The Dr. John Delony Show - My Husband Doesn’t Respect Me

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A woman looking for respect from her husband - A man whose dad was deported when he was a teenager - A woman concerned that her friend’s husband is a sexual predator To pre-order John's new book Building a Non-Anxious Life click here. Lyrics of the Day: "My Own Worst Enemy" - Lit Enter The Ramsey Cash Giveaway for a chance to win $3,000!  https://bit.ly/TDJDSgvwy 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 Hallow Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Anxiety Test 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. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. How do I stop grieving somebody that's alive? It's my dad. He was a, he was a quarterback when I was 14. He's alive and I can see him, you know, once a year. And I know some people don't even get that, so I'm grateful for that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, hold on.

Don't compare your grief to somebody else. What in the world is going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm so grateful that you've joined us. I know the one thing that many of us don't have is time. We don't have a lot of time, and you're choosing to spend an hour with me today, and I'm really grateful. On this show, as you know, we talk about relationships. We talk about mental health, emotional health, whatever's going on in your life. School's starting. Your kids are doing wild things.

You're falling out of love with somebody that you care about. Whatever's going on in your world. My promise is I'll tell you the truth and I'll sit with you in the mess and we will figure out what the next step is. If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. Don't forget, I know I'm just like beating this drum to death as though I'm like a Slipknot drummer. My new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, a book not about how to deal with a panic attack.

That book's been written. Not a book on how to, like, when I'm at the mall and I feel, at the mall, that's the oldest sentence ever. When I'm at the mall on my phone calling Blockbuster, right? Are you listening to, like, Tiffany while that's happening? Running just as fast as we can, can, can. Yeah, no, not when you're at the mall, but when you're in an anxious moment,

this book's not for you. That book has been written. There's some great books out there by Dr. Winnie Suzuki, Dr. Jud Brewer. They've written some great books on that. This book is stepping back and saying, hey, why am I always stressed? Why am I always completely burned out? When I look around,

why are my relationships all either on fire or they're in ash? How do I back out of this thing and do something different? This book is called Building a Non-Anxious Life. And it's about changing, for some of us, it's about changing one or two important things. For some of us, it's about changing everything.

And what's different in this book is, then my last one is, this gives you a map. It gives you a roadmap to follow. For you, for you and your partner, for you and your kids, for you and your kids, whatever's going on. How do we build a non-anxious life? Let's reverse engineer this world we want to inhabit. And then the alarms do, they just quit ringing or they only ring when they need to. And that's, that's important. Go to johndeloney.com and check that out.

All right, let's run out to Indianapolis and talk to Allura. That's probably the raddest name of anyone on this show ever. What's up, Allura? Hey, what's up? Is that? Hey, what's up? Is your name Allura, really? Yes. Dude, what a beautiful, beautiful name.

That's awesome. All right, so what's up? How can I help? So my first main question is, how do I get my husband to see that being a stay-at-home mom isn't just an easy task of doing just simple things?

What's your secondary question? How do I get him to treat me more like a wife and not just someone to communicate with when he wants sex. That is the question. So anytime somebody asks me, how do I get my husband to see me as a stay-at-home mom or someone who's working part-time and we've got three kids or whatever?

I'm going to walk through like the temptations here and then we'll get to your question. Is that cool? I'm going to use this as like a moment to teach a little bit. So like one, one idea is you can just go out of town for a week and just let him like stay at home and figure it out. Right. That happened to me early on. We only had one kid and by day two, I didn't know what day it was. I didn't know what day it was. I didn't know what time it was. It's like, everything was just everywhere. And there was like Taco Bell wrappers growing out of the coffee table and stuff. It was just chaos. So that's the temptation number one, right? Is I'll show you, I'll prove it to you. Temptation number two is I'm going to make you

a minute by minute. I'm going to make you like a list of my things I do every day, and we're going to compare lists. What you do at work versus what I do here, and we're going to do that. That's also a temptation. I don't think that's effective here because what you're talking about is honor and dignity and trust. It is not about strategy and calendar preparation okay

and your second question is the most important one and i think your first question about how do i convince my husband that what i'm doing is actually hard man that's a way distant second question to how do i get my husband to treat me like a human being? Yeah. When did that start? It's been since our daughter was born. Before that, things were great. But after that, he just kind of threw me to the side.

If he wants sex, he'll communicate. Otherwise, it's I'll ask him what he wants for dinner, and it's I don't care. Or, you know, he won't talk to me in person either. It's always through, like, Facebook Messenger or through text. Like, there's no actual communication between us. Okay, two important things here. Number one, on one area, I don't fully believe you. Okay, and know that i'm on your team. Okay Yeah, but this is it's very very rare that somebody flips a switch like this

He's probably been a jerk for a long time is that fair or no? Yeah, yeah before kid before baby Yeah, yeah So, why'd you end up with him i it was basically through being hurt not having a dad growing up and you know just i was on the verge of leaving him before our daughter was born but when I found out I was pregnant I was like I don't want my child to grow up without her dad like I did

your daughter is growing up without her dad he just happens to live in the same house your daughter's also getting a ringside seat into how a terrible human being treats a woman a woman. A woman that he stood before his friends and his family and God and said, I do forever. And I'm not surprising you, though. I mean, you know this, right?

Yeah. So you said you grew up without a dad, was growing up hard? Yeah, I was adopted. So I was basically raised in a family with medically fragile kids. I was the only one normal, you know, so I was kind of just left to myself most of my life. How old are you? 24. So we're going to have a real scary conversation Is that okay? Yeah

Because I know you've thought this through And my promise is I'm going to be honest Okay This is the part when people listening to the show Start yelling Just leave him What are you doing?

Why don't you just move out? Right? Yeah And that's the moment when the 24 year old mom who's been a stay-at-home mom who's been beaten down her entire life says yeah but how do i eat and how do i pay rent where am i gonna go yeah so my question for you is where would you go probably back to new mexico where my family is is that a safe place to go for a season to get your feet underneath you yes and no i mean i'm still kind of beat down by that side of my family i always have been

because i wasn't the you know the girly girl or the girl that went and got a degree in nursing like the rest of my family was. You do have a degree in nursing or you didn't get one? I didn't. Both my sisters and my mom did. Okay. All right. So you're taking a different path. And when you take a different path, A, it looks cool on Instagram, and B, in real life,

taking your own path is hard, right? It's just harder, and that's cool. It's just more of a struggle. I'm going to go as far to say, based on what you're telling me about him, you are not in a safe position. Is that fair? Your home's safe? Yeah.

My home is safe, yes, other than, you know, the confidence. The fact that you live with a grizzly bear who won't talk to you? Yeah. So let me flip this around. Have you sat down and talked to him and said, hey, what happened? I've tried to, and he just says, you know, basically that I'm making him sound like a monster. Yes, he is a monster, Laura. I mean, tell me I'm wrong.

Defend him if he's worth defending. No. Are you done with this? Yeah. You sound done. And you know one of my policies on this show is I never tell somebody to get divorced unless they're physically or psychologically unsafe. So I can't make that call for you. Yeah.

But I do think it's really, really important that you get with a professional counselor, ASAP, to do a couple of things. Number one, you have to learn how to stand up on your own two feet. And you can. And I think you've got those skills because you had to do that growing up in a house where you were an invisible kid. And also, it's scary's scary right especially being a single mom two you're gonna have to get some wisdom and guidance on how to navigate this relationship whether you try to save it again or you end up ending it you're gonna need somebody to walk alongside you okay okay i also know that stuff costs money So I'm going to give you three months with my friends at BetterHelp for free

Okay Okay But you got to promise me that you'll use it Yeah, I will And that might only be a bridge to get you to a counselor in town Okay And But you got to promise that you're going to do it

And it can be weekly counseling That you can do via your phone. You can do on, on, um, the computer, right on zoom or whatever, however you want to set it up. But you got to promise me that you'll do it. Will you? Yeah. Yes. Okay.

Another thing I'm going to send you for your home. I'm going to send you, um, financial peace university and theDollar app for a year. Here's why I'm doing that. Two things. Number one, I've seen it happen over and over and over again that talking about budgets forces couples to sit at a table.

Sitting at a table may not be safe for you and that's okay if it's not. But talking about money means you have to talk about what are our values and what do we want to do and what are our dreams and what kind of house do we want to live in? What kind of home do we want to have and what kind of vacations we want to go on? It forces you to have those conversations

about values and goals and unification or parts where you're like, yeah, I'm out. You have to come to the table on that. And my little end around here is also, it's going to give you some skills that you don't have about managing money, making money, how insurance and all that stuff works that you probably aren't up to skill on, but it's going to give you some insights into what life would be like if you end up going back to New Mexico for a season. Okay? Okay. So hang on the line. I'm going to send all that stuff to you. In all, I need you to hear me walk away with this. Number one, you're not crazy.

You're not crazy. I don't blame any guy who just got married, who's working really hard, and he gets home because this happened to me. I'd get home from work, and my wife would just hand me our kid. And by the way, she was working full-time, So that just shows you what an ignorant moron I was. But she would just hand me the kid. And my first thought was, whoa, I just got home from work. You know how tired I am. That would be my first thought. That's just me being honest. And I learned over in short order, oh, my fatigue is pretend fatigue compared to what she's working through, right? It's not real It actually super was real, but it was we had to figure it out, right?

So i'm not ever going to fault a guy for being like what do you do all day? That's a that's an honest question that if we don't ask that question Then what happens is you end up being quiet about it. You end up getting building up resentment and that's stupid and That is different. That's a different question to, hey, what happens here all day is different than I don't talk to my wife.

I just talk to her on Facebook Messenger like a child. I only contact her when I want sex. I don't interact with my new baby. That has nothing to do with how do I convince my husband that I've got value, that I'm doing stuff during the day. I say this often on the show and I'll end the call with this. Behavior is a language. So often we try to get people to talk to us and they don't talk. They don't have the communication, the ability to talk. We say, hey, will you sit

down and talk to me? You sit down and talk to me. And really through their actions, they've been loud and clear. And in a situation like this, I can ask like, hey, I want to talk to that guy, see if your marriage is over. Or behavior is a language. He is being very clear. He has no interest in being married to her. He's interested in having someone to sleep with every once in a while He's interested in having a live-in housekeeper. He is not interested in being married or having a wife doing life with somebody behavior is a language I hate this for you. Laura will be with you every step of the way call anytime Please please reach out to my friends at Better

Help. I got you for three months. Please reach out to them. You're going to need somebody in your corner. It's going to be a long, scary road, but you got this. We'll be right back. Hey, good folks. Let's talk about hallow. All right. I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about, though, is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together with other people. And that's

another reason why I love hallow. You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow and they give you three free months to do it. You can pray or meditate by yourself, or you can connect with friends, with family, a prayer group, or some other community that you choose. And this way you can share prayers, share meditations. You can even share journal reflections to grow in your faith together with others. And with Hallow, there are other ways you can personalize the app. They have downloadable offline sessions and links ranging from one minute up to an hour.

And you can listen where it works for your schedule. You can choose your guide, your background music. You can create your own personal prayer plan and more. I've made it a personal point to begin my day every single day with the hallow meditation on the scripture of the day. It's a discipline and it's a practice. And here's what I'm learning. As with anything of importance and meaning, prayer takes intentionality, practice, and showing up even when I don't feel like it, and even I don't want to. This is discipline. Sometimes you do this by yourself, and sometimes you do this with a group, and Halo helps you with both. Download the number one prayer app on planet Earth, Halo, right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show,

get three free months when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to hallow.com. Go right now and change your life. All right, we're back. Let's go out to Portland, Oregon and talk to Jose. What's up, Jose? How are you doing? I'm good.

Como estas? Bien, bien. Thank you for taking my call. You betcha, man. How can I help, brother? Yeah, so my question is, how do I stop grieving somebody that's alive? Oh, man, that's a heavy one.

Tell me about it. So, basically, it's my dad he was uh he was a quarterback when i was 14 so about 14 years ago and geez man um yeah i mean i've had a lot of things happen, you know, from that point on. And, you know, I'm 29 now. And basically I have decided that it's time to work on my depression. So, you know, he's in Mexico and I talk to him, you know, weekly or, but it's been like this for so many years that our conversations are like a minute long. And I only see him maybe once a year, if that. So he's part of my life, but at the same time, he's not because he's not in my life anymore, you know?

Yeah. And so. Does he want to be? Does he like the phone calls life anymore, you know? Yeah. And so... Does he want to be? Does he like the phone calls or are they getting awkward? They're just, I mean, it's just so short. It's like, hey, how are you doing? Good. Yeah.

What are you doing? Going to work. Okay, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Yeah. And so I just feel like, I mean, he's alive and I can see him, you know, once a year. I know some people don't even get that,

so I'm grateful for that. No, no, no, no, no, no. Hey, hold on. Don't compare your grief to somebody else. Here's why. That 14-year-old little boy needed his dad and he got ripped out. And that 15-year-old boy and boy and that 18 year old boy and that 25

year old boy and i'm telling you i'm in my 40s and i still need my old man okay there's no apologizing for that brother that's your dad and when you say i need to work on my depression i get the sentiment but i want you to be careful about that language because that suggests like I need to work on my engine of my car because my car is broken. Your depression, brother, comes naturally because your father got taken from your home when you were 14 years old. And so your body shut the system down so that the thing would keep operating. Right? It's like when your car overheats it will turn itself off sometimes right and so you're not broken man your body's been trying to survive without the padre for a long time are you a dad now yeah how old is your kids uh they're four and three okay the reason i asked that is i was

expecting there you'd have young kids here's why as you if you're like me dude when you had kid number one it was kind of a whirlwind you had kid number two you start to feel your heart expand in a way that you didn't know was possible and you realize the capacity for love that you didn't know was humanly capable, especially within your knuckleheaded chest, right? And then you start to think oh my dad felt that too And then there's this it's like when you get older you feel this different compassion for your parents because you realize they were hurting too And they wanted to do it right and they messed up. And they didn't know what day it was either. And the whole thing just gets messier and messier and bigger. This is called wisdom and it's called forgiveness. And it's called just expansion. You're just going through a natural moment in your life. And if your dad

was with you, it's when you start being like, all right, he just runs his mouth about politics. That's fine. But we're going to go get tacos anyway. He just runs his mouth about whatever, we're going to go, I'm going to take him out to dinner anyway. Because you have a different level of compassion. The challenge you have is, you can't see him. When you say you get to see him once a year, do you go home to Mexico to see him? Right, yeah.

How are those trips? I mean, it's they're quick, short, I mean it's expensive. I can only take one of the kids. So it's just, it's a lot to go see him basically. Like I have to go through a lot to get down there. So it's not like, it's just quick and short. It's like over the weekend or, you know, maybe three days.

And then, you know, I'm back home. So it's, it's difficult, basically. And, you know, I took my daughter because, you know, she's two years old and he hadn't even seen her. And, you know, she doesn't know him, so she, you know, didn't want to be around him. You know, she didn't want to. Yeah, he's just some old strange man.

Right, right. And so it's just, I don't Yeah, he's just some old strange man. Right, right. And so it's just, I don't know. And like, I know when I try to talk about the kids, I feel like he just, I feel like he shuts down. And I'll tell you this, brother, he has to. It doesn't surprise me at all. I say that he doesn't have to. That's not fair.

He doesn't have to. But he lost his son 14 years ago right and it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't compute that he would open up his heart again for the chance to get hurt that bad again it also isn't an excuse right like he's granddad he i mean that's his job is to open up his heart humongous and let these little grandkids swan dive into it but I get that it's hard right I get that not an excuse but it's a context

right so here's I can give you a couple of nuts and bolts man but I think there's a 30,000 foot view of this that we need to take. But first, I think you don't grieve your dad. I think you grieve the picture of what you wanted it to be. Because your dad's still there. It's awkward.

It's weird. Those phone calls are kind of perfunctory. And in a weird way, he doesn't know you like he could have because he hasn't seen you for 50, he hasn't like hung out with you and been like, had a paternal role in your life for 15 years, right? So I get there's some awkwardness there. So what we're grieving is not dad. Dad's there. We're grieving this picture that fathers and sons are supposed to be able to hang out together and have dinner together and bicker and complain with one another and challenge each other to arm wrestling matches and debate politics and roll their eyes. You know, you're supposed to be able to do that. That's what I'm grieving.

That I lost all that. All that got ripped away. And then when I grieve that, then I can be about, okay, what's given the reality that I live in, I'm going to choose to live in reality. What can I make of this season? And that looks like this. What I'm going to tell you is going to sound silly, but I've seen it work over and over, and it's pretty magical. If you kept a small little log, keep it on your phone, in your notes app on your phone.

But if you kept just a series of questions that when your kid does a thing, like, why do you do that? Or what do you think about this? Or you see something about Mexico on the news, and you're like, I wonder what, if you kept a list of that and every time you talk to your dad, there was some intention to that phone call, not just a, like we're punching our card,

like phone call made, phone call answered, goodbye. Instead of that, but it was like, dad, my kid keeps doing X. Do you have any wisdom for me? Dad struggles so much with feeling like, why don't people like me? And for you to reach out and say, hey, what do you think about this? I don't know a dad in the world that doesn't love giving wisdom. They often give it when it's not even asked for. But if a kid comes and asks his dad, hey, what do you think? God, dude, that's just like a gift. And so do you need that wisdom?

Probably not. Probably not. But man, A, you're putting oil in the engine of that relationship. You're giving him something to think about between calls. He may go look up something. He may go have some conversations at home. And this is not going to be the conversation I mean the relationship that you wanted the one where you hug him and you'll have dinner together once a week

But it is going to be a different version of what you have now It may be down the road. You say hey, can you do facetime with me? I want to see your face And it might be completely new. Maybe i've done that. Maybe you haven't, but it's you being vulnerable. And he might say no. It's too hard for him. Okay. So I actually have been thinking about asking him, you know,

just questions like that. But I guess I just hold back just because I feel like he's just going to shut down. He might. It's personal. He might, but also this. If you reach out and say, hey, 14 years ago, you got ripped from my life. I miss you. And now I've got my own kids and I need you.

And I know it's hard. And maybe you write this in a letter and send it to him. But I'm entering into a season where I need my dad. I've needed my dad for 14 years, but I really need him now. I need a partner in this. And we can't see each other all the time. I don't have the money to come down all the time, whatever. But can I ask you some questions on the phone?

Can we talk? Can we connect in that way? Can we FaceTime with me once every two weeks? And dude, dads are awkward on the phone. I'm the worst. I'm awkward on the phone. My kids don't like talking to me on the phone. They're just like all right dad like Because I I just is I wish I could be adventurous on the phone, but i'm not um

So I wouldn't expect this to just feel like a warm hug because it's not it's a cheap substitute But at least it's a substitute And then I think long term the 30 000 foot view I was talking about Is you have to ask yourself over time, how do I reverse engineer the life I want versus the one I'm living? What does that mean? Is Portland, Oregon the place for us long-term? Or can I move south and be closer to the border, closer to home? Is that possible?

Is there another job I could take? Is there a different training I could get over time so that I can potentially reconnect our families? You might not want to do that. I packed up and moved a thousand miles away from my family, right? So that doesn't, not out of anger or anything, but that isn't always practical. That isn't always the solution for everything.

But at least it's you asking the broader question. How valuable is this relationship to me? What do I need to do to bring it closer? Given the reality that we're in, he's not allowed back in the States and on and on that way. But you begin to take some ownership of it. And then when you decide,

no, Portland, Oregon is a place for my family. It's where we've got roots. It's where my wife is from. It's where my job is, all that. This is where we are. Then you're owning reality. You're choosing to be where you are. And there's some peace to that. It still hurts, but there's some peace to that. It doesn't feel like you are being jerked around by the government that took your dad away, by the politicians over here, by the economics over here. I make some choices. I'm choosing to live here. I'm choosing that. And so part of this is about gaining ownership back. That's hard to do, man. All that to say, I don't know that you grieve your dad here. I think you grieve the situation.

I think you grieve the picture of what should have been. A granddad with his two little grandkids, just sitting on the front porch in a rocket chair, being fat, being loud, complaining about stuff. And he's not. He's thousands of miles away. That hurts, man. And then I think you reach out. You write that letter to dad and say, it's been 14 years and I need you. Are you in?

That's a scary letter to write, brother. But I think he's worth it. I think you're worth it. And I think your kids have my granddad. It's worth it too. Thank you for the call, my man. 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. Let's go out to Orlando, Florida and talk to Mary. What's up, Mary? Hi, good morning. It's an honor to speak with you. The honor's all mine. What's up? Well, I have kind of a tough question. So should, and if so, how, can I be a friend to someone who is willingly staying in an abusive marriage to a sexual predator? One that has intentionally hurt some of our mutual friends? Do I lean in or do I lean out? Good question. That's a good one. It's a good one, but I think it's a fairly simple answer.

Tell me what you're struggling with. Sure. So I'm part of a tight-knit group of friends. A year ago, we were all on vacation together with our family. One of the husbands cornered one of the single moms in the group and exposed himself to her. And then several other women of the group admitted that he had also been touching them inappropriately that day, but they were so shocked shocked and scared. They didn't know what to do immediately. Sure. Um, so this all happened while his wife was in the next room, usually taking care of the baby. And then, um, so he was kicked out immediately. Um, and then it turns out this wasn't an isolated event. So this never happens like ta-da it never works like that yeah right yeah well it's it was shocking to the rest of us but like of course it's like you know um so a separate victim decided to come forward after that someone completely separate and then so ultimately his wife decided to stay with him and try and make the marriage work.

Did your friends press charges? See you in jail? So she attempted to. The problem was there was like, you know, because there wasn't any physical, they weren't children. It was his word against hers. They just decided to not pick it up. So the DA rejected it? Yeah. Well played, DA. Well played, idiots. It's a point. All right, so on to the next. Okay, so then something else happened? Yeah, so several months later, he did it again, this time to someone they employed,

another single mom we know, and again, his wife decided to stay. Did she press charges? Yes, she attempted to as well, and they rejected it again. So there's multiple reports. Does he know somebody at the DA's office? You'd be amazed. I called the DA's office, I'm not joking, every single day for weeks. Good for you.

Every single day. Good for you. But they have bigger fish to fry, I guess. No. Their job is to get sexual predators off because this escalates. This behavior doesn't stay static. This behavior moves. And it goes from exposure to touching like it did in that house.

And I promise you there's a wake of women this has happened to that, like you said, you said it perfectly. It's so shocking that this happens when your buddy's like right next door and her husband's right here. That it shuts your body down in a way that's unnerving. You think like, I would never shut me down. It does. It just shuts you down, man. Oh, for sure. And it's, geez Louise. No, this is their job. This does. It just shuts you down, man. And it's, it's, it's Matt.

Jeez Louise. No, this is their job. This is the fish that they need to be frying. But okay. So tell me what you're struggling with. Well, because you know, I feel like she's being manipulated, his wife, right? I feel like she's being manipulated and emotionally abused by him. I feel like she is.

I feel like she is opting out of your friendship circle. Yeah. Period. And you can get inside her head and try to insert yourself into her marriage and what's going on behind closed doors. She knows, she knows, or,

or here's the other thing. She is calling her best friends in the world, complete and utter liars. Oh, no. She knows it's true. He admits it. Good God almighty. Then, yes.

Yeah, I mean, he just tells her like, oh, I'll never do it again. No, no. She's opted out. She has opted out. Here's why. If somebody's struggling with addiction, I have some counterintuitive. I tend to think addiction is a connection disorder. So my friends who struggle with addiction, I lean in.

I don't give them money unless we're working towards a specific thing. I don't, like, it's not willy-nilly, but I lean into that. Okay? I lean into that, okay? When somebody is with a sexual predator, someone's unsafe, someone's going to enact violence in our community. They're out. They have opted out. Like I said earlier, behavior is a language.

They are choosing to leave. And I would tell her, we no longer are, speak for yourself, I no longer can be in relationship with you connected to this guy. Yeah. And you get to draw that boundary and she gets to say, oh my gosh, you're abandoning me. You're the worst. He said it would never happen, but great.

Cool. Whenever you put up a boundary, the people who you are putting up the boundary against will come bang on that boundary as hard as they can to see if it will hold. Yeah. And as for me in my house, I don't hang out with sexual predators. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I don't. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I think my heart is just broken. That to me sounds more realistic. I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't know. I think it's just living with the fact that like, this is my best friend. And this is. Well, I have this conflict because I have this foundational principle that I do not let my friends do hard things alone. And so I'm...

Okay, but let me tell you where that falls in on itself. Yeah. She didn't ask you. And so I don't let my friends do hard things alone if they ask me. Yes. But I can't insert myself into their life if they clearly don't let my friends do hard things alone if they ask me. Yeah. But I can't insert myself into their life if they clearly don't want me there. That's true. And so what you're trying to do is play God in her house and she's saying, I'm good.

Yes. And so what you have to do is take control of your life. And that sucks. That's so heartbreaking. You said it best. I love the heartbreak. That's the greatest word for it. Yeah.

Because your friend doesn't want your help. She doesn't want your wisdom. She doesn't want your advice. She doesn't want anything to do with it. She wants to go on and pretend that everything's great and I just have a little rapey husband, but it's okay. Yeah. Horrible.

I feel terrible for their child. I feel terrible for everybody involved. I feel terrible for everybody involved. I'm disgusted by the police response. One, fine. He said, she said, fine. Five people in the same house over the same weekend. Gets real sketchy. Then the next person a few weeks later says, hey, this happened too.

Nah, now I'm losing faith in you. Can I have a, do I, do you have time for a follow-up question? Yeah, follow-up question? Yeah, follow up, bring it. So one thing I'm just really hitting my head against is this perspective that she has that like he has no control over this because he's a sexual addict. Bull crap on a stick, on a pony, in a box out on the beach somewhere. That's not true. Great. Thank you. It's absolutely nonsense. I have no problem keeping my pants on. So, you know, I don't get it,

but it's just, you know. Here's the deal. I know I've sat with people who struggle with all sorts of forms of sexual addiction. It happens. I will even go as far to say, especially initially, the impulse is very hard to control it's real the the the kind of like uh, you have to sneeze and you can't sneeze

Or i've I got diagnosed with ocd long ago, like I need to blink or I start counting things It's hard when I catch myself and I have to stop. Okay, that's hard. I feel it's almost like a pressure that builds up. And that is no excuse to destroy the lives of other people. So it becomes your job, if that's your impulse, to go get the care and help you need. So you stop hurting community members. And if you won't, it's the police's job. It's our community's job to say, you have exited out of our community. You are no longer allowed to be a part

of this community because you keep violating people's sexual boundaries. That's how that goes. And so I will go with her as far as he can't control the impulse, it's internal. And that's where that ends. Because he can control his behavior, period. He can go get help, period. He can say, I won't be around any other people until I get this under control, period. He can go check himself into a rehabilitation clinic, period. And he's choosing not to. He's choosing to let everybody else in his community, all these other women who are a part of his life through his wife, through his being on his child, they get to pay the price for his cowardice and his unwillingness to go get well, period. I don't know if I made myself clear enough on that or not i i i have i have so little patience

for sexual predating i predators i i um in several of my mentors like my professors um went and were were lice are licensed in working with behavioral sex um folks who struggle with sexual behavior disorders okay like and so i I get it. It's hard. It's a nightmare. And it is not permission. I mean, I can't imagine walking into a room with my wife's friends and thinking, you know what I really feel like doing right now is taking my pants off.

Like, I can't imagine that. I sympathize with somebody who that's, their body is like, do it, do it, do it. And you can't do that. You got to go get help. Well, and it's also very predatory behavior of who he chooses. Of course it is. Yeah.

Of course it is. And there's a real big power play to do that when your wife's in the next room. Like, what are you going to do? She's in the house every time. Oh, you're going gonna blow the weekend up you're gonna make a big deal in front of her and your body goes just shuts down and then that power i win i got it right i'm not having that dude no way no way but i i want to honor you this is hard because you're losing your good friend. I also have to say,

I don't talk crap about your friend, but I'm going to, at this point, she has to begin to shoulder this. She's choosing to bring a sexual predator into these situations. She's choosing to make excuses for a sexual predator and that makes her complicit.

That makes her a part of it. Yeah, that's my struggle. Yeah. I found out some hard things about a friend of mine recently. Not anything like this. And it messed me up. Messed me up. They just weren't who I thought they were.

And nothing illegal or anything like that. But they weren't who I thought they were. And it hurt, man. I had to sit with that. I think I tried to make excuses. Like, I'm trying to. Stop. Stop.

Yeah. Because what happens when you do that, you compromise you. Mm-hmm. And then that leads to that one moment when she's like, I know he promised he won't do it, but I need him here at this thing. Is that cool? And you're like, fine. And that happens again. That's how that happens. So this is the season when you grieve it like mad, weep, cry, be angry, be frustrated. And then I think you have to go do the right thing. And I applaud you for calling the DA's office. I think you continue to bang the drum as loud as possible.

All the time, all the time, all the time. Reach out, reach out, reach out, reach out. You hear any inkling this happened again, I'm calling everybody. Any inkling this happening, I'm calling everybody. If I see him with a group of women or I see him with a group of kids i'm calling it calling it out loud I hate it hate it hate it hate it hate this for you. I hate this for everybody. I hate this for her I hate this for him. I hate this for everybody. I hate it

I'll say this to you listening If you are in a relationship whether you're close friends, you're in a romantic relationship with somebody who is a sexual predator and you're making excuses for them. You are not encouraging, but allowing their behavior. You're believing the third and fourth and fifth and sixth time, it won't happen again. It won't happen again. It won't happen again. you are part of the problem. Nothing changes until we change. And yes, I recognize this blows up everything. You didn't blow it up. The sexual predator in your life did. All you're doing now is acknowledging the explosion of everything.

But as a community, as a guy with a wife, as a guy with a little daughter, I want us all. Like my buddy, Sean Ryan, man, we've had some conversations about the sexual predator stuff. I didn't even know it was out there. That kind of crap stops when we stop it. Period. Period.

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, we're back as we wrap up today's show. It was a hard one, man. It was a hard one. A couple of calls. I'm going to have to just go sit and stare at a wall for a little bit. Or I could call a friend like I tell you guys to do all the time. As we wrap up today's show, we thought we'd go back. So around the office, this is like known just throughout the whole company as Kelly's theme song just for her life. And so I thought I would share it with you.

It's a song by the band Lit. And the song is called My Own Worst Enemy. And it goes like this. This is a favorite song that she sings a lot. Like it's very autobiographical. Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk? I didn't mean to call you that. I can't remember what was said or what you threw at me.

Please tell me. Please tell me why my car is in the front yard. I'm sleeping with my clothes on. I came in through the window last night and you're gone. It's no surprise I'm my own worst enemy. Your poetry is so good, Kelly. And I'm glad you got royalties

off writing this song. That's good. I wish I wouldn't be sitting here I love you guys, bye stay in school