The Dr. John Delony Show - I Blew Up My Marriage, but I Want to Fix It

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

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My wife and I, we've been separated for about a year now. We've been trying to work on things, but she has expressed that I'm not able to meet her emotionally. How do you meet somebody else's emotional needs? And man, I got some pretty bold opinions on that. What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney's show. Glad you are here. Talking about your mental and emotional health, your relationships, your marriages, whatever you got going on in your life. kids, all of it.

I'd love to have you on the show. Real people going through real challenges, trying to figure out what I do now, what I do next. I think we all need a dose of exhale, just some clear, honest conversations about what we can do next. You want to be on the show, go to johndeloney.com slash ask ASK. We take calls from all over the world. We do change your name.

We do change your location. I want you to be able to have a safe conversation here. and see if we can get you on a new path. Let's go out to Vancouver, British Columbia, and talk to Jordan. Hey, Jordan, what's up? Hey, John, how's it going? I'm good, brother. What's up? Glad to take, glad you could take my call.

My question to you is my wife and I, we've been separated for about a year now, and we've been trying to work on things. but she is expressed that I'm basically that I'm not able to meet her emotionally and just would love to get your advice on how I can kind of meet her there. Yeah, man, there's a lot here. I want to get to this question because I think it's a fascinating question about how do you meet somebody else's emotional needs? And man, I got some pretty bold opinions on that.

But let's back up for just a second. Give me some context here. How long have you been married? Why did you get separated, all that? Yeah, so we have been married for three years, and we got separated after, like, around two years. What happened? Yeah, I would say overall, like, I was very emotionally reactive

and kind of controlling, and I think, and defensive, and I think she, at the end of the day, didn't feel safe being around me. Right, pause that for a second. The way you framed it was, I was emotionally reactive, which might be true. Were you punching holes in the sheetrock? Were you a yeller? Did you call her stupid?

When you say you were emotionally reactive, what does that mean? Yeah, I definitely like some yelling. And also, I think, like, there were situations where, like, I thought, I was upset. I would do things that, you know, I think, I think just, like, made her feel unsafe. Like what? Give me some example. Emotion.

Like, you know, an example would be like when we had like a conflict and, you know, she was like driving after and I was upset. And let's say her, like she had a flat tire one time. and she called me and said, you know, like that she had a flat tire. And I kind of just was like upset and said, well, like, you know, you can just like figure it out. And I was just like upset. And yeah, didn't help her. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't got much for you on that one, brother. So she finally said enough. She moves out. or did you move out? No, she did, yeah. Okay. Let me back up for a second. I don't want to leave you hanging.

I hear in your voice, tell me if I'm wrong, and maybe you try to manipulate me, I hear that you are now a few years removed from that and you're embarrassed and humiliated by it. Yes. Okay. That was, yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay.

Have you dug into, A, the root of why you were acting that way? Why you allowed her to set you off like that? and be, what have you done to change your levels of reactivity? Mm-hmm. To get some space between stimulus and response. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question. So I think, like, after in the past year so, like I've dug into kind of, I think a lot of stuff just with my family and my upbringing. and I think a lot of it for me was like,

I think there's like a kind of fear and like insecurity there. Tremendous insecurity. Yeah. That was so fragile that anything would set it off to the point you'd leave your wife on the side of the road, to fend for herself. What have you done? What action steps have you taken to begin to fill that sense of,

fragility with concrete. I'm now somebody that someone else can anchor into. Yeah, so like a lot of work, I would say, with like reflecting around like my parents and like my, my upbringing, like writing out a timeline of events in my life, as well as like writing like a letter to my kind of younger self and like letters to like my parents. And also just like I've read a lot of books around

kind of just like emotional, I guess, like awareness and like recognizing kind of like what I'm feeling like in my body. And just like I think, yeah, like being more aware of kind of like what I'm feeling and then like kind of strategies around like how to like manage those feelings in healthy ways. Are you working with a counselor on this? I am. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Amazing. So when you first started talking, I thought you were just like wondering. around your neighborhood just thinking about stuff. But it sounds like you're actually practicing in real life. Okay. Can I just say, on behalf of men everywhere, I'm embarrassed for what happened in the past, and on behalf of men everywhere,

I'm proud of the steps you're taking right now. I want you to hear me say that. I'm proud of you. Because you could have been like a lot of folks and blamed her, made fun of her, and then gone on to the next person. Well, I did blame her a lot. I'm saying immaturely, but you would have moved on to the next unsuspecting woman,

and you would just would have repeated this cycle. Right? But at some point, you chose to look in the mirror and make us some changes, and I just want to say I'm proudy for that, okay? I appreciate that. So have y'all started talking again? Have you all started seeing each other again? You'll move back in together, you're all sleeping together again?

Like, tell me what has happened. happened in the last year or two? Yeah, so we, three months of not talking and then kind of slowly since then we've been hanging out more and more and like wanting, we've been like talking and having conversations. And yeah, I think there, we've had a lot of good conversations. But I also feel like there's like, I mean, from from her, there's still like a lot of like hurt and like mistrust and just like you know feelings and not not feeling safe around me yep um and for me i feel like i'm often in kind of like an anxious like kind of performance like mode

where i feel like i got to like say the right things and do the right things yes um and so i think because of that i i feel like i'm not able to be as like present with her and like as like as like attuned to her and like kind of what she's like feeling in like a moment or like in a conversation Yes, and then that makes her feel unsafe and she backs up and then you start performing more and you feel more and it just is a dance. Yeah, and that flywheel spins faster and faster. All right, I got the solution for you. And I rarely say it that boldly, but I got the solution for you, okay? All right.

You have to have the courage to, and I'm going to use words that are going to get me lit up on the internet and people are going to call me a simp and call me weak and whatever. and I think this is actually one of the boldest forms of bravery and courage there is, is to go to your wife, who you wronged and say, I was wrong. I need a roadmap back to trust. And she gets to decide, because you're dancing, you're trying to get her attention and you're on a stage. I love that you said that you're performing. You don't know what play you're in.

So you're just yelling out. all the lines from the old Shakespeare plays that you know, right? You're just like trying, like, is this it? Is this it? And it feels fake to you. It feels fake to her, which to her body feels like, oh, he's not who I, I don't know him. I still don't know him. But when you say, I want a path back to trust, if she's interested in trusting you again, which A, she may not be, so this will clear up the whole thing, then she gets to decide, here's what it will take for me to trust him again. And let me take it outside of your situation.

Somebody cheats on somebody. What's the path back to trust? I want you to get rid of your iPhone and I want you get a flip phone. I need for two months, I want to see all of your email codes and we're going to share one single checking account. And then you get to decide,

whatever she lays out in front of you, am I going to walk that path or not? and it's it's really that simple but here's what that does it forces her and and i have a an emotional like i just it makes me feel icky the phrase you're not meeting my emotional needs because that is an often 99% of time it's an amorphous blob of goo yeah that nobody nobody can grab. And it's her saying to herself, I'll know if this is okay to keep going forward because I'll feel a certain way. And feelings are so all over the place. Right? Yeah. And so I want her to be, and it's say that also, I need a path to your emotional needs and especially emotional wants.

she needs and I say this a lot like I think we overuse the word need a lot in relationships we're like I need this I need this no you don't you want that and that's great but let's call it what it is but I'll give her this one she needs a husband who will pick her up off the side of the road

she doesn't need somebody that agrees with everything she says she doesn't need somebody that will never fight with her she wants those things great but she needs a husband who will show up so that's a fair thing but you asking, I need clarity on what are your emotional needs, and I need a roadmap to them.

Yeah, I feel like there has been times where I've asked her, like, pretty specifically, and she has expressed to me, like, she wants me to be able to, like, understand in a moment, like, what she's feeling and what she's, like, needing. That's madness. That's Hollywood. That's Hollywood. It's insanity.

And I'm not saying she's insane. I'm saying the air, the culture has, surrounded us with is madness. That somehow mind reading is love. Right? That somehow he'll just know because the famous actor X or Y or Z does on the show. And the moment he stops knowing,

that means our relationship has quote unquote run its course, which I think is just nonsense. It's trash. We have to, we're constantly changing. We're constantly learning new things. rethinking positions. What used to feel good doesn't feel good anymore. That's the amazing part about being in a relationship, but we have to communicate what those things are to our partner,

period. And if we won't communicate it, I'm telling you right now, what you have is a football coach yelling at you, run the play! And you're like, I don't know what the play is. And he's just screaming, run the play. If you knew how to play football, you'd know the play. And you're like, okay I'll hand it off and he's like what are you doing right it's not fair it's just it's a it's you're in a position that you can't win you might get lucky once in a while but you can't win yeah that's what it feels like okay so yeah um gosh i feel like i'm i'm saying this a lot on shows now um all just happen to be right in a row i'm going to give you a framework a quick framework from terence real Terry real, okay?

Okay. And this is the path forward. This is the most humble, honest, and integrous way forward. You ready? Tell her that you want to have a serious conversation. Like an honest conversation? Great, cool. Sounds like y'all are there, right?

Yeah. All right. So say, number one, here's the experience I'm having. Number two, here's the story I'm making up about that experience. number three here's how i feel and number four either here's what i'm going to do next or i'm asking you what you would like me to do next and so what you would say in this position is hey we've been talking for three months i'm all in on you and my experience i'm struggling with the path forward i want you to trust me again i want to help meet your emotional wants and your emotional needs

I've worked hard to change and my experience is I don't know the path back to trust the story I'm making up about that is is you're expecting me to read your mind and I can't do that and the other story I'm making up is you don't really want to get back together

yeah how I feel about that is I'm heartbroken and I have a hole in my stomach because I know I did you wrong and I'm trying so hard yeah right and that is a That pushes all of the truth on the table.

You own all of it. I'm owning my experience. I'm owning the stories I'm making up about you, about us, about me. And I'm owning how I feel about it. And then I've got hands open. What do we do next? And when you say the story I'm choosing to make up is you don't really want to get back together with me. You don't want to break up, but you're done with the marriage.

let that hang and then she gets to address the stories you made up yeah but compassion in rebuilding a marriage is you have I mean you can't rebuild a building that's fallen over your marriage is falling over your old marriage is gone it's over if you're all going to rebuild a new marriage

you gotta have a blueprint for it right a contractor just can't sit there and look at the client and the client be like if you're a good contractor you would know where I want the bathroom or want the building. You can't, you can't, you can't function like that.

Yeah. Right. And so, again, I'll reiterate, I'm embarrassed for what was for all of us, for you, for her, but man, I'm proud of you for stepping back up. That has changed. That's masculinity. I'm proud of you. And now, man, we're going to open our hands and say, here's, I need a map.

And I can't read your mind. And if she says, then I only want to be with someone who's going to read my mind. I mean, you can tell her it's not Harry Potter. That would be an emotionally immature response. I don't say that, but you can't read minds. I think you're all going to have some hard choices to make. I'm honored that you call, brother. Thanks for the call.

Hope that helps. And holler back and let us know how the conversations go. We come back. A woman asks how her husband's neurofeedback therapy is going to affect their marriage. Hey, if you ever come over to my house, you're going to find a whole bunch of cool stuff, like guitars and hunting gear,

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You're going to love it. All right, let's go out to Indianapolis, Indiana, and talk to Mama Shell. What's up, Michelle? Hi, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm well, thank you. All right, so what's up?

So I'm calling because I hear you in your introductions a lot of times say the wheels coming off of relationships. But have you ever had a caller ask you what happens when the wheels go back on? Ooh, I like this. So tell me all about it. Well, my husband's going through neurofeedback treatment for PTSD, ADHD, and other nervous system dysregulation. He had a lot of abuse in his past, physical, emotional, all kinds. He's found an amazing clinic.

It's awesome. He's had nine treatments out of 40, and it's going super well so far. I'm super excited for him. How is it? I'm fascinated by this because I hear some that it's just junk, bunk nonsense. I hear some people have miraculous recoveries. What's he doing? So they said there wouldn't be a huge amount of change or, you know,

visible change for probably about 10 appointments. But he's so much happier. He's, his moods are more regulated. We have two six-year-olds. He has a lot of patience, a lot more patience than he had before. He's not ruminating as much about things. So you're seeing like real time change. Yes, yes.

And it's super exciting. But we have built our marriage around basically me working around his dysregulation. And I've learned how to anticipate, regulate, adjust, and hold things together. So I guess my problem is I don't know how much of my identity is me versus who I needed to be for a relationship to just function. Are you a fixer? I am and I'm a people pleaser. The deadly duo, yeah. Yeah, so part of me is afraid that when he gets better, I won't know what my role is anymore.

Well, I want to tell you, I would high-five you. I mean, because here's what happens very regularly, okay? somebody gets well. Somebody loses 60 pounds. Yes. Somebody goes to the doctor and gets their hormones regulated. Men and women, right? Yeah.

And the other partner loses their role. They lose their identity. And so what do they do? They create consciously or unconsciously things to solve. Yes. Right. Are you catching yourself already? I am.

Yeah. And I'm kind of worried about being left behind. I kind of equated it to what you just mentioned about weight loss, like two best friends. One loses 100 pounds and the other one's still heavy, you know, been there, done that too. One goes on with a happy life and then you kind of get left behind. And I don't mean left behind like I think he'll leave me, but I feel like, you know, we're going to be building a life around instead of me managing things. It's more built around mutuality.

And so that feels, yeah, super, super. hopeful, but also very scary for me. Yes. Okay. So if you look at this moving forward as a new skill to learn, it will set you free. Okay. If you look at this as a character defect or a flaw or a moral issue, it'll bury you. That makes sense. And what I mean by that in real terms, if you find yourself saying, I should be or I've got to let or I need to, that will crush you. right if you say oh man I've never shot a free throw before and I just totally airballed that one dude

I gotta keep practicing right you'll just get back on the line and shoot more free throws yeah and so the way this happens dude I love this is one of my favorite questions I've gotten a long time I love this is this is a perfect opportunity I've talked about this ad nauseum on the show for you all to get away like the marriage you had is over it doesn't exist anymore right and even if y'all want to do something cheesy, like get a janga tower and just knock it over on purpose and say, okay, we get to decide how this thing looks and rebuild it. And for me and my wife, this isn't the question for everybody, but for our house, the question that changed everything for us is, how do you want this house to feel when you come home every day? Yeah. And he might say something like, I want to come home and not feel like your fourth kid.

I want to come home and you're happy that I'm home. Yeah. I want to come home and you're not staying at your phone, but you greet me with a hug or like, whatever. Yeah. And then you all reverse engine. Okay, then here's what must be true. And then you say, here's how I want our house to feel when I get home. Yeah. And you'll build that world. And you both know we've never built this like this before. And so it's got to be clumsy. And we're going to give each other grace. And if best we can, we'll laugh.

And for me and my wife, we still to this day, we have weekly check-ins. How are we? Mm-hmm. How can I love you today? We set a goal this year and how, do you see me holding up mine to the bargain? What's your reflection with me? Right. All right.

Right. Do you think that it's possible for his love to change for me because there's, because I'm not taking care of him anymore and he's so used to that. Have you asked him? No. And he would tell me no. He would tell me no. Okay, but there's one more question beneath that.

Yeah. When you're a caretaker, when you're a people pleaser, it is your job. And you probably learn this as a little girl. I have to anticipate the emotional stability of the people's, people around me before they do so that we can all stay safe. 100%. And you have a radar that is going off all the time, right? Constantly, yeah.

What you have to practice is setting, turn the radar off and looking at him and saying, this scary question, how can I love you today? Okay. And when your whole identity has been, I will know how to love you. And by the way, Hollywood has told you, if your marriage is worth of crap, you'll already know what he needs and what he wants, which is nonsense. Right. Then you, it's, it's an act of submission.

I wish it was another word because that's a gross word, but it's like, it's you setting down your previous weapons of choice and saying, how can I love you today? Which is scary. It's terrifying. For me to set those weapons down. Well, because, because for your whole life, that's kept you unsafe. If you asked that question seven months ago, he would have said, I want Twinkies for breakfast. And if you really loved me, we would have sex all day.

And then we'd have a large pizza and we'd have beers. And then he'd forget, he even asked that stuff. And you're thinking, we have to feed our children, right? Right. And you have to go to a job. And now, so that, that, that defense mechanism kept y'all safe. Yeah. And now that same defense mechanism will bury him.

Right. And in burying him, I can tell you love him, it'll bury you too. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of love. It's been hard, but I wouldn't have stuck around if I didn't love him. And I knew he always, he's always been searching for something to make him, quote unquote, better. And he got in touch with this clinic and it's honestly been a godsend for us. And I'm really excited for him. If it works for you all, I'm so excited. Yeah. Yeah, but I'm just, you know, it's going to change the dynamic. And so it's anytime something changes, even if it's ugly, it's comfortable, right? That's right. And we marry what we know.

Yes. We marry what we are comfortable with, even if it's very uncomfortable, right? Right, right. I got friends from up north and they're like, man, I'm used to growing up and it was minus 40 degrees in the winter and I'm from Texas. and if it gets 60, the whole city shuts down, the state shuts down, right? And it's like, that was not comfortable, but it's what they know, right? Right. And so, similarly, here's the most important path for y'all.

A, is setting up routines, whether it's once a week, once a morning, especially at the beginning for, how can I love you and how can you love me? Okay. And trusting each other and then having a path for, and this is what takes a lot of, lot of practice, him looking at you and saying, I didn't like that. Yeah. And you not shutting down, you're not going all the way back and being a nine-year-old girl again. Right.

But you saying, cool, I got more data. Sorry. I feel bad. How can I love you? Okay. And you practicing saying to yourself, his vote matters as much as mine. Yeah. Yeah, he's spent a lot of time in our marriage saying nobody listens to me.

Whatever I suggest, you guys just do it, do it a different way or because I'm just so used to like just doing and being, you know. And so I guess I discredited his thought processes a lot because they were brought on by anger or fear or his experiences. And I thought that they were not as good as mine, maybe. and so now I'm I'm finding myself like backtracking and having more patience for his thought processes and initiative which I've never done before and it's hard two words can guide you or three curiosity over judgment okay one simple question tell me more about that okay and it's a humbling moment for you because you've survived on having to be right having to sift and filter through tons of emotional data flying at you a million miles an hour from a million different directions and make a call and go. And now you're going to have to practice saying, I might be wrong on this. And that's okay because we are deciding where we are going.

Right. Tell me more about that. Or getting to a place now where my wife will say, like, that doesn't feel right to me at all, what you just said. And I'm not going to go, what? I'll be like, okay, let me see if I can say it in a better way, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I've never been able to say those things to him because he does get really defensive.

And yeah. So I've found him lately being more open to hearing me. And if I'm curious about something, he'll say, oh, I understand why you thought that. But that's not what I was meaning or, you know, something like that. So that's probably good if I just am totally transparent with those things. Um, Jefferson Fisher gave me a line one time that was really transformative for me. As I'm saying something, when I say it and I know it doesn't land or it's not landing or it just came out how I said, I didn't mean to say it that way or whatever, a quick line to follow up with is, can I say that in a different way? Okay. Or if somebody you know loves you and cares about you says something that just stabs you in the guts, but you know they wouldn't do that on purpose. If you can exhale and say, can you say that

in a different way? Okay. That's the most generous interpretation of what just happened. And you're already asking for a, let's try again, because we're practicing. Right. Right. So if he says, hey, we need to quit eating chicken because they're putting poison in the chicken. We need to start eating eggs or whatever. And you can say, tell me more about that. Well, I read this article on whatever, whatever, whatever, and they said that, like, huh, I've not heard that. Right.

Right. And it's like, can we let that settle for a bit? Okay. Yeah. Or I'm going to continue to eat chicken, but I will love the fact that you were, drawing a line here, cool on you. I'll let you know ahead of time when I'm making chicken for us and the kids. My kids aren't eating chicken.

Okay, I'm going to cook chicken. I'll let you know when you'll be responsible for dinner with you and the kids. Okay. And that's great. I didn't eat carbs for years. And my wife would just make me a side dish. She just wouldn't put my meat in the noodles or whatever. It was awesome.

Took her one extra second. And it was cool. Yeah. And I felt so seen. yeah and I was being ridiculous I was being stupid like but in my head at the time

I was on it I understand big big big food I know what's happening and I was it just was what it was but it was this curious tell me more about that and often if I don't know if he's like me

but I'll talk myself and talk and talk and talk and talk and then I'm like okay that's stupid I just land the plane right Yeah. Yeah, he just, I think he just at this point is, you know, if I, if I question too much, he gets, he gets really defensive and, and that type of thing. But I see him coming out of that. Yeah. I see him being more interested in, and why I'm questioning it or trying to work with me instead of against me. Yeah. It is, and this neurofeedback thing is the most bizarre thing I've ever encountered. with anyone.

Yeah, I mean, it's, like I said, it's got, it's got, Huberman calls it anecdata. I mean, you got people who are like, it changed my life, ah! And then you've got other people who are like, yeah, okay. And so, like, if, like, I'm to a point now or if it's working for you and your family, awesome. That's amazing.

Yeah. Good for y'all, good for y'all. But, hey, it's too early to announce it here. I have a thing coming out. it will be out in time for Christmas. It is a, it would be exactly what you need right now. It's just not built yet,

but they're building it as we speak for couples to get together and just on a yearly basis. Say, all right, it's time to rebuild our marriage and it's amazing. But let's get away for four hours. Let's swipe the deck. Let's say, all right, we get to build a new marriage.

What do we love about our old one? What do we want to be different? What do you want to be different? How do I want to be different? How do you want to experience me different? What do we want this house to feel like? And then let's put in some concrete action steps on the calendar to get it going. It's awesome, man.

I'm proud of you guys. I'm proud of you guys. Thank you. Thank you. When we come back, a woman asks how to convince her husband to let her be a stay-at-home mom to their new baby. Oh. Buckle up. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

I have had some amazing mentors and friends who are also amazing women. But one of the common themes I hear from all of the women who have poured into me over the years is that between caring for people and all of the other responsibilities and expectations, that the whole world dumps on them, women are under an incredible amount of pressure every minute of every day. And often, they're encouraged to overlook their own emotional well-being for the care of others. Therapy can be a place where you learn how to set healthy boundaries, how to create some sort of balance and support and overall well-being for yourself and for those

that you love and care about. To do this, I recommend BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that matches you with a licensed therapist based on your goals and preferences. You can message your therapist in schedule sessions right in the platform. With over 30,000 therapists, they have the right person for you. And if the first therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch, anytime at no additional cost. Listen, your emotional well-being matters. Find support in therapy today. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloney

to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, h-elp.com slash deloni. Let's go to Minnesota and talk to Elizabeth. What's up, Elizabeth? Hi, how's it going? Doing great. How are you? I'm doing well.

What's going on? Yeah, so I'm calling because basically my husband and I have a four-month-old daughter, our first, and we're trying to decide if I should quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom. So I would like to be a stay-at-home mom, and my husband is not sold on the idea quite yet. Wow. Okay, so what's the crux of the disagreement here? Is it financial? Is it you're not going to do anything? What is it? I think it's pretty strictly financial. So it's not necessarily a matter of, like, can we afford our lifestyle.

If I quit my job, we both kind of will acknowledge that we probably could still kind of live the same way off my husband's income. It's more so he's looking at it as giving up my income, or he kind of looks at my income as it would be nice to have in the bank as security and just building our savings as well as a future down payment on our next home. So kind of more just an opportunity cost thing of him kind of thinking that money is hard to, hard to give, give up. Yeah. And so is time. Yes. And so are little giggles and first steps and all of that too, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So that's definitely kind of in my rebuttal to, in these conversations, you know, if he's kind of bringing up the money side of things, that's kind of. kind of my thoughts, too, is I don't want to give up time, really with my daughter. One kind of piece of context is we have discussed that we would, or he'd be more comfortable with that after our next kid just because then the cost of daycare would double and it would be, you know, more financially, I guess, feasible to him. But then kind of my rebuttal to that is just you never know how long it takes to have a second kid. And, you know, I don't know if I want to give up any time with my daughter. So the challenge for you all is you all have.

you all are fighting a proxy war, you'll need to get to the real issue. Okay. And that's hard. Couples will fight for years to avoid talking about the real, real issue. Okay.

And it sounds like, well, there's several issues here. They're just off top of my head. And feel free to tell me I'm wrong, okay? I love it when I'm wrong. There's part of you, I'm guessing here, that there's part of you

that while you're holding your baby and you hear your husband reduce that interaction to an ROI to a down payment on a future home that we may or may not even buy one day there is a part of you or maybe a lot of you

that looks at him and says I don't I can't I can't understand you and there's definitely some of that it's it's it will if you allow yourself to truly feel it there's almost a how dare you Yeah. And the other side of it is he's looking at you and saying,

do you not see, and this is his lived experience inside of his chest, do you not understand what's happening in this culture economically right now? If you have a job, hold on to it with all of your mith, all of your teeth, and do not let it go because who knows what's coming next? Right. Yeah, I can see that too. So he's looking at you saying, you're crazy. I had a babysitter. You went to daycare.

We're fine. but we might not be fine. Yeah. Yep. And I think that's, speaking of like going to daycare, another kind of piece of context is for whatever reason, and we don't really know anyone else who has, who is a stay-at-home mom or a stay-at-home parent. I don't know if it's like a location thing or what, but I think that's kind of why it's a little harder for him to wrap his head around the idea.

Just like if everyone else is doing, kids are doing so well in daycare, like what's what's the um like why would we need to not do that sure um so i think that plays into it as well yeah but that's like you know hey look my buddy's wife lost 10 pounds why aren't you i mean that that's a terrible way to live your life right yeah yeah my does he does he struggle with anxiety a little bit um he i'll say he's like a very um he's like hyperproductive he's always kind of wanting to get things done and um he's like the opposite of lazy i don't know if that really plays into anxiety but he does think of about money a lot.

And again, it's not really in a sense of like, oh, we can't afford the mortgage or we can't afford this. Yeah, if we, you know, if we wouldn't have had to fix the car, we would have X amount more money in the bank and kind of just, you know, it doesn't like the thought of losing money or having less. So it sounds like that's where he's anchored into. The source of safety is a number in a bank account. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I've been there. And I will tell you from personal experience and from sitting with a Jillian people, that number, it's an ever-moving finish line. Okay. Now he's considering a down payment for a house y'all haven't even started looking for yet. You get what I'm saying?

Yep. And then after you get that down payment, then it will be like, well, we need the bunker ranch. Like it will never stop. Yeah, and I've kind of tried to get specifics like, okay, what exactly is that we wouldn't be able to afford if I don't go back to work? And, you know, we can never really come to specifics. Just he's pretty blessed with his job. So, like, I just, I'd have a hard time seeing, like, how our lifestyles would be super different even if I do quit my job. But, but you're trying to solve a math problem and he's trying to solve a hole in his chest problem.

Okay. He's trying to feel safe extrinsically outside. Yeah, and that's something too, I think about, like, oh, I know it's, I would love to prevent him from being stressed, too, because, yeah, like, if you lose a sleepover, things like this or just thinking of money, you know, obviously that's not a great, great thing to do either. So kind of trying to balance, like, what's best for our family and what is going to, like, set us both up for success. and um so i i think i've been able to live with you have a four month old so here's here's the best path forward it's very similar to i've told a caller earlier on the show how long have y'all been married total a year and a half oh so y'all are new new new into this thing yeah we've been together like six years but yeah married year and a half okay so already you're in two new

relationships within two years. So y'all dated for five years. Y'all got married. You were married for, what, nine months and you got pregnant? Or six months and you got pregnant. Or yeah. And so then you have a four-month-old. The marriage you had is over.

It doesn't exist. Okay. What most people do is they spend all of their energy trying to either get back what was or prepare for what might be someday. Okay. And they never just set in the middle and say that we get to build this life right now. And so I'll recommend with you and I recommend with everybody. I do this in my house.

This is how much I believe in it is calling that out. The marriage we had is over. We get to decide who we are going to be together when it calls. comes to money, to time, more importantly, to values, to what scares us, to what excites us, we get to create that. We get to create our new dating life, our new romance life, our new sex life, our new sleep routines. We get to do all of that. And then we get to decide how we are going to parent this kid. And when you do it that way, think of it like if you're building a new house, the contractor sits down with a couple. I have a buddy who had a contractor sit down. They

He actually sent the husband and the wife a quiz, like an online quiz, and they filled it all out. And then they said, like, boom, this is the house we think is for you. And they were dead on. It was awesome. But it's like, what do you value? What do I value? And if he is a plugged in, want to love my wife well husband, which he sounds like he does. Yeah, for sure.

Often, I'll just speak from my personal experience. the only way I knew how to love my wife well was to make as much money as possible to work 24-7-365 so that if anything came up unexpected, we could handle it. Yeah, that seems super. That really sounds like him too.

Well, and what I missed was, I never asked her, hey, how can I love you? Because she would have said, hey, we have six months of an emergency fund. We don't owe anybody any money. you could really love me by just watching TV with me, by going to this museum with me.

Yeah, okay. Right? Yeah, definitely relatable, for sure. And so your voice matters here and you letting him know, I love you, I'm so lucky I get to be married to you, how do you want this house to feel when you walk in every day?

There will come a moment when he's going to have to put on his big boy pants and say, here is the number in the bank that I'm okay with. my wife one day I've told the story on the show she met me in the garage and it was a big showdown we had um but she said the amount of how much I love you and the amount of money you make is full okay yeah you cannot make any more money to make me feel any safer than I feel right now you cannot make any more money to make me feel any more loved or seen or known than I do right now and then she followed it up with so any more money you make is for you and your ego

okay and I was like whoa right yeah and that was an important call out for me and I was like oh then how do it and then she said the scary terrifying thing hey we have enough and then I realized I don't have a psychology

for enough okay yeah that I mean that sounds super relatable to our kind of dynamic too she drew a pie chart and just showed like one of the pie pieces was money. And she says she colored it in. She goes that one's full. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that way of framing it. But what was still empty was quality time. What was still empty was presence. You're at our house, but you're not here. You're somewhere else. You're in the markets. You're writing a new book.

You're thinking about a speech you're going to give someday. I want you here. Or you're sitting by me, but you're scrolling on the phone while we're watching a, like you're watching your little screen with your medium-sized screen in your lap and we're watching a big screen together. Like that's, you're not with me. Right. Right. Yeah, totally. And so all the way back to this conversation, this isn't a money issue for you guys. Some people are in a situation where somebody really wants to stay at home. Economically, we have to have two salaries, two incomes. This doesn't sound like y'all. Yeah, no. Yeah, that's true. What he needs to hear is

unequivocally, I value time with this child developmentally. I think it's going to be better for our kid. I can't imagine sitting in an office, making money to pay for somebody else to raise my kid. And so here is what I am proposing this looks like. And maybe it's all work part-time. Yeah. But you stating a value, it is a core value of mine

that we are the chief development officers of our child. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely something I think about a lot. Just because, you know, if you go out looking for any opinion online, you can find something that supports your thoughts and something against it. So just always thinking about, like, is daycare good for kids or is it, you know, better to have a stay-at-home mom? So things like that. People have not.

People have not. Yeah, people have not talked openly. about that data because there's a whole swath of people that have no other choice. The research is clear on it. It's clear. The challenge with it is it can be so, it can be so hard to hear if you're forced into a situation where it's necessary. Yeah, that makes sense. And so people just don't talk about it.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, even just, I mean, you know, without running any real studies, you can just think about it. And that's toward the daycare we're thinking about. Yeah, it's a common sense. Common sense. I mean, it's just common sense is common sense. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

Like, and then, you know, I kind of start to question myself like, okay, well, it's such, you know, it seems like common sense to me. If you can afford it and you want to do it, you should. But it's like, well, why has no one I know doing this? So I don't know if it's just a cultural thing or what, but that's, that's, kind of gets in my head. People make choices. They get to make choices. Yeah. I would rather this life, this house, this career, this status, this identity. I'd rather all these things than this other thing. Yeah. Or people simply have to have two incomes because X, Y, or Z, or we have to have two incomes because we want these cars in the driveway and we want this house on our driver's license. And so I don't want to trade a smaller house way outside of town for, like, it's.

People just make trades. And that's why it's such a big deal to me that people take 100 full percent ownership of the choices they make. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of another thing we've talked about is just like choices, making choices, is because the money, you know, if we do want to buy a house, we want to buy a house kind of out in the country. And, you know, an argument there would be raising our kids a certain type of way with certain experiences. So that's kind of something we talk about is even if we do save money doing one thing, it's, you know, could be beneficial for the kids in the other way. So yeah, definitely here's kind of all about choices.

Underneath poverty, underneath rural or all these different variables we put up there, what's going to be best, what's going to be best, what's going to be best, two parents on the same page who are stable, period. Yeah. And if you'll live in the country and y'all are united and your kids have a stable presence where they're known and loved, they're going to be great and be fine. And they're going to have problems because their kids are going to do dumb, stupid stuff, they're going to break their arms. Like, that's life, right? Someone's going to break their heart. There's that. And if you live in a big city and there's a stable place that we're anchored into that we call home underneath all these other factors.

All right. And so we can get so caught up in what's the right this? And if we go to this, this, this. And man, I'm more convinced that ever that a husband, like a, like a true marriage, you and me, ride or die, anchored in the same values. We don't have to agree on everything. In fact, it's best if we don't agree on everything. But we don't share the same beliefs.

We got the same values. Right. Man, then you can kind of do what you kind of live where you want. I've lived in the woods on some acreage with my kids. I now live in the city with my kids. I, they're my kids. kids, you know what I mean? They're crushing. They're doing fine. And they have struggles and challenges like every other kid. Yeah. Yeah, that's good to hear the piece about just, you know,

united parents is kind of number one. Because I definitely feel like whatever we end up doing, it'll, you know, we'll come to a healthy decision. And yeah, stay united in that decision. So that's reassuring to hear. It's amazing. And I, what I don't want you to do, which is, again, This is a cautionary tale. I'm probably 10 years down the road ahead of you. Don't miss this time fantasizing and planning about another time in the future that, who knows? 10 years from now for y'all, that's two presidential, that's three, three presidential elections from now. Really?

Right. Really? Yeah. I just read a thing today that Elon announced they're launching data centers in space. right like really that's wild i'm not planning anything i am going to make great choices today i'm i'm i'm going to do some i'm not trying to be presumptuous here and i'm not using this word in any sort of clinical sense at all but i'm going to send you a copy of the book i wrote called building a non-anxious life i'm not in any way saying you or your husband have

clinical anxiety in any shape or form or fashion but some of the chance of the chance challenges I've experienced. I mean, it just sounds like your husband's running my playbook, man, and I know what that feels like. And so I wrote the book for him and for people who love guys like him. And so I'm going to send it to you. Stay on the line here and we'll get you hooked up and I'll mail it to you. It would be awesome if you all both read it. Because if I just get this thing in the bank, if I just get this house, if I just get this piece of land, And then my body will go, ah, it's just not how it works. There's actually another path to take if you're looking for peace.

And it's from the inside out. And it's hard and it's countercultural. And I wrote a book for it. So hang on the line here. I'm really grateful for the call. Let's don't talk about the money part. Y'all are fine. Let's don't talk about the daycare stuff.

The kid number two. Let's have a real conversation, which is, hey, we have a whole new marriage. One and a half years in, we got a brand new marriage. We get to decide what this looks like. And the foundation we build it on, the values we build it on, we got to put all that on the table. We've got to be open. We've got to be honest.

Let's be curious. Let's unite on those values. And then we'll go build something awesome. Hey, what's up? It's Deloney. So we're in the middle of Lent right now. And whether you grew up with that tradition, or you're just trying to get your head and your heart back on straight this season,

there's something I want you to check out. It's called Hallow. It's the number one Christian prayer. and meditation app in the world, and it's honestly become one of the most important things I do to start my day. Anchoring my day in prayer helps me slow down and prioritize what matters to me before the world swallows me up. And right now, we're in the middle of Hallow's Lent Pray 40 Challenge. And if you've given something up and you're barely hanging on, or if you want to learn more about what this whole Lent thing is all about, this challenge is for you. Hallow is loaded with daily reflections,

scripture, music, and other special series to help you anchor your faith in practice. You can try a hallow for free for three whole months by using my link. Go to hallow.com slash Deloney today and sign up for three months of hallow for free. All right, we're back. I've got a money and marriage anonymous question, a question that somebody left at the money and marriage retreat that me and my friend Rachel Cruz put on a few times a year. Here's the question that was left. How can I be a better communicator with my wife when I am more of a thinker. She is very direct and quick to reply, so I feel like I can't be as good at talking with her. I feel like I'm kind of broken or maybe

come off as not fully present. This is my house. Just I talk a lot and real fast and fly and and peepoo, pew, pew, pew. And my wife is a way more emotionally stable and more thoughtful. and she hears a problem and ruminates on it and thinks on it, and then we'll come up with a more concrete answer. So a great gift she gave me, or this is years ago, is when I start talking about a subject, she will ask, do you want me to listen, or do you want my opinion on it?

And if you want my opinion on it, I'm going to need to think about it. So you just stop the conversation. And what I realized is A, I was kind of looking for a sparring match a little bit, I was kind of looking to get like a quick win. I wasn't looking to engage or connect with my wife. I was looking to just kind of get a little and then move on.

And so it stopped me. And so if I want to be a better communicator, I need to seek to connect with the person, understand, acknowledge them, as Jefferson says. So being a better communicator is telling the other person, here's a path to me. I'm going to allow you to see and know me. Whenever we start talking about big issues, politics, money, sex, all of it.

I want to fully absorb it and it just takes me a while to process it. I wish I was faster, but I'm not. So that's cool. So if you want to talk about a big issue, tell me about it ahead of time, kind of what we're thinking about. And then I'll come ready and prepared and ready to rock and roll. My wife, when we had big conversation, she bring notes. It's awesome. She's so prepared.

She'll bring notes. She'll bring talking points. She'll have listened to a podcast or two about it. She's ready to rock and roll. I love that. But it was her telling me, here's what I need if you want to connect. If you want to fight,

I don't want to fight. If you want to just like steamroll me with your facts and your directness, I'd rather just opt out of that. And that was a great challenge for me. So how do you communicate better with your wife? You're not broken. Just got a different computer.

And you may be looking to connect during conversations and your wife may be looking just to whack each other back and forth for a minute and then going about the day. So give her a direct roadmap on how she can best communicate with you on big things and on the little things. And don't apologize for your processing speed. It may not be as fast, but it's probably deeper and more thoughtful.

We need way more of that.