The Dr. John Delony Show - Parents "Keeping Score", Being Honest With Kids, Mom is Psychologically Abusive

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode How do my husband and I stop trying to “keep score”? My husband has a son from previous relationship. We have no contact with him. How/when do we tell our two little boys about him? My mom is very psychologically abusive to my dad. I am caught in the middle. How do I navigate this situation? Email: If something happens to me, I want to make sure my kids go to the right people. There are family members I would want to take them and other members that I definitely wouldn't want to take them. Should I have these conversations now? Lyrics of the Day: "Since I Put Your Picture in a Frame" - Tom Waits tag: marriage, anger/resentment/bitterness, communication, parenting, family, abuse, suicide/self-harm 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.

Hey, what's up? On today's show, I talked to an awesome mom of three who's asking for help on how to stop keeping score in her relationship with her husband. I also talked to a mom of two young kids whose husband has another son that the little ones don't know about, and they want to know how to have that conversation. And finally, talked to a young man who's caught in a psychological trap between mom and dad, and he doesn't know what to do. Stay tuned. Hey, what's up? What's up? This is Deloney with the Dr. John Deloney Show. The show's about you. It's for you.

It's your calls, your challenges, your problems problems your concerns with what's going on in your heart in the mirror in the hearts and minds of your kids your spouse girlfriend or boyfriend your country man there's a lot going on there's a lot of hurting people but there's a lot of joy too there's a lot of joy too There's a lot of hurting people, but there's a lot of joy too. There's a lot of joy too. We just need to figure out the next thing and we're going to get it. We're going to get it. This messiness, the good stuff, the bad stuff, all of it. I'm here to walk alongside you.

My commitment to you is I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to gaslight you. I'm going to tell you the truth even when it's hard. Even when I tell you the truth and I get off the show, I've got to go make some changes in my life. And that's happened already. I'm walking alongside with you.

If you're new to this band of cool, figuring it out folks, right? We talk about mental health challenges, family and relational IQ questions, schooling, education, parenting, addiction, marriage, all of it. Right? And sometimes we talk about good stuff. Sometimes we talk about hard stuff. But listen, I got this email. I didn't ask this person's permission, so I'm just going to call him Mike.

Mike emailed in, and I just needed to say, man, this made my day. If you listen to podcasts from the last podcast I downloaded, you know that I put something on the interwebs and got in trouble for it. I didn't get in trouble for it. The internet police, the commenters, they did not want us coming together. At the same exact moment, 1055 a.m., I got an email that's telling me what a terrible human I was. And at the same moment, this email from Mike comes in.

And Mike writes, John, I've never called in, but I've been applying your advice about grounding our kids in my love as their dad. I've been touching their face before bed, holding them close, locking eyes with them just to say, I'm glad you are my son. We have three high energy boys, 10, five, and five, and a four-year-old daughter with Down syndrome. For the past 10 years, I felt increasingly disconnected because I'm personally dealing with a chronic and debilitating health condition that consumes more time and energy than I would like. I didn't know how to connect with them well, and after listening to your show, I realized I need to step up and give this quack on the radio a shot.

Yes. Dave Ramsey taught me how to manage my money, exposed my lack of discipline, and showed me how to change my character. And you're teaching me how to be a better dad and husband. Thanks, Mike. Brother Mike, listen, you're an absolute hero. You're an inspiration to me as a dad too, of two young kids. You got four, man. You're living in a hurricane. I'm just living in a tropical storm, but I'm going to go home and intentionally make sure I'm doubling down on connecting with my two kids tonight because you reminded me in your note. We were all figuring this out together. I'm proud of you. This is hard, especially if you're a dad who's never seen this happen. If you're a mom who doesn't have a picture of what connecting with her kids actually looks like, it's hard to do.

And Mike, you can get me choked up here before the show even starts, man. But I'm grateful for you. This is awesome. We'll be cheering you on. If we can help along the way, if I can give you a shout along the way, holler at me, man. We're so glad to have you. Give me a call. Anybody.

Mike, everybody. 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291, or go to johndeloney.com slash show and fill out the form if you want to be on the show. I'd love to have you talking about anything. Let's go straight to the phones. Let's go to Marie in Austin, Texas. Dear Marie, what's going on? How are we doing? Hey, Dr. John, doing great. Thanks so much for taking my call today. Thank you for calling. I'm really grateful for it.

So what can I do to help? Yeah, so I would just love your advice on how my husband and I can overcome the trap we sometimes fall into of keeping score. So I want to change your language right off the bat. Okay? Sure. Instead of falling into traps, I want you to change your analogy to we're in a funky dance.

Okay? Okay. Funky dance. We're in a dance that isn't helping. We're stepping on each other's feet, and so we just need to learn how to dance better. When you fall into a trap, you just start rattling the bars, and then you eat the person inside that trap with you. When you're just stepping on each other's toes, you can still look at each other and laugh a little bit, right? So we're going to change the metaphor. So y'all are in a funky dance, man. You're not dancing well

with one another. Tell me about keeping score. Yeah. So just to kind of give you a little context. So I'm a stay-at-home mom of three kids under five. And one of them is an infant and I also work part-time from home. And my husband, he also works really hard. His job could be physically demanding at times. And sometimes he can have pretty harsh hours that can reach up to 12 to 16 hour days, you know, depending on the day. But most of the time, I would say we're a really great team and we dance well together. He's a super great dad. And, I mean, he's very hands-on. He does a lot of can with the house of three kids.

Um, where our, where we start to step on each other's toes a little bit is, um, usually around the time whenever work is really busy for him, um, which consequently makes really hard days for me as well. Cause I'm at home with three kids all day long running the show. Um, and so then that's where we can kind of start stepping on each other's toes of, you know, who's doing more or who's more tired. So I can, you know, let's say by the end of the night, you know, getting the kids in bed. And I've got, you know, a pile of dishes in the sink from a dinner that I just cooked. And, you know, laundry piled up. And he's okay to sit on the couch and rest.

You know, he's had a long day. Um, but I have two. Right, right. So who's the chief scorekeeper? Is it you? I mean, probably. Yes. So, hey, listen, it's the same issue if somebody is the super scorekeeper and somebody doesn't even know there's a score being kept. Both of those things will poison a relationship. Right. But I just wanted to know, is he the one laying on the couch and you say, hey, man, you're I just have a picture of you holding one baby.

There's no one wrapped around your leg and another one is flushing things down the toilet. And he's like, hey, I'm cleaning my kitchen. He's not that guy. He's not even paying attention at all, huh? Right, right. And you are – okay, so tell me if I'm right here. Okay. And so typically, you know, I'll say something like, hey, you know, like let let's get up and do this together so then we can we can both rest at the same time.

And and he'll say, well, you know, I'll get to it later, which he doesn't. And he he's OK with letting things be kind of undone. Right. And I kind of feel like I'm drowning. Yes. And by the time I communicate it, I've already been over like I'm already overwhelmed and frustrated okay so that's it that's the magic right there okay so by the time you ask for help he already

has set sail on his whoo right and by the time you say hey I need some help that fire is already burning right even if he got up and helped at that, I can't believe I even had to ask him. I'm sitting here all day, and then you start counting off that list. And so you know this, but I'm going to say it for everybody listening, and I want you to imprint this on your heart.

Scorekeeping in a relationship leads to only one outcome, resentment. Right. And resentment leads to the death of the relationship 100% of the time. Mm-hmm. Okay? And so what you've got to do is right now it's annoying and you're driving yourself crazy. And you know intellectually like, I shouldn't, I know he's working hard. I hate him right now, but I love him and I know he's working hard.

Right? Right. I know he's working hard. I hate him right now, but I love him and I know he's working hard, right? And you are wiping that third baby's booty harder and harder like, oh, I'm just going to do this and this, right? And so what you end up doing is the story you tell yourself is that you are the hardest worker. And the story he tells himself is, I've worked really hard and my wife has created this sanctuary for me and I'm going to go enjoy it. And then he collapses. And, hey, will you help? Yeah, for sure. I'm going to do that.

He's never going to, right? I don't know a lot of guys that lie to their wives in that moment. They really are planning on doing it. But they really head off to Mars, right? And that doesn't make it right. It just makes it an is, okay? So here's, going back to what you said, here's a couple of things I want you guys to do together.

And the beautiful thing is, this is an absolutely solvable challenge in your home. Right. And it stems from two people who are doing the best they can for everybody. And all you want to do now is, instead of having those two horses pull in opposite directions, you want to get those two horses going together, right?

So the first thing I want you all to do is to every single week, and I want you to be vulnerable and ask him about this because it may be foreign. It was foreign to me. I did not realize how much a simple 30-minute calendar meeting every week with my wife gave her peace, made her want to make out with me a lot more, made her just feel safer, and let her speak. It gave her an avenue to talk to me where she didn't feel safe before, right? In a calendar meeting, she was able to say, hey, on these three nights, at about this time, this is when things start to unravel with our kids. This is when I need you to put this on the calendar that I need help with these things.

That, for her, gave her safety as opposed to coming in and saying, hey, will you get up off the couch? Because you know I worked hard, but also, it's right, so it gave her some boundaries for a harder conversation. So I want you to, every week, know if sins or butts have a, and hopefully y'all can do this with your budget stuff too. You can do this with your calendar stuff. You can do this with your intimate life. With three little kids, you're going to have to start planning and programming and practicing desire. Otherwise that goes away. You'll wake up and you'll have

a 15 year old and a 14 year old and a 10-old, and y'all have kissed each other on birthdays only, right? And so I want you to start to plan those things. And it sounds exhausting now, but when you plan them, then they become something you look forward to as opposed to another chore. But I want y'all to have the conversation that says, what does the picture of this week look like? Let's get out a calendar. He may get out his phone and say, it's the same every week. But it does, and it fluctuates. And talk it through, and that's where you can have a moment of hey on these nights can you help i need your not can you i need you to lean in and help here and i need your work day

to extend a little bit and help me with these things because this thing i'm drowning here and my hope is he's a man of character and i can tell that you love him and he's a good human being. Otherwise, this call would be going way differently. Right. Told in that setting, I think he can hear it, right? The same as if his boss called him and said, I need you to stay one more hour. We got this big project. He'd be like, bro, I'm all in, right? I'll do this to his boss.

The second thing is, is I want you two to keep a singular gratitude journal together. Okay. And every day, you have to write to each other, I am grateful for, you have to start it with three sentences, I'm grateful for, and list three things about him. And it may be that those are the same things every day during a season. I'm grateful that you went to work today. I'm grateful that you bothered to come home today.

I'm grateful that you said thank you for my dinner. They may be trite and silly, but what I want you to cultivate is right now your eyes are looking for the things that he's not doing. I want you to begin to train each other's hearts and minds and eyes to look for the things that you are doing. And we find the things that we spend the energy looking for. And so, if I wake up every day looking for people in the news that hate me, I'm going to find them. And looking for what political sides of whatever are making me angry, I'm going to find that. But if I look for the things that I agree with and that bring me optimism and joy, I'm going to find that too. And you just got to practice that because we don't, we're not trained how to do that. We're trained how to find problems in

people, not optimistic things. And he's going to forget, not because he's a jerk, not because he's an idiot. He's just going to forget. And you're going to have to lean in and be vulnerable and remind him. Okay. So here's the third thing. Okay. I want y'all to get away if you haven't, and this may be expensive for y'all. I want y'all to get away, even if it's for a morning, like a half morning. And here's what couples often don't do. In fact, they almost never do this. Everything about your relationship is different. You have three little kids, right? Yes. My guess is you were a rock star employee. Is that true? I hope so, yes.

Yes, you were, and then you chose to take your expertise and your skill set and channel it in another direction. Rock and roll, great. And you're working part-time. Everything about your relationship is different. And what most couples do is they try to drag that college relationship that they had, that just lunatic, we stay up all night, we're crazy, right? Or they try to drag those first two or three years of marriage when we're just walking around naked all the time and drinking one or two too much. It was just rambunctious and chaos. And then you have kid one and kid two.

And what happens is you try to drag that old life into Kid one and kid two and it all crashes And then you start blaming one another because you're tired you start having a competition on who's more tired and who's working harder you guys have to have the fun and the Vulnerability and the scariness and the excitement of saying okay, everything's new now. I love you. You love me. We're going to have to build something new off an already awesome platform. So take a half day. My wife and I do this every year. It's an annual retreat we go on, but I want you and your husband

to go on a, maybe with three little kids, you can just get away for a half morning. Have somebody come over. I want you to go to breakfast, go somewhere to eat, go for a walk somewhere. And I want you guys to sit down and say, we have three crazy kids. We had sex seven months ago is how that worked, right? And I love you and you have never done the dishes and I'm about to smash you with a fork and all the China we have. And you're working so hard and I'm so to smash you with a fork and all the China we have. And you're working so hard and I'm so grateful for you. And I don't tell you this enough, but you are the best mom I've ever, ever met. All those things together. And I want you to begin to talk through, hey, here's what this is going to look like for us. It's going to be a weird season. We're going to have to start putting sex on the calendar. We're going to have to put

dates on the calendar. I'm going to put on my calendar, help with dishes, not because I'm a jerk, but because I'm having to learn new skills. And I'm going to ask you not to judge me when I forget. And I just hit the couch because I've got this pattern now. I want you to say, hey man, can you help me out? And I'm going to go, yes, yes, I'm in. And I'm going to be tired. And we're both going to hit our heads on the pillow exhausted at night.

And that's going to be good. And this season isn't going to hit our heads on the pillow exhausted at night, and that's going to be good. And this season isn't going to last forever, but right now we've got three little maniacs that we love and that are ruining everything and fulfilling everything all at the same time. And we're going to do this together. And I'm not going to have a fight with you when I'm already exhausted and when I've already been counting down the things all day. And I need you to hear how incredibly hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom and a part-time employee and a plugged-in wife. It is harder than going to work, can ever and will ever be.

I want you to know that, and I need you to hear that. And guys listening to this, it's true, it is. Come together in that connection there, man. And you're talking awesome. So picture today a weekly calendar meeting, a gratitude journal that sits on your bed that you both write in every day. Looking for ways to find why you're grateful about each other and then get away and begin to recraft, redo the architecture work, re-engineer a new relationship that's already built on a new foundation that includes three kids, that includes two hard jobs, that includes aging parents, whatever's going on in your life. And when you find yourself counting, you know what I did, noted? Just yell, stop, stop.

Because counting and scorekeeping lead to resentment, which leads to death in the relationship. Awesome call, Marie. You rule. You made my whole morning good. All right, let's go to Melissa in St. Louis. Melissa, what's up? How are we doing? Good, Dr. Delaney. How are you? Good. It's Deloney. It rhymes with baloney. It was a really rough childhood. Hey, I will take Delaney all day. That's easier than Deloney, but such it is. So what's going on? How are you? I'm good. Thank you so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it. No, thank you for calling. So what's up? How can I help? So my husband and I have two children. We have a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter.

How long y'all been married? As we get in, 10 years. 10 years. Okay. Yes. So as we get into this age group, we find ourselves constantly teaching them about honesty and integrity and accountability, you know, all those things that you want to teach them early in life so that they'll hopefully be better off as they get older. But my husband and I have, I guess, a secret of our own, and we need some help on how to figure this out for our family. So my husband has a son from a one-time indiscretion that our children do not know about. He's 14 years old, and he lives with his mother in another state.

We provide full financial support to him, and we had about an eight-year court battle to try to establish and develop a relationship. It wasn't until he was 10 that the courts mandated that she produce the child. And it was revealed in court or therapy that she had told him that his dad was dead and a deadbeat all of those years as she was moving around, changing her phone number, changing her name. Just a very tumultuous type relationship. And we were kind of always two steps behind her. So once they started court order therapy, he traveled for a year. He would do one week a month to do therapy and to visit. And then at the end of that year, when the judge asked the child how he felt, he just expressed a lot of anger towards his dad. He didn't want a relationship with him.

He didn't want a relationship with our family. And the judge said that he was going to honor that and that if he wanted to, when he was ready, he could come around. So we felt that we had exhausted all of our options legally, financially. We incurred a lot of debt to meet that yearly, that monthly requirement. And emotionally, we didn't really know what else to do. So we came to terms with that. We worked through that process. And obviously, we hope that he'll come around when he's older and ready to have that conversation. And we don't need to involve the courts. So I guess our question is, how do we tell our two children about this?

At what age is appropriate? It's just causing a lot of anxiety, thinking of opening up something so burdensome that will leave this hole in their hearts that they have this brother that they don't know. But I'm also scared to wait until they're, you know, 30 and 28, and this kid shows up, and he's their brother, and they had no idea. Yeah, don't do that. And they find out that we kept this big secret from them. Yeah, don't do that. So I kind of want to figure out how to navigate that. So I'm going to answer two parts.

One, you didn't ask me, and one, you did, okay? Okay. I cannot recommend enough that your husband leave an inexhaustible trail of care and compassion and intervention with this young boy. What that may look like right now is a monthly or even weekly letter that what you're doing is you're building up months and years of, I reached out, I reached out, I was the grownup, I was the grownup, I was the grownup. There will come a moment when he's going to want to talk to his dad. It will happen. And there will come a moment when

he'll see things clearly. It just happens that way. And it might not be till he's 30. It might not be till he's 21. There will be moments when he wants to know. And that's when you want him to know this guy reached out to me and would not stop. What a kid is looking for is that never ceasing connection. And I cannot get my feelings hurt by a 14-year-old with a manipulative mother. I can't get my feelings hurt by a 14-year-old, period. There'll come a day when your husband can pull out all that paperwork and say, look this young man in the eye and say, I went to the ends of the earth for you. I want you to know that. But I want this kid to feel that. Okay?

And so whether that's a – you send pictures of you and him. I probably wouldn't include the two young ones yet until he's older. But I want him to know that y'all reached out and reached out and reached out and reached out. And one day he'll loop back around. I almost have no question that will happen. The second part is this. You have a deep well of emotion tied to this situation, right? This kid means a lot to you. I bet you and I could talk offline in person for about 15 minutes and you could double over in tears, right? I mean, I bet it happened pretty quick. Your seven-year-old and your four-year-old don't have that.

They don't have that emotional connection and all of that baggage and all of that pain associated with it. And so if you let them know, you guys have a brother. And daddy had another little boy and he lives with another mommy in this place and you leave it at that, then they will go, oh, the one of them, the oldest one may ask, can we go see him? And you'll say, someday. And you just begin to norm it over time. The less sensationalized you make it, the more fact-based you make it,

they don't have the baggage you do. They'll go, okay. And as they get older, they'll ask questions about, that is another, we have another brother, we have another son. And as they get older, that's when you can begin to have more and more open conversation. Right now, the word indiscretion, I don't even like that word. I know, but it just feels so – I know it does.

I know. It is, but it is. A seven-year-old wouldn't understand what indiscretion meant, right? Right. He would understand. Daddy has had another little boy that's older than you with another mommy, and that mommy lives in so-and-so. And hopefully one day we'll get to – everybody will get to play, but he's older than you right now.

And your kid will go, huh, what's his name? And you'll say, Tom. And you'll go, huh, can I have some nachos? That's how they'll absorb this story. Okay? And what you don't want to do is communicate anything other than I'm just telling you the truth. And as they age, this conversation gets deeper and more whole and bigger. I had a conversation with my son last night.

He's 10 now. And we were talking about integrity and honesty. And I had to tell him, your dad lied a lot when he was a kid. I was real insecure. And I just didn't tell the truth a lot, which is why I'm a lunatic about it now. And he couldn't have heard that at seven. At seven, it was daddy got in trouble a lot when he was a kid. You know what I mean?

Right. And so, again, you just slowly open it up like a funnel. But I think you are dead on, and I love your heart here. You can't have secrets just destroy families. If you have a picture picture if this eventually there's a pen pal thing maybe your husband puts a self-addressed stamped envelope in there and gives this young kid an opportunity to write him back um even puts paper in there and says i'd love to hear from you i've put an envelope in there you may lose that envelope for five years but it's

year six that you get that letter back right and that letter may come back with just a traced middle finger on it right and your husband just has to know i'm not gonna get my feelings hurt by a 14 year old i'm just not and i'm gonna keep trying we've sent some um in the beginning we used to send cards and we would send gifts and we would send all of these things and and it was pretty much all rejected um and so we recently found him on a social media site. And so he reached out to him directly through that. And so he just, that's kind of been, you know, he hasn't responded, but again, trying to at least say, I'm here when you're ready to talk. And again, not talking at all about his mother because we don't want it to be, your mother is so horrible and we are so great.

Everybody has to answer for their choices in this situation. And he'll figure it out. I just really want to figure out. He will figure out deception from mom. He will figure out mom is not who she said she was. He'll figure out why did we move 14 different places when I was a kid. He'll figure that out. And it may be that mom is rejecting these letters.

You don't know, right? It may be that mom is sitting return on these things. And you have no idea the poison that she's filling that poor little boy with. And it may be that one day you have a box of letters that you hand to him. I hope you keep every one of those things that gets returned. I hope you keep everything. Because at one point, that will be part of the conversation. And you just want, not only do you want to trail, I don't want my husband giving up on his son.

Right? I don't want to be married to that guy. So I want him to continue. It sounds like he's not, right? I'm not putting that out there. But he's going for it and going for it and going for it. Reach out on social media. That's always a paltry, chicken crap second option.

Right? It's just not a way to communicate with people that you love. Always be sending cards. Always be sending letters. I love just handwritten letters, man. Keep sending them. Keep sending them. Keep sending them. She may burn every one of them. Great. It's not going to hurt him. Your original question, yes. You got to tell the little kids and I would tell them in a way that preserves everybody's dignity right now, doesn't let them be surprised, and maybe you introduce it with a photo.

And kind of like my daughter, she's five, she curls up and looks at old photo albums, and look, this is when you were in mommy's tummy. It may be, you know who that is? That little boy is your brother. That's your brother. Daddy has another son who's way older than you with another mommy. And they'll go, how does that work? And you may have to explain some stuff, but you can start it. So they'll have a picture in their head and then they're just going to go on about their day and never, never lie to your kids. Tell them the truth. I love your heart, Melissa. This is a hard one. This is a tough one um but lean into the hard conversation it's going to be hard and lean don't give up chasing that little boy all right let's go to sean in raleigh north carolina sean what's up how we doing

hey there john thanks for having me on the show i appreciate your time hey brother thanks for calling how can i help man all right so I've got a really difficult family situation. And normally I'm chock full of solutions, but this just has me at my wits end. And this is the first time I've ever done something like this. So I need some help on this. So I'm going to give you the short abbreviated version. And then I guess we can kind of fill in details as we uh as we need to so a couple of years ago i found out uh that my dad is being abused by my mom okay and it's been physically or i don't know physically or psychologically emotionally psychologically

emotionally nothing nothing physical they've been married for going on 40 years now okay and it's been based in a lot of fear and paranoia on her end i grew up with it too i'm an only child uh so it was just me and my dad there and as i was growing up i didn't know anything different i didn't realize what was going on, that it wasn't normal. But there was just have many friends growing up as a result because I was always trying to control everybody else. And, you know, thankfully I've been, because of my wife, she's helped me, you know, grow out of that. And I see the issue, but a few years ago, uh, you know, my dad, when they came to visit us here, we live several states away. They came to visit and he just unleashed all these problems that had been going on. I mean, it was just like he could not hold it back anymore.

This is just 30-something years where he's been treated like a three-year-old in every little way. When you say unleashed, did he just, y'all just went out and had a cigar, and he just told you a bunch of stuff? Or he snapped and was yelling in the middle of the house? No, it was when my wife and my mom, they went out somewhere and he and I were just alone together. And then he just, it just kind of like a damn broke. And then he was just telling me about all these problems they've been having. He's a, he's a very relaxed guy. He's, you know, very non-confrontational. He's high in agreeableness. Uh, but he just, you know, very non-confrontational. He's high in agreeableness. But he just, you know, was saying that they've been having these massive blow-up fights for several years now. I'm 27.

I've been out of the house for, you know, about five or six years. And they never did this growing up. But, you know, where they're yelling and screaming at each other. He's going out in the yard and throwing stuff around, kicking stuff up. So this has been going on for quite some time but then over the summer with the whole pandemic social upheaval it just got to be a hundred acts um and as i said before she's very afraid and very paranoid about things i mean i remember one time where she made me get rid of a video game because she believed that the design on the cover jacket would bring demonic forces into the house yes how was that type of thing oh man wow and just

and just things like that that you know me have been building up resentment so so fast forward to now how can i help you all right so it got 100x I said, and it got to the point where, again, my dad just reached out to me by text, this massive text, just profanity, extreme, just telling me about how he can't take it anymore. He's been at the point where he said that he just wants to die. He told me a couple months after the fact that he had a suicide plan. Yikes. And he almost went through with it. If not for divine intervention, I really believe that he would have. And thankfully now, he says that he's not in that position anymore, but he's still just saying that he'd rather just die than live. And part of the problem right now is that I know all

about this stuff. I know about his psychological state. I know about just how difficult it is with him, but my mom does not know that I know. And for years I've been living basically this double existence and psychologically, I just do not know how to deal with it. So I think he's at the point where they need to separate and I just want to know how to handle this. Yeah. So I appreciate your heart for your folks. You're carrying a lot. And after this call, I'm going to ask you to put almost all the stuff down. Okay. So a couple of things that you put out here and we're going to go through them systematically. Okay. If your dad says I have a plan, then what you're going to respond with is you're going to call people in his life

that love him, or you're going to call 911 and you're going to tell your dad, I love you enough that I'm not going to let you kill yourself. I'm not, period. And unfortunately, you're in a position that many, many, many grown kids, how old are you? 27. 27. How long have you been married? Going on four years now. Okay you're in a in a position happens all the time millions millions of people in the same position where you suddenly start having to parent your parents okay you become the adult in this relationship and some of it is your dad is watching you in this new relationship he may see something in between you and your wife that reminds him of his young marriage, or he may see something that just makes it so beautiful. He realizes he never

had that. Partridge in a pear tree. Here's the deal. I don't care what he's seeing. For some reason, he feels safe enough to tell you, hey, I'm out. I love you. I'm out. And you have, it's not by your hand, but in your lap. It got dropped in your lap and you're going to deal with it. I will not let my dad kill himself, at least to the best of my ability. I'm going to call in every Calvary I have and that I know. The second thing is give your dad permission to separate from your mom. Okay. And I don't know if he's asking for that.

It sounds like he might be. Give him permission. Dad, if you need to get away, get away. Come stay with us. Feel free to come stay with us. Here's the thing about your mom. She will never hear it. Okay?

I know. Any sort of explanation you give to her, she'll never hear any sort of anything. She's not going to hear it. And so what I'm going to suggest is not not you feel like you're carrying this psychological burden and you're living a double life you're not, just stop carrying it you would not talk just walk up to your mom and start talking Spanish

because she would know what you're talking about this is the same thing so just put that burden down you have a man who loves you a man who feels vulnerable for whatever reason you must be a great young man and you must be doing great things with your marriage or he wouldn't trust you like this.

And he's either testing you out, like he has to tell somebody, he's crying out for help, or he's asking for permission. And you do not have my permission to hurt yourself. You do have my permission. You can move into my basement for a season. You can move next door for a season.

You can. I will still love you if you have to separate yourself in a not safe situation, but you're not going to kill yourself. And what you need to do at this moment is to picture yourself. You feel 27 and you feel like your dad, you need to picture yourself at 45. I'm standing up tall and I'm going to start making some of these very clear decisions. The next thing you need to tell your dad is you are not allowed to dump this stuff on me. You've got to find professionals and friends your own age that are able to handle this stuff. And he may curl up in a ball, but he is, you are not his receptacle, his trash can for marital issues. You're his son. Does that make sense?

Yeah, he was working with a psychologist for a while. And, you know, he talked, he told my mom to come there, but it's, she doesn't see any of this as an issue. So you're, I mean, you're right. I mean, it's, you know, just all fear, paranoia, just for so many years, these tracks are just been worn down in her mind. And if I brought any of this stuff up, you know, it's not going to make any difference. So you're right about that. So all your dad can do is take care of himself, right? And if he's making suicide plans, one of the common misconceptions is that suicide is the problem. It's not for people who are in his situation. Suicide is a solution. And if he feels like a burden to other people and he feels like he's going to hurt and that hurt is never, ever going to stop and he's got no one to go to,

suicide is a solution to that hurt, right? And what you have to do is ring every bell there is. You will not do that. And I would have a hard, hard conversation with him directly. Like, I am your son and I love you more than anything in the world except for my wife. And you are not going to kill yourself. And he'll say, oh, no. I'll say, no, no, no, no, Dad. You are not going to kill yourself. Period.

And if I hear about you making a suicide plan, I will call in the Calvary. I'll call in 911. I'll call in every psychologist I know of in your area. I will ring every bell there is because I love you too much to let you do that. I would love you to take a break from mom and come stay with me. I would love you to take a break from mom. Come rent an apartment in this junky apartment complex down the street from my house. You and I will go fishing and hang out, but I want you to get away from there and you've got to go see somebody.

Yeah, I've been, I talked to him about two or three weeks ago and that was the first time I suggested he may have to leave. And it was, I thought, you know, thinking about that, you know, when he told me that he was taking, you know, I forget what the name of the prescription was, but he was taking double the maximum dosage and three Benadryls and a drink on top of that just to numb the pain. That's when I came to the solution that I think this needs to end. Well, yeah, he's just on a dangerous, slippery slope, brother. and yeah whatever whatever psychiatrist is writing him that type of prescription and letting him take it in that way should have their medical license removed um but it is what it is well he's doing more than the maximum dose what he which he was prescribed so he's yeah but at some point you run out halfway before your prescription should have run out and then

they'll just give you another one right that? That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. He can double up. No one can stop him from doing that, but they can stop him from getting another one until it's time, right? And they often don't. But that's a whole other conversation. But yeah, I think being real direct with him and letting him know how much you love him and letting him know that he's got a place to land with you. Again, when folks, I've got nowhere to go. And not only do I not have anyone to go to, but if I do, I'm a burden to them. Because I guarantee you, Sean, when he, after he left your house, he beat himself up for putting that crap

on you. He did. He beat himself up. He finally just let it out to the one guy he trusts, which is his son, and then he beat himself up about it. And that's that burdensome loop, right? Just piling it on, piling it on. He needs to know you're safe. You got boundaries. And you may, how about this? Get with your wife and identify these boundaries. Can dad come stay with us for a month? Can dad move into an apartment down the street? Can I afford to get on a plane ticket and go meet with a counselor with my dad? Can I do that once? Can we have the money to do that?

And can I look my dad in the eye over coffee and say, I'm blessing you in your journey to be well. You're not doing okay. And then you're going to deal with mom, but mom's not going to, mom's not going to hear any of this stuff, right? She needs some professional help as well. This is a tough one, man. You're going to have to lean in and make real hard grown-up decisions and have real hard grown-up boundaries. And this is the hardest part. You cannot connect yourself to the outcome. What do I mean by that? If your dad does the unthinkable and hurts himself, takes his life, that will not be Sean's fault. I'll even go as far as to say that will not be your mom's fault.

There will be a cocktail of reasons why that happened. Both way before you were even born and, and, and, and, and. If your dad moves in with you and stays with you for a couple of months and your marriage gets goofy, you and your wife are going to have to work really hard. You can't hold yourself to the outcome of this. What you can hold yourself to is what you can control, which is your attitude, your approach, your direction, your boundaries, and your love for both of your parents. That's it, man. It's hard. Relationships are hard. Parenting is hard. And man, we will be thinking about your dad. I want to know how that conversation goes with your old man. So after you

have that conversation, pause for a minute and then shoot me an email. Let me know what you told him. Let me know how it goes. And if he wants to call the show, I'd love to talk to him. And if you want to give me a call back, I'd love to talk to you again, Sean. Thank you so much. We have one more quick email here before we wrap up the show. This is part of a series of emails. We get all these all the time. And so we came up with something to help folks in this situation.

It sounds connected to that last call with Sean, but it's not. The email's from Will. It says, if something happens to me, I want to make sure my kids go to the right folks, the right people. There are family members I would want to take them and other members that I definitely wouldn't want to take them. Should I have these conversations now? The answer is unequivocally.

The moment you have a kid, the moment you find out you're pregnant, you must have the conversation about who will take these kids if we die. And after you decide who will take these kids, you will then have that conversation with the person that you hope will take your kids. Because you can be in a car wreck on the way home from the hospital, for God's sake, and you do not want the state government of whatever state you live in deciding to clear that mess out. Not my family, man. It would all be smooth and easy. I'm telling you, I've been there. I've sat with people and it is not clean. It is a mess. People come out of the woodwork and start suing each other.

And folks who are the most quiet, placid, kind people go to war with each other over money and over family members. Or they abandon them. Ah, I don't have time for that. I don't have the money for that. I don't have the room for that. Maybe uncle, whoever over in another state can do the right thing, have the money for that. I don't have the room for that. Maybe uncle, whoever over in another state can do the right thing, have the hard conversation. But here's the thing. I know that conversation's hard. The last thing you want to talk about when you have a little kid is, well,

we might die and someone else is going to have to take the kid. You don't want to have that conversation. That conversation's hard. It's awkward. And I say this over and over, just talking to Sean, life is full of hard conversations and harsh realities. It just is. And the earlier you can have those, the earlier you can set those foundations up, you just sleep with peace, right? So our team put together the how to talk about your legacy guide that will help you have right conversations before and after some of these big life transitions. A lot of this is focused on making a will. Part of making a will is deciding if we both die,

who takes our kids? Where are they going to go live? And this guide will help you plan how to plan your conversations, how to get on the same page with your spouse, how to ask people to be the executor, how to ask people to be the kid's guardian or power of attorney. That's an awkward conversation. I've had to do it several times. It's weird. I've had somebody tell me, no, that's life. And I didn't hate them for it. We just had to move on.

So I want you to text LEGACY to 33789 and get your free how to talk about your legacy guide today. That's LEGACY33789. The folks here put this together, and hopefully it will help you and your family have some of these hard, hard conversations. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. All right, so as we wrap up today's show, man, one of my favorite albums in the history of albums,

one of the greatest poets. Man, some of his records are, you just listen to them, you're like, I don't actually know what's happening right now. I think my brain's imploding on the inside out. He's that kind of artist. He's brilliant. He's brilliant where he levels up, right? But he came out with one of my favorite records ever.

In 1999, the name of the record was called Mule Variations by the one and only legendary Tom Waits. On that album, there's just incredible song after incredible song after incredible song. One of my favorites is called Since I Put Your Picture in a Frame. And it doesn't have many words, but it's a poem. And if you listen to him sing it, it gets way, way, way into your soul. So on Mule Variations, 1999, Tom Waits. Since I put your picture in a frame, he writes,

the sun come up and it was blue and gold. The sun come up and it was blue and gold ever since I put your picture in a frame. I come calling in my Sunday best. I come calling in my Sunday best ever since I put your picture in a frame and I'm going to love you till the wheels come off. And I love you, baby. And I always will love you, baby. And I always will. Ever since I put your picture in a frame, stop what you're doing right now and go

listen to Tom Waits. Ever since I put your picture in a frame. This has been the Dr. John Deloney Show.