I Can’t Move Past My Wife’s Affair
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What up, what up? Listen, Black Friday week is here, and that means you can save big on questions for humans decks and my book, Building a Non-Anxious Life and more at ramsaysolutions.com slash store.

What's up? What's up? This is John with Dr. John Deloney's show.

Hope you're doing well. We're talking about your mental and emotional health, your relationships, your marriages, your kids, grief.

Just whatever's going on in your life. My promise is I'm going to sit with you and we'll talk about it. We're going to figure out what's the next right move. What's one step we could take? Maybe two or three. Where do we go from here? If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask A-S-K. Kelly, this weekend, I took my son, 14-year-old, to his first heavy metal show. I'm buddies with the guitarist and he was pretty generous. Two big moments happened.

Moment number one, my son looked around and got a really clear understanding as to why I dress how I do. He's like, dad, these are your people. And the second thing is at some one point I looked over. Now he's a country, 90s country guy. He would prefer to be at a George Strait show. I failed him, but he'd prefer to be like a Garth Brooks or George Strait show. But at one point I looked over and he was bobbing his head real hard. And I was like, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. He wants none of it. He just wants to go back to hee haw music.

There we go. See, I say this because I know personally, people can be a fan of both. Agree or disagree. I'm just kidding. I'm a huge fan of both. I saw Garth Brooks and that dude jams. Yeah. And my buddy Aaron Watson jams. I'm a huge country fan and a huge rock metal fan. I agree. And if you peel away the instruments, they kind of sing about the same stuff. Yeah. Like I'll fight you. There's a very similar. Let's drink too much. You know, between the two. Yeah. It's very. A lot of similarities. Until you get into the.

Yeah, the Scary Marys or the Superdarks. Anyway, all right, let's go out to Indianapolis. Indianapolis. Let's go out to Indiana and talk to Zach. What's up, Zach? Howdy, Dr. John. Howdy, my man. What's up? Oh, just another exciting day. A little sarcasm there. I got it. I got it. What's up, dude? How can I help, brother? Well, um...

I've been struggling to kind of overcome something internally, even though it seems like on the outside everything's cool. Back very early in the year, I discovered that my wife was involved in an emotional affair with a co-worker, and since then...

like that we've been doing the rebuild process. And I mean, for, for the most part, I mean, things are actually probably better now than they was before. Yeah. But, um, I just can't seem to get these, like, as you described them, like light bolt, like light bolt thoughts, like they just kind of come out of nowhere, like thoughts, thoughts about it. And, um,

I mean, I don't know how to explain it. It's not near as bad as it was. It's definitely getting better. How long ago did this happen? I made the discovery in January, and now it's October. Okay. How'd you find out? Well...

It's a bit of a story, but my wife came home one day in August and told me about a new friend she had made at work. And over the course of a month, it seemed like they was talking way too much outside of work and I was uncomfortable with it.

And I tried discussing it with her, and she kept telling me, it's nothing, it's nothing. And then, I don't know, one day I woke up in the middle of the night, and I just had a feeling. And I checked her smartwatch, and then I saw the last message that she had received from him was, good night, baby, I love you. And then I confronted her the next day about it.

Did she come clean? Yeah. Did she show you all the text messages and pictures and all the things they'd exchanged? No, she did not completely open up her phone to me. Why not? She wasn't up for it, and I didn't push for it. I probably should have. You should have because, hey, you're playing a charade because I think you know there's more there. Yeah. Am I right? Yeah.

Probably, because my understanding is the only thing that happened between them, like on a physical level, was kissing. Okay. But obviously I've not read through all their text messages and stuff, so all I have to go on is her word, and obviously she lied to me. Right. And you know as well as I do—

She didn't slide the phone across the table and say, I love you more than life itself. And I'm so sorry. And yes, I have a crush on a coworker and I have, I have, I've been inappropriate, man, but nothing else has happened here. Look, but when she looked at you and said, nah, you can't see that. Dude, as far as I'm concerned, that tells me what I need to know. There's more to it. And it may have been sexting. It may have been, Hey, let's meet up here at this hotel. Who knows what was there? The problem is, uh,

There was something left unsaid there. And can I give you one more thing that I think is equally, if not more heavy? Yeah. You didn't ask and you've lost trust in you, right? Right. Like, cause you probably are just like me. You've told yourself all these kinds of stories about if that my wife ever, I'm going to. And you didn't. A hundred percent. You didn't. And because of that, I've only told one person up until now about this. And secrets are killing you.

Exactly. And lack of trust in your own house is killing you. And the fact that your wife still was hedging her bets when you found out is killing you. Yeah. It's definitely, as far as, don't get me wrong, I do love her. I know you do. I know you do. Or I wouldn't have tried to work through this. No, I know you do. And I don't think your marriage is over. But I don't think y'all are still, y'all may be performing better.

You know, maybe kinder, talking about things, laughing more, going for walks, putting your cell phones away when you get home, all that kind of stuff. But she still doesn't know that you're wondering what was in that phone that night. Right. This is...

Now, this actually did make me feel better at the time. And it did for a little few days afterwards. But I don't know if it'll have any lasting effects. Part of it might be just because of expecting the phone call and kind of rehashing everything in my head again. Of course. But...

And let's go there. Let's say she slid her phone across the table and you read through all the text and they were gut-wrenching. I think you're hilarious. My husband never laughs like you make me laugh. I can't believe you kissed me, but it was kind of awesome. Like you saw all that. She just handed it to you and she'd never sent him topless photos and her phone wasn't filled with pics. It was, right? Right. You then a year later...

You said, I agree. I'm all back in. We're going to rebuild something new. Then you have to make the choice to have two or three images of your wife, of you all together, laughing, having fun, being silly when she is a ray of light in your life. And the moment that lightning bolt hits, you can't stop that. It happens.

But the moment that hits, you have a choice immediately following that. And that is, am I going to either pull out that picture out of my wallet or my phone and look at it and meditate on that? So glad we stuck this out and we're building something new and amazing. And I'm going to force my energy onto that photo or to that memory. Or you can choose to meditate on what was.

On that thought and then the kiss and then where was his hands on her body? And you can go down that road, dude, and you're going to get enraged and mad again. And then you're going to get mad at yourself again. Like the whole machine will kick up again. Yeah, I don't want to do that. I want to heal. I know. But you can't just take something away. You got to have something that replaces it. Gotcha. And you, by committing to stay, said I'm back in, which means I'm not going to keep bringing this thing up. And I'm going to do what I need to do to heal so we can come back.

I did do something of a healing gesture on our anniversary because one of the tragedies about this scenario is that it only happened a couple months into us actually being married. But on our anniversary, I took a piece of paper and then I wrote down different things

Well, I didn't actually write the things down, but I made a list, basically, even though the things wasn't listed on the list. And I said things that I've done to hurt you, things that you've done to hurt me. And we burnt the paper.

And I told her that I didn't want things from our first year of marriage to come into our second year of marriage, and I wanted to start fresh. Cool. And so from that point forward, the only person you can control is you. Right. And maybe you're at a place now where you have healed from that initial, and you just need to deal with the lightning bolts. And that just takes time. Man, that just takes time.

I'll tell you what, the initial shock was rough on me. I lost 12 pounds in 12 days. Heck yeah. You're not going to eat. You're going to have diarrhea. Yeah, you wither away. It happens fast. Yeah, it was a rough time. Absolutely, man. You're not crazy. And maybe you're at a place now where you can say, okay, I'm not leaving you. I love you. I like what we're rebuilding. But one thing is haunting me.

That night when I asked you, like, to see your phone and you said you weren't ready for that, where were you hiding? Did you ever send him, like, topless pictures? No, I didn't. Did you really? What was in your phone? Because it's making me, kind of making me crazy still. Okay. And if she says, all right, I'll tell you. You got to be prepared for what comes. That's true. Like, currently, sorry, my throat got caught.

Currently, I don't know if having that conversation would be re-traumatizing for me. Bro, listen to me. I don't think you're untraumatized. I think you're a good old boy from Indianapolis, Indiana, and you are great at wallpaper and over stuff because we got work to do and we're going to move on with our lives. 100%. But the cancer's eating you from the inside out. I can hear it on you.

Yeah, definitely. Secrets will kill you. And if you have a secret question that you didn't ask, you're still rebuilding trust. You get to set the parameters for what trust rebuild looks like, and she gets to opt in or out. You cannot just do some church camp thing and burn a list on a candle, and all the trust comes back. It's something you will rebuild over time.

And you can only rebuild it through action day after day after day. It's like tearing a bicep and you go get it surgically repaired. The only way to make that thing strong again, and by the way, it can get real strong again, but you got to lift weights every day and you got to recover.

And when it hurts, you got to lean in and find out, is that an injury or is that, do I got to work through that pain? It just, it doesn't just like, you don't just burn the surgical x-rays and MRIs and just go on your day. It's not how healing works. And in many ways, I wonder if that, if that ceremony you did, dude, I love the gesture. I think it's a beautiful gesture.

But I wonder if it was as much for you as it was for her. You trying to force yourself to just forget about something without doing the work. And the work is sitting across the table from her saying, here's what I need from you to reestablish trust. I need your phone password.

It honestly was just as much for me as it was for her. Part of it because I know that, I mean, based on what I've seen, I know she has a guilty conscience about it still. And we had a weekend-long conversation about whether we was going to stay together or not after this happened.

And, um, we ultimately decided that we would. And, um, and there was a time during that she offered me the chance to say anything crappy to her that I wanted to say and get it off my chest. And, um, I refused to refuse to call her names or anything like that. But I know, um,

There's been times over the last, particularly the first half of the year, like some of the things that I wanted to say in that moment, well, they would just randomly pop out in conversation out of nowhere. Sure. And I'll tell you, saying that stuff won't be cathartic. You know that. Right. That's just not who you are. You don't badmouth women. That's just not who you are. Yeah. But that's not the catharsis that your body needs.

I think there's still two big open wounds underneath all of this. One of them is, and the answer to the question, what really happened? 100%. And can you forgive you for not seeing it, for missing it? Yeah, I guess that's something I have to work on.

Because I feel like I have 90% for governor, but there's still like a 10% that's nagging at me. And that 10% is, listen, you can't just do this all in your head. If you have a tractor and the engine blows up, you can't think through how you're going to fix it and expect the tractor to run. Right. So you can't just think your way to rebuilding trust. You got to sit across the table and say, here's what I need. I need to see your phone every day.

for x number of weeks or months i am randomly going to have questions about what happened i need you to be okay with me asking them i need you to answer me honestly i need you to open up like we're going to go back to the to the i don't know to the cloud and do retro for a year on any photos up there and see what photos might be like like i just want to know those things i want to look at our phone records i mean at our uh hotel records and see if there were any like charges to a hotel like

I'm going to reestablish trust. You blew up the sidewalk. I'm going to repour the sidewalk. I definitely think I should have took a more headstrong approach on this. Oh, well, what it is turning into almost a year ago. Yeah. And here we are. And here's what I would say. So when students used to come into my office and let's say like I had been reported something serious, sexual assault, drugs, like something, something major that was going to alter their life.

I would ask them, did you assault somebody? Here's what I got. Here's the details. Here's the report. And they would always answer. No, it wasn't me or it's sort of, but it wasn't what you think, whatever. At the end of that meeting, I always did this. Always. Because I was, not only was I was trying to keep people safe and get people to follow the rules, but I was trying to teach too. I always told people, hey, from this moment forward, I know this is hard. You have 24 hours or 48 hours, whatever it was, to come back and change your story.

And if you do that, I'm going to count it as though it was today. Because I know sometimes when you get scared and you just get called into an office and you just start spilling and you create a story, I get that. Totally get that. You get 24, 48 hours. After that, if I find out a month from now or a year from now that you were lying in this moment, that will be worse, as bad or worse than whatever happened. And so I tell you that to tell you, I think it's fair to circle back and say, hey, I want to do another...

I've been working on it and I'm just amazed at how we're rebuilding some stuff. There are some questions I didn't ask a year ago that still haunt me and you own it. Not you didn't show. I didn't push on stuff and I didn't ask questions because my world just got blew up. I want to spend a morning for breakfast, just circling back. And I'm just going to ask you, just tell me the truth. And I'm never going to talk bad about you, but there's just some things that are haunting me. There's some things that are haunting me.

And ask the questions. Don't make the accusations. Ask the questions that you need answers to. And you commit to doing the work. I am going to commit to not meditating on these pictures or these thoughts I have in my mind or whatever because I'm choosing to stay with you. Or you find out, no, it was more than just a kiss. No, there was sexting involved. No, there was whatever. I talked bad about you in these texts too. And you got to deal with what comes next.

And there's a part of me that she's still covered up in guilt. Part of me wonders if she still has things unsaid, unspoken, truths left to be told. And I think putting that on the table and giving somebody an opportunity to safely say, here's the whole truth now might be a gift. And there might be some things in that gift that you got to deal with. I just, I just, I'm to a place now where I think underneath communication problems and infidelity and pornography, all these things.

The things that destroy are the secret. Lay in bed next to somebody and they know something. You know that they know something. Nobody says anything about it. I think that's the cancer that ultimately destroys relationship. I think you're just worth the truth, brother. But if you decide it, you know the truth. You need to do the work in real time, not meditating on those lightning bolts. She deserves that too. Thanks for the call, brother. We'll be right back.

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This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This month is all about gratitude, and most of us have a person or two that we'd like to shout out for helping us along the way. I'd like to take a moment to thank two people who have transformed my life, the great Marilyn Fannin and the powerful and amazing Dr. Jean-Noel Thompson. Marilyn gave me a chance when no one should have, and she brought me along and taught me poise and professionalism, and she challenged me.

And Jean-Noel taught me how to be a dad, a husband, a professional, and how to balance the seemingly impossible weight of caring for a whole bunch of people all at the same time. Thank you to Marilyn and Jean-Noel. And for you listeners, I know you have people in your life that you're grateful for, and hopefully you stop and thank them every once in a while.

But there's one person that we often don't take time to think enough, ourselves. We don't always acknowledge that we're surviving, we're moving forward, and we're grinding our way towards a better life, better relationships, and a better world. And in a world where everything's gone bonkers, it's not always easy. So here's my reminder. Thank the people in your life and thank you. And sometimes we need more than just a thank you. We need some professional and personal help.

We need to talk to someone who's trained to help us discover our true gratitude and our true selves during the holiday season. That's why I recommend my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy, and you can talk with your therapist anytime, anywhere, so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey to get matched with a licensed therapist, and you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost.

This season, let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. All right, let's go out to Minneapolis and talk to Jake. What's up, Jake? Hey, John. How's it going? Doing all right, brother. How are you? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Excellent. What's up?

Well, I have been having some trouble emotionally and mentally just dealing with the news of hearing my girlfriend was assaulted sexually a few years ago. Jeez, man. Dude, that breaks my heart. It breaks mine too. Yeah. I'm sorry, man. How long y'all been together?

Uh, going on six months now. Okay. And she's the most amazing girl that I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. How'd you find out? How'd she tell you? Um, well, I'd say about a month ago, um, we kind of came up with this thing where like once a month we just talked about how we're doing, um,

if there's anything that we need from the other person. And, um, I guess it was just something that was on her mind. Um, and she ended up telling me and I took it in person. I took it fairly well. Um, but then once I got by myself and with my own thoughts, I just kind of spiraled. Tell me about your spiraling. Um, well, let me, let me back up. Let me stop that. How did you take it?

Um, in the moment, uh, I was kind of more shocked. Um, she has told me before that she had been sexually assaulted, um, never really went into detail. And I obviously wasn't going to pry her for details that she didn't want to tell me. Um, and then, so she ended up telling me, I was just kind of in shock. Um,

just kind of listened and tried to understand the situation and where she was coming from and how it made her feel. Um, and then we kind of just resumed our night, uh, our movie night and kind of relaxed. And then once she took off, uh, just kind of went downhill. What? Oh, when she left. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So yeah. What have you been working through?

Um, well, just kind of sometimes when it'll just pop into my mind and I'll just think about, you know, how scared she was, um, after it kind of happened and the scenario and also anger, of course, at, um, at whoever did it. Um, and then also at her friends for, um,

Not really having her back or looking out for her. Yeah. Yeah, that's all right, man. Just a twisted ball of rage. Being angry is the right response right now. I think the biggest challenge is it's not her job to hold your anger, right? Right. So how can I help you, man? I'm sorry, dude. Jeez. I'm sorry for her. I'm heartbroken for her. I'm heartbroken for everybody.

And I just, I don't really know how to like move past it. I know it's always going to be, I'm sure it's something that's going to be in, that sticks with her for the rest of her life. I don't know about that. I mean, the story, the story, the experience. Yeah. That's a part of her life. There's no question about that. But healing is pretty extraordinary.

And the healing journeys are pretty extraordinary of women who've experienced some wild stuff, evil stuff. If you decide I can't be with you because this happened, you need to own that fully.

Yeah, I'm not at that point whatsoever. Um, like I want to be, I'll, I'd work through anything with her and I know it's nothing that she can't change. It was out of her control at the time. And, um, I just want to support her. And I know it's been years ago. And when I've talked to her about it, um, and kind of how I was feeling a little bit, um,

And she was just like, hey, I'm fine. Like it was three years ago. I'm okay. I'm happy with you and everything like that. So I know she's gone through, she's gotten help and kind of worked through it, but it almost feels it's like new, it's news to me. So it's almost like it just happened in some way. And I don't know. And I also have, I'm kind of struggling since hearing that.

She was with some friends at the time when it happened. They didn't, they kind of just let her go. And I kind of have that resentment towards her friends. Like I don't trust them. I don't,

really want her I feel like if she goes I'm totally okay with like she wants to go out for a girl's night and everything like that but I don't trust that her friends will be looking out for her and protecting her and I don't know how to kind of feel like I should tell her that but I don't know so let me be as direct as I can with this okay she doesn't need you to be her dad

She doesn't need you to come to the rescue and fight a fight that physically happened three years ago. And if you were my close buddy and you came to me, I would tell you to go back to her and hold both of her hands and say, hey, when you told me this terrifying, scary thing, because what she was asking is, can I say this thing? And are you going to run? Because of that, what happened to her is so devastating. It's reorienting and it reshapes the way you experience the planet, everybody in it.

And so it's a testament to you that she felt safe enough to put it on the table. And when she immediately withdraws and says, no, no, no, it's not a big deal. I'm fine. I'm over it. I would experience like, again, I don't know your relationship, but I hear that as her saying, oh, you can't carry this. That's fine. You can't anchor. You can't co-experience healing with me. That's fine. That's cool. I'll keep doing this on my own.

And so I would coach you. I would encourage you to go hold both of her hands and look her in the eyes and say, I didn't answer this right. I'm going to re I'm going to re answer this. I am not scared about what happened with you. And I want you to put your feet on the ground, whether you're sitting down or standing up when you talk to her. And I want you to imagine roots growing from your feet all the way to the center of the earth. I want you to look at her and say,

I will be with you every single step of the way, next to you, behind you, in front of you, but you decide what happens next. Because when you go to a woman who's been assaulted, who wants to go back out with a group of friends a few years later, and you want to begin to say, whoa, you can't do that. Those friends won't, what you implicitly say is, you didn't get this the last time, you need somebody to guard you.

Somehow you played a role in this. Do you get what I'm saying? And I know that's not what you're meaning to do, but I just wanted to give you the 360 degree experience here. Yeah, I see what. You have to own how uncomfortable you, and be pissed at her friends. That sucks that they didn't show up for. But you have to own your discomfort. You can't hand your discomfort to her. You can't hand your anger and rage to her.

And you have to go see a counselor and deal with your anger and rage. And by the way, you should be incredibly enraged. I've been with the same woman for a quarter century. If I found out, if she sat down and was like, hey, I need to tell you this happened to me, I'd be right there with you.

I would be enraged and she gets to choose what counseling looks like. And she gets to choose what going to the authority is or not looks like. And she gets to choose that I don't want to do anything right now, but in a year from now, I might want to. And you experience your feet rooted to the center of the earth and you let her know, I'm not scared of the feelings of the pain of the hurt. I am rooted here with you.

Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do. I just... It sounds like you feel powerless. Helpless. Yeah. And most men don't get to experience that feeling. Actually, they experience it all the time, but they wallpaper over it. I want you to hold it. You got to grieve it. Yeah. Yeah.

I just, I just want everything. I just want to do everything for her. I'd want to protect her, take care of her, do everything. And just knowing that it's, it's stupid to think, but like a part of me is like, damn, three years ago, like,

What if I was there? That's not stupid. Why is that stupid? I don't know. Because we didn't even know each other existed. Dude, you are just, you're a good man. And I think it's fair to hold her hands when you're telling her, hey, I'm not scared of this and I'm rooted here with you. And letting her know, I want to rescue you. I want to protect you. I don't want anyone to ever hurt you again. And you get to choose what happens next when it comes to healing here.

And she will then exhale and know, okay, if I need to go to counseling, if I need to hug, if later on down the line we're being intimate and I need to stop, if I need to go away to impatient for a while, or if I just need to tell a bunch of like crass jokes and be uncomfortable, he's rooted. Mm-hmm.

If I need him to protect me from my, tell me not to go out with these stupid women again. I'll tell you, right? But she gets to decide that. Yeah. She doesn't need a dad. She needs an anchor point. And I'm telling you this with all love in my heart. You can't fix what happened. What you can be is, you can be a powerful, strong support as she heals for the next however long.

- I plan on doing that. I just haven't been...

Just when I get in my own head, I don't, I don't go to, I don't want to tell any of my friends. I feel like it's way too personal a little thing to. Yeah. It's her story to tell. It's her story to tell. And I don't want to talk to her as well. Cause I don't want to bring it up. And because I know, however, I'm feeling it was probably tenfold for her after that happened. And I don't want to bring that up and put her in that spot again. Yeah. But we're not going to compare grief. It's not a contest. Yeah.

and I think you're right to not tell your buddies yet that's her story to tell and at some point like because your buddies if this relationship keeps going will have some shape form or fashion to be her buddies right but I can tell by the emotion like you need to go talk to a counselor dude because there's also a powerlessness in this story that probably has roots in your own childhood too I never really thought about it that way

There's probably been other moments in your life when you were powerless. And the way many of us growing up, especially men, dealt with powerlessness is rage. Big chests. I will come for you. It's the fight part of fight or flight. And right now you're fighting ghosts because it was three years ago. There's no one to fight. Right. Right. An exercise. Well,

I don't give you an exercise yet. I got a couple of things I would do if you and I were working together long-term, but you're not ready there. I want you to go talk to a counselor and I want you to tell her, I want to redo it. I want to redo that thing. It's haunting me that I didn't answer it the right way. I just let us watch a movie together after you put this big thing on the table and I want to redo. Can I have a redo? And she'll probably be like, you don't need a redo. I'm fine. No, no, no. It's for me. We do this for me.

Okay. Okay. And I'm not scared, and I'll be next to you, in front of you, behind you, underneath you. You decide what happens next, but I am rooted, and we will be on this adventure together wherever life takes us. And then maybe finish with this sentence. You are safe with me.

Cool? Yeah. That's all I wanted to see. Okay. She needs a co-pilot. She needs a support system, not a father, not an instruction manual, not somebody to filter her decisions and not somebody who inadvertently communicates to her, if you'd just done this, this, and this, this wouldn't have happened. We're not doing that. We're not doing that. I am an anchor point here.

I'll go to counseling with you. I will drive you. I will drop you off. I will sit with you for six months when you just can't go. I will choose to believe you when you say everything's all good. And then four months from now when it's not good, I'm going to choose to hold you and love you. I am here. And she gets to decide what happens next. She's lucky to have you, my brother. She's lucky to have you. Blessings to you. Call anytime. We'll be right back.

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I'm blessed. I'm hanging in there. Very good. What's up? All right. So I'm 19. I just got married five months ago. That a girl? 19, huh? Yes. Excellent. I'm incredibly nervous. So I'm just going to stumble through this here. Oh, yeah. Don't be nervous. But I know that's like saying like, don't have brown hair like this. You can't help that. So just be as nervous as you want to be.

All right. So my husband has been struggling with some digestive health issues that have kept him from eating, kept him from keeping the food down that he does eat. And so he's extremely malnourished and underweight. To provide just a 30-second background, we're both coming off of some pretty heavy childhood trauma.

On my end, my dad is a disabled veteran with PTSD and a cancer survivor. So I've always kind of taken on a caregiver role and doctors and hospitals have just been a complete constant in my life. And I kind of thought I was stepping out of that. And now my husband's dealing with this health concern. So...

The problem is I've been in panic mode trying to get him to do all the steps he needs to take and heal, but he just kind of seems disinterested like he's given up on himself. He's very hesitant to follow the doctor's diet or see personal counseling because the doctors have told us that it stems from his severe anxiety. So my question is, how can I help him to see the importance of his health when it feels like he's already given up?

You've had a rough go of it, sister. Are you tired? I'm really tired. And the men in your life are in pain, huh? Yeah, and...

My husband is amazing, but he also struggles with some anger stuff, just like my dad did. And so I guess when I got married so young and left the house, I kind of thought that I was getting out of that situation. No, we marry our unfinished business, as they say. Yeah. We marry our unfinished business. And that's a nerdy way of saying your body has been trying to solve your father for a long time.

And it just moved that puzzle over to this new guy. Yeah. And I'll ask you, were you ever able to solve your dad? No. No. I mean, things have gotten better between us, but... Leave it there for a second and sit in that. Because that hurts to say out loud. Because there's a nine-year-old little girl wondering why your dad keeps drinking. And why your dad's so mad. And why your dad is banging the cabinets in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep. Scared to death out of your mind. Trying to hide under your covers. Right? Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. That was, you should not have experienced that as a little girl. I'm sorry. And the way your body tried to solve that was by learning everything from every doctor and every medical textbook and every Google search you could find because you were going to solve and figure out what was wrong with dad. And I'm telling you right now as a little girl, that wasn't your job. And I'm sorry that you had to take that on.

It's exhausting. You should have been out playing with your friends and being ridiculous and going on dates and listening to Taylor Swift and just being silly. And instead you were a home health care nurse to somebody who didn't want your help, right? Right. Where's mom in all this? She had to have a full-time job during most of that time, and I was homeschooled, so I was just in the house all day, every day. So you were trapped inside of your own home with a bear. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sorry. Thank you. Can I tell you something that's going to sound weird? Okay. The way your nervous system is probably tuned up, peace will feel like stress for you. It's interesting that you say that because every time things start to feel okay, I feel like something's about to happen, if that makes sense. It's the shoe-going-to-drop syndrome. That's not the technical term for it, but that's what I call it. And...

Often, waiting for the shoe-to-drop syndrome people, they run around and start whacking shoes out of people's hands just to go ahead and let them drop now, and they cause problems where there's not any. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. Okay. You're not broken, okay? There's not something quote-unquote wrong with you. Your body's just trying to navigate a mess.

And then you married a guy. What's his digestive challenges? Does he have Crohn's or ulcerative colitis? What's he got? They thought that, but the test came back and said that he has gastritis and IBS and that they're only so severe because of his anxiety. Yeah, he's got psychosomatic challenges. Where does his anxiety stem from?

Well, his mom left in his high school years, and his dad is diagnosed bipolar. Oh, Jesus. So, yeah, he was not at peace at home either. Yeah, no kidding. Right, so an electric fence met an electric fence, and y'all fell in love, right? Yeah. This is going to sound like a strange, invasive question, and you don't have to answer it if you don't want to, but what does...

physical intimacy look like with you guys? Is it constant? Is it a safe place? Is it non-existent? It's becoming more of a safe place. At the start of our marriage, it was feeling non-existent because I had so much anxiety around it. Like, is everything going to go perfect? And he kind of felt that for me and he was feeling sick all the time. So it was physically challenging for him. So that has been a struggle for us. Okay. How long have y'all been married?

Um, five months. Okay. Can I let you in on a secret about being married? Sure. Nothing goes perfectly. Nothing. Even the greatest night of sex will have weird stuff to it. Sounds, smells, all of it. Even the most romantic date in the world will be weird or more expensive than you thought. Or the waiter will look at you funny. It's just the way it is. And I'm telling you that as someone who also is an anxious person, um,

Where I found healing and peace was by opening my hand up and letting go. Because I was trying to control every variable because controlling every variable felt like that was going to keep me safe in a world that feels out of control. Yeah. And when you end up doing a squeeze and so tight, you suffocate. Now, here's why. If you go back and listen to all the questions I've asked you, I haven't one time told you or given you anything on how you can quote unquote convince your husband to take care of himself.

Because here's the demon. You can't. And until you drop your shoulders and weep bitterly into that reality, you're never going to be able to take a full breath because your chest is going to be so tight all the time. I just, I get scared because he's sitting right above the lethal BMI for men now and they're telling him that he has to do something right now. I know. But do you realize there's an electric fence talking to an electric fence? Yeah.

I think the greatest gift you can give him right now is peace. And the only way you can give something that you don't have is you got to go get it. And so the guy who trained me, Dr. Young, you can go back and listen to the episode. I actually had him on my show. He's one of my heroes. He used to train, one of the core training sentiments he always gave us was calm is contagious.

And in your home, if every sexual encounter, every touchstone, I don't want to say sexual encounter, but every physical interaction is electric, is performance-based, this has to go right or else, you'll starve each other of the thing you need most, which is peace in each other. And if every meal, you're counting every bite and every calorie, your husband will know every time he sits down to do something as silly as eat a meal, he is in front of a stage of thousands.

And his body will go to fight or flight or freeze. And so there's something horrifying about making peace with somebody making their choices. And also, strangely, that's the only way when someone is just double over in anxiety, it's the only way they can begin to slowly exhale. It's peace. Putting out fires one by one by one.

And so the thing that kept you safe as a kid, knowing every doctor appointment, talking to every doctor, knowing every medication, knowing all the AM pills and the PM pills, that will destroy your adult marriage. Because your husband doesn't need a mom. He just needs a safe place to land. And like you haven't been married very long. You don't know how to do that. I've been married forever. I'm still learning how to do that.

Right. And as soon as I think I've got what safe space means, my wife, she changes. She reads new books. She has new experiences. She has new spiritual insights, whatever. She changes. I got to reestablish what safety means. It's been just and vice versa. Right. And so the beauty of marriage is you don't just get it, set it and forget it. It's a constantly evolving, amazing thing. How can I love you today?

And the only thing I ask of you is to tell me the truth. You have to promise to tell me the truth. And if the greatest thing I can do to love you today is to not bother you about what you're eating, okay. But I'm still making dinner. I'm going to have something out here that's safe and it's delicious. And then at some point you need to make the decision. I can't be in here and watch you long tail. They call it long tail suicide. I can't watch you just slowly wither away until you don't exist anymore. Yeah. That's a boundary I'm going to draw. I choose to not watch you die.

And unfortunately, unless there's some diagnostic, like, diagnosable psychiatric challenges, it's hard to get a hospital to take away somebody's civil rights and commit them involuntarily, right? Trust me, I've looked into it. I know you have, especially in Texas. And so it's tough. It's tough. Does he say he's not hungry? Does he say he doesn't want to deal with his anxiety? What's his response to that?

He says he's hungry, but that it'll just hurt if he eats or if he doesn't, and so he doesn't want to deal with it. Ah, okay. Have they given him medications to help the pain? Yeah, and they're not super effective. And if he sticks with the one he's on now, it'll be the first time he's actually stuck through with one long-term, so I think that's another thing. And so that might be a conversation you guys have?

with, hey, I want to commit to two things. Skin-on-skin contact. It's going to hold you. It doesn't have to be sexual. And it's a way to down-regulate your nervous system. It brings peace. It's going to hold your foot. And by the way, I'm an anxious guy. I'm spun up a lot without even saying anything now. And I've been with the same person for, like I said, a quarter century, a long time. But I can be somewhere and I will just gently feel my wife's hand on my arm or she'll just grab my thumb.

Or put her hand under the table on my knee. And it's just a reminder to me to drop my shoulders. There's something magic about skin on skin. Or hold his face for 10, 20, 30 seconds. Put your forehead on his forehead. And just be still there. And if y'all commit to asking each other, how can I love you today? And he goes first and tells you. And you respond to him, you can love me today by taking your medication. Even when you don't want to, that's a gift to me. You can love me today by doing what your doctor said.

And you as a newlywed have to deal with or live in the reality that he might say, nah, I'm not going to love you like that. That's hard. That's hard to hear, right? Yeah. But often that's a way of frame it as a partner, as a romantic interest, as someone who's ride or die, you and me versus the world. Showing up and telling somebody you need to eat, you need to take your pills, you need to do this. That's just another parent telling them something that I'm not going to, I'm not doing that.

So in one way, I feel like I'm telling you it's like you're kind of powerless. In another way, I'm telling you the strength and power you have will come from the inside out, will become from peace, and it'll become from love, and it'll become from connection, not rules and rules and finger pointing. Do you hear that? Oh.

Yeah. And when I'm in that situation and I'm feeling scared and anxious, I know that I come off as angry because of that frustration. And I know that sets him off and makes things worse. Hold on. No, no, no, no. He gets to choose that too. I want to empower you both. You get to look at your husband and say, when you choose to do things behaviorally that I know that the doctors told us are hurting you, I get to be upset about that.

I have permission to be angry and heartbroken about that. And he gets to choose whether he reacts to that. But the language in your house of you're making me and you're making, it's not true. Let's just pass him the buck. You get to choose anger. You get to choose frustration. You get to choose heartbreak when the man you love, the man that promised you till death do us part, ride or die. He's like, I'm not going to take my meds. I'm not going to do what the doctor said. I'm not going to go to counseling with you. I don't want to address my anxiety. You get to be sad about that.

It'd be weird if you weren't, right? Yeah. And just know your body's running a program. It's seen this before with your dad, a man that you love, the man you were constantly asking, what am I not doing for you to get well and for you to love me? And I want you to hear me say, it's not about you with him, with your dad, and it's not about you with your husband. They both have demons that they have to decide. I want to heal. And for you, somebody that's been trying so hard to,

to be seen, of being worthy of being loved. I want you to hear me say, you are, you are, you are, you are. Mentally, you know, I can know that it's their choice, but it still just feels like if I figure out the right code, the right sequence of words, then things would be different. They won't. I know. I say this with a smile on my face. You don't have that kind of power. This is never about information. They both know. Yeah. That's why I think the only path is peace. The only path is love.

The only path is boundaries. So I think beginning, like just starting today, I'm going to send you a copy of Building a Non-Anxious Life. I'm going to send you two, one for you and one for him. And I want you to ask him, one of the ways you can love me is I want to read this book together. It's this goofball podcast that I listen to. This guy's silly, but will you read it with me? This would be a neat way you could love me. And maybe let him know, I've been hassling you about diet. I've been hassling you about these things. I'm going to stop because it's not working. And I want to be your wife, not your mom.

but I love you to the moon and back. I love you more than life itself. And I get to be heartbroken when I'm watching you act in some of these ways. And I'm going to work on me. I'm going to work on finding and practicing peace. I've never had that in my life ever. And I'm going to practice that now because I'm tired of practicing fighting and solving and electric, like electrocuting everybody. And Jane, I want you to commit to going to see a counselor. Okay. Okay. There is healing from your anxiety. And it might be that your husband begins to feel like,

peace in his life. And he begins to say, Oh, I want that. I want that. And I want y'all to start each day and end each day with some skin on skin contact. I want you to start each day and end each day with how can I love you today? Okay. Does that work? Yes. Yeah, that works. And I've been meaning to get the non-anxious life book. So I'm excited. I'll send you two copies, one for you and one for him. Okay. I want y'all to both read it. Um, and I want you to call anytime.

But this is serious enough for you and for him that I want you to get some professional counseling and therapy. Put it in your budget. Figure it out. Don't go out to eat, whatever. But I want you to go get some professional help. You've been through the ringer. Your body's tired and you're only 19. You have a wild, rambunctious life left to live. He does too. This isn't something that's going to be solved on a YouTube show or a podcast. You need to go get some professional help. I believe in you. Thank you so, so much for the call. Call anytime, Jayden.

And if you want to, your husband can call also. Or if he wants to, he can call too. We'll be right back. The budgeting and spending app that I love and I personally use is EveryDollar. And it's the greatest budgeting and planning app on planet Earth.

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That's every dollar dot com slash Deloney or go to the app store and download every dollar and use promo code Deloney. Get control of your money with every dollar. All right, we're back. Kelly, what are the lyrics like? If you look, you can look, you can still time after time. I know that I know this part where it goes time after time. What are the other words? If you have to the math.

I'll be waiting. See, that's all I remember. Time after time. I'm just guessing that's the most important part of the song. It's the time after time part. It's called time after time and that's the chorus. A little bit on the nose there. A little bit on the nose. A bit. Or satellite. I don't remember. You Dave Matthews fan? No.

You such a liar. She has the DMV tattooed right above her belly button. And trust me, she wears midriffs all the time. I thought you said I had thug life above my belly button already. No, thug life's like a little bit higher, like right above your rib cage. And if you didn't walk around in jean shorts and sports bras all the time, we wouldn't know that. But that's how she rolls here. All right, hey, check this out.

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Maybe you could take 30 or 40% off your life. And here's the book to do so. Nothing says like, you know what, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, you know what? I love you so much. And you're a little bit spun up. Here's a book just for you. So where do they go? RamseySolutions.com slash store. RamseySolutions.com slash store. 50 days of Christmas. Because why not? Hooking you up. Thank you guys for being with us.

Satellite in my eyes. Steve Matthews, dude. You know this. Don't play coy. I'm not a jam band type of girl, so they definitely qualify as that. I mean, I'm fine with like ants marching, but I saw them in concert. They opened for somebody and it was like three songs in an hour. And it's just not my thing. It was enough to send you straight to the tattoo parlor. So it struck a chord with you somehow, some way. She keeps coming up with...

every single day. Peace out, y'all. Love you.