Masterclass: How to Deal With a Cheating Spouse

My wife and one of my best friends had over a year-long affair. I'm worried that my husband may be having an emotional affair with my best friend. I had a one-night stand or a hookup, I guess, with her stepmother. And I saw that he was on a dating site, so I catfished him. No way. Welcome to the Deloney Mixtape. This is a new show that I've put together because you asked for it. Here's what it is. It's topic-based episodes that we compile calls about a specific issue that you're facing in your life that will help you develop a roadmap, not feel so alone, right, and give you some steps that you can take in your own life. And so whether it's about infidelity, whether it's about exercise and nutrition, whether it's about family members cutting each other off, or any number of countless topic-based issues, we're compiling a group of calls into a specific episode just for you. This is not designed for you to gawk and ooh and ah. It's designed for you, if you're struggling with a particular thing or you have someone in your life who's struggling with a particular thing, to listen to other people's experiences and to get the next right steps for you and your family. The first episode of the Deloney Mixtape is about infidelity. So many folks reach out who've got spouses who are cheating on them, husbands, wives. This first episode is about what to do in the aftermath of finding out your spouse has cheated on you. Check it out. How do I forgive and move forward after my wife and one of my best friends had over a year-long affair behind my back? And the second part of that is, is it even possible? For me to move forward. Tell me about it. Well, feel free to stop or interrupt me because I can get, there's so much that goes into this, you know, I can get ranting, but. Do this for me. Hold on, hold on. Based on what you just said, I'm all about the rant. I get it. I want to rant for you. Okay. It's easy to get dragged down in the mud on these deals. I want you to practice just with me. Stand above it. And looking down as far as you can on it. Okay? Okay. Give me the high level. And this isn't for, this isn't for like good radio. This is for you to be able to begin to talk about this without getting dragged underwater by it. Because every time you go underwater, you get emotional and you get emotional. You act crazy. Either I'm going to let her back in or she's never coming back or all my friends. Let's practice staying way up here on this one. Okay. Okay. So tell me what happened. In as few sentences as you can. Okay. Um, last August I got on her laptop and found that she had been on a paternity test website. Uh, our daughter just turned one, um, had been on a paternity test website and questioned her about it and ended up finding out it was one of my best friends who was also my boss. Whoa. He was in our wedding. I left my previous job for him. Um, what do you do? I'm a firefighter. Does that guy still have his job? Um, let's just say he was, he left. Good. After that. Um, the research is pretty clear that somebody that cheats on their wife that is lacks that, that type of integrity at home also lacks that type of integrity at work. Yeah. And this is an ongoing thing for him. Yeah. And you're a firefighter. I don't want a piece of crap like that out making sure my community is safe. Cause that, that sucker. He's going to cut corners and some innocent bystander is going to die because that person lacks the deepest roots of character. You're a hundred percent right. Good, man. I hope that that dude's like, and like grooming dogs or something right now where he can't hurt anybody. All right. So the hard part about that too, is that we actually found out she was pregnant, um, a few months before we got married. Just, we were already engaged. It just kind of happened. Um, I mean, it does. Well, we know how it happened. Yeah. I was going to say like, well, gosh, no, we know how it happened. All right. So she had a bad reaction. What does that mean? Well, so she's always had, we've been together. We're high school sweethearts. She's always had really strong Christian values. And I don't know where the nightly found out they like, they flipped like eight months before a wedding and it was really bizarre. And I didn't understand why she wanted to start to start using things. Like I'm going to do what I want to do. Um, like comments like that, like regardless of what I think. And, um, so when she found out she was pregnant, she had told me she wanted an abortion and it was really hard on me, obviously, of trying to be like, please, you know, don't do this. Like, this is our baby. Like you will regret it. Is that because she thought it was somebody else's baby? Yeah. Which I didn't know. And she didn't tell me. Okay. Um, so that was before our wedding. She had, that's been, she had a baby. I had started the affair with him and I didn't find out until over a year later and had continued every now and then with him through them. How long have you been married? A year and a half. How old are you? I'll be 25 in a few months. Yeah. This girl broke your heart, man. Yeah. And she gave you the best thing of all time too, at the same time, that little, that little kid, right? Yeah. That messes with your mind up, right? Bad. Yeah. I'm sorry, man. Um, the only way that this marriage can survive, can it? Yes, it can. Is it going to be hard? Yeah. You're a firefighter. You're not scared of hard things. The only way it survives is y'all completely control all, delete everything you knew about your marriage and you start completely over. And both of y'all are all in. And what does that mean? The fact that you called and said, I looked at her laptop, my wife and I just have laptops, several actually. I guess she has her phone and my phone, but we both know the codes to each other. Like it starts there. Yeah. You don't have secret stuff and I don't have secret stuff. This is, we're just going to build a unified structure here. Right. You wouldn't put up with that kind of logic in the firehouse, right? You wouldn't have like, I just, I'm just going to prep this however I want. You can't cause someone will die. Same, same applies in your marriage. Would she do that? You mean, would she be willing to control all, delete, start over, open up account? I mean, open up finances, share finances, open up electronics, cut off all contact with other people and just go fully in us to ride or die, build in a marriage that will last forever. Well, I mean, to add the other extra layer to this situation. So that was like the night that I found out, I went up to the firehouse, me and him worked different shifts and I confronted him. Um, and then I came back and the first thing I said was, here's what I need if we're going to fix this. And that was one of the things. Um, and she genuinely tried for a few weeks and then it just stopped. And, and I will say like, I'm a pursuer and she's like definitely a withdrawal or like she shuts down. Um, and so she shut down. Um, and that lasted until the end of December and I, we separated, um, but this is, you know, I, I, when we separated, it's with the hope that like maybe something will change, um, and get better. And I do see flashes of that at times. And then there's, you know, there's really high highs, really high lows. Um, I grew up with a mom with BPD. Um, and I see a lot of this. There's similar traits in her. And I genuinely believe that like a lot of this is caused by the mental illness. And my vows meant something to me. She broke your vows. She broke your vows. I know your vows meant something to you, but she broke them. You're hanging onto a ski rope and she cut the rope, dude. And you're still trying to ski and you're bobbing in the middle of the water and the boat is gone. Yeah. So I'm just hanging on. It's something that I wish was there. That's exactly right. That's when I tell you, you got to build something new. You got to build something completely new. And I, by the way, I really lately have, you, you stepped in it. You didn't even mean to. So I'm not going to direct this at you. I'm kind of over the, I'm a maximizer. I'm a builder. I'm a pursuer. I'm a whatever. Like, I don't care. Like I am a, uh, podcasting YouTube and radio personality. That's all. That's on my job. Description here at my office. I also go out and pull, pick up trash outside. If we have a bunch of guests coming, because when things get, uh, when you need to pull together as a team, you move chairs together. You just do what you got to do. Right. Um, and so I don't care if you're, I'm a withdrawal or I'm a pursuer, dude, my marriage is about over. I'll do whatever I have to do. Yeah. If it's uncomfortable, if it like, I don't care. Right. And so it's like, I'm just going to do my withdrawal game. - No dude, we don't have time for games. This thing's, you're about to be single mom and I'm about to be a single dad. And I don't want that for us. I want that for my baby. But yes, you are holding onto something that no longer exists. The question is not, can you get it back? You cannot, it is over. The question is, can y'all build something new? And I think you can, but it takes both of you. And she goes through one day. She doesn't think there's a chance that she would ever want to be with me again. And then the next, she acts completely otherwise. All right. Here's what I want to tell you. You, you have self-diagnosed her and you were looking at her through a lens of some sort of mental health diagnostic. Don't do that to her. It's not fair. What you have to do is to ask yourself, cause it, cause here's what it does. It also gives you a pass. It helps you not look at reality. And you've probably heard me say this a million times on the show. If behavior is a language, what is she telling you? I don't want to be with you. Occasionally I'll hook up with you. Occasionally when we come see the baby or when she comes to visit the baby or you go to visit the kid, y'all have some laughs, you grab a drink, maybe she's made dinner and it just feels like it would feel good, but it's not real. Is that true or false? Tell me if I'm wrong, man. I'd love to be wrong here. Very true. Okay. The only thing I think left to do is to sit down, say, I need us to be adults and let's, let's say we're going to go all in. And I have done my work to say, here's what all in means or let's call it. Cause right now you're both drowning in the maybe. And maybe, maybe there needs to be some just gray mush for a while, but it doesn't seem to, it doesn't seem to be effective. That's why I like separations. I like to have a date and a time and a location where we're going to reconnect what we're going to talk about when we get there. Like that separation has got a purpose and that's just to let the fire burn out in the house. Cause things got too hot. It's been four months. Has she seen somebody else that you know of? I asked her yesterday. She says no, but you can't believe that. Yeah. No, I don't trust her. Yeah. Would you go see her? Did she go see somebody with you? So we went, we went to counseling. She actually like the day after I found out, uh, scheduled us an appointment with a lady and, um, we went together like three times and this lady and I kind of butted heads. Um, it was a lot of, like, I would make the comment of how, like I felt if she can't, if I can't be, if I can't trust her with her phone, as far as, um, if I just asked to do something on it and she was very skittish about it. Um, the pretty much the counselor told me that I have no right to even ask that. It's nonsense. Nonsense. Never walk in that lady's office again. It's bull crap. Well, I stopped, uh, from, from pretty much the third or fourth appointment she said, we should want to start doing separate. And I didn't do that with her. Um, that's absolutely nonsensical. I don't think it goes to her, but I feel like the lady almost justifies it. Like, I don't, I don't think, I don't think it's, I think it's doing more harm than good. Here's the deal. Here's the deal. Here's the deal. You're spending a lot of time in your wife's head and you're making up stories about why she's doing something, what it's doing, how it's, I wouldn't do that. Judge the actual action in front of you. Okay. It doesn't matter what she's doing as a matter of where she's like, like all, like I, for us to stay together, I need you to be completely open with electronics. If that's not something you can do, then that's cool. I'm out. That's not, she's told me it's not. Yeah. I think I'm just scared. Cause I grew up, my parents divorced when I was early into my teenage years and I had a really bad reaction to it and grew up, you know, I'll never do that. My child. So two things you got to forgive yourself. You made yourself a promise that you didn't realize at a young age that takes two. And it sounds like you've worked your butt off to hold up your end of, um, of that rope that somebody else caught. And so go back and forgive your 13 year old self for being so pissed off at your parents. Cause you don't really know what happened. You kind of do, but probably not. And give yourself some grace, man. You went all into the ring to fight. That guy as hard as you could. You just didn't know the person that was supposed to fight with you was going to cut your knees out from under you. Got to give yourself some grace on that. And part two is be the best damn dad that ever existed. That little kid. She's my everything. I know she is. My daughter's mine too. I mean, it made it 10 times harder to even deal with what she did because for four months, I didn't even know she was mine until the results came in. I know. She'll always be your baby girl. And we're not going to talk bad about mom because she's also half mom too. Yeah. And we're going to love that little girl. She's not going to know a day in her life that daddy's not telling her that she loves her. She loves her. And if some crappy stepdad comes in the picture, your dad's going to be right there. And if mom's not okay, dad's going to step in. And if dad's got to go to court and get everything sorted out, which you're going to need to do, then we're going to go get things done, but we're going to take care of that baby girl. Is that cool? Yeah. I hate this for you, man. Sounds like you tried to do right. I'm sorry. It's been seven, eight months now. Just trying every day. The first, like, I wrote this book a while back and I couldn't figure out the first way to start it. I couldn't figure out like the entry point to it. And I finally landed on a sentence on two words, choose reality. And I don't know there's any sort of healing or mental or emotional or even physical health. I don't know if there's any way to get that without first being honest about the starting line. Here's how far I have to run. And I got to just at some point drop my shoulders and choose reality. The reality is my best friend in the world and boss didn't stab me in the back. He stabbed me right in the face. My wife, the mother of my baby girl. Yeah. Stabbed me right in the face. Right. Yep. That's choosing reality. That's heartbreak, dude. That's grief. That's deep grief, man. This anger that's raised all of it, dude. It's all good. It's all right. And then the question is, what are you going to do next? I don't. I think the conversation needs to be, I mean, I'll say this. There was a little bit of conflict between the two of us yesterday. And she said, you know, she doesn't want to be with me. And if that were to change, it wouldn't be for a long time. Cool. You need, you need to have the courage to hear her words. And then go do what you got to do. You need to go to the courthouse. You need to get an attorney. You need to go do this, the next right thing. I just feel like I'd be losing my dog. No. You won't be. Because she makes it very difficult for me already. I know. And that's what a court order can help with. At least it'll clarify that halftime or three-fourths time or whatever. Non-shift time. But you're trying to hold together a fantasy, brother. Then that it's gone. It's a ghost. And that's that, that angst, that. Like, oh, my God. I'll say this in a harsh way. You've already lost your daughter. Your daughter right now is tangled up in like an electric fence of chaos and tension. And I don't know who's what and where. And that's my daddy, but he doesn't live here. That's my mommy. She doesn't live here. But it's time. You need to call an attorney. You find yourself a therapist that isn't delusional. So ridiculous. And I'm having difficulties having like open and honest conversations with him about it. Okay. Tell me more. So I guess, I guess it all started a month ago. I woke up one morning, just happened to see that the security cam doorbell thing had a banner on my phone. And it was my husband leaving the house at midnight. And then there was another one that had him coming back again. at 2 a.m. And so when I asked him about it, he just said, hold on, Hannah, those are called regular affairs, not emotional affairs. Okay. Well, so he said he went next door, which is my best friend is my neighbor next door. And, um, her and me and my husband and her and her husband, we hang out, we do things with the kids. So I didn't actually feel weird about that. But what I, I asked him, how did it come to be that he went over there at midnight? And he just said that she invited him over. So that didn't really sit well. And I just asked him to see the text so I could understand. And a few hours after him just refusing to let me see the phone at all, he told me he deleted the text. Hannah. Yeah. You hear yourself as you're saying this, right? I know. I know. I know until you decide I'm going to sit in reality. I can't help you. Yeah. You know, you know, has he cheated on you before? Yes. Okay. Do you have little ones? Um, yeah. Okay. We have a almost, well, almost 13 year old and an eight year old. And you promised yourself never again, right? Of course. And you blamed yourself for part of it last time, right? Yes, sir. I'm not minimizing what this all means. Okay. Yeah. In fact, I know that you don't want to turn around because if you turn around, you realize that the gates of hell have just been opened. And so it's easier just to keep looking forward and make up imaginary stories. Yep. But I would not be your friend and I wouldn't be someone who cares about you. If I didn't metaphorically hold your hand and say, we got to turn around and look because the gates are wide open. Right. It doesn't. I have left my house multiple times in the middle of the night. And it's just go sit with people whose family members have passed away and it's with a team of people and it's part of a job or it's to sit in hotels and whatever. Okay. So I've done that. I, so many times I can't even count. I pride myself on being available for my friends 24/7 365 and for people in my community. If there ever was a moment when my wife said, let me see your phone. Well, she wouldn't have to do that because she's got my code and she can look anytime she wants. Right. And I don't have a history of cheating on my wife. I have a history of being an idiot. You see what I'm saying? Like, like every, every variable you told me. Where was your best friend's husband? Apparently from what she has told me, he was upstairs with their youngest, trying to get him to bed. And she just really needed a corkscrew to open a wine bottle. I know you can't be serious. Oh, I wish I could laugh. I'm laughing for you. I'm laughing laughter. You don't have, I know, I know, I know you don't have it. I know you don't have it. And I know if you start laughing, you'll probably start crying. You won't be able to stop. I know. Okay. I know. So what, it, we're at that magical place. Everyone I've ever sat with, eventually we get to this one question. What are you going to do now? That's, that's what I've been asking myself every day. Okay. I know what I should do. I think. No, there's not a should. There's not a should. There's not a have to. There's just an is. Because if you, if you, if you say I should, then you're outsourcing, you're blaming, you're outsourcing your next move on some kind of cultural pressure or social pressure, blah, blah, blah. What do you want to do? I mean, I wish I could just forget about it completely. You can't. You can, you can sweep another rug. You're a grownup. You get to do that. Yeah, I've done that for 10 years. I know you have, and if, and this is one of those moments, if you've got a serial cheater that it, everything kind of stops like do, do, do like Star Wars, right? And all of a sudden you go, oh crap, this has been happening for a long time. Right. And by the way, there is a way to, um, you can just Google it. There's a way to get deleted text messages that they stay on your phone. I know I tried that. And that's when he, I, I tried to be sneaky by, well, I asked him for it. He handed me the phone and I started to do that. That's when I saw the amount of text messages between the two of them. Okay. But he snatched it out of my hand before I could actually go through anything. Okay. And that's really. You get, listen, listen. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not going to make any judgments of you. I'm not going to beat you up. I'm just going to sit here with you. You can live with somebody who's going to lie to your face and sleep with you. You can sleep with your next door neighbor slash best friend, who, by the way, she's not your best friend. Stop referring to her as that. Right. Um, she's a neighbor who is sleeping with your husband and, or let's say they're not sleeping together as being so incredibly, um, disrespectful of you and your marriage and your integrity. Just stupid. Right. Just dumb. Um, you can live with that life and you can raise your children. You can raise your two kids and let them see like, this is what love looks like. And this is what marriage looks like. Or you can make another choice. And I'm not Mac. I'm not like the thought of becoming a single mom. That, that phrase is terrifying. And what that means economically and what that means, decision-making. And if you have done anything dumb, every one of your texts is going to be made public to in court. Like all that stuff. I know. I get it. I get it. But you have to choose to live in reality. And if you can't keep, bury the weight, bear the weight of reality, which I get, I've been there myself, then you got to get somebody to sit with you and hold it with you. Right. And that's been the difficult part because he's telling me that my reality isn't the actual reality. I know. And he's, I mean. When you, when you just said the thing about the corkscrew. It's not on camera. All of the, the men and women in the booth, like they all dropped their heads. Like, oh God. I know. But listen. I know. If nothing else you get from this call, you're not crazy. You do have some choices to make. I didn't hear that. Thank you. You have some, you have some hard choices to make. But you're not crazy. Well, I appreciate that. So how can I help with you? I guess that was it. I mean, you know, I talked to her about things and it just, I realized my, you know, the part of me that said, I just want to know what was in that text, but that won't really make anything better because then they'll just be waiting for the next shoe to drop. You know, it's in those texts, Hannah. You know. Yeah. I know. I just wanted to be so wrong. I know. I know. Trust me. I would love, I would love for you to call and say, I think my husband's having an affair and you rattle it off and me go, I don't think that's it at all. I would love that. I would love that. And if that was the case, as a guy who would gladly in the middle of the night, go over to my friend's house and help their wife out with anything they needed. Right. Not anything. Not anything. Most things. Right. No, no, no. I get it. Um, I would gladly, I would unthinkingly hand my phone over to anybody. Right. And I would also set up some pretty ridiculous guardrails. Right? Right. Yeah. And if I'd ever cheated on my wife, if I'd ever slept with somebody that wasn't my wife, I would have new rules that say, I don't go over to people's houses in the middle of the night. the funny thing is is we had those rules they sat on our refrigerator for years yeah he just forgot yes no he didn't he never cared he never cared I know he never cared I know will you just sit with me for a minute in that yes yes I'm sorry I'm sorry in the same way I'm asking you to live in reality until he decides to sit down and be honest with you. There's not a lot of co-creating what happens next. You're going to have to move on your own. Right. Right. If he decides to sit down and say, all right, here's a deal. But until he decides to be honest, he's not going to be honest. I mean, what does he even say when he looks you in the eye and says, you can't see my phone? Like that doesn't make any sense to me. Oh, here we go. You're looking for something. You're going to be a detective. Here we go. Yes, I am. Show me your phone. Why do you back away there? I didn't physically take it from him. That's the only thing I didn't do. I mean, I did actually say the word. If you don't show me your phone right now, we're done. Yeah. Did he laugh at you? He didn't laugh, but that's when he hadn't deleted it at that point. And then after that, an hour later, he was like, well, I deleted it. Okay. You've heard me say this a million times on the show. Behavior is a language. What did he tell you? This is over. Yep. He called your blog. Yep. Cool. This is over. Yep. And you're the one that doesn't want to hear what he just said. By deleting the thing you said, if I don't see it, I'm out. And he's like, cool. Delete. I call. Yep. Yep. Yep. It's true. Do you have somebody you can call? Yes. You have somebody you can sit with in your local community and be completely 100% honest? Yes, I do. I will be available to you every step of the way. Call back anytime. Okay. And you know, like I do, the next while is going to be awful. Mm-hmm. And it will be. It will be insane to expect someone who has no character, who has no integrity, who hurts you with his dishonesty and then makes you feel crazy for it, to suddenly treat you with dignity and respect as your marriage, as y'all figure out what happens next. Right. Okay. Yeah. He heard you. If you don't show me this, this marriage is over. Cool. Delete. Mm-hmm. You're right. I just didn't want to see it. Yeah. But I know it. I'm so, so sorry. That's all right. I think it is. I mean, this is what I need. I need somebody to just say, here's the mirror. Look at what you're saying. You know that you're not crazy. Yeah, you're not crazy. You're not crazy. And you heard it. I mean, you heard yourself when you said it. Like, you're not crazy. I'm heartbroken with you. Been married for more than 20 years. We experienced normal marriage problems like most people, but got involved at work with somebody, a coworker, and have had a very difficult time dealing with those emotions. Making probably negative emotional decisions. And that's drawn me away from being the best husband and father. And I don't like it. Tell me about the involvement. How long you've been, are you having an affair? Are you just, are you just, you're just like the attention from somebody? Well, I'm. Have you been sleeping with this person? Yeah. Okay. For how long? So it's, oh, it's, it started out, um, several years ago. Um, it's been, it's been like eight years now. Eight. So the better part of a decade. Oh, well, yeah. Okay. So you've been in this, having this affair with this other person for almost as long as halfway, as long as like 50% of your marriage, you've had somebody else. Yeah, not quite, but. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How can I help you? Um, so I've been talking to a therapist on the side, um, for about three months and I don't want to go through divorce. Never planned this. Um. Bro, hold on. This isn't a one night stand. This is an eight year long sexual and emotional affair. You're talking about this, like it just happened, like you're on a work trip and you had too many drinks. And you just, and it happened. Help me with this. Well, it definitely ha it definitely happened. Um, so we were working together for awhile and a couple of years before anything transpired. Um, and she kind of like expressed to me, you know, we were actually, um, that the times when I came by the desk, like she couldn't, I couldn't do that. I couldn't come. You know, you know, and I'm, I'm kind of her supervisor and, and when I'd come and look at stuff, she got physically changed, I guess, warm and flustered. Maybe it's love, whatever the feeling is. And, um, she basically told me without telling me that she was interested. It's like, I can't handle it when you come by. And, um, so one of your employees eight years ago said, Hey, it makes me feel uncomfortable when you come by. Yeah. I should've replaced her. Yep. And you were like, I didn't, you know what? We should probably sleep together. No. Or we should go out for coffee or I have feelings for you too. Or whatever happened. Yes. All right. But even the way you're telling that story, it's, it's like it happened like two weeks ago. Right. So why are you still married? That's the question I've wrestled with. So like, I've been unhappy. Yeah. Um, and the, the, the, the large majority was probably just, um, the butting heads at home. And what I felt was lack of respect at home. And kind of like when we had kids, they became the priority and, and I was thrown aside. Um, not entirely, but it had, it, the feelings were, um, lack of respect and, um, arguing me about parenting in front of our kids. And so the kids start to argue with the parents and suddenly I look like a bad guy or the wrong guy. And we were not on the same page. And we tried to counsel around the same time that that happened. Um, finding out your different value systems. Um, and we started counseling back then. Um, she had suspected just because we work in a smaller office. So she kind of like said, I bet you want to, you look at her and want to boom. And I'm like, no, never. I hadn't, that hadn't crossed my mind before. Um, until she said that. And then, Oh, you're going to, you're going to blame your wife for this too. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not trying. I've just, I guess there's that, there's that potential in any situation. I'm not saying she's wrong for thinking that, but that's, I was shocked when she had said that, because that's not at all how I felt. I always guarded my thoughts. I always tried to submit those to Christ and have, you know, not, not have to deal with that. Um, okay. Okay. But I, but I, okay. You, you, but you're there, you're here. We're there. And it's, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. I, I can't help, but feel there's a disassociation from reality. Okay. I don't know a marriage, none, zero. I don't know a marriage that when kids start coming along, that there's not tension. Mm-hmm. And that there is a need to figure out a new way to communicate, new values emerge that we didn't even know we had. This is a big deal to me. This is not a big deal to me. And there's, that's, that's, that's par and course for marriage is par and course for having kids. And I applaud y'all for going to therapy, for counseling, trying to figure out a new way. I'll take your word for it. That your wife just said, I don't care what you feel. I don't care what you think. I'm going to treat you like crap. I'm going to not care about you at all, which by the way, I don't believe, but I'm going to, I'm going to take your full word for that. I'm going to treat you like crap, husband. I'm not going to care about you. I'm not going to respect you. I'm not going to love you. I'm just going to care about these kids. And still you chose to sleep with one of your employees for the better part of 10 years. You have agency. You've always had agency. And so we're here now on this call. Tell me about how I can help you with the call. Are you wrestling with staying in your marriage? Are you wrestling with, like, what do you, how can I help you, man? Well, there's a lot, there's a lot of, naturally, of potential shame. I don't want to, I don't want to drag through a divorce, and I, my kids are super important. It's super important for me to be there with them in the mornings, taking them to school. I know, but you should have been through that eight years ago, dude. Here's the deal. You've burned your house down, and you're trying to tell me, like, I still want to keep the, I want to keep the upstairs, and I want to keep the couches. All of that is gone now. It's over. The question is, how long are you going to live a life where you can't even look yourself in the mirror? Right. Because I hear. I hear that on you, dude. I hear it. I'm trying to be compassionate. I hear it. So, I've driven myself to this point, and I'm, the heaviness is just overwhelming. What got, why now? What got you here? Are you about to be found out? Are you, like, why here? Why now? By the way, your wife knows. She 100% knows. She 100% knows. You don't think so? I don't. Seemingly not, but, I mean, maybe she, that she does. I've, I've, I've heard you tell that to other people as well, and I'm just trying to minimize destruction. It's gone. It's already gone. It's gone, brother. Okay. It's gone. It's gone. That's, that's the fantasy. That's the fantasy part of this. That you are in control of this. You're not. Right. We're not. It's gone. The only thing you can do now is the next right thing, which is to, for the first time in a long time, be a person of 100% integrity. What's the next right move? Stopping what I'm doing. Okay. Okay. And, by the way, that will. That will come with multiple lines of consequences. It may end in the loss of your business. It may end in a lawsuit at work. It may end in loss of your marriage. It may end in all of it. And that won't make it not the right thing to do. Mm-hmm. I don't see a way where these planes land. And I know you've been trying to air traffic control. I know you've been trying to air traffic control them all, dude. They're going to crash. I'm telling you, man. I've just been doing this too long. Mm-hmm. That's what I feel. Aren't you tired? Aren't you tired? Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing and exciting as it's happening. And then you just realize what you just said. It's going to crash. And I. I. I'm not trying to be a bad person. And if things don't change, I guess, and number one, I'm okay with ending it and moving on. But then what about my marriage? Is it too long gone? Do people recover from those kind of things? I'll say it one more time. The marriage you have is over. The best shot you have, if you want to keep that charade going, is to exhale and to put everything on the table. And maybe your wife will choose to rebuild something new with you. But your marriage hasn't been what you project to the world for 10 years. And by the way. By the way, it started falling apart before you started sleeping with one of your employees. Right. Right? Yeah. Who is this? Tell me about this woman who's gone eight years being the other woman. Is she content in that role? Has she been asking you to leave your wife for years? Like, even that arrangement is strange. She's married, too, and unhappy. And so talking about those things is what led to this. And, of course. So there's two families that are going to be blown up over this. Right. And that's what I've been telling her and trying to basically. Get out without hurting. You can't get out without hurting people. But she. Why hasn't she. My therapist has said the same thing. Why hasn't she left her marriage? Because she's, for whatever reason, either just waiting on you or. Or she's not serious. Like, she's not seriously in love. It's not love. It's something else. Trying to get in her head. Decide why she's doing what she's doing is a waste of your time and energy. Mm-hmm. Building a life with somebody who also lacks that much integrity is a fool's errand. It feels to me like the right thing to do is not for you to go fire somebody, but for you to leave. And you to say, I'm starting over. Because I've burned this whole thing to the ground. How are any of your other employees going to trust you? How are your customers going to trust you? If you can keep an ongoing deception for eight years from the person you said till death do us part, no customers can trust. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I don't get that you get the depth of the mess you're in. Or maybe you do and it's just saying it out loud is so scary. Totally. So what does it look like? What's your next move? I don't. That's. I don't know. That's why I'm calling. What's your counselor been telling you? Have you been seeing a counselor for depression or anxiety? Have you been seeing the counselor for. Nope. What to do? Yep. He said as quickly as I can end it to do it if it's next Monday. You know, that's. And that's. You've been seeing this person for multiple months, you said? Mm-hmm. So I. I agree. You haven't taken that professional's advice that you're paying. Why are you going to take mine? I'm just some Yahoo on the internets, man. I think you need to have a conversation with your wife today. And at some point, you have to. I don't think you fire that person or you separate from that person. I think you leave your job and then get a close-up shot. I don't know. I don't know what your profession is and if you're a boss or if you're just a mid-level manager. I don't know the arrangement, what you got. But I think the integrous thing is for you to leave. You've been in a power position over this employee for eight years. That's not going to. That's not going to read well in the deposition, my brother. Not to mention. Her feeling like, man, what am I supposed to do? Lose my job too? Right. Forget the legal side of it. Just like when your boss says, hey, you want to come over? Are you going to meet at a hotel or whatever? Those text messages in black and white don't read well, man. I go with what your therapist said. He's been working with you for months now. I think the first conversation begins with your wife. Or the first conversation begins with you submitting your resignation for wherever it is you work. And you going home and telling your wife, here we go. Here's everything. And she may get on the phone and call this other woman's husband. She may march down to. Who knows? You can't control what happens next. And I think this illusion of control and you balancing all these spinning plates, it's made you have to detach from reality, from the amount of pain you're about to go through. And more importantly, the amount of pain you put so many other people through by your choices and your actions. And the other employees in this office, the customers that you serve, everybody but the only person you can control right now is you and doing the next right integrus thing the question is how do me and my wife rebuild our marriage after i had a uh a one-night stand or like a hookup i guess with her stepmother eric um let's just uh as they say back that thing up say what yeah um Really just a wild situation. In all seriousness, what happened? We were all drinking together. We all killed a bottle of tequila, the three of us within the hour. And then it was just me and her stepmom in her apartment. My wife went downstairs with the kids and all that good stuff, and they were swimming. And basically, she was asleep, and I was on the couch just waiting for her. I was going to wake her up for her work call. She was supervising or whatever and had to send a closing email. So I was standing there making sure she woke up to do that. And when she woke up, her top fell off. She was wearing a bikini. Her top fell off. And put it back on, and then I kind of pursued after that. So your marriage is over. You're not going to rebuild this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't think of a more egregious violation, man. I can. Kids and beyond kids, this. Yeah, it's definitely. Yeah. You've blown it up. I think the integrous thing to do is to treat your wife with dignity and respect as you all make. I mean, I can't think of a murder. Like, just dishonor. It's a dishonoring thing you could do to somebody, man. I agree. It was the most, my biggest, dumbest decision I've ever made. My biggest regret. And I've just. This year would be five years. Were those kids yours? It was her. One of them is, and she was with my, her little brother and sister as well. Okay. So your wife has two kids by somebody else? No, she, she, there's three down there. One, it was just one. That was our daughter. That's the only kid we have. And then the other. The other kids were her stepmom's kids. Okay. Her brother and sister. So obviously, you know, this, this is just like insanely sensational and it's going to make for good YouTube clips and all that. And you also know that what you did is like, it's just the lowest thing you could do to somebody. But so I'm not going to kick you while you're down anymore. Like what's the world been like since then? I just been trying to figure everything out. Been really, really hard. I mean, I. You know, I've been trying hard to forgive myself and to, you know, just work on myself is all I can do at this point. I mean, I, um, me and my wife are cohabitating right now. Um, we're still in the same room and stuff. Um, we've been able to go and do things together and they've been civil and then, you know, nothing, nothing crazy. Our marriage wasn't perfect before this by any means, obviously, or this wouldn't have even been close to happening, but, uh. Does your wife want to stay married to you? She's in limbo right now. I mean. What, what's the limbo? Um, we just need to work on ourselves. I mean, we've been attached to the hip since we were 17. Um, and really lost ourselves in our relationship. We've just, um, got, you know, got together real quick and moved out of state after that real quick and then had a baby by 18. And so our whole life was just each other. And baby, and then that's not a bad thing. And that's not a reason why you hook up with somebody's mom. Not at all. There's never a reason why that it should not have happened. There's no, I'm not trying to make any excuse. I've tried to take accountability from the, you know, sure. I'm saying like, I'm saying like the, there's like this just annoying cultural narrative. Like you got to go find yourself. I mean, you don't, you, you, you make a commitment with somebody and you'll figure it out. Right. Y'all decide we're going to build something together. Um, so what do you want to do next? I want my family more than anything. And I understand that I've blown that up and I'm just trying to, I just can't think of not coming home to my daughter every night and not come home to my wife every night. Like it just doesn't, life doesn't seem like there's, obviously there's more to go and there's, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm 23 about to be 24. So there's, there's more to go. You're a quarter way. You're a quarter of the way done. First quarter. Oh, I just can't see life without them. Okay. I really can't. I, I, because you'll have a child together, unless you're going to abandon this child, you will be in each other's lives forever. Right. All right. So that's, that's, that's a given. Um, I don't know. I don't know unless y'all have some sort of defining. The only word I could think of right now, and this isn't accurate, this isn't right, but this is the word that's in my head. Y'all have to have some sort of line. Like I'm thinking of the word funeral keeps coming to mind. You have to have a funeral for what was, what we had is over. And as you described it, the stumbling from 17 into 18 to, oh my gosh, we're parents to trying to make it all work. To, I got really wasted and hooked up with her mom. Like that is all over. And you, you got a dropped into a coal plunge. Like you're an adult, right? And when you're 18, 19, 20, and you have a little one, it's easy to kind of still be a kid, but also be a parent. You know what I mean? Like you're a grownup adult who may have just blown up his whole life. Definitely boop his whole life. Right. So there has to be some sort of, line drawn. This was, and now this is, and that might be you sitting down saying, okay, I have blown up our life. What we had is over. Both of us have to be adults and sit at this table and decide what we're going to do next. Do you want to be married to me? And she's probably gonna say, I don't know, because the thought of answering that question is she knows her life is different now is blown up, but I don't know that she's metabolized it. Right. That's definitely taken some time. It's only two months ago on the eighth. And, and the fact that the knife that cut her is still sleeping in the same bed, it's just really close. So it might mean you go and saying, I'm gonna take 30 days for you and I'm going to go live with my mom, with a friend, with whatever, and let the smoke clear. Right. And we, we did that for about two weeks, I would say. And then my, uh, I'm staying at my mom's and she lives off a dirt road though. And a bunch of storms came through and made it pretty inaccessible to get through, especially with my car. And, uh, so then went to the couch and then kind of went from there, went back into the bed and whatnot. And it doesn't, it doesn't sound like she's ready for you to be back yet. Yeah. Harsh. I mean, it's, does she work? There's, um, not as of now. Um, she's been at home with her daughter. She's, uh, she's been at home with her daughter. She's, uh, going, I think she's actually starting today to, uh, get her GED. She's going, um, the local schools out here and doing the testing and stuff like that. Okay. She didn't get it. So she's taking the GED today? Yeah, sure. She's like starting the classes. I think she's like taking the pre quizzes and pre tests and all that stuff to see where she's at. So I want to challenge you. Okay. Um, I know that the life of your daughter will be different without a dad in the home. Um, I know that your daughter will be different without a dad in the home. Okay. I know that. I also know that a wife living in terror of her marriage will negatively impact your daughter as well. And so I can imagine your 22 or 23 year old wife hearing the most insane news ever and how she's going to react to it. Having to stay in the same lion's den of the lion who just mauled her present and her future because she has no money. She has nowhere to go. Right. And so part of me thinks it would be of high integrity to you for you to say, honey, you're trapped. And I know that. Is she still flinching around you? Um, there are good days and bad days. Um, we've been able to go to the movies and we were just able to, you know, this last week I went to escape room together and went to dinner and, you know, we're still doing things like that and able to laugh together and, you know, I've been able to be intimate and hug and kiss her. And then, and then other days it's not going like that, which I completely understand. I want to challenge you to sit down with your wife and say, you've heard me say this before, but I want you to hear me say it again. I blew our lives to Smith. The rains and my ultimate dream is that you will rebuild something new with me. But I also know that you need time to breathe. So for 30 days, I'm gonna go live here and I'm gonna take care of all the bills at this house. You're not gonna worry about anything. I want you to be able to breathe. And I'm gonna write you a letter every day and put it in the mailbox. I would love for you to write, maybe you present her with a nice journal, like something you go somewhere and buy a nice one today and put it on the, I want you to get this stuff out of your body and write down 'cause I know it hurt you bad. But if you keep hovering and she is legitimately trapped as a 22 year old with a high school diploma, does she even graduate high school? - No, sir. - Okay, she's got nothing. And she has to tread water. You've heard of fight or flight, right? - Right. - There's another one called fawn where you have to nuzzle up next to the person who just tried to kill you or just blew up everything because you got nowhere to go. It's the safest place for you. - That's true. - Okay. Do the next dignified right thing and give her a chance to breathe and make sure she's got no worries when it comes to money for the next month. - Okay. I guess I have a kind of a wimpier question for you based off of that then. I just feel like we've both established that we're both just co-dependent on each other and that, you know, I don't know, it's just hard for me to like function without. - You don't even know what that means, dude. That's a couple of 23-year-olds Googling what that term means. - Very true. - Okay. You don't even know what that means. So don't try to give any diagnostic excuses. You gotta be a grown man. You're 23. You just blew your family up. You have to say, okay, I'm gonna do the next right thing, which is to let my wife stand back up on her own two feet 'cause I knocked her down. And then we're gonna come to the table and I'm gonna say, I'll do anything it takes. What does rebuilding trust look like? And after 30 days of the smoke clearing, here we go. After 30 days of the smoke clearing, her catching her breath, she may look across the table and say, nothing. You slept with my mom. - Right. - Or she might say, here's what it's gonna take. I'm gonna need this, this, and this, and this. And then you, as a grown man, have to make a choice. Does that make sense? - It does. And I'm not trying to minimize the situation or make an excuse, but I didn't fully sleep with her mom. - Dude, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. - 10-4. 10-4. - Doesn't matter. It happened. It happened. And it's, try to take accountability from the beginning and just-- - I know, I know. - Go from there. I thought she didn't find out or anything. I sat her down and told her, which also doesn't make a difference, but-- - Right. I mean, it is what it is when it is. And you need to understand from her perspective, she lost her mom, too. - Yeah. - Like she's lost everything. - And then there's past trauma from her stepmother as well. - I would imagine so, I would imagine so. I think that we're doing the next compassionate right thing, which is you're gonna have groceries, the rent's taken care of, the bills are taken care of, you're gonna be able to breathe. Even if you wanna go one step further, which I think you should, I'm gonna help with childcare, whatever you gotta do. I'm gonna give you 30 days. And then at the end of 30 days, I want us to go eat breakfast at such and such place. And I want us to ask the question, are we gonna stay married? And I want you to tell her, I hope we can. And I understand we gotta rebuild everything. Okay? But I want y'all to have a date on the calendar when y'all gonna come back together. - Right, that makes sense. - And say, text me if you need me to come get our little girl. But we're not sleeping together. We're not hugging and kissing. We're not, we're just taking a break. Is that cool? - It's gonna suck, but if that's what's needed, I'll do absolutely anything to. to move on from this, even if it's not in the direction that I'm hoping for. - Okay. The thing you can do next, you can't undo what happened. The thing you can do next is be a person of high integrity and honor moving forward. - And that's just been eating me alive too, because I've, you know, it's thrown my moral compass so off because I've always told myself I wasn't that person. I would never be able to do that. And, you know, I've looked down on others that have done that and be like, okay, well they can do that to the person they say that they vowed everything to, they can do that to me. - That's right. That's right. And so you are now, I have to reestablish trust with you. - Right. - And that means you have to do the next right thing. You can't will it, or you can't think it into being, you just have to act it. You have to do the next trustworthy thing. I've often found trust rebuilding. If you have other people in your life that you've wronged, it'd be a good time to get on the phone and call them and say, you're sorry. It's doing the next right thing, next right thing with your wife and with your kid. It is going to do some acts of service. So twice a week, I want you to go, go to a food kitchen. I want you to go do the next right thing that's bigger than you, so that you can reestablish trust with yourself. If you go to the local church, why don't you go sit with the pastor and say, hey, here's what I did, man. I blew up everything. - That was one of the very first things I did. - Good. - I went there and talked with them. We did therapy immediately. We've done couples therapy. We've done, tried to do that stuff. And couples therapy didn't really seem to work. It seemed to help that she didn't really give any tools to use or any kind of plan of action. - Yeah, sometimes going to couples therapy right after something this big is like trying to go to PT instead of into surgery. It's like being in a car wreck and going straight to the physical therapist. It's not time yet, man. You still got to reset the bones and stitch somebody up and take out all the bad tissue, let those wounds heal. And then you can start going to physical therapy. It's just a matter of going too fast, man. Yeah, I think you can do the next right thing, man. And I hope more than anything that your daughter doesn't grow up without a dad. And so if your wife decides, hey, I just can't move past this, such a horrific violation of our marriage covenant, you'll honor her and say, I get it. And I'm going to be the best dad and co-parent I can be. I'm going to be an adult, I'm going to be a grownup, even though I'm sad and I'm heartbroken. And I hope you will do the things you got to do to rebuild trust in yourself. And maybe by God's grace, she comes around and says, okay, I'm going to go slowly, but surely, and we're going to rebuild this marriage. And here's what trust is going to look like, reestablishing trust. You can't drink, I want to see your phone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you're going to say, cool, I'm a hundred percent in. Cause I believe in you and I believe in us. And I believe in being a good dad. This is a big one, man. It's a big one. Go slow, go slow. You will not fix this in two months, three months, six months, one year. It's going to take a long time to rebuild this. Constantly focus on doing the next right thing for you, for your daughter, for your wife, and for your marriage. - I found my wife in an emotional affair with my neighbor for over a year. Now, I found out a couple weeks ago, I looked through the call logs on the phone. I knew something was going on between the two of them. I confronted him three times and I confronted her. I'm being honest with you. It was probably two to three times a day. We would consecutively argue about it. He would buy my son clothing for school and just stuff for his room. And he would cook my wife dinner a lot. And in front of me, they had nicknames and everybody denied it. And I'm having a hard time believing her in anything she says. Her mother passed away about two years ago and she was swearing on her deceased mother and our son that nothing was going on. And then when I confronted her, it was my, it was the blame was on my end and things weren't good. And it's been going on for about a year. We were in couples. It's therapy starting this January. I was unaware of everything, but I knew something was off in the marriage and I was trying to make it better. And I can't even get away because he is at my home. He's next to me at home. And he is there when I go to the gym at the same gym. So I can't even have an escape that way. And I'm not sure where to begin. I'm not even sure where my head is at. I can't trust anybody. And this is where I'm stuck at right now. - Yeah, dude, that's a terrifying place to be, man, I'm sorry. - That's okay. - It's hey, it's not okay, man. It's not, you don't gotta make me feel better. I'll just sit here with you. - Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. - Do you have little ones? - I do, I have one three-year-old son. - Oh man. - Yeah, I'm not even, I don't wanna come home. - Yeah. - I literally can't get away. And she said that she broke it off with him and our houses so close to you, if I put a hammer through the wall, you can probably see his living room. That's how, you know, we're right next door. But, and you know, she said that she broke it off. And then about two weeks ago, I asked her, we were just talking and I asked her what she had for dinner. And she said that she didn't eat. And this is something little, but it's just the fact that it happened. And she said that she didn't have dinner 'cause she wasn't hungry 'cause of everything going on. And then I got home, I work late and I got home that morning. And there was food and that was not ours. And how I know is because it was on a paper plate that was not ours in the garbage. And she wasn't honest with me again. And he keeps talking to her and saying hi. And, yeah, they both said that it was nothing sexual. But I don't believe the two of them because, like I said, I confronted him three times about it and my wife twice a day for two, three times a day for the last year. So. Man, there's not a good, there's not like a, it's not written in a textbook somewhere what the next move is. Yeah. Okay. I understand. So I'm going to give you with all of my, the time I've spent sitting with people who've had emotional affairs and full blown sexual affairs and like my personal experience, all of it. Okay. I would probably leave for 30 days. Okay. Because here's the thing, your wife is just lying to you and lying to you and you're going crazy. And it's hard to stay clear because every time you go to your, to the safest, what should be the safest place in the world, which is your home, you're in fight or flight the entire time. Correct. And every time you go to work, you're in fight or flight. And the other option would be, I'm going to go stay in an apartment for 30 days and we're going to put the house on the market. And I'm going to sell this house because that's the only way you're going to save your marriage. Yeah. And if she says, I think that's a great idea, let's do that. Cool. And if she says, absolutely not, this is where we live, yada, yada, then she gets to make a choice. Do you want this? Do you want to fight me for this home? Or we're going to sell this home one way or the other. We're going to sell it through when the judge forces the sale of the home and we split the assets up, the equity up, or we can sell it now and try to save our marriage. I don't mean to throw another curve ball at you. Throw it all, man. Throw them all. So this past February of this year, we jointly filed bankruptcy. So we could sell it. But as far as buying, I'm pretty sure we can't buy it. You're past all that. Yeah. Joe, your wife is sleeping with your neighbor. Period. End of story. You know that. I know that. They both know that. Yeah. And they would FaceTime too. I forgot to mention that. Joe. If you're done with this marriage, be done with this marriage, uh, an important family death, um, bankruptcy. Those are two of the, of the most powerful stressors on a marriage. Yes, sir. An affair. I mean, you're, you've got like, you're the, it's the trifecta. Yeah. But now you're at a place where you keep coming back to drink more poison and more poison and more poison. And I don't even hear, I haven't heard you once say, I am. I'm desperately in love with this woman and I want to try to save this marriage. I hear you pissed. Yeah. I'm, I'm, um, I thought I was past the anger stage. And no, dude, your wife's cheating on you. Right. And your neighbor waves at you. Yeah. I'm afraid you're gonna end up in jail. You know why? Cause I would. Yeah. I don't have the strength to go through what you're, what you're doing every day. I thought I made the right, honestly, I thought I made the right call. I was staying for my son and try to work it out, but I'm just, I'm angry. I can't even look at her. It's like, she, you know, she's trying in that aspect. But when I first found out it was like the end of June and I just said a divorce probably, I'm going to say like two, two weeks ago, then that's when she started to change. And I'm like, well, you know, why did it take me to say a divorce? And you know, I don't want to come home. I don't want to be around anybody. I'm, I'm angry. I'm upset. I can't, I can't believe anybody. I don't believe. The words that she's saying, you know what I mean? Even though she's, she, she could be telling the truth very well. Here's the deal. Here's what you have to, here's the work you have to do. Yes, sir. What does the path to trust look like for you? Because let's say we can't sell the house. We are stuck here in this house. It's against the law for us to sell, which is not true, but let's just make up something, okay? Yeah, yeah. What does trust look like? Trust looks like a no contact order. Trust looks like you saying you are forbidden from coming on my property. And if you come on my property, or you call my house again, you're on notice now. I'm going to file a harassment complaint. Okay. And your wife cuts off everything. She throws her phone in the sink and lets it, and loses all contacts and starts completely over. Yeah. But here's the deal, bro. She did all this stuff and she, and he made her dinner and they had dinner together last night. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I understand. You've heard me say this a thousand times. She's being very clear with you. No, I understand. Mm-hmm. And right now she's got a gravy train, which is you going off to work and then coming home. Does she work too? Yeah, she works during the day and then I work second shift from three to midnight. Okay. Yeah. So y'all effectively never see each other and she has eight hours a day when she gets to spend with a man next door. That is correct. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah, like the minute I leave for work, I leave the house around two and then that's when the calls would happen. Of course. Yeah. Of course they would. I guess I'm just still processing this and I don't even know, yeah, but. But here's the deal. I'm afraid you're about to do something stupid. Will you promise me that you're not gonna go to jail? Of course. Okay. Yeah, I have a three-year-old son and I can't. Excellent, excellent. Yeah, I don't wanna. Okay. I don't wanna make it worse for anybody. And for whatever it's worth, during a divorce proceeding, every one of her text messages will be subpoenaed. Every one of her emails will be subpoenaed, even the deleted ones. Mm-hmm. Everything is on the table. Okay, yours too. Yes, sir. And so there's a chance you end up with full custody here 'cause she doesn't wanna be married to you. Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah, she's, I mean, she's a great mom and I, you know, I couldn't ask for a better mother that way. Joe. Yeah. A great mom doesn't bring another man to the house every night. Yes, sir. And our son, like, just to bring one more incident up, like, you know, we were painting our son's room and we were in the middle of it and him and I started it and nothing was done. And she got, the next, the following day, she got out of work at two, I left, and I called her around my 6:30 break time. And she said that the room was finished and done. And I didn't believe her 'cause I know how much that takes, especially with a three-year-old by herself. And then, you know, I get home that next day, 'cause I get home at night and I look at the room and it's beautiful. Everything was cut in, all the corners. And I look on the tarp and there was paintbrushes and rollers that I don't have. And our son consecutively says that, I don't wanna say names, but the neighbor, mommy and him were all painting the room and she obviously denies it. But there's just. - Joe. - Joe. - Yeah. - You can hear it as you're saying it out loud, can't you? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Listen, like if we were in person, if I was sitting in Connecticut right now with you in New Haven, I was just there a few weeks ago. If I was there with you right now, I would stop the conversation and I'd give you a hug. 'Cause I know the path that's in front of you is gnarly. - Yeah. - Yeah. - I'm sorry. - I'm sorry. - I'm sorry. - I know miracles happen, but this sounds like your marriage is over and it sounds like now we're just waiting for somebody to be the adult and have the courage to do the next thing. - Yeah. I guess that's what I was afraid of. - I know. I'm sorry. I hate it for you too. - Sorry. It's just, you know, love's a funny thing. It's like, no matter how bad somebody hurts you, you just don't stop them. - No. - No. Of course not. - No. - Of course not. - I guess that's what I'm holding on to. - And dude, if she was ready to fight and go to war for this marriage, dude, I'd be, a thousand percent, y'all could save this marriage. - Yeah. - No question about it. I have no question about it. But everything starts with, I'm gonna tell you the truth. And she can't do that. And she won't do that. And now we're at a place where she is teaching her son that we lie. - Yeah. - She's teaching her son that multiple men stay in this home. And by the way, dude, Joe, just so you can see this from an outsider's perspective, 'cause I'm just a random dude in Nashville, Tennessee. - Yes, sir. - She's trying to send you a message. She's leaving trash in the trash. She's leaving rollers in the house. - Yeah. - She's not even trying. - Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. - Yeah, that's true. - Like there's a lot of what I would call infidelity gymnastics that people go through. Lots. - Yeah. - She's almost rubbing your nose in it or less aggressively letting you know this is happening. Ta-da! Right? - Yeah. - And maybe you tell her, "I want you out of this house in the next week. "She's gotta move out." - Yeah. - Y'all figure that stuff out. But I mean, you can't continue to allow another man to come spend. eight hours a day in your home with your wife and your child. Yeah. And that can be that you leave and then serve the papers or sit with an attorney or y'all go to a mediation or whatever. It happens in Connecticut. Every state's different. Or she packs up and goes, although I think your fear is she's just going to go 20 yards next door. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's, you know, it's what's going to happen. And she told him that, you know, she wants nothing to do with him, but you know, yesterday he was there outside and she took my son and her herself and my son and the dog for a walk. And when she went down the street, you know, he was staring at her and when he got back, you know, he said, Hey, how are you guys? And she's like, you know, good. How are you? And that's something little, but it's the fact that we're going through all this. And it's like, I, you know, my expectation is no, no context. And I shouldn't even have to say that if you're willing to work with somebody, then her defense was, well, we're neighbors. You know, what am I going to say? We're going to say hi. And I'm like, okay, but our marriage is on the line. Not a neighbor that you're having an affair with. Yeah. Right. Has she shown you the messages that she sent him that said we are never going to be in contact ever again. Stop contacting me effective immediately. So apparently this is all verbal on the back deck. Exactly. I want it in writing. Yeah. I want it in writing so that when you file a harassment complaint that this man won't leave your wife alone. Yeah. He keeps coming over to the property line and staring at her. He keeps yelling at her, trying to say hello to her when she's trying to walk your child and the dog on all in writing. I used to tell my college students, you have to put in writing through text message or email. Do not contact me anymore. Period. And once that line is crossed, then it's harassment. Now we can get involved. Yeah. That's a good point. Okay. All right. But I don't think she's going to do it, Joe. I don't think she's going to do it. I'm going to have to agree with you there. Okay. So let's start. Let's, let's get a group of people in your corner, whether that's a couple of close friends, whether that's a minister from your local church, whether that is, um, an attorney that you're going to sit with a mental health professional, everybody. Uh, maybe the path right now is to go sit with an attorney because you've got a lot to untangle, whether with, with the bankruptcy, with child, with home equity. I don't know how any of that stuff works in Connecticut, so having some, but a professional just to know what you're looking at here and the whole time, I want you to spend some time with yourself in a local coffee shop or on your breaks at work or in the morning when your son has taken a nap, figuring out what is a path back to trust so that you can lay it down in front of her and say, this is what this looks like. We sell the house and we rent because I would rather be married to you and rebuild this marriage than own a house. Or you have to sever all contact forever and partridge in the pear tree on and on and on and on and on. I'm going to put cameras up in the house and if this man steps on my property, I'm going to have him a no trespass. I don't want his plates in our home and I don't want his paint rollers in our home and I don't want his love and affection for you and our kid in our home. It's our home, not his, but Joe, you got to stop. I mean, I know you hear it, and it's, it's hard to even wrap your head around. Oh, this is it. Like my wife is choosing him. She's choosing dishonesty. She's choosing lying. And I'm so sorry. Call back anytime, brother. You got a long hard road ahead of you. And listen to me just because it's painful doesn't mean it's not right. This time last year, my wife asked me for an open relationship and I can see that she was struggling really bad and had been, had been for awhile. Um, and I felt like I didn't want to just say no to her. So basically I said, I'll give you a month, not do anything, not nothing physical. I said, I'll let you collect information. Give me some data. Tell me a reason why you think this would help us. She was already with somebody. Wasn't she? She had been already a year and a half before that for a year. Yep. Almost every year. And she, and she already had, she had a plan. Um, like we laid out all these ground rules, what would happen if we got there. And, um, and she was with somebody like almost right away, somebody different than this other person. Um, and both of them were from work. And then, uh, so I, I am struggling with this cause I, I just, it wasn't after the first month I was like, this is not something I want to have anything to do with, which I knew before I even agreed to any of it. I thought I would admit it to myself, but then, um, it all, like I asked her to stop and she said no. And even though she told me she hadn't been with anyone, there was nothing there. Um, she was still sleeping with me. And then I find out later that she wasn't using protection with these people. Um, have you ever heard of them? Have you ever heard the analogy about the, uh, rattlesnake in the paper bag? I don't know if you've ever heard of it. I don't know. Have you ever heard of the rattlesnake in the paper bag? I think so, but you might have to refresh my memory. So a guy is walking down the street and he stumbles on a plastic bag and he opens it up and there's a rattlesnake inside buzzing that rattlesnake says, Hey, will you help me get out of this bag? I'm stuck in here. I can't get out. And the guy goes, dude, I'm not going to pick you up here. Rattlesnake you'll bite me. And the rattlesnake goes, no, I'm not, I need help. Like, I'm not going to bite you this time. I need you to help me. And the guy's like, okay. And he sticks his hand in. And the rattlesnake just bites the crap out of them. And the guy goes, why'd you do that? You said you weren't going to. And he's like, I'm a rattlesnake. That's what I do. And then he goes, will you help me though? Help me out of this bag. And he goes, no, you just bit me. And he goes, I know I had to get that out of my system. I'm a rattlesnake. It's hard for me not to. I won't do it again. The guy's like, no, you bit me. And he goes, oh, come on. And he goes, all right. And he's like, I'm going to get you out of this. And he goes, I'm going to get you out of this. And when somebody's cheating on you for over a year, that means she didn't just have a one night stand or a weekend fling or a two or three week, like, ah, what am I doing? She was with somebody for a year. And so that marriage disconnection you felt that even entertained the idea that I know will make my marriage better. My wife goes and knocks around with some other dude. That'll help. The fact that you even entertained that was not enough. It's not because your marriage is falling apart because of something you were doing. It's because your wife is already in relationship with somebody else. Okay. And then you set up ground rules and you're stunned that she goes and sleeps with somebody else right away. Yeah. She broke every rule the first time. She's not a person of integrity. And I'm only telling you that because I love you, man. She's a person that lies and cheats to her husband of, and her ride or die for 16 years. I would like to say that since, since we've been together, we've been in this relationship for 16 years, we've been in this relationship for 16 years, you know, since we've been in this relationship for 16 years, we've been in this relationship for 16 years. I would like to say that since, so we went on a family vacation and she, on this vacation, we were driving through the middle of the night because we have young children and I wanted them to sleep. And her phone was still lit up because everything was locked on it, obviously. It was still lit up so I grabbed it and I found a bunch of stuff. She was sending videos and pictures and all sorts of stuff to many, many people. And from, and from that day, we started working to try to fix this. And, and, and, and then I found out everything maybe a month and a half after that in July. And, and since the day that she has come clean and told me everything, she has done every single thing I've asked. She has gone to counseling. I've gone to counseling. We're about to start couples therapy. We've taken trips together. We've really tried to reconnect on all levels and become better parents and just do things together. And to be honest, I've found nothing since then that says there was more. And trust me, I would be, I would be a person who was searching phone logs and doing all this stuff that I had never done over the first 15 years. I'd never even been through a song. - You find yourself like Liam Neeson real fast. Like, I was fine. - Yeah, it was wild. - Yeah, you just, you just like become one of those murder podcast people for sure. I gotta solve this, right? So what's your question? Let's get right to it. What's your question? - I cannot stop thinking about her with these other people. - That's right. - I, I, I, I ruminate and then I spiral and then I make up scenarios in my head and I, I make everything even worse than it probably was and then I ask her about it and then I can see the guilt is crushing her because now that she's in a healthier place and knows what she did, is doing to me currently, like, and I, for us, for my children, for her, I need to start feeling better and not being so crushed day to day and not having these two or three day spans where I just cannot function and I just am not sure how to move forward with it. - Okay. Often what happens in these situations is you are so empowered to be able to do what you're supposed to do and that's what you're supposed to do. empowered is not the right word. You're so brought back to life. You're enlivened. That's not really, I don't know if that's the right word. You're just given life again by seeing your partner try to connect with you. By seeing her do the things that you wish had been happening for 15 years. And it injects some life, some light back into a dark, dark, dark room. And what often happens is what you're running into right now. So I want you to know you're not crazy. You're not nuts. You're not alone. You're not on an island by yourself. This happens all the time, okay? That's exactly how it feels. I know it does. It's super isolating. And you start to feel crazy because she's doing all these things that seems that she's all in. It really feels that way. I know it does. You're not crazy, okay? What you haven't done is a couple of things. You have not grieved this yet. I don't know that you fully metabolized what actually happened. You've been too busy searching and playing Matlock and trying to solve this thing and then trying to get her to not wreck this whole car because it's flying down the highway and it's got kids in it and it's a thing and it's my marriage. And you haven't sat on the back porch by yourself and stared off at the sunset and said out loud, my wife was cheating on me for years. My wife was sleeping with other guys. My wife was sending nude videos and photos of herself all over the place. People have my wife's naked body on their phones. Who knows? Who knows how many? Who knows who they've shared that with? Uploaded it too. And the only way, and I'm being really direct with you because the only way to heal, it's the same as if I'm looking, I'm looking at somebody and I'm holding both of their hands and I look them in the eye and say, your husband was in a car wreck and he has died. There is something about, you have to, facts are your friends, have to be told this is what happened and you have to sit in that and own it. And what you're going to find is that you've been trying to keep your marriage together. Brother, the marriage you had is over. Yeah. I can definitely feel that. Y'all can. No question about it. Decide to build something new. And we have, I think that's where we're at right now. If I can move forward, I think she's starting to and kind of forget herself. Do you see how this has turned on you and you're making yourself the bad guy? Yeah, I'm good at that. I know. It's one of your spiritual gifts. Stop. Quit it. Quit it. It doesn't help the situation. The reality is the person who is the mother of your kids didn't stab you in the back. She stabbed you right in the face and then tried to concoct a plan to get you to go along with doing it in the future. And you being a guy that always goes to the mirror and is convinced that you're the biggest piece of crap on planet earth and you can't believe a woman like her would even be with you in the first place much less have kids and be your wife went along with it. Yeah, that's a hard thing to face. I know it is. I know. Here's what she really needs. She needs you to stand up on two feet tall. Put your shoulders back. Y'all are keeping the car going. You are. But you have to ask yourself a question you haven't asked yet. What do you want moving forward? I want to make it work. I want to make it work with her for our children and for me and for her. I don't think it was ever about leaving me or any of that. These are both married men. I gave one of them 24 hours to tell his wife he lived locally and then I made sure she knew the details. The other one wouldn't even mention knowing her so I got his wife's phone number and I made sure she had all the details. And did that make you feel any better? No. Not really. I was angry at the time. That's pure anger and rage. I had nowhere to take it but to my basically what you're talking about you called like the Sherlock Holmes thing. Like I was just searching and I was digging and I couldn't stop and I felt like that's what needed to be done. And I would golf clap if I was here. It's not going to ruin multiple lives. She wasn't trying to destroy your marriage because she thought she was bigger than the whole thing. She did though. She destroyed what y'all had. And you went along with it for a while. So both of you have to look at the parts of your marriage that you love and want to hang on to. And you both have to look at the pieces that have to be gone. Okay. Then you have to decide will you be a part of this new thing? And then to answer your question at some point you are going to have to do the hard work of deciding I trust her enough to tell myself to stop ruminating. And I'm going to practice that and it's going to take about a year or two if not longer. And then 10 years from now you're going to have a lightning bolt image pop into your head of your wife with somebody else. And you're going to have to say out loud stop it or no or not today. You're going to have to have some sort of mantra. Yeah, they kill me. Here's when it kills you. And this is when you have a choice. You don't have a choice right now because you haven't grieved this thing and your body is taking over because it knows you're not driving. What it's trying to do is to keep you safe. And this woman who destroyed you and your marriage and your family unit and you went along with it is still living in your home and y'all are having good moments and your brain is screaming at you, Jeff, going, she's the bear. She's the tiger that just tried to kill us. And so it has taken over. What grief allows you to do is to know what happened, feel it, write the letters you need to write, have the conversations you need to have, slowly begin to come out of this thing, begin exercising, begin moving, begin standing up on your own two feet, building something new, and then your body will stop trying to drive for you. Sort of. But it will still, man, it'll still drop some lightning bolts in there. That's when you have a choice. When those lightning bolts come, you can't stop those. You can't predict those. They just happen. It happens if you see your kid and you're in a tragic car wreck and your kid passes away and you get that image in your mind. Or if you are at a funeral and a loved one, a husband, a wife, a child is in a casket in that picture. Or if there's so many cheats on you, those images flash into your mind and it's your brain's way of trying to protect you. You have a choice after that, from the second after that. Am I going to sit here and worship that image? Am I going to ruminate on it? Am I going to create stories about it? Am I going to let it fill my body? Am I going to feel it? Or am I going to stop it? Nope, I will not. And here's the magic. You have to have a couple of pictures in your mind ready to replace it. That's a good idea. So get two or three photos of you and your wife together laughing. And if you don't have those photos, go get them taken. Cracking up, doing something funny. Back when y'all were in high school together at a concert, at a concert you loved together. And when that picture of her with some other dude pops into your head, you say out loud, no! And then you close your eyes and you concentrate on that photo. I can tell you were definitely right. There was stuff before all this too. It was mostly all emotional. But I found that too. And it just kills your whole memories. So I can see where you're coming from. Like my memories for the last 15 years feel destroyed. Yes. Because the tiger's still in your home. You have to teach your body is that tiger tried to kill us before, but I believe she's not going to try to kill us again. Okay. And give yourself some grace. You're not crazy. You're not nuts. You're just going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing to the next thing. And it sounds a lot, my brother, like you're getting dragged. You got dragged into this idea that, man, maybe if my wife just hooks up with other dudes, then things in my marriage will get some spark back. It's madness. Maybe I'll do a whole thing on open marriages. My God. But, geez, I'm all distracted. Or now we're going to go to this. Now we're going to go to this. It sounds like you're getting dragged through this recovery. Your recovery is something that you have to own. You have to take the leadership on. Okay. It's got to be you. It's got to be you. It's got to be you. I've been with my wife for, we've been together since we were four, for 14. I've been with my wife for 14 years. I'm 32. I met her when I was 19. We had a child at 20. And I've always just kind of been a butthead to her, to be honest. Every now and then I would demeanor or make little comments. And I would say it started a really getting bad about six weeks ago. We were doing some work in the yard and I really just blew up on her over the stupidest little thing. And then about a week later, we're just constantly arguing and, dividing from each other. And then about a week or two later, she told me that she thought she was falling out of love with me. And it just really crushed me. I never would have thought that those words could come out of her mouth. And she told me that the way I treat her is I'm not treating her the right way. And I completely owned it. I mean, I said, everything you said is absolutely correct. You know, and I said, I don't want my son, our son growing up thinking that this is how you're supposed to treat women. And I mean, since that day, I have treated her like an angel. I mean, I've done everything and just constantly telling her I love her, giving her hugs, kisses. But that was a Saturday night. And then Monday night, she ended up telling me that she was in communication with a guy she met on TikTok. And she told me she broke it off with him. And I asked her what was the subject about? And she said, it was just somebody to talk to about what I'm going through. My mental health. And she said it was never anything flirtatious or anything like that. She said it was just a stranger that I could talk to. But she said, I broke it off with him and I'm going to focus on us. And I said, I'm all in with you. Let's rebuild this. And we went about two weeks and it was just absolute honeymoon phase. I mean, we were just never. It was great. And then I went through her phone two weeks after that and found that she was on Snapchat with the guy. And confronted her about it. And she said, okay, well, I didn't, I didn't think you were really going to change. And I wanted to keep this friendship with the guy. And she said, I'll break it off with him. And I'm like, okay, I guess I'll give you a second chance. I'm kind of heartbroken again that you would keep this from me. And then about a week and a half later, which was just yesterday, I went through the call logs on AT&T.com, which I feel bad because I'm constantly digging at all this. Every time I dig, I find something. And I confronted her yesterday that she's been talking to this guy for 30, 40, 50 minutes a day. Um, the last week and a half after she told me a third time that she was breaking it off with him. And I'm just super confused. I don't really know how to handle this. Now she's saying that she's all done talking to him. And I'm like, well, how do I trust you now? You've been lying to me for the past three weeks about this. So that's really all I got. So for 14 years, you belittled your wife. She, she got the clear message. She was beneath you. You're the smart one. You're the fast one. You're the quick one. You are the provider. You're the, all this stuff. I always thought she was beneath me. You did. And she's got that message for, for, for a decade and a half. And then five weeks ago, you decide it's all going to be different. Yeah. And four, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Four weeks into this, you're pissed off that she's not just like, oh, all right, dude, you're belittling her again. Did she lie to you? Yes. No question about that. She's not on the phone to defend herself. Just you. Okay. Bro. Like I, as you were talking, here's the words that kept coming to my mouth, dude, who do you think you are, man? That's how I feel. I know. I don't, I feel like I'm two inches tall that I've treated her like this the last 14 years. And I wish I could fast forward 14 years from now and show her that I can. I know. But look, here's what you tried to do. You tried to fix this by doing things that you like doing or that you think that she would like. I'm going to buy her flowers and hug her and kiss her. Yeah. You didn't get down on both knees and say, my God, will you forgive me? How can I love you? And so when you decided, to fix this thing by showing her more affection and loving her, you did it how you wanted to do it, which is again, belittling. I pushed her away by being so close to her. I mean, I, I can't believe she's put up with you for this long, man. I can't either. I told her that I said, I don't know why you, why you're still with me after 14 years. She's created a fantasy where somebody that she's never met. Now she's talked to on the phone. Is she on a dangerous trajectory? There's no question about that. But at least that guy will listen to her, right? At least that guy makes her feel alive again. Makes it, or that guy feels it makes her voice feel like it matters because her own husband, she doesn't. Right. That guy asked her how her day at work went. Yeah. I never did that. So I mean, I I'm, I'm, yes, I get, I get being hurt. Like, Oh God. Gosh, my wife's gonna leave me. That can be a rattling moment or my wife has feelings for somebody else. By the way, just to say this at the outset, the phrase fall out of love is just nonsense. It's, it's just a, it's a dumb thing to say. Um, it's a, you don't fall in love. You don't fall out of love. She stopped. She just threw her hands up because there was no connecting with you. You were too important and powerful and wonderful and great. And she was too stupid and dumb. Yeah. And she never thought she could come and talk to me cause my arrogance, I would just blow her off. Right. Bro, if you want to save this sucker, it starts with you begging for forgiveness and saying, how can I love you? And let her speak into that. And when you go, well, I don't, you got to stop all that. Okay. Quit saying hi so much. Well, it's not even saying hi. What are you talking about? Saying hi. I know. Hi. Oh yes. Yeah. It's we, it's us. Okay. Because here's the deal. You felt bad. Like you felt bad. You decided to change. You started doing new things and nowhere do I hear we design, we decided to redesign our marriage. And so again, all of the things you're doing to save this thing, you're continuing to leave her out bobbing in the, in the middle ocean while you were sitting on the Island. Yeah. Yeah. Bro, what is this? Like, where does that come from, man? What are you scared of? I don't know. I don't know. I, uh, I grew up, I mean, my dad married, remarried when I was about eight and he was in a very toxic relationship with his now ex-wife again. So is your wife. She's in a toxic relationship. I know. Absolutely. And I, I don't know. I just, I never knew I was in, it's not an excuse. I was just never shown like how to treat a woman and love her and just accept her for who she is and, and everything. And don't just accept her, honor her, cherish her. Yeah. Like wake up every day. I'm so excited that you get to provide for this amazing person who gave you children, who takes care of your home, right? It makes, makes, contributes to the house, like contributes to the finances of the house, all that stuff. But I, do your friends, do you act like this with your buddies or at work too? Is this kind of the way you enter into the world or do you just dump all this on your wife? A little bit. I mean, I do have a level of arrogance at work and I do feel entitled and, um, I don't know. I just feel it's, I feel like it's all gone now. And I, I'm trying to not let it come back. I'm trying to be a better person. I am. It's hard. I'm going through my first therapy session at three o'clock today to talk to another therapist locally here. Yeah. I mean, I'm doing everything I can. I got you. I got you. Um, for whatever reason, whatever went on at your house, whatever went on in, in high school and whatnot, you've developed this tough guy exterior and man, it's going to cost you everything. This bravado, it's going to cost you everything, dude. Is that worth it? Right. And like in an effort to not take imaginary punches or more importantly, to punch first everywhere all the time. Right. Do you have a big truck? No, I don't. I have a, I, uh, I have a company truck, but it's just a little truck, but I mean, she drives a grand Cherokee, but it's bigger, I guess. I was just fishing there. I was just seeing if you were going to complete the stereotype for me, but all right, good. All right. So, um, and here's the thing. I actually honor that. I get that you don't have a picture or model what this looks like. And I also know what it's like to be trapped. And I know this isn't working and this is hurting me and it's hurting everybody I love. And I don't know the next right step. Do you have some men in your life you could talk to? Yeah, I I've been going out. I've got a great buddy since middle school and he's been keeping in touch and checking in with me every day. And that's that guy's that's not the right guy. Okay. I'm talking about a couple of men who are 10 years older than you that you can say, I'm a complete ass to my wife and I've got to stop. I'm going to lose my family. And I've got this built up arrogance inside of me where I think I'm better than everybody. And I know I'm not, but I can't stop. Can you help me? Yeah. There's a couple of works guys at work. I could talk to you. They're a little older than me. Yeah. If you talk to him, can you be honest with him? Can you take him out to lunch and say, I'm going to buy lunch, but I got to be totally straight up honest with you. I'm not okay. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. I have nothing to hide. Here's going to be the scariest part. Actually your situation, like people call with borderline personality disorder, all these different things. Your situation I think is one of the hardest things to heal from. And here's why. Because all the way you interact with the world is to protect yourself from one thing. And that is ever, ever being vulnerable in a position. where somebody can roll over on you and i don't know when that happened in your childhood but it did and it did bad up with a big brother who was a tough guy and you know everybody feared him and everybody you know he would beat everybody up nobody messed with him and i always thought i had to put that shield on as well that's right and that shield is going is is made it impossible to be married to and it's made it impossible for your kids to love and connect with their dad yeah you know what they're gonna have to do they're gonna have to go out in the world and be tough guys because they don't know how to feel because they've never hugged their dad for real and they're gonna this whole cycle is gonna start over that came from your granddad to your dad to your brother and it's just gonna go through your family line unless you stop and turn and say enough and the scariest part for you is the only path forward is risking getting hurt and i'm gonna tell you your wife may leave you yeah she may take your kid and go because you've been awful to her for a decade and a half i hope she doesn't but i want you to see her yes she's not being right and yes if she's on the phone i'd be letting her have it too because that's not the way to solve this problem um and i didn't yell at her i just asked her very calmly can you explain this like i don't have the energy i can't argue with her anymore sure yeah but but even like explain explain what that i haven't felt safe in my own home for a decade and a half that i've never felt loved i've just felt like a child in my own home like what i know what and this guy actually asked me how i day went for god's sakes yeah yeah i own every i own all of it i do okay and it's so hard for me to admit it i know i know it is i know it is and you're you are bucking family tradition right now in this call and i i honor you for that but ownership has two parts to it one is choosing reality admitting it and the second part of ownership is to go do it and that's what i'm saying i'm not saying that's do differently okay you got to act differently yeah you got to say i don't know and so here's what i would love for you to do how many kids you got just one boy 12 years old awesome here's your homework for this week i want you to ask your wife would you go to a nice dinner with just us i have some things i want to tell you okay and then if she says yes say i'm we're not going to talk about the other person we're not talking about any of that stuff i just need to talk to you about some things if she says yes i want you to spend some time alone writing a letter that you're going to read to her okay and that letter is going to be start with love of my life i'm so sorry okay and then if you want to work through like i didn't have a picture of what treating a woman look like and i have done it all wrong for 15 years yeah i sent her like that text message is bullcrap on a stick with a pony okay lit on fire okay okay text message is how my 14 year old son talks to his friends and text messages that's not it you have to look at her and say these words okay okay you have to feel that discomfort that's vulnerability and she might look at you and go i'm done and vulnerable means i'm risking looking at somebody and saying this is all of me do you still love me that's what you're going to be doing and that's terrifying for you yeah she told me she wants to work it out that okay she sees me making changes and she wants to make this work but i want you to tell her in that letter i immediately tried to solve me my 15 years of being an ass to you by doing a bunch of stuff that i thought and i never bothered to ask you and she's probably going to look at you and say i don't even know what i need i don't even know what i want i just know i can't do this hours do what i bought her flowers a week ago and she was like mad at me because she was like you've never bought me flowers you're trying too hard well i was like i was like you're absolutely correct just ask her i was like i feel bad ask her how can i love you today okay start that way and tell her i'm going to start asking you every morning and every evening how can i love you today okay and when i ask go ahead go ahead i'm sorry let's get when i ask a question yeah go ahead go for it how do i like i'm afraid investing all this and then i find out that she is still communicating with this guy like i feel like there's some trust gone that i take responsibility for i know i caused this but i'm having a hard time too like starting to trust her and rebuild this once again after you have told her that you're going to begin asking her every day how you can love her better it's fair to say i can't breathe knowing that some other person is going to love her better and is your go-to okay and i can't breathe and see what you're doing is you're starting with the word i you're not saying you can't do this and you need to get off the i can't breathe knowing i've put you in a position where you have to go to somebody else just to get the words how was your day absolutely i've put you in a position to have nobody to talk about what's going on during your day because i just come home and i'm a bulldog in my own house yeah now is this a hundred percent you know but this is just i'm gonna take all it's if you've ever watched jaco's original ted talk all these things went bad he was the guy in charge and he said it's on me and you for 15 years have said i'm the head honcho all right well then own it all then okay is that fair no it's not fair but let's just take it all and then at the very end you can say i can't move forward without a commitment to you that we've got no outside people speaking to this it's just going to be you and it's just going to be me okay okay yep yeah and i think it's fair to say i'm not going to sneak around and go through your crap anymore i don't want to live like that okay okay and also as you get two three five weeks into this two months into this six months into this it's fair to say hey i want to circle back how am i doing are you feeling loved and she might she's going to uncover different ways right this thing's got 15 years of the layers on top of it and she met you really young and she got a kid right out of the gate she doesn't even know what she what she doesn't know yeah right she's never felt safe and fully wrapped up in love with somebody who's like my mission in life is to make sure you're whole she's never experienced that all this is gonna be new no all this is gonna be new and so it's fair to say are you communicating with that guy all right and this is after you'll get some rapport you start building some trust back and then if you feel that that anchoring in your soul you can say would you be willing to show me your text messages or your whatever okay that's not for right now it's not for right now no no no yeah is that fair yeah yeah i'll wait six weeks okay i'm proud of you thank you it's hard i dude i know it's hard you're changing your entire family tree right now you're changing my whole personality yes i am yes and sometimes changing that personality means we have to change all of our actions so do something ridiculous like wake up early go get a cold plunge or get some ice take a cold shower in the morning start exercising in the morning like i have been yeah i've been eating way better i've been drinking a lot more water i've been going for walks good you have to start doing different things if you want different results that's right that's right so so change it all change the whole thing up man and when you find yourself you're gonna get angry you're gonna get um you're gonna lose a job you're gonna miss a sale something's gonna happen and you coming out swinging you have to be willing to say hope here he is here he is here he is i'm gonna go for a walk i need to step out i need to do dinner by myself tonight i love you with all i got and i gotta go do something else right this is gonna be a long-term practice you have to unwind 30 years of you not liking yourself and taking it out on other people proud of you for all the steps you're making man be in this for the long haul you're worth it she's worth it and that 12 year old little boy is worth it too his kids are going to be so grateful that granddad put a stick in the in the rock and said no more i wanted to ask how i should go about dealing with finding messages from my husband to and to his ex um promising that that one day he will be with her but just not now tell tell me are you okay yeah okay does this feel weird to say that out loud it's just weird to like be talking on the show no it's it's hard to say out loud honestly okay tell me more about it like how x and how old like tell me tell me everything um okay so we've been together for 12 years and we've only been married for two um y'all dated for a decade yeah dang we have four kids together cool um and this was his okay so i found messages to his ex that is his his high school sweetheart um i guess she broke his heart broke up with him and he never was quite over it so hold on how how old how old are y'all now we're 35 both of us yeah so all this time is it's kind of like weird for me that um okay so over the years he's kind of gotten in touch with her every once in a while and they kind of do this how have you been thing and I would always say hey you know I'm not comfortable with that um and have him block her or whatever but then at some point a year later so she would she would get unblocked and then I would see but from what I could tell it wasn't anything past you know a quick high and then I was pregnant with my third child so two years ago and I saw messages back and forth with them that were more than just talking it was quite a bit of complimenting each other and a lot of I don't know him giving details of our kids and just kind of more intimate talking I guess um that turned into an issue but I got over it I guess because he told me that he was just gonna stop talking to her and as far as I know he did but then I was pregnant with my fourth child who I just had him a month ago um this was like back in January or February and I found messages that he they're they're talking back and forth like they love each other um and he at some point he told her that they can't be together now but one day he'll show up on her doorstep like a stranger and they can start all over um I guess he's making it sound like he needs to stay with me like be this good guy to help raise our children together and then I guess do something for him later in life which would be be with who he really is supposed to be with which I know this all sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud when I talk to him yeah I mean it sounds like he is he is in a fantasy world I'm not excusing it so let me just back out like I still am friends with several people that I dated back in high school I also met people back in high school and I had my heart broken regularly in high school one I was an idiot a bonafide idiot and like when you're in love in high school it just feels it's the best right and so still being friends that's number one number two this idea that like it's the whole thing is a fantasy right yeah and he can he can gallop around in this fantasy world because he knows he's not doing this he you know you see what I'm saying like none of this is real right um at the same time the the a don't do that and b because it's dangerous right because she might show up somewhere or he might show up somewhere right and so you're playing with fire but bigger than all of that is 10 years ago you asked him not to talk to this woman because you didn't have a good feeling about it right right and he's continually rubbed your nose in your request for fidelity yeah it's kind of haunting me yeah yeah and almost always this isn't the only place that somebody like that does this where else does he completely ignore what you need or what you want pretty much on every level he breaks up with me all the time which is the craziest thing um he'll actually um stop speaking to me for a week and then he'll say you know he he doesn't want to be together he wants to he will never say divorce he calls it a relationship he he doesn't even call it a marriage I just feel so degraded all the time kind of well you dated him for a decade and you had children with him before you're married so this is what you signed up for yeah I know my guess is he's been the same he's been pretty consistent for 12 years right yeah yeah and you got married thinking this would all switch I did because I I wanted to be married before we had children but you had children before you were married yeah yeah so somewhere along the way you just started accepting I don't know it sounds like he's been pretty consistent this whole time well I never thought that he would ever cheat on me or talk about cheating on me or go in that direction he just ignores you for a week and breaks up with you regularly and won't even refer to you as his wife yeah I mean I guess since since I had my third child that's kind of been the thing for him to do so that's been about two years now I guess since we got married that was the trigger I guess but then you made you made another human with him yeah um so much to unpack but well what he'll do is he'll take back all of the negative things that he says to me and he will make me think he just said it because he was in a bad mood both of those things can be true it doesn't make it right yeah I'm often not who I want to be when I'm in bad mood but if I act like an idiot then I'm still an idiot you know what I mean yeah it's not like a universal past I know but he so I don't let me ask you how can I help you well um I could stay and just let him continue um doing this this way because my well for one I feel like I have um I'm pretty isolated I have no family here and he says that I can't leave because I um would be taking the kids out of state to go live with my parents and I'm a stay-at-home mom and I don't um I don't have any money myself so uh that would be my solution for leaving and or I could stay and see if um Ashley are you safe yes you don't sound safe I've talked to people who are not safe my whole life my whole career I'm safe I'm just very um I'm emotionally distraught I guess um and you have a one month old right yeah so so what happened was my entire pregnancy he was telling me that he didn't want to be with me but he was going to let me stay at home and so I was very depressed the entire time and he didn't care and he was very cold to me but then just about three weeks ago he completely switched and has been telling me he wants everything to be better and he wants to stay together and he's been very nice and kind and um I am so confused by it it really just throws me up and down and sure it sounds like he's the kite and you're the tail of that kite just getting dragged all over the place and the only way a marriage especially marriage with four kids the only way marriage works is if two people sit down and say here's what we both need here's what we both want and here's what we're going to build together yeah it can't be you living outside on the front lawn in the tent and just some guy coming out the front door on random intervals saying you can come on in where you been come on in you can't live like that and your four kids can't live like that no the challenge you have before you is this has been your relational dynamic for 12 years this is a bed that y'all co-created together yeah and if he was on the phone I would I would talk man-to-man to him and the way he's treating you is wrong and it's disrespectful and it's shameful all that and you've had four kids with a guy who's been the same way for more than a decade he's never changed I know and so you've been with a rattlesnake and you've dated a rattlesnake and you you created people with a rattlesnake and now you've suddenly got upset that it keeps biting you and now there's a lot at stake there's four new lives at stake here yes and so I don't see a path forward without professional intervention okay and yeah of course you have to get a a marriage therapist of some sort to sit down and sort this out because he is going to have to decide I am a different human starting now and I've seen that done and it's hard and you are going to have to decide I'm going to be a different human starting now he is going to have to honor and respect you and be a present father and your present husband. And y'all are going to have to learn how to be friends for the first time in a decade. And you are going to have to learn to say what you want and what you need and stand by those boundaries. Okay. Right? But y'all can't do that by yourself. You've proven that for over a decade. Yeah. And by the way, I'm Dr. Deloney. My wife is Dr. Deloney. We're pretty smart. We're not very smart. She's smart. I went to a bunch of classes. I went to a bunch of school. We have sat at the feet of great therapists over the course of our 21 years because I've almost blown it up a few times. Okay. It doesn't mean you're broken or wrong, but y'all have reached a point where you need to get a professional. Or think of it this way. Your husband has been plunging and plunging and plunging a toilet and it keeps clogging up. You got to call a plumber. Yeah. Okay. And if he says, I won't do that, behavior is a language. He is telling you, I'm not interested in this thing working out. Right. Because that's what I kind of feel like it's going to happen. He's not going to be for that. He really won't have a conversation very deep with me. That's right. And listen, nothing changes if nothing changes. That's it. Nothing changes if nothing changes. And if he cracked the door open and said, I want this thing to work. You're my wife. These are our four kids. I want things to be better around here. That is an invitation. Or you could take it as an invitation for you to say, okay, cool. I've made us an appointment with a marriage therapist. I've got somebody who's going to come watch the kids. And we're going to go sort this thing out. And we have to build something completely new. Neither of us have ever been married with four children. That's a new world. That's one player away from a basketball team. We're going to have to learn how to be friends. We're going to have to learn how to date. We're going to have to learn how to run this household. We're going to have to learn how to be lovers. We're going to have to learn how to do all this over again. Are you all the way in? Because I am. I am. And we're going to go from there. And if he says, screw you, I'm not doing any of that. This is what you always do, yada, yada. Then your next call should probably be to an attorney to find out what the rules are and what the regulations are and what your rights are. I don't know what they are in Arkansas. You and only you can make the decision as to whether this is the life you want for you and your kids. I'm not going to make that call for you, but I will call out. This has been the way it's always been. And you opted. I opted into this thing for 12 years. So one of y'all has to make a call. This is going to be different starting now. My wife works as a nurse at a large hospital. And I work from home in a tech company. And some of her interests have kind of changed. She came home and kind of let me know that she had interest towards a co-op. She was a co-worker and kind of caused a little bit of a tough between us. And then I found out she was hanging out with some of her male doctors at their house. And she said that she was actually hanging out with some of her other co-workers who were different in a more social scene. So I've just been trying to kind of work through that and get, I'm on the same page and see what's going on. I was kind of wondering what your thoughts and opinions were. I mean, I guess my first thing is my first gut reaction. And again, this one's a little more challenging because you're not sitting in front of me. I can't see you. But it feels like one of two things. One, you don't fully want to metabolize the seriousness of this. Or you've just come up with some, some safer, more generic, unflavored oatmeal language to describe the fact that your wife is having an affair. She's cheating on you. Right. Which one of those is true? Is one of it just nervous you're on the show and you don't want to like fully dive in? Or is it just, is it hit differently when you're like, no, my wife's having an affair. She's cheating on me. And I think my life as I knew it is now over and different now. I think I'm just trying to come, come to the sense of reality of it. There you go. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah, totally. I mean, your whole world got blown up. How long have y'all been married? We've been together for 12 years now and we got married a little bit before COVID. Okay. So just y'all been married for five years. Yes, sir. Ish. Okay. Um, Hmm. My gut tells me this didn't just start. How long has it been? How long has she had one foot out of the boat of this marriage? Um, I kind of just started to find out about this, um, towards the middle of end of last year. Okay. Was it a shock to you or did you go, I knew it. I was a little frustrated to say the least. Yeah, but that's not, that's not what I asked. Were you stunned by this? Did it catch you completely off guard or did it, it confirmed some fears you've had for a while? Um, yeah, definitely. I didn't know where this came from. Okay. Did she ever cheat on you when y'all were dating? Y'all did it for seven years, huh? Yes. And no, she did not cheat on me during that time that I know of. Okay. Um, yeah, I guess, I mean, I guess the, the bigger questions are, what are you, what are you going to do now? It's a good question. Um, we're trying to go to therapy at the moment to try and get an understanding. She indicated that she didn't cheat on me. She needed a father figure or another person who's more of a superiority individual to like talk about stuff with because what she does as a nurse is very traumatic. Um, she works in an OR room. Then they do a lot of, you know, they are saving life and death, I guess. And I don't know. She just kind of indicated that she never really cheated on me. She went to somebody else. It was more of like an emotional type thing. I don't know if that helped to provide any context, but I don't, I don't buy it at all. All you go to lunch with the emotional affair. You, um, send inappropriate texts with an emotional affair. You, um, over disclose that person becomes your safe place and you begin dreaming about life, um, with them as opposed to the person you're with. You don't go to their house over and over and over again. Yeah. Um, I, dude, I, I've been in those, in those rooms and I, I, I'm not in those rooms. I've never been in those rooms day in and day out minute after minute, hour after hour. She's exactly right. It's a traumatic job. It's hard. Um, and you go talk to with those about those challenges with a counselor. You go talk about those challenges with a group. You tell you you're her husband. Um, Hey, I, I, I'm struggling carrying the weight of this thing. I need to go talk to somebody. You don't sneak around for a year going over to, you know what I mean? And that like, forget going over to doctor and surgeons houses. Um, she told you she's got feelings for somebody else. I mean, am I wrong? No. Okay. So what are y'all going to therapy for? Cause I, cause you can go with two different, with two different. Mindsets here. If you're going to understand what happened. Um, if you're going to just poke around in the drawers, this will happen again. This will happen again. If you're going to save your marriage, then you'll have a different track to take. Do you know what I'm saying? Okay. Cause she's still going to work in the same place with these same people. Right. Um, the individual no longer works there is what she told me after some time. Yeah. But I don't, I don't trust her as far as I can see her to show you her text every day and have her location turned on. Um, she actually turned her location off and said it was overarching and overpowering. Yet. She wants a father figure. Um, yeah. I'm sorry, man. Yeah. It sucks. Yeah. You love this woman, huh? Yes, sir. You all have kids? No. Okay. My, um. And associate producer of the show let me know that she never even changed her name on her driver's license. Is that right? Eventually she did. After some time. How long? But it took a while. How many years? Three. Okay. So just from the outside looking in, man, it sounds like somebody who, for whatever reason, it took y'all the better part of a decade to even get married. And even after that, she didn't want to give up her independence or her way of navigating the world. And maybe she didn't mind riding co-pilot or her driving and you riding co-pilot, but she wasn't going to become one with the person she married. And let's give her the benefit of the doubt. Let's say she's exactly right. She never slept with anybody. High five. But she doesn't trust you enough to say I'm struggling. She doesn't honor you enough when you say, when she says, Hey, I've got a feeling for somebody else. And you say, okay, let's rebuild trust. And she's like, no, no, no, no. I can't rebuild trust like that. Like you need it. Like, let me see your text. And let me know where you are because you're telling me you're going over these guys' houses late at night. And she says, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. That's too much. I mean, if behavior is a language, she's telling you, I want you there. I want you at home working the IT job so I can know that direct deposit is going to keep happening, but I want to go live my life. I want to deal with my stuff the way I want to deal with it. I want to involve other men in our, in our social life. I want to be a part of the circle of emotional and physical trust. And you just have a grown up decision to make my brother. Yeah. And I hate that. I hate that for you. We do split everything, which is, you know, nice. And I have separate bank accounts and things. No, that's terrible. That's terrible. That means y'all are roommates, dude. And I say terrible, like, not as a judgment call, but as like, you can't make your marriage work. You can't make your marriage work. And I say terrible, like, not as a judgment call, but as like, you can't make your marriage work that way. I mean, you have split emotions, you have split physical lives, you have split financial lives. It sounds like the only thing that's different is y'all went and got a government stamp on on a piece of paper, but your lives are still as though you're dating. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. I guess the only, the path you got moving forward, brother, is to truly, honestly, and as painfully as this would be, write down the questions you actually have. Not the hem-haw, not the, like, put your head down, and she just kind of tells these tales about, "I'm struggling, and then this, and then I had to go over to their house over and over and over again." And you say, "Will you go over there anymore?" How dare you ask that? It's too much. It's just too overbearing. You need to write down the questions you actually want to know the answers to. And then you're going to have to ask yourself, "A, do I trust this person? B, do I want to stay married to this person? And C, what must be true for me to remain married?" And no one can really make that decision for you. Right. I can just tell you, if I was to switch places with you. I would. It would be real, real, real thin ice. Yeah, I understand that. Do you feel like you got the full story? I feel like there might be a few areas of the painting that still needs to be drawn out. Yeah. But it's mostly there. Okay. Well, I can't make that decision. I can't make. I can't. I mean, I can't tell you what to do next, brother. All I can do is to say from the outside looking in, you're right to feel completely bewildered because the actions of both of you aren't the actions of a married couple that's going to be ride or die till the wheels fall off. It's going to be standing there at the castle gates, just saying, "Bring it on, world. It's us two versus y'all." Your marriage is built on. We have two different lives. Yeah. We just happen to share a house and a marriage certificate. That's how we all run it, dude. You can run it that way. The data tells me it's not going to work. And I think a lot of people race off to marriage counseling after there's some sort of infidelity and they just want to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. And maybe you don't even know if you want to save this marriage, you want to find out some more information, you want to get to the bottom of some stuff, but it's going to always land on what do you need to feel like I can reestablish. And she can re-earn my trust and what things are we going to do differently so that we create a life where one plus one equals one. And that's the choice you're going to have to make, man. And again, if it's me, all the notifications are turned on. Probably she's getting another job. She's working at a different hospital. She's committing to letting you know, "I'm struggling in these areas and so I'm going to go talk to this professional or this person. And I'm not going over to other rockstar surgeons and doctors' houses late at night and lying to you about it. I'm not going to continue working with people that I want to have an intimate or romantic relationship with, or that I have feelings for, if you will. We're going to share finances." All those things, like, man, you're going to have to do a bunch of different stuff that y'all haven't done in, what, 10, 12 years of being together. And you're going to have to build a completely new marriage. And it's going to start with you asking yourself, "Do I still want to do that?" And then asking her, "Do you want in on that?" And that's two big question marks in my mind. And then from there, man, I believe y'all can build whatever you want to build. I just have a belief in people. And redemption, I have a belief in people, if they've chosen a miserable life, they can choose an amazing one, but it all comes down to that choice. And both of you have to have both feet in the boat. Both of you have to be all the way in. So, my husband and I, we've been married for 12 years. We have two kids. We got married pretty quickly. It was a pretty brief courtship. So, a lot of things you would find out about your partner before you get married, we kind of found out after we were already married, so it was kind of rough for a couple of years. You said that so eloquently. Some of the things you find out beforehand, we found out afterwards. But I know what that probably means, and the way you said that so gently, so you're a delight. Okay, keep going. It's been 12 years. Trust me, I get it right out. So, our main problem or my main issue has been with infidelity with him, mostly just internet issues and texting and messaging and Facebook and Instagram and so forth. We've been to counseling quite a few times, three, four times on and off. He's also done individual counseling. We've been to counseling a couple of times, and then things seem to be pretty good for a while, a few years, and then things happen, and we kind of end up back here. So, a few months ago, he started acting a little bit differently, going out more, staying out a little bit longer, very protective with his phone, and accusing me of cheating. So, the light bulb kind of went off, and I was like, "Okay, something's going on here." So, about a couple of weeks ago, I decided to. I decided to do some investigation. So, I went on his computer and I saw that he was on a dating site. Ooh. Yeah. So, I catfished him. No way. I sure. Yeah, way. You did? Did he fall for it? Oh, he sure did. Oh, this is my favorite call ever. Ever. Yeah. Hey, can we call him right now, and I'm gonna pretend to be the husband of the person? Please, please. Oh my God. The thing was, I knew it was probably gonna happen, because I know my husband has been 12 years. So, I created a fake profile, I was messaging him, he was all for it. Oh, you're the worst, and incredible all at the same time. He started writing me out to dinner, and lunch, and he was saying he was divorced. He did say he had two kids though, so at least that was something. So, then I started. I was going along with it, and I was going to meet up with him for lunch. Yeah. I was gonna say make a date with him, man, and record it, and we'll put it on the show. But this is what happened. I kept looking, and I came across two credit card receipts, and I saw two hotel receipts. Ah, yeah. Not funny anymore. Not funny anymore. Yeah. And I kinda lost it. Yeah. Not funny anymore. So, I started running him, and he lied and said the first one that was in our city, he got it for a friend, don't buy it. And the other one that was in our city, he got it for a friend, don't buy it. not in our city, it was when he went out of town to visit family and he said he didn't want to stay at their house. So he got a hotel. I didn't buy that either because he just told me about it. He didn't. He had me thinking he was staying at his family's house and he wasn't. So I didn't buy any of that. So my husband has a tendency. So the counseling he's been going through over the years, we've kind of figured out and he'll admit that he has an issue with attention and validation. And it's like, when I'm not. Hold on, hold on, Janelle, Janelle, Janelle, Janelle. Your husband cheats on you. Period. Period. I have problems with validation. I don't get meet women in hotel rooms across the country. I like to, for my wife to tell me nice things. I like for my wife to tell me she's proud of me. I like to fill in the blank. Yeah, you're right. So, so you can go to counseling and learn all these neat things and all that kind of stuff. All of that is a complete and utter wash. It means nothing. If your husband is meeting other women in hotel rooms across the United States and then lying to you about it. Period. I mean, just period. End of discussion. And here's what I think is, is unfortunate is that you are so kind. And you are so, there's something inside of you that has told you that you don't have equal value to him. That you have come up with some really complicated narrative as to why this is mostly your fault. And I'm telling you as a husband, that is not a true story that you tell yourself. You are married to a serial cheater. Period. Yeah. Yeah. He's a guy who steps out on his wife repeatedly. And I've said on this show, I'll say it again. I have a ton of sympathy for a business trip one night stand. I have a ton of sympathy for, I met somebody. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying if somebody sits down and goes, dude, this thing happened, things happen. Or I was working on a project with somebody for a year at work and I, I just fell head over heels. I get that. This is persistent and ongoing. He's spitting in his wife's face, telling her she's stupid. You're so dumb. You can't even find out. And when you're looking at receipts, he's like, you're an idiot. And you, for some reason, Janelle believe, yeah, you're probably right. Even as you described, you know, listening to you, even as you described the story about him going to see family, but staying in a hotel, when I promise you, when he was there, he was telling you that I'm at mama's house and she's whatever. The way you told that story, if you go back and listen, you don't fully, you're not a hundred percent that you're right. You're about 85%. I'm telling you, you're a hundred percent right. Yeah, I know. And you probably don't want to be as a statistic. You probably have done whatever you could do for the last decade to keep his family together. And you're married to someone who's doing everything he can to unwind it. Yeah. True or false? Yeah. You're right. You are right. And I've got like a, like a knot in my stomach talking to you right now. You're right. Like I'm sick right now. Did you tell him that you, uh, were catfishing him? Did you tell him? Or does he even know that yet? Yeah. Yeah. He knows. Um, when I confronted him, it all came out, um, he knew. Then he apologized and, you know, acting remorseful and saying he wasn't going to go and yada, yada, yada, which is a lie. Of course. He was going to be up. Of course, that's a lie. So the real question is less about him. The question is about you. Is my marriage fixable? I think any marriage is fixable, quite honestly. But I, you can't fix it alone. Period. And quite honestly, you've tried for, for 10 years. You have to have a man that will tell you the truth. You have to have a man that will tell you, I'm sorry. And you have to have a man that will not end up in a hotel room with a bunch of other women he's not married to. are you perfect in this marriage no i don't even i don't even know and i'm telling you no of course you're not no right and has he weaponized any imperfection to give him liberty and license to do whatever he wants to yeah absolutely and you're worth more than that and so are those two little kids let me say it this way i i'm gonna i'm gonna take back my answer ask me your question again is my marriage fixable i will answer it this way no your marriage as it was is over can you and your husband build something completely new yes have you heard my twin towers analogy oh yeah okay same thing what y'all had is over those towers have fallen down they are in rubble and in ash and smoke and there's dust everywhere and i'm telling you no of course you're not perfect in this marriage and i'm telling you choice you have to make and i think right now it's it's the initial choice is you alone are you gonna walk away from the towers and let nature take them back or are you gonna sit down with him and say from this point forward we build something new and here's my stipulations here's what i need to move forward and then y'all go get some professionals to help you rebuild something completely new and that might mean new jobs that might mean moving that might mean everything is different because everything is different i mean you see what i'm saying oh yeah i do i my guess is you've had some dark moments like where you're just sitting in the shower when you're finally by yourself and you weep so hard you you can't catch your breath fair yeah that's fair that is so true i'm just wondering why you know why me why why this what what is it that i did no you can't you can't your husband made some bad choices over and over and over and over and over again and at this point if i'm being super frank um i'm worried about your health and safety i'm worried about him bringing something home from some women that you don't know about or multiple women that you don't know about and i i'm i'm as concerned for your safety right this second as i am for your marriage i am too i said we have to definitely go get go get tested because i don't feel i don't feel safe wait wait janelle sweetheart where does this come from who taught you that what you feel in your guts is so wrong because you've known he was cheating on you for a long time i knew and even the way you just said just now like yeah i told him about there's an uncertainty instead of a proclamation at your front door you don't come in this home until you go get tested period and you showed put the you hand me the results like who told you that that you're worth so little that what you feel and what you think and what you need is of of secondary importance again it didn't help that i see myself in my parents relationship where they're still together but i mean my dad practically been cheering on my mom the entire 45 years they've been married so it's what your body knows right yeah yeah except the rules have changed and the game has changed and janelle my friend janelle is not going to take this crap anymore here's why because your two kids aren't going to repeat this thing right they're going to have a very clear picture in their head of what either a strong boundary and self-worth looks like and a single mom who cannot be stopped come hell or high water or they're going to have a ringside seat to a couple fight and scratch and claw their way to something so remarkable and strong and beautiful moving forward but they're not going to learn this is what marriage looks like yeah you're right fair you're absolutely right now this is the part of the story where like in the movie when the music swells and then like the montage scene happens this isn't but that's not reality reality is this do you work not right now um i got laid off a couple months ago and i'm looking for for work now okay this kind of self-proclamation has very real economic consequences right it sounds easy for me sitting in nashville tennessee with a with a good job to say you should just and that's why i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna tell you to run out today because there's a real question of where do you go and how do you feed your kids how do you eat right right that's a very real thing and you know as well as i do the court processes are so jacked up it takes so freaking long to get anything done right and so i would here's my my i mean i just love talking to you you're a fun you're funny you're like you have such a great personality thank you dr john and i'm heartbroken in my guts for you yeah and i i don't think i've told you anything you didn't already know i'm heartbroken in my guts because i've sat with women as they've walked what the next two years of your life is going to be and it's not going to be pleasant and staying in this is not going to be pleasant you're right and so the path you have to choose is not one of ease and least resistance and one of really hard you have two incredibly difficult paths ahead of you and so i always want someone to choose the difficult path that's going to lead to freedom not lead to repeating a cycle of abuse and you're just going to take it and this is just the way things are over and over again and dude i i would i'd love to talk to your husband if he wants to call me he won't he won't but i'd love to he probably won't he won't no i know he won't he won't here's here's i think your next steps are number one i'd go get a counselor today in fact i'll hook you up with three months of free better help if you don't have a counselor in your area um stay on the line here and we'll get you a code and you can call somebody and be on the phone or talking to them via zoom within the next 24 hours thank you and here's what we're talking about you need to get somebody and i want you to be very specific when you're talking to you ask i need a game plan to begin to identify my next steps i've been married to somebody for a decade who cheats on me and cheats on me and cheats on me and now he's spending money out of our family account now he's increased up an uptick in lying he's now traveling distances and i need to figure out what my next steps are and what they'll do is they'll help you think through boundaries think through do you have a mom or dad's house you can go stay up for six months with the kids do you have an attorney do you like some of those hard work do you have some of those hard questions you're gonna have to face also here's a testing site i mean they're gonna walk you through all those those questions the second thing is is i want you to get a couple of girlfriends do you have two or three women in your life that you trust a lot i do i want you to take them out to coffee sometime this week i don't want you to tell them the truth because you have never told them have you no it's time you need some real people in your corner in your life that knows the truth about what you're experiencing and dealing with and this is part of the the rising this is when janelle begins just to come out of the water like on her own two feet and this is my life when am i doing this anymore tell me why that scares you to death because i'm gonna have to come out of my yes it's everything's okay shell yeah yep you have created the most beautiful it's all great and i'm hilarious facade you're so good you're so good yeah that is you have you i was gonna say you have no idea but you probably do because we're the couple that's that everyone looks at oh my god you guys are so perfect and it's all great and all that yeah yeah and so you're going to lose your identity the identity as the perfect married woman and we're going to change that identity for the woman who tells the truth and the woman who is stronger than iron you're right over the years i've just gotten less self-discipline i've just gotten more self-discipline i've just gotten less self-discipline you're right over the years i've just gotten less self-discipline you're right over the years i've just gotten less so the more it's happened it's just the braver and braver i'm getting as far as i need to leave i need to leave yeah but it's very very very hard to leave by yourself that's why i want you to talk to these three women and there's something surreal about saying it out loud even you started this call even you started this call with me like well and this is going on and he's got some needs so bad that i i mean i feel bad i interrupted you i would love for you to sit down with these three women over coffee or tea or whatever y'all you'd like to drink and sit down and go my husband's been cheating on me for a decade and now he's moved on to multiple women in multiple cities and it ends now and their jaws will hit the floor and you can smile and say i didn't mean to drop it on you like that but i for sure meant to drop it on you like that i need your help and there's something empowering about it because you don't want to say it out loud because you don't want it to be true and i love you enough to tell you it is true yeah you're the this is the first time i've actually said it i know i can hear it on you i know i know do you trust me that there is i know there's nothing easy that comes next nothing nothing nothing but you have a great picture of your mom that hollowed out shell yeah that distant look that dad who walks in and out of that house like he owns planet earth yes yeah that's you that's the trajectory and that's if your husband chooses not just to bail or doesn't get somebody pregnant i'd call those women asap like i'd call him today or shoot him a text message and say we need to meet tomorrow morning for breakfast we need to talk oh my gosh i'm sick to my guts i hate this for you i hate this for you i hate this for you when this call first started out i thought we were gonna have some fun in the catfishing thing and this got real real real fast here's the deal janelle um hang on the line we're gonna hook you up with that counseling and i'll be here every step of the way and um you've got jenna's contact info i want you to reach out anytime you want to be back on the show you want to talk um i got you okay man what a mess somebody threw a grenade in the middle of your home and it was not you but what comes next is going to be largely what you decide not by your hand but in your lap and here we are and here we go you didn't cause it but you're part of the cleanup crew and you're part of the what's next crew and i'll be here with you