I'm Not Physically Attracted to My Husband
01:05:06 Share

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. So you're 52, you're looking across the living room at this guy you've been with for 35 years. And you are thinking, I'm not attracted to him anymore. Yeah, that's true. How long have you been feeling that way? Oh, I think this has probably been our biggest argument for the last 20 years.

What up? What up? What up? This is John with Dr. John Deloney's show. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good night. Good day. Wherever you happen to be, I'm so glad that you are with us talking about

Man, whatever's going on in your life, the good stuff, the tough stuff, the not great stuff, the heartbreaking stuff, real people going through real challenges. And on this show, I'll sit with you and pull up a chair and or sit on the ground with you and we'll figure out what's going on in your emotional life and your mental health and your relationships, whatever you got going on.

If you want to be on the show, I'd love to have you. Give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291. You leave a message, let us know what's going on, and Kelly and the team will review the calls and we'll holler back if we select you for the show. Or you can go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K-L-E-N-D-E-L-O-N-E.

And while you're here, hit the subscribe button. It makes such a big difference all across the B-O-A-R-D. Thank you so, so much for joining us. All right, let's go out to Denver, C-O, Denver, Colorado, and talk to dear Marie. What's up, Marie? Hello, Dr. John. And hello to you. What's up?

Well, you know, I wanted to talk to you and get some advice on how to address some frustration, really a major lack of attraction to my husband after trying a lot of things to just encourage him to change his habits. Tell me about it. Well, we've been together since we were 17, so almost 35 years now. Whoa. 35 years y'all met when you were 17, huh? Yeah. High school sweethearts. Gross. Did you watch Dawson's Creek? I love that. It's my favorite show.

Absolutely not. Okay, whatever. All right, so you married your high school sweetheart? Yes, I did. You don't have any kids? We've been together. We do. We have a daughter. She's 25. We have a granddaughter as well. Very cool. You're a grandma? Grandma Marie. I am a grandma. How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?

52. 52. All right. So you're 52. You're looking across the living room at this guy you've been with for 35 years, a quarter of a century plus a decade. And you are thinking, I'm not attracted to him anymore. Yeah, that's true. How long have you been feeling that way? Oh, I think this has probably been our biggest argument for the last 20 years. 20 years.

Yeah, it's gone up and down. There's been better times. There's been some changes and then things would just go back to the way they were. So what's the conversation been like for 20 years? Well, I work personally, I work very hard to keep myself in good shape. And I feel that my husband doesn't do the same. He doesn't have the same effort into making himself look good.

He treats me absolutely perfectly, but it's just such a disconnect with how he wants to take care of his body and how much that impacts my attraction to him. Is he overweight? He is. He is about 65, 70 pounds overweight. Okay. There's health concerns too. Yeah, you're obviously worried. Getting into your 50s, worried about health. How long has he known...

that when you, if you were to roll over on a Saturday morning real early and the light's coming through the curtain and he's still asleep and you look over at him, how long has he known that you don't think he's handsome, that you don't think he's attractive? About 20 years. That's hard. Yeah. He's not on the phone. And if he called and said, hey man, my wife didn't find me attractive. I'm 65 pounds overweight. I've been struggling for a couple of decades. I'd have that conversation.

He's not a phone, so it's just you. Is there a part of you that... I'm going to phrase this in an accusational way, okay? I mean, I mean for it to be that way, but I want to put aside. I understand attraction, I understand waking, I understand all that stuff, okay? So you're not crazy and you're not weird and you're not a bad person, all that. Okay. But there is a sense of you feel better than him because you do all of this work and he doesn't do any of the work. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I feel like I've...

pushed myself to extreme limits and I, I expect that from him as well. How's that worked out for you for two, two, two decades? It has worked sometimes I've, you know, implemented programs or given him workouts or, you know, I, I'm in charge of what he eats for the most part. And so you're his mom. Sometimes. Yeah.

And often in these dynamics, there ends up being a relational dynamic that he knows he can't win or he knows. I've talked about it often on the show. My buddy, Sal DiStefano from Mind Pump out of San Jose. Like, hey, John, if you go to the gym, this is a private conversation we had. If you go to the gym because you think you're gross, if you go to the gym every day to punish yourself for being overweight, for not having a six pack, blah, blah, blah.

You can white knuckle that and you'll crash every single time. If you wake up every day and say, I'm loved enough, I'm worth an hour so that I can think and feel and do and play all those things to the best of my ability, you'll do that for the rest of your life. And so my question for you is, you've known this guy since he was 17 years old. When he looks in the mirror,

When he walks through life, he treats you amazing. The person he treats not well is himself. And he knows you don't like him. He knows you think you're better than him, that he didn't think he's good looking. Why does he struggle with who he sees in the mirror? Why does he not love himself? Hold on, let me rephrase that. I don't want to imply that just because he's overweight, he doesn't love himself. Why has 20 years of you beating him over the head, giving him meal plans, giving him workouts, telling him this and that, why hasn't that worked for him?

There's something deeper for him. Right. What is it? I have been praying and diving into things to wonder what that is for a better part of the 20 years. I'm not sure if it's my fault for beating him up for so much or he truly just doesn't see that he needs to change. I mean, the old adage, people change when the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change.

Right. And hadn't crossed that threshold yet. I wouldn't blame you. I don't think that's fair and I don't think that's healthy or worthwhile. What you've done hasn't worked. I think that's fair. I think you've tried to love them with all the tools you have in your toolkit. And I think it's important for those of us who are married to realize sometimes all we have is a hammer in our bag and we just try to fix our partner with the hammer and end up causing some pain when we're trying to love them the best we can with what we got. Yeah.

So what's your next move for two decades? There's no giving up. There's no giving up. There's no, like, I don't want to be without him. So it's not so severe that that's the case. I just would love a change in, like you said, the rolling over on Saturday morning and having that desire for him to return. If he lost 65 pounds, would that suddenly materialize?

I would hope so, but I can't be sure. Tell me, I mean, do you have a loss of respect for him? Do you have a loss of... There is a loss of respect just because I've done very much to keep myself in good shape. I did go through breast cancer a couple of years ago and he's been great there holding me up with that and changes in my body. And I desperately want to...

He still loves me. He still looks at me like he did when we were 17. He still has a major attraction for me. And I'm, that makes me jealous that I don't have that for him. Have you told him that? So many times. Yeah. What's he say?

Sometimes he says, I'm sorry, I'll change. And he works through some stuff. And other times he's just mad and tells me he'll do something and change and start to work out or whatever. And he just does nothing. Does he have friends in his life? Does he have some men that he's got community with? No. Do y'all as a couple hang out with other couple friends? Not really, no. No. How do you keep alive in your marriage?

Like the cool thing about marrying your high school sweetheart is like you're solidly one, right? The hard part is there's an old Office episode about it. You know everything you've ever done ever, always, and forever. Yeah. Like so you have to be really intentional about spontaneity and adventure and adding life and curiosity and spark. When's the last time y'all were intentional about that?

I don't remember. We love the same things. We enjoy the same activities. We pretty much always do the same thing. We, you know, ride motorcycles or we go camping or fishing or hunting together and we enjoy those times together, but it's just normal stuff. There's no difference. There's no spontaneity. We forgot to have fun. Yeah. And that's, that's what I'm getting at.

The attraction thing's real. It's very, very real. No question about that. Often though, this conversation is somebody waking up and realizing I've been with the same person for 35 years. And I love that you have some ownership here. The life we have created is gray. It's slow. It's boring. It doesn't lack any spark. We haven't been intentional about setting things on fire just to watch them burn like we did when we were 17, 18, 19, 20. And here we are.

And I'll just say this, men can be awfully like, yep. You know what I mean? Yeah. So let me ask you, like, let's move aside him. What about your life feels not alive anymore? A lot of it. Tell me about it. Well, going through breast cancer and fighting for your life. By the way, not only fighting for your life, but fighting for your life when your own body's trying to kill you.

Yeah. That's horrifying. It's different when somebody out in the world is trying to kill you, right? When you're on body, that shakes the foundation that you walk on, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I was hoping that when I was through all of this, that I would have more of a desire to...

to keep going and to enjoy life. And for a short period of time, there was that, but everything just fell back to the normal before breast cancer. And even though it's different, nothing is the same. And if I'm you, that's where I would start. And the scary thing is, is you get to choose what happens next. And the really extraordinary thing is you get to choose what happens next.

But I think the exercise, and I think this is an exercise for all of us, those of us who have survived near-death encounters, like people like you, like Kelly, like who are cancer survivors, those who are married to somebody they're not attracted to anymore, they used to have just peel the wallpaper off sex with, and it was crazy. And now we're 52 and just look at each other, watch the same shows. Deer season's coming up. Whoever, whatever, the Chiefs are playing, like,

Life just happens, right? And you get to choose what happens next. So I think the exercise is what does alive look like? What does it? And so what does that mean? Here's some fun questions. What did I used to be into romantically, sexually, like that? I'm just not into anymore. And what are some things I'm 52? I'm 52. I'm on the backs. I'm on the back nine.

What are some things I want to try? What are some things I'm into? What are some things I would want to go do? What are some concerts I want to go see? Where are some places I want to go? What does a lie feel like? Because it's easy to focus on the dead part. The adventure and the scary stuff is, all right, what's it going to be? What's it going to take? Because my fear is your husband goes and loses 65 pounds and you think in your body, just like you did when you got the all clear diagnostic, it's going to feel a certain way. And those feelings just roll back to baseline.

It's what we do in spite of our feelings, right? You don't feel like exercising all the time, but you go because you know that you have a goal down the road. My guess is he's lost 20 pounds. You've made him meals and you've cooked him and you've given him workout plans and he's knocked off 20 pounds, 35 pounds, and everything kind of feels the same. You don't like him. You're lecturing him. His life is this. He's still dealing with X. He's dealing with Y. And it just kind of goes back to the way it was.

And so here's the only way I've seen this thing work. Number one, you have to open your hands up. You can't make him do anything. And that's heartbreaking and scary and all that. You can be very, very honest. And it sounds like you've done that over 20 years. At some point, you're going to have to open your hands and let that go. Okay. But I think that you don't let that go without a loving, direct response.

sitting across the table holding his hands looking him in the eyes and saying you are my one and only you're my ride or die and for 20 years I've tried to Care more about your health and about your looks and about wanting to be super sexy all those things More than you and it hasn't worked and so I'm gonna let that go and I think then it's fair to say I do not want to do 60 and 70 and 80 and 90 years old without you and that's the trajectory we're on

And by the way, I want to be a smoking sexy 50-year-old and 60-year-old and still be one of those gross couples still hooking up all the time. And I want you there with me. Yeah, that's absolutely spot on. Okay.

Regardless of how those conversations go, because for him it might feel like we've had this conversation a thousand times over the last 20 years, the next layer is I want to inject some life into our world. What does that mean? The deer hunt season's coming up. It's football season. Here's what this means. This year we are fill in the blank. And maybe this year I am. I'm going dancing. I'm taking a dancing class. You're the guy I want to dance with. I will find a dance partner at dance class if you don't want to come with me.

I want to learn to ride motorcycles. I want to, like, I don't know what stuff you're into. Right. But I want you to begin to wrestle with what does coming alive look like. And it's something you practice because you haven't done it in a long time. Yeah. It's been survival. Yeah. And I want you to be careful about blaming him for your sense of your internal, because it's easy. The light came back on, right? You got to peer over the edge. You're like, oh gosh, this thing's, this life we have is fragile. It goes away in a second.

Then you look at him, you're like, what are we doing? What are you doing? Right? It's easy. Just start blaming. Let's take some ownership. All right, I'm going for full tilt. We only got one shot at this thing. And God, I love you and I hope you come with me. How does that resonate in your chest? It definitely is hitting home. There's a lot of hard things in that. Yeah. Can I ask you one more hard question before I let you go? Yeah. And again, this is because he's not on the phone. After 20 years of struggling with...

being attracted to the person you're with after five years, 10 years, one year. Sometimes we do things, say things, respond to text messages, meet people, become somebody that we never thought we'd become. Is that you? No. Okay. Are you still a person that you respect and honor? Absolutely. Okay. I think that's a great place to start as you sit across the table from this man that you love and say, I respect and honor myself and my dream for you is that you will love the man that you see in the mirror.

And I can't be your mom, but I do want to be your girlfriend again. Would you go on a date with me? And the thing I want you to keep ever present is you both get to choose what happens next. There's zero things y'all can change about what happened from this morning all the way back to when you were 17. But you can change everything that comes next. And the scary part is only you can change you and only he can change him.

But let's open our hands. What we've tried to do for the last 20 years, meal plans and workout, this is deeper than that. This is deeper than that. That hasn't worked. Let's try something new. You're worth an amazing adventure of a life with the time you got left, and he is too. And if he wants to call me, I'd love, love, love to talk to him and give him as many tools as I got because I want him to have an amazing adventure with the time he's got left too. Thanks for the call, Marie. 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 going to 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.

If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves.

If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. 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, have you ever had seasons of chaos and busyness and madness? And then one of the most stressful things in those days is the fear of going to bed because you know you're just going to lay there and be uncomfortable and have racing thoughts and be frustrated and be hot.

Listen, I've found that a key to making bedtime something that I look forward to for great sleep and rejuvenation is creating a peaceful sleep environment. I call it a sleep sanctuary. And for me and my family, a peaceful sleep sanctuary begins with an end-of-night routine, and that means cozy earth, bedsheets, towels, and pajamas.

I love Cozy Earth's astonishingly comfortable sheets. They're world-class towels and bath products, and my wife is in love with their sleepwear. And Cozy Earth products aren't just comfortable, they're durable. They're smooth as silk and tough as iron. Plus, Cozy Earth offers a 10-year warranty on all of their bedding. I want you to look forward to going to bed, and I want you to find your peaceful sanctuary with Cozy Earth.

Go to CozyEarth.com slash Deloney or use code Deloney for an exclusive discount for up to 40% off. 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, let's go out to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and talk to Leah. Hey, Leah, what's up? Hi, Dr. Jones. How are you?

I'm good. I just have a question and then I get to the question and then I have a couple bullet points if you want me to explain more. But so my question is, how do I better manage my time and prioritize my time and say no to people to avoid over committing myself? Oh, I've got an awesome thing you can do and then you can tell me all about it. Okay.

Okay. This is awesome. Close your eyes real, real, real tight to where it feels weird how close, how tight they are. Okay. You got it? Okay. And then take one hand and hold your nose and pinch it shut so you're breathing out of your mouth and then repeat after me. No.

No. There you go. The first two parts of that, I just made that up. I was just sitting here just being dumb. All right. You just proved to all the people listening to the show you can do it. Way to go. And by the way, in future iterations of the word no, you don't have to close your eyes and hold your nose like a weirdo. But that was awesome. Okay. So tell me more about it. Why are you struggling with saying no? Okay. So...

I work. So I work, you know, nine hour days. I take, like I drive an hour to work. I do online school and I coach cheerleading and evenings and on weekends. And I also do like nannying. Good Lord, lady. When do you sleep? Yeah. In the nighttime. Okay. Um, but,

I have like a lot of anxiety when it comes to saying no to people, like when like extra things come up and like, I'd rather just like inconvenience myself rather than feeling like I'm letting other people down. Yeah. Why do you think so little of yourself? I don't know.

But it definitely has, like, what, you know, caused my relationship to struggle. Like, with my boyfriend, he, you know, I come home and obviously we don't have a lot of time to spend together. And the time that we do have spent together, like, it causes resentment from him, you know, because he feels like I don't prioritize. But I just, there's so many things going on. Yeah, you don't. He's right. Are you avoiding him? No, I don't think so. How long have y'all been together?

Five years. Oh, gross. That's so long. That's half a decade. I was going to say, the first year or two, I was dating the person I'm married to. You know, I skipped a final exam. I blew off everything. That's not in my mind. Five years, things can kind of get just routine the way things are. What is it about your current life that you don't love? I don't really know. I know like...

I have a lot of life changes happening right now with work, stress. I've been avoiding trying to do a lot of school and trying to move and stuff. So that's been a lot of stress too. The word that, I'm glad you said that, the word that was just in my mind while you were talking and letting me know all the stuff that was going on is avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. Mm-hmm.

And I don't know what your body is trying to tell you to hide from or to run away from, whether that is long-term commitment, whether that is I got to get one real job, whether that is I got to rest and other people need to be responsible for their own joy and happiness. It's not my job to go be a peacekeeper in everybody's life. Mm-hmm.

It could be that when you were a kid, it was your job to make sure your mom or your dad never got mad, never got frustrated, never got angry. And you just carry that into your adult life. But the stuff that keeps us safe as kids will destroy our adult relationships. Right. Will you do me a huge favor? Mm-hmm. This isn't me messing with you. This is for real this time. We take a huge, a huge deep breath and just let it out. What do you want to do, Leah?

I don't really know. I think you do. I think you're scared to say it because it means you're going to have to, just at the surface level, disappoint people. Yeah. What do you want to do?

Well, I know that I want to start a real life with this person and have a real big person job where I make enough money to be satisfied and stuff like that. Making enough money isn't going to satisfy you. You're going to have to decide to be satisfied from the inside out and create that life that way. Is this guy not going to marry you? He is. When?

hopefully soon. How long have you been hopefully suing? Well, we talked about it. Like I'm probably going to expect it this year, next year. Like we had planned on, you know, waiting for a certain amount of time and, and I know it's coming and we talked about it, you know, and I just, you know, I need to make it a priority and I have been struggling. Tell me about the struggle. Um, sorry. Um,

I just have a lot of trauma from my parents, you know, their relationship. I don't want to fall into a relationship that they had, kind of, if that makes sense. Yeah. Was your house pretty chaotic growing up? Definitely. Yeah. And so you love this guy and you have this picture of being married that is not one that you want to duplicate. Being married seems insane to you, to your nervous system.

Right. Okay, so going back to my very first question I asked you, are you avoiding this guy? I think you are. And not in an intentional way. Not like, you know what I love more than him? Cheerleading coaching an hour away from my tiny apartment that I don't even like being in. Right. But I think your body knows, dude, if you get close, we have a script for this, and the script is absolute abject hell. Avoid at all costs.

I did, you know, you were talking about, I can't remember what the situation was, but you were talking about how like peace feels chaotic. And I definitely resonated with that when you were talking about that. Yeah. Like anytime we're at home and we're just trying to like watch a movie and relax. Like I feel like I need to be doing something else right now. Does he love you? Yeah. Has he ever suggested or told you that he wonders what's wrong with him that you can't just sit with him? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Here's your path forward. Number one, you need to go see a professional counselor to deal with your childhood, okay? Okay. Not something you're not going to sit there for five years and rehash every memory. But you do need to look at somebody across the table, knee to knee, not even across the table, across a room, and say out loud some of the things you saw and some of the things you experienced, okay? Mm-hmm. You holding all that in is killing you, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. How old are you?

I'm 20. Okay. Stop protecting mom and dad. Okay? Mm-hmm. Stop. It's not your job. They're adults. They can protect themselves. Okay. Okay? Number two, this is going to sound bonkers, but slow down. You're 20 years old. Yeah. Okay? Mm-hmm. If you could snap your fingers and be 30, what job would you want to have?

And being a stay-at-home mom with 17 kids, that's a job. Snap your fingers at 30. Paint me a picture, a real crystal clear picture. Well, I am going to school for business major, but I don't exactly know what that will end me up at, honestly, I think. You're spinning your wheels. I know. I know.

You're just avoiding. Tell me what you, I don't care what you're doing right now. Paint me a picture of 30. The sun comes up, you open your eyes, paint me that picture. I have, I live in, you know, a house that's, you know, that I enjoy being in and I have a kid and I'm married to my husband. Just one kid? Yeah, just one kid.

You should have six. But okay, so you just have one kid and you're married to your husband. A lot of people are married and not happy. Are you married and happy? I want to be happy, yeah. Okay. What are you wearing? Not in a creepy way, but like, what are you going to... Like, what are you wearing on your way to work? Um...

I don't know. Like, are you wearing a suit? Are you wearing, um, are you heading off to be an attorney? Are you heading off, are you wearing scrubs to go be a doctor or a nurse? Like, what are you, what are you wearing? Where are you going? Well, maybe I will probably want to do a stay-at-home job. Okay. All right. And you see what I'm, you see what I'm doing here? Mm-hmm. Your whole life is based, up until now, up for the last 20 years, has been based on reacting. Mm-hmm.

18 of those years were survival. You had to react. You're a kid. You had no power. You're in a home trapped with two adults that were not making a safe space for you. Right. Okay. The last two years, you have fallen into the arms of a willing whatever 20-year-old who's happy to play house with you but doesn't know how to make a life any more than you do with a partner.

And you're filling all the gaps by running and coaching and this and that. And what about this? I'm gonna do online class. I'm gonna do this. And all those make for good stories to tell people at parties. What are you doing? Well, I'm in school. Oh, cool. What are you studying? Business. Oh, sweet. And you know, it's hollow. Yeah. And oh, you're the cheer coach. That's amazing. That's so cool. Dude, I drive an hour one way, two hours round trip. I get paid $5 an hour. You know, see what I'm saying? Like in reality, these things are not good.

Right. So the question I want you to ask yourself is, if you want to open your eyes in a house that you own at 30 and the sun's shining and your knuckleheaded husband's a little bit of a mouth breather, he's asleep next to you. Your kid comes bebopping into like, I want you to reverse engineer what must be true right now at 20 for that world to exist. You and your husband need to go have some premarital counseling. I want you to not move in with him if you can afford not to.

I want you to get your own place and learn how to stand up, learn how to wake up, learn how to get yourself to where you want to be. I want you to learn about you. You've never been able to do that. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. And then I want you to practice saying no. Here's the easiest way to practice saying no. Get a calendar and start at the beginning with the big rocks. I will have dinner with my boyfriend five nights a week.

On the calendar. Cool. I will exercise one hour a day on the calendar. Cool. I will work eight hours or I will be in school eight hours or I will split that up somehow because I'm working towards a thing. Cool. With whatever's left, then you can entertain other people's ways that you can fulfill needs they have. But you being exhausted and fried and burnt out and scared and all those things,

It doesn't help anybody when you show up. And by the way, you're mad the whole way you're driving to wherever it is you said you would go, right? Yeah. Yeah. Mostly just like anxious about upsetting someone, you know? Because when you were a kid, upsetting somebody got you hurt. Now, not upsetting somebody is going to bury you because you're tired.

Or you're going to blink and you're going to be 36 years old and you're going to realize you're living somebody else's life and somebody else's house and somebody else's marriage and you're going to have missed it. Fair? Yeah, fair. Or you a knucklehead 20-year-old, y'all get married and just make a run for it. But I want y'all to get married and decide here's the world we're going to create. We're always going to tell the truth. We're never going to be mean to each other. We're never going to yell and fight and punch and kick. See what I'm saying? You get to choose everything that comes next.

And you've never been able to choose anything, right? Right. Okay. Your anxiousness, your anxiety is not, your body's working perfectly. And we get to create a new world, right? Right. All right. Here's what I'm gonna hook you up with. I'm gonna send you a copy of Building a Non-Anxious Life, the book I wrote. Okay. It's gonna be my gift to you. I'm also gonna send you one year subscription to

To the best budgeting app on planet Earth. It's called EveryDollar. Okay. And it connects to your bank, okay? But you've got to promise me two things. You'll actually use it. Mm-hmm. And I think you're going to find some peace with some economic security underneath you. Definitely. And number two, you cannot share bank accounts with a knuckleheaded 20-year-old that you're dating. Okay. You can't share bills, none of that. Okay? Mm-hmm.

If he wants you to share money and pay bills, he can say, well, you marry me and y'all can go down to the courthouse and get married and have a party later. Right. Okay. Cool? All right. Hang on the line here and we're going to get you taken care of and get you hooked up. Your anxiousness is right. Your desire to do something different is so right. I want you to take that picture of Leah at 30 and reverse engineer it all the way back to today. What must be true starting today.

And then I want you to call a counselor in your local area or call our friends over at BetterHelp, and let's get to releasing some of that pain so we can get on to what happens next. I believe in you, sister. I want you to believe in you too. We'll be right back. Hey, good folks, let's talk about hallow. All right, I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about, though, is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate.

And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together with other people. And that's another reason why I love Hallow. You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow and they give you three free months to do it.

You can pray or meditate by yourself, or you can connect with friends, with family, a prayer group, or some other community that you choose. And this way you can share prayers, share meditations. You can even share journal reflections to grow in your faith together with others.

And with Hallow, there are other ways you can personalize the app. They have downloadable offline sessions and links ranging from one minute up to an hour, and you can listen where it works for your schedule. You can choose your guide, your background music. You can create your own personal prayer plan and more. I've made it a personal point to begin my day every single day with the Hallow meditation on the scripture of the day. It's a discipline and it's a practice, and here's what I'm learning. As with anything of importance and meaning,

Prayer takes intentionality, practice, and showing up even when I don't feel like it, and even I don't want to. This is discipline. Sometimes you do this by yourself, and sometimes you do this with a group, and Halo helps you with both. Download the number one prayer app on planet Earth, Halo, right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show, get three free months when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing.

three free months of the app when you go to hallow.com slash deloney go right now and change your life all right let's go out to cheyenne wyoming a place i've never been but man i've over romanticized it and talk to holly hey holly what's up hey dr john good to talk to you you too you too what's up well hey so man i don't even i don't even know where to start cannonball right in the middle

Okay. I'm a new mom. I have an eight-month-old. I've been married to my husband almost five years. And we're kind of getting our feet under us a little bit with, I guess, a little bit. Do you ever with having a new baby? Not really. Usually the people's solution is just to have more.

Well, so that, so hold on. I found out about a month ago that we are expecting again. Oh, wow. Can I say congratulations? Is that okay? We happy? Well, hold on. Okay. All right. Keep going. I'll be quiet. I'll be quiet. I keep interrupting you. Yeah, I mean, I think so. Okay. I think so. I was really overwhelmed, really anxious with the news and worked through, you know,

Kind of accepting that and that I'd have two tiny ones under two. And we found out last week we're having twins. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. I guess, man...

I could use some perspective maybe and some help with, I'm an, I'm an anxious mess. I had, I had, I had a really challenging immediate postpartum journey and, and so it's fresh. I didn't get, I didn't get to the point where those memories got fuzzy and now I'm ready again. Um, as everyone tells you, but, um,

Yeah. So I'm, I'm trying to focus on the now and, and, and how, you know, how good things are now, but, and, and focus on being a good partner and a good mother. Um, but I have this like impending doom of what's to come. And, and so I'm trying to, trying to learn how to live in the right now and also prepare for what's coming. And, um, I'm overwhelmed and, um,

It just feels like a lot right now that I can't get a grip on. Yeah, no kidding. Can I just say thank you for calling? Yeah, of course. Well, here's the thing. The things you just said out loud, women are not allowed to say. So I want to tell you, I think what you said was brave and I appreciate it because it was right. Okay? Yeah, yeah. I need you to hear me say it. I say it a lot, but I'm saying directly to you, my friend Holly, you're not crazy. Yeah.

I feel like it. I know you do. I know. I need you to hear me internally. You're not crazy. This is such a gift. And I know women yearn for this, but I'm petrified. Holly, this is crazy town. It is, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. And great. It can be awesome. Yeah. All right. So I...

Postpartum is a little bit of a different animal, but 99% of the time, not 99, 95% of the time, I operate with a frame of reference entering into a picture. And that frame of reference is anxiety is generally not wrong.

Okay. So here is underneath that, when I've talked to women who are having a second kid, in your case, a second and a third kid who have experienced postpartum, here's a couple of things that I've seen over the years that continue to surface and surface and surface. Okay, you ready? Yeah. Number one, we live in a clinically insane culture that says a woman should go home with a new baby and do it all by herself.

Is that you? I mean, kind of, right? Like my husband is here and he's my partner, but at the end of the day, I'm the manager, right? So forget husbands, forget husbands. Yeah. I'm saying we've created this insanity over the last 50 or 60 years in our country that says you're supposed to just leave the hospital and go home and shut the door.

Yeah. And there's cultures that have longstanding rules. No woman should be left alone with a crying baby because it's insane. You have to sleep. You have to eat. Yeah. And we're not designed to raise, we're designed to have aunts and uncles and cousins and people and neighbors. We're not designed to shut the door and have Netflix. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Absolutely. It can be so isolating as a new parent. It's maddening.

You just sit in your house alone and wait out the survival period. Yes, that is not the way it's supposed to be. It's not the way our bodies are designed or our minds, our souls, our spirits. All right, so that's number one. Number two, and this gets touchy, okay? Number two is what kind of world have you and your husband created?

To where your body says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We remember what happened inside this house for the nine months leading up to and now the eight months since. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And if you don't want to go into detail, you don't have to go into detail. But it's easy to say on the one hand, he's working full time. He's providing. He's leaving the house. He's going to get stuff done. Fine. There's also the haunting things.

I used to be this kind of wife slash girlfriend for him. We used to have this kind of sex and run around. I used to be wild. And now I'm just, I don't even know what day it is. I'm so tired. Now my body is a jungle gym and a factory to feed a human. And I can't have another just pawing on me, right? It's all these things about intimacy and connectivity. And I wish we could just get back to, and then I feel guilty for having the, I wish I could just get back to thoughts. And it just creates this spiral, right?

Mm-hmm. Does any of that ring a bell? Because I may be out to lunch here.

Yeah. Yeah. I also think too, I mean, my husband's a first responder, so he's gone three times a week. So there's that, right. Yeah. Overnight. Yeah. Overnight. So I'm gearing up for madness in this house. Yeah. So low. And, and yeah, and there's, you know, part of me that like wanted to get my feet under me and like have my body back for a

a minute, like a hot minute. And we're just like right back to where I was last year. And now there's two monsters in there that are ready to, not monsters. Holly, they can be monsters and you can love them just the same. I do. I guess. You can. All right. So here is the beautiful part. Yeah. You get to decide what happens next.

Yeah. And what does that mean? Yeah. That might mean weird stuff like, hey, honey, last time I did not do well with one by myself in this house. We're going to have three that are under the age of two. My mom's going to move in for a year or nine months or six months or my sister or my cousin or I'm going to hire two high school kids from down the street.

They're just going to come over and lay on the floor and shake a rattle and feed a bottle that I pump and I'm going to sleep. But here's my challenge I want to put down on the table for you. Let's be honest about the things that were absolute hell. Even though it was a beautiful time, new mother, I should be grateful, blah, all that nonsense. All those stories you tell yourself in the middle of the night when you're like, I wish this baby would go away.

I wish I could get my life back. And then the machine starts up. Oh my gosh, you ungrateful mother. No mother has those thoughts. Ah, right. And you start down that loop. Yeah. Okay. Now that we have a little bit of clarity and we know we got two more, two more in the shoot. Here we go. All right. Here's what must be true.

I've got to have some help. And it's not, husband, you're a first responder. You're gone 24 hours. You're off on these calls. That's your job. That's your calling. That's your life. That's what puts money in our checking account. Great. Here's what's going to be true for that season. Mm-hmm.

And honey, I miss you. So when you're home, here's what I need from you. I need you to sit on the couch and just hold me. I need you to rub my feet. I need you to massage my shoulders. I need you to be present with X, Y, and Z. Like it's starting to be very clear and tactical. Our house is just, your house kind of like a tree fell down next to your house and some branches knocked out some windows, right? Yeah.

Now a tree is headed right for your living room, right? It's coming. You'll know it's coming. Oh my gosh. Yes. It's like I can see it. You see it coming. All right. So here's the cool part. We're going to get new wood floors on the other side of this thing. We're going to get a new roof. We're going to get that thing we always want. That's going to be awesome. And we're going to have to live in a crummy hotel for about four years. Right? Yeah. Both of those things are true.

Yeah. So what kind of party can you make in the hotel for four years? Yeah. Cause that's, that's the choice in front of you, right? Is to pretend this isn't happening to just pretend, okay, I'll just do this plus a little bit more. Um, and by the way, you're going from man to man to zone real fast. I'm pretty good at zone defense. You think you are. I remember my buddy, he was like, dude, I thought we just were going to add three.

I've heard the levels out at four on, like after four, you're like, whatever. And then the older ones start, like start raising the other, like it just becomes, the chaos is so chaotic. It just is. But I hear that transition from two to three is whoo. And I'm telling you that only because it's coming. So let's just, okay, here it comes. We're going to, we're going to be honest about choosing reality and then we're going to do the next right thing. Okay. Can I ask you, cause I've talked at you. Can I ask you, okay, besides loneliness,

Besides those stories, by the way, I want you to get a journal that you write down the stories because getting them out of your body is really, really important. And some of the thoughts you've probably had if you had a pretty rough PTSD, I mean, a postpartum time, some of those thoughts, you think that if somebody else knew you had that thought, they would take your baby away, right? Yeah. It's not true. Yeah. Yeah. It's not true. Yeah, it's freaky. It is. It is. Yeah. Okay. You're not crazy. Okay. But write those down. Thanks.

Okay. And if they get real scary, then we're going to call somebody. Cool. But let's get real intentional about, all right, what must be true. So you tell me, exercise, movement, skin to skin, contact, dancing, music. I don't know. You tell me, what are some things you could put on that list? Oh, man.

I think getting outside and moving my body for sure. I'm a big hiker and, um, I used to love to camp. Haven't tried with an infant, but getting outside into nature is the main thing I live for. So, um, yeah, I think, I think that, I think, um, there's also an element too of like, I, I work now, so I'm a full-time, um,

working mom and it raises the question of, am I going to be able to continue my career? Like childcare for three kids, what, what, what's left over at the end of the day from my paycheck. Do you make a million dollars? No, I don't. I don't. And so, um,

you know, losing, losing a little bit of my identity more so in this. And, um, so. Oh, okay. Can I take something really important? What do I need to be an individual? I just interrupted you again. I'm so sorry. I've got to quit, but I, I feel like I need to say this because what you said is so important. Your identity as you knew it is gone. And the quicker you make peace with that, grieve that, honor that, build a monument and have an event for that. By the way, your marriage as you knew it is gone too.

Yeah. Y'all were ride or die for five years. Y'all had so much fun. Y'all went hiking. Y'all made out wherever intense in the forest. Like, well, I don't know. Like you're had this life and then you had a one-year-old and it was tough. And now you're about to have a thousand kids. Right. And so it's, it's this cool thing. The couples that I see really struggle and the individuals I see really struggle have this haunting question of,

When do I get back to dot, dot, dot. And back to is over. Doesn't exist. You are not who you were. Your identity as you knew it is gone. You can become an amazing professional and an amazing leader, attorney, surgeon, but you'll have a different title. You'll be a working mom. It's a different, it's a different title. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Your husband's now a working dad.

It's your identity as you knew it's over. And so as a buddy I had in grad school, he gave me this line and I loved it because he was having his fourth kid and I was barely able to stay married. And he said, dude, it's just a different kind of awesome. But everything's different. It's just a different awesome. Yeah. And that line has been important for me. It's just a different kind of awesome, especially when I realized I get to choose what that looks like. I get to build it. Yeah. Yeah.

You get what I'm saying? I do. Yeah. And I want you to, my hope is, gosh, I talk too much. My hope is this is empowering. You get off the phone and you're like, yeah, yeah. Now I can love these kids because I'm going to create a structure and a world where that's cool. And you and your husband are still going to get wonky and it's still going to be weird. And you're going to feel like your whole body exploded. All that stuff's true. It's all going to happen. And cool. Here's what must be true. It's a new kind of awesome. Yeah.

And all that sounds exhausting when you have an eight-month-old in the house, right? Right. One that's crying right now. I can hear her. I remember I told my wife I wanted to name my book, one of the books I wrote, How to Change Everything. And she said, I would never buy that book. And I was like, why? And she goes, I'm too tired. I don't have time to change everything. And I was like, oh, God. You know what I mean? She goes, I just need to do the next. So I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. Here's my hope. Mm-hmm.

How far along are you? It's pretty new. I'm due in March. So, yeah, I'm coming up on just barely getting into my second trimester here. So you've got, I don't know, about six months left. Yeah. Ish. It'd be really cool if you and your husband had somebody come watch the baby and you all set about a plan for how you're going to dream over the next six months.

And here's a fun exercise, and I've talked about a lot on the show. What do you want your house to feel like six months after you have three kids, two and under? Like what do you want it to feel like? Full of laughter? Full of cleanliness? Because you can just get rid of that. There's gonna be no cleanliness, but it could be full of laughter, right? And once you start letting some of these things go,

Yeah, there's gonna be dishes everywhere. Your living room will be clean in approximately 17 to 18 years. Cool. Let's just let that one ride. You know what I'm saying? Like, let's let some of these things ride. You might have to have like to grieve. I was like a badass working mom.

And now I'm just an employee. I was just amazing. And I'm going to make the decision to stay at home with three teeny tiny kids. And I'm going to have a couple of women come to my house and work from my house because I have to have human contact or whatever. Or I don't want to stay at home. I can't do it. I will implode. And so what's that? What must be true? But y'all, I want y'all to come up with a structure. So every Sunday night, every Monday night is going to be dreaming and planning night.

Okay. And we talk about money and we talk about sex and we talk about what we want this house to feel like. And we talk about, is our house big enough for 45 kids and all and all and all and all. And by the way, my mom's moving in or your mom's moving, whatever. None of this is going to go super smooth like you think it is. But the idea that we're being intentional about what's coming. Awesome. Okay. Does that sound like I can handle that? I can do that? I can. Yes, I can do that. I think, I think my...

Wanting a plan, I think, is really what I'm craving. Love it. And I think that that's a good, makes it bite-sized probably, instead of figuring it all out now because we can't. We don't know what's coming. Here's what's more important than your plan is that you agree to make this plan as it evolves and remake and remake this plan with somebody.

I can hand you a roadmap and say you have to go do this and it will be almost impossible. But having somebody with you, having a plan to have other people around as you head into this new season, my gosh, I can't tell you how if somebody said like, hey, I'm about to have twins. I got a one-year-old. What's number one? I would say get a bevy of friends who will come over, hang out,

A bevy of people, people you can text, all that, all of it. Like that would be number one, everything else. Number two. Okay. Okay. And I don't know what that looks like in China. Right. And it might be like Monday nights, all the women come over.

Sunday nights, y'all bring whatever's in your fridge. Everybody's coming over to my house. It's going to be loud. There's going to be barf everywhere. There's going to be diapers everywhere. And I don't care because y'all are my friends and we're just going to eat whatever's left in the fridge. And I need to see humans and remember that I'm not crazy. And every Tuesday night, your husband's got all his knuckleheaded first responder friends come over and they tell terrible stories and they laugh at really, really black humor stuff. Cool. I don't know what that looks like. And high school kids come over on Thursday. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's for y'all to figure out.

But we're not going to do this new season alone. And we're going to be as intentional as we can, knowing we're going to hold those plans real loosely because when the two show up, they're going to blow all of our plans to smithereens in all the best ways. I'm happy for you, and I'm congratulating you, Holly. And I also know, ooh, that's scary, scary, scary, Mary. Call any time over the next six months, and we will all be rooting you on. And send us some pictures when everything is...

when the sun shines on everybody in the club. Thank you so much for the call. We'll be right back. I'm so proud that Thorne Supplements, my favorite supplements on the planet, have continued to partner with me and our show listeners for health, longevity, and just feeling good. Thorne is one of our longest standing partners on this show, and it's because I trust them, I use them, I read their research papers, and I know their products are great and that my fans will love them too.

Here's the deal with supplements. There's so, so much garbage out in the marketplace. And other than my admitted gummy candy problem, I'm pretty freakish about what I put in my body. And that's why I trust my health and the health of my family with Thorne.

Personally, I've been taking Thorne supplements for years and years way before I was on the internets with these shows. And my wife and kids have been taking them as well. And here's what I take every single day. I take the super EPA fish oil, the methylated B vitamins, creatine, phosphatidylserine, and more. I take Thorne for specific physiologic needs for me to keep my body and mind optimized and for overall longevity and health.

And here's the cool thing. We've set up an amazing opportunity for all of the listeners of the Dr. John Deloney show. 25% off everything in the Thorne store and not just on your first visit, but every time you make a purchase through our page and our account. This isn't a sale that's going to change from week to week. All you do is go online, create an account through my page, and you'll get 25% off from here on out forever. It's that easy.

Go to thorn.com slash you slash Deloney. That's thorn, T-H-O-R-N-E dot com slash the letter U slash Deloney for 25% off everything in the store. I trust Thorn. My family trusts Thorn. And you can trust Thorn too. All right, we're back. Something cool happened. What's up? All right, so this is from Jenna in Louisiana.

She says, hey, John and crew, OG17 here. Yeah, you. Actually, she said, hey-o. Hey-o. You read a book on one of your shows called The Rabbit Listened by Corey Dorfield. My eyes may have leaked a little, and I immediately bought a copy to read it to my son. He's been having a lot of problems at school and has been labeled a troublemaker as a kindergartner. I read it to him several times throughout the year and also used a lot of techniques that I learned from listening to you and your team.

If you ask him what my job is, he says it's to keep me safe. We have since changed to a different school this year and we have to log what books we read. A week into the new school year, I asked him to pick out a book and he chose The Rabbit Listened. When I asked him why he chose that one, he said he really likes it and it's one of his favorites. He's at the age now where he can pick out a few words, so he stumbled through it with my help.

When we finished, his eyes started leaking. I asked him to explain what he was feeling and why he was crying, and he said, it's just so beautiful when someone listens. Ah, this is going to make me cry. This is amazing. Since then, I've made sure to plug in more when he is talking and really listen to him. Our relationship has improved exponentially, not only because of this, but other things that I've heard on your show.

I'm going to apply the lessons learned in this book to all relationships in my life because my son said it best. It really is beautiful when someone listens. I don't have anything I can add to that. That's amazing. And you brought me that book. Good job, Kelly. Thank you. Look at you doing good in the world. I try. Every once in a while. Every once in a while. That's fantastic, man. Amazing. Mom of the year right there. Yeah, I don't have anything to add to that. That's just beautiful. And that's going to carry me home this afternoon.

For those of you moms and dads and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends who are trying to make it work, I honor you, salute you. Keep it up. Keep it up. It's worth it.