Should We Stop Coddling Our 33-Year-Old Son?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dr. John DeLoney Show Episode: Should We Stop Coddling Our 33-Year-Old Son? Host: Ramsey Network (Dr. John DeLoney) Release Date: June 6, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The Dr. John DeLoney Show, Dr. DeLoney delves into the complex dynamics of parental support and autonomy in adulthood. The primary focus centers around whether parents should cease coddling their adult children, particularly addressing the challenges faced by parents of a 33-year-old son stuck in a cycle of dependence and poor decision-making.

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Caller Segment: Gail and Patrick from Cincinnati

Timestamp: 00:21 - 18:34

Discussion Points:

• Parental Authority vs. Adult Autonomy: Gail and Patrick express their frustration over their 33-year-old son who continues to make detrimental life choices despite their continuous support.

• Cycle of Dependence: The couple has previously bailed their son out during financial and personal crises. However, their son repeatedly fails to stabilize his life, landing them in increasing debt.

• Emotional Toll on Parents: Patrick shares the emotional heartbreak of having to deny their son support for the first time, leading to significant familial strain.

Notable Quotes:

• Gail (03:06): “He is basically living on a mattress in somebody's basement.”
• Patrick (05:43): “He makes my wife cry. He makes my husband go into withdrawal so deeply inside of himself.”

Dr. DeLoney’s Advice:

• Setting Boundaries: Emphasizes the importance of parents holding their ground despite the emotional difficulty. He references Henry Cloud's Boundaries, highlighting that allowing children to face their own problems is essential for their growth.

• Communication Strategies: Suggests that parents write and share honest letters to each other to address unspoken frustrations and collaboratively face the reality of their son's situation.

• Long-Term Solutions: Recommends offering structured support such as counseling or treatment programs without perpetually bailing him out, thereby encouraging self-sufficiency.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. John DeLoney (07:03): “The greatest gift you could give your son is some problems.”
• Dr. John DeLoney (11:50): “So when it comes to parents don't get a vote, what I mean by that is not they don't get a vote and trying to keep you alive... they just have to keep shelling out money and resources and time to your never ending series of bad decisions.”

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Caller Segment: Maya from Knoxville

Timestamp: 22:12 - 36:40

Discussion Points:

• Emotional Aftermath of Abortion: Maya shares her struggle with emotions following an abortion eight months prior, including feelings of loss and trauma.

• Relationship Strain: She discusses her difficulty in communicating with her boyfriend about the abortion, leading to resentment and uncertainty about the future of their relationship.

Notable Quotes:

• Maya (23:17): “Just kind of talking about the situation gets me kind of worked up.”
• Dr. John DeLoney (29:37): “Grief demands a witness.”

Dr. DeLoney’s Advice:

• Acknowledging Grief: Encourages Maya to fully process her feelings of loss and not to suppress them, emphasizing that grieving is essential for healing.

• Open Communication: Urges Maya to have an honest conversation with her boyfriend about her emotions, suggesting that this transparency is crucial for their relationship's survival.

• Seeking Professional Help: Recommends counseling to help Maya navigate her grief and improve communication with her partner.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. John DeLoney (30:05): “You have to properly grieve this loss for what it was.”
• Dr. John DeLoney (34:27): “Your grief is right. Your grief is good. And I'll sit here with you and honor it.”

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Discussion: Family Estrangement and Setting Boundaries

Timestamp: 22:52 - 37:57

Discussion Points:

• Prevalence of Family Estrangement: Dr. DeLoney presents data indicating that approximately 29% of Americans have experienced estrangement from an immediate family member, touching on various reasons such as lifestyle choices, value disagreements, and past abuse.

• Indicators for Cutting Ties: Outlines specific signs when it might be necessary to distance oneself from family members, including lack of respect, abusive behavior, and ongoing control over personal decisions.

• Establishing Autonomy: Provides strategies for listeners to assert their independence, such as stopping the practice of giving family members a "vote" in personal decisions and avoiding getting entangled in family conflicts.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. John DeLoney (38:00): “Boundaries are super important. And I live and die by boundaries.”
• Dr. John DeLoney (39:18): “Unity does not require uniformity. Being on the same team doesn't mean we all have to play the same position.”

Key Takeaways:

• Respect and Dignity: Emphasizes that absence of basic respect is a valid reason for setting boundaries.

• Impact on Personal Well-being: Highlights how toxic family relationships can negatively affect one's mental health and other personal relationships.

• Healthy Detachment: Encourages maintaining a respectful distance to preserve one's well-being without fostering animosity.

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Caller Segment: Kelly from Indianapolis

Timestamp: 56:51 - 62:54

Discussion Points:

• Household Chores Conflict: Kelly discusses conflicts with her partner over laundry habits, highlighting differences in organizational preferences and the resulting tension.

• Communication Breakdown: Illustrates how attempts to implement systems have failed due to differing priorities, reflecting broader issues in relationship communication.

Notable Quotes:

• Kelly (57:09): “I've tried talking to her about putting in a system. Love that.”
• Dr. John DeLoney (57:19): “Laundry is not laundry.”

Dr. DeLoney’s Advice:

• Compassionate Communication: Suggests approaching the issue from a place of vulnerability, expressing how the clutter affects her emotionally rather than imposing rigid systems.

• Compromise and Understanding: Encourages finding middle ground, such as agreeing on simple solutions like using a designated laundry basket, to accommodate both partners' needs.

• Reframing Requests: Advises shifting from demands to expressions of personal need, fostering a more collaborative and less confrontational dialogue.

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. John DeLoney (58:30): “What you really want is this system.”
• Dr. John DeLoney (62:47): “Compromise.”

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Conclusion

In Should We Stop Coddling Our 33-Year-Old Son?, Dr. John DeLoney addresses the delicate balance between parental support and fostering independence in adult children. Through real-life caller interactions, he provides actionable advice on setting boundaries, improving communication, and making difficult decisions to ensure both the well-being of the parents and the autonomy of the adult children. The episode underscores the importance of honest dialogue, professional support, and mutual respect in navigating familial relationships.

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Notable Advertisements Skipped:

• Money and Marriage Getaway: Valentine's Day weekend tickets in Nashville.
• BetterHelp: Online therapy services.
• Helix Sleep: Mattress recommendations.
• Delete Me: Digital privacy services.
• Organifi: Organic superfood blends and gummies.

Transcript

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Big news. New dates for money and marriage Getaway just dropped for Valentine's Day weekend, 2026. Get [e-mail] events to get away with your spouse in Nashville, Tennessee.

[Gail]

We have heard you tell adult children that their parents don't get a vote when they're making decisions for life choices. Yes, it is it because we're the parents, right?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yes. Okay, let's do this. I've been waiting for this one. Showdown time. Let's do it. What's up? This is John with the Dr. John DeLoney Show. So glad that you're with us. Talking about your relationships, your mental and emotional health, all of it. If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz. Reach out to John Deloney dot com. Ask a S K. Don't give me a buzz. Like Kelly likes to have buzzes when she's drinking Mad Dog. Fody. Fody in there under the desk. The purple one and the green one. Get it, Kelly, get it. All right, let's roll out to Cincinnati and talk to Gail and Patrick. What's up, Gail?

[Gail]

Hey.

[Patrick]

Hey.

[Gail]

How are you doing?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Fantastic. How we doing?

[Gail]

Oh, really good. Really good. Thank you for taking our call.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Of course.

[Gail]

Making time for us.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Thank you for calling in. Let me bring in Patrick here. What's up, homie? How are we doing, Patrick?

[Dad]

I'm doing terrific. It's a gorgeous day today. How are you?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Outstanding. Same. I'm doing great, man. All right, so what's going on? How can I help?

[Gail]

Okay, so we have heard you tell adult children that their parents don't get a vote when they're making decisions. Choices. Yes, it is. It is. Because we're the parents, right?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yes. Okay, let's do this. I've been waiting for this one. Showdown time. Let's do it.

[Gail]

Well, you know, we'll start by saying we don't disagree. Like we get it, right?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Oh, man. That's something we're gonna find. Okay.

[Gail]

Yeah, well, but. But I'm gonna ask you to put a comma at the end of the sentence and not a period.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay?

[Gail]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Excellent.

[Gail]

So the comma is your parents don't get a vote. And our question is what comes after the comma? Right? So We've got a 33 year old son who's on a dead end road and we've bailed him out, we've helped him out, we've done all the things to set him up for success, but he just keeps making really bad choices that he doesn't talk to us about because he's, you know, autonomous. He's doing his own thing. And we're just at the point of asking and really kind of, I guess clarifying, are we doing the right thing by not bailing him out, by not helping? Like, hey, he made his choices. He didn't ask our input, he or take our advice. And so are we somehow responsible for helping him clean up another mess?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Give me a scope of the messes. I have pretty firm thoughts around this, but give me the scope of the mess.

[Gail]

I mean he's, he's at this point, so he's, he's clean and sober. So let me just, you know, clear that he has a past, you know, substance abuse history. He's, he's really marginally employed at best, kind of by choice. And he might have some anxiety that has gotten in the way of him being successful and you know, holding down jobs. But he's gotten fired from two good jobs. He is like a banana peel away from slipping into being homeless. Like he is, he is that close and he's been there before and we've, you know, bailed him out. Of course, you always have a safe place to land here and blah, blah, blah. And then he just doesn't get his act together. Yeah, we've always focused on his potential. We see the good in him. We see, man, we work really hard to show him grace and love and like just all the unconditional things that we want him to experience. But it's just, it's, he's just not, you know, he's not adulting really well.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Dad, how do you feel?

[Dad]

I agree, it breaks my heart. We've had, you know, both our sons, great kids, great growing up life and I think the thing that breaks my heart is I've, I always had a safe place to land in my parents home, my grandparents were the same way and we raised our boys. You know, home is a safe place. If there's something goes down, you can always come home. Which our son has done multiple times, and that's fine. But we get him in, get him on his feet and he gets going. And this last time I said, hey, this is it, you know, we can't keep this cycle going. You're going to have to make it. And he was set up for success, but once again it failed. And I think the thing for me this time was he covered it up, he lied, he wasn't truthful. He ended up putting US $8,000 in debt because we had to bail him out on something that I never swore I would do. Is sign a loan for my kids. But we did. And he is, like Yale said, he is basically living on a mattress in somebody's basement. And he asked if he could come home, and I said no. And that hurt so bad.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Tell me about that. You hung up the phone. When you said no, what did he say to you?

[Dad]

He started to cry. And he, you know, he just didn't know. He wasn't used to saying no for us to say no, that he couldn't come home. And it took. We even had to call. You know, trusted family members were saying, hey, this is what we're about to do. This is hard. And, you know, they said, yeah, it's hard, but do you feel it's the right thing? And I just felt like, yeah, I felt this is it. You're gonna have to. If it. If everything goes from beneath you and you're out on the street, I can say to myself, we've done everything. But, man, it hurts. Yeah, that hurts.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So holding that tension is incredibly important because that's the path forward. Henry Cloud, if you haven't read the book Boundaries, it's one of the first stories in the book, but. And Henry's a great buddy of mine, but the classic line in that opening story is the greatest gift you could give your son is some problems. Because there's always been. When the bar. When the weight bar got heavy, there's always somebody that ran over there and helped lift it off your chest.

[Dad]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And I wouldn't wish. When I first got married and I acted the fool with my spending, and I was walking around the house at night when my wife was asleep, like, I didn't know how we were going to pay bills. Right. I had a medical emergency. I had to call a buddy and say, hey, if I have to go to the ER tonight, can I borrow your credit card? I had no. I had nothing.

[Dad]

Right?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And I wouldn't wish those nights on anybody. I wouldn't wish that stress on a young marriage for anybody. But even if my parents had wanted to, we didn't. They didn't have it. Right. Like, didn't have anything. And so I'm now 20 years removed from that. And I tell you what, I've got layer upon layer upon layer of protection against ever going back to that thing. Right? And so the greatest gift I have now in my late 40s, is that I experience the actual. There is no. No one's coming to get you on this one, dude.

[Dad]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Right. And I'm glad I learned that at 25 and not at 35. Because I think the consequences would have been much greater, would have been difficult.

[Dad]

Absolutely.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So take me back to when you hooked him up, you got him set up with a really great job, and he gets fired. What's the very next thing that happened?

[Dad]

So he. We set up for. It was around Christmas time, and he had been at the job six months plus and everything going fine. And he had his own. His own condo, his own transportation. And I said, hey, come over for Christmas, because it was Christmas time. We'll do our Christmas dinner. We'll set up. See if you can get off. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, I can get off. He goes, but my. My vehicle's not working. Can you give me a ride? It's like, absolutely. Because he had trouble with the vehicle back and forth. And so I go to pick him up, and there's no answer. His vehicle's not there. I'm thinking, did he go somewhere? So I text him. He's like, oh, oh, I've got to tell you, I moved out. I'm at a buddy's house. So I'm like, okay. So I go get him from his buddy's house. And I said, what's going on? He goes, oh, I had to move out because the dog was barking too much. And they called the condo association. Well, long story short, ended up he had lost his job weeks before. He couldn't pay his rent. He was getting kicked out of his condo. Well, then he owed money, and the truck wasn't working, so he sold the truck. Even though he didn't have the title. He didn't tell us about it. He didn't come to us and ask us for help or assistance. And then he's living in somebody's house, and there's no explanation. There's no thank you, there's no nothing. And next thing we know, we got creditors because he hadn't been paying the loan, coming after us. And we got. We were getting sued, so we had to pay off the loan and no, thank you. No.

[Gail]

Yeah. Well, I think in all of that, part of the frustration was, yeah, he wasn't honest with us, but it's not like he got fired and then started searching for another job. It's not like he was, like, busting his butt, hey, I'll shovel driveways through the wintertime to make 20 bucks to try and cover whatever. He just. He just stuck his head in the sand and disappeared until the truth came out. So he doesn't. I don't feel like he takes ownership and responsibility of himself, but he never.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Has had to, has he?

[Dad]

No.

[Gail]

No. Even when he's not lived with us, he's had other people that have helped.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But just. Just sit in that for a second. Just sitting there for a second. This isn't about judgment or blame. This is just an is.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's easy to look back and go, oh, my gosh. In college we stepped in and. And then the first job. Afterwards, we stepped in and. And then this one thing, and then this one thing and this one thing. And now he's 33 years old.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And so I think there's a tension here. And the tension is if I think my kid. I don't care how old they are, if I think my kid is about to cross a line where they're not going to be alive anymore, I'm gonna step in. And it might be institutionalization, it might be me fighting to take their civil rights away so they have to go do an inpatient treatment program or something. But I'll step in when I can. But until then, the greatest gift I can give my kid is they've got to understand how the world works.

[Patrick]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And by the way, can I just say this? That doesn't mean that your kids never welcome back at home. It might be that y' all sit down and come up with a roadmap. You will have a job. You'll have three jobs, you'll pay rent, you'll have to be home by midnight, you'll have to have drug tests. I mean, y' all get to pick the rules at your house.

[Dad]

Right.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So when it comes to parents don't get a vote, what I mean by that is not they don't get a vote and trying to keep you alive. Not that they don't get a vote. And they just have to keep shelling out money and resources and time to your never ending series of bad decisions.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

What I mean they don't get a vote is when you're married, they don't. They don't get to force you to come to Christmas to a Christmas that you can't afford to travel or can't get off of work.

[Gail]

Right, Right, right.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And that's not y' all at all. So y' all very much get a vote in. Or. You know what? I've never done this before, but let me flip it. He doesn't get a vote in what y' all do. And actually, I've been hearing this call more and more on the other. On the Ramsey show, the other show that I, I host of kids saying, hey, the Inheritance went to the wrong person. And it's like, you don't get a vote, man. It's their money. You can be mad, you can be disappointed, but that's their money. Or my dad just bought a new car and he's 75 years old and he doesn't need to do it. You get a vote. So he doesn't get a vote into what y' all try to do for your house.

[Gail]

Right. Right.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Where I think you're going to get yourselves in trouble is if you don't honor this with the weight that it, that it requires and don't grieve. Y' all had a picture of this 33 year old already with, married to somebody, home with a grandkid, and that picture's not going to happen.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And your body's going to continue to try to solve for that picture and solve for that picture. And what that, what that looks like in real life is every text message your body leaps to. This is the one.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Every email, Every email you get, you're like, oh, this is the one. You open it and it's, hey, dad, I need $40. And then there's some wild. A raccoon bit the back of my bike tire and then it crashed into like some just insane story. Right?

[Dad]

Yeah. And you've lived our life.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I don't talk about this kind of stuff, but I've got a lot of experience here.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And so the hard part is sitting down and you two together sound like your marriage is good. Is that fair?

[Dad]

Oh, we're solid.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay. Like, amazing. Because this, this situation breaks up couples a lot.

[Gail]

Yeah, we, yeah, we've definitely had struggle through that.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Because one wants to keep funding it. One wants to cut them off, One wants to be ugly to him.

[Dad]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You know, and that breaks couples up. If you guys are still solid, that's amazing. Here might be a really tough, but a powerful bonding experience for the both of you. If you wrote a letter to him that you're never going to sin, but you read it to each other, one from dad and one from mom. And it would let you hear because both of you are walking around. Can we be honest? Both of you are walking around feeling like you were the one who kind of failed the most.

[Gail]

Oh, 100%.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And dad, you're walking around saying, man, if I had just. And Mom's like, if I had just. And those unspoken stories that y' all tell each other, you both feel like you're carrying the entire squat bar and you're not. Let's just set the whole bar down.

[Dad]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And so if we write a letter to him, we read it to each other, there's this story. This isn't going to happen. It might happen. He may come to your house at 43 with it, with a new grandkid maybe, but it's not going to happen at 33. And we kind of thought it would be by now.

[Dad]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And so if you'll write that letter, read it to each other out loud and you'll weep together and you're sad together, then you get to this magic awful place called reality. Here's where we actually are. We have a 33 year old man that keeps making my wife cry. I have a 33 year old man that makes my husband go into withdrawal so deeply inside of himself. He didn't talk for three days. And when you get that level of distance, then you can start making informed decisions. Not emotional decisions, informed decisions. Like, I can't give you any more money because I'm, I'm, I'm funding your drug use. I'm funding your next bad decision, man, and I can't be a part of it.

[Dad]

Yeah, that's so hard.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It's a. I, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I would not wish that on my worst enemy. And so here, here's, here's what I would give him. I would give him a typed out piece of paper that says we love you on it. And here's, here's what we're willing to offer you anytime, day or night. You ready to go get counseling? We're in. You want to go to treatment for marijuana and for anxiety? We're in. We'll fund it. You want to, y' all, y' all make up the map. But I think it's worth him because he's going to wake up and he's going to be frozen. And I don't want him to have an email or a text message. I want him to have a specific thing that he can F up and have in his pocket.

[Gail]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And email it to him because he'll lose that. But he'll remember it, right? He'll remember it. And you say I'm an email. I'm emailing this to you also.

[Dad]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

But there will come a moment when he's gonna have to make a hard choice. And, man, if he knows, all right, I'm gonna get treatment, even if he thinks I'm gonna scam my mom and dad out of this, I'll tell him I'm gonna go to treatment and maybe he gets in there for three days or four days and is able to finally sleep and is able to. I think it's 30 days without marijuana. That starts to really transform your head start to get your, your mind back. And I'm not talking about recreational use. I'm talking about someone who is using it as, as for medicinal purposes. Right. Yeah, Right. But that's a lot of jargon I just threw at you. I just want to be sad with a, as a parent with you guys. I'm sorry.

[Dad]

Thank you.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It stinks.

[Gail]

Yeah, we appreciate that.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

We appreciate it. It didn't bring him home.

[Gail]

Yeah, no. Or it's. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. In that, I mean, it's, that really is where we've landed and still questioning, like, are we doing the right thing?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You know, just because it hurts doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because it's right doesn't mean it's without risk. And the risks here happen to be catastrophic.

[Dad]

Yes.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

They're so big.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And it may be that he needs two more weeks of, oh, I've got nothing. Nothing. I'll come home.

[Gail]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Hope, hope, hope any of that helps, man. And maybe just being a listening ear and just saying, yeah, if you're right for this to hurt really bad and for the next right move. And I'll tell you, I'll say this one more time before I, you guys go. If I know somebody's suicidal, if I know someone's self harming, if I know somebody's right up there on the precipice, I'm going to go get you. I'm going to fight to have your civil rights taken away so I can get you institutionalized, so I can let professionals do their thing. But as you mentioned earlier, you've offered counseling, you've offered so many resources, and he's never once asked for your help. And I don't know there's anything harder than a family member who just doesn't care, doesn't want our help, man, that's tough. Right? We come back, I'm going to talk to a sweet young woman who had an abortion and she's been struggling every day since. This show is sponsored by Better Help. All right, listen. Therapy is not just for people who are dealing with major traumas. It can be for that big stuff, but it can also be a valuable tool for anyone looking to improve their mental and emotional well being. I've personally used therapy for working through major trauma as well as helping me navigate daily relationship and personal challenges. So if you're thinking about trying therapy, contact my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online, so it's affordable and convenient for your schedule. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. They also have over 10 years of experience matching people with just the right therapist for for you to get started, you just fill out a short online survey to get matched with a licensed therapist. If it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time easily and for no extra cost. Listen, talk it out with better help. Visit betterhelp.com DeLoney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. HP.com DeLoney all right, let's talk about Helix. Summer is here. The sun's up earlier, the days are longer, and if you've got kids at home, your daily routine is a dumpster fire. And I don't know about you, but this time of year, my sleep schedule can get chaotic. I want to stay outside longer. Me and my family are traveling. I want to keep fishing until the last possible second, and on and on and on. But no matter what season we're in, we all need good, deep, refreshing sleep. And that's why I sleep on a Helix mattress. I've slept on all kinds of mattresses. Some that were way too so, some that felt like concrete, some that actually were concrete. But Helix is the best mattress I've ever slept on. I fall asleep faster, I sleep deeper, and I wake up without that foggy, groggy feeling. And here's the coolest part. Whether you sleep on your side, your back, your stomach, or if you run hot like I do, they've got a mattress that works for you. The Helix Sleep quiz will match you with the perfect mattress for how you sleep. And it takes less than two minutes. Plus, right now, my audience gets 20% off the entire Helix Sleep site. Go to helixsleep.com deloney and get 20 off your entire order. That's Helix Sleep. H E l I x helixsleep.com Deloney with Helix, better Sleep starts right now. Let's go out to Knoxville. Knoxville, as they say locally. Knoxville. And talk to Maya. What's up, Maya?

[Patrick]

Hi.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

How's it going?

[Patrick]

It's going pretty good. How are you doing?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay. What's going on? How can I help?

[Patrick]

So my story basically is me and my partner, we've been together for about a year and a half, a little over a year and A half. And about eight months ago or so, we had an abortion. So there's been a lot of feelings, specifically on my end, ever since. And I just want to ask you how I could talk to my boyfriend about it and honestly, if our relationship could even survive something like this.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Tell me what you're feeling.

[Patrick]

I mean, honestly, just kind of talking about the situation gets me kind of worked up.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. Did you not want to do this? Did you feel pressured to do this? Did you think it was one of the things that felt right at the right time, at the time, and now you've come back to say, oh, my God, what did I do?

[Patrick]

Yeah, well, I never imagined myself ever doing that. But, you know, things happened and.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Well, let's don't say that exactly. When you say they happened, what do you mean when you say they happened?

[Patrick]

Yeah, me getting pregnant, like, I never imagined, like, even picture that ever happening. So it was just a huge shock in general, but in the moment, I obviously didn't want to be pregnant. I still feel pretty young and just not ready, but in general, I. In general, I mostly did not want to get the abortion.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You said it was eight months ago, so. Something I've heard over and over over the last couple of decades is people getting caught off guard by the encroachment of what would have been a due date.

[Patrick]

I don't even think it's that, really. Just. It's just something that never leaves my mind, really.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. Now, tell me about talking bothered me a lot. Yeah, I can hear it. Who have you told? Who are you able to talk to this. Talk about with this?

[Patrick]

The only person that knew about it is my best friend, but I. I don't really see her much, and, you know, she's going through her own thing, so I haven't talked about it with her since it happened, so I haven't really talked to anybody about it.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay, so the great David Kessler, who wrote what I think is the most important book on grief ever written, has a line that I remember that I use in my life on a. On a. On a daily, weekly basis. Here's the line. Grief demands a witness. When you're sad about something, when you're heartbroken about something, when you feel like, I can't believe what I've done. I can't believe where I found myself. You simply have to find a person, a group of people that you can sit down with and say, hey, this is what happened. Holding that in or in the way I say it, the secrets will kill you. You don't sleep, you don't eat. Like, the. The luster of life is gone. You don't laugh as deeply as you did. It's just kind of. There's no flavor left. Right.

[Patrick]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Here's a big concern for me. Why can't you talk to your boyfriend about this? If he's your partner, if he's your. Your guy, why can't you talk to him about this? Did he pressure you into doing this?

[Patrick]

I guess you could say that in a way, but, I mean, I was on board with it. It's not like I ever told him, no, I'm not doing this. You know what I mean?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Why didn't you tell him no?

[Patrick]

Well, here's the other thing. I also feel, like, a great. A lot of anger towards him as well. That's another reason I can't really talk to him about it is because I guess I'm just angry that when I told him about it, he was just instantly like, okay, we need to schedule an abortion. You know what I mean? Like, if he was the type of guy who would, like, could be happy for the both of us, because obviously that was, like, a lot for me to take in. But if he could be happy for the both of us, if he could be like, you know, you're strong. You can do this. We can do this, like, it would have been a whole different story.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah.

[Patrick]

I'm just. I have resentment towards him a lot.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. And if you felt yourself scared and alone, you see, you're 23. So you were 22 at the time, is that right?

[Patrick]

No, this was actually. Yeah, I. This actually happened, like, the abortion happened a week before my birthday, so.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

So you find yourself terrified and scared and young and alone and 22. How old's your boyfriend?

[Patrick]

He is 26.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay. So older guy by three or four years says, hey, this is what's happening. We're not discussing this. This is happening. And all of a sudden you're scared and alone and not able to tell anybody, and you find yourself on a river racing out to the ocean, and here we are.

[Patrick]

Yeah. I mean, it's not like I could really go to him and be like, hey, this is your fault, because, you know, you hopped on board. You know what I mean? Like, this is my decision too, but it's both.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And. And I think that's fair to. To take ownership. You played a role and also to understand, man, I would have. I wish things would have been different. What are you sad? What do you. What are you most sad about?

[Patrick]

I mean, the whole thing was just extremely, extremely traumatizing. Like, not even. Not even just the pain of it, but.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Just.

[Patrick]

I mean, it feels like a loss.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. Yeah. Is it okay for me to say it was a loss?

[Patrick]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay.

[Patrick]

I mean, it was.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

It was. And I think honoring it as such is important for your healing. Can I ask you something?

[Patrick]

What do you think I should do?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Well, I think that means a couple of things. One is you have to properly grieve this loss. And if over the last year, you've had images pop into your head of you holding a baby, if you've had. If you've started referring to baby by a name, then you've got to treat it with that level of seriousness.

[Patrick]

Just kind of ignored the situation or tried to.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You can't. It'll. It'll overtake you. And by the way, you're not crazy. I've heard this over and over and over throughout my life, and it would be a lie if I said I always have heard this. I haven't. I've talked to people who made the same decision and they moved on with their life, but, yeah, I've heard it a number of times. You have to, by the way. It doesn't matter what I've heard. I'm sitting here talking to you. You've got to grieve this loss for what it was. It's a big loss. The second thing is you're done with this relationship, Maya. You know that and I know that.

[Patrick]

What makes it mean?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I mean, you resent him. You can't talk to him. There's a power differential here. You're in awe. And not in all, like, wonder like a sunset or God, but you're in awe. Like, you resent being that he's driving this boat and you're stuck in the back of the boat. This isn't a partnership. The fact that you can't sit down. How long have you all been together? Say, a year and a half?

[Patrick]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah. The fact that you can't sit down and say, I'm really hurting this bad. I'm this angry with you. I'm this frustrated with you. I'm as heartbroken that you can't have that conversation tells me all I need to know about the state of your relationship. That also suggests.

[Patrick]

I mean, besides what happened, like, we do have a good relationship. Like, he's good to me and he treats me well.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I don't think he does. I don't believe you. And here's why. If he did, you could tell him hard things.

[Patrick]

What if that's like just like a me thing, you know, Like, I, I, I want to run from my emotions. I don't really want to face them, maybe.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Is that true, or have you found yourself with a guy that is unsafe for you to be completely honest with?

[Patrick]

I'd like to think it's me.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Have you always blamed yourself?

[Patrick]

Pretty much, yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Maybe it is a little bit. And maybe this is the guy of your dreams. I don't hear that, but maybe I don't, I don't know you all that well. Yeah, but if he is, and this is 100% your fault, which I don't buy for a second, then he has a right to know that you're this upside, that you're hurting this bad. And he may surprise you and say, my God, me too. What have we done? Or he may say, I, I, I would never have done this. I thought this is what you wanted to do. And you may have learned a harrowing lesson that I will never have experienced anything again where I'm not heard, or I will always follow my gut from this moment forward. And part that's part of the grieving process is who am I going to become now? How am I going to find meaning in what happened? And how is that going to inform who I become down the road? And by the way, who I become is a series of what are the things I'm going to do? I'm going to go get a counseling degree and sit with hurting people. I'm going to start a Facebook group for people considering terminating pregnancy. I'm going to sit with folks who've just gone through this because I know how hard it is and how scary it is. I am going to fill in the blank. I'm going to go be an architect, for crying out loud. I'm going to build stuff like, who am I going to be now? Can I just say that I'm glad that you're here?

[Patrick]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I'm glad that you called and your pain is real and your pain hurts. And I wouldn't wish this situation on my worst enemy, but I'm glad that you. I'm honored that you brought it here. Let me sit with you for a bit. What's your takeaway from this call? What are you going to go do?

[Patrick]

Oh, well, it was really nice to talk to someone about it because I've been trying to find anybody too, but.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay, I'm gonna hook you up with right? I'm gonna hook you up with better help. Okay. For three months for free, so you can talk to a licensed Counselor. Okay. And I want you to put a date on the calendar this week when you sit down with Boyfriend. And it's probably going to be better for you to write everything out and you can read it to him. But say, I need you to sit in this with me, and I want you to be really honest. If you haven't talked to him about how you feel about stuff, about your anger and your resentment, your frustration, how you wish things have gone differently. And yes, that's you owning your part of. In this. You had a decision, too. But if you. I want you to be honest. If you haven't been fully open with him, because it's not safe to do so physically, emotionally, psychologically, or he's your first big, serious boyfriend and you can't imagine your life without him, so you just squash your feelings like you've done your whole life. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your future self to find somebody that you can sit and practice taking ownership and speaking your mind and your heart out to the world. Okay? Your voice matters, Maya, now more than ever.

[Patrick]

Thank you.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And your pains and your hurts and your feelings are worth being hurt. Okay?

[Patrick]

Yeah.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And if nothing else, take from this moment. You will start trusting, Maya, from this point forward. Okay?

[Patrick]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Listen to me. Your grief is right. Your grief is good. And I'll sit here with you and honor it. Do you want to do something pretty wild? You may not be prepared for this. And that's okay. Maybe a few weeks. But I think it's worth writing a letter to that kid. And I always recommend people write letters to anyone that they feel like they've lost. Parents, siblings, kids.

[Patrick]

That's gonna be hard.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Yeah, it will be. And I don't. Don't do that without a professional. Okay. I think you should do it with a counselor.

[Patrick]

Okay.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay. It'll be very hard. All this is going to be hard. Moving forward, having conversation with Boyfriend's going to be hard. All of it's going to be hard. But can we be honest? Just sitting here for a year, not saying anything to anybody, that's really hard, too, isn't it? Yeah. Let's find one person. Let's find two people. Let's find five people where our voice can be heard. Okay? Deal.

[Patrick]

You.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Okay? This week we talked to Boyfriend, and we're fully honest and fully open. And hang on the line here. I'm gonna hook you up with my friends from BetterHelp. Thank you so, so much for the call. We come back, I'm gonna talk about an epidemic that is just melting families around the country. And it's something that I felt that's important enough for me to just spend some time talking about it. So come back and bring a notepad with you. We'll be right back. All right, let's talk about digital privacy and Delete Me. Does anyone else feel like your digital footprint is starting to feel like a digital trail leading right back to you? Now scammers are using phishing attacks. That's phishing with a ph, where they're trying to trick you into giving them something by pretending to know you and be looking out for you. You get an email, a text, or a phone call, and the person or AI bot on the other end sounds like someone who's looking out for you and wants to be your friend. Listen, with the new technological advancements, no one is really safe. What is any of us to do? Start controlling what you can listen. You can learn about how to be careful online and offline and sign up with Delete Me. I use and recommend Delete Me because they work in the background to reduce my online presence. This way I don't have to worry about creepy data brokers buying and selling my data to try to trick me, to give them more and more of my personal information. Delete Me has reviewed over tens of thousands of sites for me, and they've removed my data from hundreds of them, which has saved me countless hours and a ton of stress. Stop the phishing attacks, the harassment, and the other online threats before they start. And take control of your digital privacy. With Delete me, go to joindeleteme.com DeLoney today for 20 off the annual plan, and that comes out to less than nine bucks a month. That's joinedeleteme.com DeLoney all right, so it was over the Christmas break that Kelly sent me a note. Maybe she sent me a text message or something. But let me know that 1 in 4, 25, 30% of every incoming email or phone call to the show, which is numbers, is thousands. We get one out of four at the minimum is talking something about, I cut my parents off, I've cut my kids off. I am no longer talking to my brother, my sister. This. This family's just blowing each other apart. And it's all, boundaries are super important. And I live and die by boundaries. They're critical. But now we've reached a point when it's beyond boundaries, when it's uncomfortable or I don't like your opinion, or you got a Covid vaccination. So get out of my Family, you can't come to Thanksgiving or you didn't get a Covid vaccination. And these five and six and seven year old, like, you know, back in college, I needed $30 from you and you didn't come through for me. So I hate you. And then we have adults who are just dealing with being 35, dealing with being 40. And being 35 and 40 is just annoying and hard and scary. And we thought our life was going to look different and it doesn't. And then mom calls and she's annoying. Dad calls and he's frustrating or he's grumpy or he doesn't, whatever. And it's just, I cut you off, I'm cutting you off, I'm cutting you off. So Kelly and the team dug into some of these, this research and I tried to clarify a couple of things. One, what's actually going on across the country with family members cutting each other off and when is it okay to cut somebody off? This is just Deloney's opinion. So you can take this is what you want. And what can you do when we're thinking about cutting off family members, drawing boundary lines, saying I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. All right, so here's a couple of data points. 29% of Americans report being estranged from an immediate family member. So it actually fits with our data. About 30%, such as a parent, child, sibling or grandparent, 27% of Americans have have experienced estrangement from a family members. 56% of Americans have had a falling out with a close family member at some point. And 21% have experienced a rift that never reconciled. And man, this can be these, these disagreements or these rifts come from lifestyle choices, come from value disagreements, from past abuse and trau blatant disregard for boundaries or being a whiny heiny, being a brat. And adult parents can be brats, kids can be brat. Somebody's being a brat. Right. And so this is a hard conversation to talk about because I can say, don't ever cut off your parents. Well, if dad abused you when you're a kid, it's right. It's right. When you that you don't want to run your grandkids and if your dad voted for the wrong person or watches Fox News or MSNBC all day and he's always complaining, is that really a reason to not have a father or to your grandkids to not have a grandparent? Right. So it's digging into some of these details. So here are some things that I wrote out just me thinking through this stuff. How do you know when it's time to take a break from a family member or cut ties? Number one, a lack of basic respect or dignity, not feeling annoyed or inconvenienced or disagreed with. Get over that. That's just called being in relationship with people. I'm talking about demeaning, ugly, abusive, belittling, trashing you, trashing your spouse, trashing your kids. And by the way, trashing is not, doesn't have to be a spectacle. We took a call on a show the other day and the caller said that his mom said there's going to come a day when your wife comes between me and you. And I was like, yes, the day you got married forever. Right. So it doesn't have to be. I just don't know why she just doesn't like us because you send text all the time telling her that you don't like the way she does X, Y or Z or whatever. The thing is. Well, we don't know why you don't let your our grandkids come stay with us for three weeks in the summer because anyway, lack of basic respect or Disney trashing your self worth, refusing or withholding love, connection or support. Right. And again, I want to make this clear. This is different than being annoying. My father chews too loud so I don't want to go home. My mother always just wants to have, you know, Mexican food and I don't like. She doesn't ever take in my gluten free preference. Just whatever the your complaint is, she wishes Billy played baseball and Billy plays soccer and just stop with that stuff, okay? This is different than annoying or uncomfortable or disagreeable even. Okay, Yeah. I said the other day, my buddy Ian Simpkins said unity does not require uniformity. Being on the same team doesn't mean we all have to play the same position. Being on the same team doesn't mean we all agree on what play we should run next. It's just we're on the same team. We're on the same team. We don't have to all be the same. All right, number three. Here's how you know when it's time to take a break from your family or it's number two actually, you find your relationship with your family pathologically are negatively impacting your everyday relationships with your spouse, your kids, your work, etc. You find yourself really getting grumpy. You find yourself really withdrawing. You find yourself angry, snapping. You find yourself getting sick. You get worked up, you go silent for a few Weeks, you find yourself having another drink and another drink. Or every time that phone call rings, you find yourself your heart rate speeding up. I don't know about some of you guys, but. But I know folks who, when their parents call, they just instantly turn nine again. Hey, daddy. Hey, mommy. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't right. Immediately fall into those patterns. Number three, Your family is continuing to try and control your decisions, your choices, or your plans as though you were still living under their roof. Now, here's where this gets dicey. If you're still on their cell phone plan, they get a vote. If they're paying for your college, they get a vote. If they're paying for your car, they get a vote. If you're married and you have two kids and you live an hour away, they don't get a vote. Number five, this idea. Or I'm sorry, four, this idea. You can cut them off. When you live under this idea of, you owe me, you owe me money. I need $50. I need $10,000. I need access to your home. Those are my grandkids. You will like I. You owe me access to those kids. I need to borrow your car. It's this sense of what is yours is mine. Because you owe me. There's a joke in my house. My mom is awesome. She. She's always like, I carried you for nine months. And we still bring that up to this day. Like, hey, you guys want to go eat? Because I carry. That's a funny joke in our house. But there's a path, like, when that becomes pathological, right? Next, blame manipulation, gaslighting or dishonesty or a lack of safety. If you have a parent with untreated major depressive disorder that makes it unsafe for you to be around. Well, if you can't make it here, I'm just gonna kill myself. Well, if you come over, then I just gonna have to. Hey, mom or dad, you can't scream obscenities at the grandkids. Well, you know that, right? It's unsafe or manipulation. I wouldn't have to if you would just call me more. Or blame. This wouldn't have happened if you had gone to that other school or married that other woman or. I just. I just don't know why you don't want me around or you can't bring your dog to my house. Well, because it pees everywhere. Well, I just think that if you right this. That is a reason to say, hey, I gotta draw some boundaries. And until you're ready to talk like an adult, we're gonna have to not be in communication. And the last one, and this is a big one. If there's been past abuse, there has to be a reckoning, ownership, apologies, reconciliations, not just we don't talk about it. And there can be abuse. Abuse can be psychological, emotional, it can be sexual, can be physical. There has to be a reckoning. I hurt you and who I was and what I did was wrong. And there's been some sort of retribution. I have put skin back in the game and there is actions to back up my words. I am not who I once was. I've talked to parents who mercilessly spanked their kids growing up to the point, far past the point when it was keeping them in line, it was physical abuse. And I've seen some that still laugh about it and I've seen some sob and say, I'm so sorry that I conflated loving you with physical harm. And so anyway, there's got to be some sort of reckoning, ownership. So that's a lot. And it's going to be on a spectrum. Here are some things you can do in your house to begin to establish your own autonomy. Like we said earlier, stop giving family members votes in your life. You can love them, but that doesn't mean they get a vote into where you go on vacation, what you do for the holidays, what schools your kids go to, what shoes you buy your kid. You have to be an adult. You and your partner, if you have kids, if you're married, you've got to be an adult. You as a kid. If you are asking your dad which, which engineering job should I take? This one or this one? And your dad is a fisherman, he may not have the right answer for you. You may need to find some other engineers that might ask you. And when he says, I wouldn't work there, because that's cool, man. I'm going to be an engineer and I really want to work in this city, in this town. And I think it's going to be a great opportunity for me. And I've done my research and I've sat with, met with folks and gotten in proximity to people who do this job. He didn't get a vote. Often when our parents say, I would, I wouldn't do that, really, what they're saying is, I don't know how to say this, but I love you. I don't want you to move away. I wanted you just to hang out here forever because we like you, we love you a lot, right? So you stop giving them a Vote. Here's the second thing I want you to stop trying to do. Stop trying to make your other family members okay with their life decisions. It's not your job. Can't. It's not your job to. When your mom calls and says, I don't know why I stayed with your dad 20 years ago. I can't. I can't make that okay for you. You need to find some friends. You need to find some relationships, because that's my dad, too. Number three. This is a continuation there. Commit to staying out of triangles. Well, you know your mother. I'm gonna stop you right there. I'm step right there. That's my mom. And if you have problems with my mom, you talk to a therapist. You talk to some of your friends. I'm not the guy. That's my mom, dude. Well, you know, your sister has been. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's my sister. I don't want to. I know when you talk about it makes me feel good about myself, but I don't want to get into that. Stay out of triangles. Next one. Don't own the blame or the guilt or the hate. Is that easy? No. Are you going to sob? Yes. Is it heartbreaking? Yes. When your parents blame you for their situation. And I'm going to hop out of it and then have clear boundaries, Very clear boundaries. I've talked about on the show that we, my family, Sheila and I, my wife and I send an email in September. Ish. Sometimes October, sometimes August. But we send an email. Here's what the fall is going to look like for our. Our immediate family. Travel me on the road, what's going on in our life. And we send that out. Some years that email has been very well received. Some years it has not. It's not gone well at all. Who do you think you are? Is that hard? Yeah. Does it break my heart? Yep. Does it happen? Yep. Can I control any of that? Nope. All I can control is my boundaries, and I probably need to do a better job on the show. I talk about, like, yeah, just say it. Just go out and say it. Doesn't always go well. Sometimes it goes really tough and it's not great. I don't love it. I hate it. But it is what it is. And it's not my job to make sure everyone in my extended family likes me or. Or is all comfortable with where we're eating one night or where we're opening presents. 1. Or we're eating what meal. It's my job to make sure my kids are Safe. Make sure my wife feels love and supported and that we have decided on what we are going to do for our marriage moving forward. And does that mean sitting at dinners that we don't want to be at? Of course it does. Does that mean laughing at jokes that are only moderately funny and we've heard them a thousand times? Yes. Does that mean listening to political opinions that we disagree with but we're just rolling our eyes? Yes. Does that mean stopping a family member for saying, hey, hey. Don't say that in front of my children? Yes. Making things awkward? Yes. Is that saying, hey, Josephine is not gonna. It doesn't wanna hug right now. So with a weird uncle. Yes. All that is true. All that's true. But it's my job to have boundaries. And I love what Becky Kennedy says. Boundaries require nothing of another person. They're what I'm going to do. And the last one is this. If you desire reconciliation and the data says that most people and family members, they. Most family members end up reconciling. If you want to reconcile, go first. Only speak if the person can hear you. Start with the words I. I miss you. I'm sorry. I want us to build a new relationship together. Go first. The amount of family members I've talked to over the years who haven't talked to each other for five or 10 years because they made up stories. Well, they don't want to talk to me. They don't want to hear from me. I know what I did. And they don't ever want. And you end up losing a decade of a relationship. I guess the last thing I'll say is feeling awkward or uncomfortable is a sign to work through relationship challenges, not the other way around. Not, not, not time to call them. And the world needs more families to come together. I don't care what I don't care about. I don't know. Just the world needs more people to come together. So that's my thoughts on families just breaking up everywhere and all the time. Be very slow to pull the rip cord on. You're out. I'm not. I'm not continuing in this relationship with you mom or with dad or with brother with sister. Feel free to take a year off. Hey, we're not traveling this year. We'll send Christmas cards. We'll FaceTime. Feel free to, you know, not do birthday times or, you know, go from the weekly family dinner that we always have, we've always had. And we're gonna go to monthly. We're gonna go to once every six months. But if you gotta pull the cord. Make sure you give somebody a road map back or be very clear about why you're pulling the cord and have the hard conversation about reconciliation. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Deloney for Organifi. I talk to people every day who feel overwhelmed, and I don't just mean emotionally. They're physically and mentally spent. They're worn out, they're anxious, they're not sleeping well. They feel that foggy, disconnected sense all the time. And most of them are just trying to push through with coffee and more caffeine and willpower. Can we all just agree what we're doing probably isn't working? Redlining our bodies every minute of every day is just burning everyone to the ground. That's where Organifi comes in. Organifi makes organic superfood blends and gummies, which I love, that are designed to support your body, your mind, even your emotions. So you don't just set everything on fire. You just mix Organifi superfood blends with water and you're good to go. For me, it's green juice in the morning for focus, red juice in the morning, in the afternoon for clean energy without the crash. And I love my happy drops to boost my mood and the shilajit gummies that help me feel like a laser beam. Look, most people don't have to overhaul their entire life to start feeling better. You just have to listen to your body and start making some small daily choices. And you can start with my friends at Organifi. Go to Organifi.com DeLoney and use code DeLoney to save 20 off. That's 20 off with code DeLoney at Organifi O R G-A-N-I-F I.com DeLoney all right, Kelly, my. The problem. Let it rip.

[Kelly]

All right, so this is from Nick in Indianapolis, and he writes, am I the problem? My wife and I seem to disagree sometimes when it comes to the subject of laundry. I am very much type A and like to do my laundry every weekend. And as soon as it's done, I put it away.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I feel this guy, he already gives me the hemorrhoids. Dude, laundry is not laundry. If it didn't sit in a basket for a few weeks.

[Kelly]

No, no. Then it gets wrinkled anyway and you.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Get to rewash it. Hello, this is America.

[Kelly]

Anyway, my wife, on the other hand, is a little more relaxed. She does the laundry every once in a while and prefers to leave the clothes scattered in her closet out on our floor. And in other Random places. I've tried talking to her about putting in a system. Love that. And I will do her laundry every other weekend if she will put her clothes in a laundry basket. But it went nowhere. I understand that I am very type A, but am I the problem for wanting a clean bedroom slash house?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

This is unfair.

[Kelly]

This is what we've talked about, where God says, I'm going to put these two people together.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

No, it's where they find each other.

[Kelly]

Because this is exactly what happens in our house.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Oh, I want to solve this problem that I couldn't solve when I was a child. I'll pick you up and I'm gonna marry the exact problem I had because I'll solve it now. And then I'm gonna write into a strange podcast and be like, help. Here's the thing. Is it wrong for you to be type A? Of course not. Is it wrong for you to want a clean house? Of course not. Is it wrong for you to assume superiority over somebody who just knows where their piles of socks is?

[Kelly]

Of course not.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

No. Kelly feels so superior. Here's the thing. Systems don't work for people who don't believe they need systems. Systems work for people who like Kelly, who doesn't look at pornography but looks at Excel sheets all night long.

[Kelly]

Container Store catalogs.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Oh, gosh, she has. She hides them under her mattress. She waits till Robert goes to sleep and then you hear this creak. And she pulls out her laptop and looks at a few spreadsheets and it gets the Container catalog out and her heart starts racing and her whoop strap is like, beep, beep, beep. Kelly, here's the thing. Here's the bigger picture. The bigger picture is less about cleanliness in your house. The bigger picture is you're trying to sell her on an IDEA that is 100% your idea. And you're trying to sell her as a better way to live her life. And her life seems to be working out okay, partly because you do the laundry. But she married you and she loves you and she likes the life she has. The scarier, more vulnerable approach is it would make me feel loved if you would put these in the basket. I want to have a clean bathroom and I feel scattered and chaotic when there's clothes everywhere. Would you be willing to love me enough to just throw everything in the basket? Now we got a game changing conversation because you said I want instead of, you know. What you really want is this system. My five part system on how to have clean house and clean laundry and all the other Is, hey, do you love me? And that's a scary, scary question. Ask, cuz. She may say not really or she may forget. So there's two ways to approach this. One, just pick up the clothes. Just pick them up and go wash through the laundry. Kelly, just pick up the clothes. The other thing is sit down and say, hey, I want to have a wants conversation. I really want this. And would you meet me halfway? 25% away, 75% of the way, 100 of the way. And by the way, that happened in my house when my wife sat down and said, I don't feel like I'm my best version because, John, you're a lot. And two things have happened since then. One is I've dramatically shifted. Like, I'm shockingly neat person at the house. And when I start. When I start leaving piles everywhere and shoes everywhere, she knows he's headed. He's not gonna. He's. He's heading down a path where he's not okay. And that's a great time for her to be like, hey, let's go to dinner tonight, kids. Y' all are on your own. And we go to dinner. And she's like, I'm starting to worry about you. And so it's a good signal for us. But that started with hers not saying, you need to. Started with, I really want to be my best self, and it's hard for me when your stuff's everywhere. And I was like, all right, that's fair.

[Kelly]

We had a very similar conversation where I had to say, it causes massive anxiety for me when there's clutter everywhere. But I also don't expect Robert to be as type A as I am either. So it's just like, can you just put them all in that basket?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You're type 3A's, type Triple A. Yeah.

[Kelly]

What is, though?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

I'm quadruple A.

[Kelly]

No, but he'll, you know, it's like, I don't care. True or false?

[Dr. John DeLoney]

We've recorded shows for through 2027.

[Kelly]

False, true, false. True, false, true, false.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You have a spreadsheet of all the shirts I wear in the right order. They're all black, so they match your tattoos. True, True.

[Kelly]

There we go. One of us lies a lot. One of us doesn't.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

And one of us has curly hair. And one of us doesn't.

[Kelly]

Well, exactly. You're right. And I'll let America decide who's who on that. No, but yeah, I mean, I, you know, we both had to come to an agreement that, hey, I don't care if you put your clothes away or not. But if I just put this basket here, will you just toss them in there instead? And then if you want to live out of the basket, have at it, and I'll put mine away. But can you just not have them on the floor? And it's a middle of. Instead of me going, no, they all have to be neatly hung and put here. And him saying, hey, I'll put them in. I'll just make sure they land here instead.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

That's right.

[Kelly]

So compromise, people.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

Compromise. I'll leave it at that. I compromised the ending of this show.

[Kelly]

I compromised my career.

[Dr. John DeLoney]

You did. I compromised just the general sense of joy I had in the world when I started working with a producer who's so, so heartless and mean. Peace.