Chapter 1: How should I handle a friend who slept with my wife?
is it worth trying to preserve my friendship with the man who slept with my wife god no no like and i asked this with like all due respect what's the matter with you so i mean this this is someone that i've known since high school yeah but they slept with your wife
What is going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Taking your calls. What's going on in your life? Your marriages, your mental and emotional health, your kids, your schools, your workplace, whatever you got going on. I'd love to pull up a seat and have a conversation. If you want to be on the show, go to John Deloney, D-E-L-O-N-Y. JohnDeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K.
And we get thousands and thousands of emails and calls from all over and would love to pick yours and have you on the show. JohnDeloney.com slash ask. Let's go to Huntsville, Alabama and talk to Paul. Hey, Paul, what's up, dude?
Hey, John. Just wanted to say I've become a big fan in a short while.
Chapter 2: What are the emotional implications of betrayal in friendships?
My sister loves this show and a life event recently. She recommended I listen to you.
Well, dude, I'm glad that you're here, brother. And you're just down the road here, so come down and visit. Or I'll be in Huntsville, Alabama doing a comedy show here in March, and we can meet up.
Oh, nice. Awesome. So what's up, brother? So my question is, Is it worth trying to preserve my friendship with the man who slept with my wife? God, no!
No! And I ask this with all due respect. What's the matter with you? I'm just kidding.
Chapter 3: How can I cope with feelings of shame and self-worth?
Tell me what you're thinking through, man.
So, I mean, this is someone that I've known since high school.
Yeah, but they slept with your wife.
Yeah, you're right.
So I interrupted you. Keep going. No, you're good. It's just she initiated. Yeah, but he slept with your wife. Yeah. And I know I keep interrupting you and I'm doing that strategically, but I'm struggling with what is hard about this to metabolize. Other than if your wife did this and your best friend did this.
It can feel terrifying to look around on the island that is your life and realize you've got nobody.
Yeah, that's where I feel like I'm at.
Don't, listen, don't sacrifice.
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Chapter 4: What should I consider before marrying someone with different beliefs?
And again, I want to hear your story, but listen, don't sacrifice your integrity and your character for grief. Okay? Yeah. Because you're going to end up squashing. A strong, worthy, lovable guy for the sake of momentary loneliness and pain. Yeah. All right. Tell me your story, brother.
December 23rd, got home early from work. I was on night shift at the time. And his car was in my driveway, and I walked in my house, walked in my bedroom, and they were in the bedroom. I didn't catch them in the act, but when they're both in their underwear, you kind of just assume what's been going on. My wife is not wanting to patch things up.
We're in the middle of the divorce paperwork is filed. We're in the middle of the 30-day wait period.
Chapter 5: How do I navigate cultural differences in relationships?
And through this person, my wife has not shown nearly as much remorse as he has. And through him, I know probably roughly 20 people. And it's difficult because excising him from my life is going to obviously put a little bit of a blockade in my relationship with other people as well.
So, yeah, but let me, let me make this, I, I feel like my job when I first started this podcast was to like pull apart the etymology of ADHD and how it works. Right. Right. And I feel like over and, you know, like here's the difference between compulsive behaviors and obsessive thoughts. Like I thought that that was what my job was.
I feel like now this show has morphed in a way, or my role in the world has morphed in a way, and it might not be this way forever, which is to really sit with somebody as reality is becoming clearer and clearer. And so I don't want to kick you while you're down, but now that you're here and we're sitting at the same table, I want to clear the whole picture for you, okay?
And it's one I think that you see coming or that you experience, but man, all of our instincts, mine too, is that I want it to not be as bad as it is. So here's the place where you find yourself. Your wife has abandoned you and left you. And I'll even go one step further.
Chapter 6: What strategies can help build lasting habits without shame?
She embarrassed you in your own home, in your own bed, with your community that probably you brought her into, right? Yep. Your best friend humiliated you. He revealed himself as somebody you didn't know him to be, which is both disgusting and heartbreaking, but it leaves all of us asking the question. It leaves you asking the question, how did I miss that? That's not the guy I thought he was.
And I trusted him with everything, right?
It's bad because I had a conversation with him roughly a year ago. He and his girlfriend had been together for five years. And the conversation was, hey, man, you need to take a crap or get off the toilet. Either you can leave this girl and be done with her and let her move on, or you can marry her and do the right thing. And his response was, I'm not invested in this relationship.
I don't want to be alone anymore. But I also don't want to miss out if something better comes along. And I told him, I was like, look, man, you're just going to get in this relate.
Chapter 7: How can I support children in blended families through difficult questions?
You're going to either try to jump out of this relationship way too quick or you're going to end up cheating. And they ended up breaking up about six months ago. So he followed my advice. But I mean, there was a pit in my stomach after that conversation for the longest time.
I should have, when I was talking with a therapist, she said, you need to, when people show you who they are, you need to listen. There you go.
And now here's the next layer. If you are a part of a friend community of a gang, and you mentioned 20 people, it's got 20 people in it. And after a guy in that gang goes over to a fellow gang member's house, sleeps with his wife in his bed, and that friend community chooses him over you, you have to experience that for what that is.
Another layer of grief, which is who is the character of these people? Yeah.
I've got some friends who are very much sticking by me through this, and I've got some others who have not even been able to go to dinner with.
How old are you? 27.
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Chapter 8: What steps can I take to create a positive environment at home?
Okay, 27. Sometimes people are... I think all of us, like our bodies fight for homeostasis, which is a nerdy way of saying our body fights for the things that it knows, the way things have been. That's why you'll lose 30 pounds and you'll gain 35 pounds back, right? Like your body, even if they'll kill you, it wants what it knows.
which is why changing childhood patterns in adulthood, changing relationships and attachments is so hard because our body, it just goes down the path that it already knows, right? And so I'll even give your friends some grace. I would clown them if they were having a conversation with me, but like what they want is things to be the way they were.
And if somebody does something stupid, somebody does something caustic, somebody blows up the whole thing, I get the impulse to let's just get it back to the way it was. There's 20 of us. We're all a gang, and we all just do stuff together. And you saying, no, I'm not going to be around them. It can be easy to point at you and say, hey, actually, you're the problem, right? Right.
So how old are you right now? 27. Okay. Yeah, you just told me that. All of this is happening in an ecosystem where between 25 and 35, your friends who have been your friends through high school, through college, they turn into adults, and it just changes.
Friend groups winnow down to where maybe you had a group of 8 or 9 or 10 guys that you hung out with in college, and now you're 25, you're 35, you're 45, and that number's 1 or 2. And it just stinks, man. It just is. It's not a bad thing. It just is. People go in different directions, right? Right. And so all that is happening at the same time.
But to answer your original question, I'll echo what your therapist said. When somebody reveals themselves, I don't know how you could ever trust somebody with Job advice with child raising advice and in your future dating advice with money advice.
I don't know if you could sit and share a drink or yourself with anybody if they were the kind of person who would sleep with your wife in your bed while you were out working, earning money for your home. Yeah. Right. Right. And so the step for me seems not in that direction, but in I've got to be really heartbroken and sad. And I've got to feel the weight of I missed it with my wife.
I missed it with my best friend. What does that say about me and my radar system for trustworthy people? Right.
Yeah, I just always I've been in high school. I was in multiple relationships where someone ended up cheating on me. And so I just assumed some of the feelings and red flags I felt popping up in my heart and my mind were just anxiety. And I just dismissed them.
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