Chapter 1: What challenges does the caller face after his wife left him?
All right, let's talk about your marriage. Right now, we have February and October weekends on sale for the Money in Marriage Getaway. It's the best marriage retreat on the planet. Tickets start at $749 a couple. Get yours at ramsaysolutions.com slash getaway.
I had been trying to take some steps to, you know, use nicer words, whatever. My exact thoughts were, I'm killing myself mentally and physically to put food on this table. And my kids took it as, I'm killing myself. And they went to their mom about it and said, hey, dad said he's going to kill himself. And she said, well, we're out. All right, but that means that happened in a context.
What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee. I'm a real person. I'm a real boy talking with real people. So if you're already caught up in the madness that is AI influencers, come pull up a real seat. And I guess you can have some AI nachos with us.
And we're going to figure out real challenges because no matter how much you get on the rabbit holes on the internets, our real lives keep happening. And we need help and support with our mental and emotional health, our marriages, our relationships, our kids, everything. If you want to be on the show, I'd love to have you go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K.
And for the jillions of you who reach out on social media, no, I don't take marriage and mental health questions on Instagram or Facebook, but I will take your calls live. I like to talk to real people. All right, let's go out to Asheville, North Carolina and talk to AJ. What's up, brother? How we doing? Good, Dr. John.
So glad to talk to you guys today. Thank you for taking my call. You bet, man. What's up? So my question is, um, my wife and I recently separated. She took the kids and I'm just wondering how I can kind of rebuild that relationship. Um, after I have, um, emotionally hurt them. Tell me about it, man. All right.
So, um, They left about a month ago. Real quick, real quick. Before you tell me a story. Okay. I want to, I want to, I want to, I need to frame this for myself. Okay. When you say after I emotionally hurt them, I caught just a hint of, you don't think you did that, but she took the kids and left because she thinks you did. Wow. Or are you owning? No, no, no. I've hurt my family.
Well, you're good. So I guess it's a little bit of both. Um, I've, so I don't know where to start. So, um, It's a little bit of both. So I don't know where to start with that. So long story, I had seen the writing on the wall for about six months and I had been trying to take some steps to change some things, you know, use nicer words, whatever. And it just it came to head one day.
I made a kind of a crash comments around the kids about how hard I'm working. My exact thoughts were I'm killing myself mentally and physically to put food on this table. And my kids took it as I'm killing myself. And they went to their mom about it and said, hey, dad said he's going to kill himself, which is not what I said. And she said, well, we're out.
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Chapter 2: How can a parent rebuild their relationship with children after separation?
So either she has put herself in a binary category. Either she is a hero who rescued her children from a monster or not. And the path for you, brother, is 100%. You can't escape this. It will track you down. 100% ownership of reality. Either your wife is not a good person and you're going to have to go to war for your kids or you have some reckoning with honesty.
Well, I would say I have some reckoning with honesty. Okay, what are some things you have said that she has stood there with her mouth wide open saying, I can't believe you just said that to our kids?
Well, that's the thing. There's not really. I mean, I've called my kids retarded sometimes. And yeah, that's harsh. And, you know, sometimes I try to make them. Okay, stop, stop, stop.
You have a list of things. You do have a list of things. You don't ever call your kids that. But you're not even letting yourself feel the fact that that's what you called your kids on multiple occasions. Okay? I want you to be honest with me, dude. Give me some of the things that you've said that in a better light you would not have said in front of your kids or even worse at your kids.
Well, I wouldn't have made that one statement about, you know, killing myself mentally, physically to put food on the table. I wouldn't have made that statement. I wouldn't have called him retarded on that occasion or two. But honestly, that's it. Like, sometimes I do feel like I've either mastered the art of self-deception or maybe I'm being gaslit. I'm not sure which one it is.
It's hard for me to wrap my head around, dude.
Well, that's why I called you. It's hard for me to wrap my head around. I have had a ton of time. I've had a month now to self-reflect. And, you know, there's been a roller coaster of emotions with that. And, you know, I realized that I'm basically a spineless, domesticated man child. And in my wife's defense, she's raised four kids last 15 years and not just three.
And so six months ago, or six weeks ago, you said you saw the writing on the wall. What does that mean?
I realized that our marriage is not okay. We weren't communicating things. We're just not good communicators. And instead of dealing with the conflict, I would just, like I said, when I know I can't control this world, I'll pick up a controller and control that one. That's my therapy. That's how I cope. And I guess she had enough of being alone in a marriage, and she took the kids and left.
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Chapter 3: What emotional impact does a traumatic birth experience have on new parents?
And if you find yourself unable to say that because it's factually incorrect, then you have to turn and face your wife and take that on. Because if that's the case, you have a woman who's trying to steal your three kids. I don't think that's the case, though. I don't either. I'm just telling you right now, brother, you are worth more than the life you're spending on 55 different plates.
You have to be exhausted, huh? I mean, yeah, emotionally. Not physically exhausted? You don't do anything at home.
No, I don't. I mean, yeah. I mean, I do what I can. I work a lot. I do. I have a full-time job. Probably work 60 hours a week. You know, whatever.
We all do, man. Yeah. We all do. And that doesn't give us a pass to come home and not participate in this amazing life we have. Because here's the question. What's all the work for?
To provide for my family and live life. Live a good life. Okay.
If living a good life is coming home while a tornado of activity happens around you, and you're living with a partner that you've been with for a decade and a half who you know is more tense when you're at home, and your idea of a good life is pulling out a video game controller, I'm going to challenge you on your definition of a good life.
A good life starts with somebody who is rooted and connected and people's shoulders drop when they walk into a room, not tens up. And for you, brother, I want home to be a place you can't wait to get home to. Instead of it becoming a failure factory.
If I'm you and y'all go into marriage therapy and you really think, if you believe what you're telling me, that my wife's been raising a fourth kid for 15 years and yada, yada, yada. Today, walk in to marriage counseling and drop your shoulders and hold your wife's hands and say, hold on therapist, before anybody says anything, I got something I got to say.
Today's day one when I start taking full responsibility for my actions. And today is day one. I stop blaming. I stop spinning. I stop whining about how hard I'm working. Everybody's working hard. Everybody's worried about finances. Everybody. But I have three kids and I've got a wife who you say is amazing.
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Chapter 4: How can parents cope with anxiety about returning to church after violence?
And you're not crazy.
Thanks.
I had a very similar, a different but similar when I dropped my daughter off at her small little Christian school here in town the day that that happened. killer went and shot up the window while the kids were in mass during their school.
Yeah.
I sent my son to a Catholic school here in town. Like I had that same, I had that very same like, oh gosh, like that's off limits, right? That's the feeling I had. Like that all those violence can be somewhere else out there, but not a little kid's school. Nobody can drive into a church, right?
Right, yeah. And I feel like it's hard too, because in my ward, in my congregation, we have just a lot of little kids that we've all kind of moved in recently. And there are still a lot of kids who go to school and they get training there. They have to have these drills about an active shooter, but I just have these little babies. I have just a three-year-old and a six-month-old and
And, you know, they don't, you know, the day we found out and everything happened, my, you know, I'm over here having a panic attack and my three-year-old's like, can I have a fruit snack? You know, like he has no idea what's going on. And I want to protect him from that. And I just don't know how.
Three-year-olds you should protect because they won't understand.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What strategies can help manage fear and anxiety in public spaces?
You know, we'll have it on Zoom. Like, there's no pressure. Everyone is welcome. But if you stay home, they're so compassionate and so understanding. Sure. So, but I, if I can, I want to go.
For me personally, it's been very important that I get up and leave my house.
Yeah.
Because that's how my body is going to be reminded that that's not the way of the world. I mean, violence is a way of the world, let me say it like that, but that every church, that's not happening to.
Right.
Statistically speaking, that's not going to happen to you.
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
And so that leads me to the next thing. Rumination feels like productive thinking. Going over and over, what would you do if that happened and I would do this and then that would happen? It feels like you're almost pre-planning and you're not. What you're doing is you're setting your body on fire from the inside out. It doesn't know the difference between
between a real event and a mother imagining grabbing her three kids and not being able to find the youngest one. Yeah. So it just dumps the same response chemicals into your bloodstream and says it's time to go. And so it's you, when that thought pops in your head, it's you literally catching it and saying out loud or yelling if you're by yourself, no.
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Chapter 6: How does the conversation about having another child unfold?
It feels like helpful thinking. It's not. It's protective thinking. Thank you so much for the call. We come back. A woman asks, is it worth it to have a second child just for my daughter? I want to invite you to something really cool that's happening this month.
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All right, let's go out to Philadelphia where she was born and raised and talk to Jessica. What's up, Jessica?
Hello. You will tell by my accent that I was not born and raised in Philadelphia.
I know, I was just playing. That's the old Fresh Prince of Bel-Air song. So yeah, good to talk to you. What's up?
Good talking to you too. Yeah, so I'm going to read my question and then we can go from there. So my question is, is it a good idea to have a second baby just to give my daughter a sibling, even though I really don't want to?
How old is your daughter?
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Chapter 7: What are the emotional considerations when deciding on a second child?
One person's ready to move on. One person wants to sit in it. One person, it didn't have the same effect as it did on the other person in terms of weight or whatever. And people fly past each other.
Yeah.
Okay. And it's okay to tell Gabriel that you were so happy that you got to be his mom for the period of time you did, that you're really sad that you never got to meet him, all those things, whatever, whatever happened, but it's you processing this and then you got to share it with somebody. If y'all didn't do a small service, I want you to do that. It's not too late.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, we were really wrapped up in the medical stuff.
I know. I know it's chaotic and it goes so fast and all of a sudden it happens and then you're on your way home and you don't realize what just happened, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And then he's got to get up and go to work, maybe you do too, and all of a sudden it feels like the world is spinning right past you and it's just everybody's blowing and going and then you start to feel crazy.
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Chapter 8: How can couples support each other through grief and loss?
It always brings up the best conversations and has really helped us grow in our communication skills with one another. Really encouraged us to talk to our oldest son, who is not biologically mine. My husband had him with his high school girlfriend at 19. We have full custody, but he still goes on visits with his bio mom twice a month.
I've always wanted to talk with him openly about how his life started, but we never knew how to approach it. We sat down with him first to explain sex and openly talked with him about that. He's 11, by the way. We talked about the science behind conception. He was very thankful that we explained it to him, and now we have open conversations about it often.
He knows he can ask us a question about it. It's not awkward. It's been a huge blessing. After we laid that foundation, we explained to him the start of his life. We could not emphasize enough how loved he is and how he was chosen. I explained to him that he will always be my first.
When we had our daughter, which was technically my husband and I's first, when the doctor handed her to me, I thought, I hope I can love her as much as I love him. His response was everything to us. It has blown us away. He got very emotional and started crying. He explained that he was so overwhelmed with how much we love him.
He expressed how thankful he was that we kept him safe and gave him such a good, loving, caring home and foundation. Thank you so much for joining us. I just wanted to express our gratitude. You do make a difference in people's lives. Your job is not easy, even though you carry it well. I know it can be very heavy. Thank you to Dr. John and team. We are thankful.
I'm not even going to say anything after that. I'm just going to accept that and be really grateful. That's awesome. That's one of those ones that gives me light at the end of the tunnel when things are smoky and dark outside. Awesome. What was her name? Autumn. Autumn. Thank you for writing in, Autumn. You just made my whole week. Blessings to you. See you guys.
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