I Fell for a Guy at Work . . . But He’s Married
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I am trying to get over a married male coworker. This feels like an emotional affair waiting to happen. You're getting the, the winks across the table. You're getting the laughter, but some other woman is washing his underwear.

What in the world is going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Happy New Year. I hope you're doing great. We're a few weeks into the new year, but I'm recording this in last year. So I'm just assuming and hoping everything is rocking and rolling. Not everything's going to be perfect. Not everything's going to be just how you drew it up.

I'm hoping you're choosing hope and you're making the best of what's right there in front of you. This show is about sitting with hurting people, trying to figure out what's the next right move. Folks faced with relationship challenges, mental health issues, emotional health challenges, whatever you got going on in your life. My promise is I'll sit with you and we will figure out the next right move. If you want to be on the show, subscribe.

Give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask A-S-K. And don't forget to subscribe and leave your five-star reviews. All right, let's go out to Flint, Michigan and talk to the mighty Olivia. What's up, Olivia?

Yes. Olivia Newton-John, what's up? I'm good. Dr. John, I am looking for the next right move. Uh-oh. Why are you in the wrong place? Well, let's hop into it and you can tell me. Oh, great. Okay, what's up? Okay, Dr. John, I am trying to get over...

A married male coworker. Run. I've set boundaries with him. Dr. John, it's these emotions. I don't know how to get past my emotions, my feelings. Like, I feel like I broke up with somebody. You did. I don't know how to get past these emotions, and I need help with that. You did break up with somebody. I did. Yeah. Tell me about what happened.

Okay. Well, back in the spring this last year, 2024, I started a new job. Awesome. Great opportunity. About three weeks into this job, I declared an office crush. It was a guy that I, when I first saw him, I thought he was handsome and then sitting in meetings with them. He's witty. He's funny. I just, you know, innocently, oh, he's going to be my office crush. Then

Didn't think anything else of it. But by mid-summer, I started noticing that I was getting attention from him. And then flirting started. And I was enjoying it, loving it. But then autumn starts creeping in. I'm like, this feels like an emotional affair waiting to happen. Yep.

And so in October, I shut it down. I went into his office and I had two reasons for shutting it down. I only gave him one reason. I said, hey, I'm concerned that the way we banter, our flirting in the office is going to backfire on me. Not only mentioned that I was concerned about my job, that is going to impact me and my job because, hey, I'm the new employee. I'm

I'm the female in the situation. He's over management. He's the married guy. Women typically lose in this situation. Always. But what I didn't tell him was that I was also concerned that I was going to get emotionally attached to him and fall for him romantically. Well, Dr. John, I think I waited too late to set the boundary because after I set that boundary, I have been literally crawling across the floor in tears. I've missed work. I'm even skipping the the

department Christmas party next week because I don't want to take a chance on seeing him with his wife. Like I have been struggling and just, you know, I have great friends. I have a therapist. I even have a sponsor in a 12-step program. And it's just, I could be sitting at my desk and he walks by and my heart skips a beat. I don't know what to do with that. How? How do I get past that part? He's respecting my boundaries. No.

No, he's your new addiction. I don't think this is about him. I think this is about what he represents for you. Yeah. And you laid it out. Perfect. Upper management, witty, funny, sees you, laughs with you. And then let's make it worse. You know what else he does? He's one of the few men that respects boundaries. Right. And then that makes it, that makes him even more enticing.

But, okay, so let me ask you this. Like, talk to me about relationships you've had in the past. Well, my relationship, well, first of all, I'm a 50-plus woman who's never been married. I still desperately want to be married. Dating is good in the sense that I go out on a lot of dates.

Dating is uncertain and horrible because there are no guarantees. Like even last weekend, I went to a Christmas party that I thought was for singles. Place was crawling with couples and I left discouraged. Like, where were the single men? And so I don't have, like looking back over my past, I don't have this like, you know, history of like long-term relationships and all that. I don't have that because

You know, it just hasn't happened for me for a multitude of reasons. It has not happened for me yet. Tell me about your 12-step program, what you've been working through.

That very thing, anorexia in relationships. That's specifically what I'm in the 12-step program to work on. And, you know, I got a great sponsor. I even have a dating plan where I said, like, for example, one of my goals in my dating is go out on three dates with a guy before I say no, because in my anorexia, I was

I will come up with a reason to get rid of the guy quickly. I will judge a man out of my life so fast. And I am a little bit on the intolerant side of the tracks where a man can make some little infraction and I'll get annoyed and shut him down. And so that's there. Well, here's what you have with this coworker. Here's what you have. And by the way, I don't want you to think you're crazy. I've been there. Everyone I know has been there.

Okay. You find somebody, it gets a little flirty, and then you go like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, right? Yeah. And that's why I'm so adamant, right, about like you got to run from it because it blows up everything. And you're wise to that. But let me tell you what you're working with. Number one, you get to experience the benefits of a relationship.

I'm assuming you'll have a slept together. So besides sex and intimacy, you're getting the, the winks across the table, the little inside jokes, you're getting the laughter, you're getting the bump up against you. Right. Or if he hands you trash, you like the way his hands feel when they just barely brush your hand. Like those little things. Yes. You get that, but you get it with no risk because he's married. Yeah. Some other woman is washing his underwear.

So you get all the upside and no downside. You get no little hairs around the sink. You get no walking in the bathroom after he's been in there and your eyebrows fall out because of what just happened. You don't have any of that. You don't get his temper tantrums on Sunday afternoons. You don't get any of that. So what you're able to do is anchor off and play, but you don't have any of – you're only playing with one side of the coin.

Right? So all I have to say is it's a fantasy. Yeah. And because there's no downside – there is downsides if you keep this thing going, but I mean there's no – you don't have any of the other side of a relationship. Yeah.

It feels, the feelings are overwhelming because there's no tempering the other side of the teeter-totter. It's all good. Now, let me tell you the other thing that I think you're playing with here. And this is something that I hope is really encouraging for you. You haven't given this person two or three interactions and you blow them off. True. Because you work together, you've probably been annoyed.

And probably been like, oh gosh, here he goes again. Or he may talk a little too much or a little too loud in meetings or not enough or whatever. But here's what I want you to prove to yourself. If you give a good person enough time and you give enough person pieces of yourself that normally you hide because you don't want the world to see them, you have a chance to actually fall for somebody. And so these rules that you've given yourself with your sponsor and your therapist about you have to go on three dates before you just write somebody off.

Because y'all worked together, that wasn't an option just to write somebody off. Right. And it allowed you to experience something that normally you don't let yourself experience. Yeah. Which is somebody actually likes you back. And you don't often believe you're worth being liked back. That's true. And so there was this artificial force together, which is work. And then there's deadlines. And then you're in meetings all day, every day. It's why so outside of apps...

So many relationships start at work. And so many affairs start at work. People end up spending more time with their colleagues than they do with their spouse. Yeah. Or they work on actual projects together. They're forced to work together for a common good, for a bigger goal. Couples don't do that anymore. They're just like, hey, what time are you going to be there for whatever? When's the laundry? And blah, blah, blah. Right. And so, number one...

You are right to, I'm proud of you for saying your boundaries out loud. Very few people have the courage to do that. Good for you. Yeah. The second thing is you have to figure out a way to put some distance between you and this person. Okay. Simply because of the power hierarchy. You are correct. If anything goes sideways or anybody raises an eyebrow or he's in a meeting with senior execs and someone's like, oh yeah, I see how you, and he has to throw you under the bus, he will. Right. Right.

And you are dead right. You are the new female person who's got a crush on an executive. You will pay the price here. Yep. So tell me what distancing looks like. That's a great question, and I try it. One of the things that distancing looks like is when I have to engage him because I am support staff. Sometimes I have to do things for him. Sure.

I, I, um, every, every morning I text my sponsor and I say, Hey, today I'm only going to talk to him about work related things. Oh, so you've already, you've already identified he's, he's, he's alcohol.

Oh, absolutely. Okay. Like, like I called you when I was, I'm calling you because like, after all the work, I'm still crawling across the floor and tears. Like, when is it going to take? Like, he's absolutely, I, I realized that he's, he's certainty. When I go out on all these dates, Dr. John, there's so much uncertainty, but there's certainly in going to work every day and knowing this guy is going to

do whatever he does. There's certainty in that. So absolutely, I know he is my drug. He's definitely, definitely

And I'm hating it. I'm hating it because I thought when I set my boundary back in October, I could just turn and walk out of his office and be done. And that just hasn't been the case. And I just don't know what to do with these emotions and these feelings. And, you know, when he's casually walking around the office talking about how much he adores his wife and that knife that turns in my heart, I don't know what to do with that stuff. That's the stuff I'm struggling over.

Is this a good long-term place for you professionally? And the reason I'm asking, I wouldn't say that for most people because of your history with addiction and because of your willingness to work through it. In some ways, this is like you going to work at a bar. Yeah. Right. And so I'm certainly not saying you need to run. I'm just asking you, is this a good place for you professionally? Yeah.

It's a great place for me professionally, but it's interesting that you said that because a couple of weeks ago, my boss doesn't know all the details. She only knows I had a difficult conversation with this man. She

She doesn't know that the days I miss work is because of him. She doesn't know that stuff. Tell me about missing work because of him. That feels heavy. It feels overdramatic. Tell me about that. Because being in his presence is tough. Some days being around him is tough. So the next day I stay home. That feels like a lot. Yeah.

What is it about his presence that forces you to miss work? Because I feel like you're giving this a lot of power. Like this is a plant that you went out and you pulled it out. It was starting to grow roots and you pulled it out and you told him, hey, I'm pulling this plant out. But then you went and you go back and you water it. Instead of saying like, so let me say this. So if you have anxiousness, if your body identifies the situation as anxious, the way to heal from that is right through it.

Okay. Right. So it's the, the nerd word is exposure, right? There's a, there's a specific exposure therapy. So depending on like, obviously work with your, the professionals that you're working with, but my goodness, if I, if I felt like I had this crush and I had to interact with somebody and my, my heart just swelled up, I'm for sure going to go to work the next day.

Because I'm going to teach my body that I can do the next right thing. I can feel my feelings and I'm going to do the next right thing. And let's make no mistake. If you are in the presence of a strong, handsome, funny, powerful man, I don't care if you've been married for 50 years, if you've been married for 10 years, you've never been married. You should feel lifted up. If you're in the presence of a beautiful woman,

28 years old, 58 years old, it should lift your spirits, period. And anyone who's like, no, no, no, it's what happens next. Is that something that you meditate on that you give power to over your life? Or is it something that you... A few weeks ago, I would say a few weeks ago, I did in a friend and program called me on it. I will tell you, I haven't missed work in the last few weeks. This was

Like the first few weeks after I confronted him, those first few weeks I was missing work. Lately, I have not. I am doing better with that. But I definitely hear your point. And like I said, a friend and program called me out on it. Like, hey, I think you're giving this a lot of power. I think you're feeding this. Here are some things you should do differently. Amen. And I started doing it. I think the important path is to feel it. Okay. Always there. I have that feeling again.

And I'll be the first to admit I don't like uncomfortable feelings, which is why I called this show. I don't want to sit with the film. I'll be the first to tell you the only way to deal with uncomfortable feelings is to go right through them. Yeah. And there is times when I'm not good at, like, I'm an old man now. I don't have, I don't know. That doesn't have the same allure for me in that situation. But I've got other feelings about other things. I get pretty emotional about things. Can be irrational about things.

And that's where I've got to have friends and community members. And in your case, a therapist, in your case, a recovery community that walks with you, that you outsource some of that to. But I want you to know, listen, if you can, there are fewer things on planet earth more difficult to navigate than disordered eating.

Yeah, because if you're addicted to cocaine, you can just quit using cocaine You quit surrounding yourself with cocaine you quit buying cocaine like you can you can avoid it Yeah, you can't avoid food. You have to make peace with it. Yeah, that's hard. Yeah You're in a somewhat similar situation here. Yeah You can't avoid this guy. You can't get him fired. You can't run him out So i'm gonna make peace with it and what that means is i'm gonna feel those feelings and then Like you might grab the hem of your shirt and just squeeze it once

I tend to touch my chest. It started from something that I did with a therapist, but it's just a quick little thing, and it's just a reminder I get to control what happens next. Okay. And my feelings don't tell me the truth. That's not their job. That's true. And if you're a 50-year-old woman who seeks long-term romantic connection, and you find a funny, witty guy that notices you in meetings and is kind and fun and would never cheat on his wife but kind of likes the flirty, but, I mean, you know,

Like, of course your heart's going to swell up. Yeah. And then you got to do the next right thing, which I think for you is take yourself out of proximity. And when you have to be in proximity, don't give it any more power than it deserves. Okay. Is that fair?

That is fair. And I was going to tell you that my boss had offered to move my location, swap me with another person in the office and let them support the team he's on and move me elsewhere. For career reasons, I was like, okay, I shouldn't make decisions based on a man. No, no, no, no, no. We're not giving him any power. These decisions are based on you. Right. Okay.

If you have to skip work because this person is so intoxicating, if you have to not go to social events because this person is so intoxicating, that's not about him. That's about you. Okay. Because he's going on with his job. He's going on with his life. He's going on with his marriage. Yeah. And so I think your meta here is he's just a drug. You already knew that. Your friends are telling you the same thing I'm telling you in community, which are, uh,

You're giving him way too much power. And C, I want you to... I want to reaffirm what your friends are telling you. You're stronger than you think you are. And just because you have... Like, he walks in the room and your body still swoons. Great. Cool. Okay. Going on to the next thing. It's going to take a while. Right? It'll take a while. And...

It will take, I hate to use this word, it'll take practice. But what you're going to find yourself is you're going to find yourself stronger and stronger and stronger. And you have to put in some pretty firm boundaries. I will not be around this person alone. I won't go to lunch with this person. I'm not going to go for walks with this person. I'm not, like, fill in the blank. And otherwise, I'm going to go out on a date. And when I'm in a meeting and he says something funny and I laugh out loud, great. I get to choose, like, if there's romantic interest there. And I get to choose to water that.

Or I get to choose to say, that's an attractive guy. Let it flow through me. I'm going to go do the next right thing. And for everybody listening, work, we're so lonely. We're so isolated just as people that work has taken on everything. It's the last place we have in-person, in a human connection. And so sometimes deep connection, sometimes flirty, fun connection can feel deeply and powerfully romantic. And it's not. It can become it.

But we have to make choices, man. It's hard. It's hard. We have to choose. I keep saying that. Do the next right thing. Feel it. Grab the hem of your garment. Pinch your thumb and your finger together. Take a quick inhale breath. Touch your chest. Whatever the thing you have to do, and then go to the next right thing. But if you consciously say to yourself, this doesn't have power over me, it won't. Thanks for the call, friend. I don't think you're broken, Olivia. I don't think you're broken.

I think you're attracted to an attractive guy. I think the big question is, what are you going to do and who are you going to be in the following minutes, hours, months, years? And I also think you've proven to yourself, don't run quite so quickly. You're a therapist in your recovery community. You're correct. Give yourself three or four or five times to interact with somebody, to be in somebody's presence. You might surprise yourself that they like you too. Thanks for the call. We'll be right back.

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Hey, John. Thanks for taking my call. You got it. So we talked back in September. Refresh us. What was going on in your life back in September? All right. So back then, my question was, hey, my wife gave me an ultimatum to have a third baby or possibly she was walking. I called in to get a couple of tools from you. I used a couple of those, but now I'm coming back to the well to see if they have any more knowledge for me as I continue to navigate through this.

Were my recommendations not great? It's okay if they weren't. You're fantastic, but I find myself in kind of another odd predicament with her, but I'll unpack however you think would be most useful. Tell me about today's call. What's going on?

So the main point was we got to a point in that discussion over the third baby, but it was really a proxy battle for me kind of capitulating to anything that she wants and her going nuclear, so to speak, if she didn't get what she wants. We got to the end of that, and it came to that sort of lights-up conversation that we had. And I said, listen, however we got here, you know, the important thing is that I think we try to build something new. So I kind of established I wanted to build something new. I wanted to...

put away all of the insecurities, all the issues we had, kind of put those down and just start something new. And she never really said if she was in or out. She was very upset in that moment, obviously. But then a couple of days went by where she was sad. And since then, she's been normal-ish, but not affectionate. So it's almost like she's in, but she doesn't want to say she's in because she's still kind of punishing me because she'll never forgive me. And

And I don't know how to re-engage it and say, hey, you know, three months ago we had this weird conversation about whether you're going to leave or not. You never really said it, you're leaving. So it's kind of walking on this anxious eggshells all the time. Like, are you just going to leave or what's going on? So what has stopped you from sitting down and having, like, I wouldn't have been able to sleep for three months with the looming potential, like, separation. Like, what has kept you from sitting down over dinner and be like, hey, you mentioned you were leaving. Are we all in? Are you in? Yeah.

So honestly, the reason why I haven't brought it up to her again isn't because I'm afraid she said she was going to leave. I don't actually think she's going to leave, and she's not going to say that, but I think the problem is

based on how our relationship goes, she's never going to ever say she's all in because she has to have that like over my head. Cause she's been using that for several years. Like I could leave, you don't do X, Y, Z. So I feel like if I bring up the conversation, like, Hey, let's resurrect this terrible conversation from a few months ago. She'll just be like, Oh, I mean, obviously I'm in, but like, you know, I don't know. Maybe a year from now I'll be unhappy. So like, she'll never give me any resolution to it. That's why I don't bring it up. Cause it's like, all right. I mean, maybe the other part of that, and just to finish this point is

And I said this to her, if we go forward and we're not having another baby, I understand it's going to change the family picture that you had in your mind, but there'll be a season of grieving in your life, which I'll be, I'm all in to help you with and walk with you through that. So I don't know if this is like, okay, she's kind of getting to acceptance her own way and she's in her grieving process, but how long do I let that go before I go, Hey, you know,

We can't live in an affectionate-less relationship forever because we're normal day to day, but there's just no affection on her part. It's just like, no, done. She's kind of checked out that way. So it's just odd. Man, it pains me to say what I'm about to say because it kind of violates one of my core tenets. Is that okay? Get after it. Your wife is incredibly immature. Oh, yeah. And...

I've got a close, close buddy that was telling me about this amazing therapist he has. And he said, what's so great is my therapist kind of his wife interpreter. And I was like, what does that mean? He's like, well, my wife will say things. And the therapist will be like, well, here's what she actually means. And it's so great. And I said, no, your therapist sucks. Because you're not supposed to have an interpreter. You're supposed to learn to be mature and just say the thing.

Yeah. Right. And like be an adult. And if somebody is always threatening to leave you, they have left. Yeah. They're out and they aren't in. And so you can't build anything. All you can do is, is be drug behind whatever truck she's driving down the road. Yeah. And so I guess what I would tell you is this isn't, she's not being a person of fidelity in your marriage. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

In this way, correct, yes. Maybe she's not sleeping with somebody. Oh, sure, sure. I know what you mean. This is the same thing. You're like, yeah, she's not sleeping with anybody. Here's the thing. It's similar to guys who spend every waking moment that they're not at work on the golf course. Yeah. And their wife is getting just scraps.

And then when you call them on it, they're like, what, what are you kidding me? For real? I do all this. And it's that that's not being a person that's cheating. You're just cheating with the golf course, right? Yeah. What's happening to you is the same thing. It's just, Hey, are you said you're going to leave me and these two kids? Are you going to leave me?

Oh, no. Oh, no, man. Maybe... That's infidelity. That's cheating. That is not giving you her full self. And so you're eating... You're just feeding on scraps. You're starving to death. Yeah. I think that's completely true. And to kind of give you a little more depth on that...

she's created this devious way in which she doesn't say like, I don't know if she actually said directly, I believe, but she, she very strongly like intimates that. And she knows that that's my greatest fear. But then like when I've brought this up to her throughout the process, the other kind of smaller fights for this nuclear one, I, I,

directly articulate, like, I'm afraid that you will leave if I don't give you what you want. And she would kind of almost do this, not to overuse the word, but gaslight, like, why would I leave? I'm not going to leave. And then we get to the next fight and she's like, you know, I really can't do this anymore. I don't know what to do. And so it's like, she never says like, I will leave.

But she lays that thought in my head. And the reason why she'll never say, hey, listen, Devin, I'm all in, is because if she does that, she's putting down that weapon she's always had, which she knows is my greatest insecurity. Like, I'm afraid you're going to leave. So what if you take all the bullets out of that weapon? How so? Like, we're recording this. We're coming up on the new year. Yes. What if you let her know today, I've got child care.

And we're going to take a Saturday and part of a Sunday. And you and I are going to map out 2025 together. And here's how we're going to map it out. We're going to map it out in four ways. We're going to spend the morning talking about how we see each other. We're going to talk about things that we see the other person doing that are great. Then we're going to go to another restaurant. We're going to go get coffee. We're going to get morning brunch or whatever. And we're going to talk about known. What are the things going on in your guts? Are you happy in this home that we're creating together?

How can we love each other better? And both people get to speak. Then we're going to go to lunch. And then either during lunch or after lunch, we're going to talk about celebration. Who do we want to be this year? What's that going to look like? Identity? How are we going to celebrate each other? How are we going to cheer each other on and become each other's biggest cheerleaders? And then the fourth one is nuts and bolts. How are we going to make this thing happen? What must go away so that this new year becomes true? Seeing, known, celebrate, and challenge.

Okay. And let's say you put that on paper. Forget her little threats. If you think those threats are, they're just, they're toothless tigers, then at some point you have to be the adult and say, whatever, I'm going to keep going. Because y'all are in this weird dance.

She loses power and so she pokes and you over like, well, overcorrect. She's going to leave and you shut down for a month and she gets back on top and then you slowly start becoming a great husband again and you're back engaged with the kids and then she feels like she's losing it. So she's like, well, I don't know.

Yeah, it's, I feel like she's, I think she looked into, like, I don't know, I don't think that she necessarily looked into like divorce or anything, but I think she's like envisioned that and she realized how hard it is. So now she's, she's not planning actively leaving. But my, my concern is that the next time, you know, three months from now, she's like, Hey, let's do it.

do whatever. And I go, we can't do that. Then it's not getting what you want. I can said that, then it's going to be another fight. And then this will come up at some point. But to your point about, if I may, the kind of like the retreat you laid out, I kind of did that in a sense, not as well as you did, obviously, because you're, you do this for a living, but like during the period, the past month of us being in this weird dance was our wedding anniversary. So I, I kind of, I got us like a room at a hotel with a restaurant, just kind of like have almost like a start over type retreat thing. Kind of with this, with,

With what you just kind of laid out in a framework in mind, but not as well. And she first, she declined. She said, well, we shouldn't go away together. It's not a good idea. And I said, why? And she's like, well, because we have all these problems. I was like, I just kind of walked. I was like, okay, whatever you want to do, but I don't have to cancel the reservation until X day. So then she waits until that day and she goes, all right, we can do it. We can go, but we have to talk about things. And I said, okay. And we went and we did it. We didn't talk about things.

I didn't bring it up to be fair, but I was kind of waiting. Like, where are you going with this? So we just had like a decent evening, but I was like, well, why didn't we do this? What's what's going on? Like, are you not want to talk about you over? I keep trying to read tea leaves, which is stupid. Go right through. Cause here's the thing. If she's going to leave you, she's going to leave you. I totally agree. I think she's already left you. She's just left you in your own house. She's left you physically. She's left you emotionally. She's left you spiritually. She's left you. She's moved out.

She just did the math. She probably sat with somebody and they did math. And she's like, oh, I'd have to go to work. Well, and so if I could just expand on that for a second, not that I'm great about anything, but like I do roughly nine out of 10 things in the house. So like meals, cleaning, cooking, I do so much. So I feel like,

She probably thought, oh, my life would be much more difficult. I might as well just live here and have them do everything. But I feel like if I stand up and pull back a little bit in what I'm doing, because I'm also overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I'm doing, because it's completely unbalanced, then I always feel like she's going to leave. So everything is kind of through the lens of like, if I stop doing this one nice thing I do, is she going to leave? And I have to get like...

like regain my personal agency and take power back in my life. But I'm just, I don't know. I'm so like terrified now after years of dealing with this and this very acute, like recent situation, I just don't even know how to start except saying like, Hey, one of the stories of that conversation from a few months ago, what do you do when you're leaving? And then I feel like it won't be resolved because she'll just kind of be like, well, well, you know, maybe I will. I don't know. So let's flip the whole thing around then. Okay. We're going to go on a retreat and we're going to talk about 2025.

And that's when you lay out in 2025, I am you, Devin. I'm committed to being well, to being the best father and the best husband I can be. And that means I have to be honest about my time. I have to be honest about my work. I have to be honest about my commitment here at home, domestically, like with chores and stuff like that, and how I am seeking to be the best person I can be, exercise, sleep, and all that. So beginning January 3rd or January 1st or whenever, I'm no longer doing anything

X, Y, and Z. I'm going to do dinner. I'm going to do my laundry. I'll do the kids' laundry. I will make the bed in the morning. I'll mow the lawn. I'm going to ask you to be responsible for after dinner cleanup. We can figure out who's going to go to the grocery store. We can figure that out. You start nailing these things down. But if you do it as punishment, then you become her. Correct. That's my problem. Yeah. We're not doing it for punishment. We're doing it so that you can be whole finally. You've never been whole in this relationship. Mm-mm.

And so you have to hear me say you're worth being whole. And here's the thing. My buddy, Henry cloud, uh, like the, like the goat psychologist, right? Um, who wrote the book boundaries. He has a great story about, uh, um, talking with a father about his son. Who's just living this crazy life. And he says, I don't know what to do. I give my son everything. I give my son everything. I give my son everything. And Dr. Cloud has this great response. He said, it sounds like your son needs to get some problems.

Yeah. And so your wife doesn't have to do anything and you continue to cash out every bit of agency you have because this isn't a whole relationship. She's not a person of fidelity. And so what you have to say is, okay, this year I'm not going to punish you. I'm not going to, I'm not making dinner anymore. No more laundry. No. When I look at my calendar, I will exercise for an hour a day. I will take my kids to breakfast and then get them to school twice a week.

I will work and I'm also going to get that graduate degree I've been thinking about. And so here's what that's going to cost and here's what time it's going to take. So here's going to be the jobs left undone that as the co-creator of this household, this is going to be your responsibility. Are you in? And by the way, now that we're here, what are the things you need to be whole this year? And how can I help fill like scaffold those things? How can I walk alongside you? How can I love you better?

And what you're going to get is somebody feeling in real time, this isn't just a power play anymore. This isn't just sitting on the couch lobbing grenades. I may not be here tomorrow. It's not that. This is like, oh, hours, time, commitment, participation, accountability, the stuff marriage is made of. And here's the thing. You got to hear me say this. She's already left you. And so your plans aren't working.

Your attempts to to take hold and to get her to not leave. They're not working. She's already left She just still lives at the house and you pay for everything the goal here is to say You deserve to be married to a man that is whole Who can show up and protect and provide and do all these things and be totally connected to you here's what i'm going to need to do that and I deserve to be married to somebody who's whole who wants all in on this thing. What do you need? I'll do everything I can in my power to make that true

My guess is that it's just going to like, it's kind of like you have a really dirty windshield and you're flying down the highway at 95 miles an hour and you're afraid you're about to go off a cliff. And you're scared if you clean off this windshield, it's going to show you that you're going off a cliff. It might, but the reality is you don't know where you're going because the windshield is so dirty. So we're going to get in a room and we're going to clear off the windshield.

And maybe you're finding that you've already driven off the cliff and your car is just spinning its wheels as it's careening towards the ground. Or you might find out that there's hundreds of miles of empty road ahead of you that you can keep driving together. But she has no incentive to change her life because she likes her life as it is because she does nothing. She just pulls you around on a leash. And she's always got this atom bomb in her pocket, which is, well, maybe I just won't be here tomorrow. And for you, it's all right. That's not going to hold power over me anymore. I'm going to go do the next right thing so that I can be whole.

And that's the only path you'll have towards hope towards building something new is saying, here's the role I'm going to play in building. Here's the role I am asking you to build to, to, to take on in our building. Are you in and dude, call me after this meeting, call me after it. Cause this is going to be a truth telling a clearing and maybe there's some ground rules, no leaving, no grenade throwing, no bombs, no, we're just going to lay this thing out here. I need both of us to be adults in this thing. It's been a tough, tough year.

and I've been chasing you forever. I'm going to stop chasing. We're going to anchor in. Thanks for the call, brother. We'll be right back. Good folks, the modern world exposes us to things that our bodies had no idea even existed up until just a few decades ago. And I don't mean endless streams of cat videos or AI influencers.

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All right, let's go out to Oklahoma City and talk to A-M-Y. What's up, Amy? Hi, Dr. Deloney. Thank you for taking my call. Of course. What's up? Sorry. No, you're good. Take a breath. You're all good. I guess I'm struggling to figure out how I can address my husband's drinking problem in a way that...

I guess we'll stick with him. We've had several instances over the past, I want to say four years, to where his drinking becomes more and more excessive. And it'll peak in an instance where he will speak to me disrespectfully because he's had too much to drink. And then I have a habit of stonewalling him for a couple of days and then

Once I feel like I'm able to talk to him, I'll sit down and talk. He'll admit he has a problem and he needs help. And the best that I've gotten from him is he'll try to drink less. This last time that that happened was the night before Thanksgiving. He called me, for lack of a better description, the C word. I had a frustration with me.

And I still involved him for about three days. And when we finally sat down again, he admitted he had a problem. He needed help. He asked me what I needed from him. And I told him I need a sober home, 100% sober. I don't care what people think or say about it, but in my home, I don't want any more alcohol. He was very hesitant and I said that he didn't want to impose our issues on anyone. And, um,

I knew at that point, like just trying to go back and forth with them to get him to do things my way wasn't going to work. And we agreed on he was going to get sober. That was maybe about a week ago at this point. And a couple other things happened that were upsetting to me, but I kind of just had to put it to the side because I don't want to seem like the one that's being overly critical with him. What were those things? What were those things?

Oh, gosh. So we had that discussion, I want to say Sunday after Thanksgiving. We were having friends over a couple nights later on Thursday. He calls me while he's out in town and asked me if I wanted a bottle of wine for dinner. And I just had to stop and it took everything in me to not explode on him over the phone because we just had this whole sobriety talk a couple days ago. So I said, no, I don't want any wine. I'm fine.

And he said, okay. And he shows up to the house with a six pack of non-alcoholic beer. And once again, it took everything inside me to not explode on him. And the only justification I gave myself was, well, at least he's trying. It's non-alcoholic beer because I didn't want to ruin the night. I knew that if I said something, it would just turn into this whole thing. Um,

We went through the night. He had two non-alcoholic beers, and he put a sleeve on it because he didn't want our friends to see that it was non-alcoholic beer because they do drink. I mean, everyone we know drinks. It went fine. I came to work. We're both shift workers, so we'll work for 48 hours at a time, and sometimes we'll have alternating days off to where he's alone on a day that I'm working or I'm home on a day that he's working.

And Saturday comes along, I get off Sunday morning, and then I realized a couple of things have happened while I was gone on that Saturday that he is neglecting to come forward to me about. And at this point, and it does involve alcohol, and I don't know how to approach him. And I've once again been stonewalling him for about three days now. All right. So let's start here. No more stonewalling.

Yeah. That's a cheap way to regain what you feel like is power in your house, but it's not. Absolutely. I feel like I've tried every other way and... Yeah. It doesn't work. And in a weird way, you bear the brunt of it. Yeah. Stonewalling is like that old AA saying, like, you're drinking poison hoping he dies. Yeah. Right? You feel terrible. You feel annoyed. You feel like you can't go in your own bathroom or your own bedroom or your own kitchen. Yeah.

And he just says, annoyed that you're acting that way again. So let's make a commitment now to not stonewall. Okay. Yeah. And that means you remaining empowered in your own socks and shoes. It's my house. When you say, I want a sober house or I want sober this or I want, I think we're past that because everybody can interpret that in its own way. I think, I think you need some very clear boundaries for your home and for your marriage.

And whenever we hold clear boundaries, and I'll walk you through some of them, but whenever we hold clear boundaries, we have to know that other people don't have to hold our boundaries. He may leave. And that's a scary, scary proposition. But you are quickly becoming somebody that you don't recognize or respect. Yeah. Because your house is increasingly less and less safe. Fair? Yeah. Okay.

My guess is your husband does not have the capacity to stop drinking on his own. He needs to go see a professional or go to a treatment program. I've tried to get him. I've tried to tell him that the methods that I've been trying are all these talks when it comes to a breaking point. That's what I mean about boundaries. That's what I mean about boundaries. Here's how you cast it in choices he can make.

You and I are talking right now on a Wednesday morning. A conversation has something like tonight after dinner. Let them know we have a hard conversation we have to have tonight. And if you want to, you can say, I know about Saturday. I know about all the stuff that happened on Saturday, and we're not going to debate it or discuss it. From this point forward, you have a choice. You can choose me, you can choose this home, or you can choose alcohol. What that means is by Friday, you will be at an inpatient or an outpatient treatment program.

Or you are choosing to no longer live in this house. And in that way, you're not kicking him out. He's a grown man. He has to make a choice. And if you're doing shift work and you're any kind of first responder shift work, 48 hours on, 40 hours off, that kind of thing, then there's a ton of employee assistance programs available. Yeah. And there's a ton of ego. I feel like that's the only avenue that I haven't tried because I don't respond well. I know. Yeah.

Yeah. But you've been trying to control his responses for X number of years. You have to at some point say this isn't working. I can't do it. It's just getting worse. Yeah. And by the way, he doesn't like who he's becoming either. I don't know any man that wants to get to a place where they're having to hide from the life they live in so much so often that they end up just belittling their wife. I don't know any man that wants to be in that situation. It just feels powerless to get out.

This is one of those iron sharpens iron moments. You can choose to live with me and be my husband, which I hope so much you will. You will be in a program by Friday. Yeah. Or you will choose to move out of this house and leave, period. Yeah. Let me say this as boldly as I can. You've lost the marriage that you had. It's over. When a man calls his wife the C word after bender number 25, that marriage, there's a period at the end of that marriage. It's over.

Y'all can build something new, something extraordinary. And in y'all's case, a life that is stone sober. And anyone who goes through any sort of sobriety will tell you they've got to change friendship circles and they got to cut people out of their life or give people the opportunity to fade out. And that's scary and scary and scary on top of scary. Yeah. But right now he's choosing these barbecue buddies over his wife. Yeah. And you deserve more than that. He does too. I know. With the...

best thing after this conversation with him be for me to go sober as well. I mean, I can, I think I acknowledge that I don't have the issue with alcohol or the relationship with alcohol that he does. I'm willing to be 100% sober for the rest of my life. It doesn't, I don't have to think twice about that. I think right now, unless you make grand proclamations, he needs to know that you'll walk alongside him.

Yeah. Right? My wife is a serial killer in that she can buy a bag of Reese's Pieces and eat four of them and then put them in a drawer and go on about her day. I don't know how that's humanly possible because once the bag is open, I will eat the entire bag and then I'll go figure out a way to find some more. And when I say, hey, I'm out of control with how I'm eating, I'm not being a good steward of my body.

And it's not just aesthetic. It makes me not sleep well. It makes me not a good dad. It makes me a grumpy husband. I need to cut it out. She says, awesome, sweet. And it disappears from our house everywhere. But also, I'm not going to begrudge her a piece of pie with her friends. I mean, she can eat whatever she wants to, right? But it's her honoring me as my ride or die in this particular season I'm in.

So I think you making the big, like, I would agree to go sober for the rest of my life. That's a lot. I don't think he, I don't think that's necessary right now. I think right now you can say I'm done drinking as for me in this house. And I hope with all of my guts that you choose me and you choose this home and you choose this family because you've been trying to make his choices for him for a long time. And then it doesn't work. He has to choose. Yeah. You're right. And if you've made a bunch of like Swiss cheese boundaries that have holes in them and you haven't really held them, uh,

He'll probably test them, see if you're serious. He might get wasted on Saturday when you're at work. Do you all have kids? Well, I guess he has two from the previous marriage. They're with us part-time every other weekend. Okay. So maybe you have to make a hard decision about whether you're going to move or not because he might try to call your bluff. But I think it's... I don't see another path forward than some hard directive action. Yeah. I've thought about all the scenarios and...

I guess the one thing that kept me from giving him that ultimatum is the fear that he won't follow through with getting treatment. And then I would have to either him move out or remove myself from the home because I don't want it to affect the children. And what I would tell you is it's already affecting the children. I know. You already don't feel safe in your house, emotionally and verbally.

And if you, you know this more than me, but if you go back and look at trends and escalation, you might see this thing creeping further and further towards your house getting less and less safe physically even. And so it will come to a head. My goal, it's kind of like the national debt, right? There will come a day. My dream is we all decide now that we're going to have 10 years, 15 years of tough seasons to get this thing under control. Or we just keep driving along. At one day, this thing crashes. Similar.

This crash is in your house at some point. I hope it. That's what I want to avoid. I don't want to spend 15 years. Like, I know a lot of people in his family and his friends and a lot of callers that I've heard on your show where they've been going through this for 10, 15, 20 years. I'm trying to not spend the rest of my life trying to get over this hurdle. That's right. You know, and nip it in the butt now before it does end up in divorce. Yeah.

It just frustrates me. It is. Not by your hand, but in your lap. You didn't ask for this, and here it is. I'll walk with you any way that I can, and call me anytime you want. And if he wants to call me, I'd love to talk to him too. And if he's first responders, I especially know those guys. Tell him to give me a call. I think the big lesson here is the thing you're trying to hold together to keep duct tape and bailing wire and string, keep it held together, it's already in pieces.

So the control you think you have over it's an illusion. And in fact, the pieces are beginning to scatter in the wind. The question is, will you let those pieces scatter? And will you say, here's the foundation I'm building a new house on. I hope you'll co-build it with me. But you got to go get help because this can't be a part of our life. And that's going to be a scary, scary thing. And there will be starts and stops. And you're going to have to look at the steps he takes.

And you're going to have to look at his commitment. You're going to have to look at his remorse and his willingness to say, I'm sorry. I'm going to try again. I'm going to try again. I'm going to try again. Because sobriety is a roller coaster. It's not just a straight line all the time. You deserve to have a house that's safe. And he deserves to feel at peace in his own skin. And both of y'all have proven we can't do this on our own. So professional help is the next right move. We're thinking about you, Amy. Let me know how the conversation goes. And hopefully he...

chooses 2025 as to be the year that he is finally free. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've probably heard people talk about the different kinds of flags in friendships and romantic relationships. Red flags and green flags and beige flags. Listen, sure, it can be helpful to look for relationship patterns or unsafe behaviors, but to me, all these flag labels can distract from what's really important when you're trying to find a lasting relationship.

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Try BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. We are back. Kelly, what's something that great? I didn't say that right. What's something great that happened? You have something on the internet. Something great that didn't happen was that outro right there. I did not do a good job. That's okay. All right. I found this new thing on the –

Soda machine downstairs. Soda, because I'm a 1940s New Yorker. Down at the Coke machine downstairs, you can just get soda water. Yes. That way I can get my bubbles. Yeah. Cheaper than Topo Chico. Topo Chico, dude. You should see the microplastic count on Topo Chico.

Maybe my top 15 heartbreak of the year. You think it's any better coming out of that fountain drink thing? I don't have any data on it, so I'm just going to – the story I'm going to make up is that, yes, it's way better. I totally approve of that. Ignorance is bliss. It is shipped in plastic, and it is cooked in plastic and dispensed in plastic. But it's probably fine. I don't have any data, so I'm going to say it's better. All right. So we've got a cool crap that happened from Jackson in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire.

Jackson writes,

and the funniest thing he ever did while they were married. Yes! She told me his name was Bill, they were married for 36 years, and his comical antics, and then she practically floated out of the grocery store with a huge smile on her face. My wife right away said, you just alone-ied her. Love the show. Looking forward to coming to the marriage retreat in February. Oh, very cool.

Dude, that's so great. So I think in 2025, Kelly, I need to learn to be more demonstrative. So when somebody says, this is a shirt that reminds me of my late husband who passed last year. Somebody has just dropped an anxious, uncomfortable thing right in front of you. And uncomfortable is probably better than anxious. Uncomfortable. You can go...

Oh, okay. And just turn around. You can pull up your phone. You can do a number of things to avoid that discomfort. When you ask their name and you ask what's the funniest thing they've done that you remember, that's you heading directly into that. So I always tell people go right towards it. That's one of those ways. What was his name? We're going to say his name out loud. And everybody names tend to humanize issues, right? And situations. And so his name was whom? And everyone goes,

And maybe I've been in situations where I'm like, what's the funniest thing you can remember? Guy wasn't a good guy, but it leads to a rich conversation. And anyway, I need to be more demonstrative. A, I need to learn how to speak clearly because I'm attending to today. But that's what I mean when I mean just walk right through it. And good on you. What was that dude's name? Jackson and his wife, Nicole. And I'm assuming they'll be here in February. I don't know anybody in New Hampshire. Do you have any New Hampshire friends?

There's like 14 people there. I know. 11 of them print credit cards. I think that's where all the credit cards come from. I don't think I know anyone from New Hampshire. But they grow credit cards. But we do now. I got a new friend named Jackson. I'm going to Jackson. I made my whole day better. Love that song, by the way. Thank you, Jackson. And for the record, if you had the unlucky situation in high school or college and someone was like, ooh, you just got delonied, that wasn't a good thing. It was not a good thing.

And now, look at this. Redeeming it. You're a verb. We're redeeming it. I've always been a verb, but it's getting kinder. It doesn't have the same negative connotation anymore, so that's fantastic. Hey, everybody. Be nice to each other. Be kind. Don't do drugs. Stay in school. All that stuff. Happy New Year. Bye.