The Dr. John Delony Show - How To Navigate Unhealthy Relationships

Episode Date: September 7, 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   My husband is cheating on me How can I help my young daughter struggling with anxiety? Teaching Segment: Road rage My boyfriend is jealous of my male friends Lyrics: "King of Rock" - Run DMC   tags: marriage, infidelity, anxiety, kids, road rage, jealousy, relationships, friendship   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? This is Dr. John Deloney with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Today we are talking about saving marriages, about jealous boyfriends, about children with anxiety. We're talking about road rage, man. So stay tuned. Hi good folks and welcome to the Dr. John Deloney show. This is a caller driven show where we talk about your relationships, your life, your mental health, your physical health, your parents, your kids, your annoying neighbor, some article you read on the internet. Anything and everything is fair game. We're taking your calls. I want you to call me at 1-844-693-3291. The world has gone and lost its mind up in here, up in here, and people are struggling with their mental health.

Divorce rates are up across the world here in the States. People are out of work. They're divided. Parents are acting the fool. Kids are at home. I guess we're all learning via boxes now. Your bosses are nuts. Generally, everything's a mess.

And if you are lost, paralyzed, you don't know what step to take next, I'm here for you. I'm waiting for your call. I can't wait to talk to you. Call me at 1-844-693-3291. You can email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. Follow me on the interwebs at John Deloney. And let's get to the phones. Let's go to Rebecca in Cleveland, Ohio. Good morning, Rebecca. How in the world are you? I'm doing very well, Dr. John. Thank you so much for taking my call. Oh, the pleasure is 1000% mine. It's so great to talk

to you. How in the world can I help? Well, I've got a marriage question, which is paralyzing me. So the quick background is I was married 30 years. My husband left me for someone else. Two years later, I met a man that I thought was a perfect partner. We ended up getting married. The first year, it was a disaster. It was truly the worst year of my life. And I left. He's a controlling narcissist. So we divorced. But since the divorce, we keep getting back together. This has been on and off for two years now. I take marriage and my vows very seriously, sometimes to my own detriment. And so I'm really struggling with this. And my question is, how do I make a decision about whether or not this marriage could be saved,

or if it even should be saved? That's a great question. So walk me back to your parents. What was your childhood like? Only child. Overall, good relationship with my parents. Very close to my dad. He was a good guy? He was a great guy. That's cool.

Your mom was awesome? She was awesome. She was an alcoholic. So I grew up in an alcoholic home. So that created some problems. But later on in life, she was sober and we ended up being best friends when she passed away. That's cool. What a cool redemption story. So then take me to your first divorce. You're married 30 years. You all have kids together? Yep, three kids. So you build a world, and then one day you come home. Tell me about what happens there. Well, it is a long story, but due to a lot of travel, this person got involved in a lot of infidelity in another country. So I want to back that up because the way you said that is you blamed the

travel for the infidelity. So your first husband traveled a lot and while he was traveling, he chose to violate your marriage covenant, right? Right. Gotcha. Okay. Towards the end, when it all came out, we agreed to reconcile, and I actually moved to the foreign country to be with him to start over. I forgave him, and about two and a half weeks into that, he said he changed his mind and sent me packing. Ooh. Huh. Yeah. That was more devastating than even finding out about the infidelity, because I thought we were all set to move on to a second chapter of our lives. Had he cheated on you throughout this 30-year marriage? Is that something that happened there at the end? Did y'all just grow apart over time? Or is it something woven through the DNA of your relationship? um there were a lot of reasons a lot of dynamics as far as how he was as a father to one of our children um that created a lot of rift and we were actually really good partners good teammates

and when we changed our roles within the marriage where i gave up my career stayed home homeschooled and then he became the breadwinner because I used to make more. Our roles changed. So instead of being teams and partners doing everything together, now it was very much he was working and I was the home person taking care of all of that. And I think that contributed to this. Okay. And so fast forward now, how long were you between marriages? Let's see, four years. Four years. Okay. Did you date during that time? Were you celibate

during that time? Was it just a season of loneliness and searching and trying to figure out who in the world you were? No, I had been dating. I had wanted to be in a relationship with someone. Actually, I had gotten to the point where I was pretty comfortable on my own, being very independent and feeling good. But this person just seemed like this was the one. Yeah, you used a word that for anybody who works in mental health counseling or coaching, is a giant pulsing red neon sign of danger, danger, which is he was perfect. What made him perfect? That we could spend hours and hours talking. He was very active in his church. We seemed to have similar values in that regard.

Worked well together. We ran some ministry things at church together while we were dating. He was a great parent, so he kind of filled that void that the other spouse did not. We all romantically involved. I mean, was he a good kisser? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. So all of these other things were good, right? So all of these other things seemed to check loneliness boxes, right?

Void boxes. And affirmation boxes. Right, right. He thought I was beautiful and complimented me and thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And so then you find perfection, the cue, the Disney music, and you run off and get married. And then what happens? Kind of right from the beginning. There's also alcoholism involved.

Right from the beginning, the focus was on more drinking than I ever realized. But then also... Was it always there and you were just excited about the relationship and you chose not to see it? Or was there a bait and switch? Yeah, I chose to ignore a lot of it um but it definitely once we were actually living together 24 hours a day then you can't i saw how

much worse it was gotcha and i thought and um so he ends up cheating on you he ends up beginning to slowly almost like the blob movie, encompass and control your life. Is that right? Yes. So the idea, at least especially from his perspective, was we're equal partners. Everything has to be 50-50, and we absolutely don't try to change each other. So I had a little bit of a hard time with that because I had come from a previous marriage where we were very equal partners and everything, very much a team. Um, and so very quickly within the first few days, weeks, there was just this feeling of, you know, if I wanted to do something, basically he had the veto power because unless we agreed, both of us a hundred percent, all he had to do was say no to everything. I'd like to buy, you know, a towel to hang in the kitchen.

Well, I don't want to. Case closed. Okay. Yeah. So what is it about this relationship? How old are you? 58 next week. 58.

So what is it about this relationship that you think is worth salvaging? Besides the vow, right? You made a vow. What is there to hold on to? Well, the vow is the big one. Probably the secondary would be there's always that sliver of hope of could it be better? Maybe. Maybe he's open to doing this better, changing behaviors. So I want to step back 30,000 feet and paint a full picture of Rebecca, okay?

As the daughter of an alcoholic mom, you have been in a peacekeeping role. You have been in a partner management role since you set foot on earth, right? You had an extraordinary father who helped mitigate some of that, and what a blessing that was and probably still is, right? That's probably one of the main reasons you're able to be a great mom, and we're even having this conversation right now. But I want you to watch the step back and look at the relational dynamics that have played out through your life, which is somebody does something. They withhold from you or they traumatize you, right? They go to another country. They cheat on you. They kind of rub your nose in your vows.

And then they invite you out there to start over. And then they rub your out there to start over, and then they rub your nose in that decision again, and you're left trying to figure out what you did, right? And then you begin to recreate another life again. You meet the quote-unquote perfect guy. You start down this road again, and you find yourself once again asking, what do I need to do in this situation? And so I want, as a peacekeeper, that's the way you're wired,

I want you to let go of the fantasy. He's not going to change. He's not. And I understand the economics of being a 58-year-old woman. I don't understand them, right? I'm not a 58-year-old woman. But I understand there is something to be said for just walking out the door. Rent might be hard, right?

Eating might be hard. So I don't know your economic standing. So I'm going to put that aside over there and know that that's a powerful thing for many women. I also know that the devastating thought of 30 more years by yourself, and that's a withering, scary proposition, right? Yes, it is. I want to offer you a third option, which is you are worthy of being loved. You're worthy of somebody telling you the freaking truth. You are worthy of not being cheated on.

You are worthy of buying your own freaking towels in your living room, in your kitchen. Okay? And since you were four, your worthiness has been based on making sure the people around you are doing okay and that they're happy and golden and joyful and fill in the blank. And you might have got a taste of that in between the two husbands. You probably had some peace there, but you're also lonely, right? And here you are with yet another decision. So I can't tell you whether to leave him.

I can't tell you whether to divorce him. I can't tell you what tomorrow is going to look like for you. I can tell you this. He's not going to change. He's going to be the way he's going to be. And I can tell you that you're going to have to make a decision between loneliness. You're going to have to make a decision between moving around your kids and making them and your grandkids your new world, or you're 58 years old. I can tell on the phone that you're fun to hang out with. I can tell on the phone that you care about other people. You were willing to pack up and move across the world for some knucklehead.

So I know you're kind of a person who's loyal, lovely, fun. There is some dude out there who would love to have you by his side, who's going to treat you with respect, who's going to treat you with dignity. But here's the challenge. Until you stop replaying this cycle, you're going to continue to attract people that bring chaos into the world that need your peacekeeping for them to get to the next day. And so I'm going to strongly recommend you step back, and you may have been to counseling before.

You may have sat with a professional before. But I want you to go sit with somebody who's going to walk you back to day one and talk about the trauma you endured as the daughter of an alcoholic mom. As somebody who was able to reconnect that relationship later on in life. And you probably had to do some peacekeeping there. Probably some shoving down and some denial and some, hey, it's all okay. The past was just the past so that you could have this new relationship before your mom passed away. And I want you to work really hard to get to a place where you can look in the mirror and know that guy totally, your first husband totally left you in the dirt. The second guy, it's not what you thought.

And that brings me to this big picture that folks often deal with when they've been cheated on, when they're working through divorce, when they're working through, oh my gosh, I'm in relationship number two, number three, and that's falling apart, is you stop to lose, or you start to lose trust in you, right? And that can be the most devastating thing because you thought you were right. You thought he was perfect. You thought you'd learned all your lessons the first time after 30 years, three decades. And here you are again. You thought you knew what was next. You thought you knew what you wanted.

You thought you knew this guy. And oh my gosh, I don't trust myself anymore. And until you can learn to hear your heart and listen to it and then follow that, as opposed to trying to make everybody else well, you're going to continue to cycle and cycle and cycle. So man, I'm going to tell you to let go of the fantasy. I'm so grateful for the call, Rebecca. And we'll be thinking about you moving forward. Everybody listening, I want you to hear me and on the tubes that I'm looking at, the YouTubes, they told me I can't say the tubes anymore. People on the YouTube channel, you are worthy of being loved.

You're worthy of not being cheated on. You are worthy of forgiveness. You're worthy of a good night's sleep. Thank you so much for the call. Let's go right back to the phones. Give me a call here at 844-693-3291. Let's go to James from Louisville, Kentucky. What's up, Brother James?

How we doing? Hey, good morning, Dr. D. Thanks for taking time to take my call. Man, thank you so much for calling. What can I do for you? I'm calling about our seven-year-old daughter, Alexis. Alexis, beautiful name. Tell me about Alexis. We've been told by multiple doctors she's had separate anxiety as well as anxiety in

general. We've tried a lot of different things, but really just need help to get to the bottom of her anxiety and how we can help her out. I'm active duty military and mom is a stay-at-home mom. And when I was, or when Alexis was one, I was deployed for about a year and moved back in with her parents while I was gone. Okay. And so when did you get, when did y'all see symptoms of her anxiety emerge? So basically ever since she was a baby, she was very, always needed to be held, wanted somebody around all the time. And it just kind of continued on from there. So basically her entire life.

So tell me about the stress in your wife's life. So stress in my wife's life. I mean, she's a stay-at-home mom, has both Alexis, our oldest, and Madeline, our youngest, around all the time. And we're away from family most of the time, being stationed halfway across the country most times. So very small support structure in person. A lot of time talking to family and friends on the phone and things like that, but just that interpersonal seeing somebody face-to-face and having that adult interaction. Back me up to when your wife finds out she's pregnant with Alexis, y'all are excited, this is your first daughter, and then you get the deployment orders.

Walk me back to that season, those few months there? Yeah. So, um, actually when we found out she was pregnant, we were, um, actually pretty close to all of our, uh, support structure back on the East coast. And then, um, about halfway through the pregnancy, find out they're, uh, going to transfer me to California. So completely across the country. Um, as soon as I get out there, find out we're deploying. So then we figure out, okay, well, what are we going to do? What's the best way to handle this? And that's when we made the decision. It's better for her to go back to go back home and be close to her parents, my parents, all of her sisters for that support structure. Gotcha. And so then you're overseas. Were you in active combat?

No, I was in Kandahar. Okay. So then you come back, and your daughter's how old, two? Yes, she turned two about a month after I got home. So you get back to California. Did your wife then turn around and fly back to move halfway across the country, or all the way across the country back to, or all the way across the country to see you guys again?

Or do you move to New Jersey? What's your re-entry like? So I came back to Pennsylvania. That's where she was staying. I was gone. We spent about 30 days there where we picked up the family and drove back across country to get back to our life in California. Okay. So paint me a picture of your daughter's five and you got a new little one in the house. What's an anxiety outburst that you experienced with her when she was five, she was six, she was seven?

Walk me through something. So now a lot of her things always needs to be in control. If somebody else is trying to say, oh, we need to do this. No, I want to do it this way. I want to do it this way. So that is our biggest thing right now is like she is very bossy with her little sister. You know, if we tell Madeline, hey, we need you to do this, Alexis will turn around and echo the thing to tell her to do it. Right, right. So what's an anxiety freakout look like?

Just an absolute barn burn? She starts screaming, no, no, no, I hate this. I can't do this. We're not doing it. No, just completely shuts down. Um, how do you guys respond? So a lot of the time, like we'll see it coming. So we'll, um, take a step back and, um, we have a couple of different things that we've done for, like, calm down box. Okay, Alexis, let's take a break for a minute. Go to wherever you choose in the house. Sit down.

Relax. We're going to come back to this in a few minutes. But when it gets to the screaming and I hate this and everything, it usually turns into, okay, go sit down in a room quietly for a few minutes and gather your thoughts. And then we re-engage after a few minutes of trying to get her to settle down and us settling down too, because it's pretty stressful on everybody. Right. Okay.

Is she on medication or anything right now? No, no medication. Okay. So you may have heard some of this. Some of this may be new. There's several things at play here. Number one, they've gone all the way back and done studies that show this sort of disruption and disconnection happens in utero, meaning that babies who are not yet born begin showing signs of anxious depression, ADHD, of what I would call disconnection. They start showing that in utero due to maternal stress. And so you know your wife. She's probably awesome and her having this close family system in New Jersey and then

suddenly getting packed up and moved across the country while she's pregnant then her husband gets shipped across the country and we don't know what's going to happen and is it this or is it that and then she packs up and moves so that's show, that's just me hearing as an outsider in five minutes. There's a lot of stress going on right there. And sometimes babies are used as numbing devices in that, in that type of transition, or they are used, they are, they are, can be pushed aside in close proximity, right? So they can be present, but absent, meaning they can be sitting right there on the couch, but a mom is thumbing through her phone. A mom is talking to other people. A mom is on her computer and the kid is right there in physical proximity there, but they're not connected,

right? They're communicating, but not connecting is the way I like to say that. And so what a kid will start to do in really short order is they sense that kids co-regulate themselves until they're about 12 or 13, and I think it actually goes to about 25 or 30. They are only who they are in relationship to the people around them, particularly their mom and their dad. And when they sense any sort of gulf, any sort of disconnection, they backfill that with, this is my fault and I've got to do something to fix it. And that's where you see young children begin to rewire towards ADHD or to anxiety or to OCD. You nailed it. It's a control mechanism, right? They are doing whatever they can in their tiny little five, six, seven-year-old power to re-bridge that gulf.

And that can be expressed in power. That can be telling their brother and sister what to be doing. That can tell you guys what to do, right? And so when I'm talking to moms and dads here, what I always want to back up and do a couple of things. Number one, let folks know that your daughter needs to know that her feelings are okay. The way she expresses them is not, right? And it is okay for her to feel scared and it is okay for her to feel like she is losing control of the situation. And the sooner she can learn to articulate that without

it becoming a hurricane, then you can get into controlling the behavior part. Does that make sense? It does. And so what I like to remind parents of is this. Kids crave, with every fiber of their being, they crave boundaries. Desperate for boundaries. And they will bang their head and fist and furniture up against those boundaries to make sure they hold. School often provides that for them.

Church sometimes provides that for them. Dance class or baseball practice, those provide those boundaries. And they are whole and they are firm. And so when she's in your house, she's going to be banging up against those boundaries all day long, right? And if she feels like that boundary is wavering, if it's going to fall over, if she's got somebody challenging, hey, your feeling's not real, that, boom, it falls, the fence falls over, and that's when you get into those stone freakouts, right? Those, I hate you, I hate everything, because that's just like an emotional volcano, right? And when you're a young child, you just can't rein those in sometimes. So, I want to be real careful about using go away as a response to a child in an anxious moment. Anxiety is a disconnection disorder. It's the way your brain copes with

being disconnected, even if you're disconnected in a crowded room, even if you're disconnected on the same couch. So, what I want to – I want to recommend you all do this. I want to recommend moving way upstream and helping her develop control in another way. And so I would love to have you and your wife and her, I don't know how young your other child is, how young Madeline is, but I want y'all to create a set of family values that you co-create together. And instead of focusing so much on the behavior, you've got to get her amygdala to slow down. And the way you do that, the way a child absorbs that is through eye contact, through touch, often hugs, often touching kids' faces. Like a lot of – I touch my son's face and my daughter's face every single day of their life, twice a day minimum, in the

morning and at night, touching their feet. And so, instead of making this all a cerebral exercise where you're focusing a lot on their frontal lobe, here's some information, here's some things that you're doing. I want you to get to, and you probably learned some of this in your military training, I want you to get to more of the fight or flight response way upstream. And so the way you let her know that she does not have to be in control is not through more information. It's through touch. It's through you being present. It's through your wife being present. So I want you, I'm going to give you guys a 30 day challenge in your household. I want you and your wife to make a commitment that there are no phones and no screens in the room when the kids are in the room.

And that might be really hard. It might be really easy. I don't know the rhythms of your home, but I want your kids to know when they're in the room that you are present, you are listening to them, you are talking to them. You are engaged with them. And they can feel you. Number two, I want your daughters to see you and your wife hug. I want them to hear you say positive things, lovely things, reassuring things to your wife. I want you to show up for mom. And they are going to become increasingly less volatile by watching a strong anchored-in relationship in their home, right?

And so if you and your wife are having marriage issues, I want to strongly encourage you guys to go get marriage counseling on your own and create a tree of stability instead of a hurricane in the middle of that living room, right? And then number three, again, touching their face, touching their feet, eye contact, come up with a set of family values that she gets to be a part of. And that way, when she does lose it, then you can refer back and say, hey, you've chosen to step outside of the values that we all forecreated. And so as a part of that, it breaks my heart because I want you to be at the table with us. I want you to be right here, but you chose to step out. I can't, I hurts my heart. Let's go do our time in the box. And then, and then as soon as you're ready to step back in, let's step back in. And what we're trying to do is show her that she's got control way upstream and she can just let that control mechanism go. Call me back, James. I want to hear how that goes. And that leads me to this.

I want to have a quick conversation about my brother. My little brother sent me a message the other day and said, hey, will you talk about this? And this is, he said, I'm struggling with this. So, little brother, I'm calling you out here. I'm not going to give your name or anything. But it's very similar. And it's just about control. And so here's what he asked me.

He asked me about road rage. He asked me about getting so mad when you're driving. And so I want to set the stage here, right? You're driving on the road, somebody cuts you off, and you instantly like you flip them off, or you're one of those people who like lay the horn on for an extended period of time, or you're what I call an atomic idiot, where you just drive up really close and get one inch from their bumper and you just follow them around through traffic. If they hit the brakes, you're the one that's going to die, not them. You're just going to

rear-end them, but you'll show them. It's especially funny, right? Like in a little Honda Civic and they're following up on a truck. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to show you, right? You yell, you swear at them, you grip the wheel real tight. How many of you have kids who have learned brand new words just by riding in the car with you, right? And if you're in Texas or Tennessee or any of these other like states, you start thinking somebody cuts you off. I'm like, where's my gun, right? And I'm not going to like, we're not going to take this anymore, right? The old Twisted Sisters song. And so here's the deal. If you're driving, someone cuts you off, someone takes the shoulder in traffic,

someone cuts in line when you're dropping your kids off in school, you're faced with two important cosmic truths. Here they are. Number one, you are not the center of the universe, right? And number two, in the grand scheme of the cosmos, you are basically in control of nothing. Of almost nothing. When someone flies by you or cuts you off or you're dropping little Timmy off at school and they get in front of you, you feel small and angry and out of control.

Because, hey, we have order around here and that order starts with me and you're not being safe and I was next and blah blah blah you feel slighted you feel less than you feel like if you were more of a man right or if you were more of a woman the world was more fair and if everyone just played by the rules then you would feel good about yourself and in these little moments played out at a hundred miles an hour on the highway or three miles an hour in a chick-fil-A drive-thru, a little piece of the cosmos rears its head. You realize you have outsourced your personal and spiritual validation, your worth as a person to some external source. And you are only good in relation to how others interact with you. This is disorienting when we realized that we need other people to act the way we want them to, to feel good about ourselves, to feel in control. And you realize that your human default setting is always looking for ways

people are actively screwing you over. And if you constantly look for places where you're a victim, where other people aren't following the rules, you will always, always find them. And to remedy this disorientation, this frustration, we like to get into other people's heads and play God. Psychologists call this fundamental attribution error. That's when we get in somebody else's head and we assume why they did what they just did, right? So on the road, it goes something like this.

I follow the spoken and unspoken rules of the road because I'm a good person, I'm a moral person, and I'm really intelligent. You don't. You drive like an idiot. You speed and cut people off because you're evil. You're not as smart as me. And in general, you're a pile of dried goat turds, right? And I want to tell you is fundamental attribution or getting inside somebody's head to figure out why they did what they just did is such a waste of energy, of time. It's just a waste of brain power. On its face, this remedy doesn't make us feel better. And the truth slowly seeps in that no matter how much you work out or not, how much

you talk tough or know the law or know how to roof a house or skin a deer or how nice you are or how much you give to local charities, you are not control of hardly anything except two things. You got control of two things, your thoughts and your actions. That's it. David Foster Wallace spoke about this beautifully, poetically in his famous, this is water speech. If you haven't heard it, Google it. David Foster Wallace, this is water. I if you haven't heard it, Google it. David Foster Wallace, this is water.

I think it was at a Kenyon College graduation. He spoke about this critical idea that we get to choose what we think. And so here's what I want you to do. The next time you feel road rage, the next time somebody cuts you off, the next time somebody cuts in line, somebody drives too fast and is quote-unquote unsafe i want you to choose to not feel slighted somebody flies by you at 100 miles an hour in a 45 don't don't assume they're a double-cheeked butt crack right assume that they are flying to the emergency room you get to choose that you get to choose which one you default to or assume that they're

flying to go pick up their sick kid from a friend's house and you can choose to say a quick prayer and let it go. If somebody flips you off in traffic, you can smile and choose to just let it go like a vapor. Assume that their dad is on life support or choose to think that they just got a final write-up at work and they might lose their job tomorrow and they're on edge and they chose you to take it out on because you can take it. Work towards making empathy your default setting and not righteousness, not victimhood. You can be right or you can enjoy your life, man. And if you smash the windshield or grip the wheel tight or honk real loud or speed up on their bumper,

that's like punching yourself in the face and hoping it breaks their nose. It's just stupid. At the end of the day, road rage is a waste of time. It's dumb and it solves nothing. So choose productive thoughts. Practice this. Then choose to keep driving normally

and choose to keep your blood pressure in check. Choose to not drive like an idiot. Choose to send positive thoughts towards people in a hurry. They need them. Right? So there you go, little brother. There's my little rant on road rage, right? So let's get back to the phones.

Let's get to Monica in Los Angeles. Monica, how in the world are we doing? Hi, Dr. D. Thank you for taking my call today. Thank you so much for calling. What can I do for you? I guess I'm having some difficulty between my mentality. I have a long-term boyfriend, and right now we're kind of in relationship limbo, as I would call it. You said long-term boyfriend and in relationship limbo. Which one is it?

Well, right now we're in relationship limbo, but we had been together for about almost two and a half years. Okay. But the main issue that we've been having is that he, majority of my friends are guys and he just never wanted anything to do with them. And he didn't want me, they didn't exist and didn't really associate himself with them or anything and it's something that I've been like continuously bringing up to him because I slowly detached myself from my friends because of it uh thinking you know he's just insecure because in his past you you know, five year relationship, his ex-girlfriend left him for another guy. And, you know, if I can just show him, you know, I'm not her and I'm not there to like leave him, things will get better.

They won't because that's not something that you can solve, Monica. You can't fix him on this one. The decision you've got before you is this. You've got a guy that got hurt, and that's fair, right? He got cheated on. He was with somebody for a long time. She broke his heart, and now he likes you. And you've got a set of friends that are a bunch of dudes, right?

Right, wrong, or indifferent, you've got some friends that are a bunch of dudes. Have you ever dated any of these guys, by the way? No, no, no, no. Are these just work buddies, college buddies? How do you know these dudes? Mostly from work. Okay. And then I have a couple that I've met in college.

Okay. I've never dated, I've never flirted with any of them or anything like that. So none of that for him, none of that matters. This is an alarm system issue for him, right? So this is one time he was sitting at the front of his cave or at the back of his cave and a tiger showed up and mauled him. And now every time he walks by any sort of cat-shaped object, he's taken off running, right?

He's been down that road before, and until he does his own healing and his own work, that alarm system is going to continue to go off. That's nothing you can do. You can't constantly be mining your day and your life for how he's going to respond. You can be hospitable and not a jerk. The question you're going to have to decide is, do you love him? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with him? And in this current state, being with him means that he doesn't want you hanging out with a bunch of other guys.

Or do you like these work friendships more than you like this guy? That's the basic question because you're not going to be able to fix him over here. So what do you choose? Monica, are you there? Yeah, I'm sorry.

No, that's okay. It's just like, I guess a really tough pill to swallow. Yeah, it's hard. Do you love this guy? Yeah, I really do. Is he good to you? He is.

So what is it about these other guys? What is it about hanging out with other men? What is it about them that is worth hurting the guy that you love? Oh, they just, they've been my friends for like four or five years. Yeah. And it just, it sucks because that's basically my social circle. And it's not that I haven't tried being friends with girls. It's just all the girls that I've encountered, they have boyfriends they they feel like I'm there to like try to you know do something behind their backs with their boyfriends or something like that and it's just I don't feel like I have the best of luck when it

comes to like trying to befriend girls because they always feel like I have like you know ulterior motive in some way, shape or form. Do you approach people with a flirty energy, with a sexy energy? Is that kind of your thing? No. No? I'm literally just friendly. You're just kind?

Yeah. I just ask, you know, how's your day? You know, you look kind of sad. Is everything okay at home? Is there anything i can do to cheer you up that's that's pretty much it but somehow i don't know and so i've been with the same woman for over 20 years and if i'm out to dinner and she has a friend, and her friend's husband pulls up next to my wife and says, hey, you look really sad. How are things going? Like, everything okay? Like, is there anything I can do to help you out? I'm going to knock that dude's teeth out the back of his head. I'm probably going to go to jail. So, here's the thing. I want to honor your heart here,

right? I know that I'll trust you that you have no ulterior motives. You're a good human being. You're just kind. The world desperately needs more kind people in the world, right? The other side of that is, man, sometimes when everyone around us is sending us the same signal, at some point we got to go to the mirror, right? We got to go to the mirror and say, what am I contributing to my own misery? What am I contributing to my inability to make friends here, right? And so if folks, if new girlfriend, new girlfriend after new girlfriend has a weird vibe, at some point you got to get somebody that you trust, whether that's a counselor or a mentor or somebody from your church or somebody just in your friend circle and say, man, tell me the truth. Do I just weird people out? Do people think I'm hitting on their boyfriends? And you might have to make some behavioral changes in your life if you want

to have community, right? If you want to have friends. And that brings me back to the central question that you called about is this, you cannot fix your boyfriend. You can't fix him. He has asked you to not spend your extracurricular time, whatever time you have between work and school, with a bunch of other guys. It doesn't sound super unreasonable to me. In fact, that sounds appropriate. If y'all are getting more serious, you're getting more locked in together, you're thinking about what tomorrow might look like,

you're thinking about getting married to this dude, you're thinking about having kids with this guy, at some point you're going to have to let those other college buddy dudes, you're going to have to let those circles fade off into the mist. Man, they were fun. They were exciting. And now I'm creating a world. I'm co-creating this new universe with this guy.

Or you're going to have to look him in the eye and say, man, you won't be a guy that makes me give up my friends. I don't want that. I want to keep hanging out with my buddies after work and you're going to have to wish him well. And I know that's a hard either or Monica, but two and a half years, man, you know, whether you love him or not, you know, they're going to spend the rest of your life with this dude. And you also know his pain, you know, his experiences, you know, his hurt, and he's drawing a line for you. Thank you so much for the call. Call me back.

I want to know how this thing ends. All right, so this has been the Dr. John Deloney Show. Thank you so much for calling. I want to leave you with the song lyrics of the day. And this is from one of the greatest records in the history of mankind. You don't see it on a lot of top 10 lists. I think it's because it transcends top 10 lists. It's got into our cultural DNA DNA and it's in our soul. It's from the Run DMC record, King of Rock, the 1985 classic. And I want you

to listen to this and I want you to put this in your soul. Run suggests, I'm the king of rock. There is none higher. Listen, sucker MCs should call me sire. To burn my kingdom, you what? You must use fire. Run will not stop talking till he retires. I'm the king of rock. There is none higher. Sucker MCs should call me sire.

To burn my kingdom, you must use fire. Ladies and gentlemen, if I had a mic, I would drop it. It's on a pole right here. I won't stop rocking until I retire either. This has been the John Deloney Show. Thanks for hanging out with us. Be kind to each other. Be kind to each other. Tell the truth and have an awesome week. I'll see you soon. Take care.