Caller: “Can I Win My Wife Back?”

how do I maintain a positive relationship with my spouse after a divorce we're separated right now and it's leaning that direction so is now the time for space and silence is now the time for you to go knock on that door yeah I don't want my wife to leave and I don't want to leave her then go freaking get what's going on this is John with the Dr. John Deloney show coming to you from Nashville Tennessee I'm live right now but you're not hearing this live but we can pretend we can pretend this is live taking real calls from real people about your mental and emotional health your families your marriages whatever you got going on your kids if you want to be on this show click the link in the show notes and it will send you out to a form and it will go to Kelly our overlord and she will see if you can get she can get you on the show let's go to Portland Oregon talk to Ira what's up Ira well good morning thanks for taking my call thanks for calling dude what's going on man and not much uh let's see so I have a question um how do I maintain a positive relationship with my spouse after a divorce I guess it depends on your ability to be emotionally regulated yeah and that's a really nerdy way of saying can y'all be adults that's fair that's fair you know we uh we have two kids so we want to make sure that you know we're doing the right thing we're we're separated right now and it's leaning that direction so I'm just most concerned about making sure that through the process of of the divorce if it occurs and after the divorce if it occurs I'm just most concerned about making sure afterwards that we're just being adults around our kids making sure that they have the best experience in life and make sure that those those kids are um you know happy healthy and uh keep moving on in life so that the hard truth is the data tells me that for the best way to have those things be successful is that you and are you married to is it is it a wife yes that you and marriage and build an amazing new one tell me more for the for all those things you rattled off that's that's that's what the data says would be the greatest gift to your kids second would be co-parenting as good as you can yeah but it's a distant second right so tell me tell me like you guys got separated what's going on well it's been a situation where it's been a rough couple years and I'm sure we're in a both under 10 years old oh man yeah we've kind of yeah exactly and we both worked full-time we've been a little bit more emotionally distant than I'd like to admit over the last probably year year and a half um it looks like we we went to a therapist recently we had this great conversation but it also kind of unveiled that she's been having this building issue for over a year and um I completely understand it like I I'm not a perfect person I get it and I'm still open to keep the relationship going I also have enough context clues to feel like I know where she's going so right now I'm giving her the time and space to kind of really feel this out make sure it's the right decision and make sure that whatever way it goes I feel like I've done my best from this point forward um I'm started you know we've just kind of my tone is not the best with our girls and I'll be the first to admit that I'm starting parody classes I see a therapist I'm working on it um some of our parenting um manners are a little bit different she's a lot more outgoing um she's a lot more successful than me and I'm a huge fan of hers I'm like totally like I'm her number one fan but I've also realized that her not making me a priority over a period of time has really drained me and I've realized that recently um due to the fact that I'm putting a lot of energy into her and it's not coming back and showing up in negative ways yeah so the way you describe I've thoughts here um I'll start with this one the way you describe that is a very common the word I use is a dance um she feels like she enters into a man's space who she feels borderline apologetic for how successful she is and he gets grumpy he gets sharp he talks to my daughters in a way right and when you start thinking that way then it slowly becomes us versus each other and then you are trying to connect in the ways that you like to connect which may be physical connection which may be don't you think my jokes are funny we're not having sex anymore whatever those things are and that becomes almost repellent because emotionally you're not a safe person to be around and it just goes in a figure eight right yeah and so the things that you want are in direct oppositions to the things that you both want and it becomes like putting two north ends of a magnet together it shoots itself apart what I'm concerned about with you is it seems like she's given you a really clear picture I'm wondering and again I'm throwing something up against the wall here so if y'all talked about it and created a really firm plan with a therapist throw off what I'm about to say but I'm wondering if you your instinct to provide space and give her time to think is the exact wrong path and instead I mean I'm gosh I hate to do this because I'm I'm so repulsed by them usually I'm not repulsed by them I think they're so fun but in terms of um they're not good models for how normal life works but I'm thinking of like a John Hughes like you out like like you're John Hughes I'm thinking of is now the time for space and silence is now the time for you to go knock on that door and you drop down to one knee and say I've let you and the girls down and from this point forward I will fight for you till the end of time I love that and you go scorched earth on the man in the mirror because I'm telling you brother like the thing that changed my house was when my wife I mean it was a long conversation and I've mentioned on the show a few times but dude I was doing everything I possibly could and when she said oh no no no you you're a good you're as good a dad as I've ever seen but you have a nuclear reactor in the middle of your chest and we can all feel it I literally went into a therapist she was a colleague of mine and I said evidently there's something else wrong with me and dude we talked and months later I started talking about stuff that happened to me as a kid that I had never told anybody but it unwound it you get what I'm saying yeah but that took my wife saying like no I love you but here's a path man and it feels like she's given you a path over the last year this has happened and this has happened and this has happened and you're like well I guess I'll give you some space to see if this is what you want to do I I like the idea of you going out on your on your shield I like that because at least if she chooses to leave you and says nope I want to file for divorce we'll be adults about how we're gonna I want you not to have said man I stood on the sidelines and let her kind of do her thing I want you not to have said man I stood on the sidelines and let her kind of do her thing I want you to know I went to the moon to try to get her and that brother like that's you not hedging your bets because if you do that and she still leaves that's gonna hurt bad but that's you putting both feet in the boat saying no I'm gonna keep rowing if you want to jump out of this boat that's okay now that may if y'all again if y'all have agreed on this and she doesn't feel safe and she said I need space but then disregard what I'm saying but if you're just trying to stay neutral in this deal this is not the time for neutrality this is a time for you to go get your wife I love that yeah she doesn't feel unsafe so that's a good thing yeah there's nothing like that there's no nothing in that well world so but it can't but listen it can't there's a weird man we could talk forever about anthropology and evolution blah blah blah here's the thing for most men and again I'm over gendering this and I know that so relax internets but most men just if you you went to lunch with a bunch of dudes today and you were like hey guys can I tell you what's going on in my heart that you would never get back asked back to that lunch again if y'all are doing if these are a group of guys that y'all you work hard with on a regular basis and y'all do stuff together and then one day when y'all are digging a hole or y'all working on a project you're like man my marriage is falling apart because y'all did something together y'all were doing something together towards a common goal that bought you permission to do something together and y'all are doing something together towards a common goal that bought you permission to do something together towards a common goal that bought you permission to be emotionally vulnerable with these guys and the complete opposite things happens often with women for all of human history if a woman got pregnant it meant she might die and at best case scenario she lives and she has to keep this a new human alive for 20 years and so she had to know socially emotionally is this person gonna be here before I let them into my body and potentially alter my life's trajectory safety wise death and keeping a kid alive and what I mean by that is For most, I don't say most, for many men and many women, men need physicality to buy permission to be emotionally close. And women need emotional closeness to buy permission for physical intimacy. And they blow by each other. You get what I'm saying? Yeah. We're trying to solve connection. And I need this so that I can feel, I want this so I can feel safe enough to be like intimate emotionally. And I want this so that I can be emotionally, I mean, physically intimate here. And everybody misses each other. So one person has to go first. And you called me, so I'm saying, go take a knee at the Airbnb where she's staying and say, I've let you down. And I'm in. And I will fight to the end for this marriage. I'll fight to the end for you. And if you couch it in because of the girls and all this, then she becomes a proxy so that your girls are okay. She needs to be there. The sole reason. Yeah, I don't want my wife to leave. And I don't want to leave her. Then go freaking get her, man. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I do. And let her, one question I want you to ask her when you're talking with her. There are two questions. Number one, honey, how do you want this home to feel every day when I get home? I want you to be happy that I'm here. What must be true? And it might be as simple as I want you to be in a good mood. I want you to be happy that you're here. I want, like, we have two young kids. The house is going to be chaotic. I don't want the chaos. I don't want stuff on the floor. I don't want piles. I don't want backpacks. I don't want that to throw you off, man. You're the dad. And if those things do throw you off, then like, dude, I'm gonna go see the counselor and be like, why do little things make me feel out of control? And you probably gonna have to deal with control issues, which is probably why you got anger issues. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. And I'm making something up here just off the top of my head. And then the second question I want you to ask her is, will you love me enough to give me a roadmap on how I can best love you? And I will follow that map. And in a few weeks, I'm going to give you a roadmap back to me because your wife has a role to play here, too. Okay. All right. Are you in? I'll do that. Dude, I'm in. I'm 100% in. This is like your hell yeah moment, dude. I'm gonna go kick a door and, well, not, you know, preferably. In Portland, you're gonna go to jail, brother, so don't do that. Yeah. Go ask the mailman for a consent form to knock on the door. Yeah, I will. I'll go do that. I'll have to fill out a couple forms, but I'll do that, yeah. And then they're gonna take 19 months to get it through the government councils or whatever. No, dude, go stand outside the front yard with the radio and say, I'm not going down that flight. I love you. And I love us. And here's the thing, brother, y'all get to choose what tomorrow looks like. Yeah. And nothing is inevitable until somebody signs the paper. Yeah, that makes sense. Right? Yeah. If she comes back in a few weeks or a few months or tonight and says, I've already made up my mind, I promise you I'll get you back on the show and I'll walk you through how two people can co-parent well together. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. But something in my guts tells me that's not your story. Yeah. Something in my guts tells me your daughters are gonna have a ringside seat to what happens when two people recommit themselves to each other. They say the words, I'm sorry. Your kids will have a picture of what redemption looks like, which will end up being the greatest gift you could ever give them. I'll do my best. No, no, no, no. There is, what does Yoda say? There is no try. We're gonna go get it. You're gonna do not, yeah. Okay. Go get her. And please God, man, like I say this all the time, but let me know how it goes. And if your wife wants to call me, I'm all in. Yeah. And here's this, I'll even one up because I believe you. I actually believe you're gonna go knock on that door and say, I said till death do us part, I'm all in and I've let you down. If you're in and y'all decide to rebuild, I'll give you two free tickets to my money and marriage event in October. Oh, well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Okay. You and your wife will be my VIP guests. Y'all can come. I'll give you a whole roadmap. I'm in. I'm in if you are. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right, brother. It's been a high honor to talk to you. As well. Thank you so much. Go get her, man. Appreciate you, brother. All right. Well, bye. We come back, man. I gotta stop. That guy's awesome. That guy's awesome. Yeah. We're all like, it's rare that we're all in here like, oh, yay. Great. We like this guy that we don't get a lot of uplifting. That was great. Go get him. Go get her. Fight for your marriages, y'all. Fight for your marriages. Until you're looking at the paper with your spouse's signature on it saying, I'm done. Fight for your marriage, man. You get to pick what tomorrow looks like. Both of y'all do. And you get to pick who you are going to be rebuilding this thing. God, it's awesome. We come back. A man asks how to handle sexual desire and stay connected to his wife when work keeps them apart. All right, this makes me nuts, but our culture has made being exhausted something to be proud of. People brag about how busy they are, how little sleep they get, and how exhausted they always feel. Being tired is not a flex. You know what's a flex? Getting good sleep. And good sleep starts with a great mattress. And that's why I love mattresses from Helix Sleep. Helix is not just a show sponsor for me. My kids sleep on Helix. Even my extended family. Family members and friends sleep on Helix. They all sleep on Helix mattresses. I sleep on one. I won't shut up about them. Imagine if the people who made your pants just made one pair of pants for everyone. Same with mattresses. 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I don't think about it. I don't go there. But then when I come back home, you know, my wife's ready. She wants to do stuff. You know, I've been gone all week and I'm having a hard time like flipping that switch back on quickly. And because we only have two days, you know, it kind of affects things. So that's kind of the issue I'm struggling with is how do I stay pure, but also like when I come home, like be ready to like, you know, do stuff with my wife and take care of her needs that she's been lacking throughout the week. You've got needs too, man. I guess everybody has to make decisions for themselves. My question is, is flipping the off switch the most effective thing? Meaning, are there ways y'all can flirt? Are there ways you can talk? Are there ways y'all can FaceTime? Are there ways you can keep connected to each other? Keep the fire cooking so that when you get home, it's game on, right? Like how creative, and by the way, this can be some of the most fun a couple can have is we have three kids under the age of six. We have in-laws who have moved in with us. We have. How creative can we get? And often the creativity leads to play, which leads to fun, which leads to a injection of life into a couple's sex life. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And so like, what does creativity look like? You sit down with her and have this conversation. I would also wonder, and this. How old are you, brother? I'm 28. Okay. Um, often physiological things get blamed on emotional things. And here's what I mean by that. If you've been doing this for two years, getting up at 4 a.m. on Monday, flying to another town, working all day, every day, getting up, grinding it out, and then flying back, um, your body is exhausted. You got time zone changes. You've got work changes. You are context switching pretty significantly from a work environment, a go, go, go, go, go, to now I have to put on a different hat, be a husband, be connected, be emotionally intimate to somebody that I'm only spending two days a week with. That's a lot on your body. And for men, there's often not a psychology. We've all been trained since we were zero that all guys want to sex all the time. And then you have a willing participant, you have a wife who's like, I can't wait till you get home. I'm going to, we're going to, I'm going to rock your world, boy. And you're like, dude, I need to sleep tired. And then you begin to think something's wrong with me. Is there any possibility that's the case? Yeah. Um, yeah, I think that's exactly what's happening. It's just, you know, I just, I don't know how to deal with that to make it work. Yeah. I just want to make sure that she's well taken care of. Um, and that's kind of what I'm struggling with. So this is going to sound crazy, but the greatest gift you could give to her is that you show up whole. So what must be true about your physical health while you're out of town? Can you get sleep? Can you go to the gym? Can you make a commitment to eat right? Can you take care of yourself so that you're fully whole? Like you can't be taking care of her needs if, if you don't have anything to give. Then it becomes two days of performative. Interaction. And then y'all have a transactional relationship. You don't have a marriage. That's the last thing I want. Exactly. You get home and you have yet another job to do before you get back on a plane to go do your other job. Yeah. And the bigger question I would ask you is you said you're trying to work towards a particular position that may or may not be there. Is this the life? Forget the job. For a second, man, a job is a thing that helps us get the life we want. We don't build our life around a job. And so ask yourself, is this the life I want? And in my twenties, when I was in graduate school and I was working full time and I was getting a PhD and I was running around with cops in the middle of the night, like doing crazy stuff. I was working towards a thing. Right. So there was a sacrifice, but I knew where I was headed with it. I had no idea it was going to end up in this crazy life, but I knew what I wanted to go do. And I knew I needed to cram as much experience and academic knowledge and professional experience all at once. I knew that, but it was towards a thing. It doesn't sound like you have an anchor. It doesn't sound like you have a reason. Hey, we're going to do for two years. I'm going to, we're going to be apart. We're going to be apart for five freaking days a week. That's a long time. So that in year three, we get X, Y, or Z. Cause my fear for you is you're going to look up and you're going to spend seven years like this. You're going to be 34 and you're gonna be like, dude, what happened to our life? Maybe I need to have more structure and figure out exactly the plan. And is it obviously? Life happens and the plan changes, but at least then I have a plan to alter. But I don't think it starts with it. Structure is very important, but structure towards a thing. So most people put structure around a goal and they end up losing their life, the life they wanted to live because they had to meet this goal. Like I had an, I was, had an obsession with making X dollar amount by the time I turned 30. It was a pathological obsession. And I, I hit that number, I think one year later, maybe two years later, I was working full time and getting a PhD. And I think I was teaching classes at two or three different universities. Like I was doing all this crazy stuff. I lost the life that I wanted, that I thought that dollar amount would give me in pursuit of that number. I hear this a lot from folks like, I'm going to run a marathon this year. That's awesome. Great. Run four of them. That's awesome. But they end up with their marriages further apart. Their health is actually worse and their kids. You don't know them because I'm going to hit this goal and I want goals to be in service to a life that you actually want. So I want you to add, and before you start going through structure, I want you to ask yourself, dude, what kind of marriage do I want? What kind of life do we want? What kind of guy do I want to be inside of this marriage I've got? And then we're going to start talking about what kind of job do I need to get? And if y'all are broke, if you have debts to pay off, if you're in a season, then those kinds of questions are lucky. I don't have the luxury to ask that. I'm working three jobs, minimum wage. I'm trying to scratch and claw to keep the lights on in my house. That's awesome and noble. It doesn't sound like that's where you're at. Thankfully, we're in baby steps four, five, and six. All right. So for people who don't know that, like you don't, you don't know any, you don't owe anybody any money, right? And you're working on, have you bought a house? Do y'all have a house? Yeah, we have a house and we're working on paying that off, but we're also investing in. That's great. That's awesome. So ask yourself, is this the career? You want, is this the life you want? Do you want to have worked really hard to not owe anybody any money and to buy a house that you don't ever get to live in? Because that life is pretty awful. If you ask me. It is. But it was a commitment that I made to try to build a better life for my family so that we could have, you know, a debt free life because I was working in the trades and I just wasn't getting paid. I wasn't getting paid enough to have a stay at home life. It just wasn't reality. So I had to find a job that could pay me more. And the travel job pays great. Um, I know, but it's costing you your soul sacrifices. It's costing you your soul. I, I, I, I have no data to back up what I'm about to say, but I can almost guarantee you. I'm right. A kids are going to be better off with two working parents. That have dinner on the table as often as they can, then a stay at home parent and a completely absentee parent. Yeah. And dude, I'm, I'm, you've worked so hard the last few years to change the trajectory of your family's financial future. That is noble. That's good. I just don't think this, this doesn't sound like a long-term solution for your family. Because what your family really needs is dad around. Is that fair? Tell me I'm crazy. I might be crazy. No, you're not. My daughter begs me to stay home every time I leave. And I want to be careful about giving a seven-year-old that kind of power. but there's something about that. And dude, I will tell you, I went through years when the one thing I knew that I was not good at was I was a terrible, not terrible, I was good, but like, I didn't know how to be a dad. And I didn't know how to be a husband to someone who was a mom now. I just felt like I was doing everything wrong. But I knew the greatest gift, I thought the greatest gift, the story I made up for myself was the greatest gift I could give my family is to not be here and make sure money's depositing in that account so they could have the life they want. It never occurred to me that what they really wanted was me. And I honestly did not have a psychology for that. I had to go learn what that meant and how to do it. Yeah. I just hate the idea of you, if you have to, you have to, man. And men, for all of you. Men in history have been making major sacrifices so that their wives and kids are okay. And if y'all have to do it, brother, you have to do it. And it's going to come at an extreme cost, but sometimes nobility doing the right thing comes at a huge cost. I get that. But if you're in a position now where we've cleared the deck financially, I'm going to start being really intentional about finding a place here in Colorado. Even if I have to drive down 25 to Denver and then come back, like, I'm going to see what's out there. Like, I don't know, man. I wonder if your sexual challenges in your marriage are not the actual issue. They're the light on the dashboard telling you that something under the hood isn't good. I've heard that before, that sexual intimacy is the warning light. It's the warning light of something else going wrong. But I've had so many conversations with my wife about things we can change and things we can do. And, like, you know, it's great when we, you know, have phone calls throughout the week so that she feels emotionally connected. But that's just, I don't know, it doesn't do it for me as much, you know? Okay, then what would do it for you? Have you been honest about what would do it for you? That's the hard part is I don't know. Okay, that's where creativity and fun comes in. Yeah. Like, if you're like, dude, I want to learn how to play, I want to play basketball. I've never even dribbled. Okay. Well, you can just sit on the sideline and watch people play and be like, man, I want to do that. Or I'm going to pick up a basketball and try to figure out how to dribble first. And then I'm going to figure out how to shoot. And it's going to be hilarious because it's going to be awful. And then I'm going to start playing. Like, it's, there's so much pressure gets put on this and so much existential weight that it loses the joy and the fun and the play. And joy and fun and play are so key. So connecting. Yeah. But if you're in this for the next six months, in this for the next year, then yeah, some structure is going to be important for you so that you show up. Like, I'm going to FaceTime my kids every night. I need that. I'm going to FaceTime my wife and we're going to get weird. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to eat, take care of my body while I'm gone. I'm going to come back 30 pounds lighter in seven months. Like you get like all those things you get to decide what those are, but you cannot go around filling up people's water in their water glass if your pitcher's empty. And if you do get home from a exhausting job Friday night and you just need to sleep till noon on Saturday, let's just put that on the calendar and don't beat yourself up about it. I'm wiped out. And then come noon on Saturdays, I'm up and I'm ready to go. Both with the kids, both in the bedroom, whatever that looks like. But we often get going in our life. And I think one of the most damaging sentences a person can utter, a couple can utter is this is just the way things are. Most of the time in the United States, that's not true. It's the way we've allowed them to. To be not the way things are. And if you don't like the way things are, even if it comes at a big shift or a big change or a drastic shakeup or whatever, you get to choose what happens next. And so if you don't know what would light your fire back up, just start trying stuff and have fun with it. And I don't know. It's my recommendation that just, you know, just indefinitely being away from your wife and kids five days a week so that they have a house that they live in without you. Man, that's a tough life. It's a tough life. Like you and your wife getting away for a half day and just saying, hey, what kind of world do we want to build? I promised you you could stay home, but man, I'm never home. I'd love to reimagine that. We come back. A woman asks how to prepare for her first child and transition from a career to a career. To a stay at home mom. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Summer is a time when people escape. They escape from work. They escape from their schedules, whether it's relaxing or going on vacation. Listen, we've all been sold a lie that if we could just get away from it all, everything would magically work itself out. But here's the thing. A vacation won't fix what you won't face. If you're anxious, burned out, struggling, these problems will be waiting for you when you get home from whatever vacation you take. This is why I recommend talking to someone. And this is why I recommend BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that fits into your life. You can talk with a licensed therapist by phone, video, or messaging from anywhere. No commuting, no sitting in a waiting room. Just a safe place to process what's actually going on in your life wherever you happen to be. All of BetterHelp's therapists follow a strict code of conduct. And you can message your therapist and schedule sessions right in the app. And if it's not the right fit, you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. This summer, don't just escape. And don't ignore what's coming to the surface. Sometime the strongest thing you can do is stop running from everything and start dealing with it. Go to betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10% off. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash deloney. All right, hey, take one second. It's longer than one second, but I like to minimize time because time isn't real for me. That's what Kelly says all the time. Time's not real for you, John. Take two seconds and hit the subscribe button if you're watching this on the YouTubes or if you're listening to this on podcast. And if one of these episodes, if it strikes a chord with you, with your spouse, with a friend, with a sister, with a family member, brother, shoot them an episode, share it. It just helps us with all of our metrics. And man, it's a. It doesn't cost any money, but it's a way to really help out the show and help out your neighbor. Let's go to Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. God, help me, not Louisville. Louisville, Kentucky, and talk to Anne. What's up, Anne? Hi, how are you? Awesome, how are you? Ah, pretty good. As good as I can be on a rainy day. Yes, for real. Very, very cool. It's been raining like crazy here in Nashville, but it's also, man, my wife has these wild gardens and they are amazing right now. So, I'll take. Okay, so what's up? Yeah, so I'll kind of jump into it. It's kind of funny I'm making this call without my husband because we both love to listen to you separately and then compare notes on the episode. So, we'll have a good. That's pretty fun. regroup this evening. That's pretty cool. I like that. Oh, yeah. So, later this summer. Who thinks I'm right more, you or him? I think it probably depends on the topic. Awesome. It's almost 50-50. I'd say we're usually pretty close in the greens, but every now and then you throw us a curveball. I'm like, what? Awesome. Every once in a while, I try to hit a batter, so that's good. All right, so what's up? You know, it keeps it fun. Yeah, so later this month, like later this summer, next month, just a few weeks, we are going to be welcoming our first baby, first for both of us. Hey-o. So, very exciting, very crazy time in our lives. So, on top of having our first child. I will be transitioning to a stay-at-home mom after my maternity leave, and so I just kind of wanted to call in and see if you have any advice for us as we enter these new phases of not only our marriage, but our family dynamic. Yes, dude. Thank you for the call. Yeah. Like, the fact that you're pre-planning this is so wise. That's awesome. Are you a list person? What do you mean by that, a list person? Like, my wife, her love language is lists, and I can tell how stressed she's getting by how long her lists are. Or are you kind of just like a rip-it-and-go kind of person? Oh, man, I am so type A. I have a shared note app right now with him, and it has a breakdown of our to-do list by gestational week. Nice. All right. Oh, yeah. I will speak to you in that language. All right, cool. I was trying to find out whether I should speak Spanish or French or. for English and I will speak list language for you. okay yeah so here's what I want you and your husband to do in the next like maybe this weekend if y'all have time if you don't have 17 other things on that list already um which I know you do but maybe you could move them to the next weekend here's what I want you to do and I want this to be the funnest exciting not a drudgery thing at all okay yeah I want y'all to get together and I want you to go to a long breakfast together and you've heard me say this a million times but now I'm talking not abstract I'm talking to you yeah how long have y'all been married we are hitting our second marriage anniversary in September oh dude okay y'all are running a gun and how old are you yeah uh we are both 29 oh perfect awesome okay yeah so I want y'all one of you and it'd be either one's fine you called so you get to say it one of you say you and after this is over um we'll do some I don't know Kelly uses her does her internet magic can we clip this and send it to him because I want him to get it before the baby's born um so that way you and your husband can both listen to it okay yeah so I want one of you to say the marriage we had is over what do we want to build next and here's the things I want you to think about what are the things from your old marriage that you loved spontaneity um planning like the silly sex times you had or the serious love making like what are the things that you want to bring forward into this new marriage and yeah what are some things that you're looking forward to letting go of okay so that's number one but somebody having the courage to say okay we're about to have a brand new marriage we've never been married and had a newborn in the house it's all new so we're gonna and the beauty of this is we're building a thing we've never built before and so we're going to give each other grace and we're going to always be practicing which means we can be curious about it we don't got to be judgmental about it okay yeah the second thing is I want when you make a list every day and every week and every month, I want you to begin adding a space for, I have no idea what's going to be coming. Yeah. And leave four or five blanks and then put the next thing you want to get done. Because list people. I think that's kind of been a struggle for me is that jumping into the unknown. I've worked in the same career since I graduated college. And obviously we know our relationship and it's like, wow, there's a lot of unknowns. Yes. And here's where you have a chance to bury yourself or a chance to get on top of the sand. Okay. If you're a person whose identity has been for the last 20 years, I will accomplish the things on this list with excellence. I get things done. Bringing an unwieldy, infant human into the world throws not only your schedule and your lists out into the wind, but it throws your identity out into the wind. Yeah. Because you don't know what kind of sleeper you're going to have. You don't know what kind of colic you're going to have. You don't know what kind of like diarrhea schedule. You have no idea if your kid will be able to feed as you. And so often like it's the, it's the judgment of the things that we thought were going to happen. For instance. Yeah. Let's say you have spent your life rolling your eyes and I'm making this up completely. Okay. Rolling your eyes at the thought that a mother would buy formula for their baby. Right. And then suddenly your baby won't latch or, um, you get impacted and you have to have formula for a season because you can't breastfeed. Yeah. The challenge is it also unwinds your identity. It also, you become one of those women you have judged over time and it becomes unmooring. Who am I? Right. And so I want you to begin to be curious about those things and hold them really open-handed because we have a way we want this all to go. And the only thing we know is it probably won't go like that. And if it does on this one, it for sure won't on the next one. Yeah. So here's the thing. It's it's, but you've never held your hands open before. You've always been so good and so accomplished and so smart at getting things done on your timeline or meeting somebody else's deadline that your hand has grabbed like really tight hold on the handle of that identity. And so I want you to practice letting it go. What does that mean? Maybe for the next month until your baby's born, I want you to practice just once every two weeks. I want you to practice letting it go. Maybe two or three days, not doing the dishes before you go to bed. You're like, I can't do that. Right. I want you to, I want you to practice taking all the couch pillows and dumping them onto the floor before you go to bed. Oh man. Yeah. My husband's going to get a good laugh out of this. But here's why, because this is about to be your, the next four years of your life. Yeah. And it will not be because you're, not a great mom, not a great wife, not a great friend. It'll just be because this is life now. And it's the, it's the gap between reality and what I thought my identity was. It ends up unwinding people. Okay. So here's another thing. If you don't have it already, A1, without a doubt, I want you to get a text thread with three other women who are a year or two or three ahead of you. Okay. I want you to contact them personally and say, y'all are going to be my three or four ride or dies during, during this birth process over the next month. And for the next year or two following, because I don't want you Googling a rash at 2 AM when you haven't slept in five days. Yeah. I want you texting a friend. Holly Baldridge, Holly Baldridge. That's a name of a friend of me and my wife's. She was right down the street from Sarah Simpson. I'm, I'm naming the women that literally saved my wife because they already had young kids. And when I, my Hank got his first rash, when he was an infant, I thought it was over. And I remember Holly coming over to the house and she laughed and she's like, oh, it's just this fine. And having them in like it for me, they were great, but having them from my wife for people to text at 2 AM at 11 PM, that was so important for her to just have a small tribe. And your husband has to have men in his life that he can go at least once a week and hang out with. And you're going to be like, no, he needs to be here doing stuff. He does. But he also needs to not get disconnected from a gang, a group of men who are like, yep. Yep. I can't kill style. Just like, yep. Pass the nachos. Right. Yeah. And then y'all get to decide as this thing unfolds once, once a day, how can I love you today? And you're going to commit to being honest with him. Here's what I, here's what I want today. Here's what I need today. And you're going to commit to, how can I love you? And for the first six months, probably nothing. Right. And we're going to do something every day. We're going to check in with each other every week. We're going to sit down and say, Hey, how's our money? How's our marriage? How are you? How am I? How's our baby? And once a month, we're going to just going to say, all right, we've never been married with a three month old. How are we doing? We're married. Yeah. And then we're going to buy it. And we're talking about money. We're going to talk about our sex life. We're going to talk about in-laws who want to come be nosy and how long do they want to stay and who has to make the phone call to say yes or no. We're going to just be put all that on the table. And when you get into these rhythms, it gets easier. Big conversations don't become events because we already have these things on the calendar and we get together and talk. All right. What am I missing? What are you else? Are you worried about? Um, I think if you a big portion of it, um, I am a little nervous about just the stay at home mom aspect and like how that changes life. And I am like my social butterfly. Like I, I love being out and talking. And so like part of this is like, I feel a bit nervous about being alone socially. Um, it's a nightmare and fight it with everything you got, fight it with everything you got. Yeah. Take your baby with you, invite women over, like fight back on this insane notion that stay at home moms are supposed to stay locked in a box with an infant human alone forever. That's madness. It's never happened in all of human history until like 1950. It's insanity for all of human history. Women raised kids with cousins and nieces and weird aunts and neighbors. This whole idea that you're just supposed to be a mom and you're supposed to be exhausted and never sleep, whatever. That's never happened in all of human history until 1950. So fight it with everything you got. Have a house full of women all the time, sign up for stuff, go to stuff. And I know you've got nap time and all that. I like routines i get all that especially in the beginning but the more people you can have over and again part of why i told you to mess the house up a little bit before you go to bed yeah because i don't want friends coming over to become yet another performance for you yeah where i gotta clean up i gotta do this if twice a week three times a week you had a group of moms over to have coffee and the rule was no makeup no clothes and i'm not cleaning up anything now you're talking then your shoulders drop when they come over yeah but fight it with everything that would definitely like challenge me for that it will it will but you're gonna lose your spirit if you circle the wagons and you emerge from your home in two years you'll be a shell of your former self because you got to have other people in your life and i know that sounds scary doesn't it yeah okay the law loss of identity is a really big and powerful thing and can i give you one more yeah you may stay at home for three months and realize this is not for you and a that's okay and b you're gonna feel super guilty and c your husband may feel like well i thought we had an agreement and i we always committed you're gonna be a stay-at-home mom there might be grieving during that season but you're not a bad person you're not a bad wife and you're not a bad mom you've never done this before so everything you're heading into is a theory and that's right i i know i'm okay no you go ahead go ahead yeah i'm kind of just using this as a break i i love my job for the most point but it's hit me like at a burnout phase yeah great and so i know that like regardless of post-maternity leave i don't want to come back to where i'm at great because i don't like the person i am when i come home on a bad day nice and those bad days are sometimes more often than i would like are you a teacher i want to do that with a new baby no okay no i work in corporately i work in marketing okay okay um which is a whole yeah gotcha you don't have to say anything else so here's a fun part of the exercise with what kind of marriage do we want ask yourself who do we want to be and then we're going to create a structure around that and then we're going to create a structure around that and then we're going to create a structure around that identity question i want to be a a mom and a wife that is still fun yeah that is still out and about that has people over all the time okay what must be true oh man i gotta get a full night's sleep i've got to exercise i've got to have people around me all the time which means i'm gonna have to get over that this house is not gonna be spotless all the time i'm gonna have to get over that i can't control sometimes i've got big plans and baby's super sick and we can't go you yeah i'm gonna have to hire a babysitter even though i feel guilty because i think moms should always be around and should just sacrifice themselves and never have babysitters like you know i'm saying how that how but that order stems from who am i going to be and who do we want to be and then we're going to create structures and systems to back up an identity yeah that makes sense but all close together and i want you to take um two words with you from this call okay okay open-handed okay open-handed you get two months into a thing that's not working cool we learned something we're gonna do something different now we're not going to bathe in shame we're not going to bathe in guilt we're not going to bathe in judgment it didn't work out this way cool we're going to try a new thing and give your husband that same grace too because you know what he's never been married to somebody who has an infant it's gonna be new for him too yeah everybody's doing something new but the fact that you even thought to call a babysitter you're not gonna be able to do that all is so great so great we actually uh submitted the question together um following up like a date night because we're trying to squeeze in like as much as possible before the baby gets here awesome um so hopefully like we've kind of started this but um the like the pointers that you're giving will help us probably build a stronger foundation just just know the feelings are going to come out and that you're not broken your feelings are good feelings of guilt your feelings of i miss the workplace your feelings of i'm so i hate the workplace the feelings of my baby's driving me crazy the feelings of if my husband touches me again i'm gonna set him on fire but also i wish he would hold me like all of it's just gonna be a conflicting mess and it's like i'm gonna keep i'm gonna hold him open-handed and every day every week every month my husband and i are gonna have a rhythm where we get together and touch base so that these big unspoken things don't become monumental unspoken things which become like the soil for the trees of resentment yeah i guess i don't want that to get that far yeah so just go ahead and put on the calendar now you you like to plan out in the future you can't plan anything that's coming you can at least plan your weekly and monthly meetings with your husband you can plan those things yeah and you can you can plan your nightly mess up yeah he'll get a good laugh out of that one i usually try to put everything away at night i know you do and he's just like let's make out you're like i've got to vacuum the roof or whatever you're doing i don't know what you're doing all right so yeah like it's it's um y'all work it together and he's gonna have his own things he's gotta let go of too right but man uh yeah y'all gonna be awesome it's been an honor to talk to you such a blessing i wish you guys the absolute best hang on the line i'm gonna send you together at for a year as my gift um hope to god you're not married to an android guy but um into android people relax relax it's coming but um it will help give y'all a thing y'all can do every day to bring the two of you closer together especially during a big sea change of a life like adding a new baby i hope it goes awesome we'll be right back the wait is over montana knife company has launched their first folding knife to montana i'm holding it right now i didn't think it would be this cool it is that cool i've been telling you about montana knife company's fixed blades for hunting cooking fishing for being out on the ranch for anything and now they took that same 30 years of craftsmanship and precision and they brought it to a folding knife and they nailed it this is the ultimate ever-evolving knife company everyday carry blade and here's what i really love about montana knife company these are working knives made by people who actually use them right here in america i recently spent time with founder josh smith and he personally walked me through the details and components of this knife and many of their other knives he's just one of over a hundred master bladesmiths in the world and the quality of this knife proves it this is the pocket knife perfected and like all montana knife company knives this is something your grandkids will fight over years and years and years and years from now if you haven't shopped at montana knife company before you need to know that their knives sell out fast they're handmade and supplies are extremely limited so go to montanaknifecompany.com today to check out what's available right now that's montanaknifecompany.com all right what's up kelly all right i have a together question okay can i ask you one question though before we talk about the together app i just noticed this just this second and this is on me because it's been for years like now that i've made like eye contact with it i'm like oh that's been there forever my daughter and my wife and now you are all water bottle people at all times what's i would love to become a water bottle person because it looks awesome my wife takes i mean brings hers to the kitchen table i does it help you count like how much you're drinking is it just easier do you have like a phobia about somebody else drinking out of your glass like what is it um no i don't use it to be like this is 24 ounces so i've had three of these today at all um i just always like to have water with me and so um yeah i've got this one here and then i've got one at home and i'm the same that's what i bring to the dinner table um i have one on the bedside table um it's lasts longer than the like i like iced water like my husband loves room temperature water i don't get that but i love ice water so this is the ice stays colder in a bottle versus if i just have a glass of ice water all right here's my real question how much vodka is in there i don't drink john and you know that i know but it's kind of like when you ask somebody like how much money do you owe and they're like i don't owe anybody money except for a hundred thousand student loans and my car payment yeah it's like that it's like i know you don't drink but vodka doesn't count sometimes all right what's your question about together apps you're a dork all right you're a dork so So you use a lot of science-y words when you talk about the. I like how you. Science-y, yeah. But you talk about neuroscience, relationship science. Blah, blah, blah. What's the science behind all that? What is the real, like, where does that come from? How do we know that? Is that something you just made up? It's okay if it is. Well, I don't understand the question. So when you, what is the science behind, would we say, you know, these are like the neuroscience behind doing these little habits every day? What is the real science behind that? It's, I mean, it's, um, it's a broad, huge category. So if you look at all the activities that we've loaded in there, some things are about the 30 second hug has to do with touch and has to do with bioregulation and has to do with pausing and has to do with ultimately, I know you're going to end up with eye contact with that, which has oxytocin for women. Like it's, it's a whole bunch of stuff. So it's not like the app is from a particular stream of science. It's woven throughout the whole thing. It's the foundation of it. Um, and you get a layer, I was gonna say deeper, but not above it. Social science is sometimes sketchy at best. Um, and sometimes it's good, but man, a lot of times it is sketchy on a stick, but like there's, there's a lot of studies about couples who talk together. And couples who make eye contact and couples who touch more and couples who are in connection and have regular rhythms, et cetera, do better over time. And the whole thing built on the Gottman's work about bids is what the way they call it, which is, I'm going to do a thing towards you. Will you receive that and do a thing back towards me? And so it's woven throughout the whole thing, but it's not just like, here's a piece of science and we built it on that thing. It's woven throughout the entire app, but at the end of the day, it, it works. It's the most important thing. Is that helpful? It, it is. I think it, the idea is that this isn't just a bunch of crap we made up and threw in an app. There's legit science behind this stuff that proves. I would, I would love to just, yeah. And sometimes I'm gonna be honest. Sometimes I'm like, I think we should do this. Sure. But I mean, I've spent 20 years getting two PhDs. It's in there, right? Um, I need to probably put up, like if I have an activity with just an asterisk by it and just be like, Deloney just made this. This one up because it sounded hilarious. That'd be fun too. I think we've over indexed, not on data, but I think we've become an overly optimized, obsessive culture. And I don't think it's served us well in a lot of different places. What do I mean by that? It's a conversation I was Steve Rinella when we were talking about, um, I was struggling to find the data on marriage initially. And he just looked at me and said, I don't care. Marriage has been the best thing. And I'm watching it happen and I was like, yes, that it's just what my grandmother didn't do things because she had the neuroscience she didn't because it made sense. And I think that's where we're all kind of swinging back to. And I think that's a good place to be. The Apple change your marriage. Go get it.