The Dr. John Delony Show - Can I Trust My Husband Again After He Was Texting Another Woman?

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

On today's show, we talk to a woman who found out her husband was having inappropriate text relationship with somebody at work, and she wants to know what to do next. We talk to a woman whose dad is getting out of jail, and she wants to know how she has a relationship with him, and we answer what is relational IQ. Stay tuned. Ayo, this is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Again, I don't know why we're yelling. Just sitting here on a podcast, hanging out.

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what's going on, Ray? How we doing? Hi, John. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for calling. Thanks for calling. Thanks for calling. So what's up? How can I help? Well, I recently just found out that my husband was having like a, an appropriate texting relationship with a coworker. Um, and I'm not really sure how to, uh, I guess repair the trust loss. He seems very remorseful, you know, says that he made a mistake, but I'm just not really sure how to trust him again, where to go from here. Yeah, man, I'm sorry. So, um, whenever somebody says it was an inappropriate relationship, I, in the past have jumped all over it and then realized, oh, that was different than I thought. So paint me a picture of what inappropriate was, what was actually going back and forth? So they were talking, I guess, about having a physical relationship through text. She was offering to send him inappropriate pictures.

Ah, okay. It never got to that point. Are you sure? Yes, I am sure. I did look. She said that she was going to do it over Snapchat and never did. I did look. Okay.

So he cut it off at that point. Okay, so it got a little bit over his skis and he got nervous and cut it off? Yes. He said that if he had received those pictures, he would have known that it would have crossed a different line of inappropriate. Gotcha. Okay. So, how long have y'all been married? It'll be seven years

next year, the beginning of the year. So, about six and a half. Okay. So, you asked the question, how do you rebuild trust? How do you repair this? And as I talk through here, I want to keep in mind two important things. Number one, at the end of the day, as much as this, how hard this is to hear,

you can only control you, okay? And the repair of any, the healing, I don't like to use the word repair because it's not a machine, but the healing of any relationship takes two people. And what that means is you have to risk.

You've got to go all in and hope he goes all in too. Okay? So keep that in mind as we talk through this. So the big question number one is do you want to trust him again or are you done?

I do want to trust him again. I don't really want to end our family over it. Okay, so tell me what you feel. And here's what I mean by that. Are you angry or are you scared that you almost lost him? Are you frustrated because once you heard about this, you could see, yeah, I've seen two years where we've been disconnected.

I haven't done this and I haven't been open in this way. And I've been putting off conversations and all of a sudden, or do you feel just raged out that everything's been so great in your life and then this guy went and did that. Like, what are you feeling? I'm a little confused because we weren't going through anything rough. We weren't having any hard times. We were both, you know, what I thought was happy. Even he said like, there's nothing wrong in our marriage. He doesn't know why you do that. So I'm confused and, you know, angry that he would do that. But it's all just kind of a big question mark in my head right now.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. So, um, somebody I, I turn to often when I'm trying to wrap my head around new ways and old ways of looking at infidelity, whether it's just thoughts we have and never even send a text message, or texting that all of a sudden gets out of control and all of a sudden we're meeting up with somebody never meant, or infidelity like someone's just a serial cheater and they've been having physical intimate relationships with other people for years and years and years. Esther Perel gives me, she's a great, she's just a great thought leader when it comes to thinking about these things,

rethinking about these things. Some things I vehemently disagree with her on, but that does stretch my thinking and other things she's just right on. So one of the things she talks about that was important for me years ago, and I was thinking through this for the first time, wrestling with how do people with quote unquote great marriages end up in these other situations? And she reports that in almost every client she interacts with who's had some sort of breach in the trust of their marriage,

every bit of research she's been a part of, the word that comes up always is the word alive. That the person who is involved in a texting relationship, the person who has fantasies about somebody else's husband or wife, the person who goes through with it and has intimate relationships outside of the bounds of their committed relationship, they always come back about somebody else's husband or wife, the person who goes through with it and has intimate relationships outside of the bounds of their committed relationship, they always come back and say, it made me feel alive. And here's where that's so important

is that often we think, or the narrative we've been told about cheating is that there must be something wrong with the relationship. There must be something wrong with you relationship. There must be something wrong with you or your husband must not like you or something you're doing. And that's why he went and did this. And what she's come back and said is

that's actually not right at all. He doesn't like something about him. He doesn't like who he's become in this relationship. Now, it might be because guys will say all sorts of stupid things. Wives will say all sorts of stupid things. Well, it's because of this and the towels and the wet. I got sick of always coming home frustrated.

I got sick of always coming home to a routine. I got sick of coming coming home to a routine. I got sick of coming home to us introducing sex intimacy in the exact same way in the exact same time. And this person made me feel alive. I got sick of coming home and nobody ever recognizes my contribution to the house. They just take me for granted and, and, and, and this person at work said, dude, you are killing it on these reports. And suddenly my heart fluttered a little bit. Nothing to do with romance, nothing to do with sex. I just felt for the first time in one year, two years, 10 years, 30 years, I felt alive.

I felt that guy look at me in a way that my husband hasn't looked at me in years. It's about alive. And luckily for your relationship, and I say that intentionally, your husband got real close to the edge and peered way over. And at the last second was like, no, I'm not going to cross this line. And so he did violate your, he was keeping secrets from you. Things got out of control. All that's true and real. And, okay, none of these things are excuses, by the way. This is just a context for, I'm trying to give you some ideas for this confusion. I think this is way more about him than it is about you.

Okay. Okay? Now, he may not like the way he felt around you because he doesn't think you're this or you're not doing those things or what. That's secondary to, man, something about this got his heart racing again that he felt in a way that he might not have felt since y'all were dating or since y'all were in year two or year five, whatever. So what does trust look like for you? When you say, I just want to trust him, what does that mean? I guess not worrying about, you know, who he's talking to now. Okay. What he's doing when he's, you know, not at work, not at home.

His job just kind of requires me to have a lot of trust in him. Is he on the road a lot? Is he traveling with people? Yes. Okay. He works away from home. He travels for work, so he's gone a few days a week.

Okay. And if you were honest with yourself, can you trust him? I think I can I mean you know if you can or can't can you trust him? or no? yeah

are you safe for him? meaning if you sat down and said this moron on the radio said that often when people find themselves in situations outside of their marriages, it's about them feeling alive for the first time, them feeling like they're funny again. They're feeling like they are attractive again. They're feeling like they are capable again. Tell me about how you felt when you were texting back and forth.

Are you a safe place that he could tell that, be honest and truthful with you? Yes. Because we're going back to things that only you can control now. Okay. So if you sat down and said, hey, tell me about what was just in your head. Could you hear that? Or it would just fill you up with rage? He would tell me. He would tell you? Awesome. Yeah. So here's where you guys have a magic moment. Year seven, that's a notorious tough year for folks, year seven to 10.

That's when we start to go, oh, this is who we are. And this is the way things are going to be. Do you have any little ones? Yes, we have two. Okay. How old are they? One is five and the other is almost two. There you go. So this is just going to be our life. We're going to always be wiping butts and we're always going to be having sex in the dark as quick as possible so that we can go to sleep, so that we can get back up and make a new bottle and make a new thing. And we're always going to be having sex in the dark as quick as possible so that we can go to sleep, so that we can get back up and make a new bottle and make a new thing, and we're not going to go on dates.

Whatever that is. This year seven to ten is when it starts to slowly feel like this is the rest of our life. And this is a season when lots of these things pop up. Either there's been some infidelity for years, it just finally goes, you know what? I'm not doing this anymore. Or this is when somebody starts to go,

I feel dead on the inside for whatever reason. And so what I want you guys to look at this opportunity as, like the matrix, a really close near miss. Was there a violation? For sure. Did your husband violate your trust? A thousand percent, yes. But it didn't explode. There's not blood on the ceiling. Oh my gosh, it got close. And this is a moment y'all can choose,

and you've heard me say this a hundred times, you can excavate the whole thing and say, how do we choose to lean into feeling alive with each other again? How do we, to use Esther Perel's language, how do we practice desire? I want to re-fall in love with you. I want to become a guy that makes your heart flutter again. I want to become a partner that makes you think about me all day. And when you're traveling, I'm going to make it hard for you to do your job without wanting to come home and be with me. And that's not just a sexual thing. That is just a friendship communication and a sexual thing, of course.

But how do we rebuild that? Because we've lost it. We've been together for seven years. We're changing diapers. We're tired. We're this and that. I'm not even showering anymore. And all my pants have stretchy things on them man and this is both of y'all right i get home from being out of town and i just leave my suitcase in a pile

on the floor and my clothes just stay there until i race through to wash them again for my next trip out like how do we reimagine this thing and I want you to lean in on two things. Number one, what do you both need to feel alive again? And be honest with each other, be open with each other. And the second thing is, what are the boundaries you need to reestablish trust? Meaning, I need you, when you get home, I want you to unlock your phone for the next six months, next year.

Like I want you just to put the phone down or we're all gonna have the same code. If you have any, I'm asking you to not have any extra email accounts. I want you to delete them. I'm asking you to FaceTime me or if somebody, if you text another person who's attracted to you, if you text another woman, I want you to let me know that that exchange happened every single time.

And that's his responsibility to lean into your boundaries. And so you're going to have to risk by putting your boundaries out there and saying, I need you to meet these. Because he might say, I'm not doing that. And now you have another layer peeled back of your relationship. I hear in your voice, you don't think that's the case. You think he'll do whatever you say. Is that right? Yes. He seems really remorseful. He said he would do whatever it took to fix this. Awesome. So you be honest about your boundaries and you may need to sit down and talk to somebody. You may need to go out with a friend and just vent and y'all write down on a piece of paper,

be so clear, here's the boundaries. Here's what's gonna make me feel safe. And know that he's practicing trust, you're practicing trust. And when you get a text from him in four months and it's like, hey, my boss, she texted me and let me know that I need to be at work tomorrow at eight. And you go, I don't care.

That's when you'll know. Okay. Or when he texts you and says, hey, we're all going to lunch. And there's going to be three of my female colleagues and just me. Are you okay with that? And you're like, why would I?

Yes, I don't care. That's when you'll know. And if it's a year from now, two years from now, and you say, not a good idea. I don't feel right about that. You'll let him know and he'll go, great, cool don't care. That's when you'll know. And if it's a year from now, two years from now, and you say, not a good idea, I don't feel right about that. You'll let him know and he'll go, great, cool. No problem. Is that, you see what I'm leaning into?

It's creating a safe place. Y'all can talk about being alive and it's creating a safe place where you can, your boundaries can be heard and he can lean into them. And just know it's going to be frustrating because this is all new and he's going to forget to text once and he's going to catch himself and send it. Understand that he's practicing and trying

and you're practicing and trying too. I think this might be one of those moments that launches your relationship into a new stratosphere. And you can not just say things were going great. I want you to be able to define great. What is this thing that we are creating? Who are we going to be? Why are we doing this? And how can we both work together to let the other one feel alive? Does that sound exciting?

Yes, it does. And that's a really good idea of what to do. It kind of answers my question there. Awesome. Just not a bridge I've gone over before. Yeah, hey, we're in it now. You're in it now and you're committed and he sounds like he's committed.

This is perfect. This is perfect. Go excavate the whole thing and y'all go out somewhere, dream about what this can look like. And again, when y'all go out, this isn't a punishment session for him. This isn't you're going to take him out

and be like, and I did this. Sounds like y'all have had that this isn't a punishment session for him. This isn't you're going to take him out and be like, and I did this. Sounds like y'all have had that conversation. This is you saying, something about this made you feel alive and I want you to feel alive with me. And I want to feel alive again with you. And we've got these two kids that we love dearly and they have taken much of our life with them.

And so it's our job to recreate desire, to recreate intimacy, to recreate laughter and sexuality and commitment and aliveness. And I don't even think aliveness is a word, but y'all can create it in your house. Who cares? So great. I want to know how this conversation goes. So have this conversation, build something cool, draw the blueprints and begin building, and then write me back and let me know how things are going, Ray. Thank you so much for your vulnerability. Talk to you soon. We'll be right back on the Dr. John Deloney Show. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet,

get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era because, I mean, we pretty much have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks more often than we want to.

We do this at work, we do this in social setting, we do this around our 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, 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 learn to be honest with yourself and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy and you can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey and you get matched with a licensed therapist.

Plus, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash deloney. All right, we are back, Cracker Jack. Let's go to Taryn in Fresno. It's an all-California show today. What's up, Taryn?

Hi, Dr. Deloney. Thank you so much for taking my call. Thank you for calling. And I don't know why I'm so loud today. I feel loud. Sorry. It's nothing to me. Wake up.

It's okay. But if you and me met at a coffee shop, I wouldn't be like, Hello, Taryn! I wouldn't do that. I don'tping me to wake up. It's okay. But if you and me like met at a coffee shop, I wouldn't be like, hello, Tara. I wouldn't do that. I don't know why I'm yelling. It's so dumb. So let me, I'm going to back that thing up. Okay. We'll slap it up, flip it and reverse it.

Okay. So, hey, good morning, Tara. What's up? How are we doing? I'm good. How are you? I feel so much better to talk to you like a human. Not like I'm like, radio.

I am good. So what's going on? How can I help? Yeah. So my dad has been in prison my entire life. Well, let's just get right into it. It's a great way to start a conversation, right? So what happened?

Why has he been in jail your whole life? So he was sentenced when I was about three months old. And he is a sex offender. Okay. So, yeah, that happened when I was just a few months old. He's been gone ever since. Were you the victim? I was not, no.

Okay. What was the offense? So without getting into too much detail or getting too graphic. Um, he was, he had a lot of, uh, abuse when he was growing up, um, from, you know, other people like in the church and his family. Um, and that kind of progressed to him doing the same kind of abuse when he was an adult. Okay. With kids? Yeah. Okay. All right.

Okay. So he's been in jail your whole life. And how many years is that? 20 years, 30 years? 25. 25. Okay. Yeah.

So he is getting released at the end of next month. Can I just guess? Does he want to kick it all back up and make up for lost time and get his daughter back? Kind of. Okay. So he, probably the past like a year or two, I mean, we will write letters back and forth here and there to stay in contact. We have kind of tried to kill the relationship a little bit, but riding back and forth and, you know, with visitation and everything, and, you know, then COVID hit and no visitation was allowed to happen, that wall was always there. So it was

kind of easy and it was okay. But now that he's getting out and it's all in person, it's like, I don't even know where to start. So I guess my, my main question for you is how do I, how do I maintain this relationship in a healthy way with healthy boundaries? I guess that's my question. Okay. So I'm going to lean into a hard thing. Okay? And the hard thing is this. I'm going to talk to somebody else about their dad, and I'm going to be really honest. And that can sometimes cross my own personal boundaries, which is to not say ugly things about other people's parents. Is that cool? It's okay. It really is, yeah. Okay.

So let's start it this way. Take all of the daughters supposed to fill in the blank with their dad, supposed to love their dad and respect their dad. Take the fact away that he's your dad. Let's just talk about this guy. Let's call him Dan. Let's talk about Dan. What do you think of Dan? Be honest.

Probably not the best things, but I mean. Hey, that's what I want to hear you say out loud. What do you think about Dan? Because here's my guess. My guess is you have wrapped up your feelings and what you really think and your guts and your rage and your anger and your heartbrokenness under this daughter duty to dad. I may be way out of line there, but that's my guess. And you have tried to make it work because I'm supposed to forgive, I'm supposed to bring my dad. What do you really think about

Dan? Honestly, I was really disgusted with him. I just didn't understand how someone could do that, even with all the abuse he had as a child. I mean, I understand how it led up, not saying that I agree with it, but... Everyone's still got a choice. Everyone's still got a choice. Could care less what happens. Yes, exactly, yeah. And I was very angry.

I was very disgusted for a long time. We didn't talk for a number of years, actually, just because of the whole situation. Once I was old enough and I found out everything that happened, once my mom and him actually were able to tell me what happened. How old were you when that happened? Probably about 15 or so. So was there a big cloud?

Did they lie to you for the first 15 years of your life about where dad was? Um, so my mom was, my mom did lie for a number of years saying where he was. Um, she would just kind of make up random things. I don't remember all of them, but of course it was avoiding the fact that he was in prison. Um, he was actually telling my mom and I that he was innocent this entire time. And then when I was about 14 or 15 or so, he actually came to my mom and me, like wrote us a letter and told us that he was actually guilty of all those things. So he told my mom and I the truth at the same time. And then my mom kind of gave me a more detailed explanation. So it kind of hit everybody suddenly and it was, it was surprising. And that was the time that I didn't really talk to him for a while. Um, probably till I was about 18 or 19 or so,

he kind of wrote me out of the blue and he wanted to apologize for everything that he did and that he's been going through, you know, treatments and therapy and, um, kind of taking his mental illness into consideration and trying to find treatment for that. So just basically that he's changed and that he's trying to forgive himself and move forward and all that. And ever since then, it's just kind of been on and off and rocky. And to this day, it's still hard to talk to him. And I just don't know what to say sometimes. I don't know how to have a conversation with this guy sometimes.

And it's hard. So that's just kind of where I've been at. Oh, man. Well, thank you for walking us through that. So I don't want to miss the scope of this trauma. And you've lived this, but I want to put words to it. Your dad left you. And if he had left you and your mom for another woman when you were three months old, that would have been trauma.

Because you would have spent your childhood years wondering what was so great about that other woman that dad left me. Like I'm his baby girl and he left me. And then there was the trauma of finding out that your mom lied to you for years, whether she thought she had to or not, whatever. That's not the point. The point is that it happened. I'm not about blame and all that. It happened.

And so then there's a fracture in the relationship between you and your mom. And my guess is y'all were ride or die at that moment because you're all, she's all you had. And then to find out, I don't, nothing I know is true because mom, the one person I had didn't tell me the truth about my whole life.

And then to find out, oh, there's dad, he's back. Oh, and by the way, he did the most evil egregious thing a person can do, which is take the innocence away from a child. And by the way, daughter, if you will have me back, I'd sure love to come back. And so then this whole thing wraps up in a pretty bow and a package and handed to you,

which is you get to heal yourself from all of this trauma and you get to heal all of these things and it all rests on you, which is another trauma. It's kind of like my friends. I've had several friends who get cancer and they will tell me almost worse than the cancer diagnosis is that they are now responsible for making every person in their life feel better. And that's what just happened to you. Now it's your job.

What are you going to say to dad? Are you going to have dad over? Are you going to let me back in your life? And suddenly you, the child, are responsible for healing these adult relationships. Yeah. And so I need, like, I know you know this. I'm not telling you that you don't know. You're clearly brilliant and you have clearly been through, tough as nails.

You've been through a lot. But the trauma is that you've experienced that your body has had to navigate is deeper than just your dad committed an atrocity. It's that since you were three months old, you have been a balloon on a string just floating up in space. Does that ring true with

your body? Does that ring true? I haven't really ever put words into it or put it into words, but yeah, it does. My guess is you are really good at your job and you don't take crap from anybody or you take crap from everybody and you say, I'll take care of it. You're either a war finder or a peacekeeper. Which one are you? I'm a peacekeeper. There you go. I will make sure that everything goes. And when a peacekeeper is a peacekeeper for a long time, the one person that doesn't have peace in their soul is them. And I just want to tell you, I could probably get choked up here pretty quick

if I let myself. I'm sorry this happened to you. Because you're kind of awesome. Not kind of. You're all the way awesome, and you deserved a better shot out of the cannon than you got. And you deserve to be anchored into people who say,

I freaking love Taryn. She's incredible. And if I'm the first person to ever tell you that, shame on everybody around you, but I'm glad I get to be the person to tell you that. Are you married? I am, yeah. Somebody good?

Yeah, very good. A good anchor? Oh, yeah. Do you ever get to put the peacekeeper down and just go full Taryn? Just go full, either it's full rage or full dance or full, we're turning the strobes on and we're turning on the house music and we're going to rock this thing on or full. I can be wildly intimate with this person.

Like, are you able to let peacekeeper go? Probably the only person I can do that with is with my husband. Okay. He's, he's seen me try so hard to make people happy. And I just exhaust myself where I get sick or whatever ends up happening. And he just kind of, he kind of tells me when to just be myself and relax or he'll sometimes he'll come in and he'll pick up the pieces. So I don't have to. Hmm. So here's your work. Your work is not fixing your family.

That was done to you. That's not your job. Your job is to heal Taryn. And man, what a stud that you married that loves you enough to walk alongside you. My dream and hope for you, Taryn, is that in short order, you don't need somebody else

to tell you when you've done enough. You'll be able to trust your body for the first time. You'll be able to trust Taryn for the first time. You'll be able to stand tall and say, you know what I want today? Craziness. You know what I want today? I wantiness. You know what I want today? I want to, we're knocking off work

and we're going to dance until we can't move. You know what I want to do? I'm going hiking until my legs don't work anymore. I want, and that's the work. Because I think you've been nice long enough. And I think you've squashed terror for a long, long, long time. And none of this is why you called, right?

Yes and no. So here's the deal about your dad. Any sort of relationship you do or don't have is on your terms. Your dad cashed in his ticket when he chose to steal the most precious thing from a person, which is their innocence.

From one, two, 20, 50, however many kids there were. He made a choice to say, I am no longer going to have influence or presence in the life of my one sacred daughter. I'm choosing that. And I know he's got demons and I know he's been hurt and evil

and hurt people, hurt people, all that, but he made a choice. I'm choosing this over influence and presence in my daughter's life. And that's a choice he made, and he's got to live with that, and you've got to live with that. Your mom's got to live with that.

The whole ecosystem has to live with that. And you have to let the fantasy go. And this is a hard thing for peacekeepers because peacekeepers live in a fantasy world that if they just do the right things in the right order that everyone else's world will be okay. And that's not real. So you have to let the fantasy go.

That he's gonna come out, you're gonna have this big hugging moment and he's gonna slowly start coming around and one day he'll be able to hang out with your kids and it will be lovely. And we got dad back. That's not real and that's not going to happen. No. You've got to build something totally new.

And you've got to start over with all that knowledge in mind. And if you say, you know what, after doing some work on Taryn, I don't want to be in a relationship with this guy. Don't. No obligation. If you say, for the first two years you're out of jail, you can write one letter to my house a month. I will burn every other letter that comes, and I will not see you in person. For two years, you can write me a letter.

And then maybe I'll meet with your parole officer and see if you are living up to the recidivism rate for this type of sex offender. The odds of him recommitting are very high. Right. And so I get to do whatever I want to do because I'm freaking tearing. Right? Yeah.

And so hear me say, I want you to be completely and totally at peace with whatever you want to do and however you want to build it. And the moment somebody sends you a mean text and says, well, you know what you should, done, blocked, next. The moment your mom says, well, I was hoping we could all get blocked, tech, next. Because for the first time, Taryn's not going to be keeping everybody else's peace. Taryn's going to keep peace inside of Taryn,

which is going to give her husband peace. It's going to give her kids peace. It's going to give her workplace and her environment peace. And then maybe I'll reach out to that guy. Or, hey, tell me I'm all crazy, Taryn. Tell me I'm bananas and say, no, I really, really want a relationship with him. You can do that too, but it's on your terms. Hear what I'm saying?

Yeah, I do. So here's what I want to have happen. I want you and husband to go out. I want you to let him talk. I want you to let him speak into, he loves you. He's walked alongside you. He's seen you hurt. He's seen you cry. He's seen you try to make everybody else's world okay. Both professionally, personally, everybody. I want to get his thoughts on letting dad back in your life. And then I want you to let it go for the first time. Whether you have to write it down, whether you just get a laptop and

start typing, you have permission to type because I have a feeling that a lot will come out and your hand may not be able to catch up on the yellow pad. But right, right, right, right, right, right, right, Taryn. Whew. What do you really feel? Where do you want to go? Where do you want to live? What do you want to do? What world do you want to create?

You've been creating everybody's world for a long, long time, Taryn. Who do you want to be? What do you want to be? Start there. And then decide, I want to let this disgusting person back in my life. I believe in redemption. But sometimes redemption has a slow, long arc. And to anyone out there who hurts kids, God help you. Don't. Stop. Go get help. Quit. Turn yourself in. Whatever.

But stop. Because you don't just hurt the kids. You hurt their entire family systems. You hurt the entire kids' ecosystem. You hurt your kids, your spouse, their kids, their grandkids. That type of evil roils through, just burns through generations. We'll be right back on the Dr. John DeWitt Show. 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, we're back. Dude, if this podcast thing doesn't work out, I'm for sure going to be a professional singer because I'm awesome.

So on a couple of these shows here instead of taking a third call I want to get some of these emails folks because I say stuff all the time and then folks write in like you say this all the time what do you mean by this or by that you always talk about kids have a role

talk about relational IQ what are you talking about? And I think it's fair just to set context with kind of what I'm talking about. So this question comes from Katie. Hello, Catherine. I'm assuming you're a Catherine. If you're just a regular Katie, shake it off. Oh my gosh, I love Taylor Swift too. All right. Katie asks, what is relational IQ? You say it all the time, but I have no idea what it means. I ask that like in a snarky voice.

Like the way I'm reading this is like Katie's like, you're kind of an idiot. Why do you always say this? I don't know what you're talking about. But it could be that Katie's like really brilliant and is like, never heard of this. It's not in a textbook. What do you mean?

Here's what I mean, Katie. Relational IQ is simply, who are you in relationship to those around you? Who's your community, your personal, your neighborhood, your nation, your spiritual community? Where can you be vulnerable? Where do you have congruence and authenticity? What I mean by that is, where can you be vulnerable? Where do you have congruence and

authenticity? What I mean by that is, where can you be fully you? Who gets the real you? Is that just one friend in one place? Is that just your wife, just your husband? Or can you pretty much be the same person at work as you are at home, as you are with your friends, as you are at the grocery store. That's congruence. Can I just be myself in all these places? And if I can't, why not? What have you contributed to this community? What do you contribute to this community on an ongoing basis? And what do you take from this community? Are you a leech? Are you the person that everyone is always pouring into and you just got holes in the bottom of your bucket and everything's always running through you? I need more. I need more.

Or like the last caller, are you the person that makes sure everybody else's bucket is full, even if it means dumping yours out so that they've got something? So when I talk about relational IQ, I'm talking about how do you show up? How do you come across to those people in your life? Whether you work with them, you drive with them, you sit by them at the grocery store, you mow your lawn next to theirs. How do you set boundaries? How do you honor other people's boundaries?

How do you love yourself, your immediate circle? And how do you show up for strangers in the world? And relational IQ asks, how do other people experience me? and how do I experience other people? Here's a good example. I am exhausted. Last night I was up until 1 a.m. finishing up book edits. I thought the book edits were going to take two hours.

It took eight on one chapter, just grinding it out on one particular chapter. Shocking. I talk too much. And so I got it back and needed to cut like 3000 words. So I'm cutting and cutting and cutting and then trying to reorient. And because one section leads to another section, I got to adjust that section and completely cut this one out. And then it's like, nah, I got to put that one back in. Hours and hours and hours. My relational IQ asks, when my kids walk in, am I putting just this thing down and being present with my kids?

I happen to be editing right in the middle of the living room, which made me the epicenter of all these other people, all these other relationships. So I'm this big pulsing, just beacon of frustration and beacon of I'm locked in

and zoned into something. And my kids are bouncing off my electric force field saying, oh, dad's radioactive. Hey, dad, you want to play? Hey, dad, look at this. Maybe if I cry, dad will look at me. Maybe if I break something, dad will look at me. My wife is tiptoeing around the house because she's like, I don't know if that is a bug zapper. I don't know if that pulse of energy is anger or rage

or just completely focused. She's a writer too, so she understands, man, when you get locked in, you get locked in. And, or is that a cry for help? Which is probably a little bit

of all of that stuff. I didn't have good relational IQ last night. Relational IQ would have been, I don't want to be the epicenter of, I don't want my energy to screw up everybody's night. And I know I'm good relational IQ last night. Relational IQ would have been, I don't want to be the epicenter of, I don't want my energy to screw up everybody's night. And I know I'm going to have a night where I got to grind something out for a while. So I should have gone down to the basement.

I should have stayed at work. I should have said, hey, I love you guys. I miss you guys. I'm going to send flowers or I'll be home later tonight. You'll have the best night ever. Go out to dinner and have a great time. I got a project I got to finish. But instead I tried to do it all. That was bad relational IQ because then my son ends up just

going in his room, shutting the door, going to bed early. Like, I'd rather not engage this. My daughter, if she feels tension, she's all in. And then she ends up a crying mess. And then I try to over-solve the cry. And then my wife's like, hey, I've got this. You get back to do it. Which then I'm like, oh, because I can't pay. Bad relational IQ. Good relational IQ is, how am I feeling today? How's the world going to experience me? How do I change my attitude? How do I know, hey, I'm running kind of hot. So if somebody runs in and goes, hey, I need you to do this, that I'm not going to lash out at them and bite their head off. I'm going to say, yeah, let me get right on that. Or, hey,

can you run that by so-and-so? Because I don't have the bandwidth to take care of it today. Relational IQ is knowing how I'm going to interact with other people and understanding that other people may be running hot. So when I say, hey, I needed this a week ago and it's late, and they snap at me going, that's probably not about me. Probably not about me, but I got a lot going on. I'm going to circle back. I'm going to ask you to be respectful when we talk, but I'm going to circle back. Relation IQ, how do I experience the world and how's the world experienced me? And all these areas, personal, neighborhood, nation, spiritual, I know some days, 99% of them, I don't need to go checking on the news. A, it's nonsense. It's bull crap.

It's not real. They're trying to get me riled up. And it's going to make me respond to other people negatively. Not good ways. So I'm just going to roll off. What conversations am I avoiding? Which conversations am I having? Relational IQ is how you show up for those you care about, which should be everyone. How do you respond to conflict? How do you support those you love? That, when I say relational IQ, is what I'm talking about. If you want to have a good relational IQ, it all starts with you going back to yourself and saying, can I identify my body? Can I be honest and understand when I'm bringing my shenanigans,

my pain, my trauma, my lack of sleep, my poor nutrition, my feeling good, my excitement to a situation? And can I respond in a way that is dignified and kind and yet holds my boundaries to other people? What are my boundaries? What does kindness look like for me? What does kindness look like for me? What does respect look like for me?

That's relational IQ. Hope that helps, Katie. Thanks for writing in. Man, I say these things all the time and I don't realize people are like, I don't know what you're talking about. All right, so to wrap up today's show, this is going to be the most controversial thing

I've ever said on the Internet, without a doubt. The song of the day is by somebody universally revered as the greatest songwriter of all time. And he does have some extraordinary songs. But this isn't the best version of this song. The song is written by Bob Dylan, which, by the way, is one of only two live shows I've ever walked out of.

The show is not great. It's hard. It is hard. But I do recognize he's Bob Dylan, and everyone should bow in reverence and all that stuff, wear purple robes and whatever. The song is Don't Think Twice, and the lyrics are incredible.

But I heard it on Mike Ness' record, Cheating at Solitaire. It's a country record. He's the singer of Social Distortion. He had a country record called Cheating at Solitaire, which is an incredible record. And I remember thinking, that is how that song should have sounded. So I just broke all the music rules on the internet. You don't think Bob Dylan is it?

Yes, Bob Dylan's great. But Mike Ness' version of the song is better. The song is don't think twice and it goes like this. Well, there ain't. Oh, by the way, Mike Ness plays offender on the song. I play Les Paul because of Mike Ness and he showed up with a telecaster on the song. Kind of broke my heart a little bit.

Both and, John. Way to use me against me. That was like Yoda chopping off Luke's hand with his own lightsaber. Well, there ain't no use to sit and wonder why if you don't know by now. And it ain't no use to sit and wonder why.

Doesn't matter anyhow. When the rooster crows at the break of dawn, look out your window. I'll be gone. You're the reason I'm traveling on, but don't think twice. It's all right. So great. It ain't no use to turn on your light, the light I never knew, and it ain't no use to turn on your light. I'm on the dark side of the road. I wish there was something you could do or say, make me want to change my mind and stay. We never did much talking anyway. But don't think twice. It's all

right. Bob Dylan is one of the greatest diss songs of all time. Just like this show. See you soon on the Dr. John Deloney Show.