The Dr. John Delony Show - She Constantly Accuses Me of Cheating!

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A man frustrated by his wife’s constant distrust of his faithfulness - Whether TikTok is a reliable place for mental health advice - A husband suffering from panic attacks after a long season as his wife’s caretaker Lyrics of the Day: "Tik Tok" - Kesha  Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. They found that TikTok pushed potentially harmful content to these users on an average of every 39 seconds. Harmful information. Listen to me when you're playing with mental health. You're playing with life and death. Get these devices out of your children's hands. What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

So grateful that you are with us. Live. We're not really live, but it sounds cool to say that. Like live, but we're not. Man, I am just coming off a week of being on the road and being out and seeing some of you good folks. South Carolina to Colorado to... Where did we go? Ardmore, Oklahoma, right outside Oklahoma City.

It's close to the home of Toby Keith. The famous Toby Keith. Hey, listen. So my wife was obsessed with country music. She still is a big country music fan. I was not. I'm talking to Kelly here. And I was a heavy metal kid and a punk rock kid.

And so in college, I was dating this girl who's now my wife, and she loved country music. And I heard on the radio that there was going to be free tickets to a country music show. I waited in line for hours. I didn't know any of these people. They all were just their names and i got toby keith two tickets and i was like hey i got i got us tickets to a country music

show and she's like really and i told her who and she's like yeah i'm not going to that she's like that's not for me i know that's brutal kind of broke my heart yeah that's brutal even now uh it's probably what 25 26 years later when I try to do something nice, and she's like, I'm not having it. I'm like, man, this feels a lot like Toby Keith. Turns out he's a great guy. I heard he's a great, wonderful guy. He used to be over there at Belmont where I was. He would do rehearsals and stuff, and he's just a lovely human being.

Way to go. I used to work in the music industry. Yes. And I had a couple dealings with him, and he was fabulous. I heard he was just a wonderful guy. Yeah, he was great. Like he plays a character on stage, but he's just a great, wonderful guy.

I know a number of people that have worked for his team and they have, and trust me, if they have bad things to say, you know about it. And nothing. What do people say about working on this team?

Let's just move on. Let's leave that for another show. For another show. Hey, this is the most important and incredible, and I'll even say extraordinary, mental health and marriage and parenting podcast of all time ever. And so I'm so grateful that you've joined us.

If you want to be on the show, give us a buzz, 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291. And please go to subscribe, hit the like button. If you're on Apple or Spotify, make sure you subscribe. Leave five-star reviews.

It just helps everything so much. I'm so grateful for your support and care. Let's go out to Ben in Lexington, Kentucky. In the KY, what's up, Ben? Not much, Dr. John. How you doing? We're rocking and rolling, man. Y'all doing well?

Awesome. Well, it's a little cold here. That is true. It is cold. It is cold. So what's up, dude? How can I help, man? Well, me and my wife, we've been together for 13 years. I've been married for almost a year, and she's always had this idea that I've been cheating on her. And it's getting to the point where I just can't handle it anymore because I'm not cheating on her. And no matter what I tell her, it's always she's got an answer for it. So my question is, what can I possibly do to keep her from thinking I'm cheating on her? That's tough, man. It's like you're trying to love somebody and she keeps putting a wedge between you, right?

Yeah. Or coming up with reasons why you can't get close. So you kind of have a unique relationship. Y'all were together 12 years and then you've been married for one. What took so long? Almost one year. Um, well, you know, financial situation, you know, I wanted to make sure that I was in a real stable place before we got married and, and you know, her as well. Um, took a decade. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's crazy, but hey man,

teach their own, teach their own, but here you are, right? That's right. How long has she accused you of cheating on her? For the entirety of our relationship. Okay. I mean, it comes and goes. It's not an everyday thing, but whenever it is a thing, she just never lets it go.

So what are the things she points out that would suggest you're cheating? She says I'm always on my phone. Okay. Are you? No. Okay. I'm really not.

I have no social media. And if I am on my phone, it's either taking phone calls or just looking at just like tractor equipment. You know, it's just something, you know, something, nothing, you know? And I don't think she realized there's a person who's on their phone all the time because it's not me. Gotcha. Um, so I don't have any like empirical data to back this up. I'm just going to tell you something I've seen over and over and over and over

and over again for the last 20 plus years okay yeah the things that we are often capable of or that we've often been guilty of or that we often think about doing are the things we often project onto other people okay and so my question to you would be out of the gate has she ever cheated on you not that i'm aware of would it stun you or would it melt you oh absolutely okay so it wouldn't be something if you're like yeah i could see that it would be out of the blue yeah has somebody ever cheated on her in a previous relationship that was, that was like a nuclear bomb inside of her? Well,

you know, we've been together for so long. I mean, I, her, her relationships before me were pretty, she hasn't spoke on it. So I can't really,

I don't know. Um, but you know, if I had to point to something, it's her parents are divorced. Um, but you know, if I had to point to something, it's her parents are divorced. Um, I don't know if there was infidelity in their relationship to cause that. Um, there's always conflicting stories between them, but, um, you know, that's not the only thing I could possibly think of.

Well, and it may be that she picked up that relationships look like one person accusing the other person all of the time yeah and that may have been what the the norm that she grew up with and in a weird way in a way of trying to circumvent and prevent or as bernie brown says dress for her tragedy like she spends a lot of time thinking about what happens what happens what happens what happens and then she has to ask you and then it kind of bubbles up and she explodes on you. And you're like, what are you talking about? And then it kind of, it simmers a little bit and it starts building back up again and up again. You end up creating the very thing that your body's trying to protect you from. And that's how you get family dysfunction that happens

year after year, generation after generation is in a way of trying to prevent you from cheating and driving her crazy. What's going to happen is uh are you leaving is somebody you're going to run into is going to be super chill and they're going to laugh at your jokes a little bit they're going to reach over and grab something from you and kind of brush your arm and you're going to like it and is that's how these, and slowly it's going to just slowly tilt the other way, right? Has that happened to you? I mean, there have been moments where just women have spoke to me. How dare you, Ben? Just kidding.

I know. It's crazy. No, no, trust me. I understand. All right. So let's do this. There is not a single thing you can do. If I was going to put some blame somewhere,

I would start with you. And blame is kind of dramatic. I hate using that word. But you knew this going in. Right. If you called and were like, dude, out of nowhere, she's just insane about me cheating.

That would be one thing. You knew this. And so part of me says, I mean, you made the bed and you're just lying in it now you're upset that it's uncomfortable so there is that

okay and if any if you're gonna have a conversation with her a direct conversation I would start there I have to own my my part in this

this has been going on for a long long time and maybe now that y'all are living together 24-7 365 it's amplified or whatever.

Let me ask you that question. Why now? Why are you just done now? Well, see, I probably should have mentioned this before, too. She is pregnant, and I don't know if it's her hormones getting all crazy or what have you, but she just recently, whenever I emailed you my question, she blew up on me just because I showed up at the house without my phone. I mean, I just completely forgot it at the farm.

You know, it was a total accident. And she just blew up. And I'm like, she wouldn't listen to anything I said. And it just really frustrated me. And, you know, because I wasn't feeling good that day and she knew that, and I was just stopping by just to get some aspirin. And, and instead of, you know, asking how I was and, you know, are you okay? She just automatically said, you know, I think you're cheating on me. Why don't you have your phone on you? And all this. So, you know, it was just a bad situation.

So what's your or what moment? I don't really know, John. Would you leave her and this new baby? No, absolutely not. Okay. So you're caught between a value, I'm not going anywhere, and I can't keep living like this. Right. And I think she knows that.

Okay. So here's a couple of ways, a couple of things I would tell you. First is, I'm sure you've done this but i it's it's worth doing it again probably writing her a letter and i want you and here's why writing a letter is important because i want you to read her this letter and then i want you to give it to her and there's some research about um the importance of writing things down that you might stumble over verbally but when you write it down you have time to you to hit the backspace and you spend the time getting it out, it's a lot more articulate and you get everything out. You get more out than

when you try to talk, your body gets nervous, you kind of seize up a little bit. And there's been some studies with social media that suggests, like when I was a kid, if the school bully on the bus talked trash to me and said something really rude. It hurt, but there's some natural mechanisms inside our bodies that help us that, that, um, it kind of dissipates over time. Especially if that person is not like my parents or somebody in my close circle, when it comes to social media, it's black and white and it's posted. And so you can read it over and over and over and over again, that same thing, I'm going with the idea that it also works in reverse. And I've seen this over and over where if you tell her, I'm not cheating on you,

she has already accused you. She's in fight or flight. Game is on. She's not hearing any new data. She's just in a fight now. But when she's calm and she goes back to this letter, and then she's calm later on, goes back to this letter, and she's at peace and goes back to this letter, it's going to reinforce and reinforce and reinforce. Okay? So I'd recommend writing this stuff down and then taking her out somewhere and reading it to her. Okay? It will probably be hard to read, but it's important that you have a clear path ahead for her. I would note that this is on you, not on her.

Okay. The moment you said, and then you do that, then she's off, right? She's got to defend herself. The statements that I would make are, I work really, really hard to love you the best I can. And I'm beginning to feel like I can't breathe because every moment I walk in this house, I'm being accused of being a liar and a cheater. Two things that I don't put up with in my life. I don't put up with my friends and I'm struggling to continue to be connected in this relationship because it's a constant attack. And I think the next statement I would

go with, and again, this is just me, I am choosing to be well. I want to be a good dad. I want to be a good husband and I can't continue to do it in this context. So when you choose to accuse me of something that I have not done, will never do, I'm going to choose, you're choosing to send me away and I'm going to choose to go for a walk, to take a little kid out, to head back to the farm. I'm going to choose to not be in this situation. I'm not going to leave you, but I am going to choose to be well, as well as I possibly can. How does that sound? It sounds good, but you know, I just just i just know her and i don't know i just don't know if she'll i feel like i've done all those things just not in a letter form and

it's it's like it goes in one ear and out the other honestly i i don't know how she would handle that i i know and i i would tell you it's time to take a stand. And I tried. But here's the problem with taking a stand is you're not going to leave. You're not going anywhere. Yeah. And I guess that's the thing is she knows that I'm not going to leave. And it's almost like I have to leave and then just see how she changes. Or if she does.

Or if you leaving validates all of her fears that she's been coming. Have you talked to her about going to marriage counseling? No. I'll be honest, I don't know if I want to go to marriage counseling. You know,

I just... Well, that's dumb. Why wouldn't you want to go? Well, I just... I like to work things out myself, you know? Okay, well, that's not... I know I'm calling you.

It's not working. It's 13 years. It's not working. I know, I know. I like to fix my car by myself, too, and Okay, well, that's not... And I know I'm calling you. It's not working. Yeah, it's 13 years. It's not working. I know, I know. I like to fix my car by myself, too, and that usually doesn't work, and I have to take it in someone. Yeah. Is that fair?

Yeah, that's... Yeah, I mean, you're right. Here's the deal. I've said this before, and get a little bit of smoke from it, and I don't care. I look at fidelity in a marriage relationship and a romantic relationship much bigger than somebody putting a body part inside of somebody else. So like, I know it's easy to say like fidelity, I've never cheated on anybody. I never had sex with somebody else. I think fidelity and cheating and,

um, being whole in a marriage is way bigger than sex. I think that somebody who walks in and steals your dignity every day, calls you a liar to your face repeatedly over and over and over again. Someone who you've probably shown all of your phone and all of your texts and all of your deleted stuff. And you've probably shown, they probably tracked and all of your texts and all of your deleted stuff. And you've probably, they probably tracked you around with a little app and all that stuff. Oh, yeah.

So what you have to realize, you're not dealing with data here. You're not dealing with, there's not a thing you can do. There's not like a data point that she's going to go, oh, okay, phew, that's not going to happen. And I think there's a bigger issue here when it comes to cheating or when it comes to fidelity in a relationship. She is making choices to separate the two of you, or she's making choices to not be in relationship with you, and she's choosing to do that not by having sex with somebody else that you know of, but she's choosing to put wedges between the two of you so that you cannot get close, and then she's blaming you so that you cannot get close.

And then she's blaming you for that distance. See what I'm saying? Yeah, I get it. This is a bigger deal than I think you are allowing yourself to believe it to be. Well, I know it's a big deal, but I just, I don't know. I just wish it would stop. I think that's... Dude. You know.

That's the greatest line of this show's history. I know it's a big deal. I just wish it would stop. That's exactly right. That's exactly, exactly, exactly right. A hundred percent. You're a, you're a good man who works on the farm. And when a problem like presents itself yeah you fix that problem

and you literally take bailing wire and uh some hay and you solve that problem and maybe some duct tape and you can't do that on this one because somebody on the other field just keeps throwing cocktail molotov cocktails on your field and setting it on fire. And at some point, you can't just keep going out there and putting out the fire. You have to stop and say enough is enough is enough. And quite frankly, I think the step forward is marriage counseling because something is going on inside of your wife that is making her, that is pushing her, that is encouraging her to choose to make the guy that loves her more than anybody on planet earth the bad guy constant bad guy an inability to be at peace in relationship she is choosing an anxious

life and there's not a thing you can do about it at this point other than to begin to create a world where you have to protect yourself and the world that this little baby is going to come into i would be on the first train into a marriage counselor because this relationship has very short legs on it if you don't get involved very, very quickly and get a third party in there. You've tried your best, my man. You've tried and you just want it to go away. You've tried to solve it and it's not. So now you can do one of two things. Accept what is and live a life of quiet desperation. Hang your head low like millions and millions and millions of men have done. Or you can look at her and say,

you're worth fighting for. We are worth fighting for. This family's worth fighting for. I'm not giving up. I'm calling a marriage counselor and we got to go do this because we need help right now. Thanks for the call, Ben. We'll be right back. All right. We are back for everybody's favorite segment with nobody's favorite music. Facts are your friends. Let's do it, Joe. Oh, gosh. Still no, Kelly.

Like, literally one job as a producer is to have not terrible music. Oh, trust me. There are so many other jobs. And I've told you before, we're going to. Just chill. All right. I don't do good at chilling. Oh, I'm fully aware of that.

I don't either, so I get that. Not one of my spiritual gifts. And I think when a woman tells a man, hey, just chill, it's kind of like when a guy tells a girl, just calm down. Calm down. Just calm down. And no one in the history of the world has ever calmed down by being told that. Not one time. All right.

Let's go to this article that you handed me, Kelly. I'm so thrilled about this. Actually, right when I saw the title, hemorrhoids, I went to, got some Preparation H, which should sponsor this show because I give them so much free airtime. And here it is. It's out of CBS News, so we know it's factually correct. Teens turning to TikTok for mental health advice are self-diagnosing oh man um a third year psychology student says this if i'm trying to figure out how to do something i

feel like it's easier to go on t. So just, I want everyone to catch how quickly the world has shifted. I went to college in the late nineties and into two thousands. I went to college and I paid a professor, I paid the university who then paid the professor for the knowledge that was in their head. Now, granted, I could have gone to the public library, like Goodwill Hunting says. I could have done that. But there was information in my professor's heads that I did not have access to. And I was paying for that access. And in fact, there's some old colleges, I think Oxford, there's several colleges that you can't go into the building. You can't go into the psychology building unless you're a major. You couldn't go into the architecture building unless you're a major. You couldn't go into the architecture building unless you were a major. They protected the

information because that's what these students were paying for. And this was a special incubated world. And then the internet's hit. And then very quickly, it was about 2000, I don't know, several years ago, my wife backed up and knocked the side mirror off the car And so in an old prius and so I got on on ebay and bought one had it shipped to the house My dad came my dad's, um good at fixing stuff. And so we went out to fix it together As we're walking outside in the dark. He says into his phone Repairing 2010 passenger side mirror prius um video and I was like, oh gosh, my old man's losing it and then youtube pops up repairing 2010 passenger side mirror Prius video. And I was like, oh gosh, my old man's losing it.

And then YouTube pops up the video, the exact step-by-step thing. I was like, oh man, I don't really need what's in a mechanic's head anymore. I can get this. There may be some tools I don't have. There may be some time. I don't have the time to fix this thing

or there may be some expertise. I don't have a lift or whatever. But the days when I would go to a mechanic and say, I don't know what's wrong. I don't know how to fix this thing. That's over because I can get that information on YouTube now. And in just a few short years, it's gone from YouTube, which is millions and millions and millions and millions of people doing things and uploading their process. They just put up cameras and say, I'm going to give this information to the world for free. Some of it's trash and garbage. Much of it's great. A lot of it's just great stuff. I built a compost box over the weekend. I got the plans off YouTube. I just punched it in. I didn't have to pay for it. I mean, it's just a wild new world we're in, and I don't think we fully grasp it. And then you go one step further to TikTok, which takes an eight-minute video or a 25-minute video or maybe even a three-minute video and turns it into a 30-second, 15-second clip.

Now, here's where this is dicey. I put stuff on TikTok, so I'm a part of this system. Let me tell you why. For those of you who are not people of faith, there's an old story in the Old Testament by a guy named Jonah, right? And everybody knows Jonah, but he got eaten by a fish and yada, yada. That's not the important part of the story at all. The important part of the story is there was a group of people that the story goes God wanted to save.

And he said, those are terrible people. I don't want anything to do with this system. I don't want to be a part of this thing. They're not worth saving. And he was told that's exactly where I want you. And so that story has always resonated with me is when people are hurting, when people are struggling, people I don't like, that's where I need to go. When there is a system that I don a system that is just full of garbage, I need to head into that, not run away from it, not thumb my nose. So I have such disdain for 17-year-olds getting on social media platforms and in 30 seconds, googling what some diagnostic is and being reductive and saying, I feel this and this. And so I have this

and you have this too. Here's what you need to do. Have warm lemon water and some essential oils and your depression will just go away. That is so dangerous. I've entered into that world to try to bring some sort of sanity to it. And I know people with wisdom and experience and the right credentials have done that. So I want to call that out. I've headed into TikTok. So it's weird for me to be talking about how dangerous I think all this stuff is and what nonsense this is. But the idea is the article says social media therapy. She was diagnosed, this woman was diagnosed with anxiety and depression.

By the time she was in fifth grade, she had begun having suicidal thoughts. Even with therapy, her struggles with anxiety and thoughts about self-harm made her feel alone. There was no one I thought could help me. And I started looking for other people through social media. Then I looked through Instagram, any social media I could, then TikTok. On TikTok, the hashtag mental health has been searched more than 67 billion times. 67 billion times. Now gaining traction is referred to as social media therapy They're going into these spaces to the soothe themselves to make themselves feel better To make themselves the master of that environment when they don't feel that they've mastered the environment of the outside world

Let me repeat that in english When you go scroll and you feel like you feel a little bit better, you get some super quote or something like, yeah, and you don't take that quote to the real world. You just sit there and based in it, you'll feel better, but you're feeling better in a fake fantasy world. It's not real because as soon as you move into the real world and your parents' relationship or your mom being upset with you or your in-laws deciding what you do Christmas or your spouse is looking at pornography instead of talking to you, like those things are real. And what happens is we go to these devices to get these little quips and get these little clips to make ourselves feel better. Oh, I've got this

diagnosis. I've got this issue. This 22-year-old influencer told me I have a thing and it's a this and this is why, and I'm just going to stay here. And then the algorithms learn, this is what you like, and it just keeps pumping it in and pumping it in, and now you are sitting in a trash can, swimming in sewage, while the world spins outside. The real world just keeps spinning outside of of this little digital box it says this um as you look through tiktok the algorithm strengthens it turned into diagnosis turned into other things like adhd borderline personality disorder and more depression anxiety i'll read this last one in one recent study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate,

researchers posed as 13-year-olds and searched and liked mental health videos. They found that TikTok pushed potentially harmful content to these users on an average of every 39 seconds. Harmful information, wrong crap. And listen to me, when you're playing with mental health you're playing with life and death You're playing with long-term damage to people Some users received recommendations for content about suicide within 2.6 minutes of joining the app What's online is a free-for-all and there's's really no accountability for this, and there's no responsibility taken. Here's the last one. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry have popular TikTok videos about ADHD.

52% were deemed misleading. One out of two. So what do we do with all this? I want to circle back to you, moms and dads. Get these devices out of your children's hands. Stop. moms and dads get these devices out of your children's hands stop i cannot get mad at a 13 year old or a 15 year old or a 12 year old or a nine year old for not wanting to talk to their parents about something fine they're kids i'll give them that but i put the blame squarely on mom and dad for handing them these devices and saying,

here, run free. And if you have any crazy conversation, like, oh, what's oral sex? You know what? Instead of asking somebody who might know, I'm just going to Google it. I'll just look on TikTok. Hey, what's depression? I feel bad. Mom was mean to me today because I got a D in class because I didn't study. I'm going to get on TikTok. Oh, I've got depression. I've got major depressive disorder. And my mom's got narcissistic personality disorder. This is what, and now we're off to the races. And then you tell a friend at school and that friend says, hey, I've got something for you. And they hand you Xanax or they hand you Adderall or they hand you something else. And the percentage of that crap that has fentanyl in it is just a whole domino.

Take the phones back. Take your kids' lives back. Stop sending them to TikTok. Stop allowing them. And if all the propaganda bullcrap is true about other countries running TikTok and trying to say, dude, what are we doing? This whole thing, there are people out there trying to debunk misinformation and good for them. I'm trying. I'm trying. You notice I don't talk a lot about diagnostics. I talk more about

how to treat people and how to take care of people. But at the end of the day, I think this is a really simple, solvable problem. And that means our kids aren't going to be mad at us for a season. They're not going to like us. That's fine. Our job as parents is not to be liked all the time. Our job is to protect our kids. And we have to take this crap out of our kids' hearts and minds. We have to be adults that are likable, that give them an opportunity to come back and talk to us.

They are desperate for adults to say, hey, I love you. I like you. I'm likable. What's going on in your world? They're desperate for it. Moms and dads, start showing up. Enough with the digital babysitters. Enough.

Let's take back our kids. Let's take back our kids. We'll be right back Alright, we're back Let's go to Will in Athens Not Greece, Georgia What's up, Will? What's going on?

You've never heard that joke before, have you? I'm incredible Definitely have never heard that one before My friends call me Chappelle Jr. Nobody calls me that, actually What's up, dude? Hey, so I've got a question and I'm just going to straight shoot it. So how do I turn off anxiety alarms after a season of trauma? And then kind of the second part to that is how do I better manage trauma next time around? If it's cool, I'd like to give you some context to that and just not have a question. Yeah, for sure.

So my wife, so I'm 25 and my wife's 26. We were married in June of 2021. And so we got married and it was awesome. And then we went on our honeymoon, had a great time. We came back to kind of start our life. And then two months after we got back, uh, I got a call from my wife and she was in tears and she had to leave work because she was having some, some incredible back pain. Um, and so after some doctor's visits, um, we found out that she had actually hurt her spine when she was younger, but it wasn't that bad, but she works at a vet's office. And so she was lifting some animals. And when she did that, it ended up fracturing her spine. And so for that entire fall, we were doing doctor's visits and trying to get with her insurance to try to solve the problem. But slowly, her spine was slipping more and more. And so it was causing her more and more pain.

And so by the time we got to January, she was starting to lose feeling in her legs. She couldn't walk anymore, and it just got progressively worse. Luckily, we got surgery in that February of last year. And after the surgery, they were able to secure her spine. She had a great prognosis, but the doctors were saying that it was going to be about eight months for her to recover back to normal. And so during those eight months, you know, I had to kind of help her do things like going to the bathroom and taking a shower and cooking her food and just kind of being a caretaker

and taking care of her while she couldn't work. So we didn't have her income anymore. I'm a full-time student and I work full-time. I had both of those going on. And I just took care of her and just tried to meet her needs during that time. And then, you know, we actually... So now she's recovered a lot and she's able to get back to kind of a normal life. She's been able to go back to work.

And we're kind of coming out of this season of trauma. But I was sitting in class in January and I just had this feeling of like, oh my God, I'm going to die. I'm freaking out and my heart started racing. And it was just full on panic attack. And so I was in this lecture hall and I just kind of ran out of the lecture hall, kind of like a crazy person, and I was just kind of in the hallway. Hey, right when you were saying that, I was thinking, welcome to the club, man. Welcome to the gang.

You're not crazy at all, man. Not crazy at all. Yeah, and so, you know, after that, I just had, like, insane just health anxiety just constantly in my head of, like, I have after that, I just had like insane, just health anxiety, just constantly in my head of like, I have this cancer and this cancer. And just kind of like what you were talking about in the last segment, I was just like spun out on looking up diagnosis. And my wife was like, you got to stop that.

It's driving you crazy. Oh, I love it. And I was like, you're totally right. I love, I love the one recovering from spine surgery is telling the healthy one, dude, you're going to have to just dial it back 30%. She's like, you're fine. Yeah. But all that to say basically is that, you know, we had this trauma

and now we're kind of coming out of it and it seems like we're at the tail end of it. But now my body, like the whole time I was kind of like I'm pushing through, I'm serving my wife, this is great. And now my body decides to spin out when it seems like we're recovering. That's right. Absolutely. So here's where I want you to start. Well, let me say this. You are 1000% right where you should be. Okay. Right where you should be. There's nothing wrong with you. You're an amazing husband. She

won the lottery with you. And probably you would say the same thing. You stepped up in a tremendous time of need. What a gift. And you laid some foundations to the homes that you and your wife are going to build moving forward that will be legacy shifting. Your kids and your grandkids are going to be different because of what you did in this season. Okay? I don't want you to lose that. It's huge. The place you need to start, both of you, place you need to start both of you but particularly you know

both of you i was gonna say particularly you but both of you are in the season is grief here's why all grief is is the gap between what i hoped would happen what i thought this was going to look like in reality and dude for a long time you couldn't wait to marry this girl right right and y'all were going to rock it till the wheels came off y'all were going to be a dual and dude, for a long time, you couldn't wait to marry this girl, right? Right. And y'all were going to rock it till the wheels came off. Y'all were going to be a dual-income family. You were going to make this much money.

You were going to live in this place. You were going to travel to these places. You were going to do all these stuff. You were going to go to school, and you were going to do this, and everything fell apart. And so there's a part of your body that is continuing that narrative and trying to catch up to that narrative, trying to make that narrative happen. And there's the other part of you that is dealing with the day-to-day reality. I have to help my wife go to the bathroom because she can't move.

And what a panic attack is, an anxiety attack, there are some physiological differences for this conversation that it's not really worth digging into. But it's your body saying, hey, dude, I'm out. If you're not going to stop, I'm stopping us. And there just came a point when school, and as you were talking, here's what I wrote down. Middle of a pandemic, you got married. That sounds cool. That means you dated through a pandemic,

planned a wedding through a pandemic. Awesome. A complete and total lack of control and autonomy. You watch somebody you love be in so much pain, they couldn't move, right? Right. That's disorienting. That's scary. And for a lot of us, we've never had that kind of scary before until we see it for the first time when we're older and it's disorienting. Tell me if this is true. After a year of intense caretaking, trying to be a good new husband, also going to school, when's the last time you started

just hung out regularly with a group of guys? It happens. It's just not as regularly as it used to be. That's right. It's really easy to look up and suddenly at six months, it's eight months and you're really lonely. Or you just get together and you all hang out and you're not, dude, I'm not going to get into all of what's been going on. And they're like, man, sorry. And you're like, it's cool, bro. And then you're off to watching the game or eating chips and whatever. And you're down that road.

Like you're past the, hey, I'm not okay, guys. And so you find yourself lonely, financial insecurity, lots of plans, right? And all of a sudden this many doctor bills is a lot, right? Right. You see, I mean, it's just piling up and piling up. Here's what I think would be really helpful for y'all. And here's all we want you to do. We want you to do a couple of things to show your brain that you're not running on fight or flight anymore, that you are in the driver's seat. That I'm in control now.

I'm back. I'm here. And you can be in the driver's seat in the crappiest situations and not be anxious. That's the whole idea behind a non-anxious life. But I want you to spend some time. And it'd probably be good for her to do it too. To just write down. We thought the first year and a half of our marriage was going to look like this,

and here's what it's look like. And be real specific and real graphic. I never thought that I would have to wipe my wife. I did. I did. A lot. I never thought. I thought showering would be different.

It ended up being. There's a romantic shower, being, there's a romantic shower and then there's a therapeutic shower. Those are very different experiences. Right? See what I'm saying? Like, I want you to be very specific about this. And if y'all are gangsters,

read these letters to you because here's the other thing. She's got a whole bunch of guilt and a whole bunch of shame that she should not be carrying either. Right? Sure. Has she told you she thought she ruined the first year or she

can't believe you have to do all this stuff? Right. Yep. Is that true too? Yep. Yeah. Do you see like, and so listen, your body's just trying to get your attention that things aren't okay. This is less about responding to crises and more about, Hey, we're not safe financially. We're not safe relationally. You're lonely. You have no control over what happens tomorrow, sounding every alarm I got. And then you are such a hard driver. You're like, well, I'm going to grad school, so I got to go to class after my full-time job, after bathing my wife. And then your body's like, dude, we're out. It may be a season to take a semester off to go in there and ask for incompletes and finish up next semester. It may just be time to give your, I did that multiple times through both, all three of my graduate degrees. Just took a semester off. It's too

much going on here at home. Or it may be a time where you say, I got to hire some help and get some help. Or it may be, you see what I'm saying? But it's, it's settling into, okay, here's what we wanted this to be. And here's our reality. That is not going to happen. The thing that we wanted, we got to grieve it.

We got to let it go. And now we get to build what comes next. And it may be that, and I'd hope to have a graduate degree, but how old are you? 25, 26, 25.

Okay. What are you going to grad school for? Computer software engineering. Computer software. Wow. You are you going to grad school for? Computer software engineering. Computer software. Wow. You're really smart, huh? I'm the logical.

She is like the fun, creative, like let's do everything and just be weird and crazy. And I'm the, let's stay in a line and do things by the book. Awesome. So that will kill you in this season. Acknowledging grief for you

is loosening your grip on the wheel. Because you've clamped down on that sucker, haven't you? Absolutely. Yeah. And dude, you're too good of a guy. The world needs you for you to die of a stroke or a heart attack

at 35 years old. Right. And a lot of at 35 years old. Right. And a lot of that comes from sitting in grief. I thought I could control everything and come to find out I can't. And that sucks. And then looking over and saying, but I do love you. And I do love what we're building together. And we're going to build something completely new.

I want you to write a letter. I want her to write a letter. And I want you all to read them to each other. And then here's the second part of the exercise. I want y'all to um I want you to Write. Okay. Here's what happens next in the next six months. That's it the next six months. Here's what happens next and Hold it very very loosely and check in once a week check in once a month for a little bit deeper dive How's the six we had a plan? How's it going? How's it working? And she might

tell you, how about we take the plan and water it up and use it as two ply? And you can be like, that sounds great, but we're going to just say, okay, here's our new reality. And then in six months, we're going to plan a new one. Then we're going to plan a new one. And then we're going to plan a new, it's going to be an ongoing planning season. The idea that you're going to put us all on a spreadsheet at 25, and it's going to roll out when you're 75, that time is over. It's not going to work. And I'm glad you got to learn it now.

Most of us learned that in our 30s and 40s. And then we think like we shouldn't be married. It's costing. You learned it young. Good for you, man. But I want to give your wife an opportunity to speak her guilt and shame that's unwarranted. And you look her in the eye and say,

no, no, no, no. It's been my life's greatest gift to be able to walk alongside you. And I want her to be able to look at you and say, I know you had a bunch of plans and they're sideways. Let's make new ones. Let's do that together. We'll hang on the line. I'm going to send you both the first and the second edition of the Couples Questions for Humans. Y'all can sit around and chit chat with each other and maybe get weird. And dude, again, thank you so much for being a husband who steps up. For a husband who loves his wife and for being brave enough to tell your story.

A lot of us need to hear that. Gentlemen, let's step up. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com.

All right, as we wrap up today's show, please don't forget to hit the subscribe button to send this episode to somebody who you think it would mean something important to and to leave five-star reviews and tell us that we're wonderful. Helps get the message out. And I'm really, really grateful.

Send this to everybody you know. And as we wrap up today, hey, this is super big news. Kelly took Jenna out for tattoos this weekend. And she got, Jenna got in old English across her back, the Kesha with the dollar sign. And underneath it, TikTok. So, congratulations, Jenna. You're going down the rabbit hole here. You're going to have to spend a lot of money on

makeup to cover up your tattoo. I am the biggest Kadalar Ha fan on the planet. What is it, Kadalar Ha? Kadalar Ha. That's what my brother used to call her because the S is a dollar sign. Kadalar Ha. Kesha, look at that. Look at that ironic Gen X humor. Gen Y.

She is so not Gen X. What's the generation? Gen X humor. Gen Y. She is so not Gen X. What's the generation? She's a millennial. Gen X is like my parents. Yeah. I'm a Gen X. She's a millennial. I'm between Gen Z and millennial.

Well, that ironic millennial humor. There I go. Man, Deloney. You sound like such a Gen Xer. Her favorite song. It's called TikTok. This ought to be good. Wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy.

Hey, what's up, girl? Grab my glasses. I'm out the door. I'm going to hit the city. Let's go. Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack. Because when I leave for the night, I ain't coming back. That makes sense.

I'm going to have horrific breath. I'm talking pedicure on our toes, toes. Trying on all our clothes, clothes. Boys blowing up our phones, phones. Drop top and playing our favorite CDs. Pulling up to the parties. Trying to get a little bit tipsy. Dude, you already brushed your teeth in Jack Daniels.

You're tipsy enough. Good grief. Whatever. TikTok him. This is the problem, America. This is the problem. We've got to solve this. We need to call Vanilla Ice.

You said there was a problem. You'd solve it. And we checked out the hook while the DJ revolved it. Where are you, Ice? We need your help. We'll see you soon.