My Husband Borrowed Thousands of Dollars and Never Told Me

On today’s episode, we hear about: A woman struggling to trust her husband after he hid a mountain of debt A woman wondering what boundaries she and her husband should set before moving in with their in-laws A man grappling with the realization that his wife mishandled their money Next Steps: ❤️⁠ Get away with your spouse today!⁠ 🔥⁠ Reconnect every day. Download the Together app.⁠ 📞 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: Head to⁠ Beam⁠ and use code DELONY for an exclusive discount—because better sleep, energy and focus start tonight. Get 10% off your first month of⁠ BetterHelp⁠. Keep your home safe and under control. Go to⁠ Cove Smart⁠ and use code DELONY for up to 80% off your first order. Get an exclusive offer with code DELONY at⁠ Cozy Earth⁠. Get 20% off when you join⁠ DeleteMe⁠. Go to⁠ Dutch Pet⁠ and use code DELONY to get $50 off a year of vet care. Go love your pets! Visit⁠ Hallow⁠ for a 90-day free trial. Visit⁠ Helix Sleep⁠ for special offers! Working knives for working people—go to⁠ Montana Knife Company⁠ to see what’s available now! Explore⁠ Poncho Outdoors⁠! Get 25% off your order at⁠ Thorne⁠.  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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  He was supposed to take over all the bills, like, you know, the rent and all these things. Then I come to find out that our rent wasn't being paid on time. I only found out because my landlord showed up to my house and he told me he hadn't spoken to him in a while.

• 0:20Dr. John Delony?

  I guess this is harsh, but y'all have never been married.

• 0:29Dr. John Delony?

  What up? What up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Happy New Year.

• 0:36Dr. John Delony?

  Coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, taking calls from all over the planet. Real people going through real struggles in their mental and emotional health with their marriages, with their kids, with schools, whatever you got going on. My promise is I'll pull up a seat with you and we're going to figure out what's the next right move. I'd love to have you on the show. We get hundreds of emails a day from all over the planet and I'd love for you to send one in too. JohnDeloney.com/ask, A-S-K. Send your email in. Kelly will review it. Kelly 1.0. And she'll review it. And Ancient Kelly. She, she, she-

• 1:11Speaker 02

  What happened to New Year, New Me? Wasn't there something?

• 1:14Dr. John Delony?

  I'm done with that.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Are you done now?

• 1:15Dr. John Delony?

  I'm trying to hang on to my not swearing so much and exercising, so.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  But you make me swear. A lot.

• 1:21Dr. John Delony?

  If you listen to the show that you produce, you would know I can't make you do anything. You get to make choices.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  You tap dance on my last nerve, though.

• 1:28Dr. John Delony?

  Well, you should put it away. It sounds like a choice. But I'd love to have you on the show. Kelly will take your, what you write in and she will export it to Sanskrit, an ancient language that, that's what she originally learned to read and write on. And then she'll get back to you. So let's go to Chicago, Illinois and talk to Jennifer. What's up, Jennifer?

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yes. Hi, Dr. John.

• 1:54Dr. John Delony?

  How are you, love?

• 1:54Speaker 00

  How are you?

• 1:55Dr. John Delony?

  Good.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  I'm okay. Hanging in there.

• 1:57Dr. John Delony?

  Hanging in there. Well, I'm glad you called. What's going on?

• 2:00Speaker 00

  So, um, my question is, should I remain in a marriage where my husband had a large amount of debt within the past year and a half?

• 2:14Dr. John Delony?

  That's a big question. Tell me what's, tell me what's going on. What'd you discover?

• 2:17Speaker 00

  So, try some, I'm just gonna try to make it simple, cause it's a lot. Um, well, we relocated. Um, I was the one paying most of the bills in the beginning. Then I got pregnant. I was still paying the rent, you know, the bills, cause I was the one who made more money.

• 2:33Dr. John Delony?

  What, what did he do? Did he go to a job?

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was working. He was working, but you know, he just took care of the smaller bills, like his bills. So, I was paying the rent, paying my car, paying all my bills. Sounds kinda crazy, but it was okay for me at the time. I was saving money to stay, stay at home with my baby, um, which I think about it now and I'm like, that's just crazy. He didn't even help me with that. But, um, fast forward, um, I went back to work. He was supposed to take over all the bills, like, you know, the rent and all these things while I was paying off some debt that I had from being at home. Um, then I come to find out that our rent wasn't being paid on time.

• 3:16Speaker 00

  Um, I guess he was kind of stuck in something where he wasn't able to pay everything. So, he was going around asking to lend, you know, to borrow money from family and friends that I had no idea about. You know, so then, um, I only found out because, um, my landlord showed up to my house and he told me he hadn't spoken to him in a while and the rent wasn't paid. So, then he kind of came clean, but I kept finding out more and more stuff from other people that he was asking for money. And he, when I confronted him about it, he said he thought he wasn't, you know, he was gonna be able to catch up and that he just didn't wanna stress me out. So, that was the excuse for not telling me all of this,

• 4:01Speaker 00

  which doesn't make sense to me, but...

• 4:04Dr. John Delony?

  Well, it does to me, just listening to it. And I, I guess this is harsh, but y'all have never been married. Y'all have a certificate.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  That's how I kind of feel.

• 4:14Dr. John Delony?

  Y'all may have gone through a ceremony. Y'all made a human together.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:19Dr. John Delony?

  But just the way, just, just the way you described your original story, which was, I did all of this. I paid all of this. I paid my savings. I did this.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:29Dr. John Delony?

  And then my chumpy little husband over here who was working full-time. I made more money than him, so he just paid for this stuff.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:36Dr. John Delony?

  Already, I can tell you, like, the contempt in your home is, is already powerful. You already think you're better than him.

• 4:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:45Dr. John Delony?

  Is that fair?

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I mean, this has been going on in the past three years. We've been together for almost nine years. And he did pay for other things here and there, like, you know, he did pay the rent when we lived in our previous place. Everything that's happening now just pretty much started in the past three years.

• 5:01Dr. John Delony?

  It, it, it's not, it's not. It started, it started nine years ago. Here's why.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 5:05Dr. John Delony?

  When you get married to somebody, if you want this thing to, to work long-term,

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:10Dr. John Delony?

  it's y'all's money that goes into y'all's account.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:14Dr. John Delony?

  And maybe one person hits send, but y'all pay the rent.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:17Dr. John Delony?

  Y'all pay phone bills. Y'all pay car bills. Y'all save money together.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Yes, correct.

• 5:23Dr. John Delony?

  He's always been second tier to you because you make more money and you do this and you do that.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  And I think that's where I'm starting to build a lot of resentment because when I found out everything, I told them, "You should have just came to me because I can make the money for the rent. We could have just swapped."

• 5:40Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, but you're not, you're not hearing what I'm saying. If, if you were, if you were truly, I, I'm gonna ask you to be super reflective and honest, okay?

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:52Dr. John Delony?

  Just in the limited time we've talked together,

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:58Dr. John Delony?

  I can imagine a world where he doesn't feel like he can come to you and say,

• 6:04Dr. John Delony?

  "Hey, we're not making ends meet."

• 6:07Dr. John Delony?

  And if he was calling me, dude, I'd be all over him for calling family and friends for borrowing money.

• 6:15Dr. John Delony?

  But just the way you laid out y'all's story?

• 6:19Dr. John Delony?

  He has gotten the message loud and clear that he's less than.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  You're right.

• 6:24Dr. John Delony?

  And so suddenly, he's trying to take care of a new baby, trying to take care of a wife, and he's not making ends meet. And like most guys, I'm not excusing his behavior, what he did was wrong, okay? But I can get the sentiment that he's trying to do, trying to make this thing work so that you can have the life and his baby can have the life, y'all's baby can have the life, that you and him want.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Correct. And I, when everything happened, I even asked him, like, "Am I, can, do you feel like you can't come to me and talk to me and tell me that you're struggling?" You know, and I think recently, obviously, we've been kind of, we don't even communicate. He did feel that way, and, you know, I'm trying to tell myself, he did it to help me, and he did it to not stress me out, because I was under a lot of stress with work.

• 7:13Dr. John Delony?

  Of course, yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  And, um, he's a great dad, he is a great husband.

• 7:17Dr. John Delony?

  Stop right there, stop right there. What does it feel like

• 7:22Dr. John Delony?

  when you uncover a big mess like this? And you look at him and say, "Why didn't you come to me?" And he says, "'Cause I can't."

• 7:31Dr. John Delony?

  "Because you're gonna beat me up again." Or, "You're gonna throw a fit, and then you're gonna be like, 'Well, then I've gotta go bail us out so I can pay my bills.'" And, like, what, walk me through what that felt like, that level of reflection.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  I mean, I was upset. I was upset, but I also felt bad.

• 7:51Dr. John Delony?

  Were you upset with him?

• 7:52Speaker 00

  I was upset because, well, the situation, and with him, because I felt like you should've told me. Granted, I know what you're telling me, that he felt like he couldn't tell me.

• 8:01Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, but I want you to stay right there. Don't run from that, don't run from that.

• 8:07Dr. John Delony?

  Right or wrong, just for a minute, go through the thought exercise of owning that.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:14Dr. John Delony?

  Oh God, what if I created a marriage where my husband feels so marginalized and so small because I'm always telling him about all this stuff I do?

• 8:23Dr. John Delony?

  That I've created a world where the man that I made a human with, my ride or die, doesn't even feel safe enough to come tell me this, so much so that he has to bury his head in shame and go ask buddies for money?

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 8:35Dr. John Delony?

  Does that feel heavy?

• 8:38Speaker 00

  It does. I feel, I just feel like crap. I'm like, okay, you know?

• 8:42Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, so you can't, you can't go back, you can't go back and change any of the stuff that has happened.

• 8:51Dr. John Delony?

  Hearing that level of reflection, if you jump to, "Well, you should have though anyway, and I can't believe you, so I'm gonna divorce you," whatever, fine, fine. My challenge to you is, with this new information and these scales peeled back from your eyes, can you exhale and say, "Okay, the only person I can control here is me." Either, "I don't want to be married to you, I've always thought I'm better than you, I still think I'm better than you, and I'm gonna go on with my life, I make more money than you, I can provide for me and my kid, etc." Or, "My God, I've gotta do some work so that I realize just because I make more money than my husband doesn't mean I'm better than him, or I'm somehow more important than him,

• 9:34Dr. John Delony?

  we are in this thing together. And I need some skills so that I can communicate that."

• 9:43Dr. John Delony?

  Can you have that level of reflection? And if not, that's, I mean, it's fine, but that's, that's, that's a humbling, full ownership, I gotta own what I brought to the table here. And again, if he was on the phone, you know I'd be going after him.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  And it's not, yeah, it's not that I think that I'm, I'm better than him. I never did. I didn't care about the money. I just want our communication to be better. And he struggles with that, which is fine. He writes.

• 10:08Dr. John Delony?

  But you struggle with it too. You struggle with it too.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  I'm more vocal, but I think that's it. My personality is a little bit stronger. But I never want him to feel that I'm better than him. I never, I, I want him to be the leader. You know, I can make the money, but let's make decisions together.

• 10:25Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Let's save money. Let's do all this. That was, that's always been my thing. And I think he just, you know.

• 10:31Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. And so the, the first thing you have to do is to change your, your pronouns from mine and our, to ours.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:39Dr. John Delony?

  From my bills and my savings to our future together.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 10:45Dr. John Delony?

  And it's our money.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:47Dr. John Delony?

  It's my 125,000 and your 40,000. Together we make 165,000. I make, I, like, in, when it comes to direct deposit, the, the check that's deposited that says John Deloney on it is way more than the check that Sheila Deloney deposits. And it is our money. It's our save. We only have one account. We have one checking account. It's ours. It's our savings. It's our kids' college funds. It's our mortgage. It's our stuff. And so let me, let me say, let me, let me rephrase your question. The marriage y'all had is over.

• 11:30Dr. John Delony?

  The question you have before is do you want to make it official? Or do you want to rebuild something new with a guy you said is an awesome dad? And he's actually a pretty good husband. He just hid this big scary thing from me and oh God, I contributed to that. Do we want to decide that we are going to change how we talk to each other? How we communicate, how we do bill paying, how we do all of it from the floor up for our sake? And for the kids sake? Does that make sense?

• 12:02Speaker 00

  It does, because I've been, you know, waiting for him to, I want to sit and budget, I want to do all these things, but he's just, I guess he feels stuck.

• 12:10Dr. John Delony?

  Well, it's a failure factory for him.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, so I'm like, okay, we need to do this because we both need to, you know, we want a plan five years from now, but he doesn't, his way of managing money is not the best, and he says it. You know, I don't manage my money correct, you know, I've always had, he's always had that issue. But I mean, we can work together to fix that, but I'm waiting and waiting and waiting, and he's not talking to me, so I think that's where my frustration and my resentment kind of builds. But then again, I'm like, maybe I should approach him and sit down and talk to him and do these things, because maybe that's what he's waiting for.

• 12:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, and, and, and, and listen,

• 12:50Dr. John Delony?

  I'll say this one more time, and I don't want to say it again, what he did was not right.

• 12:55Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, I would even go as far as to say what he did was cowardly.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 12:59Dr. John Delony?

  And I get it.

• 13:03Dr. John Delony?

  And your revelation, I think, is one of the most powerful revelations that anybody in a marriage can come to, which is, I'm gonna go first.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:12Dr. John Delony?

  And when you go first, if you lead with the word "you",

• 13:18Dr. John Delony?

  he's all, he's gonna, he's gonna bail again, because he has to, that's how he stayed safe the last decade. If you lead with the word "I", "I have this, I realize that I created a world that was all about my bills and my stuff and my money, and I'm sorry. I want to build something with you where we both have equal voice here about our future, and I've got to learn some new skills. I would love it if you would join me in this."

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:49Dr. John Delony?

  And here's the, here's the scary part, he can look at you and say, "No", and that's terrifying.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, it is.

• 13:55Dr. John Delony?

  Or he could say, "All right, I don't know how to manage money. I struggle with it, I get behind, and then I get scared, and then I start scurrying around, and I've made a big mess for us."

• 14:08Dr. John Delony?

  Will you help us dig out of this hole? And then you can say, I'm all in. Are you all in?

• 14:15Speaker 00

  I think that's what he's waiting for.

• 14:17Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:18Dr. John Delony?

  If he was on the phone with me, I would say, brother, you gotta go first. You gotta wade through your wife's volume and her excitement and her whatever. And you gotta go first. And I would tell him to sit down and say, I love you and I don't know how to be successful in this marriage because everything I've done, I've been told feels like I'm less than you.

• 14:42Dr. John Delony?

  That's what I would tell him to say.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  I'm correct.

• 14:50Dr. John Delony?

  But it sounds like you got a guy that got in over his head trying to scramble to give his wife, to finally prove to her that he had value, more value than she's ever given him, and for this baby. And dude, he just, he made a left turn and he screwed up.

• 15:05Dr. John Delony?

  And if you think that's walking away worthy, I can't tell you to do that.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. I don't want to.

• 15:11Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I definitely, it was just such a shock, something that I didn't expect. It was like, now we're like, hopefully my landlord renewed my lease because I just wish he would have said something. But again, I mean, that's why I'm here. But it happened already.

• 15:27Dr. John Delony?

  But even saying that, I wish you'd said something and I have to own that I've been impossible to talk to.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:35Dr. John Delony?

  I'm sorry. Together, we have to agree this never happens again, which means I've got to work on how I talk to you, how I talk about our future together and our earned income. And I've got to, I've got to trust that you, if you ever get in trouble again financially, you're going to be honest with me.

• 15:58Dr. John Delony?

  You get what I'm saying?

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yes.

• 16:00Dr. John Delony?

  But all of those were I statements. Here's what I need to do. Here's where I messed up. And here's what I want and need moving forward. Are you in?

• 16:11Dr. John Delony?

  Not with, "You should have told me. I can't believe you did this. You screwed this." Like, you get what I'm saying?

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:17Dr. John Delony?

  It's a very humbling, humbling position. And I, my, I'm in the middle of a big research writing project on marriage and I'm, I'm overwhelmed with this one piece of data. For a marriage to work, it's a race to the bottom of the marriage. What do I mean by that? There should be scratching and clawing from each partner on who can out-serve the other. Who can say, "I'm sorry first." Of course, outside of abusive situations, right? Or traumatic, of course, those. But somebody saying, "I'm gonna take ownership of my part of this." "No, no, no, it was on me."

• 17:02Dr. John Delony?

  "No, no, no, no, I created a world where you couldn't talk." "Yeah, but I called our friends and asked them for money." "Listen to me, I created a context that you felt like that was the only move you had." "Was it the right move?" "No, it was a terrible move." "But I get it and I'm gonna work really hard for us." "So here's what I'm gonna hook you up with, okay? I'm gonna send you some tools. I'm gonna send you both a copy. I'm gonna send you two copies of Building a Non-Anxious Life. And I want you all to read that and use that as a roadmap for rebuilding your marriage from the floor up." "The second thing I'm gonna send you is a premium version of the EveryDollar app. It's the, it's my, it's the budgeting app my wife and I use. It's the best one, I think, out there. It's amazing and I'm gonna send you a year subscription to it for free."

• 17:46Dr. John Delony?

  "I'm also gonna send you all the digital Financial Peace University. I work for Ramsey Solutions and they have, like, the company was built on this idea of getting out of debt and living free and teaching couples how to communicate and build budgets together." "I'm gonna send you all nine digital lessons and I want you to both watch those with no commentary. Both of you watch them and then at the end of the video, you'll talk about what you experienced and what you felt. And it will walk you through a step-by-step process to how to communicate, building budgets together. But underneath all of that, how do we talk about our kid's future? How do we talk about our dream home? How do we talk about living free lives together so that we both walk in the front door, both of our shoulders drop and we're happy to see each other, for God's sakes?"

• 18:32Dr. John Delony?

  And that's going to be the path. So hang on the line, hook you up with all those resources. I usually don't do this, but I'm gonna tell you, I don't think your marriage is worth tossing. I don't think your marriage has been a full both feet in the boat, both of you in the marriage. Or maybe it was your boat and he kept trying to get in and he got to get one foot in the boat and you kept shoving the other foot out. Whatever it is, both of y'all get back in the boat and say, "Let's row in the same direction." And that means both of us are gonna have to learn new rowing techniques because neither of us know how to do this thing right. But together, we can learn together, have grace and compassion, and we're gonna build the most amazing marriage in our family generation's history. It's day one today. I'm grateful for your call, sister.

• 19:13Dr. John Delony?

  Start with the word "I." Start with humility. Start with this lens of service and go build an amazing marriage. We come back, a woman asks what boundaries they should set before living with their in-laws for six months while their house is being redone.

• 19:30Dr. John Delony?

  This time of year, everybody's talking about getting more organized, less clutter, less stress, and having more peace. Well, here's one area where I want you to focus on specifically with organization and peace this year: your digital footprint. And to do this, I recommend Delete Me. Listen, every time you fill out a quick form online, grab a discount code, or sign up for some free thing on the internets, your personal information like your name, your email, your phone number, and your address, all of this gets collected, insulted, and shared without your permission by data brokers. Over time, this turns into a fire hose of spam calls, weird texts, and scam emails. Delete Me's team of privacy experts find your personal

• 20:14Dr. John Delony?

  information on data broker sites that are selling your data, and they get it taken down for good. And then they keep checking and they keep it gone. It's like setting healthy boundaries for your digital life. It's a way to organize your digital life to where you are in control and no one else. Protecting your privacy is part of protecting your peace. So this year, start fresh with fewer distractions and more peace. Go to joindelete.me/deloney for 20% off your annual plan. That's joindelete.me/deloney and organize your digital life this year.

• 20:52Dr. John Delony?

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• 21:36Dr. John Delony?

  up to whatever life throws at you. When you're shopping for the guys in your life, I want you to go to ponchooutdoors.com/deloney. You can sign up with your email, and you get 10 bucks off your first order. Tell them you heard about Poncho shirts right here on the Dr. John Deloney Show. That's ponchooutdoors.com/deloney.

• 21:57Dr. John Delony?

  All right, let's go out to Denver, Colorado, and talk to Marie. Hey, Marie, what's up?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Hi, Dr. John. How are you?

• 22:04Dr. John Delony?

  I'm great. How are you?

• 22:06Speaker 03

  I'm doing OK. We're getting a lot of snow today, so I'm trying to stay warm.

• 22:10Dr. John Delony?

  It's like 85 degrees in Nashville. Actually, it's not. It's freezing today. I think it's below 30 or something. Like, they're shutting down the city right now. It's too cold, but good for you all. What's up?

• 22:21Speaker 03

  So I have a question about, you know, what my husband and I should think about conversations that we should have and boundaries that we should potentially set with our in-laws as, or my in-laws, as we get ready to move in with them in the spring for about six months' time.

• 22:42Dr. John Delony?

  How come you're moving in?

• 22:44Speaker 03

  So we're going to be selling our house in the spring and we have a two and a half year old and we talked with our Realtor and she was like, I highly recommend that if possible, y'all like move into a different space while we're staging and while we're, you know, showing the house, if possible, it's really hard to, you know, do all of that. And we want to take our time with, with buying and we're moving to a new area. And so it'll, our goal is no more than six months to be living with my in-laws for that time. And so we want to be really intentional about moving in with them. I want us all to like each other when this is all over, because I value that relationship with them. And so

• 23:27Speaker 03

  I, I really want to be intentional about making sure that, you know, we, we go into this with our eyes wide open and we're doing things on the front end so that on the back end, when this is all over, we still like each other.

• 23:39Dr. John Delony?

  This is one of my favorite calls I've ever received on this show, ever, ever. You know why? This is adults making adult decisions and dealing with adult realities. And that makes you in the top 00001% of mature humans on the planet right now. That's so awesome. That's amazing. What if when, when government officials were like borrowed a trillion dollars, they were like, hey, let's don't do this until we have a plan to pay it back. Like, just your willingness to be like, hey, the day after we move out, we still want to love you guys. We want y'all to love us. Let's reverse engineer that. Genius. You're the best, Marie. So high five. All right. So I'm going to pretend that everybody involved is that mature. Is that fair?

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Uh, for the mo-, yeah, I would say so.

• 24:27Dr. John Delony?

  Well, my mother-in-law. But like, it is, is, because here, I'm going to paint you the ideal scenario, okay?

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 24:35Dr. John Delony?

  This is the dream world. The dream world is you take that level of, again, I wish I had a different word because it sounds like I'm so paternal, but that level of maturity and wisdom and you and your husband and your in-laws, you, y'all set up a special dinner and y'all paid for it. It's really nice. And you tell them, here's the goal of this dinner coming up next week. The goal is we want to all be on the same exact page with, we want to have the same picture of what the next six months is going to look like. And it's aligning pictures. And here's what I mean by that. Have you heard me talk about pictures and words?

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:14Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, so for people who haven't heard me talk about that, we think in pictures, but we speak in words. And so y'all, all four are saying the words, we're moving in, or they're moving in. And all four of you, you, your husband, and your in-laws have a different picture of what the words moving in look like. Maybe your mother-in-law is like, I'm gonna babysit every day, and I'm just gonna hug that baby. Your father-in-law is like, I ain't doing any babysitting. I'm watching this game. I don't care what's going on. And maybe your husband's like, oh, dude, we're gonna get to make out on my old high school bed, and it's gonna be awesome. And you're like, well, no sex for six months, because I ain't doing it in that house. Like, everybody's got a different picture, right?

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:55Dr. John Delony?

  And so it is simply aligning that picture.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:00Dr. John Delony?

  Of, here's what we think this is gonna look like and feel like. And I love the way you said this. If you look at your in-laws and say, what y'all are giving us is such a generous opportunity for our two and a half year old 20 years from now. I want to make sure that we love each other more the day after we move out than today.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:22Dr. John Delony?

  How can we best inhabit y'all's world in your house, and love and honor your hospitality?

• 26:30Dr. John Delony?

  And often, aging parents have forgotten the realities of life with a two and a half year old.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:38Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:39Dr. John Delony?

  And so putting that on the table, how, like, are y'all gonna be in the same house? Are y'all gonna be like in a back house or something like that?

• 26:47Speaker 03

  So we'll be in their basement.

• 26:49Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  They have like, they have a couple bedrooms down there, and there's like a small little like kitchenette type of thing. But there's also like, some shared space that we don't want to cut them off from being able to use for that entire six months that we're there. So that does complicate things a little bit. But for the most part, we do have our own space. So there's not like

• 27:10Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  a door to the basement.

• 27:11Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, so here's where this is important. They may have already decided between the two of them, dude, that shared space is all theirs for six months. We'd love to give that up. And if you and your husband are already like, okay, we don't want to take this from them. Already you see there's a wedge between you without, and both of y'all are trying to do the best you can to love each other.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:30Dr. John Delony?

  And so it is putting that out saying, here's my worries. And I'd love to hear your worries. Worry number one, I got a two and a half year old. They, I don't care how good of a parent you are, they throw tantrums. Um, my plan is if there's a tantrum, we're going to take the kid downstairs and we're going to deal with it.

• 27:49Dr. John Delony?

  Worry number two, there's this shared space. I don't want to take y'all's shared space for the next six months. And all of y'all address each individual worry. And maybe a worry is, we want to plan for a weekly dinner where we all eat dinner together. But we also want to preserve some just dinner with me and my husband and our new little baby together in the basement.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:12Dr. John Delony?

  And having those individual, maybe if, I don't know if y'all go to church, but we're going to go to this church and y'all go to yours. It's, we just don't want to feel like, well, we have to invite them up for dinner now. And here they come down the stairs again. Like, let's go ahead and have those things out. And if, in a, in a super wise family, y'all could leave that dinner and say, okay, cool. Friday nights, family dinner night. Or Friday nights, they would love to babysit and you and husband go out for date night.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 28:38Dr. John Delony?

  Um, or every Tuesday night is all of us are getting together for dinner and it's just on the calendar. And Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, we eat downstairs with just our nuclear family.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 28:50Dr. John Delony?

  But it's getting all those things out on the table. And you're, you, so here's how it best works. You and your husband say, in a perfect world, this is what we would love.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 29:00Dr. John Delony?

  We want to have dinner every night of week with, every night of the week with them, or we don't want to do that.

• 29:07Dr. John Delony?

  Um, we are worried about our two and a half year old drawing dinosaurs on the walls with crayons, which a hundred percent he will do, right? Like those things, and then addressing those out on the table there.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:22Dr. John Delony?

  All you going first, though, and saying, here's my number one goal to honor your hospitality because this is such an amazing gift. This is like a, like a potentially generation, generational shifting gift. Six months of no rent, no bills, no, and maybe, maybe I'll decide it's a big deal for us to pay 500 bucks a month.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:42Dr. John Delony?

  And then, and let them say, we're not taking your money. Are you crazy?

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:47Dr. John Delony?

  Or whatever, right?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think what I'm most worried about is, um, like my, we have a two and a half year old and she does throw tantrums and she does, um, have one day a week where they have her for childcare. So my husband and I can work already. And so, um, the, like, we want them to still be grandparents. We don't want them to become a second set of parents to her. But we also like, when we're living there, we don't want the way that they, um, the way that they discipline or whatever you want to call it, when she's there one day a week, to undermine what we do the rest of the week now that we're living in the same space.

• 30:29Dr. John Delony?

  And that would be a beautiful sentiment for your husband to say out loud.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 30:34Dr. John Delony?

  I want to make sure that me and my wife remain their parents and y'all get to have the honor of just being their grandparents.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:43Dr. John Delony?

  And so we want to walk in the doors, setting the table for, we're going to take care of the discipline. We're going to take care of the kids groceries. We want to be responsible of those things because we want y'all to get to remain the most precious thing on planet, which is grandparents.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:59Dr. John Delony?

  And just setting it out loud, like, this is what I want to do here. And the reality is your father-in-law is going to be like, hey, we don't yell in this, he's going to do that stuff. And you know that your mother-in-law is going to be like, you should, when she throws a tantrum, you just need to pinch her on the back of her cap, whatever, right? And rub some essential oils under that nose. Like, well, I don't know. You just, you have to know, I'm, am going into their house and they're going to say their stuff.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:29Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And you get to decide, and this sounds crazy, you and your husband get to decide how much of that you let annoy you, frustrate you, or make you mad.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:43Dr. John Delony?

  Right? Because here's the deal. Two-year-olds are going to do two-year-old stuff. Grandparents are going to do grandparents stuff.

• 31:52Dr. John Delony?

  And new parents trying to prove to their mom and dad and to their mother-in-law and their father-in-law that they've got this, y'all are gonna do your stuff too.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, true.

• 32:02Dr. John Delony?

  And so hopefully your in-laws are like, dude, the fact that they sat down and had this direct conversation with us was amazing. That shows a level of wisdom we didn't even know they had. And we're gonna let, we're gonna do our best to let them take the lead on discipline and stuff and remain grandparents. And, fill in the blank. We hope that's the case.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:26Dr. John Delony?

  But even the, again, the fact that you're not just making, this is gonna be great, or this is gonna be miserable. But you're like, hey, let's, we get to choose what this is like.

• 32:38Dr. John Delony?

  And you and your husband, I want y'all to also go and y'all go out and have coffee and pre-game with each other. How is the best way we can love each other when your mom says something that really annoys me?

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:52Dr. John Delony?

  Or, hey, when you get around your dad, you act different. And I want us to have that conversation now.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:04Dr. John Delony?

  Is that fair?

• 33:05Speaker 03

  That's good. Yeah, totally.

• 33:07Dr. John Delony?

  And so if you and him get together, as y'all map out, here's what we want this to look like, here's how we want to honor our, our parents and in-laws. And more importantly, y'all talk about, hey dude, when you're around your mom, you get real sassy. Or you get real, or when, when, hey, wife, when you get around my mother, you get real performative and you try to go into, it's all perfect, it's all good. It's, I'm just making stuff up. But, um, yeah, I, we need to have a signal that we can call each other out and we're not gonna get mad and infuriated, but we're gonna, we're gonna accept the challenge because we love each other.

• 33:42Dr. John Delony?

  And what must be true, we have to over celebrate each other. Cause you can't have challenges without celebration. We're gonna overly challenge each other. I'm gonna keep my eyes extra tuned to when I see my wife is, I see you struggling. He's gonna grab that two-year-old and be like, I'm out of here. You go spa date. We're gonna put money for spa date. We're gonna put money for, I don't know what you do. You may go to the gym. You may go to, I don't know, go smoke weed with your friend. I don't know what you do in Denver, but like, we're gonna go do, we're gonna have those things built in so that we can overly celebrate each other. Dude, I saw you. Thank you for grabbing the laundry last night. Thank you for getting up with two and a half-year-old. Thank you for making the bed. Like those little bit of things so that when I have to challenge you, like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're turning into a 14-year-old son again. I need my husband back.

• 34:27Dr. John Delony?

  That he'll be able to go, okay, I got you. I'll accept that challenge and it won't come off as more criticism. But man, you and him get together, then y'all come up to a game plan. Take your in-laws out to a nice dinner, let them know what's coming and y'all map this sucker out. And I'm so honored to talk to people who wanna be wise about a challenging relationship season and owning, we get to choose what this thing looks like. Let's make that choice on the front end. I love it. I love it. I'm proud of you, Marie. Thank you so much for calling. We come back, a man asks how to rebuild trust with his wife after she mishandled their money.

• 35:08Dr. John Delony?

  This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As we head into the new year, I want you to take an inventory of all of the junk you're carrying. All those things that you think you have to do, along with all the past hurts and pains, along with past guilt and shame. Listen, when the world feels heavy, it's important to look in the mirror and consider setting down all of that old weight and not carrying it into 2026. Therapy can help you identify all that heavy stuff and move forward with clarity so you can focus on the new year unburdened by the past. If you're thinking about therapy, I recommend BetterHelp. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the leading online therapy providers in the world and they're

• 35:51Dr. John Delony?

  Trusted by millions and they have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. It's online, so it's easy to fit into your schedule to get started. You just answer a few simple questions and they'll connect you with a licensed therapist who will fit your needs. If it's not the right fit, you can change at any time for no extra cost. You can't feel lighter without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. BetterHelp will help. Go to betterhelp.com/deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H E L P, dot com slash deloney.

• 36:23Dr. John Delony?

  All right. Hey, do me a favor. It's the new year, 2026. Take two seconds and hit the subscribe button and let us launch out of this year in a whole new way. Takes two seconds, doesn't cost you anything. You can just hit the subscribe button, the like button, and then we are off to the races. Millions and millions and millions of you listen to this show for millions of hours and only a few of you take the time to hit the subscribe button or the like button. Please do that for me. It makes a huge difference for everybody involved. All right, let's go to Rochester, New York and listen to Liam. What up Liam?

• 36:58Speaker 04

  Hey, how you doing?

• 36:58Dr. John Delony?

  I'm good, brother. What are you up to, man?

• 37:00Speaker 04

  I'm just on break for work. That's about it.

• 37:03Dr. John Delony?

  Outstanding. Well, I appreciate you calling me on your break. Breaks are precious, man.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:09Dr. John Delony?

  What's up?

• 37:09Speaker 04

  I should take more care of that.

• 37:11Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, you should. You should.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, no, just like talking about just I, the way we had set things up, um, I had trusted my wife with just overseeing the finances. I check in and everything, make sure everything's going and, you know, I had started a new job and we had this plan. We did everything we budgeted, did that. And a month and a half in, I checked and I was like, things are good. Great. We've hit our marks and we're going to keep doing it. And I took my hand off a little bit and then another month and a half later, I look and I saw less money in our savings than when we had started. And I was like, you know, what the heck happened? So, talked to her and just...

• 37:54Speaker 04

  Um, I text her that morning. She comes down. She was asleep because we have two kids, another on the way. And she, her sleep's precious. She needs it. But, um, and comes down and she was like, well, I was trying to do this and this. And I, I didn't care so much that we, like, I did care that we lost the money, but I was more upset about that. She's like, well, I tried putting it back before you knew anything about it, you know?

• 38:17Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  And that, that was the hard part. So that was like, well, what you're portraying to me is you don't trust me with it or almost that you don't need me. You know what I mean? And it's like.

• 38:28Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, but she, she doesn't.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 38:30Dr. John Delony?

  Do you hear what I'm saying? What, like you advocated this response. I mean, you're cert, you're acting like her dad.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:37Dr. John Delony?

  Like you take care of all this. I'm gonna check in on you. See how good you're doing. That's not how couples handle money, brother. Like, tell me about that.

• 38:46Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, the way we had set it up when we first, I mean, we've been married seven years now and we revisit this conversation a bunch.

• 38:52Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  But, um, she was like, I want to take care of this. Cause that's how our parents do it. Um, you know, when I was young.

• 38:59Dr. John Delony?

  What, what does take care of it mean? She wants to make her own budget and do all the stuff?

• 39:01Speaker 04

  She, she, she wanted to do everything, me not even look at it, not even concern myself with it.

• 39:07Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. Was she doing that out of a sense of control or a sense of, uh, she's a stay at home mom and she wants to have some purpose and value? Or she thinks you're dumb?

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Uh, no, it was control. She doesn't think I'm dumb. She told, cause that was like something I always struggled with. And she tells me all the time, I don't think, or, you know, whatever, you're not dumb.

• 39:25Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  And, um, she's like, I, I believe it's from control because it was just like, it's something she could do.

• 39:32Dr. John Delony?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  And it wasn't, this was even before we had children. So she wasn't a stay at home mom. She was working. And that's just what she wanted to do. And I was like, yeah, I trust you. That's fine. Sure.

• 39:42Dr. John Delony?

  Uh, uh, okay. That, uh, don't ever do that again. Cause money is too, money is too much of a, a, like, let me go all the way back. When I was doing my practicum, seeing counseling clients, it, uh, one big takeaway I had. And I'm talking about if I was talking to a single mom with multiple kids, somebody with special needs or with a multimillionaire. They would all tell me about their sexual exploits, their number of partners, their abuse histories. No one would tell me about their money.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 40:15Dr. John Delony?

  It was that personal.

• 40:18Dr. John Delony?

  And so A, it's a very personal thing and more importantly, it's a revealer of the state of your home, right? It's, it's the state of is somebody out of control? It's a state of does somebody feel like they have a purpose and a role? It just matters a lot. And so that would be a line I would draw. Like my wife hits the button to pay all the bills, right? Like, so if it's like, I leave it up to her, like she hits the button, she writes the checks. But we get together every month and sometimes every other week and we talk about the state of things. And we make decisions and we, we high five each other and then

• 40:59Dr. John Delony?

  we go forward. I deal with the investments and she deals with the, like, is the light's gonna stay on and all that kind of stuff, right? So, but it has to come from a, we're together on this thing.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:16Dr. John Delony?

  And so if she's requesting, like, hey, I just want to do all this myself. I want you not to worry your pretty little head with it. I would tell her, hey, this is how couples break up and it's too big of a deal for me.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 41:30Dr. John Delony?

  And for you to, for you to feel like, I think she just didn't need me. That was true because she was running the whole show without you. You would just swoop in and judge her performance every once in a while.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 41:44Dr. John Delony?

  And let me challenge you on one other thing. Like, man, if there's a big issue in your marriage, like, oh my gosh, we're burning through savings and my wife didn't even tell me, that's never a text message.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 41:58Dr. John Delony?

  That's like an in-person, we need to have a hard conversation.

• 42:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:02Dr. John Delony?

  You get what I'm saying?

• 42:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:04Dr. John Delony?

  So, so what's your, what's your, what was she spending money on?

• 42:09Speaker 04

  Well, what she said that money was spent on, and I went and looked at all the records and everything, was they were just bills. Like, they were truly bills. What we had done was, we had misbudgeted, and the numbers weren't lining up as what I was making to what we're spending.

• 42:27Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 42:27Speaker 04

  And so we rebudgeted all that, and now we are good.

• 42:30Dr. John Delony?

  Great.

• 42:31Speaker 04

  But what it was, was just like, hey, I need to take this out and pay this insurance, so I need to pay this. And she had communicated that a couple times. But then, I was doing the math, and I'm like, okay, there's still $400 that's not, like, accounted for.

• 42:53Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  And by no means do I think that she's actually misspending money, because, but if you saw like our house and how we live, it's like, she's not buying anything for herself.

• 43:05Dr. John Delony?

  That's pretty smart, yeah. So where did that $400 go?

• 43:09Speaker 04

  She cracked it up to, to the, what is it, like, insurance for our cars.

• 43:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yep.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  And then, something about the phone bills, because everyone goes through, like, her, and we have like a massive family, like, her siblings, and we all have like a massive group of cellphone service, and they just pay her their shit.

• 43:32Dr. John Delony?

  Bro, get your own plan, dude. Y'all are married, you have a house. Get your own plan. Pay the extra 20 bucks a month, but have your own household.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:40Dr. John Delony?

  But again, otherwise, you'll just be dealing with this kind of stuff all the time. But let me ask you this. When she came to you and said, hey, we have to spend more money on insurance, what was your response to that? How'd you respond?

• 43:54Speaker 04

  I trusted her, and I was like, oh, okay, I guess that's what it is for insurance. That was about it. I didn't think too much of it.

• 44:03Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. And the reason I'm asking is if she came to you and said, hey, we made this, and by the way, making a new budget usually takes about three months, 90 days to cycle through it. Just because stuff comes up like, oh gosh, dude, I had the guys come work on the sprinkler three months ago and they just now sent me the bill and insurance comes out of nowhere and we thought it was in August, but it comes in June. Like, that's just part of getting into the rhythm of it. Um, and so it takes about three months to get it settled in. But if she came to you with one of those things and your response is, are you serious? Why didn't you, then what you're telling her is, don't come back to me with that kind of stuff.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:44Dr. John Delony?

  Or if you said, oh man, geez, that's expensive. Well, thank you for knocking that out. Um, we'll have to, we'll have to reimagine it next month. Then that's an encouragement. Like I'm a safe place for you to come with these challenges. You get what I'm saying?

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:57Dr. John Delony?

  Um, I, I think the path forward is, and again, you can do it how you want to. The path forward, it's similar to an earlier call we took on this show, which is, I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt unless you tell me otherwise. She was trying to do the best she could to be a team player and all of a sudden it got over her head.

• 45:19Dr. John Delony?

  And she made a call, which is, I don't want to bother him with this. I don't feel like I can tell him he's going to go through the numbers and start asking me all these questions about the spreadsheet and why didn't I do this and why didn't I do that? I don't want to fight it. And so I'm just going to pull it from savings and I'll fill it back next month. Like, and so the path forward is, A, you can sit down and let her know all the things she did wrong. Or you can take ownership, full ownership of your part of this and sit down and say, hey, I, dude, I should never have put this all on you in the first place. And I know you want to do it all yourself. That's not wise for us as a married couple.

• 45:57Dr. John Delony?

  So I'm gonna sit here with you as we decide what's coming next with our budget. And if she wants to pay all the bills, great. But I wanna be better about communicating, I'm on your team. I'm not your boss who's looking over your shoulder to make you sure you clicked every button right.

• 46:12Dr. John Delony?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:14Dr. John Delony?

  But it's you, it's you starting with I statements, not, not, uh, you did these things statements. So your original question to me was, how do you rebuild trust? I'm struggling to figure out where trust was broken here. Where is trust broken here?

• 46:33Speaker 04

  I don't know. I guess more or less, I think you're just right. It was more of just, I should've communicated about how involved I wanna be with it. And it's not, I, cause I try, I try to, yeah, no, I just think you're right. I should've just made it very clear from them because like you're saying, she was doing the best with what she could. And like, you know, like how she approached me and maybe I mishandled it wrong. Cause like that, I don't want that in my marriage.

• 47:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  You know, I want, I want, I want that trust.

• 47:03Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  And I think it's more like she said with me than her.

• 47:08Dr. John Delony?

  Tell me about that.

• 47:12Dr. John Delony?

  Like, I don't want you to do the same thing to me that you did with her, which is I say something bold, like you need to go, go first and you're like, you're right, I'm sorry. And the way she was like, I wanna take care of the money and you're like, okay, you're right. So tell me where you're being reflective here. Or how you're being reflective here.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  I, I think it's, I think it's like when those,

• 47:38Speaker 04

  like my wife had a hard time growing up with like watching her parents. And I think, and I mean, I know she has a lot of trust issues like with stuff. So like you said, maybe when it was times to be like, How I should have responded, because you know, she doesn't open up like a lot about things.

• 47:59Dr. John Delony?

  Sure.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  But it was like, maybe that was like one of those times where it's like, okay, you can either handle this with like grace and like, you know, have your responsibility and try to be like open, or I can completely just overanalyze, over criticize, and then it's like you said, well, not doing that again. So that that was kind of what she said. And she was like, I didn't want you stressing over it. So she like, no, I have stressed over things before. And she's like, I'm just gonna not bother with them. Because maybe that is like the, oh, you like over criticize and all these things. And yeah.

• 48:33Dr. John Delony?

  So that's a bit.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  I mean, that's, that's, that's, sorry, go ahead.

• 48:35Dr. John Delony?

  No, you go ahead. You go ahead.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  That's something, it's always been hard to get my wife to like come out of her shell.

• 48:42Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  And be like, super open with things.

• 48:47Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 48:47Speaker 04

  And like, say, say, say, there's times, you know, in marriage where you get, we have those arguments. It's like, so often do I want to, because I forget things sometimes. And I'm like, I've gotten better about that. Like, I'll count on my fingers, things I want to bring up, like after she talks. Because sometimes when she talks, I'll be like, jump in. So I don't forget. But then it's like pulling teeth there to talk again. You know what I mean?

• 49:10Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. And so, um, if, this is the old quote from the movie Fight Club, from Chuck Polonhook, but if a conversation with your spouse is you just waiting for your turn to talk, it's not a conversation. It's a, it's a competition.

• 49:28Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 49:29Dr. John Delony?

  If you listen to the thing beneath the thing she's telling you, and you hear a wife that's exhausted, frustrated, has a new baby, doesn't know if you still like her, thinks she's pretty anymore, or she grew up in a house that was just chaos and there was no trust anywhere, and trust for her, she's a lived experience of trust getting her hurt, or getting her accused. And so she's trying, and she gets the facts wrong, but the sentiment is, I'm trying to connect with you. And by the way, conflict is connection. It's, it's, it's one of the most, the tension is the doorway in a marriage. That's what's beautiful about it, if you can go through it. But it's you not just waiting for your turn to rebut her things factually.

• 50:15Dr. John Delony?

  But it's in that moment of, I'm a safe place for you to be sad with. I'm a safe place for you to be upset with. Go for it. I'm, I'll, I'll hold the weight of the family right now. Not that you become a punching bag or get abused or anything like that, but, but does what I'm saying resonate? Do you get what I'm saying?

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it does. It does.

• 50:36Dr. John Delony?

  And maybe the next day or two days later, we come back and if there's two or three things that are still really heavy like, hey, you said I never helped.

• 50:46Dr. John Delony?

  Can you help me? Because I'm trying to keep my eyes open about the laundry. I'm trying to keep my eyes open about the dishes and I want to figure out a better way that I can love you in a way that resonates with you. Can you give me a map?

• 50:58Dr. John Delony?

  Instead of, hold on, hold on, right there. I did the dishes yesterday and I did the laundry three weeks ago. Like, you see what I'm saying?

• 51:05Dr. John Delony?

  And then what she's gonna feel in her nervous system is that guy's not listening to me. Cause this isn't about those isolated times. It's me saying, I'm trapped in this house with a kid and I feel totally alone. I feel useless and purposeless. And, and that's, it's, it's part of the wizardry of being married, which is what is the thing beneath the thing we're talking about? Otherwise laundry becomes a proxy war, right?

• 51:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:27Dr. John Delony?

  All of this, I think, if you sit down and take her hands and you go arrange for a, a sitter, you call somebody and you sit down and say, like metaphorically, I'm clearing the deck here.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:43Dr. John Delony?

  I, I wanna, I wanna read you some things I wrote down about how much purpose you bring to my life and to this family.

• 51:52Dr. John Delony?

  I wanna read you a couple of things I wrote about how out of my mind in love with you I am and how beautiful I think you are. And again, I don't know what her things, the things she wrestles with are, but go right at those things.

• 52:06Dr. John Delony?

  And then say, I, I gave you all this money. I'm not gonna do that again. It's too big of a deal for us. It's too big of a radar system for the health of our whole family unit. I don't ever want you to feel alone again. And I'm gonna work really hard to get some new tools in my toolkit so that the only tool I have isn't criticism.

• 52:28Dr. John Delony?

  Bro, now you're setting the table. You're tilling the soil that she can start planting seeds that y'all can work on together forever. And those will turn into a forest of trees. But dude, I think you're on the right track, brother. I'm proud of you. And you got the next right move right in front of you. Um, it's time to do the courageous, masculine, brave thing and go do the next right move for your home. Which is to take a knee in front of your wife and say, I'm gonna do this differently next time. I'm all in. I hope you will be too. Thanks for the call, homie. We'll be right back. Montana Knife Company makes the best knives on the planet, period. You guys know that my son and I are big hunters and that my wife is a world-class, amazing cook.

• 53:11Dr. John Delony?

  So between the woods and the kitchen, I need knives that actually hold up to real use in the real world. Several years ago, I bought my wife the chef's knife set for Christmas and she still uses it every day. She says it's one of her favorite presents I've ever bought her. And I have a number of Montana Knife Company knives for me and my son's outdoor adventures, hunting and fishing and just causing general mayhem in the woods. Their knives are designed, tested, and built by real hunters and real cooks. And when you pick one up, you can instantly feel the quality. They're proudly made in the USA and they're razor sharp right out of the box and they're tough enough to last a lifetime. Montana Knife guarantees that my grandkids are gonna fight over these knives someday.

• 53:56Dr. John Delony?

  If they ever need sharpening, you just send them back to Montana Knife Company and they'll sharpen it and send it back to you for free. Give the outdoorsman and the cook in your life a knife that they will love and cherish and use forever. Go to MontanaKnifeCompany.com to see what's available right now. You will not be disappointed. That's MontanaKnifeCompany.com.

• 54:21Dr. John Delony?

  All right, Kelly, the, uh, so this show goes out on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, I don't know where else, on your tin cannon string system that you have at the old folks home, like, it goes out everywhere. Um, but we got the Spotify numbers in today.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Right, so, people are hearing this show in late January.

• 54:41Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  We are recording this show.

• 54:43Dr. John Delony?

  Early December.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  On December 3rd. And we got our Spotify wrap-up today, and I just have to say, our listeners are awesome.

• 54:51Dr. John Delony?

  They are the best.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  They are amazing.

• 54:52Dr. John Delony?

  The best, they're in the gang, OG 17!

• 54:54Speaker 02

  So, our top spot on the charts on Spotify, number one.

• 55:00Dr. John Delony?

  Number one, how you like them apples?

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Uh, we had a 68% increase in our listen time, our total audience, 863% increase over last year. What?

• 55:11Dr. John Delony?

  As the great Martin once said, "Damn, Gina!" It's a lot of people.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yes, 101,000 of our listeners, this is their number one show. 101,000 people.

• 55:23Dr. John Delony?

  The rest of you listeners should be ashamed.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not listener shaming. 359,000 of our listeners, this is top 5. And then for 529,000 of our listeners, this is top 10. For somebody like me, like, I listen to a ton of podcasts, to be in someone's top 5 or 10, that's huge.

• 55:42Dr. John Delony?

  That is huge. I, I'm, I'm kinda blown away by that.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we're in some pretty big company with, like, The Ramsey Show, Joe Rogan, Dax, so, we have a lot to be thankful for, and we are so, so grateful for all, all of our amazing listeners.

• 55:57Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, it's, um, this is a rare moment of, like, me being speechless, I don't have words for that, like...

• 56:04Speaker 02

  And if John doesn't have words, trust me, because John's got a lot of words.

• 56:08Dr. John Delony?

  I don't have, like, it's still, it blows my mind, every airport I go to, every time I'm in the bathroom, going to the bathroom and somebody wants to talk, which happens more than you would think, like, wherever I happen to, like, at punk rock shows in the middle of mosh pits, multiple times, people are like, "Dude, I listen to your show!" Like, I'm just, I'm speechless, thank y'all for being in the gang. And, more importantly than y'all just listening to the show, it's you choosing to share these episodes, take little nuggets of this, and sit down with your husband, sit down with your wife, sit down with your kids, and decide, "I'm gonna, I wanna do something different," call in a counselor for the first time, getting back in the gym, whatever it is, like, making those life changes, it's just... Speechless, man. I'm just grateful. I'm so grateful.

• 56:52Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, I might get choked up here. I don't have emotions. You took all my emotions, Kelly. I love you guys, for real. Thank y'all for being with us and buckle up because this year is gonna be a wild one. Love you guys. Bye.