Is It Too Late to Save My Marriage?
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How can I reconcile with my wife? After revealing my gambling addiction, I revealed how much money I lost, which was a six-figure amount. It was pretty much just a volcano ready to erupt as, you know, addictions. The last year or so was just absolute hell. I mean, it sounds like for a year, and I'm going to be out of line here. You may be through with the past, but the past is not through with you. What up? What's going on? It's 2025. Welcome back to the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm John.

I'm a dad. I'm a husband. I'm trying to figure it out right alongside each and every one of you. Some of you aren't dads. Some of you are moms. Some of you are just brothers, sisters, just dudes. Some of you are Ben, the guy, I don't know. Ben, you just look like an awesome guy making it happen. Thanks. And can we shout out Sarah, the editor of the show, had the first case of natural triplets I've ever heard of. She had them...

And I say natural. Like, she just didn't have IVF. Right. She got pregnant. There was no medication or any kind of... You're going to have three. Yeah. But I think what's important to call out is she had all three babies on my birthday, which I think shows incredible team dedication. And one of them is named Benjamin. After me, obviously. She didn't... I didn't even check. She didn't go with a John? No. There's no John. How does that make you feel? She had them on your birthday, though. I mean, yeah, that's kind of a flex, but she clearly doesn't value her job. She didn't name one of them. She had three of them.

Did she name the daughter Kelly? No, Adeline. That's way prettier. Both names are beautiful. Let's go out to San Francisco. Okay, wait. We can't just blow past by what happened over the holidays. What happened?

We hit a million. Oh, we got a million. We did it. Our listeners are amazing. We did it. Yes, yes, yes. We did it. Sorry, man. There's a lot that happened. It was a wild holiday in the Deloney house. And I was like, oh, no, what does she know? What does she know? What does she know? No, it's yeah. Do we get a million? It was so great. And yeah.

1,000% of this is because of you, the listener. Thank you all so much for being in our gang. And one of my favorite things in the world is being all across the country, meeting somebody, and them shaking my hand and saying, I'm one of the OG17. And that makes my heart feel so cool. That means you've been with us for a long time. But man, we hit the million mark and we're just getting rolling, which is awesome. As the great Limp Bizkit once said, we're just rolling, rolling, rolling. Now, can we go to San Francisco?

You may. Awesome. Let's talk to Jim. What's up, J-I-M in San Francisco?

Hi, good morning. Happy New Year. You too, man. Happy New Year. What's going on? Yeah, yeah. Well, I just wanted to say I've been listening to your show for about a month, and I really appreciate how perceptive you are and your empathy, and congratulations on the one million mark. I just heard that right now. Well, thank you, brother. I appreciate it, and welcome to our cult, and we'll send you a jug of Kool-Aid here when you get off the phone. What's up, brother? How can I help, man?

Yeah, so I won't start the question. We'll dig a little deeper. So the question is, how can I reconcile with my wife after revealing my gambling addiction, which was back in December of 2023, and work in recovery for over a year now? Tell me about it.

Yeah, so we'll start with the 30,000-foot view. So I'm 47 years old. I was a compulsive gambler from 2017 to 2023. So about seven years, which I hid from my wife. Sports gambling was the game of choice. I've been a casual gambler for a good portion of my life, probably since middle school.

In small amounts, it was like office pools, fancy sports, side bets, smarts, badness, stuff like that, occasional trips to Vegas. I revealed the addiction to my wife in December of 2023, as I already mentioned. A letter came from one of my personal lenders, and she was questioning about it. It was pretty much a volcano ready to erupt, as you know, with addictions. The last year or so was just absolute hell.

with all these things coming in the mail and I was like hiding and making up all these stories. I revealed how much money I lost, which was a six-figure amount, and some other financial misgivings. We have three small children. They're ages eight, five, and two, boy, girl, girl. My wife has not worked in 10 years, so I pretty much work two jobs. I work as an educator down in the Bay Area, but my family lives up in Sacramento, so I can explain that situation in a little bit as we dig deeper.

My wife is an amazing stay-at-home mother. She runs a phenomenal household. But again, she's not worked in nearly a decade.

She was devastated when I revealed all this to her. I mean, I lied to her often. I was not present as a father. And she actually did question me about this back in February 2022. So I kind of made some stories and said, okay, well, yeah, I was gambling, but I broke even. And, you know, just, you know, you lie as you do when you're in addiction. And then, well, the survival mode for quite some time. And then, of course, you know, the anxiety, all those things to start, you

building up in you. But yeah, and again, we've been married for a little over 10 years, but we've been separated for the past year. I've been going to GA. I went to GA right after I revealed the addiction to her in December of last, of 2023. Hold on, stop, let me stop real quick. Why are you separated?

So, um, so she filed for divorce, um, in January 21 to 2024. So after a few weeks after I revealed, um, the gambling addiction to her, um, she initially said that we were going to work as a team. Um, but I guess just after a few days when she saw just all the stuff I had done and all the debts and the lies, um, she just, um, and there was some previous ruptures in the marriage. I was going to say there's, there's almost always in this case, this,

For whatever reason, I mean, I can guess some reasons. I can speculate. But gambling addiction revelations have – there's often the spouse responds differently than like multiple affairs or even drug or alcohol addiction. So that tells me there was probably, maybe not, but probably other things going on in your marriage for a long time. There was. And as anyone who struggles with addiction for seven years of any kind –

It like when you feel that right then your wife almost like I think of like you ever seen Star Wars one. Yes, you're from the Bay Area. You probably all watch that show. That was a very generalized statement. I just made about all the tech guys, but they all watch Star Wars. But there's that scene at the very end when the when the when the TIE fighters go down to get the Death Star and everything just goes and everything.

When somebody's with somebody in addiction, I always imagine that scene. Like, as all these lights just go by and their last seven years go in reverse. And they're like, oh my gosh. Like, everything becomes clear in that moment. You get what I'm saying? Right. And there has to have been other stuff going on. Were you abusive?

No, no, not at all. Um, no, no physical abuse, no verbal abuse. I'm like probably the nicest guy you'll ever meet. Um, but I, I do have an issue with avoidance. Um, I do keep things to myself. Um, um, just, you know, there was other, uh, I, I, I mean, kind of tell you, um, some other things like I would unilaterally make financial decisions without consulting my wife. Um, there were other financial issues like involving my parents that didn't tell my wife that, um,

It created some hardship for us when we had to buy a house. I mean, I can get into more of those details if you want to. But there were, yeah, I mean, she didn't feel she was treated as an equal or as a partner with other financial decisions. I think it's way deeper than that. I mean, it's one of those moments that she knows something's not right for a long, long time. And when you put it on the table, it's like, oh, my gosh, this is not, he's not who I thought he was, right?

And then, so she files for divorce, but I guess y'all didn't go through with it. I guess she held.

Well, so that she hired an attorney, um, around this time last year. And then, um, and she told me she wanted to have this meeting with her father and her sister. It was on a Sunday afternoon. And then, uh, I just thought we were talking about finances and then she hits me with, um, divorce. And then, uh, and then of course I was like begging and pleading. And then she's like, yeah, but it's not just the gambling. It's all the other things that, you know, you, um, yeah, you never been honest with me. Um, well not never, but there's, you know, many times you're not been honest with me. Um, you've, um,

you know, stonewalled me, lack of communication, lack of transparency, emotional insecurity. Those are a lot of some of the other deeper things that have been going on. But yeah, then a few days later, I got served papers. And then we've been kind of going through the process, but, you know,

You know, we're now in a nesting arrangement with our kids. So as I said, I work down in the Bay Area, but they live up in Sacramento. So I'm down here four or five days a week. I stay with my parents. Then I go back to my house on Friday night. And then my wife leaves and she stays with her. Her family lives up there. She stays at either her parents' or sister's house. And I'm with the kids on Saturdays. And then she comes back Sunday night.

We just kind of do it all over again. That's kind of the hamster wheel we've been on. And, you know, she has, obviously, when you go through the process, there's financial disclosures, all these things. So I gave her everything back in the summer. She's had a few months to look at it and then...

But, you know, there's a lot of stuff, right? I mean, it's many years of financial documents to look through, and I guess it can't make sense of it. So her attorney reached out to my attorney and said, like, hey, can we have a settlement hearing? And our settlement hearing, interestingly, is on January 21st of this year. So exactly a year after. So we have a settlement hearing coming up. Your original question. My original question, yes. How can I reconcile with my wife? She's divorced you.

You're the tail end of a proceeding. We're the tail end of a proceeding, yes. So it's, I mean, it sounds like for a year, and man, I hate to link these, okay? And I can be out of line here. Sure, go ahead, please. But one of the telltale signs of someone who is falling off a cliff into gambling addiction is an inability to recognize a loss in progress. And I feel like you're experiencing this in real time.

I mean, do you have any indication on planet Earth at all that your wife is doing anything other than progressing at a somewhat rapid clip these days with how long divorces take for a settlement hearing? One calendar year? That's not super slow. No. So, man, it feels like you're spending a lot of energy trying to figure out how to solve this thing, and the thing has a period at the end of it as far as she's concerned.

As far as her attorney, as far as your attorney, I mean, everybody's got a period at the end of it but you. And it sounds like you're not living in that reality yet. Am I off? Kind of. I mean, I will say I have experienced... I mean, the year 2024 was a...

It was obviously a challenging year, but a good year in the sense that I did experience a lot of character change. You know, by going to, you know, I attend three or four meetings per week. It's amazing. I'm super proud of you, by the way. That's awesome. It's awesome. And I got a sponsor a few months ago. I read literature. I'm a more present dad than I was before where I'd like,

not pay attention to my kids. I'd be on my phone looking at, you know, sports stats or things like that. Income's gone up by 32%. Debt's gone down. I've been, my wife and I, we do work well together with the finances, with the house, with the kids, with the education. So we've been communicating well with that. And, you know, we're in the house at the same time many times because, you know, we are in a nesting arrangement. And, you know, again, like it's just a weird situation. Have you taken her to coffee and said, do you want to still be my wife?

I've not done that, no. Okay. Anything other than that is you creating a fantasy and really trying to hang on to it tightly. Right. And short of that hard conversation, because here's the other deal. You might get the terrifying clarity that you've been trying to avoid for a year. Probably, yeah. You're right. But maybe she's like, yeah, I've been waiting for you to ask.

I don't know another thing to do. Y'all are being civil. Y'all are acting like adults, which I'm super proud of you. You're working your butt off to change who you are. Like from the inside out, man, to heal. That's amazing. And there's still this humongous blind spot. There's that old, it's one of the most haunting movie lines I can ever remember. It's from the movie Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson movie. And it just repeats throughout the film. You may be through with the past, but the past is not through with you.

Oh, I like that. You may be a radically different man on the road to transforming everything. And yet seven years plus the dating relationship you had with your wife, the consequence of that may go with you. So I think the bigger challenge is that you not become one of these guys in recovery who are only doing it for some other outcome because you know those guys and it doesn't work.

- Right, right, I've seen a lot of people relapse. And I have to do this for myself. - There you go. - I get that, like it's been all about my personal growth because, you know, I have to be a better version of myself. If I do want to be a better father, a better partner to either my wife or someone else down the road, I have to be, it has to start with me and I have to want it. - Yeah, but hold on. - And I am extremely motivated. - But listen, Jim, those two things are external. And if you've listened to this show for five seconds, you know I'm pretty obsessive about people being good parents, about people being good marriage partners.

But you have to go through this process because you deserve peace. Right. Not so that you can be a better dad and be a better this. Those are external metrics. You've got to do this for your spirit, for your soul, for your chest, for your... Otherwise, you're just getting on another treadmill and another treadmill and another treadmill.

I agree. I will say I was riddled with anxiety the last year and a half after my wife had some questions about it about two years prior to the revelation of how bad it really was. This was back in February 2022. That timeframe until December 2023, yeah, it was hell. And I...

And more at peace, you know, to have that serenity prayer, you know, when you go to the meetings where they talk about the serenity except the things you cannot change, the courage to change things you can, there was no difference. And that really sticks with me because I do feel less anxious now. But you're less anxious because you had your catharsis. Right. You lanced the boil, right? You opened the infection up so it could drain. And that always feels better. Exactly.

But my fear is you had done all this work and you're like, look, look, look, look, look, look, look, assuming or expecting that she's going to go your right. True. Yeah, I would agree. And so I think you've got to make space in your sobriety for staying sober when she says, I'm buying you out of this house. My dad's writing you a check. You're not welcome here anymore. When she says, I've met somebody else.

You've got to have a space for sobriety there because there's nothing in your story that tells me anything other than y'all are heading for a mediation on the 21st, a settlement, and your attorney is going to recommend you write her a check and everybody move on. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. No, I mean, no, that's the harsh reality. So, I mean, if I'm you, there's that – it's one of my favorite quotes ever. It is, conflict deferred is conflict amplified.

Hard conversations put off simply create way more, way bigger explosions. And so, man, I can't recommend enough that you say, hey, can we go grab coffee? Well, I was thinking about doing that, right? Yeah, that's what I was considering doing. And you should feel real anxious. You should feel real nervous. And I want you to practice with a sober mind. Head directly into that anxiety.

And call your sponsor before, call your sponsor right after, but head directly through it, brother. And sit down and say, I still want to be your husband. We're heading towards the settlement. Is there any chance you still want to be my wife?

And I will say I did approach the topic of reconciliation in March of last year, like only after two months of recovery. And she was like, you're crazy. And then she just unloaded on all these previous ruptures, which I wasn't quite present to, which was great to hear. But she was just like, yeah, you're just nuts. And then, of course, then we all

All the crap that comes with the divorce stuff, which is really not great. You know, like the custody mediation and she took attorneys midway through because she was happy with the first attorney. And then all those, and then, you know, then falls into court and now this is what she wants. They said, okay, well we have to sit down and talk. Yes. So I want you to like with fervor chase reality, solve for reality right now. What is actually true?

And I might have to practice being sober in that reality. And that's going to be really hard. And I thought meetings have been hard for the last year, but they weren't as hard because I was working towards getting back what was. What was is gone. Even if she comes back to you, your marriage is completely new because she knows you as somebody who lied to her face for seven years and hid things and put her and her kids at financial and like,

emotional risk, significant risk. And so there's going to be years of trust rebuilding, even if she says, yes, I'm interested in being your wife again, but nothing you're telling me suggests that at all. In fact, the opposite, you know, I'm moving towards the closure here. And so, man, for your sake, having that direct conversation with a loving spirit and a gentle spirit, and she might look at you and say, no, don't ask again, please.

That's the best path forward. Otherwise, you are just trying to solve for fiction, for fantasy. It's not real. And if she says, yeah, then call me back, dude, because then there's going to be some pretty rad steps y'all take together towards reconciliation, towards coming back together, towards rebuilding something completely new. I can walk alongside you there, but y'all aren't there yet. Right now, you're at, do I need to accept the reality that it's just coming towards me like a speeding train or...

Is there a possibility that she's going to change her mind at the last minute? I hope so, man. I'm a romantic at heart, dude. I really hope that's what happened. But I don't see any indication here, man. Thanks for the call, my brother. Call me back anytime. We'll be right back. Okay, good folks. Lent is just a few weeks away. And if you haven't heard of Lent, it's a practice that goes back centuries. And it's when Christians all over the world get ready for Good Friday and Easter through different kinds of prayer, meditation, and fasting.

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Go to bondcharge.com slash Deloney and use coupon code Deloney to save 15%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E, bondcharge.com slash Deloney, and use coupon code Deloney to save 15%. All right, we're back. Let's go to Augusta, Georgia and talk to Eleanor. Hey, Eleanor, what's up? Hey there. Ultimately, my question for you, Dr. John, is,

I find myself, I'm pregnant for a third time with a third baby girl. So I currently have two girls and a third one's on the way. And ultimately, that's been a harsh reality to accept. I wouldn't even say accept as fully in my vocabulary yet. In a preface to this discussion, I did want to say I recognize that

That's how lucky I am to be struggling with this exact situation because I know so many are not, would be, you know, kind of their lucky stars to be in my exact situation. Yeah, but that doesn't minimize your pain. Yeah, and that's what I have to tell people. It's okay. It's okay. Tell me why such a heavy heart over having a third baby girl.

I'm going to apologize because I'm going to be teary-eyed. You're okay. We're just talking on the phone, so you can tell how teary you are. You're going to hear it, I'm sure. I don't have easy pregnancies, and we have really, really challenging...

newborn phases. All of my children so far and projected by professionals will be born with something called severe infantile reflux, which is just acid reflux for you and me can be deadly in an infant. And so first baby was almost admitted to the NICU as like a four month old to have a feeding tube. And

The choice to have another child comes with an incredible weight of six months of just really intense colic pain.

appointments, you know, and it's something they'll grow out of, but it's a very, very intense newborn period. Um, as it is with anybody, but just an extra layer of it. And so I think the disappointment is that I had even told my husband years ago, it's like, I want two children and I'm done. And,

And we didn't even find out the gender of our second child until she was born because I was so dead set on having two. And there was just a deep gut-wrenching that was, I'm not done yet. My family's not done yet. And this hope of, you know, please let us have a chance to have a boy. Oh, so that's, so you, in your head, the picture of your family included a little boy.

Always, yes. Okay. So when you found out you're having a third girl, y'all made a decision, hey, we're going to go through hell again. Yeah.

Y'all aren't like first-time parents where it's like a lot of Googling and a lot of people telling you horror stories at the water cooler at the office. Y'all know this is awful. Yeah, the newborn period that God had for us was way worse than anybody could have ever described. But they grow through it. Thank God they grow through it. Sure.

And you have a very real... Yeah. It's like you've been in two rounds with Mike Tyson and you're not knocked out. And so, like, I know what's about to happen in round three. Here we go. Right? Yeah, basically. And I just felt like...

I'm a very faith-filled person. I felt like my prayers were, God, if I take this chance again, please let our family grow to what we have pictured. And I also have just the most wonderful husband,

I pray that any young woman that's searching finds a guy like mine one day. I'm so freaking lucky. And to not see him get the chance to pass that on to his own little boy cripples me. And I think that's just... So what I would tell you is you've got permission to be sad.

You have permission that you had a picture that's not, and you did all the things in your power to manifest this thing, right? You prayed for it. You wished for it really hard. You went again. You know you're going to put your body through tough times, and often with this kind of severe, when your baby's in pain and you've got two other little ones, the postpartum risk is higher. Have you experienced that in the past too? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think being sad is okay.

And if for nothing else, have that permission. And what I will tell you is I haven't met anybody. I'm sure they exist. I'm confident that some people are going to blow up the comments of this thing. Fine. By the way, will you make me a promise not to read the comments on this particular call? Yeah. Yeah. I know people are going to be born into a family where they're not. That's not. No, I know. Not the case at all. And you're going to want this baby. You're going to be a great mom. Absolutely. It's just, there's also this, this heartache that I can't, I,

I have found, and this is through my PPD, my postpartum depression experience was the more I pretend everything's okay, the harder it becomes for it to not be okay and to actually heal through it. That's right. So this is the first time I'm actually taking a...

socially unacceptable thing to say. It's like, I'm not excited about having another baby girl. I'm not. So let me tell you, there's millions of mothers who have that same or husbands, dads who have that same, ugh, it was not in my picture. And it doesn't mean you're broken or wrong. If the baby's born and you reject this kid, yeah, then you got a problem. That's not going to be you, right? Your disappointment is okay.

It's what happens if you choose to meditate on that disappointment. If every discomfort you have, every kick you have in your tummy, every doctor appointment you have, if you begin to hate and rage, that's when you need to go sit down with somebody and take some professional precautions there, okay? Okay. Because right now, just being sad, like, oh my gosh, it was supposed to be this picture. That's the same as, I mean, I don't want to minimize it.

The story of being a parent is I have a picture for what my family is going to look like. And that picture almost is never realized. Yeah. Right. And so you find grief, which is right. And what we often don't feel in society, especially tells us it will never come, is that there's healing on the other side of this. You'll laugh again. Yeah. This third little girl will be chaos and a mess and super fun, or she'll be quiet and reserved and no thank God.

Yeah. Right. Um, I, and, and for whatever it's worth last night, I had dinner with one of my closest friends. Um, it was a couple of friends and all three of their kids came over. He is the most avid sports fan. I know the most avid sports fan and all three of his young daughters showed up.

And he loves them and they are so fun and so brilliant. And so these things that I thought I wanted, I think the key to life is being open-handed about what you get, what we get. Yeah. Right? And so your grief's okay. Do you have, I'm going to ask you a really hard question. Do you already have a name?

No, and that's part of, I have. Did you already have a name for that little boy? Yeah. What was the name? I don't want to say it because I don't want to. Okay. I have to keep crying that I don't get to use it. Well, here's what I want you to do. I want you to write him a letter. I want you to write him a letter. And said, I thought you were coming to our house. You went to somebody else's house. And we're going to miss you. And we know you're going to have a great, great, great life. And you better not marry my daughter.

Because here's the deal. You're grieving it as a loss. You already have a name. You had a face. Well, and that's something that happens. I don't... You had a smell. I don't know if your wife experienced this. Each of my pregnancies, I had very vivid dreams. Of course. Of, you know, the gender of baby I was holding. That's right. I could see their face, and it felt so real. And that's... I actually...

I was convinced I was pregnant with a boy. And I think that's another layer of all this. It feels like I have lost a person because it was so clear. You lost a dream. Yeah. And I'm a believer in grieving lost dreams too. Oh, gosh. Okay.

But listen, if you don't let this picture you have, if you don't let this person, if you don't let this experience, this picture, this dream metabolize. Yeah. My fear is you hand it to this sweet, amazing new daughter you're about to have for her to carry and it's not hers to carry. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's ultimately why I called you is that I knew that the weight of what I'm feeling is too heavy for the phase of I have a propensity to postpartum depression. It's like I can't be wrestling with all this and the biochemistry that's about to come. Sure. So let's do this. Let's do this. You have an amazing husband? Do you have girlfriends? Yeah, a couple. Okay. Okay.

I want that to be the chief focus of the next two to three months for you. Getting other women in your life that you can text, call, talk to, chit chat with, whatever. Okay? Yeah. And I want you to honor them. We rob people when we don't ask for help because it's one of the greatest gifts in the world we can receive is when somebody says, hey, can you help me? That's a great gift.

Not so great when they ask you to help them move, but any other requests? I want you to find a couple of women that you say, Hey, I'm going to text you crazy hours of the night. Will you? I hear you. This is, this is my hesitation towards what you're asking me. And there's other people that probably are in the same shoe that need to hear your answer. Um, I psychologically have been through a battlefield in the last year. Um,

If I were to ask for support from friends in that way, what ends up happening is the minefield that I open up chases people away because it's just too heavy. Yeah, but hold on. Yeah, your friends aren't to throw grenades to.

Okay. It's chased a few people away that were my support, which is why I'm hesitant to answer that question. Hold on. Because the spreadsheet has changed recently. It has changed, but did your burdens chase people away? The things that you're challenged with chased them away? Or was it your lack of willingness to go head into these challenges, to go meet with a therapist, to go meet with a doctor? The burden, yeah. You get what I'm saying? Yeah.

I do because I was doing those things that you're saying and I was reaching out in these friendships. And so now I'm at this weird place where I have to be very trepidatious about what I share. That's not true. That's not true. But you have to be willing to deal with it when it gets heavy. Here's what I mean.

Okay. If you have somebody you say, I'm having an anxious attack because an anxiety attack and I'm pregnant again. I got two knuckleheads running around. And one of your friends texts you and says, thank you so much for sharing. Have you gone for a walk? And you say, I can't, right? Or I'm thinking about hurting myself. Okay, cool. I'm calling the doctor. No, no, no. You can't call the doctor. If you're really my friend, you can't call the doctor. Okay.

So if you're putting heavy, heavy burdens on people and they're willing to walk with you, but you won't go do the next thing, which is I need to go talk to a physician. I need to go talk to a psychiatrist. I need to go talk to my OBGYN right now. I need to go for a walk. Then people begin to back out because they've reached the end of what they can do to help you. Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah. What I don't want you to do is to look at the next six months as a automation. Okay.

Like this is just, I'm on a boat on a river that I've been down before, and there's an inevitability to what's about to happen. Okay. What I would love for you to do is say, okay, I got in that same boat the first two times. I'm going to try a different boat this time. Doctor, I want an exercise routine, and I want somebody to call when I start having tough thoughts. I'm going to be silly about sleep. I'm going to call a high school kid to come over and play with my little ones while I can take a nap.

Like, I don't know what, I don't know what must be true in your world for, to be well, but I, what if you, what if you flipped it and said, these are going to be non-negotiables because I, I negotiated on them last time and I saw that end result. Yeah. Because I hear in your voice like a, like a resignation. I think I've tried everything I know to do. Okay. Um,

We're an ex-military family, so we're new-ish to an area. And when you don't have deep roots somewhere, those connections to just be able to call somebody and pull that trigger to get the help, it's not always an easy thing. That's right. It's tough. And it's not that I'm unwilling. I'm absolutely willing. Sure.

When's the last time you went and talked to a professional licensed counselor? Oh, last week. I'm not kidding. It's been a minefield. Check all the boxes on the programs. I'm with you. I'm with you. I want you to go sit. I'm doing everything I can, but my life can only, you know, if it just doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. I got you. But here's what I want you to do. I want you to sit with your counselor, and I want you to tell your therapist that I had some friendships that I blew up over the last year.

That they didn't seem able to hold my friendship, the needs I have. And I want to work on that. I need to find out. I need to parse through with you and should help me look at this from a different angle. Was it me? Was it my friends? Was it, was I not doing the, like, what was it? Cause maybe your friends are jerks. They're like, I don't do all your drama. And they left. Fine. Let them go. Or,

It was, man, we keep wanting to walk alongside you, but you're not willing to take another step. You just want to dump your trash in our yard, and we're not going to do that. But talk with your counselor about it. Work through those things individually. Work through them. I think that's fantastic. And I guess, yeah, it is so easy for me on this side of this to say that. I know that. But when I know I've experienced something once and I've experienced something twice,

Maybe it's a personality thing. I don't want to just give into the inevitability. Then I'll do it all different next time. I'm going to do all of it different next time. Just see, because I already know what's going to happen here. Maybe I can get lucky with the other side of it. And that's not an indictment on you not doing any work. I know you've been working your butt off for the last year. Millions and millions and millions and millions of people have been working so hard. But sometimes it's just a realization. All right, that way didn't work. That way is not working. So I'm going to try this way. And you are, have an amazing husband, which is awesome. And you're,

And there's going to come a moment when you guys continue to lean in. Here's your two letters. I want both of you and your husband to write a letter to this little boy. You'll have a name you had picked out and cheer this little boy on wherever this little boy happens to be in the cosmos. And then I want you to write a letter to this little girl, your new baby that's coming, how much you're going to love her, what kind of life she's going to have, how amazing her child is going to be.

and begin to prep yourselves for going to be super girl dads, super girl moms, girls everywhere in the house. And when that baby's born, she's going to be ready to rock and roll into a house that cannot wait for her to be there. But right now it's okay to be sad. It's got to be bummed out. Picture was different. Thanks for the call. Call anytime. We'll be right back.

All right, so I've done some soul searching recently, and I've come to the realization that I actually love the internet. Just kidding. It's the worst. It's amazing, but it's the worst. But it doesn't matter if I think it's the worst. Everything in my life takes place over the internet. My work, my personal messages and communications, everything.

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That's J-O-I-N. Join deleteme.com slash Deloney. All right, we are back. Check this out. Big announcement. Money and marriage getaway. My favorite event that I'm a part of is happening again this fall with me and Rachel Cruz. Every marriage needs intentional time away to disconnect from life's busyness, to reconnect. Talk about sex, intimacy.

how to, how to communication, fighting all of it. I think kind of bias is the best marriage conference on the planet. You're going to come to Nashville. You and your spouse are going to come for three days of laughter, hard conversations, some tears, intentional time together, and lots of practical teaching. And we set this thing up. We limit the number of people who can come. We could sell a jillion tickets and just, just,

I don't know, download all this and do this. That's not the point of this thing. We want everyone to get every question they have answered. So there's tons of access to me and Rachel Cruz, lots of times for question and answers. Early bird tickets start at $749. Every time we launch this event, tickets sell out ASAP. So you got to hurry. November 6th through 8th, 2020.

November 6th through 8th, 2025, $749. That's for the whole couple. All you got to do is get yourself to Nashville. You're going to stay here for a couple of nights. And we let you go Saturday at noon-ish in the afternoon. So then you can go hang out in downtown Nashville together, make it a long weekend.

November 6th through 8th. Get your tickets at ramseysolutions.com slash events or click the link in the description if you're listening on YouTube or podcast. These will sell out. They always do. Get them ASAP. All right, let's go to Tucson, Arizona and talk to McCall. What's up, McCall? Hi, Dr. John. I feel so grateful to be talking to you today. I feel grateful to talk to you. What's up?

I am calling because I cannot seem to move past the anxiety I feel after witnessing my neighbor take his own life. Oh. McCall, you're not supposed to see that. No. Tell me about it. So it was a weird situation.

My family was packing up to go to an outdoor movie that our town was putting on at the time, and we had just moved there. And so I didn't even know him.

But I had run inside to get a blanket. And as I was inside, I heard some commotions and yelling and a pop. And I immediately knew it was a gunshot. And I ran outside and my little boy had actually seen the whole thing. He said, that guy shot him. That guy shot him. And so I had just seen a man laying on the ground. And I didn't even bother to close the front door. We all just hopped in the car and left.

And so for about 15 minutes, I thought it was a murder. And the police came with no sirens. The ambulance came with no sirens, and I was so confused. And they let me know that it was actually a suicide situation. And so I got myself and my son into therapy right after that. My other kids didn't really see it, but they...

We didn't think that they needed therapy and they're doing fine. But my son has since graduated therapy, but I can't seem to get past it. Yeah, I think you just need to remove the phrase get past it from your psyche. Okay. This won't be something you quote-unquote get past. This is something that you'll grow around and grow through. But get past suggests this thing just...

Is in the road and you just go on down the road and this is a part of you. It's a thing you saw. You saw something that people might see on a TV show or they can imagine. But there is a there's a visceral reality when you hear it, when you start using your senses, when you see it.

And they burn themselves into your mind and body because your body has a protective mechanism. It doesn't want that to ever happen to you. So it puts a GPS pin in that. See, don't ever let that happen. And for you, that was your home. That was your neighbor. Yeah. Yeah. And so it electrifies the skin you live in, right? It's not like it happened in an alley and so you don't go to dark alleys anymore. It happened at a relative's house. You don't go to that relative's house. This happened in your yard, right?

Yeah. Right. And so I think it is the anxiety is right in that it's just trying to let you know, hey, you're not safe because a crazy thing happened to you, happened to your neighbor, but you saw a crazy thing. You experienced it. And you want to add another layer of anxiousness onto that? Your kids saw it. Yeah. So can I unwind a few things for you? Yes, please. Your kids seeing that's not your fault.

Yeah. You forgetting the blanket inside and having to go back, it's not your fault. Your kids seeing really scary, scary things is not your fault. Open your hands and let that nonsense go, okay? Okay. I want to flip it around and thank God Almighty that you have two little kids who have got a mother and is dad in the picture? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Have a mom and a dad that loved them so much that immediately got them out of harm's way because you didn't know what was up or what was down.

You got them into the correct professional help as soon as possible. And kids are astonishingly resilient, especially when they're anchored into connective caregivers. The old saying in counseling is kids can experience all kind of trauma. They just can't experience it alone. That's when it becomes traumatic over time. Your kids didn't. They had you. They had a husband. They had professionals. So amen to you for being a good mom and a good dad throughout this thing.

Okay? Thank you. Thank you. I want you to let the fault part go. And every time that story enters into your head, I want you to do something that's going to make you look crazy. Okay? I want you to comically, abruptly stop that story. Nope. When you're in your shower and your mind kicks off to, well, you should have, nope, nope, nope. And what I promise you, what you will do over time is you will begin to shift this thing

You'll shift your default setting to I should have to. Thank God I was able to. Fill in the blank. Okay. Okay? Here's number two. What was the name of that man? Are you allowed to say? His name was Jeremy. Okay. I want you and your husband to write Jeremy a letter. Okay. You're never going to give it to him. But this is walking your body through it. It's to help you metabolize what happened. And it doesn't have to be a nice letter. Hey, man, you scared our family to death. And I'm sorry that you were struggling so much with whatever was going on.

I mean, I haven't fully written him a letter, but I have found forgiveness. He was living with his parents. And so we actually have become friends with his parents and like, they're like second grandparents to us. So I've like kind of gotten over that anger that I felt towards him, but it's just that. Yeah. But the fear part's still there. Yeah. And so what you do is you have a lot of imaginary conversations with him or about him.

And your body doesn't know the difference when it's in your head. So it spins up to fight or flight as though this whole thing's kicking off again. And then it goes right back to the gurgling sounds. It goes right back to the awkward way somebody's neck cranks to like a really unnatural angle. Or somebody's ankle rolls over. Like all those little micro nuances are stuck in your soul. And when you start doing that imaginary conversation game, your body goes right back there. Yeah.

And so we're going to metabolize it. We're going to let him go. Jeremy's a sweet kid. He had a lot of demons, man. And for whatever reason that no one will ever know, what happened happened. But he no longer gets to live inside your head and your heart and your mind and your family's home. And so what we're going to do is we're going to write him a letter and you are going to read yours to your husband. Your husband's going to read his to you. You're going to say it out loud. As David Kessler, who was recently on my show, said, grief demands a witness. We're going to say it out loud to each other.

And you have to be honest in the letter. Hey, you scared me. I'm scared to come to my own house now. Every loud noise, I jump. But I want you to feel comfortable giving Jeremy the responsibility in this particular situation. Write it out. Okay? And then we destroy the letters. We move on. Okay. Okay? Here's another thing I want you to metabolize, okay? That young man is no longer hurting right now. Okay? Yeah. He's not in pain. It's over.

And it's easy for us to flinch up, like when one of our kids gets a bad cut, or one of our kids bangs our head, our bodies clench, right, real tight. And when you think about him, you think about, it's easy to draw a connection to your own kids. It's easy to draw a connection to yourself and how much pain that must have been, how scary that must have been. He's not in pain anymore. Yeah. Sorry. Don't be sorry. Don't be sorry. You saw some things you should never have seen. I'm so sorry. Thank you.

I feel like every coping mechanism I've been given is just kind of not getting me far enough. Yeah, I know. And so it's like the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 stuff is just like... Those are band-aids. Yeah. We're not doing band-aids. We're going right through it. We're going to go talk to Jeremy via letter. Okay. I'm not avoiding the conversation anymore.

I'm going to abruptly stop my mind when it heads down these tracks and let my mind know I'm driving. I'm okay. You don't have to automate and protect me. Okay. Okay? Yes. As you move a little further down the road, you're going to quickly be able to scale through. It's an old CBT technique, but it's like, is that true? Every loud noise, boom, my chest gets real tight. Is that a gunshot? No. I'm going to consciously exhale.

You're not there yet, but we're going to work through those things. And here's the biggest challenge that most people who've experienced what you've experienced go through is they go to war with their body. They want their body to stop trying to keep them safe. And that's nuts. I want my body to be doing. Yeah. Your body's working perfectly. Given your biology, your genetics, your this wild situation, your body's cranking along. What we want to do is teach our body. I wasn't safe then. I am safe now. And most of the time, not always.

That's what great physicians are for and great psychiatrists are for. Often, your body goes, okay, cool. We're back. Tell me about your friendship circle there in your home or your hometown. You have friends. You have connection. How's your marriage? My marriage is great. We just moved. We move a lot. And so, I mean, I have friends all over the country at this point. Just not here. Do you get to see and touch? Okay.

Yeah. It's easier said than done, but you've got to find human beings that you can be in proximity to. It's one of the great fallacies of digital communication, these long text threads of old friends that are hilarious. They still send funny memes. We still check in with each other, still get happy birthday. All that's great and good, but your body is regulated by real people in time and space. Yeah. So you have to have somebody that you sit across the table from.

You have to have a couple people you have into your home for coffee. And for you, someone who moves a lot for whatever reason, that's probably a whole other phone call, that's a nightmare to get up and do it again. And then you make new friends again and make new friends again. That's your lot in life. I wish there was another way around it, right? It's like telling somebody, like, when you look at their budget, like, hey, you got to go make more money. Like, I don't know. You got to go get a job. Like, I hate to say that. But so your job right now is you got to go once again, new town, new home, new community, whatever. Right.

Having people back in. Having people back in that I can be present with, that I can drop my shoulders with, that I don't have to perform with.

And I know for almost everybody listening to this show right now, I read the data on loneliness. That sounds like a pipe dream. It sounds like a fantasy. It's like not real. I get that. And it doesn't exclude the fact that we have to have it. So that means we have to fight through the fantasy, put down the video game controllers, put down our lives and I mean, the distractions in our lives and head into life with other people. So we've got to do, there's not, there's not another way around it. And McCall, if you write this young man a letter,

And here's the goal of the letter. I'm going to let you go. I'm so sorry you were hurting this bad. I'll never know what was going on in your heart and mind. And by the way, you scared my family to death. I'm going to let him go. I'm going to let him go. I'm going to let him go with my husband. I'm going to be open there. He's going to be open back. I'm going to have some friends over to the house. I'm going to check in with my kids. I'm going to check in with myself. I'm going to begin to journal just to keep a gratitude journal. What's three or four things I'm grateful for every morning when I wake up? I'm going to begin to stop those conversations, those loops in my head.

When that image of him on the ground pops into my head, I'm going to immediately, you can't stop that lightning bolt. Those pictures, those images pop in our heads. That happens. You can't immediately replace it with another picture. Nope. I got to focus on that one. Got to focus on this one. And over time, your body will go, oh, she's driving. I don't need to keep reminding her of this. Most of the time, our bodies are just trying to keep us safe. And they're working as our particular bodies and experiences in biology program them to. It's all good.

But my job is not to avoid. It's to teach. We're safe now. We weren't safe then. We're safe now. Thank you so much for the call. Call me back anytime. I can walk alongside you. I want you to grab a book called Finding Meaning by the great David Kessler. It's the best book on grief I've ever read, ever. Check it out, and maybe you and your husband can work through that together as well. Thank you for the call. We'll be right back.

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That's Organifi, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash Deloney and use code Deloney for 20% off. All right, we're back. Kelly, am I the problem? Go for it. All right, this is from Jennifer. She says, for Thanksgiving, we had plans with my daughter, her fiance, and their new baby to go see my parents in California. We had everything planned to help her feel less anxious with the drive with the new baby. She's a very anxious first-time mom.

She texts, doesn't call, but texts me three days before we are to leave to tell me they can't go to a big project that he has due after the holiday, and if he fails it, he probably won't graduate. By the way, she just dropped out in her senior year to have the baby. I'm so upset because her parents are getting older and both have dementia. They've never met the new baby or her fiancé. I feel like they should have planned better when he knew this project was due from the beginning of the semester."

She doesn't really seem to care how anyone else feels about this. Yet, she is upset with me for going to Texas for Christmas for two weeks to see my son's family and my other daughter. She said that I ruined her baby's first Christmas. Who's right here? I'm sick of fighting about this. She's 22 and knows everything. That's so great. Here's the thing. She's 22 and she knows everything. So, if there's somebody... I'll even stay away from fault language here, but...

You're the one that they made their decision. I mean, not to be rude, but you don't get a vote. They don't really care what you have to say. They didn't call and ask and say, is this okay? They just did what they're going to do. And so what you've chosen since Thanksgiving is just to wake up and be angry and miserable every day. They made a choice. They made a call. They're going to live with those consequences. Does it stink that, that the parents aren't going to get, is this her sister? Is that who that is? Or is it her daughter?

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Your daughter made a selfish call is what it is. Right. And 22 year olds in college didn't plan well for finals. Ta-da. That's not a big shocker. Right. That just is. And so would it have been awesome? Yep. I get a hint of, she doesn't like this whole thing. She doesn't like that. Oh, my 22 year old daughter just dropped out of college. I have this baby. Like

There seems to be a lot more layers here. And so what mom wants is, oh, she had a baby with fiance. She dropped out of college. She's doing these things that I don't like. That's not the way I would have drawn it up. But you're going to do these things. And 22-year-old's like, no, I'm not going to do those either. So it sounds like a mother losing control of all of it. And so what I would say is let go.

22 years old. What you don't want to do is cash in and this 22-year-old daughter of yours doesn't want you as a grandparent. I don't want to lose that, right? So I can be disappointed and then I'm going to go on about my day. I don't know. What do you think?

I agree. I think that the 22-year-old is selfish. The 22-year-olds. But they're 22. And again, you have no control over that decision. You can be disappointed about it. And I understand her disappointment because she wants her parents to meet the grandbaby. Of course she does. I totally understand that. Going to war with a 22-year-old first-time mom who just dropped out of college? It's ridiculous. Yeah, you're not going to win. You're going to lose that every time. And...

But also, you know, with the 22-year-old being mad now because you went to see them over Christmas, tough crap. She didn't get a vote either. She's 22. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not going to let you. No. Sorry you feel that way. Yeah, exactly. Move along. And this is one of those, like, I'll implore all parents and adult kids. If somebody texts you something big like that, call them. Pick up the phone and call.

pick up the phone and call. If there's a text message, you're like, man, that sounds hard. Pick up the phone and call. It's astonishing to me over my holiday break, the conversations I had when first with several people that were like, oh, we got the text and we understood everything.

Like, what? What did you understand? Why didn't you call me? Like, well, you know, no, no, no. What did you, you know what I mean? Like, just make that extra phone call. My God. Right. If something comes across weird, especially with your kids, especially with adult relationships, man, be adults. Right. And yes, 22 year olds are going to be 22. I'm personally not going to cash in that relationship over time over. You ruined my baby's first Christmas. I didn't. I'm going to move on with my life. I don't know.

Ben, did you ruin somebody's first Christmas this year? I don't think so. I mean, actually, the opposite, because my one-year-old nephew gave us all stomach flu. Oh. So he wrecked my Christmas. Let's put him on blast. Nobody listens to the show anyway. What's his name? Where does he live? I'm just kidding. Don't say that. All right. Thank you guys so much for checking us out, and we will see you soon right here on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Love you guys. Stay in school. Learn your drugs. Bye.