Pod Insights The Dr. John Delony Show I’m Afraid That My Husband Will Eventually Resent Me About this episode On today’s episode, we hear about:
A wife worried her husband will resent her because of her health issues
A mom wondering how to talk to her daughter about her weight
A woman struggling to tell her mom she’s no longer welcome in her house
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Transcript 10,609 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:05 Speaker 00 With all of my health stuff, I've had to take a more lack approach to kind of just everything in my life, my job, my finances, my marriage. I'm just wondering, how do I prevent him from resenting me?
0:21 Dr. John Delony? There's a lot in that question right there.
0:29 Dr. John Delony? What's going on? This is John, and I'm so glad that you're with us. Talking about your mental and emotional health, your relationships, whatever you've got going on in your life, your kids, your marriages, all of it. People all over the world show up to the show, pull up a seat, and we're going to figure out what's the next right move. If you want to be on this show, go to johndalony.com/ask. And for the jillions of you who DM me, I don't answer questions on social media when it comes to individual family life situations. But I will take your call on the show and walk alongside you as we figure out what we're going to do, what you're going to do next. Let's go out to Lee Summit, Missouri, and talk to Mary Mary. What's up, Mary?
1:13 Speaker 00 Hi, John.
1:15 Dr. John Delony? How are you? Beautiful? You doing good?
1:16 Speaker 00 I'm okay. It's been a month. I'm struggling a little bit, but I'm fine.
1:23 Dr. John Delony? No, you're not. And you know what? At least for the 20 minutes we're going to talk, it's okay to not be fine. I'm glad you're here. What's up?
1:31 Speaker 00 So with all of my health stuff that I've been having going on over the years, I've had to take a more lack approach to kind of just everything in my life, whether that's my job, my finances, my marriage, my household duties that I took on when we first, me and my husband first got together. And one of the things that kind of just eats away at me is I like, I'm trying to balance all of these new changes without my husband resenting me in the future. And I'm just wondering, how do I prevent him from resenting me, you know, like five years down the road?
2:17 Dr. John Delony? There's a lot in that question right there.
2:20 Speaker 00 Yeah, there is.
2:21 Dr. John Delony? Um, so tell me about your health. What's been going on?
2:24 Speaker 00 Um, so about three years ago, I had some major health issues come up where there is no end in sight. It was just doctor appointment after doctor appointment after doctor appointment and nobody knew what was going on. Um, I got fast forward about a year and a half, we finally figured out what was going on, but they're like, we don't know why you have this. Like, it doesn't make sense.
2:50 Dr. John Delony? What's the diagnosis?
2:52 Speaker 00 Um, there's actually three. So the first diagnosis is Eller-Danlos syndrome.
2:58 Dr. John Delony? Okay.
2:58 Speaker 00 And then the second one is POTS, and then the third one is endometriosis.
3:04 Dr. John Delony? You're in a lot of pain pretty regularly, huh?
3:08 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, I kind of, over the years, I was a very active person, um, big into dancing and things like that. I've ended up not being able to do dancing anymore. Me and my husband did ballroom dancing for years. And now I can't do that. I can't really go on hikes. In fact, like, my doctor's ordering me a walker. And I've had to use, like, wheelchairs and stuff, so I've completely lost a lot of my mobility.
3:34 Dr. John Delony? What is, what is the prognosis look like? Is this degenerative? Or is there a treatment plan that you can be a part of?
3:41 Speaker 00 It, it's genetic, so it's progressive.
3:44 Dr. John Delony? Okay.
3:45 Speaker 00 So, um, basically, my connective tissues in my joints are just super lax. Um, the collagen's not formed correctly in the joints and pretty much anywhere in my body. So it causes a bunch of health problems, but the big issue is my joints are just not stabilized. So I have a lot of falls and with age dislocation, the, it just gets worse.
4:07 Dr. John Delony? Sure, yeah. I hate this for you.
4:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's been hard.
4:13 Dr. John Delony? Yeah. It's it's not been hard. It's been like reorienting, right? It's it's got Ctrl Alt Delete on the person that you used to be.
4:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, um, sorry.
4:26 Dr. John Delony? No, you're okay.
4:27 Speaker 00 It's it's one of those things that I, you know, I listen to your show pretty frequently. And you always talk about like how you have to kind of like grieve the loss of things. Like whenever you have a baby, you have to grieve your old marriage. You have to grieve everything. I'm I find that I struggle. I'm struggling like with grieving the loss of my old life because I won't be able to get what I had back. I can do physical therapy and try like experimental surgeries and stuff, but that's not going to fix the problem.
4:57 Dr. John Delony? Yeah.
5:01 Dr. John Delony? Yeah, it's tough when grief is like a slow moving train.
5:06 Dr. John Delony? Right? There's not a period at the end of the of the loss. It's like a can like a slow drip loss, right?
5:16 Dr. John Delony? And I guess it's it's almost, I I don't know, because I've never been in your shoes from the outside.
5:24 Dr. John Delony? If if somebody had done this to you, at least you have somewhere external to point at.
5:33 Dr. John Delony? And it's got to be even further disorienting, dealing with the reality of the loss of the things you used to be able to do, and in many ways, the person quote unquote that you were. When the enemy is your own body, right?
5:52 Dr. John Delony? My goodness.
5:53 Speaker 00 It's very disorienting, to say the least.
5:56 Dr. John Delony? It's like your daily but being betrayed by the one thing you're supposed to count on, which is your body, right?
6:04 Dr. John Delony? Do you have kids?
6:05 Speaker 00 Um, we want to have kids, but with everything going on, we've had to put kids on the back burner for the last three or four years.
6:13 Dr. John Delony? Yeah. Are you are you even able to have kids at this point with with POTS and endometriosis?
6:20 Speaker 00 Um, we are actually going to be having some experiment, not experimental, but like exploratory surgeries to see in December.
6:29 Dr. John Delony? Just how just how tough stuff is?
6:34 Speaker 00 I'm sorry, what?
6:34 Dr. John Delony? Just to see how, what the damage is internally, right?
6:39 Speaker 00 Um, yeah, pretty much. The endometriosis, we don't really know how, like, how bad it is.
6:44 Dr. John Delony? On base of it.
6:45 Speaker 00 My MRI, yeah. They know, like, the MRI is showing that I most likely have endometriosis in quite a bit of different locations, but until they do that exploratory surgery, they don't really know for certain. But it's like, yeah, you, you have all the symptoms. You have the whole little criteria list and your MRI is showing it.
7:05 Dr. John Delony? So tell me about this guy you married.
7:10 Speaker 00 He is, he's fantastic. I'm, honestly, I'm so lucky because he always puts me in front of everything that he does. And he's very goal oriented, which is nice because during this time, like, it was really hard to kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. And he, he's not really, like, I wouldn't say that he's optimistic, but he's like, very like, okay, well, you know, we don't know yet if this is going to be causing infertility. We don't know yet if you're going to end up having to have this replaced or that replaced, or if you're going to have to have this joint surgery. So he kind of keeps me sane when my head just goes towards like catastrophe, which is very lovely.
7:55 Dr. John Delony? Yeah.
7:55 Speaker 00 When you're kind of stressing.
7:57 Dr. John Delony? Almost, sometimes even better than optimistic is realistic.
8:02 Speaker 00 Yes. Yes, he's very realistic. That's a good word. And he, he loves.
8:06 Dr. John Delony? Maybe even different than realistic, he's very present. Like, this is what we know today.
8:11 Dr. John Delony? And we might have things to be sad about tomorrow, but let's be here today.
8:15 Speaker 00 Yes. Yes, that's a very good way to describe him. But he also is, you know, he's kind of like me where sometimes when things get to be too much, he can spiral. And so then we're kind of spiraling together.
8:29 Dr. John Delony? Yeah.
8:29 Speaker 00 And he, unfortunately, because of my health, he's had to take over, like, a lot of, like, cleaning the house. That used to be something that I did. Um, and then he has to like work more hours because, you know, we, we maxed out our health insurance. He'd never done that before. So he has to make up like the money that, you know, I'm losing by not being at work because I have to take a lot of work off with my health and everything like it. I think everything just piles up and I don't want him to resent marrying me. If that makes sense. Like, I know that sounds silly.
9:02 Dr. John Delony? Not, not at all. Doesn't, doesn't sound, doesn't sound silly at all. In honor of your husband, let me ask you this question. Like, what evidence do you have that he's heading towards resentment?
9:14 Speaker 00 I don't have any for him, but I grew up in a very tumultuous household and like, if, like, all the, all the men that I had in my life when I was growing up, like, my, my dad especially, if something went wrong, he would just leave. And so, like, it's not that I think that he's going to leave. I feel like the little child brain in Madison from when she was a kid, that's what she's seeing. Like, all of these warning signs are popping up and I don't know how to handle it. And I feel guilty because I feel like I'm going to be pushing him away from me when I need him with me.
9:55 Dr. John Delony? So I would even transfer, like, it's not even little girl. Um, it was a revelation to me that adult romantic relationships simply reuse the, the, I'm trying to say this in a not dorky way. It, they, it uses the same roadmap that was established when you were a kid. And so if you have a, like, with your, with your parents, your mom and your dad, however that relationship was formed, the, the highways that were developed in your head that was that relationship, your brain doesn't make new ones with your husband. It just reuses those roads. And so if you have exits built into that highway system, because
10:39 Dr. John Delony? dad would just bail on you. Then it's not just an inner child. It's a grown up with real fears baked into your nervous system, right? And I'm telling you that, just so you know, you're not crazy. And that doesn't make him bad. And it doesn't make him like your dad. But it just-
11:00 Speaker 00 I know he's not my dad.
11:02 Dr. John Delony? Well, I know, but I don't want, because here's where it happens. You start to feel a certain way in your body. Oh, this guy's gonna do it too. And then you feel guilty that you had that thought about this guy. And so you pull away a little bit, or you overcompensate a little bit. Right? And then weirdly, you create an environment that makes it hard for him to get to you.
11:29 Dr. John Delony? And then it's how, it's how patterns recreate themselves.
11:35 Dr. John Delony? And then he begins to feel not that I don't have the honor of a lifetime to take care of a hurting wife, but that I can't get to her. She keeps, she keeps bailing on me. Or when I get close, she's electric. She comes at me.
11:50 Dr. John Delony? You get what I'm saying?
11:52 Speaker 00 I do.
11:52 Dr. John Delony? And so some of this is dropping your shoulders and saying, "The way I feel is exactly right because my body's run this script before. I feel that. And then I'm going to consciously go through on a minute by minute, sometimes hour by hour, sometimes, day by day,
12:15 Dr. John Delony? is this true now?
12:18 Dr. John Delony? And for you, it's not. And so I think the scariest part, the scariest thing for me you can do in this relationship at this moment is to have any sort of secrets between the two of you.
12:32 Dr. John Delony? Is when you're feeling that you don't have an opportunity, that the closeness y'all are gonna have is you putting stuff on the table and honoring him enough to let him respond to it.
12:46 Dr. John Delony? And giving him permission to be super frustrated. That's okay too. That's right also.
12:54 Dr. John Delony? You get what I'm saying?
12:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, I get what you're saying.
12:58 Dr. John Delony? And I know you don't want him to be frustrated, you don't want him to be sad that his crazy, fun, super sexy, dancing, hiking wife is here. He gets to be frustrated there. I, I, I would think something's wrong with him if he wasn't like, "Ugh." And does he get up and feel that and then go do the next right thing, which is to lean back in towards loving you recklessly?
13:22 Dr. John Delony? And that in and of itself is amazing. It's when either of you get hung up on the, "I shouldn't have felt this way."
13:27 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
13:28 Dr. John Delony? No, you should. And are we gonna go do the next right thing?
13:34 Dr. John Delony? And so, the, the scary thing for you is, and I'll just put this in the ether, and here's my hope for saying this out loud, is it frees you, okay? It could immobilize you, no pun intended. My best, my best oldest friend on the planet is in a wheelchair, so I'm just trying to have some fun here, um, is, is, is this, right?
13:56 Dr. John Delony? You can do nothing
14:01 Dr. John Delony? to prevent him from deciding he's gonna resent you.
14:07 Dr. John Delony? Which stinks.
14:09 Speaker 00 That's heavy.
14:10 Dr. John Delony? And so, I know, my hope is that frees you.
14:15 Dr. John Delony? Because if you start right now trying to quote-unquote "prove" that you're still worthy of being his wife, and worthy of having his love,
14:25 Dr. John Delony? then that fundamentally alters your, your marriage, way deeper than, "I don't dance anymore, or I don't hike anymore."
14:35 Dr. John Delony? You get what I'm saying? The challenge for you is to show up and say, "I'm still got, I still have both feet in this boat." Until you show me behaviors of language, until you show me that you're not all in too, I'm all in.
14:50 Speaker 00 Okay.
14:51 Dr. John Delony? And on those days I get scared, like I'm too much, I'm afraid you're just gonna walk out and leave, I'm not gonna hold that inside, we're gonna have a weekly meeting just to see, like, "How are we doing? We still love each other, right? Do we still, even, even deeper than that, do we still like each other?"
15:06 Dr. John Delony? And then that becomes you, okay, these things are off the table now. I can't do these things. I physically can't do these things. And you hear me on my show a lot. I'm always telling people like, no, you can. You can go not be angry or not scream and yell. You can't do those things. You can't, right? You can't go hiking.
15:25 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:26 Dr. John Delony? And so that's off the table. Then you look across the table at this guy and say, how can I love you right now?
15:35 Dr. John Delony? And in this new bounded context we have,
15:39 Dr. John Delony? what does love look like?
15:41 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
15:42 Dr. John Delony? And let him speak to it.
15:46 Dr. John Delony? And I can tell you as a husband who's had to take care of a wife who's had medical complications over the years, it's my single greatest honor in my life, more so than having kids. Be honest, honest with me. Do you think he's gonna leave?
16:01 Speaker 00 No.
16:01 Dr. John Delony? Okay. Are you almost more worried that he's
16:04 Speaker 00 But I don't want him to resent him.
16:05 Dr. John Delony? Yeah. Do you almost, are you almost more worried that he's gonna stay?
16:10 Speaker 00 No, I want him to stay.
16:11 Dr. John Delony? I know you want him to stay, but are you almost more worried that he's gonna stay and just resign himself to sadness and resentment?
16:21 Speaker 00 I think he would if he was sad and resentful, he would stay anyway.
16:25 Dr. John Delony? Okay.
16:25 Speaker 00 But that's because I know that he loves me more than anything.
16:29 Dr. John Delony? Yeah.
16:32 Speaker 00 But I don't want him to get to that point either.
16:34 Dr. John Delony? Okay. The challenge for you is you can't stop him from feeling how he's gonna feel.
16:40 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
16:41 Dr. John Delony? The thing you can do is keep both feet in your boat.
16:47 Dr. John Delony? And set up a daily, if not weekly, especially weekly, especially monthly. Do we have a practice where we put everything on the table? This week was a good week. Let's celebrate that together. This week was a good week for me, not a good week for me. Let's celebrate that together.
17:07 Speaker 00 Okay.
17:08 Dr. John Delony? He's gonna maybe need to go hiking with his buddies.
17:13 Dr. John Delony? Cause that's who he is. He's an outdoors goofball, right? Just like me. And that means you're gonna have to say, the best way I can love you today is to tell you, go get your friends and y'all go hiking. And when he walks out that door, you get to be sad and weep. Not at him.
17:32 Dr. John Delony? But for you, cause that stinks, man.
17:36 Speaker 00 Mm-hmm.
17:39 Dr. John Delony? And when he comes back in, you can choose to take that frustration and angst I've been stuck inside all day and dump it on him. Oh, it must be nice. Or you can say, dude, I'm so happy you got to get out of here.
17:55 Dr. John Delony? That's the, that's the part of this you get to manage.
17:58 Speaker 00 I definitely need to work on that.
18:02 Dr. John Delony? Right?
18:05 Dr. John Delony? And I don't want you to ever feel sad. Uh, I, I told a guy recently, we were walking through a parking lot after a show late at night. And I looked at him and I said, hey, he's a friend of mine. I said, hey, there are no bad feelings here. He was going through a tough time with his spouse. So there's no bad feelings.
18:26 Dr. John Delony? You're allowed to have them. You're allowed to feel helpless. You're allowed to feel frustrated. You're allowed to feel angry. You're allowed to be pissed off. All those things are right and good.
18:35 Dr. John Delony? What matters in those moments is what's your next right move? What's your next right action? Thank you for the call. I'll be here all the way through. If you want to call me, tell them to call me. I'd love to talk to them. You both are pretty special. We come back, a woman asks how to talk to her daughter about her weight without hurting their relationship.
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21:47 Dr. John Delony? All right, let's go out to Tulsa, Oklahoma and talk to Jill. What's up Jill?
21:51 Speaker 02 Not much. So I will just get started. So I have a beautiful, amazing 14-year-old daughter who, from the time she was little, has, was, you know, always been average to slim. And then she hit puberty and wasn't anymore. I get, so the, for the past three years, I've just tried to lovingly support her, but I can just feel it, like, every time I try, it doesn't go very well, I don't feel like. So I backed off and I just don't want, I feel like in 10 years from now, she's either gonna say, you know, "How come you didn't help me more?" Or "You helped me too much and now I have an eating disorder." And I just don't
22:36 Speaker 02 know how to, how to help her.
22:40 Dr. John Delony? So, so how old is she? She's 14 now. So she's gained a lot of weight all of a sudden?
22:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, I would say the last three years, yeah, she hit puberty and just went from being slim and she just gained weight and quickly, like, um, stretch marks. And I would like ask, like, you know, "Does it bother you? Do you want help?" "No, no." And, and I just can't believe that's true. I feel like she already struggles, um, with like self-worth stuff. And like on top, like, school's a struggle, making friends is struggling, like, and then this on top of it. And I just, I don't want to push too hard. I don't want to not help. I don't, because I know she's beautiful, but I just want her to feel like that.
23:29 Dr. John Delony? What makes you feel like she doesn't think she is, other than you pointing out specific things?
23:37 Speaker 02 I just feel like she's always down on herself. She's just always kind of had that glass half-empty. And I don't feel like she feels confident. And she'll, she'll make comments, "I don't like the way I look in this." I don't like, so I know that that, and I always tell her she's beautiful, but I just don't know how to make her feel it.
24:00 Dr. John Delony? Well, A, you can't make her feel anything.
24:03 Speaker 02 That's fair.
24:04 Dr. John Delony? You can root yourself so deep into your own self-securedness that she feels loved.
24:14 Speaker 02 Okay.
24:15 Dr. John Delony? And seen and known.
24:18 Dr. John Delony? But i- if, if kids grow up real fast sometimes, like they shoot up.
24:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:25 Dr. John Delony? Like at different paces and kids get stretch marks and I grew what, seven inches in seventh grade? I still have that.
24:33 Dr. John Delony? Like it's, it's, it's a part of my life.
24:35 Speaker 02 Right.
24:36 Dr. John Delony? I can tell you if my mom or my dad had been like, whoa, does that bother you? That would have been when it started bothering me. You get what I'm saying?
24:44 Speaker 02 Yes. But she would make comments and she does make comments. She's like, I hate these stretch marks. And so I try to just like, you know, like, do you want help with your weight? Cause like, I know like, and it maybe comes from me. I was like, I listen, like my sisters really struggled with the way my parents helped them. I didn't personally struggle a lot. Like I've always had to watch what I eat and whatever, but.
25:07 Dr. John Delony? Okay, okay.
25:07 Speaker 02 And I don't want that, cause.
25:08 Dr. John Delony? But let me ask that.
25:08 Speaker 02 I don't want it to ruin my relationship.
25:10 Dr. John Delony? Do you, do you have a house where everybody's been on a diet for a long time?
25:14 Speaker 02 No.
25:15 Dr. John Delony? Okay.
25:17 Dr. John Delony? So I, right, wrong or indifferent, when a teenager, especially a young teenager and especially a young girl teenager, puts something on the table like, um, I don't like X about me. I don't like, I got too big of a forehead, or I don't like my skin, or my hair is too stringy or whatever.
25:40 Speaker 02 Okay.
25:42 Dr. John Delony? A, if you lie to them, they know it and they lose your trust.
25:49 Dr. John Delony? And so if you have a kid with a ginormous forehead,
25:54 Dr. John Delony? and you go, no, you don't, no, you don't. They are, the, the meta there is, I can't trust that person.
26:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
26:03 Dr. John Delony? And.
26:08 Dr. John Delony? The second thing, piece of this that I always hang on to tightly is, those are questions of, "Do you still love me?"
26:20 Dr. John Delony? Not, "Can you fix this?" You get what I'm saying?
26:23 Speaker 02 Okay.
26:24 Dr. John Delony? So if you have, if your daughter comes in and says, "I've got these stretch marks and I hate them."
26:30 Dr. John Delony? You can say, "Yish, yeah. Do you want to help with that?" Or, "Get over here. Let me hug you."
26:39 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah.
26:40 Dr. John Delony? Ugh. And if she asks, "Ugh, I wish there was something we could do."
26:48 Dr. John Delony? Maybe the question is, as you, as you get older and your body settles into itself, I'm always here for you.
26:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:56 Dr. John Delony? Or maybe you say, "Ugh, have you seen my toes? They've driven me crazy since I was a kid." Right? Because they're, my, my third and fourth toe are webbed. I'm making something up here, but...
27:04 Speaker 02 Right.
27:05 Dr. John Delony? But what, what, what we're doing here is we are entering into, "I'm with you," not because you have a thing wrong with you and I can see that it's wrong and, "Man, I've got some money right now. I can fix it for you." And more, the question that's being asked really is,
27:20 Dr. John Delony? "Do you still love me? And have you felt this too?"
27:25 Speaker 02 Okay. So like, when she does, like, so she's coming to me and, you know, after a while, it's like, "Okay, I do want help." So I kind of, like, tried, like, "Hey, let's be more active. Like, what can you do after school or whatever?" And then she just kind of doesn't do those things anymore. And I'm like, "Okay, should I make her? Should I push it?" Or just...
27:46 Dr. John Delony? I would ask the question to my 13-year-old or 14-year-old, "Tell me what help looks like."
27:55 Speaker 02 Okay.
27:55 Dr. John Delony? Teach me about the help that you would like.
28:01 Dr. John Delony? And you allow them to begin to unpack, or actually the help I need is just more hugs.
28:08 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah.
28:09 Dr. John Delony? Or actually, the help I need is, will you still tell me I'm beautiful when I don't think I am?
28:19 Dr. John Delony? And I think for fixers like you, like me, we jump to, alright, here's a nutrition plan and here's a whatever.
28:25 Speaker 02 Right, that's what I want to do, but it doesn't seem like maybe that's what she wants.
28:30 Dr. John Delony? Well, and let me ask you this, you've probably heard this saying, more is caught than taught. What does healthy living look like with you and your, are you married?
28:40 Speaker 02 Yes.
28:41 Dr. John Delony? Okay, what does healthy living look like with you and your spouse?
28:46 Speaker 02 So both of us, like my husband's an avid, like he works out every morning, he's very disciplined in that way. Mine looks a little different, mine's more physical therapy because I don't walk well, I've got my own. But we do, and like we always have healthy options, have good meals, but we enjoy stuff too. Like I would say it's pretty average.
29:07 Dr. John Delony? Okay. Is there any part of your husband's crushing and killing it discipline that rubs off on her as failure?
29:17 Speaker 02 He is, like he does bring it up a lot, not to her, but like in his own, like, oh, I shouldn't have been that, or oh, I need to do better.
29:25 Dr. John Delony? Well, just know that kids metabolize those type of sentiments. And their feelings are bigger roller coasters and their emotions at that age are so amplified.
29:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:38 Dr. John Delony? That, yeah, it gets, it can get internalized in a really profound way. And I'm not even trying to shame your husband, he's probably trying to help.
29:46 Speaker 02 Yes, and I really think he is.
29:49 Dr. John Delony? But I will tell you, as somebody who's struggled with this sort of eating most of my life, I'm super grateful for when I would say things like, ugh, I look fat in this shirt, that my wife at an early, if my kids' early age would say, stop. A, that's not true, and B, if that's how you really feel, keep that to yourself right now.
30:11 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah.
30:13 Dr. John Delony? Because I don't want a 13-year-old, their default setting to, am I fat in this shirt?
30:20 Speaker 02 Right.
30:22 Speaker 02 So we can make those comments, but we just need to keep them with ourselves and not in front of her or her brothers.
30:28 Dr. John Delony? Well, even deeper than that, if there is a belief that those are true, that air is what your home will breathe.
30:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:36 Dr. John Delony? And so if your husband genuinely thinks, "I should not have eaten that,
30:41 Dr. John Delony? because he got up and worked out, works out every day, and he mostly eats a healthy food all the time, and then he had a piece of cheesecake, and his first response is, "I shouldn't have eaten that," then he's got challenges he needs to deal with.
30:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:51 Dr. John Delony? Because that's factually not true.
30:54 Speaker 02 Right.
30:54 Dr. John Delony? "I've had ice cream with some of the fittest people on the planet."
31:01 Dr. John Delony? Right?
31:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:02 Dr. John Delony? So that in and of itself tells me there's the air that's being breathed in that house. Now, that doesn't change the fact that you're watching a 13-year-old girl whose body is changing so fast, so quick.
31:15 Speaker 02 Yes.
31:15 Dr. John Delony? Both internally and externally, and you know this from your childhood, especially girls' bodies change in really remarkable, wild ways. She could just as easily grow three more inches and suddenly transform again, right?
31:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:31 Dr. John Delony? Maybe not, but that, all that could happen, I'm way more concerned about, A, the actions and behaviors and words of the adults in the house.
31:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:41 Dr. John Delony? B, that my kid knows they are anchored in love, period.
31:49 Dr. John Delony? And I'm not going to put my concerns, my personal issues with myself, with my body, with my mind, with my discipline, my actions, I'm not going to dump it on my child, I'm going to live it out. And you get the difference?
32:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yep.
32:04 Dr. John Delony? And so if you look and see, my goodness, if I had those stretch marks, I would be truly, super embarrassed about them. A, that doesn't make you crazy or a bad mom.
32:13 Speaker 02 Right.
32:14 Dr. John Delony? Right? That doesn't make you somehow dysfunctional. And B...
32:20 Dr. John Delony? That's not something you pass along to a 13 year old girl.
32:24 Speaker 02 Okay.
32:25 Dr. John Delony? Right? And so the question I have for you is what does repair look like now? If there are things that you go, oh God, I wish I hadn't said it like that.
32:35 Dr. John Delony? I didn't mean it that way. I was trying to be helpful and I tried to fix something and really what she was asking is do you still love, like, right?
32:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:43 Dr. John Delony? If you could think of a few things, I would take your daughter out to breakfast. Take your daughter out for a walk.
32:50 Dr. John Delony? And say, I'm trying, I'm, I'm trying to love you in real time and I've messed up a few things. And so can I have a control alt delete on this? What are you talking about, mom? And be like,
33:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:01 Dr. John Delony? I need you to understand from the depths of my being. And by the way, if you can put your hands on both side of her face and stare directly into her spirit through her eyes.
33:12 Speaker 02 Okay.
33:13 Dr. John Delony? And say, you are the beautiful woman. You're turning into a beautiful woman and I think you're stunning.
33:21 Dr. John Delony? And when you are uncomfortable, I love you so much, I get uncomfortable.
33:28 Dr. John Delony? And I need you to know that I love you to the moon and back. And so does your dad. And we both say dumb things sometimes because we have our own insecurities. And if you ever want to know about them, I'm happy to tell you.
33:39 Speaker 02 Okay.
33:40 Dr. John Delony? Okay?
33:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:41 Dr. John Delony? And then say,
33:43 Speaker 02 I love that.
33:43 Dr. John Delony? I will help you. I'll walk alongside you. I will love you the, any way you need me to show up for you, I will.
33:51 Dr. John Delony? But I'm going to default to what I know to be true, which is you are beautiful and you are 13 and your body's gone haywire.
34:00 Speaker 02 Right.
34:00 Dr. John Delony? Has she started her period yet?
34:02 Speaker 02 Oh yeah, a couple of years ago.
34:03 Dr. John Delony? Okay. How did, how did that conversation go with you too?
34:06 Speaker 02 Good. We've always been very open.
34:08 Dr. John Delony? Cool.
34:09 Speaker 02 And I, I had it in her backpack. She had like a little zipper thing. I said, when this comes, you know, if it happens at school, call me or you have the stuff to take care of it. Yep.
34:19 Dr. John Delony? Perfect. And so that's a great, like you can say like, hey, remember we talked about this?
34:25 Dr. John Delony? And remember, we talked about that, those things, we talked about this thing and the first time we had to go bra shopping, like all those things.
34:30 Speaker 02 Right.
34:31 Dr. John Delony? Let this be another one of those developmental conversations, which is, you need to know, I've got your back, I've got your, I am the foundation with which you can anchor into. And then maybe, she's 13, so that she's old enough to say, my parents messed this up with Aunt Judy and Aunt Susan, and they still are complaining about it to this day.
34:53 Dr. John Delony? I don't want, I don't want, that's not going to come between us.
34:59 Speaker 02 So just talking about, I guess I've just been scared to like, so I've just made like little comments and I've been just scared of it and I just need to just say it.
35:09 Dr. John Delony? I mean, you just hit it right on the head. Because teenagers especially, little kids especially, and teenagers especially, especially, they enter into, am I safe and am I loved and am I still okay?
35:24 Dr. John Delony? In little, rarely in these big blowups. It's usually little, um, with the, like the Gottmans in terms of marriage, we'll call them bids, little tiny bids for, am I still okay here, am I still okay here?
35:37 Dr. John Delony? And so, I hate these stretch marks, mom. Ugh. I hate that you are frustrated with parts of your body. I've been there too. It's the worst.
35:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:48 Dr. John Delony? Come give me a hug.
35:51 Dr. John Delony? And then the next question, if it is, more than likely, she'll just drop her head in the middle of your chest and you can hold her.
35:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:58 Dr. John Delony? But if she says, ugh, I wish there was something we could do,
36:02 Dr. John Delony? you can say, well, right now I'm gonna hug you, because I think you're beautiful. And then later on, when the emotion of that moment has distilled, when you're tucking her, tucking her in at night, y'all are grabbing coffee together, because starting now, y'all are gonna start having coffee once a week, or breakfast once a week.
36:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:18 Dr. John Delony? And then you're gonna say, hey, you said, is there something you can do? I want you to tell me about that.
36:25 Dr. John Delony? And then if she says, "My goodness, I wish there was a surgery. I wish there was a thing." And you could tell her, "Hey, you're gonna grow up and you're gonna keep growing and these stuff will fade over time. There's parts of my body. I wish I could walk." You know, you can be really vulnerable with her. Yeah. And then give her a lifeline. When you're 18 and your body's kind of settling into itself,
36:46 Dr. John Delony? maybe.
36:48 Dr. John Delony? But right now, you're an amazing 13-year-old girl and it's just stinks that it's awkward for us. Right. Right. Okay. All of that is telling her one major thing, which is, "I'm right here in this mess with you and I love you and there's not a thing you can do to where I won't love you and think you're beautiful. And yes, I have parts of me that I'm not super happy with either." All of us are like that. All of us are like that.
37:18 Dr. John Delony? And also, I'm not gonna lie, be like, "I don't see those stretch marks at all. I don't see them." Because that's not true. You do.
37:27 Dr. John Delony? And I'm not gonna also make a face and be like, "Ugh."
37:30 Dr. John Delony? Right? I'm not gonna do that. So it's anchoring all the way back. And then, yeah, have a hard conversation with your husband. I am grateful eternally that my wife had that conversation with me multiple times. Because I was taking my challenges with who I saw in the mirror and I was handing them to my kids and say, "Hey, y'all carry this too." And that, God help them, that's not their job. It's not their job. And I'll tell you, there's been seasons when my son will look a little pudgier and then he grows seven inches the next two weeks, right? And so those concerns I had with kid number one, I'm not gonna have those with kid number two because life, like their bodies are just changing so quick.
38:11 Dr. John Delony? And their emotions, all of it. But I just want to say this, "Thank you for loving your daughter. I want to get this one right."
38:19 Dr. John Delony? It says a lot about you as a parent. That's awesome.
38:23 Dr. John Delony? This is a time for connection and vulnerability, not for the right weight loss, weight loss program. And when a kid comes to you, a teenager comes to you and says, "Can you help me with X?" The next question should always be, "Talk to me about what help looks like."
38:39 Dr. John Delony? Like, if, when you say the word "help," what does that mean?
38:45 Dr. John Delony? And let them answer that. Let them give you some clues as to whether they want a workout plan, or they want a nutrition plan, or they want mom to sit by them on the couch and remind them, "I still love you." They want dad to come in and just be like, "My goodness, 13-year-old daughter, you're so beautiful, I can hardly stand it."
39:04 Dr. John Delony? "Ugh, so glad I'm not 13 anymore. Thank you for the call, Jill. You're amazing." When we come back, a woman asks how to tell her mother she's no longer comfortable with moving her in.
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40:38 Dr. John Delony? All right, let's roll out to Baltimore, Maryland and talk to Elaine. Hey Elaine, what's up?
40:43 Speaker 03 Hi, Dr. John.
40:44 Dr. John Delony? How are you?
40:45 Speaker 03 Hi. I'm doing pretty good.
40:47 Dr. John Delony? Excellent. What's up?
40:49 Speaker 03 Well, I was hoping you could help me to figure out how I can tell my mother that I no longer feel comfortable moving her into my home after some recent events revealed a major misalignment of what I consider some pretty core values.
41:03 Dr. John Delony? Ooh, tell me, why was she gonna move in?
41:07 Speaker 03 Well, um, my mom has, is financially unstable. She has, she lived with her mother for a long time up until my grandmother passed away and my mom has been able to kind of live on her own for a few years through her employment and through other means that she's able, but she has lost her job and has had some physical problems where she's not able to work full time anymore and she just doesn't bring in enough to live on her own. And I have told her for years that, you know, she'll never be without a home, that as long as I have a home, she'll have a home. And now I'm feeling conflicted in that and I was hoping you could help me.
41:48 Dr. John Delony? Yeah, what, what happened that you just flipped that switch and you were like, no, it's not gonna happen?
41:53 Speaker 03 Well, I have a young adult niece, my mother's grandmother, or excuse me, my mother's granddaughter, who, um, she, she got her, was due to have her second abortion. And this came to light, my mom called me when I was on the road and mentioned that she was going to be taking my niece that afternoon to have her second abortion. And I was shocked and, I mean, I knew that this had happened before and when it did happen, I prayed on it and I promised myself that I would say something, that I would try, that I would reach out to my niece
42:34 Speaker 03 and do whatever I could to try to convince her otherwise and to explore support and some other avenues to, to save her baby. And, um, when my mom...
42:48 Speaker 03 Failed to reach out to any of the people that love my niece and that who could potentially support or help her. When she just decided to go ahead and take her to do that. Um, goodness, I mean, I remember my mother holding my babies and I just, I can't, it's like, it just can't be the same person. And so I'm just feeling so conflicted. And I, I did speak to my mother since writing you. Um, and
43:22 Dr. John Delony? Tell me how that went.
43:24 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, it didn't go great. I feel like my mom is willing to pretty much say anything just to kind of have peace back between us. I know that I'm a lifeline for her. Um, and I, I love my mom. I love being with her. I want my children to have a relationship with her. But this, it makes it feel almost unsafe. Like, if she had taken my daughter without getting, exploring every avenue to help her, to help save her great grandchild. I, and,
44:02 Speaker 03 um, she just, she kind of stands on, she's doubling down. Like, it's, she says it's not her place. It wasn't her place to, that, that it's my niece's decision. And I agree, it's her choice. Um, but my mom feels it wasn't her place to reach out beyond, I don't know, to anyone, it seems. And I just feel like, you know, darn it.
44:29 Dr. John Delony? This, yeah. I mean, this is one of those, um, I think this is the reason, or one of the reasons why this is such a flashpoint issue, which is, you have people on one side of the building saying, hey, I cannot participate in the death of a child. And then you have somebody on the other side saying, in this purse, in this adult, your, your niece, in her moment of need, I'm not going to leave her stranded. I will, I will be here with you.
45:06 Dr. John Delony? And in your mind, you go to, "I have a picture of my mother holding my kid." And your mother may also have pictures of herself standing so alone in certain scary moments of her life.
45:21 Speaker 03 Yes.
45:22 Dr. John Delony? And so, you end up having a war, but two people are holding different pictures in their mind. That's what makes this so complex. It's so black and white on either side.
45:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:35 Dr. John Delony? Right? And so, the question, I think, for you is, you may be having a conversation about this unborn child, and your grandmother, I mean, your mom, is having a conversation
45:51 Dr. John Delony? about her own terrified, scared-to-death 22-year-old self.
45:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:57 Dr. John Delony? Right? And y'all just looking at the exact same issue from different places. The question you have to answer is, there is, what I thought you were gonna say was you found out your mom has like a major drug addiction or something, like, "There's an ongoing behavior and presence that I cannot have in my house for the safety of me and my kids."
46:17 Speaker 03 Right.
46:17 Dr. John Delony? This sounds like, and I don't want to distill it so much, but a punishment, "You did this thing, and that disqualifies you from this thing I was gonna give you." And here's the deal, you can 100% do it, because it's your house.
46:38 Dr. John Delony? And if there's a secondary issue here, or maybe it's a first-tier issue, which is, "I can't put you in proximity to my kid, because you have proven to me that if one of my kids comes to you, you will default to them and not to their support network." That's a legitimate concern, just happened right in front of you.
46:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:00 Dr. John Delony? But it's getting to the deeper thing, which is, "I don't want her here, because she did this thing, and I can't forgive her for it." Or, in your mind, "I can't reward you with the room in my home for it." If that's the case, own that fully.
47:15 Dr. John Delony? Or if it is, you have set a precedent now, let's take abortion off the table because it's such a third real topic.
47:22 Speaker 03 Yes.
47:24 Dr. John Delony? She bought beer for other teenagers somewhere and she can't figure out that it's wrong. She just wants them to have a good time. And you're like, Mom, I can't bring you into this house. I've got teenagers here.
47:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, that was, that was her, that was kind of her way of thinking growing up was, you know, you're better off to do it here than somewhere else.
47:42 Dr. John Delony? There you go. And, and so you're looking at the same problem from two totally different issues. And it's, it's, it's why we're having so much division culturally right now. It's because at some point, one person or the other has to go around the issue and sit with the person next to them. And either say, I can't, I can't be in your life because you did this thing. You crossed a line that, that you can't uncross.
48:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:15 Dr. John Delony? Or-
48:16 Speaker 03 I definitely want to be in her life and want us to be part of our lives. I just don't, I feel a hesitation in welcoming that into my home. We-
48:28 Dr. John Delony? When you say that, what is, when you say that?
48:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:31 Dr. John Delony? Is it, I can't welcome somebody who is pro-choice into my house? I can't, I can't invite somebody who would, when a, when a child, when a young adult, I don't know how this, this, this, your niece is, but when a young adult is reaching out for help, that doesn't bring in everybody and just tries to solve it on her own? Like what's the, what's the, I can't bring that into my house? What is the that? Be specific.
48:53 Speaker 03 Um, that for me is her unwillingness to seek support, to seek the people's support. And when I'd mentioned that in our, in our telephone call, she said, well, what were you going to do? You weren't going to help her. And that for me was like heartbreaking because it's like, I feel like she doesn't even know me. It's like, of course I would help her. I would reach out, I would do internet searches and find, you know-
49:21 Speaker 03 And, and, and her, and she says that, you know, my niece is in a bad financial way. Um, she does not take good care of herself, um, and that she wouldn't be able to support a pregnancy. I, I challenge that. I think that she would be able to. I know that it would be hard, but I think that, um, you know, I'm trying to think about her in the future and like her child and adoption and an open adoption. Um, but you know, and it's, it comes down to it. I just feel like it's not my place to say, but at the same time, like if it were my daughter, like that's, that's our lineage. That's our family. And like it goes against, it goes against what I feel is inherent in us to protect our family.
50:06 Dr. John Delony? Okay. So go, go one layer deeper. Can we go one layer deeper beneath this?
50:11 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
50:15 Dr. John Delony? How many times over the course of the last 30 years?
50:21 Dr. John Delony? Has your mom completely blown you off?
50:31 Speaker 03 Can you tell me what you mean by completely blown me off? Like just disregarded my feelings? Or?
50:36 Dr. John Delony? Um.
50:40 Dr. John Delony? Uh, I'm, I'm trying to think of a, no, let me say it like this.
50:48 Dr. John Delony? This woman who is your mom now, you've been struggling with her, your relationship with her since you were little. Fair?
50:55 Speaker 03 Yes.
50:56 Dr. John Delony? Okay. And you've made a whole bunch of really clear decisions over the years to not be like that. Fair?
51:04 Speaker 03 Yes.
51:05 Dr. John Delony? And now, are you married?
51:07 Speaker 03 Yes.
51:07 Dr. John Delony? Okay. You have a good marriage?
51:09 Speaker 03 I do.
51:10 Dr. John Delony? Okay. You worked your butt off for that good marriage because you didn't have a picture of what one even looked like. Fair?
51:16 Speaker 03 That is true.
51:17 Dr. John Delony? Okay. You have made choice A, choice B, choice C, all the way to choice Z.
51:25 Dr. John Delony? And your life is bearing the fruit of that. You have a good marriage. You gotta, y'all aren't worried about where your next meal is gonna come from. If one of y'all were to get laid off, y'all would be okay, cuz you got each other. You have a relationship with your daughter that you dreamed of having with your mom. Fair?
51:43 Speaker 03 I'm trying, yeah.
51:44 Dr. John Delony? Okay. And so pretend you were a car mechanic for 25 years, and everyone in the community came to you for car care. And then you got your mom over here that's like, "I ain't going to you. You're just gonna lecture me about the brakes." That's devastating. Because the fruit of how hard you have worked is right there, and your neighbors eat from that tree, and your kids eat from that tree, and your own frickin' mom will.
52:29 Dr. John Delony? And now we have this huge, huge issue that goes against your core, who you are. We take care of the kids in our line. And she's like, "Nah, I'm gonna take my car somewhere else."
52:48 Speaker 03 But she wants to park in my garage.
52:50 Dr. John Delony? That's exactly right. And you've told her for the last 20 years, you always have a garage to park in.
52:55 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. You know, I've had that picture in my mind of my mom. You know, I've made room for that picture in my mind of my mom in my home, and like us helping each other.
53:07 Dr. John Delony? I know, but in that picture, that picture was 2D. It wasn't 3D.
53:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, right.
53:11 Dr. John Delony? And when you painted the picture, you left out the part.
53:15 Speaker 03 I feel like to make it work, I will have to ignore this part of myself.
53:19 Dr. John Delony? There you go.
53:19 Speaker 03 And my husband is very supportive. He's, you know, this is what we do for family. You know, we promised early on that we would take care of our parents, that we would not put them away, that we would not, you know, that we would do everything we could to make sure our parents were safe and comfortable and well-cared-for. Point blank.
53:36 Dr. John Delony? Yep.
53:36 Speaker 03 And I feel like I'm going against that. And so I have to compartmentalize this.
53:44 Speaker 03 I don't know.
53:45 Dr. John Delony? And so anytime I get stuck in an either/or position, I always force myself to back up. I have to take this job or not take this job. I have to move here or I have to not ever move again, right? Anytime I back myself into a corner like that of an either/or, I force myself through an exercise of putting at least three to five other variables on the table. And they might be nuts.
54:13 Dr. John Delony? But I at least force myself and what that exercise proves to me is I'm not backed into an either/or. And so here's what some of those might be for you.
54:25 Dr. John Delony? We can get you a one-bedroom apartment and we're gonna do that for 24 months.
54:30 Dr. John Delony? But you can't be here.
54:33 Dr. John Delony? We are going to cover your health insurance, but you can't come here.
54:41 Dr. John Delony? You can come here and if this particular X, Y, Z happens in my house, then you are choosing as an adult to leave my home.
54:53 Dr. John Delony? So I'm gonna bring you here, but I have to fully be myself in this house. But forget the abortion issue. I don't think, like talking to you now, I think her moving in makes you, brings you all the way back to 12-year-old you.
55:10 Speaker 03 I've always been the peacekeeper in the house.
55:12 Dr. John Delony? That's right.
55:12 Speaker 03 I've witnessed a lot with my siblings and that more so their struggles with my mom. I've always just kinda like gone along to get along and nothing ever seemed like important enough to really rail against her.
55:30 Speaker 03 This, however, just feels so much heavier than anything else and I can't, I promised myself I wouldn't be silent.
55:37 Dr. John Delony? Okay. And you have to ask yourself, what does, what does being silent here mean? Does it, because you're at a crossroads with core values. I have a core value that is I will always take care of my mom no matter what.
55:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
55:51 Dr. John Delony? And I have another core value which is
55:54 Dr. John Delony? if a child is in distress, we bring in everybody to help.
55:58 Dr. John Delony? I have another core value which is I am adamantly pro-life.
56:04 Dr. John Delony? Especially, especially when it comes to my family.
56:09 Dr. John Delony? And so, these are all crashing together.
56:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
56:17 Dr. John Delony? And so I guess I want you to hear me say that
56:21 Dr. John Delony? for a peacekeeper, you're not gonna have quote unquote peace, especially initially, in any decision you make moving forward.
56:29 Speaker 03 Right.
56:30 Dr. John Delony? So make peace with the fact that there's not gonna be peace moving forward here.
56:34 Speaker 03 Right.
56:35 Dr. John Delony? Right. And so, you have to choose your heart here. I think if I was in your same situation, I would be honest about,
56:48 Dr. John Delony? and I intentionally, nobody knows where I stand on a lot of these quote unquote issues, because I care a lot about the hurting person in front of me. So I'm not making an issue statement. I'm saying if there was some things in my life that violated core, core values. I'm gonna be honest, what I hear, the deepest fear is, this big flashpoint thing, with taking care of your niece,
57:10 Dr. John Delony? reignited in you, I'm about to bring this woman into my home and she's gonna have direct access to her granddaughter, my daughter, and I can't give her access to another child again because I've worked too hard. I've seen too much of the damage this woman leaves in young people, with my sister who refuses to talk to her, my other sibling, who is in and out of jail.
57:37 Dr. John Delony? And so, this is a moment where the fantasy, that 2D picture you had created, you had painted for yourself, which is, one big happy family, it proved yet again, this isn't one big happy family. And then we gotta grieve like bloody hell that picture that we painted, because it's not true, it's not real. And now we gotta paint another one.
57:58 Dr. John Delony? And that's where dumping these things out on the table, and somebody who's awesome, whether it's a couple of good girlfriends or your husband, can hold it with you while you just kind of, it's like, I'm dumping out puzzle pieces and you're kind of separating them into the ends, into the middles, and the picture of the giraffe, and the picture of the lion. You're separating these pieces out, and that's you just kind of sifting through your values. Who are we as a house gonna be? And we are somebody who...
58:27 Dr. John Delony? Fill in the blank. And that sounds to me like y'all might be somebody who's gonna spring for half of a one-bedroom apartment. Or someone who's gonna spring for a one-bedroom apartment for this many months. But I can't have you run my daughter. I'm not gonna put her through what I've spent 25 or 30 years healing from. And it's still right in front of me. I just saw it happen with something else.
58:57 Dr. John Delony? Or you say, "One of my values is I can be deeply disgusted by somebody and they can still pull up to a seat at my table." That's when your value's cool? Knock your lights out. But I want you to own the depth of it and understand there's not gonna be just a lot of "Ah!" when you come up with this quote-unquote "next right move." The next right move is often very painful. The next right move is often uncomfortable.
59:25 Dr. John Delony? And that's what I see in your future here.
59:29 Dr. John Delony? Values are tough, especially when those we love and have promised ourselves we'd take care of crash up against them. It's the messiness.
59:38 Dr. John Delony? But congratulations on changing your family tree. It's pretty impressive what you've pulled off and what you continue to do.
59:45 Dr. John Delony? Seek to be whole moving forward for you, for your husband, for your daughter, and for your mom. We'll be right back.
59:55 Dr. John Delony? This time of year, everybody's talking about getting more organized with less clutter, less stress, and why are we doing this? Because we want more peace. And here's one area I want you to focus on this year: your digital footprint. And that's why I recommend Delete Me. Every time you fill out a quick form, grab a discount, or sign up for something quote-unquote "free online," your personal information, things like your name, your email, your phone number, and your address, all that gets collected, sold, and shared behind your back by data brokers. Over time, this turns on the fire hose of spam calls, weird texts, and scam emails. Delete Me's team of privacy experts finds your
1:00:36 Dr. John Delony? More personal information and it gets it taken down and they keep it gone. It's like setting healthy boundaries for your digital life because protecting your privacy is part of protecting your peace. This year, start fresh, get organized with fewer distractions and find peace. Go to joindelete.me/deloney for 20% off an annual plan. That's join, J-O-I-N. Joindelete.me/deloney and start protecting your peace this year.
1:01:08 Dr. John Delony? All right, Kelly, am I the problem? Go for it.
1:01:10 Speaker 04 Again, yes.
1:01:12 Dr. John Delony? Disagree.
1:01:12 Speaker 04 Answer this question a lot.
1:01:14 Dr. John Delony? Go ahead.
1:01:14 Speaker 04 All right, so this is from Roseanne in Somerset, Pennsylvania, and she writes, "I've been married 37 years. Recently, my husband's brother has been dating a woman that my husband had a one-night hookup with before we were married."
1:01:28 Dr. John Delony? Oh, yeah.
1:01:29 Speaker 04 So we're talking like almost 40 years ago, they had a hookup.
1:01:31 Dr. John Delony? Yes.
1:01:32 Speaker 04 "It's still awkward, her showing up after all these years, and now my family events are not comfortable. We have not attended any of them since they started dating. Everyone says it's in the past, but it's not quite in the past when it's back in your face. I feel this is disrespectful as his spouse for me to have to be in the same room. My husband feels the same as well, same way as well, but he's still not sure that I'm being, that I'm being reasonable. Everyone else sees this as no problem. So am I the problem?"
1:02:03 Dr. John Delony? Oh, man. I have a knee-jerk reaction, but you go first. What do you think?
1:02:08 Speaker 04 It's been 40.
1:02:10 Dr. John Delony? That's what I'm saying. Yes, you're the problem.
1:02:12 Speaker 04 Let it go.
1:02:13 Dr. John Delony? Yeah.
1:02:14 Speaker 04 I mean, at this point, we just laugh about it and move on.
1:02:15 Dr. John Delony? Don't hold it back anymore.
1:02:16 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:02:17 Dr. John Delony? Let it go.
1:02:18 Speaker 04 We're done. I mean, it was a one-night stand, she says. One-night hookup.
1:02:23 Dr. John Delony? Forty years ago.
1:02:26 Speaker 04 Let it move on. He's been with you for 40 years.
1:02:29 Dr. John Delony? You won. You got him.
1:02:31 Speaker 04 Now, to me, this is different if she, he had an affair with her 10 years ago and while they were married, that's a different discussion, but it's not. They had a one-night hookup 40 years ago.
1:02:40 Dr. John Delony? Forty.
1:02:41 Speaker 04 I mean, do we all want to be, you know, I mean, I don't want to be held accountable for what I did 20 years ago, you know, or 30 years ago or whatever, because we were different people and we make mistakes or even if it wasn't a mistake, it was 40 years ago before they were married.
1:02:55 Dr. John Delony? Yeah. You gotta, just exhale on this one. Just exhale on this one.
1:03:03 Dr. John Delony? Let it, let it ride. Roll your eyes. You won. You won. You got him. Forty years. You got him.
1:03:09 Speaker 05 And maybe they need to just get it out in the open. Let's all make the joke, say the funny thing. Move along. You know? Let's call it out.
1:03:18 Dr. John Delony? Dude, I tried to.
1:03:21 Dr. John Delony? Forty years.
1:03:26 Speaker 05 It's time.
1:03:26 Dr. John Delony? You were 50 at that age and.
1:03:28 Speaker 05 I hate you.
1:03:33 Dr. John Delony? Yeah, 40, like. Yeah, let it, let it ride. Let it ride. If, if you, if, if you.
1:03:42 Dr. John Delony? There's not even any ifs. Let it ride. Go on about your life. You're hanging on to stuff. You're, you're picking up 40-year-old bricks and choosing to carry them in your present day. You won. You got the guy. Just roll your eyes. And when you make eye contact with your brother-in-law's new girlfriend, you can just wink at her and be like, I got him. Ha.
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