The Dr. John Delony Show - Ive Been Cheating On My Pregnant Fiancee For Years

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

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I have been cheating on my fiance for all of our relationship, which has been about three years. Does she know? Does she know about your affairs? Yes. Okay. Does she know the full extent? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney show, talking about your marriage, your dating life, your kids, your mental and emotional health, whatever you got going on in your life where you found.

I'm struggling. And I don't know the next right move. That's what we're here. Pull up a seat and we're going to figure it out together. Let's go out to Perry Hall, Maryland and talk to Joe. What up, Joe? Hi, Dr. John. How are you, brother?

I am nervous. All the words. All the words. Well, man, I'm glad that you're here, brother. Take a big deep breath, dude. I have been cheating on my fiancé. for all of our relationship, which has been about three years. And we are now expecting twins, and it has blown up.

And we don't know how to move forward. Well, I want to applaud you for coming out and just saying it, taking ownership, ma'am. That tells me that you're actually interested in what's the next right thing to do, right? Yes, sir. Yeah. Does she know? Does she, I'm sorry. Does she know about your affairs?

Yes. Okay. Does she know the full extent? stint? Yes. All of it? All of it. Okay.

How far long is she in her pregnancy? About a month. Okay. So you all are four weeks in, eight weeks pregnant? Where are you? I would say four weeks pregnant. Okay. So ask me a specific question, how I can help, man.

We all just sitting there in the ash of a burned down house, saying what do we do now? Yeah. I've been, uh, I've actually found your show about, um, four weeks ago when this all blew up. Um,

and, uh, yeah, I've actually signed up for better health and, uh, I've been talking to a therapist for that amount of time. Um, and found that I've been,

uh, lying to myself and having dysfunctional, pathological lying, habitual lying and, trying to get out of that. So I believe I'm taking the next right step. It's just trying to, I want to give you a little bit of a timeline. This kind of all blew up in September 19th, and I had the largest, like the worst breakup call ever that this is wrong.

So that time was when I, I just say it, I just say it, man. I ended up, she works for a government agency that I can't name. And so she has, you know, she gets thoroughly background checked. and because I am with her, I also get thoroughly checked. So that being said, I applied for the Secret Service and had done all the things and had gotten to the point of the polygraph, took the polygraph, and admitted to a lot of things in that polygraph. And on the ninth, I think it was either the 19th or before,

I knew she was about to go into her meeting for her security clearance, and I knew that they were going to discuss me. And so I called her two days before then, and I told her what happened. Why'd you call her instead of showing up in person? I am not entirely sure, except that I knew that I needed to say it. Are you all in different parts of the country right now?

No, sir. We live probably about 30 minutes away, and we weren't her schedules a lot so okay all right so you disclose this two days out

yes okay and obviously it all blew up but when I disclosed to what I disclosed I only disclosed a fraction of it

and so about you know it blew up about four weeks later more came out because she got access to everything and was looking through everything. And yeah, and she asked me the questions and I told her the truth. And then about the real.

And then after that happened, she got a really upset. she had a she has a brain condition and she had a massive seizure because of the stress on her body and she was technically dead for three hours

and her best friend had texted me that that was what going on and that was my that was my wake-up call of this needs to stop so What is cheating get you? Because it's solving a problem in your life.

What is it? It was, now that I've been to therapy, I believe it was because I was coping with not being happy with myself and feeling appreciated and, you know, using porn and whatever else it was made me feel good for a little bit. And so that was my coping mechanism. I don't know that it made you feel good as much. much as it distracted you or made you feel numb from not liking this guy in the mirror.

Yes, sir. And so the strange thing about not liking the guy in the mirror or feeling dead in your own skin is the world we have. And bro, I'm trained as a therapist, right? Like, I get that. That's my whole world. And the path to you becoming a man that you respect for the first time in your life is doing the next right thing. action. Yes, sir.

And it may cost you your, I mean, your relationship with this woman may be over. You getting the dream job you want may not happen at this moment in your life. It will one day, but not today. I guess what I'll tell you is becoming a man that you respect so that others can anchor into you, which is what our world desperately, desperately needs, is going to come with, a hellacious amount of accountability here. Yes, sir. Right?

Or as Paul Thomas Anderson once famously wrote, you may be through with the past, but the past may not be through with you. Yes, sir. And I want you to, I'm telling you that, to let you know, the relief you feel,

that you finally put everything out on the table, that it will get hard again. It will get really hard again, right? And that doesn't mean it's not the wrong path. In fact, that is 100% the path. is walking through it. Right? Yes, sir.

So I guess the elephant in the room is, does she still want to be with you? Obviously, this is way more complicated now that you have twins coming. Yeah. She's, we've talked about it. And I've expressed my, obviously I want to still be with her

and I want to take responsibility, you know, for everything I've done and also for the children coming. Let's separate those real quick, okay? Okay. Anytime somebody has that sense, and it has been there for a long, long, long time of feeling dead inside,

one of the things they don't ever want to do is hurt somebody, which makes their actions cheating on somebody, hiding money, lying. It makes those things seem even more insane, but my guess is you don't ever want to hurt this woman. Is that fair? Yes, sir. Okay. I want you to be super, super clear that your pursuit of her, your repursuit of her, is not in an effort to take away her pain because you feel real bad, right?

Yes, sir. Okay. I want to make sure that you have decided I want to wake up every day for the rest of my life and choose to love this woman so recklessly that I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that she knows on a minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year basis that she is safe and loved.

And if you can't make that commitment right now, don't. I can and I do. Okay. That's a big commitment because here's why. You've never done that before? No, sir. And so you're going to have to give yourself a dump truck load full of grace.

moving forward. Because you're entering into a thing that you want to do and you don't know how to do it. You don't know what it feels like to do it. And you have an allergy to discomfort, to boredom to the mundane, right? Yes, sir. And that is life. And so cool. If you say you're all in, awesome, you're going to show up for your kids, right?

You're going to do that. But are you going to show up for her? Okay. I don't want the weight of that statement, that commitment to go unnoticed. You should have felt a squat bar on your back, just go with a whole bunch more weight on it, okay? Yes, sir. Because becoming somebody that another person can anchor into till death do you part takes responsibility. Okay. It's the responsibility that more and more and more men need to take, but it is a responsibility. Okay, so my guess is

neither of y'all are in a place to make here's what we do next because it's still too everything's still too fresh she almost died yeah the guy she was going to marry she found out was a fraud oh and you're having twins

on top of having a neurological condition which is going to be a whole different kind of pregnancy right? Yeah yeah it's just a lot so she's probably operating on a minute by, oh, by the way, the government shut down, which that's great. Like, so she's on a minute by minute, right?

Yeah. So what has she told you about rebuilding this thing from the bedrock up? Obviously, we established that, you know, all that, I took care of all the apps, all the things that I was doing, Instagram, Facebook, like, you know. They're gone. You've deleted them. They're off. Oh, not just that. I went and I took the account, I deleted the account, then I deleted them out of my phone.

Great. And I'm the whole nine yards because I was using, I was misusing all kinds of apps. Okay. So here's the thing. I want you to continue to go back to her on a week by week basis for the first two or three months. Okay. And say, you get to decide what rebuilding trust looks like and I will walk the path you lay before me. I want you to make that a weekly ritual.

And she will probably say, I don't want to be your mother. I don't know even. And then when she says that, I want you to say, that's totally cool. When you are ready, I'm here. And here's the things I've done in the meantime. I'm on week four with everything off my phone. Here is my phone unlocked if you want to see it. By the way, the passcode to my phone is X, Y, or Z.

Yes. by the way, I've pulled my credit report. Here is everything I owe. I want you to see that I'm a person and character. Because I am going to rebuild this from the floor up. And my hope is over time, she begins to say, and here is, I've been to counseling this many times, I am in the gym.

Here's the things affirmatively I am doing, not to win her back, but to become somebody that is trustworthy that she can anchor into. you. And every time you fudge something, you kind of bend the truth a little bit, you're going to stop. You're going to call her and say, you asked if I was headed straight home. And I said, yes, I actually am stopping to get coffee, and then I'm going to come straight home. I'm going to be 100% honest with you. And you're going to have to practice when you do veer left or right. You've been doing it for so long. You're going to have, you're going to slip and fall. You're going to go through the shame, go through the guilt. You're going to go, boom, I'm going to call you right back. And this is how I'm going to practice being a person of integrity. Yes, sir. And at the end of this path, she still may say, I don't want to be with you. There still may be lingering consequences. And part of being a person of integrity is if you do this for a year and you come to the

realization that I don't want to be with you romantically long term, you have to be a person of character that puts that on the table. I'm going to hurt you again. My hope is that doesn't happen, but this is integrity. It's whole. The root word is integer, whole. But she gets to decide the path moving forward. And if she chooses to take you back, then she has a responsibility to practice being less emotionally reactive to give you a path back and to not beat you up 24-7, 365, 4.

Like, that's part of y'all coming back together. But right now, you own the cleanup. You blew the house to smithereens. You own the cleanup. And she gets to tell you which part of the yard you're going to. to start cleaning up first. Slow, steady, step by step by step. And by the way, go to every single appointment, every single OBGY an appointment, every single

doctor's appointment, because you also are going to be a dad who freaking shows up. I'm going to take off work. Well, if you leave again, you're fired, fine. I quit because these kids that aren't even born yet are more important. I will be a dad who shows up. And in so doing, you're going to show her that you're a guy who shows up. And in so doing, you're going to prove to yourself, the person you absolutely burned from the inside out on this deal. You're going to prove to yourself, I'm a man who shows up.

I'm a man who can weather the truth. I'm a man who is going to do things in my life. I'm going to play music. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to get a hobby. I'm going to get a side hustle. I'm going to be a guy who doubles and triples and quadruples down on the woman in my life because I'm a guy who doesn't let. myself get dead in my own skin and that is a choice that we make and so you've been using apps as a

numbing device as a drug you're going to have to backfill that with positive activities part of positive action i'm going to start serving in my local community i'm going to become involved i'm going to become a man that i respect when i look at him in the mirror not who's perfect but who is working grinding to do the next right thing and then maybe she'll consider re-anchoring into you You got a long road to hoe, but listen, I'm proud of you for saying I take ownership. And ownership comes at a cost, but it is the next right move. Call me anytime, brother. I'll walk with you.

And if she wants to call, I'm happy to talk to her too. You got a long path ahead of you, man, but you're taking the right step. Keep going. When we come back, a woman asks how to get sober when her husband has no interest. interest in getting sober himself. This show is sponsored by Better Help. All right, as we head into the new year, I want you to take an inventory of all the stuff you're carrying, all the things you think you have to do, all the past hurts and pains,

along with all of the past guilts and shames, all of it. When the world feels heavy, it's important to look in the mirror and consider setting down all of that old weight and even consider not cancer. carrying it into 2026. Therapy can help you identify the heavy stuff, help you set it down, and move forward with clarity so you can focus on the new year. And if you're thinking about therapy, I recommend BetterHelp. BetterHelp has over 30,000 therapists, and they're one of the leading online therapy providers on the planet, and they're trusted by millions of people around the world with an average rating of 4.9 stars out of 5. It's all online, so it's easy to fit in your

schedule. To get started, you just answer a few simple questions, and they'll connect you with a licensed therapist that fits your needs. And if it's not the right fit, you can change therapists at any time for no extra cost. You can't feel lighter without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloni for 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, h-elp.com slash deloney. All right, Huntsville, Alabama, right down the street from me. Let's go to Destiny. What's up, Destiny? Hey, Dr. John. How are you? I'm good. How are you, lady?

I'm making it day by day. There we go. There we go. What's up? So, I'm struggling with staying sober when there's alcohol around me constantly because my husband has no interest in getting sober or being sober. Tell me about your sobriety journey. How'd you get here? We started, when we met, we bonded over drinking. And then as the years gone on, it's just gotten heavier and heavier. And I've been trying to quit for the past probably two to three years. And I always find myself going back to it, fall in like I have, feel like I have no willpower when it comes down to the end of the day.

Well, I mean, that's right at the top of AA, right? I'm powerless. Yeah, I haven't actually attended any AA or anything like that. So how are you trying to get sober? Just white knuckling the crap out of it? Basically, yeah. All right, I'm going to tell you, you're going to fall over every time trying to do that. Yeah.

Are you really ready to get sober? Are you just tired of being drunk? I'm ready to be sober. Okay. And I'm asking you that question because when it comes to a spouse, who has no interest in helping his wife get healthy and whole, you're going to have some real hard choices to make. But the first choice is I really want to get sober

because I'm worth feeling loved and alive in my own body. Yeah, it's taken some time to get to that point to where now I just got to figure out how. Okay, tonight you go to your first meeting. And tomorrow morning you get up and go to your meeting again. and here's what you're going to prove to yourself. A, you are indeed powerless. B, alcohol's been serving a role in your life.

It's actually been helping you. We've got to get to the true thing your body's trying to navigate. And it might be an unsafe husband. And three, you're going to prove to yourself. I'm serious about this this time. Yeah, I always tell myself I'm serious. I know, I know. I know. I think you really want to want to do this. Yeah. I've never in my life. That's not true. Maybe a couple of times. But almost never have I met somebody who really struggles with alcohol who likes the struggle. Yeah. So you say, I want to quit. I want to go get sober. They'll tell you at AA, it will, don't underestimate the cost. I wonder, I think sometimes I wonder what, you know, the relationship's going to be like. a hundred percent different.

And so if you're trying to preserve the relationship as it is and do this other thing, the homeostasis of the relationship, that I said that in a dorky way, the gravitational pull of the way things just are is going to win the day every time. Because you're going to have four weeks of sobriety

and then your husband's going to yell at you. You're going to have four weeks of sobriety and he's going to come home drunk again pawn at you or you're going to have four weeks of just white knuckling it, and then you're going to get in trouble at work, and your body is going to reach for the only thing it knows to take the pain away. And it's surrounding you in your own house. Yeah.

I mean, I've heard you say, like, if you're trying to get sober from alcohol, you pour it all out of your house or take it all out of your house. That's just step one. That's just that's not even step one. That is step zero. Yeah, and then it's brought back in daily, even though, like, I can ask, I can say, hey, can we do this together, or can you only get the amount that you will drink? So I'm not tempted because I'm probably not going to go out and get it.

But if there's not any extra, I'm less tempted to do it. And that's your story on this side of sobriety. And that story makes sense to you, and I applaud it because you're trying to hang on to something. You're trying to hang on to a ghost, which is that we have a good marriage. and I think deep down you know that you don't. Yeah. Is that fair? I definitely think things could be better.

Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Is your husband safe? Yeah, he's safe. Okay. The only other conversation I would challenge you to have with him is not about drinking, but it's about a wife sitting down courageously vulnerable in front of her husband and saying,

I'm feeling myself die. And I've got to make some changes in my life. Will you do this with me? Will you help me feel safe in our house? And he might say no. And that's different than will you stop drinking? Yeah. But you can't even say, I miss the old us.

I miss you because you don't even know the guy. You know 17 beers in guy. Or maybe you do know guy who's, it's 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning. He hasn't started drinking yet. And that guy's not great. Maybe he is. Maybe he's wonderful. Yeah, I mean, he has his days like when, you know, like if he hadn't started drinking yet and we get along and we're great and we have a good day.

And then sometimes he's just, when he's not drinking, he's quiet and walled up and we don't talk. Right. And we're just, you know, and then he'll get a few drinks in and his mood changes. He's happier. Yeah, of course. It's a social lubricant. Yeah. like you said it perfectly it helps bring the walls down so that we can be the person that we

imagine ourselves wanting to be instead of dealing with why are we having to build walls around ourselves anyway yeah that's a hard scary path to take well so bright is hard but how do you get sober when your husband has no interest in getting sober you a fully commit this is a path I'm going to take. And B, you've got to get some support around you, which is why I'm a fan of AA, why I'm a fan of recovery groups, while I'm a fan of other people getting involved, because you can't just cut off the thing that's propping you up, which is alcohol, and you especially can't just disconnect yourself from your husband overnight and expect everything to go smooth. Yeah.

Every demon you have will come screaming and howling at you in the middle of night and the middle the day. That makes sense. So the question number one is, do you actually want to get sober this time? Yeah. Okay. I deserve it. My son deserves it. There we go. And so, I'm going to go to a meeting tonight. You're going to go to those stupid meetings every day? Yes, I am. At least for the first 90 days, I am. You don't need a sponsor. We're not even alcoholics. We don't drink too much. I need some help. And they're going to tell you, step one, not step one, there's 12 steps, but they're going to tell you, you've got to get rid of all the alcohol,

and you're going to have to change environments. You can't be around people who are doing that. Especially, not forever, but especially right now. Yeah, I mean, we really only drink at home. Yeah, but is that financial? We don't actually, like, we don't go out and party or anything. In some ways, that makes it worse. Because if you only drink at parties, you only drink at bars,

you still have the safety and security of your home. If you only drink at home, that means those rattlesnakes live there. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. If you told me I only do drugs at parties, I would be like, sweet, just don't go to parties. But when you're like, no, I only get myself in trouble, I only become somebody I'm, I don't, I don't, that I need to protect myself from. I only do that at home. That's tough.

It's tough to change that environment, right? Yeah. Especially when you're all by yourself. It is possible. going to be infinitely harder. But you're on the right track with, I deserve this. My son needs a fully present mom, even if she has two or three or four years of stumbling and grinding through. Why was alcohol the only way I could get through my life? Your son desperately needs a plugged-in dad who doesn't need three or four drinks to be able to exhale and smile and hug his son.

but you can't do that for him. You can only do it for you. So step one, go to a meeting tonight. Step two, go to a meeting in the morning. And they're going to give you a roadmap. Sign up for a sponsor as soon as you possibly can. And tell your husband, I want my home to be a safe place. I'm not going to tell you to stop drinking because I can't.

I can't make you do that. But I am telling you, I want this to not be a part of my life anymore. And my prayer is it's not a part of our life. I deserve it. He deserves it. And God help you, your son deserves it. Today is day one, Destiny. Day one for real.

I'm proud of you. You get that 30-day chip and you call me back. Maybe we'll talk to your husband at the same time. I'll walk with you. Day one, proud of you, sister. When we come back, a woman asks, how can she repair her marriage and her finances when her husband keeps having all of these business dreams

that are setting everybody back? All right, let me tell you about Hallow, the number one prayer and meditation app in the world. All right, y'all know this. My life is chaotic. I'm a speaker. I'm a writer. I do this show.

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Hallow helps me make space for peace. So if you want to anchor your day into spiritual truth and wisdom and get ultimate peace, check out Hallow. Right now when you sign up at hallow.com slash Deloni, they'll get you. give you three months of the app for free. Go check it out. That's hallowh-h-a-l-L-O-W.com slash Deloni for three months for free. All right, let's go out to Chicago, Illinois and talk to Nicole. What's up, Nicole? Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. Of course. Thanks for hopping on this morning. What's up? How can I help? So I wrote down my question so that I don't kind of phrase it the wrong way. So how do I move forward when my husband's business dream keeps setting us back.

Tell me about that. Well, it's not only like relational between us. It's financial, it's emotional, it's physical. It's all intertwined. Yeah. Yes. Yes, it's all intertwined. So I, my husband and I have been together for 15 years.

We're high school sweetheart. We've been married for eight. Gross and awesome. And we have two kids under five. And since I've known my husband, he's always had this very entrepreneurial spirit, where, like, self-employment working for himself was always the goal. And he kind of did like a side gig when we were in college. And it was great for extra money, but we decided it wasn't going forward as a full-time thing. There was just not a lot of longevity there.

So he decided to, you know, get the degree, take on a full-time job. He was doing really well there and actually had hopes of being a partner in the company someday or being part of that ownership and that leadership role. And unfortunately, things took a turn. And they were brought out by somebody different and yada, yada. It goes downhill from there. So then my husband faces some emotional setback and kind of has this quarter life crisis for lack of better words. Did he get fired or just there was just a. stop sign. Like, you're not going any further. Right. There was a stop sign of like,

you're not going any further. It was bought out by a different corporation. And the ladder that he thought was there had been ripped out from under him. Perfect. Okay. So he was putting all of his time and energy into building something with them for it to be taken away. Okay. So he stayed with them for a while to see how it would go. And they, on several occasions, told them, you're so great, we're so wonderful, but this is going to be it. This is where you're at. You can be here for as long is you want to be here, but you're not climbing anymore. Perfect. And so that did not fit well with him, obviously.

And I understood that. So he kind of went back to, well, why don't I revisit the self-employment thing? And so now we're at about nine months of him being completely self-employed. If we were working the baby steps, we had been working them for a long time in the heart of baby step too. So for the people listening, you all made a commitment to. Right. to not owe anybody any more money, to get out of debts.

Yes, to get out of debt and to not owe anybody money. And we had never had credit cards. We had never, we'd always paid for everything in cash since we had graduated college and moved in together and got married. And so now we're at the point where we're nine months into a new business that he is doing wonderful work. And the clients and the customers are so pleased with him. but the finances just aren't there yet. And he had a large job. He's in construction.

And he had a large job that he was still learning how to bid out things and how to charge. And it left us almost $10,000 in store credit card debt for material. And so now we have business debts. And I haven't been able to, I manage a lot of the personal finance. so that he can help manage the business thing and we're kind of splitting things, which is not how we want to do it, but it's just what is manageable right now.

And so now I have personal credit card debt because we're going on eight weeks of not getting a paycheck from the business. Hold on, hold on. I can hear your voice quivering. Yes, I'm sorry. No, no, no, don't be sorry at all. Good grief.

This is scary. Have you said all of this out loud to anybody before? Yes. Okay. it sounds like you're saying it all at once for the first time and it's just it's it's heavy here's my biggest concern of everything that's happening okay everything you've laid out is i get it and i'd even go as far to say noble both of you i can see i can feel both of you trying to do the right thing for each other and for yourselves okay you're trying to be a supportive

wife. He's trying to be a guy that's just scratching and clawing and making it happen. He's actually good at the work he does. Right? Everybody's trying. But here's the big red flag for me. This quote unquote dream, this quote unquote, you looking in the mirror and saying, I'm going to be a supportive wife, I'm going to be a supportive wife. And him looking in the mirror saying, I'm going to be a guy that works hard for my family. All that is pulling you away from the values you all committed to build your marriage on. We are not people who borrow money. We, our family,

we are a couple who always works together and makes decisions together. I'll go one step further. I am a man who takes care of my family. Right now, he's doing amazing work at a hobby, right? Yeah. You are a, I will be a wife who ride or die, with this man I've been with since high school.

I will be a supportive wife and that support is causing you to become somebody that goes against who you say you're going to be also, right? You see where your values are starting to crash into each other? Yes. Okay. This is a beautiful moment to turn all the lights on the house and call

something for a second. When's the last time you held his face and said, I can't tell you how proud of you I am for how you are scratching a claw for me and this family? Not to that extent ever, but I have told him multiple times, especially when he gets down, I'm a fixer. So my initial thought is to come up to him and to say, like, I love how you're working so hard. I'm very proud of all the work that you're doing. You know, but then he'll be like, but there's a butt. There's a butt to that. And he can hear it in my voice. And it's, it is true. and it's hard for me to not be supportive of something that makes him so happy.

But he's not happy. He's freaking miserable. Right. He's miserable. And if he gets a steady dose of, I love you. And I cannot tell you how lucky I feel with all of the men in the country leaving their families, all of the men who won't work hard, I got one that does. And you can be an amazing hard worker.

You can be an extraordinary gifted craftsman and a terrible business owner. I do corporate events for companies. All they do is they go in and coach and help dentists and doctors and lawyers actually run their business because they are amazing dentists. And they are heart surgeons. They can go cut out a heart and put another one in. but they don't know how to run payroll. They don't know how to keep supply chain stocked. They're different skill sets.

You get what I'm saying? Oh, absolutely. Because that's been a conversation too. And he's under the belief that, oh, well, I'll never make as much money if I go do this for somebody else. And in the short term, he's actually right, but he's not ever going to lose as much either. There's two sides to the risk equation.

Yeah. I agree. I mean, there's positive. to being his own boss, you know, especially with the young kids, and I work full-time too. So, you know, we are not home with the kids. There's daycare runs and after-school activities and things like that, where it's nice for him to not have somebody telling him, oh, no, you can't go pick up your kids or you can't, you know, so that there are a lot of positives to being self-employed into having his own business.

And, of course, I love those positives. But they're not real right now. realized. No. It's a hobby. Yeah. We just keep thinking, well, the next job, we're going to get another job. It's going to be great.

It's going to be better. And he is learning. Of course he is. Of course he is. That's why I'm so, like if he was here, I would hug him and tell you, thank you for being an honorable man. And you can be an incredibly honorable man. And the most honest, graceful thing you can give yourself is the words not

right now or not just yet. Those two things aren't incompatible. It's not either I go all in on my own business and I just crash and burn or maybe we get the one, I mean, it's like golf. You get, you hit one shot and you're like, oh, I can do this, right? The next job, it'll be the next job, it'll be the next job. And you as the person who's keeping the books at home are just watching this thing slowly slip and slide. More importantly, you're watching your value slip and slide. You're watching your marriage slip and slide and you're watching the man that you love and you dedicated your life to come unwound. Yeah. Fair?

Because this impacts. You said it. This impacts your sex life. It impacts your, um, just the general laughter and peace in a house, which already is chaotic because you got two kids under five, right? Yeah. It impacts everything. And so it's circling back to, I need you to hear me say, I'm so proud of you. with a period.

When so many men bail on their families, I got a guy that's scratching a clawing. Period. And you don't have to fix the next thing. So I guess do we just keep going? No. I always default to a couple of just principles, frameworks for how I live my life

and how I coach other people to do it. Human beings are unfathomably resilient, especially the nerd words are in a bounded context when there's a time limit. So anybody, if he had called me before and said, hey, I just realized I'm capped, I can't go any further. I would have said, cool, you have a 12-month exit. And that 12-month exit's going to cost you every weekend

for the next calendar year. I want you and your wife to sit down and count that cost. Because on the weekends, you're going to miss every, every soccer game, you're going to miss hunting season, you're going to miss everything, because you're going to be building your own construction deal on the side. One customer at a time, learning how to bid jobs, learning how to do with subs, learning how to tell somebody a customer one thing, and then four of your guys don't show up the next morning because somebody else paid him a quarter more an hour. All that stuff. And at the same time, he's got a paycheck.

coming in. He's got health insurance coming in for his wife and his babies. And we did have that plan. I mean, and it worked for about six weeks. We started it in January and he was doing weekends. He'd be gone out of state doing jobs from Thursday through Sunday night and sometimes Thursday through Monday and it was getting to the point where it looked positive and we said, well, wow, we've got all these jobs lined up and you don't even have enough time to do them. And I, there was this nagging part of me and it's partially my fault of when he took his exit because I had this nagging of, well, I'd really like to have a good savings account first, or I'd really like to pay off all our debt first. We could do it in 18 months. And I didn't speak up. There we go. And I did say it at some point, but then

he would, he would just be so miserable. I know. And so I gave in. And I said, fine, just go ahead. So it wasn't that we didn't have those conversations first. I know, I know, but those conversations were always with like you said it perfectly with the dot dot dot and the butt after it. Meaning, I didn't speak up in real time. I hoped that he just knew. He kept saying he was going to be miserable. You knew that actually was going to be super miserable

if one of these jobs didn't work out. Or he's going to be winning at work, but he's going to be connected to the most important person in his world, his wife, and she's going to be scared and unsafe. And when I get scared of unsafe, you get scared and safe, you nitpick, you point out, you try to fix, you close down emotionally or centrally. Like all those things that all of us do naturally. And it just creates this weird figure eight dance, right?

Yes, absolutely. And so there's something powerful about you overowning, right? And you're saying, I want to have a hard conversation and I need you to stay present. No leaving the table, no saying, oh, I'm going to, I just, let's, I want to put everything on the table. Number one, I'm so proud of you. I came and see straight. Number two, there's multiple moments over the last year that I didn't speak up, and that's on me. And because I didn't speak up, you got a scared shell of a wife.

And I'm sorry. Number three, we got to be honest about the finances of this job. it speaks in nothing about your skill set, nothing about your dream, none of that. We just have to be honest about the math problem we have right now. And if he can't sit present in that, then you all have bigger issues in your marriage I need to go deal with.

Oh, no, he could. I know he can. I know he can. I said that for the audience listening because there's going to be somebody listening who's like, well, you would never. I know, your guy sounds amazing. You sound amazing.

And I think that's the hard part is you can have two awesome people that are struggling at being married, are two awesome people that are struggling in being parents are two awesome, amazing people who are both hard workers, both all in, and yet the business isn't working out. You get what I'm saying?

Yeah. And when you make being an entrepreneur, your identity, instead of I'll be a guy who shows up for my family. That needs to reemerge as the identity. Do you what I'm saying? Yeah. And you reemerge as a wife who I will never

not speak my mind again, even in the short term, if it's going to make my husband feel uncomfortable. Because now he feels your discomfort, you feel his discomfort, and he's trying to do everything he can, so you're not uncomfortable, and you're trying to do everything you can for he's,

so he's not uncomfortable, and now you're borrowing money, he's bidding jobs under, so he can get the job and it loses money, and now we have a mess. You know what I'm saying? Yes. And I guess I want you to hear me say,

on this side of it, this is the best kind of call I can take, because I have two people that are all in on each other, it's just gotten cloudy and the sun's going to come back out. Thank you for the call, sister. I see a really bright future for Fiel's marriage and for his business and for everything.

Because for the first time, not for the first time, but forever, you're going to start never leaving the table without having said what you believe and what you want, even if it causes short-term discomfort. Thanks for a call, sister. We'll be right back. I'm always talking about sleep. Why? Because sleep matters. I've struggled with sleep for years. And when I don't sleep, I'm impatient, I'm distracted. And I'm not the dad, husband, friend, or coworker that I want to be. And that's why I'm pumped to tell you about something that's truly helped me sleep better. Beams nighttime dream powder. Y'all, this stuff is amazing. A few months ago, my neighbors who are professional athletes, they told me about this stuff.

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Go to shopbeam.com slash deloni and use code Deloney to start sleeping better tonight. All right, Kelly, something awesome happened. So this is from Jonathan in McKinney, Texas. And he writes, I've always avoided conversations about a love. loved one passing away because I never knew what to say someone to someone who was grieving. You taught me to ask the bereaved what their loved one's name was and the favorite memory that they have of the deceased. What a game changer that device has been. I love seeing the smile come across the face as they think of their favorite memory. It feels like asking those questions

is honoring both the dead and the grieving family member. Thank you for giving me that tool and to make a connection with a hurting person. DTID, which is Dallas Till I die, and go Rangers. Could have done with that last part. Without that last part, Jonathan. Jonathan's a very smart human being. That feels like there was a huge bait and switch to say go Rangers. So I will say, dude, thank you so much for listening to the show and for putting these things into practice and honoring hurting people.

It's amazing. I'm proud of you. And H-Town, get your hot chase up and go stroze for life. Peace out.