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Chapter 1: What are the signs of financial abuse in a relationship?
What I'm working with is we, I've been in a relationship for 13 years and I'm un, I'm unmarried. Okay. We have three children together.
Oh boy. Okay.
And In the beginning of our relationship, I did not have a bank account. I had a job, but I did not have a bank account. And then when I became pregnant with our first child, I stopped working. And he, without me prompting, surprised me as a gesture, added me to his bank account for our upcoming child. And then... That's when our finances were commingled.
That's like the great Beyonce song. If you like her, then you should have put her on your bank account. Gosh, what a gesture. What a gesture.
It was a huge gesture. And we never sat down and talked about the nuances because at this time, neither one of us had money. a penny to our name. We didn't have two nickels to rub together, but we had this child coming up and it meant a lot. Okay. And through shortly after I had the birth of our first child, I got a great paying job and with great benefits about two months after the birth.
And he wasn't able to continue working, uh, his part-time job any longer, so we decided he would quit, stay at home with the child, and I would continue working to bring home the bacon. Throughout the years, as the child got older and as time went on, we were in a situation where he was able to start working again and we were able to utilize daycare, and I was continuing my job.
But then there became a pattern of going from job to job where he would get a job and shortly quick because he didn't like it or he didn't like management or he would just continuously call out. And this continued on for a few years. And I just thought, you know, he'll be figuring out what he wants to do. He'll find his niche eventually.
It became really hard to not rely on what he says he was going to do. I stopped trusting his word.
That's because he never kept his word.
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Chapter 2: How can I protect my finances from my partner?
So Anna, you're at a precarious position right now. And you're probably not sleeping and you're probably spinning out a lot. And here's why. Your body knows that you are on a razor's edge and they're going to take your house from you because you put your house on the block. You're dangerously scared because you know that your credit is going to be like his.
And even if they take your home from you because you default on an equity line of credit that you can no longer afford, your kids aren't going to be able to have an apartment because your credit's so bad. You know these things in your nervous system. The real question is, are you going to act on them? What are you going to do next? And I get the grief and I get this fear and I get the terror.
I get all of it. And even if you don't think you're worth it, your kids are. I'm just sick to my stomach that this is the way this man has chosen to treat his wife and his children. It's disgusting. It's just gross, man. But neither you nor I can do anything about how he chooses to wake up and piss away his life. What we can do is choose the next right thing.
I want you to think about your four walls. Is my home secure? Do I have running water and electricity? Do I have transportation? Do I have food for me and my children? And if you don't have those things, you have to move to protect yourself financially, particularly when you are the chief breadwinner. You're the only one bringing him money. And listen, his fantasy will come crashing down.
The question you have to ask yourself is, will it come crashing down on top of you or next to you? And as for me and my kids, I would not subject them to the abrupt ending to his little fantasy run that he's had. So yes, I would move the money. This is a matter of safety. I would move my direct deposit into a new bank.
I would close the checking account, and I would tell him, I have taken the money out of the account. You've spent us into a dangerous hole. If you want to go get a job, you're welcome to have money. You will have no more resources or money. And by the way, I want you to put a freeze on your credit report so he can't take out any credit cards in your name, no loans in your name.
And I don't know how the laws in California work. Hopefully his 14 years of not being willing to marry you will backfire on him. But I don't know how that crazy state does stuff. So I don't know. And you got to ask yourself, is this a relationship you want to stay in? He's a predator. He's a child. He's not a sexual predator, but he is somebody who just does nothing. He's not a predator.
He's a parasite. That's what he is. He's a parasite. He's a parasite. I hate it for you, sister. I wish I had better news. But yes, this is not financial abuse. This is you spreading your wings and protecting your children and protecting you from somebody who does not care about anything other than himself. Thanks for the call. We'll be right back.
All right, let's go to Denver, Colorado and talk to AMY. What's up, Amy?
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Chapter 3: What should I do if my friend is in a toxic relationship?
And that's another thing. I'm a mom. I'm married.
Yeah.
She's single. She's divorced. That's right. And we're way, she, you know, I feel like she lives her life like she's in her 20s and she's almost 40.
She does.
And I'm like, I'm in a different place and you don't, she doesn't ever support me in the things that I need. Okay, but Amy, Amy, Amy. Whatever's happening there.
She never has. Ever. For 30 years, she hasn't. And I think it's not fair for you to suggest that you haven't got something out of this for 30 years. You've been the hero for 30 years. You've been the wise, steady one. You've been the safety net. And now, you need someone who's wise. It's hard having kids. It's hard being married to the same knucklehead. Like, you need somebody to be wise.
You need someone to lean on every once in a while. And you're realizing, oh, I don't have that.
That's exactly it.
So... It does no good to think about, to spend time meditating on how much you've helped over 30 years. That's a choice to be miserable in your present day. Right. The best way to spend energy is to go find people who you can lean on. Right? And that is miserable. And there's no roadmap for that. Making friends in your 30s and 40s is the absolute worst. It's the worst.
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Chapter 4: How do I end a long-term friendship without conflict?
Yeah. So I just don't know how to breathe it. You don't.
You just carry it with you. I'm sad that that had to end.
Yeah, I think I've talked about it on the show. I have one ride-or-die friend who was my longest friend. And I got a call several years ago. It was just like, hey, I'm moving on with my life and I wish you the best. And this is the last time you'll hear from me. And it was somebody that I love deeply. Been through a lot of wild adventures with.
And I don't ever talk about them because I want to honor them. But they had the courage and integrity to reach out. And then I immediately fired an email back and it bounced back to me. That was it. Ouch. Yeah. And, God, I wish them well. Hope their life is full and great and grand.
And also, I gotta have other men in my life, other women in my life that I trust, that I can lean on when things get wild. I've never raised two kids before. I need some wisdom. I've never been married to the same person for 20 years after almost blowing it up a few times. I'm over my head as all of us are trying to figure out life. And so I need people in my life. So sad. Broke my heart.
And I'm going to go do the next right thing. Right. Because, I mean, again, what else am I going to do?
There's really nothing else I can do for her. I've done everything I can do. She's drowning me.
That's right. And so you have an obligation to yourself, to your husband, to your kids, to your family, to your friends, to if somebody doesn't want to swim to shore, I'm not going to voluntarily drown with you. I will pull and fight and scratch and claw with you to get you back to shore. If that is not where you want to go, then I can't be your person.
And by the way, when you're swimming out in the ocean and you're lost and you need help getting back to shore, if they're like, yeah, I don't do that. I don't help. I got a date. Life's too short, man. Life's too short. And a 30-year friendship is not something just to throw away. And I think they're worth fighting. And I realize I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth here.
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Chapter 5: What are the challenges of balancing work and personal life?
That just becomes me making drama in my own head. It's over-inflating myself. I don't need any over-inflation. You get what I'm saying? Oh, yeah, yeah. So you're not going to be like, do you know what my signature is worth? Not very much if that's the way I see the world. It's going to go away. Yeah, yeah.
But if you try to add the additional, like, I got to be perfect at this thing, man, that's what's going to bury you.
I think that's definitely where I'm struggling right now. I haven't even thought of it that way, but up until this point in my career, I haven't had one of those detrimental things happen yet. And so I'm trying to be a good steward to a company that trusts me, and I don't want to screw up. So I think that is part of what's burying me.
Would that company have hired you if they didn't think you were capable of it? No. Okay. So in the moments that you doubt yourself, at least trust them that they would not have put somebody in charge of all of this money and resource and time if they didn't believe in that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All of us have seasons of doubt. I have them all the time too.
But I want you to really focus on who you are outside of this job. And I tell people all the time, like my personal friends, they know this, this job would have buried me had I got it when I was 30. Because I would have got so caught up in it. And I got to a point where I was actively working every day of my life to not be a part of this thing. And only then did it happen.
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Chapter 6: How can I manage my energy in a demanding job?
Which allowed me to hold it really, really loosely, which allowed me to say that extra thing and be fully myself. And that allowed me to actually help people. And so what your company hired is you. And if you can show up and tell the truth at work, I don't think this is a good deal, guys. Yeah.
Or I'll go along with it and I'll sign away this thing, but I think the winds of construction slowdown is coming or whatever things you wrestle with. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I'll sign it. But I'm relying on you four guys because that's you just being honest and you being you. You being authentic. And I know that word gets beat up all the time, but I'm just going to tell the truth. Yeah.
And it relieves that pressure. And on the backside, do you and your wife owe anybody anything? Outside of the home and cars now. Okay. Number one, don't be an idiot. Don't take out loans on depreciating assets. You're too smart for that. pay off your cars today. Can you do afford to do that?
Um, I can't afford to do it today.
Okay. Make that number one priority. Pay off your depreciating assets. They're losing money every second they're around and you're still paying the same. Okay. That's number one. Number two, I want you and your wife to sit down and strongly consider, and this is going to go against all the bro wisdom. Okay.
All the TikTok bro wisdom and all the big truck, like, yeah, dude, it's going to go against all that. There is something deep and profound when you go to work every day and you know they cannot take my house. Yeah. And so you can invest money. You can like, dude, I'm going to put some stocks. I heard the apples. You can do all that crap. You can speculate on land. You can do all that stupid stuff.
It's fine. Yeah. If you want to be able to get under the squat rack that is senior executive leadership and hold, get under that weight of running the company, of being a senior leader, and know if something goes completely belly up, they can't take my house because it's mine. I can go get a job at the supermarket and pay the taxes on it. I'm going to be fine. Yeah, yeah.
And it gives you, like right now, your brain would be failing you if it let you sleep all night. Yeah. Cause it knows one wrong step and maybe they're going to take our house. Maybe they're getting my, I'm married now. They're going to take my wife's like, right. You see what I'm saying? Like your nervous system knows. Oh yeah.
Yeah. That's definitely, that's definitely what keeps me up.
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Chapter 7: What are healthy boundaries in friendships?
Yeah. You got your old buddies, your college buddies. They're still like, yeah, bro, dude. And you got all the news and all the bank speculators, and you got all the old dogs in the construction industry. You got everybody yapping at you. And you got your church friends, yada, yada, yada. Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to hook you up, but I want you to use it, okay? All right.
I want to hook you up with three months for free with better help. Okay. Okay? And I want you to get online and tell them the exact same thing you told me. I'm 27 years old. I've worked really hard. I'm pretty smart. And nobody outworks me. And now suddenly I found myself at the head of a pretty large construction company in Nashville, Tennessee, where there's gangbusters construction going on.
And suddenly I can't breathe. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And I want you to commit to it. And I would tell you to go get a counselor, go find somebody you can talk to. I asked Kelly to pull the data. It's about a 48 day wait period right now. All right. That'd be hard. So I'm going to hook you up and you don't have to like sneak into a counselor's office in Nashville. You can do it.
You can do it from your phone. You can do it from your laptop, wherever you happen to be. And you got hotspots. All you guys have hotspots in your trucks. You can do it from your truck. Okay.
Yeah.
Is that fair? Yep. All right, hang on the line. I'm going to hook you up with the BetterHelp guys, and I want you to actually use it, okay? And I'm here in Nashville. Come by and see me anytime, dude. I'd love to hang out with you and grab a cup of coffee here in the lobby. That'd be awesome. For everybody listening, Harvey's not crazy. In fact, he's exactly where he should be.
Here's what's happening. He thought this was going to feel different. When I get to be a leader, when I get to be making this much money, when I get to, when I get to, when I get to, and suddenly you realize this is heavy. It's hard. It's scary. Leadership is hard. They talk about it in school. It's like, become a leader. Dude, leadership's hard. A lot is expected of you. Being a boss is hard.
Having a signature that can sign for millions of dollars, it's hard. And people don't talk about that. And you're not allowed to because somehow you're supposed to be so grateful and so lucky, which you are. But man, it's hard. It's scary. And especially you can't go to like tell your buddies, I think you need to go see a counselor. I'm newlywed. I don't know how to do this.
I'm breaking away from my college friends. I'm breaking away from my friends. From my parents, I am making all these changes. Therapy is a great place to sit down and do that. And like I said, there's like over a month, month and a half wait list across the country right now. I think what, 40 or 50% of mental health professionals have some sort of wait list right now. It's tough.
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