The Dr. John Delony Show - Should I Cancel My Wedding?

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: A woman struggling to decide if she should cancel her wedding A man wrestling with his paralyzing fear of money A woman whose in-laws are getting remarried . . . after being divorced for 40 years Buy "The Rabbit Listened" here Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Hallow Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. My husband's parents divorced 50 years ago, and recently we were told that they want to remarry. Two months ago, they decided to go on a little getaway together, and they told us just as friends. Gross. I love it. Nothing more.

I love it. Nothing more. I love it. What up, what up? This is John, the Dr. John Deloney show. Show for you, about you, and honestly by you. A show where people call they're struggling

with real stuff going on in their life. Whether it's their marriage, their mental health, challenges with their physical health, parenting, whatever you got going on in their life, whether it's their marriage, their mental health, challenges with their physical health, parenting, whatever you got going on in your life, your dating relationships, whatever. My promise is I'll sit with you and we will figure out what to do next. And unlike most internet podcasting gurus, I don't have all the answers. I don't know everything. I promise you that.

But my commitment is that I'll find out people who do, or I'll find the information. And if I don't know, I'll say, I don't know, but here's the deal. I'm going to tell you the truth and I'm going to sit with you as we figure out what to do next. If you want to be on this show, give me a, shoot me an email, johndeloney.com slash ask ASK. And you just go on the website, fill out the form, and it goes to Jenna and Kelly, and they sort through them and create the show. Or give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291, and you can leave a message,

and then we'll have you on and be fantastic. All right, let's go out down the street to Knoxville, Tennessee, and let's talk to Mary Mary. What's up, Mary? Hello, John. How are you? Good. And you? I'm doing very well. Thank you. Outstanding. Appreciate you taking my call and seeing what we can do about this. All right, let's do it. What's up? Okay. So I am engaged to a man. This is our second marriages were early 50s, prior marriages of 20 plus years and all that. We've been together over two years, engaged for about a year of that. In the beginning of our relationship, he was very open with me about why his prior marriage ended.

And that was because he was in a very toxic relationship that had been, in order to cope with that, was using escort services for probably five to 10 years or so. And this was all done very covertly. His ex knew nothing about it until one day she discovered a piece of mail about a declination of a credit application that he was trying to get additional credit in his name. Well, he had an apartment with this person, with this escort that he was seeing very regularly, almost in a relationship type of situation. And so this was discovered, his divorce ensued, and, you know, they tried to go through counseling. You know, and, you know, we can only believe so much

about what people tell us about their past, but he did show me the divorce papers and confirmed that this is a legitimate story. And so I was very grateful to get, you know, have them come clean. You know, and I'm certainly not perfect either with my prior marriage, not in that sense of demeaning, but, you know, in other things where I recognize where I had failures as well. So moving forward, we have great chemistry. There's zero drama.

It's so refreshing to have zero drama with somebody. And so in the last... We had some financial difficulties this early spring. He lost his job and was able to get by. I didn't have to cover him or anything, but he's a very proud man in terms of wanting to be a good provider. And so that puts some stress on him. And I felt like something was off. And so I did confront him and I felt like this is, it's more than just the finances, what's going on. And he admitted that, you know,

and he showed me his phone and his email where these escort service ads started to roll into his inbox again in April. I, you know, confronted him about it. He was very open with it. He's never hidden his phone from me. It's just I don't routinely look at stuff because it's just not in my nature. I'd rather just trust and deal with whatever happens. I don't want to be, I don't feel like a grown man needs a babysitter, if you know what I mean. Absolutely. So I was really disappointed. I knew from the beginning that it would be a risk.

I don't believe that he has actually taken action on that, but the fact that it's rolling in his inbox is still very risky behavior. Yeah, I do. To not fall back into that pattern of a coping mechanism. Well, Mary, these things, I've got multiple email addresses for different things. Not one time has an escort service. Just one of those covert ones. Well, not one time has an escort service just rolled into my inbox. Yeah, I know.

That's not how that works. Right, and so I didn't believe the story that it was just, it said, oh, I have this account open that I didn't realize was still open. That's bull crap. I went and logged into that account, and he absolutely knew it was open. Of course he did. So I don't buy that he's not, for lack of better words, that he's not using again. Right. I don't either. The challenge here is,

the reason this has escalated risk, if you will, is, and hear me parse this out. This isn't a moral parsing or a characterological parsing or even me trying to get cute. This is me just talking about safety. There is somebody who's married who has a one-night fling after an office party with an office coworker. There's that, right?

There is somebody who has meet somebody at work or meet somebody at the park where their kids play and they develop a long-term emotional affair. There is long-term sexual affairs with people when they're married. All that stuff happens. But an escort is a physical, biological risk to me. That an escort, using escort services, in my opinion, is a whole other layer because you're not just, the illusion when you have a one night stand or the illusion that you,

you know, when you have an affair is you are just, this is just between me and that person. Now, that's a stupid thing to say because you're going to crush somebody emotionally you might put them at risk and when I say risk I'm talking about STI risk

I'm talking about all kinds of risks this is different this is putting the very bed you lay in in significant risk and this is one of the few moments when I would throw my hands up and step way way way way back. That's why I wrote you.

Because I know it. It's not even about trusting so much because I've never known a man not to cheat. It started with my father. I don't. Four or five times. I don't. And I'm not a great guy. I'm not perfect.

Just know they're out there. Statistically speaking, there's more of them than those that do. It's you deciding. I got my pickers broken, I guess. Well, we marry our unfinished business, right? Right. So my guess is you're going to make sure that you are able to fix that.

And you can't fix that. Because most of the time affairs have nothing to do with the partner. Sometimes they do. But they have to do with somebody going out and feeling alive again. Or somebody trying to cover up shame right well it's the same thing because if i know that he has financial difficulties you know the anonymity in that world makes him feel like a man again escort doesn't care it makes him feel like a man again and there's no work that has to be done that's right it's cheap

cheap cheap dime store lazy masculinity that's right that's right it's cheap cheap cheap dime store lazy masculinity that's right that's right it's bullcrap it's fake but all that to say is he has chosen by his behavior to put your actual physical health in significant danger period yeah because there's some things you can't you can't that can't get an antibiotic for. So if I'm you, let's just pretend you're my sister, okay, or you're one of my close friends who's a girl, a woman. I would say step number one is I'd go get tested. That'd be step number one, and that's for me and my health.

Step number two is I'd probably go sit down with a counselor because you've been through this before, and this is going to have some significant weight to it. And the way you couched your previous marriage, that you weren't perfect and you did some things, just the way you said that tells me that you were probably in an abusive relationship and you have mined the depths of yourself to figure out what you did to cause some of that. Fair? True.

Well, I also responded in a toxic way. I didn't. Yeah. You made dumb choices on the back end. That's fine. Yeah. That's fine. I mean, it's not fine.

You know what I mean, right? It happens. And by the way, this guy in his previous marriage, I don't care how toxic it gets. He made a choice. Right. To endanger everybody. So he wasn't forced into this.

He didn't, his bad marriage didn't cause this. Right, and he continues to deflect and blame her for. Nope, nope. She may have been the worst person in the world, in the world, in the world. Great, he gets to wake up every day and decide, am I going to be a person of integrity and character? Even if that means I'm going to be a person of character and integrity as I end my marriage because it's unsafe. Fine. Yes, but I didn't do that too. So've chosen the shame route. You put that in your backpack and you're choosing to carry it around as an I am statement instead of that's something I did and that will never happen again. Right? That's fair.

Stop carrying that around. You did that. It happened. And there's a period. And then you get to do something different this time. And this is why I just, part of my question to you is just, I just give up and get a dog because I cannot seem to be attracted

to somebody that doesn't do this. I think, I think it's time probably for the first time ever that you go see a true trauma therapist and say,

I need this, I need to heal my body from the inside out. And that journey. I have, I have been through some trauma therapy, but it was for the prior relationship that apparently I still have work to do. I think you got it.

Yeah. There's a difference between trauma therapy that allows you to breathe post significant trauma. But in this situation, you're going back and you have a little girl in there that's still asking daddy why he kept running around and why he didn't show up

and that's the stuff you got to deal with and my guess is my guess is don't answer this question but my guess is Mary's life as a little girl

as a young teenager was really tough real real real tough so that's what we got to go sit down because your body's going to continue to antenna and direct you towards these toxic relationships until you can completely unhook from this need to go solve and instead connect to anchor into the truth that is i'm'm married. And I'm worth being loved. And I'm worth not being cheated on.

Not all men are cheaters. I'm worth. I don't know. Any number of things. I'm worth all of it. I'm especially worth more than this. I'm going to end this the same way I always do. I'm not going to tell you to end your relationship. That's on you. I don't want you saying this podcaster said I had to do

that. But I want to tell you that as you've laid it out, you're not safe physically or emotionally. And it's time to take some action to first protect yourself, second, heal yourself, and then begin to ask hard questions about this relationship and relationships moving forward. Thank you so much for the call, Mary. We'll be with you. Call her anytime I can help. We'll be right back.

Hey, good folks, let's talk about hallow. All right, I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about though, is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together

with other people. And that's another reason why I love Hallow. You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow and they give you three free months to do it. You can pray or meditate by yourself or you can connect with friends, with family, a prayer group or some other community that you choose. And this way you can share prayers, share meditations. You can even share journal reflections to grow in your faith together with others.

And with Hallow, there are other ways you can personalize the app. They have downloadable offline sessions and links ranging from one minute up to an hour, and you can listen where it works for your schedule. You can choose your guide, your background music, you can create your own personal prayer plan, and more. I've made it a personal point to begin my day every single day with the hallow meditation on the scripture of the day It's a discipline and it's a practice and here's what i'm learning as with anything of importance and meaning prayer takes intentionality Practice and showing up even when I don't feel like it and even I don't want to this is discipline Sometimes you do this by yourself and sometimes you do this with a group, and Halo helps you with both.

Download the number one prayer app on planet Earth, Halo, right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show, get three free months when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, let's roll out to hallowed.com slash Diloni. Go right now and change your life. All right, let's roll out to Dave in Philadelphia. He was born and raised. What's up, Dave?

What's up, Dr. John? How are you? I'm good, brother. How are you? I'm good, man. I appreciate you taking the time. So I wanted to reach out. The way that I found you,

I was listening to, I think I was searching for being guilty that I'm doing better than my parents and sisters and stuff like that. Um, I hold, I think a lot of, uh, of guilt and, and I have, you know, heavy imposter syndrome. Um, and then I'm sure you've heard the term like egomaniac with an inferiority complex. So, um, I'm 38 and I got clean and sober. Um, when I was 26, I was a really bad heroin addict, cocaine, uh, alcohol. Yeah. I was a train wreck, bro um so i think like i've i've it's funny i was like thinking about this call and i'm like you might have to do like a trilogy for me because there's

so many layers but of course um there's like now i have this i've rebuilt everything i i have a great wife i have three little kids eight six and three. I've worked in the drug and alcohol treatment realm for a long time and recently started my own recruiting firm where I staff treatment centers all across the country. Can we stop right there? Yeah. Just for a second. Okay.

Dude, you are in rare air, brother like one percent of the one percent yeah i i hold on hold on hold on call him because i want to recognize that i know so i before you even ask your question you i gotta say this you know how um you have that buddy from high school and you haven't seen him in forever and you run into him in like a random place and they're either, they've put on 50 pounds or they're super shredded. Yeah.

And the way you look at them is like this alarm bell, like they see it. And they haven't noticed that over the last 20 years, they've kind of put on half a pound and half a pound and half a pound. And then you see somebody or they haven't lost half a pound, half a pound, half a pound. And they don't even recognize just how incredible they are or on what kind of slippery slope they're on.

And so I need you to hear, man, 12 years up on what I think are some of the hardest drugs to get off of. Yeah. Heroin because of the biomechanics of it and alcohol because it's freaking everywhere, right? Yeah. You've done some hard, hard work. Yeah. So hear me say, man, this is me and you meeting in a grocery store and we haven't seen you in 20 years and I just can't get over how good you look, man.

I'm proud of you. It's amazing. I appreciate that. Yeah, I need to hear that. I think it's funny. Like, I'm a big self-care seeker and so, like, still do regular therapy, you know, do a lot of different meditation stuff, take courses here, there, and everywhere. Um, on a big health kick lost like 30 pounds since, uh, since Christmas, like all kinds of stuff. But I was like talking to my therapist. Um, I just did EMDR to try and

like address trauma, but like all of this circles around my fear of money and losing everything. And it's so black and white. Hold on, hold on. I don't think that's it. I may be wrong. I may be wrong. I hope not. That's what I'm calling.

I may be wrong. But I'm wondering if you are doing these things because there is a belief within you that you will feel a certain way when you're finally safe. Yes. A hundred percent. That feeling doesn't exist. That that's it. Because it's like, I have this feeling of like, when I have this much money in the bank, I'll be okay. Yeah. I'll tell you this. When you don't owe anybody any money and I'll go one step further, when you have an emergency fund, when you've got money set aside where you're your own bank, right?

You got six months of expenses. You get fired. There is a physiological shift that happens inside your body. It does downshift. But, man, based on what drugs you were into i guarantee you your childhood was chaos wasn't it yeah i think the interesting part through tremendous amounts of therapy was the chaos was almost created by me due to boredom like my parents are still married they have a sick marriage my dad doesn't drink my mom i've seen maybe drink a glass of wine in her whole life like dude listen addiction addiction is about relationship it's

not about substance yeah no so it's i think i was always seeking like the approval of i was the the skateboard kid and like to you know your music guy like the punk rock and stuff and i wasn't the uh you know soccer playing student council president. I think that's where a lot of it stem. And I think now, you know, like I'm also, uh, you know, I found Ramsey through you, but like my emergency fund is almost way too much. I have like well over a year's worth of expenses. Um, I'm paying down the mortgage.

All my kids have healthy college funds. And like I said to my wife the other day, I got to put money in Kaia's college fund. And my wife's like, dude, she's three. And I'm not talking like $100, I'm talking like I need to put like $5,000. And it's so manic that it's driving my wife nuts. And I'm starting to feel like I don't even want to take the kids to dinner. And if you looked at me on paper, I mean, liquid assets are there. The finances, saving, like we don't live anywhere outside of our means,

but it's like checking the bank account four times a day. You're trying to prove to your kids that dad's all right. Yeah. You're trying to prove to your wife that look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, look at me, look at me, look at me. I'm doing it. Yeah. And they don't want that. They just want Dave, man.

Yeah. They just want Dave. Yeah. Have you seen, it kind of spun up and went, I was on somebody else's show. I was on my friend, The Minimalist Show. Have you seen that conversation that, it was the first time I ever talked about that publicly, about my wife, what she said to me. I know. Oh, oh, oh, my God.

Was that when you were like, dude, I got this other thing, and I'm going to speak at another event, and you're yelling in the basement? And she was like, hey, we've got enough. We've got enough. That's why I wrote you the message on Friday. Listen, I didn't have— Because that's the conversation. I didn't have a psychology for enough. Yeah.

Right? Because I was just running and running and running. Money was a source of huge fear in my home growing up, as was personal challenges I had growing up. And on top of all that, here's the deal, man. You did heroin. I made straight A's. We both had the same trauma.

They just gave me money and gave me jobs for mine and they got onto you for years. Both of us were running. Yep. My parents are still married too. That doesn't always matter. Okay? Sure. The challenge here is not seeking a feeling.

One of the greatest gifts I've had is to sit next to Dave because Dave Ramsey was a broke, crashed East Tennessee kid from the hills. He calls himself a self-proclaimed hillbilly. And there's moments that he still experiences to this day where he says there's times when he gets the bill,

there's 1,100 employees here, 1,000 employees here, for coffee just for the whole campus. That was more than he made in an entire year. And he said there's still moments when his breath leaves his body because that East Tennessee kid. I have the exact same thing. The exact same thing. So here's the important thing he's taught me,

and I'll pass it on to you. I cannot trust my feelings. I can't. I'm trying to raise kids that will learn to trust theirs. But my feelings are entirely untrustworthy for several reasons. And I'm fine with that. What I then have to do is kind of like, you know, the basketball player, Chris Paul, he's not seven feet tall. So he has to come up or Steph Curry. He's six, two, six, three. So he's got to learn to shoot from really far away in really chaotic situations, right?

You and I have to figure out another way through this thing because our bodies have been through the ringer and our feeling system is just going to be a lot. It's always going to be telling us there's something around the corner, something around the corner, something around the corner. And so there's two things we got to do. Number one, we have to be very crystal clear about what finish lines look like, and we have to hold to those ratios. What does that mean. I will put six months in an emergency fund and that will be all. I will commit to that despite how I feel. I will put this much as a percentage into my retirement and that is it.

That's it. I moved the goalposts on myself all the time. And I think it's like, yes, cause I, I hit those goals and then I'm like, Oh cool. I made this much last year. Well, if I don't make a million this year, I'm a loser. I'm this and that. And it's like, that makes sense. Not moving the goalposts because that's all I ever do. And by the way, it's okay for it to be both. And you could have made a million bucks last year and make 750 grand this year and be disappointed. That's okay. Yeah. That's all right to feel that way. It's all right to look at your business that went down a huge percentage, right? And to look at it and go, man, what do we need to look at? Because next year, if it goes down to 500,000, my business,

my take-home has been cut in half. And it's also at the exact same time, really cool to be grateful that you're making half a million dollars or three quarters of a million dollars. It's both and. Yeah. Right. It's both and. Yeah. That's where I tell like my therapist, like it almost, I think I also feel guilt for feeling the anxiety because like I look at my brother-in-laws and my sisters and all these people that like worked very hard. And like, I think, you know, on paper I'm, I'm relatively much more stable in the one that they can go to. And it's like, but it's not curbing the anxiety. And I think then I get like the guilt of like, you have all this,

like this cushion and all these great things and your kids go to this great school and you're like, it's day home. And like, none of that matters. None of that matters. I mean, that's not true. Let's be honest. Call a spade a spade. No, it's cool, but it doesn't matter to my sanity. It is cool.

There you go. The longer you're running, the more you just drag your family. It's like they're on a tube behind a boat and the tube fell over, but they're all still hanging on and you're just dragging them

across the lake. And you're like, look how fast we are and look how big this boat is. And they're like, we just want you to stop. Right? I have a boat.

I think you can understand. Of course you do. You're like reading my mind. But listen, listen, here's the thing. There's a part two to that story I told about my wife telling me, hey, we have enough. Yeah. She was struggling too because she grew up with not a lot also.

Yeah. And so when we both sat down and we defined what enough is going to be for the both of us, it actually included taking more speaking gigs, but it also included me doing other things in my off time. It also included me being very intentional about going to see my own counselor. Very intentional about how I take care of myself. What I say no to outside of these business opportunities. Right? So it's not like it all goes away. It's me and my wife get together and co-create something. And I gave you one of them.

One of them is sit down with your wife and create the psychology of enough. Okay? The second thing is, and here's it, it's just ratios. If you're worth $100 million, right? And you buy a $100,000 car, you have bought a car that if you, like ratio wise,

it's like you bought a $1,000 car for somebody who makes them, right? You see what I'm saying? So lean on the ratios, give, give like crazy, be generous. And here's the second thing. I have to have a group of men in my life that I outsource a lot of these questions to. Okay. I am untrustworthy when I get fired up to myself now, i'm not gonna lie to people at work That's not what I mean by trustworthy. I mean that I feel things heavily Yeah, this person's really pissed at me. This person's about to fire me This person's not doesn't doesn't want me on their team, whatever

And i've got a few men in my life and women in my life that I lean into and I trust and say hey This just happened. Am I crazy and they go? Yes, you're being crazy. Stop. Don't respond. And I'll go, I have to respond because of all the, I'm not going to do it. See what I'm saying? That's the hard work. And then here's the honest truth. After a decade of this, my feelings are actually becoming better signals. I'm able to read them better now but it just takes a while yeah you you you have to you've got to stop chasing that feeling and just be committed for a season while your body relearns uh i'll i'll i'll i'll try to find the right balance between talking about some of this because i'm not ready to talk about it all but i've been through some pretty significant trauma counseling and a few maybe a month ago i went to my counselor and i said hey look um she said how are you feeling

and i said if i gave if i gave a name to it it would be exhausted or depressed one of those two feelings and she smiled really big and she said your body is learning for the first time what normal feels like you're just gonna have to learn what that feels like that's cool because they're the two that i feel so i'm on the right track yeah because you've been what normal feels like. You're just going to have to learn what that feels like. That's cool. Cause they're the two that I feel. So I'm on the right track. Yeah.

Cause you've been running forever and ever and ever. And for you not running feels like impending doom. It does. It feels like somebody's going to call me. The world is going to fall apart. I'm going to lose it. And I did this as the EMDR therapist. She's like, you're frustrating me because you try so hard to understand so much that like,

you, you cognizantly know what's better, but like, it's never going to be enough and like, you're never going to be broke in the tent

asking people, like, you're not going to be able to not provide for your kids because you have this balance of like, really hard work, but also like,

you're a little bit overly neurotic with it where like, on paper, you couldn't be more safe. Like if you sat down with a financial, but it's that safety is not external and you're trying to get safe externally and you can't, it's internal. I'll tell you this. My count, I may have said this on the show. My counselor told me,

we can only, you're only going to talk once every two or three sessions now. And here's her words. You've built an intellectual fortress around yourself that is very hard to penetrate. And then she said, she said, congratulations. And it was not in a positive way. You know what I mean?

It was like golf clap. And so you have to practice. What does that mean? Sit with your kids and play freaking Candyland until your brain spins sideways. Yeah. Take one of your your kids and play freaking Candyland until your brains spin sideways. Take one of your young kids and just go for a walk and point out every leaf and every acorn. And if you find a little, I don't know,

a little piece of fruit on the ground, throw it at your kid and let him throw it back at you. Or if y'all go swimming, do a giant cannonball first. Go out on the boat and go really, really, really slow. Or get some kayaks and go even slower. You just need a couple of years of teaching your body. And I am intentional. A couple of years.

It takes a while to teach your body to stop running. Now, when you get in the business, bro, run. Fight and claw and scratch. I'm not saying don't be ambitious. And I'm not saying when you get in the business, bro, run. Fight and claw and scratch. I'm not saying don't be ambitious, and I'm not saying when you get in the business, bro, get after it. I'm just saying those metrics won't heal you. What will heal you is connection, connectivity, being with your family. And you just got to practice learning to sit in that.

What's uncomfortable right now but will soon, better than any heroin, is going to give your body that peace. I can't tell you, Dave, how proud of you I am. So proud, so proud. Stay on the line here. I'm going to send you a copy of my book on your past, change your future. It's my gift to you. Actually, I'm going to send you two, one for you and one for your wife. I want you to read it together. And I want you all to work through those exercises together. And it's going to give you a roadmap towards building this non-anxious life. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Let's go out to Charleston, South Carolina and talk to the one and only Anne.

What's up, Anne? Hi, Dr. John. Thank you for taking my call. Of course. Thanks for calling. What's up? Okay, so my husband's parents divorced 50 years ago, and recently we were told that they want to remarry. Oh, man. Did they marry other people after the divorce? So, yeah, a little bit of background. They divorced when my husband was a newborn. His dad immediately remarriedried and his mom remarried

thereafter. And he was raised by his mom and stepdad. He was very close to a stepdad. And his dad was in the picture, but he didn't live with him. So he doesn't have a real close relationship with his father. And for the time that we've been married, 25 plus years, his mom and dad have had very little contact with each other to the point that like special occasions, baptism, things like that, his dad wouldn't even come to if his mom was going to be there. So about a year ago, both his step-parents passed away in a short amount of time from one another. And, um, his, so now he's got two, he's got a mom and a dad that are newly widowed. And, um, this past Christmas, they were both at our house, his mom and his dad, and they were very cordial with one another, were talking, and they both liked to travel.

They're both obviously getting over the death of a spouse, and they had stayed married to the same spouse for almost 50 years, or not quite 50 years, probably 45 years or so. And they both got to talking of how they wanted to travel. So about two months ago, they decided to go on a little getaway together. And they told us just as fast. Gross. I love it. Nothing more. I love it.

Nothing more. Yeah, right. Just like teenagers, right? I guess. Well, and we believe them, I guess. I don't know. It was kind of, I mean, even him traveling together was kind of weird, but we're like, you know what? Maybe it'll be good for him.

So that was about eight weeks ago. And then just recently his mom told him that they are thinking of remarrying him. Atta baby. I love it. How old are they? They're in their 70s. Hey, y'all stay away. Stay out of it. Okay. My husband's having a hard time with it.

He's gonna have a hard time with it. There's no way around that. And there may be some complexity here like estate planning and prenups and all that kind of stuff. I won't get into that because he may have kids and she may have other kids. That's all messy and whatever. Well, my husband's an only child, so he doesn't even have anyone to like. Like, you know, a common sibling to talk about it with.

Here's how I would take this. And both of my parents are in their 70s, okay? So here's, here's how I would take this. And both of my parents are in their seventies. Okay. So I'm just speaking how I would internalize this a super weird, super weird B maybe not the healthiest thing. And also be when your parents are in their seventies and they're like, we're just getting burgers. What are you going to do? Right? Right. Like, what are you going to do? And so you can try to get in the middle of this or y'all can't or he can like have a talk.

It's too soon. Y'all need to, y'all are still grieving or whatever. Or you can just say, you know what? Y'all are teenagers again. Just go party till the wheels fall off. Like what else? What's the other option? Right?

Right. Right. And I think he's afraid of it not working out a second time because obviously yeah but they didn't they didn't ask him yeah exactly he didn't get a vote and so it probably won't work out probably or it might be incredible and so so so weird. So weird, right? It is incredibly, it's so weird. Yeah, and even our kids are like, what?

Like, that's so weird. All you have to do is this. You have to say, ew, a lot, right? Don't say ew. But here's the reality. You and your husband need, especially your husband, he had a very clear picture of what the next 10 or 15 years are going to look like. Right. And that may be very different now. That's his picture to deal with, not theirs.

Right. Right. So I got, I had this, um, this woman who worked with me. She's incredible. I won't use her name here because she, I haven't asked her if that's okay. Um, she lost her husband and I met her new husband that they had been remarried, that she'd gotten remarried after her husband had passed away. Guy was awesome. Awesome. And in a million years, I would not have picked this guy with her. And so I was asking about it.

I was like, dude, this guy's amazing. But so different than I would have imagined. And I was talking through like, you know, how do you get remarried and how do you rebuild a life? And here's what she said to me. And it, it was so profound. She said, Oh, John, we're not building a life. She said, I did that. I built a life and I built a home. I raised kids. I've done that. That part of my life is over. I now have married somebody who's my best friend, who's my ride or die, and we're going to get old and we're going to get wrinkled up together and we're going to go to the lake every weekend. And it was such a powerful transition

for me. Like, oh, you and I have very different goals relationally. I'm trying to keep my marriage together, like duct tape and bailing wire and trying to figure out how to raise a teenager. Y'all are just going to the lake, baby, right? It was a totally different mindset. And so I'm not going to impose – it doesn't lessen the sacredness of marriage and all that. It's just different stages, right? And so if they say, hey, we're going for it. I mean, what? I mean, why not? That's what I told my husband. I said, it's their life. They're not telling us how to live our life. So we really can't tell them how to live their life. So if that's what

they want and if it doesn't work out, that's on them. It's not on us. Yeah. And you can tell them, hey, if this thing, it works out all the way till the ride or die end, we will be so happy. And if it doesn't work out, I'll be here for you. You both can call me. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just, I think he feels like it's just rushed.

Oh, it is. Make no mistake. You know, it went from a little getaway, just as friends, and now we're thinking about getting married. And he's like, no. It's hardly been a year since your spouse has passed away. And her thing is she says she doesn't like being unwed and that he will take very good care of her. Here's the deal. Okay.

The notebook and the Titanic are over now. Right. Right? I mean, that season the deal. Okay. Like the notebook and the Titanic are over now. Right. Right? I mean, that season's passed. Yeah. And safety and security and love and commonality and ew. Like all that's awesome. Right.

It's just different. It's totally different stages. And so how old are you guys? We're in our 50s. Okay. You know it's starting to accelerate. Mm-hmm. But you've become aware probably over the last five to ten years

how insanely precious minutes and hours are. Sure. Right? Right. It doesn't move proportionally. It's like compound interest. That pressure and that feeling you feel, like my wife told me a few months ago,

oh my gosh, we only have five spring breaks left with our son. Then he's gone. And I was like, what? You know what I mean? Like five spring breaks and I missed the last two traveling for work. That's over.

That never, I got five left. You're further down the road than I am. You start to see how precious this time is. When you get to be 70 that accelerates in such a powerful way and so I would your husband's going to have to grieve because he had a picture and that picture's going to be different

that might be different because his parents are back together it might be different that he's got to deal with his dad that he felt bailed on him and that may be part of the issue. Yeah. Any number of things. But I think the posture is y'all are crazy, but good for y'all.

Yeah. I mean, what are you going to do? Do you think this is too soon? Yes, it's too soon, but it's your life. Yeah. I want you to have as much fun as possible in your remaining time together. I don't know why you would hope for anything other than that. Right. Right. Right. And that's what I told him. I said, you know, they're older. They, they probably don't feel like they have all

these years down the road, like a younger couple would be, you know, so waiting a year or two to get married is not really, it may not be in the cards for them. So maybe that's why they want to hurry up. Well, and here's the deal. I don't know. None of us get a vote. Right. Unless my dad sat me down or my mom called and sat me down and said, I need you to be very specific with me.

Am I making the worst mistake of my life? And even then I would probably say, I can't tell you that. If you want to be with somebody and this is the dude for the last 10 or 15 years of your life. And statistically, they're already playing on house money right now, right? Right. And so who knows what tomorrow brings once you are in your mid-70s and on. You're playing on house money. And so let's have as much fun and joy and love as possible.

Yeah, right, right. Good advice. Thank you. I will pass it on to him. Hey, good luck with that. Good luck with that. I know it's not going to be easy. And I'll just say this.

I'm smiling this whole call. It brings me joy. It just does. There's so much heartache and so much, I can't wrap my head around losing somebody that you were with for 50 years, 50 years. I can't wrap my head around that. And so the idea that two people found each other, albeit pretty quickly, found each other

and were like, are you in? I'm in. Let's just see how much gas is left in this in this old truck I that just brings me joy that makes me smile And again, there's going to be estate things to figure out there's going to be insurance things to figure out There's going to be all that stuff. That's that's all a pain in the butt and you can't skip those steps You got to deal with those things But just at its core

I mean, what else are you going to do? You're going to shut down your 75-year-old mom and be like, no, you call me before you date again? No, man. You're going to say, knock your lights out, guys. Y'all have a good time. And we'll be there at the wedding. And maybe you and your dad have to have a hard conversation. That's fine. Or maybe just not. Maybe just not. Thanks for the call, Ian, you're awesome. We'll be right back. All right, we are back. As we wrap up the show, we're not gonna do a song today.

I've come to believe that my wife is a children's literature expert, if you will. And children's literacy is her expertise. And I've come to believe that children's literacy is her expertise. And I've come to believe that children's literature is, through her example and through her teaching, children's literature holds some of the most profound truths expressed in the most simple ways. It was Churchill, the great Churchill, I think, who said, if you need me to come speak tomorrow for 12 hours, I can do it. If you need me to speak for 30 minutes, I need six months. Because distilling truth and distilling honesty and distilling a great

profound truths in a teeny tiny directional way is very, very hard. And this book called The Rabbit Listened by Corey Dorfeld. It's just a masterpiece. So we're going to have story time. I'm going to read it. If you want to roll over to YouTube, if you're listening to this and check it out, or we'll put the book in the show notes. It's one of those books I think every kid should have on their shelf. Corey Dorfeld, just a masterpiece. Here's the book. One day, Taylor decided to build something, something new, something special, something amazing. And Taylor was so proud.

But then out of nowhere, a whole bunch of black birds just fly in and knock these things down. Things came crashing down, and he's just looking over a pile of blocks that have all been knocked down. The chicken was the first to notice. Cluck, cluck, what a shame. I'm so sorry, sorry, sorry this happened. Let's talk, talk, talk about it, cluck, cluck. But Taylor didn't feel like talking, so the chicken left.

Next came the bear. Roar, how horrible. I bet you feel so angry. Let's shout about it. Roar! But Taylor didn't feel like shouting, so the bear left. The elephant knew just what to do. Trump-a-da, I can fix this.

We just need to remember exactly the way things were. But Taylor didn't feel like remembering, so the elephant left. One by one they came, the hyena, hee hee, let's laugh about it. The ostrich, gulp, let's hide and pretend nothing happened. The kangaroo, what a mess, let's throw this all away. And the snake, let's go knock down someone else's. But Taylor didn't feel like doing anything with anybody. So eventually they all left until Taylor was alone. In the quiet, Taylor didn't even notice

the rabbit, but it moved closer and closer until Taylor could feel its warm body. I'll be, dude. I'm gonna get all choked up reading this book. God almighty. Together, they sat in silence until Taylor said, please just stay with me. And the rabbit listened. The rabbit listened as Taylor talked. And the rabbit listened as Taylor shouted. The rabbit listened as Taylor remembered and laughed. And the rabbit listened as Taylor shouted. The rabbit listened as Taylor remembered and laughed. And the rabbit listened to Taylor's plans to hide, to throw everything away, to ruin things for someone else. Through it all, the rabbit never left. And when the time was right, the rabbit listened to Taylor's plan to build again. I can't wait, Taylor said.

It's going to be amazing. Woo! The greatest gift people have ever given me during times of dark tragedy and mild personal life is just showing up and saying nothing. Just being there. Thank you for being here with us. And I'm glad I get to be here with you. We'll see you soon.

Stay in school, don't do drugs.