Dr. John Delony

But, or I'll stay gone for three months total.

If I see this thing, if we're both putting in the work.

Right.

But right now, it sounds like she's telling you, or not sounds like she is, she's telling you, I need a timeout.

And I want you to look back at the work you've done

not to get in her good graces so you can just keep plugging along your life, but I want you to look at the work you've done that prepares you for this moment to now enter into her electricity, into her shutdown, into her withdrawal, into her panic, into her anxiety and say, I see you and my chief priority right now is helping you feel safe.

So I will honor your wishes and I'll step out.

And here's the bounds of me stepping out.

want us to text at least every day or if you're not comfortable with that great we'll text every other day i want to facetime the kids at night they won't know that i'm not at work or whatever they don't need to know i don't want the kids to know that we're separating

You fill in the blank with the communication stuff, but let's set the rules up for this thing.

You might want to even write it down and hand it to her and you keep a piece of it and you can hand a third one to the therapist.

Everybody's got the same, everyone's on the same page.

But most importantly, we're going to have a date and a time and a location of where we're going to meet next so that we can follow up on the work we each have done, how we're both feeling, and then go from there.

Or you can just say, no, I'm not leaving.

And my guess here in this situation is it will confirm what she has thought all along, which is even his health, even him getting well, even him going to counseling is yet another manipulation tactic.

And so asking, I've done this work so I can love you super well.

Right now, loving her super well is, all right, I'll back out, but I'm not giving up on you.

And I need you to be honest with me.

If you're ever going to call the marriage, if you're ever going to file for divorce, I'm going to ask you don't drag this out for six months or a year or whatever, that you have the courage to put your next step on the table so that you have a way to respond with integrity.

Sorry, you're going through this brother.