The Dr. John Delony Show - My Mom Has Schizoaffective Disorder

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Today, we’re talking with a wife who’s resentful of her husband for letting his brother live with them and a young woman who’s coping with her mom’s schizoaffective disorder. And I dive into why everything Hollywood has taught us about romantic relationships is ridiculous. Husband invited his brother to live with us and didn’t ask me first My Mom has Schizoaffective Disorder. How do I cope this this? We need to change the way we think about relationships Lyrics of the Day: "Walk" - Pantera Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Greensbury Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

On today's show, we talk to a woman whose husband invited his teenage brother to live with them without asking her. We also talk to a woman who's struggling with her mom's mental health diagnosis and what this means for her in the future. We also talk about the changing picture of relationships in America. Stay tuned. Can't you see I'm easily bothered by persistence? One step... Dude, I introduced my son to some metal last night.

Didn't end great. I realized I just did an opera version of a Pantera song. That's not great either for any of us. Hey, this is Dr. John Deloney's show. So glad you're here.

Respect! James, we gotta do that. We gotta have a super metal band. Like a super group metal band. And really, just you and me. White Stripe style. It'd be incredible. I'm down. Kelly, will you be in it?

No. Well, there went that. Man., on this show, we talk about mental health relationships and old metal songs. So glad that you're with us. If you want to be on this show, give me a shout at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask. We'll get you on the show. If the gatekeeper Kelly says so. Let's go to Joy in West Palm Beach. What's up, Joy? Hi, how are you? I'm so good.

How are you? A little bit nervous, to be honest, but here we go. I'm not great at this. You're good. It's good. What's up? So my husband and I have been talking about moving to another state in the next year or two. And currently his younger brother is living with us.

But when we move, I'd really prefer if his brother did not come. And I don't know how to talk to him about it or even if I have a if I have a right to even ask that so man you just told me a lot in like two sentences how how much can I impact that how what's your what's your permission level whatever you need to ask why in all of the world do you think you don't have a right to ask about who lives in your home what has happened it is but what has happened in that dynamic between the two of you that makes you even say that out loud? Well, he lives with us with, it was kind of without my permission. His family had asked if he would be able to come live with us.

And my husband just automatically said yes without ever talking to me about it. And so I just kind of feel thrown into this. Yeah. How long have y'all been married? Six years. Where else does he do this? I mean, that's like the biggest thing, but. Make unilateral decisions.

Just this is the way we're doing it. Be honest. decisions just this is the way we're doing it um be honest not i mean he doesn't he doesn't really do anything like that that big scale and uh i mean that's like the biggest thing but i'm talking about little stuff i mean yeah um sometimes with our our, our finances, just he, I mean, like we, we have the same end goal, but he doesn't always the day to day, he kind of sometimes loses sight of that and just, or now I'm trying to, you know, get us, keep us on a budget and keep us going to the, you know, where we're trying to go. And he just will be at a store and see something and go, oh, I want to buy this and buy it. So there, that's probably, I mean, that's probably the biggest thing.

It took you a lot of courage to call about this, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah. This isn't what you asked me, so I'm just going to answer what you asked me, but I am going to say this. And I will admit I have a bias to this, okay? I would rather be wrong than right.

Meaning I would rather hear something that's not really there on this than to miss it completely. But I hear a little bit of fear in your voice, a little bit of futility, a little bit of, I need to protect him and I need to keep whatever our story is, our story. And what I want you to hear me say is, if that's the case, please look in the mirror this afternoon or this morning, whenever you want to. You don't need another guy telling you what to do. But I want you to look in the mirror and say,

I'm worth being a co-partner in this deal and go talk to somebody. Okay. I may be way out to lunch, but there's something in your voice that is setting my radar off. Okay. And I'm just telling you that because I love you. Okay. So when it comes to, you've got a, how old is this little brother? He's 17. Okay. So again, in a quasi-normal dynamic, I would sit down and say, he's been with us for this many years. Three years, is that right? Yes. Three out of six. So 50% of our marriage has had a teenager in it. That's your brother. I'm ready to have our own home.

And so I am not interested in him moving with us this time. We've done our duty. We've done our part. And other people in the house can step up. Or he's about to be 18. He can be ready to be on his own. And I would like our own house as we move. That would be as simple of conversation. And then probably the pushback would be,

no, he's my brother. He's got to do whatever. And that's when you would talk more about the last three years. I haven't had a voice in this. I feel like I'm not a participant in my own home. And this is my home too. And I'm all about helping and loving. And if we want to support them financially and whatever the things are, but I'm ready to have my own home, please. And not please in a, please, pretty please.

Like my son asked me for Girl Scout cookies, but please as in a, I'm trying to be pleasant as I'm telling you, this is the way I want to move forward. Something tells me you can't have that conversation. You wouldn't be calling me. So what is the conversation like in your home? Well, we do have our own kids and it's always like, Oh, but they love him. Like they love having him around. Of course. And I'm like, yeah, but I mean, it's just, and we just, so we have, we just had our, our third baby three months ago.

So we now have six of us living in a two bedroom, like 850 square foot living space townhouse. What? That's a lot of humans and not a lot of square footage. Exactly. And so that's like another reason why I'm like, I'm ready for our space. I'm ready to have, you know, I want my family. Yes. So what keeps you from saying it out loud? I think I just, I feel guilty and like, like maybe I'm a bad person for not, it's not that like I don't want to help him but at the same time

I guess I feel like I'm being selfish where did you learn that? somebody taught you that that the way you feel and what you need to make your house whole and what you need to be well is selfish somebody told you that who told you that.

Who told you that? I don't know. Usually that story is a story that we are told when we're young. We're born into it. You be quiet. This is where we're going to eat. You shut your mouth. You sit back there.

We don't wear clothes like that in this house. You wear that. Only girls who don't care about how they look eat that stuff. Don't eat that. We're like this. My little brother's moving in with us, by the way. You need to make room. And those are stories that are just dumped onto us, man.

And so if I'm the first person to ever tell you this, shame on everyone around you, but you're allowed to have your thoughts and your feelings, and you're allowed to have your emotions, and you're allowed to say, this is what I need to be well. And we have three of our own kids. Five people in 850 square feet is a lot. A lot.

Not to mention a newborn and all the diapers and breastfeeding and yelling and crying. That's a lot of humans. And you throw a 17-year-old. Where's his parents? Well, they're from another country. So his mom is in their home country, and he came to the U.S. to live with us. Oh, so now we got a cultural element on this. Yes.

All right, totally different now. Okay. Oh, man. Oh, man. Just for my own edification, are you safe, Joy? Yes. You promise? Yes.

Okay. We often think of safety as physical safety. I'm not going to get punched in the eye. I want you to start thinking about safety also being spiritual safety, psychological safety. Does your voice count? Can you say, hey, this is what I need and I'm heard. Now, I also want to be, I mean, the way I was talking earlier, I was talking very ethnocentric, very much Western. This is the way we do family. And I know there's a number of different cultures that do, the family looks different, right? And brothers and sisters and cousins are all living

with us. And that's just the way we do life. What I hope you can do is have a conversation with your husband about, this is what I need. And he will hear that. But it is absolutely not selfish for you to be heard, for you to state your needs out loud. In fact, that's a gift. In fact, what I would tell you is hurting all day, feeling like you are a stranger in your own home, distances yourself from your husband,

from your kids, from family. And so if you, I don't think that's, I mean, if you want to start thinking selfish, think that way. Choosing to not speak up when I don't feel safe or loved or connected in my own house, that's got ramifications too. Okay, so here's, I would take him out.

I would have a hard conversation, a gentle conversation, a respectful, loving conversation that just says, I need to have my own house with my own family. And it's time for your brother to do his own thing. Or at least we got to get a way, way, way bigger house with a garage apartment or something, right? When y'all are moving, are y'all getting a new place? More space? Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's the thing, too, because if he were to move with us, then I feel like we would need an even bigger house because he would need his own space. And so I'm just, like, thinking about all of the, you know, all of those types of things, too. Yeah. And it's just. You sound lonely. Yeah. And it's just... You sound lonely. Is that the wrong word? No. Okay.

Stay on the line here. I'm going to send you a copy of my new book. We talk about this stuff all through it, okay? Not the cultural challenges that you've got. And there is a cultural gap here. Is your husband usually respectful when you bring up cultural differences and you'll say, hey, how are we

going to navigate this? Because you're fusing cultures here. And part of fusing cultures is just navigating the differences. Or does his culture trump every time? No, I think, like, he's open to talking about it. He just doesn't always understand, I think. He has a hard time really understanding it.

Okay. And so I've talked, in fact, I just talked about this in the last podcast. One of the great ways when there's a miscommunication this way, think about it this way. We often speak in pictures. I mean, we speak in words, but we think in pictures. Okay. So you have a picture of quote unquote my house, what I feel safe. And you tell your husband, I just want my own house.

And he's got a picture of what own house means. And it includes cousins and nephews and brothers and all kind of people in it. It's got a picture of it. And often when we're talking past our loved ones, it's a matter of painting a new picture for them. Here is a picture. It's me being able to walk around in my own home without a bra on, without a head covering on, in my underwear to go grab something out of the dryer. Being in my own home means not having to cover up every time grab something out of the dryer. Being in my own home means not having to cover up every time I walk out of my bedroom. It means that I'm allowed to keep it

clean as the way I want to keep it. Does that make sense? Like you're painting him a picture of, oh, I didn't even think about that. I didn't even, oh my goodness, I didn't even realize that, that I want to have my friends over. I want to have buddies over with, and they bring their little kids over and want to play. We've got the 17-year-old here. It's painting a different picture for your husband. And most of the time, if two people love each other, painting a new picture, people go, oh my, ah, I didn't even see it. I'm so sorry. And then there's some grieving. aha i didn't even see it i'm so sorry

and then there's some grieving like i did i totally missed it i'm so sorry but the other side of it is man sometimes it's hard and they somebody says nope they're living with me and then you've got a hard decision to make i'm going to be really optimistic here that you got a great husband who is just absent-minded and hasn't thought through it didn't even occur to him the struggles you're going on sharing a house with two grown men right or a grown man and an almost grown man that a new picture paint for him would be really helpful thanks for the call joy man three kids and-year-old and a husband and a wife in a two-bedroom apartment. Story at 11.

We'll be right back. It seems like everybody's talking about how crazy the housing market is right now and how powerless homebuyers feel. Mix that with the stress of moving and life change and job change, and you've got a tornado of anxiety fueling one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make.

This is not a good idea. So if you're a new home buyer right now, my advice to you is to focus on what you can control, like the people you choose to help you in the home buying process. You need folks like my friends at Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is a Ramsey trusted provider that's been helping people with their home mortgages for decades.

And their home buyer edge program will help you skip a bunch of the stress. Here's how it works. Apply to become a Churchill certified home buyer and cap your interest rate for 90 days. Then you'll get a $5,000 seller guarantee to help your offer stand out. So go ahead, take a deep breath because Churchill has your back. Check them out at churchillemortgage.com slash D'Loni and get the home buyer edge today.

All right, let's go to Marie in Winston-Salem, Witch Trials, North Carolina. What's up, Marie? Hi, Dr. Donnie. How are you? Good. How are you? Good.

I have an interesting one for you. I love it. Bring it on. Let's do it. Okay, so my mother has something called schizoaffective disorder. Oh, when did she get diagnosed? Diagnosed about five years ago,

but she has been bipolar her whole life. Yeah, how long did she navigate that before you finally got a stable? Usually people who are diagnosed with that, there's just a wake of trauma in all the family systems before people finally land on what actually is going on. So she is the fourth generation of my family with that diagnosis. And when I was about my entire childhood, she was a rock star. I mean, she was an international

businesswoman, six figure income, just blowing it out of the water, right? When I was 16, something happened. Nobody can conclusively say what. And the wake of trauma is about 13 years. She started thinking people were following her. She started thinking people were planting bugs on her. And from someone who was achieving that high, everybody believed her for a while. And then you understand she got on disability.

We almost lost our home. You understand the financial disappointment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now they're on a steady disability. Her and my father are on a steady disability, but she has just tanked slowly over time. I'm so sorry. So let me pause real here. For everybody listening, schizoaffective disorders is, I think it's like a two-layer sandwich of, no, maybe it's a burrito, and the filling is psychosis.

So hallucinations, people are chasing me, people are following me. A dysregulated reality wrapped up in either super high mania, something very similar to bipolar, or long, brutal depressive episodes. What is your mom's? She's got the psychosis. Does she just bury herself or does she get real manic? She does actually really neat cycles. That's the one blessing we were given.

She sticks to her cycles. Winter and summer are down. Fall and spring are up. Great. Okay, so there's some sort of predictive nature to it. A little bit of the mania. The delusions come in,

the bugs and the FBI are pretty solid. Okay. The other ones come and go. You got your gold standard there. And let's be honest. Yeah, exactly. Can we really trust the bugs of the FBI? I mean, come on, Marie.

Wow. And there's no lab test for this. And so this usually goes undiagnosed for years and years and years. And like you mentioned, you said it perfectly, it's a slow descent into madness that is propped up by the people around you, right? And then you start thinking you're crazy, and your dad thinks, what am I losing it? And all of a sudden, everybody finds themselves in the mud a little bit, right? Yes, everybody a little bit at a time.

And right now she's basically agoraphobic. She won't leave the house because if she does leave the house, they'll come in and put stuff down. Right. That's right. So that's an overview. What type of care has she gone after? She has gone after, she's a religious medication.

There's no issue. She doesn't palm them. She's pills down the throat. she's a religious medication. There's no issue. She doesn't palm them. She's pills down the throat. It's great for her. She's got, she wants a month therapy. We're starting with her. She's been institutionalized several times when things get real bad. Has she ever been acutely suicidal?

Suicide, no. She's afraid of death. But she has had episodes where she has thought they were there and she went and got a gun because she wasn't going to let them take her alive. Gotcha. Okay. So it's less internal-oriented violence but external. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And this has been going on. I'm 29. This has been going on since I was 16. Um, and I love my mother just as much now as I did when I was 16. Let's make that clear. Um, everyone wants me to accept that mom is just going to be this way. And I have a hard time with that. Yeah. And I don't know what to do with the tension I see. Because my father, they've been married 36 years. He doesn't work. He's our full-time caretaker. And it hurts me when there's tension in their marriage.

Sure. Like when I walk in and they're, because, you know, people with that disorder can get aggressive like dementia. And when they pop back and forth between the two of them, it kills me. Because it wasn't like that growing up. They were really, really good, you know? And then the last one that's the kicker is there's been one kind of strong bipolar each generation that has kind of progressed over into this. And I got the lucky gene. Congratulations, Marie.

You're the winner. And I don't know how to cope with the possibility that I'm watching my future. Gotcha. I just tell you thank you so much for being brave

and vulnerable and telling your story. Okay. Because I want to generalize this now to people who are listening. It's easy to listen to your story, Marie, and say, oh, my gosh, can you imagine? But almost all of us have someone in our family with Alzheimer's or dementia or obesity or a temper problem. And we all wonder, when does this happen to me? Right. When, when do I hit somebody? When do I go off the rails? When do I start drinking two too many and then three too, right? So all of us have what you're describing.

Yours is just very acute and very unknown and very, very scary, right? Because yours feels out of control. I cannot drink. It's hard when you're looking at what's happening to your mom. And so let's work from, oh, man. Let's work from childhood back or childhood forward, okay? Okay. I want you to give your body a lot of grace because your body has a memory of a brilliant savant connected fun mom. It remembers that and it is constantly looking for that again.

Yeah. And it's a never ending search. And so everything that's not that, cognitively you can know it, but it doesn't feel right. You get what I'm saying? It feels disoriented. Your body's never connected.

When you're with your mom, you're never safe. You're always waiting. You're always this, this, this, this, this, and you can't lean into it. Your body's circling back for when's normal, when's normal, when's normal, when's normal. My guess is,

I'd be willing to bet you, and I don't have a lot of money, so it would be a really lame bet, that your childhood wasn't as rosy as you remember it. Is that fair? My parents, she traveled a lot for her work, and they did a really, and I know this sounds corny, I'm going to think about that after we get off the call. You're talking to me. There is no corny. We're good. There is no corny. I lived in the middle of about a thousand acres that was divided up amongst all of our extended family. And so when mom went, dad stayed home and we saw her every

morning and every night. When I listened to other calls, they said, oh, my mom went off and did this. That, it wasn't there. I remember when it started because it was so different from the behavior that had been there previously. Okay. Yeah. She was absent a lot because she was gone working. But you had family connectivity that you were rooted to, right? Yes. Yes.

And you also have woven through the genetic fabric and behavioral fabric, experiential fabric of your family, mental illness that's generations old, right? Yes. Yes. And so my guess is you had a, your dad is some kind of saint. Is that fair? Yes. He sounds like an incredible man. What you just described to me, I'm going to be super unfair.

Is that okay? We're friends. Just picture you and me. We're at a bar. We're hanging out. I'm going to be unfair, but know I'm doing it with a smile on my face. Okay? Okay.

Okay. What you just described to me, a thousand acre place with generations, it sounds like a compound. It sounds like a family compound that we have hidden ourselves into the woods, which sounds very much like the bugs in the FBI. We're going to hide out here and create a family. Am I on to something? Yeah. Okay. Even my friends always joked when they came over that we were a closed society. There you go, right? It's like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, right? So you've got this thing. So here's what I want to tell you. The instability you see in your mom, my guess is,

has threads all throughout your childhood. And that doesn't negate the fact that you love this woman and it breaks your heart to see her like this. And it is stone terrifying to think this is where I end up. One of the gaps we have when we're grieving, what used to be and what is, is that we lionize what used to be so great or it was so awful. And this be so great or it was so awful, and this is so great or this is so bad.

And sometimes when you're working with, it helps to flatten it out and to really dig into the truth of some of the narratives. It doesn't make it any better that your mom's struggling like it is, but it makes you feel less bonkers, And it lets your body not be so reactive. Like, oh, this is how this is manifesting this now, but we were on a trajectory here. And so there's something about just accepting mom. I don't like that language.

That's your mom. What I do like is grieving, saying I had this picture when I was 13. I see my friends and their moms. I wanted my mom to be somebody that was going to be all excited about my wedding and that we could go to the store and then we could drink a little bit too much with, and she could tell me dirty jokes and I'd be like, mom, don't say that. I had that picture of my mom and it's not going to happen and let your body feel that that's grief that's ownership of it and it sucks it hurts so bad and when you can do that over a period of time this isn't a one-shot thing this is a way of being a acknowledgement and internalization. Then it's not about accepting

just the way mom is. You know, I accept that the economy crashes. I can't do anything about it. I don't know. I didn't do anything. It just crashed. I accept that Facebook tracks everybody. So I don't use Facebook, right? So I accept things. I don't want to do that with my mom. I want to love my mom, but I can only truly plug into to my mom when I am truly honest and have owned the stories, owned the reality. And that's hard, but it's necessary. Some quick ways you can own that story is to write your mom a series of letters about what it was like to watch her slowly get more and more scared. A way you can own that is to be with your sisters or your brothers, and y'all talk about it too. Y'all are open with each other and y'all talk about it.

Okay. A way you can own it is to be highly intentional about what your life in the future is going to look like and start reverse engineering. How do we get there? Because right now, this is a story that's holding you down. And that leads me to this. One of the demons of this. So you've heard the phrase like bipolar,

schizophrenia. There is a strong genetic component, but I love the way Brene Brown says it. Genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. Learned experience sets some of these things off. Okay, so the wiring might be there for when X, Y, and Z happens. So you go back and you look at mom and say, we don't know what it is. It could have been a complex number of things.

It could have been a long, slow slide. It could have been that genetically speaking, she had kindling set up, gasoline on there. She just needed a spark and there it went, right? And what you're gonna do is start now. Working with a counselor closely, getting a crew of people and begin setting up different experiences

that are different than the ones that are generational. Do you still live on the compound? I do not. Okay. And do you have friends and community that are outside of that gang? Yes. Do you find yourself leaning into conspiracy theories and looking over your shoulders, or are you free from that?

Only when I get manic do I get paranoid, but past there, no. I moved out of state. I bought a house out past there, no. I moved out of state. I bought a house out of state. Okay. I left the whole scenario. Genetics, some genetics are, this genetic is not a predetermination. This is not a period at the end of your sentence. Okay.

Is it a possibility? Okay. Yep. I'm never going to lie to you. It is. It is. Does it have to happen? Is it inevitable? Absolutely not.

What I'll tell you is if you live a life without hope and you live a life of isolation and running, my guess is I have no data to back this up. Okay. So this is me spitballing. The inflammatory processes in your body, the fear mechanisms in your body will participate in the switching on of genetic predispositions to protect you from what's coming. And so if I'm you, I'm going to partner with a counselor, probably maybe even a psychiatrist at this point, prophylactically and say, what do I need to start doing now? Thoughts I need to have, behaviors I need to have, actions I need to take, community members I need to be around. What can I start doing now?

And it might be exercise and meditation and blah, partridge in a pear tree, all this stuff. What can I start doing now so that when I feel the leanings this way, I know, okay, here we go. And I've got this bedrock of behaviors that I already lean towards. I've got this bedrock of thoughts. I've got this community that I can lean on when things get, here we go, here we go, here we go, right? When it starts spinning. And you know when you're heading down a manic road, right?

Yeah, you can feel it. Generally, I start getting angry. And I'm like, why? You know, you can go up and then you get up. Everyone thinks it's fun, but it can actually go at an angle where you're hyper angry at other people. Oh, raged out. And you also like, it also is like, here we go. Right.

Cause you're going to get more done than anybody. Right. So it's both. Yeah. It's a, it's the worst. Yeah. Listen, you've got hope. And if you get anything out of this call, it's grieve your mom

and never let that light go out. Keep walking towards that light of hope. Okay? Okay. Your story's not over. All right. Your story's not over. Your story's not over.

Hang on the line. I'm going to give you a copy too of Own Your Past, Change Your Future. It's exactly what I'm talking about here. It's a brand new book. It's what's going to, I want you to read it. I want you to work through it. And then I want you to give you a copy too of Own Your Past, Change Your Future. It's exactly what I'm talking about here. It's a brand new book. It's what's going to, I want you to read it. I want you to work through it. And then I want you to give me a call back.

Okay. Thank you for loving your mom. Thank you for doing the hard work coming up with grieving. This is who she was and this is who she is. And I love her for who she is. I got to have boundaries. You got to be safe and all that stuff. And my future's not over yet.

We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era because, I mean, we pretty much

have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social setting. We do this around our 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, 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 learn to be honest with yourself, and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct 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, and you can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey, and you get matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, 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 are back. Um, I want to go to this email here from Jonathan in Kansas City. Jonathan writes this.

Kelly sent me this and I just want to park on it for a second. I'm a 40-year-old guy and I've never really had a group of friends. My wife is begging me to find some guys to hang out with. She says I'm suffocating her. What do I do? Man, I get this a lot in reverse and sometimes this way. So let's back all the way up when we answer this story. Up until about 150 years ago, and this is drawing from Esther Perel's work. This is drawing from Terry Reel's work. This is drawing from some anthropology. Talk about this a lot in the new book. Listen, up until about 50, 100 years ago, marriage, it was a work relationship. It was either for wealthy people to expand their power and their kingdom, or it was for poor people to just get through the misery that was life together. And a whole community of people met our needs,

our existential needs, our value needs, our safety needs, our passion needs. They were met by people in our church or whatever myth we were following. And I'm going back thousands of years now. Our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers, our spouse. It was met by our tribe. And over the last 50 years, we have pulled that apart in spades. We have increasingly isolated ourselves from homes with front porches and sidewalks to homes with back porches to homes with now with no porches to neighborhood community associations, to Facebook groups. And what we've done is we have increasingly isolated ourselves, but our bodies still need purpose and value and safety and connectivity and passion and desire and sex.

It needs those things, but we've taken them away. And so then we find Jerry Maguire, the famous Jerry Maguire movie, you complete me. Shut up. You had me at hello, right? We got that. And this idea, and it's not just Jerry Maguire. I mean, we're talking Shakespeare, but this idea that there's a quote unquote soulmate. There's this idea that I will meet the right person and they will meet, they will make me feel safe. They will make sure I'm loved. They will make sure I'm connected.

They will make sure I eat all the right things. They will always be hot. We will have crazy wheels off sex all the time. And all of that is gonna be distilled down into one single person. What do we do? We stop making friends. We stop going out.

Just gonna be home. You are my thing. And good folks, it's too much pressure for one person, for romance, for our relationships. Individuals don't have the tools for it. We've got to have peers and friends and other men and women in our lives because we have different kinds of needs. Now, this nonsense has been used to, or this isn't nonsense, but this has been used for nonsense. Like, we're non-monogamous and we need to sleep around with everybody because this person meets this need. That's stupid, okay? But what's not stupid is that it's unrealistic for, and it's unkind to expect one person to meet every one of your needs all the time, always. It's impossible. It's why we watch movies. It's why we read poetry. It's why we read books. It's

why we hang out with our friends, our same gender friends. It's why we have friends of all shapes. And so when I get a call like this, I'm 40. I've never really had a group of friends, but I found the one. And she's going to meet all of my needs. And she's saying, dude, I'm suffocating because I can't be your safety net. I can't be your always friend. I can't be your tell me everything's going wrong at work friend. I can't be your grab a beer friend. I can't be your, okay, let's just have sex too, friend.

I can't be your mother of your kids. I can't, that's just too much pressure. Okay. I actually love the new direction of marriage. I love this idea of safety plus intimacy. I love it, but we have to get new tools to do it. We've got to learn a new way of being. Our parents, my mom was not allowed to have a checking account when she got married. That was a law. My dad was a cop. She was a, I mean, she stayed at home and she wasn't allowed to get a checking account without her husband's signature.

My mom, we're talking one generation. And over the last 50 years, they just celebrated their 50th year of marriage earlier this year. They've had to undergo a lot of transition and change. Now my mom is a fancy decorated PhD professor. My dad's a professor. And they've had to figure stuff out along the way, how to communicate, how to talk, new tools. So what I tell you that to tell you is if you are married now and you're 40, you probably don't have a great picture, a great model of, how does all of this stuff work together? How does it all end up in the same pot and we don't drown each other,

but we also don't leave each other? How can we feel safe with one another and still desire each other? And how do we get passion and romance back? But also, man, somebody's got to pay the bills. And you got to vacuum and get the stupid hairs out of the sink when you shave. It's gross. It's disgusting. You're gross.

How do we do all of that? I'm going to leave you on a setup here. It's not very cool. James, can I just do a setup here? Sorry. Buy my new book. Oh, it's so, it feels gross doing this. But it's true

The whole book is based about this How do you deal with these old stories About how marriage is supposed to go How relationships are supposed to go And then what do you do about it Here, that's my little tease everybody So Jonathan, sounds like you're suffering Have I got a deal for you

1995 plus shipping and handling Just kidding, it's not 1995 It's way more expensive than that, not really But you've got to develop External community You've got to develop rhythms You've got to develop a communication that you can connect with your spouse And talk about safety

And talk about desire And sometimes you practice safety and other times you practice desire Sometimes you practice romance And other times you practice showing up again and again Even when you're frustrated, even when you're tired. All those things take a lot of work and a lot of effort and a lot of practice. And I'll tell you, it is super worth it. Absolutely 100% it's worth it. I wouldn't trade the new expectations on marriage that I have that my grandparents have.

They were married 74 years. 74 years, 74 years, and they became soulmates because they went through the grind together. And we've tried to say, let's do soulmate first. Let's reverse engineer it. You'd be soulmates first, and then we'll do life together. That's not how soulmates work. I don't know how many tools for what that looks like. Check out this book here, man. Check it out. Here's one thing you can do. You can sit down with your spouse and say, I feel really safe, but I miss our wild sex life. Or I want to learn how to desire you some more. Would you practice that with me? Try that. 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. Hey, what's up? We are back. As we wrap up today's show, this is the third take. James just said the last one was weird, so here we go. We've started the show this way. We'll end it this way. Song's off the Vulgar Display of Power record.

Probably shouldn't listen to it. Song's called Walk by Pantera. It goes like this. Can't you see I'm easily bothered by persistence? I'm one step from lashing out at you and you want in to get under my skin and call yourself a friend? I've got more friends like you.

What do I do? Is there no standard anymore? What it takes, who I am, where I've got more friends like you. What do I do? Is there no standard anymore? What it takes, who I am, where I've been, where I belong. You can't be something you're not. Be yourself, by yourself, stay away from me. It's a lesson learned in life, known from the dawn of time. Respect. Walk. Walk on home, boy.