Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E83: Building and Rebuilding a Marriage that Lasts

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E83: Building and Rebuilding a Marriage that Lasts · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  This was a video and it was titled I have a crush on a Co
• 0:03
  worker but I'm happily married. What does one do with attraction
• 0:06
  in and outside of marriage? You did a video with this guy.
• 0:08
  I've always regretted my marriage, should I leave?
• 0:12
  Do you buy that it's possible to marry the wrong person?
• 0:14
  I think we live in a culture that has told us that happiness
• 0:18
  is somewhere else. There is no perfect marriage.
• 0:21
  It doesn't exist. Like, I don't feel like I love
• 0:23
  you anymore. Let that be the starting line,
• 0:26
  not the finish line. Hey guys, welcome back to the
• 0:32
  Lila Rose podcast. Happy New Year.
• 0:34
  I can't believe we're in 2024. So many good things in store
• 0:38
  already. It's off, I think for a lot of
• 0:40
  people to a great start, although I know some people are
• 0:43
  like it's already 2024. I already feel like I'm behind.
• 0:46
  OK. Today's conversation I hope is
• 0:48
  going to be really helpful, encouraging and lightning.
• 0:51
  It's on relationships. As you guys know this show, we
• 0:54
  talk about relationships a lot. I think they're so important.
• 0:56
  The health of our relationships is really the health of our
• 0:58
  lives, first and foremost, our relationship with God and then
• 1:01
  our relationship with other people.
• 1:02
  If we're married, our spouses, our kids, and you know, our
• 1:06
  family, whoever it may be. So today we have a treat.
• 1:08
  We're going to have Doctor John Deloney on the show of the
• 1:12
  Doctor John Deloney Show. He's a Ramsey personality, so he
• 1:14
  works with Dave Ramsey and his whole Kingdom of Content, which
• 1:17
  is really great. But he does some amazing stuff
• 1:20
  on relationships and he has some great advice.
• 1:22
  He has years in academia, he's written many, many books, but he
• 1:25
  does this live Colin show, giving people live relationship
• 1:28
  advice, and I think it's really sound advice that he gives.
• 1:31
  So we're going to tackle some big relationship questions about
• 1:34
  boundaries in marriage. We're going to talk about how to
• 1:36
  deal with attraction and desire in and outside of marriage.
• 1:40
  We're going to talk about how to maintain a healthy marriage and
• 1:43
  really build that 70 plus year marriage with your soulmate, how
• 1:47
  that's possible, why and how divorce isn't the answer.
• 1:51
  And really walking through that, you know, does divorce, can
• 1:54
  divorce make you happier? We're going to get into that and
• 1:56
  so much more. Hey guys, it's a new year, 2024.
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• 2:56
  John Deloney, thanks so much for joining the podcast.
• 3:00
  Thanks for having me on, I'm really grateful.
• 3:02
  All right, so I first heard about you from, I think YouTube
• 3:06
  sending me your videos because I like the relationship stuff.
• 3:09
  And then I'm I'm a fan of Ramsay's, you know, Dave
• 3:12
  Ramsey's whole empire that he's built.
• 3:14
  He's doing some really good work in the world.
• 3:15
  So first, for people that aren't familiar with you yet, what's
• 3:18
  the background on John Deloney? Oh man.
• 3:22
  Background. I grew up in Houston.
• 3:24
  I was the son of a homicide. Detective and a stay at home
• 3:27
  mom. And then my dad quit being a
• 3:29
  detective about halfway through my life and became a minister.
• 3:32
  And my mom went back to school and then at the age of 40, she
• 3:35
  took her first Community College class and then she graduated at
• 3:40
  57 with her PhD and became a tenured professor at at 63.
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  So that's the house I grew up in.
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  And then I've been in academics for the last 20 years as a Dean
• 3:51
  of students and a professor. And then several years ago, I
• 3:54
  had to run in with Dave Ramsey and his team and I quit my
• 3:58
  entire career to become as my 12 year old says, dad, you're just
• 4:02
  a dumb old YouTube. And that's what I that's what I
• 4:05
  do now for a. Living not Not dumb, not dumb.
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  What? I think it's one out of every
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  four. Jen's ears want to be a YouTube
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  star when they grow up. Well, now I can't tell them.
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  It's a dumb job because, well, my whole life has changed.
• 4:17
  So it's it's a pretty good gig for me and my family.
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  And so now I can't tell those kids like I get a real job, but
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  it's a pretty good job, so. So you were working respectively
• 4:25
  in academia and now you're making.
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  Video exactly. I used to have a real job.
• 4:31
  No, I'm I'm busier now than I ever was, but that's just a
• 4:34
  totally different world. And, but in many ways, it's very
• 4:37
  much. It's very much.
• 4:38
  The same, so it's good. All right, well, what I want to
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  get into in our conversation is some of the relationship live
• 4:44
  advice that you give some really important stuff on marriage and
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  boundaries. It's and desire.
• 4:49
  It's really interesting stuff. It's very important, I think.
• 4:51
  But First off, what was the, you mean you met Dave Ramsey?
• 4:55
  It sounds like he kind of gave you a vision of a different
• 4:58
  life. Was there something that wasn't
• 4:59
  satisfying you in academia working that way or some
• 5:03
  personal dream that you had that you're now living?
• 5:05
  What, what? What made the change for you?
• 5:10
  Honestly, at the time I mean you, you can.
• 5:13
  See it over the last couple of decades, higher education has
• 5:16
  just changed. It's pretty changed pretty
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  dramatically. It on a number of different
• 5:20
  fronts and so it was getting harder and harder to operate at
• 5:24
  the particular school I was at. It was my dream job, dream
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  position. Everything was great about it.
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  What I I had two little kids. And so for me, I wanted their
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  dad, them to see their dad in a world gone mad.
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  I want to see their dad doing what he could in the tiny little
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  sphere of influence that God had given him.
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  This is what you got. And when I sat down with Dave
• 5:47
  and his team, they said I'll never forget, Dave said.
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  Hey, you help thousands of people in a profound way.
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  You can join this team and you can be a part of helping
• 5:57
  millions. And that was when I went home
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  and I remember tell my wife all for my son and for my daughter.
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  I want them to at least see their dad get in the ring.
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  And it made this thing may end tragically and I have to go back
• 6:09
  and and be a professor again. But I wanted them to see their
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  dad get involved in hard conversations across the country
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  and at least provide a picture. Of here's another way to do life
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  because the ones that we're being presented with all across
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  the spectrum, it's just madhouse.
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  It's just dumb and so what's a different way to do life and
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  then ended up, you know, the call in show and I wanted to
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  show so badly to be about how smart I was in my smart academic
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  answers about mental health. That's my training.
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  My background is mental health and emotional health and more
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  and more it was about dealing with marriages and.
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  Intimacy and raising kids and how do I deal with boundaries
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  with my parents? And so over the last few years,
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  it is absolutely. Taking a hard right turn to.
• 6:57
  Conversations about relationships that we're all
• 6:59
  messing, we're all struggling with.
• 7:01
  OK, so let's go there because I think we talk about that a lot
• 7:04
  on this podcast, relationships, relationship health.
• 7:06
  And I want to start with one of the videos I saw that you did,
• 7:11
  which was a live call in show. So you have this show and these
• 7:14
  are callers that are just, I guess they watch you on YouTube
• 7:17
  and then they queue up and they have, they just pour out their
• 7:19
  hearts on air. Well, they, I mean, they call in
• 7:22
  from all over the world and are they write in and then our
• 7:26
  producers craft the show, right. So there's just thousands of
• 7:28
  people who write in and they, they pick the three calls per
• 7:31
  show. But yeah.
• 7:33
  And I I get one line is what my team will give me, they'll say.
• 7:37
  Son has autism and intimacy issues with husband.
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  And then that's kind of what I got.
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  And then somebody calls in and we have 10 to 15 minutes to try
• 7:46
  to figure out what to do next. And these are real people who
• 7:49
  are calling in. Oh yeah, they're real people and
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  I've never met them. And most of the time I never
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  have met them. There's been one or two times
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  I've met people like it's book. Signings and things, but yeah,
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  I, I, it's just a, a touchstone. I'll tell you this when they
• 8:01
  first started calling. I remember my instinct because
• 8:05
  I, you know, I'm new to radio, new to podcast, all that.
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  My first question was. Why are you calling me?
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  You should ask your friend that question.
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  And every single person, 100% of them said dude, I got nobody.
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  And that was a harrowing season for me realizing how lonely
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  people are. How many people are sitting at
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  home in their marriages and their husbands or their wives
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  have no idea how behind the 8 ball they actually are?
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  And so, yeah, it's been an anonymous place for people to
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  call in and ask hard questions. OK, so wanted to start with this
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  one. This was a video and it was
• 8:39
  titled I've always regretted my marriage.
• 8:42
  So we're going to go right to the some of the toughest stuff.
• 8:45
  Should I leave? And this gentleman calls in and
• 8:48
  he's telling you about how he wasn't even sure on the altar
• 8:51
  when he married his wife, but he's in the marriage.
• 8:55
  And at first I was worried that you were going to tell him to
• 8:58
  leave because you were kind of like ribbon, ribbon with him a
• 9:01
  little bit like saying, hey, you know, what do you mean?
• 9:03
  You don't desire your wife. Who do you desire?
• 9:05
  What do you desire? You're kind of trying to get to
• 9:06
  the root of his desires. But then you laid into him with
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  there's trade-offs either way, basically, and what it would be
• 9:14
  like if he did leave his marriage.
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  Can you share a little bit about what you, I don't know if
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  you're, you remember this conversation, by the way, with
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  this guy? I don't.
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  I don't remember the conversation, but.
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  I I have. It pretty frequently whether it
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  whether it makes the. Air or not?
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  I think we live in a culture that is told us that happiness
• 9:30
  is somewhere else, then wherever you have to be, then wherever
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  you happen to be. And happiness is a feeling which
• 9:38
  is a complete and utter. Lie.
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  It's nonsense. And So what I always want people
• 9:44
  to know is go get a new spouse, go get a new job, get a new
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  house, buy a new car, then a newer car and then get different
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  clothes and then get that whatever makeup thing get get
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  whatever it is you think you want and you need that's going
• 9:56
  to fulfill you. But never forget that you go
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  with you. And so you get that new job.
• 10:02
  Great Day three, you're going to look in the mirror and your kids
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  going to come in and ask you that Mom, I forgot my thing or
• 10:08
  dad, I need this. And you are right back to you
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  and whatever the new world is that you thought was going to
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  solve you. And So what I always.
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  I mean, yeah, dude, leave your wife.
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  Blow up your entire world. Most people think they picture
• 10:23
  their life exactly as it is, just in a new circumstance.
• 10:26
  And I always want people to know, no, no, no.
• 10:28
  If you leave your wife, everything implodes, right?
• 10:30
  Everything changes. Your home, your job, the way
• 10:34
  your friends interact with you. You now have to say, I used to
• 10:37
  be married, right? Like all everything changes.
• 10:39
  And sometimes if you're an abusive situation or somebody's
• 10:42
  cheating on you all the time. I mean, of course there's,
• 10:44
  there's, there's, there's reasons, but I always want you
• 10:47
  to know that you go with you and most people don't think that
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  through. They just get mad at somebody or
• 10:52
  don't like somebody, or they create revisionist history and
• 10:55
  try to drag the past. Into right now.
• 10:58
  What I thought was so interesting that you did with
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  that one caller, and I think you do this with a lot of the
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  callers that call into your show is you really got him.
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  And it's sometimes it's a her, you know, women actually divorce
• 11:08
  more than men do, right? But you got him in this
• 11:11
  conversation to really verbalize.
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  You really pushed him to verbalize.
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  What is it that you're really wanting exactly?
• 11:19
  What is it that's really underneath the feelings?
• 11:21
  What are the thoughts that you have about your wife that you
• 11:24
  don't like, or the thoughts about your life that you don't
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  like? Can you share more about this
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  difference between our feelings and our thoughts and how our
• 11:31
  thoughts impact our feelings? Our feelings don't tell us the
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  truth. That's not their job.
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  If you ask any neuroscientist, feelings aren't designed to lay
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  out the facts of a situation. They're designed to keep you
• 11:43
  safe and not dead. And they also have they don't
• 11:47
  have the same timeline continuity that reality does.
• 11:51
  Meaning if my dad was unsafe, let's say my my dad was an
• 11:56
  awesome, amazing man. But let's say my dad beat me up
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  all the time and every time my dad drove up the driveway as a
• 12:01
  little boy, I knew I needed to hide.
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  And then I get married 25 years later.
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  My body put AGPS pin in that when dad comes home you get out
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  of the way. Well then, my wife.
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  Dries up this the the driveway and my body quietly.
• 12:16
  Sounds an alarm. It says it's time to get small.
• 12:18
  And make your like, go ahead and let's go in the other room.
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  Right. I feel like I need to go, but I
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  don't. I don't.
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  And so my feelings, they're we have as a culture, we just like,
• 12:29
  how do you feel? How do you feel?
• 12:30
  How do you feel? I don't care if you sit down and
• 12:33
  have hard conversations with someone that you love and that
• 12:37
  you care about, and you'll work through hard things.
• 12:39
  And you both say, here's what I need and I'll help you meet your
• 12:43
  needs. I need you to help me meet my
• 12:45
  needs. And my whole life is about
• 12:46
  serving you and your whole life is about serving me.
• 12:48
  And together, we're going to create this new amazing thing
• 12:51
  together that, by the way, we're going to have to create.
• 12:53
  Over and over and over again for our whole marriage because our
• 12:56
  life's going to change all the time.
• 12:58
  You do that happiness is a. Byproduct of that work.
• 13:02
  It's not a thing that you try to chase down because it's
• 13:05
  fireworks and cotton candy. It dissolves, it goes away, It's
• 13:08
  a vapor, you can't grab it. And so I think we have it
• 13:12
  backwards. We're trying to reverse engineer
• 13:13
  happy instead of doing a bunch of really hard, important,
• 13:16
  powerful things. And happiness is a cool.
• 13:18
  Thing at the end of the rainbow. But feelings do matter, right?
• 13:21
  In terms of their. 100%. Know of what something else
• 13:25
  going on, but like you said, they're not laying out the facts
• 13:28
  of a situation. So I mean what do you what's
• 13:31
  your advice for people that are deal.
• 13:33
  I mean we're at the start of the new year.
• 13:34
  It's 2024 and I think that it's very important for people to be
• 13:39
  in touch with their deepest desires or discern what am I
• 13:42
  really seeking or wanting deep in my heart and feelings are a
• 13:46
  part of that. They're not the whole story, of
• 13:48
  course. What's your take on even
• 13:51
  understanding one's restlessness?
• 13:54
  You could say discontentedness and the feelings associated with
• 13:58
  that. To come to a realization of this
• 14:00
  is OK, the right moral good path for my for my life.
• 14:05
  Yeah, it's a really important question.
• 14:07
  And by the way, I get lots of grief from my friends.
• 14:10
  Both both the science nerds and in my new media world, because
• 14:14
  I'm too feeling centric. I believe deeply and listening
• 14:19
  to feelings as they are important, important indicators.
• 14:23
  So yeah, I tend to I'll I hit the the pendulum too far towards
• 14:27
  feeling. So I'm glad you called it back.
• 14:30
  Here's what I often ask people to do choose.
• 14:33
  I tell people that you got to choose reality, and I think
• 14:36
  that's a smart place to start. So pull out a piece of paper and
• 14:42
  write down and spend some time thinking about it.
• 14:45
  What is the true state of my marriage?
• 14:48
  What's the truth like? What is my relationship with my
• 14:50
  kids? How much money do I owe
• 14:53
  somebody? Like whether it's the the
• 14:55
  mortgage or the the. Cars or what?
• 14:57
  What is the state of my life? And as you write those things
• 15:01
  out, you'll feel nervous, you'll feel excited, you'll feel angry,
• 15:04
  you'll feel frustrated. And that is a good place to put.
• 15:08
  You know stars by. That ends up that's your body.
• 15:11
  Saying, hey, we need to press on this.
• 15:14
  The challenge with feelings is this.
• 15:15
  So if you take anxiety, which is something I've kind of I
• 15:19
  accidentally backed my way into, I didn't mean to talk about this
• 15:21
  as a career, but it just kind of happened.
• 15:24
  That way the the neurophysiology of anxiety is if you feel
• 15:28
  anxious and you avoid the thing you felt anxious about, it
• 15:33
  actually reinforces the anxious feeling.
• 15:35
  It makes it stronger because your body got what it wanted,
• 15:37
  which is to keep you safe. The only problem is it doesn't
• 15:41
  keep your relationship whole. It doesn't keep you in your job.
• 15:44
  It doesn't keep you connected with your kids or your friends.
• 15:46
  It keeps you increasingly, increasingly.
• 15:48
  More more isolated and alone in a way.
• 15:52
  It's so when you feel anxious, head directly into that.
• 15:55
  And if you're like me and that's scary or that's hard or you
• 15:58
  don't even know how to do that, get a friend, get a counselor,
• 16:01
  get a pastor, get somebody to go with you, but head towards those
• 16:04
  hard, scary feelings. If you're married, sit down and
• 16:08
  have the courage to stay across the table if it's safe.
• 16:11
  I feel as distant from you as I ever have.
• 16:14
  I feel like I can't breathe when.
• 16:16
  You come in the room and I don't know why.
• 16:18
  I'm scared of my own wife. And have those hard
• 16:21
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  How does one have a hard conversation with like that if
• 17:20
  that's really the, you know, ugly truth going on deep down in
• 17:25
  someone's heart or body even? It's a feeling that they're
• 17:28
  having when that can do so much painful damage to the person
• 17:32
  sitting on the other side of the table.
• 17:35
  I think, well there's 22 challenges there.
• 17:37
  One is you're the assumption is you're not doing painful damage
• 17:42
  by saying nothing. And I would suggest that you are
• 17:47
  slowly suffocating each other if you say nothing versus just
• 17:52
  putting it on the table right now.
• 17:53
  That's number one. Number two is most people let
• 17:57
  these things get pent up and pent up and pent up these
• 17:59
  feelings and then they explode all over somebody.
• 18:03
  So I always tell like a a spouse or a.
• 18:07
  Romantic partner of any sort when they're sitting across the
• 18:10
  table, speak about you. I am experiencing absolute
• 18:15
  loneliness in this relationship that's different than.
• 18:18
  You haven't been doing this and you haven't been doing that
• 18:20
  because when you go at somebody, they instantly have to.
• 18:23
  They have to defend themselves. It'd be silly not to.
• 18:25
  And now you're in a war versus I can't breathe in this house.
• 18:31
  I feel scared when you walk. Into a room.
• 18:33
  Why am I doing anything I'm not saying about you, I'm saying I
• 18:36
  need to do some figure out what's going on because you say
• 18:39
  that you love me. And every time I walk in a room,
• 18:42
  you flip your phone over, I feel like this and that's different
• 18:47
  than let me see your phone. Like, right.
• 18:49
  So it's sitting down and saying, here's what I'm experiencing in
• 18:52
  this house. Here's what I'm experiencing
• 18:53
  this relationship. And that's a that's a gentler
• 18:56
  invitation to a conversation than attacking somebody.
• 18:59
  And for me and my wife, to be honest with you, we got to get
• 19:03
  to a place where like we sat down like grown-ups across the
• 19:06
  table and said, are we going to stay married?
• 19:08
  Like it was a very grown up. We have a one, We have an older
• 19:12
  kid and a younger kid. Are we going to keep doing this
• 19:15
  because we can't keep being married like we are.
• 19:18
  So as adults, are we going to call it?
• 19:19
  Are we going to go forward if we're going to go?
• 19:21
  Forward, we have to start being open on a regular basis and that
• 19:25
  was the key to creating a marriage that I didn't know it
• 19:27
  was possible. I didn't know it could be this
• 19:29
  great. But it started with I promised
• 19:32
  to never attack you, but I also promised to always tell you the
• 19:34
  truth. And that's that's changed
• 19:36
  everything. Well, I think the key element
• 19:39
  there is a trust that even if it's really rough, what you're
• 19:42
  saying and the other person may feel offended by it, like, you
• 19:46
  know, I don't, I, you're just too touchy or I, I didn't intend
• 19:50
  to make you feel that way, but you're still feeling that way.
• 19:51
  I mean, it can quickly devolve, right?
• 19:54
  But you're, I think there's this, the secret ingredient is
• 19:57
  trust that you're going to stick it out and be there and that you
• 20:00
  both have good intentions and want good things for the other
• 20:03
  person and want to stay together.
• 20:06
  How, how does someone, if there's someone listening right
• 20:08
  now? You know, I started with this
• 20:09
  example of this, you know, guy saying he always regretted his
• 20:12
  marriage and called into your show.
• 20:14
  And they're like, well, I don't have that trust with my spouse
• 20:18
  or with my significant other. And I'm I feel so alone.
• 20:23
  I don't know what to do. What should they do?
• 20:27
  I think you make a beeline, you stop everything in your life and
• 20:30
  you go see a professional therapist as soon as possible.
• 20:33
  Period. Here's why there is no
• 20:36
  relationship without trust. I don't care what marriage
• 20:38
  certificate you're holding. I don't care how many kids you
• 20:41
  have. I don't care how many.
• 20:41
  Mortgages you all have signed together.
• 20:43
  You don't have a marriage. If you don't trust each other,
• 20:45
  period. And I hear that all over the
• 20:49
  country. Yeah, but I've got my thing over
• 20:51
  here and he or she has their thing over there.
• 20:54
  And we that makes you great business partners, that makes
• 20:58
  you Co managers. Of the household.
• 21:00
  Like Jim and Michael Scott in a couple of episodes, right?
• 21:03
  I mean, it's it's you're just Co managed.
• 21:05
  You are not married and most of us have tried to be in a
• 21:11
  trusting relationship and we've gotten.
• 21:13
  Burned bad, and our bodies tell us, don't ever do that again.
• 21:17
  And or we watched our parents go all in and one of them got.
• 21:20
  Burned real bad. And so it makes sense to be
• 21:24
  weary. Of that.
• 21:25
  The other side of it is. I'm promising you, you cannot
• 21:29
  have a fully engaged or vulnerable, connected, amazing
• 21:32
  marriage and therefore an amazing family legacy, a change
• 21:37
  of your family tree unless you go all in, both feet in the
• 21:41
  boat. You can't have one on land and
• 21:43
  one in the water, and that's scary and terrifying.
• 21:46
  Yet that's the only way it works.
• 21:48
  But it takes ultimately the two to go all in.
• 21:51
  But someone needs to start the all in process because I think
• 21:54
  that's what happens. It's like one person is afraid
• 21:57
  to go all in, maybe even in the marriage, because maybe they
• 21:59
  don't feel that the other person is all in.
• 22:02
  And again, this isn't everyone's story, but in some of these
• 22:04
  really rough situations. So what do you do when you're
• 22:07
  not sure you're, you know, maybe in this situation, you're
• 22:09
  concerned you had another video about cheating.
• 22:11
  You know, I think my my spouse is cheating on me, right?
• 22:14
  So you're concerned your spouse is definitely not in all in,
• 22:17
  right? So how do you still stand up and
• 22:20
  say I'm going to be true to the vows that I made at the altar
• 22:22
  and be all in? I I think you have to sit down
• 22:25
  at a table. And say I'm going all in here.
• 22:28
  And you have to be willing to risk what comes on the other
• 22:30
  side. And I know that sounds very
• 22:32
  bravado. There is a.
• 22:34
  Terrifying economic consequence to women who leave their
• 22:38
  husbands, especially outside of a top earning potential right
• 22:43
  the data tells me that when women leave their net worth goes
• 22:46
  down especially when they have kids and men's actually goes up
• 22:49
  a little bit so it's not as easy it's it's really cool but.
• 22:52
  You should just leave. Well, that's like, who's going
• 22:55
  to pay the bills, right? I got to eat.
• 22:56
  That gets scary and hard. And so I think it's important
• 23:01
  for everyone to know there is no easy path here.
• 23:04
  And and we're going back to the feelings conversation.
• 23:06
  Most of us want to avoid feeling quote UN quote.
• 23:09
  Bad. And so if I have this
• 23:11
  conversation, what if he actually leaves?
• 23:13
  And I think the question that's even scarier is what if he
• 23:15
  actually stays and this is your life for the next 30 years?
• 23:19
  What if we just had a hard conversation or two or three or
• 23:22
  four, or we primed it and said, hey, I want to build a new
• 23:25
  marriage because the one we've built up till now is not going
• 23:29
  to serve us moving forward. Are you in?
• 23:31
  And when I say all in, here's what I'm going to need and or we
• 23:34
  don't even know how to. Do this let's.
• 23:35
  Get a marriage counselor, somebody who's trained in this
• 23:37
  to help, to help be a neutral third party and walk with us.
• 23:42
  All those things are helpful. But I think it takes somebody
• 23:44
  recognizing I got to choose the hard path here.
• 23:47
  And it's either going to be hard being in a marriage where both
• 23:49
  of us have one foot out of the boat and we're kind of planned
• 23:52
  and kind of like on the OR it's going to be real hard and we're
• 23:57
  but I'm going to put all my chips on the table and I hope
• 23:59
  you do too. I think part of the challenge
• 24:01
  for a lot of people is that they see either these like picture
• 24:05
  perfect images of relationships from, you know, the fiction
• 24:09
  books they're reading, if we're talking old school, or just from
• 24:11
  your social media feed, if you're talking like the social
• 24:13
  media world. And so you see this beautiful,
• 24:16
  idyllic, idealized version, romanticized version of
• 24:18
  relationships. And then there's the real world
• 24:21
  and there's divorce and there's your parents split up and
• 24:23
  there's the rough stuff that you saw that you don't want to be a
• 24:26
  part of, right? It's the wounds from childhood.
• 24:28
  You're like, I don't want that. But then there's the third way,
• 24:31
  which is reality, which is like, you know, the real world for the
• 24:34
  vast majority of people, which is not the idealized romantic.
• 24:37
  And it's not the just let's crash and burn over here, but
• 24:39
  it's let's put in that work. How do people learn how to do
• 24:44
  the work or what kind of work is acceptable to even do without it
• 24:48
  bordering? Oh this is actually me being OK
• 24:51
  with emotional or physical abuse.
• 24:55
  I mean, I think taking abuse off the take abuse off the table for
• 24:58
  a second, we can circle. Back to that, I think it starts
• 25:00
  with two people sitting across the table from another saying, I
• 25:05
  don't have a picture of what a great marriage looks like.
• 25:07
  My parents didn't have that. Your parents didn't have that.
• 25:10
  Are you interested in building something new?
• 25:12
  I thought when I still launched the John Deloney Show, I thought
• 25:17
  that people were coming to the show because it took off so
• 25:19
  fast, because I was so smart. They weren't.
• 25:22
  They came to the show really fast because.
• 25:25
  Of how I talked to other people, that's what they had never seen.
• 25:29
  They'd never seen somebody sit down across the table from
• 25:31
  someone who said, hey, I just cheated on my husband.
• 25:33
  I don't know what to do next. And me not yell and kick and
• 25:35
  scream and me say. Dude, pass the nachos, we got to
• 25:38
  figure this out. And still say you can't.
• 25:40
  Cheat if you want to stay married, right?
• 25:42
  And here's how to like so. I think it's finding pictures of
• 25:45
  what this looks like. That could be sitting with an
• 25:48
  older married couple who's figured it out.
• 25:50
  That can be going to counseling. That can be reading books
• 25:52
  together and having honest conversations.
• 25:56
  I had been pretty open about the one conversation my wife and I
• 25:59
  had. We sat across the table.
• 26:00
  It's like, are we going to keep doing this?
• 26:03
  I had her as a guest on my show for my 500th episode.
• 26:06
  I had her as a guest and she said something like one time.
• 26:10
  We've done that like 4 times and I was like, well I guess that's
• 26:13
  out there now, right? So there is no perfect marriage.
• 26:16
  It doesn't exist. I think what makes it perfect is
• 26:19
  will you both keep coming back to the table?
• 26:22
  And saying, OK, cool. The great Esther Perel said, I
• 26:25
  love what she said. She said most adults have four
• 26:28
  or five great lives in their adult life, in their adulthood.
• 26:32
  And if you work really hard, it can be with the same person.
• 26:36
  And so this idea of. I am married to a radically
• 26:40
  different person right now that I'm married. 21 years ago, her
• 26:44
  name is the same, her Social Security number's the same, but
• 26:46
  she is a radically different person.
• 26:48
  And thank God I'm a radically different guy because I was an
• 26:50
  idiot back then. I still not that great, but I'm
• 26:53
  better than I was. The goal is, can we keep coming
• 26:56
  back to the table and saying, hey, we've never been parents
• 26:58
  with an eighth grader and a second grader, how can I love
• 27:02
  you this week? And I wish it was more complex
• 27:05
  than that, but in my home, after two decades, we ask that
• 27:09
  question every week. What's your picture of this
• 27:12
  week? Look like and how can I best
• 27:14
  love you this week? And when I feel things get
• 27:16
  intense, I'll say, how can I love you today?
• 27:19
  And sometimes her answer hurts my feelings.
• 27:21
  I need you to go. Outside out into the woods and
• 27:23
  not be here for a little bit and I'll go great, I'm out, right.
• 27:26
  And sometimes it's I need you to do bed times tonight because I'm
• 27:29
  going to set the house on fire just just just to feel it
• 27:32
  warmth, right. And so it's always coming back
• 27:35
  and coming back and coming back. And the expectation is she's
• 27:37
  going to say, hey, how can I love you today?
• 27:39
  And when two people are engaged that way, not you're never going
• 27:42
  to do it perfectly, but if you're committed to always
• 27:44
  coming. Back and always coming back.
• 27:47
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  order, there is this common phrase marry the wrong person.
• 28:59
  You know, this idea that you can marry the wrong person.
• 29:02
  And I've seen it, you know, and like Reddit threads or you know,
• 29:06
  support groups online that are people pouring out their hearts
• 29:10
  or just in personal friendships over the years where people are
• 29:13
  worried that a they will marry the wrong person.
• 29:16
  So it kind of paralyzes them and decision making or once they're
• 29:19
  married, if they're hitting a rough patch, they're concerned.
• 29:22
  Did I marry the wrong person? Do you buy that it's possible to
• 29:25
  marry the wrong person? I don't buy that there's such
• 29:28
  thing as you a right or. Wrong.
• 29:30
  Right. That goes back to the Romeo O
• 29:33
  Romeo, right? Where our our vision, our
• 29:36
  pinnacle vision of romance in the 21st century is two
• 29:40
  teenagers who snuck away to get married so they could sleep
• 29:44
  together and then died in a murder suicide.
• 29:47
  That is our ultimate picture of romance in our culture.
• 29:51
  It's insane. It's madness.
• 29:53
  So no, I don't buy into the there's one right person or
• 29:56
  there's a wrong person, no doubt about it.
• 29:59
  There are people that say I don't care what your values are.
• 30:02
  This is what I'm doing. We're going to live in this
• 30:05
  house and I'm going to drive this suburban.
• 30:06
  I don't care if we can afford it or not.
• 30:08
  And I will take out this much debt and I will buy this.
• 30:12
  And our kids will be dressed like, I mean, yeah, there's
• 30:14
  definitely people who are not interested in building a
• 30:17
  marriage. They are interested in
• 30:20
  reflecting to the world their fantasy.
• 30:23
  About what success looks like. So yeah, if you're married to
• 30:29
  somebody who has no interest in being married to you, they're
• 30:32
  not right. That's not right.
• 30:34
  I don't know that they're wrong existentially.
• 30:36
  They have just chosen. I don't want to work on this
• 30:38
  with you. I don't want to be in a
• 30:40
  relationship. With you.
• 30:42
  I think it's important to note that every single solitary
• 30:47
  relationship in the. World from a.
• 30:49
  Friendship to a relationship with a pet to a relationship.
• 30:52
  With a with a. Employer to a romantic
• 30:55
  relationship, every one of those is a risk that something's going
• 31:00
  to happen on the other end, that they're going to look at you and
• 31:01
  say I don't want to be in this anymore with you.
• 31:03
  You can't work here anymore. I'm running away as my dog did
• 31:07
  one time. Every relationship you enter is
• 31:09
  a risk, and so if you're not ready to take that risk, then
• 31:13
  don't get involved. But don't, don't.
• 31:14
  Peg it to some existential I don't want.
• 31:16
  To marry the wrong and what's the right one?
• 31:18
  The right one is 2 people who sit a table and say I'm all in
• 31:20
  if you're all in. That's the right one.
• 31:23
  And you can have a right one with a whole bunch of different
• 31:25
  people. You just got to everyone's got
• 31:26
  to make that choice. Yeah, it's the power of the
• 31:29
  promise. I I think one of one piece of
• 31:31
  advice that was given to me years ago that I found so
• 31:34
  helpful is that morality, the the moral code, like, you know,
• 31:38
  be faithful, marriage is forever.
• 31:41
  Like when you get married and you make those vows, you keep
• 31:43
  your promise, that clarifies a whole lot of complications that
• 31:48
  sometimes we create or we can invent where if what you're
• 31:51
  doing is not moral, then that thing is not going to ultimately
• 31:54
  bring happiness in the long run. And that thing is not the right
• 31:56
  decision, period. And then it's sort of the
• 31:58
  question of prudence. OK, well, how do I navigate this
• 32:00
  difficult situation I may be in? But you know, and, and if you,
• 32:04
  if you are married to them, they are the right person.
• 32:06
  I mean, that's the, that's the beauty, beautiful thing about
• 32:09
  making the choice. You know, if you really went in
• 32:11
  that marriage freely and you've really chose that freely,
• 32:14
  obviously if you're a coerced or abused or into it, that
• 32:17
  obviously that's different. But then that is the right
• 32:19
  person. And then there's a question of
• 32:20
  how do we, how do we make this work together?
• 32:23
  Yeah, I, I think you can tie yourself in knots.
• 32:26
  Is this the right? Is that the right?
• 32:27
  I think that's not the question. The question is, who are you
• 32:30
  going to be when you take this job?
• 32:31
  Who are you going to be when you enter into this relationship?
• 32:34
  Who are you going to be when you have this child?
• 32:37
  And we try to hedge everything on the front end of it.
• 32:39
  And I just don't think. That's how it works.
• 32:40
  Similar to my My grandparents were married, I want to say 73
• 32:46
  years, maybe 74 before my granddad died.
• 32:48
  They were married for a billion years.
• 32:51
  My granddad was a World War 2 vet.
• 32:53
  They were amazing. They raised 4 awesome kids.
• 32:56
  They did all this cool stuff. And then when my granddad died,
• 32:59
  I remember my grandmother looking at me.
• 33:01
  She was a. Powerhouse of a woman.
• 33:04
  And she couldn't breathe right. And she said, I don't know what
• 33:09
  to do. And that's when I realized, oh,
• 33:13
  they're a single entity. She lost one of her lungs and
• 33:18
  she lost one of her legs and one of her arms and a half of her
• 33:20
  heart. And that's what a soulmate was.
• 33:24
  And when I, when they got married, the idea of a soulmate,
• 33:27
  that's what a dumb idea? That's, that's dumb.
• 33:31
  Like we're we just did life together for 70 years and what
• 33:36
  we try to do now is we try to reverse engineer that.
• 33:38
  We try to hire. I mean we try to hire, we try to
• 33:41
  marry a soulmate, find a soulmate, find the person and
• 33:45
  then create it that way. That's not how it works.
• 33:48
  You have to go put in the hard work for 2550, seventy years and
• 33:52
  then at the end you. Realize, oh, we share
• 33:56
  everything. We share the air.
• 33:58
  Right. And that's a different
• 33:59
  proposition. That's just a it's a cultural
• 34:01
  flip. Flop that we've done that
• 34:03
  doesn't make any sense and it doesn't bear out.
• 34:06
  So good. That's so good.
• 34:07
  One of the comments I saw on the video about the guy going back
• 34:10
  to that same one about him, you know, having these regrets and
• 34:14
  these emotions that he was dealing with.
• 34:15
  And then he cheats on his wife, but he's still in the marriage.
• 34:17
  And you were telling him, make up your mind, be all in or all
• 34:20
  out. And either way your your misery
• 34:22
  will follow you. But one of the top comments on
• 34:24
  the video, which I thought was so it was so telling.
• 34:27
  It was I left my marriage of 11 years.
• 34:29
  I took my son from my first marriage with me, but my
• 34:32
  daughter for my second marriage chose to stay with my husband.
• 34:35
  I cheated on him because I thought the grass was greener on
• 34:37
  the other side. It wasn't.
• 34:39
  I threw away my family and has come to haunt me even a
• 34:41
  generation later. My daughter chose not to have a
• 34:43
  relationship with me. And then she talks about all the
• 34:45
  fallout from the grass was greener.
• 34:47
  You know, she went on after this fling.
• 34:49
  She, you know, I had this vision of a different life.
• 34:51
  And now she's on Christmas and she says today is Christmas and
• 34:54
  I have to watch them on TikTok or on Instagram because it's the
• 34:57
  only way I can feel like they're in my life at all.
• 35:00
  And she says, don't ruin your lives with infidelity.
• 35:02
  If you're married and you have children, try to work through
• 35:04
  it. It destroys their life and it
• 35:06
  will destroy yours as well. I mean, I, I, I feel like that
• 35:11
  story isn't told enough, that raw honesty, because the happy
• 35:16
  divorce story seems to be told more often in pop culture.
• 35:20
  I mean, think about all the celebrities who happily divorce.
• 35:22
  We've chosen to, you know, amicably.
• 35:24
  We love each other till eternity.
• 35:25
  But now we're going our separate ways, right?
• 35:28
  And it's like all happy pictures of their separate ways, not
• 35:33
  reality. What?
• 35:34
  Yeah. And it comes down to this.
• 35:37
  The phrase we hear a lot is our relationship has run its course.
• 35:41
  And I just called nonsense on that.
• 35:42
  One of you or both of you quit. Call it what it is, call it what
• 35:46
  it is. And you used to be my friend.
• 35:47
  You used to come to my house like and drink my beers.
• 35:50
  I used to be my friend. But you quit.
• 35:53
  You quit. Both of you did.
• 35:55
  Or one of you wanted to be with somebody else and you thought
• 35:57
  that was going to make things OK.
• 35:59
  Or one of you got real obsessed with X or Y or let go of X or
• 36:03
  what whatever The thing is. What have you got?
• 36:05
  Abusive and unbearable. Y'all stopped and so I just
• 36:10
  don't buy that language as though some relationships have
• 36:13
  more gas than than others. It's just people quit driving
• 36:15
  and that's it is what it is right.
• 36:18
  But you're right the the other side, I think factually I don't
• 36:21
  know the data. On it, it'd be interesting to
• 36:22
  look at it. I don't know how you could do a
• 36:24
  real study on this, but for every one of those I get another
• 36:29
  note that says, hey, I left my marriage and I got remarried and
• 36:32
  it's great and wonderful and good.
• 36:33
  OK, we'll find. But you're right the the
• 36:36
  conversation about no I went ahead and this person made me
• 36:41
  feel more alive. I texted this person back that I
• 36:44
  wasn't married to and then she thought I was hilarious.
• 36:47
  And then I texted him back and then I sent this picture and he
• 36:50
  sent that picture. And then we ended up meeting up
• 36:52
  and I thought it was going to solve this, this feeling.
• 36:55
  And I ended up blowing up everything.
• 36:57
  Yeah, that story's just not told.
• 36:58
  It's just not told enough. And so I, I again, like if
• 37:06
  you're getting your relationship advice from celebrity
• 37:10
  Instagrams, that's probably not a great place to get it.
• 37:13
  Get it from your elderly neighbors who live down the
• 37:15
  street who are still married. Go sit with them and.
• 37:18
  Figure it out. They're going to give you.
• 37:21
  They may not give you some nonsense from some.
• 37:24
  Modern day college professor, They may not give you some
• 37:27
  nonsense that sounds all hip and cool on Instagram, but they're
• 37:30
  going to tell you the truth because they've made it.
• 37:31
  They pulled it out. Well, I think that what you just
• 37:34
  said, you know, you get messages and I know couples that are
• 37:36
  remarried after divorces and sometimes, you know, in the
• 37:41
  Catholic tradition, there's something called annulment
• 37:42
  saying that this actually wasn't a marriage to begin with.
• 37:45
  So that different, different category.
• 37:47
  Yeah, it wasn't an actual marriage because there wasn't
• 37:48
  freedom or there was a secret cover up from one of the
• 37:51
  spouses, etcetera. But let's just talk about
• 37:54
  divorce where no, it was, you know, we fell apart or we or
• 37:57
  whatever it was. And you know, those happily
• 37:59
  remarried stories. It's still not, you know,
• 38:02
  there's not an acknowledgement there that there maybe could
• 38:05
  have been a happily, you know, restoring story or happy
• 38:10
  rejuvenation story or something with your first spouse if all
• 38:13
  the work that we're talking about had been done.
• 38:15
  But you'll never know because you never you never did it
• 38:18
  right. You walked into the new
• 38:20
  relationship. So again, not to pass judgement
• 38:21
  on anyone specifically here, but I think that's another just kind
• 38:25
  of story that's not told is like that story of no, we're going to
• 38:28
  fight it out together and make it work and create something
• 38:30
  even more beautiful together instead of just trying it
• 38:33
  somewhere else. Yeah, Esther Pearl's analogy was
• 38:38
  one of the most profound I've ever heard.
• 38:41
  And she was talking to a couple who had experienced.
• 38:42
  Infidelity when I'm going to cheat on the other one.
• 38:44
  And they kept using language. I just wanted to get back.
• 38:47
  I just want to get back. I want to get back to the way it
• 38:49
  was when we were dating. I want to get back to those
• 38:51
  first few years when we didn't have any kids.
• 38:53
  We were just having sex all the time all over the place.
• 38:55
  And everything was wild and fun and so exciting.
• 38:57
  We had money to burn. And what she said was really, I
• 39:02
  love this, this picture. She said you could not go back
• 39:06
  to Manhattan, downtown New York on September twelve, 2001, and
• 39:13
  sweep up all the glass and twisted steel.
• 39:16
  And wood and. Use all that dust and rebuild
• 39:19
  those two twin towers. They fell.
• 39:22
  You have two choices. You walk away and let nature
• 39:25
  take it back over the next couple million years.
• 39:28
  Or you get a bunch of experts and professionals out there.
• 39:30
  You'll excavate the whole thing. You have to design and build
• 39:34
  something brand new that is hopefully stronger, arguably
• 39:38
  more beautiful. That's a testament to the, I
• 39:40
  mean, it's a picture of the past, but also a projection to
• 39:42
  the future. And you got to build something
• 39:44
  completely new. And I think if more couples
• 39:48
  entered into marriage knowing our first year is going to be
• 39:50
  what it is and then we have to rebuild something new.
• 39:53
  You know why? Because we've never been married
• 39:55
  for a second year with all the temptations and struggles and
• 39:58
  financial realities and I want to move and parent influence and
• 40:01
  all that kind of stuff. And then when you have your
• 40:03
  first kid. I can't tell you how many times
• 40:06
  I hear I just wanted to get back.
• 40:08
  I want my wife to get back to the way things were.
• 40:09
  I want my husband to be back. Dude, it's not ever going to be
• 40:12
  that way. You have a kid now, it's
• 40:13
  different. And so you have to build a new
• 40:16
  marriage around this. And if you wrap your head around
• 40:19
  that, it can be the funnest thing in the world.
• 40:22
  I love it every we do an annual. My wife and I get away for a a
• 40:25
  annual. Retreat every year.
• 40:27
  Just to say, how was last year and we had some like personal
• 40:30
  goals and we have some ideas about how things might look in
• 40:32
  the future and what do we wish, What do we have to grieve from
• 40:35
  last year? What are we excited about?
• 40:36
  What do we need to stop and just celebrate from last year in this
• 40:40
  year's meeting, By the way, it was awful.
• 40:42
  We had to come back for another meeting in a third meeting
• 40:45
  because the first couple were bad.
• 40:47
  They didn't go well. We got pretty cross with each
• 40:49
  other. We ended up in a pretty weird
• 40:50
  disagreement. So they're not all rose petals
• 40:54
  and and scented candles. It's tough, but this idea is we
• 40:59
  got to build something new all the time.
• 41:01
  I've never been, she's my wife married a nerd.
• 41:04
  She's never been married to somebody who gets bajillions of
• 41:07
  comments all the time and people sending stuff to our house and
• 41:11
  showing up in the, you know, when we're out in restaurants,
• 41:13
  Like that's a new marriage for her.
• 41:15
  And I've never been married to some like.
• 41:17
  So all of it's new and there's a beauty and a fun to that.
• 41:20
  But when you experience things, when things go sideways, you
• 41:25
  can't get back to the way it was, you can't go backwards.
• 41:28
  You've got to build something new from the floor up.
• 41:32
  And that's, that's a big. Things and and minor things.
• 41:35
  Little things. Takes a lot of action,
• 41:39
  resiliency, you can use that word, but it's really just
• 41:42
  plowing through like taking action, like making forward
• 41:45
  movement. And it makes sense because love
• 41:47
  is not a feeling, right? Love is an action.
• 41:50
  It's a choice that you can action day in and day out and,
• 41:52
  and that, that sometimes can be really hard and love is not
• 41:56
  always butterflies and easy. Sometimes it is that hard choice
• 42:00
  every day and you got to plow through.
• 42:01
  But that's where you're building something really beautiful and
• 42:04
  not what you're building is you're building a, a
• 42:06
  relationship of, of real love, of actual a foundation on
• 42:11
  sacrifice as opposed to just this is for me and, and my
• 42:14
  feelings and. That would be the worst Ryan
• 42:17
  Gosling moving ever. Ever.
• 42:19
  If it was like. There's a lot of already worse
• 42:21
  Ryan Gosling to be that. Well, but if he.
• 42:24
  I don't know, I kind of love him, but if.
• 42:25
  He if he. Takes like person.
• 42:27
  That sounds like it. No, I just like saw him without
• 42:30
  a. Shirt on.
• 42:30
  I was like, man, that'd. Be nice, but here's the deal.
• 42:32
  So like if the movie was, he opens his eyes and he looks over
• 42:37
  at his sleeping wife and says, I choose to love you today.
• 42:41
  And he gets up and makes his side of the bed, and then he
• 42:43
  gets up and picks up the wet towels that she left on the.
• 42:45
  Floor. And she gets he gets up and and
• 42:49
  starts making breakfast. And like, if that that would be
• 42:53
  a boring movie. It would.
• 42:55
  But that is that's what love looks like over the long haul,
• 42:59
  right? And also, it looks like her
• 43:01
  waking up when he's asleep and doing the same thing on the
• 43:04
  other side of it. So it's both people deciding I'm
• 43:07
  going to be all in on this thing.
• 43:08
  But it doesn't make for a sexy, exciting movie.
• 43:11
  The same as, you know, like it took me and my wife almost 15
• 43:17
  years to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in
• 43:23
  mortgages and student loans and nonsense.
• 43:26
  And it was the worst. And yet we found.
• 43:30
  Parts of ourself on the other side of that a.
• 43:33
  Strength that we didn't know. A marriage we didn't.
• 43:35
  Know a freedom we didn't know existed.
• 43:37
  And I could have sat there and tweeted a lot about it and
• 43:40
  yelled about it and. Like.
• 43:43
  Been mad at the government about it?
• 43:45
  Or like, here's the choice in. Front of me right now.
• 43:48
  Let's just go make those. Hard choices, and over the long
• 43:51
  haul we're going to create something pretty extraordinary.
• 43:53
  I get my actors mixed up a lot. Ryan Gosling was in the
• 43:56
  notebook, right? Yes, yes.
• 43:59
  OK, yeah, that's what I mean that that movie, because it's
• 44:02
  just like she threw away love. I mean, they weren't married
• 44:05
  yet, right? They were just fiance's.
• 44:07
  So I guess all's fair in love and war to some extent because
• 44:09
  they hadn't actually made the commitment yet.
• 44:11
  But I just felt like the the emotional childishness.
• 44:16
  Well, I'll tell you something that that that would make me a
• 44:18
  terrible. Relationship.
• 44:19
  But how would you critique the note I've?
• 44:21
  Just seen the notebook. Here's how I'm gonna I'm gonna
• 44:23
  critique it. I'm.
• 44:23
  Gonna get hate in the comments. Some people are gonna love that
• 44:28
  movie, but. As a relationship guy, I hate to
• 44:31
  say that I've never seen it, so I'm gonna make it a my my
• 44:35
  publicist just was like what? Like no, I've never seen it.
• 44:38
  So I will. I will watch it.
• 44:40
  It's pretty horrible in my opinion.
• 44:41
  Maybe I'll do a video on this one day of like my least
• 44:44
  favorite chick flicks and why? But but it was just like the
• 44:47
  childishness of what love is like love was love is purely
• 44:50
  emotion and desire as opposed to love is a decision.
• 44:54
  And it's a decision that you spend time investing your life
• 44:57
  in over a period of time as opposed to just like a fling
• 45:00
  basically. But anyways we can talk about
• 45:03
  that one. I actually had breakfast
• 45:06
  recently with. I won't.
• 45:09
  I won't. Out this person, but it's an
• 45:10
  expert that would be recognizable to some of your
• 45:13
  listeners and the conversation we're having is a very personal
• 45:16
  private conversation. But he said if you had told my
• 45:20
  21 year old self that, sex in my 40s would have been so much.
• 45:26
  Better than it was in my 20s with one person I've been
• 45:31
  married to for this long. I I would.
• 45:33
  Have said you're insane, you're insane.
• 45:36
  And I said what do you think that is?
• 45:37
  And he said it's an honesty and a vulnerability because you're
• 45:42
  still hedging your bets when you're in your 20s, you're still
• 45:43
  trying to hide, you're still trying to present the the
• 45:46
  Instagram filtered version of you, even when you're married,
• 45:49
  even with that person that walks in on you while you're going to
• 45:51
  the bathroom. And there's something about
• 45:53
  being 40 and going this is. Who I am and I love all of you.
• 45:58
  Will you please love all of me? Which I think is the scariest
• 46:00
  question anybody can ask. But I think it was a profound
• 46:04
  and I laughed because like, dude, you can't tell any 19 year
• 46:06
  old that. And they're like, he's like, I
• 46:07
  know dude, you can't tell anybody that.
• 46:09
  You just have to experience it. But it's this idea that just
• 46:12
  hang in there. Just hang in there.
• 46:15
  I don't feel like like I don't feel like I love you anymore.
• 46:18
  Let that be the starting line, not the finish line.
• 46:22
  Let that be the starting line to at least trying to have some
• 46:26
  challenging conversations that will lead to a brand new
• 46:29
  marriage that you're married to a different person and you're a
• 46:31
  different person and y'all have created something powerful for
• 46:35
  yourselves, for your kids, for your community.
• 46:38
  Let that attempt to be a starting line, not a finish line
• 46:41
  because that idea of I feel I feel pan, that can be really
• 46:44
  tough. It should be a signal, not a
• 46:46
  statement. Well, and I think as Christians,
• 46:50
  you know, there is the intangible that's very becomes
• 46:53
  very tangible of God's grace. Like there's three in a
• 46:57
  marriage. It's not just you and that
• 46:58
  person sticking it out. And yeah, I mean, this is not to
• 47:00
  say like people who don't believe in God can't marry and
• 47:03
  stay married and be faithful and and develop love together.
• 47:06
  They absolutely can. But when you're asking God for
• 47:09
  that special supernatural support, that grace, it does
• 47:13
  make this huge difference. It can be transformative.
• 47:16
  But again, I think even those examples are stories aren't told
• 47:19
  enough either. And so sometimes people don't
• 47:21
  trust that that can be real for them.
• 47:25
  Or even that idea of that, you mentioned it earlier, I think
• 47:27
  it's important to just click. On like.
• 47:30
  Covenant. I said I would.
• 47:33
  I said forever, and I said if you get sick or if we go broke
• 47:39
  or if you do something that other people think is
• 47:42
  unforgivable, like I said. Forever.
• 47:44
  I said that. And so I think we throw that
• 47:47
  away. I think we have a very
• 47:49
  distracting disposable culture. I said forever.
• 47:53
  I know when I buy a car, maybe I got 10 years of that thing.
• 47:55
  Or if you're like me, you keep goes away too long because and
• 47:59
  you embarrass your family. But like, I like when you buy
• 48:02
  something you know you're going to.
• 48:03
  Replace it at some point. We just have a pretty disposable
• 48:07
  culture, and I think there's something like I said I would.
• 48:10
  And if you're a person of faith then and you bring your deity
• 48:14
  into it, you tell God I'm in forever.
• 48:17
  I said that's an important covenant.
• 48:19
  That you made. Right, it's the important
• 48:22
  covenant you made you stamped it into concrete and just to blow
• 48:25
  it off is is it's pretty dismissive and small.
• 48:30
  It's, it's a, it's a, it's a frightening thing just to.
• 48:33
  Blow that off. There's another topic that came
• 48:36
  up a lot in some of the lives that I saw that you did, the
• 48:38
  live question and answers. And this one is a topic that I
• 48:41
  think deserves so much exploration because I think it
• 48:46
  really effects, we've touched on it in this conversation.
• 48:49
  It's basically feelings and a desire, but I think it affects
• 48:52
  decision making around relationships more than maybe
• 48:55
  anything else. And it has to do with
• 48:57
  attraction. You know, the feeling of
• 48:59
  attraction, the sort of intangible, like I had this
• 49:01
  vision of being with this person or in another scenario and it's
• 49:05
  just keeping me up at night. And so you're unhappy.
• 49:07
  You're not in the present moment with your current with your
• 49:09
  spouse or your current relationship.
• 49:10
  Anyways, you did a video with this guy, this kid called him he
• 49:14
  was 22 years old newlywed I think if I remember it correctly
• 49:18
  he the the title was I have a trash, I have a crush on a Co
• 49:21
  worker but I'm happily married. Apparently this young man
• 49:25
  switches jobs, he moves to a new town.
• 49:28
  He's been married but now he's have this random attraction,
• 49:31
  sudden and strong attraction to a Co worker and he's like what
• 49:34
  do I do? Does this mean I again married
• 49:36
  the wrong person? How do I navigate this?
• 49:40
  Share your thoughts like how how to navigate attraction because
• 49:44
  the reality is, and I heard this before I got married from
• 49:46
  marriage counselors, you're you know, you should be attracted to
• 49:49
  your spouse when you marry them. By the way, do not marry someone
• 49:51
  if you're not attracted to them. I do you agree with that?
• 49:54
  By the way, John. Yeah, I think it's.
• 49:56
  OK. Yeah, just a little bit easier.
• 49:59
  I think attraction. I think attraction.
• 50:01
  I think attraction is. Drastically reductionistic.
• 50:05
  Like it's very aesthetic, right? Yes, of course.
• 50:08
  And I think attraction. Means is something so much more
• 50:11
  than like physical. Body features.
• 50:14
  Totally, exactly, totally. It's it's it's.
• 50:16
  But yes, you need to be attracted to the.
• 50:17
  Person you're with 100%. Yes, yes.
• 50:19
  So and then what that means to different people at different
• 50:22
  times that it does ever flow, it changes.
• 50:25
  But the point here is what's what is your take on how to
• 50:28
  handle of attraction, especially when you're married and if you
• 50:33
  experience a lack of attraction, suddenly less attraction than
• 50:37
  you thought, attraction for other people.
• 50:39
  Because in the modern world today, I think in pop culture
• 50:42
  and secular society, if you're not attracted, you should get
• 50:45
  out. And if you are really attracted
• 50:47
  to someone else, you should get in bed with them basically, if
• 50:50
  they want to get in bed with you.
• 50:52
  And you know, this is a long question here, but I, I was
• 50:55
  recently on a podcast with this gentleman who's a big YouTube
• 50:59
  named Destiny. And that's his like stage name
• 51:02
  on YouTube anyways. And he was in this open marriage
• 51:04
  with his wife. Well, he called her his wife.
• 51:07
  She called him her husband. But they basically said, if we
• 51:10
  have sexual attraction for somebody else and they're down,
• 51:13
  we're OK with sharing. And, you know, unsurprisingly,
• 51:17
  the marriage unraveled very publicly.
• 51:18
  Now they're divorced or they're divorcing.
• 51:20
  It's very tragic. But you know, why?
• 51:23
  What does one do with attraction in and outside of marriage?
• 51:27
  How what's the? What's the?
• 51:28
  What are some of the bright lines and and how of how to
• 51:30
  navigate that? Well, I think, I think.
• 51:33
  There's a, there's, I mean there's multiple questions
• 51:35
  inside that question. So we can just kind of pull them
• 51:37
  apart. As you mentioned, attraction
• 51:40
  ebbs and flows. When I was in the middle of
• 51:43
  writing a book and I was getting up at 4:00 AM and then going to
• 51:46
  work all day for shows and then travelling and then writing in
• 51:48
  hotel rooms, I would come home a haggard mess.
• 51:52
  I was not the joke with with my wife.
• 51:56
  Is like, I know I'm not my A game right now like and like I
• 51:59
  was in the gym, I was main lining gummy candies all the
• 52:03
  time. I didn't look great.
• 52:04
  I was haggard mess. And and so that ebbs and flows.
• 52:10
  That's part of life. That's part of being in
• 52:12
  relationship with somebody. The same as people get grumpy
• 52:14
  and they're in great moods and there's a really tough season at
• 52:17
  work. And so there's that natural ebb
• 52:20
  and flow to that. And if you allow yourself to be
• 52:24
  just blown either which way in the wind, like a small little a
• 52:27
  sailboat, yeah, you're going to you're going to wreck your
• 52:30
  marriage. I also think it's absolutely
• 52:33
  insane to be I, if I remember quickly, I don't remember the
• 52:36
  end of this call, but I remember walking away thinking this guy's
• 52:40
  beating himself up because he was working at a new place.
• 52:43
  And this Co worker is pretty and she's hilarious.
• 52:45
  And here's a crush. Like I don't think you beat
• 52:48
  yourself up over that. But it's an important signal
• 52:50
  that I need to not go to lunch with this person.
• 52:53
  I need to not respond. I need to not text this.
• 52:56
  Person I need to make. Sure that my boundaries are
• 52:58
  really firm because I like their company and this is a recipe for
• 53:03
  blowing my whole life up and so I for me, dude, I travel over
• 53:08
  the I mean amazing people. Of course you find yourself
• 53:12
  attracted to people you get you think people are wonderful and
• 53:15
  hilarious and so smart and so fun.
• 53:16
  I don't have another conversation, and I told my wife
• 53:21
  I do. And so I've made the mistake
• 53:25
  before of seeing how close you get to that line and dancing on
• 53:28
  it. And oh, man, you can get scary
• 53:30
  close. And so now those signals, those
• 53:33
  alarms for me are I don't even go near that stuff.
• 53:37
  But I think it's nuts to say you're never going to be
• 53:38
  attracted to somebody ever again.
• 53:40
  That doesn't mean you go act on it.
• 53:42
  You know who does that? Children.
• 53:43
  You've seen the marshmallow test, right?
• 53:46
  Like some good children have come.
• 53:47
  Along with those tests, though, it's.
• 53:49
  They are. They are.
• 53:50
  But children have feelings and then they act on each one of
• 53:53
  them. Adults are able to create a plan
• 53:59
  and stick with it, create covenant, stick with it.
• 54:02
  Now when it comes to what I would call more drastic things
• 54:06
  like people have called my show it says my my husband or wife
• 54:08
  has gained 100 lbs or they went and cut.
• 54:13
  All their hair off or my husband shaved his head and shaved like
• 54:16
  did this and whatever and now I'm not attracted to them
• 54:18
  anymore. I think that is a conversation
• 54:21
  that you sit down and have honestly.
• 54:23
  Here's why. They know nobody gains 100 lbs
• 54:28
  or 50 lbs and doesn't know. But they know when you when you
• 54:34
  avert your. Eyes.
• 54:35
  They know when your touch slowly fades and stops.
• 54:39
  They know when intimacy in your marriage starts to dwindle and
• 54:43
  dwindle, They know. And so pretending like you don't
• 54:47
  want to quote UN quote hurt anybody's feelings.
• 54:49
  Or pretending like you don't want you're just slowly
• 54:52
  suffocating each other. Have the conversation.
• 54:54
  And when it comes to like, the one I get on my show a lot is.
• 54:57
  A My my partner's gained a lot of weight.
• 55:00
  That's often almost always a conversation about I'm worried
• 55:05
  about you because that's often a by product of.
• 55:08
  A bunch of other things going on in our.
• 55:10
  Marriage or in in. I'm watching the person I love
• 55:14
  slowly become Last of Us of who they were.
• 55:16
  Both in personality and enjoy and in all these other things.
• 55:19
  And so it's almost, well, not almost ever.
• 55:22
  It's less a conversation about he used to have ABS and now he
• 55:26
  doesn't. It's usually it's not about
• 55:28
  that. It's about.
• 55:28
  Dude, I'm worried about my husband, right?
• 55:30
  I'm really worried about him. On a host and I'm not attracted
• 55:33
  to him anymore. And so I think you sit down, you
• 55:35
  have that hard, hard conversation.
• 55:37
  And again, it's not, hey, listen, you've gained a bunch of
• 55:41
  weight. That's not how you had that
• 55:42
  conversation. Because now you start a fight
• 55:43
  and they have to go to war with you.
• 55:44
  They got to defend themselves. But it is.
• 55:46
  I'm really worried about you. And I'm struggling with being
• 55:50
  attracted to you, and I'm going to own that.
• 55:53
  And you're putting your vulnerability on the table.
• 55:55
  Is that going to hurt to hear that?
• 55:56
  Absolutely. Is that going to be the path
• 55:58
  towards healing? Yes.
• 56:00
  If there's going to be healing to be had, then yes.
• 56:03
  I think it's hard. I hear a lot of these stories,
• 56:05
  especially from kind of like postpartum mom groups, but you
• 56:09
  know, women who are in the child bearing years and they're
• 56:12
  gaining weight and they're, you know, the weight stays on and
• 56:16
  then they feel they're not as attractive or their husband even
• 56:19
  has the candid conversation with them.
• 56:21
  You know, I'm not as attracted. I mean, what do you do in that
• 56:25
  kind of a more sticky situation where it's not as clean cut as,
• 56:29
  oh, just let me get you on a diet plan to lose 50 lbs.
• 56:34
  I don't know that there's a clean cut metric there.
• 56:38
  I'll tell any guy like if if you're challenging your pregnant
• 56:43
  wife on how she looks. Postpartum so she's yeah, I
• 56:47
  don't I mean, but but but keep in mind like the world I mean,
• 56:51
  another thing we talked about in the podcast a lot is
• 56:53
  pornography. And, you know, I, I go on shows
• 56:56
  that I debate people about why porn is not a good thing, which
• 57:00
  surprisingly, some people still think porn can somehow be a good
• 57:03
  thing. But unfortunately, you know,
• 57:05
  that's their culture today. But a lot of people are waking
• 57:07
  up and saying, no, it's a bad thing.
• 57:09
  And so anyways, there's this expectation of what I want
• 57:12
  sexually or what I'm seeking. And obviously when you're, you
• 57:16
  know, if you're in a marriage and your, your spouse is having
• 57:19
  children and then everything else is, is a natural part of
• 57:21
  marriage, it doesn't match what the pornification culture sets
• 57:27
  up as, you know, the ideal womanhood or whatever it is.
• 57:30
  So I don't know if you if you have any advice, generally
• 57:33
  speaking for the right mindset to have for men and women.
• 57:37
  Well, I think, I mean, I think you nailed it first.
• 57:39
  I mean, I don't, I don't know a neuroscientist that thinks
• 57:41
  pornography is a good idea anymore.
• 57:43
  I don't, I don't know who's still hanging on to that.
• 57:45
  But and that's not. Even like a faith-based.
• 57:48
  Statement that's a, that's a science argument.
• 57:52
  But I mean, I think you have to deal with the fact that your
• 57:57
  husband has a fantasy that they've created about how the
• 58:00
  world works. It is simply untrue.
• 58:02
  And they have been willing to throw away all of this other
• 58:10
  thing we talked about. Attraction is a big picture,
• 58:12
  right? It's not just a static, but
• 58:15
  they're willing to erase all of that for X&Y&Z man, that's a
• 58:21
  conversation that your marriage have to, you have to deal with
• 58:23
  in your marriage. And by the way.
• 58:30
  Try to say this the right way. I mean, would that be an
• 58:33
  addiction? I mean, it sounds like if it's
• 58:35
  so if. I mean, if you're addicted to
• 58:36
  pornography, yes. Or addicted to a sexual idea.
• 58:40
  I mean, you could say like stuck on an idea about how sex should
• 58:44
  be or what they need their spouse's body to be.
• 58:49
  I don't know if I'd classify it as an addiction.
• 58:54
  It's, it's, it's, it's just, it's just not real.
• 58:57
  It's, it's, it's imaginary. It's not real.
• 59:00
  It's, yeah, it's not real. And if that's what you think you
• 59:05
  need, then you're going to have a very, very miserable.
• 59:09
  Life a very miserable life and. Because you're going to move.
• 59:15
  From person to person to person to person.
• 59:17
  And you are not going to know the depths of what like you're
• 59:22
  not going to know it's 70 years. And when your partner dies, that
• 59:26
  part of you goes with them because that's how connected you
• 59:28
  are. But yeah, it's, it's, I don't
• 59:30
  know. I wouldn't classify as an
• 59:31
  addiction, but I classify it as. Just a an irrational fantasy.
• 59:35
  It's not real. It's not real.
• 59:39
  And so it's a both and. It's a both and.
• 59:42
  But here's the thing. Here's what I was trying to I
• 59:44
  didn't know. Right way to say this?
• 59:45
  Or like a tangible I mean. A couth way of saying this, but
• 59:51
  if that's the person that you married, my guess is I would be
• 59:55
  surprised. Maybe not, but I'd be surprised
• 59:57
  if there wasn't. There wasn't seeds of that
• 1:00:02
  before. You start having kids before
• 1:00:05
  these other things happen. It would surprise me if that
• 1:00:08
  wasn't already a piece of their character and that you already
• 1:00:14
  felt embarrassed or small or not enough.
• 1:00:16
  And I want people as we went back to, you know, back to very
• 1:00:19
  beginning, this conversation, those feelings that if you feel
• 1:00:22
  like you have to cover up in front of your husband, if you
• 1:00:24
  feel like you have to turn away a little bit in front of your
• 1:00:26
  husband, listen to that signal and at least put that on the
• 1:00:30
  table because that will come back.
• 1:00:32
  The ROI on that will be really tough to deal with when life
• 1:00:35
  happens, right? And maybe, maybe somebody just
• 1:00:39
  flips a switch, but. Man.
• 1:00:42
  And by the way, it's easy to throw all the men under the bus.
• 1:00:45
  I tell you I've had way. More countless more
• 1:00:48
  conversations behind closed doors with men who, after their
• 1:00:52
  wives, had. Kids were like I thought I was
• 1:00:56
  in love and now, now dude, I I'll go to I'll go to hell it
• 1:01:02
  back for that woman. Like that's the most amazing
• 1:01:05
  like it, it transforms and that that story's not told enough
• 1:01:08
  either. I agree.
• 1:01:10
  Such an idiot bro. Yeah, the I like it.
• 1:01:14
  Maybe it's just me and I'm pretty outspoken and my buddies
• 1:01:16
  know me and so and I keep a pretty small.
• 1:01:18
  Group of pals, but I don't. I can't think of a guy.
• 1:01:21
  Who has called me as a buddy? He's like, dude, my wife had a
• 1:01:23
  baby and it's like a few months later and she's like, you know.
• 1:01:27
  I've never I haven't got that call.
• 1:01:28
  I have got the calls like dude were.
• 1:01:31
  You in the room when your wife had to be like?
• 1:01:32
  Yeah, and he's like the men are like, you know, I'm, I cannot
• 1:01:37
  believe how in love I am. And if you ever say anything
• 1:01:39
  like that out loud, then I'm going to lie.
• 1:01:41
  I'm going to tell them that you lied.
• 1:01:42
  But I that's the story I hear more.
• 1:01:44
  And again, I may have a very small circle, but it is what it
• 1:01:47
  is. No, I, I, I personally, I hear
• 1:01:49
  that story more too. And it's, I think it's the
• 1:01:53
  unfortunately, there's these really sad, awful stories that
• 1:01:56
  make their rounds on the Internet and then they're people
• 1:01:58
  that are going through that. And so they're connecting with
• 1:02:00
  that and they're saying, this is my story too.
• 1:02:02
  So I think it's just easier for a, a sad, awful story to go
• 1:02:07
  viral than a good +1. I mean, that's kind of the
• 1:02:10
  nature of of news. And let me ask, let me ask you
• 1:02:12
  this, how many women do you talk to?
• 1:02:15
  And this is more just inquisitive.
• 1:02:17
  I'm not leading here. They they have a particular a
• 1:02:21
  particular picture in their mind about what their husbands want
• 1:02:26
  and they don't feel like they're living up to that picture and so
• 1:02:31
  that the hedge in the relationship begins there.
• 1:02:35
  That's a great question, I think.
• 1:02:36
  And it may be chicken or egg. Yeah.
• 1:02:39
  No, I think that's a lot of cases.
• 1:02:40
  That's a lot of cases where it's more the insecurity that she may
• 1:02:44
  be bringing into the relationship and he's like, it's
• 1:02:47
  good, I'm great. That's not coming from him, it's
• 1:02:50
  more coming from her. And again, that goes back to,
• 1:02:53
  you know, just body image of issues in general that women
• 1:02:55
  have and girls have because of I think social media is a huge
• 1:02:58
  part of that. And again, you know, we talked
• 1:03:00
  about this earlier, but the perfect aesthetic that you see
• 1:03:02
  online and the perfect bodies you always are seeing online,
• 1:03:04
  you're comparing yourself to that.
• 1:03:05
  Your spouse isn't necessarily comparing you to that.
• 1:03:08
  You're comparing you to that. And that's, that's especially
• 1:03:11
  tragic, right, Because it doesn't need to create friction
• 1:03:13
  in the marriage, but it can. Most of the time I have people
• 1:03:18
  call my show men when they have cheated.
• 1:03:23
  It's I, I can't think maybe I have, there's been, you know,
• 1:03:26
  500 plus episodes. So I I can't go all the way back
• 1:03:29
  but. I can't think of a time when
• 1:03:32
  somebody said, hey, I cheated because my wife wasn't pretty
• 1:03:35
  anymore. It's almost always been because
• 1:03:38
  somebody else made me feel alive.
• 1:03:41
  Somebody else thought I was funny.
• 1:03:42
  Somebody else thought I was worth looking at that was worth
• 1:03:46
  their. Time and I think back to the
• 1:03:49
  times when I have felt insecure and I end up circling my own
• 1:03:53
  wagons and leaving my wife on an island, right?
• 1:03:56
  Has nothing to do with her. Has to do with I feel smaller,
• 1:03:59
  not enough. Or you know, I'm not doing my
• 1:04:02
  job good enough or I haven't been to the gym enough.
• 1:04:04
  I don't have a six pack anymore. Whatever.
• 1:04:06
  The thing is story I'm telling myself and I project that onto
• 1:04:09
  her and versus her coming to me and be like man.
• 1:04:12
  I don't know dude, you don't have that 6 pack anymore like
• 1:04:14
  you did when you were 35. And so I, I, I again don't have
• 1:04:19
  any data, but I wonder how that works.
• 1:04:20
  But I think on my show, anecdotally, that's what I hear
• 1:04:22
  the most is my wife got distant or we got distant together and
• 1:04:28
  then this person at. Work made me laugh.
• 1:04:31
  This person at the mall, like, like, made me feel like I was
• 1:04:35
  pretty special. Yeah, it's like that saying, you
• 1:04:37
  know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that
• 1:04:42
  ounce of prevention and keeping the spark alive in your
• 1:04:44
  relationship. And I've, you know, my husband
• 1:04:47
  and I, you know, early on in our marriage, getting great advice
• 1:04:49
  from people. It was really like weekly date
• 1:04:51
  night, you know, like, you know, have fun together, not just to
• 1:04:54
  talk about the business of the household, but like romance each
• 1:04:57
  other, like do stuff you enjoy, like stuff that you fell in love
• 1:05:00
  over when you were dating. Like that's not just a nice to
• 1:05:04
  have, that's a need to have it a marriage.
• 1:05:05
  Maybe it ends up being every two weeks, OK, but like that's a
• 1:05:08
  need to have. You need to createspace in your
• 1:05:10
  marriage for the love and the leisure and the joy that you
• 1:05:14
  fell in love over. You know what that creates sort
• 1:05:17
  of the the soft landing space. Any other seasons where that's
• 1:05:20
  more difficult than others and there's hardships that you face,
• 1:05:22
  but you know, make that a priority in the marriage as
• 1:05:25
  opposed to an afterthought. Because when it becomes an
• 1:05:28
  afterthought, you know, we're we're mayor human beings.
• 1:05:30
  We may find ourselves deeply attracted to this idea of it,
• 1:05:34
  that we can find it somewhere else.
• 1:05:36
  Well, and I think it's, there's a great therapist named Terry
• 1:05:40
  Reel who's wrote some really important books, but I think it
• 1:05:43
  was real. He was talking about that desire
• 1:05:49
  and that romance and safety cannot coexist.
• 1:05:53
  And I was like, that didn't sound right.
• 1:05:54
  But the way you laid it out made a lot of sense in that is when
• 1:05:58
  you start dating, the romance is there.
• 1:06:01
  The attraction is, is 10 out of 10, right?
• 1:06:04
  You're all in. What you're practicing is
• 1:06:06
  safety. Are they going to show up when
• 1:06:08
  they said they? Were going to.
• 1:06:10
  Do they open the door for me? Who pays for dinner if we get
• 1:06:14
  crossways? Are they respectful of my ideas
• 1:06:16
  or they say they're sorry? You're practicing safety.
• 1:06:20
  Then once you get married and you get down the road a little
• 1:06:22
  bit and you start to settle and feel safe, we don't have the
• 1:06:27
  alternative, which is we don't know how to practice romance.
• 1:06:30
  We just have sex, that's it. And if you don't have a game
• 1:06:35
  plan for, like you said, how do we laugh?
• 1:06:38
  How do we go do funny things? How do we do silly things?
• 1:06:42
  You end up a with the cancer of what we used to back in the day.
• 1:06:45
  Yeah, dude, that's biological. Your body was on fire,
• 1:06:49
  literally. And now it's not.
• 1:06:50
  And so it's not that something's broken, it's that you've
• 1:06:53
  established safety. Well, now from this position you
• 1:06:56
  get to go down a rabbit hole together of what romance looks
• 1:07:00
  like in what exploration and curiosity and funny and all my.
• 1:07:04
  Gosh, that was a disaster. All those things together.
• 1:07:08
  And I like thinking of romance as not something that is
• 1:07:11
  inherent all the time. And when it runs out, like it's
• 1:07:13
  like gasoline, a car, that car is dead on the side of the road.
• 1:07:16
  No, dude, it's something you practice.
• 1:07:18
  You're constantly coming back. And by the way, when you're 40,
• 1:07:21
  romance looks different than when you're 30, then when you're
• 1:07:23
  20, then when you're 16, it's not all one big continuous
• 1:07:26
  stream with the same definition. And so, and by the way, romance
• 1:07:29
  looks different in my house than it probably does in your house.
• 1:07:31
  And it looks a dozen our friends homes.
• 1:07:33
  And so it's something you practice together.
• 1:07:34
  And I can't think of a thing that's more fun to practice
• 1:07:37
  together than laughter and having fun and being intimate.
• 1:07:41
  I can't. That's the funnest thing to
• 1:07:42
  practice if you have the right mindset about it.
• 1:07:45
  If you think of it as if I got to practice it, it that means
• 1:07:48
  it's not real, well then, there you go.
• 1:07:50
  Well, it's such a good point because I mean, you think about
• 1:07:53
  people that you think about. I think about myself before I
• 1:07:55
  got married and I wanted so much or such a deep desire I had to
• 1:07:58
  be married and to find my one love and build a life and all of
• 1:08:02
  this right. And then you get married and I
• 1:08:04
  and I and I wake up each day and I'm like, I get to do this with
• 1:08:07
  my love. Like I get to create something
• 1:08:10
  with him that's beautiful. And that's actually part of my
• 1:08:12
  job description as a wife now, to create beautiful experiences
• 1:08:17
  for us. I mean, find a way in all the
• 1:08:19
  challenges of life to have space for romance and for leisure
• 1:08:23
  together. And yeah, again, this is
• 1:08:25
  obviously hard at certain times and certain, you know,
• 1:08:27
  challenges. I don't get to.
• 1:08:29
  I have to, right? As soon as I have to love you,
• 1:08:32
  right? Because I said I would, right?
• 1:08:34
  Well, I guess I'm still in the honeymoon phase.
• 1:08:36
  We're only five years then. So he's still like the best
• 1:08:39
  thing. I'm 21.
• 1:08:41
  That's, that's, that's impressive.
• 1:08:42
  It's impressive. But but no, I, I mean, I think
• 1:08:44
  it's a mindset thing, right? It's a mindset thing of making
• 1:08:47
  the space and time for that. And then I love the fact that,
• 1:08:50
  you know, there's seven days in a week.
• 1:08:52
  And again, Christian perspective here.
• 1:08:54
  The 7th day, God rested and he commands us to rest.
• 1:08:57
  What is rest? Well, for God it was marveling
• 1:09:00
  and enjoying the creation, like enjoying the human beings he
• 1:09:03
  created. And for us, part of rest is
• 1:09:05
  worshipping God, enjoying God and enjoying each other.
• 1:09:08
  So like, make that. That's a holy mandate to do
• 1:09:11
  that. Holy, you know, worship of God,
• 1:09:14
  but then also enjoyment of creation and enjoyment of loved
• 1:09:17
  ones. And if that's practice and
• 1:09:19
  marriage, it's just a very preventative, I think for all of
• 1:09:22
  the issues that can happen. OK.
• 1:09:24
  So with the time we have left you, we've talked a lot about,
• 1:09:27
  you know, different relationship advice, which is all really good
• 1:09:29
  stuff. You've mentioned a few times
• 1:09:32
  resources. You talked about, you know, talk
• 1:09:34
  to the 70 year old, a couple that's been married 70 years,
• 1:09:37
  get their advice. What are some resources you
• 1:09:39
  would give people for how to have healthier marriages or
• 1:09:43
  prepare to have a healthy marriage?
• 1:09:46
  I think we often treat marriage. I'll answer the question but I
• 1:09:49
  want to give this picture. I think we often treat marriage
• 1:09:52
  like a basketball game where somebody has explained us to us
• 1:09:56
  what basketball looks like and how you play it.
• 1:09:58
  But we've never seen a game. And then we walk into a gym and
• 1:10:01
  they flip the lights on the hand us a basketball and they say go
• 1:10:03
  play. We taught you how to run the
• 1:10:05
  offense and how to shoot 3 pointers in free throws and how
• 1:10:08
  to block and take charges and you're like.
• 1:10:09
  What are you what? OK.
• 1:10:11
  And it just ends up chaos. Because millions and millions
• 1:10:14
  and millions. Of our fellow citizens did not
• 1:10:19
  have a good picture of what a good healthy marriage looks
• 1:10:21
  like. And I also want to be really
• 1:10:24
  sympathetic and empathetic to our parents, my mom and dad.
• 1:10:28
  I, my mom, when they got married, my mom was not allowed
• 1:10:33
  to have a checking account per the federal government without
• 1:10:37
  my dad's signature on it. She was not allowed to get a
• 1:10:39
  mortgage without my dad's signature on it.
• 1:10:42
  That was in 1970 when they got married.
• 1:10:44
  She wasn't allowed to do that until 1973.
• 1:10:47
  So the fact that they went from that's the world they dated and
• 1:10:50
  got married in to now she is a tenured professor making more
• 1:10:55
  money than my dad and they're still married together.
• 1:10:57
  And she travels all over the world in her 70s.
• 1:11:00
  They did a pretty freaking good job.
• 1:11:02
  Figure that thing out that they changed the.
• 1:11:04
  Oil on that car while it was driving, right?
• 1:11:06
  I think the. Question we have to ask
• 1:11:08
  ourselves is where are we getting our picture of what
• 1:11:10
  marriage looks like? And so I have found incredible
• 1:11:14
  value and having friends that were 10 or 15 or 20 years older
• 1:11:18
  than me who have good marriages that I want to have.
• 1:11:22
  They're not going to be exactly the same, but I want to emulate
• 1:11:24
  that. I want to feel like that when I
• 1:11:26
  walk into their homes. I want my home to feel like
• 1:11:29
  that. I want my body to give me that
• 1:11:31
  signal. So what what has to be true for
• 1:11:33
  that to happen down the road? So I think having good pictures
• 1:11:36
  and not getting them from Hollywood and not getting them
• 1:11:39
  from I do this for a living. And I talked with people who are
• 1:11:42
  very fancy pants behind closed doors.
• 1:11:45
  Everybody is struggling. Everybody, 100% of people are
• 1:11:49
  trying to. Figure it out.
• 1:11:50
  And so don't imagine that everybody's life's perfect.
• 1:11:53
  It's just not. But find some real people that
• 1:11:55
  you can communicate with. That might be once a month,
• 1:11:57
  you'll go to dinner. That might be once a month you
• 1:12:00
  meet with them. I have a group of guys who are
• 1:12:02
  10 or 1520 years ahead of me that are married.
• 1:12:04
  They're great husbands. I want to be like them.
• 1:12:06
  They're great dads and they're down the road from me.
• 1:12:07
  Cool. I want to be like that.
• 1:12:10
  So that's number one. Number two, constantly build
• 1:12:14
  into your calendar, going back to the well together on a weekly
• 1:12:18
  basis. Every single week, let's sit
• 1:12:21
  down at the table and for 30 minutes let's do a budget.
• 1:12:25
  Because how you spend your money is going to dictate.
• 1:12:27
  Your values together. How are we spending money?
• 1:12:31
  How can I love you this week? What's our calendar look like
• 1:12:33
  this week? I have found that calendar time
• 1:12:36
  is like an aphrodisiac in my house.
• 1:12:39
  I always tell husbands like me if you'll sit down and just plan
• 1:12:41
  the week. Out your week ago.
• 1:12:42
  Good. And for most people, after about
• 1:12:45
  being married for two or three or four years, you got to start
• 1:12:48
  putting sex on the calendar. You got to put dates on the
• 1:12:50
  calendar. And it doesn't sound Hollywood,
• 1:12:52
  but the old marriage and family therapist question is do.
• 1:12:57
  You want to have. Sex on a calendar or you don't
• 1:12:58
  have none at all and that that's your choice.
• 1:13:00
  You get to have right to start making a priority.
• 1:13:02
  You put your work meetings on the calendar, you put your trips
• 1:13:06
  to the dentist, put something way more fun and.
• 1:13:08
  Important on your calendar like intimacy.
• 1:13:10
  Right. And be so begin to be
• 1:13:12
  intentional. Is is the main word.
• 1:13:14
  And then in my house, one of the things that saved our marriage
• 1:13:18
  was asking, what is your picture of today look like?
• 1:13:23
  The great William Glasser is a psychiatrist.
• 1:13:25
  He passed away several years ago.
• 1:13:26
  He said he could fix most marriages in one to two
• 1:13:28
  sessions. And he was speaking hyperbolic
• 1:13:32
  but with hyperbole. But here's here's what his pick
• 1:13:34
  what his main sentiment was that we think in pictures, but we
• 1:13:39
  speak in words. And that's where almost every
• 1:13:42
  relationship falls apart. What does that mean When my wife
• 1:13:45
  says, hey, I'm going to need some help today when you get
• 1:13:48
  home. Cool.
• 1:13:49
  My picture of what help looks like is after X&Y&Z is done in
• 1:13:56
  the house and after this and this and this is over, then I'll
• 1:13:59
  do these little things for her. Help is at 501 when you walk in
• 1:14:05
  the door, I'm handing you a pizza coupon and I may come back
• 1:14:09
  in a week, right? And so we both you heard the
• 1:14:13
  word I need the words I need help.
• 1:14:15
  But we had very different. Pictures of what that meant.
• 1:14:18
  And So what happens is I love it when she goes away for the
• 1:14:20
  evening and just get some time by herself and I get to just be
• 1:14:22
  with the kids and we hang out and have a wild time.
• 1:14:25
  And I also love it when our house is in our it's regular
• 1:14:29
  routine. It's that we got we got crossed.
• 1:14:32
  And so every day of our life, I ask my wife, what's your picture
• 1:14:35
  of today look like? And she'll be very clear, not
• 1:14:40
  just about times and dates, but about when we get home.
• 1:14:43
  Here's what I'm going to need from you.
• 1:14:45
  And I say awesome, or I can't make that happen because I've
• 1:14:48
  got this. My picture of today looks like
• 1:14:49
  this. And we match our pictures up
• 1:14:52
  over and above our words. And I can't tell you how
• 1:14:55
  transcendent. That has been.
• 1:14:57
  Your parents are coming over this weekend.
• 1:14:58
  What's your picture of that look like?
• 1:15:00
  I thought we were just going to sit around the house.
• 1:15:02
  And. And she's like, no, I thought
• 1:15:05
  you were going to go out and go downtown.
• 1:15:06
  And what is your picture of? What of the holiday?
• 1:15:09
  What is your picture of this weekend?
• 1:15:11
  What is your picture of our date look like?
• 1:15:13
  You start asking that question on a regular basis and it will
• 1:15:16
  transform your marriage from the inside out because it will
• 1:15:18
  clarify things. So good.
• 1:15:20
  I love that. That's that's awesome.
• 1:15:23
  OK, John, where can people find your work?
• 1:15:27
  Like we mentioned a couple times, I host the Doctor John
• 1:15:30
  Deloney Show. It's a podcast, comes up Monday,
• 1:15:31
  Wednesday and Friday and it's a blast.
• 1:15:34
  It's a caller's caller driven show.
• 1:15:35
  They call in and they can find me there on YouTube and on
• 1:15:38
  podcast. And I coast the Ramsay Show with
• 1:15:40
  Dave a few times a week and you can follow me on the interwebs
• 1:15:44
  at John Deloney. And hey, I'm really grateful for
• 1:15:46
  your hospitality. Thank you so much.
• 1:15:48
  Awesome, and we'll link to your stuff too so people can find it.
• 1:15:50
  Thanks so much, John. You betcha.
• 1:15:53
  Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:15:56
  this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
• 1:15:57
  I hope you enjoyed it. As always, do not forget to
• 1:16:00
  subscribe. Give us five stars if you're
• 1:16:03
  listening on Spotify or on Apple.
• 1:16:05
  And don't forget to hit the notification bell if you are
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• 1:16:09
  Also, we've just launched our new Locals community.
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• 1:16:26
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• 1:16:29
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• 1:16:32
  And that link is in the bio. We'll see you next time.