The Dr. John Delony Show - Married Three Months and I Feel Trapped

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Here's what's happening on today's show: A man whose been married three months asks John why he feels trapped. (2:25) We hear from a woman whose teen daughter keeps finding ways to talk to strange men online. (20:00) We talk with a mom wondering how to best support her daughter as she grows up with a chronic illness. (35:47) Lyrics of the Day: "Demons" - Imagine Dragons Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. We're fighting a lot, especially for only being married for three months. What are y'all fighting about, man? The way we both handle physical touch. My wife is not a physical touch person, and I am. You have a picture of what lifetime commitment looks like. And she has a different picture of what lifetime commitment romance looks like. What is up?

This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. The greatest mental health, wellness, marriage, parenting, whatever podcast you want to call it, this is the best one ever. I'm so glad that you joined us. If you want to be on the show, go to johndeloney.com slash ask. And you can write us a note in the form and get it to us. And I'm a bit late this morning. I am running around.

Two things. One, somebody sent an email this morning. Letting me know that I'm a Satanist. Actually, I'm not. I'm a demon working'm a Satanist. Actually, I'm not. I'm a demon working for a Satanist. And that I both pander to and hate women and families. So that was awesome. And two, I've been inspired by the great Dr. Peter Atiyah's work and his admonishment.

Get a colonoscopy. I don't care how old you are. Well, actually, there is an age to it, right? But we wait way, way, way too long. And it's such a simple... Colon cancer is such... Not simple, but it's something you can deal with the earlier you catch it. And it's roundly dealt with when it's caught early. And it's a mess when it's caught late. So why not? And most of our insurances will do it for free. So I signed up for one. It's pure screening.

There's no, I'm as healthy as, I hope so, super healthy. But they sent me this form. And here's what I have to eat this week. They call it a low residue diet. Oh! Oh! Oh! When they called me

and were giving me like the rundown of the whole thing, they were like, hey, you're going to have to eat a low residue diet and I just stopped the nurse. I was like, you're going to have to stop right there. That's the grossest, could you have named it something else?

Like the non-explosive, just something not low residue. Anyway, glad you're with us, everybody. Let's go to, I'm pretty sure they're going to edit that out. Let's go to Brandon in St. Louis. What's up, Brandon? What's up, Dr. D?

How are you doing, man? Hey, I'm doing good. How are you? Good, good, good. What's up, brother? Hey, I just had a quick question for you. Hey, hold on. How old are you doing, man? Hey, I'm doing good. How are you? Good, good, good. What's up, brother? Hey, I just had a quick question for you. Hey, hold on. How old are you? I am 22, about to turn 23. All right, man.

It's like 10 to 15 years and counting, and it's going to be colonoscopy time. Just go ahead and put that on your calendar, my man. All right. That's right. What's up, dude? Hey, my wife and I, we've been married for a little over three months now. And I'm just wondering if you have any advice for keeping a healthy and sustainable marriage. And the reason I'm asking is I just feel like we're fighting a lot, especially for only being married for three months.

And I'm wanting things to change and just wanting to know if you have any advice for being a better husband and keeping a better relationship with my wife. What are y'all fighting about, man? Man, the primary things that we fight about are the way we both handle physical touch. My wife is not a physical touch person, and I am. And so I feel like she's definitely like changed. She tries to, we both try to meet in the middle, but sometimes I just kind of get upset because it's still different. And then, uh, hold on, hold on. Let's dig into that real quick and I'll go to the next one. Um, you phrased that as you spoke about that as differences in physical touch needs.

Okay. Very common in marriages. But the way you ended up, you landed there was you feel deceived. She changed on you. She used to be one way. You thought you were getting one thing and now you've got something else. Tell me more about that. Yeah. You've got something else. Tell me more about that. Yeah, so when we were dating, I liked to hold hands and hug in public.

I try not to be cringy or anything, obviously. Okay, good. Don't be gropey. Gary the Groper, don't be that guy. No, not at all. All right. And she was very hesitant to do that. And closer to the time we were getting married, I asked her if that was going to change in her marriage because, you know, we were going to make a lifetime commitment to each other.

And she was telling me that that it was going to be different because we were going to be married. And it's changed a little bit, but I just I don't think that it's changed as much as I thought. So I don't think that she's that she deceived as I thought. So I don't think that she deceived me by any means, but it kind of is a little different than what I was thinking. Okay, so you just nailed it. You have a picture of what lifetime commitment looks like. Yeah. And it's that we are high touch, high intimacy, sex all the time.

We hold hands in public. She nuzzles the back of my neck. You have all these things that this is what a lifetime commitment romance looks like. Fair? Right. And she has a different picture of what lifetime commitment romance looks like. It might be, you always have food on the table and you always, the trash just magically disappears from inside the house and the bed magically gets made. Right. So her picture of lifetime commitment could look very different. And that is the dance of being married, right? Is, is coming up with a new picture. Okay. So

you're, you're onto the next thing. What was the next thing? Yeah. Uh, I would say that the biggest thing, uh, is probably, so there's like little things that we could, that may not necessarily need to be a fight at all. But I think they turn into them because we handle, we both have, we both handle anger, angerness different. So if I'm angry about something, then you've kind of talked about like you use silence as a weapon. And that's how I do it is I'm just kind of turned quiet and kind of shut myself off. Whereas my wife will sort of rage out. And so both are wrong. Uh, and I definitely can do better. I don't think both are wrong. Both are just are maybe the situation with which they hurt somebody else or when they are applied to somebody else. right? I'm a guy that defaults to silence until a switch flips.

That's what my wife calls it. And, man, that's a good thing. I don't say stupid things. I've never hit anybody. You know what I mean? I'm not a violent guy. And so silence is a great default network. It's when I use silence to get my way.

That's when I'm misusing or sometimes exploding like, will you please just hear me? Or I'm so frustrated. Man, I totally get that. It's when you do that at somebody and you hurt somebody, right? So I don't want to lionize those things. Let me back up a little bit here. You're 22. How old is she?

She is about 21. Y'all are really young. Why'd you get married so young? We've been dating for a few... We've been dating for a little over two years, about almost three. And we waited... We wanted to get married right after he graduated

just because living situation and we felt kind of... we wanted to get married right after he graduated just because living situation and we wanted to get, we wanted to figure things out as we grew up together instead of trying to do it separately and then coming back, you know, coming together after a while of doing that. Cool. So let me tell you a story. So when I first got married, I remember the time my wife, and I don't know if I've mentioned this on the show or not. I remember the time my wife was next to me in the bathroom brushing her teeth. And I remember she took her toothbrush and then she put toothpaste on the toothbrush. And because she's a serial killer, she shoved it directly into her mouth and just started brushing her teeth. And I remember looking at her and I said, you're doing that wrong. To which she's wise and she was like,

I don't know this is a thing that you can do wrong. Enlighten me, Obi-Wan. And I said, well, the way you're supposed to do it is you're supposed to put toothpaste on the toothbrush and then put it under the water first and then put it in your mouth, weirdo. And someone who doesn't hate babies and so we both walked into our marriage with just a picture of here's how you brush teeth right both of you guys are dealing with i thought my life was going to continue as is

i was just going to have my husband or wife move into my life. And so what you're experiencing, A, super normal. Please don't overreact to it, okay? You probably feel trapped. You probably feel buried up to your neck, right? Like, what have I done? Have you had those thoughts? Oh yeah.

I wish you would just come in and say, we shouldn't have done this, and she would just leave. Like, I wish I could, like, there's just this, I get it. And then if you're like come in and say, we shouldn't have done this. And she would just leave. Like, I wish I could like, there's just this, I get it. And then if you're like most, not most, like many, um,

you have thoughts and then you get really upset that you had those thoughts. Like you're some kind of bad guy, right? You're not. Okay. What you have is two people trying to live lives in their own lane and drag the other person over into their lane because this is the way life is going to be. And what you haven't done yet, and this is what getting married at 28, 29, or 30 will give you, is some tools to say,

the lives we led are over. They do not exist anymore. We have to in real time we have to change the oil on this car while it's driving we got to decide to build something new together and that's a totally different proposition and so the picture you had up up about what what committed love is going to look like in her picture does neither of those? Now what matters is here's a paintbrush, here's a paintbrush, here's some paint, let's paint something new together. Let's figure something else out.

And that starts with a conversation that if you can get this down at 22, you will have the greatest marriage of anybody I've ever met. And that is a cyclical recursive, like back and forth all the time. Every two months, every three months, every quarter, we're going to have a conversation where we write it down. What are your needs in this season? We're both trying something new. How can I best meet your needs, even if it's

going to make me uncomfortable? And I know it's not very popular right now because it's supposed to be like, no, if it doesn't make you uncomfortable, you go do you, bro. That's all stupid. No relationships last with that sort of infantile mentality. What you need is to say, hey, what can I do? Tell me. Here's what I need. I need physical touch. I need sexual intimacy. I need you to pick up your underwear. I need you to help make the bed. And then here's what you can control on that, you. So when somebody calls and says, hey, how do I fix my marriage? Strengthen yourself. Decide I'm going to be the best freaking husband who's ever lived by meeting needs. And by the way, she's got to participate too. This becomes a very one-sided trip if she's like, forget you, dude.

I'm not helping meet your needs, you weirdo. But you have to say these things out loud. And these are best done like not in a fight. The little picky fights you're talking about, those are proxy wars. You have no margin. You have no emotional margin. You probably aren't sleeping that well. Your diet's probably all gone to hell.

Everything's a mess right now. You've been married three months. And then there's just no margin to absorb the, where's the cup? I thought you put it over there and now we're in this fight for no reason, right? So you've heard me say this so many times. I wish I could come up with something new. I was thinking about this morning in the gym. Like I need to come up with some new material.

But really what y'all need to do is go decide. Like, hey, I want to take you out. We're three months in and we've hit some bumps and some rocks and some like just some normal growing pains let's make something awesome and let's decide what that's going to look like and then we're going to practice it as we move forward and by the way one thing i want to give you brandon every time you get start to get mad or frustrated or sad or loud or angry angry, stop. Say nothing, okay? Will you do that?

Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. I'd love to hear you learn at age 22 to say, I'm going to need a minute. I'll be right back. You're fine. I have my insides have set set on fire and I need a minute. And let me go for a walk real quick. Let me go do 40 pushups outside. Let me go write something down and then I'll be back. Give me an hour. Give me 45 minutes or whatever. And if you can start that right now, creating a

gap between your feeling and then what you say or what you do or getting angry, you're gonna have a lot of peace in your home, especially if your wife joins along with you. Are these things possible? If you took her out and said, hey, can we just like, all right, we're three months in, I'm trying to force you to live in my world and I feel like I'm getting dragged into your world

and what we need to do is create our world. What would that even look like? Could you start there? Yeah. Would she be in on that? Yeah, she'd be in. She's awesome. Love her to death.

I'd say that something else that kind of happens too, and she knows this too, and so I would say that when we get in a fight, it could be something really small. When she gets really upset, and I have done this before, and I try my best not to do it, and I don't think I've done it when we've been married. But she'll lash out and she'll say some like super hateful things and she'll always apologize after she says them. Give me an example. Um, so when, uh, she'll get upset about something or we'll get upset. And then one of the things that she does is if it escalates, she'll say something

like, I hate you. I hate you. Or we should have never gotten married. And she, she, so, so a little bit after that, you know, I tell her that really, really never gotten married. And she, she, so, so a little bit after that, you know, I tell her that really, really makes me mad. And you told me last time you weren't going to say that again, but at the same time, I feel like I really can't, I, I know that she needs to take responsibility for actions as I do too, but she grew up in a home where it was, everybody said that, um, everybody said that they hated each other. Parents didn't show their love to her, and it's sad. So I'm trying to keep my head up when that stuff happens, but it just makes me really upset. Divorce is never on the table. Okay, let me hop in here. Here's your path forward.

Number one, she cannot make you mad. That's a choice you make. Okay. Okay. And here you mad that's a choice you make okay okay um and here's why that's important it's very important outside of the heat of battle outside of the heat of a moment um you know what i'm gonna take back what i said my wife can make me mad i've given her permission to do that um so i'm gonna to take that back. You get to choose your response. Very few people, my boss can't make me mad, but I just don't give people that. I don't give them that. I've worked for a decade to decouple myself from other people, but I give my wife permission to make me mad. I love her. She gets permission to speak in my life. I have the choice on how I

respond to that, how I act. Here's an important thing y'all need in your marriage Is really firm boundaries so you respond when she says I hate you Your response or I wish we never got married Your response of that really makes me mad. You've just poured gasoline on a fire right In a non-fight, when you're out to breakfast, you're out to lunch and you're figuring out like,

all right, how are we going to build this thing? You each get to make rules. And one of the rules for you, one of your boundaries is, if you say that you hate me, you are telling me that you want to end the conversation

and you want me to walk away because that's what I'm choosing to do. I will choose to leave the conversation 100% of the time you tell me you hate me. Every time. And so she's not, she will learn in short order that her husband has very strong boundaries

and that he will opt out quietly with respect and I'm going to walk away. And by the way, I don't care about her childhood when it comes to that kind of crap. That is infantile acting like a child. She's got to stop that. Okay. It's destructive. And again, I wish she'd gotten a better model when she was a kid.

She didn't. And so she's got to stop. And that's got to be, you know, she's going to practice stopping. That's all she knows. She's 21. She's got a lot of maturity that she's got to undergo in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Or in my case, 30, 40, 50 years. That's a no-go.

Absolutely no-go. But that starts with you saying, I will not accept you telling me that you hate me. I will choose to leave that conversation. You see what I'm saying? Your response, any response after that is, I'm choosing to punch back. And why, right?

It's all, when she crosses over there, you're fighting a generational fight, right? She's fighting her parents. She's fighting their parents. This has nothing to do with you. Step out. Right.

Right? And at some point, if she wants to solve the actual challenge that's before you, if she wants to get closer to you, become more intimate with you, she will know I'm not going to throw that grenade because that grenade is her choosing. I don't want you in my space anymore.

And that's her choosing to be a child, a hurtful child. Just aside, listeners, don't say you hate people. Don't say you hate your spouse or your kids. Don't say you want a divorce. Don't say we never should. Take that crap off the table. You're here. You've done it.

You did it. Okay? It's about what are we gonna do next brandon i've said this a thousand times i'll say it a million times more till they cancel the show which who knows i feel like i'm always one call away you can't live your life and drag her into yours and she can't live her life and drag her into yours. And she can't live her life and drag you into hers. You'll have to decide that the lives y'all were living are over. They're over.

Who are we gonna be together? We can both still have our dreams. We can both still have our goals and our lives, but they are now one. They're not together. And we're gonna build something together moving forward. And you each get to state along that journey, what your needs are, by the way, your needs will change. And you both get to state along that journey what your needs are. By the way, your needs will change.

And you both get to state what the boundaries are. You can't talk to me like that. I don't like to touch in these situations. Fill in the blank. Every couple makes their own rules as they go. But you gotta state them out loud. You can do this, Brandon. Call me back in about six months.

Let me know how things are going. I'm excited for you guys. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life,

and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule.

You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash deloney. All right, we're back, Jack. Cracker Jack, let's go to Cynthia in Phoenix, Arizona.

What's up, Cynthia? Hello, how you doing? I'm good. How about you? I'm okay. All right. Hey, that's as good as we can do sometimes, right? What's up?

Yes. So my question is, I'm having trouble with my daughter. So a quick recap. When she was 14, she was going on social media, created an Instagram account behind my back. I already told her she could not have any social media. She was using other people's phones, like family members. They thought that she was playing games, but yet she created this account. Talking to some stranger boy, who I think was like an older man type thing.

She was sending inappropriate pictures to him. They would call each other, talk on the phone. He would never show his face. Only she would show her face. So that's why I think it was like an older man. What kind of inappropriate photos was she sending? Of herself. Like topples photos or sensual photos?

Yes. As a 14-year-old. As a 14 year old? As a 14 year old. Yes. So when, um, we caught that, took all the phones,

um, told everybody, Hey, she cannot go on anybody's phone. If she needs to call a family member, you have to dial the phone for her. So I thought that was cleared. Now when she's 15,

um, COVID happened. They sent, um, the children home with laptop computers. She started going on these Zoom chat rooms with, you know, strangers again. So, again, took her phone away. I mean, took the computer away.

Like, we would have to, like, okay, if you've got to do schoolwork, you've got to be around somebody. So, now she's about to be 16. We started a new school, fresh start. We're telling her like, you know what? You cannot be on these sites anymore. We're going to give you back your phone because now you're about to be 16. Okay. We're going to start this rush. Four days into school, you're back. I call her, um, I went in her room and I saw like the laptop underneath her, her blanket. When I opened it up, she's chatting again with random people saying, I love you. They're a boyfriend and girlfriend. I'm like, they're a boyfriend and girlfriend.

I'm like, why are you telling this? I was like, who is this person? I don't know. I just went to this chat room. I'm like, how do you get this chat room? Because when I tell you to open it up, you never know the password, but now all of a sudden you remember it. So I'm just like, I don't know what to do. I don't know why she needs to keep chatting with these boys, these strangers. I don't know what she's looking for, what she needs. I'm asking her why she does it. I don't know. She says she wants friends. You just moved. You just started this new school. So you have friends. Why are you always trying to build relationships online? So I don't know what to do. We tried counseling. That was like, she wasn't participating in. She said she doesn't need it. It was like nothing. There was no good outcome from counseling. So I don't know what else to do.

Man. There's so much here. Yeah, there is and then there's not, okay? Mm-hmm. 16-year-olds are very smart and they're very capable. 15 year olds. I've been around some extremely mature 14 year olds that are impressive, smart,

fun, hilarious. I was a high school coach and I coached freshmen and sophomores and they were awesome. I loved being around them. They're, they're great. They made me laugh.

And they're children. They're children. And they don't have the emotional regulatory capacity in many cases to to detach from the need to be seen to be attached from a need to be heard and or at least felt like they're heard to be seen as special so what is happening in your home that this is where she goes to get that stuff? So her father is not in her life. He's been... Well, that's about what I need to know right there.

That's about what I need to know right there. Okay. He's been in and out of her life. He's been incarcerated. He's incarcerated now. So they talk here and there. Like when she wants to talk to him, she'll tell me and I'll make a visit, but it's not often.

So she needs... Again, I'm making a lot of leaps here without talking to her and spending some time with her, but it's not a surprise to me that she is... Her sweet little 14, 15, 16-year-old brain is wondering every single day, what was so bad about me that dad left?

What did I do? And then somebody on an anonymous chat room says, I'll tell you that you're beautiful. I'll show up and tell you that you have value. Just take your shirt off. And once that switch gets flipped, now we're in a whole different ballgame. Because there's a natural physiological arc to this that gets circumvented,

which is why we keep adult predators away from kids. Because once the switch is flipped on, now you've got a whole different ball of wax dealing with kids who've been sexualized. And so asking, what are you doing? This is primal. This is in her soul. I will find some man that will tell me

that I've got value and that I'm beautiful and that I'm not worthless because the one guy that was supposed to be here left me. And she's going to spend a long, long time trying to bridge that gap. Okay? That's an oversimplified explanation. I'm sure there's more complexity

to it in Partridge in the Pear Tree. Here's the rub. None of that matters. What matters is let's pretend there was like an arcade and you dropped your daughter off of this arcade with some regularity, just a cool place to hang out. And then she told you, hey, there's strange men hitting on me there. And they come and rub my shoulders and they want me to take my shirt off. And they say nice things about me. It just feels ugh. And then you were

like, well, I don't think I'm going to keep dropping you off there. And then she sneaks out. You find out she's sneaking out and she's going there and you go get her. When she turns 16 for her birthday, would you then just take her back and be like, all right, make good choices? No. You would never let her go back. You'd call the cops. You would scorch earth.

And for some reason, when it comes to the internet and computers, we think those are different things. And I would say they are different in that there's way more predators online than there are in real life. And what I'll tell you is I've just been a part of too many investigations over

the past 17, 18, 19 years, working in colleges with high school and college kids that have, man, it just, it's got, I've got a rise in me. Okay. Save your daughter is what I'm telling you. She's begging you save your daughter is what I'm telling you. She's begging you, save your daughter. Be the adult that doesn't leave her. What does that mean? That means I'm going to the school and saying,

my kid will not participate in your laptop program because y'all have not provided us any sort of safety mechanisms that keep kids from getting into chat rooms with adult sexual predators. They keep them off the internet, outside of school stuff. And I don't know how to solve that. I don't work. I'm not a programmer.

That's y'all's problem. Right. My math textbook didn't have a special portal that someone would sexually abuse me when I was a kid. Your child does. So as far as I'm concerned, you're going to give my kid alternative assignments until y'all figure out how to keep predators out of my home.

Okay. You see what I'm saying? Yes. I reject it because they are failing you. And I would make it pretty direct. And like, here's some printouts of the chats that my daughter's undergoing on your school device. This also may mean that in your home,

you have to get rid of the internet. And God, that would be annoying and uncomfortable and expensive and just frustrating all the time. You mean you got to go back to getting DVDs at the library? Yep. But we're talking about your daughter. Of course. And we're talking about two more years.

And so many times I hear parents are like, I would do anything for my kid. I'd turn off the internet. I'm not going to take away their cell phone. Do anything. Here's one more thing. Sending her to counseling about her sexting is not the way to go about that. Taking her to counseling with you because you are looking to heal and become a stronger woman and a stronger mother after her husband, after her father left y'all together and you're learning some new skills. That's how you do that.

Okay. Because if you take her somewhere and drop her off and say, something's wrong with you, they're going to fix it that's the declaration of war for a 15-16 year old bring it then if it's hey I realize that dad screwed us both left and I

I'll learn how to love you better and so I'm not asking you are going to be a part of that you can sit there in the room and not say anything but you're going to be a part of that. You can sit there in the room and not say anything, but you're going to be a part of it. That's a whole different ballgame. And then you know what she gets to see? She gets to see mom cry. She gets to see mom be sad. She gets to see mom be confused. And then she doesn't feel so crazy anymore. Okay. But be the only adult in this young girl's life That will say I'm not leaving you

And I'm standing up And dude I absolutely know Cynthia That when you take away all this stuff And put her on an island It is gonna be It's gonna be hell on earth in your home I know that It's also gonna be hell on earth when she comes home pregnant

It's gonna be hell on earth When she comes home and says, Mom, I've got fill in the blank with STIs. It's going to be hell on earth when you get a call from a police department saying, hey, we found a bunch of nude photos of your daughter on some guy's computer. You're just

picking your hell on earth. And I'd rather pick the relational one. Right. Because there's light on the other side of that one. I have a quick question. Yeah. So with her father being incarcerated, I feel like, I would, I feel like, okay, that's her father still, they should have a relationship. But I just feel like it's just toxic because you pick and choose when you want to call your children.

Either he's going to be consistent. Uh-huh. Or he is opting out of his daughter's life. Again. Okay. Right? Even if she asks to speak with him? Let's write letters.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I need some more guidance on that. I have a strong bent and my opinion on that, it may not be the right thing. I'd want to talk to someone who's an expert in those type of relationships. What I do know sitting here is that inconsistency from adults to children makes children go crazy. Because they think they're the reason there's inconsistency.

Right. Or when dad skips some sort of meeting or some sort of phone call or some sort of FaceTime, they assume, huh, must have been something else more important than me. And the kid doesn't know that dad's in solitary or that they just did a lockdown and they took away all the privileges. Kid doesn't know that. So the kid just absorbs it all and makes it their fault. And so letters can always be written. There can always, and you can also hold a letter, right? You can touch it and you can read it again and you can read it again and you can read it again.

But if dad's playing games, I'm not having that. That's how I feel. But then I get like, I get, you know, like torn. Well, I don't want the courts. Like, is he going to take me to court and make this ugly? But I'm like, you probably wouldn't because you don't fight for. He's made it ugly. You're trying to polish a turd.

It's a mess. There's not a way to make this not ugly. Okay. Right? He left y'all. Whatever he did, he left you.

High and dry. And if he wants to take you to court, then okay, I'll go to court then. Okay. I think this is a conversation best had with your counselor that you're going to get with you and your daughter. Okay. And letting her know this

is mostly for you, but she's coming along with you because your counselor is going to know you and know her and be able to say, hey, I think we need to stop the calls. Often in these moments, I do know this, time around the calls escalates behavioral issues with kids, especially teenagers. Time right after the call with dad, escalation. Time right before the call, escalation. Dad misses the call, escalation. I'm talking about dad in jail or dad who's divorced, who just is kind of flaky. And so at some point, I'm not gonna let this person who is their biological father, but they are, is not daddy.

I'm not gonna let this person continue to throw grenades inside my house. At some point, I'm the parent. I gotta draw boundaries similar to this electronic mess, okay? Moms and dads, you've heard me. If you're listening to the show for five seconds, you've heard me.

And I'll say it again, and I'll say it again, and I'll say it again, and I'll say it again. At some point, we have to stand up in our local schools and stand up in our local communities and say enough is enough with the electronics. As a taxpayer, the pedagogical value is just dismal. The ROI on the amount of money we're spending in public schools and local schools,

private schools, I don't care. Just to say, look what we have. Look what we have. Look what we have. When it comes to technological advancements. You can see the state of teachers. Man, I can just go off. We got to stop.

We have to stop. We have to stop. Somebody has to fight for their kids. Please let it be you. Please let it be you. We'll be right back. It seems like everybody's talking about how crazy the housing market is right now

and how powerless homebuyers feel. Mix that with the stress of moving and life change and job change, and you've got a tornado of anxiety fueling one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make. This is not a good idea. So if you're a new home buyer right now, my advice to you is to focus on what you can control, like the people you choose to help you in the home buying process. You need folks like my friends at Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is a Ramsey trusted provider that's been helping people with their home mortgages for decades.

And their Home Buyer Edge program will help you skip a bunch of the stress. Here's how it works. Apply to become a Churchill-certified home buyer and cap your interest rate for 90 days. Then you'll get a $5,000 seller guarantee to help your offer stand out. So go ahead, take a deep breath because Churchill has your back. Check them out at churchillemortgage.com slash Diloni and get the home buyer edge today. All right, we're back. Let's go to Lynn in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. What's up, Lynn? Not much. How about yourself?

I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. Good. So what's up, lady? How can I help? Okay, so I'll just give a little backstory first. So my daughter was born in January of this past year, So she's seven months. When she was born, they noticed she had a lot of fluid buildup in her, kind of below her knee and her feet and her labia a little bit as well. So at first they thought maybe it's just because she was cramped in the birthing position for so long, but then it didn't go away. So we met with a geneticist and they decided to do two different genetic tests on her. Anyway, those both came back negative. So they decided

to do a whole exome sequencing on my daughter, myself, and my husband. And then in June, the results came in and we found out that she has Milroy's disease. So it's a really, yeah, I know. So it's a really rare medical condition. The genetic doctor we have been seeing told us that there's less than 200 cases or, excuse me, 300 cases in medical literature. It's just so rare. But the biggest thing that comes with that is just lymphedema. Right.

How is her lymphedema? Is she draining well or is she starting to have sores on her feet? How is it? You know, it's really well managed. We have a really good lymphedema therapist. Good. She was born in a really great hospital. They caught it right away.

So, yeah, she's been doing compression since she was born. We actually have been to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I mean, we've been a lot of good places. So it's under very well, like it's being managed very well. She doesn't develop sores on her feet or anything yet? Not any current ones. We've dealt with that a little bit. As of now, it's been all good. She just had her first round of cellulitis. Yeah. But that's over with now.

But that's kind of the biggest risk factor with lymphedema is the cellulitis. What about mobility? Her mobility is really good. Really good. She's scooting around? Yeah. She's a singer. She's standing on stuff.

I mean, her mobility. Yeah. Like I said, we've been working with a really good lymphedema therapist and a physical therapist. And they've been watching that the whole way. So, yeah, she's right on track of where she should be. Cool. All right. So how can I help?

By the way, everybody listen. Miller's disease is very, very, like she said, very, very rare. Just a dysfunction of the lymphatic system. And I don't know enough about it to talk with any sort of eloquence about it. But we have fluids, drainage systems in our bodies that things get expelled, be it urine, through our bowels. It's just part of our system. And this very rare disease, you can get over enlarged feet, legs. Sometimes it's one leg.

Sometimes it's both feet. Does she have it in both feet? Yeah, she has it in both feet, both legs, and then it's in her hands and arms slightly as well. Not to the point yet where she has to wear compression garments, but yeah, mainly in both her legs. And then her right leg is actually a little bit worse than her left. Okay. So you are here. How can I help? So yeah, my question is, I'm trying to make it as much as one question as possible, but there's kind of a couple little parts to it. So how do we teach her how important it is as she gets older to basically self-manage her lymphedema? And how do we best just really imprint it on her heart that she's just so beautiful. And then as my, as her mom, um, I am the carrier of it. I have

the disease as well. I have no symptoms, which got 10 to 15% of people that have it have no symptoms. I have no myself a note here. All of this starts with that. Okay. You have to be very direct with yourself. Are you married? Yes. Yep. Okay.

You like who you're married to? He's a good guy. Yeah. He like who you're married to? He's a good guy. Yeah. All right. He's good. He's the positive. I'm the worrier.

Okay. You have to be very direct with yourself and with him and your adult community about dealing with your guilt. Okay? Okay. You know as much as I do that you didn't cause this, you didn't do this, and it was a wild genetic throwing a dart in the dark and it hit the bullseye. Right? Mm-hmm. And so if your daughter sees you wince when you look at her,

she'll internalize that. If your daughter sees you cry or to somehow harbor guilt, this is my fault, I can't believe I did this, children will make that disconnection their fault and she'll try to solve it in a million different ways. So the greatest gift out of the gate you can give this little girl is to make peace with yourself and make peace with your body. And I also know that's a tall order, okay? I'm not saying that's easy. It's a similar conversation I have to people

who accidentally hit their kid with a car or who hurt their child or accidentally dropped, whatever the thing happens to be, it's making peace, not making it go away, but making peace. This happened, okay? And I have permission to be sad. I'm gonna do that with my counselor.

I'm gonna do that with my husband. I'm gonna do that with my friends. And then I permission to be sad. I'm going to do that with my counselor. I'm going to do that with my husband. I'm going to do it with my friends. And then I'm going to be in this moment and I'm going to go about being the best freaking mom who's ever lived, which I'm pretty sure you are. Cool. Yep. Okay. So step number one, we're going to deal with our anxiousness and we're going to deal with our guilt. She is not going to do this because that's not her job, right? Okay. So when it comes to teach a kid self-advocacy, how to stand up for yourself, how to do your things, here's where these get hard. I've been working with students, with young people with special needs for most of my professional career.

Here's where this is challenging is, A, there's just a convenience. It would just be so much faster if I would put your compression socks on for you so we can get to this stupid restaurant. And what we do over time is we start to deny our kids, whether they have special needs or exceptionalities, or they're just a regular old square in the middle of the bell curve kid. We rob them of struggle. And when we rob kids of struggle,

we rob them of growth and development and resilience. So it's stealing from our kids. For a kid with Milroy's disease, it's going to be harder. It just is. Because if she has to put on compression gloves and compression socks

every morning, gosh, I think just getting my kid to find socks makes me want to set my hair on fire sometimes. And then, I was cleaning the garage.

You know how many random socks I found? I mean, so just kid with sock issues, right? Yeah. Yours is going to be challenging. And so your plan now is it's going to take us 50 minutes to get ready to go to church

or to get ready to go out to eat when it normally would have taken us 10 minutes, 15 minutes. It's going to take some time. But I'm not going to rob my child of that struggle. And they're going to learn self-advocacy. Another thing in a restaurant when they bring our food, I don't say thank you for the whole table. My kids say thank you for their individual plates. I'm teaching them they have a role to play in gratitude. That also, so similarly, if your child needs something, needs a wheelchair, and not when they're six, by the way,

but when they're 10, when they're 12, when they're 14, and you're at the airport, you can take her up to the counter holding her hand and say, tell this gentleman what you need. And she will say, I need someone to push me from here to the gate, please. And they will bend down and look her in the eye and say, I got you.

And she will learn the beauty of mom's right here with me. And I just spoke my needs and this awesome guy is going to make it happen for me. See what I'm saying? Yeah. It'd be so much easier for you just to leave her with dad. You run up there and grab, say, hey, my kid needs a wheelchair in the bed. Gotcha.

So much easier. That means we're going to have to go to the airport 30 minutes early. Right? See what I'm saying? Yeah. So we're going to slowly incorporate her into her own life, right? Yeah. And that brings me to this.

It's going to sound counterintuitive, okay? Okay. We're going to be very direct about what she has. Might even show her that your leg is different than her legs. That she's got exceptionalities. We're going to call it out and we're not gonna hide it okay because kids feel when we hide things and then they feel even more of a big giant red light bulb in their life than they already do we're gonna focus on what we're do, not what we can't do. And, man, we're going to have hard seasons

and low times and good seasons and good times, and we're going to make the best childhood we can moving forward. Yeah. I just made it so easy, right? Go get them, Lynn. No, I'm just taking it all in in kind of. Yeah, I guess, yeah. Another thing that I just kind of worry about a little bit is, you know, like, you know,

she'll never be able to get a pedicure. Not worry about that, but, you know, she'll never be able to get a pedicure. She'll probably never be able to wear flip-flops. And, you know, when she wears shorts, you know, I'm sure she's going to want to, it's, you know, it gets warm. I just don't want her to feel like the odd one out. Cause she's got these big, you know, compression garments. I just never want her to feel like she's not perfect. You know, the way she is, you know, and I don't, there's a couple of things here. Don't ever make her carry your baggage yeah here's what i mean by that my kid

is growing up in a world where there's an african-american president my kid's growing up in a world where social issues are different where there's not a table at his school that just has people who listen to country music at it and then another one that listens to hip-hop and another one listens to heavy metal like my high school did right and so when i ask him where do you sit he's like i don't know i just sit around my head instantly goes to panic if you're not at the right table dude things go sideways for you he has a different world that's not his experience. And so you have understanding of what it's like to put on shorts and not have people look at you. She won't have that. That will be her whole world, will be her legs. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, she's going to know that and we're going to call

it out. We're going to call it out. Let's put on some shorts and put on your special socks. And then we're going to go about our day. And if people look and ask, you can say with her chin held up, I've got Milroy's. This means my body doesn't drain fluid. Good. You want to go play? Yeah. You see what I'm saying? And all the other stuff doesn't come. now make no mistake middle school will be hell high school will be tough right we know that yeah we know that and we can preventatively mourn that and slip into this low level dysthymia this low level depression that just runs our life or we can just go reckless with joy and good times and figuring this thing out as we go and deal with the heavy when it gets heavy

yeah that makes sense and i yeah i totally agree yeah she's going to feel beautiful if you treat her beautifully. Yeah. She is going to feel odd and scary if you flinch when you hold her. Yeah, which, yeah, that's not how it is now. And, you know, like we love her and I just, yeah, I don't. Yeah. Middle school is going to be awful. Middle school is going to, people are going to ask her questions. But then she's going to find her gang, right? She's going to fall in with her people, and they're going to do their thing.

And then there's probably going to be some people who are hyperprotective of her. I had a couple of friends like that, but I was hyper, I still am hyperprotective of them. Right? And they're, because they're in my gang. They're on my team, right? And she'll find that. But, so it's going to be both and. And by then,

you will have, she, she will have five, 10, 12 years of advocacy, of pulling on her own socks, even though it takes forever, of having hard conversations,

of asking for support when she needs it. And, she's going to be able to just, she's going to, it'll hurt, but she's going to be able to move past that nonsense. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Yes.

Yes. Maybe move past it later on. Being 12 just as hard being 12, right? Yeah. But we're not going to hide our daughter. She's beautiful. Yeah.

We're not going to hide her. And we're not going to pre- daughter. She's beautiful. Yeah. We're not going to hide her. And we're not going to pre-grieve things that haven't come yet. We're going to live our life as we are. And there's also, my guess is, some pretty extraordinary medical advancements that are on the way, right? Yeah, yeah. Even from 20 years ago, it sounds like there's a lot of, you know, new things and good things. Absolutely. So let's keep our heads up and when we get sad, we're going to go to adults

with that sadness and we're not going to throw things that our kids have to carry for us. And we're going to be honest and not hide anything. This is what this is. You are just shorter than the other kids. You suffer from Milroys. You're not going to be able to wear flip-flops.

What would flip-flops be like? They're fine, but you can't run in them. Yeah. And plus, I've never got a pedicure, Lynn, in my life. Relatively fine. I would feel sorry for it. Getting a pedicure for me would be like dumb and dumber. It would not be pleasant

for anybody to take my pedicure. I know that's something dumb, but... No, no, no. But it's an experience that mom wants to have with her daughter. Yeah.

Okay. This brings me to the last thing I'm going to tell you then I'm going to let you go, okay? Okay. When you found out you were pregnant, the picture machine started. Mm-hmm. And when you find out you were pregnant The picture machine started

And when you find out you're having a little girl You started thinking about what it's going to be like when she brings some idiot home from college You started thinking about what thanksgiving was going to be like You thought about the wedding you thought about all that stuff because you're normal and you love your kid And then she was born You thought about the wedding. You thought about all that stuff because you're normal and you love your kid. And then she was born. And then there was some challenges and there was a testing and more testing and more doctor visits and more testing. And then they sat you down and said, hey, actually, there's this genetic thing.

And all of those pictures have blown up. But what most of us do is we go about our day comparing our reality with those pictures that we made up before we even had all the details. And it's that energy expenditure that wears us out. And so the energy is much better spent moving forward. Yeah, I had a picture, man, of what this is going to look like. It's not going to happen. It's going to be different. I'm going to take her to get pedicures every Saturday. Honey, you got to make way more money because we're doing this together. It's not going to happen. It's going to be different. Like mother, daughter, I'm going to take her to get pedicures every Saturday.

Honey, you got to make way more money because we're doing this to get, it's not going to happen. So what is going to happen? That becomes, oh man, every Sunday, we're going to the beach. We're going to the water. We're going swimming. We're going to whatever the thing is.

The mother-daughter time was to be, right? So you see what I'm saying? It's just adjusting that picture. Yes. And it's so hard. I would recommend writing a letter to that old picture. Here's what I thought was going to happen. You may even start a journal that she's going to be able to read someday.

But things get heavy and she'll know just how much mom loved her. Okay. I can do that. But writing something down that says, I had this picture. I thought we were going to get a bunch of pedicures together. I just had pictures of us running

in the beach in our flip-flops and having cute toes. I just said the word cute toes, and so my brain malfunctioned a bit. But I had this thing, and it's not going to happen. So now what? Now what? Most of us spend so much energy, myself included, Lynn, going back and trying to edit sentences that have already been written. They've got exclamation points or periods at the end of them. They're over. And I keep going back. I wish I hadn't said that. I wish I't have done that. I wish this could be different. I wish my kids could.

I wish me and my wife could. They're over. It's over. The only thing I can affect is what's going to happen moving forward. I thought this was going to be that way. It's not. So now it's going to be like this. And the one thing in the world I can choose

that I get to own is that gap between what is reality and what could be. I get to choose what going forward looks like. And you can too. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, as we wrap up today's show,

thanks for being with us. I don't know much about this band. Is this why you have a big dragon tattoo on the back of your neck? Imagine Dragons? I imagine dragons. We felt like this song fit the email we discussed earlier. Oh yeah, because I'm a demon working for a Satanist.

The song's called Demons and it goes like this. When the days are cold and the cards all fold and the saints we see are all made of gold, when your dreams all fall and the ones we hail, dreams all fail and the ones we hail are the worst of all and the bloods run stale. I want to hide the truth. I want to shelter you,

but the beast inside, there's nowhere to hide. What is this song? Don't want to let you down. Demons. We'll see you soon.