I Gave My Husband an Ultimatum and Now He Wants a Divorce
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So I gave him the ultimatum. It had kind of been really our entire relationship, but most of our almost four-year marriage, him crossing lines and like rules that I felt like we had set pretty much in our relationship. What lines and rules? That language kind of makes me feel... What up? What up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm so glad that you have joined us talking about your mental and emotional health and your relationships, whatever you got going on in your life.

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Hi, Dr. John. My question is, how can I repair my relationship with my husband after giving him an ultimatum? I don't think anyone's ever asked me that question in that way. So did you say, all right, here's the ultimatum, and he just flew right by the ultimatum, and you're like, I mean, never mind? A little bit, I guess. Okay.

Yeah, so there's probably no repairing. There may be rebuilding. There may be building something totally new. But, I mean, you said if you cross this line, this thing's burned to the ground. And he crossed the line and then it burned to the ground. And now you're like, oh, just kidding. Is that what happened? Kind of. Tell me all about it. Yeah, so I gave him the ultimatum. And it had kind of been like just reexamined.

Really our entire relationship, but most of our almost four-year marriage, him crossing lines and rules that I felt like we had set pretty much in our relationship. What lines and rules? That language kind of makes me feel weird. Okay, yeah, that's fair. I call it a rule instead of a boundary because...

I don't feel like it fits the definition of a boundary, but we had more of like a rule in our relationship that neither of us would watch porn or kind of consume things that were just overtly sexual. And he never watched porn, at least while we were married, but he would look at things really sneaky and behind my back that we both felt like just crossed that line.

And there were times where I would catch him or he would tell me, which is great, I guess. But yeah, so I just kind of had felt like I didn't really want to deal with that anymore. And I don't know, he just had a very adverse reaction to it. Like at first he really understood and was like, I'm trying my best and whatever.

I have a lot of respect for you and I want to be better for you. And then a few weeks later, he came home and told me that he didn't think he wanted to be married anymore. And he felt like he couldn't look at me the same after the ultimatum. And me doing that, giving him an ultimatum while he felt like he was trying his best.

best to figure this out, um, made him lose like respect and attraction for me. Um, and it made him realize that he wasn't super happy in our marriage because he felt like he was being controlled. Yeah. I mean, I mean, this, this doesn't apply everywhere, but a rule is for you. I'm setting this rule for you. A boundary is something I set for me.

Okay. And so just as you're describing this, it sounds very much like me talking to the parent of a teenager. Yeah. And his response, quite honestly, is very much like a teenager response. Then I'm moving out. I'm 16. I'm moving out. I don't want to live here. Right. Right. And it sounds like the question of him...

I don't want to get into it, but I kind of do. You say he wasn't looking at porn and he's not doing this and he's not doing this. Was he pausing on it? If I look at Instagram right now, every 10th scroll is somebody in a bikini top or something. You know what I mean? Mine's a work thing, right? And my social media person is a young woman. I'm not pausing on anything ever. Yet it's still just there. Or if I go to the news right now, if I went to check on the weather,

There's going to be some little, like, ad strip on the side with somebody in a bathing suit or somebody almost topless selling me, like, a Kia, right? Right. So tell me, is he pausing on this? Like, what are you, quote, unquote, catching him doing? Um, I...

I don't know. I don't want to put too much of his business out there. You kind of already have. We're here. That's true. We're here. You don't have to name him or anything, but what is he stopping at? What's he looking at? Yeah, it would be like on... Because he actually deleted Instagram because he felt like he was always surrounded by things that made him want to...

dive deeper into something. But he still had like TikTok and stuff. And on there, there's like weird like sex bots. And so he would go on those profiles and like click on the links and just like weed down a rabbit hole. And it eventually led to him like basically deleting everything, any kind of social media, except for Facebook. And then even on Facebook, he would like

The final, this was kind of what was the final thing for me is he had kind of created this loophole where he would like join Facebook groups where people would post links where like the cover photo was like some woman with her bare butt or something like, I don't know. And he would try to click on those links or just whatever it was. Um,

He was, I don't know. So it was never like really porn, but it was just like almost that, like about as close as you can get without searching up porn. Okay. So what I hear is a guy who is struggling. Yes, absolutely. And I hear a guy who said, like, who agreed with his wife.

Either to quote unquote your rules or y'all sat down and said, here's you, you both sat down and co-created this identity. Who's here. Who's this is who we're going to be. We're going to channel a hundred percent of our sexual desire and energy into each other. Yeah. Game on. Okay. That sounds like a noble goal. Okay. Go get it. And then both of you are going to have to learn how to handle that intensity. Okay.

Right. Right. It's a lot, but here we are. And then he stopped looking at what we would call traditional pornography. Then he found like that the internets keep hollering at him. So he got rid of Instagram and he got rid of Tik TOK and then he got rid of Facebook. And occasionally he clicks on a picture of a butt. Right. Like, so here I hear, I see a guy, uh,

continually making another effort, another effort, another effort, and then he comes to you. Yeah. What I hear is a guy that can't win or more specifically, a guy who's struggling and whose wife is standing on the side of the bank of the river with their arms crossed saying, if you can't swim, you're done. Is that fair? Am I mischaracterizing that?

Um, I don't think it's unfair. Um, yeah, I mean, I think he was definitely struggling and I had not ever, like anytime it happened, I had only told him that I loved him and that it was okay and that I forgave him. And that I knew that he was going to like try again. Like it was always a fresh start. Um, what led to the ultimatum? What happened? Um,

So the ultimatum was...

Basically, I had had a weird feeling that he wasn't being completely honest about it because I was asking him how things were going. He had started therapy for it. He has dealt with a pornography addiction in the past. And so we would frequently just do check-ins just to see how he was doing. And it was basically just like, how are you? Are you good or not good? Okay, what can we do this week? What can I do to support you? Yeah.

And I just had a feeling that he wasn't being honest about it. So I asked him if I could look at his phone and he said, sure. And I did. And that's when I found that he had been joining a bunch of Facebook groups where the purpose was to like post things that were just overtly sexual. And he had been like just searching up things that were kind of weird. And so I was like, Hey, that's not,

Cool. When you say weird, are you talking about like for real weird sex stuff? Cause the internet is a dark, gnarly place. Uh, yeah, not like definitely weird. Nothing that's like was scary or like violent, but just, um, furniture and shoes and feet and stuff. Yeah. Like weird. Yeah. Okay. That's all you gotta say. Yeah. There's, there's, yeah. Anyway. Um, um, yeah. And so, um,

I basically was just like, I don't appreciate this anymore, you know? And I really need to see like a more of a good faith effort and like something that I can hold onto that shows that you really respect this. And I led into just this deeper conversation where he just was like, I don't know, like, I feel like this isn't my value anymore. So I don't see the purpose in it. But like, I'm going to,

keep trying for you, but basically like, I just don't, I don't like having all of these restrictions on what I can view and not view. Right. And so, I mean, we, this is what I think is the problem in the, the, um, popular media is,

Like boundaries are all the rage right now. I talk about them all the time. Ultimatums. Like, yeah. Right. The great cutoff, right? I'm not talking to my parents because one time when I was a kid, right? All that kind of stuff. Right. What nobody talks about is when the person on the other side of the boundary goes, ah, okay, cool. You'll have a good one. And they head out. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And they basically call your bluff. Yeah. Yeah.

And so the question you have to ask yourself is multifaceted. Number one, when you said ultimatum, that means ultimatum. That means either or, if then. You do this or I'm out. Yeah. So you have to be able to say, I was wrong on that. Or, bye.

Right. If you're weird internet searches and you're like, if that's more important than this, and by the way, it's not, it's a deeper thing. He lives in a failure factory. He can't win. Right. Or he feels he can't win. Right. Or he's making choices to not win. Right. It's all that's true. Right. He has not made the decision to quote unquote, get clean. And that's hard. Right. And he says, bye, then you got what you wanted.

Yeah. Right. You wanted a life without a part with a, with, with or without a partner. You didn't want that garbage in your life. So here you go. You got it. So you have to decide, A, am I right on that? Or B, okay, I over, I overstepped. I, I'm sorry. I was wrong.

Number two, you have to own that continually over-paternalizing him, over-parenting him is not working. Totally. And you all have to go – it isn't about watering down your boundaries or watering down your values. It's you saying, I value us together, and the way I've been trying to keep us together is by increasingly becoming your mom, and that's not working.

Yeah. And so you need to go sit with somebody and learn some new skills. Yeah. Right? And I think telling him that, that I value monogamy in all of its forms. And I value like you and like I want to be the recipient of that laser focus of your sexual energy. And by the way, I've got to learn how to hold that. Right. And underneath all of that, it sounds crazy.

and hard to hear, but my guess is his continued going down rabbit holes has very little if nothing to do with you. Yeah. And he has to make a commitment to, I want to get to the bottom of these fetishes. I want to get to the bottom of curiosity. I want to get to the bottom of just opening these accounts and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking down these rabbit holes. Right. And he has to decide if he wants to stay with you because he may not want to give that stuff up. He may not want to give up the illusion. Like, I didn't even go from my mom's house to yet another mom.

Right. So do you want to stay married to this guy? I do. Yeah. Are you willing to do it and not cash in? What do you mean by that? This is a pivotal moment in a lot of marriages. Yeah. Where you either recommit together, he doesn't give up on himself and on you, and you don't give up on him, or one of you kills the other, a part of themselves and just says, whatever. Yeah. You either are like, whatever. He has a weird internet-y thing. Fine.

And you never fully present because it grosses you out and makes you sad and all that stuff. Or he just resents you and continues to have a secret life that can't put on the table. Yeah. What's your next move? Yeah. We're kind of like in that process right now, I guess, because it's been a few months since quite a few months since then, which has led to like,

It's just been a really messy last few months, reasonably. I've recognized that I don't think, and said I don't think that the ultimatum was right or really a reflection of how I was truly feeling. But it just felt, yeah, I regret it. I regret saying it and doing that. And I don't think that they ever really give people the outcomes that they want. Let's say ultimatum is for you.

Right. An ultimatum is not to get somebody else to change their behavior. It's you saying, this is what I will tolerate. Yeah. And then they have to go make a grown-up choice. And you get how different that is than the way they're usually used as weapons. Right. And that's not what they're for. They're for protection. Yeah. For you. Absolutely. And that's just my misunderstanding. If you step back five years, ten years on a trend line,

Do you see a man that's growing into the man you see that he can become? Or do you see a man who's just a lying, conniving, I'm going to do my own thing. I'm just going to get better at my secrets. As it currently stands where we're at in our relationship, I would say it's probably about 50-50. Okay. I think the part you've got to reimagine and rebuild is can I trust you?

Right. And he has to reimagine with you, can I trust you? You've got to trust that he's not going to have secret things that y'all together agreed on that go against your agreed upon identity. We are a couple who doesn't engage in that. Cool. And every couple decides those things for themselves. And then if he creates a secret life, it's a violation of the identity y'all decided together. And beneath that, he has to trust you that when he struggles, you're not going to throw some imaginary gauntlet down and say,

Or imaginary fence down and be like, all right, here's the end of my love this time. Here's the end of my love this time. You'll both have to rebuild trust with each other. And that might be you looking at him saying, I'm never going to leave you. Period. Do you love me? Because I see something better for both of us. I'm worth more than being married to a guy that has to like sneak off in the closet and close the door and look up like fetish videos or whatever. I feel like I'm worth more than that. And I love you more than that.

but I'm not going to be your mom and I'm not going to be your dad. Or, hey, here's where my line is and I'm going to hold it firm and vice versa. But I think it's coming back like the, how do we heal this? How do we, I think it's both of you sitting at a table saying, okay, here's what is what is. The last few months have been awful. Let's wipe the table. Will you build something new with me? Here's what must be true. And that means both of you have to sit down and say, here's what I want. I want a marriage without that kind of garbage in my life. He might say, I want a marriage where I'm married to a partner, not to a mom.

And we're going to build this thing slowly but surely. My guess here is, I don't have a guess. I think this one's going to be tough. I think this one's going to be tough. But I don't want you to compromise. And I want him to feel heard and seen. And that's a tough, that's a tough road to navigate. Thanks for the call, Susan. We'll be right back.

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Through, we're kind of passing now, but we were coming up there on the year anniversary of Lou's, she had a miscarriage. And so just how can I support my wife with feelings of loss and grief? And I guess kind of the, it's easier to kind of offload that burden onto her. And it's kind of a twofer of, you know, how can I process that loss and grief to help her? Help.

Tell me what you've been experiencing. Tell me what you've seen in your lived experience with you and your wife. Well, so just, you know, what I think is very common of just... No, no, no, no, no. Don't tell other people's story. Tell yours. How's it been? No, no, no. I understand. The friends announcing pregnancies and...

the children that they already have growing and, and being a part of, uh, lots of, uh, friend groups with, with, with children and being around children and, um, kind of navigating the, the good balance of, you know, I want to Google and ogle with her if a baby staring at us in public and, you know, talk and dream about that stuff. Um, but, but not, uh, turn it into an, an overwhelming feeling or, or, um,

Um, just, uh, uh, not a pester in a sense, but just not let it get extreme to the point of it's overwhelming to just constantly be around kids or talking about it. And, um, is she, is she, is she unable to have that conversation?

No, no. And this that's I know that I'm kind of coming to you first. It is, you know, it's just it's sitting down and having conversations. I just always love the conversation.

your reiteration of having the right tools, you know, just, I, I love, um, just in life, you know, if you've got the right tools for the job you're doing it, boy, it makes the job, uh, much, much easier and faster and nicer. And so I'm just, this is more just the making sure that I've got the right tools or that I can sharpen up some of the tools because your show, your show has been great. Um, I've,

been able to listen to women talk about it and their experience and then what you've talked about with them of that was able, you know, I was able to already do some things with her and kind of talk about some things, but let me, let me hop in here. Let me hop in here. All right. So I may not have talked about my experience and I've been through this a bunch. Okay.

Um, and you can tell me, no, not my experience at all. Or yeah, dude, I totally get that. Um, first miscarriage and especially second miscarriage. I didn't get it. Um, it was a loss and I was sad and I was bummed out. Um, but it wasn't my body that was changing.

And it wasn't me. I wasn't staying up all night researching what's about to happen to my body and what's happening to this baby and what stage are we in and what it looked like. And here's sonogram picture number one and sonogram picture number two. For me and for many, many, many of the men I've sat with over the years, it didn't register there with me. In fact, I kicked into, okay, how much money are we going to have? Are we going to be able to afford? It just became very practical for me.

I also did not immediately start thinking of, I didn't grow up with a lot of little kids around me and I didn't babysit. I didn't have these images already in my head of toddlers and middle school kids and dances. I didn't have that. My experience has been that

countless women find out they're pregnant and they immediately start living into this picture, imagining what's it going to be like? What's this going to be like? Oh my gosh, this will be cool. Here's what the nursery will look like. Here's what first grade are they going to go to? I just didn't, I didn't go there. I didn't, I didn't even know to. Not an excuse, just is. And so miscarriage number one, miscarriage number two, I was unprepared for the disproportionate loss that was felt in my house.

I was very sad. I was heartbroken. I was not prepared for my wife's devastation. Does that make sense? Oh, it's perfect sense because that's my experience as well. I had no idea. There you go. I like you. What's that? Heartbroken. Stop right there. Just saying it out loud, I didn't know. I'm sorry. That's huge. Here's number two.

There is a sense of loss, like being betrayed by your own body. That's disorienting. Does that make sense? Yes. This idea that you and I will never be able to, we can hear the story. We'll never know internally what that feels like.

Like my body's supposed to do this thing to create life and not take life or not be inhospitable to life or what was going on or what happened. Like it's this, it's this real quick loop. And this is almost every woman I've ever talked to has experienced this, has sat down and asked that question. What, what did I do? What happened? And it can get, um, um, I mean, it gets very in the weeds that I eat something that I run that I, like it just, you start going down every variable cause you have this picture and you want to, you don't want it to ever happen again. And your body starts creating stories. Um,

Here's the big thing. What's important here is her story. Okay. And you saying, I can't be in your body. I can't be in your, um, in your experience, but I want to know, and I'll sit here with you in the discomfort. And here's a couple of ways you can do that. Did y'all give this, um, this child that you lost, did you give, you give him her name?

After hearing you speak with some others, I had just brought it up to, you know, what would you have done? What would I have done? And we just, you know, it was nothing direct, but just like, hey, what name is the first one that popped into your head? Did y'all come up with one? Yeah, we did. What was the name? Bella. Okay.

I am somebody who believes deeply that speaking the names is important. That's just, that's me and that's the people I've sat with, but speaking the name is important. Coming up on like maybe the first year anniversary, there can be something cathartic and healing about you both writing a letter to Bella on what would have been her one year birthday and saying, we miss you and we hope you're resting easy in heaven. And me and mom are being intentional about choosing joy in the present.

But just being honest, writing those things down, getting them out of your body and getting them onto paper. And then here's the big thing, being a witness to sitting with each other and reading them out loud. Because the worst part about grief is not the worst part. There's a whole bunch of bad stuff about grief, but one of the worst parts about grief is miss, um,

It's the misalignment. You're sitting in your own house on your own couch and she thinks you shouldn't be over it yet. And you think she should be over it yet. And you see this amazing baby in line at target and you want to hug the baby. And she's like, how could you? And it's this misalignment and you feel like you're on an Island, but you're sitting on the same couch together. You know what I'm saying? Oh yeah. So it's about aligning grief. It's about aligning the pictures so that she feels permission that when you are hugging a baby, you're

In public, you are just gaga, goo-gooing and all the stuff. Or when your friend calls you and says, like, dude, I'm having a baby, and you go, yeah, all right. You won't have permission to say that out loud. You want to celebrate that. And she has permission to go, boo. Both are true. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. But I think there's something important about a name or something important about a marker, a ceremony.

And there's something important. And it's different for everybody. I've got some friends who did a small thing one time 20 years ago. And cool. I went and got the names tattooed on my body. They're on my body next to my kids' names that are tattooed on me. Like everybody does it differently. It's not a right or wrong way to do it. The thing is you need to do a thing. And to give her permission, your wife permission, to tell the story a year later.

And maybe that is you being real brave and saying, um, Hey, tonight after dinner, I want to do something kind of weird and it's going to be heavy. Are you in? Oh gosh, Conrad. What now? I want to, um, I want to talk about Bella and she'll go cold, right? She would freeze if you said that, wouldn't she? Yeah. Yeah. I'm, you know, she'd, she'd be quiet, but, um, say, I want to hear your story. What are the things I don't know?

And your job is just to sit there and show up in that discomfort so that she's not alone. And you, brother, if you haven't yet, I want you to be honest too about it all. Because it wasn't until my wife told her story to me that I exhaled and I got to be honest with myself. I was way sadder than I had let on. I was way sadder than I had even acknowledged with myself. That loss was bigger than I'd even thought. I'm sorry for both of y'all's loss, my brother. Grief demands a witness.

Story's got to be told. The name's got to be said. And grief demands people sit in that discomfort, not with solutions and not with a bunch of answers and not with a bunch of you shoulds and are just, I hear you, man. I'm sorry. And for everybody listening, somebody else's joy does not diminish your hurt or your pain. Both can be true. And what I have found in my own life is celebrating other people's joys and

especially when I'm hurting, not hiding from their joys. I can't go over there to that birthday party, not after. Celebrating their joys has become one of the greatest antidotes to my own hurt because your body begins to realize there is laughter and there is life and the sun does come up even when you can't see it. Thanks for the call, Brother Conrad. Appreciate you, man. Everybody who experiences it, pregnancy loss, it's hard, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching. Sit with each other, write the stories and say the names. We'll be right back.

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Go to ponchooutdoors.com and use code DELONI. All right, we're back with Anne. Let's go out to Baltimore, Maryland. What's up, Anne? Hi. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm so excited. I listen to you every day, but I'm also extremely nervous. Okay, number one, there's so many other good podcasts you should listen to. And...

Don't be nervous. I'm not that good at this job. Yes, you are. I listen. You offer lots of good advice and perspective. So I'm very appreciative to get this call today. Well, you're too kind. You're too kind. You're an antidote to how mean Kelly is to me. All right. So let's cannonball all the way in. Go for it.

Okay, so basically what I'm looking for is somebody to give me an honest opinion. I've been to three couples counselors. I've been married 15 years, and I'm trying to figure out if I need to just go ahead and vow for separation, move forward with divorce, or go to this couples counseling, that Christian couples counseling my husband asked me to go to, which he's never done before. Okay.

That may be one of the best questions I've ever been asked because it's so layered. I love how layered you made that. Yes, it's very, very complicated. So good. Okay, I'll ask you, let's just reverse engineer the whole thing. Okay.

Give me your gut answer. Don't, don't, um, don't qualify it. Don't maybe just give me your straight from your guts answer. Okay. My gut answer is divorce. Okay. And that's only because you're trying to qualify it. Just say divorce. Sit on it. Sit on it. Yeah. I want to leave him forever. Yes. Exhale on that. That demand evidence from it. Is that true? Yes. Okay.

Because I don't believe people can change anymore. I disagree with you on there, but that doesn't matter. What matters is you said the words out loud. I want a divorce. This is over. Period. Yeah. And anytime I have those big stories in my head that are floating around, floating around, floating around, by the way, I have had that story in my head too. Okay. And I wrote it down and I sat in it and lived in it and I changed my mind. And that's not everybody's path. And I don't even know what happened in your life. But here's, here's, um,

As you laid out that question, here's what I heard in that question. Something big happened or has happened over a period of time and you're exhausted and you've never had autonomy and power in your marriage to make a choice or a decision. And now that you're making one, it feels awkward and weird and obscenely heavy. 100%. Okay. Something changed this year. Like too many things have happened and I finally...

feel like I made a decision. What happened? I feel differently. Well, I had back-to-back surgeries and zero help. Still having to take care of the kids, take care of me. And I felt that showed me a lot. And then he had a lot of issues with his mother because his dad passed away two years ago. Having to take care of her and he couldn't put himself aside.

for the kids, for every single holiday was ruined this year. And it just made me think very differently about how I want our household with our kids. And then also realizing that my wants are never going to be met either. And maybe it's better for everybody if I show them what a happy house is. Exhale on that. Mm-hmm.

You're holding your breath. Drop your shoulders down. I know I'm stressed out. I know. I can feel it. Okay. Yeah. You said it out loud. Now, I'm going to kind of poke holes in your story, and I want you not to just accept what I'm saying, but I want you to push back on me, okay? Mm-hmm. If we've been together 15 years and we've created humans, how many kids you got? Two, three? Three. Three. Gosh, this may be the worst marriage thing I've ever said. Yeah.

If you get a hit in baseball three out of ten times, they put you in the Hall of Fame. Mm-hmm. So it's a bad analogy, but you get what I'm saying. If he had one bad year, his dad dies, he just blew it. The other 14 years have been fine. It's been all right. That's one thing. Mm-hmm.

And I would challenge you to explore a guy who's begging you to go to therapy. Please go to a counselor with me. I blew it. You had surgery. I didn't show up for you. My mom got sick or my dad died, whatever. Like I just went bananas and I blew it. But he'd have to actually feel that way. He doesn't feel that way. Okay. So, but that tells me that either, uh,

you're annoyed by him because it's bad. I mean, you hate him. That's the past year you've put you through hell. Or this is the cap on 15 years worth. So walk me before this year. What has been going on for the last 15 years?

It's been a sexless marriage from the get-go. Like he told me before we got married, it's because it was religious reasons, which we had sex, but you know, he felt better when we were married. But even when we got married, it was one time the entire year and that it

It was exactly like that after that, once every few years. And it was so bad for me because it made me feel horrible as a person that I was cutting. And because of his upbringing, he had zero responses like, okay.

And I just wanted him to hear me, how it's affecting me. I made him go to couples counseling. We did three different couples counselors. We've been kicked out of every one. And I'm just kind of... Why have you been kicked out? The first one when I was pregnant was my second. And it's because the counselor said he knew what to do and he wasn't willing to do the work. So no affection, none of that.

I was working on how I talked to him to make sure I was, you know, serving his ego, making him feel better, not putting him down, not comparing him to like how awesome my dad is or whatever it was. So that was that. We waited a while. Then I, when I was, um,

through two miscarriages before my daughter, which let me just lead by saying all three of my kids are IVF babies. We're not having lots of sex to have those. Those are a totally different story. If you were in person with me, just to lighten the mood, I was going to be like, well, at least you're three for three, right? But you weren't even that, right? No, no, no. Exactly. So...

So I went to another counselor because I basically... I had two miscarriages and I was like, I'm not going to be complete unless I have one more kid. So knowing that was a wrong decision. I mean, it wasn't a wrong decision. I love my children. But I basically told him, if it's not you, it's going to be somebody else. I want to use my eggs. My body doesn't work before. There's no opportunity. And that therapist ended up leaving, sending us to a guy to see if he was more comfortable. And that guy gave up too. He was just like...

This is not working. You two have two different things. You need to work on him. All right. If you circle back and listen to this call, and it'll be hard because it's weird when you hear your own voice, right? That's always weird. But for the people listening and for you, if you want to discern it, when you talked about you, I hear a strength and a resolve at the beginning of this call.

Okay. When you start talking about him, your whole cadence changes, your voice pitch changes. You're mad and you're angry that this dude has taken a decade and a half of your life. What I want to tell you is if you make decisions when you are angry, those are by definition going to be decisions that are not involving all the variables in the next right move.

Okay. So what I want you to do is to feel empowered, but I want you to own the last decade and a half. Here's what I mean by that. I want you to say the words, I have put up with this for a decade and a half. I have...

sought healing I have sought trying to get his attention through 55,000 different like here's the deal I want you to get into the driver's seat of your own life because when you talk about him you sound like you got thrown in the trunk and I want you to make whatever decision you're going to make next because it's going to alter your entire life I want you to make it from the driver's seat not from the trunk okay

And all that means is you take ownership. And when you start taking full ownership, you're going to have a season of deep grief. Okay. Because all this mad you've had at him is going to come back to you. Right. Because I'm going to be the one that's ruining everything. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to recognize that you were participated in this for a decade and a half. I allowed it. You didn't allow it. You're not his mom. You participated in it. Okay. You co-created this thing.

But I tried to fix it. Yes, you did. I'm not saying it's all free at all because I got on meds. I've been seeing a therapist for 15 years. You've worked your butt off. You've worked your butt off. Okay. And I've said this a lot on the show and people can agree with me or disagree with me. I think fidelity is a much fuller picture. This man got married to you and said, I do not want to participate in a marriage with you. Period. Mm-hmm.

And you have gone to hell and back to make sure you did your part. Right. And so my bigger question to you is, you sound very resolved at the beginning of this call. What do you think you haven't done yet? I don't, I don't, it's not that I don't think I haven't done yet. I just know I'm...

I just want to know that I'm right, that I do deserve better, that there's such thing as a happy marriage with affection and all those things. That does exist. I don't know. I don't want to leave selfishly for just me, but it's not just the sex. It's also follow through of getting things done. There's just so many things happening.

I know there's going to be an issue no matter who you're with, but I don't want to blow up my kid's world just selfishly for me. And I think my 30,000-foot view is your house is already blown up. The real question is, are you going to get the kids to safety? Or is safety going to be found where you are? There's just a different path towards it. Yeah. I mean, I don't think they're— What does your husband think he's going to accomplish by this new therapy? This new whatever? I don't—

I don't know. I think he's thinking that it's going to be all fine and I'll like pacifier again for a little bit, but none of it's, nothing's ever changed. Like there's no resolve. Why does he want to stay married to you? I don't,

I think because he's an only child and he's realized over the last year, he's had issues at work that everyone's seeing what I see for once that he has an obsession with baseball and anything outside of that, that he's not interested in. He doesn't do, he can't return phone calls. He can't pay the bills, but he has to have control of the bills. Like those kinds of weird things that he can't even give me an explanation on. Like, he can't tell me why he doesn't do it. Right.

But it's just a multitude of things that it's almost embarrassing. Like I'm embarrassed. So it's hard for me to lift somebody up that I'm not proud of. Yeah. So behavior is a language. You've heard me say that a bunch. And so it's pretty clear what he thinks about you and your kids and your household and your marriage, right?

Yeah, but he's delusional. He's going to act like I've blindsided him, but I've been telling him. But I think his life, he grew up with an alcoholic mother. He's an only child. She had nothing. I mean, she had something to do. She lived in the house, but the world revolved around her, not him. Dad was the loving one. She was the abusive alcoholic. And I don't know if she abused him. I don't know because he just, it's a blank spot. He can't remember his upbringing. So let me say this.

You can't go forward with a divorce. You can't go forward with your next right move and suddenly expect somebody who has not loved you, cared for you, cared for these kids, been willing to sit down and co-create something new, do all the work. You can't suddenly expect that in the transition. Right. So as you're telling me, he can't even give me an explanation as to why he doesn't pay bills. He can't give me an explanation as to why he values baseball over our kids. He can't give you an explanation as to why

He won't be sexually interested with his wife after a decade and a half. No, he won't. He can't give me a reason. I've been asking her, I was like, were you abused? Are you gay? I've asked everything. You're making yourself crazy there. I know. Then I start wondering if it's not me, because people, if you ask anybody else, they're like, oh, they're gay. If they're not gay, then, oh, it's somewhere else, and it drives you crazy. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You're looking for an absolution that will never come.

Okay. Because if he could have given you that answer, you wouldn't be in this position right now. That's true. If he told you the truth from the get-go, you wouldn't be in this position right now. If going to professional help and not getting fired by one, two, three different professionals, right? And by the way, good on them.

It's unethical to take somebody's money that just can't, you know what I mean? It's like a contractor who's unable to build a house in the area that somebody wants them to build. It's unethical to take their money. Good on your therapist. True. No, I know. But therapists need to eat, so when they fire you, that's a big deal, right? Well, I know, and the other thing is I've learned also from a friend that a normal therapist is not going to

tell you how it is. They're just going to listen. They need to be a doctor level that can actually call you on your bull. So I think that's where I messed up too. I should have found a different type of therapist. I don't know. Here's the deal. The days of reflection for you have to end at some point. Okay. You spend every minute of your day looking in the mirror at Ann. Yeah. What have you done? What did you not done? What did you say? What did you didn't say? It's been a decade and a half. Fair.

Yeah. At this point, reflection, looking in the mirror, listening to another podcast, reading another book, going to find another professional is a, it's a Xanax. It's a way to delay going forward. Right. And it's better for the kids, right? I can't. It's better for kids to see love. I know you can't tell me that. No, I'll tell you. I think that's a, can be a straw man sometimes.

Okay. So, um, it's yes, a loving household full of joy and laughter and connected relationships with two parents is, is statistically better for children. And so people always ask like, well, then we should just get divorced because we don't have that. My answer is always no, get that.

Right. Two people can decide who's chosen a miserable marriage, can choose an awesome one. They literally can, can, can choose that. And everybody listening, you're going, no, they can't. They for sure can. If you choose to make changes, if you choose to make changes. And if you have a partner that's looking at you saying, I don't love you enough to do this. I don't love them enough to do this. Can I just toot my own horn for one quick second?

In 2018, maybe, maybe 17 or 18, I got a new fancy job and my gift to myself was a major league ticket. All the baseball games. Yeah. And you just probably broke out in hives, didn't you? That's like one of your triggers. I hate baseball, but I live it every day. I'm a lifelong Astros fan and they were finally had a good team. Yeah. And I was coming home from work exhausted and I was laying down on the TV and I had a young, young little boy.

Dad, let's go play baseball. Let's just watch the Astros. Let's go play baseball, Dad. Let's go watch the Astros. And one day my son asked me, and he wasn't being manipulative. He wasn't old enough to be manipulative. He was just literally asking for facts. Dad, do you love me as much as the Astros? I canceled that ticket that day. It's off. I turned it off. Because what my son was seeing in real time was how obsessed I was with this baseball team.

Okay. Which is kind of crazy because I'm like, you're talking about a ticket and my life revolves around baseball. I know, but I need you to say, sometimes I got it wrong. I thought I could have my cake and eat it too. I thought I could go work 14 hours a day on behalf of my family and keep up with my lifelong, since I was zero, baseball team. And I thought I could crash on the couch and just relax. And I thought I could do quality dad kid time all at the same time.

And an innocent question from a three or four or five, I don't know how old he was. And he wasn't trying to say, do you love me more than baseball? You got to choose. He wasn't doing that. He was just saying, I see you love that. I wonder where I stand. Right. And boom, we're off. And I lived on a steep, steep, steep hill. And I chased baseballs up and down the street because he was a kid and he would throw them sideways or he'd miss the bike. Right. She became part of it. But here's the thing. As a choice I made behaviors, the language, right?

Yeah. What I'm telling you is, and I'm not better than anybody else. I just happen to have that real life situation happen in my house. Yeah. Does my son know I love the Astros? Yep. Do I miss games? Yep. But you chose him. I choose him.

Yeah. I choose my wife. I think that's amazing, but we don't have that. So choose reality. Choose reality. I know, but here's the thing. How do I protect them? Because the other thing that changed is this obsession. I've noticed now, just to give a snippet, is he didn't get picked to be assistant coach. And so instead of being a man about it, he decided it's a good idea. Let's tell our children that.

What a bad coach you have. He didn't pick daddy. He's a liar. And I lost it. You do not involve children and adult problems. And now it's happened two times. I'm not going to his game. I know, but do you see? It's like he's immature. He's immature. He's immature. He's immature. He's wildly immature. He's painfully immature. He's unwell, unwell, unwell, painfully unwell.

And then he does something immature and unwell and you're like, no way. Right. Well, yeah. You have to choose to start living in reality and stop being surprised. And what you've done is every time you set yourself up for maybe this time, boom, maybe this time, boom. And that's preventing you from taking the next step. I'm not going to tell you to divorce your husband. I'm not going to do that. That's your call. Right. Right. I'm not going to tell you to leave your husband. I'm going to tell you behaviors of language.

Yeah. And if you go back and listen to this, you seem very resolved in your next step. That's what I hear. I think so too. I think I just need to pull up my pants and just be prepared for it to be bad. Have you set on, written on a piece of paper, here's what must be true, and handed it to your husband? No, I'm afraid to. Why?

I'm because he only has him and his mom and he doesn't have true friendships. And I'm scared if I do that, since I've cleaned up every mess ever made, that what if there's either he completely loses control. Are you scared of him being violent, Ann? I don't know. I don't know what to expect. Because last time, I tried to leave a couple times. I'm afraid if he realizes he's finally losing it all, that he's going to

either be suicidal or be that upset he'll lose his on me i don't know has he ever been suicidal before no okay has he ever been violent to you before no punched a wall not me okay that's significant yeah but i'm nervous i'm nervous because yeah i don't know i'm just i'm scared that it's gonna be a narcissist losing there you can't you can't control the other side of this thing okay

Fair. So you can't control the other side. If you think he's going to be violent, then you have him served. If you think he's going to go off and do something irresponsible, call 911. I'll also say, if you've never written down on a piece of paper, here's what must be true. Here's what I want and need in this marriage. No baseball, no major league ticket. We will pay bills together. We will be a household that if you haven't done that, try it. And if you know in your guts we're past that, then do the next right thing.

But yes, kids deserve to grow up in a home that they walk in the door and it feels safe inside. And yes, I'm right on this. Having two parents in that house that are connected and loved and provide that stability and safety, not conflict-free. Conflict's actually good because it shows kids two people can be in conflict and still be on the same team. That's the best. But coming home and having a dad that's so scary that you're afraid to even say, hey, here's what I need.

A dad that is so devoid of responsibility and security and safety. Yeah, it's not a good place. I wish you the best, sister. Get people to walk with you. Sit down with an attorney and walk through every nuance here. Sit down with a couple of girlfriends that you can text 24-7-365 as you enter into this process. Get some people to walk with you. Thanks for the call. We'll be right back.

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That's CozyEarth.com slash Deloney. And if you get a post-purchase survey, say that you heard about Cozy Earth on this podcast. All right, we're back. Hey, before we read the social post, real quick, Kelly.

There seemed to be a theme in today's show, which is like rules versus boundaries versus just the whole thing just feels messy. Actually, that's what the social post was about. So we can, instead of the social post, we can just talk about that. But I'd never heard you talk about the difference between rules and boundaries being rules are for them, boundaries are for you. So just clarify that a little bit, if you would, about what are boundaries, what are rules, right?

I mean, rules sound to me like a parent thing because I have rules for my kids, but not for my husband. Yeah, like a rule. I have rules with my kids. When I think of rule, and again, people in the comments world, like I could be wrong on this. Here's the way it maps out of my head. Rules infer a power hierarchy. I come to work at a place. They say, here are the rules you will abide by to work here. Cool.

I can opt in or I can opt out. Right? My kids, you are my kids. I have...

dominion over you i am your dad this is your mother we will tell you what happens in this house now as a part of educating them of course we're going to bring them along but there are rules in our house there are rules in restaurants there are rules to live in a society you have to drive this speed and even the other day um my car may or may not be unregistered right now and a policeman got behind us and got real real close and i was with josephine we were on our date daddy daughter date and i was like i'm pretty sure i'm about to get a ticket um she

She goes, what does that mean? And I said, they're gonna turn the lights on. It's gonna be a whole thing. We'll pull over. They'll give daddy a ticket because daddy's breaking the rules. She, my eight-year-old, launched into this tirade. It was every bit. It could have just been word for word a new Rage Against the Machine song. They don't have a right to do that. They're just driving around judging people. They don't get to make all these rules. They don't get to just tell you a hundred times what you have to do and how you have to drive. And I looked at her and I was like,

They for sure do. That's their job. She's like, yeah, they're just judging everybody. And I said, hey, I opted to drive on these communal roads. These roads have rules. And she's like, that's ridiculous. And you and mom do it too. It just went in this whole thing. And so...

Yeah, yeah. Everybody pray for me. Teenagers are going to be tough up in here, up in here. So rules are you agreed to it or just by nature there's power. Boundary is a thing that I put into the world that keeps me safe, keeps us safe. And a boundary suggests –

When a couple makes a boundary, it suggests something egalitarian. We are doing this together to keep us safe. And so us, we don't want a bunch of wild pornography in our marriage. We're going to put this boundary up. Are you in? I'm in. You hold this gate. I'll hold this gate. We are not going to be consensually non-monogamy, non-monogamous. You can't sleep with somebody. I won't sleep with somebody. It's a boundary we're putting on this relationship, right? Or whatever the thing is. Um,

Your parents can't just show up at our house on random Tuesdays and stay for four weeks. That's a boundary we put on our house, right? That seems like something we do together. And often couples, somebody doesn't get what they want and it just gets real paternalistic or maternalistic real fast. You will, you will not. So that's just the way, I don't know. That's the way I think about it. If you find yourself in a marriage relationship and you find yourself making rules for your partner, that is a relationship that is not going to make it.

That is about, I think I am better than you. I have power over you, and you will do this thing if you're going to be with this, right? And that's just a recipe for somebody. What happened in that first call is, all right, then I'm out. Boundaries are about identity. Who are we going to be? And how are we going to unify to protect this thing? Does that ring true? Oh, it does. Like I said, I'd never heard boundaries and rules described that way, but it makes sense. Okay.

I'm doing this boundary to protect me, not because I'm telling you, you know, wagging my finger and telling you what you have to do. Yeah. And here's the thing. I think all these calls had this in common, not the call about loss, but the first and last call had this. People can hear your rules or your, your boundaries. They can walk away. Right. Amazon just said, everybody's coming back to work five days a week. A lot of other employees are like, bye Felicia. Like, right. They have to deal with that. Or,

Hey, we're a couple that doesn't cheat on each other. Yeah, I cheated on you. All right. And I don't think our culture gives us psychology. It's like, you got to do boundaries. You got to do this. You got to cut people. We don't have a good psychology for self-worth when someone says, all right, I'm out. So there you go. This is a tough show. It's kind of like a show. Like there's a gritty other side to boundaries and my rules. And sometimes people leave. Sometimes people don't. It doesn't work out. And...

It's easy to be like, good riddance. It hurts. It's hard. It's hard. See you guys next time. Love y'all. Bye.