Are Video Games Ruining My Relationships?

On today’s episode, we hear about: · A young man wondering if his love for video games is hurting his relationships · A husband unsure if he can trust his wife again after her affair · A man struggling to overcome a pattern of overthinking and fear Next Steps: 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John's Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼The Dr. John Delony Show T-Shirts Connect With Our Sponsors: 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. 🌿 Get up to 40% off at Cozy Earth with code DELONY. 🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. 😇 Go to Hallow for a 90-day free trial. 💤 Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! 💪 Get 25% off your order at Thorne. 🥤 Get 20% off at Organifi with code DELONY. 🏔️ Use code DELONY at Poncho Outdoors. Listen to More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/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.

• 0:04Dr. John Delony?

  Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  I've played and currently still play a wide range of games that I feel have given me tremendous value and skills in my life. I'm trying to iron out how I can be seen as a strong father figure and a partner and not some guy that likes playing video games all the time.

• 0:21Dr. John Delony?

  You have created a narrative where your everyday video game playing is different than somebody else's.

• 0:31Dr. John Delony?

  What up? What's going on? This is John with Dr. John Deloney Show. I don't even know why we're yelling. It's a pretty chill, good day. Hope you're doing well wherever you happen to be. So grateful that you're with us. If you want to be on the show, we're talking to real people who are struggling, trying to figure out what's going on next. And there's a lot going on in the world. We've got an election coming up. We've got a pretty major cleanup going on east of my hometown, my community right now, out in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina. And then we're just a day away from whatever's going to happen with the big hurricane that's about to hit Florida. And so we're thinking and praying for those folks. And by the time this podcast comes out, who knows where it's going to be, but it's not looking great. So wherever you happen to be, man, we're thinking about you guys.

• 1:15Dr. John Delony?

  And if you want to be on the show, that's what it is, man. It's sitting down with hurting people and trying to figure out what's the next right move. Give me a buzz, 1-844-693-3291, or go to johndeloney.com/ask. Let's go out to Vegas. Vegas! And talk to Tyler. What's up Tyler?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Hey, good morning, John. How are you?

• 1:34Dr. John Delony?

  I'm great. How about you?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  I'm doing so good. I am so nervous. I've been listening to you forever. I'm an original 14 listeners.

• 1:42Dr. John Delony?

  You do!

• 1:43Speaker 01

  And I couldn't be more excited.

• 1:44Dr. John Delony?

  I appreciate it. Hey, bad news, there's only like 28 of y'all. So you're in the first half. You're in the first half, which is kind of cool.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  That's exciting. Yeah, I'll take it.

• 1:53Dr. John Delony?

  And I'm nervous too. So we can be nervous together. We won't lose one another. How about that? So what's up?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  That sounds good. My question in essence is what role or impact can video games play on a relationship, especially one with kids? And how can we strike a balance? I have a little bit of a blurb of kind of my background and...

• 2:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, go for it. Read it out.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Sure. So, growing up, video games had a big impact on my life. It gave me and my brother something to learn together and connect through, and eventually compete at with each other, and even in online and in-person tournaments. Uh, being twins, we also felt a stronger sense of closeness and also competitiveness, I think, than most other siblings. Um, I played and currently still play a wide range of games that I feel have given me tremendous value and skills in my life. One example is learning to play the drums without a single formal lesson through the Rock Band video game, I'm not sure if you've heard of that.

• 2:49Dr. John Delony?

  I have this.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  Another is the skills I've learned from playing logistics and business-type games that have strengthened my role in my current career path of purchasing. Um, understanding supply and demand and market trends has allowed me to make hundreds of real dollars in player-driven online gaming markets. Uh, we were both also very involved in other activities growing up, like church twice a week, baseball Little League for six years, and Boy Scouts every week from the earliest age you could start at. So I have a really solid appreciation for those types of activities and wanna strike a good balance with my new family. I've been in a new relationship for the last fourteen months with two little boys, uh, three years old and ten months old. Last month, they all moved in with me and my brother, and we're spending all of our time together outside of work.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  I wanna set a good example and not be seen as a partner and father figure on a screen all the time, but I also wanna express myself and continue to learn and grow through this media form like I have my whole life, and share that with these boys and my girlfriend if they're into it as much as I am. I see them all as great developmental activities, where can I find balance?

• 3:56Dr. John Delony?

  I mean, that's a pretty, uh, y- you've written yourself a very convincing and compelling essay, and so...

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:05Dr. John Delony?

  I would ask you, you seem to, you- Like back in like ninth or 10th grade and you had to write your first persuasive essay, right? You've done that for yourself, you've persuaded yourself. And so, what can I help you with? You seem to have it buttoned up and figured out. And so, is there a lingering sense of doubt? Is somebody calling you on it? Like, where's the question coming from? Because you seem to have it pretty laid out for yourself.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, not necessarily. It's more like, my question is just, you know, this is totally new to like my girlfriend, for example, and like, my passion and, you know, my love for the video games is almost like, it's just new to her. She's never really experienced it. And then I also have, like I said, two little boys and, you know. I don't know, I'm trying to iron out and see how I can be seen as a strong father figure and a partner, and not kind of be seen as, you know, just some guy that likes playing video games all the time, because I do feel like I've gotten a tremendous sense of value from them and, you know. I'm not the kind of guy that just plays Call of Duty all day for 12 hours, you know. I almost see them as different types of things and...

• 5:15Dr. John Delony?

  And that's what I'm interested in, because you have created a narrative where your everyday video game playing is different than somebody else's. And I'll also say, I took a few notes while you were talking.

• 5:27Dr. John Delony?

  How many brothers, like twin brothers, have you hung out with over the years?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Oh, many. I mean, funny enough, there was a lot of such twins in my high school. And, yeah, so, I guess, I don't know, five, six?

• 5:40Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. How many amateur drummers have you hung out with?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Oh, that one, I wish the number was higher, very little. I don't have a lot of musically passionate friends and people around me, but...

• 5:54Dr. John Delony?

  How much money have you earned from like this world-building video game playing? You said you've hundreds of dollars, how much?

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Well, maybe 400.

• 6:02Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 6:07Dr. John Delony?

  The phrase that keeps coming to mind is just some conversations with some of my nerd friends, but the nerdiest way I could say this is I think what video games give you is,

• 6:21Dr. John Delony?

  I'm trying to say it not in the nerdiest way, you gotta earn your dopamine. And so anytime you're doing something that you really love and you really wanna keep doing, it's common for all of us to craft stories around it. And it becomes the lens by which we see everything, right? And that's why a great romantic partner, a great friend, a great brother, some yahoo on a podcast that we've never met before, right? What we can provide you is a different perspective.

• 6:55Dr. John Delony?

  And so I would challenge you that just because you and your brother played close video games together, I would suggest you all, you have no evidence to suggest you all have a better relationship than most other brothers.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I didn't mean it in a better way.

• 7:11Dr. John Delony?

  No, I know.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  It was more just the competitiveness.

• 7:14Dr. John Delony?

  Right, and same as I'm better than most amateur drummers. Or I have been able to, because you could have mowed six lawns and earned 400 bucks.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 7:25Dr. John Delony?

  And so what I want you to say is you've enjoyed playing video games. You've actually become like probably really good at them and you love them. Okay? That's all well and good. And good for you and good for your parents for, I'm sure when your parents were like when you were little, for making you get outside and making you do things that were tactile and work with your hands and all that kinda stuff. So good on you, okay? If you had said I never go outside or whatever, I would've said there's some bigger issues. But it sounds like y'all have lived a pretty balanced life. I can't in good conscience say if you pick up a video game controller, you're gonna be ruined. That just wouldn't be true.

• 8:04Dr. John Delony?

  What I can tell you, how old are you?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I'm 27.

• 8:07Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. You're a couple of years...

• 8:12Dr. John Delony?

  I won't say late, you may be right on track nowadays.

• 8:16Dr. John Delony?

  Here's what you're running up against. I want you to move video games to the side. Okay, let's just move it over to the side. I want you to get rid of what I would call nonsensical

• 8:29Dr. John Delony?

  Gen Z language, like "I just need to express myself", like that kind of just blech, okay?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:35Dr. John Delony?

  Instead of this like oogie, like googy, like "I just need to be fully seen", like you need to be fully seen and validated in connected, in-person, human relationships. Okay? When it comes to, and I'm thinking of me, I played music my whole life, always. I went to concerts my whole, I lived in, trying to find a place to get on a stage to, and I tried to find a place to a mosh pit all the time, always, right? I followed Pantera around for god's sakes, and I mean, I was obsessed with it.

• 9:10Dr. John Delony?

  And then I got married. And it's not that my marriage took that stuff away from me, in fact, my wife encourages it and laughs it and loves it and supports and all that. But I had to ask myself, is this still the top priority in my life? And expressing myself, I had an identity shift. When I took on the responsibility that somebody, like when I said, "Hey, I want you to hitch your wagon to me and I'm gonna hitch my wagon to you and we're gonna go create a new world", I took on voluntarily the role of a new identity.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:43Dr. John Delony?

  And so by doing that, it crowded out my chasing around mosh pits for a while, financially, time, I had to go to grad school, I had to do these other things because I had longer, I had a longer picture down the road, okay? And so, you have accepted the responsibility

• 10:00Dr. John Delony?

  of a mother of two and a romantic interest, and now you're the landlord.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Dr. John Delony?

  You have taken on more, um, you've got a finite calendar and you just took on a major responsibility.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:14Dr. John Delony?

  And so by doing that, you also decided, I'm gonna be, play less video games if I'm gonna be the kinda guy that shows up for this woman and for her two kids.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:23Dr. John Delony?

  If you're not, if you're listening to the show, there's, there's idiots everywhere that take on those responsibilities and they're like, "Yeah, glad y'all are here," and they don't ever get off the couch. Doesn't sound like you're that guy.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  No, and that's, I'm glad you said that and brought this up. It's, you know, I wanna give a shout out to my girlfriend for just being an incredible mom and partner to me. And it's been so exciting, John. I mean, having these two boys, you know, like I said, 10 months old and three years old, we got a pretty different dynamic between the two, but it's been so fun. I mean, I, I love the responsibility. I'm embracing it fully. Uh, I almost never play video games like during the week unless we're playing like a, like rock band, you know, a family type game together, but, you know.

• 11:03Dr. John Delony?

  So here's what I'm always gonna say. I'm always gonna say, if a parent is choosing between, um, playing Call of Duty with their two young kids, and I just picked that game, you know way more games than me, I don't know any games, um, Call of Duty, or going to Walmart and buying, um, Nerf guns and running around the neighborhood.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:26Dr. John Delony?

  I'll tell you, do the Nerf guns 100 times out of 100, 1,000 times out of 1,000.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  That sounds like a great idea. I'm, I'm with you there.

• 11:33Dr. John Delony?

  If you've got, um, a rock band versus, "Hey, I'm gonna take, um, guitar lessons. Will you take guitar lessons?" Now, you have a one-year-old and three-year-old, you can't do that.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:43Dr. John Delony?

  But you can slowly start to get there. I will tell you, bringing, wheeling in my Marshall half stack with my Les Paul to my son's violin recital, and I had practiced one of his songs and learned it like a heavy metal version of it, and we played it together at the end of his recital, is one of my favorite moments of my life.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  That's so exciting.

• 12:04Dr. John Delony?

  Does that make sense? But it was, it was earned and owned. We did it together. And so, I'm not gonna tell you if you play video games with your kids or with your girlfriend's kids, that it's all gonna come down. What I want you to ask yourself is, I wanna earn my dopamine. What do I mean by that? Video games, pornography, and I'm intentionally lumping all that together, watching other grown men play sports instead of participating, watching fishing shows instead of just going fishing, right? All these things are our body's way of circumventing the arduous, yet joy-filled, yet gritty reality that is reality. They're all approximations.

• 12:48Dr. John Delony?

  And what the brain research continues to tell us is that we're paying a price for it. What I can't tell you is I can't say it's this many games for this many hours, for this many, only I can do that. What I can tell you is that three-year-old will look at you and wonder what's so amazing about that controller and that screen, that you look at it way more than him.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:12Dr. John Delony?

  Or if he comes down at nine o'clock at night and you're like, "Hold on, hold on", and you keep playing, and this is the pot talking in the kettle, dude, I did this the other night, watching a baseball game. And I'm haunted by my daughter just staring at me, okay? This is fresh on my mind. "Dad, come on, Dad!", I'm like, "Hold on, it's the ninth inning, Astros are about to blow it." "Dad, come on, hold on!", right? It's that, I was just right there. But I promise you, she went to bed with a little bit of huh. Cause the Astros are more important. And by the way, it's okay, right? It's okay to have importance and to have your kid, "Hold on for a second", that's fine. But I think I want you to forget video games, forget everything. And I want you to imagine taking your arm to what was your life and clearing the deck.

• 13:58Dr. John Delony?

  And get one sheet of notebook paper and a pen and begin to write in order, "Because I've accepted these new responsibilities, here is now the order of importance of how things are gonna roll in my life."

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:12Dr. John Delony?

  I am being a, a proxy father.

• 14:16Dr. John Delony?

  I am being a boyfriend slash playing house with my girlfriend. I am also a brother and I guess he lives with y'all too?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he lives with us right now.

• 14:26Dr. John Delony?

  Alright, y'all be careful cuz that show, I don't wanna take that call one day either. Just kidding. That was awesome.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  No, he's got his own thing.

• 14:33Dr. John Delony?

  I know, yeah. But I want you to begin to write this stuff down. Okay? You wanna, you wanna amaze a kid, go get a real drum set and start practicing.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:44Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 14:46Dr. John Delony?

  And what I don't want a kid to do is to think that the world cheers for you when you just go beady beep beep beady beep.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:52Dr. John Delony?

  Uh, if you wanna teach a kid how to earn 400 bucks, like show, show him you coming in smelling like fast food or exhausted, sweaty.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:02Dr. John Delony?

  Not, and again, there's gonna be people who write into this like, "I made a million dollars playing video game." Number one, shut up, no you didn't. And two, good on you, way to go, I'm proud of you.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Dr. John Delony?

  How does that sit with you?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Very good, John, I mean, you're hitting it on the head and, you know, kinda going back on what I was saying earlier, it's like, yeah, I've, I've totally accepted, especially since you moved in, I've, I've accepted this new life and, and, and embraced it and it's been so exciting, I mean, we've made so many memories, we, we go out to the park by my house and we'll go to the trampoline park here in Vegas or, you know, just, I love making real memories, you know? I almost feel like for a while I got lost.

• 15:43Dr. John Delony?

  There you go. There you go. And, and bro, I don't want you to, um, beat yourself up, if you begin to realize there's a life out here and my buddy Michael Easter lives there in Vegas and he's always going on these crazy hikes and when it's 5,000 degrees outside, if you find out like, "Oh dude, I live in an amazing desert with a lot of cool opportunities, just have a wild life." I blew 10 years of my, don't do that to yourself either, okay? I think there's a place for it. Here's what I'll tell you, I think it's important that your kids, and I'm, I'm just saying that loosely, right? I know you're still just figuring this whole thing out. I think it's important that our kids see us have passions. And I also think it was important that my son got a ringside seat to his dad going back to school and getting a second doctorate. I think that, seeing that was important.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  You remind me of a situation. I actually just got a new job about six, six weeks ago. And I got the news and I got the call while I was at my girlfriend's house at the time before she moved in and I mean, it broke me down into tears because I was just so happy and excited for the opportunity and you know, our three-year-old was, he saw it and you know, he, he thought something was wrong, but I feel like I displayed such a level of like joy and happiness over this accomplishment, I guess, and

• 17:00Dr. John Delony?

  It's great.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I want to continue, I want to continue with that, you know, in real life. I was gonna say something a minute ago.

• 17:07Dr. John Delony?

  Here's what should be, what should naturally happen. There should be a just a natural lessening of grabbing the controller. And maybe instead of it being a default thing, a thing that you just got through your life to get to. Maybe it's something you put on the calendar once a week, or once every two weeks, once every three weeks.

• 17:28Dr. John Delony?

  Um, and here's what I've found in my own life. This isn't for everybody, but what I found in my life is, there was about 10 years. I would strum the guitar occasionally. I'd go play a song at a songwriter thing or whatever. But it mostly stayed on the wall, hung on the wall.

• 17:42Dr. John Delony?

  And I had other things. I had two really little kids. I, I moved across the country. I had graduate school. I had a whole bunch of jobs. I was a dean of students and a professor and, and, and, and, and.

• 17:53Dr. John Delony?

  And now the smoke has cleared a little bit. My kids can bathe themselves and they can go to the bathroom by themselves. Thank God. And now I can head to the basement or my room where I play music. And now I love that my teenager and my third grader can hear their old man working on, on a hobby while they're doing their homework. I love that. So this is seasonal. All of that said though, man, when it comes to video games, I think they've become they're, the technology is astounding. And as we head into VR world, man, it's just gonna be wild.

• 18:28Dr. John Delony?

  I'll just put it this way, for all human history, that we have not been able to experience shooting, and death, and running, and flying, and, man, I'm reading about some of the VR pornography, it's like, it is wild in the streets, what's coming? And, our brains aren't designed for that, what they're designed for is a 360-degree tactile experience where all of your senses are engaged, smell, touch, sensation, electricity, sun, cold, rain, all of it. And now we're having to hack our existence with cold tubs and saunas, we're having to create artificially these things that our bodies were designed to experience in real time. And it's just us trying to capture the variables.

• 19:10Dr. John Delony?

  And my recommendation to everybody is, put the screens down, put the controllers down, and get outside. Just get outside. Just get outside. Doesn't help a guy like you, who's like, loves it, loves it, man, I want to honor that dude. But if you ever think, you want to watch people play baseball, or you want to watch somebody, uh, play music? Why don't you actually just go play baseball? Just go play music? Bring back the game chicken, with a brick wall and a tennis ball. That would fix humanity. Thanks for the call, my brother. Thanks Tyler. We'll be right back.

• 19:46Dr. John Delony?

  Alright, we're back, let's go out to Spokane, Washington, and talk to Paul. Hey Paul, what's up, brother?

• 19:50Speaker 02

  How's it going, Dr. John?

• 19:53Dr. John Delony?

  I'm good, my man, what's up?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  So, uh, I'll just get the question out there, um, so, how do I, uh, process my wife's affair, and rebuild trust in our marriage?

• 20:08Dr. John Delony?

  Hmm, what happened, man? Tell me about it.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  So, uh, I guess a little bit of a concise backstory will help. Um, so after we were married about 10 years, my wife told me that she was bisexual.

• 20:24Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  And, um, we both come from an extremely conservative religious background.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  And that was a bit of a twist, then uh.

• 20:37Dr. John Delony?

  What, what, what led her to that um new um the declaration of a new identity? Did she have an experience or two, or did she like find women attractive? Like where did she, where did that come, come from?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  And she's always been attracted to women and men since puberty. And because of, you know, stigmas and taboos, um she was just afraid to ever say to anyone.

• 21:03Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Um.

• 21:06Dr. John Delony?

  So she said it to you, how, how many years ago is this?

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Uh, let's see, I've been married for almost 14 years now, that'd be about four, three and a half years ago.

• 21:13Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. How'd that conversation go?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Um.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Remembering back to it, uh, and she was like, I have something to tell you, um, I will have a seat. And she told me, and honestly, when she told me, it wasn't that big of a deal to me. Uh, um, because, you know, it's not something she's ever acted upon. I guess just having a secret like that for so long, she finally thought she had, I mean, finally had to get it out.

• 21:48Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Okay, so fast forward the last four years, sounds like she acted on it?

• 21:53Speaker 02

  She did.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  So, maybe about a year ago, not even a year ago, um, seven, eight months ago, um. Uh, the, that whole side of her kept coming into conversation more and more. And then, a few months ago, she's like, oh, I have this friend Christine and, you know, she's bisexual too. Her husband knows all about it. And I'm like, okay, I don't care who your friend's with, just promise me that you'll keep a platonic. And she said, of course, I'll keep a platonic and then beginning of September.

• 22:33Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, she did not keep a platonic.

• 22:35Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, so we, we have this weird moment in history where

• 22:41Dr. John Delony?

  inside of this, like what I would call the ride or die covenant.

• 22:47Dr. John Delony?

  That phrase till death do us part is somehow secondary to the emergence or the

• 22:58Dr. John Delony?

  for lack of better for the honoring or this the outward stating of a new identity.

• 23:05Dr. John Delony?

  And just personally, brother, I reject it. Like I'll all day long, man, you're attracted to who you're attracted to.

• 23:15Dr. John Delony?

  But she looked at you and said till death do us part, right? And so here's why I'm telling you that you're not crazy for feeling betrayed.

• 23:25Dr. John Delony?

  And there's not, there's supposed to be some sort of lessening because it's because it was with a woman. There's some sort of left. It was a it was a betrayal, dude, and you're not crazy. You're not weak. You're you're heartbroken as you should be, man.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  It was sort of surreal because I've spent my career.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  I'm in the legal profession, dealing with broken families and child capacities. I never thought that one of those scenarios would ever pop up in my life.

• 23:57Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, here we are, man. It's almost like you, if you're like me, you spend your whole life trying to help other people. And man, it's like you get caught off guard because there's this, there's this little, I don't know, stock ticker that runs in the back of my mind like I'm depositing into the the great bank of karma. So since I've been so helpful and kind to other people, bad things should never happen to me. Right? Since you've spent your whole career helping people as their marriages are falling apart, it's not allowed to happen to you, right? And then it's it's even more like it hurts. I think it hurts worse. I think it catches you off guard, right?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Most definitely.

• 24:43Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. All right, so here we are. So the big question for me to you is, do you want to stay married to this person?

• 24:49Speaker 02

  I do.

• 24:50Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. So what must be true?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  And if there's one thing I can't stand, that just like the biggest thing to me is dishonesty.

• 25:01Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  I have to be able to trust.

• 25:07Dr. John Delony?

  So, so let me ask you again, what must be true? What is rebuilding? Not going back because back is over. What was is no more. You have a new marriage that you are interested in rebuilding. The old one's gone.

• 25:23Dr. John Delony?

  Because the old one was built on curiosity and honesty and trust. And in fact, I would say a really deep level of trust. And that's over now. And so what you'll have to do is look at a fresh piece of ground and say, we're going to excavate that and we're going to put big, deep footers in it. We're going to rebuild this whole thing. And awesome, it could be a testament to what's to come. It could be amazing.

• 25:48Dr. John Delony?

  What must be true for your wife to reestablish trust with you?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  I have to have verification of what she's saying.

• 25:57Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, so you need to see her phone? You need to see her computer? Like you need to know where she is?

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Not necessarily where she is, but if she says, you know,

• 26:07Speaker 02

  like when she said she cut off communication with the other party and

• 26:13Speaker 02

  wanted to, you know,

• 26:16Speaker 02

  be 100% with me.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  I still haven't asked to see the message where she ended it.

• 26:25Dr. John Delony?

  So here's what you have to do. You have to get over all of these shoulds and maybes and I don't knows. You have to be honest with yourself about what must be true to reestablish trust. You get to dictate that and then she gets to say, I'm in or I'm out.

• 26:44Dr. John Delony?

  And I'm not saying that everything you put on the table is going to be rational or even make sense or even be helpful. Doesn't matter. I find it, I find it as a guy who works in legal profession, I find it weird. You haven't said, I want to see those texts. That probably would have been the first place I went. Why haven't you wanted to look? Are you scared there's something else?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  I'm scared that my trust would be misplaced, believing her, you're taking her word.

• 27:09Dr. John Delony?

  And let's keep digging. What would be true underneath that?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  And if she isn't being truthful, then it's done.

• 27:20Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, that's what we're scared of. And that's what I want you to go straight into. Here's why. Let's say there's an alligator between you and your vehicle that you take to work.

• 27:35Dr. John Delony?

  Instead of dealing with the alligator, calling animal control, getting that thing out of there, you're gonna build a complex system of roads and sidewalks and elevators and trampolines, all these different contraptions to get around and over and underneath this alligator. And you're gonna add complexity on top of complexity on top of complexity. And as Nassim Taleb says, "The more complex a thing is, the more likely it is to fall." It's gonna fail, it'll crash. And your body will know that you're tightrope walking, your body will know that, "Ah, I don't know, mm, ah, what." It will know. So head directly into it.

• 28:16Dr. John Delony?

  Otherwise, you're gonna make yourself crazy because your body's gonna be solving for reality all of the time.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:23Dr. John Delony?

  And by the way, if you tell your wife you're all the way back in too, "We're gonna figure this out",

• 28:29Dr. John Delony?

  and you're not, then now you're the one not being honest.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 28:36Dr. John Delony?

  And you know as well as I do, being in that profession, you can get a hold, you can get a backlog of texts.

• 28:43Dr. John Delony?

  You can go get everything that was written back and forth.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:49Dr. John Delony?

  And if that's what you need for peace of mind, then go get, go get them.

• 28:54Dr. John Delony?

  And if she says, "I don't want you to see it," or "I don't want, I already deleted them, I'm sorry, I forgot", you know how to get them. And if she says, "I don't want you to do that, you can't do that," you all need to address that.

• 29:04Dr. John Delony?

  And then, by the way...

• 29:08Dr. John Delony?

  There's this, we can build up this fantasy that once I finally see what was written, what was texted, what was emailed, that there's gonna be some catharsis. It's often still really painful, man.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  I imagine, yeah.

• 29:21Dr. John Delony?

  And so here's the homework. The homework is to begin to say, okay, what not, as much as what are we not gonna do, right? We're not gonna communicate with that person. We're not gonna, we're not gonna text other people. Um, if you, like, I'm putting this on the table. If you violate our covenant again, if you cheat on me and lie to me again, I'm, I'm, I'm outta here. Um, or you are opting out of our marriage. What are the things you are gonna do affirmatively to begin to bring y'all back together and build something new? We're gonna go on a walk every morning together before we go to work. Every night after our son goes to bed, we're going to, um, go out on the back porch and have a glass of wine and go through five things that were good and five things that were hard about the day. What are the things we're gonna do

• 30:06Dr. John Delony?

  affirmatively to begin building this stuff back? Cause most of the time, people, they say, "I wanna see your phone," and they, you see the phone, "Oh, you're actually telling the truth, okay? It was a one night stand, it was a couple of weeks, or a couple of months, or a year, whatever, it's over." All right. And then you go right back into the same life.

• 30:24Dr. John Delony?

  And you're just back to watching the office, back to just working really late with your laptop on your lap, back to watching TV till you fall asleep. And that same under, underneath your life, that same nagging, not playful, not erotic, not alive in your own skin, in your own home, that's still there. And that's what we gotta deal with.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:48Dr. John Delony?

  Is that fair?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  It is.

• 30:50Dr. John Delony?

  And by the way, if, once you, you don't get over, once you walk through the betrayal together, this idea of creating a life that you guys both wanna be living is one of the funnest, most adventurous, most exciting things a couple can do together.

• 31:09Dr. John Delony?

  Because you get, I mean, the, the, the, the deck is cleared, man. Your house got blown away. You get to build something new. What do you want it to look like?

• 31:18Dr. John Delony?

  But that's for later. Right now, it's time for being sad. I'm sorry, man.

• 31:24Dr. John Delony?

  In your guts, you've known this woman for a decade. Do you believe her?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  I do.

• 31:29Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 31:31Dr. John Delony?

  It's awesome.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  I mean, the only thing I ever kept from, from me before was a surprise guitar for her birthday, so.

• 31:41Dr. John Delony?

  That you know of, and maybe that's part of it.

• 31:44Dr. John Delony?

  Maybe that's step number one.

• 31:48Dr. John Delony?

  We're gonna both say five secrets we've kept from each other. They can be big ones or little ones.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 31:56Dr. John Delony?

  And you might find some stuff out and go screaming into the night, and you might find out some hilarious stuff.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 32:03Dr. John Delony?

  But, but Lego piece by Lego piece, brick by brick, concrete poured by rebar, by all of it, we're gonna rebuild something. It's gonna be very, very slow.

• 32:15Dr. John Delony?

  Here's what I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna send you, by the way, what I'm gonna give you is not gonna heal anything, okay? It's just a tool. Right? I'm gonna send you all of the Questions for Humans Couples Editions. I've got one and two, and then the third one just came out. It's brand new.

• 32:30Dr. John Delony?

  And I'm gonna send you the Questions for Humans Intimacy Edition, okay? It's brand new.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Okay. Thank you.

• 32:36Dr. John Delony?

  And here's what I want you to do, like, as part of the rebuild, every night, we're gonna do five of these things.

• 32:45Dr. John Delony?

  We're just gonna go through five of the cards. We're gonna write stuff down. We're gonna laugh, gonna be silly, whatever.

• 32:52Dr. John Delony?

  And it'd probably be worth your time to get a good marriage counselor too, just to walk with you. Although sometimes, I'm hearing more and more marriage counselors saying stupid stuff like, "Well, it just like, it's run its course." Like, I don't believe in that. I don't believe marriages just run their course. I think people decide to opt out, and if you opt out, you opt out, but you wanna get somebody that was interested in the rebuild with y'all. That'd walk, walk through it, that'd help you process stuff. And you're gonna have stuff that needs to be put on the table. She's gonna have more stuff to get put on the table, all that. Um, but maybe this big moment

• 33:28Dr. John Delony?

  will allow y'all to rebuild something stronger and arguably more beautiful than what was.

• 33:36Dr. John Delony?

  Slow and steady, but the first thing out of the deck is you have to say out loud, "Here's what must be true for me to reestablish trust," and let's go two weeks at a time. Because it's going to shift in two weeks. I don't need to see your texts anymore after two weeks, but here's what I really need.

• 33:51Dr. John Delony?

  I need you to go for a walk with me and just tell me how the day was, up or down. I need you to hold my hand. I need you to, like, be open to it. And don't be punitive with that kind of stuff. I've seen people be really just moronic with their trust establishment. "I need you to re-roof the house," just whatever. But I want you to be honest about what you need, and give her permission to be honest about what she needs. Let's rebuild this, let's rebuild something amazing, one step at a time. You know what? Hang on to the line, too. I'm gonna hook you up with a free livestream. My friend Rachel Cruz and I are doing a money and marriage livestream. I'm gonna hook you up with a link, and for everybody listening, we'll link to it in the show notes here. Actually, it might be over by the time this episode comes out, I think, but we'll get you guys hooked up, Paul. And you and your wife can watch it and tune in with us.

• 34:36Dr. John Delony?

  Thanks for the call, brother. I wish you guys the best, best, best. We'll be right back.

• 34:44Dr. John Delony?

  All right, let's go up to Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Missouri and talk to Joseph. Hey, Joseph, what's up?

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Hey, how are you?

• 34:52Dr. John Delony?

  I'm fantastic, brother. How are you?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Oh, you know, I'm doing, I'm doing.

• 34:58Dr. John Delony?

  All right, what's up?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  So, I'm gonna be 23 next week. Been married for almost two and a half years to my wife. We got married, I was 20 and she was 19 when we got married. And I guess I struggle with a lot of fear, anxiety, and just worry constantly. I think my brain is just constantly overthinking everything, and it's kind of exhausting. And I think it takes a toll on my marriage and just by, I'm not able to show up as well as I think I'd like to, just because I'm so in my head that with every decision I'm

• 35:44Speaker 01

  making, I'm like, having this insane internal dialogue.

• 35:49Dr. John Delony?

  Have you messed something up big in your life?

• 35:54Dr. John Delony?

  Like, do you have some memories of doing some, like, something humongous and stupid?

• 36:00Dr. John Delony?

  It's just me and you and a couple million people, to be honest.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I know that a lot of my fear, all of that stuff comes a lot from my upbringing. I would probably say, just because I saw a lot of divorce, I saw cheating, I saw death threats. My grandpa held a shotgun up to one of my stepdad's heads at one point.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I've just seen a lot on both my mom and my dad.

• 36:35Dr. John Delony?

  I want to go one step deeper, more than seeing it. You've experienced it.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:42Dr. John Delony?

  Right? That's in your chest.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:47Dr. John Delony?

  It's in your knees, it's in your legs, it's in your back, it's in your shoulders, it's in your body.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, there's really not a day that goes by where I'm not really, like, my chest just always feels heavy.

• 37:04Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  And I feel like with every decision I make, there's just something on the line. Like, I'm like, I'm screwing something up, or I'm just gonna end up...

• 37:14Dr. John Delony?

  Where does that story come from?

• 37:19Dr. John Delony?

  Did you get blamed for some of the chaos in your home growing up?

• 37:24Dr. John Delony?

  Did you drop a pass in a football game? Did you fail or get caught cheating on something like? Where does the story, because I get what you're laying out for me, is very, very rocky soil.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:37Dr. John Delony?

  And you got your own little patch of grass that you're trying to start with your new marriage.

• 37:44Dr. John Delony?

  And so it's not in that soil anymore, but for some reason you're scared to put seeds down.

• 37:50Dr. John Delony?

  What I'm trying to do is find out the thing, or several things, or a bunch of things. Often ruminators have been blamed for things, they've experienced things, and it has an outsized response. Right?

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:05Dr. John Delony?

  I've got a buddy who cheated on everything in eighth grade, everything. And he'll tell you, he's like, dude, I was 13 years old, 14 years old, who cares? I was an idiot. I cheated on something in eighth grade, it still haunts me. Haunts me.

• 38:22Dr. John Delony?

  Right? To this day, to this day, dude, I'm old, man. I got a four, I got a freshman in high school. To this day, still, I remember the teacher's name. I remember her looking at me. I remember that taste of like silver in the back of my mouth. That is an outsized physiological response to something that happened when you're 13 years old.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:43Dr. John Delony?

  And what I want to do is unhook those things. Give me an example of something you've blown or screwed up, screwed up in your life, or something you've been blamed for.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I mean, whenever I was, uh, I got introduced to pornography and those things when I was really young. And I didn't necessarily get caught. I actually came to my parents and told them. Um, but I've had a lot of shame about it my entire life. And I even, early on in our marriage, um, I was really into it because me and my wife, we, we waited until marriage to have sex. Uh, we, and, you know, we dated for a good three years before

• 39:35Speaker 01

  we got married. And I think I had to come to my wife, uh, and tell her, you know, what I'd been doing. And I've slipped up multiple times and still struggle with an addiction to, you know, the other half of it, the masturbation piece of it. Um,

• 40:01Dr. John Delony?

  Here's the promise, brother. The bargain you struck with the universe is this. Hey, Mom and Dad, I've been introduced and I'm seeking connection with this, um, fantasy, something that's not real. And

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:22Dr. John Delony?

  Your mom and dad, instead of them saying, good God, dude, I'm so sorry. We've created a crazy chaotic place for you. I'm so sorry. We're going to work on connection from the inside out.

• 40:35Dr. John Delony?

  Or just saying, "Hey dude, you're a knuckleheaded kid. You're curious, of course."

• 40:40Dr. John Delony?

  And it used to be that we could try to prevent playboys from being in the house. And now it's just pornography's everywhere, right?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:50Dr. John Delony?

  And then there's this lie that if you can just get across the marriage finish line and find somebody who says, "I do",

• 40:59Dr. John Delony?

  that you will finally feel at peace. And you don't.

• 41:05Dr. John Delony?

  No young newly married guy feels, "Ah!" Now for it, right?

• 41:11Dr. John Delony?

  It almost dumps gasoline on that fire. And, we don't talk about this very much. You know what masturbation gives you?

• 41:19Dr. John Delony?

  Momentary peace, release. Drops your shoulders, right? It can often be a Xanax.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:30Dr. John Delony?

  When you're walking around all day with the weight of the world on your shoulders, that your parents' marriage was your fault, the violence you saw was your fault, the assaults that you saw, the near deaths, all that was on you. And now you're married and you're bringing somebody else with you.

• 41:45Dr. John Delony?

  Boom.

• 41:47Dr. John Delony?

  Five minutes by yourself and phew.

• 41:51Dr. John Delony?

  I tell you, let's tell you this. I mean, I tell you all that to tell you this. There's nothing, you're not broken dude, you're not, you're not ruined.

• 42:00Dr. John Delony?

  But you're gonna have to choose to seek healing from the inside out.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:06Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  I guess the thing that...

• 42:11Speaker 01

  I guess how that kind of plays into...

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Is I just feel like my wife and I haven't been on the same page.

• 42:20Dr. John Delony?

  You haven't.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  As far as...

• 42:21Dr. John Delony?

  You haven't.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  And...

• 42:29Speaker 01

  I don't know, she, cause... She struggles with her own things, her own anxiety. I mean, and.

• 42:34Dr. John Delony?

  Joseph, everybody does. The question you'll have to ask each other is, will we walk alongside each other?

• 42:44Dr. John Delony?

  And hold each other's arms up in the desert? We can't heal each other. Tom Cruise was wrong. You can't complete somebody else.

• 42:53Dr. John Delony?

  But will we ride or die? Will we tell each other the truth? Will we not beat up and abuse each other for being honest and telling the truth and being vulnerable?

• 43:04Dr. John Delony?

  Can we also create some boundaries for this marriage, this new marriage? Because here's what you're having to do, brother. And I want you to hear me say, it's like,

• 43:13Dr. John Delony?

  it's like you grew up watching, living inside of a prison yard, watching them play football.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:21Dr. John Delony?

  And then all of a sudden, you found yourself in the NFL.

• 43:26Dr. John Delony?

  You've never seen football played the right way, coached the right way with the same rule. You've never seen it done. And here you are trying to do it in real time. Cut yourself some slack, man.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  That's the thing. I feel like I'm, I'm, that's the, that's a hard thing. I don't know why I can't cut myself some like,

• 43:48Dr. John Delony?

  What is not cutting your, what is not cutting you slack, getting you? What's it protecting you from? Be honest.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 43:58Dr. John Delony?

  I'll tell you what it's protecting you from. You being quiet and you keeping secrets from your new wife. Keeps the possibility in your mind that she's going to see all of you, see all of you and know you.

• 44:15Dr. John Delony?

  And just like your parents, find you lacking.

• 44:20Dr. John Delony?

  And so I'm going to have a secret fantasy life. I'm not going to engage. I'm not going to say, hey, I miss you. I'm going to go jerk off and call it. I'm not going to go for a walk and go lift weights and go do these things. I'm just going to try to earn money and try to get status over here. And I'm going to avoid the messy, vulnerable part of, hey, I miss you. I've never even seen this done right.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  The thing, so I've had all these, I feel like I've had these conversations. My struggle is, is that I feel like whenever I say my wife and I are not on the same page, it's like I've been trying to get us to go to therapy together. There's this couple that I really appreciate. I told her the other night, I'm trying to get a dinner scheduled with them and she's very hesitant about it, but I was like, I really like the way that they love each other and I want that for us, you know?

• 45:17Dr. John Delony?

  And what does she say?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Just sometimes, you know, she says, you know, I'll do the dinner, but I'm not going to promise you anything, you know, like that I'll, I guess.

• 45:31Dr. John Delony?

  So maybe you're on the other side of what I'm saying. Maybe it's already happened. Maybe you've already said, hey, this is me. And she's like, yeah, I don't want that.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I feel like I've said it many times of, you know, just like here, let's try to figure some things out, but she doesn't want to figure herself out. I mean, I believe that marriage, you have to be curious about each other and you also have to be curious about yourself.

• 45:58Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  I feel like I've done a lot of, I feel like I've been doing a lot of work in the past two years.

• 46:03Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  You know, going to therapy and trying to figure out what's going on with me. Why am I the way that I am? And she doesn't want to go to therapy and, you know, I asked her, I was like, do you feel safe with me? You know, do you feel like you can tell me the things in your heart? And she's like, yes. But I'm like, I just don't believe that's entirely true because she's just very, she doesn't like, she says she's just not an emotional person. And I don't believe that. I feel like we're all emotional people. I don't think there's not an emotional person. I think, you know, she's just afraid to face the things that are painful.

• 46:44Dr. John Delony?

  And so Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, please.

• 46:49Dr. John Delony?

  Do you love her?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  I love her like crazy, man.

• 46:52Dr. John Delony?

  Do you trust her?

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I do.

• 46:59Dr. John Delony?

  What if she's telling you the truth?

• 47:02Speaker 01

  That's the thing, like, maybe I'm like, that's why I feel crazy sometimes, man.

• 47:07Dr. John Delony?

  But what if you, here's the deal. What if?

• 47:14Dr. John Delony?

  What if she's not real demonstrative?

• 47:18Dr. John Delony?

  What if she's like, sitting around having five hour conversations about child, that's just not her thing?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:26Dr. John Delony?

  And what if? She just loves you for you?

• 47:31Dr. John Delony?

  Or worse, what if she doesn't?

• 47:36Dr. John Delony?

  But? What you're, what you're saying to her is, I think you're lying to me. And I think I know you better than you know yourself.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:48Dr. John Delony?

  And? What I want to tell you is that doesn't, that, that approach to her, that, that, that downward sloping judgment has not

• 47:59Dr. John Delony?

  worked. What if you tried just believing her? Because then when you just believe her, here's what you have to do. You have to say out loud, here's what I want.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Dr. John Delony?

  It's easy to say, I want you to be more emotional, you need to go do this work, you need to go do all these things, you need to go to do all these things, hoping that she discovers the way you want to be loved. That's less vulnerable for you. It's way scarier to say, hey, here's what I need, here's what I want. Because she might say, I'm not doing that.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:35Dr. John Delony?

  Does that, you get what I'm trying to say?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  No, I, I get that, 100%.

• 48:41Dr. John Delony?

  Have you sat down and said, you know what, I believe you.

• 48:46Dr. John Delony?

  And I think I've taken all my insecurity from my childhood, and me trying to be a good husband, and me struggling pornography and yada, like, by the way, 90 something percent of men, you're not alone, brother.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:57Dr. John Delony?

  Okay?

• 48:59Dr. John Delony?

  Don't, don't be your own judge and jury and executioner, don't do that.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:05Dr. John Delony?

  Do you think your wife loves you?

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I do.

• 49:08Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, does she trust you?

• 49:11Speaker 01

  She does.

• 49:12Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  I think what you said is right. It's just, you know, me trying to think I know her better than she knows herself. I guess. I don't want to be doing that.

• 49:34Dr. John Delony?

  But here's the scary, here's the scary other side to that. Do you love her for her? Do you love her as she is right now?

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do.

• 49:46Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. If there are things in bed you want to try, if there is affection that you want, if there's a daily check-in that would really matter to you, if there are things in your home that you all need to reimagine, you've been together for three years, and, or you've been married for two, two and a half, three years, and there's some things you want to reimagine in terms of, like, household, domestic stuff, and money, and, like, man, have those conversations.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:22Dr. John Delony?

  Put it on the table. And in the same way, the only, the ground rule is, be curious. If you say, "Hey, I want to try this in the bedroom", the only thing I would ask her is to say, instead of going, "Ew, gross, no, never", and say, "Tell me about that."

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:41Dr. John Delony?

  And vice versa, if she says, "That just makes me feel uncomfortable", you, instead of being frustrated or mad, "You don't love me", you be curious. Tell me about being uncomfortable. And that is where intimacy is found. And that, that, that, that, that further peeling away, layer after layer, "Do you see me and do you still love me?" Because here's what it sounds like is missing in your marriage, if I can just throw this out there.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:11Dr. John Delony?

  Just being good old fashioned friends.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:17Dr. John Delony?

  Do y'all do fun stuff together?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Um, we, sometimes we'll, we'll play a video game together.

• 51:28Dr. John Delony?

  Boo! Boo! Do y'all do anything fun?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  You know, not as often as I, as I would like to.

• 51:37Dr. John Delony?

  Does she not want to do fun stuff with you?

• 51:42Speaker 01

  No, I don't want to say that she doesn't want to do stuff that's fun. The thing that is hard for us is our work schedules. So she gets up really, really early and she's done with work around one o'clock. And then I get done at work around five and I'm home by six and she's going to bed by 7:30. So it's like by the time I get home and we eat dinner and do dishes, she's hitting the hay. Um, and-

• 52:11Dr. John Delony?

  That to me is something y'all need to talk through. Cause here's what's getting in the way. Your work schedule. And if y'all are doing this for a short period of time, you're doing this for two years while she gets promoted or you go to grad school or whatever the thing is, fine. Every couple needs to go through those periods, right? That's great, fine, wonderful. But if you have found yourself two years into marriage, you're 23 years old and your work schedules are dictating your joy, your work schedule, not even the work itself, but the work schedule is dictating your life around it. Man, that's a recipe for a crash for your marriage.

• 52:55Dr. John Delony?

  Cause it's gonna, both of you are gonna be starved emotionally, intimately, and somebody in another context will fill that void or you'll go completely dead.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:10Dr. John Delony?

  You have to have intentional connection points. And that may mean one of y'all sits down and says, alright, I'm gonna start working towards a new job because I don't want this to be our life.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:20Dr. John Delony?

  Or maybe you say, we're just doing it till we're 25, we don't owe anybody anything, and we gotta pay for a car and then we're gonna go do something else. That stuff's all good. And then you just have to be really intentional about, um, I always tell people, put date nights on, put sex on the calendar. Underneath that is find things that y'all just love, like doing.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:42Dr. John Delony?

  And it might mean you gotta learn how to do something dumb. Like, and I say that you think is dumb. It's not dumb objectively.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:52Dr. John Delony?

  My wife's obsessed with gardening. She loves it. I, I just never was, but eventually it became up to me. I'm gonna get interested in gardening and now I'm kind of a nerd about it. I've got boxes of seeds and starters. I can't wait, right? I'm all in. But it became, I wanna connect with her.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:14Dr. John Delony?

  And on some of my nerdy things, she has done the same thing. So it's just about, dude.

• 54:20Dr. John Delony?

  Sometimes it's about not overthinking and it's just being like, dude, let's go hang out. Where can we do that?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's good.

• 54:29Dr. John Delony?

  Is it fair that you miss your friend?

• 54:33Speaker 01

  I, I think I've just kinda felt alone a little bit.

• 54:36Dr. John Delony?

  That's, hey, no, no, no, dude, don't hedge that. You've been hedging your whole freaking life. Will you be fully you for a second?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:44Dr. John Delony?

  I think you married somebody that you love and you care about and you're really close to. And like most of us growing up in your situation, you put a lot on this relationship.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:58Dr. John Delony?

  This was gonna be what healed you.

• 55:01Dr. John Delony?

  And a three-year-old marriage can't carry that weight.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Definitely put a lot of weight on it.

• 55:11Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Thinking I was gonna be the, I wanted to be.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just always wanted to be the man that my mom never had growing up.

• 55:24Dr. John Delony?

  And Joseph, the fact that you're having these conversations tells me you're going to be.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Dr. John Delony?

  You're going to be. It's something that you will work and work and laugh and grow and say, I'm sorry. Do you forgive me? You want to try again? That was amazing. That was not amazing. Like that will, you'll look up and have been married 20 years and then look back and go, oh my gosh.

• 55:53Dr. John Delony?

  We're a single, united front.

• 55:57Dr. John Delony?

  And middle and back.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:01Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:03Dr. John Delony?

  But also I want you to remember, you're judging those men through the eyes of a seven year old.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:10Dr. John Delony?

  Right? You're, you've got a lens of terror and fear and I will show up. And that's jet fuel. It's rocket fuel. But man, you see rockets, they shoot all over the place.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:25Dr. John Delony?

  It's just manic, manic energy everywhere.

• 56:29Dr. John Delony?

  Here's a homework assignment for you. Okay?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  All right.

• 56:32Dr. John Delony?

  I want you to write down on a piece of paper.

• 56:37Dr. John Delony?

  What you just said, but I want you to detail it very specifically.

• 56:42Dr. John Delony?

  And the further you can refine it, the better. Here's what I mean. I want you to write the top of the paper. I am a husband who. Kind of husband are you? And not, don't list a bunch of, of, of strategies.

• 56:58Dr. John Delony?

  I'm a husband who works out. I'm, I'm a husband who believes his wife.

• 57:04Dr. John Delony?

  Oh crap. I've never believed anyone because everyone lied to me my whole life. I gotta practice trust.

• 57:11Dr. John Delony?

  I'm a husband who loves my wife till the end of time. Well crap, man, I gotta do dishes. Hate dishes. She comes home exhausted at seven o'clock.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:23Dr. John Delony?

  Right? And it may mean you come home at five o'clock and you start figuring out how you can go to bed with her at eight 30. Maybe she stays up a little bit later and you get up and do some of your life stuff in the morning.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:39Dr. John Delony?

  I want you to start with the identity. I'm a husband who, I'm a man who. And then we'll come back, fill that with action steps. Right now, you're looking for a feeling. You said that at the very beginning of the call and it's just stuck with me. I feel like, I feel like, I feel like.

• 57:54Dr. John Delony?

  And your feelings have kept you alive your whole life. And you have like movie after movie after experience of crappy crappy men. And good on you, brother. I'm not going to be that kind of man. I'm going to be a different kind of man. But if you're not specific about what action steps, what, what identities you're going to be, what you're going to look like, what that's going to look like day in and day out. What you're going to do is you're going to chase how it feels. I want to feel like my wife loves me. I want to feel like my wife is happy. I want to feel like my wife has got everything she wants. I want my wife to make me feel like, and now crap, I became those guys.

• 58:35Dr. John Delony?

  Feelings are just signals, they're just, they're just blinking lights. They're, don't tell you the truth. Your actions tell you the truth. Follow those, those actions. But be very clear about them. Try them out for 30 days, try them out for 60 days. And then be willing to say, ah, I tried that, it didn't work. I'm going to try something else. Do it for 90 days and see what happens.

• 58:55Dr. John Delony?

  Make sure your wife has a note every morning she leaves to go to work about how much you love her. It's just an action step. Make sure when you walk home every day, your phone is already off.

• 59:07Dr. John Delony?

  And you walk in and hold her face, you set your bag down, you hold her face, and you just put your forehead on her forehead. 10 seconds. Make sure you go preheat her side of the bed. If you've got an electric blanket during the winter. Whatever you got, I mean, whatever you got to do. It's about the action stuff. And I'm, I'm telling you, the feelings part will follow. And if she is keeping some big, deep, dark trauma from you, it will emerge when her body feels safe. It's not an indictment of you. It's, it's her, in her chest, it's that, because she feels oppression and pushing and moving. And maybe she doesn't have any deep, dark secrets. Maybe she just loves you.

• 59:43Dr. John Delony?

  And you can practice trusting her. Brother, I, I think you're gonna have a pretty amazing life ahead of you. I'm gonna send you a copy of my number one bestselling book, Building a Non-Anxious Life. I'm also gonna send you also, I hooked up a last caller, I'm gonna hook you up too. All three, I've got Two Questions for Humans Couples, and I've got a third edition coming out. Um, it's out in stores now. And also, I'm gonna send you the Questions for Humans Intimacy Deck. I want you guys just to sit around and chit chat, become friends, do cool stuff together, laugh, go through a couple of these cards every night.

• 1:00:21Dr. John Delony?

  You can't put all the pressure in the world on her to heal you, this entity to heal you. You've gotta do the work to heal, and together, y'all will build something amazing. I think it's gonna be a rad ride, brother. Thanks for your call. We'll be right back.

• 1:00:38Dr. John Delony?

  All right, what's up, Kelly? Something cool happened.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  Yes, so this is from Joseph, not real sure where he's at. A team that had a 0.2% chance of making the playoffs in August is now one of the hottest teams in baseball. Their first victim, the Houston Astros.

• 1:00:56Dr. John Delony?

  Hope that felt good.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, it did.

• 1:00:57Dr. John Delony?

  Can we just pause for a second?

• 1:01:01Dr. John Delony?

  I'm a huge A.J. Hinch fan. I think A.J. Hinch is a rare display of character and virtue in this modern world. He is the, the coach of the cheating season that by all accounts, privately, he smashed the screens, he tried to get rid of it, and the players kept bringing it back, and the players kept bringing it back, and because of some stupid collective bargaining agreement, no players, some deal with the commissioner, he took it all. And he did interview after interview after interview, saying, "I love the team, we cheated", and that he sat out for a year. I hope he wins every World Series forever, because I want men like that. That's, that's who I want my son, I want my son to emulate men like A.J. Hinch.

• 1:01:46Dr. John Delony?

  So if the, if my loser Astros are gonna get knocked out, swept, by the way, then God bless A.J. Hinch. How's that for a little, little, uh, cosmic retribution?

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  It is. And it says, "I just want to finish the email to give this guy," he wrote the email. "So the Houston Astros, maybe they would have won if they would have used some trashcans. Go Tigers."

• 1:02:10Dr. John Delony?

  Hope that was fun for you, whoever wrote that in. And I especially hope that was fun for you, Kelly.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  It was, and I'm pretty sure it was fun for Joe here as well, that wrote it in.

• 1:02:19Dr. John Delony?

  Joe.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Dr. John Delony?

  Well, Joe, I'm gonna give you that one. All's fair.

• 1:02:26Dr. John Delony?

  But I think the meta-question we all have to ask is, I wonder how all those Rangers who've been on vacation for a few weeks are doing? What do you think, Kelly? You think your precious Rangers are just vacationing the crap out of the summer? Probably.

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  Probably.

• 1:02:42Dr. John Delony?

  Just sitting there in the Bahamas, watching the playoffs on their iPads.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  They took some notes from how my Cowboys are every year. Like, how do y'all handle it?

• 1:02:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Yeah, there's an internal, uh...

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  It was like a how-to meeting.

• 1:02:58Dr. John Delony?

  Communication system in Dallas.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  How to handle the playoffs when you're not in it.

• 1:03:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. How to be sad when you've lost again, again. Don't worry Astros, we'll come back. And A.J. Hinch, God bless you, brother. Go win all. Go win it all. Hey, love you guys, bye.