The Dr. John Delony Show - I’m Afraid I’m Going to Cheat on My Husband

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

On today’s episode, we hear about: A woman wondering if her attraction will lead to cheating A military wife struggling with her husband’s lack of parenting skills A woman ashamed of usi...ng weight loss medication   Next Steps: ❤️ Get away with your spouse today! 🔥Reconnect every day. Download the Together App. 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John’s Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch   Connect With Our Sponsors: Head to Beam and use code DELONY for an exclusive discount—because better sleep, energy, and focus start tonight. Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. Keep your home safe and under control. Go to Cove Smart and use code DELONY for up to 80% off your first order. Get an exclusive offer with code DELONY at Cozy Earth.   Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. Go to Dutch Pet and use code DELONY to get $50 off a year of vet care. Go love your pets! Visit Hallow for a 90-day free trial. Visit Helix Sleep for special offers. Working knives for working people—Go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors! Get 25% off your order at Thorne.     Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:05 I've been married a little over a year, and I am finding myself attracted to someone who goes to the gym that I'm at. I'm really scared. What if I do something stupid? What if I respond to it? What makes you so untrusting of yourself? Have you done this before? Have you cheated before? Hey, this is John with the Dr. John Deloney's show.
Starting point is 00:00:31 I'm so glad that you're with us talking about your relationships and your mental and emotional health, everything you got going on in your life. I'm glad that you're here for two decades. have been sitting with hurting people when the wheels have fallen off their life. And pull up a seat and we'll figure out what's the next right move. If you want to be on this show, go to john Deloney.com slash ask ASK. And it'll go to Kelly 1.0. She'll convert it to hieroglyphics, which is her original language that she used thousands of years ago. And she'll get back to you.
Starting point is 00:01:05 And thank God for AI because then it will translate it back to your native language. All right, let's go out to Seattle, Washington, home of Pearl Gym, and talk to Krista. What's up, Krista? Hey, thanks so much. Nice to talk with you. It's nice to talk with you. So I am struggling. I've been married a little over a year, and I am finding myself attracted to someone who goes to the gym that I'm at, and I just didn't think it would be like that being newly married, and I have a new baby.
Starting point is 00:01:39 And just trying to figure out how do I deal with this? How do I change that? How do I not be that person? I'm scared of cheating. Okay, so there's a big, there's a lot of leaps in here. So, geez, let me back all the way out. Tell me about your marriage right now. Yeah, I mean, it's generally, it's really good.
Starting point is 00:02:06 We're adjusting to having, you know, another, another little person in our lives. It's generally like textbook great. It's just, I'm just struggling with figuring out, you know, what marriage really looks like as we move forward. Tell me about that. So I was used to traveling a lot and being kind of a jet setter,
Starting point is 00:02:38 the baby was a surprise. Is the baby why y'all got married? No, no, he's a honeymoon baby. She's super cute. Hey-oh. Yeah, I'm surprised. Which, you know, I'm so grateful for that, but it just... Okay, let me stop you there right.
Starting point is 00:02:56 Can I tell you you can be super grateful and be holding a baby that's the like, this suddenly is the reason you're alive, right? All that stuff. and also you can grieve the fact that it wasn't in your plans for it to come like this. Yeah. It doesn't make you a bad mom for you to go, good God, I wish this had happened four years from now. Yeah. And it doesn't make you a bad wife and him a bad husband if y'all are both scrambling now
Starting point is 00:03:28 because this is not the picture y'all drew up. Yeah. I mean, I didn't think I would feel this way having a baby either. and I... Okay, listen to me. Listen, there's no bad feelings. Okay? Okay.
Starting point is 00:03:48 There's no bad feelings. You're allowed to be frustrated. You're allowed to be annoyed. They pop into your mind. And I think most of our pathology these days is because when the thoughts hit, we are so uncomfortable with them. We want to blame somebody else for them
Starting point is 00:04:04 or we want to beat ourselves up for them. and then we feel dead in our own skin because we have to numb ourselves out. And then somebody walks by us in the gym and they say, hey, I think you're beautiful. And all of a sudden we're like, oh, that makes me feel alive again. Yeah. Yeah. You get what I'm saying?
Starting point is 00:04:23 I don't feel like myself most of the time. Yes. Yeah. You don't feel like the version 3.0 of yourself. And now you're at version 5.0. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I am. I just don't know. Like, I feel like my identity is just completely flipped and I don't know how to deal with that, I guess. And yeah, as having these feelings really scares me because I do love my baby and I love my husband. And I want that to work. I'm just so terrified. Like, what if I, what if I do something stupid? What if I respond to it?
Starting point is 00:05:09 Um, generally I just, like, keep my distance from that person, but I'm, I'm really scared. Have you done this before? Have you cheated before? No. So what makes you so untrusting of yourself? Um, in the past, I had really poor taste in men, I would say. Okay. And so I don't trust that I won't fall for something that's stupid. I guess I don't trust that I'm going to always make the wisest of choices.
Starting point is 00:05:45 Okay. So let me clear the deck on a couple of things. Number one, there would be something wrong with you, psycholoid. There would be something wrong with you all of you if you suddenly stopped finding attractive people attractive. Okay? Okay. There would also be something innately wrong if there weren't lightning bolts. of like electric desire.
Starting point is 00:06:17 Okay, that just means you're human. Okay. What you can control is whether you choose to meditate on that and fantasize about that and let it consume part of you. Okay. The whole room should be lifted up when a beautiful woman walks in the room, period. End of story. There should be a spirit.
Starting point is 00:06:42 that lifts in the room, right? There should be a spirit that lifts in a room when a fireman walks in, right? Or like a good-looking guy in the gym. Just walk, like, everyone should go, ah, right? Yeah. And then it's the switch flips is, I wonder if. Or I'm going to turn on the flirt a little bit. Or I'm going to receive his flirt a little bit.
Starting point is 00:07:10 and man my husband doesn't and that would be so cool if and that reminds me of when and that's when and that's when we get ourselves in trouble yeah and so if you honestly think in your guts and what i what i can't parse here in 15 minutes is are you wrestling with i'm a new version of myself and my husband and i have found ourselves you've heard me say this like six inches apart on the couch but 6,000 miles away from each other, then what we need to do is go out for a half day and completely wipe the deck and say, hey, we got a brand new relationship. Yeah. We have a brand new partnership.
Starting point is 00:07:53 We have a brand new marriage because now we have it. We've never been together. We've never been romantically involved and had a human to take care of. Yeah. And we've never been in love and trying to do life together and build something together. And I was the wild, fun, jet setting, jump up on the table. girl and now I'm covered in throw up
Starting point is 00:08:15 and changing diapers and breastfeeding and also watching you be disappointed that I'm not right? Like all of that has happened all at the same time. Yeah. And so the question is who are we going to be? Hmm. Like so that's
Starting point is 00:08:30 part one. Part two is everywhere you go there's going to be attractive people and there's going to be hilarious people and there's going to be poets and there's going to be people with jobs that your spouse doesn't have. And you wonder what that would be like. That makes you human. Great. Appreciate it and move on with your life. Okay. If you think I am at risk of blowing up my marriage and becoming somebody I don't want to be, then quit the gym. Go to a new gym. It's that simple. There is no pulley machine that's worth your marriage. Yeah. Right? But almost always
Starting point is 00:09:10 that my goodness that guy's good looking but more than more than that what's what's attractive about him is that you see him noticing you yeah and that feels good yeah and is it happening at the same time that your husband's got his head down trying to figure out how to be a husband and a dad too yeah okay that's the conversation that needs to happen that makes a lot of sense yeah and it's not i need you i want you to use these words i want you to be intentional about noticing me. Yeah. It feels like right now
Starting point is 00:09:52 if we get one-on-one-one time the TV's on and it's not, it's just not, and I fall asleep, and he's working on starting his new job. There you go. Yeah. And just because it's winter
Starting point is 00:10:07 doesn't mean summer's broken. And so it might be a season of winter right now. He's got a new job. You have a completely, completely your identity that you knew. Everything about you that you knew is gone now. And so it might be that we need two or three months or five months or six months of snuggling up on the couch under a blanket.
Starting point is 00:10:31 And there's not fireworks and it's not July 4th. And we're not running around in tank tops and swim trunks. But the roots of what our relationship is growing deep. Yeah. But I want to ask you, like, what can you control about feeling alive again in this new season? What about old you are you missing? I feel like I used to be driven and fun and adventurous. And I don't feel like, I don't feel any of it anymore.
Starting point is 00:11:20 Okay. I don't feel anything. Okay. Tell me about that. I just don't think, yeah, it's like I, The only time I feel like a piece of me is there, you know, like I'll have moments with my son, but just every day I just look in the mirror and I don't recognize myself. And I don't, yeah, I just feel really, really empty. Okay.
Starting point is 00:12:02 Can you exhale on that? Hold on, grieve that. Sorry? Grieve that for a second with me. Like the woman. that you were so proud of and the woman that you spent years curating and creating, she has a baby now. She's a wife now, right?
Starting point is 00:12:25 Listen to that sound. It's one of my favorite sounds in the world. Right? Yeah. And I'm glad I don't have that sound in my house anymore, right? Both are true. Both are true. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:45 And so my question is, that emptiness, that who am I? that what is my purpose now? Because my purpose was being so hot and sexy and my purpose was adventure and my purpose was passion and driven and all that. And all of that, by the way, she's still there and she'll return. She's just going to look different.
Starting point is 00:13:02 It's a different kind of awesome now. Yeah. She was rad, dude. And now you're entering into a different kind of rad. The question is, are we going to remain empty and let somebody else from the outside come try to feel that for us?
Starting point is 00:13:16 Because I'm telling you, that's a bottomless pit. or am I going to be intentional about asking who am I going to be now and look at my husband and saying, who are we going to be now? And then I'm going to reverse engineer that with we don't turn the TV on at night. We have to have, even if it's six minutes survival sex and I've got spit up on my shirt, and by the way, I'm not taking my shirt off yet, but we're turning the lights off and we're getting this done. Right?
Starting point is 00:13:45 Like, what does it look like? And hey, I know you're trying to start a new business. you can take five minutes, and by the way, it's not even take you five minutes, but close the laptop, we're doing this. Or I need you to close the laptop and keep the kid because I'm going to go do something silly with my girlfriends right now. Yeah. What came so easy now has to become intentional, and just because it's intentional doesn't mean it's less than and doesn't mean it's not valuable.
Starting point is 00:14:12 In fact, I think the more intentional it is, the more valuable and precious it becomes. Hmm. I guess, yeah, that does make sense. Yeah, everything is a half hour and a list to get out the door now. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes, and yes. So reality has changed. Trying to pretend reality has not changed is not real. It's just dumb, right?
Starting point is 00:14:38 It has. Yeah. And so what does it look like to put sex on the calendar? What does it look like to put adventure on the calendar? What does it look like to put exercise on the calendar? It's different. It's different. Yeah, definitely different.
Starting point is 00:14:59 It's just a different kind of awesome. Yeah. Let me promise you, having sat with people on this very issue, if and when you, I don't say when, if you sleep with the hot guy at the gym, I can't imagine a scenario where you don't wish that you had that back. Yeah. But to me, it's less about that guy who just noticed you. And more, it is a signal for where we need to lean in inside our heart. you and your husband. What is that revealing?
Starting point is 00:15:37 What is that feeling of, oh my gosh, there's, he recognizes me as old me. What is, what is that signal that we can head towards in our own house and put on the table? It's a moment of honesty. We're a year in and I've got a toddler and I have to be honest with your husband
Starting point is 00:15:54 like a guy's noticing me at the gym and it feels so good. It feels so good. I'm not going to do anything with it, but it's making me realize. I don't notice you anymore. I feel empty inside. I feel so empty that some stranger at the gym
Starting point is 00:16:12 with big abs makes me feel seen again. And I want you to begin to see me again. And here's what that looks like. What if we didn't have phones up? What if we had our laptops down? What if we? What if we? What if we? Let's just co-create that thing together. You'll have a brand new marriage.
Starting point is 00:16:31 So clear the deck. The tower is fallen of your old marriage. Clear it. build it. And to reiterate, you're not a bad, if you're not a bad human, if you think somebody else is attractive, if you think they're super good looking, you're not a bad person if somebody handsome or beautiful walks in the room and you feel alive. Great, that's wonderful. That's life. That's what beauty does, where you begin to cross over as you begin to imagine, what would it be like if? And those thoughts and feelings we can control. And if you don't feel like I can control those,
Starting point is 00:17:08 got to remove yourself from the situation. Thanks for the call, sister. I don't think there's something wrong with you. I think there's alarm bells going off, and I think there are big spotlights pointing you in the direction you got ahead. It's just going to be uncomfortable. It's just going to be different.
Starting point is 00:17:21 But adventurous, fun, driven, purpose-filled. Krista, she's still there. Just her purpose and her adventures and her drive are going to be pointed in different directions now, and that's incredible. Thank you for the call, sister. Call anytime. Call any time.
Starting point is 00:17:38 When we come back, a woman asks how she can tell her husband that he needs to just suck it up. I can't wait for this. We'll be right back. Full stop, Montana Knife Company makes the best knives on the planet, period. You know that my son and I are big hunters, and I'm always talking about what an amazing, incredible cook that my wife is. So between the woods and the kitchen, my family needs knives that will hold up. A few years ago, I bought my wife, the Montana Knife Company, Chef's Knife Set, and she still uses it every day. She says it's one of the best gifts I've ever given her. I have a number of Montana Knife Company knives for all of my fishing and hunting outdoor adventures.
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Starting point is 00:20:23 Go to cozyEarth.com and use code Deloney for up to 20% off your entire order. That's Cozy, C-O-Z-Y. CozyEarth.com slash Deloney. Use code Deloney. All right, we're back. Hey, take two seconds to like or subscribe to the show. And it just helps the algorithm. It helps your neighbors. It helps everybody. It helps us.
Starting point is 00:20:45 It helps everybody. Take two seconds, log in and hit the subscribe or like button. So we go to San Diego, California, and talk to Miranda. What's up, Miranda? Hi, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How about you? Good, except for I feel terribly guilty that I'm about to ask you a question about my husband right now.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Oh, geez. All right. Bring it on. Okay, so just to give a little backstory, a few years ago, I got out of the Navy to work at church part-time and stay home with the kids. And my husband's still in. He's been gone most of the last three years. And this summer, while he was on deployment, I was pregnant with our fourth child. We don't have any family, but we have a bunch of kids, obviously, goats, chickens, dogs.
Starting point is 00:21:30 So I was by myself taking care of all that. Then I had a C-section. Because why not, right? Why not? Exactly, yeah. A million chickens. And then I had a C-section and came home and had to recover from that and have to take care of the new baby and take care of everything else I was doing and just wait for him to come home, which was another two months. So I just felt like I was looking at the end of the tunnel.
Starting point is 00:21:55 There was a light. And then when he got home, I would be able to rest. But that just has not happened at all. I mean, he's got three months off of work now. and he just has no patience for anything. His temper is so short, and I just feel like I can't ask him for help because his patience is so bad.
Starting point is 00:22:14 When I leave from my meetings for church or to go grocery shopping, he's always rushing me and implies that I'm just wasting time, basically. He even said he wants to plan a backpacking trip for himself while we're here on leave. And I was like, maybe I'd like to go on that. And he's like, well, we'll watch the kids.
Starting point is 00:22:33 And I just felt so discouraged by that. I feel so burnt out. And I've had to be strong for so long. And I just wish that I could just rest. And someone would be strong for me or sacrifice for me so that I can just breathe for a little bit. Because it's so hard to watch him be so impatient when for years I've been doing this. And he made me feel like it was easy.
Starting point is 00:22:56 And that I should feel guilty if I'm stressed out about being a mom. So I'm just like, do I just tell him to suck it up? because that's what I've been doing for all this time, or is that too mean or what? No, I mean, it's, because he's going to say the same thing to you. Yeah. And so that's not the issue.
Starting point is 00:23:18 The issue is underneath this thing. Two-fold. I hear two-fold things. One is the men and women I've sat with after deployment number two and deployment number three are fried at the cellular level. Yes, that's so true. And was he in combat deployment?
Starting point is 00:23:36 What was he doing? No, he was, he was, he was just, they really didn't have a mission. They were kind of just being present around the waters in different areas, so. Okay. And so, this is just my experience,
Starting point is 00:23:52 and you both have been in, so you have a different perspective than I do. This is just the outside when people come sit with me, okay? Mm-hmm. There's like a hierarchy of, I saw combat, so I get to be X, Y,
Starting point is 00:24:08 I get to feel a certain way or I get to, like, have these responses. I was deployed, but I didn't see combat, so I only get to, I'm only a permission to feel this level of frustrated, scared, lonely, left out, whatever. I've been in the service for 20 years, but I never went to combat. And so none of my feelings count. None of the things I saw, watched, et cetera. None of that counts. And it's easy.
Starting point is 00:24:37 Here's the challenge. both of y'all have picked up a score card and you're walking around keeping score and that's a recipe for a marriage that ends in ash. And you sitting down and saying, hey, tell me about, like, even deeper than that,
Starting point is 00:24:56 you don't look like you're happy to be here. You don't look well. Are you okay? I miss you. I miss my husband. And it's less about he's not seeing, he's not knowing me, and it's more about how can I see and how can I know him. How can I celebrate him?
Starting point is 00:25:18 And that sounds crazy, but that's the only path to you being finally seen and known and celebrated too. Somebody has to go first. I totally agree with you. I mean, I've actually been following that advice that you've given. And every day I try to tell him and be encouraging to him. Like, I've noticed that you're doing these things really well. When we get into bed at night, I will make a point to say, you're doing a really great job with this or that.
Starting point is 00:25:41 And thank you for everything that you're doing here. and these changes that you have made because he's not all bad, obviously. Of course. He's made a lot of good changes. Yeah, of course. And so I acknowledge all of those things. But are you at a position now
Starting point is 00:25:53 where you can clear the deck and say, hey, we've got a brand new marriage. I want to build a new marriage. Because when we had doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. The one we had was two kids, no chickens, one deployment, and I had a steady paycheck too.
Starting point is 00:26:08 We have a new life now. What do we want this thing to look like? and for somebody who just came off deployment number three, there might be so much chaos with four kids, a wife working part-time, plus all these chickens, plus all these whatever, plus the financial stress of living in San Diego, all of it, all of it, all of it, all of it, all of it.
Starting point is 00:26:26 And it might just be that he's electrified and the only thing his body knows to do is get out of here. Or let me put it this way. I remember exactly the moment when I realized, falsely, by the way, the greatest gift I could give my family was to just not be in the house. because I couldn't do anything right.
Starting point is 00:26:49 I didn't know the rhythms and routines of this house. I was working 24-7, 365 in hospitals and sitting with hurting people and then doing my college job during the day. Like, I just knew I make this thing worse. I'm going to be out of here. I'll go make money. I'll go on hunting trip.
Starting point is 00:27:07 I'll just leave because that'll be the best gift I can give my wife and my kids. Okay. And you get what I'm saying? So like what I thought was the greatest thing actually made everything worse. It put gasoline on the already existing fire of my marriage. So it sounds like what you're saying, how I'm taking this,
Starting point is 00:27:31 is that I need to suck it up kind of. Nope. Is that now I feel like. And both of you all need to stop sucking it up. Yeah. Here's the thing. There's no amount of sleep or rest that's going to solve the chaos. It is your life right now.
Starting point is 00:27:45 That's true. You have a, you're just like, hey, when do I get to go run my marathon? And the problem is your marathon will not have a finish line. So what do you recommend for that, like, burnt out feeling? What do I do about that? I just feel like I can't even enjoy being around my children anymore because I'm so tired, like not physically, but just, like you said, on a cellular level. Yes, it's existential because you're running a race that has no finish line.
Starting point is 00:28:14 People can do insanely hard things when there's a finish line. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Like, just like how I said, I felt like there was a finish line, like a light at the end of the tunnel, but now I'm realizing that's not true. Exactly. Because you had a picture of what it was going to look like when he got home,
Starting point is 00:28:31 and he had a picture of what it was going to look like when he got home. Mm-hmm. And he walked in the door and you're like, ah, I'm off. Mm-hmm. Your turn. That's definitely how I felt. And he walked home and said,
Starting point is 00:28:42 this home is more chaotic than the boat I just got off of. That's definitely true. I mean, in my defense, he did tell me that when he got home, he was going to, it would be that way. Of course. But he probably didn't anticipate how. You probably sent him some flirty pictures too and said, I can't wait until you get home.
Starting point is 00:29:01 I'm going to rock your world. We're going to make kids number 9, 10, 11, or however many y'all have. And you both got home. I was pregnant. I didn't want to be good. But like you both had pictures of what this is going to look like. And you both had good intentions of what we were going to do and how we were going to be. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:17 But you keep saying I just need to rest. That's not true. What you need is some sort of, let me rephrase that. You do need rest. but your rest is not going to be found in just unhooking from everything. Right. Because you're also a problem solver. And that machine will kick up wildly.
Starting point is 00:29:43 Mm-hmm. What you need is some support and some help, and you need a partner in a unified vision for what our home is going to feel like and look like moving forward. And you don't have that. Right. Yeah, you're right. And so you're adding more chaos with more chickens and more dogs and more ponies and more whatever.
Starting point is 00:30:01 There's this ever, there's this ever, let me put it this way for you. You have some sort of internal gap, internal space that you're trying to get other people and other things to fill. And so what is that gap? I don't know. How do you know? I mean, usually it takes some introspection.
Starting point is 00:30:35 I don't really do that. I'm too distracted to think, actually get to know myself. I probably avoid it. Yeah, probably. But I think you're right when you said that it sounded right to me. I just don't know what the answer is, what that gap is for me. Okay, and there's not just like a, oh, it's this.
Starting point is 00:30:55 Yeah. It's usually a whole bunch of shenanigans. Okay. And it's just, here's some time, it's worth exploring. What you're seeking here is peace. Yeah. right it's not being off the clock although that might be a part of peace it's not him doing the dishes although that might really help those are all tactics those are all hacks they're all things that
Starting point is 00:31:26 have to get done but you're talking about something in your bones man yeah you're right I did my service I became a mom I tried to be a wife I held it all together I had another kid and another kid and another kid and then I had this you I watched a lot of YouTube while I was pregnant, so then I wanted to have the chickens and the farm and the whatever. All of these things are supposed to solve that gap inside your chest and they're not. You're right. And I just keep adding more things. Yes. And then you blame the rest of the world for your lack of peace. Yeah, that's true. Now, I'm not, I'm not letting him off the hook. He does need to have some suck it up. He does need to, like, he needs to have the same, if not more vigor about the mission that is his home that he just
Starting point is 00:32:11 got off the boat. He just carried out on the boat. The problem is, is they didn't send that boat out there without some sort of mission, some sort of operation strategy. Your home doesn't have one right now. Right. And so that's what I mean by y'all clearing the deck. It's not about either of you sucking it up at this point. Yeah. Y'all chose to make four humans. So there's going to be just a level of chaos. It just is. There's going to be a level of fatigue. and a level of what happened in my body. There's just going to be that. You all just have to,
Starting point is 00:32:47 y'all have that responsibility. You'll put that weight on the bar. So it is what it is. But it's about clearing the deck and saying, hey, I miss you and I love you. And we have a brand new marriage now. We have never been married after deployment three, after I quit my job,
Starting point is 00:33:01 after we have four kids. What do we want this thing to look like and feel like? And then we get to develop the strategy to get us there. Definitely. If you sat down across the table and said, I miss you, and I love you and I want to build a new marriage
Starting point is 00:33:16 and I realize that while you were gone this house became an electrified, chaotic zoo literally and I want to know how we can co-create a new marriage and I want to know how I can love you in this new season. What would he say to that?
Starting point is 00:33:37 I think he would be all for it. He's a very dedicated person to me and to our family. He is. I think that he's going, like you said before and made me realize he's going through his own struggles too
Starting point is 00:33:50 and we probably just need to, like you said, start new, hear from each other what is going on and try and serve each other and support each other and be a team instead of trying to fight each other all the time. It sounds gross the way I say it. What you just said is perfect, but it can also, the way you said, it can also be a lot of cliches, right?
Starting point is 00:34:10 A lot of things you just ditch onto a pillow. Right. There is a point when this gets gross, and I wish it wasn't this, you couldn't distill it down to this level of transceasing. transaction, but Terry Reel, the great therapist and author, says, at some level, it is, how can I give you what you want and what you need so that you are anchored enough to give me what I want and what I need? And the challenge is someone has to go first. Yes. Otherwise, it's just about take, take, take, give me, give me, give me. I need, I need. And that turns into, well, you don't, you never. And then it turns to, well, you don't, you never. And then it turns to, you don't. into I've got this scorecard and I'm winning. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:34:55 I just need to wipe a clean and stop resenting him for how I feel. It's not his fault. It's just our life. It's our life. That's right. Yeah. And like any, you've been through these trainings before in your years of service, at some point, the battlefield will happen to you or we're going to come up with an operation
Starting point is 00:35:15 and with a strategy and a plan and then we're going to happen to this battlefield. And so it's just recognizing after we woke up and six years later and the world had just happened to us. And now we're going to take our autonomy back and we're going to take control of this thing
Starting point is 00:35:33 and we're going to lock arms and do the same together, unified together. And if you haven't asked, if you haven't gone past, man, you didn't even do anything. I just drove around in the ocean on a boat for a while
Starting point is 00:35:49 and docked and went and partied and got back on the boat. Right? Which is the easy story to throw out asking him hey what was it tell me about it
Starting point is 00:36:01 yeah it's not really fair to him to say that because that's only how I thought and what I will guarantee you and you know this the number of men who I've sat with
Starting point is 00:36:13 over the years who say hey by the way I'm going to tell you what happened you cannot tell my wife that this thing blew up that we were under under watch for we were I'm trying to think
Starting point is 00:36:25 say not nerdy military terms so the listeners don't like that we were thought we were going to get shot and killed twice a week or three times a week or every week or we got geared up and and got all the boats out of the middle put them out and then we had to put them all back we could see i'm going to do that over and like who knows but he was probably trained you keep your mouth shut about what happened you suck it up and you go home right and if you become a safe place for him to exhale and talk to and you give him a map on how he can love you. Now you're talking about game change. Will there be times when both of you all have to suck up?
Starting point is 00:37:12 100%. Yes, that's just life. That's being a parent. That's being a spouse. Are y'all going to have to do things that you don't feel like doing? One million percent. That's life. But right now, solving that at the tactical level isn't a good use of your time or energy.
Starting point is 00:37:29 It's just going to lead to more burnout. It is exhaling and saying, how do we want to feel when we both walk in the door? every day. I miss you and I love you. Let's build something completely new from the scratch up. We get to decide. We get to decide what it looks like. I'm all in. Are you in? And if he wants to call, I'd love to talk to him. I love talk to him. But it's awesome that he loves you and it's awesome that you love him. It's built something amazing. We come back. A woman asks how to face shame about using weight loss medication. If you've seen me speaking on stage at live events in the local Club or anywhere on social media or the internets, you have seen me wearing poncho shirts. Why? Because
Starting point is 00:38:17 I love them. I'm always wearing poncho shirts. And now that it's cold outside, it's perfect for wearing my favorite poncho shirts, the denim's and the flannels. Their denim has that soft, broken in feel in a little stretch. It's like you've worn it a million times, but it still looks incredible. And poncho flannels come in original or western styles. And I'm telling you, They're going to be the softest shirts you've ever owned. And somehow these soft shirts are tough and comfortable. I love poncho shirts. They come in slim or regular fit,
Starting point is 00:38:50 and they're built to last, and they hold up to whatever your life throws at you, inside or outside. When you are shopping for the guys in your life, I want you to go to poncho outdoors.com slash deloni. If you sign up with your email, you get $10 off your first order. And I want you to tell them that you heard about their amazing.
Starting point is 00:39:09 amazing shirts right here on the Dr. John Deloney's show. That's Poncho P-O-N-C-H-O. Poncho Outdoors.com slash Deloni. All right, Sacramento, California. Let's talk to AMY. What's up, Amy? Hi, Dr. John. How are you?
Starting point is 00:39:27 I'm great. How are you? I'm doing well. Excellent. What's up? So here's the deal. After many months of tests, experiments, and discussions with between me and my doctor, we finally decided that the right next step for me and my health was to go on GLP1 weight loss
Starting point is 00:39:48 medication. Outstanding. Awesome. Thank you. So for context, my starting BMI is about 30. Okay. I'm comfortable with this decision, but I realize that I have only told two people about it. One is my husband, and the other one is a good friend who is also on the same journey.
Starting point is 00:40:11 So we're bouncing off of ideas off of each other. How long have you, and by the way, BMI at the population level is a helpful metric at the individual level. Doesn't tell me a whole lot. Are you overweight? Are you, have you been struggling with your weight? Tell me where you are. Yeah, so I'm overweight. I'm not, I don't consider myself obese.
Starting point is 00:40:37 Okay. I'm about 30 to 40 pounds heavier than I want to be. Okay. And is your desire, is that based in reality or is that based in some sort of distorted view of yourself? No, it's pretty real. Okay, all right. Your doctor agrees you could, you could use to lose 40 pounds?
Starting point is 00:40:56 Correct. Okay. And the weight gain has caused some real medical issues as well. Perfect. Okay. It's not just that. How long have you been taken? What are you taking?
Starting point is 00:41:04 I'm on Zep bound Okay great So how long have you been on it? Just a couple weeks What have you seen What have you experienced? Magical to be honest with you The way that it
Starting point is 00:41:23 Just turns off all the food noise People keep talking about it But it just once you've experienced it It's hard to believe And I'm asking this for the audience as much as anything else. What have you noticed about other positive side effects?
Starting point is 00:41:48 Say much yet. I think it's too early to talk. What I've heard from, so I've had up some of them on this show before, and these have become some of my close personal friends. But there are fitness experts across the globe and not influencer dorks, but like actual trainers and actual scientists.
Starting point is 00:42:11 Many of whom when these things came out, when JLP once came out, they took them not because in any shape, form or fashion they needed them, but they wanted to be able to speak from insider knowledge, right? And to a person, 100% of them have come back in personal conversations to me and said, I stopped drinking.
Starting point is 00:42:35 I stopped worrying all the time. These things, like basically that weight loss is a downstreet. benefit of a whole host of other powerful benefits. And so... I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, you're like, oh, sweet, sign me up for that too. So let me get to the root question here. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:54 Where in the world does your shame come from that you happen to live in a sliver of history and we have some amazing medications that are pretty transformative? Yeah, I'm trying to figure out myself, to be honest. Again, I'm comfortable that this is the right choice, but I really... realize that I don't want to tell people. So the expectation is it's going to be visible, right? People are going to start noticing. And if people start commenting about it,
Starting point is 00:43:24 my initial reaction is that I don't want to talk about this at all. But I'm not a liar, so I don't know what to do. The question beneath it, why do you feel like you need to tell anybody? Why can't you just say thank you so much? What have you been doing? Been working hard. but but is that true like yes i have been working hard right but i have been working hard for a very long time and it hasn't been working okay so you just found you found different ways that
Starting point is 00:43:57 that it didn't work and now you found one that did yeah i think at the at the core of it is that i feel like i should have been able to handle this myself where does that should come from because that should is a lie. You got dropped into a world ecosystem that your body was not designed to live in. Period. What do you mean by that? The human body from the cellular level to the neurological level to the physical level was designed for environments of scarcity. All of our brain chemistry is designed to go, oh God, there's apples. Once a year. Or let me put it. another way. My great-grandmother got a sack of oranges for one Christmas. And the thought of having
Starting point is 00:44:52 oranges in December was madness. It was worthy of a Christmas gift. The Christmas gift they got that year. And now we go to the store and we have oranges stacked in a pile as tall as we are 24-7-365. True. Not to mention Uber Eats and gas stations and hyper-palatable food. and hyper-processed, like, we just aren't supposed to live in this environment. And I want to applaud you for scratching and clawing and trying so many different paths for so long. What that tells me is you're committed to trying to find ways to be a good steward of your body. That's awesome.
Starting point is 00:45:43 And now you found one that works. Hooray, awesome. And nobody else gets a vote. And I guess I want to give you some pieces. How would your response? How would you respond to the question What have you been doing? And I feel angry that people are actually entitled to ask that question
Starting point is 00:46:04 of people about people's bodies. Yeah, but hold on, hold on. How do you respond to? You can choose anger if you want to or you can choose deep compassion because you've been there too. True. You've had somebody in your life that lost a bunch of weight and you had to know because they must have the secret elixir.
Starting point is 00:46:21 What's the secret path, the super workout, the atomic diet week, what is it? And so if somebody asks, take that as a sign that you are a light and a dark place for them. And you can just say it's a whole bunch of stuff. I'm still working on it, so I don't want to talk about it too much, but it's been a lot of hard work. Or just say I met with my doctor and these GOP ones are magical and then going about your day. That's a good way to look at it.
Starting point is 00:46:57 I think at the end of the day, I'm generally like a pretty high achieving person. So I try to excel at everything that I do. Do you use the internet? What's that? Do you use the internet? Yes. Cheater. Do you use a laptop?
Starting point is 00:47:17 Correct. Cheater. Do you have a smartphone? Yep. My granddad was an engineer and he used a pro tractor. Cheater? Do you drive a car? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:33 Yeah, my great-grandfather had to get around on a horse, cheater. Like, it takes the tools that we have. And every tool we have, we have, comes with trade-offs. My great-grandparents walked a lot, and so they were thinner and healthier. We drive a lot. We can get places a lot faster. Both of us would say we should trade.
Starting point is 00:47:56 Great, cool. If you take GL-1s, you have to, have to exercise. You have to work out. I do. Okay, you have to lift weights. Great. You have to be intentional about protein and fiber. Great.
Starting point is 00:48:14 But we just live in a sliver of history where we have this, both, this amazing abundance, and if you read the data on global starvation, it has fallen off a cliff in recent decades. Amazing. They're still hungry people, make no mistake. But awesome. We've figured out abundance in this little snapshot of history. Cool.
Starting point is 00:48:34 We're burning out the soil and all that, but fine. We've solved abundance for a while. Great. And that comes at a cost, which is, we have light switches in our minds that are not designed to have food everywhere all the time 24-7, especially food engineered by scientists
Starting point is 00:48:49 who are trying to flip switch. is in our mind that make it almost impossible to stop eating. Cool. Or as John Stewart says, science has become amazing solving problems caused by science. Cool. Right. That's true. It's just hard to turn off the noise, right? The noise of like, oh, if you just go keto for two months, it's going to be fine. Or if you just lift heavier, then you're going to be fine. And then you try all of those things and it just doesn't work. That's right. Correct. the hardest thing is just mostly doing the right thing over and over again for a long, long time.
Starting point is 00:49:31 It's hard. It's hard. I'm exhibit A. It's hard. And so you found something incredible. Great. I don't think you're a cheater. I think you're doing the next right thing for you and your body
Starting point is 00:49:48 and you're not doing it on a whim and you didn't watch a YouTube clip and be like, oh, yeah, I'm good. Like you went and sat with a doctor. and I don't think other people will get a vote in your life. And I would not have one second. This is just me personally of shame about telling somebody that I was on a GOP one if I was taking one.
Starting point is 00:50:09 And also, I can't control what stories other people choose to take with that information and make up about me. So I'm not going to try. But I'm not going to cash in my integrity. I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to be a person who just suddenly stops telling the truth or telling my story, but I'm going to be a guy that can't,
Starting point is 00:50:31 I can't decide, I can't make you not make up stories about me. Great, cool. I'm going to move on in my life. But I guess hear me say, Amy, I'm proud of you. As a guy who sat at my kitchen table and wept when I first took anxiety medication, I thought I'd failed my son, thought I'd failed my wife,
Starting point is 00:50:51 I thought I'd failed my everything. I wept. and those medications for a short season turned down the noise enough that let me go sit with a counselor and get back into the gym and and and and and and and and. I've been there,
Starting point is 00:51:05 I get it. And there's also a place just to be of insanely deep gratitude that me and we live in a time with all this abundance and we live in a time when our brains have been hacked and we live in a time when somebody studied, what is a helo monster poison or something
Starting point is 00:51:20 and came up with these GLP ones and so far with the, right intentionality about what we eat and how much protein we get and how much we're lifting weight, whatever, they can be magic for a large swath of a hurting population. Incredible. So I applaud you, sister. I applaud you. Call me back in a few weeks and let me know how you're doing. I would love to keep up with your journey here. I'm proud of you. It's awesome. Hold your head high. We'll be right back. All right, it's the new year and everybody's talking about getting more organized with less clutter, less stress, and more peace.
Starting point is 00:52:02 Here's one area of organization I want you to focus on this year, your digital footprint. To do this, I recommend delete me. Every time you fill out a quick form, grab a discount online, or sign up for some kind of free thing on the Internet, your personal information, things like your name, your email, your phone number, your address, all of that stuff gets collected and sold and shared by data brokers behind your back. And over time, all of this turns into a firehose of spam calls and weird text and scam emails. Delete Me's team of privacy experts finds your personal information on data broker sites that are selling your data and it gets all of that information taken down.
Starting point is 00:52:45 And then Delete Me keeps checking on your information to make sure it's always gone. It's like setting healthy boundaries for your digital life because protecting your privacy, is part of protecting your peace. It's about organizing everything in your life. So this year, start fresh with fewer distractions and more peace. Go to join deleteme.com slash deloney for 20% off an annual plan. That's J-O-I-N, join deleteme.com slash deloney and start organizing and protecting your peace this year. All right, we're back. I've got a money in marriage question. These are anonymous questions that people leave at the money-marriage. retreats that me and Rachel Cruz put on a few times a year here in Nashville.
Starting point is 00:53:30 Here's the question. We've been married 10 plus years and we have two little kids. We live in a rural area and don't really have friends we can call or that we hang out with. Lots of people we know, but no real adult friends for either of us. How the heck do we do adults make friends in small rural areas? As a guy who grew up in suburbs, I moved out to a rural area when I was here in Nashville. out in the woods, like banjos playing everywhere.
Starting point is 00:54:00 And I had to get used to two things. Number one, the people around me had different lived experiences than I did. And I had to get over something that I didn't even know was inside my chest, which is I thought that I knew more about the world and that I was a little more educated. I mean, I hate to say it,
Starting point is 00:54:21 but I'm probably a little bit better. And that was 1,000% wrong. incorrect. And so two things that my wife and I did. Number one, we were uber intentional about generosity. That means we were always taking food and stuff to our neighbors. And some of our neighbors are in their 70s. And we've become great neighbor friends with them. We talk about their illnesses. We talk about their dreams. We talk about the cost of land. We talk about the engine that my neighbor's putting in his old truck and in his 70s. He's just awesome. We talk about our kids. We talk about everything. But it started with us taking over some
Starting point is 00:55:03 homemade sourdough bread. It started with us taking over like when I get a deer during hunting season. I'll take one over and just donate the whole thing to him. It started with, hey, come up to my front porch, let's have coffee with my 60-year-old neighbor who's dying of cancer. And he showed up. And it was amazing. It was a blast. And so number one, we went first and we led with generosity. Number two, we started having my kids, friends, parents over all the time. And we are very different. And they turned into dear, radical new friends of ours that we love and we care about
Starting point is 00:55:40 because we started realizing they've got different lived experiences. They lived in different towns. We all had different jobs. But we all care about mostly the same things. We want some peace in our life. We want our kids to do well. we want our marriages to be good and we want to laugh hilarious and tell funny jokes. And we have different values and different beliefs and yada yada.
Starting point is 00:55:58 And it has been awesome. But again, that took us inviting people into our house. And it's been transformative. And so I can distill it down in two sentences or two little quippy phrases. Go first and be weird. Go first and lead with generosity. Go first and do the invites and be weird. just be willing to do things that you're uncomfortable with that you've never done before
Starting point is 00:56:24 and have conversations with people you've never talked about before and open your eyes and realize I'm no better. I'm just different and I want to learn about their world. And I'll tell you what, in our life, in my rural community out in the woods, it has changed everything in my life. For me, my wife and my kids. Love you guys. Bye.
Starting point is 00:56:45 All right, let's talk about your marriage. Right now we have fans. February and October weekends on sale for the money in marriage getaway. It's the best marriage retreat on the planet. Tickets start at $749 a couple. Get yours at ramsysolutions.com slash getaway.

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