The Dr. John Delony Show - Preparing for Marriage, a Convoluted Affair, & Talking to Kids About Cancer

Episode Date: February 17, 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   I think my girlfriend is the one. What can we do not to prepare for marriage and hopefully avoid stupid mistakes? Email: Where can my wife and I find a marriage counselor? My husband had an affair; how do I get past this? My husband has cancer, how do we tell our autistic child? Lyrics of the Day: "Positive Songs for Negative People" - Frank Turner   tag: marriage, relationships, counseling/therapy, infidelity, marriage, sickness/illness, parenting   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 a 19-year-old guy who found, quote-unquote, the one. He wants some advice, and I give him some. We also talked to a woman who's got a kid and a husband who has a kid by another mom and another kid by another mom. Things get messy when he has an affair. And finally, I talked to an incredible mom and wife whose husband was just diagnosed with cancer, and she wants to know some tactics and some strategies for telling her autistic child what's going on. Stay tuned. Hey, what's up? What's up? Hope everybody's doing good. This is Deloney.

Welcome to the Dr. John Deloney Show. A show where we take real calls from real people. It's not scripted. It's not pretend. It's not fake. It's real people struggling with real issues, real things going on in their hearts and their minds. The good stuff, the bad stuff, the cuts and the bruises,

the skin, knees. Reaching a hand down and pick each other up, helping each other dust off, and then making the next right move. So if you're new to our gang here, dude, we talk about everything on this show, mental health issues, relationship issues, marriage issues, addiction, parenting, anything.

Anything you can think of, give me a call, 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. Or you can go to the, I'm not going to do it. They told me there is no more www anymore, said old man. So you go to johndeloney.com. Nope, forget it. Go to www.johndeloney.com. You forgot the HTTPS colon slash slash.

You're going to go to HTTP colon slashes www.johndeloney.com slash show. Fill out the form. I would prefer if you could just send a letter in on a yellow pad. Write a letter and mail it to us. But www.johndeloney.com slash show is much faster. Now I'm just doing it on accident. I can't help it now. So I get this question a lot, and I want to just address this right at the beginning of the show.

Folks ask a lot, how can I better connect with my kids? I'm always telling people to touch their kids on the face. I'm always telling them to play with their kids, interact with my kids. I'm always telling people to touch their kids on the face. I'm always telling them to play with their kids, interact with their kids. And folks ask a lot, how do you do that? How do you practice that? And so here is a page out of the child play therapy book. There's something that was transformative for me as a kid.

And Dr. Janet Freshly, Dr. Janet Freshley Hicks taught me this. And she's a maestro at child therapy. And it paid significant dividends in my life with my kids. And then it helped me become a better husband. And then it helped me become a better employee because it just changed the way I interact with people. Most of the time, I would get down on all fours or on the floor and try to be a good dad. That way, I play with my kids. Number one,

you got to get down on the floor and play with your kids. If you got kids who are teenagers, this won't work. I'm talking to folks with kids who are maybe 10, 11, 12, and younger. 10, 11, 12 is getting a little bit old, but let's try it. Let's cap it at 10. You get down on the floor to play with your kids. And what I turned those into inevitably were lessons. I would say, hey, you know, you can do this with your Legos or why don't you make the horse do this? Or why don't you? And I would try to direct the play for these kids. And I felt good about myself because I was on the floor. In all, it was good, right? I'm playing with my kids. But what I teach kids behind my messaging is whenever dad shows up, whenever somebody else shows up,

the way they want to do things is the best, and you should just do whatever they want to do. And I rob my children from the opportunity to, A, learn to use their voice, learn to use their imagination. But more importantly, I let them know that their job when we interact is to see me, not the other way around. And so, what play therapy does is it teaches a kid how to be seen, how to be heard, and it teaches the parent how to listen. And so, there's this activity that a therapist will do called tracking. And here is all it is. And it's hard to do. You got to practice it. But you get down on the floor with your five-year-old, your six-year-old, your three-year-old,

your two-year-old, your 10-year-old, and you just follow them. And you say things like, you are picking up that car. Wow, you are driving that car really fast. You are riding that horse all the way across your room. Oh, you just jumped that horse over your bed. And here's the thing, that's it. No questions, no advice, no invitations, no, what if we, nope, you just track the child's movements with their toys and eventually the child will tell a story with their toys because children speak through play and what it does over time and it usually happens really quickly like 10 minutes 15 minutes 20 minutes is they may look at you kind of weird, like, what are you doing? And you just let them know, I'm just listening because I love listening to you. I love being here with you. And then you go right back to tracking them. Ask no questions, give no directions, just track them and you will

watch them come alive. And it's really remarkable. And then if you do that to your wife or your husband, they're going to call the police on you and you're going to be institutionalized. So don't track your family members as they're older, but it does over time teach you how to sit and listen to somebody and be engaged with my advice, I watch her talk. I listen to her talk. What is she actually saying? What's her whole body saying, right? What is her facial expressions? My 10-year-old son, my 11-year-old son, what is he trying to tell me? What is he actually speaking? What is he interested in? What is he loving right now? And that's different than waiting for my turn to give him advice. Well, what'd you tell the teacher? Well, did you do your homework? I know you got an A on that. Way to go. What'd you get on the other exam? Instead of just skipping everything, I can listen to where he's coming from.

And then I took that to work and started listening to my employees in a different way, listening to my coworkers in a new way, and just started teaching me how to listen. So start with your kids. Just start tracking. Just start tracking them. If you don't have young kids and you have older kids, just start listening to them, right? Start in your head tracking them. Man, he's just throwing that ball back and forth. Man, he is making some great catches.

And then you may pop off with, hey, that was a great catch. Man, you are looking good. You're doing a great job. I saw you are looking good. You're doing a great job. I saw you today at practice. You look good, man. How was practice? Tell me about practice. And you start cultivating the practice of listening and being with. That's my two seconds for today.

Tracking, it's awesome. Let's get to the phones. Let's go to my brother Radish in Vancouver, Canada. Radish, I've got to just be obvious, man. As a guy whose last name rhymes with the lunch meat, I had the childhood, man. Is your real name Radish or is that just what they call you? That's just what they call me.

Well, from one fellow food nickname to the other, it's good to talk to you, man. How are you? I'm good. Thanks so much for taking my call. You bet. How can I help? Okay. So I've been listening to the show for a while.

And one thing I've noticed is quite a few of the callers are having some kind of struggle or issue in like their marriage. So I'm calling because my girlfriend and I have been dating for about five months. I love her so much and I'm pretty sure she's like the one for me. So I'm wondering what we can do now so that we are prepared to have like a strong and connected and healthy marriage in the future. Well, good for you, man. That's awesome that you are thinking that way, and I appreciate the uplifting call. So I'm going to start your uplifting answer with a negative.

Are you ready? Okay. There is no such thing as the one doesn't exist. Not real. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I,

did you know I was going to say that? Yeah, I know that too. It's just like the quickest way for me to explain that. I'm pretty sure I'm going to want to marry this girl. That your heart burst when you're with her. Okay, so how old are you, man? I'm 19.

19, all right. And tell me where you met her. Online. She actually lives in Washington. Okay. So she's about two hours away from me, and it's been a difficult five months since the borders closed. I haven't really been able to see her much, but

we're finding ways to connect online and do different things. So it's been good. So what, what has tipped the balance for you what has made you say you know what this is it man i've had 19 years of riding solo and it's time to time to get a partner and head off into the wild west what is it about those last five months what is it about her that makes you think yep i'm done My search is over. Well, I don't know. I've thought about it a lot. And for me, it's just a whole lot of things seem to be coming together well.

Pick them apart for me, man. Yeah, we connect really well. She kind of, I'm kind of a weird dude around here and a lot of, and it's hard to find people that actually like understand me. Yeah, I can see that. So they're, it's like they're few and far between. And she's one of those people that actually gets me. She's kind, uh, hardworking. She's just a wonderful person.

And it's somebody I can see spending the rest of my life with and so when you so a being seen and heard for the first time feels good doesn't it yeah yeah and being valued for the things that make you unique your weird things i've got my plenty of weird things and um it feels good to be seen, right? So when you say, hey, I think you're it, what's her response? She's pretty much in the same place I am. Okay. Like, we're pretty much on the same page with it.

And so fast forward, what do you think this looks like? And not in a fantasy world or a mythological world. Like, walk me through the next few months of your life. What is that going to look like? Well, when we first started dating, we kind of made the decision that around one year, we would strongly consider if this was going to be, like, if we were going to get married or if we were going to end up going separate ways since we don't want to date for 10 years and then did not go anywhere already so next few months is probably going to be just more getting to know her trying to

figure out some more stuff in my own life and make sure that I'm kind of on the right track and then go from there, I guess. I'm not sure. All right, so I'm going to give you some thoughts and some ideas, and what I'm not going to do is say that you're too young, and I'm not going to say that you've only known her for five months. I'm not going to give you any of that traditional stuff. You're going to get that from your friends and your family and from the internets and all that. Okay. So I'm not going to give you those

things. 19 is young. And I actually gave up a full ride scholarship to one university and went across the country to another school because I met a young girl when I was 18 and I wrapped it up. That was it for me. I was done. And I ended up paying for school or for a chunk of it. And it didn't work out, but I ended up meeting the person I was going to marry at that same place. And so all I have to say is I've made some big life decisions when I was your age based on this feeling and this, I just know this is it. And so I'm not even going to judge that. I'm going to say, man, carry forward. Here's a couple of things I want you to be careful of. And I want you to think through, okay? Thing number one is there is a big difference between one year and 10 years. And so I am really pushing back hard,

not just with you, but with all of culture right now on this obsession with an ROI on friendship. ROI meaning return on investment. You are my friend so that I can help, you can help me get a job. I am your friend because I'm networking. I want to be near you because you're going to help me get where I want to go. I want to have three friends that are ahead of me and two friends that are behind me. Dude, we have lost the art and the spiritual connection of just having people in our lives, just because. And so I want you to focus deeply, not on a time limit. If it's not a year, man, we got to call it because I think that's foolish and crazy. My wife and I dated five years. We broke up a whole bunch of times, okay?

Any sort of artificial constraint like that just becomes that, an artificial constraint. And you're going to find yourself making decisions recklessly. Either I'm not 100% and so let's just call it and you're going to break up with a great, someone who may be a lifelong friend or someone who's going to be your future wife

just because you hit a deadline. And I just am not a fan of those things. The other side of that is you're going to have to live in proximity with each other. You're going to have to figure out a way that you move to Washington, she moves to Vancouver, that y'all get in the same area and get some physical proximity over a sustained period of time where you get to see how there's some great research on disgust and relationships. One of the biggest predictors that a relationship is not going to make it is with one of the other people. One of the partners is disgusted by the way they move their mouth or like when they open their mouth, if there's like little saliva strings when they open it or something like that,

there's this disgust when they see their mouth. Kelly's face is like, yeah, gosh. And James just passed out on the board there. But there's something about, you gotta see her, okay? You've gotta be in proximity. She's gotta see you and gotta see how y'all operate, how you walk, how you treat people at the grocery store. It's those human things that you've got to see that the internet just simply cannot give you.

You can learn a lot about somebody, but it's generally a curated experience online. And there's nothing that you can trade for that connection. And then here's the final thing, man. That one language that I'm in love language is, I know you were just saying, hey, that's the easiest way I can just say, man, I'm all in, head over heels for this young lady. And that's all good. But I want you to always remember this. Love is a choice. And it's a decision. It's a thing you do every single day.

So if you decide at some point in the next year, two years, whatever it is, she is it. She's it. And she decides that for you. I want you to know that that's not going to be a, like there's not going to be a music swell and like, you know, there's not going to be some James Horner, like symphony playing up behind you. And suddenly you're going to stand taller and you're going to have this romantic way. That's just not how it works. You decide I'm going to love you forever. And then you're going to wake up the next day and say, I'm going to love you forever. And then four months from then, she's going to get like a

real bad virus and be sick and be thrown up. And you're going to wake up that morning and say, I'm going to love you forever. And then there's going to be days that she just walks in and takes your breath away. Just stunning. And you're going to say, I'm going to love you forever. And then there's going to be days that she comes in and you're like, I need you to leave because you are making me angry and frustrated and I am going to love you forever. And then there's going to be days that she hits you in the head with a, with a wiffle ball bat because you deserve it. And you're going to have to say, I'm going to love you forever. This is a daily decision, every single day for the rest of your life. And so as you morph from these feelings of desire, I just want to be with you.

I want to just be connected with you for the rest of my life. As that turns into the day-to-day grind, the day-to-day safety, as you learn just each other's rhythms, I want you to then focus on cultivating desire, cultivating being in love. It's a thing you're going to tell yourself every day. It's a thing you're going to practice. And that doesn't sound sexy. And they didn't talk about that in the notebook. They didn't talk about that in Romeo and Juliet, but it's the reality of living with somebody. So all that to say, 19 man, you won the lottery. Good for you, dude. You may just be finding someone who sees you and loves you for the first time. And high school sucks for 99.9% of people because they have to pretend and play and it's not real and it doesn't feel right.

And so, man, I want to encourage you. Lean in, dude. Go for it. At some point, you're going to have to do your goodwill hunting drive. You're going to have to get in an old crummy car and you're going to have to do your goodwill hunting drive. You're gonna have to get an old crummy car and you're gonna have to drive across the country and move to be next to her. And you're all gonna have to figure out life that way. So brother radish from Deloney baloney to radish. Good for you. That's awesome. Um, this brings me up to a bigger question. A couple of, not a couple, a lot of folks want to talk about, um, Oh, by the way, go see a marriage counselor.

I'm looking down here at the email. Y'all start doing some premarital counseling, some relationship counseling. It's good at your age to begin to, what are things I need to look for in a marriage? What are the questions I need to ask? And a third party can often walk you alongside and say, ask this question. Have y'all thought about asking this? And it just gives you a new permission. So I got an email here from Blake.

Says, my wife and I have been discussing seeing a marriage counselor to deal with some small issues before they become big issues. Yes, Blake. Yes. We are, that sounded like Johnny Carson's guy. Good for you, Blake. We are new to our area and have no idea how to find somebody. Honestly, pick up a phone book.

Pick up a, or Google it in your area, marriage counselors in your area. If you're at a local church or at work, ask somebody, hey, y'all know any good marriage counselors? We're past being embarrassed by that. Every couple should go see somebody at some regular interval just to check in or have people in their life they can check in with. But just ask and remember this, the most important thing, the number one thing about getting well, getting on the path to wellness, getting some good tools in therapy and counseling is the relationship with the therapist.

And so you and your wife pick one, you go and you have a great first session and you really connect and this therapist, she gets you or he gets you. Awesome. Go back. You get in the car and your wife's like, I love this therapist. He's incredible. He hears us. And you say, that dude is a wackadoodle do. I'm not going to see that guy. I can't stand them. Then you both go, great. Let's move on to the next one. And then you go find again. And then you go find again, okay? This isn't a one and done deal. But honestly, don't be embarrassed about it. Just ask. Just ask. And if you got to go to the phone book, go to the phone book. If you got to go online, look for some online reviews and go that way. I think it's a good way to handle it. Great question, Blake.

Radish, y'all go, once you move and you're in the same vicinity, then y'all just agree. Let's go see somebody and we can ask some great questions, talk about our past, and we can begin to merge this thing. All right, let's go to Wendy in Atlanta, Georgia. Wendy, good morning. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you? I'm all right.

I'm all right. So what can I do to help today? So my husband and I have children from previous relationships. And a little over a year ago, he had an affair with one of our children's moms. So I'm wondering kind of what are appropriate boundaries and how we kind of move forward from that. There's a lot on that one, man. So walk me through just some of the complexities. How long have you and your current husband been married?

June will be five years. Five years, okay. And then how many kids did he bring to this partnership? Two, from two separate relationships. Okay. So you were relationship number three? Yes. Okay. Do you all have any kids together separate relationships. Okay. So you were relationship number three? Yes. Okay.

Do you all have any kids together? One. Okay. So he brought in two kids. Y'all made one. And then how many kids did you bring? One. Okay.

From one other relationship? Yes. All right. So you have four kids total. One you brought in, one together, and then two he brought in from two different people. Okay. So you have one, two, three, four, five different adults navigating this relationship together, right? Right.

Plus, my daughter's dad is married, so we co-parent well with her stepmom. Sweet. So we have an additional family. Okay, all right. So I don't know if you've ever sat down and just mapped this out like I'm doing right here. Just to start this call.

Oh, yeah. That's a lot, right? It's a family forest. We don't have a family tree. Yes, you've got a family forest here. So give me a sense of your demeanor. Are you somebody that laughs a lot through life? Are you somebody that holds to control tightly?

Tell me who you are. Oh, man. I am a control freak at its finest. All right. I am very one-on-one with 90% of the time, so I like things to be stable and to go typically in the direction that I have planned for it to go. I get anxious about it.

So just taking a stab at this, you spend a lot of your time anxious. Is that right? Oh, yeah. Okay. And you, after a series of seasons being highly anxious, there's just seasons when you want to lay in bed and not get out of bed and just watch Netflix. Is that fair? That's accurate.

Okay. So tell me about this guy that you married. He's the total opposite. He is very laid back, though with the flow. He doesn't get, he's never really shown a temper about anything. You know, something starts bothering. It has to be something pretty serious. He is actually, he's a detective.

So a lot at work. And then I think when he comes home, he doesn't really want to deal with a lot at home too. So he's a police detective? He is. Okay, so my dad was one. So I grew up in a house with home too. Right. So he's a police detective? He is. Okay. So my dad was one. So I grew up in a house with the detectives. So they're very unique, extraordinary, yet unique individuals, right?

So I got you on that. So he, a couple years into your marriage, was it right when you were having a baby or right around that season? No, it was after. Okay. Probably. She's a little over one and a half. Okay. I'll call her a newborn until she's about three before your life becomes any semblance of normal again, okay? And folks with three-year-olds right now are like, they're not normal! Fair enough.

So then he goes back to visit baby mama of one or two or three of which he's got three now and they end up hooking up do they have they just have a one-night stand or they have a rekindled their relationship walk me through what happened um from what i understand um hey talk talk directly into the phone, okay? Sorry. There you go. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay.

We were kind of at a little bit of a rough patch in our marriage. I was really anxious about the situations that we were going through just with his work and then with having to co-parent with all of these people. So I went out of town for an interview, and while I was gone, he basically just, he confided in her, told her lots of things that I had told him out of safety, you know, not really expecting any of that to ever come out. And then he told her, and then that led to an encounter just

one time and then when i came back home um probably that following week he he told me everything that happened so he didn't try to keep it a secret but that's kind of where we was he remorseful and upset or did he just say hey by the way no he was remorseful he's tried really hard to move past this and work on our marriage and reassure me this is not going to happen again sure um and so that was a year ago and you stayed with him so tell me what surfaced recently that's making you wonder how do we move on how do i how do i reconcile this and keep going well he's pretty adamant that i have to make a decision he wants things to be resolved between me and his child's mother and i'm a firm no um she's not been remorseful about it and as soon as she found out that I knew it was well I need

to tell her my side of the story it was never I'm sorry this happened this was a mistake and it's been a total not take responsibility at all and that's just to me I don't want to deal with it like I'm going to therapy working on me. And if you're not making positive steps to work on you, there's no benefit in this. But I think his biggest fear is that the child's going to recognize that there is an issue there because I don't have any interaction with her whatsoever. But I also don't feel like I have to. He has a dad that takes care of him and a mom. And when he's with us, I love him so much. I take care of him.

I don't allow my feelings for her to impact how I love him, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so what is the picture of this mythical relationship your husband envisions that you and one of the other baby mamas has does he want you all to hang out and go get margaritas together well i mean what does he picture i think he well i mean we talked about this friday again um it was basically you at least need to acknowledge one another's existence when you're around one another and you know prior to this happening, we had a good relationship. You know, we would go do things with the kids, all of us.

I mean, we did birthday parties together. We were unusual in that we could get along in a healthy way. But then after that happened, it was kind of like, well, I trusted you. You broke this trust, not just in a little way, but this was my marriage. Right. And you're not remorseful. So I don't know. I want to be okay in that, hey, but that's it.

I don't want a friendship, and I think he wants the friendship to be there so that there's not that awkward tension that is obviously there. Sure. So, man, I'm just going to speak directly from my heart. Is that okay? Yeah, that's fine. All right. So, number one, you married a guy that has gotten three different women pregnant and

had three different kids by three different moms. Okay? Right. So, there should be no surprise as to what you got tangled up in. Is that fair? Right. Yeah. Now, we all want us to believe that we're going to be the one that helps change somebody.

We all want to be that person that I'm going to be so desirable. I'm going to be so loved that loving that this isn't going to fill in the blank. And it did. It happened to you. That sucks, right? That doesn't give him an excuse to cheat on you. That doesn't give him an excuse to go disclose intimate things to somebody. The hard part here is, is that he's had an intimate relationship with three different people, right? He's grown humans with three different people. That's intimate moments. And so what

you guys need to do is have a boundaries conversation if you haven't already, and not a fight, not a war, but a, here's the things that I want to be ours in this relationship. And normally that's things like kids and home and not other women. That's not going to be your relationship because you're going to have to share your home with other people's kids. You're going to have to share your home with other people's kids You're going to have to share your home with Other women and what I mean by other women is there's going to be other women come to your house to pick up kids You're going to have to drop kids off. That's just going to be the nature of this and as they get older And you're navigating basketball games and ymca stuff. It's just going to be more and more and more right? That's the path you chose when you married this guy

Doesn't mean that it's not the right path. I'm just telling you it's going to be more complex. And that leads me to part two here is, yeah, he violated your marriage covenant. He did. And that other lady violated your marriage covenant. She did. And you chose to stay. And you chose to continue to raise this baby, this kid, when your husband's got custody, which is part of being married to him, right?

And so that means you're going to have to interact with her. Does that mean you've got to be friends? No. Does that mean you're going to call her the next one time something great happens? No. But I do think that means you're deciding to opt into a life where you've got to be a civil adult. And your husband's right. Your kids are going to learn how you interact with people that you are frustrated with or

disagree with. They're going to learn that by watching you. They don't have to know that, hey, dad re-hooked up with baby mama again. You know what I mean? And that doesn't mean you have to be okay with that. What happened was wrong. It's not cool. It was a violation of everything about your marriage. What I don't want to see happen is you continue, you stay, you forgive him. He's working his butt off to be right. He is trying to change. He's working hard. And one year, two years, three years later, you're continuing to hang this over with him, right? Because then at some point it becomes your challenge, either cut bait or be

all back in. But you can't be all in sort of with one foot and a couple of toes. And that means being all in with this guy means you're going to have to interact with her. If you ever sat down with her and just said, hey, let's just talk, what would that conversation be like? That's what he wants. Why won't you sit down with her and say, hey, look, we have at least 15 years left of interacting with each other at a minimum. And you're going to be sitting on one side of my husband and I'm going to be sitting on the other side at this kid's graduation. We're going to go to the same wedding. Like, we're in it now. What the hell?

Like, why in the world would you hook up with my husband? Like, what keeps that conversation from happening? Is it just because she didn't run to you and say i'm so sorry no i mean it's just the pain that comes with that yeah i have such a serious complex with um abandonment and rejection that I work with. And she speaks to those things because she's angry at me too. Like it's a constant attack on me as a person. And I don't, the idea of sitting down with someone and hearing those things just, it hurts. I don't want to, I don't want to do that.

I got you. If I'm honest. No, it's, hey, that's brave that you're saying that out loud, and I appreciate that. So, here's a hard thing I'm going to tell you. I'm going to try to do it gently, okay? Moving forward with that pain that you have and not addressing it for the next 15 years is going to be really hard. Really hard. It's going to be really hard, really hard. It's going to be heavy.

You can navigate it because you're tough, and you can navigate it because I think your husband loves his kids, but it's going to be really hard. And sitting down and having a one- or two-time hard conversation is going to be really hard. One of those leads to healing much, much sooner. One of those leads to putting those bricks down much, much sooner. And if you think about it from her eyes, you may be the woman that he left her for, right? Yeah. You may be both having the exact same feelings about each other, about this one dude, right?

And there can be some common ground empathy there. Is it going to feel good? No. I'm just trying to brought my head and be in your situation. Dude, you know what I mean? I can't even fathom it. But I'm trying to put myself in a situation where I can look down five years, 10 years, 15 years down the road and say, this only ends in a train wreck. This just doesn't get better. It just festers. And then at some point the kid turns 12 or 15 and starts asking questions and then there's just poison in the water. Or I can bite down on my mouthpiece. This is a fighting reference. I can bite down on my mouthpiece and I can just wait

in there. And I can call her and say, I'm tired of hurting. And I think you start that conversation with, I have a fear of abandonment and rejection. And this was really hard on me. This is a year ago. This is not getting better. It's just getting worse. And we've got to be grownups and solve this for the sake of our babies. We've got to solve this for the sake of moving on. And I just don't see a way around that, Wendy.

I don't see a way that you move forward with any sort of peace in your life, any sort of peace in your marriage, any sort of wellness in your life, that just the constant cycle of inflammation is going to make you sicker. It's going to make your body break down over time. All this is going to just continue to happen because you've got this heat in your life that's not going to go away. And I know you don't want to have that conversation. I cannot see a way forward,

a path towards healing without that conversation. I don't think it's going to be easy. It might be, actually. And it might be a moment where y'all end up weeping hard and getting frustrated at each other and crying and hugging and then agreeing to be adults. And even if one of you has the courage to say, we're not going to be best friends, let's just say that, but we've got to do this for the sake of these kids. I think there could be a lot of healing there. Can that happen?

I don't know, man. That takes two super mature people. That's the hope. And here's the thing. I'm hoping for that, Wendy, I'm hoping that our country can do that. I'm hoping that people on both sides of political aisles can sit down and say, you have hurt me in ways. You do things on a regular basis. You have a view of family. You have a view of money. You have a view of fill in the blank that I think hurts me. But man, not addressing this, not being adults,

not being real and not being honest and just yelling and fighting and avoiding is just going to kick this and kick this and kick this. And we're going to teach our kids how to do it. And we're going to teach their kids how to do it until the whole thing falls over. Or we can reach out with that first text message, Wendy, to this woman and say, it's been a year. This is going to be a hard conversation, but I'd love just you and me to go have brunch one morning. And I'm going to be an adult, and I hope you will too. And I know it's going to be a heavy conversation, but for the sake of our kids, can we just get together and meet and talk? And that's my challenge to you, Wendy. It's not going to be easy. I know if you have that conversation, my gut tells me it's going to be a tough,

brave, healing conversation. And I'd love, love, love for you to call me back and let me know how it goes. And you are not seeking validation. You are not seeking her forgiveness. You are not seeking her apology. You are seeking peace. And you can know I went first, I went forward and I heard out, I listened, I paid for the meal and then we moved on. So thank you so much for your call, Wendy. Please let me know how that conversation goes. And I hope you will continue to be brave and have that conversation. And tell your husband, come on, man, stop. Three kids, three different moms, stop, stop, stop. Okay? Every detective out there needs to have a therapist in their life because the job is hard. Y'all get to see things. You interact with people in ugly and

hard ways. You do a trauma all day long. You got to have somebody in your life that's helping you heal. And I know y'all are smart and I know y'all are trained to walk into rooms to see things you interact with people in ugly and hard ways you do a trauma all day long you gotta have somebody in your life that's helping you heal and I know y'all are smart and I know y'all are trained to walk into rooms and see things that nobody else does

and you have to experience things that nobody else does I know that because I lived with it that doesn't mean you're immune to being a person go get the help you need

get the help you need alright let's go take one more call let's go to Heather in Knoxville Heather how are you? I'm doing well the help you need. Get the help you need. All right, let's go to take one more call. Let's go to Heather in Knoxville. Heather, how are you? I'm doing well.

Thanks so much for taking my call. You betcha. Thanks for calling. How can I help today? Well, two days after Christmas this year, my husband had emergency surgery and had a tumor about the size of a baseball removed from his colon. Oh, gosh. I'm sorry.

Yeah, he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, and we have three children. The youngest is 12, and he is autistic, and we are trying to navigate how much we let him know about the situation as far as how dire it is. Okay. Because I don't want to wreck his life. Yep.

But I also, we are fully expecting a complete recovery. We have no reason to think that his dad is not going to completely recover. But he's going to get very sick when chemo starts in a couple of weeks, and we're just not sure exactly how much we need to let him know. So give me a number one. God bless you, dude. I hate that for you. That's not a Christmas anyone needed in 2020, for God's sakes. Well, it was a 2020 Christmas. Let me just say. Jeez, man.

I know, but still, that just is not great. And I'm sorry that happened to you. How old are your other kids? 23 and 18. How are they doing? Don't laugh. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The 23-year-old, my daughter daughter has really stepped up i spent the entire week in the hospital

with my husband because half the floor had been turned into a covid ward and so they were extremely short staffed because all they had to pull their normal staff to just do COVID stuff. So she really, what we really tried to do is make it seem like a big slumber party. So we had friends that sent pizzas. They went to downstairs to my daughter's apartment and played video games. And so she is, she is handling things the way she knows how to do, which is taking care of little details. Good for her. The 18-year-old, we get to talk when we go out to walk the dogs, and he expresses his concerns in his oblique way. Right. He's managing as well as can be expected.

Keep, I tell you what, man, you are a saint and you just help millions and millions of people across the country with that one statement. You want to help your late teens, early 20s kids deal with challenges that show up when grandma or grandpa dies, when mom and dad get sick, get a dog and take walks every day.

It is the most healing thing for all of us. You get to move your body body you get to be in nature you get to have relationship and the same way little kids you play with them on the floor you just walk with teenagers and they don't have to make eye contact with you but they will slowly start talking to you good for you all right so um give me a quick rundown what's what's the functioning level of of your 12 year old-old? High functioning, medium? It's hard to say high functioning or low functioning because he has his strengths and his weaknesses. He has very good social skills. He is a great student. He has anxiety

in a way that his brain misinterprets ordinary signals, misfires, and can send him into a panic attack, which we didn't realize for years. An example was when he was five and we went trick-or-treating and the wind was blowing and he freaked out and was screaming in the middle of the street that we were all going to die. Right. Okay. So he's got some hypersensitivity, right? He does. Okay. He does.

All right. So I, 12 years old, I'm going to tell you a story about a guy. He is a good friend of mine. His name is Mark Charney, Dr. Charney. And he is, of all things, a savant. He's a theater, is the chair of a theater and art department and dance department at a university. And I watched, had a ringside seat to watching him partner in one of the most unique things I've ever seen. They partnered with the autism center of the university.

And what they did was they connected theater students to these autistic college students. And the autistic college students, some of them were very high functioning. Some of them were not high functioning socially, but they were very good, right, with remembering facts. Some were hypersensitive, like the sensations were over alarming, right? And what they did was they worked with them and they put on a play. And what was so magic about the play is these young kids with autism did not know how to properly perceive and feel their own feelings, but they were able to learn this character is going to feel like this. What does that look like? Make me a sad face. Make me a happy face. And over the arc of this play, it's one of the hardest I've ever wept watching theater. I'm

going to get choked up here talking about it. I watched these kids with autism inhabit other people because they were inhabiting the facts of these other people. And part of the facts was learning these emotions, learning these feelings and learning these pains. And then when you circled back, the kids with autism said, I now have a new language for how I feel. And so what I would start with is, and you may say this, it may not work exactly with your kid. I think you're still going to be okay. You're not going to hurt anything. I would go find children's books, just go to Amazon and get three or four children's books like they would tell a fifth grader or a sixth grader. And there's going to be a book called Mommy Got Cancer or Daddy's Really Sick. And the way kids learn, right, is through play

and through children's literature like that. And I would buy four or five of those books, and then I would go through them and see if any of those are going to identify with your son. And then what I'd have him do is read them to you. And as you read them, I want you to speak out loud. Imagine what this would feel like. And so what we're trying to do is to show him into this story. And then you're going to give him pictures because the book's going to give you illustrated pictures of a dad in a hospital, of a mom in a hospital, maybe a dad losing his hair. And he's going to give you illustrated pictures of a dad in a hospital, of a mom in a hospital, maybe a dad losing his hair. And he's going to get a picture of it.

What an autistic kid often struggles with is the outcome. I don't have, they don't have the, sometimes they haven't learned or they don't have the capacity to imagine or picture. And so all the alarms set off at the same time, right? Precisely. And so what this is going to give him is a picture of, and it may be, if you want to do something magic, it may be a partnership with your 23-year-old kid and your 18-year-old kid and your 12-year-old kid that y'all make up some sort of play. And in your home, and you're going to perform it, and you can even tell them, y'all have to do this play for me and your dad. And through that, it's going to talk about somebody overcoming something difficult. The play is going to be a

wreck. It won't be good. Everyone will be dying laughing and crying at the same time, but it will be a way to bring your family together. And on the back end of this, you'll never forget it. And then through that narrative, when you slowly start to see where the the your your son's eyes widen and he goes wow that's the entryway to have this story daddy might look like this because daddy's really sick too and daddy is what he's going to get really skinny also and you're going to see the the painful faces in those books you're going to see the smiling faces in the book and the whole time i want you to never let go of his hand when you're reading these books. He's not going to probably realize it, but what you're doing is you are telling that little oversensitive amygdala,

it's okay. And I'm not saying this is going to heal it all. If I have a 12-year-old son with autism, that's exactly where I start. And I've seen, I saw a profound shift in a way'm also giving him that connection because I'm going to hold his hand through this entire thing. And if we can get 18 year old brother to sit on his bed on the other side, that's even better because I want him to feel surrounded and safe as we go through this hard, hard place. Let me know how that goes. And we will be thinking about your husband and yeah, we're going to expect a full recovery. He's going to be better. He's going to get there. And again, thank you for being a mom who loves, loves, loves her kids and is doing what she can to ask the right questions and walk through this

together. And you, Heather, make sure you got people in your life that you can lean on because you're going to need a place to cry. You're going to be propping up kids and dogs and husband. And I want you to have a place where you can get propped up too. Thank you so much for that call. All right, so as we wrap up the show, I talked in a previous podcast about the time I went to see a concert. I think it was the Indigo Girls at the Ryman or something, some 80s group that I loved back in the day or the 90s group, war and treaty opened up and just blew the show away right it just was a rousing standing ovation at the Ryman Auditorium here in Nashville I just I remember thinking whoa I've seen that one or two other times and one of them was when I went to see my favorite rock band on planet earth social distortion and they had this little um British

singer singer songwriter open up had a band and his name was Frank Turner. And the show started with a bunch of dudes in black shirts and big thick black boots, if you know social distortion crowd, and their arms crossed, furrowed brow. And by the end of the show, the whole audience was singing along. This little guy from the UK won over everyone. I got obsessed with him. His name's Frank Turner. You can pick any album. You can pick almost any song. There's a few songs that aren't great,

but he's just a savant. He's extraordinary. I think he's one of the best songwriters working today. This song is a song that my son and I listened to when I drove him to work. We listen to it every day. We sing it together still to this day when we're out doing stuff together. It's off the song Positive Songs for Negative People. Some of you need this record in your

life, by the way. Positive Songs for Negative People, out in 2015. The song is called The Next Storm, and it goes like this. We had a difficult winter. We had a rough few months. When the storms came in off the coast, it felt like everything broke on us at once. It's easy enough to talk about blitz spirit when you're not holding the roof up and knee deep in it and the pictures and the papers got ruined by the rain and we wondered if they'd ever get dry again. But I don't want to spend the whole of my life indoors, laying low, waiting on the next storm. I don't want to spend the whole of my life inside. I want to step outside and face the sunshine. I don't care what the weatherman is saying,

because the last time I saw him, he was on his knees. He was praying, and the preachers and the scientists got soaked just the same, and we'd wondered if we'd ever get dry again. But I don't want to spend the whole of my life indoors, laying low, waiting on the next storm. I want to step outside and face the sunshine. Face it, good folks. Face the sunshine. This has been the Dr. John Deloney Show.