The Dr. John Delony Show - Election Anxiety, Fatherhood Wounds, & Premarital Counseling

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that gives you real talk on life, relationships and mental health challenges. Through humor, grace and grit, John gives you the tools you need to cut through the chaos of anxiety, depression and disconnection. You can own your present and change your future—and it starts now. So, send us your questions, leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291, or email [e-mail]. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode 3:08: Teaching Segment: Dealing with Election Anxiety Blog: How to Deal with Election Anxiety 8:39: I am a very responsible 17-yr-old but feel like I am missing out on the fun of life 17:25: Dad is marrying the mistress he left our family for. Should I go to the wedding and welcome her to the family? 29:57: I just left an abusive marriage. How do I navigate my kids’ relationship with their father? 43:30: I'm getting married soon and my fiancé doesn’t want to do pre-marital counseling 51:52: Lyrics of the day: "Faith" - George Michael tags: election, politics, voting, anxiety, responsibility, growing up, forgiveness, marriage, reconciliation, remarriage, values, faith, abuse, parenting, premarital counseling, engagement, communication 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.

Hey, what's up? On today's show, we're going to be talking about daddy issues. Dads of adult kids, dads of little kids. We're going to be talking about the importance of premarital counseling and getting on the same page with values. We're going to be talking about election anxiety, the stress. And here's the thing. I don't normally tell people who I vote for, but people all over the world are asking me who I'm going to vote for.

So I'm going to tell you right now. I'm voting for you. Hey, what's up? I'm John, and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show. We're taking your calls about your life, about your relationships, about your dilemmas. The goal of this show is to help you rethink, re-examine, reconsider your lives, how you talk to yourself, how you talk to your kids, how you talk to those you love, how to honor those that you don't like,

how to unhook the chains of those who've hurt you and give you next steps for the rest of your life. My goal is to help take you through mental health challenges, relationship challenges, the confusing, always changing science, these basic ways of living that have been way overcomplicated, way distilled down in three talking points or four little fancy ways to way over professionalize, super far removed from normal people like you and me. We talk about love, loss, gut-wrenching decisions, confusing moments, or we may talk about one of my greatest pet peeves on the entire planet. I don't get angry very often. It's just a waste of time and energy. I especially don't get raged out very often. But one thing that makes my insides boil,

like they're on fire, is when I see someone at a crosswalk who doesn't wave. When I'm in a car, which is a giant 2,000 pound metal missile, and I stop, and somebody's got little earbuds in, and they walk along as there's no human interaction, as though they are a snowflake

and I am, I don't know, I'm just a bush. I'm just a tree in the forest, not worthy of eye contact or a wave. You want to change the world, people? Wave at one another at crosswalks. Acknowledge that the person sitting in their giant metal SUV could run you over. Even in their tiny plastic Prius, they could run you over, but they don't because they're kind. It's against the law, but they're kind, right? And acknowledge they're a human and that you're a human and they are worth a little

wave. You want to make a difference? You can vote. Yes. You can feed the homeless. You can help one another. Yes. But start with a wave When you cross a crosswalk, look and make eye contact and wave Anyway, whatever's going on in your heart, mind, or universe Give me a call, I'm here to walk with you Call me at 1-844-693-3291 That's 1-844-693-3291 Or you can email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com

Askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com, askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. And I want to start today's show not going directly to the phones. We've already got calls lining up. This is awesome. But I have a buddy staying with me today, this week, actually. He's staying with me and my wife here in Nashville. And, man, we got to talking on my front porch last night about election stuff and the economy and voting and all of the things and things and things, and I felt

my blood pressure going up. I started talking too much and talking too much, and I'm sure all of the internet apps are recording all of my conversations I'm having with my friend on my front porch, and I was just getting more like, and I thought, dude, stop. Every day you go out to talk to people on the radio, you talk to people in person and tell them to chill out. Control what they can control, right? Anxiety is just an alarm system. Well, here's the deal.

Anxiety is an alarm system. It goes off when you're scared. It goes off when you're disconnected. It goes off when you can't control the future. And that's where we all are right now. In a couple of weeks, we're going to vote. I don't know when this show is going to go out, but when you hear it, it'll be right up against voting time. And voting makes us feel small.

Elections make us feel small. Because here's why. When we control the things we can control, we realize that we just have one thing that we can do. It's like going to the circus and you're throwing ping pong balls into those fish bowls and you're trying to get that little goldfish. And when we're voting, we get one ping pong toss. That's it. And November 7th is going to come and go and there's nothing we can do to change the date. There's nothing we can do to change the outcome other than cast our one vote.

And here's the deal. You have to vote. You have to. I don't want to. I don't care. You have to. It's a part of being a citizen. It's a part of participation.

It's a part of taking ownership in your day, your kid's day, your life, your future. I continue to be moved by memories of pictures, TV shots of countries throughout my lifetime who have gone from various political regimes to democracies. However flimsy and hard and wobbly those democracies are But seeing the lines down the blocks of people who finally have an opportunity to be heard To talk And it's just a big deal You got to participate, right? So if you're feeling anxious, if you're feeling nervous

Here's a couple of things you can do To deal with the election anxiety Number one, make a decision you're going to vote. I just made it with you. We're all going to go vote. Number one, or number two, limit your media intake. By now, you know. You know who you're voting for, period. You are not thinking, I don't know, maybe, oh man, voting day is November 3rd. James Child's in there, not November 7th, it's November 3rd. So yeah, voting day on November 3rd. James Child's in there. Not November 7th, it's November 3rd. So yeah, voting day on November 3rd.

You guys got that. But here's the deal. You already know who you're going to vote for. You know. There's nobody in America right now going, I don't know. You know. So that means you don't have to keep watching. That means you can turn off any of your devices.

I love this term, doom scrolling, where you're just going there looking for things that are going to make you anxious to get you that cortisol hit, right? To get you that anxious feeling, your heart rate up a little bit. If you need your heart rate up, go have some coffee. Go have some coffee, but just turn it off. You know who you're going to vote for. Decide locally. If you want to get some more information, if you want to learn about some things you can do locally in your area, which, by the way, is where you have the most impact, ask about your local candidates, read up on them, read about them, talk to people in your community about them. That's where you're going to maybe

have some ideas. I didn't know about this judge. I didn't know about this representative. But think about things you can do locally and then create a plan for how you're going to get involved. One of the things I'm going to do in my house is I'm going to take my son with me when I go vote. And that might mean I've got to get him out of school depending on when I can get out of here, but I want him to see the lines. I want him to sit in that line and he's 10. It's going to be painful for all of us. All the people in my community is going to be painful for, but I want him to have memories seared into his mitochondria that his dad stood in a long, long line because this was a big deal. I want him to remember how important this moment is and then make time to rest and play, to laugh, to be with your community, to kick a soccer ball around, to otherwise be a human being.

That's what you can control. You get one vote, you get one ping pong ball into the fishbowl, and that's it. Do what you can do and put the rest down, mindlessly scrolling. Who won this? We all saw the debate. We saw who won, right? We saw who won. No one, right? So we all, let's just move on.

Let's do our vote. Let's learn about what's going on locally. Let's be with one another as human beings. Let's wave at crosswalks, and let's try to regain our humanity in the next few weeks. And then whoever wins, we're still going to pump gas next to one another. We're still going to share meals next to one another in restaurants. We're still going to wave to each other at crosswalks. Let's regain our humanity, and let's not go on the offensive.

Let's not go on the curl up in a ball. Let's move forward together. United as one group of people trying to do the best we can. All right, that's it. That's my election rant. That's it. All right, so let's go to, let's start off today. We're going to go to, let's go to Tyler in Minneapolis. Tyler, good morning. How are we doing, good man? Doing well. How are you, John? Outstanding. How can I help you this morning? So I'm 17 years old and I'm a junior in high school. I just feel like I'm starting life too early. I started listening to Mr. Ramsey when I was just turning 16. I really got into financial stuff and life's choices. I put an idea in my mind that I had to live my life perfectly or I wasn't going to be successful.

I don't know if I should just let loose a little bit and have some fun in high school or keep my head down and keep doing my thing. Well, number one, thanks for calling, man. Are you skipping class right now? No, I'm actually, I got contact trace, so. Oh, so you're at home anyway. Okay. Right. So number one, congratulations for being a junior in high school

who pays attention to the world around them. That makes you different than I was when I was a junior. I was just trying to play rock music and play sports, and that was about it. So good for you. When you say, am I starting too early to live my life, what do you mean by that? Well, I just feel like I'm making really adult decisions and not hanging out with friends and like doing wiser stuff that normal teenagers aren't doing. And I feel out of place with everybody else. And I don't have many friends because of that. So it's just, it's hard to talk to people about stuff.

Sure. So let's drill down on that a little bit because having friends and doing fun, silly things and laughing a lot is not against being an adult, right? I have a lot of laughter built into my day. We do silly things. We were pranking each other the other day backstage at an event here in Nashville. We are constantly laughing with the radio team behind the booth here. I mean, I like to build silliness into my life. I also have to show up at work on time, right? I got to get my assignments done. I've got to pay my bills and

things like that. So those aren't mutually exclusive. What's making you feel like you are wiser than the people around you, or you are, are, I don't say superior, but you're doing more adult things than they are? Does it have to do with smoking cigarettes, staying up too late, eating unhealthy food? Like, what are the things that you're talking about? Well, yeah, it's like I don't do any drugs or smoking. I don't drink at all. And I feel a lot of the people around me do that. And I know I heard somebody say the other day that what's the point of driving as a teenager

if you can't drive stupid, but I drive safe and I'm like, I don't, I don't get that. So yeah, that, those are nonsensical, goofy statements that a few loudmouth knuckleheads will put out there, but that the majority of people don't in reality live by. So I'll give you some peace of mind. I've worked with high school students and college students and even graduate students for years and years and years, almost two decades, actually more than two decades. And we used to do this thing called social norming, Tyler. And what social norming was is we would give people real data about what's actually going on in the lives of the people around them. And so when you're 17 and you don't do drugs, you're 17 and you don't drink, you're 17 and you just like to get your homework done and listen to some music and watch a funny show at night and then go to bed. And you're not on the football team and you're not in band and you actually like reading.

You actually like writing. It's easy to feel like you are in a vortex. That you are all alone. That you're the only person because all you hear is the loud people in those high school hallways. All you see is the caricatures on whatever TV show that's depicting high school kids or college kids. Here's the reality. I used to give these statistics. I would do these big surveys of students and it would always come back, regardless of where I was. Way, way fewer people were actually drinking than people thought.

Way fewer people were actually dating and hooking up than people thought. Way, way, way fewer people were actually doing drugs than people thought. And so what happens is a whole bunch of people listen to these caricatures. They listen to the loud mouth in the group or in their class or in the hallway, and they begin to feel small. They watch these TV shows, they watch these movies, and they begin to feel like that's not me. That doesn't depict me.

And I want you to know there are way more people in your school. There's way more people in your school. There's way more people in your community. There's way more people in your state that are just like you, Tyler. Now, are they listening to Dave Ramsey trying to figure out how to start saving money as a 17-year old? Not a bajillion of them, right? There's a lot of adults who aren't doing that. So that makes you unique already, which is awesome. But I want you to not walk down the hall wondering, am I the only one? Nobody's like me. And I want you to walk with your head held high and say, I get to choose how I'm living my life. I get to choose the things that make me happy.

Those things don't make me happy. I don't have any interest in them. And I'm a person of value. And my promise to you, Tyler, is there's other people just like you. So at school, are you involved in any activities? Are you involved in any afterschool events or teams or anything like that? Yeah, well, I'm in sports, I'm in football and baseball, but I'm also in choir and our drama club and our show choir as well. Dude, very cool, man. So you're getting to see it all. I did that too.

I've played sports in high school and college. I was in choir in high school. I did theater in college. I'm going to tell you right now, you are going to feel a little bit weird. I did, right? I remember sitting at football games, I loved my teammates and they would be screaming and rah-rah and they didn't always understand what was happening. And then in choir, there's people that were to the death choir. They were just like those kids on Glee. They were in

it to win it. I never fully got that either. I loved acting and theater and those kinds of things, but there was people who were infinitely more talented than me that lived and breathed that. So you're going to always feel a little bit weird, Tyler, and I want to tell you that's a good thing. You're getting a wide breadth of experiences. You're meeting all kinds of cool, different, wacky, fun, interesting people, and that's going to make your life richer. When you get out of high school and you get into college and you start seeing different folks and having different experiences, your whole world's going to open up. And so, Tyler, I want to give you some peace about who you are and where you are. If you're having fun and you love choir and you love playing baseball, you love playing football, you love acting, do it all.

Do all of it. Get your homework turned in. And then one day, if you don't like playing baseball anymore, don't play baseball anymore. But don't give up on you. Don't give up on your values. Don't start feeling like, I got to start doing these things because I'm like them. Or don't start backing away from people because you just assume they're doing all these things because I promise you, Tyler, I promise you, you're not the only one there. And as it goes to Dave stuff, man, the earlier you can start thinking about money, the earlier you can start thinking, man, I got to go to college in a few years. Maybe I should start saving money for it. Maybe I should talk to my parents about it. The earlier you can make a decision that I'm not going to shackle myself

to a credit card or to debt, and that's going to hang over me and inform my relationships and my decisions for years and years and years and years down the road. The earlier you can do that, brother, you are going to feel weird. You're going to be out on an island, but you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of success. It's going to differentiate you from all the people around you. So Tyler, I'm high-fiving you from Nashville to Minneapolis. I hope that you do not have COVID. I hope that your contract-traced isolation is going to end with a smile on your face. And I want you to go back to school with your head held high.

Walk down the hall with your head held high. I want you to be intentional about making friends and meeting people and getting connected with folks. And double down on friendships, my man. Double down on friendships. They're worth it, and you're worth it. All right, let's go to Micah in Houston. Micah, good morning, brother. How are we doing?

Doing well. How are you? Outstanding, outstanding. So how can I help you this morning? So when I was 18, my dad left our family and moved in with his mistress. At that point, I kind of told him that she wasn't a part of my life, but his life, and I had nothing to do with her. And fast forward to today, I'm 21,

and he texts me and my brother that they are now getting married, and he's kind of been forcing upon us that she's a part of his life now, and in order to be with him, we need to meet her. And I still haven't met her and have been recently being conflicted on if I'm doing all I can as far as accepting him and who he is and also sharing the love of Christ to his situation and if I'm in the wrong or not for still holding what I said before and not meeting her. So why haven't you met her yet?

So one, I never had the opportunity like at the very first of it. It just wasn't a thing and I was kind of oblivious to the affair. But you're 21 now, so why haven't you reached out just to meet her? I'm 21 now. Yeah, why haven't you reached out in the last year or two? And this isn't a judgment question. This is just me digging in. Why haven't you just decided, hey, I need to meet this lady?

She's been with my dad for three years now. Part of it from what I've heard of other people that have known her in the past. Hold on. I know I probably shouldn't. Yeah, I don't care what other people say. Why haven't you reached out? You're 21. You can drink and drive.

That sounded bad. You can drink, period. You can drive, period. You can buy guns, period. Why haven't you reached out to her? You're an adult now. I've just always had an uncomfortableness about it. Okay.

I've never been at a peace. How has your relationship with your mom changed? We have gotten a whole lot closer. Okay. I'd say she's had some medical issues from all the stress and stuff. Sure. And it's been a lot of, yeah, supporting her and her supporting the family. So your dad's getting married soon, and you're in this weird spot. Do you still talk to him outside of this, outside of his recent text message, which is how children communicate

with one another, by the way? Um, it's, I would say it's embarrassing and it's frustrating that your grown father chose to drop this on you via text message, but that's for another show. How has your relationship with him been outside of him leaving your mom and finding somebody new? Do y'all talk regularly? Do you talk on the phone? Do y'all have lunch together? How do y'all interact? We interact on the phone and with lunch. It's very sporadic because sometimes it really can be. It's just easier to love him from a distance and let him reach out to me. Going to school, working, and when I have too much contact with him or I'm talking with him regularly, there's a lot of arguments that go back to needing to meet her and him justifying all of his decisions and

me, you know, saying that I don't agree here and stuff and him just trying to prove why he's right in everything and how he's still in God's will and talking about, you know, trying to correct me as a Christian too. So let's put mom down and let's put dad down and I want to take you in a spaceship and let's go up 30,000 feet above this situation. Okay. Okay? So there's a guy who made your mom cry.

He hurt your mom, right? When you're an 18-year-old young man, he hurt your mom and he's continued to hurt your mom cry, he hurt your mom, right? When you're an 18-year-old young man, he hurt your mom, and he's continued to hurt your mom for the last three years. So you're going to have a natural, built-in, extended middle finger to the guy that hurt your mom.

That's natural and that's normal, okay? And you love this guy called your dad. And in whatever weird way, it sounds like he's still in some broken, fumbly way, loves you and still tries to connect with you and still tries to reach out. He's still desperate for your affirmation, right? He still wants you to make sure this is all okay for him

because he's still conflicted. But he's still your dad and you still love your dad and it it's okay to still love your dad even if he hurt you. And so what you need to do is this. Your dad is a grown man of his own, and he's allowed to do whatever he wants to do, right, wrong, or indifferent. What I will tell you is every marriage has things that goes on behind closed doors that are hard and ugly and messy and challenging. And you will probably never fully get to the bottom of what was in your dad's heart, what was in your mom's heart, what 20 years or 30 or 40 years of them being married was like. You'll never know. You'll also never come around to the fact that what your dad did was okay, right?

That's never going to be something that you make peace with. And so what you've got to do is put down your thoughts about what my dad's doing, what his new wife is doing. You've got to put all that down, and you have to make decisions, grown-up adult decisions for you, Micah. You've got to decide who you're going to be and what character is going to look like for you. And so less about how can I, should I do this for him? And should I be at the, are you going to be a guy? And these aren't judgment questions. Again, I'm just asking questions for you to think through these. This is going to be a loyalty issue about you and your mom. Can I love my dad and still love my mom? Is it, am I going to be abandoning her? Am I going to be

being disloyal to her? If I go to this wedding, if I go meet this other lady, right? Um, are you going to be disloyal and abandon your dad who walked away from you guys, right? Are you going to abandon your dad? If you never decide to meet her? You've got to own the legacy of these conversations. These are character decisions for you, my man. And so when I want to ask you, put your dad's stuff down, put your mom's stuff down. What do you want to do, Micah? Okay.

No, I'm asking you. What do you want to do? I want a relationship with my father. So he has told you, you can have a relationship with me in one way and one way only. And that's if you fully accept this new woman and you meet her and you make her a part of your life too because you don't get me without her. And he's a grown-up and he's drawn that boundary. You may think that boundary is nuts. It may be immoral. It may be violate your faith, like your religious codes, but that's the boundary he drew. And your mom may have drawn a boundary, which is if you loved me,

you will never talk to that woman. And now you're a 22 year old man stuck in the middle of other people's boundaries, which is where we all find ourselves all the time. So I'm asking you not about him. What do you want I want to have my own life a part of immorality and being able to raise my own family the way that I see the Lord is leading me to raise them. Okay. Can you be in contact and in relationship with people who choose different values than you? Or does that mean you're done with them? No, I can't. You can't what? I can be in contact with those people.

Oh, you can. Okay. Yeah. So my question to you, and you're telling this to everyone who's listening to this podcast, which may be like 18 people if we're being honest, right? Will you go to that wedding or are you going to tell your dad, I simply can't accept your new wife. I can't accept that. I still love you as my dad, but I can't be a part of that wedding. Or are you going to go to the wedding and say, dad, I think this whole thing's a mess and tell his new wife, you are my dad's new wife. I don't like how any of this happened.

I'm going to respect you as a person. I don't approve of this. I don't like this. But this is the life that – the cards I've been dealt. And you're going to go to your mom and say, Mom, you're my mom, and I love you, and Dad's my dad, and I love him. However crooked and messy this whole thing has gotten, I'm going to love you both the best I can. Which one of those sounds right in your heart? Probably going to the wedding and talking about how it's not right.

But I'm still loving both of them. Okay. What's your mom going to say about that conversation? She's going to be in support of it. Okay. Do you feel at peace with moving on towards honoring relationships, even if you don't buy in what's going on behind closed doors, even if your values on the front end say, I don't like this? Are you at peace with that? Yes, I am.

Man. A whole lot more. I usually don't think I do a lot of good on this thing, but I think we got somewhere today, Micah. Way to go, man. Hey, here's the thing. I do too. Thank you. Listen, you're 21, and I want to just give you some really great slash not great news.

This is the rest of your life. I really want this job, but it's in this city. I really want to marry this person, but they want to live in this town. I want to have six kids. They want to have two. I want to have dogs. They want to have cats. This is the rest of your life. I want to go to this church. She wants to go to that church. I want to have this kind of friend. He doesn't want to. That's the rest of your life.

And so what often we get sucked into is how can I help this person, especially with our parents? Kids get really wound up in how can I make my dad feel okay? How can I stand my ground, hold my values, be my own person, and also make sure my dad's feeling okay? And so if you can have this hard conversation with yourself, with your faith values, with your mom, with your dad, if you can start having these hard conversations now, Brother Micah, the rest of your life is going to look very different because you're going to get to own what you want, what your boundaries are, what your values are. And then you're going to own those hard conversations done in dignity and with respect and with love. You're not going to be ugly to his new wife if you choose to meet her. You're going to say, hi, you're a person. You came into this situation. It's a mess.

I would have preferred this not be this way, but you're a human. I'm going to treat you with dignity and honor. I'm going to be kind to you. And I'm not going to be disrespectful. I'm not going to become the guy that I watched my dad become. And I'm going to talk to my mom and be honest with her. And that's going to let you live your life with dignity and with respect, hold your values. And if your values end up being, you know what? I'm not going to this wedding. I cannot support anything about this. I think it's wrong. It violates every part of me. Then stand up on your own two feet with your head held high and say, these are my values. This is where I drew the line. And these are my boundaries. And you get to do that, my man, you get to do that. I'm not going to bail you out and tell you what I think you should do, but you get to do that. And I'm proud of you for making hard choices. And it sucks for you,

being a young kid put in the middle of this, trying to make your dad feel better and trying to deal with a mom who's sick and trying to remain loyal. That's hard, but that's the rest of all of our lives. So good for you, Micah. I'd love to know what you decide to do two weeks from now. Shoot me an email back and we'll read it on the show here. I love to hear back from folks when they say, hey, listen, I took two weeks. I took three weeks. I did this, and it's been great. Or I'm still struggling with something, and let's talk again.

So congratulations, Micah. Good for you. Let's go back to the phones. Let's go to Darcy in Denver. Darcy, good morning. How are we doing? I'm doing well, John. How are you? I am so well, John. How are you?

I am so good. So good here in Nashville. So how can I help you this morning? Well, I have just a little advice that I need to get from you. I have a wonderful six-year-old boy and a delightful four-year-old girl. And we just moved out of my marital home with my husband. It was an abusive relationship. And, excuse me, we just moved out five weeks ago. And what I'm struggling with the most right now is my son's feelings towards his father.

I'm trying to give them time with him, with their dad. And because of what has happened in our home prior to us leaving, neither one of my kids want to spend time with him at all. My son is to the point where he will just tell me, Mom, I hate him so much. I don't want to see him. He said, I don't want to see him until November, Mom. I just don't even want to talk to him. And he's very emotional. He has almost had panic attacks getting ready to go see him. Is your son safe?

He is safe now, yes. But, I mean, when he goes and visits your ex-husband, he's going to be safe, right? Yes. Okay. And this is the thing. When the kids go see their dad, they're with me. I'm with them when, because if I try to leave, they both start crying. They, and you know, my husband doesn't, my soon to be

ex-husband, just, he's not, he's not empathetic to what they're feeling. And our son has really experienced a lot of resentment from his dad because of just his own childhood. He did not have a great childhood. And so he sees me as this doting mom on our children. And I think he resents that his son gets the childhood he never got. So I'm stuck here with my own feelings and I'm trying to validate and acknowledge our son's feelings that he doesn't want to go see him, that his dad has hurt us, but he's trying to make things right and is doing all the things I wanted him to do before we left. Right. And so he's like, well, why do we have to go see him? But you don't have to go see him. Right.

So I just, I don't know. So let's, number one, thanks for being vulnerable here. This is a mess. And I just want to acknowledge that sucks. Okay. Yeah. That's not how marriages are supposed to be. That's not how dads are supposed to be.

And I know that's not the picture you had drawn up, and I hate that for you. So a couple of different things here. Number one, I would do the best I could to get out of my soon-to-be ex's head. Okay. Why he's choosing to do things now as opposed to later. He's doing this because he resents me because he, I'm giving my kid the childhood he never had. They call that the fundamental attribution here. When you get into somebody's head and you start deciding why they're doing things or why they're

not doing things, I would just stay completely out of that. That's going to make you crazy. Number one, because you're going to always be guessing. And then you start assigning motives to why he did something, why he didn't. He took them out for ice cream. Oh, because he knows I don't like sugar and my kids. It's just going to make you nuts. And the second thing is it's going to be a cheap way to prop you up. And over the next five weeks, five months, five years, you're going to get really exhausted.

And you're going to get real frustrated. And you're going to grieve the loss of this picture that you had with him as the dad of these two beautiful little kids. You're going to get resentful. You're going to get heavy. And this is just going to be a cheap way to prop you up by putting thoughts in his head and then absorbing those thoughts back into yourself. It's this weird feedback loop. So what I want to tell you to do is just leave his head alone. You've got enough weight in your own right now, right? And so here's a way I want you to think about kids. And Kelly let me know about this call coming today. So I actually called my friend in Texas. She is a rock star when it comes to having hard conversations with children. This is what she does.

And I called her about a few calls. She is brilliant. And I kind of asked her through, how do you have this conversation? How do you talk to kids about these situations? And here's what she said. She said, kids look at themselves as 50% mom and 50% dad. Okay. Kids look at themselves as 50% mom and 50% dad. And when parents get separated and a spouse talks bad about their ex, gets real flinchy around their ex, especially if they're safe, says, I know we've got to go do this. Then the kid starts to dislike or hate 50% of themselves.

They begin to internalize these feelings in ways that they can't understand. And so what Lynn – Dr. Lynn Jennings, she's the rock star who helped me think through this. But over time, when they internalize 50% bad, then the way they justify 50% yelling at people, 50% smashing things, 50% doing drugs, 50% sleeping around is because I am that person, this kind of behavior is what I saw. It is who I am. And it justifies it in their head. And it also gives them some numbing. It helps compress that pain they feel from that disconnection from that other person. And that's how addictions become generational, right? It's just kids trying to backfill the gap of I'm not good. I am disconnected, and it's my fault.

And so when a five-year-old or six-year-old asks, why don't you have to? I say because I'm an adult. Okay. And you're a kid. I would say something like because he he's your daddy and I'm going to be there, but your daddy loves you and daddy makes mistakes. I make mistakes, but daddy loves you and he is working really hard to love you the best way he knows how. And over time, what's going to happen, and this is, again, this is all under the umbrella that your kid is always going to be safe and that your husband is honoring your kids, right?

It's going to be really tough for you to continue to speak positively about him, and you've got to. For the sake of the young man your son is becoming, you've got to. And for the sake of the picture that your son is trying to interpret, he's trying to interpret a guy who loves him and he knows he loves him. And also he scares me to death. And that's a conflicting, hard place for a six-year-old to be. And so you've got to be real conscious to take your pain and your heart and use that with your, or deal with that with your counselor, not with your six-year-old. And that hurt of that other parent, your kids will carry around like a bag of bricks. And so it may be to your soon-to-be ex, hey, I'm going to circle back to you. I'm going to tell you, we're going to have to stay in communication because we're still

parents of these two beautiful babies. And so I know you don't want to hear this, ex, and I know that you don't like it when I tell you, this scares our son. Here's just a recommendation on a way that we can not scare him. And he may say, oh, my son. You'll know that all you can control is what you can do, and you're going to move forward with dignity on this one, right? Okay. Yeah. Yep.

And the best you can to not run him down, as hard as that's going to be, and to say, why do I have to go? And you can look at your son and say, because your daddy loves you. And I know that you love your daddy. And what about when he said this? Yeah, he scared us. He wasn't doing good that day, but he's trying to do better. And it may, you may have to clench your fist behind your back. You know what I mean? And it may be that you're doing the hard thing and you're showing up too just to make sure they get to see your dad. And I'm a big believer in never giving up on somebody and he may turn himself around

and he may get the help and care that he needs. That doesn't mean that y'all are going to get back together. It doesn't mean that you're going to live happily ever after in this family foursome, but it does mean that he might still turn around and end up being a good dad to your kids. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's what I've told him is I just want him to be a better person and a better dad for the kids. So. Is he willing to hear that? It doesn't matter. He hears it. I don't know if he accepts it. I think he wants me back more than he wants the kids, if that makes sense. Absolutely.

Well, and I'm looking into it. I'm kind of probably looking more into it, but he keeps saying, I want us to work. I want to work on us. And I'm like, I want you to fix you first, then I fix me. And then we can be better parents for the kids. And then the worst case scenario is we go through the divorce and we get divorced. So Darcy, are you done? I am, yeah. Okay. And I've told him that.

I know, but I'm hearing an ellipsis in your voice. I'm hearing a dot, dot, dot in your voice. Are you done? I think I am done. Okay. Then I'm going to encourage you to go down whatever roads you need to do to make sure that happens. Okay. Because I feel like if just talking to you for a few minutes on the phone, I'm feeling conflicting.

I'm feeling conflict in your voice. Okay. And I can only conflict in your voice. Okay. And I can only imagine what your kids are experiencing. I can only imagine that your husband thinks he's actually like, she keeps coming back and she's bringing the kids. And that means I'm doing the next right thing. And that means this thing's going to, so if you know, there's a period at the end of your sentence,

then it can begin to be cruel to let your husband live in a myth. Okay. Right? Yeah. And so if you're done, done, done, then make it done, done, done. Okay. And I have told him that, you know, I am done, that we've tried to work. And I find myself wanting to call him when we go do things together,

just the kids and I. And it's just like this cyclical, like emotional thing for our son. And, you know, and I'm like, I have like, what is it in me that wants him here? And it's not even that I want him personally. It's I miss that companionship. Yeah, he was your best friend. He was enough that you grew two humans together and you loved him. And you probably still do love him. And for whatever reason, whatever abuse happened, and I don't want to get into it, but whatever happened that said this is it, then this is it. And at some point, you're going to have to grieve the loss of that Thanksgiving table that y'all are going to have in 12 years that you had a picture of already in your head.

Of your son and his weird girlfriend that he brought home from his freshman year of high school, of college, and your daughter's weird boyfriend at Thanksgiving, and your husband making jokes. That's not going to happen. Yeah. And the sooner you stop living into that fantasy and grieve it and weep bitterly over it and then begin the grieving process, then you start the true separation process. Then your husband's got a chance to grieve.

And then your kids don't live in this weird tractor beam that they're in right now. Okay. You can't experience pain and then automatically just shut off the fact that you love somebody. You can't. Mm-hmm. That is the truth. It just doesn't work that way.

And I know it's so cool. And on the Hallmark movies, it always works that way, but it's just not how it works in real life. Right? I know, yeah. But hey, I want you to know that we're rooting for you and praying for you and thinking about you. It's going to be hard to both deal with your heart and speak positively about somebody as you separate from them, as you begin or continue the journey of raising a young man and a young woman.

That's going to be a lot, right? And so I'm going to, with all of my being, Darcy, get some people around you that you can walk with. You cannot do this by yourself. And I'd recommend a good counselor that will talk to you if you've got good friends. Not that are like, yeah, yeah. Not those friends, but people who will be honest with you and say, hey, you're being ridiculous today. Or who will just show up with donuts. You know what I mean? If you've got a good church group in your community, whoever is around you, right? But find some folks that you trust and you can

hang on to, because it's going to be a rocky, rocky season for a while. Okay. Thank you. Call me back if I can help. We'll be rooting for you. Okay, Darcy? Awesome. Thank you so much, John. No, thank you for being with us, for walking with us, and for trusting me with that one. That one's going to be tough. All right, let's take one more quick call. Let's go to Kristen in Oklahoma City. Kristen, what's happening? Hi, Dr. D. I need some advice. Bring it on. Let's do it. I am getting married in April, and I brought up premarital counseling a few weeks ago, and he was like, nah, we don't need that.

Like, we're fine. Not a big deal. And I kind of just swept it under the table. But it's kind of important. We have a one-year-old daughter, and I would love to have a sound foundation in our marriage. We did things kind of backwards, but we're trying to fix it. And I just don't know how to bring this back up without being kind of like Maggie, like controlling. And I've just kind of freaked out about it now. So why doesn't he want to go? I don't know. He was like, we don't need that. Like no,

nobody ever, like it doesn't work. It's nothing that is for us. Why do you want to go? I think we need it. I think the other, well, about a month ago we were talking about bills. We have everything split down the middle except for our cars and our phones. And we were doing our biweekly cash transfers back and forth, back and forth at the ATM. And I was like, man, I can't wait until we combine our finances and don't have to do this anymore. And he was like, what do you mean? I was like, well, when we get married, we're going to combine our finances. That's what you, that's what you do when you get married. And he was like, uh, I didn't know. I don't think we're going to do that. And then I actually heard you, I don't remember where it was at, but, um, uh, I don't know if it was on the day of Ramsey's or not, but you were talking about when you do get married, you need to make sure you, like your brain is healthy before you start this thing. So I was already thinking about doing starting therapy before that, but then that kind of brought it into a, like a spotlight. Like what else are we

not thinking about that is going to come in the next couple of years that we could address now before we get married that could help us immensely. Kristen, I'm high-fiving you from Nashville. I'm hugging you. I am COVID-hugging you from Nashville to Oklahoma City. I think you're real wise here. So here's the deal. Premarital counseling is wonderful. It's exceptional.

I recommend it for 100% of people who are considering getting married. It's not going to fix any and all problems. What a good pre-marriage counselor does is it just, like you just mentioned, it brings up questions that people who are getting married never even thought of. It brings up value statements that are different than beliefs. It brings up those things that we don't talk about all the time. Or you hear me talk a lot about the difference between words and pictures. Well, you have a picture of a married couple and they just share the same account. And your husband has a picture of a married couple where wife pays all the bills

and I use my money for whatever I get good and dang ready to. Right. And so there's different pictures. And what a good marriage counselor is going to do is just walk you through those conversations so that they don't set your house on fire when you're trying to figure out a new marriage. Um, I, and you've got a one-year-old, a beautiful little baby. Oh, she's the best. best. She'll actually be one on the 22nd. That's so cool. Congratulations. So this is a bigger deal to me than just the premarital counseling.

In three minutes, you've told me of two big value issues. One is I want to do something that's going to bring us together. He blows it off and says, nah, we don't need to do that. And the conversation is over in his head. That's less about the premarital counseling and more about whose voice matters in this relationship. Are we both in this together? What happens five years from now when I want a third kid and he's like, nah, or my mom's sick and she needs to move in. Nah. Like it's, it's going to be, it's, it's a deeper conversation about how we're going to relate together, how we're going to work together, how we're going to be on the same team. And that's a values issue.

Then about the money thing, right? You've heard me, my friend Dave Ramsey here, all of us talking about money is one of the top, if not the top stressor in marriages. It's money. And y'all already launching out of the gate, not on the same page. Yeah. Right. That freaks me out, man. It should. It should. It should be an alarm bell. Yeah. So what you need to do is sit down and have a hard values conversation. And you can't do this when it's a tense moment already. It needs to be something that you plan and that y'all have a deep conversation about. And if he refuses to have a values conversation, then you need to go meet with somebody about what that means for your future.

Okay? And that's a scary proposition. That's a proposition that most people in your situation don't go through with because they say, I've already got a kid. This already is what it is. We'll just figure it out later. And I'm telling you right now, later doesn't come. So freaky, man. Yeah, it's changing the oil on the car while it's already moving.

And y'all are kind of already doing that too. You already live together. You already have a child. So you're already way down the road here. And so you are doing things a little bit out of order, right? It's just a person I want to be with. And this is a good human being. Do we share values?

So you're down the road there. I have a hundred percent confidence y'all can make this not work. You can make this spectacular and extraordinary, but it's going to be. There's just some things that were, like, he's real big on like, what kind of food do you want at the wedding? I don't care. Yeah. Like, well, I want you to care.

This is not only just me. It's our wedding, you know? But some of those are, again, those are values conversations. Yeah. So at my wedding, I honestly, in my heart, did not care what we were going to eat. Yeah. I had a weird thing. You know what I cared about?

Some of the music. And so my wife said, here's what I want you to do. And this is part of our values, right? She gave me the gift of, I'm not going to judge the fact, I'm not going to put on you, you don't want to get married, you don't like us because you don't have an opinion on the napkins. She knew my values were, I love you, we could get married in a gas station bathroom for all I care, I don't care, right? And so, and I valued her to say, these things do matter to you. Let's do it.

And those, again, those are values conversations. I don't put stuff on her in that way. And she honored me in reverse and vice versa. I honored her in the other ways. But when it comes to values conversations, like you've got to be there. I was, that wasn't one I could be like, I don't even want to be there. That was something that was important to her. And that was one of my core values is I want to honor her in the best way that I can. And so that's what I'm talking about. A premarital counselor can do for you guys. That's what a good values conversation can do for you guys.

And, but that's something y'all need to do sooner rather than later. And so that's one that you plan ahead of time and you tell them, hey, we're going to have a picture ceremony, what we want our wedding to look like, but more important, what we want year one to look like. I want to do a, I want us to get together for a couple of like, everyone makes fun of me on the internet. We're going to get together for a long breakfast one Saturday. We're going to go on a Saturday, a long Saturday date, and we're just going to paint a picture of what the next five years is going to look like for us business-wise, financially, where are we going to live. Our kid is going to be six in five years. Oh, that's crazy. She'll be going to school, right? We're going to paint that picture, and we're going to talk about values.

We're going to talk about who we are, and then we're going to work back that way. And it's important that you let him know this is a big deal to me that we do premarital counseling. It's a big deal that we get on the same page values-wise. And if he says, I'm not doing that. I don't care about any of that. It doesn't work. It's stupid. As hard as this is for me to say, that's an alarm for you.

That should be a big flashing red neon sign that says, in the future, I may think things are important and I'm going to get blown off. And that's when you've got to have somebody that you can walk alongside, some people that you trust in your life that you can have those hard conversations about, is this a relationship worth moving forward with? I hope it is. I think it is. I've got faith in this dude. I think he's going to be like, all right, man, I didn't realize it was such a big deal. Let's go do this. That's my hope. I stay comically optimistic about things. And so let's go. I'm rooting for you, Kristen, and for your fiance.

So as we wrap up today's show, man, I feel like I speak in hyperbole a lot. I say, it's the greatest of all time. This, my friends, is the greatest song ever written. This song was so great that he just named the album after the song. That's how good it was. And some people think the greatest songs ever written were written in the 1800s, these big, rich hymns. Nope.

The 1600s Irish drinking songs with these transcendent melodies. Nope. The greatest song ever written was written in 1987. It was released on a one-word album. And the name of it, this song is so good, it only needed one word for the title. In 1987, George Michael brought us the song Faith. Faith, ladies and gentlemen, and he wrote,

but I've got to think twice before I give my heart away. And I know all the games you play because I play them too. And I need some time off from that emotion. Time to pick my heart up off the floor. Oh, when that love comes down without devotion, well, it takes a strong man, baby, but I'm showing you the door. I know you're asking me to stay.

Say, please, please, please don't go away. You say I'm giving you the blues. Maybe you mean every word you say. Can't help but think of yesterday and another who tied me down to lover boy rules. Because I got to have faith, a faith, a faith. I got to have faith, a faith, a faith. And then there's just a lot of faith, right? Man, I gotta have faith. This is the Dr. John Deloney Show.