The Dr. John Delony Show - How Do We Close Our Open Marriage?

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

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For the last 10 years of our marriage, we've been open for swinging. I've always had a, just kind of a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that it was wrong. We're both born and grand Christians. We both grew up very conservative, met at Bible College. Who brought it up? He brought it up, of course. No way, really? Yeah, I know. It's shocking.

Hello, everybody. This is John with the Dr. John Deloney's show coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm a real person. Not a robot. I'm a real person talking to real people who are going through real challenges with their relationships, their mental and emotional health, their kids, their marriages, dating, whatever they got going on in their life. They pull up a seat and we figure out what's the next right move. That's what this show is about. If you want to be on the show, I'd love to have you, John, Deloney, D-E-L-O-N-Y, John Deloney.com slash ask. Ask, fill out the form, and we will holl back girl at you and get you on the show. And yes, I get DMs from all over the planet. We do take calls from the UK, from Australia, from Canada, from all over the place, right? Wherever you're calling in from, we'll figure out a way to get you on and love to talk to you about what's going on in your life. All right, let's talk about your marriage. Right now. Now, we have February and October weekends on sale for the money in marriage getaway. It's the best marriage retreat on the planet.

Tickets start at $749 a couple. Get yours at ramsysolutions.com slash getaway. Let's go to Baltimore, Maryland, and talk to Catherine. Hey, Catherine, what's going on? Oh, hi, Dr. John. Thanks for taking my call. Of course. What's going on?

Not much. I had a kind of a question that I wanted to bounce off of someone, and I'm a big fan, and I thought maybe you could give me some good advice. I would love it. Let's go. So my husband and I have been married for 20 years. We've got four kids. We're very happily married. We've got issues, but nothing, earth-shattering or out of the ordinary, I guess. Um, we do have, for the last 10 years of our marriage, we've been open or swinging. Okay. And since that started, I've always had a, just kind of a nagging feeling in the back of my mind

that it was wrong. And we're both born and grand Christians. We both grew up very conservative, met at Bible college. We were virgins when we got married. So this is obviously a huge step not in that lineup for us. And it was. I mean, we, we bit up. It was a series of conversations over months and months and months before we even got to the place where we were willing to even try something.

Who brought it up? He brought it up, of course. No way, really? Yeah, I know, it's shocking. He was, he's a big researcher. He loves to read. He loves to study. He keeps a very early study time like he did in college.

And so he loves to read and loves to learn. and in his learning and reading after we had kind of gotten out of a very strict legalistic conservative background, he was reading about how sex is maybe a little bit different in the Bible than what we were taught, which is basically it's bad unless you're married, and then that's basically the end of it. So it took him on a really wild journey of studying just everywhere in the Bible that talked about sex, and he was like, I don't think sexes is cut and dry as we've been led to believe it is. So that led to a lot of questions on his part and maybe a pendulum swing to the other direction where he thought, um, was thinking that we could open our marriage as long

as we were both consenting adults and there was no lying and everything was up front. And I wasn't so excited about that. I, I definitely felt that I had everything I needed in the marriage and that I wasn't interested in exploring anything. Um, and he, that basically, over several months kind of convinced me that maybe this was a good idea. And as the conversations continued, I realized two things. I think he was going to do something anyway. And maybe he needed to, or felt like he needed to have some experiences outside of me that he was very curious about. And he didn't want to do it without my knowledge or consent. So this was maybe a way to do that. I don't know. It's been very, we've talked a lot about it.

it in a lot of circles. Anyway. I'm sure you have. By the way, I'm going to pause here. If he was on the phone, we'd be having a radically different conversation about... Yeah. I'm trying to give him very a lot of benefits of the doubt. You are, you... I don't know whether you're delusional or you are honoring, right? I don't want to talk about somebody when they're not sitting here.

Either way. Awesome, cool. And we won't talk about... We'll get into his... Well, let me stick with my own side then. So anyway, I was not convinced that it was a good idea. Okay, but you went along with it. And eventually I decided to kind of go along with it and see what happened, basically.

Hold on. When you say go along with it, was that you finding people to be with two, or is it letting him do his thing and still come home? So it was very much a two-way street. He did not want it to be one and not the other. Okay. He actually said he kind of felt bad for me that I was. was his only experience, or that he was my only experience ever with anything in intimacy-wise.

And I told him I was just really happy with that. And I wasn't really curious. And he was like, yeah, but I think he might be. I'm like, okay, yeah, maybe a little bit, but not enough to go do something about it. Right. But for him, he wanted to go sleep with other people. And for it to be okay for him, he needed you to sleep other people so that he could sleep at night. I think so.

Okay. And we were in a place in our marriage where he was traveling a lot for work every week. I would come home alone with the kids. He would come home very sexually frustrated after being gone for so long. We would always fight, you know, because the tension was just ridiculous. And the solution was if we just both slept with other people, then that tension would be gone. It didn't start that way, but it ended up being that. And it actually, I think, really helped us a lot.

and he didn't he was very fair he didn't want to be going out having fun without me having something at home so he worked very hard to make sure I was comfortable and like knew what was going on he didn't sneak around our communication improved because we were talking a lot about sex and what we wanted and trying to be very honest with each other and in that honesty I did realize that I was just having all these nagging feelings of doubt and guilt about all of this and I brought that up to him and he um we taught we've talked about it many times and he was kind of like are you sure you're guilty because you seem like you have a lot of fun in the moment I was like I do have a lot of fun in the moment but then I feel empty like trying to

survive off Twinkies like it's just not fulfilling in the long run it's fun but it's not it's not a need I guess it's just fun and that's what it's become and um just through my own personal of scripture. I'm really at the point where I feel like it's wrong and I don't see it as being God's prescription for a healthy marriage. And I want to be done like myself. And I think he would be honoring of that if I want to bring it up to him, which I will be eventually he'd honor me not participating. But of course, I would prefer him not to participate either. And I think that is where I come up to a problem because all this time I've had this. this nagging feeling about

it being wrong but I've agreed to it anyway so why am I like standing up for it now I guess yeah gosh the gas lights are burning so brightly in your home it's blinding and let me

let's take sleeping with other people off the table right because consensual non-monogamy is this big thing and it's people rationalize it in a million different ways and we're just two grown-ups and we can do whatever we want, blah, all that stuff. Right. Give me another example in your house

where you feel strongly about a thing. Raising kids, how you spend your money, going on vacation, dealing with in-laws, whatever. Where you have a very strong feeling about it and he, because he's, quote unquote, studying, or he is, quote, unquote, smarter than, or he's a great word smith, has convinced you that the way you see this thing is inaccurate? Okay. We've been going to church our whole life, and we've moved from church to church to church

more times than I care to remember. And usually because, because something has been taught or handled in a way that he doesn't think is healthy, which I agree with, but I don't agree that it's a reason to leave. And so... Give me something not faith related. What's that? Give me something not faith related. Okay.

That's really hard to find. Really? Y'all are in total alignment on everything else? Oh, no, no, no. But just kind of faith is like the line through everything for both of us, not that we are in agreement. Um, okay. Here's what I'm hearing. Kids and just kids in discipline. Great. There's another one. We'll talk about that. So you have a thing in your guts when he yells at your kids or he spanks your kids or he like walks away from your kids, whatever. And there's a nagging sense as a mother. This is not right. Or I don't like it like this. And he then throws a Bible verse at you or, uh, I've been studying this. And this is the way they, whatever. There are a few things like that

I believe it's our job to be the parents and the children are the children and we should be the ones making the big decisions in our household and it is not the responsibility of the children and on certain issues he will say okay the kids what do you think and let's pull the ideas

which for some things is okay like what game do we want to play tonight or what movie should we watch that's fine but I mean we're talking big decisions like moving to another state or things like this. And I'm like, this is not their decision. Right, right, right. And he's like, well, I just want to see what they think. I said, yeah, but now our daughter is upset because she thinks because she agreed to the

move and she's moving away from her friends. It was her fault for agreeing. Like, that's not, yeah. That's not her responsibility. We shouldn't be putting that on them. And he kind of disagrees, and I don't know if it's because of the way he was brought up or whatever. He usually doesn't throw a Bible verse in it.

He's just like, I want to know what they think. So here's what I'm here. He's very much of preference. And I would say this if he was here, and not actually not even in a judgy way, but just in a fact way. He has an allergy to maturity. He has an allergy to discomfort. And what he will do is use any tool at his disposal, children, the Bible, anything that will justify him not. doing a thing that he finds not pleasurable or uncomfortable.

Of course sleeping with people feels good in the moment. It's sex. Right. And when I look at you and say, till death to his part, I do, I am anchoring into bedrock, into concrete, that you are my person and my pushback is you don't have to have sex with other people to work hard on your communication right you don't have to have sex with other people to deal with the root of the issue which is you work a lot when you're gone and you're not present in the home and I'm stuck here in the house with these kids when you're off and by the way my life is very similar to that I'm on the road all the time I get that I get being frustrated I get being lonely I get coming home into the rhythm of a household that is moving on without me because I'm gone and we have to

figure out ways to come back together and you don't have to go bang other people for that you see get what I'm saying and absolutely it is hard it was hard looking at my two kids saying hey y'all have a community y'all have friends and I am got a new job I am moving y'all across the country and watching them cry watching them be sad watching them struggle meeting new friends at a new school watching my wife have to figure out because I'm right on the road again like how to like internet service and light bills and why is this company right but that's mine to own not to put it on them too so they have to carry a little bit of it also right you see what I'm saying it's my job as a husband and as a dad to co-create a world with my wife where my life

isn't. In fact, it's the opposite of comfortable all the time. I have little glimpses of comfort amidst great discomfort because that's what I took on. Right. And this is a person, and by the way, this is the pot talking to kettle on this one, I bounce from church to church to because at some point in a faith community, faith requires accountability. And when the pastor would say something, or the Sunday school teacher said something that might be in the Bible, but I don't like it, then I can, I'm a good word smith. I went to a lot of grad school classes. I can work my way around it. And so when I got to Nashville, you know what? This was the big moment for me. When my daughter was born, after multiple miscarriages, years of us trying,

I reached out to a couple of men that were kind of paternal figures for me in my church growing up when I was a little kid. And I realized in that moment, oh, my arrogance and my not wanting to be held accountable by the community, by the way, I signed up for, I signed up for this faith community, I have robbed my son of these relationships because I keep moving every six months to a new building, to a new building, to a new building. Right. Not trying to find truth and not trying to find growth, but trying to find comfort.

Right? Right. All that to say is you can't change any of that for him. Right. What you have to do for the first time in your marriage is say, I am finished. And here's what I am finished means. I'm not sleeping with anybody else. The marriage we had is over. I want to build a new one where fidelity and integrity means something. where we are the adults in our house and we work hard together doing hard things feeling

uncomfortable for a greater good and that also means i'm not going to be married to somebody who is having sex with other people whether you tell me about it or not because i am selfish i want you for me just like we promised ourselves at the altar when we're going to make big decisions about moving across the country or taking new jobs or changing schools or what, going on Christmas vacation, we as the adults are going to own that and we are going to tell our children

what we're doing. I'm not going to make them carry a piece of that because their little backs and legs can't carry that kind of weight. Yes. Right? And you know as well as I do that's 55 different things.

Being a part of a faith community means purposely putting yourself in a position to be uncomfortable because that's the only way you get stronger and grow. It's like going to the weight room and taking all the weight off the bar. Right?

You can do 500 reps in a gym if you don't have any weight on the bar, but you're not going to get any stronger. And there's academic ways around everything these days. Look at our government right now. It's still shut down as of this recording because one side is saying this is true and the other side is saying this is true.

Right? You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. So I want to free you of this is the way we've done this stuff. This is what I agreed to. And I appreciate you being like a grown-up saying I didn't like it, but I said okay. And not only did I say okay,

I wouldn't sell up with other guys. I've done, I've participated in this and it ends today. yeah and you have to hold true that he may walk out the door on you because his sexual appetite with other people

is more important to him than fidelity in your marriage yeah he might yeah that's a hard one to swallow I know he might and so it's you saying okay I'm an adult

and by the way I'm so proud of you for owning your choices like owning them not just being like he made me You're saying, nope, I did that. I went to another dude's house on multiple occasions and stuff with other days. Cool. And as of now, that's over.

Tell me what scares you to death about making that stand for yourself and for your marriage, for your kids, for honesty. I'm afraid it would end everything. if that's the case, I want to tell you that the marriage you think you're holding on to is already over. It's over. You're just getting dragged behind it.

Okay. I'll tell you, man, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for owning it. I'm proud of you for standing tall as an adult. And I'm proud of you for saying, I want things to be different going now. the marriage you had is over and by the way it's been over for a long time the question is can you sit down and say moving forward i'm done with this world i'm done with this life that we've been leading and here's what i want for us going forward i hope you will rebuild the marriage with me and standing in the hurricane of whatever the response is going to be my hope is he says i'm with you we're going to figure this out i get by your silence that he probably won't, but you're worth that. You're worth standing on the truth.

And finally, for the first time since you're a little bitty girl, saying, I'm going to do what's right for me, which I think ultimately will be what's right for y'all. Thank you so, so much for the call. Appreciate it. You're a brave, brave woman. We come back. A woman asks how to tell her daughter about her mom's past affair without hurting everybody's relationship. This time of year, we're giving our time, our money, and sometimes without meaning to, we're giving away something way more personal, our data. That's why I recommend delete me. I like a good deal as much as the next guy, but I want you to remember that every email

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slash deloney. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, the holidays are a time of traditions. Some traditions are great and some traditions have run their course. It's a great time to reflect on those traditions and what they really mean to you and to ask yourself, is it time to begin to create new traditions on your own. Therapy can give you space to create new traditions, reflect on the old ones, and most importantly, take time for yourself. If you're thinking about therapy, I recommend better help. They've served over five million people globally with an average rating of 4.9 stars out of five. BetterHelp is totally online so it's easy to fit into your busy holiday schedule. To get started, just answer a few simple questions, and they'll connect you

with a licensed therapist who fits your needs. And if it happens to not be the right fit, you can change therapists at any time for no extra cost. This month, start a new tradition by taking care of you. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloni to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Deloney. Okay, let's go up north to Toronto, Ontario, and talk to Elizabeth. Hey, Elizabeth, what's going on? Hey, thanks for having me today. I really appreciate your help.

You got it. What's going on? Yeah, so my daughter is 15, and she's very perceptive about people in relationship. She's a really intelligent kid. And I recently learned from my husband that she overheard a conversation between some family members about some sort of quote-unquote mistake that my mom made in the past. That was an affair, but she's not aware of that yet. So I know that she doesn't know all the details. She didn't hear all the details.

But she went to my husband and basically asked, did Grandma make some sort of mistake in the past? So my husband came to me. He said to her that it wasn't a story for him to tell, but he would talk to me about it. But that kind of brings us to present day, and we haven't gone back to her to say anything because I just feel really puzzled about first of all what would be appropriate and I'm also just concerned about her relationship with her grandmother

and yeah I love this question I'm going to talk at a 30,000 foot view real quick and give you a landscape of how important this is and then give you some tactics okay okay here is the 30,000 foot umbrella that we need to make sure we tackle ASAP okay okay this amazing 15 year old girl that you have um overheard a family secret every family has them yeah and she did an amazing thing

which tells me that you have you and your husband have done a really fantastic job of creating a relationship with with your daughter bravo Okay. Because this 15-year-old came to one of you and said, hey, I heard this thing. Is this true? Mm-hmm. Okay. So the meta, the umbrella concern I have right this second is every minute y'all don't respond back to this 15-year-old, she's getting the message that some things are not okay to ask mom and dad.

Right. And then what happens next year when her boyfriend pushes her a little bit too far? or when she's heading off to college and she maybe doesn't want to go to college she wants to take a gap here she knows in her nervous system there are some things the bigger they are

the more I cannot go to mom and dad and so we want to do is go directly through the middle of this and so when you and your husband sit down and talk to her and I think it's important that y'all go unified on this one because she went to him is

y'all say we want to take back how this played out. You can always come to us and I want your husband to have the courage to say and by the way, I have said these exact words in my house by the way is to look at, and I have a 15 year old too. Look directly at your 15 year old and say,

you came to me with a big thing and I kind of whipped out and I'm sorry. I froze. You can always come to us and this is us making this right. Okay? and I would add on the things I just said and you can hop in and say

there's going to be a boyfriend and you're going to have a bad experience with him and I want you to know you can always come to us you're going to learn other family secrets and you can always come to us one day you might accidentally stumble on text messages flirty gross ones that your dad sent me and you're going to freak out

and I want you to be able to come to us right and so it's starting there the second part of this is the tactical part and that is this you can't protect your mom from her past decisions what you can do is protect your daughter and your relationship and you can do that in an honoring and dignified way and the only way to this is take these words with you and put them etch them into stone facts are your friends and calm is contagious. Okay?

It's as simple as. So you overheard about the big secrets about Grandma, what'd you hear? I don't know, I just heard that Grandma made a big mistake one time and this and this. And actually probably based on your husband's reaction, she's probably going to say something like, it's no big deal, Mom. I don't need to know. And it's for you to say, actually, yeah, you do. You're 15. It's time you learn.

Mm-hmm. grandma yeah it's kind of I figured I mean we're kind of at the point where she I feel that she does kind of need to know she does some of what the fabric of our family that's it that's it and so what we're going to say is we're going to say facts of your friends and what do we mean grandma I don't know what the story is I'll make up one just for fun we lived in a small town and there was a really handsome farmer that came over and cut hay for us and grandma had eyes for another farmer and she had a fair in our little town and it caused a big old stir and your daughter's eyes will get huge and say grandma made a mistake now when i say facts of your friends we're going to say

grandma had an affair grandma made a mistake we're not going to say grandma was and we're going to throw in a bunch of character assassination terms right and what you're going to get the and you're also going to be able to say and grandma i don't know if she did she make it right did she say she was sorry, did she bury it? I don't know if you were in a huge city or in a small, like, what was the, what was the jet blast after, or the, the blast radius of all of this? Well, it was pretty far reaching because it was the pastor of our church. Gosh, nice, nice. Okay. Yeah. Even better. Okay. So, I mean, if she didn't hear it through one of us, it might come some other way to her.

It will. And in addition to, coming to her, she's also going to have the added burden of, I have no one to talk to about this. Yeah. And in this day and age, you know what she's going to do? She's going to go to chat, GPT, on how to deal with it. Yeah.

Or worse, she's going to say, oh, my parents think I'm stupid. My parents think I don't understand these things. My parents think, I don't know anything about filling the sex, fill in the blank. And, I mean, she's listening to enough Taylor Swift's song. She gets it, right? Yeah. She's really smart. And like I said, like she, and maybe in a 15-year-old kind of way, she is, like I said, pretty perceptive about relationships. But also in a 15-year-old way, I feel like she's kind of in her era of thinking she knows everything and a little bit judgy about everything.

She's supposed to. So I can't, yeah, but I kind of worry about, like, her getting this information right now, like what it's going to do to strain the relationship with my mom. She has to, here's what she has to work through. Oh my gosh, this person did a thing one time and this person is really amazing to me when I show up every, every time I see her. This person made a huge mistake one time. And also, this is a great opportunity. to talk about power dynamics. And this might be when your husband leaves the table.

And you're able to say, hey, there's going to be men who want things from you and you're not going to see it coming until it might be close to too late. And if you want to be a real gangster, this is a time when you tell about a thing that happened to you once, not in graphic detail. Yeah. But maybe you dated the quarterback in high school or maybe you, dated the coolest guy in the band in college. I don't know. But suddenly you found yourself on a date and this guy wanted more. Yeah. And this is when your daughter's eyes will get real big, but she'll

begin to see you as a person. And then she gets to see you, what have you done? You did the next right thing. Yeah. And so you telling her, yep, grandma did this thing with a, with the minister of the church. And maybe he got fired, maybe he didn't, maybe you get to see sometimes men in powerful positions get to keep their jobs and it's the women who get shamed. And it shouldn't be that way, but that's the way it is sometimes. Well, yeah, that's a little bit how it played out. It usually does that way. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. He was not able to continue as a pastor, but then my mom was the one who carried the weight of apologizing to the entire church community. That's exactly right. It's Hester Prince.

She's the one that seduced the poor pastor. Yeah. It's evil. It's evil. Right? It's evil. But that's the role. And good God Almighty, there's not a more important conversation for you to have with your daughter right now.

Yeah. Well, I mean, unfortunately, we've also seen it play out in our own church. Of course. With another family. And so maybe telling her. There are really great people and great, amazing leaders at churches. And also, there's some not good ones. Yeah.

And I want a 15-year-old to immediately default to her judgment. That's what 15-year-olds are supposed to do, right? They're supposed to be all balls of emotion, right? Just fireballs of, oh, my gosh, you're the worst. You're the best. They're supposed to all be like that's the way it is. But I want you to be able to say, Grandma made this huge mistake.

And I don't know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 25 years ago. And she's been an amazing woman of character since then. And she's right now the best mom I could ever have. She's the best grandma I could ever have. Or best grandma you could ever have. But that's where we're going to say facts of your friends. And calm is contagious. So when she goes, oh my gosh, oh, my.

you'll be able to say, hey, she's an amazing woman. She screwed up. And when the whole community turned on her, she held her head up high and she did not even the next right thing, just the thing that the unsupportive community demanded of her. And it might be a good time to talk about maybe your dad was an amazing guy who stuck by her. He was. Yeah.

So she gets a contact. of everybody screws up sometimes screw-ups become very public and sometimes screw-ups the consequences of the mess-up one person carries

disproportionately often in faith communities the woman carries it more than a man does mm-hmm yep and by the way if you haven't processed this

you need to do that too yeah were you a little girl when this happened I was 19 oh geez and I watched it happen for a couple years yeah yeah

and so you telling your 15 year old daughter I was about your age when this all happened and I learned at a young age to not say anything I kept quiet I didn't question things and I watched my poor mother get dragged through the ringer and I want you to know right now

never don't ask the question but I think you can be I'm trying to think if I was in the exact same situation here other than very graphic they would sneak behind in the pastor's office by the way I've had that conversation with people before or when dad was out of town the pastor would come over for a quote unquote church visit and they would like outside of very

graphic specifics a 15 year old is old enough to know about everything okay but more important you are 19 you're about this her age and if you learned anything from about sexual fidelity about I'm never going to see something in my life and not say something if any of those kind of things that this is a great moment to teach her right now yeah and telling her true i did learn you learned a lot yeah and what an amazing opportunity to not let that anything be wasted with that thing that happened when you were 19 this is a way to continue to make all things new this is changing your family tree right right right right Mm-hmm. Thank you.

And if you want to be a gangster, a super gangster, tonight, ask your husband to take care of bedtime, and you go to a coffee shop, and you write 19-year-old you a letter about what that poor girl experienced, how if you could go back and if you could see her right now, you would give her a huge hug and tell her that none of this was her fault and all that embarrassment and shame that was on the family,

that was on you, to go to church with your head held low. Put all that in writing, and if you want to be a real gangster, read it to your daughter. Here's a letter I wrote to myself. Yeah. Because teenage girls often carry a ton

that nobody knows is going on. Yeah. And it's Tuesday. You all need to have this conversation this week. Okay. Don't let any more time go by. It would be good to get it off my chest. Yeah.

But don't get it off your chest and hand it to your daughter for her to carry. It's you saying, I've been carrying this big secret. And we need you to know you can always come to us. And sometimes the thing you ask is real big and we're not going to handle it super right out of the gate. And your husband can be like, yeah, that was on me. Mm-hmm. But also you come to us with anything and we're going to tell it all to you. and it's okay for you to think back to

25-year-old grandma and go, oh my gosh, how could she do that? But don't forget, grandma's amazing, and she loves you. Yeah. It's both and. And you can tell her part of being an adult is carrying the both and the and. That's true.

Right. Yeah. You're pretty awesome mom. Your husband's pretty awesome too. Thank you. And this doesn't come in any of the parenting manuals, which I hate for us all. But yeah, we're going to go right through this one with a 15-year-old.

If you have a 7-year-old and they're asking the same question, we're not going to give near the level of detail. We're going to say something like, yeah, 25 years ago, Grandma made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Hey, what do you want for dinner? Right? And we're going to acknowledge it.

We're going to own it. And we're going to go on to the next thing. And we're going to let their questions guide our responses. unless we know they know something and they're just not asking questions, then we're going to approach them and we're going to put on the table because we're adults,

and that's what we do. We can handle that. They can't. But 15 years old, haven't heard some things. Yeah, she's old enough. And by the way, she's experiencing some of this

on the periphery, sexualization, weird boys, internet, all that stuff. And as we're increasingly moving to a world where you can just get any answer and any response, digital relationships, we're going to teach

right now, I'm always a safe place for you to come ask hard questions. I'm going to tell you the truth, even when it's hard, even when it's hard. You're awesome. Best luck to you. I would love to know how this conversation goes. So if you would do me a huge favor and write us back and we don't have to read the response online, but I just want to walk alongside you guys as y'all have this conversation and the ones that will follow, by the way, this will be conversation one. I'm sure there'll be more questions coming. And if you'll ever need anything, feel free to holler. I'm really honored to talk to you all. When we come back, a woman asks how to cope with her death-related nightmares.

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Let's go out to Memphis and talk to Sarah. What's up, Sarah? Hi, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I really appreciate your time. Of course. Thanks for calling. I appreciate your time. What's up?

So I'm just having a lot of death-related nightmares pretty much every night, and it's kind of progressed during the day, death-related anxiety and basically, like, thinking that I'm about to die during the day. and my previous coping mechanisms that I used last time that this happened were no longer an option for me. So I'm calling to get your insight on how I might be able to work through it, especially as my work caseload increases because it is definitely because of my job that I have any of these issues. What's your job?

I'm a death investigator for the medical examiner. Oh, you work at the Emmy's office. Very cool. yes the medical examiner sorry um jeez yeah so there's that i will i will tell you sarah um having shown up i can't count how many homes i showed up to where people had passed away or died um natural causes self-inflicted violence whatever car wrecks whatever the job i never understood how people could do was the emmy Yeah. Yeah, and it's like it makes it compounded and it's probably going to sound morbid to say,

but this is actually my dream job that I worked for for my whole life. Yeah, totally. And so that also adds to it. Yeah. So for people who don't know, here's how this works. Let's say somebody calls 911 and they walked home and their 80-year-old husband has just had a cardiac event. They've had a heart attack and they've died in their home. Or they got home or they got a call from a roommate that a 22-year-old has died by suicide. Or you get a call from a screaming mother that her four-year-old is choking and has just passed away. Like the whole gamut, right? The police show up, hopefully if you're in a well-resourced community, folks like me would show up, like those who

are here to help with the psychosocial part of this like the here's what you do next and the the crisis counselors right the the victim services unit which as a part of we'll show up and sit with you and then the white van shows up do you all have a white van in memphis era yeah okay so the white van shows up and here's what the white van does the white van has usually two people in it and their job is to get the actual body out of the house after all the photographs are taken after all of the investigation part is done and by the way police show up at these scenes no matter what it is and they work at homicide back right yeah and so they want to make sure there's no foul play they work it back sometimes it's really easy to tell and sometimes it's a little more complicated but you sarah and

your team show up in the middle of the night 2 a.m. 4 a.m. Christmas day whenever and you all get the body out of the house and into the van and down to the morgue or to a holding place, right? Yeah. Ugh. Yeah. And for my job, it's, I'm not simply just removal. I'm the one who takes the pictures. I'm the one who interviews the witnesses about what happened.

I'm the one who writes the report. If there's a video of the death happening, I have to watch the video and write it down for the doctor to read. so yeah I'm intimately involved they call us like last responders because we're the last ones to show up that's right and can I

if you are particularly sensitive and you're listening to this just hit the little 15 or 30 second pass button while on this and I'm going to ask you this Sarah directly you've got

experiences where you're taking photographs of really graphic images, right? Yes. You've had to photograph children, right? Yes. You've had to photograph really gristly scenes, right? Yes.

And those will burn a hole in your spirit, right? Honestly, that's the part about this that confuses me because it doesn't bother me in the moment. That's what makes me feel bad. No, no, no, no, no. I think that makes me good at my job. It makes you amazing at your job. It doesn't, it doesn't bother me in the moment.

And I, I, it is my dream to help figure out what happened to these people and write the last chapter of their story. Yeah. But even though it doesn't bother me in the moment and I don't struggle to do my job, I guess when I come home. Yes. My brain holds on to the things I see and then I dream about them at night. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So here, the title of the book says everything by Dr. Van der Kolk, the body keeps the score. And I'm with you.

I don't know why. If I go buy a house when I sit down and I'm signing the paperwork to buy a house, I'm in full fight or flight, total panic mode. I come up with every scenario about how I'm going to not be able to pay off this house and my kids are going to be starving in the street. I go bananas. But if I walk into a house and there's four people who have just been, been shot and killed. Like, I can do that just fine. Some of the, and this is awful to say,

some of the hardest laughing I've ever done in my life to the point that I had to go outside because I was laughing so I was going to throw up was in those homes. And it makes you feel insane, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to have a really dark, black whole sense of humor to get through those situations. Or some people get really stoic and really clinical, right? Yeah. And You have to have defense mechanisms, and that's what makes you really awesome at your job. That's what made me good at my job. And our bodies keep the score. And I don't know about you, but I've gone to some crazy, grotesque, violent situations,

just out-of-body experience situations. And it's all good. Fine, talking, laughing with the cops, helping move bodies, taking pictures, cleaning up scenes. And it's when I get home and I lay in bed. that my heart starts racing. Yeah. Or I crashed dead asleep and it's when you wake up

and you're like, there's no way that just happened, right? Yeah. And for you, it's nightmares. Yeah, pretty much. Very vivid ones. I have a vivid imagination. Correct. That's right. That's right.

All right. So here, I'm going to give you a couple of things to do and I want to tell you at the outset, okay? I want more people like you being willing to do this kind of job. The way you just said that was so poetic and beautiful. I want to be the person who will write an honorable last chapter for a person. What an amazing heart you have.

Oh, thank you. And my fear for somebody like you is that sense of I'm going to find beauty in the ugliest. If you're not careful, you will burn out like a, flame right like like like a flash and you'll have to go do a dump desk job and then you'll die slowly inside because you were put on earth to sit in people's ugly mess right yeah and i i work with people who are like past that point oh yeah and i i see like what i could become yes and i just don't want to end up like losing my soul to this job yes but i also love this job okay awesome all Right, so here's one thing that I want you,

the big picture is you have to have an unflinchable, don't care how tired you are, I don't care how awful the scene you just came from, or honestly, how benign the scene just came from, right? Because you've also shown up to houses, the person was 65, they were 300 pounds overweight. It's like a natural cause and effect here, right? Yeah, yeah.

You've been to those two. Yeah, that's happened all the time, yeah. And I want you to honor those the same, as when you're photographing the kid who just died from SIDS, who's two, and the mom is screaming in the next room. Both of them, okay? Yeah, yeah, I always try to do that. I want you to have a unflinchable, unshakable routine or practice for what happens after you hit send on that final report.

This is a thing I do every time because here's what will happen. your body will will attenuate to we can cycle this trauma through because I don't care how good you are showing up to your job and by the way this happens for surgeons this happens for preachers this happens for attorneys this happens for nurses anybody who works in the messy pain therapist of other people okay you have to have a process that you do every single time every time and it's annoying but it's a part of the job it's an essential part of the job okay

here's what that might look like for you this has been a great help to me is writing it can be 10 sentences it can be three pages writing a letter to the person who just died and it can be on a yellow

I would recommend it not be typed out. I'd recommend you handwrite it. And there's a whole bunch of research about why that's important. But I want to connect your physiology, your body to the processing of this thing. Because you're good at shutting off your mind, right? You're good at burying emotions,

but bringing those emotions back through your body through just a simple act of writing. Dear Susan, I just finished writing the last, chapter of your life it was such an honor that i got to be a part of the last bit of your story here's what i want you to know i saw six people tattooed up baldheaded dudes crying in your living room which tells me you are a person people they could count on dear timmy two-year-old i was just a part your last chapter.

And I made sure your mom had somebody to hug. She's going to miss you so much. Okay. Okay. I could do that. I know. I know it's going to be. Just you hearing that is hard, right?

Because here's what you're doing. You are consciously letting your body feel this thing and use its own innate processes to metabolize what you just experienced. Okay? Okay. You can keep these in a secret folder that's only yours.

And by the way, I think legally speaking, I would write at the top of that folder private notes, that way they're not subpoenaable or anything like that. But I would write them by hand, so they're not on a computer anywhere. And this is you processing. I used to set mine in a fire but I was always having fires in my house

like I always had a fireplace was awesome and so I would always put them in there that was part of my little ritual but I'd let him go okay here's the second part you have to have a yoga practice a walking practice an exercise practice of some sort

and when you go on this I want you to be very intentional about the following I see the trees that tree has 17 branch is low. I'm counting cracks on the sidewalk. Look at that sunset and the colors are orange and red and pink and purple and or it is pitch black outside. I'm going to count streetlights. And what you're doing when you do that is you're bringing your body back from what it's starting to spin out and plan for

your future death and reverse engineer it to I'm okay right here right now. this is done best with skin-to-skin-skin contact. Are you married? Yes. Okay. If you just got up in the morning, because also, how about this? Have you ever gone to do a thing at 2 a.m.?

You come home at 4.30 and you get back in bed for 45 minutes, and then your husband gets up and he's like, what's up? And you're like... Yeah, that happens every day. Exactly. Mine too. I used to be having coffee and my wife would be like, hey, can you get so-and-so?

And I would look up at her and be like, I would never say anything. You have no idea what I just did last night. None. In fact, I would get home and get back in bed, and my wife hadn't even moved. Yep. Okay? So here's the thing. You probably learned like I did. I can't just use my wife. You can't use your husband as a trash bin to dump all of this on.

Yeah, I don't want to do that. But if you keep secrets, you're going to put a huge wedge in your marriage. I did that, and it almost cost me my marriage. Because I realized I created a whole life that my wife. wife wasn't a part of, which meant my need for connection began to not involve her. And I did that, I started out as a way to protect her, but saying, hey, I was out last night, I need you to take a 10-minute walk with me. And we're going to hold hands. And we're going to point out five beautiful things on the walk. Okay. Okay. And here's the third thing.

you wake up in the morning or right before you go to bed in the morning. There's research on nightmares where right when you wake up after a nightmare, you have a small journal by your bed and you write six or seven sentences, but you take that nightmare and you end it well. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to honor my body. Your body's just trying to get your attention. And you're at the early stages, if you're not there already, of a pretty anxiously life. I want you to honor that anxiousness by going directly through it.

On a plane, sometimes that's breathing exercises. Most people listen to podcasts on planes. You know what I listen to? Binaural beats. Because I have a meditation practice. Because I don't like flying. Occasionally I'll watch John Wick

or whatever on a movie, like, right? That's fine. But like most of the time, I'm pretty spun up and I have big headphones on the signal to the world don't talk to me and I exhale and breathe through it

and it usually takes me about three minutes now because I do it all time and I'm through it now. I've let my body know we're okay right now here. And I chose to get on this plane if it goes down

there's nothing I can do about it. Yeah, nothing at all. That's the bargain I made and it's probably not going to go down. But you can only critically think like that when your body is not spinning out in fight or flight, when your body's not trying to get your attention about a threat right now. And it's having a process. It is honoring those people, not only you honoring them,

but think of writing them a letter as a way of them honoring you. It's them saying thank you for being there for the last chapter of my life. I don't know why, but that makes me feel uncomfortable. It does. Because, because you have worked. really hard to divorce your emotions from the person in front of you. And when you're on scene, you have to do that. A surgeon cannot be thinking while they're cutting, this is a four-year-old little boy. They can't. They have to think trachea, trachea, trachea, trachea, heart. That's the only way

they can get through it. Yeah. And then the surgeon needs to exhale if the kid makes it and say, write themselves a quick note, dear Tom, it was an honor that I got to work on you today. I've given you a new lease on life. My hope is you use that new lease on life. Or, Timmy, I did my absolute best today and you didn't make it. I'm going to live my life 5% more adventurous because I've got another life to live now.

And that's yours too. And I want you to know I hugged your mom and I held your dad while you wept. If you don't break that wall, your body will break it for you. okay or you'll be like some of your Emmy colleagues who are way overweight

who are completely burned out they have no emotion for themselves their kids their spouses life and you know those guys who get three double cheeseburgers on the way to a scene and they stop at Taco Bell

on the way home and they watch Netflix until they pass out yeah and that's not the life I want you, can I be honest? I want you to be the person that shows up when I die. Because I can tell by your heart and spirit you will honor my wife and my kids.

Oh yeah, I always try to do that. And I can tell by your spirit, you're going to make sure that if I was doing something stupid, nobody knows about it. I'm just kidding. I know you got to write down to the airport. Well, I got to write it down. I know you got to write it down. I'll be tactful about it.

There you go. There you go. but your body is keeping track of all of this whether you consciously are or not and I want to say thank God that your body loves you enough to try to keep you safe to that's true

and when you bust open in the middle of the night and this is for anybody suffering for nightmares if you bust awake in the middle of the night I was falling or I was about to drown I'm going to finish that story right there. And then the guy from EMS showed up, unhooked my husband, or he unhooked me, I reached over and I hooked my husband. My husband grabbed me and we swim to surface. And we got big gulps of air and we smiled because we made it. Thank you body and mind and spirit for trying to keep

me safe. I'm good now. And I'm going to put my foot under the covers and I'm going to touch my husband's foot, skin to skin contact. I'm going to go right back to sleep. And the research tells me that nightmares begin to slowly dissipate. They don't go away forever, but they slowly lose their power over you because your body knows, oh, she's in control. You are a modern-day saint, Sarah. People who walk into messy to bring light and to find beauty. My God, we need more of you in the world.

I'm grateful for you. my prayer for you is you do the things to take care of you and your marriage so that you can do this long term because we need people like you. Thank you so much for the call and thank you for the work you're doing. We'll be right back. I want to talk to you about home security and my friends at Cove. Cove is a smart, affordable home security company with the mission of helping you protect your family for less than a dollar a day. The holidays can make your home a target for thieves

and porch pirates, but Cove cameras stream live video and audio directly to your control panel and your phone so you can see and hear what's happening in real time. That kind of clarity and control over your home can help you have peace of mind, especially when you're away traveling for the holidays. Cove lets you customize your security system with a quick online quiz so you only get what your home actually needs. Not a bunch of pushy salesmen and women trying to sell you extra stuff that cost you a ton more that you'll never use. Cove setup is simple. You can do it yourself. It usually takes about 30 minutes and every system comes with a 60-day risk-free trial. December is the perfect time to protect your home with Cove. Right now, Cove is offering an exclusive

holiday sale for my audience. Visit covesmart.com and use code Deloney at checkout for up to 80% off your first order, 80%. It's the easiest decision you're going to make this year. Go to cove C-O-V-E, covesmart.com, and use code Deloney. All right, we're back. Let it rip. Kelly, what's up? All right, so we got an email, follow-up email from a caller that I wanted to read. So back in March of 2022, so. Dang, Gina.

It has been a minute. We had a woman that was considering, she was single, and she was considering, um, using a sperm donor to have a baby. Okay. And in the conversation, a lot of it came through talking about her getting some counseling, kind of, there was a lot of kind of what was causing her to want to go into this without a partner, you know, just looking at the, at the reasonings behind it and kind of what was she trying to fill with some trauma and stuff like that.

So we got an email from her. Did I give her a good answer? You did. Okay. She's, yes. Phew. Okay, good. Especially back then because it was only a company.

years in so things you know it was rougher back then all right so she said my segment was was single in considering a sperm donor at the end of the call john said when i actually have a baby to please send him the photo and i said that i would during the call john made me promise to call a new counselor following our call which i did in march of 2022 i began working with a new counselor that walked me through healing my past relationship traumas then i met my husband in august of 2022 we got married in may of 2024 and now our parents to a sweet baby girl, which we are putting a picture of. So if your lists are watching, you can see this. I truly believe calling into the show was the stepping stone to healing that I needed, and I wanted

to thank John. It honestly changed the direction my life was going. So little baby Sloan Alice was born on July 24th. Yeah, dude. And I told her, so whenever she sent me the email was the show after you and I had a conversation about the name Sloan. and what a cool girl name that was. I do have a...

I know. And I told her that. I said, you're not going to believe this, but literally yesterday, John and I had a conversation about what a cool girl name that was. It's the coolest.

I don't know why. I just think if you're a girl named Sloan, you are awesome, and you're going to have a cool sleeve tattoo and you're going to drink beer out of a bottle, and you're going to be the coolest. She's only a few months old, so maybe not yet.

Fair. Fair. But she's obviously going to be a cool girl. That's so awesome. So we are posting a picture of Sarah Chris and Sloan, and just so very happy for them all. Dude! Look at us!

Look at that! I don't want to take credit for anything, but like, good on you for doing the healing work. Good on you for getting back out there. Good on you for a meeting. That guy. Dang, Gina. And good for little baby Sloan.

Oh my gosh, that's awesome. I'm a smile all day because of that. Yeah, that was one of my favorite ones that I've got. And it was just so great to see that. And I was so happy to be able to, I asked her, I do have her permission, by the way, to share the photos. I did ask. I am going to be happy all day about that.

Love that. I don't know anybody who doesn't have the tension, whatever it is, the conflict, and turn and face it, especially when you need to get with the right professionals to walk through it. That isn't glad they took that journey. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Well, Kelly, you just made my whole day. That's probably never been said.

so I think we should end on that note. I will stop talking and just let this one be a first. A first. Love you guys, bye.