Caller: “My Husband Hid $50,000 of Debt”

He took out a $50,000 HELOC against our house and refuses to provide an accounting of where this money has gone. We're seeking counseling, but there's still a lot of pushback. Yeah, I mean, counseling's not going to help right now. What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. So glad you're with us. Talking about your marriages, your life, your life, your jobs, your kids, your mental and emotional health, whatever you got going on, I'm glad you're here. We're going to figure out what's the next right move for you, for your family, for whatever you got going on in your life. If you want to be on this show and you, unlike me, know how the internets work, you can click the link in the show notes and fill out the form and it will go to Kelly and she will get you on the show. Let's go to Raleigh, North Carolina, and let's talk to Elizabeth. Hey, Elizabeth, what's going on? Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm obviously really nervous. I'm going to articulate as clearly as possible, but I. You will be the only one articulating clearly on this show. I'm a mess, so you're good. I need help figuring out how to protect myself. and my son financially, and whether trust can be rebuilt in my marriage. What happened? My husband came to me at the beginning of this summer, and a couple days after us talking about planning for a second child, told me that he took out a $50,000 HELOC against our house. And at the time, we weren't married, so I did not have to sign on it. He told me it was going to be a $20,000 loan, so we could renovate his old home and then sell. And after that, pay the loan. It was a very straightforward plan. And come to find out, he did not pay off the loan with the proceeds of selling the house, and will not and refuses to provide an accounting of where this money has gone. How long have y'all been together? We have been married for just two years. Okay. Where do you think that money's gone? To be honest, there are so many worries. I don't know what would be worse, if it was spent on uselessness, or if it was just so. Poorly managed. And he does like to have his toys, like cars and boats and things like that, that have been sold and bought and sold and bought. And I think. I don't know. I don't know. So. And there's a lot of embarrassment on my part for trusting my husband. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that I've been trying to do, is I've been trying to help him to manage, at least this side of finances. And it's. I've. We're seeking counseling, but it's. There's still a lot of pushback. Yeah. I mean, counseling's not going to help right now. Because you have somebody that's looking you in the eye and saying, yeah, I lied to your face, and I'm not telling you how I lied. And I don't care about the agreement we made. I'm not doing X, Y, and Z. I mean, y'all can go to counseling all day long. If you want to just Venmo Kelly that money, you can. But y'all are just going to go and talk in a circle. Yes, that seems to be what's happening. Because reestablishing trust is somebody sitting down saying, I violated your trust. I cheated on you. I took out a loan behind your back. I lied about how much, whatever. And I was wrong. And graciously asking for a path back. And. That's. You can't reestablish trust with somebody who's not interested in your trust. He's interested in getting his own way. Right. What concerns me. I mean, obviously, a deceitful loan. I call that financial infidelity. He cheated on you. He just did it with y'all's money. What concerns me the most is not that. What concerns me the most is you have. And the reason I asked that question first is you don't know where that money went. And if there was a shiny new car that pulled up or a shiny new boat that pulled up, you would have some inkling. But if my gut is right, you've wondered for a while if there's somebody else. Is that fair? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. You're not dumb for trusting your husband. Oh, I feel like it. I know. So what's your next move? Well, I was. I didn't really want to give this a full shot for my son, for us, to try and make it work. We tried. At least, you know, give my best to say that I've done everything that I can. But I don't. I don't see how there's any moving forward if he's refusing to come forth with information. Yeah. I mean, you can. I mean, you've heard me use this analogy before, but after finding out your husband deceived you. to the tune of $50,000, by the way, that you know of, the house y'all had, the marriage you had is over. And if you are trying to rebuild a new marriage, and every time you stack up a brick, he takes the brick down, it's not even that he's not helping. He's actively taking the bricks down as you stack them. Right. You can keep doing that, but it's. It's. It's futile, right? And here's the part that always just makes me shake my head, is when men or women make choices like this financially, it's like. A divorce will. I mean, you go through a divorce proceeding, there's going to be forensic accounting of where that money went. It's going to come out. Right. I mean, the truth will be revealed. His text messages and his. WhatsApp messages and all that stuff's going to be in his private Facebook messages. All that's going to be discoverable. So if you're caught, you're caught, you're caught, it's best to lay it all on the table and say, here's who I've been and here's who I want to become. I hate this for you. This is probably my top two or three least favorite conversations to have in the world, because I hate this for you. Yeah. And while I. I suppose, educate myself on next steps of what to take. The path for you is to be very clear. And I personally am not ever clear in these moments. I've never had something like this happen. But when there's. I've got a big thing that I feel really hurt or really deceived or really frustrated or really angry. One of my go-tos is. One of my go-tos is I have to get a couple of people in my life that I trust to sit down with me so that they can see something clearly when I'm clouded by big emotions, big feelings. Like you're talking about feeling shamed, feeling embarrassed. Like those things are big and they cloud next right steps often. So having one or two people that you trust to the moon and back by your side and you being clear about here's what must be true. If we're going to rebuild a marriage together, I need to see this and this and this and this. And it may be that you write it down and hand it to them. That way you can know I was respectful and I was super, super clear. As we always say around. I have asked for these things before. Do what? I have asked for bank accounts and accountings of. Financials and he refused to show them to me. Tell me how that conversation goes. I don't know. And he told me that he wanted me to trust him to take care of the situation. And I respectfully responded with, I don't think I can do that right now. And if we're partners, I need to be informed as a partner and excuses were made and the conversation went round and round and round and made it very clear. I want you to begin to change your language, okay? Okay. I want you to work on, and this is going to be hard. I mess this up all the time. I want you to do the best you can. No longer. Don't say I can't. Because whenever, like, I can't move forward unless you give me this information. It can be perceived as a challenge. I bet I can get you to. What I want you to do is take more ownership language, which is I won't. I could, but I'm not going to. If you have chosen to blow. Up our marriage, I want to be a part of the rebuild and I won't continue rebuilding. Not that I can't, I won't because I could, you could, you could sit there and stack brick all day long. You could put your head back in the sand and just go forward with life and pretend he doesn't have somebody on the side. Pretend he's not struggling with gambling. Pretend he's would rather have shiny toys than a college fund for your kid. You can pretend all that's just the way it's going to be. You can do that, but you can choose not to also, and choosing not to comes with a ton of consequences, right? Right. Because rent is expensive and I don't know what your work, do you work outside the home? I, I. I stay at home and work part-time and our finances are not combined. Okay. So you have to go into this very wide eyed, which again, you're going to need one or two girlfriends, people that you trust that walk alongside you. Um, cause you're going to get a full-time job and you have to get a place to live if that's the route you take, or he's going to have to get a place to live. And you have to sit down with an attorney and say, here's what's happened and here's what I've asked for and here's what's been rejected. And so here's what I'd like to explore. So this, the next right steps in order is be very clear about what you want and what you are going to do. Get some people that you trust that are not on your payroll that are in your life. And then to get, uh, somebody. Uh, somebody. Somebody who will be an advocate for you, which is what a, a good lawyer is. And, and saying, I did everything I could saying, I wanted to make sure I turned over every rock. That is you looking at him and saying here, like we've talked, we've gone round and round. Here is what must be true for you to reestablish trust with me. Cause you broke our trust, not me. You are continuing to break trust, not me. And trust in a dating relationship that turns into a marriage is earned by is he or she going to show up when we said they were going to, is he or she respond emotionally, maturely when things go wrong? Do they, do they seek repair after we get in a disagreement or a fight or what? Like you establish trust little by little over time and then you get married. And so I'll tell you again, I know it feels that way, man. If you can't trust your spouse, you can't, I mean, uh, the whole, you can't have a marriage without two things, trust and safety. And right now you don't have either of those things. Since he's told me about this information, it's been a very long, anxious summer. Yeah. And so the path through anxiousness is right through it. Maybe spend some time writing. What you are truly anxious about finding a place to live, paying bills, going through a contentious divorce, like all, like be very clear about those things. And I, I hate to sound so clinical about it, but otherwise it gets super clouded up and it feels overwhelming. And then today becomes next year becomes five years from now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because your, your body is still stuck in the beginning of the summer. I just think a lot of my judgment is clouded by the fact that we were, I guess I'm just mourning the child that we were talking about having. There you go. Yeah. I don't know that that's clouded judgment. That's just grief. And you're right to be sad. Another thing I would do before lunchtime today, and we're talking in the morning here. Yes. I would pull my credit report. And I think it's mycreditreport.com or something like that. But you can get all three credit reports. They're for free and they'll email them to you and you can put a freeze on your credit. That way, nobody can take out loans against you without your permission, but you can at least see what are you on the hook for what has been taken out in your name. And then an attorney will tell you the impression that I, no one could take out a loan without my signature on it. Oh, honey, the number you're, you're right. But the number of. The number of spouses that I've talked to over the years, whose spouse takes out loans and their kids names in there. I mean, it's, it's pretty easy to do, but this is one of those things where you can begin to know, like facts are your friends here. I know financially, I've got nothing else that I owe, or you might find that you have a truck payment with your name on it or a boat payment with your name on it. I have checked recently and I, I didn't, I had, as in a couple of weeks ago, do not have anything in my name. Okay, great. That's a, that's one of those things I want to check that fear off. Okay, good. And then an attorney will tell you, here's what as community property, here's what you will be on the hook for when it comes to mortgage or other things, maybe he put the mortgage in his name because he's that kind of guy, but you have a whole. I do believe he did. You have a whole. You have a whole bunch of really hard decisions to make in front of you. And I can't in good conscience or ethically take those decisions from you. You've got to own, whether you stay in this thing, you've got to own, whether you make demands of him, you've got to own whether you choose to leave this thing. I can't take that from you, but I will with all my guts suggest that you get some people in your corner, tell them everything that's gone on, all of it, your concerns about him having other people. Other romantic interests, your concerns about money, your concerns about what's his honesty, all of those things, and have people in your life that can help see through the smoke when it all feels too much, and get a good reputable attorney in your area that can walk you through, here's the, here's the, here's your responsibilities, here's the truth, here's the this, here's the that, all that stuff. Okay. I hate this, hate this, hate this for you. My gut tells me that this is, there's questions you don't want to ask because you're terrified of the answers. And I would suggest you write those questions down because that's where you have to head. You've got to get to the bottom of those questions. I'm so sorry, sister. Thank you for calling. I wish I had better news for you, but I'm grateful for the call. We come back. A woman asks why she's struggling so much. We'll be right back. Hey, all of you stay-at-home parents out there, listen up. 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I talk about all of it. And I also want to just call out, I know it's tough to say, hey, send me $25 on a pre-order. And by the way, I'm going to send you a bunch of free stuff, but send me 25 bucks and in a few months I'll mail you the book. I know that's a tall order. It really helps me out. It helps the book with distribution. It helps get that book out in front of more people the more we pre-sale. So I'm literally asking you to do me a favor. If you're going to buy the book anyway, if you pre-order it now, it makes such a huge difference in so many different places. Go to johndeloney.com and you can pre-order that now. And here's the second, just a gift I've got to you. People have been asking for my conflict framework, right? That I adapted from the great Terry Real and several others. If you keep having the same arguments in your home, in your marriage over and over and over again, if you keep having these big feelings and just home is a tense place, this is the conflict framework. If you actually want to solve a problem, long two or three hour conversations, they can feel cathartic, but they don't ever solve the thing. This conflict framework, it's completely for free. Click the link in the show notes and I'll send you the Connected Conflict Game Plan and you can begin solving challenges in your marriage. This is the exact same thing that my wife and I do on a regular basis to solve challenges in our own home. All right, let's go out to Kansas City, Missouri and talk to Samantha. Hey, Samantha, what's up? Hey, Dr. John, I'm going to show my age here. I used to listen to Dr. Laura pretty religiously back in the day. Yeah, dude, the OG. The OG, for sure. And I appreciate your gentleness with families. So appreciate everything that you do. Thank you so much. Hey, my situation is I have a 21-year-old who is a junior in college and then our youngest, he just left for college about a month ago. So here we are, we are empty nesters and it's not feeling like I thought it would. You know, in the hard parenting years, you know, you fantasize about the future, about being empty nesters and you just have all these images of what it's going to be like. And wow, it's just, I know I'll get there, but for right now, it's not. It's like, I'm sad and I know that's normal, but I'm ruminating. Like I'm like, I keep replaying all the good times and all four of us are like, you know, now the house is quiet and my husband's being so patient with me, but I'm not happy about it. I'm sad. I want them back and I want us all under one roof. You know this, but sad is right. Yeah. Sad is right. Have you done that? I'm going to be mean right now. Have you done that thing where you are walking down the hall and you just look in that empty room? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, we, I don't hear them chomping upstairs and telling him to keep it down. And you're missing that, like the being six o'clock and that morning cereal is glued to the bowl. Yes. Yes. Just the chaos of the house, you know, which you don't think you're going to miss, but I do. I miss it. And I feel, I don't know how to describe it, but I feel like I'm going to step into this new life when I'm like clinging so hard to memories, you know, of us all here together. So I want you to tattoo two words onto your forearm. Okay. Don't really get this tattoo. Don't really do that. But unless you want to just be a gangster and if you do get this tattoo, send us a picture and I'll post it up because you'll be a legend. Okay. It's the two words. The two words are both and. We're both going to be very sad and I have to be responsible for choosing things that bring me joy now. Yeah. And I've worked with college students and their families for almost my entire career. So I'll tell you a couple of things I've heard over the years, okay? And by the way, I have a 16 year old. I'm already in pre-mourning. I did not expect this at all. Not at all, right? Yeah. If you heard some of the deals I've been trying to make with him to go to college locally, like I'm embarrassed. Like I'm going against everything I've taught every parent for 20 years, right? And I'm like, hey man. And he's like, dad, no, I gotta go. I gotta go fly. And I'm like, I know, but you could fly right here. And how about a whole bunch of money? Like I'm trying. Yeah. So I'm with you. Here's a couple of things I've heard over the years. Number one, the silence exposes the state of my marriage. And we aren't as close or we don't have the common, I was gonna say common enemy. We don't have the common mission of just surviving every day anymore. And I've seen couples like essentially wipe the deck clean and start dating again. Yeah. The phrase I've heard the most often is, who are you? Like, I don't even know what you like anymore. I don't know what you're into anymore. I don't know what, like hobbies. I don't know what books you read. Like, I don't know you anymore. And that can be a terrifying thing or that can be so fun. I've heard the, I should'ves, right? And people can drown themselves in I should'ves. I should've been more of this. I should've been more patient. I should've, I should've, I should've, I should've. And I'll tell you, that's a natural thing, but it's also a net negative. It doesn't solve, it doesn't solve anything moving forward, right? And the third thing I've heard is, especially from, have you been a stay-at-home mom or have you had a full-time job? Well, I was a stay-at-home mom for 16 years and then I've, you know, working full-time now for a couple. Okay. I've heard, especially from moms, a complete and utter wipeout of identity. Who am I now? Yeah. And I thought my role was, and that role feels like it is gone. It's not gone. You're still a mom and you're always going to be those boys' mom forever and ever and ever and ever. But it's going to be different now. And instead of driving the car, now you're in the backseat of their life, being a cheerleader. And of course you're a mom, so you need to do some backseat driving. They need to be grown up and roll their eyes when mom's like, well, you need to, like that's part of it, right? Yeah. But you beginning to ask yourself a scary question, which is, who am I going to be now? Yeah. And identity questions are often wrapped up in a couple of things. We can get stuck in asking, who am I going to be? Who am I going to be? And we can, now we have the internets and we can research that question for forever and ever and ever. Amen. I often find people are successful figuring that out with two things, asking, who do I want to help now? Like, who am I going to be in service of? And the second thing is, just starting to try a bunch of stuff. Yeah. Sign up, for dance classes with your husband. Sign up for, start, we're going to go to concerts once every two weeks. We're going to start going for long walks at night. We are going to join a hiking club or a, I'm going to start taking yoga, like whatever. And you might find three yoga sessions in, you're like, nope, not for me. But I'm going to start doing things and get out of my head and get into my body. And hear me say this, very rarely at the beginning, are you going to feel like doing any of this? You're going to feel like taking laps around your kitchen. You're going to feel like just sitting on the couch. Ugh. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So here's a couple. How do I? Go ahead. No, go ahead. You go ahead. Well, well, like for example, like fall breaks coming up. And, you know, for, I mean, as a family, for as long as I can remember, we do fall breaks. We do spring breaks together when the kids are out of school. And, you know, now my kids have different fall breaks and so we're not going to get together. Um, I, I, I don't, I, so I, I know I'm grieving that cause we're not going to have those anymore. Like they used to be right. Like I, I just don't, I don't know how to, I don't know how to, I can't fix it. Right. It's just, it is what it is. It's not broken. It's not broken. It's exactly as it should be. And it still hurts. Both and. Um, you've done an amazing job launching two young men out into the world who know their mom loves them. Hopefully they know their dad loves them. And it hurts. It's the worst. Yeah. And so you asking a question of what do I want to do for fall break? You and your husband saying, what do we want to do for fall break? And you looking at him saying, I still want us to take a fall break. Even though the kids won't be here. Yeah. I want us to take one. What do we want to do? Or if you find yourself, I don't want to do fall break with just you, then y'all, you need to, you need to address that question. Right. Yeah. That goes back to the first thing. The most common thing I hear is it, the kids, the last kid leaving either. I used to joke, like I worked in residence life and housing for years and I would watch parents drive away and they would both be pumping their arms out the window. Right. And I would see cars drive out, driving one mile an hour and they kept hitting the brake. You see the brake lights flash. Like I can't leave this parking lot because it's all over for me. And so if your marriage has been exposed of like, oh, we're going to be gross, we're going to be gross, then that's awesome. And if your marriage has been exposed to, I don't, we don't know each other anymore. Yeah. And we want to be gross. How do we get, how do we, what's the path back to that? Yeah. Well, my, my husband is, he jokes, he's like, I'm, I'm, he's being patient. He's like, we're going to have sex in every room of the house. Right. Like it's, it's so, I'm trying to get there. I'm trying to get there. He's, he's being really, really, really patient, but. But, but he also may need to know, okay, sex is going to start earlier in the day when you text me that you miss me. Yeah. When you pick me up from the office and we go to, to a nice dinner, when you take me somewhere, when you like. Now that the kids aren't there to vacuum the house, you got, you got a vacuum. Like, yeah, I want to get here, but here was what must be true. And some of that, I hate to use this word because it's such a buzzkill. Some of it is logistics. Yeah. Some of it, those boys is you had to tell them 14 times, but they took the trash out and they did this and they did that. And those, those chores are just suddenly gone. Right. Yeah. And so is the amount of trash that's gone too. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but just getting through the logistics, but a lot of that can be accomplished by just swiping. The deck and saying, all right, we have a brand new marriage. Now you and me, who do we want to be now? Yeah. And you knowing in your guts, it's not going to both. I'm in a season of grief. This is sad. And I get to be sad and I'm going to start putting some things on the calendar. I'm going to start putting myself out there with friends, with, with dinners, with dancing, whatever you want to do with fishing. I don't know what you're into or what you always like. Gardening, whatever. And, um, I'm not always going to feel like it, but if I know I'm safe, I know that I'll be glad that I did that thing. Um, I'm going to go, I'm going to go, I'm going to go ahead through it. I'm going to go ahead through with it. Right. Okay. But hear me say, you're not, you haven't lost your mind. You're right. Everything's different now. Yeah. And if you want to be any weird thing you want to do, I'm in support of just let your kids know. Let your kids know. So here's what I mean by that. If you want to write them a letter every week, tell them, Hey, I'm not struggling with you guys being gone. So I'm going to write y'all a letter every week. I'm going to be a weird mom and I get to do that. Okay. And I'm going to make cookies and just mail them to y'all. You can throw them in the trash. Just, you better not tell me. You better tell me they were awesome. And because I am a weird, sad mom and where I see most, not most, almost all kids are like, well, roll their eyes, but secretly like, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. But if you call it out, I'm being an overly dramatic mom right now, or I'm just, I'm not even being dramatic. I'm just sad. Yeah. I've tried to, like, I've tried to not put my emotions on them because I don't want them to feel like they have to, you know, cheer me up or whatever. But I love that you said that. Maybe I can just give myself permission to. Well, it's, it's, it's, here's the difference. It's you saying, here's how I feel. And here's what I'm going to do about it. Not. Here, I'm sad. You, you fix this 18 year old, which he can't. Right. Right. Okay. And so I'm going to write y'all a silly card every week. Okay. And because I'm, I'm, I'm a, just a sad mom. Yeah. And. Okay. They don't have to, all their, their only job there is to receive the card. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I like that. And that's it. Okay. I like that. And if you want to just destroy an 18 year old. When you know he's coming home, just shoot him a text and say, Hey, hold, before you go, I need to change the sheets. Cause me and your dad, dot, dot, dot. Just say that you'll ruin him. You'll ruin him. And that, that will help me and my community of mental health professionals because he will definitely go to therapy right after that. Awesome. But we're just, we're looking for pockets of joy and we're looking to not always feel like doing something, but we're going to, we're going to head into it. And if we get into something and we're like, dude, I thought bowling tonight would be fun. I'm just feeling drab. You can leave. You're a grownup. You can leave. It's awesome. Um, so yeah, you're all, you're in the right place. I have great, great call. I appreciate the call. Um, just remember you get to choose what happens next. And by the way, when you're grieving like this for something that is right, but still hurtful. Um, have a, have some actions that, you know, don't help. If you know that just melting in front of the TV, when you get home from work at five o'clock and ordering a pizza and just staying there till 11, five hours of just turning into goo. Like, if you know, that is an, if for all of us, that's a net negative, you're going to not sleep well, you're going to wake up grumpy. Sometimes putting a list of things I'm not going to do. I'm only going to text the boys twice a week. I am going to say on Sundays, y'all better call your mom because y'all need to call your mom. Um, but I'm not going to hassle y'all. I'm not going to sit here and rot in front of the TV. I'm going to get out and do stuff. I'm going to whatever, but having a list of things I'm not going to do. Cause I know I don't feel good after them. Um, that's good. That can be important too. So you're in the right place. I'm thankful for the call. I wish you guys the best. I think y'all have an adventurous next 20, 30, 40 years right ahead of you. We come back. A man asks how to make peace with the fact that his house. This will never be clean. Ooh, this will be a good one. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by better help. Every year you tell yourself you're going to handle this year's holidays differently. You're going to stay calmer. You're going to feel more peace, but then the same old patterns show up. The same family tensions, the same challenges you have to keeping healthy boundaries. And you find yourself cranky and tired and even snapping at people that you love. Listen, this year can be different. You still have time to get ahead of all of the chaos and understand what's behind your reactions. And you can develop a plan for moving through the holidays with peace. Therapy can help you build this healthier plan before you actually need it. When you're ready to have that conversation, check out better help. Better help is an online therapy platform with more than 30,000 licensed therapists across its network. This means you can find someone who can help you feel more peaceful this holiday season. Help you develop a plan. Or help you with whatever your needs and goals are. If the first therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch at any time for no extra cost. If you thought about trying therapy with better help, insurance options may now be available nationwide through participating providers. And eligible members have an average copay of just 23 bucks a session. Listen, you know what's coming. This year, you have time to keep calm ahead of all of the holiday chaos by preparing differently. Go to betterhelp.com slash Deloney to check out your payment options. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney or click the link in the description. All right, we're going to stay right here in Nashville and talk to Eddie. Hey, Eddie, what's up, man? Hey, Dr. John, how are you? I'm all right, brother. How are you? Good, good. So my question is, my wife and I have been going back and forth on like one issue. We have three little kids. And because of that, I've already given up on the house being clean. How old are your kids? They're four, three and six months. Oh, dude. Yeah, you're in the middle of chaos. Yeah. Yeah. So do I give up on having the dishes washed and having some basic laundry folded as well? Or how do I go about this? I guess my first question on top of my head is, why don't you do it? what was that? My first question that just popped into my head is why don't you do it? So I, I work really, really long hours. I'm almost never home. Okay. Um, so I, I minimum 12 hours a day. It can go up to 16, 18 hours a day. It just depends on what has to get done. Okay. You're a grinder, man. What do you do for a living? Um, I, I, uh, I have my own little thing. I have an e-commerce business. Okay. So do you, do you work from home or do you leave the house? No, we had to, we moved to a warehouse. Okay. A ton of product. Yeah. Awesome. Um, okay. So you get home and there's three kids there and your wife is covered in spit up and diarrhea and dirty diaper. It's just chaos, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I, I made a faulty assumption. I'm assuming she's staying home. Yeah. So she, yeah, she did. She did. Yeah. She is a stay-at-home mom as of like about a year ago. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, um, can I tell you the dynamic a little bit more? Yeah. I was about to ask about it. So tell me, tell me more. Yeah. So, so the, the four and three-year-old are both in school or daycare and my wife is home with a, with a baby now. Um, my, my way of just looking at it is we kind of had a clean house when I used to be home and I didn't have a job. And, you know, I was staying at home and taking care of stuff and everything was always done. And before my wife quit her job, because, you know, the business was doing well, we had this discussion and we said, like, if you quit your job, do you think you can handle the kids and the house? And she said, yeah, I'm going to have so much time. Right. So the only thing that's changed is that we have a baby, but it's never, we've never really had a point where the house was ever clean. And I'm not talking about toys. I don't really care about toys being all over the place. I don't really care that's fine. It's just the dishes are just for me, such a basic thing and some laundry. I'm like, I don't, I don't know how to press her more. Cause she is doing a lot with a baby, but at the same time, she's home with a baby by herself from like nine to four, you know? Yeah. Um, so you're saying this from a lived experience. I've, I was a stay at home dad with two kids and I managed to get it done. Cause it, cause it, it, it feels, it feels like the cleanliness is the surface issue, but the deeper issue is what? I, I just, you know, I work really hard and I don't think she's putting in the same effort. I, when a baby cries, I know she's putting in 10 times more effort, but that's it. I know the baby doesn't cry all day. I've watched the baby, but you know, yeah. Yeah. So I, I, man. If you ask me, would I trade positions? Would I have, would I be a stay at home and taking care of the baby and my wife come to work? I would say absolutely not. It's way harder to do what she's doing, but things still have to get done. You know, that's my opinion. Totally. I agree. I agree with you. And so my, here, here's the, there, so answer number one is if it's, just a matter of things getting done, is there a place where y'all can hire it out? But that to me seems like a problem y'all would have solved. It seems like the deeper issue here is you feel in your guts and I'm not making a judgment statement. I'm not going to be one of those people that tries to nail anybody to the wall. I just want us to be honest. I feel like I'm putting in 10 and 12 hour days and I feel like you're not pulling your weight at home. Not saying that not raising a kid is hard and all that kind of stuff, but I think there are two or three or four hours a day where you're just scrolling your phone and I'm making some up. Is that, is that, is that the, is that the truest dynamic here? Yeah, I would say so. Have you had that conversation? We have. And then she thinks I'm like trying to parent her. Okay. Well, and that's where like a, in issues of cleanliness, right? Yeah. When, when you say I want this, these dishes done, that's what a parent says to a kid. So she's right on that. When you say after coming in and I'm exhausted a way you could love me dot, dot, dot is different because then, because for her, the dishes might be fine because she's not out of dishes yet. There's still bowls in the, in the, in the, in the cabinet. There's still glasses in the cabinet, right? Yeah. Like she doesn't need the laundry done today. And when she does, she may do a marathon on a, any given Saturday and in her mind, she's like things are fine the way they are right now. I'm surviving as a mom of three tiny kids, even though two of them are gone for part of the day. But it's, that's where you get into these like, Hey, do the dishes. I mean, they're, we got dishes a lot. Like what versus here's a way, here's what I want. Here's a way that you could show me. You love me. How can I help you so that you can help me? Yeah. And we've, we've had the discussion of hiring help. I'm curious to see what your thoughts on this would be. My only concern is, um, it's, it's, it, it, it, it could be in the budget, but my concern is like, what are the kids going to think? You know, I, I, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I worked really hard all my life and I don't want my kids to think, Oh yeah, they just have someone that comes and cleans the house and everything's taken care of. No, I, you know, when I, when I am home and my wife asks me for help, I'm glad to give it. And I'm not the only one doing it. I get the kids involved. Everyone's involved in cleaning up. And that's, that's what I want the kids to grow up with as well. So, and I get that. And, and, and I don't want you to project out onto them in that way, but I get your, I get the sentiment, right? I went through some big time hand wringing when I hired someone to mow the lawn big time. Big time, big time, big time. Like it, it messed me up. So I get that. I get it. And this is a different conversation. Cause here's the thing. If you have a wife who's struggling, she's six months postpartum, she's struggling plus two little kids. She, you sitting there judging her activity level is not helping a situation. You got a hurting wife here. If that's not the case, you're not helping a situation. And you're seeing this as a judgment issue. I'm working hard. So you need to do this stuff. Then y'all have values differences that y'all need to get to the bottom of. Cause it's going to fracture your whole marriage because you're walking around thinking. And again, I don't think anybody's doing this nefariously, but they're done. I can hear it in your voice. I'm doing more than you. And anytime a married couple gets into scorekeeping, the relationship you had doesn't exist anymore. Now it's you versus each other. It's not you with each other. You get the difference. Yeah. And right now it's you versus each other. I'm doing all this. So you should be doing all of this. I got a four and a three and a one-year-old and I got a wife who's drowning. I'll worry about the lessons later. I'm going to take care of my wife. And if that means I put in a 14 hour day and I got another hour worth of chores to do at night so that my wife can exhale, great. That'll suck for a while for everybody. Right. Yeah. And if that means I'm going to hire somebody for three hours a week to come in and just, just nuke this place and get it spotless so we can just control, delete, reset every week, every two weeks, every three weeks. Great. That's awesome, man. Yeah. But if you think your wife is actively like, nah, I'm not doing nothing. I would just, I would, man, I would really challenge you on that. It could be true. It could be true. Yeah. I mean, we, it's not to say we've never had somebody coming in and helping. I'm not against that at all. But the thing is, you know, with three kids, the cleaning kind of has to be every day because otherwise there's just an explosion every three hours, you know? And just, just like two days ago, my wife took a nap and the kids happened to be you know, they were home and guess what they did? They went into the pantry, they opened all the corn nuts and our entire living room was just full of corn nuts. Of course. These, these things happen all the time. If, unless we have a cleaning lady every single day, the house will always be a disaster. Yeah. Cause that's what little kids do. Right. Right. So it's not about scorekeeping really. It's just, this is the problem we've had ever since the beginning. I knew, you know, her completely the opposite of mine is their house. I went into their house and I actually helped them organize and help them do things completely. Does it complete disaster? You sound like a delight. So that's the complete opposite, right? And no, my, my in-laws actually asked me to help them. Okay. But, but, uh, I, I, here's the thing. I, I don't want to keep going back to the way you were raised and the way you were raised. I don't want to keep going back to the way you were raised She was raised. I want y'all to focus your energy on what kind of home do we want to have right now? and if you're sitting there thinking i'm bringing more value to this relationship right now that's going to be a big problem got it if you can say i am putting in all i got and my wife is struggling not only under the weight of there's corn nuts everywhere but there's fatigue and exhaustion and four years i mean she's been pregnant for five years straight basically right yeah um and the weight of mom's stuff and the weight of breakfasts and the weight of dinners and the weight of all the stuff none of this none of this wipes away like 10 cases of costco corn nuts all over the house right none of that does none of it gets rid of the diapers and you you have little boys you said yeah yeah you a three and a four-year-old little boy two four-year-old boy they're every room in your house has pee in it all of them every room right and laundry and all like i guess what i what i'm trying to gently do is point you to you and your wife clearing the deck and not saying this is my job that's your job but saying hey who how do we want this house to be and she might look at you and say dude when it's all clinically cleaned up and everything smells a little bit like clorox it makes her anxious and you have to say man a way i can love my wife is to relax a little bit and you have to be able to say when everything is just chaos and piles and whatever it makes me anxious makes me feel like i'm kind of losing my grip on stuff and so what are some things that you can do to make sure that you're not losing your grip on stuff and so what are some things we can do we can hire help we can i can get a week i will put in another hour of when i get home because i want my wife to be well and whole right and none of that is me versus you that's us together deciding what kind of house do we want to have and i can just tell you from years of experience you're never both going to land in a place you you and you're gonna have to exhale and when you walk in the door not treat your wife like an employee or like a parent you're gonna have to walk in with your eyes wide open and say what's the best way i can love this house and if you go in and say i treat your wife like an employee like hey you didn't complete all the things on your job description um yeah that's a recipe for a disaster and that doesn't mean that she doesn't have responsibilities at home but it's y'all getting y'all using pictures and words right you y'all using the same words clean but you have a picture of what that looks like and she has a picture of what that looks like and you have a calendar attached to that cleanliness and she has a calendar attached to that cleanliness and that's where y'all are getting mixed up because y'all keep saying the word clean and so being with each other and by the way she feels i mean she's used the words i'm not your kid it's my house too and she's right on that and both of y'all as adults have responsibilities there have you asked her the question how can i love you yeah of course what does she say and um she she just likes when i'm there with her we spend time together okay and like in all the other parts of our marriage it's it's really i would almost dare say perfect awesome just the one one spot okay so if everything else is perfect man i i would i wouldn't burn perfection close to perfection to the ground with judgment and i do think you're right to say this gives i want my house to be the most peaceful place in the world which by the way y'all have three kids under five it's just gonna be chaos and so you speaking in your own language you're not gonna be able to say i want my house to be the most in forever terms i wouldn't do that because it traps you in a prison and the locks on the inside that prison right now yeah dude i remember trying to pick up my living room with the one-year-old and my buddy was like bro stop it's gonna be like this for 20 years and i was like oh okay right and it hasn't been but i was i was overdoing it and um you being honest about hey i want this place to be as much as we can make it inside of this hurricane that we're living in i want it to be my a peaceful place and peace looks like this for me here's a picture of peace how can i love you how can i support you how can i give you margin so that and what you might find is she cares less about your money and she cares less about the work hours she cares less about this e-commerce business and she misses her husband yeah or she has a different vision for her marriage and she's kind of living in your world right now who knows or vice versa you y'all talked about it forever i'm gonna hit the gas on this business we're gonna grow grow grow it and she's not holding up her into the bargain but it's talking about that way at the bottom not in a me versus you but in a how can i love you because we're friends got it that's great does that make sense yeah 100 and yes you might have two three four years of brother being real real tired and what i would tell you is i would have you know she's gonna be tired too and your tires are gonna look different and they're gonna feel different and you're gonna have to fight the urge to say my way is right and her way is wrong my way is better her way is worse and instead say who did we agree we were going to be and are we both pulling our weight that we're able to pull and there's no such thing as a 50 50 marriage that's a false myth it does not real it's usually 80 20 90 10 70 30 occasionally it's 45 55 and those those seasons are rad right and you're gonna have seasons when you're working 20 hours a day because your business is going to suddenly scale on you and y'all are gonna have to sit down and say okay here's the season i'm entering into i'm gonna need some more help around here i'm not going to be able to do this extra hour or two that i usually do at night what does um hiring some help look like now and so if you can take judgment off the table and be curious about stuff how i can show up here how we can be friends how we can co-create the same together um and how you can give a little how she can give a little and how you can say hey i'm worried that you're not okay are you all right how can i love you well man that changes everything but yeah bro you got five kids i mean three kids under under five it's just gonna be for us it's gonna be winter for a while put on the winter coats some summer's coming spring's coming but it's gonna be a minute and if you can exhale in corn nuts everywhere as just an is man you'll i promise you you look back on these as the good old days and then after a long day we're picking up corn nuts i bet your house smelled so bad eddie thanks for the call brother appreciate you we'll be right back all right everyone summer is over i hope you had a great one i hope you went on a vacation i hope you took the time to slow down and relax because now we're back to real life full 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every single day go to cozy earth.com slash deloney and use code deloney for up to 20 off your entire order that's cozy earth.com slash deloney use code deloney and don't forget to take their post-purchase survey and let cozy earth know you heard about their amazing gear right here on this show all right kelly we're back um so we were just talking about the cleanliness levels in our marriages that call could have very easily been my wife calling me oh same for us because we are very very different yeah um because we grew up very different yeah um my husband grew up mom you know dad was away six months of the year in the military mom worked full-time she had three kids and let's just say housekeeping wasn't the top order of business we were worried about survival exactly i on the other hand i mean i can't imagine having if i like had a drink of water and then put the glass in the sink that would have been unheard of right right you didn't do that you didn't take take off your shoes and just leave them in the living room. Right. And all the towels were folded the right way and facing the right direction. Yeah. Yes. That's how I grew up. And I, I want to be sensitive to, we were just talking about this off air. Like the temptation one is to just roast any husband of a wife with a young kid. Like there is no other responsibility. You are responsible for everything. If you ever ask anything of her, you're a jerk, whatever, yada, yada, yada. That's I, I found that last caller like to really be searching. And so like not trying to be ugly or rude, maybe he doesn't understand, doesn't know whatever, but like I get that everybody, we got three kids like that. Everybody's tired. Everybody's tired all the time forever. You'll be tired for years. It just is where people get into trouble is my ways, the right way, your ways, the wrong way instead of our way is what we agreed. On and when you start getting into scorekeeping, I've worked this hard and you haven't worked this hard. I put in 12 hours and that kid and you start husbands, especially start doing math. Like that kid was only awake three hours that gave you four other hours when you could have been, that's going to get yourself into trouble. And so, and, and did you scroll two hours away? There's that. Things still need to be done. It's got to be done. Yeah. There's still laundry to do. There's still dishes. Right. And so it's not a free pass for either people. No, because that's just part of living in any household. That's right. There's just things that have to be done. That's right. Yeah. And so if you're to a point you can hire out help. Great. Yes. And if you can't hire out help and you're a point where I got to work another four hours tonight, so it's going to be 16 hour shift today and you don't think you can open your eyelids, but I got to go get the dirty diapers off of the thing. Like that's the season they're in. And the, the, if you can always just do whatever you can possibly do to stay, we are doing this together, not me versus you because me versus you is a lose, lose every time. And just know that season ends. It does. It does. And we've talked about this before because I think Sheila and I are probably very similar in this. Y'all are mean to me all the time. Actually, she's not. No. Okay, go ahead. Anyway, um, there's just because what I think is a clean house doesn't mean that's what you think. Yes. Yeah. And like if I come home and my husband has come home and set his travel coffee mug in the sink, you know what? I'm just going to wash it because I'm washing my dishes as well. Um, and if it bothers me, he'll make sure it's done before he goes to bed. But if I'm the one that wants it done right now, well, I'm just going to do it, you know? So, and, and you can choose to, not go, he knows I hate this. He's trying to send me a message and go down a whole trail of a litany of, of grievances, right? Or you can just wash them off. My husband knows that, um, our bedroom is one place that I really would like to keep picked up because it's kind of the one place we could be and be able to relax. And so he'll notice that like his bedside table, there's a reason that his is the one that doesn't face the door, his side of the bed. And then it started, he, and he'll say something. He'll be like, I bet this is starting. It's not going to bother you. I'll get it cleaned up this weekend. Cause he recognizes that. Yeah. And as long as he's, you know, but I don't require that every single thing be, you know, not misery. Right. No. But if you look at my bedside table, you would probably think that because everything is exactly where it's supposed to be. But that's me. Yeah. That's on me. And so being able to say this, my perfect vision of my house, it looks like this. And her perfect vision of a day is I made another day with three kids under five. If y'all are both on the same team in that way. Awesome. It's great. If you want your house that looks like a magazine all the time, you need to live alone. Period. Yeah. And trust me, there's times that I thought maybe I should. Yeah. That's a messy one. No pun intended. No pun intended. Like for me and Alex, look at our desks. That tells you all you need to know. Alex, shout out. Me and your desk are pretty similar. Same team, brother. Love you guys. Bye.