The Dr. John Delony Show - My Husband Borrowed Thousands of Dollars and Never Told Me

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

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He was supposed to take over all the bills, like, you know, the rent and all these things. Then I come to find out that our rent wasn't being paid on time. I only found out because my landlord showed up to my house, and he told me he hadn't spoken to him in a while. I guess this is harsh, but y'all have never been married. What up? What up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney's show. Happy New Year. Coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, taking calls from all over the planet. real people going through real struggles and their mental and emotional health

with their marriages, with their kids, with schools, whatever you got going on. My promise is I'll pull up a seat with you and we're going to figure out what's the next right move. I'd love to have you on the show. We get hundreds of emails a day

from all over the planet and I'd love for you to send one into John Deloney.com slash ask ASK. Send your email in. Kelly will review it. Kelly 1.0. And she'll review it

and ancient Kelly. She, she, she, she. What happened to New Year, new me? I'm done with that. Are you done now? I'm trying to hang on to my not swearing so much and exercising, so. But you make me swear a lot. As you, if you listen to the show that you produce, you would know I can't make you do anything.

You get to make choices. You tap dance on my last nerve, though. Well, you should put it away. That sounds like a choice. But I'd love to have you on the show. Kelly will take your, what you ride in, and she will export it to Sans script, an ancient language that that's what she originally learned to read and write on. And then she'll get back to you. So let's go out to Chicago, Illinois, and talk to Jennifer.

What's up, Jennifer? Yes. Hi, Dr. John. How are you, love? How are you? Good. I'm okay. Hanging in there. Hanging in there. Well, I'm glad you called. What's going on? So, um, my question is, should I remain in a marriage where my husband hid a large amount of debt within the past year and a half.

That's a big question. Tell me what's going on. What did you discover? So try to, I'm going to try to make it simple because it's a lot. Well, we relocated. I was the one paying

most of the bills in the beginning. Then I got pregnant. I was still paying the rent, you know, the bills because I was the one who made more money. What did he do? Did he go to a job? Yeah, he was working.

He was working, but, you know, he just took care of the smaller bills. like his bills. So I was paying the rent, paying my car, paying all my bills. Sounds kind of crazy, but it was okay for me at the time. I was saving money to stay at home with my baby, which I think about it now, and I'm like, that's just crazy. He didn't even help me with that. But fast forward, I went back to work. He was supposed to take over all the bills, like, you know, the rents and all these things while I was paying off some debt that I had from being at home.

Then I come to find out that our rent wasn't being paid on time. I guess he was kind of stuck in something where he wasn't able to pay everything. So he was going around asking to borrow money from family and friends that I had no idea about. So then I only found out because my landlord showed up to my house. And he told me he hadn't spoken to him in a while. and the rent wasn't paid. So then he kind of came clean. But I kept finding out more and more stuff from other people that he was asking for money.

And when I confronted him about it, he said he thought he wasn't, you know, he was going to be able to catch up and that he just didn't want to stress me out. So that was the excuse for not telling me all of this, which doesn't make sense to me. Well, it does to me just listening to it. And I guess this is harsh, but y'all have never been married. You all have a certificate. That's how I kind of feel. You all may have gone through a ceremony. You all made a human together.

But just the way you described your original story, which was, I did all of this, I paid all of this, I paid my savings, I did this. And then my chumpy little husband over here who was working full time. I made more money than him, so he just paid for this stuff. already I can tell you like the contempt in your home is is already powerful you already think you're better than him is that fair yeah but I mean this has been going on in the past three years we've been together for almost nine years and he did pay for other things here and there like you know he did pay the rent when we lived in our previous place everything that's happening now just pretty much started in the past three years it's not it's not it started it started nine years ago

Here's why. Okay. When you get married to somebody, if you want this thing to work long term, it's y'all's money that goes into y'all's account. Yes. And maybe one person hits send, but y'all pay the rent. Y'all pay phone bills. Y'all pay car bills. Y'all save money together.

Yes. Correct. He's always been second tier to you because you make more money and you do this and you do that. And I think that's where I'm starting to build a lot of resentment because when I found out everything, I told them you should have just came to me because I can make the money for the rent. We could have just swapped. Okay, okay, okay, okay, but you're not hearing what I'm saying. If you were truly, I'm going to ask you to be super reflective and honest, okay?

Yes. Just in the limited time we've talked together, I can imagine a world where he doesn't feel like he can come to you and say, hey, we're not making ends meet. and if he was calling me, dude, I'd be all over him for calling family and friends for borrowing money. But just the way you laid out y'all's story, he has gotten the message loud and clear that he's less than. You're right. And so suddenly he's trying to take care of a new baby, trying to take care of a wife, and he's not making ends meet. And like most guys, I'm not excusing his behavior, but he did was wrong, okay? but I can get the sentiment that he's trying to do,

trying to make this thing work so that you can have the life and his baby can have the life, y'all's baby can have the life, that you and him want. Correct. And I, when everything happened, I even ask, am I, can't, do you feel like you can't come to me and talk to me and tell me that you're struggling? You know, and I think recently, obviously we've been kind of,

we don't even communicate. He did feel that way. And, you know, I'm trying to tell myself he did it to help me and he did it to not stress me out because I was under a lot of stress. Of course, yeah. And he's a great dad. He is a great husband.

Stop right there. Stop right there. Stop right there. What does it feel like when you uncover a big mess like this and you look at him and say, why didn't you come to me? And he says, because I can't. Because you're going to beat me up. again? Or you're going to throw a fit and then you're going to be like, well, then I've got to go

bail us out so I can pay my bills. And like, walk me through what that felt like, that level of reflection. I mean, I was upset. I was upset. Were you upset? Were you upset with him? Because, well, the situation and with him, because I felt like you should have told me. Okay, okay. I know what you're telling me that. He felt like he couldn't tell me. Okay, but I want you stay right there. Don't run from that. Don't run from that. Right or wrong, just for a minute, go through the thought exercise of owning that. Yes. Oh, God, what if I created a marriage where my husband feels so marginalized and so small

because I'm always telling about all this stuff I do that I've created a world where the man that I made a human with, my rider died, doesn't even feel safe enough to come tell me this, so much so that he has to bury his head in shame and go ask buddies for money. Correct. Does that feel heavy? It does. I did feel like crap. I'm like, okay, you know.

Okay, so you can't go back. You can't go back and change any of the stuff that has happened. Hearing that level of reflection, if you jump to, well, you should have, though, anyway, and I can't believe you, so I'm going to divorce you, whatever, fine, fine. My challenge to you is, with this new, information and the scales peeled back from your eyes, can you exhale and say, okay, the only person I can control here is me. Either I don't want to be married to you. I've always thought I'm better than you. I still think I'm better than you. And I'm going to go on with my life. I make more

money than you. I can provide for me and my kid, et cetera. Or my God, I've got to do some work so that I realize just because I make more money than my husband doesn't mean I'm better than him or I'm somehow more important than him, we are in this thing together. And I need some skills so that I can communicate that. Can you have that level of reflection? And if not, that's, I mean, it's fine. But that's, that's a humbling, full ownership. I got to own what I brought to the table here.

And again, if he was on the phone, you know I'd be going after him. Right? And it's not, yeah, it's not that I think that I'm, I'm better than him. I never did. I didn't care about the money. I just want our communication to be better. And he struggles with that, which is fine. He writes.

But you struggle with it too. You struggle with it too. I'm more vocal, but I think that's it. My personality is a little bit stronger. But I never want him to feel that I'm better than my never. I want him to be the leader. You know, I can make the money, but let's make decisions together. Okay.

Let's save money. Let's do all this. That's always been my thing. And I think he just, you know. Okay, and so the first thing you have to do is to change your pronouns from mine to ours. Yes. From my bills and my savings to our future together. Mm-hmm.

And it's our money. Yes. It's my $125,000 and you're $40,000. Together we make $165,000. Yes. I make, like, when it comes to direct deposit, the check that's deposited that says John Deloney on it is way more than the check that Sheila Deloney deposits.

And it is our money. It's our save. We only have one account. We have one checking account. It's ours. It's our savings. It's our kids' college funds. It's our mortgage.

It's our stuff. And so let me say, let me rephrase your question. The marriage y'all had is over. The question you have, before is do you want to make it official or do you want to rebuild something new with a guy you said is an awesome dad and he's actually a pretty good husband he just hid this big scary thing for me and oh god i contributed to that do we want to decide that we are going to change how we talk to each other how we communicate how we do bill paying how we do all of it from the floor up for our

sake and for the kids' sake. Does that make sense? It does, because I've been, you know, waiting for him to, I want to sit and budget, I want to do with these things, but he's just, I guess he feels stuck. Well, it's a failure factory for him. Mm-hmm. So I'm like, okay, we need to do this because we both need to, you know, we want to, we want a plan five years from now, but he doesn't, his way of managing money is not the best,

and he says it. You know, I don't manage my money correct. you know, I've always had, he's always had that issue. But I'm like, we can work together to fix that. But I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and he's not talking to me. So I think that's what my frustration and my resentment kind of builds. But then again, I'm like, maybe I should approach him and sit down and talk to him and do these things because maybe that's what he's waiting for.

Yeah. And listen, I'll say this one more time. I don't say it again. What he did was not right. Okay. I would even go as far as to say what he did was. cowardly. Yes.

And I get it. And your revelation, I think, is one of the most powerful revelations that anybody in a marriage can come to, which is, I'm going to go first. And when you go first, if you lead with the word you, he's going to bail again. Because he has to. That's how he stayed safe the last decade. If you lead with the word I, I have this, I realized that I created a world that was all about my bills and my stuff and my money, and I'm sorry.

I want to build something with you where we both have equal voice here about our future. And I've got to learn some new skills. I would love it if you would join me in this. Yes. And here's the scary part. He can look at you and say no. And that's terrifying. Mm-hmm.

It is. Or he could say, all right, I don't know how to manage money. I struggle with it. I get behind and then I get scared and then I start scurrying around that I've made a big mess for us. Will you help us dig out of this hole? And then you can say, I'm all in. Are you all in? I think that's what he's waiting for.

Okay. If he was on the phone with me, I would say, brother, you got to go first. You got to wade through your wife's volume and her excitement and her whatever. And you got to go first. And I would tell him to sit down and say, I love you and I don't know how to be successful in this marriage because everything I've done I've been told feels like I'm less than you. That's what I would tell him to say. But it sounds like you got a guy that got in over his head trying to scramble to give his wife

to finally prove to her that he had value, more value than she's ever given him, and for this baby. And dude, he just made a left turn and he screwed up. And if you think that's walking away worthy, I'm like, I can't tell you to do that. Yeah. I don't want to. Okay. I mean, yeah, I definitely, it was just such a shock, something that I didn't expect. It was like, now we're like, hopefully my landlord renews my lease because I just wish you would have said something. But again, I mean, that's what I'm here. But it happened already. But even saying that, I wish you'd said something and I have to own that I've been impossible to talk to. Mm-hmm. I'm sorry.

together we have to agree this never happens again which means I've got to work on how I talk to you how I talk about our future together and our earned income and I've got to I've got to trust that you if you ever get in trouble again financially you're going to be honest with me you get what I'm saying? Absolutely.

But all of those were I statements. Here's what I need to do. Here's where I messed up. And here's what I want and need moving forward. Are you in? Not with you should have told me I can't believe you did this. You screwed this.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Yes. It's a very humbling, humbling position. And I'm in the middle of a big research writing project on marriage, and I'm overwhelmed with this one piece of data. For a marriage to work, it's a race to the bottom of the marriage. What do I mean by that? there should be scratching and clawing from each partner on who can out serve the other

who can say I'm sorry first of course outside of abusive situations right or traumatic of course those but somebody saying I'm going to take ownership of my part of this no no no no no I created a world where you couldn't talk yeah but I called our friends and asked him for money listen to me I created a context that you felt like that was the only move you had was it the right move no it was it a terrible move, but I get it, and I'm going to work really hard for us. So here's what I'm going to hook you up with, okay? I'm going to send you some tools. I'm going to send you both a copy.

I'm going to send you two copies of building a non-anxious life, and I want you all to read that and use that as a roadmap for rebuilding your marriage from the floor up. The second thing I'm going to send you is a premium version of the every dollar app. It's the budgeting app my wife and I use. It's the best one I think out there. It's amazing. And I'm going to send you a year subscription to it for free. I'm also going to send you all the digital financial peace university.

I work for Ramsey Solutions, and the company was built on this idea of getting out of debt and living free and teaching couples how to communicate and build budgets together. I'm going to send you all nine digital lessons. And I want you to both watch those with no commentary. Both of you watch them. And then at the end of the video, you'll talk about what you experienced and what you felt. and it will walk you through a step-by-step process to how to communicate building budgets together. But underneath all of that, how do we talk about our kid's future? How do we talk about our dream home?

How do we talk about living free lives together so that we both walk in the front door? Both of our shoulders drop and we're happy to see each other for God's sakes. And that's going to be the past. So hang on the line. I'm hooking up with all those resources. I usually don't do this, but I'm going to tell you, I don't think your marriage is worth tossing. I don't think your marriage has been a full both feet in the boat, both of you in the marriage. Or maybe it was your boat and he kept trying to get in and he got to get one foot in the boat

and you kept shoving the other foot out. Whatever it is, both of y'all get back in the boat and say, let's row in the same direction. And that means both of us are going to have to learn new rowing techniques because neither of us know how to do this thing right. But together we can learn together, have grace and compassion, and we're going to build the most amazing marriage in our family generation's history. It's day one today. I'm grateful for your call, sister. Start with the word I. Start with humility.

Start with this lens of service and go build an amazing marriage. We come back. A woman asks what boundaries they should set before living with their in-laws for six months while their house is being redone.

This time of year, everybody's talking about getting more organized, less clutter, less stress, and having more peace. Well, here's one area where I want you to focus. focus on specifically with organization and peace this year, your digital footprint. And to do this, I recommend delete me. Listen, every time you fill out a quick form online, grab a discount code,

or sign up for some free thing on the internet, your personal information like your name, your email, your phone number, and your address, all of this gets collected and sold and shared without your permission by data brokers. Over time, this turns into a fire hose of spam calls, weird text, and scam emails. Delete me's team of privacy experts. Find your personal information on data broker sites that are selling your data and they get it taken down for good. And then they keep checking and they keep it gone.

It's like setting healthy boundaries for your digital life. It's a way to organize your digital life to where you are in control and no one else. Protecting your privacy is part of protecting your peace. So this year, start fresh with fewer distractions and more peace. Go to join deleteme.com slash deloney for 20% off your annual plan. That's join delete me.com slash deloney and organize your digital life this year. If you've seen me speaking on stage at live events, you've seen me in a local comedy club, or you've seen me anywhere on social media or on the internets, you have seen me wearing poncho shirts.

Why? Because I'm always wearing poncho shirts, because they are the best. And right now it's cold outside. and that means it's perfect for wearing my favorite poncho shirts, they're denims and flannels. Pancho denim has that soft, broken and feel with a little bit of stretch. It feels like you've worn it a million times, but it still looks amazing.

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Tell them you heard about poncho shirts right here on the Dr. John Deloney show. That's poncho outdoors.com slash deloni. All right, let's go out to Denver, Colorado and talk to Marie. Hey, Marie, what's up? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm doing okay. we're getting a lot of snow today.

So I'm trying to stay warm. It's like 85 degrees in Nashville. Actually, it's not. It's freezing today. I think it's below 30 or something. Like they're shutting down the city right now. It's too cold. But good for you all.

So it's up. So I have a question about, you know, what my husband and I should think about about conversations that we should have and boundaries that we should potentially set with our in-laws or my in-laws as, as we. we get ready to move in with them in the spring for about six months time. How come you're moving in? So we're going to be selling our house in the spring. And we have a two-and-a-half-year-old.

And we talked with our realtor. And she was like, I highly recommend that if possible, y'all, like, move into a different space while we're staging and while we're, you know, showing the house. If possible, it's really hard to, you know, do all of that. And we want to take our time with buying and we're moving to a new area. And so our goal is no more than six months to be living with my in-laws for that time. And so we want to be really intentional about moving in with them. I want us all to like each other when this is all over because I value that relationship with them. And so I really want to be intentional about making sure that, you know, we go into this with our eyes wide open and we're doing things on the front end so that on the back end,

And when this is all over, we still like each other. This is one of my favorite calls I've ever received on this show ever, ever. You know why? This is adults making adult decisions and dealing with adult realities. And that makes you in the top 0-000-1% of mature humans on the planet right now. That's so awesome. That's amazing. What if when government officials were like borrowed a trillion dollars, they were like, hey,

let's don't do this until we have a plan to pay it back. Like just your willingness to be like, hey, the day after we move out, we still want to love you guys. We want y'all to love us. Let's reverse engineer that. Genius. You're the best, Marie. So high five. All right.

So I'm going to pretend that everybody involved is that mature. Is that fair? Oh, for the most, yeah, I think so. Well, my mother-in-law. But, like, it is, because here, I'm going to paint you the ideal scenario, okay? Sure. This is the dream. world. The dream world is you take that level of, again, I wish I had a different word because it

sounds like I'm so paternal, but that level of maturity and wisdom and you and your husband and your in-laws, you all set up a special dinner and you all paid for it. It's really nice. And you tell them, here's the goal of this dinner coming up next week. The goal is we want to all be on the same exact page with, we want to have the same picture of what the next. six months is going to look like. And it's aligning pictures. And here's what I mean by that. Have you heard me talk about pictures and words?

Yes. Okay. So for people who haven't heard me talk about that, we think in pictures, but we speak in words. And so all four are saying the words, we're moving in or they're moving in. And all four of you, you, your husband and your in-laws have a different picture of what the words moving in look like. Maybe your mother-in-law is like, I'm going to babysit every day. and I'm just going to hug that baby.

Your father-in-law is like, I ain't doing any babysitting. I'm watching this game. I don't care what's going on. And maybe your husband's like, oh, dude, we're going to get to make it out on my old high school bed and it's going to be awesome. And you're like, well, no sex for six months because I ain't doing it in that.

Like everybody's got a different picture, right? Yes. And so it is simply aligning that picture. Okay. Of here's what we think this is going to look like and feel like. And I love the way you. said this, if you look at your in-laws and say what y'all are giving us is such a generous opportunity for our two and a half-year-old 20 years from now, I want to make sure that we love

each other more the day after we move out than today. Yes. How can we best inhabit y'all's world in your house and love and honor your hospitality? And often aging parents have forgotten the realities of life with a two and a half year old? Yes. Right? Yes. And so putting that on the table, how, like, are you all going to be in the same house? Are you all going to be like in a back house or something like that?

So we'll be in their basement. Okay. six months that we're there. So that does complicate things a little bit. But for the most part, we do have our own space, though there's not like a door to the basement. Okay. So here's where this is important. They may have already decided between the two of them, do that shared space is all theirs for six months. We'd love to give that up. And if you and your husband are already like, okay, we don't want to take this from them, already you see there's a wedge between you without, and both of y'all are trying to do the best you can to love each other. Yeah. And so it is putting that out

saying, here's my worries, and I'd love to hear your worries. Worry number one, I got a two and a half year old. I don't care how good of a parent you are. They throw tantrums. My plan is, if there's a tantrum, we're going to take the kid downstairs and we're going to deal with it. Worry number two, there's this shared space. I don't want to take y'all's shared space for the next six months.

And all of y'all address each individual worry. And maybe a worry is we want to plan for a week. dinner where we all eat dinner together, but we also want to preserve some just dinner with me and my husband and our new little baby together in the basement. Yeah. And having those individual,

maybe if, I don't know if y'all go to church, but we're going to go to this church and y'all go to yours. We just don't want to feel like, well, we have to invite them up for dinner now and here they come down the stairs again. Like, let's go ahead and have those things out. And if in a super wise family,

y'all could leave that dinner and say, okay, cool, Friday nights, family dinner night. Or Friday nights, they would love to babysit and you and husband go out for date night. Or every Tuesday night is all of us are getting together for dinner and it's just on the calendar and Monday, Wednesday and Thursday we eat downstairs with just our nuclear family. But it's getting all those things out on the table. And so here's how it best works. You and your husband say in a perfect world, this is what we would love. we want to have dinner every night of week with every night of the week with them or we don't want to do that

we are worried about our two and a half year old drawing dinosaurs on the walls with crayons which 100% you will do right like those things and then addressing those out on the table there yeah all you going first though and saying here's my number one goal to honor your hospital hospitality because this is such an amazing gift. This is like a potentially generation generational shifting gift. Six months of no rent, no bills, and maybe I'll decide it's a big deal for us to pay 500 bucks a month. Yeah. And let them say, we're not taking your money. Are you crazy? Yeah. Or whatever, right? Yeah, I think what I'm most worried about is like my, we have a two to a half year old and she does throw tantrums.

And she does have one day a week where they have her for child care so my husband and I can work already. And so we want them to still be grandparents. We don't want them to become a second set of parents to her. But we also like when we're living there, we don't want the way that they discipline or whatever you want to call it when she's there one day a week to undermine what we do. the rest of the week now that we're living in the same space. And that would be a beautiful sentiment for your husband to say out loud. I want to make sure that me and my wife remain their parents and y'all get to have the honor of just being their grandparents.

Yeah. And so we want to walk in the door setting the table for. We're going to take care of the discipline. We're going to take care of the kids' groceries. We want to be responsible of those things because we want y'all to get to remain the most precious thing on planet, which is grandparents. Yeah. And just setting it out loud, like, this is what I want to do here.

And the reality is your father-in-law is going to be like, hey, we don't yell in this. He's going to do that stuff. And you know that your mother-in-law is going to be like, when she throws a tantrum, you just need to pinch her on the back of her cap, whatever, right? And rub some essential oils under that nose. Like, I don't know. You have to know I am going. into their house and they're going to say their stuff.

Yeah. Right? And you get to decide, and this sounds crazy, you and your husband get to decide how much of that you let annoy you, frustrate you, or make you mad? Yeah. Right? Because here's the deal. Two-year-olds are going to do two-year-old stuff.

Grandparents are going to do grandparents stuff. And new parents trying to prove to their mom. and dad and to their mother-in-law and their father-in-law that they've got this, y'all are going to do your stuff too. Yeah, true. And so hopefully your in-laws are like, dude, the fact that they sat down and had this direct conversation with us was amazing that shows a level of wisdom. We didn't even know they had.

And we're going to let, we're going to do our best to let them take the lead on discipline and stuff and remain grandparents and fill in the blank. We hope that's the case. Yeah. but even the again the fact that you're not just making this gonna be great or this is gonna be miserable but you're like hey let's we get to choose what this is like and you and your husband I want y'all to also go and y'all go out and have coffee and pregame with each other how is the best way we can love each other when your mom

says something that really annoys me yeah or hey when you get around your dad you act different and I want us to have that conversation now. Yeah. Is that fair? That's good. Yeah, totally. And so if you and him get together, as y'all map out, here's what we want this to look like, here's how we want to honor our parents and in-laws.

And more importantly, y'all talk about, hey, dude, when you're around your mom, you get real sassy. Or you get real, or when, hey, wife, when you get around my mother, you get real performative, and you try to go into it's all perfect, it's all good. I'm just making stuff up, but we need to have a signal that we can call each other out, and we're not going to get mad and infuriated, but we're going to accept the challenge because we love each other. And what must be true? We have to over-celebrate each other. Because you can't have challenges without celebration. We're going to overly challenge each other. I'm going to keep my eyes extra-tuned to when I see my wife, I see you struggling. He's going to

grab that two-year-old and be like, I'm out of here. You go spot date. We're going to put a money for spot day. We're going to put money for. I don't know what you do. You may go to the gym. You may go to, I don't know, go smoke weed with your friend. I don't know what you do in Denver. But like, we're going to go do, we're going to have those things built in so that we can overly celebrate each other. Dude, I saw you. Thank you for grabbing the laundry last night. Thank you for getting up with two and a half year old. Thank you for making the bed. Those little bitty things so that when I have to challenge you, like, hey, whoa, you're turning into a 14 year old son again. I need my husband back. That he'll be able to go, okay, I got you. I'll accept that challenge. and it won't come off as more criticism. But man, you and him get together, then y'all come up to a game plan, take your in-laws out to a nice dinner, let them know what's coming, and y'all map this sucker out.

And I'm so honored to talk to people who want to be wise about a challenging relationship season and owning we get to choose what this thing looks like. Let's make that choice on the front end. I love it. I love it. I'm proud of you, Marie. Thank you so much for calling. We come back, a man asks how to rebuild trust with his wife

after she mishandled their month. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As we head into the new year, I want you to take an inventory of all of the junk you're carrying. All those things that you think you have to do, along with all the past hurts and pains, along with past guilt and shame. Listen, when the world feels heavy,

it's important to look in the mirror and consider setting down all of that old. weight and not carrying it into 2026. Therapy can help you identify all that heavy stuff and move forward with clarity so you can focus on the new year unburdened by the past. If you're thinking about therapy, I recommend BetterHelp. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the leading online therapy providers in the world, and they're trusted by millions, and they have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. It's online, so it's easy to fit into your schedule to get started. You just answer a few simple questions, and they'll connect you with a licensed therapist who will fit your

needs. If it's not the right fit, you can change at any time for no extra cost. You can't feel lighter without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. BetterHelp will help. Go to betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, help.com slash deloni. All right. Hey, do me a favor. It's the New Year's 2026. Take two seconds and hit the subscribe button and let us launch out of this year in a whole new way. It takes two seconds, doesn't cost you anything. You can just hit the subscribe button, the like button,

and then we are off to the races. Millions and millions and millions of you listen to this show for millions of hours, and only a few of you take the time to hit the subscribe button or the like button. Please do that for me. It makes a huge difference for everybody involved. All right, let's go out to Rochester, New York,

and listen to Liam. What up, Liam? Hey, how you doing? I'm good, brother. What are you up to, man? I'm just on break for work. That's about it. Outstanding. Well, I appreciate you calling me on your break. Breaks are precious, man. Yeah, yeah. What's up?

I should take more care of that. Yeah, you should. You should. Yeah. No, I'm just talking about just the way we had set things up, I had trusted my wife with just overseeing the finances. I check in and everything, make sure if things are going, and, you know, I had started a new job, and we had this plan. We did everything we budgeted, did that, and a month and a half in, I checked,

and I was okay, things are good. Great, we've hit our marks, and we're going to keep doing it. And I took my hand off a little bit, and then another month and a half later, I look, and I saw less money in our savings than when we had started. And I was like, you know, what the heck happened? So, talk to her and just, I texted her that morning. She comes down. She was asleep because we have two kids, another on the way,

and her sleep's precious. She needs it. And comes down, and she was like, well, I was trying to do this. And I didn't care so much that we, like, I did care that we lost the money. But I was more upset about that she's like, well, I tried putting it back before you knew anything about it, you know. Yeah. And that was the hard part. So that was like, well, what you're portraying to me is you don't trust me with it or almost that you,

you don't need me. You know what I mean? And it's like... Yeah, but she doesn't. Do you what I'm saying? Like, you abdicated this response. I mean, you're acting like her dad. Yeah.

Like, you take care of all this. I'm going to check it on you and see how good you're doing. That's not how couples handle money, brother. Like, tell me about that. Well, I mean, the way we had set it up when we first had been married seven years now, and we've revisited this conversation a bunch. Okay. But she was like, I want to take it.

care of this, that's how our parents do it. You know, when I was young. What does take care of it mean? She wants to make her own budget and do all stuff? Or she wanted to do everything, may not even look at it, not even concern myself with it. Okay, was she doing that out of a sense of control or a sense of, she's a stay-at-home mom and she wants to have some purpose and value? Or she thinks you're done? No, it was controlled.

She doesn't think I'm dumb. She tells me that was like something I always struggled with, and she tells me, I don't think, or, you know, whatever, you're not dumb. Okay. And she's like, I believe it's from control because it was just like, it's something she could do. And it wasn't, this was even before we had children, so she wasn't stay-at-home mom. She was working. And that's just what she wanted to do. And I was like, yeah, I trust you.

That's fine. Sure. Okay. Don't ever do that again, because money is too much of a, a, like, let me go the way back. When I was doing my practicum, seeing counseling clients, it, one, big takeaway I had. And I'm talking about if I was talking to a single mom with multiple kids, somebody with special needs, or with a multimillionaire, they would all tell me about their sexual exploits, their number of partners, their abuse histories. No one would tell me about their money.

It was that personal. And so, A, it's a very personal thing, and more importantly, it's a revealer of the, and more importantly, it's a revealer of the. state of your home, right? It's the state of, as somebody out of control, it's a state of, does somebody feel like they have a purpose and a role? It just matters a lot. And so that would be a line I would draw. Like my wife hits the button to pay all the bills. Right. Like, so if it's like, I leave it up to her, like, she hits the button, she writes the checks. But we get together every month and sometimes every other week and we talk about the state of things. and we make decisions

and we high five each other and then we go forward. I deal with the investments and she deals with the like, is the light's gonna stay on and all that kind of stuff, right? So,

but it has to come from a, we're together on this thing. Yeah. And so if she's requesting, like, hey, I just want to do all this myself. I want you not to worry your pretty little head with it.

I would tell her, hey, this is how couples break up. And it's too big of a deal for me. And for you to feel like I think she just didn't need me, that was true because she was running the whole show without you. You would just swoop in and judge her performance every once in a while. And let me challenge you on what other thing? Man, if there's a big issue in your marriage, like, oh my gosh, we're burning through savings

and my wife didn't even tell me, that's never a text message. that's like an in-person we need to have a hard conversation yeah you get what I'm saying yeah so what's your what's your

what was she spending money on well what she said the money was spent on and I went and looked at all the records and everything was they were just bills like they were truly bills what we had done was we had misbudgeted

and the numbers weren't lining up as what I was making to what we're spending. And so we re-budgeted all that. And now we are good. But what it was was just like, hey, I need to take this out and pay this insurance. So I need to pay this. And she had communicated that a couple times. But then I was doing the math and I'm like, okay, there's still $400 that's not like accounted for. And by no means do I think. that she's actually misspending money because, but if you saw like our house and how we live,

it's like she's not buying anything for herself. That's pretty smart. Yeah. So where did that 400 bucks go? She cracked it up to the, what is it, like insurance for our cars. Yep. And then something about the phone bills, because everyone goes through, like, her and we have like a massive family, like her siblings, and we all have, like, a massive group of cell phone service, and they just pay her. Bro, get your own plan, dude. Y'all are married.

You have a house. Get you on your own plan. Pay the extra $20 a month, but have your own household. Yeah. But, again, otherwise, you'll just be dealing with this kind of stuff all the time. But let me ask you this. When she came to you and said, hey, we have to spend more money on insurance. What was your response to that?

How did you respond? I trust it around. I was like, oh, okay. I guess that's what it is for insurance. That was about it. I didn't think too much of it. Okay. And the reason I'm asking is if she came to you and said,

hey, we made this, and by the way, making a new budget usually takes about three months, 90 days to cycle through it. Just because stuff comes up, like, oh gosh, dude, I had the guys come work on the sprinkler three months ago,

and they just now sent me the bill and insurance comes out of nowhere, and we thought it was in August, but it comes in June. Like, that's just part of getting into the rhythm of it. Mm-hmm.

And so it takes about three months to get it settled in. But if she came to you with one of those things and your response is, are you serious? Why didn't you... Then what you're telling her is,

don't come back to me with that kind of stuff. Right. Or if you said, oh, man, geez, that's expensive. Well, thank you for knocking that out. We'll have to reimagine it next month.

Then that's an encouragement. Like, place for you to come with these challenges. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. I think the path forward is, and again, you can do it how you want to. The path forward, it's similar to an earlier call we took on the show, which is, I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt unless you tell me otherwise. She was trying to do the best she could to be a team player and all of a sudden it got over her head. And she made a call, which is, I don't want to bother him with this.

I don't feel like I can tell him. He's going to go through the numbers and start asking me all these questions about the spreadsheet and why did I do this and why didn't do that? I don't want to fight it. And so I'm just going to pull it from savings and I'll fill it back next month. And so the path forward is, A, you can sit down and let her know all the things she did wrong. Or you can take ownership, full ownership of your part of this.

sit down and say, hey, dude, I should never have put this all on you in the first place. And I know you want to do it all yourself. That's not wise for us as a merry couple. So I'm going to sit here with you as we decide what's coming next to their budget. And she wants to pay all the bills, great. But I want to be better about communicating. I'm on your team. I'm not your boss who's looking over your shoulder to make you sure you clicked every button right.

Do you what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. But it's you starting with eye statements. not, not, you did these things, statements. So your original question to me was, how do you rebuild trust? I'm struggling to figure out where trust was broken here. Where is trust broken here?

Right. I don't know. I guess, more or less, I think you're just right. It was more of just, I should have communicated about how involved I want to be with it. And it's not, because I try to, yeah, no, I just think you're right. I should have just,

it very clear from them because like you're saying she was doing the best with what she could and like you know like how she approached me and maybe I mishandled it wrong because like that I don't want that in my marriage yeah you know I want I want that trust yeah and I think it's more like she said with me than her tell me about that like I don't want you to do the same thing to me that you did with her which is I say something bold like you need to go go first and you're like, you're right. I'm sorry. And the way she was like, I want to take care of the money and you're like, okay, you're right. So tell me where you're being reflective here. Or how you're being reflective here. I think it's, I think it's like when those, like my wife had a hard time growing up with like

watching her parents. And I think, and I mean, I know she has a lot of trust issues like with stuff. So, like you said, maybe when it was times to be like how I should have responded, because, you know, she doesn't open up like a lot about things. Sure. But it was like, maybe that was like one of those times where it's like, okay, you can either handle this with like grace and like, you know, have your responsibility and try to be like open or I can completely just overanalyze, over criticize. And then it's like you said, well, not doing that again.

So that was kind of what she said. And she was like, well, I didn't want. once you're stressing over it. So she's like, no, I have stressed over things before. And she's like, I'm just going to not bother with them. Because maybe that is like the, oh, you like over-criticize and all these things. Yeah. So that's a big.

Sorry, go ahead. No, you go ahead. You go ahead. And it's something, it's always been hard to get my wife to, like, come out of her show. Yeah. And be like super open with things. Yeah. And like, say, say there's times, you know, in marriage where you're,

And we have those arguments. It's like so often do I want to, because like I forget things sometimes. And I'm like, I've gotten better about that. Like, I'll count on my fingers, things I want to bring up, like, after she talks. Because sometimes when she talks, I'll, like, jump in so I don't forget. But then it's like pulling teeth to hear to talk again, you know what I mean? Yeah. And so if, this is the old quote from the movie Fight Club from Chuck Pollan Hook,

but if a conversation with your spouse is you just waiting for your turn to talk, it's not a conversation. It's a competition. If you listen to the thing beneath the thing she's telling you, and you hear a wife that's exhausted, frustrated, has a new baby, doesn't know if you still like her, I think she's pretty anymore, or she grew up in a house that was just chaos and there was no trust anywhere. And trust for her, she's a lived experience of trust.

getting her hurt or getting her accused. And so she's trying and she gets the facts wrong. But the sentiment is, I'm trying to connect with you. And by the way, conflict is connection. It's one of the most, the tension is the doorway in a marriage. That's what's beautiful about it, if you can go through it. But it's you not just waiting for your turn to rebut her things factually. But it's in that moment of, I'm a safe place for you to be sad with. I'm a safe place. for you to be upset with. Go for it. I'll hold the weight of the family right now.

Not that you become a punching bag or get abused or anything like that, but does what I'm saying resonate? Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, it does. It does. And maybe the next day or two days later, we come back,

and if there's two or three things that are still really heavy, like, hey, you said I never help. Can you help me? Because I'm trying to keep my eyes open about the laundry. I'm trying to keep my eyes open about the dishes and I want to figure out a better way

than I can love you in a way that resonates with you. Can you give me a map? Mm-hmm. Instead of, hold on, hold on, right there. I did the dishes yesterday and I did the laundry three weeks ago. Like, you see what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And then what she's going to feel in her nervous system is that guy's not listening to me because this isn't about those isolated times. It's me saying, I'm trapped in this house with a kid and I feel totally alone. I feel useless and purpose for us. And that's, it's part of the wizardry of being married, which is what is the thing beneath the thing we're talking about. Otherwise, laundry becomes a proxy war, right? Yeah.

All of this, I think, if you sit down and take her hands and you go arrange for a sitter, you call somebody and you sit down and say, like metaphorically, I'm clearing the deck here. Yeah. I want to read you some things I wrote down about how much purpose you bring to my life

and to this family. I want to read to you a couple of things I wrote about how out of my mind in love with you I am and how beautiful I think you are. And again, I don't know what her things, the things she wrestles with are, but go right at those things. And then say, I gave you all this money. I'm not going to do that again. It's too big of a deal for us.

It's too big of a radar system for the health of our whole family unit. I don't ever want you to feel alone again. and I'm going to work really hard to get some new tools in my toolkit so that the only tool I have isn't criticism. Right. Bro, now you're setting the table. You're tilling the soil that she can start planting seeds that y'all can work on together forever. And those will turn into a forest of trees.

But, dude, I think you're on the right track, brother. I'm proud of you. And you got the next right move right in front of you. It's time to do the courageous, masculine, brave thing and go do the next right move for your home. which is to take a knee in front of your wife and say, I'm going to do this differently next time. I'm all in.

I hope you will be too. Thanks for a call, homie. We'll be right back. Montana Knife Company makes the best knives on the planet, period. You guys know that my son and I are big hunters and that my wife is a world-class amazing cook. So between the woods and the kitchen, I need knives that actually hold up to real use in the real world.

Several years ago, I bought my wife, the chef's knife, for Christmas, and she still uses it every day. She says it's one of her favorite presents I've ever bought her. And I have a number of Montana Knife Company knives for me and my son's outdoor adventures hunting and fishing and just cause in general mayhem in the woods. Their knives are designed, tested, and built by real hunters and real cooks. And when you pick one up, you can instantly feel the quality.

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That's montananife company.com.com. All right, Kelly, so this show goes out on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. I don't know where else. On your tin can and string system that you have at the old folks home. Like, it goes out everywhere. But we got the Spotify numbers in today. Right. So people are hearing this show in late January.

Yes. We are recording this show early December. On December 3rd. And we got our Spotify wrap up today. and I just have to say our listeners are awesome. They are the best. They are amazing. The best.

They're in the gang. OG 17. So our top spot on the charts on Spotify. Number one. Number one. How you like them apples? We had a 68% increase in our listen time. Our total audience, 863% increase over last year.

What? As the Great Martin once said, Damn, Gina! It's a lot of people. Yes. 1001,000 of our listeners, this is their number one show. 101,000 people. The rest of you listeners should be a shame.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not listener shaming. 359,000 of our listeners, this is top five. And then for 529,000 of our listeners, this is top 10. For somebody like me, like, I listen to a ton of podcast. To be in someone's top 5 or 10, that's huge. That is huge. Yes.

I'm kind of blown away by that. Yeah, and we're in some pretty big, company with like the Ramsey show, Joe Rogan, Dax. So we have a lot to be thankful for and we are so, so grateful for all of our amazing listeners. Yeah. It's, um, this is a rare moment of like me being speechless. I don't have words for that. And if John doesn't have words.

Yeah. Trust me. Because John's got a lot of words. I don't have like it still, it blows my mind. Every airport I go to, every time I'm in the bathroom, going to the bathroom and somebody wants to talk, which happens more than. than you would think. Like, wherever I happen to, like, at punk rock shows,

in the middle of Mosh pits, multiple times, people are like, dude, I listen to your show. I'm just, I'm speechless. Thank you all for being in the gang. And more importantly than y'all just listening to the show, it's you choosing to share these episodes, take little nuggets of this and sit down with your husband, sit down with your wife, sit down with your kids,

and decide, I want to do something different, calling a counselor for the first time, getting back in the gym, whatever it is, like making those life changes. It's just, I'm speechless, man. I'm just grateful. I'm so grateful. Dude, I might get choked up here.

I don't have emotions. You took all my emotions, Kelly. I love you guys, for real. Thank you all for being with us. And buckle up because this year is going to be a wild one. Love you guys. Bye.