The Dr. John Delony Show - Difficult Relationships, Drug Addiction, & Military Moving Struggles

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode 8:19: A young lady in our class at church has become close with our family. She has drama after drama, and I need to set some boundaries. How? 22:15: Son has drug addiction and I am tired of battling it.  29:28: We’ve moved many times for military and husband’s job. I am starting to resent him for it. How can I get past this 37:43: Lyrics of the Day: "Alive" - Pearl Jam tags: addiction, family, boundaries, relationships, military, anger/resentment/bitterness, marriage 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.

On today's show, we're going to talk to a couple of people who are struggling with boundaries and people they love. How do you help someone when the help they need exceeds your abilities? And we're going to talk to a young mom who's got three young kids, who resents the fact that her military husband has moved her all over the place, and she just wants stability. Stay tuned. Ayo! I'm John and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show A live show taking your calls about your life We're all trying to figure out what to do next Taking crooked, wobbly steps through

life, through our marriages, through parenting, through all of it. By the way, speaking of parenting, you know sometimes your kids do something that's so good and you are so proud of them. The first thing that comes to mind is straight A's, right? Or helping, you know, an elderly person or whatever the thing is. Helping your husband or wife without being asked, whatever. Well, I had a proud moment. I always want my kids to find comedy everywhere. I do. I want them to find that. And my wife was reading my daughter she's gonna be five soon reading her a story the other night and I'm walking by her room and she's laughing my daughter's laughing and she's laughing in the kid laugh way where it comes from inside your soul it's the

greatest sound on earth the laughter of a child but not just the laughter of a child, but it's when it comes from their chromosomes, from their DNA. It is coming from inside without their laughing hard from their guts. And I stopped and stuck my head in and said, Josephine, what's so funny? And in between gasps of air, she said, Daddy, in this story, she's reading a princess story. My wife is reading it to her. They said, Duke, duty, and dude. Duke, duty, and dude. Somewhere along the way, a duke of something, think the duke of Earl, had a duty, D-U-T-Y, to protect the princess. Dude. And my little five-year-old daughter heard Heard. Diarrhea joke, diarrhea joke, diarrhea joke.

Somehow she equated duty, D-U-T-Y, with D-O-O-D-I-E. She equated Duke, D-U-K-E, with D-O-O-K, I guess is how you spell it. I don't know how to spell Duke. But anyway, my daughter's listening to this princess story, and what she's getting is some great diarrhea humor. And listen, it's probably not the best thing that my kids can already pick that up. But I was proud of her, and I was excited for her, because in between this probably patriarchal story, she found some diarrhea humor.

And listen, everybody, I'm proud of her for it. So as the duke of my show, I've got a duty to tell you when things are funny, and that was funny. All right, so anything and everything on this show, we'll talk about it, even if your kids are finding bathroom humor in classic fairy tales. And listen, I'm working hard to put some joy out into the world. We're all dealing with hard, hard things. I'm not an exception to that rule. Every day I'm working on my marriage. Every day I'm working on trying to be a better parent. Every day I'm trying to figure out how to be a good son-in-law, be a good kid, be a good neighbor. I'm here with you. We're figuring this out together. And so when we can, I'm going to inject some joy and some laughter and optimism into the world. I got this awesome email from

Meredith Boggs. Meredith Boggs. Meredith Boggs. Here's what she writes. John, my husband is obsessed with your show, to put it mildly. Excellent. Meredith, you're already my favorite email of the day so far. His growth over the past few years has made him unrecognizable in the best ways, and so much of that growth is continually propelled by the content

of your show. Thank you so much. All right. So here's what she writes. She goes on to write, let me say it that way. I met my husband, Justin at middle school church camp. We began dating at 16 years old. That's what I'm talking about. I knew those relationships would pay off someday. Mine never did, but boy, I went head over heels at church camp relationships. It's no exaggeration to say we grew up together. We got married and shortly after we moved abroad using our skill set to work for a nonprofit organization that provided medical and surgical care for special needs kids in China. After returning home to the U.S., my husband grew was grew increasingly restless with his job in health care. And we sensed there was something more.

He's the most intensely ADD person I've ever met. He tested in the 99th percentile in college, which explains so much of our four years of dating. He's also a beautiful visionary, and he made a mid-20s career change, diving headlong into the wild world of entrepreneurship and we struggled hard for a season. His ADD became an excuse for his behavior, which I responded to by taking on the role as the adult and his mother, which is so detrimental. His anxiety peaked with the stresses of a startup, creating a wide gap of disconnection that I potentiated by my lack of grace and understanding. I took the backseat to his new business and nearly nagged him to death because of it. Can we just stop here?

Meredith, your self-awareness is extraordinary. Your ability to understand, yeah, your husband's got some challenges and you are bringing gasoline to that fire. Thank you for being a self-aware person. It's awesome. Fast forward five years of therapy and spiritual guidance from mentors,

lots of tears and the hard work of rebuilding. And I don't even recognize the man I was once married to. He's still that ADD boy and the beautiful visionary he's always been, dreaming up crazy ideas every day, but he's grounded and committed. He picks up the phone each time I call. He apologizes quickly. There's no question in my mind what's more important, me, not his business, our marriage, not work. He is wise and contemplative, grounded and intentional, continually leading and loving me. Wow. Justin Boggs, husband of Meredith, my brother, thank you for being an example to everybody out there struggling with ADD, struggling with whatever set of genetics,

what set of behavioral experiences, whatever set of models their parents gave them, their neighborhood, their community gave them, whatever, it doesn't matter. Because every day we got to get up and go that way. We got to put down the past, quit dragging that stuff with us all through our life, leaving a trail of nonsense and broken branches through us. And we just got to go forward. You did that. And my guess, Meredith,

is that you also played a role in his healing and his coming around and your marriage coming back together. When he started working on being present, being plugged in, doing the things that he needed to do so that ADD wasn't an excuse for being a disconnected husband and you quit nagging because nagging is poison. Complaining is poison. It never solves anything. And you put that down and decided to connect too.

And those things work together. And now you guys got a rock solid Relationship Made of rubber bands right because it's going to stretch and grow And stretch and grow but good for you Way to go Thank you for injecting some joy into our lives Some optimism and some hope into our world It's a messy time and we need it

Whatever's going on in your world Give me a call at 1-844-693-3291 Good stuff Rough stuff challenges, all of it. 844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash show. You can fill out the form and we will check it out and see if we can make it work to have you on the show. All right, let's go out to Mary in Miami, Florida. Mary, how's it going and what can I do to help? Hi, thank you for taking my call. I really appreciate your time.

We, my husband and I are married. We have two adult children. Our kids, let's call them, they're 21 and 23, are part of a young adults group at our church. And we have a young woman that has joined the church group, I don't know, eight, ten months ago, and has become pretty involved in our lives. We've always opened our home for young people just to give them a safe place to hang out. We love spending time with them. But this is the most challenging young

person I've, well, person in general I've ever met. And my question for you is, how do we love her without being manipulated and without having her absolutely consume us because I went from opening my arms in my home to when I see her name come up on my phone, I just dread it. In the past 10 minutes, she's already called me two times this morning. So what are things she's doing that's weighing on you in heavy ways, making you want to be the person that you are not, making you want to be a closed door person instead of an open door person? Because I feel like I'm naturally, I guess my gifting is to shepherd people. I come alongside and listen and pray with and encourage. And I feel like that that's being taken advantage of. She's an extreme person. She's mentally unstable. She has pretty much everything under the sun, including bipolar, anxiety. She takes on every possible addiction that there is.

It's almost like she goes in search for them. From cutting her body. She just recently diced herself up. I mean, it was horrific. She is now Baker acted for the fourth time. She's only 19 years old. She has confessed of being pregnant and falling out of a tree and getting in car accidents. I mean, the list is endless and it's all consuming. So she'll send group messages to these young adult groups and have these extremes like, I have to cut. I don't deserve to live. I don't want to be here anymore. Hey guys, I think I'm pregnant. Hey, I think I fell off. I cut my leg on something today. I mean, it's five extreme things in one week at one point. Sure. So it's just too much. Sure. So there's a couple of things here. Some of what I'm going to tell you hopefully will be helpful. Some of it, you're not going to

like me what I'm going to say. Okay. Is that cool? Fair. All right. Yeah. So thing number one is you are recognizing that you're over your head and there is there is a, when people get exhausting, people that we care about, people that we've opened up our home to get exhausting in this way, it's easy to, and dangerous, but it's easy to begin to moralize it. That she is doing this for attention. She's doing this on purpose. And what I'm going to tell you is I want you to reframe it and say, she's doing this because she's not well. And that's a totally different perspective. The analogy I give to folks in this situation is this. If my 10-year-old son comes out of his bedroom, comes into my bedroom, and he says, Daddy, I don't feel good. And he barfs all over my bed at three in the morning. Oh my gosh,

it's disgusting. It's annoying. It's gross. And it's frustrating. I'm not going to sleep the rest of the night. I'm going to have to strip all the sheets off the bed. We're going to turn all the lights on everything, but I can't get angry with him because he did the only thing he knew to do, which was to go to a safe place and say, Daddy, I'm not well. And then the next thing that happened when he wasn't well is he barfed all over me. So I can be grossed out and frustrated, but he came to where I invited him. And so what I want you to do is to not look at this young woman as someone who is trying to manipulate you, someone who is trying to hurt you guys, but you've got someone who's not well and is desperately trying to connect, desperately trying to matter, desperately trying to lean into people in the only language she knows how.

And you guys are over your head, right? This is somebody who's not well in a way that y'all can't handle it. And she's going to go too far cutting, or she's practicing and building up towards something, or she's just cutting and it's not that big of a deal, but it freaks everybody out and it gets everybody's attention and, and, and. So she needs professional help. And she needs desperately a group of adults to sit down with her and say, we love you and we want you here. You can't talk to us like that because we don't have the skills to help you in the right way. And so she doesn't get to blow up your phone and she doesn't get to blow up your whatever, your time with graphic tales, with fall-down tales, with things that she knows y'all can't handle. But y'all have to be honest and open and explicit with her. And she's got to have

people that she can call, whether that's the doctor, whether that's her psychiatrist, whether that's her rehab center, whatever that happens to be. The second part of this is the part you're not going to like. And it's this idea that you feel called, you feel your gift is shepherding people, walking alongside them, being a hospitable place. We love having kids over. We like giving them a safe place. The reality is you like being that person for them. You like having the laughter and the fun and the tears. You like being the go-to person, having people over at your house. That's awesome. Your two kids probably were super fortunate to have you all as parents.

But shepherding really happens when things get hard and inconvenient. And the messy part of being a mentor is 2 a.m. calls. And the messy part of being the open door house is sometimes people come in that open door. Oh man, they're a lot. And so I would, if you're going to be the person who opens your door, if you're going to be the person who is there for folks, don't just do it when it's convenient or when it's not annoying or when it's folks who are mostly have everything together. They just broke up with their boyfriend and they need a place to go unless that's what it is, but call it what it is. Right. Cause my guess is this woman came and she had some struggles and man, initially it was, this person's got a lot.

I'm going to be there for them. And then you found out in short order, your whole group did, whoa, this is a lot. The sexiness, the shine of this wore off real fast and you realize working with somebody with bipolar or borderline personality disorder or suicidality or cutting, those are around the clock, frustrating, exhausting times. And if your mentorship and hospitality runs out just because it gets hard, man, that sends a really tough message to everyone around you. And so I want to honor you guys by saying, yeah, you're way over your heads. You need to call somebody that can be directly involved and you need to let her know here are our boundaries. She doesn't get to drop these things on you, but she needs to know we can't

handle these things and we don't know what to do with them. And so at that point, she's exceeding your boundaries, right? And if it gets to it, then tell her we're asking you to not call us anymore because you were only calling us to drop things on us that we can't deal with. We don't know how to handle. If you are ready to say we don't want you in our home, if you are ready to say, we don't want you around, that's a tough, tough situation. Because then you're going to have to look at your mentorship, your calling, and say, it's got limits to it. And it's only when it's easy, right?

When I say that, does that hit you hard? Does that hit you in a way that makes you uncomfortable, makes you mad at me? Tell me what's going on in your heart and head. No, I hear you. I receive what you're saying. I've already, yeah, I've processed that. There's selfishness on my end. You know, when you get in tough situations or you're stretched, you know, the ugly comes out sometimes and reveals what you're dealing with. So I'm very self-aware of that. But we've gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. And I just don't know how to manage the in-between because when we started out, I mean, this was months ago, it was definitely an open door.

But when you feel like you're being taken advantage of. It almost feels like an abusive situation. And even my husband, he's like, honey, this just feels like you're being abused at this point. And we're all exasperated. The young adults in the group stopped responding to her. They're like, we can't do this every single day. So it wasn't for like, I want to be the person and I'm going to save you. But yeah, there's definitely reward when you can encourage someone and enjoy their company and you can help them feel like a better person, obviously. But I'm not equipped for this. I've told her many times, we've gone from the gentleness, the encouragement, the ideas of how to cope. We invited her for Thanksgiving

because she lived on her own. She's here in our home, but then she takes her bandage off of her diced up arm and she's like, I hope you don't care. It's really hot. She's got this sleeve on to cover it. And then she wears short sleeves, and she talks about it constantly. Gosh, you think everybody is bothered by this? And I don't mean to sound insensitive, but I'm kind of at that point now because we've been doing this for so long. She has a psychiatrist. She goes to Celebrate Recovery. She has a regular counselor.

She has a trauma counselor coach. I mean, she's seeing three people at a time plus CR. So it's not lack of going to help. She's on medication. And I've become like this close person to her, but I don't text or message or call or talk to even my husband and we're close. Right, right. So I don't talk to anybody as much as this person. And I have said, hey, girl, I can't message you all day. I've got to get back to work. You know, those kinds of things.

And so a great gift you can give her because that's good for me to hear that she's got all sorts of other people helping her. A great gift you can teach her now is what boundaries look like, what loving boundaries look like. And so it's going to be explicit saying, if you come to me and show me wounds on your arm, I am calling your psychiatrist. Kick and scream, fight and get mad. I don't care. I'm not equipped to handle that. And I will call your psychiatrist. And it is totally inappropriate for you to take your bandages off at a family dinner that I invited you to. You are not welcome to do that in my home. I love you and I love having you around. You cannot do that. And by holding her accountable, by telling her that I love you and I'm not pushing away, but that's unacceptable. You're going to show her and model for her boundaries that she's never, ever had. You're going to have to be prepared for the

what if. What if she keeps doing it? Are you ready to say you are not welcome here? Are you ready to tell her I will only text you twice a day? You can text me all you want, but I'm going to turn the notification part off on your text. I'll check them when I get around to it. So be it. But I'm not going to let you run my world like that. Teach her what boundaries look like. And it sounds like you're going to have to learn what boundaries look like too. So it may be about you getting with your husband and saying, here's going to be our boundaries.

I'm going to text her once a day, once every other day. We've gotten this world where that ding controls us. No, I mean, we control that phone. I'll respond to you when I'm able to respond, right? And set up those boundaries. Make sure that when you are a person of hospitality, and this isn't just to you, Mary. This is to anybody. If you are a person of hospitality, an open-door person, make sure that applies to everybody who walks in that door.

And that doesn't mean you have to accept blood on your floor. It doesn't mean you have to continue to get vomited on. But if you have an open door, you've got an open door. And people who don't look like you, who have different experiences than you, who are desperately trying to connect with you may just walk right in, right? And that's hard. That's messy. And you've got to have good boundaries, and you've got to have professionals.

You're lucky on this one because she's got so many professional resources that she can lean on, and now it's just a matter of setting up those boundaries. But thank you so much for calling, Mary. This is a tough one. This is tough when you love people, but they exceed your ability to love them. And when they call your bluff, right? Everybody's welcome. Everyone can come into my open door except for you, right? And that's hard.

I'm glad you're wrestling with that because that's hard. All of us who are people of hospitality wrestle with that. Schools wrestle with that. The government wrestles with that. Churches of hospitality wrestle with that. Schools wrestle with that. The government wrestles with that. Churches are always wrestling with that. Who's welcome at your table? Who's welcome there? I love that question.

It's hard and messy. All right, let's go to BJ in Appleton. BJ, what is up? How can I help? I have a son who has a drug addiction. Been struggling with it for, as far as I know, six to seven years. His father died unexpectedly when he was 16. I hate that.

Right after he turned 16, and things started to go backwards after that. And then to a point where this roller coaster, he's put everyone on with his addiction. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. How old are you, BJ? 55. 55. And how old is he now? 27. 27. Is he married? Does he have little ones? He has two kids. Two kids. Mm-hmm. Are they in a safe place? Yes. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Do they live with him, with their mom? With their mom. Okay. So your sons had loss after loss after loss, huh? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And you've had loss after loss after loss huh yeah yeah so can I tell you this BJ you're allowed you're allowed to be exhausted thank you you're allowed to be super frustrated and heartbroken and pissed off and sad and heartbroken again and again and again what are some things you've tried to connect with your son? I'm just, just for the people listening to this, what are some things you've gone through to try to connect with him? He's been through group sessions and counseling and rehabs, and I've been there with him.

You know, I've attended his rehabs. I've attended his group sessions. You know, I visited him when he was in jail. Always let him know I love him and support him, and I'm there for him. And so he has the tools from previous group sessions and counseling sessions. He knows what to do, he just won't do it um and i've told him several times i think if he saw a therapist and talked about the demons that haunt him it would do a great deal for him but he just he doesn't do it do you see somebody i do okay. Okay. Is that helpful? It is very much.

Okay. So you're at a place now where no parent wants to be, and I'm just going to be honest with you and tell you the truth, okay? Mm-hmm. There's absolutely nothing you can do for your son other than continue to love him and to draw firm boundaries that keep you safe and you well and you whole. You can't make him see a counselor i know you know these things and i'm telling you i'm saying these things out loud for

the listeners as much for you but until he decides he wants to get well and whole he's not going to get well and whole and anything in between that is performance right and it's going to fall down and it's real frustrating that he won't get clean for his kids. It's real frustrating that he won't get clean for his ex. It's real frustrating he won't get clean for you. But he won't. I know. I know.

And he's an adult. He's an adult. I can't make him do anything. But it's still that mama bear mentality that wants to love him and protect him and help him in any way I can. And it's frustrating to just stand and watch. It is. The best way you can love him right now is to take care of yourself. And that means sitting down with your therapist and say, I'm ready to draw hard, hard boundaries. I'm ready to create a life, reverse engineer a life of where I want to go, where I want to be, not just constantly in response to my son and his addiction, his challenges.

And you build that world back, and that may not include him very much. Who knows when he's going to decide to turn it around. He's had a supportive mom. My guess is even before your husband passed away, there's probably some demons way back there that he's experienced, that he's working through. But man, that's tough loving an addict. I can't think of no other thing because it's like having a funeral to someone who's still walking around. And for you, this is loss on top of a loss. You lost your husband. You lost your partner in crime.

You lost your marriage. And now you're watching a ghost of your son walk around, and it's heartbreaking. And I wish I had better news for you other than you've got permission to be exhausted. You've got permission to, at 55, build that life. And you can. It's not too late. And you're not going to not have a hole in your heart. And you're not going to not hurt desperately.

But you can begin to work towards the places you want to go, the person you want to continue to become, the grandma to those two baby girls that you want to become. You can work towards that. And hope upon hope and pray upon prayer that he falls down on his face and decides, I'm ready. I'm ready to go see somebody. I'm ready to do the hard trauma work and work through this stuff because I'm worth it. My kids are worth it. My mom is worth it. My future is worth it.

But love comes with risk and it's hard. I hate that for you, Bobby Joe. I hate it for you. Ugh. I can't think of anything worse I mean I'm wrapping my head around it I guess the death of a child is The worst thing a parent can ever experience

But close to that is An addicted child And if you're listening to this And you've got addiction problems If you've got a mom or dad Who didn't treat you right If you've got a mom or dad who did treat treat you right, if you've got a mom and dad who did treat you right, hear me say you are worth getting well, man. You're worth not having to use.

You're worth not having to eat. You're worth not having to fill in the blank for your addiction. And it's going to be hard to get there. But it's worth the journey. It's worth those hard conversations. It's worth those hard counseling sessions. It's worth painfully changing your behaviors and falling down and scraping your knees and your face and hurting relationships and getting back up and getting back up and getting back up. But it's worth it.

It's worth it. It's worth it. And I hope you heard the exhaustion in BJ's voice. Hope you heard the she's tried and she's tried and she's tried but doing it for somebody else isn't going to work you got to do it for yourself and you got to know that you're worth it we have a culture that is so addicted to everything

you're worth being well you're worth being well thank you so much for that call Thank you so much for that call. Thank you so much for that call, BJ. All right, let's go to one more. Let's go to Allison in New Orleans. Allison, how are we doing this morning? Good. How are you? Good, good, good. How can I help? So I'm really battling myself right now with a regretful decision, a big decision that my husband and I have made. He retired from the military a year ago and we had planned on always settling back home near my family. I'm the only child. I'm very close with my mom. She's my best friend. And he had a job lined up and everything.

Well, he ended up getting a better job offer in a state we used to live in. We were stationed there before. And we jumped the gun and decided financially, we're going to do it. And we moved to this other state. That job fell through. I did not get it. And now he's doing the job now. He's a police officer. He's doing the job now that he had lined up back home near my family in Virginia. And I just feel like the past year, I just, I don't know what's wrong with me.

I just can't move beyond this. it's been, it's been hard. So did, does he not want to move anymore? Is he loving this new police department he works for? No, he does. And I'm very grateful for this department, you know, with everything going on, we are very lucky to be where we are right now. The community shows nothing but love towards them. He is flourishing and I love watching that for him. It's been his dream job. Um, but we do have three children and I am the only one, not his fault, but I'm the one

that has to take our kids to their games and their school events. And I don't have support with my family. It's just mom still after a whole military career. And I struggle with it every time. So have you, not in a moment of frustration, not in a moment of rage or anger or exhaustion. Have you sat down and talked to him about it? I have, and he would move in a heartbeat. Okay. So why don't you move? I think it's my kids. I always said I wanted to settle, be settled when my oldest started middle school. Okay. He started middle school the year we moved here. So he's now in seventh grade.

We've got a fifth grader and we've got a second grader. And I just want stability for them. I am tired of moving. I know, but listen, you're not stable. A mom who lives a life of regret and who lives a life of constant frustration, I'm telling you, those kids are absorbing that. And you've heard me say this, and I'm going to say it a thousand more times before Dave Ramsey fires me someday. Those kids feel that on you, and they backfill that gap between you and them with it must be their fault. And they will spend every waking moment trying to make sure

that the relationship with mommy's okay. And they're not going to do it on purpose and you're not doing it on purpose. But if you've got a situation where your husband is ready to pack up and go, you were blessed in this season. You had, man, it's been a gnarly year for police officers, good and bad. And he had a supportive group that trained him and taught him and rallied around him and a community that supported him. What a gift. And you've got three healthy kids bebopping along. You're exhausted from moving.

I've got all that. But they need a settled mom. They need a settled mom. And they need a mom that feels good. Here's the thing. You need to make sure that your picture of what Virginia is going to look like is real, and it's not a fantasy. Well, that's the problem. And that's hard for a military spouse, right? I mean, you've lived a nomad's life. That's really tough. But at some point when you decide I'm going to be settled, you're going to have to plug in and make new friends, make new community, be vulnerable with people that you don't know, and continue to lean into that. And if your family does that for you in Virginia, awesome. I just talked to so many people who it's just going to be that way once they can just get wherever they are going to go.

And the worst part about moving is that you're going to go with you. Right. And if you're a person who's not settled, who hasn't been settled, who's got regret in her heart because her husband's moved her around, the U.S. government's moved her around, that's not just going to go away when you land in Virginia. No. And I mean, my husband says he'll move, but he does not like Virginia. Right.

So I think that's part of my hold back too. He loves it here. Great. Great. But he's really going to love a wife who doesn't feel like a martyr. And he's really going to love a connected family. And at some point, somebody's got to give. And if you are living less than, if you are living a life of regret, of just, I tell you what, man, I can want to live in a lot of places,

but the place I want to live is where my wife feels like her best self right now your best self in many ways is a choice you've got to decide to be fully you wherever you are admittedly that could be easier with family and connection and all those things right so if you've got a guy that's willing to go and you want to make one more last move, make one more last move. You deserve that. He deserves that. Your kids deserve that. But it's not going to solve everything. And when you get there, you're going to have to decide, I am plugging in and I'm growing roots. And I'm going to have to do the work to not be a bitter wife,

not be a frustrated person. What's past is past. We did move our kids around a lot. I've moved around a lot. I lost 10 years or however many years of relationships, of connections, of whatever, whatever, whatever, partridge in a pear tree. We're moving forward.

So I'm going to invite people to come to games with us. I'm going to invite people to have meals over at our house, especially when my husband's out working the late shift. I'm going to invite family members over. I'm going to go see a counselor so I can learn new skills on how to plant deep roots. I'm going to be plugged in. Because it may be, Allison, that a move is going to really be great for you. It was for my family. It was really important. It was good. And when we got here, we still had to realize that we came with us. And we still had a ton of work to do, my wife and I, on reconnecting and relearning how to be married again. And really that's happened every time we've moved to new cities.

Good for your husband for loving where he's at, but being willing to pack up and move. Good for him. I say you all start looking at real estate in Virginia and he needs to get his application in ASAP and you all need to go for it. When you decide to move, when you finally move and land there,

probably six months, right? I want you to call me back and let me know how you're doing. Call me and let me know how your family's doing. Call me and let me know how your marriage is doing. But I want you to go. Let yourself off the hook. Don't be the martyr. Just go.

Awesome. Good for you. I'm excited for you. All right. As we wrap up this show, I'm going to pull in one of the greatest songs of all time from the 1991 album. Not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, but the 1991 album 10 by one of the greatest bands of all time, Pearl Jam.

And their classic song alive, Eddie Vedder sings. Son, she said, have I got a little story for you. What you thought was your daddy was nothing but a... While you were sitting home alone at age 13, your real daddy was dying. Sorry you didn't get to see him, but I'm glad we talked. Oh, I'm still alive. And while she walked slowly across a young man's room she said I'm ready for you why I can't remember anything to this very day except the look that look oh you know where now I can't see I just stare something wrong she said of course

there is you're still alive she. Do I deserve to be? Is that the question? And if so, who answers? Who answers that question? Whoo! Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder. This is the Dr. John Deloney Show. you