I Think My Husband Is an Idiot (but I Don’t Want To)

On today’s episode, we hear about: · A wife who thinks her husband is an idiot but wants a new perspective · A stay-at-home mom wondering how to get her husband to treat her as an equal · A woman seeking advice on how to be more disciplined Next Steps: 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📘 Get The Intentional Father by Jon Tyson. 📚 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

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I'm trying to see how do you men more positively when the ones around me are just either limpy or lost puppies.

• 0:14Dr. John Delony?

  You've told yourself a story that your husband can't, and that's easier than dealing with the truth is that he won't.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  I thought things were gonna look differently.

• 0:28Dr. John Delony?

  What's up? What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. So, so grateful that you are with us, talking your mental and emotional health, your relationships, your marriages, dating, whatever you got going on. This is the state of the world. Whatever you've, you're working through, I've probably got an opinion on it, but more importantly, here's my promise, I'll sit with you. And for the last two decades plus, I've been sitting with hurting people, trying to figure out what's the next right move. And I'd be honored if you want to join us on this show. We take calls from all over the planet. Give me a buzz, 1-844-693-3291, or go to johndeloney.com/ask. And we'd love to have you on the show and call, leave a message, let us know what's

• 1:13Dr. John Delony?

  going on in your world, and we'll see if we can get you on. And Kelly's gone today because evidently administrative tasks were more important than partying with us. So T-Money's running the ship, and T-Money likes to drive fast. So let's go out to Gulfport, M-I-S-S-I-S-I, P-P-I, and talk to Kate. What's up, Kate?

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Hey, John, how are you?

• 1:36Dr. John Delony?

  I'm so good. How about you?

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Oh, I'm wonderful and enjoying a once in a lifetime snow in South Mississippi.

• 1:42Dr. John Delony?

  Very cool, man. I don't think I've ever heard that sentence, so that's awesome. Very cool. What's up?

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Never happened. Yeah, so I need a Big Brother's perspective.

• 1:52Dr. John Delony?

  Got you.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  How, how can I see men more positively?

• 1:58Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, man. Tell me more about that. I think men are pretty great.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:04Dr. John Delony?

  I'm kind of biased too, though, so.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  This is true. Um, well, I have been married for the past seven years. Um, my husband and I have been together for ten, almost. Um, we've got two little boys, a one-year-old and a three-year-old. And we want to raise them to be good, godly men. Um, but neither one of us really have had very strong male influences in our life.

• 2:27Dr. John Delony?

  Hmm.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  Um, my dad is still around, but he is not, like, emotionally there. Um, and when I was younger, he had made some kind of comment when we were on vacation. "I think I have Asperger's." I was like, "Okay, all right." And that was that. Um, I mean, he's a brilliant man, just not emotionally there. Um, my husband's dad died right before we got married. And we just, we don't have very many people in our lives that we can look up to. So I'm, I'm trying to see how to view men more positively when the ones around me are just either wimpy, or fox puppies, or, um, harsh. It's just, it's hard to, to see them more positively, or even look out for people that

• 3:13Speaker 00

  we can look up to, if that makes any sense.

• 3:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, totally. Um, are you married to a good man?

• 3:19Speaker 00

  He is. He's a very good man.

• 3:21Dr. John Delony?

  So do you not look at him favorably?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  I wouldn't say unfavorably, but he...

• 3:31Speaker 00

  I don't think he's an amazing provider. Um, and a lot of that's because, you know, what he wants in life. Um, we're both involved in ministry, so we know that, like, financially, things weren't always going to be amazing. Um, but it's like, he'll say he's going to do something, and then it falls through. Like, he's been looking at other jobs, but he won't apply for them, and he says that he will. Or, um, i- it's just that the follow-through is not really there.

• 4:00Dr. John Delony?

  So...

• 4:01Speaker 00

  But otherwise, he's a really good man.

• 4:02Dr. John Delony?

  Sometimes, um, overgeneralizations are true. They just are.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:09Dr. John Delony?

  Sometimes, overgeneralizations, um, uh, stereotypes, whatever you want to call it, they protect us from having to deal with the reality in our own house. Or in our own neighborhood, or in our own families.

• 4:25Dr. John Delony?

  And so I guess what I would tell you is there are men who are idiots.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:32Dr. John Delony?

  And there are millions and millions of men who grind every single day to do the best they can with the tools they got.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:40Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And so what I hear is two different things. Number one.

• 4:51Dr. John Delony?

  So let's pretend your dad does have, um, he's high functioning autistic.

• 4:58Dr. John Delony?

  You said he's brilliant.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  He is.

• 5:01Dr. John Delony?

  You said he was a provider.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:04Dr. John Delony?

  So, um, but he wasn't as emotionally available as you would have liked him to be.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:13Dr. John Delony?

  So what I'm not gonna do as an adult with my own kids is choose to hold one of my parents responsible for a potential, um, special need.

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:26Dr. John Delony?

  Right? Um, or when it comes to, um, I don't know, a dad passing away.

• 5:35Dr. John Delony?

  I'm not gonna assume negative about that guy. He died, right?

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:39Dr. John Delony?

  And then I've got a, it's easy to go, oh, man, I don't respect him. I don't like him, whatever. It's harder to say, my husband is not a person of character.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:51Dr. John Delony?

  That's a much harder thing to say. It's harder to say to part, to dig into the nuance of my dad, which is he was really good at some things and awful at some other things. Both are true.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:02Dr. John Delony?

  Right? So it sounds like you got two things going on. One, you don't like the situation that, you don't like the life that you're living.

• 6:12Dr. John Delony?

  Or you might like parts of it, but you thought it was gonna feel different. And so it's easy to point your finger out at the world and I'm just gonna find this group. The other side of that is you gotta be really radically honest with your husband. Or about your feelings and the reality that you find yourself with the man you married. Tell me about him.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  Um, he is an amazing dad.

• 6:38Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Um, sorry, I'm getting emotional.

• 6:41Dr. John Delony?

  That's okay. Well, take a breath. I said a lot to you. Am I out to lunch?

• 6:47Speaker 00

  No, no, I don't think you're out to lunch. I think you're on the right track. Um.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  It's just like you had mentioned, I thought things were gonna look differently. I thought our boys are gonna have grandfathers to look up to. And they have pillars and strength and integrity to look up to. And my husband does an amazing job doing that. Um, but there's some things that he won't be able to teach them, which sounds silly, but...

• 7:20Dr. John Delony?

  Like what?

• 7:20Speaker 00

  Like how to build something or, um, it seems really silly, but I just... I want them to know how to be well-rounded individuals and be able to fix the tractor as ridiculous as it sounds, or, um, fix something electrical. And my husband, I love him to death, he's very smart, but not, uh, handy, I guess would be the word.

• 7:54Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. So the grief that you're putting on into the world is yours?

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:00Dr. John Delony?

  And the grief, you keep telling yourself a story.

• 8:07Dr. John Delony?

  And that story is, um, he's so amazing, he's so amazing, he's so amazing. At the same time, you're telling yourself another story, which is, he will never teach my boys to be the men I want them to be.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:20Dr. John Delony?

  And those two stories can't compete.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:24Dr. John Delony?

  You're making yourself bananas, right? Like you're trying to spin the record both directions and it just sounds like noise.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Um...

• 8:34Speaker 00

  So do I lean more into this is what he can do for them? They're gonna be amazing because he can do this?

• 8:39Dr. John Delony?

  Well, I just reject the "he can't."

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 8:44Dr. John Delony?

  The first time I ever went deer hunting was I was in my 30s. And it's because my father-in-law berated me into it. And it's become my singular obsessive passion over the last 15 years.

• 8:59Dr. John Delony?

  Um, I watched my dad fix stuff growing up because we had no money. He had to.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:07Dr. John Delony?

  And this weekend, as I was building garden beds by myself, I grew up in the suburbs, dude, outside of a major city, as I was building garden beds for our property outside of town in the woods, this weekend, I was thinking, huh, like I've come a long way. And by the way, I had my headphones on and I was listening to an audiobook of a nerdy science book about marriage.

• 9:31Dr. John Delony?

  So both things are true. You've told yourself a story that your husband can't, and that's easier than dealing with the truth is that he won't.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:44Dr. John Delony?

  Because I don't think you respect him.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Yes, if I'm honest, sometimes I do struggle with that.

• 9:53Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, tell me about that. Don't put this on to the boys. The boys are, the boys can learn whatever you want to sign them up for.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:00Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, like I mentioned earlier, just the follow through on things, I feel like, I was talking to him about it this last weekend, like I felt like I've been let down in a lot of different ways. Um.

• 10:17Dr. John Delony?

  Be, be specific about a lot of different ways. That feeling becomes a lot. Be specific. Are you frustrated with your financial situation? Are you frustrated with, you thought you wanted to live, do ministry and live in rural Mississippi and you hate it there? Did you think he was going to be a guy who exercised, knew how to fix, like, did you think just men just knew how to do some stuff and he doesn't know how to do that stuff? Like, what, be specific.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  So, for instance, um, like, he's been looking at different jobs, and he says he's been looking and looking and looking, but he's never actually created a profile on Indeed or looked and actually applied to anything. He's just word of mouth. Um, or...

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Like for my birthday years ago, I had told him that I I wanted to build cabinets above our our washer and dryer and he said it was gonna happen, he was gonna do it, he promised it's gonna happen and it's been three or four years, it hasn't happened.

• 11:18Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  Um, just things like that with the the follow through just isn't there and I I don't want to be promised something if you're not gonna be able to follow through.

• 11:27Dr. John Delony?

  What what's a deeper thing? This isn't about cabinets. This is not about him looking for a job. It's even deeper than that. Be totally honest. What is it?

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Um, I I guess, I feel like my dad let me down.

• 11:45Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  Like I maybe on one hand I could count the amount of times he told me he loved me or he was proud of me.

• 11:51Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 11:51Speaker 00

  Including my wedding. I mean, I've just, I've seen the marriage that my parents have and it's lasted, but it's not been wonderful.

• 12:06Dr. John Delony?

  What are you doing on a daily day to day basis to contribute to that not being the same way? Because I hear somebody who's just looking around and saying, all of my life is happening to me. Where are you taking control and autonomy and running with it?

• 12:20Speaker 00

  Um, so like when I I had back to where I I struggled with depression, so I started going to counseling and I was put on, um, this was so lost after I had my last kid because I had postpartum.

• 12:40Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  Um, and I've been working to a lot of that stuff and, um, I've been working out, um, eating better. I've been trying to take care of my mental health because I know that I can't take care of anybody else.

• 12:55Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  I can only focus on me.

• 12:58Dr. John Delony?

  Can I tell you that I'm really proud of you for that?

• 12:59Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 13:01Dr. John Delony?

  It's good. It's awesome.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 13:03Dr. John Delony?

  And underneath all of that, you sound to me profoundly lonely in rural Mississippi.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:14Dr. John Delony?

  Tell me about some girlfriends that you have that you go hang out with, you have coffee with, that you go have beers with, that you just act silly with.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Um, my coworker is a really good friend. She's probably thirty years older than me, but we're crazy people at work. And it's even funnier because we work with intellectual disabled adults, so they get a kick out of it. But every day at work is hilarious.

• 13:42Dr. John Delony?

  But that's work?

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Really hilarious.

• 13:45Dr. John Delony?

  Do y'all hang out outside of work?

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Uh, rarely.

• 13:49Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Rarely.

• 13:51Dr. John Delony?

  So I want that to be on your radar, okay? I'm trying to think of things that you can control. Here's the bigger picture. Um, you're on a bullet train to recreate the marriage that you experienced in your house.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:08Dr. John Delony?

  And it's because you've told yourself stories about your husband, and then you hold him accountable for those stories. At the same time, and I don't say this lightly, he is a man who is currently lacking in integrity. And if you don't own that, then you make yourself bananas when you're like, "He's so great. He's so wonderful." And I hate where we live. We tried this life and I don't like it. We don't have enough money for basic stuff.

• 14:48Dr. John Delony?

  And what y'all, it sounds like the old pictures and words thing. You have a very clear picture of what quote-unquote "looking for a job" looks like. He evidently does too, and those pictures don't align. So he can go have a bunch of cups of coffee and have some lunches with some guys and talk about jobs, and you come home and you're just sobbing that your husband's a loser because he won't apply for a job. And he's thinking, "I tried. I'm trying." Or you have pictures of us not being in Mississippi anymore, and he's trying to find a job that will pay bills in rural Mississippi.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:23Dr. John Delony?

  And so what I think you need is to back all the way out. Number one, let go of the "all men are bad." They're not.

• 15:32Dr. John Delony?

  Most men are doing the best they can. They have, they have limited tools and the world shifted on them.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:38Dr. John Delony?

  Okay? And I don't know anybody that if they could go back and coach their dad to do different things, wouldn't have a long list of things they could coach their dads on.

• 15:51Dr. John Delony?

  And it breaks my heart for you that that call's never gonna come that he's proud of you. It's not gonna come.

• 16:00Dr. John Delony?

  And I think you gotta grieve that. And write him a letter. Don't send it to him, but write it. Get that, get that stuff out of your body. Okay?

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:09Dr. John Delony?

  Cause it just loops and loops and loops and loops and loops.

• 16:14Dr. John Delony?

  And you're taking small baby steps, which I love to see of making, like, being well inside your own head, inside your own heart, inside your own house.

• 16:24Dr. John Delony?

  You're taking action steps, which is amazing. Exercising, going to see a counselor. I want you to start hanging out with friends outside of work.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 16:33Dr. John Delony?

  But I want you and your husband to go sit down and have a honest to goodness conversation that is you telling him, "I don't like our life."

• 16:45Dr. John Delony?

  And if, the more specific you can be, the better. Dollar amount, geographic location, career trajectory.

• 16:58Dr. John Delony?

  Do you get what I'm saying?

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:00Dr. John Delony?

  Cause those are the realities I think y'all are working around. Y'all are just looping and looping around those and you're, you're not, you're not being direct about them. But here's the bigger thing. His wife is drowning inside of y'all's house and you have to be honest. Cause I think you're drowning and he's looking at you waving your arms in the ocean and thinks, thinks you're waving at him.

• 17:20Dr. John Delony?

  I don't think he realizes how bad it is. Is that fair?

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:24Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 17:27Dr. John Delony?

  The greatest gift you can give him right now is honesty.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:33Dr. John Delony?

  Sometimes when we sit down with our spouses and we make these plans, they come with these, "But we have to live here. And you have this degree, so we have to do this." And I think we're in a, in a season in the world that's changing so, so, so fast. The world we live in right now will be so different five years from now. And in many ways, that terrifies me. Because I don't have a roadmap for it. I don't like living without a roadmap.

• 17:58Dr. John Delony?

  But y'all have to sit down and take your arm and wipe off everything. You have family land. So what?

• 18:06Dr. John Delony?

  You have a degree in whatever. So what?

• 18:10Dr. John Delony?

  You don't know how to do a certain thing or certain things right now, but you can learn them.

• 18:16Dr. John Delony?

  Shoot, I don't mind telling you, I just asked Andrew, who's currently running the video equipment right now, if this summer, he can give me and my son welding lessons. Because they left the welding class. I just asked him the other day to create a class for me. And my son, and to give me a list of things I need to buy so I can be a welder. Like, and I'm old. I'm an old man. I'm not old man, but like, I'm getting there. So this idea that you can't learn, if you get a master's degree in theology and wrestle with those abstract ideas, then for sure, you can learn how to do some of these other things. But you gotta, you gotta wanna do it. And I want you to have a picture. I want my boys, when they walk across the graduation stage at the age of 18, to know how to do these things. It's actually a thing I went and did.

• 19:00Dr. John Delony?

  You and your husband need to go through John Tyson's book, The Intentional Father. It is a faith-based book. So if you're not a faith-based person, I think the book is still extraordinary. But if you are people of faith, it's, it's the best fathering book I've read. But it gives a map for, your kids gotta learn how to do a whole bunch of stuff, especially in the upcoming world they got. They gotta learn how to raise chickens, and they gotta learn how to, like, dodge a punch, and they gotta learn how to code, or whatever, like, deal with AI. Like, they gotta do all of that stuff. It's a new world, new planet. But instead of just every day being like, "Well, they can't do this. They're never gonna be able to do that." Let's go all the way out to the end, to the finish line and reverse engineer it. When they're 18, they walk across stage, I want them to know how to do these things. Husband, I want you to know how to do some of these things. It would make me, as your

• 19:44Dr. John Delony?

  wife, feel safer if you knew how to do some of these things. And...

• 19:50Dr. John Delony?

  Some of those things you're not gonna learn, know how to do. You have to learn how to do it. You have to learn how to do it. One of the most humbling and has turned into my favorite part of my life is I know how to do a couple of things pretty good. There's a whole bunch of stuff I don't know how to do. And so I love surrounding myself with other men and women who can teach me how to do new things. It's awesome. It's just being a lifelong learner. That's one thing he should have learned in grad school. But all of this starts with you at home being very specific about, "I don't like the world we're creating, even though we're surrounded by cool stuff." Right? "I don't want to mistake my happiness for blessings," as the old cadence call says. "I don't want to, I don't want to just continue to putt along like this." So let's be honest and let's be specific.

• 20:35Dr. John Delony?

  And right now, your husband's not doing what he says he's doing, and you gotta call him out on the carpet on that because you love him. And hopefully, he's a person of character and he hears it. And then he begins taking action steps. Phew, thanks for the call, Kate. I'm really grateful for you. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've probably heard people talk about different kinds of flags in friendships and romantic relationships. You got red flags and green flags and beige flags. Listen, it can be helpful to look for patterns or relationship behaviors that are unsafe. But to me, all those labels can distract from what's really important when you're trying to find a lasting, deep relationship.

• 21:19Dr. John Delony?

  What's really important are your values and your potential partner's values, and whether both of you are willing to wake up every day and choose to honor each other's values. But when you grow up in challenging environments, or given how we are bombarded with everyone else's values all day, every day, it can be tough to even know, "What are my values? What is important to me in a relationship? And how will I show up to honor myself and love my partner?" Forget all the different flags. Listen, ask yourself, how can I learn to know what I value? Therapy can help you figure out your values, learn what you're looking for in your relationships, and then decide your boundaries and non-negotiables. If you're thinking about starting therapy, try BetterHelp.

• 22:03Dr. John Delony?

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• 22:45Dr. John Delony?

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• 23:55Dr. John Delony?

  All right, we're back. All right, Andrew.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Yo.

• 23:58Dr. John Delony?

  Our fearless YouTube leader. You were just telling us during the break. Walk me through what y'all were talking about.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  So I've had that conversation with my wife, just the other side of it, of my dad taught me all of the construction skills and running cows, all of how to change your oil and brakes, all that.

• 24:15Dr. John Delony?

  And y'all had to, right?

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, we had to.

• 24:17Dr. John Delony?

  Very similar to my childhood, right? Like, you had to.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, we had to. It was just a part of what we did. Couldn't afford to take it everywhere else. And now I work in an office and...

• 24:26Dr. John Delony?

  With some really fancy technology and...

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, stuff my dad wouldn't understand, but also we still have cars and we still have all the things that break. So my wife and I have had the other side of this conversation of how do I transfer my father's skills to my sons? I've got two sons now and that's... It's tough. It's tough to think through that and it's... We're still learning that. I actually just found that book that you were talking about.

• 24:55Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  I'm gonna buy that.

• 24:56Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  So this is... That was a great call for me to hear as well, just that.

• 25:02Dr. John Delony?

  Something I've been wrestling with, so thanks for sharing that. Something I've been wrestling with is this idea of masculine protect and provide. And well, I see it, I see it on two sides of the teeter totter and I think everybody misses it. I think there's the protect and the provide, the bros who are all about, "You gotta lift weights and snap into a Slim Jim and know how to use all your bow and arrows and guns and all that", which is awesome, and provide is paychecks and direct deposits.

• 25:31Dr. John Delony?

  And then I think they've got families and spouses that are desperate for, "Hey, I want you to provide laughter and joy in this house. I want you to provide a stable, like, personal presence here. I want you to provide, like, stability and a hug and laughter and help cook dinner. Provide a..."

• 25:53Dr. John Delony?

  The trash taken out, right? And so I think it's easy for men sometimes to spend a lot of time on Instagram and whatever, and then they hide from their families in the gyms. They hide from their families at the shooting ranges. They hide from their families at the bow and arrow places. And there's the other side of that, which is it's the modern world. I don't have to do any of this stuff. Um, I can, I'm providing a paycheck and I know how to play video games and stuff like that. And those guys need to get their butts out into the gym. They need to go outside. So it's a both and, but I think what you mentioned, Andrew, which I love is it's about sitting down inside your home and saying, what does our family need right now? And so knowing you're, you grew up in a more traditional, blue collar world, and I'm

• 26:34Dr. John Delony?

  watching you like, like literally take classes and learn different aspects of the internets kind of stuff, right? I grew up in a house that was, we did stuff because we had to. I grew up with a, you work five jobs. I've been working since I was a little kid. That's just what you do. And I learned how to have hard conversations with people, but I'm not a policeman, so I've got to learn how to do them differently. And I'm doing, so I think the whole thing is what does protect and provide mean in my house and in my neighborhood? And it's going to be different for everybody, but you, in this current world, you can't hit the teeter totter on either side. You gotta do both. If you're really good at your MMA gym, awesome, you gotta learn how to hug your wife. And if you're really good at your, like, I know how to handle myself and I conceal, great.

• 27:16Dr. John Delony?

  You also need to learn how to get on the floor and play candy land with your daughter. You gotta do both. And the other side of that is true too. Uh, me and one of my colleagues, he like, he's like, I've never mowed a lawn in my life. And I'm like, that's not a good thing. You gotta learn how to mow, you gotta learn how to do some of these things, right? Um, I'm thinking of the time I was pushing George Campbell's Tesla when it ran out of batteries, like, like, that wasn't great, right? So I just think, I think we're in a world, you gotta do both. So anyway, thanks for the little diversion there. Let's go out to Huntsville, Alabama and talk to Emily. Hey Emily, what's up?

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Hi, John. Thank you for having me on. I really love listening to your show.

• 27:55Dr. John Delony?

  Well, thank you so much for joining us. What's up?

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Um, I just had a question about my relationship with my husband. It feels like he kind of treats me like the maid in a lot of ways. And then, like, at the end of the day, he's kind of baffled as to why I'm not diving into intimate time with like, any kind of fervor and not feeling very affectionate towards him. And I know it's a two-sided issue that we've kind of created this dynamic together. But we've been married for like thirteen years and just have, just been through the wringer, kind of, and I just have a hard time broaching these subjects.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Cause he, he does get kind of sensitive and will feel like I'm mad at him, like, when I'm not mad at him. Or if I'm just saying like, "Hey, could you do this?" He's like, "Well, why are you grumpy?" And I'm, "I'm not grumpy." So, I'm just kind of, I'm not the best communicator either, so I'm kind of just stumped.

• 29:03Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. So, can I tell you that, um, I don't know if this will make you feel worse or make you feel better, um, that you found yourself in the thirteen-year dance and you're not broken, there's not something wrong with y'all, okay?

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:20Dr. John Delony?

  But there is, there is some paths out. It just means that both of y'all are gonna have to decide, we're gonna, we're gonna do things that are different.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:27Dr. John Delony?

  And it's frustrating and it's different and it's uncomfortable, but it's super manageable if y'all choose. Or another way to say it, um, a little less nerdy is, tiny decision by tiny decision, y'all have chosen the life you have, which means

• 29:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:43Dr. John Delony?

  y'all can choose something completely different if you want to.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 29:47Dr. John Delony?

  He is gonna have a harder time. Here's why. He has a maid.

• 29:54Dr. John Delony?

  He has a live-in housekeeper that does everything for him. And occasionally she has sex with him.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 30:04Dr. John Delony?

  He's kind of got what he wants.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:08Dr. John Delony?

  You do not.

• 30:10Dr. John Delony?

  So the impetus for change, and by the way, he doesn't have the life he thinks he has, or he thinks he's got it about as good as he's gonna get it. And he doesn't understand how amazing his life could be too.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:23Dr. John Delony?

  With a wife who is not an employee, but was a full-time co-adventurer in this one wild life we all have.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that's, I mean, the last couple of conversations we've had about just the state of things have been initiated by him being unhappy, essentially.

• 30:41Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, tell me about it.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  And he's like, well, he's like, I just feel like you don't like me at all.

• 30:46Dr. John Delony?

  That's it, that's it.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  And I'm like, well, I don't really right now because I just had to pick up all of your dirty socks and you're watching TikTok while I did the dishes and just like,

• 30:57Speaker 04

  and I understand that like there are gonna be days that he's like at a zero after he gets home from work. And I'm so appreciative that he does go to work. But I've tried to like say like, I don't really want to like make a list like you have to do this every day. But just like, jump in, let's do it together. Let's like, you know, exist together instead of just you being off to the side until the end of the night.

• 31:22Dr. John Delony?

  So, he's not on the phone, so the only person I can challenge here is you, is that okay?

• 31:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:28Dr. John Delony?

  Has, over the last 13 years, his experience at home been somewhat of a failure factory?

• 31:37Dr. John Delony?

  And here's what I mean.

• 31:40Dr. John Delony?

  If he decided one day to start doing the laundry, would he do it quote unquote, "right"?

• 31:49Dr. John Delony?

  Or would he fold the stuff quote unquote, "right"?

• 31:52Speaker 04

  No, but I will say I have gotten better at not saying anything about it.

• 31:57Dr. John Delony?

  Right, well, so here's the dance. Maybe one time, seven years ago, he tried.

• 32:04Dr. John Delony?

  And, and I'm just, I'm making something up here, okay?

• 32:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:09Dr. John Delony?

  They tried. And he saw you undoing the dishes where he'd put them away because he'd put them in the wrong stack or on the wrong side. And of course, he could have asked, but he didn't. He was trying to be helpful. And what he learned was, I don't do this the quote unquote, "right" way. I'm gonna let her just do it.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:30Dr. John Delony?

  I'm gonna opt out of that. And when he begins to drive home, he knows, oh, here we go. I'm not gonna do home right. Now, I would challenge him if he was on the phone that his job is to sit down with you and y'all swipe the deck completely clear and say, okay, what kind of world do we want to live? What kind of world we want to have in our house? Because we get to create it. How do we want this house to feel every time one of us walks in the front door?

• 33:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:00Dr. John Delony?

  And I want you to put your phone away the moment you get out of the office and don't pick it back up.

• 33:08Dr. John Delony?

  Can we create that world?

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:11Dr. John Delony?

  And he's gonna look at you and say, I just want you to like me.

• 33:16Dr. John Delony?

  Will you show some interest in me romantically? And you might say, yes, but if you're always telling me how much you need sex, how much you need this versus you want me?

• 33:30Dr. John Delony?

  Because most wives who feel like they've been relegated to the maid role feels like they're really kind of a vehicle of interchangeable body parts that their husband uses just to get off.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:43Dr. John Delony?

  Need versus, no, he wants me. He wants to be with me.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:50Dr. John Delony?

  Where does he do things that are good?

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Um, he's, I mean, he's a good provider. I don't have to work and I appreciate that so much. Um, he's very much like the fun dad, so he jokes with them and he'll, you know, take him out four-wheeling and, you know, tries to, you know, be very fun. And he's, you know, the best brother and like a really great son. And it just feels like

• 34:21Speaker 04

  he's, he's really good in all these areas. And if you were to talk to somebody in his office, they'd be like, oh, my gosh, he's such a hard worker. He's so nice. And then I feel like he gets home and it's like, he just, I don't know, like, I don't know if he just deflates or if he's just like, you know.

• 34:41Dr. John Delony?

  Are you happy to see him when he comes home?

• 34:44Speaker 04

  No.

• 34:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  And I, and I wanna be.

• 34:47Dr. John Delony?

  I know, I know.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  And I feel like that's so mean.

• 34:48Dr. John Delony?

  Don't blow by it. Just sit on that for a second.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:56Dr. John Delony?

  Because I know it's both and, but it's hard when everyone tells you how great your husband is. And it's like, that's not the guy I experienced at home.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:06Dr. John Delony?

  And it's usually a mix of both. He knows you don't want him to come home.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:13Dr. John Delony?

  Or he knows you want him to come home, but he knows you don't like it when he's there because you're in, he's in your house.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:22Dr. John Delony?

  And he's not doing your house the way you want house done. And if he was on the phone, I would tell him it's not an excuse. You gotta plug in, dude.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:33Dr. John Delony?

  But here's, here's this weird place y'all find yourselves. Y'all are gonna have to decide, we want to like each other again.

• 35:41Dr. John Delony?

  The Gottmans research, they're kind of the gurus on marriage research. Beyond all things, fighting styles, the bull crap, and then are from Mars and women are like, all that stupid stuff is not real. The one unifying factor in marriages that make it? They're just friends. They're great, great, great friends.

• 36:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:03Dr. John Delony?

  You get what I'm saying? And so y'all have to decide, we want to be friends again.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess, does that just like mean me asking him to like sit down and

• 36:19Speaker 04

  like, just, I don't know. I'm so bad at talking to him.

• 36:23Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, I want to dig in right there. Why?

• 36:27Speaker 04

  Um, I mean.

• 36:29Dr. John Delony?

  Do you have this Hollywood version of your house that if we have to say it, it, it makes it less?

• 36:36Speaker 04

  No, I mean, I feel like I have pretty realistic expectations for the household. Last, um, so like, just like recent history, our son passed away two years ago.

• 36:46Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 36:47Speaker 04

  And like, it was like right after we were so close and we like, I mean, it was just like the shock of everything. We kind of bonded more than we had been before. And then the following year, he kind of lost, because I went to, you know, the.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  Support groups and therapy and our older kids are in therapy and we were all getting help. And he just didn't. And he was like, well, you're my wife, like you can help me. And I was like, I'm drowning. I can't help. I can't help anyone.

• 37:27Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  And um, so he got really mean for a really long time and

• 37:33Dr. John Delony?

  What does really mean mean?

• 37:34Speaker 04

  Like, just yelling. He never was like physical, but

• 37:38Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Just like the littlest things would just like set him off. And so I feel like I still have like that flinch reflex.

• 37:45Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. That's, that's, that's super fair.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:49Dr. John Delony?

  Super fair. So don't walk around saying, well, I'm just not good at talking. You have a husband that went through a gnarly depression, probably still there.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:58Dr. John Delony?

  Many, I'd say most couples, um, I haven't looked at the data recently, but most couples don't survive the loss of a child.

• 38:07Dr. John Delony?

  And here's why.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:08Dr. John Delony?

  Because of the, the pace of their grief is different.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:15Dr. John Delony?

  One person's like, all right, can we get all their life? And the other person's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, realize what just happened. And one person goes to counseling and gets on it and let's go. And the other person just is buried for a while.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:28Dr. John Delony?

  And then eventually you look up two years, three years, five years later, it's like, I don't know that dude anymore.

• 38:34Speaker 04

  That sounds very accurate.

• 38:36Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. What was your child's name?

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Thomas.

• 38:41Dr. John Delony?

  How'd he pass away?

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Um, he was six months old. It was positional asphyxiation.

• 38:48Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, man.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  It was, um, just like super crazy traumatic and

• 38:58Speaker 04

  I just, he ended up, the only reason we didn't get a divorce, like when he did kind of lose his mind is because he ended up getting really, really sick and it was almost like His body was like, nope.

• 39:10Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  Like, no more. And his, like, I mean, we went to every doctor. They couldn't tell us what was wrong with him. And still, it's a little bit of a mystery. And I was like, just a couple of weeks ago, I was like, that was like your God, I mean, your body and God saying, like, sit down.

• 39:29Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Like, we, you gotta stop. And so I'm so thankful that that happened when it did, because it was just like so toxic. And, and he's been much better since, you know, this, all this past year has been better.

• 39:46Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  Than the previous, than.

• 39:48Dr. John Delony?

  So ma- maybe we're at a place now where it's time for honesty and skill building.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 39:55Dr. John Delony?

  Here's what I mean. I want you to, and, and you're thinking, God, I have to plan one more thing. And what I would say is yes. Because you painted me a picture of a husband that's drowning.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:08Dr. John Delony?

  And you're thinking, God, there's so many life rafts out in this lake. And I was able to get on the life raft. I got all our kids on the life raft. You're right about all that stuff. But right this second is not the time for keeping score.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:22Dr. John Delony?

  Um, if you go back and look at the data that says that anxiety and often depression are quote unquote, women's illnesses, because they're, they're diagnosed so much more frequently. And more sophisticated research has come out in the last few years that suggest, actually Terry Reels on this 20 years ago, that men often display anxiety and depression through anger, through

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:45Dr. John Delony?

  physical altercations, right?

• 40:47Speaker 04

  He, he's kept on like having what we thought were like cardiac episodes. And we went to the cardiologist and he was like, he's having panic attacks.

• 40:55Dr. John Delony?

  That's exactly right.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  Which of course, he has like, I don't know, he comes from a very macho family and they're wonderful. And they love him very much, but they, you know, they just have a very traditional, like, that's not something that would happen to a man.

• 41:09Dr. John Delony?

  Right. But, but it is.

• 41:10Speaker 04

  They all collectively kind of brushed it off. But I was like, if the doctors here are telling us, you know.

• 41:16Dr. John Delony?

  So think, think, think of it this way. Your husband's, and I know this happened to you, I'm not excluding your experience, I just want to shine light on his.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:25Dr. John Delony?

  Your husband's son passed away. And the story he's probably told himself was there was some level of prevention that could have stopped that.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:34Dr. John Delony?

  Putting a blanket in a different position, putting a pillow in a different position, putting a stuffed animal, whatever happened.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:41Dr. John Delony?

  And your husband leans over and looks in his toolkit for how to, for what to do next, and there is nothing. His toolkit is empty. Because his parents, the ones who were supposed to put tools in that toolkit, said, "You shut your mouth and move on with your day."

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:59Dr. John Delony?

  And so that tends to lead a more compassionate, "Ooh."

• 42:06Dr. John Delony?

  Now, that doesn't negate the fact that he started to treat you, his way of getting through the day is just to numb out. He scrolls his life away.

• 42:14Dr. John Delony?

  And you, because you're a person who's picking up the slack in the house, I often have asked parents, "How did you," especially when one parent picks up all the slack, "How did you make it?" And they're like, "We, I had to."

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:25Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And so you've had to, the last 24 months.

• 42:31Dr. John Delony?

  And I'm super grateful for you. And when the lights come back on for him, he will be too. But right now, the world is, his only connection to humanity is through a sexual encounter with you. That's it. That's his only connection to intimacy.

• 42:50Dr. John Delony?

  And for you, "I need you present socially so that I can even get there in my head and my body." You know, just miss each other in the night.

• 43:01Dr. John Delony?

  And he just has gotten used to his socks magically being in the drawer, because he's tuned out.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  That makes sense.

• 43:10Dr. John Delony?

  And so both of you have to sit down, and again, when y'all sit down, I'm giving you a chore, and you're gonna be like, "God, I hate that I have a chore, but we're here." I want you to plan a half-day together, and I want you to find somebody to watch your boys.

• 43:26Dr. John Delony?

  And I want you all to have a two-year, since Thomas passed away, here we are.

• 43:35Dr. John Delony?

  And I think it's right and honest for you to say, I love you and I want to learn to like you again.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 43:45Dr. John Delony?

  And here's what I need. And it is not sexy to say, I need to not see your phone.

• 43:52Dr. John Delony?

  I need you to not bring your last meeting home. I need you to practice being likable in the side of this house.

• 44:02Dr. John Delony?

  And then you turn around and say, what are some things I can do?

• 44:09Dr. John Delony?

  And you'll have to start there and ask him, are you willing, are you willing?

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:17Dr. John Delony?

  If you, if you can imagine that conversation in your head,

• 44:23Dr. John Delony?

  what do you see him doing?

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Kind of following along until there's been like a request made of him. Like, like the, the phone thing is just, just for me, because I get distracted easily and I just,

• 44:43Speaker 04

  just like the constant like TikTok, Instagram video reel going drives me crazy. So that would be like a big item for me, but I feel like that's the hardest thing for him to put down.

• 44:54Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, but it's kind of like telling a smoker to quit smoking, but there's nothing, there's no other behavior to fill that gap.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:04Dr. John Delony?

  And so it's like, I need this phone away and I need you to just chit chat. I need you to just pull up a seat from the hours of 5:30 to six while I'm making dinner and just talk to me. And it will be boring and it'll be frustrating. And I'll give you all the questions for humans cards. You all can just get to know each other again. And I know that sounds silly, but I've heard from couples all over the planet about how these knuckleheaded little cards are reigniting their marriages because they're learning about each other again.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  That sounds awesome.

• 45:36Dr. John Delony?

  You get what I'm saying? Like, it's real easy to get over existential. And what we have to do is rebuild from the floor up. And the floor up, it's cool to like, go into a house and to check out paint colors. But before that, there's a bunch of dudes outside laying concrete forms.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:54Dr. John Delony?

  So they can just pour a foundation back. And that's where y'all are. And I do think it's fair to start the meeting with, "I'm not gonna poke at you, I'm gonna ask you not to disengage.

• 46:07Dr. John Delony?

  I'm on your team, I love you more than life itself, you're the father of my kids, you're my husband for 15 years, we've been through hell together the last two years. And the things I put on the table are not attacks, they're invitations. Please stay present with me."

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 46:25Dr. John Delony?

  Okay?

• 46:27Dr. John Delony?

  And what you're doing is you're just setting the ground rules for a conversation.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  Okay, I think I can do that.

• 46:36Dr. John Delony?

  Here's the alternative. Everything just stays the same.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  Seeming less and less like an option.

• 46:43Dr. John Delony?

  I know, I know. And I've said it often on the show, this is one of those moments where you are turning the music off, you're turning the lights on, the party's over for a while.

• 46:55Dr. John Delony?

  We're gonna have to learn new dances, we're gonna have to get new records. Because this party's gonna change now. And it almost always takes one partner just saying, "I'm done with this, but I wanna rebuild something new with you."

• 47:11Dr. John Delony?

  And the flexing and the macho and the just trying to numb it all away isn't working inside your own house.

• 47:22Dr. John Delony?

  So circling back, y'all aren't broken. Y'all had an extraordinary event that you'd need to deal with. And you're probably gonna need some professional help to go through it. And it might be him saying, or if he won't go see a therapist because of how he was raised and all that, fine. But you can tell him, "If you really love me, I want you to come with me so we can learn some new skills."

• 47:47Dr. John Delony?

  Because I do believe right now, this is a skills issue. So the guy's still trying to touch the ground after his boat sank. I'm so sorry for little Thomas. Thank you for sharing that with us.

• 48:02Dr. John Delony?

  Here's the words I want to guide you. Clear boundaries, direct, honest, open connection, very specific. Here are some things. And always begin with I. I feel like I'm competing with the phone. I would like us to have a phone-free house from the hours of 5 till 10 p.m. Will you honor me enough by that? And go from there. Thank you for the call. We'll be right back. I want to introduce you to my friends at Cozy Earth, the makers of the best bedding, sleepwear, and bath linens in the world. If you're like me, your New Year's resolutions are hanging on by a thread and your body

• 48:47Dr. John Delony?

  is redlining from all of the new exercise, new eating habits, and all of the back-to-school activities. Now, listen, I'm all about go, go, go! But we have to remember, rest and sleep is vital for our overall health. And though I like to go hard when I rest, I like to do that right, too. For me and my family, that's where Cozy Earth comes in. Right now is a great time to experience their bedding and pajamas. They're soft and breathable, and they keep me and my family comfortable and cool all night long. Perfect for the sleep we need to be re-energized. Invest in yourself by investing in cozy, comfortable sleep with Cozy Earth. And right now, Cozy Earth has an exclusive sale for all of you watching or listening to this show. Forty percent off all products to help you stay cozy this winter.

• 49:31Dr. John Delony?

  Visit cozylearth.com/deloney and use code DELONY for forty percent off. That's cozy, C-O-Z-Y. Cozylearth.com/deloney. All right, let's go out to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and talk to Paige. Hey Paige, what's up?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Hi, Dr. John. I am wondering, how do I develop self-discipline and stop abandoning healthy habits?

• 50:00Dr. John Delony?

  Ooh, good question!

• 50:02Speaker 02

  I feel like it should be just as easy as well, just do it. But I'm 35 years old and haven't been able to just do it yet, so...

• 50:16Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, man. Tell me what you have tried that hasn't worked.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Um, I, you know, I've read as many books out there as I can think of and, you know, I'm tend to be a reader and then have a really hard time implementing things. Um, even just things like drinking water every day, or exercise, or budgeting, or anything that requires consistency in life to create a healthy, a healthy life.

• 50:48Dr. John Delony?

  So I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you a crazy, uh, a thing here, okay?

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:53Dr. John Delony?

  I think we've entered into a world where, and if you go back and listen to my show over the last few years, I've been hyper intentional about it. Um, and it's one of those things that I'm hoping people will go, "Oh," like in 10 years, okay? So I'm giving you the secret right now.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  All right.

• 51:12Dr. John Delony?

  I think we have all reached information overload.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:17Dr. John Delony?

  We don't need to read a lot more new books. I'm gonna write a book on marriage, I think, so everyone needs to buy that book later on when it comes out, but other than that, I think we're pretty much, I think we got to info.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yep, and I've heard you say that, that's why I even mentioned it, is because I've heard you say that and, um...

• 51:35Dr. John Delony?

  So that's why this show is about real people. Okay, so, number one, you have to stop, you have, you have to stop looking at certain behaviors as productive behaviors, and you have to look at them for what they are. They are numbing and avoiding behaviors. Some people smoke weed, you read books.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 51:56Dr. John Delony?

  Some people, um, look at pornography, you listen to podcasts.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:03Dr. John Delony?

  Okay? All of it is a way to keep space from actually dealing with the hardest part of habit building, which is identity. What is the story I'm telling about myself?

• 52:23Dr. John Delony?

  And I think the stories you tell yourself are that you're not very good at a lot of stuff.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  I think I'm really good at a lot of stuff.

• 52:38Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  But yes, I'm not good at other stuff.

• 52:41Dr. John Delony?

  What are, what are they? What are the books you keep reading trying to quote unquote fix?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Um.

• 52:50Dr. John Delony?

  Except for my books, obviously, because they're amazing.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I've read your books. I've read, you know, a lot of the, the big ones out there, like Atomic Habits and the, that one about hurt, you know, the relentless, that, well, the one about stopping hurrying and...

• 53:10Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, John Mark Comer's book, yeah. Excellent book.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:13Dr. John Delony?

  The ruthless elimination of hurry, yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you. Ruthless. Um, really good books. I, I want...

• 53:23Dr. John Delony?

  If you could snap your fingers, what behavior would you change in your life?

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Um.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Exercise. Being, being a person who, who keeps my body healthy. Um...

• 53:39Dr. John Delony?

  What, what does not keeping your body healthy get you?

• 53:47Speaker 02

  Less, less mental load, less things on my plate.

• 53:51Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  It's just another thing to think about, another thing to do when there's already so many things to think about and do.

• 53:59Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 54:05Dr. John Delony?

  How do you move it from your chore list to your, um, want list?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  I know it's an identity change. Um...

• 54:16Dr. John Delony?

  But beneath identity is the self-worth. Why don't you think you're worth an hour every day, just to feel good?

• 54:26Dr. John Delony?

  And why have you outsourced how you feel to a number on a scale or a pant size? Or a number of hours in a gym?

• 54:34Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think I do, Dr. John.

• 54:37Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  I really, I really, uh, cause I've sat with that question. I've listened to everything you've said because

• 54:44Dr. John Delony?

  You're like, I listen to lots of podcasts.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Cause I listen to, I listen to podcasts and I don't, I, I could be wrong, you know? Maybe if we dig deeper, but I, I, I do believe I'm worthy of being, well, I love myself.

• 54:56Dr. John Delony?

  Awesome.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  I think I'm a great person.

• 54:58Dr. John Delony?

  Good, hey, high five to you. Nobody calls my show and says that. That's awesome. Okay. Great. So how can I help? Where are you stuck? What, what precipitated this call right now? What habits did you abandon that you're like, gosh, again?

• 55:13Speaker 02

  The, the thing that precipitated this call is I was reading back through journals

• 55:18Dr. John Delony?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  and from my life and, um, I have a whole lot of Januaries that are well documented.

• 55:25Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah. My wife's favorite person on the planet is January John. She loves that guy.

• 55:32Dr. John Delony?

  She loves it. She says he's the best guy who's ever lived. One time, January John made it all, one time, all the way to April. It was amazing.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Yep, yep. Um, so yeah, I, and I just, I would look at the different, the different things I was stuck on when I was 20 and they're the exact same things I'm stuck on now. The same things that I want to develop in my life when I was 20 are the same things now. And there's just a whole lot of Januaries that talk a lot about that. And, um, I don't know, I worked really hard in the last few years on my mental health and anxiety. Um, that's required cutting a lot of things out, like caffeine and busyness and political articles.

• 56:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Um, so I, I've had tremendous growth in those areas, the things that cut things out.

• 56:22Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. But what are you, what are you, what are you adding in?

• 56:26Dr. John Delony?

  What are you going toward?

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Podcast listening to audiobooks.

• 56:30Dr. John Delony?

  Here's an example. You and I sound very similar. So last year I did something I've never done before. Because every January has always been about restriction, what I'm cutting out.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:43Dr. John Delony?

  Last year I made a change. I will go to 10 punk rocker metal shows and get in 10 mosh bits. That was the thing I put on my January last year. I will go to the comedy club 25 times in the year. That means once every other week.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:59Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. I began putting in because to do that meant I had to go to sleep earlier. That to do that meant I had to spend my money differently.

• 57:11Dr. John Delony?

  To do that meant I had to exercise and be super intentional about it. And I had to be okay with 15 or 30 minute, you know, exercise sessions because I had this other thing that was a bigger priority last year.

• 57:27Dr. John Delony?

  And two weird things happened. I put on more weight than I have in a long time. And I had maybe the best year I've had in ages.

• 57:36Dr. John Delony?

  And so what I've had to address this year is the story that I told myself that life would be good at scale number X was maybe false.

• 57:46Dr. John Delony?

  Because I got my blood work done and my blood work's pretty good, too. Do you hear what I'm saying? So what I had to do is go, go address some of those, what are the cornerstone stories you've been telling yourself every January for the last 30 years?

• 58:03Speaker 02

  That it won't feel good until I have done these things?

• 58:07Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, except it's cognitively dissonant because you feel good. You like yourself.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  I do.

• 58:13Dr. John Delony?

  You've done a lot of work.

• 58:17Dr. John Delony?

  And so that's where I think the master, the master stroke of Atomic Habits is the identity call out. Who do you want to be?

• 58:29Dr. John Delony?

  And if it's, I'm a guy who doesn't fill in the blank, that's fine. And a couple of like virtue issues, value issues, fine, right? But if your list is just, I'm a person who doesn't, it's just a scarcity way of living.

• 58:48Dr. John Delony?

  So what's a thing you'd love to add into your life?

• 58:52Speaker 02

  I want to spend more time with my siblings and their families.

• 58:56Dr. John Delony?

  Are they around you or do you have to travel?

• 58:59Speaker 02

  About an hour.

• 59:02Dr. John Delony?

  So what must be true for that?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Probably stop listening to as many podcasts on audio books to get out of bounds.

• 59:10Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, I, Scott Galloway talks about this, that maybe the most important advice for 20 to 35 year olds right now is get out of your home. Be at home as, as little as possible.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Do you know how cold it is here right now?

• 59:26Dr. John Delony?

  I know. It's negative everything. But life is happening outside of that screen and life is happening outside of that house.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:36Dr. John Delony?

  You get, you get what I'm saying?

• 59:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 59:39Dr. John Delony?

  I want, instead of, I want you to build a life worth living, a life that you love, a life that you want to have. And that's family and that's your faith practice, tethering into something bigger than you. That's your work and that's a purpose. Like, why are you here? What do you want to do? And from that, like, I think you've probably heard me talk about my conversation with my dear friend Sal Dostoevsky from Mind Pump Guys, like, dude, if you go to the gym and work out because you think you're gross, if you go to the gym and think that you'll be happier at some number on a scale, you're going to quit every time. If you go exercise because you're worth exercising, because you feel good so you can go to the comedy club, so you can go see your families, you can go

• 1:00:24Dr. John Delony?

  to these other things, you'll do that forever. And you'll have weeks where you go an hour every day and you crush it. And you'll have weeks where you go 15 minutes, you just get it through because I got to go to the next thing. But that's a part of who you are because it's got a big, it's serving a purpose. Do you get that switch?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  That's harder than you giving me a magic.

• 1:00:51Dr. John Delony?

  So much harder.

• 1:00:55Dr. John Delony?

  Here's the magic formula, and this is the worst thing I can tell you. Because you know this and you've done it every time.

• 1:01:03Dr. John Delony?

  We only change what we measure. Our feelings are almost always wrong.

• 1:01:09Dr. John Delony?

  And, well, I'll say that they're not always, almost always wrong. They almost always don't give us the clearest and most correct information.

• 1:01:20Dr. John Delony?

  And you have to have some form of accountability.

• 1:01:27Dr. John Delony?

  And you know those things and they're really annoying. They're really annoying.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Dr. John Delony?

  And if you want to change the nitty gritty habit. Huberman has talked about some really important neuroscience that's come out in the last few years, which like actually has been around for a while, but he's calling it to the forefront. If you do things that you especially don't want to do, you actually grow part of your brain that allows that same behavior to be easier to do next time.

• 1:01:58Dr. John Delony?

  And so here's what that means. You just have to do stuff sometimes that you really, really don't want to do.

• 1:02:06Dr. John Delony?

  And January John loves hearing that. February John does not like hearing that.

• 1:02:13Dr. John Delony?

  And I also made peace, I quit hating February John.

• 1:02:18Dr. John Delony?

  I just quit hating that guy. I quit being annoyed by him. I quit looking him in the mirror every, every morning and be like, you're gross. You're disgusting.

• 1:02:30Dr. John Delony?

  And from that foundation, I have found it infinitely easier to hang on to habits that I want to hang on to. And be really, hold loosely on the nights that I just go to bed.

• 1:02:44Dr. John Delony?

  Or the mornings when I sleep in and wrestle with my son in the morning, or get into a poking contest, or like a bickering contest with my daughter. Before school, we both go to work annoyed, and I could have just gone worked out. Like, like it is, I was stupid, and I'm on to the next day.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Dr. John Delony?

  Will you put on the calendar, I will see one live music event every month. This year, I'll see a minimum of 12 live music events. And that means, ugh, I either have to go by myself, or I have to do something even weirder and ask somebody at work or a friend to go with me.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, my sister and I just decided that we're gonna, the one that's an hour away, that we're gonna put on our calendar every other week to see each other.

• 1:03:33Dr. John Delony?

  I think that's-

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  She comes here, I go there, we meet halfway.

• 1:03:35Dr. John Delony?

  That's incredible. But here's what I want you to do. It's easy to put that calendar, that date on the calendar, and then get surprised by it every day before that date. What I want you to do is you put that date on the calendar, which is important. It's like you're training for a marathon. Not because, "I gotta train for a marathon," but I'm a person who runs. I run all the time. So here's, I'm gonna choose to be a little bit less healthy, because running marathons come at a cost. I'm gonna be a little less healthy, so that I can accomplish this goal. You have an awesome new goal. I wanna see my sister in person every other week. Because my identity is I'm a person who hangs out with my family. And instead of every Friday going, "Oh, gosh, tomorrow I drive to whatever,"

• 1:04:18Dr. John Delony?

  I want you to begin to reverse engineer that Saturday all the way back to the previous Sunday. What must be true for this week? I'm gonna need to do my laundry earlier this week. I'm a person who takes care of their bodies, so I'm gonna need to get all four exercises and exercise sessions in before that day.

• 1:04:38Dr. John Delony?

  Do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yep.

• 1:04:43Dr. John Delony?

  And my guess is when you begin to reverse engineer and plan some of those things, amazing. And then if you only get three one week, okay, fine, you'll live.

• 1:04:53Dr. John Delony?

  Cause I'm a person who's pretty compassionate to myself, cause I'm doing about as good as I can do right now.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  I like that.

• 1:05:03Dr. John Delony?

  I have an incredible new partner that I'm gonna hook you up with, okay?

• 1:05:08Dr. John Delony?

  It's this amazing company called Trainwell. And it's a personal trainer in, like, on your phone in an app. You can connect with them and they give you workouts. And here's what's amazing, like, um, for the Thanksgiving holiday, when I was trying out to see if this was somebody I wanted to do, like, to partner up with, I just said, hey, I'm gonna be staying at a place in the woods. And so I'm only gonna have a couple of dumbbells and a kettlebell and some, and some exercise bands. Trainer, sweet, here's your workout for the week. Boom. Next week, I'm back in my regular gym, but I only can do three weeks, three days of heavy lifting this week, cause I gotta do something else. Like, great, boom, done. So they work directly with you and they give you feedback every day.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 1:05:51Dr. John Delony?

  But it's on your phone, so there's nowhere to go. And you know they're gonna text you. How was it? Or they're gonna give you a photo, a photo, I mean, a video chat. How was it? If I give that to you for three months for free, will you use it?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Um, yeah.

• 1:06:06Dr. John Delony?

  If you're not, that's okay.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  No, I, I can do three months. I've, I've done three months before giving up before.

• 1:06:16Dr. John Delony?

  All right, how about this? Do you wanna wait until you're about to give up and then start?

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:06:22Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  No, I wanna start when we get off the phone.

• 1:06:25Dr. John Delony?

  Excellent. All right, hang on the phone, I'm gonna hook you up with my friends at Trainwell. T R A I N W E L L. It's awesome. It's probably the coolest innovation I've seen. Um, and I'm a lifelong, uh, exerciser, but I, I, I've, I've loved what they've brought to my life. Even if sometimes I know my trainer Nate is gonna text me like, where are you, man? Ugh, I'm right here, right? I don't want to, I don't feel like it, but my feelings don't get a vote all the time, cause my feelings are wrong a lot. Sometimes I just feel like Cheetos and that's usually a never good idea. But here like

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Accountability seems like it would help.

• 1:07:02Dr. John Delony?

  Well, it's annoying, but it's just necessary. Alright, so and here's the thing. Here's, here's your magic wand roadmap. Okay.

• 1:07:10Dr. John Delony?

  When you get off this call, take out a piece of notebook paper or a piece of printer paper or whatever. But I want you to write this down. If you've got a journal, you sound like you're a journaler, write this stuff in the journal. Number one, write five things you're grateful for. Start with the, the words I am grateful for. That's number one. Number two. I want you to write down four or five identity statements for 2025. I'm a person who. In 2025, I'm a person who. Under each one of those things, I want you to write three or four behaviors that you got to lock into.

• 1:07:46Dr. John Delony?

  And just commit to yourself on those behaviors because I'm a person who and the very bottom.

• 1:07:54Dr. John Delony?

  Actually, not the very bottom. I want you then to go into your bathroom and look yourself in the mirror. And I want you to say 10 times, I love this girl.

• 1:08:04Dr. John Delony?

  I want you to look yourself dead in the eyes. I love this girl.

• 1:08:10Dr. John Delony?

  Do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:08:12Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:08:14Dr. John Delony?

  If you miss a workout, who cares? Doesn't matter. If you go see your sister and you haven't got your laundry done and I'm a person who takes care of all my household stuff before I go out. Alright, fine. Next week I'm going to tweak my schedule so I can get that laundry done. Cause I like coming home on Sundays after being with my sister and everything's ready to rock and roll for Monday.

• 1:08:35Dr. John Delony?

  And I'm going to go to concerts. I'm gonna go 12 concerts this year. I gotta find the money for that. So I'm a person who's gonna work some overtime.

• 1:08:42Dr. John Delony?

  Cause I'm a person who loves to go see live music more than I like sitting at home watching TV. It's gonna begin to build it in. And for anyone who's trying to change identity habits, there is seasons of doing stuff that you don't want to do. That's a cornerstone of any sort of behavior change. I don't want to do it. It's uncomfortable. I'm gonna choose my heart. I'm gonna go do it anyway. There is a season of that. Actually, there's a long time of that. I don't want to, but I'm going to.

• 1:09:09Dr. John Delony?

  You're on the right path, dude. It's awesome. It's an honor to talk to you. This is January John to January Paige.

• 1:09:16Dr. John Delony?

  Actually, let's do this. Call back in February because I want to see where you are. And we'll keep working through this thing. Hopefully, February John doesn't show up this year and January John goes into February. Hey, everybody, hang with us. Um, I've got a wild new segment coming up right after this break. We'll be right back.

• 1:09:36Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, good folks. Lent is just around the corner. And if you haven't heard of Lent, it's a practice that goes back centuries. It's when Christians all over the world get ready for Good Friday and Easter through different kinds of prayer, meditation, and fasting. It's about getting rid of the things or habits in your life that get in your way of knowing God and of living a full, joyful life. So whether you grew up in the Christian tradition and you want to experience Lent in a new way, or you think the whole thing sounds bonkers and you just want to learn more, check out Hallow's Lent Pray 40 Challenge. The Lent Pray 40 Challenge walks you through great stories and guided prayers. Last year, more than a million people around the world prayed with Hallow every day during Lent,

• 1:10:20Dr. John Delony?

  and this year will be even bigger and better. Right now, you can get three months of Hallow, the number one prayer app in the world, for free when you sign up at hallow.com/daloney. This means your trial will last all the way through Lent. And when you join, you can check out over 10,000 of their guided prayers and meditations, music, and so forth. So download the app and sign up at hallow.com/daloney to get notified when the Lent Pray 40 Challenge begins. That's hallow.com/daloney for three months of Hallow absolutely free.

• 1:10:55Dr. John Delony?

  All right, we are back. So, um, as y'all know, one of my favorite events that I'm a part of is the Money and Marriage Event that me and my friend Rachel Cruz put on. It's a weekend-long retreat. We do a couple of times a year.

• 1:11:09Dr. John Delony?

  At a recent Money in Marriage, we take live questions from the audience. We also give them an opportunity to write down questions that we answer live. And this year, we got some questions, a huge stack of questions. That some of them were so gnarly, they were so personal, they were so intense. We just didn't get through them all. And so, but they're too important. Like, as we went through them, they were so, so heavy and so important. And so, what I want to do is have to start a segment at the end of the show where I answer these questions that people left. These are real people who wrote in these questions and handed it in on a card. We took it out of an anonymous question box. And, phew, there's some doozies. So, here's today's, not tonight's, but here's today's.

• 1:11:51Dr. John Delony?

  "Last night, my husband admitted to a pornography addiction that's been going on for four years. I'm utterly heartbroken and shocked." Where do we go from here?

• 1:12:06Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 1:12:08Dr. John Delony?

  I don't know that anybody who's been married for a long time hasn't had their partner sit down and say, "Hey, here's something that's going on. We're about to go bankrupt. I have $50,000 in credit card debt. You thought I got a degree, I didn't. I'm about to lose my job. I've been struggling with pornography. I'm having an emotional affair." Fill in the blank. And you sit in that moment.

• 1:12:36Dr. John Delony?

  A couple of things to do right away. Number one is, regardless of what is said, and this is gonna sound controversial and I'm a... Regardless of what you're told. A good default response is, "Thank you for sharing."

• 1:12:54Dr. John Delony?

  If you can summon those words, "thank you for sharing",

• 1:12:59Dr. John Delony?

  you force yourself into what I would call a position of maturity. That doesn't mean you're not gonna grieve like crazy. That doesn't mean you're gonna get enraged, angry, wanna smash stuff, do smash. It doesn't do any of that away. What it might do is stem.

• 1:13:19Dr. John Delony?

  Your next emotional response, and sometimes emotional responses are punches. Sometimes emotional responses are, "I'm leaving." Sometimes it's saying really ugly things that you can't get back. Sometimes emotional responses are, you immediately try to take that pain away. You try, you go into peacekeeper mode and try to solve it real quick. "Oh, I'm so sorry." Or, an emotional response might be, "Oh, my gosh, you've been, like, in this case, you've been addicted to pornography because I'm not beautiful anymore, or I haven't been around, or, or, or..." That's not the time for the solution. When somebody sits down and puts this upon you, not by your hand, but in your lap, boom. "I've had this ongoing addiction to pornography for four years."

• 1:14:04Dr. John Delony?

  Thank you for sharing. The second thing is, almost always, 99.9% of the time, the solution will not come in this first day, or two, or three, or four, or five. These are moments for revelation, for heartbreak, as you, as you mentioned here, for shock, for, for lack of better terms, this is about survival now. If you can hear it, thank you for sharing. Tell me everything. Tell me everything. You just listen. I'd advise you to write things down, things that you feel, things that you want to say,

• 1:14:49Dr. John Delony?

  get them out of your body, but write them down. Don't lob them onto somebody else, but write them down. And then over the next 24, 48, 72 hours, two, three, four days, you begin to, the, the fog begins to clear on the next right step. And it's not the next right step towards solution every time, it's the next right step towards dealing with the, the smoke and ash that was your marriage, the smoke and ash that was your reality that's now very, very different. Sometimes it's, "I need to go stay with a friend for a couple of days." Sometimes it's, "I need you to go stay with a friend for a couple of days." Sometimes it's, "I don't want to see a laptop open, I'm cutting off the internet for the next 10 days, I'm, I need to do a thing right now that's pretty drastic, and if you don't want to be around that, fine, but I need you to step out."

• 1:15:34Dr. John Delony?

  Sometimes it is, "We're gonna go to dinner tonight and I need to hear every single lurid detail. I wanna know all of it." Sometimes it's, "We're gonna sit down today and we're gonna go through your search history. I wanna know." Sometimes it's, "Fill in the blank, but it gives you 24, 48, 72 hours." The next thing is, you have to have somebody or a small group of people you can talk to. Secrets will kill you and grief demands a witness. Sometimes it's a therapist, sometimes it's a counselor, sometimes it is a close group of girlfriends. And if a husband says, "I've been addicted to pornography for four years. You can't tell anybody?" Nope, you just threw a grenade. You handed me a grenade. You can't say, "Here's a grenade. Just hold it." I can't do that. Now, I'm not gonna go parading it around. I'm not gonna be ridiculous. I'm not gonna

• 1:16:17Dr. John Delony?

  go smear you. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna get down in the mud like that. But this is a lot for me to hold when I'm utterly heartbroken and shocked, as the author writes here. So I'm gonna find somebody. So the response, "Shoom, shell shocked. Thank you for sharing." And I know that sounds crazy. Try it next time somebody tells you something insane. Something heavy. Something that just blew your world up. Thank you for sharing. Calmness contagious.

• 1:16:48Dr. John Delony?

  Then I'm gonna begin to write some of this stuff down. I'm gonna begin to exhale. I'm gonna find somebody that I can talk to, that I trust. One or two or three or four people. And then we will go from there. To the person who wrote this, you're not alone. Lots of homes all over the place are destroyed by pornography. And if you've, are struggling with pornography and you need to sit down with your partner, today is as good a day as any. Secrets will kill you and it will destroy your marriage. Let's start there. That wraps up today's show. And we're gonna leave on a heavy note, I guess, with these, some of these marriage questions, man. There's some gnarly ones here on this stack that we'll go through. Thanks for being with us. Stay in school, don't do drugs. Love y'all. Bye.