. Yeah. And so we're going to not worry about what happened in the climate 150 years ago that may have changed the weather patterns. We're going to deal with the fact that a hurricane just blew this house down right now. Yeah.

Right. And so whenever I'm sitting with somebody and they're painting a picture for me on what to do with a loved one, a parent, a spouse, et cetera, a kid, I'm always looking for trend lines. And the way you're explaining the story and how rapid it is, it's accelerating fast. Yeah. And so because of the psychosis that you've talked about,

because he's talked about self-harm, because you've had professionals show up to the house, long conversations aren't the problem here. This isn't a matter of getting all the things. thoughts in the right order. This is a person who's in the throes of psychosis. And so what I would petition for at this point is your mom's going to have to do this. Yeah.

I would petition for, I don't know how it works in Minnesota, but he is psychologically incompetent of making safe decisions for himself. So she's got to get control of her money, of the family money. She's got to get the house in her name. She's got to get the cars in her name. right but there's a she needs to sit with an attorney because there's a legal framework for how to do this and rightfully so the courts are slow to take away somebody's civil rights with what's the what they'll be doing in your dad's case they'll be saying yeah you can't make decisions for yourself anymore as an

adult there's a pretty high threshold thank god but also there's millions of people experiencing some degree of this across the country and they feel trapped right yeah but that's what we're going to begin to do, move forward that way. And I think telling your mom, I'm not interested in, I can't, I can't support you your mom's mental and emotional health. She's going to have to get her own counselor to talk through. Navigating. And she does. She, she's been working with someone throughout this whole thing, which has been really good. And he did, so we did, we were able to get him admitted. We live relatively close to the Mayo Clinic. It's about an hour way. So we, luckily we have a really good resource nearby and he was admitted into there um i guess i'm not

exactly sure what the wing was called but they're you know psych word i guess for lack of better turn um and he was there for three weeks um refused medication to begin with i'm not too familiar with how the court stuff works but there were two court hearings stuff like that and i believe um he since he was refusing medication to become court mandated that he take it um start medication started getting better. Sure. And then they ended up releasing him. And that's kind of where we are today.

He was good for a couple of days at home. And then pretty much started to go back down the spiral about five days ago. And I think if he misses one more online counseling appointment, the county is at that point, has to step in and they will come get him. And I think at that point, he goes on what's called a full commitment, is my understanding. Correct. Yeah, he's committed against his will. So you and your family are already past what I suggested.

right so they've gone through the court hearings the court has declared him unable to make decisions for himself and so they're stepping in the challenge for you is is to recognize your own grief in this deal because you're watching your dad dissolve in front of you and that's heartbreaking it's painful right and what all of us want when we see a loved one um falling apart in front of us and i'm saying this in a crass unclinical way right but when we're watching a loved one just unspool in front of us, it's hard not to constantly be judging where they are right now with where they used to be. Yeah. And we spend a lot of energy toggling back and forth. And yeah, but it used to. And if this thing hadn't happened,

and the challenge for you will be staying present. And the man before me is very, very sick. And nobody in our home has, the ability to care for him with the care and support he needs. And so nobody in the world would want a father on full commitment, right? Placed against his will in a psych hospital. And that's the best thing for him right now because he's going to hurt himself. He's going to hurt somebody else. He's going to do irreversible damage. Yeah. And it's heartbreaking. That is. Yeah. And if you go visit him and he's screaming at you or he's

He's numbed out of, they give him too much meds, and he's just kind of staring catatonic off into space. It will break your, it'll break your spirit. It'll break your heart. And I want to give you permission to have your heartbroken. Be sad. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And if it's hard to go see him in that state, I get that. I get that. It's sitting with your mom and constantly checking out on her, how can I care for you today? What do you need from me? And you have any courage to say, mom that exceeds my ability to help I can't help here but I can do this yeah right there's just a

heartbreaking I mean think take the psychosis away this is a guy that just got diagnosed with stage for pancreatic cancer and they just said he can't leave the hospital yeah it's devastating everything is different now and I really really hate this for you yeah I think one thing me and my mom say back and forth to each other a lot is it's unlike anything that we thought would ever you know our family would be

have to deal with or have you know be a part of or any any way to phrase it absolutely but he's clearly had a psychotic break and I mean like you say he's at the Mayo Clinic he's got some of the best care on the planet and they're saying here's the next right move for him

yeah and one of the hardest things for someone who's had a psychotic break is simple mood stabilization will you just please keep your meds. And there's some amazing transformations that happen when people who've had psychotic breaks, people with schizophrenia, people with like bipolar one, like true severe bipolar one, when they take their meds, they're just a different person. And when they don't, they're a very, very different person. And it's heartbreaking. Med management becomes a really important thing. And if somebody won't or is unable to or won't or whatever word you want to use, but I'd have as much

grace for his actions and behaviors. Nobody would, he wouldn't wish himself in the situation he's in, right? No. Yeah. And so it's just, it's a exhale. The one thing I would challenge you with is to write him a letter. And the next time you see him, read it to him. And in many ways, this letter is way more for you than it is for him. But it's you, whether it's the last moments of lucidity he's going to have in his lifetime, or if he can't hear you at all when you read it, I want you to be able to go to his funeral one day. I want you to be able to visit him and he has no idea who you are. I want you to be able to know I said the things I wanted to say.

Okay. All right? Yeah, I can do that. And recognize he's a prisoner trapped in his own mind, his own body, and it just, it stinks, man. Yeah. I think that's the hardest part for me is getting to a place where I can, I don't know if I'll ever accept it, but getting to a place where I can understand this isn't him necessarily doing this. This is a sickness.

And like, it's funny because when he, when we have these conversations, he actually seems very with it. And it's just eerie to like, know I'm talking to him, but I'm not really talking to him. And it makes it, it's almost like he's doing it in a way, like, in the way. my mind, I'm like, oh, he's being, you know, a jerk or whatever. And I know that's not true, but in my mind, that's just like, oh, man, like, this is really, this is not my dad. Yeah. And for those of us who grew up watching movies and TV, it's unmooring.

It is, for lack of better terms, it can be terrifying to sit there and talk with somebody who's amidst a true psychotic break. Yeah. And they're not playing. like you can you can have a conversation and you can see oh in your bones you think there's cameras in the doorknops you know what I mean yeah and in if you're like me I've left multiple of those conversations with a tiny little inkling that maybe I'm bonkers you know what I mean I think my mom did check the Wi-fire out or twice you right right so I mean I'm sat with folks who I know are delusional they are out of

their minds. And I've left and gone to my car and been like, dude, I'm going to turn the Bluetooth off. Right? You know what I mean? Like, because they're so convincing. And when it's your, I can't, I can't even wrap my head around how hard that would be if it was my dad. Because my dad's not perfect, but I love my dad. And I've created a world, a picture in my head of how his last few years on Earth are going to go. And this isn't in that picture. And so reestablishing a new picture. Oh, I've got a great. the fact that I painted this picture of how this was going to play out. And that's not how it's going to play out. It's actually going to play out very, very differently. And I did not have on my bingo

card. I did not have on this picture I painted my dad in a white gown and an institution. I didn't have on my bingo card 45 pill bottles across my mom's kitchen counter. And here's where we are. And so make sure you've got a group of guys that you can talk to. You can be honest with. Make sure you're connected with your girlfriend that y'all have regularly scheduled times where you can just say, hey, I need 15 minutes just to say that I'm sad. Write your dad a letter and be honest in the letter about the stuff about your childhood stuff. Be honest about the good times y'all had. And then be honest about saying, Dad, I'm not carrying any of that old stuff with us. I see my dad a shell of himself. I see I'm hurting. I want you know that I love you. I forgive

you. I love you. And I'm heartbroken with you. and free yourself from carrying around. You don't want to go to his funeral one day. You don't want to go visit him one day and have that nagging feeling. I should have told him. Let's write that letter and let's read it to him. And let's tell him.

And it may be an exercise where you and your siblings and your mom get together and you all write letters and you all read them to each other just as a way to grieve the man that we knew is no longer here or is not here in this season. Maybe with some medical intervention and some psychiatric intervention,

we'll get them back. but right now he's gone and it helps metabolize. It helps share that grief with other people who are going through it too. And it helps everybody be honest. I hate you're going through this brother, but he's lucky to have you as his son, somebody who's still caring for him. Thanks for the call, brother.

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That's helix sleep.com slash deloni with Helix better sleep starts right now. All right, we're back and Kelly has an, Am I the Problem? And whenever she has an Am I the Problem and she's smiling, I know it's a doozy. All right, so I am very curious to get your take on this one. The way you smile right now. I know it's not going to be good. All right. So this is from Becca in Columbus, Ohio, and she writes,

Am I the problem? I am a Christian, and I find it hard to interact with my coworkers when I know them to be actively involved in ungodly relationships. They claim I am unapproachable because I am blunt and honest about my different beliefs. I find it hard to fake my approval or look past situations with people, who intentionally hurt others by cheating or using others for selfish reasons and then laugh about it. They claim I am judgmental. She lumped several problems into one problem into that statement.

So I'll pull them apart. Number one, if you're a person of any sort of faith and you work with people who are not of that faith, they didn't opt into that. And so to hold them to the worship practices, to hold them to some belief standard that they didn't opt into isn't fair. They didn't ask for that, right? If they ask you, if y'all go to the same church and y'all have the same agreement, if they're part of the same faith as you, and they're living outside, then they've opted into this club, into this gang, and part of opting in is, is iron sharpens iron. We're going to hold each other accountable. That's part of that deal. They didn't opt into that.

Then you, um, trying to get them to, you walking around approving of them is no way now. and that's separate and apart from indecent human behavior. Like not being a good person. So I have my particular faith beliefs. I've got my particular faith practices. And I don't hang out with guys that cheat on their wives. Like, I don't care what they believe.

I just don't hang out with dudes who the core promise they made, they're not going to keep up that one. Then, of course, they're not going to keep the promises they make to me. That's just the way that is. whenever I'm out on the road and I bring comedians with me for comic shows, I hang out with comics who talk good about their wives when their wives aren't in the room. Those are the guys I want to be around. Some of these guys tell jokes that make my, I'm like, ah, gosh, that's even, that's too far for me.

But they talk great about their wives. And those are the kind of guys I like to surround myself with. So if you're hanging out with people who are cheating on their spouses and they're hurting people affirmatively, forget what faith. Yeah, I'm not going to be around folks like that. Does that make sense? It does, but what about the situation in this case where they're coworkers? So she's not hanging out with them outside of work.

I'm not going to work at a place where I'm not going to be in a joint mission of running a business, working in a business towards an external goal where with people who celebrate and hurting other people or deceiving other people. Because if you're going to cheat on your spouse, you're going to cheat in the business, period. There's data that proves that. if you're going to laugh about hurting somebody else over here in a hotel room somewhere, you're going to laugh about hurting a client or taking advantage of another business that you're doing work with. I'm just not going to be a part of, I'm going to find another place to work, right?

And she gets to choose that. But going back into the same place every day with her nose up being like, y'all are not, y'all are not, y'all are not, y'all are not, she's drinking poison and expecting them to get sick with it, right? Am I crazy? I find another place to work. No, I don't think you're crazy. I think that that's like the whole idea of finding another place to work. That's, I mean, that's a big deal. It's a huge deal.

Because most places you're going to work with people that you don't agree with what they're doing or whatever. I mean, that's just. Yeah, but there's a difference between, let's say you are married and you believe deeply in fidelity. And like, I believe in being with one person. in her case forever. And you have co-workers that have multiple partners. They go on lots of dates. They hook up a lot of people.

That's different than somebody who's like, ooh, dude, I'm going to go, I'm going to go catfish this person. I'm going to go, ooh, she's dating somebody. I'm going to blow up their relationship. I just want to see if I can, which is what it sounds like is going on here. There's a difference. That's not what it sounds like to me. To me, it sounds like this person is a extremely judgmental,

jerk. Like, yeah, no wonder no one wants to be around you. Yes, you have your faiths and your beliefs and yes, you do. And you can say, I don't want to be a part of that. But it sounds like she says, when she says, I can't, I'm blunt and I'm going to be honest about my beliefs. I find it hard to look past these situations. They didn't ask for your opinion. Right. So the, the situations are, if they're dating a bunch of different people, yeah, that's a you problem. Because they didn't sign up for your same set of values. And if you don't want to, to work there leave. If they're hurting people, if they're cheating on people, if they're taking advantage of people, then you are in a mission with them to go serve some sort of customer somewhere and I'm not going to be in, I'm not going to join that mission with somebody who's deceitful. And if they're doing things that are, could potentially be bad at work, then you need to go talk to somebody. Yeah. But to just sit there like wag your finger and judge people, they didn't ask. They didn't sign up for it. Yeah. If they're, you know, like you said, dating a bunch of people,

sleeping around whatever, they probably didn't ask. Yeah, and we don't live in a theocracy. It's not, it's not, Jesus himself says, give to Caesar what's his. I'm not playing that game. Like, the goal isn't to make everyone around us follow our same rules. That's not the point.

And also, nobody ever converted anyone by beating them over the head. Or wagging their finger in their face. Right. Maybe, you know, do what we're taught as Christians in love. Give a cup of cold water. Love you guys.