The Dr. John Delony Show - I Married the Man I Had an Affair With

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

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I had enough there while I was married to my first husband. I had also asked my ex-mother-in-law to meet me for dinner. I confessed to her and tried to get advice on how to tell him. She thought it would be better for her son's quote-unquote feelings to have his wife up and leave him and divorce him and not know why. Hey, what's going on? This is John. With the Dr. John Deloney Show, welcome back. If you're new to the show, I'm glad that you're here.

if you are one of the OG 17, you listen to every episode, you're doing with us since day one. I don't even think I was with us day one. But you've been with us. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for watching the show. Thank you for listening to the show.

Thank you for sharing the show. We've started a movement here on owning what we feel, owning what we say and do next, owning our relationships and our mental and emotional health and loving those around us well. And I'm glad that you're here. glad that you're part of it. Let's go out to Birmingham, Alabama, and talk to Ashley. What's up, Ashley?

Hey, Dr. John. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm okay. Could be a little better. What's up? So my question is, how do I make peace with a mistake that I made in the past? And I'll try to keep a short backstory. So almost four years ago, I was 24, and I had enough. while I was married to my first husband.

We were married about a year and a half. The affair had started off emotional for a few months and led up to being physical one night. And a couple of days after it had happened, I broke down to my dad about it, but not to my husband at the time. I wasn't honest with him about it at first, but he did have suspicion. and shortly after I ultimately ended the marriage. And months go by and I was wanting to be honest about what had happened, but I wasn't sure about telling him since time had passed. And during that time, I began confessing to some of the people around me,

like my sister and a couple of friends. And I had also asked my ex-mother-in-law to meet me for, dinner and I confessed to her and tried to get advice on how to tell him. She and my dad both at the time were telling me that I shouldn't. And I had told my dad that I was meeting her to tell her. And that same week, my dad had actually told my older brother, who then told my ex. so he had found out about it from him. So fast forward to today, I'm 28 and remarried to the man that the affair happened with,

and we now have a son, and I just still struggle with what I did or what we did, and the damage that it's caused in multiple different directions. And I'm also a Christian and very ashamed and embarrassed of it. and I just need some help with all of that. Yeah. There's a lot to the story, huh? Yes. I was trying to keep at minimum.

Yeah. Let me start in a weird direction, okay? Okay. Your first husband. Is he a good guy? Yes, he was a good guy. Yeah. And I say this obviously.

I mean physically, but was he a safe guy? Was he someone you could tell stuff to? Someone you felt safe being around? Someone who could hear you? Not 100%. I don't really feel like he was emotionally there. And we kind of just didn't talk about certain things. But did you not talk about him because you wouldn't share?

You wouldn't let yourself be seen and known? or because he was a gas lighter, he was going to take what you said and rub your nose in it. Or maybe a bit of both. Sometimes when I hear people say this situation's not safe, it's because it literally is not safe.

Physically, I'm going to get hit. If I say something, I'm going to get, my partner will withdraw from me. I'm going to get screamed at, like, right? It's literally not safe. Sometimes, though,

somebody says it's not safe. And that just is another word for it's uncomfortable or it feels scary to let myself be fully known to tell the full truth. And so I don't. And I blame them for it. Okay. Yeah. I would say he would not physically hurt me. He did have some anger problems.

But I think it's more of me not fully wanting to be uncomfortable or honest. Like when I look back throughout the years that we were dating, I started dating him when I was 18. And I had actually broken up with him a few times before we had gotten married. But we had always gotten back together shortly after. And I feel like I wasn't completely honest in the reasonings sometimes. Sure. So why did your dad and his mom say you shouldn't tell him? I feel like because they were trying to somehow, I guess his mom was trying to maybe spare his feelings.

She thought it would be better for her son's quote unquote feelings to have his wife up and leave him and divorce him and not know why? Yeah. That's insanity. I mean, you know that now, but like, that's madness. Why would your dad tell you don't tell him? I'm assuming because he thought it would be a big mess, which I already knew that it was going to be.

But it already was a mess. I mean, your marriage was already over, but it already blown up. Yeah. Often the things we do to try to fix the things that we've done instead of just laying the out in the open. Let me put it this way. If you have a deep, deep cut and you don't ever take the time

to rinse that thing out and have it exposed and have it cleaned, it will just get infected. And once it gets infected, when you throw a bunch of different bandages on top of it, trying to cover it up and trying to, it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse, right? But that brings us here.

I don't hear somebody who is still struggling with a decision. a choice. I hear somebody and tell me if I'm out to lunch on this one, okay? I can be totally wrong. I hear somebody who became somebody she didn't respect, who did not just one thing that was out of alignment with who she wanted to be, or I'll put it this way, did one thing that hurt somebody really badly, but you did a bunch of stuff. And it wasn't like you, um, cheated once. It was cheated on top of dishonesty

in top of telling everybody else but that one hurting guy that you loved and you committed yourself to. And it seemed like a whole bunch of stuff all on top of itself as opposed to I just did this one thing. Is that ring true? I hear somebody who does not

respect herself. Yes, that's true. Okay. So fast forward now what has come up recently that has made this voice louder? Are you finding yourself attracted to somebody else again? Are you missing this guy or the same patterns repeating in your new marriage? What's going on?

No. I feel like it's actually done the opposite. I will never do something like that again. And that's at least what I think in my head. I'm really not sure. I feel like the last few years since it has happened, it's kind of just been an up and down thing of where it still just kind of haunts me.

But I'm not really sure recently of one particular thing of maybe that has came up. So I think the place to start, start is full and in many ways radical or to quote my friend Jocko like extreme ownership here and it is I chose to have an emotional affair I chose for years not to tell him the truth about what I felt what I wanted my concerns for our relationship I then, before I even gave him a chance to reconcile with me before I divorced him, I left him, I then went and told a whole bunch of other people without, like, you see what I'm saying?

All of those statements start with I. And I know there's context and I know you got advice and I know you were 24 and you were scared to death and I know all that stuff. But there's a part of you that knows something in your nervous system and there's a part of you that is trying to trying to, has been trying to take the edge off of that for years with different stories, with blame, with shame, with all that stuff. And so there's something powerful about just shining a light on, a big bright light on all of it. This is what I did. And there should be guilt with that.

You heard somebody. You did something that was not in alignment with who you want to be. Is that right? All right. Okay. And so guilt is right here. I'll even say it's healthy to be ashamed of what you did. And there's something powerful about forgiving 24-year-old you.

Write her a letter and say, you blew it. And I'm not carrying that cinder block around with me anymore. Because all it's doing is weighing down your new marriage. It's weighing down your relationship with your baby. It's weighing you down when you look at that, at yourself in the mirror here at 20. years old. And if you're writing that letter, there's probably going to be some things in there, unless you're just cold-hearted, and I don't hear that. There's probably going to be some things that you look back on that 24-year-old with a little bit of compassion. You didn't know.

I messed up. I went left and I should have gone right. Like all those different, like, it's just about taking full ownership and letting 24-year-old you just forgive her. forgiveness is not letting her off the hook you're living in the consequences of it but it is simply saying for 28 year old you i'm not carrying this around anymore and my hope is this leads you to not a sense of walking around for the rest of your life with your head held low but it just lets you walk a little more humbly and a little more compassionately because things happen everybody messes up and so when you hear somebody at your local church who the rumor has had an affair, your heart doesn't immediately go to, I can't believe, it goes to, oh, God, I'm going to take her to coffee, right? Or when the rumor mill starts on

somebody at work or somebody in politics and the news, your immediate thought is one of compassion, one of humility, one of, dude, I have found myself in a place where I never thought I could be. And it makes you one of the most empathetic, caring people around. You get what I'm saying? Yes. Okay, so tell me a couple of great things about. about you at 28. What kind of wife are you right now? I'm an intentional wife. What does that mean? Be specific.

Of just doing little things for my husband. Like I make him coffee or I make his lunch every day. And we're pretty good about prioritizing time together. Okay. What kind of mom are you? And to be honest with each other. What kind of mom are you? You a good mom?

I try to be. No, give me an example of how you are a great mom. I'm home with my son pretty much every day. Okay. So I make sure he's fed, spend time with him, teach him. Okay. Does he run to his mom with his arms open? Yes.

Okay. So if we're going to tell the whole truth and we're going to have radical ownership here, we're also going to own the good stuff, right? And there's that weird, there's that weird paradox where if you had never done what you did at 24, if you had never blown up your ex-husband's life and your life, this little baby wouldn't be here. That's a weird thing to try to do the math on, right? Yeah, that's something I've struggled with. Okay.

Struggling, let me put it this way, that's a math problem that can't be solved. And so trying to loop on that math problem over and over and over and over again, it doesn't, there's not an answer to it. All it does is drain away any extra margin and energy for loving well the people in your life today. And so here's the simple daily practice. This is really hard, but it's simple, okay? It is when the what if pops in your head, when the image of you driving home from your first, like, physical encounter with the guy who's your husband now,

that feeling, you know what I'm talking about, that shame, like it's just heaviness. Yes. When your body drags you back to that moment, all your body is trying to do is keep you safe. It doesn't ever want you to hurt like that again and you don't ever want to hurt anybody else like that again. When it does that, you have a picture in your mind, a real picture.

I would recommend have one on your phone or carry one in your back pocket. Go old school to Walgreens and print one out, put in your pocket. Carry it with you and pull it out. And don't just look at it. Put yourself in that picture. And it's one of you and your current husband

and your baby. laughing, feel the weather, feel your son's hand on your finger, your new husband's hand around your shoulders. It will bring you from your body trying to protect you to, remember what happened, remember what happened to, but I'm okay now. I'm new now. I've rebuilt myself into somebody I respect with a thousand little actions every day. I'm a wife who loves her new husband well. And by the way, he's not your new husband. You've been with him twice as long as you're with your ex. I'm an incredible mom.

When and if my son comes to me for wisdom, I'm never going to tell him you should lie to quote unquote spare somebody because that's just going to make when they find out even worse, right? It's I am now in the driver's seat of my life. And when you get there over time, when you constantly pull that picture out, you constantly decide I'm not going to meditate on what I did.

I'm going to meditate on what I'm doing and who I'm becoming. Your body will go, oh, you're driving again, cool, and it will slowly change your default setting to constantly remind you of the worst thing you ever did to she is this person now. But at some point, you've got to let 24-year-old you go, all that pain you caused.

Radical. I own it all. I did this. Yes, I got bad advice. I chose to lie. Yes, he, wasn't emotionally whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah. I chose to go to somebody else's house and sleep with them.

I had this picture of our life together, yet I have a family with somebody else now. All of that is true. And it all has a period at the end of it. What are you going to write next? What I'm going to write is I'm going to become somebody of high character that my husband and my son can anchor into. I know what it's like to not be able to trust yourself. I'm going to always do the small little things

so that I'm a person that I respect and trust. I'm going to choose it. I'm going to choose it over and over and over again. Your move, sister. Thanks for the call. I took a lot of courage to call. Be a person of high, high integrity from this point forward. We come back.

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It's got to Johnson City, Tennessee, just a few hours from me and talk to Thomas. What's up, Thomas? Hey, John. How's it going? I'm good, brother. What are you up to, man? Oh, man. I just got back from a work trip, so trying to settle back into the daily routine, I guess.

Very cool. Very cool. What's up? How can I help? Yeah, man. So my question is, well, I mean, you know it. How do I stop obsessing over my wives and my finances? What's the state of your finances? Pretty good. I mean, I don't know how in depth I should go, but I mean, I'm 21. My wife is 22. We've done pretty well for ourselves. We're very, very thankful to God for that.

I can't even point anything out that like we're struggling with right now. We haven't bought a house yet, but we're working on that. We're saving up for a down payment, kind of ending baby step three. So we're pretty much close to having that emergency fund built all the way up. For people listening that don't know what that means, that means that Thomas and his wife don't owe anybody any money. And they've almost saved up three to six months as of expectations. expenses. So basically they are their own credit card now. They're their own emergency bank now, which is amazing. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. Which put you ahead of most people in the

United States, which is amazing. Right. And like I see those statistics all the time. You know, I guess the algorithm on social media and everything is kind of tailored to what you engage with most and mine just happens to be finances a lot of the time. So I see a lot of those statistics and like we are ahead of the game. You know, we're contributing to retirement as well. What was money like growing up for you? I guess there's moments whenever you're like lead with that next time. So I'll do that.

My parents had 10 kids. Okay. So it was pretty tight. Pretty tight. Yeah, pretty tight. Did your dad make $100 million a year? No, dude. No, not at all.

Our kind of structure growing up was my family would kind of travel around the eastern United States doing like biblical dramas and churches. And we would live off of like a love offering basis. So churches would basically. Pass the bucket, maybe. Yeah, past the bucket. And that's kind of what we would live off of. So there wasn't any guaranteed like, hey, this amount of money is coming in per month. And along with that, you know, at kind of closer to the tail end of.

the ministry, my parents kind of started up their own business. But even as far as that goes, they're not doing the best financially, especially with retirement coming up. So they don't really have much put away for that. How are your other nine siblings doing financially? Good question. I think it's a mix of, I mean, good and all right. I don't think anyone's doing really bad. I think there may be a couple who are probably tighter just due to different life changes recently, but I wouldn't say anyone's like down in the dumps per se. I don't know. What is your, give me, you mentioned your social media algorithm feed. Give me a big picture.

Do you study finance? Are you all up to date on it all? No. I work for a large financial firm. So not as a financial advisor though I'm just kind of in that space as it stands I do IT Okay so you get the headlines

I do I get the headlines I see you know like oh well you know this stock is you know Going up by this percentage of S&P is doing this well You know things like that so it's pretty cool Well you get the this stock is going up of which in this country there are approximately six to seven that are going up right and the rest are floundering. So you get those,

but you also get the, it's all coming down. I can't believe this is happening. The Fed is on trial, all this crazy nonsense it's going on, right? Yeah, everything, yeah. Okay. So I want to back all the way out for a second, okay?

Okay. I want to propose something to you that maybe you've never considered before. Okay. I want you to consider that your body's working perfectly. it's it's working exactly as your lived experience would would set it up and that is you have a very real in your nervous system not just in your head wired into you from a young age that a meal may not be coming you have a lived experience of seeing a father turn around and see 11 mouths plus his that he's responsible for

and whether he tried to hide it or not, you know that look of a dad who's thinking, I don't know where we're going to sleep tonight. Okay? Yeah. You would be clinically, I would tell you to go check yourself in to a hospital if you were like, no, do I don't think about money at all.

It's all good and great. Every single cell in your body is saying, we're not safe, we're not safe. This could go away at any moment. Sometimes we get to have a nice meal, but most of the time. That is your nervous system trying to solve for it. Okay. That's number one. Right. Number two, you work in a world where you don't have insider knowledge, but you get blasted by headlines. What do I mean by that? I have several friends in the banking industry. When I ask them like, dude, what happens if we have a recession?

To a person, they're like, sweet, dude, that means everything's on sale. And they know that because they understand how things work. I don't. So when I see huge headlines, it's a recession coming, all this, oh, you should have bought crypto 10 years ago, you're behind the times, you should have, whatever, like, my body just sees the headlines and it does what it's supposed to do, which is dives out to protect me. Whether that means go to war, whether that means worry and obsess and scroll more and read more and do more spreadsheets and figure out more little nooks and crannies and get more jobs

What? It's just doing what it's supposed to do. Trying to keep me safe. Sure. Okay? So hear me say, I don't think you're crazy. All right. Well, I appreciate that. It feels like it sometimes. I know, I know, I know. And here's the third thing.

What else are you anxious about in your life? Just throw them out there. I truly don't know. Nothing else. You're just golden with your marriage. Y'all are all the same line together, your job. You just feel, ah, not worried about AI or nothing. Like, what do you get anxious about?

I mean, with AI comes layoffs. Like, there's been a lot of conversation about that with my company. So, I mean, that's something I think of. Honestly, like, if I'm being 100% honest with you, I don't honestly get anxious much about that. I have full confidence that whatever happens, you know, that's just another step that I'll just have to take to kind of overcome it. And I know God's got our back. so I'm not really worried about that. Truly the, really the only thing I can think of is finances.

When you say obsessed, what does that mean in real life? Like when you say I'm obsessing over our finances, what does that mean? Yeah. Like constantly checking the balances of like 401K, our savings, our, you know, money market accounts, seeing, you know, a headline on social media saying like, hey, you know, this stock, you know, went up this percentage, if you would have just invested in it, you know, six months ago, you could have had this much return. Well, then I'll take the balance that was in our account at that time and do, you know, the Dave Ramsey investment calculator and look up like,

you know, from this time to this time, this percentage of return, what would I have? And it's like constantly like parsing through those numbers and seeing like, man, I could have done better or like, man, I should, you know, really get invested in this sort of thing because it's projected to, you know, go this high, you know, crypto, you know, all that talk, whether it's going up or down, you know, things, when you're a kid driving around in the RV, you just had kids everywhere? Yeah, it was, well, it was a 12-passager van. Even worse. How many times did you hear the words you should, y'all need to? You all should have. Good bit. Okay. The words and the voices that we hear over time, the stories that we're told when we're young,

become the stories we tell ourselves as adults. The problem is we tell those stories as adults in our own voice, and so we believe it. I work, my other job besides this show is I co-host the Ramsey show, right? Love it. Listen to it all the time. Okay. I look at my 401K balance once a year, and only because my wife and I get together once a year for our annual marriage retreat, and I just give a state of the union. Here's what it is this year. And here's why, not because I bury my head in the sand, not because I don't care, none of that,

but because I'm never going to sell my 401k. I'm never going to get out of it. I'm ever going to pay a 35% tax and borrow against it. It just is. And because it's there, I've made peace with, it's a roller coaster and looking doesn't do any good for it. It will do nothing for me except give me false security because I know it will go down at some point. Or and even in so if it's high, I'm like, oh, I feel so good. That's false. It's going to go down and it'll go back up and it'll go down and then hopefully it goes back. Right. Or it just leaves me looking for things I quote unquote should have done, which is a meta story for my wife probably could have done better than Mary and me. Yeah. I'm not enough. And whether your mind is way clear than

mine, which is like, yeah, dude, if AI takes my job, cool, I'll go get another one. That's fine. We'll figure that out. That's awesome. Your body has a lived experience, or as Vanderckelk says, your body has kept the score. And it's often fighting wars that we don't even know we're fighting. And so the challenge for you is twofold, and I just know it intuitively because I experienced the same thing, okay? I grew up in a house with a dad who's a good man, with a mom who's an incredible woman, and very money insecure for most of my childhood. Okay. I would be crazy if I wasn't highly attuned to it as an adult. Also, I'd be crazy if I kept trying to play whack-a-mole with markets and with all the,

predictions and it's just madness. I would be extra crazy if I got any financial advice from TikTok. Right? Right. You should have. You need to buy passive income, buy duplexes and stuff. I would be insane. Right.

Right. So the path I'll give you is twofold. Path number one is, or three, commit to yourself to stop going to war with your body. If you start obsessing over something, if you start, if your heart, that warm feeling you get when your stomach drops,

if your heart starts racing, if you start saying, I should have, I should have, I should have. Instead of immediately trying to run out and solve that problem, if you'll just take one quick, deep inhale and deep exhale and say, out loud or whisper it, depending on if you're by yourself or the others,

dude, thank you for taking care of me. thank you for trying to keep me safe i'm good that's you just calling your body back into your frontal lobe into your mind it's realigning i'm saying i got it i got it you're trying to save us you've been there before i'm good though i'm just not going to go to war with my body anymore i'm too i'm too tired man it's it's a losing proposition the second thing is is committing to a set of principles and what i mean by that is i'm not ever going to sell my 401k that's a principle of mine. I will go up or down on that ship.

We'll either go to the moon or we'll go to the bottom of the ocean. That money, when I invested in my 401K, it's spent, right? And so when I have that principle lined out, the action steps that validate that principle in my life means I'm not going to bother looking at it. It doesn't do any good. I'm not going to do anything. If you're one of those day traders

of which a vast majority of them lose everything, you need to watch every second of every, everything of all, like, right? You need to. Thankfully, I don't do that. Of course, yeah. And so, and so it's really asking yourself this one question, what can I control here? Or as people used to ask in the alleyways between, you know, between bars when I was in college, what are you going to do about it?

Oh, nothing. I'm just going to put a bunch of fake numbers into a calculator and project out a decision that I didn't even make. and to try to see just what kind of a loser I am. I'm not even going to put in the calculator. I'm going to use the investment calculator for real money that I have that I am putting in there so that I can project out a future that me and my wife want to create together. That's what those calculators are for.

They're not shame meters, right? Yeah. And so come up with a set of principles. I have, growing up with not a lot, and having a couple of number one best selling books in a show that's pretty popular, My life has changed to some degree when it comes to worrying the daily stresses of worrying about how me and my wife are going to pay our bills. Okay?

That's changed. The angst hasn't. And so this is directly from Dave who grew up with not a lot of stuff, who's worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars now. And that is I just simply look at ratios. I look at the numbers. and I make decisions based on the number, not on my feelings or the emotions attached to it. And for me, that means I don't make big decisions without my wife

because she's more stable than I am. She doesn't have that same angst that I have. Yeah, same here. And here's the third thing. You ready? Stay on the known path. All I mean by that is this. Just keep doing the same workout, man.

Just keep eating the same healthy diet. Just keep showing up for your wife in a thousand little ways over time asking her every day. How can I love you? Getting together a couple times a year to make sure your values and your actions are aligned together. So y'all are best supporting each other so that y'all can get where you want to go. And anytime somebody throws another path in front of you and another path in front of you and another path a new cutting edge with it, just keep scrolling. Or put your phone away. But you get what I'm saying?

Limit your inputs on what you should be doing. Yeah, I think that's probably something I struggle with a lot. Yeah, get off. Yeah, there's a lot of information coming in. Turn it off. If you've already made your principles known, turn it off. If your principles are wavering, if you have new ideas, be honest about those. Sit with your wife and a friend or two and put those principles on the table and say,

I had this principle. I think about changing it. What do you all think? If you have lived experience on a topic and your body, it gets really powerful and strong emotions around it, getting a coach, getting a friend, getting somebody to see something you don't see

is really important. Because your feelings are, you can't help those. You're just going to feel stuff. But you have to be responsible for your next emotional right action, right? The next emotions,

the next actions you take. That's just emotional maturity. And sometimes we need people with us. Here's a fourth thing. Last one really quick. You ready? Yep. If you put your phone away,

you're going to have a bunch of idle, boring, itchy time. Choose to backfill that time. with things that will get you where you want to be and help you become the man you want to become. Exercise, sex, with your wife, not with strangers.

Go to a comedy club. Go watch movies. Go get another degree. Go start planning for life after AI takes your job. Whatever it is. You're going to have time and itchiness like, go use that productively and don't just scroll,

literally doom scroll in your case, your life away. Don't go seek more. opinions and more information and more information and more, dude, I made my call. I've made my choices. I'm going to invest 15% of my income. I'm not going to owe anybody any money. Those are core values. Those are principles I have put forth. That's the sidewalk I walk on. So I'm not even going to look at things that challenge those. I'm going to get on about my life. And then you're going to find yourself pretty bored, pretty fast. And so I've got to do some things that are going to back for all

that. It's all well and good. All I say is you're not crazy, man. Your body has been through financial insecurity, your body has seen and experienced hungry mouths. You're not crazy, man. Your body's just doing right. It's an honor to talk to you, brother. Hang on the line. I'm missing you a copy of building a non-anxious life. I want you and your wife to use that as a roadmap to build your young marriage with.

All kinds of things will come out when you'll read the book and do the exercises at the end of each chapter, but I think it will provide great stability for you as you build your own branch on your family tree. Thanks for calling, brother. We come back, a man asks how to bring back his hobbies without feeling guilty in his marriage. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Sometimes it feels like everyone else's love lives

are these perfect little hallmark movies. Here's the truth. Whether you're married, dating, or single, everybody is still figuring out how to do relationships. I've been married for 23 and a half years. Both my wife and I have PhDs, and we're still trying to figure out how to keep our marriage rolling down the track. Both of us have benefited greatly from our times with a great therapist.

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slash Deloney. All right, let's go out to Philadelphia. Talk to B.I.O.L. What's up, Bill? Hey, Dr. John. How are you? I'm good, brother. What's you up to, man? Hey, just living a dream trying to not let it become a nightmare.

Excellent. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah. What's up? Yeah. Hey, my question, how can I pick up on some hobbies that I left go of? 16 years of child raising my children getting older and I just finding some time on my hands and seeing a little dad guilt that I don't know how to navigate. So I just thought I'd give you a call and see what you had to say. Oh, you used a magic word.

Tell me about dad guilt. Yeah, so I have a lot of, I've been married 20 years and have a phenomenal marriage and three awesome kids, 16, 13, and 10. And raising those children to this point has been somewhat of a challenge. Our youngest was in

a NICU for 14 days and yeah, just created some financial challenges and around that. So I've kind of put my head down, maybe so to speak, and just plowed through some of those challenges. Let

go of a lot of my hobbies and things that I enjoyed in lieu of family and raising children and my marriage. So now here I am. I want to go out with the guys, want to go snowboarding and do some of these things that I enjoy. But I feel guilty for letting my family at home. And I don't know how to navigate that. Yeah, navigate that guilt and just feel bad that, you know, I'm leaving them behind or that I, you know, I've invested 16 years in my life, as I should have, but now, yeah, where do I go from here?

So, a friend of mine, her name is Dr. Becky Kennedy, she's a clinical psychologist in New York. She's a pretty wise voice when it comes to parenting. She gave me a definition of mom guilt, dad guilt, that I had never heard before, that I thought was phenomenal. And I'll pass it along, okay? Sure. She said most of the time, moms and dads are not feeling guilt. Guilt is a feeling, and I would even go as far to say it's a good feeling of your body's response when you violate one of your core values. Okay. So do you think dads are bad if husbands are bad if they also have hobbies?

No. Okay. Okay. Do you think guys who work really hard for their families, guys who are stable and secure and who love their wives well and who love their kids well, are bad men when they go snowboarding with their buddies, or when they do woodcutting or when they play golf within reason? No, they're not.

Okay. So doing, going snowboarding, hanging out with your buddies once a week, twice a week, is not a violation of your core values. So I would challenge you and wonder, is this not guilt? Or when you leave, your kids,

you've done such a good job with your kids, you're so connected with your wife, they miss you. They're sad to see their dad go. And you take their sadness and their frustration from them and you shove it down in your chest and you call it guilt.

And here's a next step. Here's a next step. Where I would really challenge you hard on is this idea that 24-7 access for your spouse and for your kids somehow is, quote-unquote, the right thing. Because your kids get unfettered access to their dad, your wife gets every single meal at the table of their husband. All those are good things, I guess. but they also have a lived experience of a man who is slowly letting the light inside his chest go out and that's not good.

And so my challenge to you would be the greatest gift you could give your kids on top. So obviously, this like just, this is like a duh statement. Of course, if you're the breadwinner in your family, you're going to work real hard. And of course you're going to show up and be present with your kids

during important moments for bedtimes and whatnot. Oh, that's right and good. Yeah. You should not go to every practice. It's okay if you miss games. It's really important that your kids have a lived experience of their dad having friends. Of a grown man having things that he loves to do and that he practices getting good at and that he fails at. That's important also.

Mm-hmm. And so what you have to make peace with is your feelings are going to be what they are. There's not a lot you could do with them. It's a cocktail of genetics and your childhood experiences. Maybe your dad didn't show up for you as a kid, and so you overhit the pendulum. Great. All that's good. You're going to have your feelings.

You can't control those. What you can control is what you do next. I'm going to go. I'm going to put it on the calendar. I'm going to make myself go. Mm-hmm. And the moment I get in the car and pull out of the driveway, any thought I have to, what if, I should have,

that is simple, you're not going to help your kids in any way with that sort of thinking. You're just going to take away from the thing you're going to do. So the moment you get in the car and shut that door and head to the airport, the moment you get in the car after kissing your wife and tucking your last kid into bed. Mm-hmm. And you head over your buddy's house to play, poker, do whatever you all going to do, watch play Dungeons and Dragons. I don't know what you guys

do, but go fishing, whatever it is. I'm going to be fully present wherever I'm at. And then that allows me to show up, connected whole, my body knows it's got a gang, it's got a tribe, a group of men that will be there in any moment, and that will allow me to show up for my wife and kids when I'm

with them at a level of depth and presence that I did not know was possible. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's, that, yeah, I can say here and say, yeah, that all sounds good. Rubber meets the road, rubber meets the road. Your homework assignment for 2026 is to put at least one thing per week on the calendar where you are away from your home. My wife and kids do.

They find something else to do or I just, that's up to them. I mean, yeah. Really? Are they incompetent? Are they unable to have joy without you? I wouldn't have said so, no. Are you going to feel like you're missing out? Does your wife know how to laugh and have fun with her kids?

Yeah. Yeah, she definitely, she's definitely, and maybe another part of this is she is definitely more of a homebody. Great. So she doesn't understand. It's awesome. Why I need to be. My wife's dream night begins and ends with her in bed at 845. And here's the thing

I'll never understand it Me neither But agreement I can rock to her midnight and not Care Agreement and understanding isn't the goal for me It is how do I love her well

And so I go to I've played music with my buddies And we sometimes stay too late I go to local comedy club A couple times a week That doesn't happen until late I make sure I share with my kids the next morning when I bomb.

Your dad got up in front of strangers right before Nate Bargazzi got up, right before so-and-so got up. And I tanked. And they go, ooh, was it bad? I'm like, oh, so bad, right? And I also tell them your dad crushed last night. I also say, hey, Josephine, my daughter, do you think this joke is funny? She's like, I think you could, right?

I bring him into it. My son's 15. I try to take him wherever I can now. But I don't, my wife doesn't understand why I don't want to just get a full night's sleep because I feel so good when I do. But, right? But she's like, how can I love that guy well?

Loving that guy well is he needs to have a couple of crazy things that he's doing at all times. Awesome. Because I also know he's a man is going to get the crap done that he needs to get done around the house to be a man I can trust and support and love. Yeah, very well.

Very well said. Game on, homie. Not only do you need to have one thing a week that you go do, you need to have at least one big thing a quarter that you go for a couple of days. Well, I have a friend. Go ahead. I have a friend wanting to take me to Vermont snowboarding.

It goes on the calendar before the day's over. I keep saying no. I keep saying no because I know what will happen when I drive away, the tears and everything else that will be shed because I'm not there and I just... But those aren't your tears? I know. but it just, it robs the joy of the trip. Maybe that's, yeah, I guess that's my problem.

Yeah. You're taking their sadness. By the way, that's good sadness. They love their dad. They like him around. But it could also be codependence. I have to make sure my dad's okay so that I can be okay, and that's not healthy. No, I don't, yeah, I don't think it's that.

So let him cry. Get in that car knowing, dude, I'm such a good dad. My kids actually freaking miss me when most kids, in the country are like, thank God my dad's gone for the weekend. Yeah. Be excited about the reunion on your way home. All that's good. And by the way, if this was every weekend and four nights a week,

I'd be having a very different conversation with you. I am one who is guilty of setting up where I've got something going on every night of the week and that's not good for my family. Right? It's not. But nothing is not good either. Go back to first principles. It's important for kids to see,

their dad with friends. Bring him if you can, talk about it on the way and on the way home. All that's important. It's important for kids to have independent relationships with their mom and with their dad. It's important for everyone in the family to have shared experiences. It's important to get around a table and eat dinner together as often as possible. It's also important if you're kids to learn how to manage boredom, sadness, and all those things that are just a natural part of being alive.

But by and large, the research tells me families get a better version of both parents when both parents have friends outside the home, have experiences outside the home, have relationships outside the home too. So go make it happen. You're a move, brother. Today's your independence day. Go get some friends. Go do fun, crazy stuff. Don't carry your kids frustrations or annoyances or tears and shove them in your chest and call that guilt. That's not what that is.

that's just kids loving their dad. Being kids. It's supposed to be that way. And then feel all your feelings and go have the time of your life. And don't break your leg snowboarding. That'll make this call really sad at the end. Appreciate you, brother. We'll be right back.

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their best offer yet to 50% off Beam's Dream Powder with my discount code Deloni. Go to shop, S-H-O-P, shopbeam.com. slash Deloni and use code Deloney at checkout. That's Shop Beam, B-E-A-M-D-A-M-D-O-C-Loney and use code Deloney for up to 50% off their dream powder. All right, we are back. Hey, listen, I talk to so many of you every day who are frustrated with the state of your marriage. You like the person you're married and you want it to be better and you look at each other and just get right back in the same dance over and over and over again.

I've been hearing this for years since I've been doing the show and sit with people behind closed doors. And so here's the deal. The path forward is almost never a big fireworks show. It's a thousand micro habits, a bunch of tiny little things that you do day in and day out. Yes, they're boring sometimes, or they're pretty awesome.

But it's just the constant doing over and over again. And it's hard to know where to start. So me and my friends created the Together app. It's on your phone. And you know how much I don't like apps? This one is actually awesome. It helps you start small. and gives you simple activities that you can do for yourself and for your spouse every day.

These are micro habits for your marriage. It's incredible, dude. Your marriage is built in the small everyday moments, and this shows you how to do it. It's six bucks a month. I know everyone's out there struggling financially. I got you. Six bucks a month, your marriage is worth it. I promise you, click the link in the show notes or search together in the app store.

And you Android people, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Relax, relax, it's coming. But if you got an iPhone, go to the Together app in the app store. All right, Alex, something cool happened today. What's up? Yeah, Maddie said something awesome happened.

After listening to your show, it is apparent that so many issues adults face today stem from insecurities in their childhood. So I started doing something with my four-year-old daughter. It's called FaceTime. Once a day I yell FaceTime, and she comes running and puts her face in my hands. I get down on her level, look in her eyes,

and hold her face and say, I love you, and I'm proud of you. You are beautiful. you are brave and you are capable. I will continue to do this as long as she is under my roof and for any other future kids as well. Thank you for all you do. That's awesome.

I've talked before in the past on, man, you can get kind of nerdy, but physiologically, kids, all of us have a lot of nerve endings in our face. There's something powerful about somebody touching our face and what it does to your nervous system. But doing that with your kids, especially getting down on their eye level,

we forget, adults forget that we're humongous to a four-year-old, right, or to a six-year-old or even to a 10-year-old, we're huge. And so getting down on their eye level, holding their face and looking them directly in the eye, even if they like flinch or they look away and they're like, oh, stop, dad, stop. Telling your kids, I'm so proud of you and I love you. What that does is it sets the table for when you have to have challenging conversations, when you have to have accountability conversations, when you have to say, hey, in this house,

we don't do that. You've already built a firm foundation so they know that that challenge is coming from a place of not criticism and anger, but from a place of love and connection. So it just sets the stage for their entire life. So good call. What was her name? Maddie.

Maddie, you're changing your family tree, and that's amazing. Everybody. And by the way, my kid now, my son, he's taller than me. Still, try my best to stand up on my tippy toes. Man, he loves looking down on his old man. And I do the same thing with even my older kids.

Constantly. Put your kids, heads. constantly. Put your hands on their face and tell me you love them. Look them in the eyes. We'll change everything. Bye.