The Dr. John Delony Show - Can I Fall Back in Love With My Husband?

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A wife wondering how to fall back in love with her husband - A man unsure of how to help her friend in an abusive marriage - The red flags that point to an abusive relationship Lyrics of the Day: "Fallin'" - Alicia Keys Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. So for the last six months or so, I've been living in this in-between place in my marriage where I'm half in, half out. Is it possible to fall back in love with your spouse? Off the top of my head, I'm going to say no. I think you should move out. Yo, yo, yo, what's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

So glad that you're with us, hanging out, listening to the greatest mental health and marriage and parenting podcast ever. Hey, my experiment is for sure working. So I don't know, it was like six months ago. I was reading about some journalism tips and tricks, right? Some things that journalists do, that politicians do, so that they can gain advantage. And one of the core tenets is to just flood the field with garbage. Say everything's the greatest. Everything's the worst thing ever. This is the most worst ever. Just make a bunch of outlandish statements.

And initially people roll their eyes. They're like, oh my gosh, this person's ridiculous or moron or whatever. And then in short order people start um either a completely disregarding everything you say which then allows you to um move about the cabin without any interference you can just do whatever you want because no one's listening anymore or you slowly start to move the dial, right? So think about it. When your kid says, that's the best movie ever. It's the best movie ever. And then you watch it and you're like, this is terrible. And the next movie is like, this is the best movie ever. You either A,

quit listening to their advice, or you find yourself like five or 10 years later, kind of defending the movie. So I tell you all that to tell you, I just started trying it on the show. I just started opening every show by saying, this is the greatest mental health podcast ever. It's for sure. Not, not even close, maybe top 1000. And there's a lot of podcasts out there. Um, I bet we're top 900. I would give us top nine. You think Kelly, you think we're top nine? I think we're top 900. I think more. I think we're better than that. Oh, of course you do. You have a better disposition on the world and a better outlook on life. It's also my job.

That is your job. We are top 400. We are top 400, I think. But the number of people over the last six months, the number of media conversations, the number of people sliding into the old DMs who talk about this as the greatest show ever. It's working.

It's incredible. So listen, just some friendly wisdom from Uncle John. Just start saying everything is the greatest of all time. Eventually, people will believe you. Or they'll just tune out and that's fine. All right, go to teen oh oh real quick the one and only i didn't

ask permission to use her name so her online handle is des crane miss crane listen uh she sent us a bunch of the whole team care packages with chocolates and yetis and hydration and tea these fancy pants teas. Thank you so, so much for caring about us. For everybody in there, man. This is awesome, right? Yes, thank you. Thank you.

I'll tell you what, man. Thank you so much for thinking about us. It's awesome. All right, let's go to Tina in Chi-Town in Chicago. What's up, Tina? Hey, John. How we doing? Glad to be talking to you today.

I am glad to be talking to you. What's up? I could really use your advice. Maybe, maybe. What's up? So for the last six months or so, I've been living in this in-between place in my marriage where I'm half in, half out. I feel stuck, unable to move forward,

and it's taking a big toll on me. So my question for you today, is it possible to fall back in love with your spouse? And I can give you some background. Off the top of my head, I'm going to say no, I think you should move out. Okay. Now, I just said that to be provocative when I said that you kind of smiled and laughed How did you feel when I said that? I figured you were joking. Oh, okay. Well, there we go. I'm not very good at this job

So normally when somebody tells me they're stuck I will do my best to convince them right off the bat that one answer is the right one Because usually it's like setting a puzzle piece in and you know if it fits or not and so um Or you will push back and immediately start to fight me like no i'm in this mirror, right? So it becomes something very powerful um

why Why have you and i'm i'm intentionally using these words, why are you choosing to be stuck? That's a good question. Maybe if I give my background, it might kind of help shed some light into what's going on. So we've been married for almost five years together for seven. We have two kids, a stepchild and one together. Shortly after we got married, I realized how much anxiety and alcohol consumed my husband. When I was pregnant and after our son was born, it got worse, and I became the default parent. It's been really hard. After many failed attempts to get his addiction under control, I hit my breaking point last fall, but I wasn't really ready to move out. And I gave myself until the end of the year.

In November, I finally told him that I would not keep living like this. And he said he heard me differently than all of the other times before. And he's been showing consistent, real change for the past four to five weeks. So for so long, I visualized my life as a single parent without him because I didn't see him changing and making some of the strides that he has been more recently. I just know that it feels like I don't have the same feelings as he does for me anymore and i feel stuck in deciding like can i jump back into this or is it time to move on kind of without him yeah i mean you left him you left him a while ago and you waited for a while to tell him,

and you told him in the form of a if-then statement. If you don't do this, then I'm going to fill in the blank. And he called your bluff. And now you're in a mess, right? It feels like the more honest thing would have been in November, actually, back in June, back in March, to say, I can't be in a marriage. I feel unsafe because you are an alcoholic. I feel unsafe because you're not taking care of yourself. I'm out. That would have been the most honest way. Or to say, I am considering leaving you because I don't feel safe.

Sure. And that's not happened though, so here we are. So it sounds to me like you left. Now, you chose to withdraw. And so I think 1 million percent you can choose to hop back in. He's at the very, very, very beginning stages of sobriety. And when somebody tells me someone's struggling with alcohol and anxiety, I immediately go to a connection issue, relationship issues, probably stemming from a long, long time ago. And you tell me they escalate when you had a kid, especially first kid is when most couples report a significant reduction in connectivity, intimacy. and of course, you have another human that's suddenly figuring out how to take care of, right?

And so that doesn't surprise me at all that he got more anxious because his body felt more disconnected and alone. And he drank more to shut up the anxiety alarms. Like that doesn't, that, it bothers me. It's not a great response, but it makes perfect sense. And so the question you have to ask yourself is, are you willing to quit being in the middle here, go all in on this marriage, ask him, how can I help meet your needs? And you probably for the first time, commit to being honest on a regular ongoing basis about what you need. If you're willing to do that, man, I think you can get there. If you have left the relationship though, don't be cruel to him. Don't be cruel to yourself. Don't be cruel to your kids. Make your adult decision and then live with the adult consequences and move on about your day. Sure. That's been hard. Cause like I said, the failed attempts,

it'll be okay for a while and he'll try really hard and I'll believe, okay, this time a pattern. And so it's also hard to figure out, you know, is this consistent change that seems very real to me? He says it feels different more recently. It's like, how do I move past, you know, some of the fears that I have that this is just another failed attempt? And that's really kind of where it's at. I care a lot less about feelings right now. I don't care how he feels.

I care what he's doing. And you need to feel your body's trying to get your attention saying, hey, we've been down this road. We get hurt every time. Your body's doing exactly what it's trying to get your attention saying, hey, we've been down this road. We get hurt every time. Your body's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing. You just have to decide. I hear you. I hear you. And this has gotten us hurt before.

But I'm going to choose to be vulnerable and go all in one more time. Or you're right. It's time for us to get out of here. Because the one thing I know for certain is your relationship will end if you've got one foot in and one foot out. And it will end catastrophically. It'll end in a huge mess. And you end up in a weird way becoming the bad guy. Right. And so I would tell you to be a person of person of integrity and I don't mean that in a like to be throwing

grenades at you but be in or be out and if you're in say every time this gets me hurt every time this drags me through the mud um you hurt me you drag me through the mud and I'm choosing to go all in again and here's what this is going to look like. Have you outlined not what he needs to be doing, but have you outlined what you need to be whole in this marriage? Yes. We've had a conversation multiple times. I mean, more recently was probably a couple months ago, but when I did tell him that I wouldn't keep living like this,

he referenced some of the things that I had shared before. So he knows what they are. Okay. What is he doing to get sober and stay sober? So he weekly has been working with a counselor that specializes in addiction and is helping like through his anxiety and past traumas and things like that. We've been going. It's been sporadic, but we go to the same counselor that he sees individually together. But more specifically, things that he's been doing, he has not been putting himself in temptation, uh, meaning like going to the bars,

um, unless it's for a specific thing or he has specific kind of goals in mind, top of mind, he, he's catching himself a lot more instead of like reacting in a normal way he's taking the time to like really think about it be conscious um so i see that he's doing like the internal work in addition to like i said working with his counselor so you mentioned a bunch and those are fine things the fine things especially getting professional help. In a perfect world, he'd be going to a group three or four times a week, especially here at the beginning. But I'll leave that between him and his counselor. You named a bunch of things that he is stopping doing. He's stopping being reactive. He's stopping going to the bars. He's stopping

fill in the blank. That's all fine and good The only way I believe this is sustainable is if you two decide some things you're going to do together That you are that are going to replace some of those things. He doesn't go to the bar Y'all have a weekly night that y'all Put the kids to bed and you both stay up 30 minutes later and you just hang out You play questions for humans you are silly you all make out like you used to when you were dating Like whatever things you play dominoes. I don't care what you're doing You watch a now i'd rather you not watch a show together because that can just be numbing too But watch a show together if that's what you got to do

So I would love we're gonna go for walks together. We're going to go to the gym together. We are going to have one couple or one group of friends over to our house every week. We're going to make ourselves do it. Even when the house is a wreck and we're tired, we're going to figure this out because we're going to start, not only stop doing things that hurt us, but we're going to start adding things, doing things, participating in a way of life that makes the whole environment less anxious. And that's connectivity. That's free. We're going to pay our debts off. We're going to find those things that make us anxious. We're going to get rid of a bunch of clutter and a bunch of crap. You see what I'm saying? So we're going to do positive things too. And that's where you can not just sit on the sidelines with your arms folded, judging him to see if he's making progress.

But this is where you are vulnerable and you participate in what happens next. You become, you'll begin to, you're building a new life together, a non-anxious life together. So, to answer your original question, do I think you can fall back in love? Absolutely. I do. Do I, will I ever know the ins and outs of the abuse you've experienced? And no, I don't. And so only you can make that call. Just because I think you can, doesn't mean it's going to happen. Is it maybe a better way to phrase it is, is it possible? Yes. Likely?

I don't know. What I do know is if you're going to stay in it, you got to be all in. And being all in means you got to be vulnerable. And being vulnerable means you might get hurt again. It's the only way love works. I hate it. I don't like the design. I wish I could be kind of in and kind of out.

You can't. And on the other side, if you're going to be out, be all the way out. Don't torture him. Don't torture you. Don't drag those kids through. If you're out, be out. And as long as you're in this relationship moving forward, never wait one month, five months, nine months to communicate your needs. Love yourself enough to be heard on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, because your needs matter. Let me know what you decide. I'm interested to see where this thing heads, and I'll be here if you need anything further. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm

pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst.

If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves.

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. All right, let's go to Zach in Huntsville, Texas. What's up, Zach? Not much, just trying to get out of this ice storm. Yeah, welcome to it, man. Welcome to Texas. Welcome to Texas. It's cold once a year when it is ice falls from the sky. I know, right?

So what's up, dude? Nothing good, unfortunately. Oh, man. Tell me about it. Okay, the question is basically we need to know what boundaries or how to set boundaries or whatever the case may be with a friend who is in an abusive relationship. Define abuse for me. I'll give you examples if you need to. But to cover it all, he's verbally abusive. He is neglectful of her and their infant child they got one daughter that's

living with his grandparents because he's too big of a this stand up to his grandmother and tell her no the kid's going to come stay home with me even though there's no custody arrangement whatsoever we have have to constantly help her out because he won't like um like i'll give this one example um a week after their infant daughter was born she called me and asked me to take her to her one-week checkup. And her quote was, he doesn't want to. Recently, her and her daughter spent a week in the hospital. They checked the baby in for observations because she had gone to the ER because the baby hasn't gained much weight. And he didn't show up for a single day that they were in the hospital.

We took her there and we took her home. And we're at the point where like, I, I value marriage about as much as you and Dave do, but we're at the point, we're no longer supporting them being together. We're telling her if you call us with any problems, we're going to tell you to just leave him because we're getting sick of it. She seems to somewhat be on board with the idea of leaving him, but she is terrified of the idea of going to a shelter,

which is the last thing I told her she needed to do. And at this point, we're trying to figure out how to protect our family and set boundaries and stuff up so that we don't have to keep being stressed out by the constant neglect and abuse that is coming with this. But at the same time, we don't want to abandon her because we know that that's just going to leave her no choice but to stay there because me and my roommates, we're literally all she's got. What I'm going to tell you is hard, okay? Because you got a great heart. And I wish there were more people who cared about hurting people in the world but at the end of the day

you can't make her do anything you can call and i would recommend you call the authorities because um uh for because if the kids are being abused they if they're being neglected, if they're being left alone. But at the end of the day, the fact that she hasn't called 911 screaming bloody murder that some old woman has taken her baby, that's her choice. Blame husband all you want. The fact that she doesn't want to live in a shelter, totally get that. That she hasn't come to you and said, I need a place to stay for 60 or 90 days. Will you help me? She hasn't done that. And so one of the most difficult, challenging things is

being in a relationship with other adults because we can't make them do the things that we can just so clearly see would help them be safe and whole. You throw kids in the mix, and it's even worse. Do you know this guy? What has stopped you from calling this guy? I'm not 100% confident in my ability to defend myself, and he can get pretty violent. For example, another reason why I can't stand this, percent confident in my ability to defend myself and he can get pretty violent for example like

another reason why i can't stand this i i got up four in the morning i did my delivery i was going home i went to walmart because we were preparing for halloween or something with some or other and then i get a call asking to take her to the er because she's got a prolapsed uterus i go over there that he initially called me because he didn't think his car would make the 30 mile trip South down to the ER. I go over there and he's sitting in his car, screwing with it. I go inside,

she's getting the baby and all the stuff ready for it. And I swear to God, I've never been closer to punching him in my life. I got them and everybody ready to go. He sat down and ate pizza. And I, have you made this Your war I

Like you wake up everyday enraged And you go to bed everyday enraged And you spin out and you spin out And you spin out And she hasn't asked for your help or when she does she just wants a ride and you give her that ride and you give her advice you say i think you should leave and she goes i know and then she doesn't at some point you're continuing to torture yourself because this guy is a terrible human being and make no mistake he sounds like a terrible human being

an absolute terrible human being. And make no mistake, he sounds like a terrible human being. An absolute terrible human being. On all counts. But your daily choice to just swan dive into that cesspool is you choosing to make your life shorter. You're going to have a stroke and you're going to have a heart attack. He doesn't think about you every day. You think about him a lot. Yep.

It's mostly because like, I'll have a pretty good day and then she'll text me and be like, Hey, I need this or this or this. Cause I'm not getting it. And I will admit I'm very close to just calling it. I'm what's torturing me is I don't know how to tell her we can't participate in this any longer without making her think that when she finally gets sick of it, we're not going to be there to help.

I want to make sure— You say it exactly like you just said it. You take her out for coffee, you and a couple other guys. That way she doesn't believe this is some sort of romantic move on your part. And you'd be surprised at how signals get crossed when people are in these kinds of situations. And you tell her very clearly, we cannot be your fallback plan 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We love you and we are scared to death for you and we're scared of those kids, but you're an adult and you're making adult choices. The moment you're ready to leave, our front door is open for you.

But until then, you're going to have to make some grownup choices. If this is the life you are choosing, this is the marriage. And let me be honest. It makes me sick to my stomach to say that because I don't think she's consciously choosing this. I think she absolutely feels stuck and trapped. This may have been the world she grew up with. Who knows? They may be threatened to keep her baby, to make up all kinds of stuff. She may have an addiction that you know nothing

about. There's a million different variables here. I've seen it all, and then I know I haven't seen any of it. Okay? You can't control any of those things. You can only control you. And so I think you are very, very honest and clear about your boundaries. I do want to ask one thing just because this is the only really, this is the biggest worry about if it comes to the point where we're her only option, we take her in our house,

would it be wrong for me to, or is there a better way to say we're not taking you in unless you're leaving him? I mean, you can say whatever you want. I know that. The only reason I haven't said that yet is because I don't know if that's the right thing to help her or if it's – I mean, it would be foolish of me to weigh in on that because I don't know. Like, you get to put the boundaries and stipulations. It's like when somebody donates $5,000 and say you have to spend it like this, this, and this. I may say, that's ridiculous. But it, this and this I may say that's ridiculous but it doesn't matter what I think it's their money

I can either choose to take it or not take it and the moment she says come get me I need to get out of here he's at work she needs to call and have a restraining order put on him so he doesn't show up at your front door and by choosing to get involved you're choosing to She needs to call and have a restraining order put on her. So he doesn't show up at your front door. And by choosing to get involved,

you're choosing to potentially put yourself in harm's way. It's not by your hand, but in your lap. You didn't ask for this, it came to you. And you're the kind of guy that steps in the middle, in the gap. And so I'll tell you to be wise and don't be a hero. And this isn't a movie set. so call the local authorities and make sure she's got the resources that she needs beyond you can give her a place to stay that's safe for her and her kids you cannot do trauma therapy and you cannot do job placement service like she's

going to need some professional help significant professional professional help. You're not an attorney that's going to help her get full custody of her kids. But it's telling to me that grandma took the baby, and she hasn't burned people's house down. If somebody takes my daughter, I don't care who they are, it's going to be a bad, bad day. And I'm a pretty chill guy. And Kevin helped what my wife would do. See what I'm saying? Like there's clearly another side to this. What I will promise you is if you walk around bathing in rage, you're not going to make wise choices. If you wake up every day with a single fixation on this guy,

saving this woman and finally coming up with the right thing so that she may, you're going to end up getting yourself hurt. And so I think what you and your roommates need to do is come up with some sort of Guys, let's all sit down. Let's spend half an hour on this and let's Write out on a piece of paper. We're all gonna agree. Here's the here's our boundaries on this deal And then all three of y'all all four of y'all how many roommates you got y'all all go out to ihop and you take her With you go to walfa. Let's take her with you and you say hey worried about you. You know that We love helping you. We love loving you, but we can't participate in this any longer.

The moment you're ready to leave, we'll come get you. And if you want to say, but it's got to be for good, fine. I think the last number I read was people go back six or seven times, I think, five or six or seven times I go back to abusive relationships So may not last long but such it is you put whatever stipulations you want The last thing she needs is some other person to come in and take her life from her She needs to be given a context of safety and security so she can make the hard choices on her own. Thank you for stepping up, man. Thank you for stepping up.

But knowing what you can control versus what you can't control, that's one of the cornerstones of a healthy life. And unfortunately, we all control very, very little. But we do control our ability to love so thank you for stepping in the gap let me know how it goes man we'll be right back all right we're back guess what time it is kids it's time, get your bandanas out. It's time for Facts of Your Friends. Oh man, look at it. I set it up like it's... All right. So today's Facts of Your Friends, I'm just going to say at the outset, this one's tough because I'm going to leave you with some concrete steps, some concrete things to look for. But I also am going to leave you with some concrete steps, some concrete things to look for. But I also am going to leave you with some open-handed, open-ended discussion topics.

Because I'm going to be honest, I struggle with this. And I should. This is one of those things that like as somebody who spent their years working with abused and traumatized people, I should be able to rattle this off. And I've called some of my colleagues across the country. I have sat on the internets. I've read books. I really struggle with the definition of the word abuse.

And when you say that's abuse, we all know what that is, right? It's physical abuse. It's harm. It's somebody hurting you. that's abuse, we all know what that is, right? It's physical abuse, it's harm, it's somebody hurting you, it's psychological abuse, it's sexual abuse, it's neglect, right? We know when we hear the word abuse, it's easy to think like, I know it when I see it, right? Like that old court case about pornography, like I know it when I see it, right? But as a science nerd, it's just a nerd in general, that's not good enough. I like to define it. What is it? And so I can just a simple definition online. This is just a random place. I just typed into the Googles, what is abuse? And here's the definition.

Abuse is defined as any action that intentionally harms or injures another person. That makes sense, right? So some of my discussions with my colleagues was, yeah, it's an intent to harm. It's an action that intends to hurt somebody. The reason why I balk at that is neglect is also abuse. The last caller we had, a dad just sitting around while his kid needs to go to the ER and he's just not even paying attention. He's just eating chips. He's not trying to hurt that kid. He couldn't care less about that kid. That's abuse. And so there's no intent there. There's just neglect. There's just complete disregard. And I would suggest that's still abuse. And here's another challenge. I had a colleague once that was, we were all having a meeting and the meeting got

tense, but it was a tense meeting. We were also laughing back and forth. And the boss said something, right? Like the highest ranking person in the room said something and everybody's laughing but it was like a very passive quiet just silly throwaway thing and it wasn't an insult it wasn't a anything derogatory it was just like a little while later my colleague came out of that meeting and she was rage crying. Rage crying. She was shaking to her core. And the way she explained it was this incredibly abusive behavior by the boss. I was there. Everybody was there.

Men and women. And nobody saw it. In fact fact we all saw the opposite we all saw some attempts to kind of let the air out of the room and to connect and i think it would be dismissive to suggest that her body was not in full fight or flight her body had moved to defend itself to to run, to freeze, to come back swinging. And so for me in my chair, it's like, ah, it's not abuse. I don't like that either. Doesn't feel right. And if we create a culture where the end user, the end receiver is the person who defines abuse,

you get the world we got now where everybody's offended about everything. And one of the cornerstones of anxiety is you got to go through it. You got to work. You got to head right into the middle of the storm. That's where healing is. But we've created a culture where everybody's anxious about everything. Everybody's fired up and worried about everything. And it's everybody else's job in the world to bend their lives around our offense or our discomfort. And it's chaos. It's madness. It's a moving target. So I don't like saying that every person gets to define abuse for themselves. That doesn't make sense. So I find myself in this quandary. I like the idea of abuse is harm, right? It's a harm, whether you meant it or not. I also think there's got to be some sort of boundary there. Otherwise you get into this, these thought crimes and this, you raised an eyebrow and all of a sudden it hurt. Like it's

just such a mess. And so I leave that to you. I think it's an important topic to discuss. How do we define abuse at the end of the day? I even have to go this far as I'm, you know, once you guys to see or just experience, this is annoying. My wife tells me, I try to think through an argument in my mind and get all the way to the end of the argument. I can also imagine a scenario where certain behavior would be unifying in one situation and abusive in another. Right? So it may be fun.

It may be unifying to poke, to make jokes with some of my childhood friends. The very same jokes, the very same behavior may be unifying for us. And to somebody else, like my wife or my, a colleague, that may trigger something that happened when they were a kid.

And it's, and it's very re-traumatizing, right? So I think approaching the world, I've got to be able to speak my needs out loud. I've got to know when my body is reacting and I have to be willing to be hospitable and humble. I got to be able to say, hey, I didn't mean harm. It's probably best if we don't work together i didn't mean harm anyway i will never make say that again do that again make that joke i had

no idea i was neglecting you i thank you so much for telling me consider that problem fixed it's salt right so i think it's a mix of both. Here is, this is from choosingtherapy.com. Here's a couple of, I'm just going to run through a couple of these. Signs that you may be in an abusive relationship. Somebody's verbally abusing you. They're swearing at you. They're yelling and screaming at you.

And sometimes you can abuse somebody very, very quietly. Somebody threatens violence. They threaten to withhold love. They would threaten to withhold food or safety, right? Verbal abuse. Unpredictable behaviors can be abusive, especially for kids. When they don't know what mom or dad they're going to get, whether it's going to be the rage dad or the drunk dad or the angry mom or the happy mom or the super engaged dad, their nervous system can never stabilize. It's always toggling with this hard back and forth between the sympathetic and parasympathetic response. It becomes a mess. Cruelty to animals or others, right? Threatening behavior, forced sexual activity, or disregard for others' desire, right? You can be abusive through forcing somebody to cater to your sexual whims.

It can also be abusive to withhold connectivity, weaponize it. That can hold somebody hostage. Here's a couple other ones. Financial abuse. Stealing money from the joint account, lying about expenses, making somebody go through you or go through them in order to spend money. I've heard of couples who somebody gives the other person an allowance. They got to run every expense by you or you don't have your own debit card or whatever, or they have their own account, right? There's financial abuse. There's taking out credit cards in your name

and spending money and racking up debt that you've got to pay, right? So there's public shaming. There's harassment. There's bruises and black eyes. And by the way, there's the fight or flight or freeze response. One we don't talk about a lot.

It's a trauma response. It's an abuse response. It's fawn. I'm going to nuzzle up to you and get so close to you that you won't hit me anymore. I am going to get so close. So it can look like intimacy. It can look really, really close. So I think the key here for me is anything that makes my body feel like it's got to protect itself Could be abusive behavior. It's not it's not a guarantee every time

Anything that causes my body's sympathetic nervous system to fire up fire flight ready to rock and roll Could be it might not be It might just be that i'm really really tired. I took that the wrong way And that's where it's incumbent on all of us to learn what we need, to learn how to regulate our own nervous systems. I can't outsource that to everybody. I can't make that everybody's job. That's my job.

And if you've experienced trauma, that means you got some work to do. You got some healing to do. That's hard. If you are being abused right now, if you're in an abusive relationship, call somebody. Call somebody. Call somebody, call somebody.

Your life has value outside of being somebody's punching bag. You're worth being loved and you're worth more than that. Call somebody. Reach out to a local hotline if you don't have a friend. Or like the last caller, call some buddies and say, I need help. Come get me. And let's make a plan for what happens next.

Life's too short to be abused. And if you're abusing somebody, stop. Go get help. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can

make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, as we wrap up today's show, the song of the day is from the great Alicia Keys. Man, she's awesome. Song's called Fallin'. It goes like this. I keep on fallin' in and out of love with you. Sometimes I love you, sometimes you make me blue. Sometimes I feel good and at times I feel used. Love you, darling, makes me so confused.

I keep on fallin' in and out of love with you. I never loved someone the way that I love you. That's such a great song. Love's a mess, it's hard. Best of luck to you. We'll see you soon.