The Dr. John Delony Show - Should We Stop Coddling Our 33-Year-Old Son?

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

On today’s episode, we hear about: ·       A couple wondering if they should stop bailing out their adult son ·       A young woman struggling with the aftermath of an abortion  ·       The consequences of cutting family members out of your life Next Steps: 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test  📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future  ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards  💭 John's Free Guided Meditation  🤘🏼 The Dr. John Delony Show Merch    Connect With Our Sponsors: 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. 🔴 Get 15% off with code DELONY at Bon Charge. 🌿 Get up to 40% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth.   🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe.  😇 Go to Hallow for a 90-day free trial.  💤 Visit Helix Sleep for special offers!  🥤 Get 20% off with code DELONY at Organifi.   💪 Get 25% off your order at Thorne.    🏋️ Go to Trainwell to get started!   Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big news! New dates for money and marriage getaway just dropped for Valentine's Day weekend 2026. Get tickets at ramsysolutions.com events to get away with your spouse in Nashville, Tennessee. We have heard you tell adult children that their parents don't get a vote when they're making decisions, you know, life choices. Yes. It is, it is.

Because we're the parents, right? Oh, yes. Okay, let's do this. I've been waiting for this one. Showdown time. Let's do it. Woo-ha! What's up?

This is Jon with the Dr. Jon Deloney Show. What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney show. So glad that you're with us talking about your relationships, your mental and emotional health, all of it. If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz. Reach out to johndeloney.com slash ask ASK. Don't give me a buzz like Kelly likes to have buzzes. She's drinking Mad Dog Foti Foti in there under the desk, the purple one and the green

one. Get it, Kelly. Get it. All right. Let's roll out to Cincinnati and talk to Gail and Patrick. What's up, Gail? Hey, hey. How are you?

Doing fantastic. How are we doing? Oh, really good. Really good. Thank you for taking our call. Of course. And making time for us. are you? Doing fantastic. How we doing? Oh, really good. Really good. Thank you for taking our call. Of course. And making time for us.

Thank you all for calling in. Let me bring in Patrick here. What's up, homie? How we doing, Patrick? Hey. I'm doing terrific. It's a gorgeous day today. How are you?

Outstanding. Same. I'm doing great, man. All right. So what's going on? How can I help? Okay. All right, so what's going on? How can I help? Okay, so we have heard you tell adult children that their parents don't get a vote Yes, it is it is because we're the parents

Okay, let's do this. I've been waiting for this one showdown time. Let's do it Well, you know, well, we'll start by saying we don't disagree. Like we get it. Oh man, that's what we're going to fight. Okay. Yeah. Well, but, but I'm going to ask you to put a comma at the end of the sentence and not a period. Okay. Excellent. So the comma is your parents don't get a vote. And our question is what comes after the comma, right? So we've got a 33 year old son who's on a dead end road

and we've bailed him out, we've helped him out, we've done all the things to set him up for success, but he just keeps making really bad choices that he doesn't talk to us about because he's, you know, autonomous, he's doing his own thing. And we're just at the point of asking and really kind of, I guess, clarifying, are we doing the right thing by not bailing him out, by not helping?

Like, hey, he made his choices. He didn't ask our input or take our advice. And so are we somehow responsible for helping him clean up another mess. Give me a scope of the messes. I have pretty firm thoughts around this, but give me the scope of the mess. I mean, he's at this point, so he's clean and sober. So let me just clear that up. He has a past substance abuse history. He's really marginally employed at best, kind of by choice.

And he might have some anxiety that has gotten in the way of him being successful and holding down jobs, but he's gotten fired from two good jobs. He is like a banana peel away from slipping into being homeless. Like he is that close. And he's been there before and we've, you know, bailed him out, of course you always have a safe place

to land here and blah, blah, blah. And then he just doesn't get his act together. We've always focused on his potential. We see the good in him. We see, man, we work really hard to show Him grace and love and, like, just all the unconditional things that we want Him to experience. But it's just, I, it's, He's just not, you know? He's not adulting really well.

Dad, how do you feel? Uh, I agree. Uh, it, it breaks my heart. Um, we've had, you know, both our sons, great kids, great growing up lives. And I think the thing that breaks my heart is I've, I always had a safe place to land in my parents' home. My grandparents were the same way. And we raised our boys. You know, a home is a safe place. If there's something goes down, you can always come home, which our son has done multiple times, and that's fine. But we get him in, get him on his feet, and he gets going. And this last time I said, hey, this is it. You know, we can't keep this cycle going. You're gonna have to make it. And he was set up for success, but once again, it failed. And I think the thing for me this time was

he covered it up, he lied, he wasn't truthful. He ended up putting us $8,000 in debt because we had to bail him out on something that I'd never swore I would do a sign alone for my my kids, but we did and He is like like Yale said he is basically living on a mattress in somebody's basement and He asked if he could come home and I said no And that hurts so bad. Tell me about that. You hung up the phone. When you said no, what did he say to you?

He started to cry. And he just didn't know. He wasn't used to saying no. For us to say no that he couldn't come home. And it took, we even had to call, you know, trusted family members who said, hey, this is what we're about to do. We, this is hard. And you know, they said, yeah, it's hard, but do you feel it's the right thing? And I just felt like, yeah, I felt this is it. You're gonna have to, if it,

if everything goes from beneath you and you're out on the street, I can say to myself, we've done everything, but man, it hurts. That hurts. So holding that tension is incredibly important because that's the path forward. Henry Cloud, if you haven't read the book Boundaries, it's one of the first stories in the book, and Henry's a great buddy of mine, but the classic line in that opening story is, the greatest gift you could give your son is some problems.

Because there's always been, when the weight bar got heavy, there's always somebody that ran over there and helped lift it off your chest Yeah, yeah, and I wouldn't wish when I first got married and I Acted the fool with my spending and I was walking around the house at night when my wife was asleep Like I didn't know how we were gonna pay bills, right? I had a medical emergency had to call a buddy and say hey if I feel the ER tonight Can I borrow your credit card? I know I had nothing right and I Wouldn't wish those nights on anybody. I wouldn't wish that stress on a young marriage for anybody.

But even if my parents had wanted to, they didn't have it. Right? They didn't have anything. And so I'm now 20 years removed from that. And I tell you what, I've got layer upon layer upon layer of protection against ever going back to that thing Mm-hmm, right. And so the greatest gift I have now in my late 40s is that I Experienced the actual there is no no one's coming to get you on this one, dude

Yeah, right And I'm glad I learned that at 25 and not at 35 because I think the consequences would have been much greater. It would have been difficult. Absolutely. So take me back to when you hooked him up. You got him set up with a really great job and he gets fired. What's the very next thing that happened? So He We set up for it was around Christmas time and he had been at the job six months plus and everything going fine. And he had his own, his own condo, his own transportation.

And I said, Hey, come over for Christmas. Cause it was Christmas time. We'll do our Christmas dinner. We'll set up, you know, see if you can get off. He goes, Oh yeah, yeah, I can get off. He goes, but my, my vehicle's not working. Can you give me a ride? It's like, absolutely. Cause he, he had trouble with the vehicle back and forth. And so I go to pick him up and there's no answer. His vehicle's not there.

I'm thinking, did he go somewhere? So I text him. He's like, oh, oh, I've got to tell you, I moved out. I'm at a buddy's house. So I'm like, okay. So I go get him from his buddy's house and I said, what's going on? He goes, Oh, I had to move out because the dog was barking too much and they called the condo association. Well, long story short, it ended up, he had lost his job weeks before

he couldn't pay his rent. He was getting kicked out of his condo. Well, then he owed money and the truck wasn't working. So he sold the truck, even though he didn't have the title. He didn't tell us about it. He didn't come to us and ask us for help or assistance. And then he's living in somebody's house and there's no explanation. There's no thank you. There's no nothing.

And next thing we know, we got creditors because he hadn't been paying the loan coming after us. And we were getting sued, so we had to pay off the loan. And no thank you, no. Yeah, well, I think in all of that, part of the frustration was, yeah, he wasn't honest with us, but it's not like he got fired and then started searching for another job.

It's not like he was like busting his butt, hey, I'll shovel driveways through the wintertime to make 20 bucks to try and cover whatever. He just stuck his head in the sand and disappeared until the truth came out. So he doesn't, I don't feel like he takes ownership and responsibility of himself. But he never has had to, has he? No. No. Even when he's not lived with us, he's had other people that have helped. But just, just sit in that for a second. Just sit in that for a second. This isn't about judgment or blame. This is just an is. Yeah. It's easy to look back and go, oh my gosh, in college we stepped in and,

and then the first job afterwards we stepped in and, and then this one thing, and then this one thing, and this one thing, and now he's 33 years old. Yeah. And so I think there's a tension here. And the tension is, if I think my kid, I don't care how old they are, if I think my kid, I don't care how old they are, if I think my kid is about to cross a line

where they're not gonna be alive anymore, I'm gonna step in. And it might be institutionalization, it might be me fighting to take their civil rights away so they have to go through an inpatient treatment program or something, but I'll step in when I can. But until then, the greatest gift I can give my kid is they've got to understand how the

world works. Yeah. And by the way, can I just say this? That doesn't mean that your kids never welcome back at home. It might be that y'all sit down and come up with a roadmap. You will have a job. You'll have three jobs. You will pay rent. You'll have to be home by midnight. You'll have to jobs. You'll pay rent.

You'll have to be home by midnight. You'll have to have drug tests. I mean, y'all get to pick the rules at your house. Right. So when it comes to parents don't get a vote, what I mean by that is, not they don't get a vote in trying to keep you alive. Not that they don't get a vote in they just have to keep shelling out money and resources and time to your never ending series of bad decisions.

What I mean they don't get a vote is when you're married, they don't get to force you to come to Christmas, to a Christmas that you can't afford to travel or can't get off of work. Right, right. Right, and that's not y'all at all. So y'all very much get a vote in, or you know what? I've never done this before, but let me flip it. He didn't get a vote in what y'all do.

And actually I've been hearing this call more and more on the Ramsey Show, the other show that I host, of kids saying, hey, the inheritance went to the wrong person. And it's like, you don't get a vote, man, it's their money. You can be mad, you can be disappointed, but that's their money. Or my dad just bought a new car and he's 75 years old

and he doesn't need to, dude, you don't get a vote. So he doesn't get a vote. So he doesn't get a vote into what y'all try to do for your house. Right, right. Where I think you're gonna get yourselves in trouble is if you don't honor this with the weight that it requires and don't grieve.

Y'all had a picture of this 33 year old already with married to somebody, home with a grandkid. And that picture's not going to happen. Yeah. And your body is going to continue to try to solve for that picture and solve for that picture and what that what that looks like in real life is every text message your body leaps to this is the one. Yeah.

Every email, every email you get you're like, oh, this is the one and you open it and it's Hey dad, I need $40. And then there's some wilds a raccoon bit the back of my bike tire and then it crashed into like some just insane story, right? Yeah. And you've lived our life. I mean, I don't talk about this kind of stuff, but I've got a lot of experience here. Yeah.

And so the hard part is sitting down and you two together sound like your marriage is good. Is that fair? Oh, we're solid. Okay. Like amazing because this situation breaks up couples a lot. Yeah, we've definitely had to struggle through that. Okay. Because one wants to keep funding it, one wants to cut them off, one wants to be ugly

to them, one wants to, you know, and that breaks couples up. If you guys are still solid, that's amazing. Here might be a really tough, but a powerful bonding experience for both of you. If you wrote a letter to him that you're never gonna send, but you read it to each other, one from dad and one from mom. And it would let you hear, because both of you are walking around, can we be honest,

both of you are walking around feeling like you were the one who kind of failed the most. Oh, 100%. And dad, you're walking around saying, man, if I had just, and moms, like if I had just, and those unspoken stories that y'all tell each other, you both feel like you're carrying the entire squat bar and you're not. Let's just set the whole bar down. Yeah.

And so if we write a letter to him, we read it to each other, there's this story, this isn't gonna happen. It might happen, he may come to your house at 43 with the new grandkid, maybe, but it's not gonna happen at 33. And we kind of thought it would be by now. Yeah.

And so if y'all write that letter, read it to each other out loud and you'll weep together and you're sad together, then you get to this magic awful place called reality. Here's where we actually are. We have a 33 year old man that keeps making my wife cry. I have a 33 year old man that keeps making my wife cry. I have a 33 year old man that makes my husband go into withdrawal so deeply inside of himself

he didn't talk for three days. And when you get that level of distance, then you can start making informed decisions, not emotional decisions, informed decisions like, I can't give you any more money because I'm funding your drug use. I'm funding your next bad decision, man. I can't be a part of it. Yeah.

That's so hard. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I would not wish that on my worst enemy. So here's what I would give him. I would give him a typed out piece of paper that says, we love you on it. And here's what we're willing to offer you anytime, day or night. You ready to go get counseling? We're in.

You want to go to treatment for marijuana and for anxiety? We're in. We'll fund it. You want to, y'all make up the map, but I think it's worth him because he's going to wake up and he's going to be frozen and I don't want him to have an email or a text message. I want him to have a specific thing that he can fold up and have in his pocket. And email it to him because he'll lose that, but he'll remember it, right? He'll remember it.

And you say, I'm emailing this to you also. But there will come a moment when he's going to have to make a hard choice. And man, if he knows, I'm going to go get treatment. Even if he thinks I'm going to scam my mom and dad out of this, I'll tell him I'm going to go to treatment. And maybe he gets in there for three days or four days and is able to finally sleep and is able to, I think it's 30 days without marijuana that starts to really transform your head. You start to get your mind back.

And I'm not talking about recreational use. I'm talking about someone who is using it as for medicinal purposes, right? But that's a lot of jargon I just threw at you. I just want to be sad as a parent with you guys. I'm sorry. Thank you. It stinks. Yeah, we appreciate that. We appreciate it.

And then bring them home. Yeah, no, it's, yeah. No, I appreciate that. And that, I mean, that really is where we've landed and still questioning like, are we doing the right thing? Just because it hurts doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because it's right doesn't mean it's without risk. And the risks here happen to be catastrophic. Yes.

They're so big. Yeah. And it may be that he needs two more weeks of, oh, I've got nothing, nothing. I'll come home. Yeah. So hope any of that helps me and maybe just be in a listening ear and just saying, yeah, you're right for this to hurt really bad and for the next right move. And I'll tell you, I'll say this one more time before I let you guys go.

If I know somebody's suicidal, if I know someone's self harming, if I know somebody's right up there on the precipice, I'm going to go get you. I'm going to fight to have your civil rights taken away so I can get you institutionalized so I can let professionals do their thing. But as you mentioned earlier, you've offered counseling, you've offered so many resources and he's never once asked for your help. And I don't know if there's anything harder than a family member who just doesn't care, doesn't want our help.

Man, that's tough. All right, we come back. I'm going to talk to a sweet young woman who had an abortion and she's been struggling every day since. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, listen, therapy is not just for people who are dealing with major traumas. It can be for that big stuff, but it can also be a valuable tool for anyone

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Listen, talk it out with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash deloney. All right, let's betterhelp.com. Alright, let's talk about Helix. Summer is here! The sun's up earlier, the days are longer, and if you've got kids at home, your daily routine is a dumpster fire. And I don't know about you, but this time of year my sleep schedule can get chaotic. I want to stay outside longer, me and my family are traveling,

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Plus right now my audience gets 20% off the entire Helix Sleep site. Go to helixsleep.com slash Dulony and get 20% off your entire order. That's Helix Sleep. With Helix, better sleep starts right now. Let's go out to Knoxville, K-Knoxville as they say locally, K-Knoxville and talk to Maya. What's up, Maya? Hi.

How's it going? It's going pretty good. How are you? I'm doing okay. What's going on? How can I help? So, my story basically is me and my partner, we've been together for about a year and a half, a little over a year and a half.

And about eight months ago or so we had an abortion. So there's been a lot of feelings specifically on my end ever since. And I just want to ask you how I could talk to my boyfriend about it and honestly if our relationship could even survive something like this. Tell me what you're feeling. I mean, honestly, just kind of talking about the situation gets me kind of worked up. Yeah. Did you not want to do this?

Did you feel pressured to do this? Did you think it was one of the things that felt right at the time and now you've come back to say, oh my God, what did I do? Yeah, well, I never imagined myself ever doing that, but you know, things happened and... Well let's not say that. I wasn't exactly... When you say they happened, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say they happened?

Yeah, me getting pregnant. Exactly. When you say they happened, what do you mean? What do you mean? When you say they happened? Yeah, me getting pregnant, like I never imagined like even picture that ever happening. So it was just a huge shock in general. But in the moment, I obviously didn't want to be pregnant. I still feel pretty young and just not ready, but in general I, in general I mostly did not want to get the abortion. You said it was eight months ago, so something I've heard over and over over the last couple of decades is people getting caught off guard by the encroachment of what would have been a due date.

I don't even think it's that really. It's just something that never leaves my mind really. Yeah. And tell me about it. It's bothered me a lot. Yeah, I can hear it. Who have you told, who are you able to talk to this, talk about with this?

The only person that knew about it is my best friend, but I don't really see her much and she's going through her own thing. So I haven't talked about it with her since it happened so I haven't really talked to anybody about it. Okay. So the great David Kessler who wrote what I think is the most important book on grief ever written has a line that I remember that I use in my life on a daily weekly basis. Here's the line, grief demands a witness.

When you're sad about something, when you're heartbroken about something, when you feel like, I can't believe what I've done. I can't believe where I found myself. You simply have to find a person, a group of people that you can sit down with and say, Hey, this is what happened. Holding that in or in the way I say the secrets will kill you. You don't sleep, you don't eat. The luster of life is gone. You don't laugh as deeply as you did. It's just kind of, there's no flavor left, right?

Here's a big concern for me. Why can't you talk to your boyfriend about this? If he's your partner, if he's your guy, why can't you talk to him about this? Did he pressure you into doing this? I guess you could say that in a way, but I mean, I was on board with it. It's not like I ever told him, no, I'm not doing this. You know what I mean? Why didn't you tell him no?

Well, here's the other thing. I also feel like a great, a lot of anger towards him as well. That's another reason I can't really talk to him about it because I guess I'm just angry that when I told him about it, he was just instantly like, okay, we need to schedule an abortion, you know what I mean? Like if he was the type of guy who would like, could be happy for the both of us, cause obviously that was like a lot for me to take in, but if he could be happy for the both of us,

if he could be like, you know, you're strong, you can do this, we can do this, like it would have been a whole different story. Yeah. I'm just, I have resentment towards him a lot. Yeah. I'm just, I have resentment towards him a lot. Yeah. And if you felt yourself scared and alone, and you say you're 23, so you were 22 at the time, is that right?

No, this was, actually, yeah, this actually happened, like the abortion happened a week before my birthday. So, you find yourself terrified and scared and young and alone and 22. How old's your boyfriend? He's 26. Okay. So, older guy by three or four years says, hey, this is what's happening. We're not discussing this.

This is happening. And all of a sudden you're scared and alone and not able to tell anybody and you find yourself on a river racing out to the ocean and here we are. Yeah. I mean, it's not like I could really go to him and be like, hey, this is your fault because, you know, you hopped on board. You know what I mean? Like this is my decision too, but.

It's both end. And I think that's fair to take ownership. You play a role and also to understand, man, I wish things would have been different. Man, I wish things would have been different. What are you sad about? I mean, the whole thing was just extremely, extremely traumatizing. Like, not even just the pain of it, but... I mean, it feels like a loss. Yeah.

Yeah. Is it okay for me to say it was a loss? Yeah. Okay. I mean, it was. It was. And I think honoring it as such is important for your healing. Can I ask you something? What do you think I should do?

Well, I think that means a couple of things. One is you have to properly grieve this loss. And if over the last year, you've had images pop into your head of you holding a baby, if you've had, if you've started referring to baby by name, then you've got to treat it with that level of seriousness. And- And just kind of ignore the situation or try to like... You can't, it'll overtake you. And by the way, you're not crazy.

I've heard this over and over and over throughout my life. And it would be a lie if I said, I always have heard this, I haven't. I've talked to people who made the same decision and they just moved on with their life. But yeah, I've heard it a number of times. You have to, by the way, it doesn't matter what I've heard. I'm sitting here talking to you. You've got to grieve this loss for what it was. It's a big loss.

The second thing is you're done with this relationship, Maya. You know that and I know that. What does it mean? I mean, you resent him, you can't talk to him. There's a power differential here. You're in awe and not in awe like wonder, like of sunset or God, but you're in awe like you resent being that he's driving this boat and you're stuck in the back of the boat. This isn't a partnership. The fact that you can't sit down, how long have you all been together? You say a year and a half?

Yeah. The fact that you can't sit down and say, I'm really hurting this bad. I'm this angry with you. I'm this frustrated with you. I'm this heartbroken that you can't have that conversation. Tell me all I need to know about the state of your relationship. That also suggests that you- And then besides what happened, like we do have a good relationship.

Like he's good to me. He treats me well. I don't think he does. I don't believe you. And here's why. If he did, you could tell him hard things. What if that's like just like a me thing, you know? I want to run from my emotions and I don't really want to face them.

Maybe. Is that true? Or have you found yourself with a guy that is unsafe for you to be completely honest with? I like to think it's me. Have you always blamed yourself? I'd like to think it's me. Have you always blamed yourself? Um, pretty much.

Yeah. Maybe it is a little bit. And maybe this is the guy of your dreams. I don't hear that, but maybe. I don't know you all that well. But if he is, and this is 100% your fault, which I don't buy for a second, then he has a right to know that you're this upset,

that you're hurting this bad. And he may surprise you and say my god me too What have we done? Or he may say I I would never have done this I thought this is what you wanted to do And you may have learned a harrowing lesson that I will never have experienced anything again where I'm not heard harrowing lesson that I will never have experienced anything again where I'm not heard. Or I will always follow my gut from this moment forward. And part of that's part of the grieving process is who am I going to become now? How am I going to find meaning in what happened and how is that going to inform who I become

down the road? And by the way, who I become is a series of what are the things I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go get a counseling degree and sit with hurting people. I'm gonna start a Facebook group for people considering terminating pregnancy. I'm gonna sit with folks who've just gone through this because I know how hard it is and how scary it is.

I'm going to fill in the blank. I'm going to go be an architect for crying out loud. I'm going to build stuff. Like who am I going to be now? Can I just say that I'm glad that you're here? I'm glad that you're here? I'm glad that you call and your pain is real and your pain hurts and I wouldn't wish this situation on my worst enemy, but I'm glad that you I'm honored that you brought it here. Let me sit with you for a bit.

What's your takeaway from this call? What are you gonna go do? Well, it was really nice to talk to someone about it because I've been trying to find anybody too, but. Okay. I'm gonna hook you up with, I'm gonna hook you up with BetterHelp with better help for three months for free. So you can talk to a licensed counselor, okay?

And I want you to put a date on the calendar this week when you sit down with boyfriend and it's probably going to be better for you to write everything out. And you can read it to him. But say I need you to sit in this with me. And I want you to be really honest. If you haven't talked to him about how you feel about stuff, about your anger and your resentment and your frustration, how you wish things have gone differently. And yes, that's you owning your part in this. You had a decision too. But, I want you to be honest, if you haven't been fully open with him because it's not safe to do so, physically, emotionally, psychologically,

or he's your first big serious boyfriend and you can't imagine your life without him, so you just squash your feelings like you've done your whole life. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your future self to find somebody that you can sit and practice taking ownership and speaking your mind and your heart out to the world, okay?

Your voice matters, Maya. Now more than ever. Thank you. And your pains and your hurts and your feelings are worth being heard. Okay? Yeah. And if nothing else, take from this moment, you will start trusting Maya from this point

forward, okay? Okay. Listen to me. Your grief is right. Your grief is right. Your grief is good. And I'll sit here with you and honor it. Do you want to do something pretty wild? You may not be prepared for this and that's okay. Maybe a few weeks. But I think it's worth writing a letter to that kid. And I always recommend people write letters to anyone that they feel like they've lost.

Parents, siblings, kids. Yeah, it will be. And I don't don't do that without a professional. Okay. I think you should do it with a counselor. Okay. It'll be very hard. All this is going to be hard moving forward.

Having conversations with your family, your friends, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your family, your Yeah, it will be and I don't don't do that without a professional. Okay, I think you should do it with a counselor

Okay, it'd be very hard all this is gonna be hard moving forward having conversation with boyfriend's gonna be hard all that's gonna be hard But can we be honest just sitting here for a year not saying anything to anybody. That's really hard to it Yeah Let's find one person let's find two people let's find five people where our voice can be heard, okay? Okay. Deal? Deal. Okay.

This week we talked to boyfriend and we're fully honest and fully open. And hang on the line here, I'm gonna hook you up with my friends from better help. Thank you so, so much for the call. We come back. I'm going to talk about an epidemic that is just melting families around the country. And it's something that I felt that's important enough for me to just spend some time talking

about it. So come back and bring a notepad with you. We'll be right back. All right, let's talk about digital privacy and delete me. Does anyone else feel like your digital footprint is starting to feel like a digital trail leading right back to you? Now scammers are using phishing attacks that's phishing with a pH or they're trying to trick you into giving them

something by pretending to know you and be looking out for you. You get an email a text or a phone call and the person or AI bot on the other end sounds like someone who's looking out for you and wants to be your friend. Listen with the new technological advancements no one is really safe. What is any of us to do? Start controlling what you can. Listen, you can learn about how to be careful online and offline and sign up with Delete Me. I use and recommend Delete Me because they work in the background to reduce my online presence. This way I don't have to worry about creepy data brokers buying and selling my data to try to trick me to give them more and more of my personal

information. DeleteMe has reviewed over tens of thousands of sites for me and they've removed my data from hundreds of them which has saved me countless hours and a ton of stress. Stop the phishing attacks, the harassment, and the other online threats before they start and take control of your digital privacy with DeleteMe. Go to JoinDeleteMe.com slash Deloney today for 20% off the annual plan and that comes out to less than $9 a month. That's JoinDeleteMe.com slash Deloney. Alright, so it was over the Christmas break that Kelly sent me a note Maybe she sent me a text message or something, but let me know that

One in four twenty five percent thirty percent of every incoming email or phone call to the show Which is numbers is thousands we get One out of four at the minimum is talking something about I cut my parents off. I've cut my kids off. I am no longer talking to my brother or my sister this this family's just blowing each other apart and It's all boundaries are super important and I live and die by boundaries. They're critical but now we've reached a point when it's beyond boundaries, when it's uncomfortable or I don't

like your opinion or you got a COVID vaccination so get out of my family. You can't come to Thanksgiving or you didn't get a COVID vaccination. And these five and six and seven year old like, you know, back in college, I needed $30 from you and you didn't come through for me so I hate you and then we have adults who are just dealing with being 35 dealing with being 40 and being 35 and 40 is just annoying and hard and scary and we thought our life was gonna look different and it doesn't and then mom calls and she's annoying dad calls and

he's frustrating or he's grumpy or he doesn't, whatever. And it's just, I cut you off. I'm cutting you off. I'm cutting you off. So Kelly and the team dug into some of these, this research and I tried to clarify a couple of things. One, what's actually going on across the country

with family members cutting each other off and when is it okay to cut somebody off? This is just Deloney's opinion so you can take this is what you want. And what can you do when we're thinking about cutting off family members, drawing boundary lines saying I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. Alright so here's a couple of data points. 29% of Americans report being estranged from an immediate family member. So it actually fits with our data about 30% such as a parent,anged from an immediate family member. So that actually fits with our data, about 30%,

such as a parent, child, sibling, or grandparent. 27% of Americans have experienced estrangement from a family member. 56% of Americans have had a falling out with a close family member at some point, and 21% have experienced a rift that never reconciled. And man, this can be, and 21% have experienced a rift that never reconciled. And man, this couldn't be,

these disagreements or these rifts come from lifestyle choices, come from value disagreements, from past abuse and trauma, blatant disregard for boundaries, or being a whiny-hiny, being a brat. And adult parents can be brats, kids can be brats.

Somebody's being a brat, right? And so this is a hard conversation to talk about because I can say, don't ever cut off your parents. Well, if dad abused you when you're a kid, it's right. It's right that you don't wanna run your grandkids. And if your dad voted for the wrong person or watches Fox News or MSNBC all day and he's always complaining,

is that really a reason to not have a father or to your grandkids to not have a grandparent, right? So it's digging into some of these details. So here's some things that I wrote out just to be thinking through this stuff. How do you know when it's time to take a break from a family member or cut ties? Number one, a lack of basic respect or dignity.

Not feeling annoyed or inconvenienced or disagreed with. Get over that. That's just called being in relationship with people. I'm talking about demeaning, ugly, abusive, belittling, trashing you, trashing your spouse, trashing your kids. And by the way, trashing is not, it doesn't have to be a spectacle. We took a call on a show the other day

and the caller said that his mom said, there's gonna come a day when your wife comes between me and you. And I was like, yes, the day you got married forever. So it doesn't have to be, I just don't know why she just doesn't like us because you send texts all the time telling her that you don't like the way she does X, Y, or Z

or whatever the thing is. Well, we don't know why you don't let your, our grandkids come stay with us for three weeks in the summer. Cause anyway, lack of basic respect or does any trashing yourself worth refusing or withholding love connection or support? Right?

Um, and again, I want to make this clear. This is different than being annoying. My father chews too loud, so I don't want to go home. My mother always just wants to have, you know, Mexican food and I don't like, she doesn't ever take in my gluten-free preference just whatever your complaint is. She wishes Billy played baseball and Billy plays soccer and just stop with that stuff. This is different than annoying or uncomfortable or disagreeable even.

I said the other day my buddy Ian Simpkins said, unity does not require uniformity. Being on the same team doesn't mean we all have to play the same position. Being on the same team doesn't mean we all agree on what play we should run next. It's just, we're all on the same team. We're all on the same team.

We don't have to all be the same. All right, number three. Here's how you know when it's time to take a break from your family. All right, it's number two, actually. You find your relationship with your family pathologically or negatively impacting your everyday relationships with your spouse, your kids, your work, et cetera. You find yourself really getting grumpy. You find yourself really withdrawing.

You find yourself angry, snapping. You find yourself getting sick. You get worked up. You go silent for a few few weeks you find yourself having another drink and another drink or every time that phone call rings You find yourself your heart rate Speeding up. I don't know about some of you guys, but but I know folks who when their parents call they just instantly turn 9 again Hey, daddy. Hey mommy. Oh I'm so sorry. I didn Right, immediately fall into those patterns. Number three, your family is continuing to try

and control your decisions, your choices, or your plans as though you were still living under their roof. Now here's where this gets dicey. If you're still on their cell phone plan, they get a vote. If they're paying for your college, they get a vote. If they're paying for your car, they get a vote. If you're married and you have two kids and you live an hour away, they don't get a vote.

Number five, this idea, or I'm sorry, four, this idea, you can cut them off when you live under this idea of you owe me. You owe me money. I need $50, I need $10,000. I need access to your home. Those are my grandkids. You will like, you owe me access to those kids.

I need to borrow your car. It's this sense of what is yours is mine because you owe me. There's a joke in my house. My mom is awesome. She's always like, I carried you for nine months. And we still bring that up to this day. Like, hey, you guys wanna go eat? Cause I carried you.

That's a funny joke in our house, but there's a path, like when that becomes pathological, right? Next, blame manipulation, gaslighting or dishonesty, or a lack of safety. If you have a parent with untreated major depressive disorder that makes it unsafe for you to be around, well, if you can't make it here,

I'm just gonna kill myself. Well, if you come over, then I just gonna have to, hey, mom or dad, you can't scream obscenities at the grandkids. Well, you know that, right? It's unsafe or manipulation. I wouldn't have to if you would just call me more or blame. This wouldn't have happened if you had gone to that other school or married that other woman.

Or I just don't know why you don't want me around. Or you can't bring your dog to my house. Well, because it pees everywhere. Well, I just think that know why you don't want me around. Or you can't bring your dog to my house. Well, because it pees everywhere. Well, I just think that if you, right? This, that is a reason to say, hey, I gotta draw some boundaries. And until you're ready to talk like an adult, we're gonna have to not be in communication.

And the last one, and this is a big one, if there's been past abuse, there has to be a reckoning. Ownership, apologies, reconciliations, not just, we don't talk about it and There can be abuse can be psychological emotional it can be sexual could be physical there has to be a reckoning I hurt you and Who I was and what I did was wrong and there's been some sort of retribution. I have put skin back in the game and there is actions to back up my words. I am NOT who I once was. I've

talked to parents who mercilessly spanked their kids growing up to the far past the point when it was keeping them in line. It was physical abuse and I've seen some that still laugh about it and I've seen some sob and say I'm so sorry that I conflated loving you with physical harm and So anyway, there's got to be some sort of reckoning ownership. So That's a lot and it's gonna be on a spectrum Here's some things you can do in your house to begin to establish your own autonomy. Like we said earlier, stop giving family members votes in your life. You can love them, but that doesn't mean they get a vote into where you go on vacation,

what you do for the holidays, what schools your kids go to, what shoes you buy. You have to be an adult. You and your partner, if you have kids, if you're married, you've got to be an adult. You as a kid, if you are asking your dad, which engineering job should I take? This one or this one? And your dad is a fisherman, he may not have the right answer for you.

You may need to find some other engineers that might ask you. And when he says, I wouldn't work there, cause that's cool, man. I'm going to be an engineer. And I really want to work in this city, in this town. And I think it's gonna be a great opportunity for me. And I've done my research and I've sat with, met with folks and gotten in proximity

to people who do this job. He didn't get a vote. Often when our parents say, I wouldn't do that. Really what they're saying is, I don't know how to say this, but I love you. I don't want you to move away. I wanted you just to hang out here forever cause we like you. We love you a lot, right I wanted you just to hang out here forever because we like you.

We love you a lot, right? So you stop giving them a vote. Here's the second thing I want you to stop trying to do. Stop trying to make your other family members okay with their life decisions. It's not your job, you can't. It's not your job to, when your mom calls and says, I don't know why I stayed with your dad

20 years ago. I can't make that okay for you. You need to find some friends and you find some relationships because that's my dad too. Number three, this is a continuation there. Commit to staying out of triangles. Well you know your mother, I'm going to stop you right there. I'm going to stop you right there. That's my mom.

And if you have problems with my mom, you can talk to a therapist. You can talk to some of your friends, I'm gonna stop you right there. I'm gonna stop you right there. That's my mom. And if you have problems with my mom and you talk to a therapist and you talk to some of your friends, I'm not the guy, that's my mom, dude. Well, you know, your sister has been, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's my sister. I don't wanna, I know when you talk about it, it makes me feel good about myself,

but I don't wanna get into that. Stay out of triangles. Next one, don't own the blame or the guilt or the hate. Is that easy? No. Are you gonna sob the hate. Is that easy? No. Are you going to sob? Yes. Is it heartbreaking?

Yes. When your parents blame you for their situation and I'm going to hop out of it. And then have clear boundaries, very clear boundaries. I've talked about on the show that we, my family, Sheila and I, my wife and I send an email in September ish, sometimes October, sometimes August, but we send an email. Here's what the fall is going to look like for our immediate family.

Travel, me on the road, what's going on in our life, and we send that out. Some years that email has been very well received. Some years it has not. It's not gone well at all. Who do you think you are? Is that hard? Yeah. Does it break my heart? Yep. Does it happen? Yep. Can I control any of that? Nope. All I can control is my boundaries.

And I probably need to do a better job on this show. I talk about like, yeah, just say it. Just go on and say it. Doesn't always go well. Sometimes it goes really tough. And it's not great. I don't love it. I hate it. But it is what it is. And it's not my job to make sure everyone in my extended family likes me or Or is all comfortable with where we're eating one night or where we're opening presents one or we're eating what meal It's my job to make sure my kids are safe

make sure my wife feels loved and supported and that we have decided on what we are gonna do for our marriage moving forward and Does that mean sitting at dinners that we don't wanna be at? Of course it does. Does that mean laughing at jokes that are only moderately funny and we've heard them a thousand times? Yes.

Does that mean listening to political opinions that we disagree with, but we're just rolling our eyes? Yes. Does that mean stopping a family member from saying, hey, hey, don't say that in front of my children? Yes. Making things awkward? Yes.

Is that saying, hey, Josephine is not gonna, it doesn't wanna hug right now. So with a weird uncle, yes, all that is true. All that's true. But it's my job to have boundaries. And I love what Becky Kennedy says, boundaries require nothing of another person. They're what I'm going to do.

And the last one is this, if you desire reconciliation and the data says that most people and family members, most family members end up reconciling. If you wanna reconcile, go first. Only speak if the person can hear you. Start with the words, I, I miss you. I'm sorry. I want us to build a new relationship together. Go first. The amount of family members I've talked to over the years who haven't talked to each other for five or ten years because they made up stories. Well, they don't want to talk to me. They don't want to hear from me.

I know what I did and they don't ever want to and you end up losing a decade of a relationship. I guess the last thing I'll say is feeling awkward or uncomfortable is a sign to work through relationship challenges, not the other way around, not time to call them. And the world needs more families to come together. I don't care about... Oh no. The world needs more people to come together. So, that's my thoughts on families just breaking up everywhere and all the time.

Be very slow to pull the rip cord on. You're out. I'm not continuing in this relationship with you, mom or with dad or with brother or with sister. Feel free to take a year off. Hey, we're not traveling this year. We'll send Christmas cards. We'll FaceTime. Feel free to, you know, not do birthday times or, you know, go from the weekly family dinner that we always have. We've always had and we're going to go to monthly. We're going to go to once every six months. But if you got to pull the cord, make sure you give somebody a roadmap back or be very clear about why you're pulling the cord.

And have a hard conversation about reconciliation. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Jelone for Organifi. I talk to people every day who feel overwhelmed, and I don't just mean emotionally. They're physically and mentally spent. They're worn out. They're anxious. They're not sleeping well.

They feel that foggy, disconnected sense all the time. And most of them are just trying to push through with coffee and more caffeine and willpower. Can we all just agree what we're doing probably isn't working? Redlining our bodies every minute of every day is just burning everyone to the ground. That's where Organifi comes in. Organifi makes organic superfood blends and gummies, which I love, that are designed to support your body,

your mind, even your emotions, so you don't just set everything on fire. You just mix Organifi's superfood blends with water and you're good to go. For me, it's green juice in the morning for focus, red juice in the morning and afternoon for clean energy without the crash, and I love my happy drops to boost my mood and the She-Legit gummies that help me feel like a laser beam. Look, most people don't have to overhaul their entire life to start feeling better.

You just have to listen to your body and start making some small daily choices. You can start with my friends at Organifi. Go to organifi.com slash deloni and use code deloni to save 20% off. That's 20% off with code deloni at organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I- at organifi.com slash deloni. All right, Kelly, am I the problem?

Let it rip. All right. So this is from Nick in Indianapolis and he writes, am I the problem? My wife and I seem to disagree sometimes when it comes to the subject of laundry. I am very much type A and like to do my laundry every weekend and as soon as it's done, I put it away. I feel this guy. He already gives me the hemorrhoids.

Dude, laundry is not laundry if it doesn't sit in a basket for a few weeks. No, no, then it gets wrinkled, anyway. Then you get to rewash it, hello, this is America. Anyway, my wife on the other hand is a little more relaxed. She does the laundry every once in a while and prefers to leave the clothes scattered in her closet, out on our floor and in other random places. I've tried talking to her about putting in a system, love that, and I will do her laundry

every other weekend if she will put her clothes in a laundry basket, but it went nowhere. I understand that I am very type A, but am I the problem for wanting a clean bedroom, slash house? This is unfair. This is what we've talked about where God says, I'm going to put these two people together. No, it's where they find each other. Because this is exactly what happens in our house. I want to solve this problem that I couldn't solve when I was a child. I'll pick you.

And I'm going to marry the exact problem I had because I'll solve it now. And then I'm going to write into a strange podcast and be like, help. Here's the thing. Is it wrong for you to be type A? Of course not. Is it wrong for you to want a clean house? Of course not. Is it wrong for you to assume superiority over somebody who just knows where their piles of socks

is? Of course not. No. Kelly feels so superior. Here's the thing. Systems don't work for people who don't believe they need systems. Systems work for people who, like Kelly, who doesn't look at pornography but looks at Excel sheets all night long. Container store catalogs. Oh gosh. She has them. She hides them under her mattress.

She waits till Robert goes to sleep and then you hear this creak and she pulls out her laptop and looks at a few spreadsheets and it gets the container catalog out And her heart starts racing and her whoop strap is like beep beep beep Kelly here's the thing um Here's the bigger picture the bigger picture is less about cleanliness in your house the bigger picture is cleanliness in your house the bigger picture is you're trying to sell her on an idea that is a hundred percent your idea and you're trying to sell her as a better way to live her life and her life seems to be working out okay partly because you do the laundry but she married you she loves you she likes the

life she has the scarier more vulnerable approach is it would make me feel loved if you would put these in the basket. I want to have a clean bathroom and I feel scattered and chaotic when there's clothes everywhere. Would you be willing to love me enough to just throw everything in the basket? Now we got a game-changing conversation because you said, I want instead of, you know what you really want is this system, my five-part system on how to have clean house and clean laundry. And the other is, hey, do you love me? And that's a scary, scary question to ask

because she may say, not really, or she may forget. So there's two ways to approach this. One, just pick up the clothes, just pick them up and go wash through the laundry. Kelly, just pick up the clothes. The other them up and go wash through the laundry. Kelly, just pick up the clothes. The other thing is, sit down and say, hey, I want to have a wants conversation. I really want this.

And would you meet me halfway, 25% of the way, 75% of the way, 100% of the way? And by the way, that happened in my house. When my wife sat down and said, I don't feel like I'm my best version because John, you're a lot. And two things have happened since then. One is I've dramatically shifted.

I'm shockingly neat person at the house. And when I start leaving piles everywhere and shoes everywhere, she knows he's heading down a path where he's not okay. And that's a great time for her to be like, hey, let's go to dinner tonight. Kids, y'all are on your own. she knows he's heading down a path where he's not okay. And that's a great time for her to be like, hey, let's go to dinner tonight. Kids, y'all are on your own. And we go to dinner and she's like, I'm starting to worry about you.

And so it's a good signal for us. But that started with her not saying, you need to, started with, I really want to be my best self. And it's hard for me when your stuff's everywhere. And I was like, all right, that's fair. We had a very similar conversation where I had to say it causes massive anxiety for me when there's clutter everywhere. But I also don't expect Robert to be as type A as I am either. So it's just like, can you just put them all in that basket?

You type 3 A's. Type AAA? Yes. What is? no. I'm... Quadruple A. No, but he'll, you know, it's like, I don't care if you watch the clothes. True or false, we've recorded shows through 2027. False. True. False.

True. False. True. False. You have a spreadsheet of all the shirts I wear in the right order. They're all black. So they match your tattoos. True. True.

There we go. One of us lies a lot, one of us doesn't. One of us has curly hair and one of us doesn't. Well, exactly. You're right. And I'll let America decide who's who on that. No, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, we both had to come to an agreement that,

hey, I don't care if you put your clothes away or not, but if I just put this basket here, will you just toss them in there instead? And then if you want to live out of the basket, have at it. And I'll put mine away. But can you just not have them on the floor? And it's a middle of instead of me going, no, they all have to be neatly hung and put here,

and him saying, hey, I'll put them in, I'll just make sure they land here instead. That's right. So compromise, people. That's right. So, compromise people, compromise. I'll leave it at that. I compromised the ending of this show. I compromised my career. You did.

I compromised just the general sense of joy I had in the world. And I started working with a producer who's so, so heartless and mean. Peace!