My Wife Is in the Dark About Our Financial Troubles
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Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Dealing with some financial stress and anxiety. A big part of it has to do with not necessarily being clear with my life on where we are at financially. My promise to you is she feels that you're hiding stuff. I promise you she does. Yo, yo, yo, what's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

Talking about your mental and emotional health and your relationships and the people in your life or the people not in your life. Just all of us are running into challenges over and over again. This show is about sitting with hurting people and trying to figure out what's the next right move.

Whether you're stuck at home, you're stuck in your job, you're stuck in your relationship, you're stuck in your own head. Give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. And my promise is, man, I may be wrong, but I'll sit down with you and we'll figure out what's the next right move. Let's go out to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and talk to Will. Hey, Will, what's up, man?

Hey, John, how are you? I'm good, brother. What's up? Hey, I'm just calling in. I'm dealing with some financial stress and anxiety, and a big part of it has to do with not necessarily being clear with my wife on where we are at financially. Tell me about it.

Um, you know, just given the economy and where we're at with the economy and everything. And then on top of that, uh, just being a family with three kids and, you know, a single income is, you know, pretty tough. And in the last five, six years we bought in a house and, you know, we've done all the things, but, uh, it's kind of put us into a situation or I've gotten us into a situation where, uh,

I don't want to be in and I'm working my way out of it, but there's stress with her wanting to know where we are at financially. And I just have a big hard time talking through that with her. I want to do something that's, that's really not popular right now. Is that cool? Yeah. Um,

Because I find myself falling into this, and so I want to make an agreement with you that I will change this in my life if you'll change it in yours. Is that a fair trade? You don't even know what I'm about to ask you, but I'm in if you are. Deal. Let's do it. I want us to not blame the economy for anything anymore. Okay. I want us to say, we wanted to buy another car, send our kid to this school, buy a house. We wanted to do these things.

And in the particular world we find ourselves doing, the particular jobs that we're doing, given a particular set of contexts, it's not going to work out. So I get to decide what the next right move is. Is that fair? Because here's what I want to say. I want to take full ownership. You bought a house, you made some choices, things got tight. And I really want to dig in, not into what's the economy and oh my gosh, it is. It's wild. It's wild. It's expensive. And it feels like everything's kind of out of control.

I can't control any of that. I can just control my next right step. And so I'm going to ask you, why do you have a hard time being honest with your wife about where you as a family are? I just would say, I mean, it's not where I want us to be or where I imagined us to be. And I feel like I don't want hiding. It's not the right word, but just waiting until I get us into a better situation to be like, okay, here's what we did.

here's what we're doing now. And this is where we're at now. And like be in that better situation. And it's just hard to do it in the meantime while we're working to get there. My promise to you is she feels that you're hiding stuff. I promise you she does. And I definitely, I identify with that. I know. I mean, she's starting to accuse you, blame you, rattle around the edges a bit, be sharper with you.

A little bit here and there, yeah. I would be willing to bet money that her body knows that she doesn't know the full, that you don't feel safe and she doesn't know what it is. And some people shut down and try to solve it themselves. Other people blame, but she knows, man. I'm interested, is she going to blow up on you? Is this a matter of you feeling less than as a husband that you, did you do some things that you don't want her to find out about?

Why are you trying to solve this all by yourself? Unless it's just macho shame. I'd probably say just macho shame. Okay. Being the husband and the dad of a single income household where I'm the one that's making the money and just feels like a lot of weight on my shoulders. And even though we have the nice, not necessarily nice things, but we have what we need and we have a little bit of what we don't need and just...

It's hard. How bad is it? I mean, I wouldn't say it's horrible. How bad? It's manageable. I mean, just credit card debt. You're coming unwound. How much do you make a year? About a little over $60,000, $65,000. Okay. How much credit card debt do you have? Probably about $20,000. What's your mortgage every month? About $750. $750? Yeah. Okay. That's a pretty low mortgage.

Does that include taxes and fees and insurance and all that? Everything. $750,000? Do you all live in a little bitty house? It's not huge. It does a job, though. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. So what do you owe besides $20,000? Just car payment and a couple of loans as well. How much do you owe on cars? About $8,000 on car. Okay. And then about another $20,000 in personal loans. What are the personal loans for?

I went about getting those to see if it would help me get out of the credit card debt. Obviously, that didn't work. So who'd you borrow from? Some really crappy little bank. So you went to a bank to get a loan, basically to try to make your own consolidation loan, and then you paid off all your credit cards, and then you promptly ran them back up again? Yeah, for the most part.

So beyond the secrets of where you are financially. So when you're telling me you owed 20 grand here on credit cards, that stinks. That's manageable. Your mortgage is so stinking low. And then 8,000 on cars, we can solve that. But now you're talking about you owe a ton of money. But beyond that, you're out of control. Tell me about that. You've run up $40,000 plus in credit card debt.

Buying what, man? Essentially, yeah. I guess it's a $60,000 income. I mean, you got to be working hard. What are you running up? I mean, this has all just been stuff from when we bought the house, doing new appliances and different home improvements and different things like that. And then one thing led to another, and then I found myself with those loans and...

I feel like I have a plan to get it done and taken care of, but I mean, it's still very stressful and not one to experience anxiety, I feel, but definitely have some of those physical manifestations of anxiety. - What do you do for a living? - Sales. - So your body knows you're one tick of a downturn in the economy away from maybe losing your job, maybe not, maybe keeping your job, but definitely losing commission, right?

I have a pretty good sales job that is not affected by the market. So I feel very secure in my job. Okay. That's another conversation. I don't know any sales job that's not affected by any market, but that's another. We're coming out of a bad market right now. Okay. Yeah, I don't see an integrous path forward without sitting down with your wife and telling her what kind of mess you're in. Does she know you'll have $40,000 in credit card debt? No. Okay.

In my world, I call that financial infidelity. Yeah, she brought that up with me. And I don't like what that implies. But it's not an implication. It's just truth. No, yeah. Is that fair? No, you're right. Okay. She's right. If she went through every one of those statements, would she find some things that you're not proud of that you've bought? No. Okay. Then I think the conversation needs to happen tonight. And I think here's how I would start the conversation, brother. I would start it with,

I have been feeling distant and anxious and a wreck. And part of you has to be wondering what in the world you're doing wrong, what the kids are doing wrong. It's time for me to come clean and then be very clear. I'm not cheating on you. I don't have a girlfriend. I don't have anything like that. But we're in a mess financially. And if she didn't know about this, tell me if I'm wrong. Because if she played a part in this, then she's got to be a part of the

Shouldering the weight of this household, but if she said hey, can we afford to get new appliances and you're like absolutely honey? This our new house get whatever you get whichever ones you want Let's get this one and she didn't know and you would you had said hey, I'm in charge of finances around here I'll take care of this. Um, then you need to come clean. Is that what happened? Yeah, exactly what happened. Okay, and I think you tell her I wanted to provide for you I never wanted you to want for anything and I overspent us and now we're in a big hole

And if you think you have a plan, what's your magic plan for getting out? We have a new division that has no sales work done on it. What does that mean? I'm going to be starting the sales division for this division that our company is opening, and there should be good potential for return. What's the potential for it not to work? I'm not sure yet. Okay. So are you changing jobs?

No, it'll be with the same company I'm with. But you're changing jobs. You're going from a secure 65,000 to a new wing? I would still have the secure. Okay. So you'll keep a 65 running and gunning, and then you have an opportunity to add on top of it? Correct. Okay.

I think that's when you have to be really clear about sitting down with her and saying every extra penny that we make, you and I have to live on a budget. And we haven't had to do that. And I've wanted to provide you a budget-free life because I didn't want you to worry about anything because you're working so hard with these three kids. And I was wrong, and I'm sorry. We have to start living on a budget. And we have to be very intentional about all the money we got coming and going in this house. And every new sale I make in this new role is going to go towards paying this $40,000 off. Yeah.

Can you do, I mean, can you just sit down and lay it out like that? What's she going to do? Is she going to be relieved? Is she going to be mad? What is she going to be? I feel anybody would be mad if you're having a conversation like that. I understand that there's going to be some, some emotions, but I mean, I don't think it's nothing we couldn't work through. Okay. I also would invite her in every week. I want you to actually, you know what? I'm going to send you, um, I work at Ramsey solutions. I'm going to send you the every dollar app. Okay. Okay.

I'm going to send you the premium one that connects to your bank and both of you, my wife and I both have it on our phone. So every time my wife uses our debit card, I can see the expense and vice versa. And you just drag it into the appropriate category. But this is going to be a way I'm giving you this tool. I want you to sit down and say, you are going to see every expense that comes and goes in this house. You're going to see every dollar that comes into the house, every paycheck that comes in. I need you wife to be a part of this conversation with me. Okay. And hopefully,

She is a wife that will be relieved to actually get some insight into what's going on in her own home. But also she gets to be upset. She gets to feel like the rug got pulled out from under her. What does she do when she gets really mad? She gets scared. Yeah. What does she do? She normally likes to take some time to herself. Okay. Leave for a little while. Okay. I would offer her that.

But I would come with all of the paperwork in front of you. I want you to prove to her I made an enormous mess. I'm putting everything literally and figuratively on the table. Here are all of our bills. And we're going to pay these off in order of smallest to largest. I don't care about the interest rates. It's not a math problem right now. It's a behavioral problem. It's a psychology problem.

I kept spending and I didn't have the courage to tell my wife we don't have enough money because I let that be a metric for what kind of man I am, what kind of husband I am. And in the process of me trying to hide and be ashamed that I didn't make enough money, I almost buried my family. And here it all is. It's right here. She can see it. But have a final number. This is how much money we owe down to the penny if you got it. Does that make sense?

We have to be done hiding anything and everything. Is this all of it? It's rare that there's this much hidden money off to the side without another issue. But I trust you if there's not. Yeah, I'm open and honest. There's no other issues. It's been happening and obviously interest and happening over, I mean, a long period of time. And then, I mean, really, I haven't used my cards for quite some time now. I want you to cut them up.

I want you to get rid of them. I want you to get rid of them. I'll send you Financial Peace University if you promise y'all will watch all of the lessons. Yeah. You'll watch them all? I think there's nine of them, and they're an hour long. If you promise you'll watch them, I'll send you that for free too. Yeah, I'll watch them. I sit down and listen to your show every... I want y'all to watch them together.

Okay. Okay. This isn't something you can solve by yourself. You've proven that to everybody in your home. You can't solve this one by yourself. You have to now say, I made a huge mistake. I dug us a hole. I was not honest with you. I hid from you. I lied from you. I lied to you. Here it all is on the table. And I don't want anyone to say, that's not true. I don't want, not anyone. You don't have a right brother to say it's this economy.

You bought appliances that you can't afford. You dolled up a house in ways that you couldn't afford it. It's not the economy's fault. It's a math problem. You didn't have the discipline or the self-confidence to look at your wife and say, hey, number one, we're going to budget together every week because money fights destroy relationships and we're going to be on the same page. I don't care how many kids we have. And number two,

Since we have a unified mission of being free, not owing people money for the sake of a depreciating car in the driveway or a depreciating dishwasher that we're going to have to replace in a few years, we're not going to borrow money for those things. It's not the economy's fault. Y'all would have had to deal with old dishwashers for a while. Maybe even everybody who holds your breath, wash them by hand until you got cash. But here we are. It's not the economy's fault. Not the economy's fault. It's time to come clean, brother. I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for saying no more.

And know this, your anxiety is right. Your anxiety knows that you are separate from your wife because you're holding some pretty big secrets over her head. Your anxiety is right because your body knows, hey, we make 60 grand. We owe 50 grand in revolving credit on depreciating assets. Not good. It's time to come clean. Let's make this thing right. Make sure to call, man. Hang on the line. We'll hook you up. We'll be right back.

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Hey, Dr. John, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How about you? I'm doing fine. Just living the American dream.

Best of luck to you. Best of luck to you. What's up? I think we're all just trying to do the best we can. That's exactly right. Well, I just want to say thank you to one, to you and your team for letting me the opportunity to speak with you. And I also wanted to thank you personally for kind of de-stigmatizing mental health issues and getting support and treatment for them. It's meant a lot to me and my family. And I just wanted to say thank you for that. Well, thank you for that blessing. I'm really grateful for you. Thank you.

Well, you're too kind. So my question to you is this. What advice do you have on how I can set better boundaries with my mom? Definitely an easy question to say the least, Dr. John. Yeah, it's one of those. It's like, how do you lose weight? And it's like diet and exercise. And it's like, cool, thanks. Right. All right. So how old are you? I'm almost 30. Okay. And so you're still in your 20s. I was just trying to help you out there. Yeah. So 29. Yeah.

How long... Walk me through what's going on with you and your mom. Yeah. So I'm really grateful for the fact that I have amazing parents that were really involved. My mom actually stopped working once I was born to be a stay-at-home mom. So she was really heavily involved and doing all the mom stuff, getting us to and from different practices and those kinds of things. But I...

When I graduated from college, and I think a lot of people might have had this experience, I started my career. My parents were really great about letting me live at home during college to reduce my debt and minimize my expenses. And then even after college,

I finished college. They allowed me to live there too. But I was about ready to move out, get started on being an adult and really adulting hard, if you will, Dr. John, and then COVID hit. So that kind of put pause on things because I just felt like it was better to stay at home and be with my family. And since I hadn't ever moved out...

Prior to it, I didn't think that moving out during a global pandemic was probably a great recipe for success. It's fair. What's this COVID thing you talk about? What is that? Just kidding. I mean, it was just something that might have happened to impact the whole entire world. In our country, especially, man, Michigan, y'all got hammered. You're right. Y'all got shut down, right?

Okay. And it was just nice to have people that you can actually see and give them a hug. Oh, sure. I mean, you don't have to justify it. It is what it is. And so you basically, without meaning to or unintentionally, you open your eyes and you're what, 26, 27, and you've lived at home for 26 or 27 years. Yes. Okay. All right. You're 100% right. Okay. So I was...

About a year and a half into COVID, I had been in my career for a while and I was

And things were starting to let up, and I was like, I'm ready to move out. I'm ready to kind of kickstart that next chapter into adulting, if you will. And I was a couple of days away from getting the keys to the apartment, had the utilities all set up, had furniture bought, the whole shebang. And unfortunately, my brother passed suddenly. Oh, man. What happened with your brother? He unfortunately died by suicide. Okay.

What was his name? His name was Johnny. Okay. I'm sorry. Thanks. Good guy? He was an amazing friend to everyone. And I'm really grateful for that. Unfortunately, I wish we would have had more time, Dr. John, because I think as we would have grown up, I think we would have been really good friends and we would have laughed about the things that we didn't get along with when we were kids.

You're not hanging on to this, are you? About my brother passing? No, I didn't ask that right. You're going to hang on to that for the rest of your life. But I hear a hint of, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I hear a hint of somehow you feel like you're part of it, that you played a role. I think as I was looking through the timeline, the hard part,

that I have about the timeline is I had, and I know this is going to sound crazy, Dr. John, I had a premonition when I was younger about how my brother was going to die and how I was going to find out about it. And it happened exactly the way I had the premonition. And the last thing I said before I went to bed

With my parents, we were about ready to, we were actually going to do an intervention the next day and go up and he was at another one of our family's properties and say, hey, we love you, Johnny. You know, you're screaming for help here. We've got you. He was hours away from us. I said, unfortunately, my brother and I don't have the greatest relationship right now. And I guess I'm going to have to be okay with that for the time being.

And then I went to bed and I found out in the middle of the night. So it was. Listen to me real carefully, Kathleen. Listen to me. Your brother's death is not your fault. Thank you. Thank you for that. You've got to choose to believe that. Okay. You have to let that into your chest. I can hear you deflecting it. Yeah. It's hard. You know, if that makes, you know, sometimes I wonder if I was a, you know, if you would have done something differently, would it have changed? I know.

That's the haunting question that all people are left with when loved ones pass away, especially the way he died. And there's a million things you wish you could have told him. Oh, yeah. But his death is not your fault. Was he hurting for a long time? Unfortunately, he had... We didn't really know what mental health issues he had because he would go and he would seek treatment for a period of time and then...

he wouldn't follow up on it. So they didn't really, weren't able to really pinpoint his diagnosis, but he would have periods of time, unfortunately, where he was manic for most of his life. So we would have like six weeks of it being like a normal relationship, if you will. And then we would have six really challenging weeks for the whole entire family. So it was always a, a kind of a yin and the yang. And my goal was because his,

Moods could be so up or so down was to try to be as even keel as possible to reduce the burden on my parents, if you will. Sure. Listen to that last sentence you just said. That because he was volatile, because he was really high and then he'd get really low, in order to make sure your parents were stable, you became a human Xanax.

That is very true. Listen, that was never your job. And since you've taken responsibility of your parents' well-being, their emotional stability, as well as your brother's health for all these years, you are carrying a backpack full of cinder blocks of guilt and shame and responsibility on something that you were not responsible for. I'm going to, with all my guts, I'm going to, I'm not going to beg you, but I'm just going to implore you, please.

entertain the idea that this isn't your fault, that your brother was hurting a lot. I will do my best. Do what? I will do my best, Dr. John. I'm really grateful for the fact that I've had an amazing group of people around me, whether it be friends, family, and also amazing resources through therapy and that kind of stuff that have really, I mean,

I was so grateful that I got into a suicide support group within months after my brother's death. And that was just really helpful, especially that first year in particular, to navigate those weird, tricky waters, to say the least. Yeah. And you know now with a big exhale that he's not hurting right now? Yeah. I mean, I think that's the best part about it is it doesn't hurt. Yeah. It didn't hurt. But she was still here.

Because y'all are hurting. No, you're right. And I think that the hard part I have is, you know, you not only mourn, you know, the person that you lost in the present moment, but it's also the future moments, if you will. You don't even realize that you have a picture of y'all with your little kids and their uncle, Johnny, at Thanksgiving, 20 years. You don't even realize that that picture's already in your head. No. And people ask me all the time, they're like, what's one thing that you wish you could do? I'm like,

I will love to sit around bonfire with my brother in our fifties gabbing about stuff and be like, you remember X, Y, and Z and having our kids, you know, running around and then be like, Oh, remember that time that I told you X, Y actually did Y and Z instead of it. And, you know, those, those kinds of things that you, you know, you grow and you develop into. And to a certain extent, you know, we didn't always have the bestest of relationships, but you know, we, we,

We got the craziness of our lives, if that makes sense, because you grow up and experience very similar things. So it was... Hey, Kathleen. It's a really sad thing, but he's in a better place. I think your relationship was better than you thought it was. You've mentioned that multiple times. Mm-hmm. I want you to take a huge deep breath, and I want you to exhale, and I want you to let that one go. That dude struggled. He had some pretty significant mental health challenges, and he knew his sister loved him. Mm-hmm.

Even when he yelled at you and didn't talk to you for six weeks or six months and screamed at you and borrowed money and didn't give it back and he was mean to your parents, his body knew that sister was safe. No, you're 100% right. I think, I don't want to say this, and you've mentioned this before. Sometimes you're the, unfortunately, you show the worst sides of yourself to the people that you know that love you the most. Mm-hmm.

That's why I hate to say it. I was so grateful that his friends have been so amazing. And they tell me all the amazing things that he did because... It rounds out a picture. It becomes 3D. It does. It does. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about mom. What's up with mom? Tell me about boundaries and mom. So my mom...

She has always been super hands-on, like I said, throughout our whole entire life. And my brother and I would look at each other because she would get super hyper-focused on one of us or one of our grandparents, if you will, because she was a stay-at-home mom. She had just a lot more flexibility than most to be very caring and very attentive. And it was almost like we could count and be like, tag, you're it. But caring and attentive can be highly intrusive and overbearing.

You are 100% right. So I thought at one point in time that I would become an adult and it would, how do I want to say this, evolve with the older I got, if you will, to be less intrusive, less hyper-focused. Benzodiazepines are highly addictive. That's what Xanax is. Yes. You have been her Xanax forever. Even helping her manage her son with some pretty significant mental health challenges.

It don't matter if you moved out. You were still her drug. That's a very good point. I didn't even think about that. It almost felt like I'm her emotional support human. I was about to say your emotional support pet, but you went with human. That's exactly what you are. I mean, I think I'm a human per what I know, but... You are. So you've moved out. Is she making it tough? She...

I was actually planning on moving about 30 minutes away close to my new work. And she said that moving 30 minutes away would be like me moving across the Atlantic Ocean, which I'm sure for a lot of your listeners who have people that live very far away, they would be like, that's a little dramatic, but okay. So...

They made me a deal where they allowed me to rent out one of our family properties for a really amazing affordable rate. And I'm so grateful for that. And it's about 10 minutes away from their house, which is lovely. We've got a lease and everything that says that I'm the tenant, that this is my property, that I- Kathleen, you're living at your mom's house still.

Yes, I'm living in one of our family homes. That's right. But not with my parents. I'm living on my own. But you're living underneath your parents. Correct. Yes, and so they're going to be overbearing, and there's not going to be any boundaries because as far as they're concerned, you live in one of their rooms of their home, it's just down the street. Yeah. And because they're cutting you a deal, you owe them. That's a very good point. It's not a deal. That's part of their...

401E, their investment in their emotional support fund. And you're paying with little chips off of your soul. That is a very good point. You have to move out and pay full rent somewhere and you have to learn to establish... Because here's what's starting to happen as you turn 30, you're starting to wonder if you could. Yes. You're 100% right. And if you don't develop the strength...

It's like if you carry around a toddler too long, it will delay their walking. Yes. No, you're right. You have to trust, I can handle an apartment, I can pay bills, and I can be scared in the middle of the night and still go to sleep and wake up tomorrow. I can do those things. Yeah. I can call someone to fix the plumbing, and I can get ripped off and be mad and never do that again. I got to learn those things. No, you're 100% right. At some point, you have to decide, I'm going to stop

My service to humanity is going to stop being an oxygen tank for another functioning adult. And I'm going to develop strength of my own so that I can serve my family, myself, my local church, my community, whatever, wherever you choose to invest it in moving forward. But you can't do that right now because you can't give what you don't have. And what you don't have right now is confidence because you've never done it.

No, you're right. And I thought by, how do I want to say this? When my brother moved out into the other property, I thought, oh man, that's like, that's a fantastic safety net. You can learn how to be an adult if you will. But then, you know, if you needed to call for help. It's a leash. It's a leash. Yes. You're a hundred percent right. Yeah. It's not a safety net. It's a leash. That is a good point.

And if mom can't breathe without her 30-year-old child living under her wing, then mom has some work to do. That is a very good point. And Kathleen, you can't do that work for her. That is also a very good point. The hard part is trying to put in as much work as I can to me and trying to, to a certain extent, there's been a lot of trauma and things and working through all of that. There has. There has.

But I can't do it for my mom and I can't do it for my parents. You got to do it for you. And I think you're worth that. You're trying to train for a marathon right now with the respiration mask on and a leash. That is, yeah, that's a good point. You got to start learning to run. I think you're going to find your way stronger than you know that you are, than you think that you are, but you're not going to know. No, you're right. Because I hate to say it.

To a certain extent, I feel very successful at my job. I get people that say all the time, like, whoa, you're way ahead of the game than where I was even at my age. And I'm in my 40s or whatever, late 30s. But I hate to say it, feeling like I'm under my mom's wing and having her lack boundaries specifically with the home and that kind of stuff, like you said, because in her eyes, it's basically I'm living in a room in her house.

Yeah, I'll say it in a weird way. She's not lacking boundaries. She's just going into her property. That is very true. And until you get your place and say, this is my home and this is the world I'm creating. Are you seeing anybody? You dating anybody? I am. Okay. Are y'all thinking about getting serious? Gross. Or are y'all just dating?

Uh, no, we, we've been seeing each other for the last couple of years now. Um, he was actually pretty fantastic. We would have been together only a couple months and then my brother passed. So he's been, he's been through all of it to say the least. And so now you have to start imagining what's life going to be like when I have my home that me and my husband create together. You're a hundred percent right. And I've, I've thought about, you know, eventually we would move in together and that kind of stuff. Um,

But I've thought about just living here until that time happens when we're getting married and that kind of stuff, which I think will happen probably within the next year or so. But until that time period, if I stay here, then I still deal with the boundary issue. You're paying a sole tax that I don't think you can afford. Okay. Let me just put it this way. I may be wrong. Go get an apartment for six months and find out. And if it's no good, your mom will let you move back.

That is very true. If I'm wrong. What I think you're going to find is, well, I can decorate however I want to. I can breathe however I want to. I can watch the TV as loud as I want to. I can wear whatever I want to in my house whenever I want to. I can respond to text messages and phone calls whenever I want to. I don't have to, oh my gosh. I don't even know what breathing my own air is like. And also, man, this is going to be hard because you've been responsible for your mom and dad's well-being for your whole life.

It's going to be hard for them. It's going to be hard for you. But at some point, somebody's got to make that call. And right now, maybe I'm wrong, but your boyfriend has some kind of sense that when he marries you, he marries her too. I don't think he wants to marry both of you. I think he just wants to marry you. And so I think it's worth getting an apartment of your own closer to work. And again, remember, it's so much closer. It's a half hour closer to work. That's an hour a day. That's your time. It's your soul. You're worth that time.

And I also am not somebody who believes in you just cut your parents off. No, mom's probably doing the best she can with the tools she's got. And so we're going to be honest with mom and say, mom, I'm 30. I got to grow up. I got to get my own place. And y'all have been cutting me a deal. This is amazing. And, um,

Spent two hard, hard, hard years and I'm transitioning into work that I'm crushing. I'm transitioning into this may be the one, this may be the guy and I'm going to start taking my own steps on my own sidewalk and I love you and I will honor you guys every step of the way. But come September 1, I'm moving out on my own. Come October 1, I'm out on my own. I'm going to go get my own place. You're going to feel anxious and you're going to feel all that and those feelings are going to be right because your body's never done this before.

And my guess is you are going to feel deep and profound peace that you didn't even know. And you're going to feel guilt too because of mom. She's going to say some stuff. I think you're worth giving a shot. I think you're worth moving out. And I think you're worth the boundaries. Hey, mom, this is what I need. And asking her, I need you to respect this. And that's going to be new for her. She's going to bang her head up against those boundaries and see if they hold. I want you to know, I think you're worth those boundaries holding. Thanks for the call, sister. 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.

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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, let's go out to Guns Up. Go Red Raiders Lubbock, Texas and talk to Jax straight off of Sons of Anarchy. What's up, Jax? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? Good. How are you?

I'm very excited and nervous, but I'm going to try not to be. And if it's okay, I just want to take a second to thank Kelly, especially Kelly. And just all the hard work that you guys have put in. It's helped me grow so much in the last year and a half that I've been listening to you guys every day. So I appreciate you guys so much. I'm really grateful for that. I need you to know Kelly does not work very hard.

The rest of us do. Kelly does not. I really doubt that. No, she does. She's one of the hardest-working producers in podcasts. So what's up? I'm going to ask my question. And because I'm nervous and excited, I wrote all my thoughts down because I know I would ramble if I didn't. Perfect. Go for it. So...

How do I manage lingering doubts and the guilt that comes with them about my faith after spending several years as a very aggressive atheist? Good question. Okay, tell me about it. Tell me about your aggressive atheism.

So I've got some context that'll help kind of explain it a bit. Go for it. So I grew up in a Southern Baptist household, if that gives you any perspective. But it wasn't like a major thing.

it was just kind of like, you know, the underlying understanding and occasional mention that God is real and he's to be respected. Um, but that mostly came from my mom and her side of the family. My dad was very, very anti-religion and still is to this day. Um, we went to church pretty infrequently, maybe a few times a year. Um,

My childhood and on through my late teen years through the end of high school was pretty rough. My mom went through two marriages back to back that were abusive in every sense of the word. And I was unfortunately at an old enough age where I was exposed to all of it. And I remembered all of it. And from a really young age, I remember thinking, you know,

Just questioning, like, why has this God that I've been told by everybody around me pretty much that, you know, loves me so much and loves my family so much, why is this being allowed to happen? And so fast forward to high school, I got really lucky and blessed. And I had a really good group of friends and my boyfriend at the time and his family who were all very...

strong and passionate in their faith. And that led to my faith growing and going to church regularly and having that relationship become a lot more healthy. Um, everything was good for about two or three years. And then my mom went through her second divorce and it crushed her. It was really nasty. Um, and, uh,

About four or five years after that, I went through my own abusive relationship. And so pretty much that whole time was just a struggle. I mean, I don't really remember a time where I felt like I could just breathe. And going through my own struggle, like I saw my mom go through, just made my faith just take a nosedive and it shattered. And I...

just spent several years being very jaded and angry at God and confused. And I just thought everything was this ruse that everyone else was part of. And I wasn't, and I just couldn't understand why. And, um, okay. So, uh, fast forward to today though. Hey Jax, real quick. I've made some really, really good changes. Can I tell you, like you were right to be mad. Yeah.

You're right to be outrageously angry and frustrated. All that was right. You're not a bad person. I wasn't going to cry. I wasn't going to cry. I need you to know, if you watch your mom, like the woman who's keeping it together for you, and you watch her look at some man and say, I do, and that guy beats her up, and that guy's screaming and yelling and making your house unsafe, and you go for years and you can't breathe.

Then you finally get the courage to look at somebody and say, I love this guy. And he abuses you. I would say there's something wrong with you if you don't look in the sky or look in the dark nights and look up at the stars and say, where are you? You're right. Your anger's right, kid. Okay? That means a lot to hear you say that. You're not crazy. I would think you're crazy the other way. Okay? All right. I just felt like I needed to say that. So keep going. Well, things have...

I appreciate that a lot. So things have gotten better. I left that abusive relationship about three years ago and we do have a child together who just turned four about a month ago and she's wonderful. Is she safe? I'm in college now and...

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. 110%. She's spoiled rotten. She's good. Um, I'm in college now and I'm really successful. Um, and I've really started to improve my physical health, my mental health, everything. And, um, through all this, I've really started to reconnect with God. And I was even saved earlier this year, back in June. Um,

And so all of these things I'm extremely blessed for and I'm very, very grateful for. But I'm kind of at this point where I'm just struggling and full of guilt and anxiety because I'm living this life as a Christian now. And

those doubts that I've carried with me this whole time are still just in the back of my head. And I've grown to understand that the things, the struggles that we go through, God puts them in our life, not as punishments, but preparations. But there's that little voice in the back of my head that's like, okay, but like, why did it have to be that though? You know? And, um,

it's, they're lingering so much to the point where I just feel kind of like watered down as a Christian, if that makes sense. And I feel like those around me that are going to see right through me because like I look at them and I know you're going to tell me this is bad. I know. But I compare myself a lot because I see them and how on fire they are and just how

I know it's only what's on the surface, but I just don't... I don't feel like they seem to feel. And so I just feel like I'm questioning myself all the time. And I feel like... I feel like my heart's not fully in it. Okay. And I don't know what to do. And I've tried, you know...

I've tried talking to my parents and it's just, we're not exactly on like the level where that's a conversation that can be had the way that it should be. And let me hop in here. Okay. I've tried talking to, you know, church members, you know, the community. Yeah. Okay. Let me hop in here. This is a quote from the great Anne Lamont. One of, one of my favorite writers of all time. She says the opposite of faith is not doubt.

The opposite of faith is certainty. Doubting doesn't mean you're somehow less than or wrong. In fact, it means your search. It means you're doing everything you're scratching and clawing to get towards truth. And if the people in your faith communities are scared of your scratching and clawing towards truth, then what they're defending is their egos. They're not defending the truth because the truth doesn't need a defense. It just is.

And as someone who spent a significant time as an adult, I wouldn't characterize myself as an aggressive atheist like you did. But I didn't believe any of this stuff. And for those listening, my family aren't Christian. I didn't believe any of this stuff. And it was a slow, steady walk. And by the way, what I believe now in my 40s is very different than what I believed in my 30s, which is very, very different than what I believed in my 20s.

And your understanding that God puts things in front of you for you to like shape you moving forward. There are people listening right now that completely reject even that picture. God would never do that. And so here's what I want you to know. You're not crazy. And you have a history of your short life of looking backwards and seeing people trust and get absolutely roasted for it. And so your body has in its nervous system,

An innate distrust, especially for paternal figures, right? Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very fair. And can I tell you one more crazy story? It's from the Bible. What did Jesus do when he was in the garden right before the resurrection? What did he say to God? Do you know? I honestly can't tell you off the top of my head. I'm not sure. I'm going to paraphrase. He said, is there any other way we can do this? I don't want to do it like this.

You know what that sounds like to me? Doubt. And then he went and did the next right thing. Okay. So in those moments when your feelings are telling you one thing really loudly, I want you to listen to them. Occasionally they're right, but often they're wrong because feelings jobs are not designed to tell us the truth. When you're sitting with a bunch of super like atomic people of faith, right? Like whatever you might feel left out.

That feeling might not be telling you the truth. That feeling might be protecting you because you tried to be all in before and it got you hurt. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And when you feel less than because you're asking questions or you're doubting, your body's probably trying to keep you safe from getting ostracized and kicked out of a relationship or a community again because that's happened to you before and it burned like fire when you had two abusive dads in your home and then another abusive romantic interest.

And so when you start asking questions, your body might scream at you, stop asking questions because they may leave too. And I'm telling you, if people don't want to be in relationship with you because you ask hard questions and they're probably not the people for you and that's okay. And even in scripture, it says some people got, I think the quote is the gift of faith. I've met people who just don't question anything. I'm jealous of them.

I'm also jealous of my wife who can open up a package of gummy bears and just eat three and put it back in a drawer. I don't know how she does that. I can't do that. And I also question everything all the time over and over. And then though, I go do the next right thing. Most of the time, sometimes I fall down on my face. So if you hear me say nothing else, I want you to hear me say this. Growing up, you got hurt a lot. You're right to ask hard questions and God can handle you being mad at him.

And he can handle your anger and he can handle your questions and he can handle you on your face in the garden saying, I don't want to do it like this. Is there another way? And also the relationship looks like going to do the next right thing. And sometimes it's, man, I'm in a season of doubt. I'm in a season of disbelief. Lord, help my unbelief. I'm going to go serve the poor. I'm going to go tip that waitress who's exhausted really well.

I'm going to exhale and be really kind to my ex-husband or to my wife, even though I'm frustrated and I don't want to be. I'm not going to yell at my kid. I'm going to go do the next right thing, even in those seasons when everything feels like it's just on fire. And hold your belief systems loosely. They're going to change. They're going to move. You're going to come to different understandings about scripture, about Jesus, about God, about how all of it works, about which communities of faith you want to be a part of or not. That's all of us. Hold those loosely.

But it sounds like you've anchored in. I do believe in something bigger than me. I do believe in this God they talk about. And I'm not going to chase feelings. I'm going to chase the next right thing. I'm going to chase relationships. Those are all good things. I think you're on the right path, Jax. I do want you to find, if you can't find him with your family and you can't find him with your pastor at your church, I want you to find a group of people that you can sit down and ask hard questions to and get coffee with and go to the movies with and go play softball with or whatever y'all do in town there that you can do life with.

And some of them will be just rock solid and some of them will be all over the place and some of them will be up and down. And that's called life. And I think every group needs all those people. It's that tension that keeps everybody whole moving forward. Thank you so much for the call, my friend. Keep doing the next right thing. We'll be right back.

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All right, this is from Ellie. My husband and I recently told my mother-in-law that she could not be around our eight-month-old daughter without us present due to the way she treats people, specifically how she treats my husband. His and his mother's relationship has been off and on since he moved out at 18 due to her being verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive toward him in childhood. He still wanted a relationship with her, so we tried to reconnect every few years.

After I went back to work, we allowed her to try picking up our daughter one day a week from daycare to have some grandma time. But after a recent visit from an out-of-town family member, she blew up on my husband in front of everyone because he was being too loud and had food on her sofa. We wanted to sit down and talk with her about the situation and why her treatment of him leads us not to allow her to be around our daughter, but she refused to speak with us without being in front of a counselor.

We said no to counseling because we don't believe we need to be in counseling session with her, a 50-year-old woman, when we're a 30-year-old married couple. We feel that if she chooses counseling, it should be hers alone. She doesn't want us around and won't speak to us without a counselor, and she won't go see our daughter anymore. Are we the problem? I don't know. I mean, there's a lot here. On face value, no.

No. A 50-year-old is saying, I don't want to talk to you unless, and you're saying, okay, then I might talk to you. This is boundaries. It's my boundaries versus your boundaries, and such it is. And if a 50-year-old blows up because they put an eight-month-old on a couch and the eight-month-old gets food on the couch, that's the adult's problem because eight-month-olds get everything everywhere, all things, cha-cha-cha, TT, PP, all of it. Everywhere in the club gets tipsy when there's an eight-month-old around.

And so if you put a month old on your couch, yep, that's an adult fault problem. And if you, yes, it's probably mom's fault, 99.9%. But there is something in the way the question, I don't know, the question just felt stacked, but maybe I'm just feeling ornery today. What do you think? Again, you know, we're always trying to keep in mind we're getting one side. But it sounds like there's some obvious issues here if the

From the husband's childhood. Abuse, physical, emotional abuse. So that's not great. So I think maybe they've set some firm boundaries that they've had to stand firm on, which we tell people to do. All the time. So... Yes, if you're... Let me say it this way. If you come from an abusive household, one or both of your parents was physically and emotionally and psychologically abusive, and then you see the first inkling of that with a toddler, we're out. Absolutely. I'm out.

You have proved you like behaviors of language. You have proven it over time. I'm out. You cannot handle your emotions. Cool. I will handle the safety of my child because that's my job. I'm their parent. Yeah. I think I might agree that I would be like, no, I'm not going to counseling with you. Like that's the only way you're going to talk to us. No, if you scream at my eight month old, I'm not going to therapy with you. No. If you called me and said I was a treacherous mom to you.

I abused you in multiple ways growing up and I want to heal that. I don't even know where to start. Would you go meet with a counselor with me? I would do that. I'd recommend anybody do that. But if a mom is a 50 year old woman is doing a temper tantrum and then, yeah, it's just, it's just weird power games. I'm out. Yeah. And I, and I'm so, I'm so slow. I don't want people just blowing their parents off. Right. But yeah, I mean, you're going to, yeah. Bye Felicia. Yeah. I think you're right. Dang Gina.

I don't feel like we landed the plane on the show very well. I feel like we just, we're still circling. I don't know. Maybe we did. I think it was a good show. You're so kind. You're a great producer, Kelly. We recorded that, right? We got that on recording? Okay. All right. We're good. Opposite day. Is that anything? It was when you were like in fifth grade. Love you guys. Bye.