The Dr. John Delony Show - My Wife Has Created a Life That Doesn’t Include Me

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A husband struggling with loneliness in his marriage - A woman suddenly angry after her estranged father’s death - A mother wondering if she should stop trying for another baby Lyrics of the Day: "Beth" - Kiss Enter the Ramsey Cash Giveaway here Shop the $10 Sale here 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: 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 you know when it's time to stop trying for another baby and going through recurrent losses and kind of move forward with life? Oh, gosh. Let's don't solve that one. That was really hard. It's a big one for a Monday. Yeah. Yo, yo, yo. What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

Show about mental health, marriage, relationships, parenting, the madness that is our education system. Whatever you got going on in your world, this show, here's'm gonna do I'm gonna walk alongside you and I don't have every answer But usually I know the people who do or i'll tell you I don't know But I also promise i'm gonna walk alongside you and i've got two decades of walking with people trying to figure this stuff out Your mental health your marriage whatever's going on in your life If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291. And we got to start today's show with probably some of the most important news we've ever discussed on the air, ever. Jenna.

Yes. This week in Nashville, there was a storm of epic proportion, and the storm was named Hurricane Taylor Swift. Yes. What in the world? Insane, yeah. I heard 500,000 additional people were downtown. In downtown, yeah, for various other things that were here this weekend.

But yeah, it was insane. I went to two of the shows, two of the three shows. I went Friday and Saturday. It was mass chaos downtown, but it was the most fun I've ever had in my life. How many homeless people could you have fed with the ticket prices? We don't need to talk about that. Okay, we don't need to talk about that. Okay, so you were on the floor the first night.

The second night, yeah. Second night. The second night, I got to be on the floor nine rows from the stage and see her and all her. It was amazing. It was just, she was an ethereal queen on stage. It was wonderful. Oh, man. see her and all her it was amazing it was just she was an ethereal queen on stage it was it was wonderful oh man i i want to say what i think but man swifties they will come they will come find you in your sleep listen she puts on a show her production i heard it was i heard it was second

to none it's three and a half hours of just non-stop just fun did she do the same set yes except she's got a portion in each show where it's two different songs. It's like an acoustic set, two different songs every night. Okay. And Friday night, it was amazing. I was up high, but she announced. So she has her re-recordings that she's doing. And she announced to the entire stadium that she is releasing the Speak Now, Taylor's version in July.

And she was like, I'm going to surprise you guys right now. I've been planning this for months. And the entire stadium was just, I can't even imagine how loud it was if you were standing outside of there. I heard there were shrieking, the sound of shrieking women cascaded through the hills of Tennessee.

Like in a way that like people's roofs were coming off and their sidewalks were buckling. That was intense. I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. What was your favorite song of the night? Well, so Friday night she did like the surprise set.

And the first song that she did was Sparks Fly. It's from Speak Now. It's one of my favorites of all time. But other than that, there's on the Evermore album, she performed Champagne Problems. It is fantastic. Did you ever weep? I got very close.

I got very close, especially that she sings a song in the set called Marjorie. It's about her grandma who passed when she was 13. I don't know how she performs that song every night because it's just gut-wrenching. My favorite thing in the whole world is how you talk about her.

I've been to church services that people have less reverence for God than how you're discussing Taylor Swift right now. It's incredible. Like I can feel you through the booth, man. It's amazing. Listen, this has been a thing for about 15 years of my life.

So do you feel at peace now? Can you move on? Can you go to like Metallica and Slayer? No, I will never move on from that, from this weekend. Oh, gross. All right, let's go out to Tom in Los Angeles and get some soul back in the show.

All right, hey, I am jumping in here. This is future John. This is John from the future. After this show has already been recorded, and I have to come back and say this next call you're about to hear, I missed it. And here's what I missed. Okay, so you're going to listen to this call, and you're going to hear me, and you're going to be hollering at your phone or your speaker in your car or in your

headphones when you're mowing the yard, however you consume the show. Watching YouTube, you're going to be like, oh my gosh, I know, I know, I know. Here's a couple of things. Number one, I'm pretty sure after listening to this call that this man's wife is a significant challenge. It's a problem, okay? Also, I try my best. I'm not always perfect, but I try my best to not badmouth somebody's spouse when they're not on the phone. That's hard, right? The third thing is most of the time when you're dealing with somebody who's got a spouse and the spouse is just out to lunch, the spouse is just spending money willy-nilly, the spouse is cheating on them, the spouse is struggling with addiction, whatever. You as the person on the phone, the person is cheating on him, the spouse is struggling with addiction, whatever.

You as the person on the phone, the person who's calling and saying, how can I help my spouse? How can I fix this? I'm lonely. How do I do these things? Can't do anything about the spouse. The only person you can change is you. And so you're going to notice in this call,

I don't think I messed this part up. I intentionally focused on this guy. What can you do? Why is your wife creating a world that you don't exist in? I think the reality is she's always had that life. She's always spent money. She's always run up debt. She's always created alternative life that she is living that this guy is funding. But that's not always helpful for me to just grenade on somebody. So you're going to hear this call and you're going to be going, what do you mean? It's completely her. I'm with you. I'm with you. And I really want those of us, folks who listen to this show who are struggling with a spouse, struggling with a friend, struggling with a

mother-in-law, struggling with whoever to go back to the one place where transformation happens. And that's in the mirror. That's with you asking yourself, what are my thoughts? What are my actions? What can I control here? So check out the call. Be nice in the YouTube comments. Be nice. Here we go. What's up, Tom? Hey, how you doing, John? I was doing great until Jenna started talking about the Swift shows, but I think you're going to get us back on track, man. Well, I know you deal with life and death stuff and heavy marriage hanging on by a thread stuff,

and I feel a little bit silly for this call. No way, Dan. Yeah, so here's what's going on. I travel a lot for work, about four days every other week, and my wife loves to travel for fun. And this month, especially, she's gone a lot. And I'm not included on those trips. It's girls and it's this and it's that. And I bring up, like, hey, most of my travel is an hour or two flight from our house. And I say, hey, why don't you come out for a night? Or, you know, take Friday off. We'll spend the weekend there or whatever, wherever I am.

And it's quickly dismissed. And it's like, hey, I need more time to plan and this and that. And if she wanted to do it, there would be a plan B. Like if one of her friends calls and says, hey, let's go here for the weekend, you know, she'll find a way to make it work. And so I'm calling you, and thanks for taking my call because I feel like I'm getting wound up in my head, and I don't want to be resentful. I want her to enjoy the trips. I love her because she loves to live her life and have fun. And there's also a little bit of a backstory, if you don't mind. When we got married, we had a lot of debt, and her debt was travel debt. And we did FPU and we paid it off and we've been debt-free ever since.

A year and a half ago, I was refinancing our house, shortening the term and lowering the rate. And she had hidden a bunch of debt as well. And so we downloaded every dollar app and paid that off ahead of schedule. Did y'all deal with the infidelity? A little bit. So no? Not really. Not really. And the other, and we're both men here, the other trigger is I was a single dad. My kids spent every other weekend when I traveled with their mom. And I would constantly get emails from her like, hey, check out this cruise. It's on sale or this or that. And I would be trying to make ends meet.

And so there's these little triggers along the way that when she's like, hey, I'm going to Hawaii or I'm doing this and works good, money's good. She does well, I do well. We're working our butts off, but there's all these things along the way that are just, when she says, hey, I'm going here in two weeks with my friends for three days and I'm getting back from a trip with an empty house. And, you know, and there's all these little things and I feel like I'm getting wound up in my head and I don't want to be that guy who's resentful

or treats her poorly or, you know, where it's changing my everyday life. And I feel like I'm getting to that point. Well, your everyday life has been changed feel like I'm getting to that point. Your everyday life has been changed. And I would be willing to bet, I don't have a nice car, but I'd be willing to bet it that this is just a symptom of a bigger issue. Because she's created an alternative life that doesn't include you for whatever reason, whether you hold her accountable, whether you're not safe, whether you always have some scheme or plan or whether your rules and your whatever always trumps, she's created a world or you're an anxious mess. Are you a high strung guy? Are you anxious

a lot? I do pretty well with that. I'm not, but I will say, you know, and I know you travel for work and I'm raised by a single mom and not a close family. And so I can be a lonely guy and kind of line that up as well. And so, you know, coming home to an empty house after being on the road. Yeah, but that's not the issue. The issue here is y'all are co-managers of your household. Y'all aren't doing this thing together. Right.

And travel is but one thing that y'all do separately. Right. And we'll do trips together, but it's been a while. And that's kind of the other- I know, but you're not hearing what I'm saying, dude. You're not hearing what I'm saying. Your marriage is running in parallel. You have two people living under the same house that are sharing the same name that have two completely different lives. Right. And this travel, this, her going out of town with her friends her world that she has curated that doesn't include you that's but a symptom of a marriage that's running on on two side-by-side tracks but it's not working together right and you can't control

why she has created a world what you can control is why she has excluded you from it. Right. Right. And so if I ask you, cause she's not on the phone. If I ask you, why does she choose, why won't she travel with you? Why does she not like traveling with you? I can answer you. I can answer this from my house.

My wife doesn't like to travel with me because I don't care about itineraries. Cause I just show up whenever I hate getting to an airport more than an hour. Like I like to get to the airport just in time to get through TSA, just to get through and walk straight onto the plane while they're boarding for her. She wants to be there seven to 10 days before the flight actually leaves. She likes to spend the night in the airport. I'm just kidding,

but she likes to be there so early. And then when we get to wherever we're going, I don't know, we'll find a hotel and we get to the town. Like that's how I roll. And that makes her feel unsafe and uncared for. So that's why she doesn't like to travel with me. Why does your wife exclude you from joy?

Yeah, I don't know. We went to Cabo in January. Tom, you know, you know. Yeah, I don't, you know, it's hard. The last couple of vacations that I've asked her about it have been good. You know, but our sleep schedule is different. You know, I'm older. I don't like to party like I used to.

But we still, the last, and I looked at it, the last couple of times we vacationed, we had a lot of fun. I know, but you keep focusing on vacation. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. There is a bigger issue here, man. Maybe, you know, I don't know. Maybe because I watch the pennies. Maybe because I'm jaded because I travel for work.

And it's hard to impress me. I don't, you know. The question you've got to ask your wife is, and really yourself, is beyond travel. You're stuck on this travel thing. When it comes to how the house feels when you get home and she's there, how the house feels when she gets home and you're there, to how y'all handle conflict, to how you like to honor each other by how the other person likes entertainment and I'm going to show up there, your sex and intimacy life.

I'm telling you right now, something's off. Yeah. And you keep focusing on this you right now, something's off. Yeah. And you keep focusing on this travel, travel, travel, travel. I'd be willing to bet if I talked to her, it would have nothing to do with travel. Travel is her way of escaping, getting away. Right. Living the life that she doesn't feel like she can live at home. Right.

And it could be that she's a brat. And again, I'm not talking, I don't talk bad about your wife, but it could be that you would like to have a budget and you don't like to spend money y'all don't have. And she's like, I don't know, I can't live like that. YOLO, whatever. That could be it. She could be very immature or you could be so constricting and hard to live with that she's had to create an alternative world. When I was an anxious mess I was always Seeing the end of time. I was always dealing with Okay, we're gonna move our money here and this scheme here and then we're gonna do this and then I remember sitting down in my backyard in west texas with my wife and I said you I feel like you've created a world That I don't live in

And she said, I've had to. And those words were one of the impetus for me to go get help. Right. Because I was a nuclear reactor. I was kind. I wasn't abusive. I didn't cheat. But man, I was electrified.

And that's just me. I don't know what your thing is. You might be the opposite. You might be Eeyore, bring the whole house to, I don't know. But your wife has created another planet that you don't live on. And she doesn't want you living on it. She'll go with you on your rocket ship trips to Cabo. Cool, that's fine.

I think she likes you. Yeah. But there's something bigger going on, man. Right. That's very interesting. I haven't looked at it like that. um, yeah, that's interesting. I appreciate that. So here's here's if i'm you Here's what I would the way I would start I would take her out somewhere nice

And I would say hey, I want to talk about us And I would say i've been asking about travel and I not she doesn't make you hurt and she doesn't hurt your feelings. You're allowing your feelings to be hurt. Okay. I'm going to use that language. This is all about me. I've decided to get my feelings hurt whenever you're gone.

And when you create these travel plans without me and when you don't want to go on my work trips. But then I started thinking, are there other places in our relationship where I'm not showing up, where we are running parallel lives? And I want to create a future where I can help meet your needs and you feel empowered to help meet my needs and we're working together on this deal. And it becomes much less about,

will you do this thing and go on this trip? And why can't I go? It's a much richer experience. I'll tell you this. When my wife is about, I've mentioned on the show, it was probably four or five months ago when I was struggling with my daughter who was six at the time and she's turned seven since.

And between my wife and Dr. Matej, Gabor Matej really hammered home what if I concentrated on being likable not on always being right not on always lecturing not on always trying to solve every problem or have my opinion hurt on everything. But what if I focused on being likable, being fun, being funny, staying up a little too late sometimes, getting up a little too early sometimes, like spraying one of the kids with a hose when they get home, allowing them to spray me back

when I'm least expected, whatever the thing is. What if I just did the dishes instead of making a checklist about it and i tell you what man my whole house has changed my marriage has changed my relationship with my daughter my son have changed everything is different now because i'm working hard not to be right not to win not to make sure every t is crossed and every i is dotted but to be likable to be a joyful person. And it's just

ricocheted through my life. So sit down with your wife and talk about the state of your marriage. Let her speak and don't try to correct her. This isn't something you're going to solve in one meeting, but ask her, am I hard to be around? Am I hard to travel with? If you had to create another alternative world, alternative universe that I'm not a part of because I'm tough to be around, start that way. Let her speak and let her be open with you. It might be a really hard season coming up.

But man, if you get through this and get to the other side of it, y'all can create something amazing where y'all are in tandem and you're working together. And then you can take all the vacations you want, man. But you got to heal from the inside out on this one. 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,

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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 halo.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, we are back. Let's go out to Beth in Chi-Town in Chicago.

What's up, Beth? Hello, how are you? Partying. How are you? Good. Awesome. What's up? Thanks for taking my call.

My question is how to let go of the anger with my father. And I'll give you a little backstory. We haven't had a relationship in decades. He was invited to my wedding, didn't show up. Invited me to meet his first granddaughter when she was born, didn't come. And so after that, I mean, I wrote a letter to him, didn't send it, but just to get all my emotions out and felt like I really had peace about it because I didn't understand how he couldn't be there for me and my siblings, even his brother and his mother.

But after I had a child, it really changed my perspective on all of it. Does he have mental illness? You know, my siblings and I think we have diagnosed him, you know, just in our heads, but we don't know. I would be willing to bet a lot that he was struggling with something pretty profound.

Yes. The act of walking away from your kids and your grandkids is so unnatural. Yes. And I hate that you experienced that. Thank you. But you know that's not your fault, right?

No. And I'd always said, or I said in the letter that I wrote to him and said, you know, the only way I can have any sort of respect for him of being my father is just not to know him at all because I can't understand how he could do that. And really, over the past year, he gotten really sick. And, you know, I struggled with, we all did with, should we go visit him? And then ultimately, will we go to his funeral? And we weren't given the opportunity to. We had to find out he was sick through multiple different parties. And so he was remarried. His wife had just a quick burial. The obituary wasn't released until after the funeral, and we weren't even listed anywhere in it. And then since then, you know, I've went back and looked at the tribute wall and his obituary, and every single person on there comments about how he was, you know, the most dedicated Christian man that they knew.

And I'm like, he abandoned his entire family. And I don't know. I have a lot of anger towards that. I thought I had peace about everything else, but now I'm just angry. One of the hardest fantasies in the world to let go of is the parent walking away from their child. It's one of the hardest ones in the world. And you can think you've dealt with it and buried it until they pass away. And then there's that, your body realizes, oh, this never wraps up.

There's no happy ending. Yeah. And as much as it's frustrating, you know, we've seen enough Hollywood movies where, you know, the kid walks in and dad's on his deathbed and he says, I'm proud of you.

You know what I mean? Like, and that will never happen. So my question for you is this, and it's a hard one. Okay. What is this anger getting you? Nothing.

Yeah. Why are you still at war with him? I don't know. I think it's just having children and not being able to comprehend how he would do that. You can't. You can't. You can't make rational sense of an irrational act.

I would tell you any energy you spend trying to make sense of it is a waste of time. It's energy you're taking away from your kids and dumping it into a bottomless pit. You can never wrap your head around it because it makes no sense. And I know that's maddening. Yes. But there's this idea of making peace with my dad walked away from us forever. And I would let people have their story about him. Because that gives them peace.

The ones that he chose to be in relationship that weren't you, let them have their story. I mean, what sense of it is to burn that to the ground? Like you could show up at his old church and be like, hey, I'm his daughter he walked away from and he never met his grandkids because he sucked. He was the worst guy ever. Just wanted y'all to know. My promise is you won't sleep one ounce deeper by doing that. Yes, because I didn't think about that. And of course, I've stopped myself. Yeah. You know how about that and of course, I stopped myself. Yeah,

you know how good that would feel? It would feel amazing. It would feel so good, the retribution. It would feel good for like five seconds. You know what I mean? And on the way home, you'd stop at like a burger joint

and eat yourself into a coma because it would feel so good. And then you go home and then you'd realize you went with you. Yes. Nothing's changed. He still walked away from his little girl. Yes. Most of the time people

get stuck here, it's for two reasons. One, it's rage, anger feels good. It does. The fantasy of what I'm going to do or what I could do feels so good. And the second thing is, is there some sort of lingering dot, dot, dot that I had something to do with this?

And your body loops trying to solve what was it about me that he walked away from because I need to solve that so it never happens again. And both of those things are unsolvable loops. They will spin faster and faster until you become an anxious mess. And then in a strange way, you restart the cycle, and your kids want to stay a few inches away further away from mom because she's a

lot. Is that fair? Yeah. And then the cycle starts again. Yeah. And then the cycle starts again. Yeah. So whenever someone's facing this, you've done part of the work, okay? I always direct people to write four different letters. All right?

You've written one of them. Was it the vomit letter? The you suck and I hate you letter? Okay. Pretty much. When did you write that? When my daughter was born 18 years ago. Okay.

Let's update that one. Okay. Yeah. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to write a letter to let them know what you really think. Dear dad, you suck. You left your daughter.

You left your granddaughter. You left your sons. You left us granddaughter. You left your sons. You left us all. You created this little fantasy world at your little fantasy church, and you played super Christian while your family wondered why dad left. Write that letter. And the second letter, which is really hard to write, is a letter that lets him know what you miss about him. Here's what I missed. And the first letter is usually angry. The second letter is really sad.

Because you might have some memories of him when you were really, really young where he was funny or silly or took your fish in or did something goofy or whatever. He could remember his aftershave, whatever the thing is, or when he would kiss you and it would gristle your face with his whiskers, whatever the memories you've got locked away in there. Here's what I miss. And the third letter, and all of these have probably a week or two weeks between them, okay? Because they're heavy. The third week is, the third letter is the one of empowerment. Here's what you're going to miss. Your granddaughter is freaking amazing. And because you chose to walk away, you will never know how awesome she is.

Here's some awesome things she's doing. Your son-in-law, he's the best father you could ever imagine and on and on. Okay. What we're doing here is we're creating movement the other way. You're teaching your body by going through this process. That season is over. He's gone. And here's what comes next. And then that fourth letter, why did he leave? When did he go? He, um, like he was a great dad when we were really little. Um, my mom and him got divorced when I was 16. My, my siblings were already moved out of the house and graduated. Um, and really we just didn't have much of a relationship. I mean, years before he left.

Why did they get divorced? He was cheating on her with his wife that he had. Okay. So my guess is, whether you remember it or not, from about 13, 14, and 15, you lived through hell in that house. Is that fair? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So your fourth letter is you need to write Beth, 14, 15, 16-year-old Beth a letter and

let her know this was not her fault because she's still trying to defend you. Mm-hmm. Fair? Yes. She still runs the show a lot. When you got really, really pissed when you were 15 or 16, what did you do?

Did you withdraw? Did you throw and kick? Did you yell and scream? What did you do? Like, just full angst as a teenager. I yelled at teenager. I yelled at him. I took it all out. My siblings were more reserved and when they hurt their feelings, they didn't

say anything and I was always the one to defend them or me or my mom or anybody on how he just wasn't there. How often do you yell now as an adult? I have my moments. She's still protecting you.

Yeah. You got to let her go. Okay. When those adult, when we as grownups have those moments of childishness, when I ignore, when I stamp my, literally I'll stamp my feet and ignore my wife or my kids or my workmates. That is me being nine all over again, right? That's that little boy coming out and being like, oh, we'll show them. And it's like, no, dude, you don't get to drive because you're nine, right?

Similarly, you got to let that girl go. And that's letter number four. I've also heard folks with some pretty significant success in, and you've heard me say this if you've ever listened to the show more than a couple of episodes, is to go to Home Depot or Lowe's or something and buy a cinder block. Yes. And put duct tape on it and write your dad's name and write the day, the last day you remember talking to him in person or write on that thing, you died and wouldn't even let us come to the funeral and carry that sucker around your backyard, carry it around your house until your arms burn,

until it gets so heavy. And then take it as far in the far corner of your backyard or a park or wherever you find peace and set that sucker down and rip the tape off. And in that moment, commit to never picking that brick up again. I'm not carrying my dad's trauma anymore. I'm not carrying his hatred. I'm not carrying the fact that he walked out on his little girl and her brothers. I'm not carrying any of this stuff anymore. He doesn't get any more from me.

And you're going to wake up certain days and you're going to find yourself carrying that brick and it's fine. You're just going to have to remind yourself, I'm not carrying that anymore. You're going to find yourself start to scream or yell at somebody you love. And you're going to stop yourself mid-yell and be like, I'm not carrying that anymore. I already let little Beth go. She gets to go play. She gets to go finally be 16 like she should have been a long time ago. But it's going to be a practice I'm not carrying it anymore

I'm not carrying this anymore I'm not carrying it anymore he gets no more of me because he's had enough of you for the last however many years and we're done now it's time to live forward does it suck that he abandoned you God Almighty I can think of hardly anything worse and we're done. Now it's time to live forward.

Does it suck that he abandoned you? God Almighty, I can think of hardly anything worse. Is it unbelievable that they hid his funeral from you, didn't even mention you in the obituary? Yeah, it's wrong. It's wrong at every level, and it happened. Those four letters are grief. It's a practice of grief. It's a practice of sitting in it and it hurts.

And it's probably best if you have somebody that you can read those letters to. Maybe your brothers will join you in this exercise and you all can read your letters out loud to each other. Grief demands a witness. You do this stuff with other people. And if you're really brave, you read that letter out loud to somebody or to a couple of people that you write to your younger self. We never carry a brick again. Thank you so much for the call, Beth. 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 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 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. Let's go out to Hope in Durango, Colorado. That's not even a place, Colorado. What's up, Hope? I don't even know where that accent came from. What's up? How are you? Good. How are you? I mean, just having the time of my life running a scam here called a podcast. What are you up to? Just working, taking a break to talk to you. Awesome. So let's solve this problem. What's up? Yes. So my question is, how do you know when it's time to stop trying for another baby and going through recurrent losses and kind of move forward with life?

Oh, gosh. Let's don't solve that one. That was really hard. It's a big one for a Monday. Yeah. Gosh. Man. So how many losses?

So our story, my husband and I have been married for almost five years. We got pregnant the first time a month after we got married and lost that pregnancy about a month later. And then found out that there was actually a second baby in that pregnancy that was in my fallopian tube. It ruptured and I came pretty close to dying before I had emergency surgery. We got pregnant two more times that year, lost both of those. And then a fourth pregnancy seemed like it was going in the right direction finally. And then I got the same debilitating pain. And sure enough, it was another ruptured ectopic. Had my second tube removed in emergency surgery. We are big Dave Ramsey followers. So we

saved up in cashflow to do IVF because that was our only option for me to carry our baby at that point. Did IVF. Our first transfer, embryo transfer was perfect. Our embryo split into identical twin boys and they are wonderful. They're two and a half now. Yeah. Two for one there. And then we decided to start trying for baby number three in January, transferred again. That embryo also split and would have been identical twin girls, but we lost them. And then just last month, we were going to try one more time to do a transfer and hope that it would work. And like a few days before my, um, scans just weren't looking very good. And so it got canceled and, but I felt like I'd had a lot

of time to like recover from the previous losses, but going through these last few cycles just really put me back in that really difficult space. And I just don't know if it's time to move forward and just enjoy the boys that we have or what. So I want to preface this with, this is a deeply, deeply personal decision. Okay. Yeah. This is a decision between you and your husband. This is a decision about identity and a decision about,

there's so many different decisions here. Okay. I want to talk to you broadly and then we'll get very specific. Okay. And I'm not going to sugarcoat anything. And I would need you to know if we were having this conversation in person, I would go a lot slower than I'm going to go today.

Okay. Okay. Is that fair go today. Okay? Okay. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. I'm really worried about your marriage. Yeah. This is a lot of loss in a very short amount of time.

Yeah. And statistically speaking, the ice y'all are on is so thin. You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? Yes. Yeah. We came very close to not making it to even have our boys because it was so hard that first year. Yeah. The challenge is grief, as the great David Kessler says, is like a fingerprint. It's unique to everybody. And when you go through loss like this, especially miscarriage, it's hard to discuss and it's hard to even know, right? Because it feels a certain way and then there's hormones, but then there's also loss and then people feel it differently and think differently about it. And you've got one of you saying, well, I'm ready to try again.

And you've got the other person like, I can't breathe yet. What are you talking about? What's the matter with you? And it's when you get to the what's the matter with you. Or what do you mean we're just going to stop and just sit here for a year? So you start grieving separately. And when you start grieving separately, you create two different worlds, right? And then somebody at work is a little bit funnier or a little bit nicer

or a little bit we can talk about something else. And then all of a sudden you're down hatch number one or down hatch number two. So just starting broadly, for the sake of your marriage, I would tell you to take a break. Yeah. You just need to exhale for a season um and y'all haven't even had a chance to be married yet y'all got thrown right into the

middle of a scorcher right yeah for sure um how old are you I'm 31 okay why this it almost feels manic. Why the push, push, push, push, go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, it definitely felt that way until we had our boys. And I just have always wanted to be a mom.

I've always wanted to have a huge family. And I think manic probably is a good term for how I felt. Like just as soon as one loss was over, it was time to try for the next one. How did y'all grieve the loss of those pregnancies? Everybody does it different, so there's not a right or wrong way. Boy, I'm really open about it. So I've shared a lot about it with just friends and family and everybody yeah but you're sharing the process how did you agree those individual losses i we moved forward really quickly i have the name of every one of the pregnancies that me and my wife have lost, which are three, tattooed on my body. Oh, wow.

Okay. And it's not for everybody. But there's something profound about stopping and acknowledging loss. Even if you aren't that, like, man, it wasn't a baby. Whatever, wherever you fall on that spectrum spectrum which is a whole other conversation the moment you find out your pregnancy a dream is cast out ahead of you right oh yeah you start making plans and you start building rooms and you start um you start imagining and it's really hard to just let that thing dissipate and go. You have to honor that, man, a path just laid out in front of us and that path is over.

You know what I mean? Some people do it by writing letters to the baby that they lost. Some people write poetry. Some people call some friends over and have a formal funeral service. Some people come over and just say, "'Hey, we want to acknowledge this together. "'This is a heavy season for us.

"'We lost this.'" But just blowing by it and blowing by it and blowing by it seven times, that's a lot that your body's carrying for you. Yeah, definitely. Have you been open with your husband about the nature of these losses? Yeah. Yeah.

We're very open with each other about all of them. Okay. You're calling for a reason. Are you calling because you want permission to stop or do you want permission to keep going i almost think it's permission to stop okay i need you to hear me say and i'm gonna speak for everybody in humanity no one can give you that permission that's for you but you have my permission to stop I'm going to speak for everybody in humanity. No one can give you that permission. That's for you. But you have my permission to stop.

And you're going to have to grieve that dream that you're going to have 14 kids running around and all their knuckleheaded girlfriends and boyfriends and party. You're going to have to grieve that. And just because you grieve that picture doesn't mean you don't love recklessly these two knuckleheaded twin boys you got. It's both and. Yeah.

But I think it's worthy of writing yourself your future self a letter. The 52 year old you that was going to have six kids running around and honor her. Because, man, just listening to your story, y'all went down swinging, right? Yeah. But it's almost scary to reimagine your marriage right now, isn't it? Yeah, we just feel like I've never had time to do anything fun.

Like we're taking a family vacation at the end of this month. And that's like, we never even had a honeymoon. Like we just have never spent money on anything fun. Hope, you are not going on vacation. You've heard that old saying. That's true. If it's just you and your spouse, that's vacation. If you go with your kids, it's a trip. You're going on a trip at the end of the month with two twin, two and a half year old boys.

There is going to be pee and poo flying airwear. In diapers, in naps, in shenanigans, and you sitting reading a book in the bathroom of a hotel like that's just going to be what this trip is but you can also find deep resounding joy in this little four this little gang of four that's going to take on the world

yeah it's just hard to like reimagine life I guess when you were expecting it to be different. It is. It's hard. It's devastating. Yeah.

I think. Go ahead. It's hard to not have like, I almost wanted like a second chance at pregnancy because theirs was just so terrifying because of all the losses before. And so I was like, this next pregnancy, I'm going to do all these things differently. And then- Hey, hope, hope, hope, hope. None of this loss was your fault.

I remember sitting with a woman one time who looked up at me through tear-soaked eyes and she said the following, I'm tired of my body killing babies. Yeah. And I just hugged her and I didn't say another word because there wasn't anything else to say. And what I should have told her was, it's not your fault. Because you have spent the last five years trying to reverse engineer every step you took and every meal you had and every bout of gas and diarrhea and every week. You've tried to reverse engineer it all.

It's not your fault. Okay? Yeah. Hope's not broken and hope didn't do anything wrong. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. The scariest question you and your husband have to answer is not, are we going to have any more?

The scariest question you'll have to answer is, what are we going to do now? And who are we going to be now? Yeah. And the beautiful thing is y'all get to choose. Are we going to forgive each other for how we did or didn't respond? Are we going to work really hard to alter our mindset towards being comically, overly grateful for these two rascals we got and our gang of four? And are we going to properly sit in grief for what wasn't? Right?

You're going to have to walk through all that stuff. Yeah. You just can't avoid it. I would definitely take a break. How many embryos do you have out? We have six more. That's incredible. You're going to have 111 kids hope yeah we had five boy embryos and three

girl embryos we were like boy if they split every time that's a lot of kids jeez i mean there's going all in i'm going all in and you put your car keys on the table and your house deed on the table. Whew. I can't make those calls for you, okay? That's between you and your husband. But I would definitely recommend taking a break for a while. Yeah.

Okay? And you know this. When you get to be 34, 35, they start telling you that you're 1,000 years old. Yeah. And that you're this grandma trying to have a baby, which is just stupid. Okay. Yeah. You got time. If time is even something you want to go down that road, but what y'all have to do right now is spend some time healing your marriage,

healing yourselves. You got to grieve these losses. That's a lot of loss. You got to grieve your body that in your heart and mind failed you. But you also got to make peace with it because that's the only one you got. Yeah. You got to make peace. You got to grieve that future we were going to have that we're probably not going to have. It's going to look very different. And it's still going to be awesome.

It's just going to be a different kind of awesome. Fair? Yes. I'm really grateful that you called. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Hang on the line here. I'm going to send you a copy of Own Your Past,

Change Your Future. Actually, I'm going to send you two. One for you and one for your husband. And it really is the path. Here's where you go when all the wheels fall off and all the plans we had going this away, suddenly there's that road implodes. And what do we do now? So hang on the line here. I'm going to send you a couple of copies of that. Um, and you call anytime. If I can help you with the grieving process, if I can help you anyway, I've been down this road personally. So thanks for being brave to do everything new. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet

has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, as we wrap up today's show,

Kelly is so old that her favorite show growing up was ALF, and she got to listen to this song live. Not live, but like you were when it came out. I was like five. So. The song is by her favorite band, Kiss. And she actually has that tattooed on the inside of her lip for obvious reasons.

The song is Beth. Shout out second caller. Beth, I hear you calling, but I can't come home right now. Me and the boys are playing. We just can't find the sound. Just a few more hours and I'll be right home to you. I think I hear them calling. Oh, Beth, what can I

do? Beth, what can I do? I know you're lonely. I hope you'll be alright because me and the boys will be playing. I never know what Kiss is talking about. It's not rocket science they're playing and and she wants him home way to go america way to go kelly was in honors classes too see you soon