Are Video Games Ruining My Relationships?
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What's going on? This is John with Dr. John Deloney. 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 this 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

the big hurricane that's about to hit Florida. And so we're thinking of preparing 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. And if you want to be on this 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 slash ask A-S-K. Let's go out to Vegas. Vegas! And talk to Tyler. What's up, Tyler?

Hey, good morning, John. How are you? I'm great. How about you? I'm doing so good. I am so nervous. I've been listening to you forever. I'm an original 14 listeners. I couldn't be more excited. I appreciate it. Hey, bad news. It'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.

That's exciting. Yeah, I'll take it. And I'm nervous, too, so we can be nervous together. We won't lose one another. How about that? So what's up? 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. Yeah, go for it. Read it out. Sure.

Sure, okay. 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. Being twins, we also felt a stronger sense of closeness and also competitiveness, I think, than most other siblings. 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. I have not.

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. Understanding supply and demand and market trends has allowed me to make hundreds of real dollars in player-driven online gaming markets. 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

every week from the earliest age you could start at. So I have a really solid appreciation for those types of activities and want to strike a good balance with my new family. I've been in a new relationship for the last 14 months with two little boys, three years old and 10 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.

I want to set a good example and not be seen as a partner and father figure on a screen all the time, but I also want to 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? I mean, that's a pretty... You've written yourself a very convincing and compelling essay. And so I would ask you, you seem to...

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

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'm

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 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 I'm not the kind of guy that just plays Call of Duty all day for 12 hours. I almost see them as different type

types of things. And that's, 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. Um, how many brothers, like twin brothers have you hung out with over the years? Oh, many. Um, I mean, I, funny enough, there was like a, there was a lot of sets of twins in my high school and, uh, yeah. So I guess, I don't know, five, six. Yeah. How many, um, amateur drummers have you hung out with?

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. How much money have you earned from this world-building video game playing? You said you've hundreds of dollars. How much? Maybe $400. Okay. So the phrase that keeps coming to mind is just from conversations with some of my nerd friends. But the nerdiest way I could say this is I think what video games give you

I'm trying to say it not in the nerdiest way. You got to earn your dopamine. And so anytime you're doing something that you really love and you really want to 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. And so I would challenge you that just because you and your brother played close video games together, I would suggest you have no evidence to suggest you all have a better relationship than most other brothers.

Yeah. I didn't mean it in a better way. No, I know. The competitiveness. 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. Yeah, you're right. 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 kind of stuff. So good on you, okay? If you had said I never go outside or whatever, I would have 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 going to be ruined. That just wouldn't be true.

Um, what I can tell you, how old are you? I'm 27. Okay. You're a couple of years. I'll say late. It may, it may, you may be right on track nowadays. Um, 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. Um, I want you to get rid of what I would call nonsensical, um,

Gen Z language like I just need to express myself like that kind of just blech okay yeah instead of this like oogie like googie 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.

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.

Yeah. 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 a longer picture down the road. Okay. And so you have accepted the responsibility of a mother of two and a romantic interest, and now you're the landlord. Yeah. You have taken on more, you've got a finite calendar. You just took on a major responsibility.

Yeah. And so by doing that, you also decided I'm going to be play less video games if I'm going to be the kind of guy that shows up for this woman and for her two kids. Yeah. If you're not, if you listen to the show, there's there's idiots everywhere that take on those responsibilities and like, yeah, glad y'all are here. And they don't ever get off the couch. Doesn't sound like you're that guy.

No, and I'm glad you said that and brought this up. I want to 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, 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 love the responsibility. I'm embracing it fully. I almost never play video games during the week unless we're playing like Rock Band, you know, a family-type game together. But, you know. So here's what I'm always going to say. I'm always going to say, if a parent is choosing between 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. Call of Duty. Or...

going to Walmart and buying Nerf guns and running around the neighborhood, I'll tell you, do the Nerf guns a hundred times out of a hundred, a thousand times out of a thousand. That sounds like a great idea. I'm with you there. If you've got a rock band versus, hey, I'm going to take guitar lessons. Will you take guitar lessons? Now, you have a one-year-old and three-year-old, you can't do that. But you can slowly start to get there. I will tell you,

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. That's so exciting. Does that make sense? But it was earned and owned. We did it together. So I'm not going to tell you if you play video games with your kids or with your girlfriend's kids that it's all going to come down.

What I want you to ask yourself is, I want to 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. 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. I don't think 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. 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. The 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, because 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 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 going to roll in my life. I am being a proxy father. 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.

Yeah, he lives with us right now. All right, y'all be careful because that show, I don't want to take that call one day either. Just kidding. That was awesome. No, he's got his own thing. But I want you to begin to write this stuff down, okay? You want to amaze a kid? Go get a real drum set and start practicing. Yeah. Right? Yeah, for sure. What I don't want a kid to do is to think that the world cheers for you when you just go, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

Yeah. If you want to teach a kid how to earn 400 bucks, like show him you coming in smelling like fast food or exhausted, sweaty. Yeah. Not. And again, there's going to be people who write into this like, I made a million dollars playing video games. Number one, shut up. No, you didn't. And two, good on you. Way to go. I'm proud of you. Yeah. How does that sit with you?

Very good, John. I mean, you're hitting it on the head and kind of going back on what I was saying earlier. It's like, yeah, I've totally accepted, especially since you moved in, I've accepted this new life and embraced it. And it's been so exciting. I mean, we've made so many memories. We go out to the park by my house and we'll go to the trampoline park here in Vegas or just...

I love making real memories. I almost feel like for a while I got lost. There you go. There you go. And, bro, I don't want you to 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 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 to have a wild life. I blew 10 years of my life. Don't do that to yourself either, okay? Yeah.

I think there's a place for it. Here's what I would tell you. I think it's important that your kids, and 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.

You remind me of a situation. I actually just got a new job about 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 thought something was wrong. But I feel like I displayed such a level of, like,

joy and happiness over this accomplishment, I guess. And I want to continue, I want to continue with that, you know, in real life. 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.

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. And I had other things. I had two really little kids. 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.

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 a hobby while they're doing their homework. I love that. So this is seasonal.

all that said though when it comes to video games i think they've become they're the technology is astounding and as we head into the vr world man it's just gonna be wild i'll just put it this way for all human history that we we have not been able to experience shooting and death and running and flying and man you 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. And my recommendation to everybody is put the screens down, put the controllers down, and get outside. Just get outside. Just get outside. That 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? Are you going to watch somebody 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. November can be bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. We have the normal November madness that comes with colder weather, family dynamics at the holidays, figuring out Christmas plans, and why not, this year we also have an election.

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All right, we're back. Let's go out to Spokane, Washington and talk to Paul. Hey, Paul, what's up, brother? How's it going, Dr. John? I'm good, my man. What's up? So, I'll just get the question out there. So, how do I process my wife's affair and rebuild trust in our marriage? What happened, man? Tell me about it.

So, I guess a little bit of a concise backstory will help. So after we were married about 10 years, my wife told me that she was bisexual. And we both come from an extremely conservative religious background. And that was a bit of a twist.

Then, uh, 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 from? She's always been attracted to women and men since puberty. And because of, you know, it was stigmas and taboos. Um, she was just afraid to ever say it to anyone. Okay.

Um, so she said it to you. How many years ago is this? Uh, let's see. I've been married for almost 14 years now. That'd be about four, three and a half years ago. Okay. How'd that conversation go? Um, I'm bringing back to it. Uh, and he was just like, I have something to tell you. Um, I won't have a seat. And she told me, and honestly, when she told me it wasn't that big of a deal to me, um, because you know, it's not something she's ever, uh,

acted upon, I guess, just having a secret like that for so long. She finally thought she had it. I mean, finally had to get it out. Yeah. Okay. So fast forward the last four years, it sounds like she acted on it. She did. So 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, um,

A few months ago, she's like, oh, I have this friend, Christine, and she's bisexual too. Her husband knows all about it. And I'm like, okay, I don't care who you're friends 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, she did not keep a platonic. So we have this weird moment in history where inside of this, what I would call the ride-or-die covenant,

That phrase, till death do us part, is somehow secondary to the emergence or the, for lack of a better word, for the honoring or the outward stating of a new identity. And just personally, brother, I reject it. Like, all day long, man, you're attracted to who you're attracted to. But she looked at you and said, till death do us part, right?

And so here's what I'm telling you that, um, you're not crazy for feeling betrayed and there's not, there's supposed to be some sort of lessening because it's cause it was with a woman or 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. It was sort of surreal cause I spent my career, uh,

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. Yeah, 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 little obstacle

I don't know, stock ticker that runs in the back of my mind. Like I'm depositing into the, uh, 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. Most definitely. 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?

I do. Okay. So what must be true? And if there's one thing I can't stand, the biggest thing to me is honesty. Right. I have to be able to trust. 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. 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 could be a testament to what's to come. It could be amazing. What must be true for your wife to reestablish trust with you? I have to have verification of what she's saying. Okay. So you need to see her phone. You need to see her computer. You need to know where she is.

Not necessarily where she is, but if she says, you know, like when she said she cut off communication with the other party and wanted to, you know, be 100% with me, I still haven't asked to see the message where she is.

End of day. 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. 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. It doesn't matter.

I find it, as a guy who works in the 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? I'm scared that my trust would be misplaced, believing her, just taking her on her word. And let's keep digging. What would be true underneath that? And if she isn't being truthful, then it's done. 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. Instead of dealing with the alligator, calling animal control, getting that thing out of there, you're going to 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 to

And you're going to 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 going to fail. It'll crash. And your body will know that you're tightrope walking. Your body will know that, ah, I don't know, ah, what? It will know. So head directly into it. Otherwise, you're going to make yourself crazy because your body is going to be solving for reality all of the time.

Okay. And by the way, if you tell your wife you're all the way back in too, we're going to figure this out, and you're not, then now you're the one not being honest. Absolutely. And you know as well as I do, being in that profession, you can get a hold, you can get a backlog of texts. You can go get everything that was written back and forth. And if that's what you need for peace of mind, then go get them.

And if she says, I don't want you to see it or 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. Y'all need to address that. And then by the way, 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 going to be some catharsis. It's often still really painful, man.

I imagine. Yeah. And so here's the homework. The homework is to begin to say, okay, what not as much as what are we not going to do, right? We're not going to communicate with that person. We're not going to, we're not going to 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 out of here. Um, or you are opting out of our marriage. What are the things you are going to do affirmatively to begin to bring y'all back together and build something new?

We're going to go on a walk every morning together before we go to work. Every night after our son goes to bed, we're going to 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 going to do affirmatively to begin building this stuff back?

Because most of the time people, they say, I want to see your phone. And like, 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.

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 until you fall asleep. And that same 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've got to deal with. Okay. Is that fair? It is.

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 want to be living is one of the funnest, most adventurous, most exciting things a couple can do together. Because you get, I mean, the deck is cleared, man. Your house got blown away. You get to build something new. What do you want it to look like? But that's for later. Right now it's time for you to be sad. I'm sorry, man. In your guts, you've known this woman for a decade. Do you believe her?

I do. Okay. That's awesome. I mean, the only thing that you ever kept from me before was a surprise guitar for a birthday. That you know of, and maybe that's part of it. Maybe that's step number one. We're going to both say five secrets we've kept from each other. They can be big ones or little ones. All right. And you might find some stuff out and go screaming into the night, and you might find out some hilarious stuff. Okay. But Lego piece by Lego piece, brick by brick...

concrete poured by rebar, by all of it, we're going to rebuild something. It's going to be very, very slow. Here's what I'm going to give you. I'm going to send you, but by the way, what I'm going to give you is not going to heal anything. Okay. It's just a tool, right? I'm going to send you all of the questions for humans, couples additions. I've got one and two. And then the third one just came out. It's brand new. And I'm going to send you the questions for humans, intimacy edition. Okay. It's brand new. Okay. Thank you. And here's what I want you to do. Like as part of the rebuild, um,

Every night we're gonna do five of these things. We're just gonna go through five of the cards. We're gonna write stuff down We're gonna laugh can be silly whatever 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 counselor saying stupid stuff like well, just like it's run its course like there's a hat I don't believe in that I don't believe marriage is just run their course I think people decide to opt out and if you opt out you opt out but I

You want to get somebody that was interested in the rebuild with y'all. Walk through it with you, help you process stuff. And you're going to have stuff that needs to be put on the table. She's going to have more stuff to get put on the table, all that. But maybe this big moment will allow y'all to rebuild something stronger and arguably more beautiful than what was.

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 text anymore after two weeks, but here's what I really need. 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 stuff. 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 the line too. I'm going to hook you up with a free live stream. My friend Rachel Cruz and I are doing a money and marriage live stream. I'm going to 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. Thanks for the call, brother. I wish you guys the best, best, best. We'll be right back.

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Go to joindeleteme.com slash Diloni today for 20% off. That's join, J-O-I-N, deleteme.com slash Diloni. All right, let's go out to Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Missouri and talk to Joseph. Hey, Joseph, what's up? Hey, how are you? I'm fantastic, brother. How are you?

Oh, you know, I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing right. What's up? So, um, I'm going to be 23 next week. Um, 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. Um, and I guess I struggle with a lot of fear and,

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 making, I'm like,

having this insane internal dialogue. And I can barely even trust my own thoughts. Have you messed something up big in your life? Do you have some memories of doing something humongous and stupid? It's just me and you and a couple million people. Just be honest. 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. I've just seen a lot on both my mom and my dad. I want to go one step deeper. More than seeing it, you've experienced it.

Yeah. Right? That's in your chest. Yeah. 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. Yeah. There's really not a day that goes by where I'm not really, like, my chest just always feels heavy. Okay. 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. Where does that story come from?

Did you get blamed for some of the chaos in your home growing up? Did you drop a pass in a football game? Did you fail or get caught cheating on something? Where does the story, because I get what you're laying out for me is very, very rocky soil. Yeah. And you got your own little patch of grass that you're trying to start with your new marriage. So it's not in that soil anymore, but for some reason you're scared to put seeds down.

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? Yeah. I've got a buddy who cheated on everything in eighth grade. Everything. 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.

Right? To this day. To this day. Dude, I'm old, man. 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. Yeah. And what I want to do is unhook those things. Give me an example of something you've blown or screwed up in your life or something you've been blamed for.

I mean, whenever I was... 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. But I've had a lot of shame about it my entire life. And I even... Early on in our marriage, I was really into it. Because me and my wife, we...

We waited until marriage to have sex. And, you know, we dated for a good three years before we got married. And I think I had to come to my wife and tell her, you know, what I've 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 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 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. Or just saying, hey, dude, you're a knuckleheaded kid. You're curious, of course. And it used to be that we could try to prevent Playboys from being in the house. And now it's just pornography is everywhere. Right?

Yeah. And then there's this lie that if you can just get across the marriage finish line and find somebody who says, I do, that you will finally feel at peace. And you don't. No young newly married guy feels, ah, now for it, right? And almost dumps gasoline on that fire. And we don't talk about this very much. You know what masturbation gives you? Momentary peace, release, drops your shoulders, right? They can often be a Xanax.

Yeah. 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 death, all that was on you. And now you're married and you're bringing somebody else with you. Five minutes by yourself and I tell you this. I mean, I tell you all that to tell you this. You're not broken, dude. You're not ruined. But you're going to have to choose to seek healing from the inside out. Yeah.

I guess the thing that, I guess how that kind of plays into is I just feel like my wife and I haven't been on the same page. You haven't. You haven't. And I don't know, because she struggles with her own things, her own anxiety. Joseph, everybody does. The question you'll have to ask each other is, will we walk alongside each other?

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. 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? 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 you grew up watching, living inside of a prison yard, watching them play football.

And then all of a sudden you found yourself in the NFL. 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. That's the thing. I feel like that's the hard thing. I don't know why I can't cut myself some slack. What is not cutting you slack getting you? What's it protecting you from? Be honest.

I don't know. 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, and just like your parents, find you lacking. 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 just 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. The thing. So I've had all these, I feel like I've had these conversations. My struggle is, is that I feel like, um,

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. And what does she say? Sometimes...

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

I believe that marriage, you have to be curious about each other. And you also have to be curious about yourself. - Correct, 1000%. - I feel like I've been doing a lot of work in the past two years. You know, going to therapy and trying to figure out what's going on with me. Why am I the way that I am?

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. 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 emotion.

Emotional person I think you know she's just afraid to face the things that are painful and so Joseph Please do you love her? I love her like crazy man. Do you trust her? I? Do I what if she's telling you the truth? That's the thing like maybe I'm like that's why I feel crazy sometimes man What if you here's a deal what if what if she's not real demonstrative I?

What if she's like sitting around having five-hour conversations about childhood? That's just not her thing. Yeah. And what if she just loves you for you? Or worse, what if she doesn't? But 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. Yeah. And what I want to tell you is that approach to her, that downward sloping judgment has not...

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. 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 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. Yeah.

You get what I'm trying to say? No, I get that 100%. Have you sat down and said, you know what? I believe you. And I think I've taken all my insecurity from my childhood and me trying to be a good husband and me struggling with pornography and yada. By the way, 90-something percent of men, you're not alone, brother. Yeah. Okay? Don't be your own judge and jury and executioner. Don't do that. Yeah. Do you think your wife loves you? I do. Okay. Does she trust you?

She does. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, 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. But here's the scary other side to that. Do you love her for her? Do you love her as she is right now? Yeah, I do. 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 and in terms of like household domestic stuff and money and like man have those conversations yeah put it on the table

And in the same way, 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, oh, gross, no, never, and say, tell me about that. 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 further peeling away layer after layer, do you see me and do you still love me? 'Cause here's what it sounds like is missing in your marriage, if I can just throw this out there. - Okay. - Just being good old fashioned friends. - Yeah. - Do y'all do fun stuff together? - We sometimes will play a video game together. - Boo! Boo! Do y'all do anything fun?

You know, not as often as I would like to. Does she not want to do fun stuff with you? 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 730. So it's like, by the time I get home and we eat dinner,

and do dishes, she's hitting the hay. That to me is something y'all need to talk through because 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. 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. Because both of you are going to be starved emotionally, intimately, and somebody in another context will fill that void or you'll go completely dead. Yeah.

You have to have intentional connection points. And that may mean one of y'all sits down and says, all right, I'm going to start working towards a new job because I don't want this to be our life. Yeah. Or maybe you say, we're just doing it until we're 25 and we don't owe anybody anything and we got to pay for a car and then we're going to go do something else. That stuff's all good. And then you just have to be really intentional about, I always tell people put date nights on, put sex on the calendar. Underneath that is find things that y'all just love doing.

Yeah. And it might mean you got to learn how to do something dumb. Right? Like, and I say that you think it's dumb. It's not dumb objectively. Yeah. My wife's obsessed with gardening. She loves it. I just never was, but eventually it became up to me. I'm going to 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 want to connect with her.

Yeah, and on some of my nerdy things she's done the same thing so it's just about dude Sometimes it's about not overthinking and it's just being like let's go hang out. Where can we do that? Yeah, that's that's good. Is it fair that you miss your friend? I think I've just kind of felt alone a little bit. That's hey, no, no, no, don't do don't hedge that you've been hedging your whole freaking life Will you be fully you for a second? Yeah, I think you married somebody that you love and you care about it and is you're really close to and I

Like most of us growing up in your situation, you put a lot on this relationship. Yeah. This was going to be what healed you. And a three-year-old marriage can't carry that weight. Yeah. I definitely put a lot of weight on it. Yeah. I wanted to be, I don't know, I just always wanted to be the man that my mom never had growing up. And Joseph, the fact that you're having these conversations tells me you're going to be. Yeah.

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. You'll look up and have been married 20 years and then look back and go, oh my gosh, we're a single united front and middle and back. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But also I want you to remember, you're judging those men through the eyes of a seven-year-old. Yeah.

Right? 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. Yeah. It's just manic energy everywhere. Here's a homework assignment for you, okay? All right. I want you to write down on a piece of paper what you just said, but I want you to detail it very specifically. And the further you can refine it, the better. Here's what I mean. I want you to write at the top of the paper,

I am a husband who, what kind of husband are you? And not, don't list a bunch of strategies. I'm a husband who works out. I'm a husband who believes his wife. Oh, crap. I've never believed anyone because everyone lied to me my whole life. I got to practice trust. I'm a husband who loves my wife till the end of time. Oh, crap, man. I got to do dishes. Hate dishes. She comes home exhausted at seven o'clock. Yeah. 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 830. Maybe she stays up a little bit later and you get up and do some of your life stuff in the morning. Yeah. That's, 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, man, 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 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. Feelings are just signals. They're just blinking lights. They don't tell you the truth. Your actions tell you the truth. Follow 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.

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 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 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 in her chest. It's that because she feels your pressure and pushing and moving. And maybe she doesn't have any deep, dark secrets. Maybe she just loves you. And you can practice trusting her. Brother, I think you're going to have a pretty amazing life ahead of you.

I'm going to send you a copy of my number one bestselling book, Building a Non-Anxious Life. I'm also going to send you also, I hooked up a last caller. I'm going to hook you up too. All three. I've got two questions for humans, couples, and I've got a third edition coming out. It's out in stores now. And also I'm going to 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. You can't put all the pressure in the world on her to heal you, this entity to heal you.

You've got to do the work to heal and together you'll build something amazing. I think it's going to be a rad ride, brother. Make sure you're called. We'll be right back. Okay. It's time to talk about Organifi. And so listen, let's stop for a minute and say thank you to our bodies. Our bodies do so much for us. They move us around. They care for us. They work all day to try to keep us safe and they alert us to perceive dangers. Our bodies are always working for us. And if we're honest, we're not.

Eh, we may not always treat our bodies very well. I'm working to get better at being a good steward of my body, and I want you to join me in honoring the only bodies we're ever going to have.

And one great way that I am being a good steward of my body is my daily use of Organifi products. I love Organifi because they're super, super selective about what goes into their whole food blends. And Organifi helps you thank your body by using ingredients with integrity. Organifi is plant-based, certified organic, vegan, dairy-free, soy-free, and glyphosate residue-free. And glyphosate's a pesticide that your body will thank you for keeping away from it.

Organifi is so easy. All you do is mix your favorite juice blend. I love pure, the green juice, the red juice. You mix that with water and you're off to the races. And I still love my happy drops every day. And I've been trying out the new Organifi Better Biome Gummies to help with gut health and improve digestion and nutrient absorption. And I'm loving them so far.

Go to Organifi.com slash Deloney right now to save 20% off at checkout by using code Deloney. That's Organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash Deloney. And use code Deloney for 20% off. All right, what's up, Kelly? Something cool happened. 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. Hope that felt good. Yeah, it did. Can we just pause for a second? I'm a huge A.J. Hinge fan. I think A.J. Hinge is a rare display of character and virtue in this modern world. He is 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 led the team. We cheated. And he sat out for a year. I hope he wins every World Series forever because I want men like that. That's who I want my son. I want my son to emulate men like A.J. Hinch. So if my loser Astros are going to get knocked out, swept by the way,

And God bless AJ Hinch. How's that for a little cosmic retribution? 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 trash cans. Go Tigers. Hope that was fun for you, whoever wrote that in. And I especially hope that was fun for you, Kelly. It was. And I'm pretty sure it was fun for Joe here as well that wrote it in. Joe. Yeah. Well, Joe, I'm going to give you that one. All's fair.

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.

Probably. Just sitting there in the Bahamas watching the playoffs on their iPads. They took some notes from how my Cowboys are every year. Like, how do y'all handle it? Yeah. There's an internal... It was like a how-to meeting. Communication system in Dallas. How to handle the playoffs when you're not in it. 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.