I Hate Being a Stay-at-Home Mom
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Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. How can I become a happier stay-at-home mom? I want to want to be here with my kids, but I don't. I want to go to work and I can't go to work right now. It's because we wouldn't be able to afford childcare. We have three kids. So we have a three-year-old and then we have one-year-old twins. Can I say something that you're not allowed to say? Yeah. Your life sucks right now.

What up? What up? What up? What up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Thank you for joining us. So grateful that you're here. There are literally a trillion podcasts and YouTube shows you could spend your time watching, and you chose to spend your time with us. Don't take that for granted, and I think it's such a blessing that you're with us. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. And thank you for subscribing to the show. Thank you for passing along episodes to your friends and family. I

I just continue to be overwhelmed. The other day I was in Philadelphia at 4 a.m. dropping off a rental car and the woman driving the bus of the rental car as we were getting off, I was the last guy off the bus. She said, I love your YouTube show. And I just thought like, man, we're here. We are everywhere. It's because of you all. Thank you for sharing the show. Thank you for being such an advocate for helping your friends and family and your own homes grow.

Just get a little bit healthier, see things a little bit differently, take some agency and understand we all have choices that we can make. So grateful. If you want to be on this show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask A-S-K. Let's go out to one of my favorite places on planet earth, San Antonio, Texas, and talk to Jessica. Hey, Jessica, what's up?

Hey, Dr. John. Thanks for taking my call. Of course. Thank you for calling. What's going on? I'm super nervous. Oh, don't be nervous. Don't be nervous. What's your favorite concert you've ever been to? My favorite country? Concert. Oh, concert. Oh, my gosh. You're putting me on the spot. I can't remember right now. What's your favorite song? My favorite song? You're putting me on the spot again. I don't know. Here's a very morbid question. What song do you want to make sure they play at your funeral?

Oh gosh. I'll tell you what. I don't want them to play at my funeral. Okay. Um, Cardi B anything. I was going to say who let the dogs out. I don't want that played at my funeral. I want the last song they play at my funeral. It's actually in my will. I want it to be piano man by Billy Joel. I want everybody singing out into the parking lot. I think that'd be great. All right. Okay. So now we're best friends. All right. So what's going on in your world?

Okay. So my question is, how can I become a happier stay-at-home mom? I want to want to be here with my kids, but I don't. And it's just really tough every day when I'm like, okay, tomorrow, it's the end of the day. And I'm like, all right, tomorrow, we're going to get to do this all over again. And every day, forever and ever. And it's just, it makes me so...

And it's just creating problems for me, like definitely in my marriage, but then also with my family. I mean, when I say my family, I mean my parents and my husband's parents. And when I say creating problems, I think it's more one-sided. I don't even think they're giving it a second thought or they even know that I'm upset by this. But, you know, it's definitely causing me some grief. And I can tell you more about that or however you want to start. I'm...

I'm trying to think of the right way to ask the question I want to ask you. Okay. How long has it been your responsibility to make sure everybody else was getting what they wanted and needed before you? I guess even when I was a child. I'm a people pleaser. I know that. Where did that come from? What are the seeds of that? I think it's... So growing up... And that's... So growing up, like...

My mom was always really frustrated and angry. Now she's told me, you know, she just felt stuck and she was unhappy and stuff. And so she was just always really upset. And so I just, when I would come home, like from school or whatever, and I'd walk in the house and I'd think, okay, let's see how she's feeling today. And if she's feeling good, it's going to be a good day. If she's not feeling good, I better go to my room or just go back outside and go play. Can I stop you real quick? Yeah. It's not supposed to be like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Like in a perfect world, a dad or a mom is supposed to be happy to see their kid. You should not have known at that age that it was your job to take care of the emotional needs of the adults in your life. That should have never been your job, and I'm sorry. And now here we are. Here's the bigger question. I won't say why. Well, I will ask why, but it's not a fair question, and I know that, okay? Mm-hmm.

Why are you living a life that you don't want to be living? Because this isn't about you enjoying something. How do you make yourself, like, I don't know. If you like long, flowy dude hair, you're asking me, like, how do I think somebody's handsome with a shaved head? You just don't. I don't know. You just don't. Like, why can't you live the life that you want to be living?

Then I guess the better question, the reason I can't live the life that I want to live right now, meaning I want to go to work and I can't go to work right now is because we wouldn't be able to afford childcare for, we have three kids. So we have a three year old and then we have one year old twins. And, um, can we sit on that for a second? That's the issue. Yeah. Yes, I know. That's the issue. Yeah. And I, and I feel so like, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop. It's not the childcare issue. I didn't, I didn't say that right. Oh, just exhale for a second.

Can I say something that you're not allowed to say? Yeah. Your life sucks right now. Yeah, it does. It's all vomit and poo and crying and movement and all night. And you're all tired and your body's a jungle gym. And already you're seeing your husband start to raise his eyebrow a little bit and give you the eye. Do you want to do it tonight? No. Yes, I know. I know. Can I just say it? You've got three little, like three little...

beating hearts of yours outside of your body, walking around and it's amazing and your life is miserable right now. Can we just exhale? Yeah. You're not, hey, listen, you're not a bad mom. You're not a bad wife. Everything's chaotic. It's chaos. And there's not a mindset trick. There's not like a super, like a journaling exercise you can do to make your life not crazy right now.

The only thing I can tell you is this will pass. Okay. It will go faster than you think, but you have two one-year-olds. I still get like hives thinking about the time I had one one-year-old. And then I had another one-year-old, but by that time I already had a six and a half or seven-year-old that could bathe himself. I can't even imagine what your life is like right now.

But it's wild, right? Yeah, it's wild. And like you said, miserable. It's miserable. And so I want you to hear me say, like, it's not going to be like this forever. In fact, it's going to go real, real, real fast in the grand scheme of your life. Okay. And every minute, it's going to feel like a thousand years for a little bit longer. There's an old... Man, I'm going to do my best to dig up these studies. I was really touched recently by some... I think, man, I think it was either old psychologist or anthropologist. But there was some...

Old Native American wisdom that there should be no, and I think it was cross-cultural. I think it was across the world too. I have to go back and get my sources. So don't quote me on the sources, but here's the sentiment. No woman, no mother should ever be left alone with a crying baby. And I'm wondering if this, I hate my life. I hate all this stuff. It's too loud. How much of this are you trying to do all by yourself?

As a stay-at-home mom inside of a three-bedroom, two-bath house or wherever you live in San Antonio, Texas alone because that's just the way they told you you're supposed to do it. All of it. Okay. You can't. All right. That's not true. You can and your body's going to revolt because it's not designed to do all of this by itself. And that means you as a people pleaser are going to have to for the first time in your life ask for help.

Well, that's the thing I've asked and that's what I meant by becoming resentful of my family is that we've asked, my husband worked 14 hour days. It is just me and the kids all day. And we've asked for help and nobody can come through for us. Okay. Okay. Let's stop that. Those people that you've asked can't. There are a thousand other options. Even when it doesn't feel like it. Here's what options look like.

Group of moms that come over to work from home, but they work at your house. A group or just group of women that will come over just to have human beings around you. Hiring my son when he was 10 years old, a woman down the street hired him to just come play with her kids while she was there. And just that much gave, oh, geez, right?

Like there was, it wasn't even like a true babysitter situation. And I get it. Childcare is about a million dollars a kid nowadays. I heard a comedian recently said if all the volume was off and he just got dropped on planet earth and somebody showed him a video of people storming the white house, he would have thought for sure that's about childcare costs, right? It's, it's wild. Um, okay, cool. Hiring a teenager to come over and be a babysitter for two hours is not that you can manage. Okay.

But it's you getting creative. I think you get stuck in, I really need my parents to help me and they're not, and they won't. I really need my in-laws to help. They will not. And so the more you dwell on that, the more you're choosing to be miserable in the day in and day out of your life. It's not going to happen. They won't. Or how much of this is, it might be the case.

Have you sat down and said, it would really help me out if you could come over two days and Thursdays from 8 a.m. till 11 a.m. so I could get some stuff done? Have you been really specific?

Yes. Not with my parents because they're not living here right now. They live here, but we're from a different state. They're living in that state right now because of some family stuff. So not with my parents recently, but my mom doesn't work. And so in the past I have asked her, you know, mom, would you just come and just hang out here so I'm not alone or just hang out so that the kids are a little bit distracted. And she usually tells me why she can't.

Okay. And then with my in-laws, same thing. They live 45 minutes away from us, and my mother-in-law still works. And so, of course, during the week, I don't expect her to do that. So on the weekends, can you guys come down? And they'll tell us, well, no, because we have to grocery shop. Or no, because they have a 19 and a 23-year-old who still live at home. Well, we have to help the 19-year-old take her car to the shop. Sure. Some something. Yeah.

Yeah, the grocery shopping really makes me mad. The whole 19-year-old thing. I think she's 19, guys. Come on. Of course. All right, so let's put a period at the end of the sentence. They told you no. We are not interested in helping, and that hurts. And dwelling on that doesn't solve the problem that you need some help. Do you have some women, just a group, a gang of women who are your friends?

Not really. I have some girlfriends, but they don't have kids or they have kids and equally as busy or they work, their kids are in daycare, things like that. Here's what I found. Everyone thinks everyone else is super busy. And underneath all of that, everybody's walking through life thinking they're a burden. And these entire industries cater to this idea that we all think we're suddenly burdensome.

I guarantee if you've got friends in child, sending their kids to childcare, if you sat down and said, Hey, I think I've got a plan for how we could do a swap and save everybody a billion dollars in childcare costs. Would you be interested in figuring that out? They might tell you no, but they might tell you good God. Yes. That'd be amazing. Mm-hmm.

But underneath all of that, you're not a burden to ask somebody. Even if you said, hey, could you just guys come over? I know y'all don't have kids. I need human interaction. We all come over. I'll make breakfast. I just need coffee with people my age. Good gosh, what a gift that would be if y'all could come over. Or being specific, not just, hey, could you come over? But I really like conversations with you and I need them right now because I'm going crazy. And give people a chance to tell you no.

But I want you to begin to make that a high priority. Where are pockets or moments or time when I could have adult interaction? Is it going to be perfect? No. Is it going to be night out? No. Is it going to be wet? No. You're in a season. You have a three-year-old and twin one-year-olds. Life is a human hurricane, right? Okay. You're not crazy. And you're not a bad mom for wishing this all away. Okay. And you keep getting up and going again and again, right? Okay. Also,

Have you done the math on childcare? I know I'm making jokes about it, but... No, yeah, we have. So I went back to when my oldest, my three-year-old, I went back to work when she was six weeks old. Okay. And...

A family member was watching her back then, so we didn't pay quite as much as if we would have had her in a daycare center. And then that person couldn't watch her anymore, and so we were going to go ahead and put her into daycare so that I can keep working. And then we found out that we were pregnant, and then we found out that it was twins. And so then we just thought, well, and we did look into it. Most places couldn't even take the twins together. And then the ones who could, it was really, really expensive. It was more than what I was making. Okay.

Is there a place where your three-year-old can go play for a few hours a day? She used to be in Mother's Day Out last year, but we pulled her out this year because we couldn't afford it. The tuition went up, and so we couldn't afford it anymore. And right now, we stay inside the house pretty much all the time just because it's really tough for me to get out with all three kids because they're all at different stages in

in their mobility even the twins are um i have one that's like kind of behind on the milestones i have another one who's kind of almost ready to walk um and then my three-year-old who just takes off can i tell you something bonkers it's so super annoying about what i'm about to say because i know i'm not a yeah i'm not a i'm not a mom with three kids um go ahead so i'm telling you from the utmost privileged position of what i'm about to say okay okay okay

When somebody is telling me, hey, I need to buy this whatever car and they only make this much money and they're like, but I have to have this car because of this and this and this and this and this. I'll often tell them, I hate to tell you this, man, but math doesn't care what you think you need. You can't afford it. And when somebody says, yeah, but I only like to eat this and this and this and this and this and this and that's what I'll tell them. I know, but your body doesn't care about math.

what you think you like, it does know about energy expenditure and calories. It just does. So I'll tell you, I know it's such a pain to get those three kids out of the house. And I'm listening to a friend of mine in San Antonio drown from loneliness. I'm just listening to it. Is that fair? Yeah. So my challenge to you is, is there a park? Is there a place? And I don't know what you got in San Antonio. By the way, it's a billion degrees outside. So I know it's not easy.

um especially in the summer months but as we head into the fall if there was a place where you could just make eye contact with other adults and yes you're not going to go there to rest you're going to go there you're going to be running around all over the place but it's a novelty and it's different and it's fatiguing on the kids and it gives you a different um a different environment it gives them a different environment the novelty and the stimulation and the

and just seeing another parent or two or three or five and you can go oh god you too right yeah and maybe that's where your friends can meet you maybe that's where somebody can just have a conversation with you and i know you're not gonna be able to have great conversation because you're running around up and down and yeah i get all that but i guess the bigger picture is this what you're doing is it's wearing down your soul and again

It's just gonna be chaotic for a season. I wish it wasn't, but you're gonna blink and you're gonna have two two-year-olds and a four-year-old. And it's gonna be bonkers, but that four-year-old's gonna figure out how to go to the bathroom by themself. And you're gonna feel like you got five hours of your day back. And then that four-year-old's gonna turn four and a half and five and they're gonna figure out how to take a shower by themselves. And you're gonna feel like the most luxurious person on the planet.

And then those one-year-olds are going to become two-year-olds and they're going to become three-year-olds. And then it's going to be more chaotic and more annoying and also little pockets of peace and little pockets of peace. So I guess the mind shift here is not, how do I just suddenly flip a switch and love all this? It's not, it's chaotic. It's mayhem. The mind shift is, this is going to go by real fast.

and every day is going to be a grind so who can i find to do the grind with and it's not who i wanted it to be okay i'm gonna make peace with that i'll grieve that i'm gonna move on because i gotta get some help and my husband's working his freaking butt off 14 hours a day what an admirable man okay i'm resolved to not do this by myself that means i might be resolved to have to pile everybody in the car and go to a park or go to a something i don't know what they got in san antonio ah

to a nature preserve. Take them all to the Alamo. That Alamo has seen a lot of chaos. Don't do that. I'm resolved to call a high school kid, to call a middle school kid, to come play with my kids. I'm resolved to call some friends. I'm resolved to keep reaching out and trying and trying and trying so I don't have to do all this alone. And I guess ultimately I want to leave you with that, Jessica. You're worth not doing all this alone and all this chaos. Thank you for the call. Your kids are lucky to have you. They're lucky to have you. We'll be right back.

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and talk to Leah. Hey, Leah, what's up? Hey. What's going on? How are you? I'm doing good. My son just woke up as I got on the phone with you. That's all good. You need to take him somewhere? You want to hold him? He can babble through. That's fine.

Okay, he might babble a tiny bit. Well, cool. I think it's one of the most amazing noises in the world. Second only to little kids laughing their heads off, which I just love. Aww. What's up? So, I am newly married. Okay. But I've known my husband for years. My question is...

I feel that he treats me different depending on how I look. Like if I don't have my hair done and if I'm not really looking that great, I honestly feel like he does not see me. And that's kind of hard for me to deal with because, you know, they always say men are visual. But, oh, sorry, his toys. No, you're good.

But for me, like, I love him for who he is and I care what he has to say. And just the whole appearance thing is really making me feel...

Not that great, especially since I don't feel my best. I have a year and a half year old and after birth, like my face, I have different skin tones. It's called melasma. So I have dark spots under my cheek. I have a dark spot that looks like a little mustache. My hair is not as healthy as it was before. And...

It just, I don't know. I feel like something is off there. Okay. Have you talked to him about it? I haven't. Okay. I know this is, he was married before for 20 years and, you know, they didn't really have a big physical connection. So that was one thing he was very, you know, excited about and happy with me because he was very attracted to me. And I feel like that attraction is

going away and he hasn't told me. I've mentioned a little bit like, because I want to go to the gym, but I haven't been that consistent. And I talk about like, okay, change my body a little bit. He says, oh, you're perfect as you are. But then he yawned as he said it. And it just seemed like he's not telling the truth here. So that kind of bothers me too, because I'd like to just openly say,

say how we really feel about that. All right. So there are all types of people all over the place. Okay. I'm going to give you some insight into the secret man meetings that I attend every week. Okay. Okay. I don't really attend secret man meetings, but I'm just going to tell you what I've heard behind closed doors for decades.

40 years of growing up in locker rooms and hanging out with dudes and traveling with guys and playing music, like all different guys from all over the spectrum. Okay? I'm on the edge of my seat, John. Good. Here's the secrets. Now, make no mistake, there are idiots everywhere in every group of people. We both know that, right? Mm-hmm. You have gotten in a place where you are telling yourself so many different stories that you believe.

And then you're reacting to the belief of those stories. And then you're projecting that belief onto your husband. And until you sat down and had a conversation with him, and he's looked at you and said, you're right. I'm struggling with attraction right now. I love you. Right. Which, by the way, that happens all the time. That's normal. It's part of every marriage and every long-term relationship is ebbs and flows and attraction. But here's the big secret I've learned. Almost universally,

The sexiest people begin that eros, that eroticism comes from the inside out. It's people who you see them all the time. You're in their presence and they're not classically attractive, right? They wouldn't be on the cover of whatever. Right. But you're just overwhelmingly attracted to them. Some of my closest male buddies are not good looking guys.

And I remember back in our 20s, it was staggering to me. They would sit down and talk to a group of women, and it was like Brad Pitt just pulled up a seat. And it was this sense that came from the inside out. And I've met women who are just stunning, that aren't done up, that aren't, you know what I mean, like done to the hilt. It's just this understanding. It's the way they walk. It's the way they talk. It's the way they understand things.

I'm in season X, I'm in season Y, I'm in season Z. And you're pretty lucky to be talking to me. And so, yes, there's the classic beauty, the classic, oh, she's hot. There's that, of course. Right. But then there's that. I'll tell you a thing in my house. My wife used to come out, she'd wash her hair and she'd put a towel on her head for years. Like she would just like fold the towel up on her hair. I just always thought she was cluing me in to the night is over.

Right? I just understood that to be the case. I think we were married like 14 years before that came up in conversation. It never occurred to me to talk about it. Maybe 10 years. And she was like, what? I was like, yeah, whatever it tells in your head. I just know that this day's over. She's like, what are you talking about? I had no idea. I thought, and then she had a story. And because we never sat down and discussed the stories,

I took a particular behavioral cue as you're on your own tonight. And she took my behavioral cue as for some reason, she's not beautiful or attractive or John must be in his own head again tonight. And we did that for years. And all of it was changed with some conversations around a table. And so my question, he's on the phone, so we can't ask him. I can ask you.

You named and describing yourself, you've named some things that for some reason you have told yourself dampers your inner beauty, your inner sexuality, your inner desirability. Do you really believe that? No, those are just some parts of me. Okay.

But then just for example, like when for years we would be out and he would take pictures of me and like just stare at me and be all excited. And now I noticed recently we go out and he just will take pictures of my son and not me. And that just feels kind of like...

And that doesn't happen all the time. But then when I look at this, like you said, it might be in my head. I just can't help but feel it. It's as the great Brene Brown says, what you go looking for in the world, you're sure to find. I think you're right on this. And so if you don't believe you're beautiful and you don't believe that he desires you anymore, he may see you when he walks into the bathroom, you quickly cover up with a towel.

And he may see you look away and not hold his eye contact or his gaze anymore like you used to. And he may, in his own subconscious way, be trying to honor you. Or he may just be so enamored with this little miniature version of himself babbling around that, yeah, he takes way more pictures. And that story that you're telling yourself that suddenly you're not even beautiful enough to take a picture of anymore. See what I'm saying? Yeah.

I do. So here's the big scary thing. How do you engage in this conversation in real life? Here's what I can promise you. If you approach it with the word you, Y-O-U, I've noticed you don't want to sleep with me as much anymore. I notice you divert your eyes when I walk in the room where I'm just wearing my underwear. I notice you don't take pictures of me anymore. He has to defend himself.

If you start the conversation with, can I tell you some things that have been on my heart lately about me? Sure. Go ahead, honey. I've got this thing that makes it look like I have a mustache now. And I remember I looked like X, Y, and Z. And then I had this baby. And now I feel like I look like X, I mean, A, B, and C. I just don't feel beautiful for you anymore. And I feel like I'm moping around the house. I feel like I'm making it hard to be like sexy. We used to have so much sex in the air in our home.

And that's an invitation for him to go, yeah, I've noticed you look like you have a mustache or for him to go, what? What are you talking about? I just thought you looked really tired. I don't want to be haggling all over you. I don't want to bother you. I'm going to be one of those guys that's always pawing at my exhausted wife. You see what I'm saying? I do. Here's the scary thing. The only way you're going to know is if you put it on the table and say, the story I'm choosing to make up is, and I got that from Brene Brown too.

The story I'm choosing to make up is you no longer think I'm beautiful. I no longer feel beautiful. I no longer present as beautiful. I've got these new skin tones. I've got this new, I gained some extra weight. I don't go to the gym as much anymore. The story I'm choosing to make up is I'm no longer sexy or desirable or even worth sleeping with anymore. And just let that be on the table. I could do that. This isn't what I thought you were going to tell me. What did you think I was going to tell you?

You're going to laugh, but I was thinking you would say to put effort into it, put more effort into it. Let men are visual. Well, so here's the, there's number one, there's the stories. And here's why that's important. You're going to get some information.

And it might be information that's really hard to hear. He might look at you if he's a person of integrity and he's actually struggling and be like, yes, I'm struggling with this. Right. I am. I am. Less about your, like the, the, the, the shades of your skin tone and more this, um, this give up sense. Right. Right.

And you are the one who are, I'm getting that sense from you. I feel like you need to ask yourself what must be true for you to begin to feel desirable in your own skin. Okay. And this would be something that I would change about myself to feel more desirable or I pick something that's already that I like about myself. I don't think it, I don't think it's a, I don't think it's an either or. I think it's about changing your identity.

Because your identity, the story you tell yourself. This is really hitting me big. Thank you. The story you tell yourself is I'm just a frumpy, unlovable, unattractive, having sex withable mother of a one and a half year old. Yeah. Instead of the story is I am a mom who just created a human and I'm getting after it. And I also am a good steward of my body.

So in the breaks I have, I'm gonna exercise, not so that I can become like hot again, but so that I can fricking feel good and I'm worth that. And that means I'm gonna need 30 minutes or an hour of, I'm gonna have to get some home gym equipment, or I'm gonna have to go to the local YMCA or the local gym and use their childcare service, which means me and my husband have to budget for that. I'm gonna need my husband to start helping with dinner

Or to bring home some healthy grocery options so that we can begin to change. You see what I'm saying? It's an identity. It's a story that we tell ourself. And then we backfill that story, that identity with action. Okay, that makes sense. Because he's always encouraged that like, oh, take time. You can go ahead. And for some reason, I have not.

If the story that you tell yourself all the time is I'm just this frumpy, unlovable. Right. And then he goes, Hey, go take all the time you need. You're going to hear that as you're not pretty enough for me. I wish you'd go work out. So you wouldn't be so unattractive. Exactly. Or if you're like, no dude, I, I loved feeling beautiful in my own skin and I am a person of beauty and I'm a person who's a good steward of my body. Those aren't mutually exclusive.

So I'm going to go exercise. I'm going to feel good. And by the way, you're going to go do a week's worth of exercise. The actual aesthetic of you is not going to change a whole lot, but you're going to freaking feel awesome.

Thank you. Because I will. I worked out before and I used to feel amazing and I just haven't been. Okay. So I get it. But hold on. This comes after the conversation with your husband. Oh, I forgot. Okay. You can't do this. You can't do this. You can't just blow by that because this is the intimate moment. This is the moment when you say, this is all of me. Do you see me and do you still love me? Because you have to get an answer to that question because you doubt that right now.

Okay. Fair? Fair. Thank you. Thank you for being brave. Yeah, I appreciate that. That helps a lot. All right. Here's your homework assignment. I want you to write down on a piece of paper when baby's taking a nap today. Okay. Here are the stories I'm making up about my appearance, my lovability, my sexuality, my sensuality, and my husband. And then I want you to tell your husband, hey,

Can we turn all the TV off and put all the phones away and have like an honesty meeting tonight? And he'll go, oh Lord, what is it? And be like, no, no, no. I love you so much. And I want to have this. I just want to, I want to be honest about some things. Sure. And I want you to start all of those with the story I'm choosing to make up is, or the stories I've been making up are as follows. It's so funny how it actually is.

Me, and I was so focused on it being a him thing. Well, hey, it might be him. He might be a total scumbag jerk. Right. But maybe not. Only you know him, right? Okay. Early on, I had somebody call this show, and here's what the call was. I have a two-year-old, an infant...

And my husband, my boyfriend says I'm now in the running to be his wife. But he said, I have to get the house back in order and get my body back. And then she called me asking for how, like how she could fix her mindset. And I told her, I know some friends of mine who don't mind going back to jail. What's this guy's address, right? It doesn't sound like your husband. Am I right? No, he's wonderful. Okay.

I think you're haunted by a story he told you of his ex-wife where he had a loveless, sexless marriage and you have loved filling that gap for him. And now suddenly you're in just a season and you've begun to tell yourself new stories. I think it's time to put those stories on the table. Let's write new stories. Let's define new identities and let's just go make those things happen.

And by the way, you have a one and a half year old. I could hear the pots and pans in the background. It's just chaos. It's just the season, just the season. So how can we have fun and adventure and sexuality and sensuality with a running around? It's just hard, just a mess. And it doesn't last forever. And if there's a spirit of adventure about it and a spirit of honesty and put it all on the table, man, couples can overcome anything, anything.

But it starts with those stories we tell ourselves and it starts with those identities. And then it starts with those behaviors, those actions. Who are we in spite of our identity? You get to change that stuff every minute of every hour of every day. Awesome. Awesome. I'm proud of you for calling. I'm proud of you for calling. Let me know how this conversation goes. I'm really, really interested. And I'd love to talk to your husband if he wants to give me a buzz. Thank you so, so much. We'll be right back.

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That's join, J-O-I-N, joindeleteme.com slash Deloney. All right, let's go out to Columbia, South Carolina and talk to Tessa. Hey, Tessa, what's up? Hey, Dr. John, how are you? I'm good. How about you? I'm okay. I've been better, but I've also been worse, so I'm okay. All right. Well, so how can I help? What's going on? So my question is,

What kind of therapy or counseling can I seek for my husband and I, or at least my husband, hopefully both of us, for financial infidelities? I found out recently that he has been hiding money away in an account I thought he closed when we got married.

And probably about nine months to a year ago, I had found out he'd opened a couple of different credit cards. And I'm just... What's he spending stuff on? Miscellaneous things, but the main thing is...

Like, he'll use the money in our account to go buy scratchers and to go buy lottery tickets and to buy miscellaneous random things. And then he uses the other things to pay bills due to all the money he's spending on mainly gambling. Okay. So does he have a gambling problem? I think he does. And before we got married, I had told him that

That's my biggest worry because this is my second marriage. And I was married first time for 18 years. And my first husband put our house in foreclosure twice because of his gambling. So I had told him, I said, gambling is a hard no for me. And I didn't know until we've been married for almost 10 years and I

I didn't know until recently how bad his gambling was. And I'm just so stressed about it. I stress about money. When I was a single mom, I stressed about it. And I think I kept it pretty tight ship, but we were still paying our bills when I was a single mom. And now my husband and I are together. We've been married for 10 years. And

We make so much money, but we're living paycheck to paycheck. And I don't understand why. Have you, or when this came to light, what was his response? Slightly angered. Basically, like, why would I question, not question his loyalty, but question, you know, why I would think he was doing something wrong.

Because he was. Yeah, he was. Because he was. Don't let him gaslight you like that. And, you know, we've talked about it. I've gotten the EveryDollar app. Hold on. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

You're avoiding the easy things, but the really hard things. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. And let's just honor your nervous system for a second. You've been down this road that you suddenly woke up. It's like you were asleep. You know what? It's like Dumb and Dumber when they think they're going to the Rockies and they wake up in Nebraska or wherever they are. Yeah. That's where it just happened to you, but it's happened to you before. Yeah.

And you swore you would never fall asleep when someone else was driving again. And you just woke up and you're in Nebraska again. And every alarm bell your body has, it's going off. It's ringing off the hook. It is. It really is. Okay. So you just stop for a second. There's some very simple things to do. Very hard, but very simple things to do. Yeah. Have you pulled a credit report?

of your social security number, every open account, every revolving credit account with your social security number attached to it? Yes. Okay. Is there anything that you didn't know about on there that's open? No. Okay. Has he done that? Yes. In front of you? No. Okay. So if I'm in your situation, this is me turning all the lights on, turning all the music off. I say that all the time. Here's what that actually means. Before we have one more conversation,

I want to see your credit report. I want to see every single account you have open. And I want access to all of the expenses and withdrawals from those accounts. It's been my experience that 99% of the time, there's not some altruistic husband who has a secret savings account trying to make his wife a secret millionaire.

Yeah. 99% of the time he's seeing somebody else or he's got some sort of addictive behavior that he's lost control of. Yeah. Period. And anybody who loves somebody who finds secret accounts and secret credit cards and secret debts who wants to preserve the marriage, it's kind of like finding out your husband or wife is having an affair and you say, open your phone now. If they want to stay married, they open the phone and they deal with what's on that phone.

If they don't and they want to preserve their ego, then they start hiding everything. So before we go any further, no more conversations, no more are we going to counseling. Counseling is after we have discovered the extent of this mess. And by the way, new things will come to light in counseling, fine. But here's everything on the table. I want to see a copy of your credit report right now. I want you to pull it right in front of me. Great. And I want to see it.

I'm going to highlight with a highlighter, all of the open accounts, all of the debts against those accounts. And they're not all going to be current by the way. Number two, I want every single account you have open. Show me all of them. You don't trust me. How dare you? No, I do not. I don't trust you. Let's open them up. And if you don't, behavior is a language. You are telling me that you want to hide things from me and you want me to have to make some hard decisions about the trustworthiness of our relationship. You get to choose. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. You see it. That's what we're talking about. Isn't a counseling conversation. It's a boundaries conversation. I kind of wondered if that was the thing as well, I guess, because I feel like I've done so much and I've told him how important it was to me. And I felt like that's the betrayal. You have to, you have to own the betrayal. Yeah. You literally, when you got engaged and were dating and got married, you put on the table, this one thing can never happen.

Yeah. And he said, all right. And then he stomped on it. Yeah. I'm sorry that happened. It's not your fault, but thank you. No, I know it's not my fault, but I'll sit with you. You know, he was in the military for 28 years and has PTSD. And I just. It doesn't. It's a context, not an excuse.

I know. I know. And I feel like I have avoided confronting him because of his anger issues. Not that he's ever shown anger to me or my children or anything. But I just wanted to be his safe space. And now I feel like I'm his, but he doesn't want to be mine. Maybe. Or sometimes with...

my children, I'm their safest space when I draw really firm boundaries. Yeah, it's true. And again, he's not your child, but he may be so out of control and so desperate for a boundary and so ashamed and embarrassed that the most loving thing you can do is say, I will not participate in this anymore. I want to see it. Show me all your cards. Wow. And if you're unsafe,

Be very wise about how you have this conversation. Oh, no, I'm safe. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm safe. Definitely. 100%. Okay. Well, there's a conversation to have. Yeah. And by the way, this is going to sound counterintuitive. Right. And this is going to sound like capitulating.

That's kind of an annoying word I just used. It's gonna sound like unnecessarily submissive 'cause let's say you're 1000% in the right here, okay? Yeah. And from your story, I think you are. What's the goal here? Is the goal to beat him up or to shame him or to win an interaction? Or is the goal here to feel safe in your own skin and your own home and your own marriage?

But it's to feel safe in my own skin, my own home, my own marriage. Okay. So there is a way to confront. And confront can be done in two ways. It can be done with a finger pointed at somebody. You have done this. Or it can be every day I wake up in my own house and I'm so scared I can't breathe. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm terrified about our money situation. I'm terrified about what I found out. I'm so, so scared. Will you help me not feel so scared anymore? And if he says no, or I've got it under control, I can't breathe. Will you help me? What does that even mean? I want you to pull a credit report right now so that I can see with my own eyes what kind of situation we're in. I'm telling you we're fine. I can't breathe. I need to see it on my own. I need you to pull up every account we have.

and be completely honest with me about the situation we are in. And hopefully you hear the difference. It's an invitation. Can you help me? Can you, my husband, help me breathe by showing me what kind of mess we're in? Yeah. Or one of them is throwing grenades. You're right to throw grenades. It's just not always helpful. Yeah. It makes perfect sense. Okay. Now, this doesn't mean you're not accepting. This means you're just being very quiet with your power and your strength. Right. Okay? Yeah.

And be prepared for what you might find. Something tells me about how you're, this is really close on the surface here. You think there's a lot to be uncovered here. Are you worried about what you're going to find? I'm terrified of what I'm going to find. Okay. I really am. Let's do this sooner rather than later, okay? Absolutely. Yep, pull the band-aid off. And I'm happy to talk to him too if he wants to call me. Like, what do we do now?

Absolutely. Okay. I will let him know. Okay. I will. He probably won't want to talk to me. But maybe, but maybe. All right. I'll be thinking about you guys. Okay. Let me know how it goes. And then once we know what everything on the table, then we get, can get into the, what are we going to do now? What are we going to do now? But we first have to realize just how lost we are before we start figuring out where do we go from here? Thanks for the call, Tessa. I wish you guys the absolute best. We'll be right back.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes, and if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest...

A lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst thing.

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Take off the costumes and take off the masks 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, we're back. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to do a public service announcement about credit reports. Okay, I'm not selling anything. It's not a commercial. That last caller, we were talking about her pulling a credit report, her husband pulling a credit report.

Um, there's three credit report agencies. There's Experian, there's Equifax and there's TransUnion. And, um, because of some legislation that was passed years ago, everybody can pull a credit report for free once per quarter. Um, and I recommend people do this on a semi-regular basis, especially in situations where you may be married to somebody or be in relationship with somebody that, um,

has a gambling problem or that is opening up credit cards that may have used your credit card number to open a report, to open up a revolving credit account, to go take out a loan in your name. And so when you pull a credit report, it uses your social security number and it tells you, here's all the open credit lines of credit that are out there against your name.

And if you're worried about somebody else's financial infidelity, that they may have taken on debts or spending money in ways you don't know, you can ask them. I want you to pull a credit report. It's for free and will come to your email box. It just pulls up.

And you can pull them from all three of these. And occasionally there's variants, there's difference. And so it's good to check them out. And by the way, you can also get on these websites or call these numbers. Again, that's Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. And you can freeze...

your social security number, your credit account. What does that mean? That means nobody can open a credit card in your name or take out a loan using your social security number until you release your credit. So if you're worried that somebody is spinning out of control in your house or your home, you can actually freeze your credit. By the way,

This also unfortunately has happened time and time and time and time again. When I found out some of my college students, their parents had taken out loans or taken out credit cards or whatever in their kids' names, using their kids' credit card numbers. So doesn't matter how young you are, it's good just to pull it out. This is how people find out there's fraud, that somebody overseas has taken out a credit card in their name. It's good just to pull these and then you can dispute things and you can go down those rabbit holes if you would like.

But Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, it's free to pull a credit report. I think it's worthy of doing it regularly. Go check it out. And that's just one of those tools you can use to just, whew. And if you're worried about somebody maybe has way more debt than they told you or they've been lying to you or taking out secret credit cards, have them pull their credit report right in front of you and look at it together. Again, let's put all this stuff on the table. Let's live in reality and we can choose what's the best path from there.

Thank you so much for being with us. Trust yourself. If something doesn't feel right, it may not be. I love you guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Bye.