My Husband And I Are Happy . . . But Something’s Missing
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I wanted to reach out and see how I can help my husband develop passion or drive outside of our family. Do you feel like you're losing life inside your own skin? Millions of women listening to this just stopped and they're like, I wish my husband would just talk like that. What in the world's going on? This is John of the Dr. John Deloney Show, taking your calls from all over the planet on your relationships, your mental and emotional health, whatever you got going on in your life.

For 20 plus years, I've been sitting with hurting people and the wheels have fallen off and people are just trying to figure out what's the next right move. That's what this show is about. Real people going through real challenges. Give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask. A-S-K. johndeloney.com slash ask. Let's go out to McKinney, Texas and talk to not so plain Jane. What's up, Jane? Hey.

Hey, hey, doing good. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. What's up? Yeah. So I wanted to reach out and see how I can help my husband develop passion or drive outside of our family. My short answer is you can't, but tell me more. Tell me more.

Okay. So, yeah, I recently got the idea from Rachel Cruz on her Instagram, saw her and Winston had their annual planning date. And so I brought that to my husband and said, hey, I think we should do this. Just talk about our goals, finances, goals.

planning for the year, what that could look like for us. And so we did that and it's our first time to really do something like that. And so, you know, I didn't say, hey, come prepared with, you know, three goals or anything like that, which is kind of more brainstorming and let's

let's just see how this goes. But when I, you know, asked him, hey, what are maybe some personal goals for you for the year? He didn't really have any. And so I tried to kind of press into that and, you

His response to me, which I love, he said, I just want to come home from work, hang out with my best friends, which is me and our two kids, and just raise my boys up in a Christian household. And so I definitely admire that and love

It was just more of like, hey, if we could go anywhere on a trip outside of finances or time restrictions or anything like that. And he's like, hey, it's not really my season to travel or anything. I just want to be at home and spend time with my family. Yeah. I'm trying to think like, man, like millions of women listening to this just stopped and they're like,

I wish my husband would just talk like that. So tell me what you were hoping or wishing he would have said. Yeah, so I think even just simple like, you know,

you know, goals or anything for himself, but, you know, at work, he just wants to, you know, he doesn't really want to, you know, move up in management or, you know, any, any professional goals, you know, anything move up that just kind of like status quo, but he does not like his job at all. So, um, you know, I'll,

you know, try and help them, you know, we can look for a different job or do that. But he's like, no, it's fine. I'll just do that. You know, it's providing for my family. So I'm like, okay. Um, or, you know,

I mean, he doesn't really have a good set of good guy friends to where he can, you know, pick up the phone and say, Hey, let's go play golf this weekend or something like that. Or, you know, just small, small things like that. Um, just, I guess that community or have that group of guys for accountability. So I don't know. I just feel the pressure of, of, I mean, yeah, I, like you said, I, I don't think I can create those goals or anything for him, but if there was anything I could do to encourage him to, you know,

I don't know, some hobbies or do something for himself, I guess, or just saying. Where is your source of, I don't want to say discontent from, but tell me some of your goals. Yeah, so right now I've got a six-month-old, but trying to get back into running. So I'm training for a half marathon at the end of the year.

That's one kind of goal. And obviously just spending time with our kids too, spending time with family. But my husband, he doesn't cook or anything. So I'm trying to figure out some recipes that are good for our family and that the boys will actually eat. So you seem incredibly nice. Do people say that you're a nice person?

All the time. Okay. You sound nice. So can you, and kind and nice are different things, right? And I'm certain that you're kind, but you're also very nice. Would you play a game with me where you, all right, take your hands right now and put them over your ears real quick. Okay. Okay. And I want you to pretend you're taking off a mask that is nice.

Okay. And you set it down on the table. Okay. Okay. And then I want you to be, and you probably don't have never given yourself permission to be this. And I'm not even saying this is a good idea, but just for, just for fun, just for a game, pretend you're a fried, exhausted mother of three with a six month old. Okay. If you could just speak out into the world,

what you wish your husband was helping with, providing for you, offering to your family, what would it be? Let it come from your guts, not from an ice. It would be help with shared household chores around the house. Okay, keep going. You know, it'd be cooking dinner one night.

Okay, those are tasks. Go beneath the tasks. Okay. Just having a real conversation with me. Okay, keep going. What does that mean? Yeah, just getting beneath the surface, or, you know, like having a non-superficial conversation, I guess. Just talking about needs and wants and desires. What do you need and want? Well, I guess I've never allowed myself to think in this...

In a space. What do you need and want? Stop thinking. Now you're starting to go get nice again. What do you need and want? Okay. Connection. That's off of a Google word. What does that mean to you? What does that look like? Just...

I guess, I don't know. Yeah. Getting, getting back to our, like focusing on our marriage. I don't know, sitting on the couch and having a conversation versus scrolling on our phones. Okay. Are you, are you sensing the oxygen in your marriage is getting thin now that things have changed in your house? Yes. Okay. Do you see a man that you love dearly and almost like the lights are going out? No.

Yes. Okay. Do you feel like you're losing life inside your own skin? The word that keeps coming to mind is that you're looking for passion inside your house and you'd almost rather a reckless, and I say this reckless with a smile on my face, not in a bad way, but like a reckless dreamer who is always saying, and then this, and then we're going to do this, and we're going to do this. And you'd rather be saying, hey, slow down. We have three little kids versus I'm good, man. When's dinner? Yeah.

Does that sound right? Yes. So, A, I want you to know you've got three kids, is that right? Three little ones? Yes. Okay. I guess what I would tell you, the first one, first off, is I don't think your marriage is broken, okay? Okay. I don't think you're messed up. I don't think your husband's messed up. I think you all have found yourself where millions and millions and millions of American couples find themselves, okay? Okay.

And that is your entire life has changed and he hasn't changed. He doesn't understand that it's changed. And you open up your toolkit and inside your toolkit from probably your entire childhood experience, the one big tool that you have that has solved most of the problems in your life is niceness. I won't be seen. I'll make sure everybody else is okay. I'm going to go to bed and then I'll get up in the morning and I'll be nice and we'll repeat this cycle. Does that sound familiar? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Okay. And then he's opening up his toolkit because by the way, he feels his marriage very different too. He opens up his toolkit and it just says, keep going to work and shut your mouth. And he shuts it back. And what happens here is, is that most couples, most individuals inside of a partnership, hope and pray that the other partner will just read their mind. Because that's what Hollywood told us would happen. If it was true love and if the relationship still meant something that we would just read each other's mind.

And unfortunately, that's a great cosmic joke that Hollywood played on us. It's not real. And so the only path forward I've seen couples, and by the way, I've seen couple after couple after couple after couple relight the passion on fire in their house in an amazing way. But it starts with somebody deciding, you've heard me say this a lot on the show, turning the lights on, turning the music off, stopping the dance that we're in right now, which is

He's got a pretty good life, but he doesn't feel alive in his own skin. You've got a pretty good life. You don't feel alive in your own skin. He has a wife that takes care of the kids and puts dinner on the table. You've got a husband that loves being at home, loves you, loves the kids, loves having his dinner, and he goes to a job he hates, but he's providing for the family. And then it's real easy for you to sit down one night in a moment of a teeny tiny sliver of that rare moment you have, right?

of by yourself and you think, oh God, this is the next 50 years of our life. We're going to wake up and be 70. And then you sit down and want to have like a big dreaming session and stuff. And he looks in his toolkit. He's like, I don't know. My life's pretty good. And so the only way I've seen this thing work is one person say to the other, I love you. And here's some magic words. I miss you. And you have to have the courage to say not, hey, well, what do you want? Hoping that he puts on the table what you want him to want.

And instead say, we have three little kids. You have a job that you hate. And I think I won the lottery marrying you. And I don't want to be married to somebody who hates getting up and going to work every day. Mm-hmm.

I want to support you as you begin to dream about what your job might become, what salary might become, a house we might want to live in one day. I want to have a family that we go on vacations all the time. And right now, all we can afford is a KOA. Great. A Campground of America. Great. Your job is to research it and pick it. Is he a video gamer? Yes, he is. Yeah. So he's Xanaxing when he gets home from his family, okay? Yeah. And so...

I want us to play one game a night, just the two of us. I'm going to send you, Jane, all of my questions for humans for couples, all three decks, okay? And the intimacy deck. I'm going to send you four of them. Okay. But you're going to have to say, I want to do five to 10 of these cards a night. No screens, no nothing. Okay. When you walk in the door, I want you to put your phone away and just be with me. I want you to cook dinner two times a week. Okay.

I want you to take the two older ones while I deal with the younger one when it comes to bedtime. And that it's not sexy. And I know that there's certain pockets of the world that say, very vocal pockets that say, he should just know how to, he doesn't, he doesn't. And so here we are, right? Okay. And in the same way, he's listening to pockets of, not technically, but there's pockets of the world that tell him,

Neither of those paths work. So what I want you both to do is to create a new path. Do you doubt for one second that he loves you? Not at all. Do you doubt for one second that he's a good man? No. Okay. So what we have to do is we have to paint pictures for each other. And sometimes those retreats are amazing because you can say, okay, let's paint a picture of us at the end of this year.

Okay. And here's where I want you to get real specific. I want you to, in my words, I want you to choose reality. How much money can we have in a savings account by the end of this year? How much, how many vacations or trips could we have gone on by the end of this year? How many books can we have read by the end of this year? You see what I'm saying? Like, let's put some very tactical things on a piece of paper and

And from those tactical things that y'all try together, let's try to read a book together. Let's try to listen to a podcast and discuss it together. Sometimes couples sit on the couch and they just stare at each other and it's tough. Here's another thing I want you to do. I want you to go get a couple of girlfriends and I want you to get a couple of girlfriends and say, hey, I'm going out with the girls on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. All three of these kids are yours.

And I'm going to, I'll make you a list of what you got to do. Or you can follow me around and watch how this stuff works with this one has this bottle and this one's got this bottle. And don't forget this one can't have peanuts. All of it. All the stuff you deal with on a day-to-day basis. But I want you to, you, you to get some friends. And you get some goals. And begin to put them on the table.

It might be that your husband just isn't one of these Instagram crush it and kill it and dreamers. And I'm not going to beat him up for that. He's, it sounds like he's a great man who loves his family. Who's providing what I tell him. You got to go get some friends and go do some stuff. Join a softball league. Of course I would. I tell him, Hey, play less video games, dude. Yes, I would. But also I don't want to assassinate his character. He sounds like he's a pretty amazing guy.

But maybe if his wife starts doing the things that she wants him to do for herself, you begin to give him permission. Oh, she goes out with friends. This is what this looks like. I want to go have a beer with the guys after work. I want to go have coffee with this dude and talk about maybe changing jobs. And it's just this homeostasis. We're frozen now. We got three little kids. Our whole marriage is different.

And sometimes if you're like me, if you're like Rachel Cruz, she's a great friend of mine. It's easy to just get away, clear the deck and let's dream and plan. And sometimes it's a matter of, hey, we're going to do a couple of small things and then we're going to go from there.

But your marriage isn't broken. Your marriage is, I don't want to say it's right where it should be, but it's a very common place that you find yourself. And now you got two people who are going to work together to not Hollywood this thing, but to actually put real things on the table. And all of this starts with, I miss you. And here's what I want to do. And then fingers crossed, he goes with you. Thank you so much for the call, my friend, Jane. Hang on the line. We're going to hook you up with some free gear. We'll be right back.

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All right, let's go out to Atlanta, Georgia and talk to Sierra. What's up, Sierra? Hey, Dr. John. How are you? Dude, I'm rocking on to the break of dawn. Sister, how are you? Good. Awesome. What's up? I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot. You're not crazy. It's cool. No, it is cool. I'm at a Starbucks. It's very fun. Oh, dude. Hey, someone's going to come knock on your window in a minute, but it's all good. What's up?

I'm doing well. I'm actually getting married in a couple of months. Gross! Yeah. Are you in love? Very exciting. Oh, so much. Absolutely. Congratulations, Sierra. Thank you. Tell me about who you're marrying. So, he's a really good guy. We've been together for almost nine years. What? Nine years?!

Yeah. We met in high school, so we've been together for a while, but I think it's about time. I'm 24 and he's 26. Okay. So y'all been together forever, but you're still really young. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we've been together since I was like 15. Dude, this is like Dawson's Creek romance. I love this. I love it. Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to help. So, I never lived on my own. I've been living with my parents forever. Uh-oh. I went to college. I commuted there, commuted back. So, never really had the opportunity to live by myself. Okay.

And now that the wedding's coming up in a couple months, it's really starting to hit me, I guess, that I'm like leaving them. And I'm just trying to process those feelings. It's like excitement and then sadness, and it keeps going back and forth. And I'm feeling a lot of different things. So I just need somebody to kind of talk me through that and figure out how to cope with all that change. Sheesh. I don't know. Yeah.

Cause it sounds like you're pretty clear eyed. Like I'm 24. Most of my friends have already moved out. I'm still here and it's time. And also there's a reality. And I know it's easy for me to be like, get out of your mom's basement. But also, um, there's a reality to it. Like you're going to miss your folks. Right. It sounds like you actually like them.

Yeah, I do. We have a really, really close relationship. And right now the situation has been like, I kind of go back and forth. So where I'm moving, our apartment's only like 25 minutes away from where my parents and my sister are going to be. So it's not like a giant jump. We're not moving states. It's just the fact that I'm not going to be able to like walk in the door every day and say, hey, how's everybody doing? And just like hang out with them all the time. So just try to adjust to that. You'll have this...

hairy-legged boy that you're moving in with. Yeah, I know. He's really great. He's a good person. That's awesome. We love each other a lot. We're basically really, we're very, very close. Very open with each other. Okay, so I hear you mention loneliness. The thought of walking into an empty house or an empty apartment while he's still at work and you just exhale. I get that. What's another fear or two you have?

I guess the loneliness is definitely a big one. And I'm kind of like, I don't want to say I'm like an indecisive person, but I'm making a career jump. So I was on the path to go to law school a few years ago. I started working at a law firm as like their assistant. I realized I didn't want to do that anymore. And I decided I want to go to flight school. So I'm trying to do that right now.

right now while planning the wedding, while moving out and processing all these different feelings. So I think that probably plays into it a little bit. Maybe it's a bunch of stress. It's all of it. It's all of it. Yeah. I guess what I would tell you is, yeah, you're making a ton of changes. And so if you were super confident and stable right now, I would, I would, hopefully you would refer you out to a professional colleague, right? Yeah.

Because you've got a ton of change coming. So whenever I don't know what to do next... By the way, I've been wrestling with this personally. I keep reading about AI. I keep reading about all this stuff. And it's like, everything's about to change. And I don't even know what that means. And so I always want to say, okay, when everything's about to change...

And yet I have no picture of what that change is going to look like, or I have no experience to lean back on and say, okay, here's what this is going to feel like. Right. So like, um, I went the other day, I've had a problem with my foot recently. And so I finally, finally, cause I'm an idiot, finally went to the doctor. It took me forever. And I got a shot in it. And the needle was comically large. Okay. But here's the thing. I've gotten shots before.

And so I knew this is going to be painful for a second and then it'll be over. And the doctor actually did an amazing job. It wasn't bad at all. And then I was out of there. If I had never got a shot before and I saw that needle coming down, dude, I would have, my, my fear of what was going on would have been way worse than the actual procedure. Right? Yeah. So,

I guess my little formula, if you will, my model for dealing with things when I don't know what it's going to feel like, what's coming next, or what it's going to look like is, A, I always want to get some wisdom on the decision I'm actually making. And it sounds like you've done that. You trust your parents? Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. And you've done some wise things. Like, I want to go to law school, but before I go all in...

I'm going to go spend a year clerking in a law office. I know it's not technically a clerking, but I'm gonna go work in a law office. And you're like, oh, I don't want to do that. Amazing. Have you done that same thing with, with flying?

Yeah. So right now I'm working on my private license. I want to do that first. So you like the whole, you like going to the, going to the aviation school. You like getting in a plane. You like hanging out with other pilots. You like that world, right? Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. It's really fun. Okay. So I'm going to challenge your assessment of yourself that you're indecisive. And I think you're wise.

I think you're wise because if you were indecisive, you would have started law school and stopped, started law school again, taken a leave of absence, gone to work at a thing, gone to get a cup of coffee, get a cup of coffee, ask somebody else, read 50 books, listen to podcasts. That's indecisive. That's most of your peers. Yeah.

Yeah. You have an idea about something. You try it out like this guy. You've tried him out for nine years. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's amazing. So so here's here's a number one. Here's here's number one in my model. Do something that breaks the inertia. And here's what I mean by that.

If you have a hesitancy, if you're always just like slow playing, slow playing, slow playing, then break the inertia. Go make a decision. Go do a thing. Okay. Right? So what does that mean? If you're nervous about being lonely and you just sit and spin and think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it, then I want you to put on the calendar a

Like a Tuesday after you get married, I mean, not after you get married, but the Tuesday after the Tuesday you get married. Then the next Tuesday, I want you to schedule coffee with your mom and your sister. Put it on the calendar. So I know that's going to be there. I'm going to have check-ins with them. If the first three weeks you walk into your apartment and it just feels hollow and lonely and you start getting a little bit anxious, then I want you to plan to hang out with your sister.

Okay. Like being with your family and your friends isn't a bad thing. You've got community. You've got built in. Like getting married doesn't mean I have to instantly be lonely. And clearly this cat that you're marrying knows that you're a family oriented person, right? Yes. Does he like your folks too? Oh, absolutely. We're there all the time. Okay. That's amazing. So as you build your own house, it doesn't mean we've created this weird thing like this somehow the old leave and cleave means like

abandon. That's dumb. Still hang out, still have fun, right? But now you're going to begin to discuss your own values and your own conversations. And so do something that breaks the inertia. If you're like me and you rattle off decisions all the time over and over and over so fast, what I have to do to break the inertia to change the energy is I have to slow down, which means I have a rule now. I don't respond to an email for 24 hours if it makes me mad.

Or before I make a big decision, I ask two friends who are experts in that thing before I go do a big major life change. Before I left higher ed to come to this job, I actually flew to Texas to meet with somebody who has known me for a long, long time. Before I jumped, like, hey, am I seeing this correctly?

Yeah. And so I want you to basically, it's the old Seinfeld episode opposite George. I want you to do the opposite. Okay. Here's the second thing. I want you to write down what you actually are afraid of. Go right towards the fear. I'm afraid of being lonely. Cool. I'm going to put that on the table. I'm going to tell my husband that, or my, my fiance that I'm afraid of, um, flight school taking up all our time as we're newlyweds. Let's put that on the table and let's begin to solve that problem.

I'm afraid of getting into flight school, not liking it. Let's put that on. Like, so let's really write down these fears and then look at the ones we can actually do anything about. And the ones that we can't, we're going to, what are you gonna do about them? Right. And then the ones that we can, boom, we're going to go right into them. And then here's the third one. And this one's going to be the hard one. Okay. Well, you just give yourself permission and be sad. Yeah. You're transitioning your whole life. And you're one of the rare 26 year olds I talked to. You've had a pretty great life, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the problem is like, I feel a little bit guilty getting upset over something like that. Nope.

But I have to let myself be sad. That's exactly right. It's huge. And being sad doesn't mean you're not super over the moon excited about what comes next. Yeah. It's not either or, it's both and. Yeah, that's the weird thing is like I haven't felt that way before. So it keeps flipping back and forth. Yeah, let it flip back and forth. Let it flip back and forth. That's amazing. You're about to transition out of a pretty safe, secure, awesome, amazing life.

And you're getting under a squat bar. Have you ever been in a weight room before? Yeah. Okay. All right. So, you know, the squat rack, your mom and dad have been lifting your squat bar for a long time. Yeah. And there's something about walking into a house when you know somebody else is there, just in your nervous system, in your amygdala, you know, hey, if there's somebody trying to get into the house or somebody trying to, like, there's just safety issues.

Yeah. There's just conversation issues. There's just, oh gosh, I don't, can you help grab this thing? And there's nobody else there. And that's just the transition to adulthood. Mm-hmm. And you're coming at it late and that's all right. Mm-hmm. But you should be a little bit weirded out by it. It's all right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And again, you love this guy? Oh, absolutely. Awesome.

Can I just say congratulations to your parents for creating a world that, um, they should have kicked you out a long time ago, but that's okay. But like creating a world that you actually like them, you like being around them. And I'll say congratulations to you, um, for thinking through these things. And it sounds like you are wise will be on your years, which means you're probably raised well. Um, and, um,

Or that means you weren't raised well and you had to see a lot of crazy life and you've got some wisdom scars. But it sounds like more of the former than the latter. So I tell you, I'm proud of you. Give yourself permission to be sad. Give yourself permission to be freaked out. Give yourself permission to be overwhelmed. You're changing majors. You're changing schools. You're changing homes. You're changing your marital status. You're changing everything all at once. And that's terrifying and freaking amazing. All of it at the same time. Go get it.

And by the way, last thing, your feelings are your feelings. You're allowed to feel them. You're allowed to feel them. Have a couple of people in your life you can call and say, hey, am I seeing this and experiencing this in a way that makes sense? Because when our emotions get going, we often don't experience the world clearly. But man, I'm proud of you. You're on to the next step. You're on to the next. Congratulations. We'll be right back.

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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 the home of what I think is the top two or three places in the world to eat, San Antonio, Texas, and talk to Gabby. What's up, Gabby? Hi, Dr. Deloney. Deloney, how are you? I'm great. How about you? I'm nervous. Oh, don't be nervous. You're good to go. You're good to go. What's up?

Okay. I just had a quick question for you. How do I navigate social situations and friendships now that I'm sober after spending the last five years building all of my relationships around alcohol? Oh, wow. So how long are you clean? So my longest running was a month, but as of right now, four days. Can I just stop? And I know we're on the phone, but can I give you a hug? Sure.

Yeah, I was really proud there for a second. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Uh-uh, we're not doing that. We're not doing that. You're on day four, right? Yes, yep. Yeah. And tomorrow's day five, right? Yep. Yeah. I'm proud of you. I don't know anybody on the planet that starts and stops, that doesn't start and stop on the way to something great. That 30-day run, the proof to you you can do it?

Yeah, it was, I mean, it was a good run, but again, you know, I got around some people and I got in a situation and I was like, oh, just, you know, one drink. And, um, my track record shows that I don't know how to drink one drink. Well, awesome. Now you got some new data in, um, in the system and now you can go make a better choice next time, which unfortunately bummer is zero. Yeah. Right. Um, have you gone to meetings?

No. I think part of my problem up until recently is I never really considered myself an alcoholic. I was like, oh, I don't drink every single day. I'm not hiding it. I just drink a lot when I do drink. It's not a big deal. Everybody drinks a lot in their 20s. So I've never gone to a meeting, but I've kind of toyed with the idea here recently. Yeah, I can't recommend. That'd be my first, second, and third recommendation would be for you to go to a meeting.

And exhale. Well, and here's the thing. You white knuckled your way through 30 days and you will powered your way through 30 days and you can't change this big of a challenge with white knuckles. Yeah. And the only way to do it is to drop your shoulders and you can't drop your shoulders by yourself because alcohol is too strong.

And the reason I asked first off that if you'd gone to a meeting and I was assuming you had not, it's because one of the very first things you're going to tell you is you're probably going to lose most of your friends. Yeah. And I hate that. And that's the hard part. Yeah. No, it's caustic. It's heartbreaking. Or here's what you're going to find. You're going to find that most of your friends, people that you call friends and call you friend, were not friends like you thought.

Yeah, because we did dry January. We all white-knuckled our way through dry January. I ended up, towards the end of dry January, going on a bit of a little bender and causing a bunch of chaos in my life. And then I was like, okay, I'm sober. And then the same friends who experienced that chaos in my life are still handing me drinks and still encouraging me to drink. And I'm like, I'm trying so hard, and I don't want to lose them as friends at the same time as I don't want...

I know our relationships are going to have to change because everything was based around drinking. Everywhere we went, everything we did, we were always drinking. And so I guess, I just kind of guess more needed validation that it was okay to let those friendships go. Let me get underneath that, okay? Your friendship wasn't just based on drinking. It was based on you all needing each other to fall a little bit so that y'all felt like y'all were superior in moment by moment gulps of air.

They kept handing you drinks because your spinning out in chaos makes them feel half an inch taller. Yeah. Because at least they're not doing what you're doing. That's true. And you waking up the next morning saying, hey, you guys did this. Y'all were my friends. That makes you feel half inch taller. And so it's not a relationship based on drinking. Drinking becomes the medium by which y'all get to step on each other to feel a little bit taller for just a night. That's not friendship.

That's a bunch of hurting people desperately using each other.

Yeah, I'm married and I was talking to my husband about it because he's one of the few people that doesn't encourage me to drink because he knows how I get. And we were like, well, why do you feel like the need to drink when you're around them? And I'm like, well, that's my role in the friend group is I'm the fun one. You walk into the party and there I am to hand you a drink. And it kind of just gave me that identity in the friend group. And I guess now that I've

day four don't have that identity coming up, you know, Friday night, Saturday night, Thursday, Thursday, that I'm kind of just like, what am I going to do with my, my weekend? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's not a cabbie. That's not it. What's the real question you're asking? I don't know. The real question you're asking is how am I going to stop hurting now that this is gone? Yeah. The real question you're asking is how can I hide now? So my question to you is like, what are you hiding from? You have kids.

I do. How old? He's four. Okay. Why don't you feel like you're a good mom? I didn't have the best mom and dad. So like...

I kind of found out when I was pregnant, I was going to do everything completely differently. And both of my parents have issues with alcohol. My grandparents have issues with alcohol. My siblings have issues with alcohol. And so I kind of, I decided I was going to do alcohol quote unquote the right way as a mom. And, um,

I felt like he's never seen me drink. He's never been around me when I drink. So I thought I was doing it the right way. And so now I'm kind of running into, you weren't doing it the right way. You were just hiding it better than your mom and dad. And I'll tell you for a four-year-old, his nervous system knows when mom's drinking. He knows. I don't tell you that to shame you. I tell you that to tell you the only way to do alcohol differently, it's a ghost that haunts your entire family line, right?

Yeah. Yeah. The only way is to turn and stare and face it down and to drop your shoulders and say, okay, I'm powerless. You win, but I'm out. That's it. It's the only way. And so my, my, my, um, hope you can feel my heart through the phone. You're a good mom, dude. You're carrying the baggage of an entire family line and you're holding, you're holding it back for the sake of your son and your husband.

And you're using every bit of strength you got to try to protect great grandkids that you'll probably never get to meet. And so I want to tell you, man, that's valiance and that's honor and that's bravery. I'm just telling you, you're doing it the wrong way. Right? It's like you're a warrior with a machine gun and you're just firing it directly into a wall. I love the bravery and I love the courage. It's just not doing anything. Going the wrong way. It's going the wrong way.

And so the craziest, most courageous thing you can do is walk into a meeting. And if your husband needs to go with you, then take him with you and drop your shoulders and say, my name is Gabby. And my great grandfather couldn't, and my grandfather couldn't, and my mom and dad couldn't, and I can't control alcohol. I need help. Because what you're looking for here is your identity has been, you're the crazy girl at the party. You're the fun girl in the identity that you've told yourself. The story you've tried desperately to backfill is you're

I can be the mom that I didn't have, and I can be the wife that my dad didn't have, and I married the guy that's not my dad. It's all amazing. And I can still have that identity that has kept me kind of held together like super glue and duct tape, the crazy girl, and you can't. Yeah, I just...

Like I said, I thought I could do it the right way and have that identity. And I guess it's just been really hard to let go of that identity, which entail comes with all of the friends I've made in the last... Well, I've been drinking for 10 years, but the last friends I've made since we moved and have made these friends. And they're not friends. They're not friends. Because if they were, they'd pull you aside and say, hey, you're not all right. If they were, then when one idiot's like, hey, have some more shots...

And they would say, no, no, no, no, she's not drinking. Stop. Yeah, that's not how they have acted at all. Because they're not your friends. Yeah. And that means you have to deal with the loneliness. And you've been lonely since you were a little bitty girl. Oh, yeah. And you're going to have to deal with trust with your husband because you've been dealing with trust issues with the caring figures in your life forever. Yeah.

And that's what I tell you. You can't do it by yourself, man. And you can leave this conversation. You can leave, you can look in the mirror and say, I was too weak to do it myself. You can, you can talk like that or you can high five yourself and say, dude, I gave it a shot. This one didn't work. So now I'm going to try this one. Yeah. Um,

So do I just like slowly back out of this and be like, okay, you guys continue. Oh, I can't make. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Repeat after me. They don't get a vote. You don't owe them anything, Gabby. You owe you, your little boy and your husband, period. Your whole life has been spent trying to make sure everybody else is okay.

That stops today. I've heard those words in therapy probably once a week since I started seeing a therapist. Well, there you go. You're going to call a random old podcaster and he'll tell you the same thing starting today. Okay? Okay. You've been grabbing at ghosts for a long time. When kids grow up in the home, the alcoholics, especially lineage alcoholics, it's grabbing at ghosts. You see your dad there, but he's not there. You see your mom there, but she's not there. And it makes kids insane.

And so what you're going to have to do is, A, begin the healing process. A, you got to do that process sober, which means you got to go through the detox process, the who am I process. I guarantee you've got a wake of decisions you wish you could have back, right? Yeah. You're going to have to go through the forgiveness process of forgiving Gabby for doing things when she was just trying to stay alive.

You might have to sit down with your husband and say, hey, here's some things you don't know. You're going to have to go through that whole thing. And I need you to listen to me. On the other side of this is a peace and a depth of sleep and laughter and deep romance and intimate connection with your husband. Clear-eyed with your kid that you have never experienced in your life ever. You should have, but you didn't. Yeah.

Yeah, I just never thought, pictured that kind of life for myself. I know, I know, I know. So when I'm staring at it, it's kind of like... It's not real. No, that's not for me. I know. It is for you. You just got to go get it. Today's day four. Will you make a call today? Will you go to a meeting this evening? Yeah. Do you promise in front of me and Kelly and the whole gang? I do. Okay. Okay.

Will you send in a picture of your 30-day chip when you get it? Of course. We'll celebrate you like crazy. You promise? Promise. I am as proud of you right now as I've been proud of anybody in a long, long time. Thank you. Your great-grandkids are going to have a different life because of the choice you made today. Okay? Go to a meeting tonight and don't stop going. Game on? Game on. It's been a high, high honor to get to talk to you today, my friend. Thank you so, so much. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. All right. Blessings.

We'll be right back. All right, the rumors are true. Yes, the modern world exposes us to things that were just unheard of until a few decades ago. I'm talking about the little screens and the big screens and the giant screens in our homes and in our offices, the fluorescent lights, the EMFs. These things can affect our mood, our sleep, our anxiety, and more. This is why I'm super excited to partner with Bond Charge, a world leader in red light therapy and EMF blocking gear.

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All right. This is from Kate, who was on our show just a few weeks back, about 20 episodes ago. And she just wrote in with a little bit of an update. Well, update us. Yeah. So she said, Hi, John. I wanted to reach out to share some cool crap that happened after I talked with John in January. In our call, we talked about how I needed to come clean with my husband about the lack of respect that I've been feeling for him.

After the call, we went on a marriage retreat and I was able to sit him down and come clean with all of the feelings that I had been keeping from him. We talked through specific ways in which I felt that he had let me down and he was able to share some things with me that he was struggling with as well. We were able to put it all out there, then wipe the slate clean and look at how we want our marriage to look from here on out.

While we don't have it all figured out yet, we put some things in place to make sure that we're able to connect every day, like praying together every morning before we go our separate ways and planning time every evening to connect after we put our boys to bed. Because of these changes, our communication has been better, our house has been more peaceful, and our emotional and physical intimacy has been better than ever. Now buckle up because I'm about to say some nice things about you and you need to take it.

I want to thank you and your team for everything that you do. I know that when you do the same thing day in and day out, sometimes it can seem mundane, especially when you hear variations of the same problems that people call in with.

But after listening to your show for the past several months, I can honestly say that you've been able to change my way of thinking and have encouraged me to do challenging things. I am going back to school for my master's in counseling, and I have the courage to reach out to my friends to schedule girls' nights and make more time for deep and meaningful relationships. I've been able to share your wisdom with others and have seen others' lives and marriages change because of it. So thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and perspective with all of us that really need it. And Kelly. Yes, John, I actually wrote this. So hush your face. Thank you for putting up with John Deloney and his crazy antics. And thank you to the team for making this podcast happen. Y'all are truly changing lives. Now you can just awkwardly say, thank you. Sincerely, Kate from Gulfport, Mississippi. Kate, thank you. I'm working on not saying too much as a way to like, uh,

make myself feel better. Deflect. Yes, deflect and put filler words. So I'm just going to say thank you. When this is coming out and the internets do not like a call that I took the other day and I'm getting roasted like a pig over an open spit. So it hasn't been going well. I needed to hear that today. So thank you very much.

I'm really grateful, Kate. And I'm also grateful that you and your husband laid it out, wiped the table, and said, let's go build something new. And y'all are slowly inching your way towards it. It's amazing. I'm proud of you. Thank you for the kind words. They mean more than you will ever know. Blessings, guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Bye.