Chapter 1: What challenges does a woman face after marrying the same man three times?
Have you ever heard me talk about the Twin Towers falling down? No. When it comes to marriage?
Okay, so... What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee, talking to real people going through real life challenges. Thank you for joining us. There's a billion podcasts out there, and I'm glad that you are sitting with us.
Pull up a seat, grab some drinks and some nachos, and we're going to figure out what's the next right move. All right, let's go to Dallas, Texas and talk to Stephanie. What's up, Stephanie?
Hi.
How's it going?
It's okay.
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Chapter 2: How can couples rebuild their marriage after infidelity?
It's going.
That means not good at all. What's up? What's up?
So my question is a little bit of a, I guess, 22 years in the making, but I'll give you a little bit of backstory. So my husband and I, we've been together since high school, almost 22 years now. We separated a few times and we've even divorced each other twice. So we've technically been married to each other three times.
Over 22 years?
Yes.
Wow.
Okay. Over the course of the years, we've faced a lot of struggles, including me having miscarriages, him being unfaithful multiple times, emotional abuse. We've had medical traumas with our children, one of them being care flighted multiple times and being placed on life support at one point. Shortly after that,
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Chapter 3: What strategies can help in overcoming resentment in a relationship?
He was unfaithful again. My husband is a three-time war veteran who also struggles with PTSD. In 2022, he attempted suicide, and he was hospitalized for about three months trying to deal with that. But it seems like over the course of the 22 years, it's just been one thing after the other. We now have five kids. Our oldest is almost 20, and our youngest is six months old.
She was a complete surprise. Ayo.
Good gosh. That's what you needed on top of all this was a six month old.
Yeah, exactly. Wow. But instead of feeling like joy, I feel that sometimes my husband blames me for having another baby, which is also painful. Yeah. I love him very much and we've worked really hard to make our marriage better.
Chapter 4: How does a father cope with his daughter leaving for college?
We've done a lot of things to pour into our marriage. And I've forgiven him many times, but deep down, I still have so much pain and hurt and anger. I carry a lot of resentment towards him, I guess. So my question is, can I ever truly forgive him for being unfaithful, you know, despite past hurts and like work past all that resentment?
Have you ever heard me talk about the Twin Towers falling down?
No.
When it comes to marriage. Okay. So it's an analogy that I just love and actually use it everywhere. The first time I heard it was from the great Esther Perel, the marriage therapist out of New York. But she said, when somebody cheats in a relationship, and I've actually, I think it's much bigger than that.
When you have a kid for the first time, when you get a new job or you move or you lose a job, whatever. She described the changes in a marriage like the Twin Towers when they fell. when they were knocked down by terrorists and they fell, you couldn't sweep up all that steel and glass and wood and rebuild those towers using the old materials. You had two choices.
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Chapter 5: What advice is given for dealing with feelings of inadequacy?
You could walk away and let nature take it back over. In the next 100, 200 years, it would, right? Or you can get in some professionals, you can excavate the whole thing and y'all can rebuild a new marriage. And it sounds like using that analogy over the last 22 years, you guys have had one thing after another, after another, after another. Yes.
And you've tried to rebuild your marriage a number of times, which is right and good. I've got 20 different marriages. I've been married 23 years. I've got 20 new marriages, right? For various reasons. But y'all have tried to rebuild it on top of the existing rubble.
And so when you say you're really working on your marriage and y'all are working together, what you haven't ever done is excavate the whole thing and start from bedrock, from dirt. And until you do that, until you can honestly have a marriage where you can put your hurts on the table and say the things out loud, because you still can't do that.
No.
And he's not well.
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Chapter 6: How can one manage feelings of insecurity in friendships and work?
Yeah, definitely not.
And I'm not blaming him. He's just not. It's okay. I love him to death, man. And he's been through hell and back, but he's not well in a place where you could say, hey, this is how I feel. This is what's happened. This is reality for me right now to where he could go. I hear that and hold it, right? He can't do that. And you can't do that. And so any work y'all do on your marriage,
is like trying to build a new building on top of a collapsed infrastructure.
Yes.
Okay.
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Chapter 7: What steps can be taken to improve self-confidence?
And so the path forward for you, yes, you could actually dig through and work on resentment, on coming together, on building a new thing. But he would have to be committed to getting well and whole. And you would have to be committed, and both of y'all have to be committed to excavating this whole thing out and creating a marriage where we can say the things that are true.
And right now, y'all don't have that. No. You both play defense in your house, right?
Yes.
You protect him from things that are going on inside your chest. He tries to protect you from the things going on inside his heart and his head. And so he's got coping strategies, you've got coping strategies, and those strategies pull you both further and further apart.
Yeah, they do.
Instead of we are having challenges and these things bring us closer together. Fighting conflict should be a point of connection for couples. And for you guys, because y'all haven't excavated the whole thing, conflict is a point of separation for y'all.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
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Chapter 8: How does personal growth influence relationships with family?
And so the question I have for you is what would it look like if you were to come home and say, hey, we have 500 kids. I've got childcare for them. I want us to go out for half a day and clear the whole calendar. And let's pretend we're building a new marriage from scratch, from zero. How do we want this house to feel every morning when you wake up, when I get home, when you get home?
How am I able to say, I don't want to be intimate tonight. My head's full of all kinds of old junk. I'm not okay. How is he able to come home and say, I had a really dark day. It was tough for me to get out of bed. And here's what I would love from you today. What would his response be to that?
I think... Now more than ever, he's more open to things like that. Okay. I feel like his heart has kind of softened. As our older kids are getting older, you know, we feel that we've done all of this stuff and it's kind of messed them up. And I think that we feel the tug more than anything to make things right.
Okay.
Um, but I don't, I guess I don't even know how that would feel because I don't think that we've ever had that.
Yeah.
Yeah. Do you think he would be, would entertain it?
Yeah, I think, I think that he would. Um, lately he's been more willing than I have. I've just kind of been very closed off. And so lately he has been, you know, hey, what do you want to do tonight? Let's spend time together. And I'm just like, go away.
Well, and think about those kind of questions. Those are, the Gottmans call them bids. That's his bid for connection with you. And for you, that's like slow dancing on top of a collapsed building.
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