Hey, on today's show, we're going to be talking about adult themes, so if you've got little ears in the room, take cotton swabs and shove them way down deep there or send them outside, tell them to go be human beings, get some cuts and scrapes and play in the yard. We're going to be talking about social media and cheating and marriage.

We're going to be talking about a young man whose parents may be using him for money. We're going to be talking about somebody struggling through a sexless marriage and what to do next. Stay tuned.

Yo, yo, good folks, I'm John, and this is the Dr. John Delany's show, the show for you about you, where we walk alongside one another, talking about relationships, relational I.Q., mental health, parenting, falling in love. Sometimes we talk about people who don't know that hallway traffic rules are the same as the highway. So if you're going to text and walk down a highway, oh, no, you're going to not walk down a highway.

But if you're going to text and walk down a hallway, walk on the right side, are you going to get some donuts and coffee in your hair?

I don't know whether it's the heart walk on this side or that side, just like you drive your car. Right. So whatever. If you're looking for honesty in a world where truth doesn't exist anymore, if you want to first or second opinion, if you want to learn how to walk down a hallway or learn how to talk, which I'm not doing very well this morning, I'm here to walk with you. So give me a call at one eight four four six nine three thirty to ninety one.

That's one eight four four six nine three three two nine one. Again, you can email me and ask John at Ramsey Solutions. Dotcom people are emailing all over the world. The support has been off the charts. It's been extraordinary, overwhelming and beautiful. So thank you so much. Email ask John at Ramsey Solutions. Dotcom, leave your number how we can get in touch with you. Let me know what's going on in your heart and your mind and in your relationships.

And Kelly will reach out and see if we can get you on the show. Just a quick update. The show launched a few weeks ago. And the response, like I said, has just been second to none.

Could never have imagined this from a guy that listens to like three podcasts. And that's only on occasion. This has been overwhelming. It's been a dream come true. Big shout out to Kelly, Daniel and James child Zach Bennett in the squad who is putting this thing together behind the scenes. I'm grateful for them. Thank you all. And I'm just grateful for you. The listener who is keeps tuning in, the YouTube folks who keep watching. Thank you so much.

As we were trying to figure out how to be humans again with one another. So let's go to the phones. Let's start with let's go with Beth in Bristol, Virginia. Beth, how in the world are you this morning?

I'm good. How are you? Good, good, good. How can I help? Well, I've been married for 12 years. We have two small children, and I found out a few months ago that my husband has been messaging other women on Facebook and a couple of them are saying we're not, you know, just kind of benign. But there is one where he is talking to this girl. And instead of like I can see the whole conversation because I think she had deleted some of that.

So, like, they may have known each other before, but he proceeds to tell her, I'll kind of be PG about it, proceed to tell her how attractive he thinks she is. And that's all of the you know, the message I seen. But I think kind of struggling with it, trying to figure out, is this like cheating or am I kind of overreacting about it or and how I should approach him about it.

So, Beth, what did you say to him? How did he respond when you talked to him about it? Well, I haven't talked to him about it.

How to talk to him about it kind of threw me for a loop. And I'm just, you know, I just don't really know what to say to him about it. Yeah.

So paint a picture. I want to, I guess, paint me a picture of your marriage. How is it how have things been? And, you know, they've been pretty well and you said you said that you said that with hesitancy, that's been pretty well like give me paint the picture. Well, I mean, you know, we've when we got married and we had a pregnancy that I went to preterm labor and lost the baby and so we've been through a lot, you know, several deaths in the family and and on and on.

But I mean, we get along pretty well. We don't really argue very much.

You said you have young kids. Tell me about you. Tell me about your small kids. How old were they? We have a 10 year old in a soon to be three year old. OK, so you're in the same boat as me and my wife. All right. So you all are flat on it, right?

Yeah. My little boy was kind of a surprise. Yes.

Surprise. Yes. But it's a good surprise on most days, right? Yeah. He just get surprised. Yeah.

So cutting through all of this is in that's actually before we cut through anything, I've got to know, who have you talked to about this? Nobody. So you've just sat on this for a few weeks all by yourself. Yeah.

How did you stumble on these messages? Well, and he's kind of guarded about his phone, so, I mean, I don't go into the whole lot that he has left over there at the end or something, and I just kind of curious, you know, who it was. And it was a message from this random person was like, I don't even know this person. You know, it was a message to my husband. So I looked at that message and the other messages.

And so did something in your heart and mind tip you off to something's not right that the the boat you to just next to each other on there's going to drift apart? Or is this just you happen to grab the phone? Well, like I said, he's kind of guarded about it now, so he rarely kind of leaves it just laying around when I after I had our son or something similar kind of happened. He said it was nothing, but he was on Instagram.

And I don't even know how I came across it now. But it was like he had posted a comment on somebody else's picture. And I guess that's how I seen it. But he had sent me something in Spanish and it was like, you know, you're as beautiful as a rose or something like that. So something very specific. She sent that to me like previously that day in another message. And then I was on Instagram. Just look around and see the effects of that on some of the girls picture.

Yikes.

In can of about that then. And he's like, no, that that was just an error or something. And, you know, we kind of had a little discussion about it.

So has he ever cheated on you before? Has he ever cheated on you before? No, of course. I don't have any physical evidence that he's ever cheated on me.

Physical evidence, because now we're a detective agency, right? Yeah, that's right.

So the ultimate question here is this. Do you feel betrayed? Well, yeah.

I mean, I just. This really upset me. But, you know, it's kind of like, you know, this is a graphic. It's kind of like pornography. I mean, as I've mentioned, because he he has I know he has watched porn before. And I told him that I don't like it and yada, yada. And he he says he stopped or whatever, but I talked to other people about their like weapons. No big deal.

So, like, if this more like kind of a porn issue.

Well, and so that's where I'm asking you is the only voice that matters right now. I'm going to walk you through a couple of things here. But the only voice that matters to me right now is you. And do you feel like this is you've been betrayed? Yes, OK, so in my opinion, then, it's cheating, if you think it's cheating, then for your marriage and your values and your context, it's cheating.

And so you notice the questions I asked you, which is who have you talked to about this? Because you're going to get all kinds of different if you go to the magazines or the Googles or your friends are going to get all kinds of different will. You should just think this or this is no big deal or this is a big deal. And that can be really painful because in your heart you're thinking, no, it is a big deal. Right.

So that's kind of what I was want to get into thinking about. Is this is this a big deal or should I be concerned about it or here, here's my thoughts on cheating.

And these are hard and these are probably countercultural. I took these directly from who's the the the matriarch of relationship language in the modern world. And that's Esther Perel. And she writes a lot on infidelity. She writes a lot on marriage, relationships and how couples work through things. And as I was going through her her information, one thing stood out clear to me. And it was it was a heart stopping moment for me because it made me have to look in a mirror, too.

And my guess is, is that ninety nine point eight percent of the people listening to this and watching this, you're going to have the same moment. But as far as she's concerned, as far as I'm concerned, cheating infidelity is a secret. And that's the full sentence there. It's a secret. And so if we let we live in this culture where the the definition of cheating keeps expanding. Right. It's just getting bigger and bigger and the access and the ability and as a quick text is a flirty bump into somebody in a hallway is going to grab lunch and have coffee with with female coworkers or is it you have feelings for somebody at work there, a fun person to flirt with, but you're never going to cheat physically.

Right. And so at the end of the day, I think, you know, if someone or something is cheating, if it involves secrets, if it if you can't tell the other person in your the other partner. And so I had to be honest with myself and think, man, how many times over the years have I.

Cheated then under that same definition as people are driving now thinking, well, don't I get my own private life for people watching the YouTube like I get my own? Here's the thing, man. A relationship, a marriage means you become one. And so when your right arm starts hiding things from your left arm, that's the very definition of infidelity. Right. And most of us think of cheating as I didn't sleep with anybody. I didn't put this there.

I didn't kiss anybody. I didn't hold their hand right. And so I love that. Esther Perel says cheating is a much bigger picture. It's this idea of desire. It's this idea of Eros. Right. And a secret becomes a brick of fire in your soul.

And so I don't know anything about your relationship. I only think about your husband. I don't really think anything about that. Right. What I can tell you is just because somebody is chatting with somebody else doesn't mean that your marriage is broken. It doesn't mean that he doesn't love you right off in those kind of things are about him. There's a great guy. His name is Jack Moore. I wrote it down here. The erotic equation is attraction.

Plus obstacles equals excitement. Or as Esther Perel says, we are most intensely excited when you're a little off balance, a little uncertain or poised on the perilous edge between ecstasy and disaster. And so often cheating isn't about the person you're leaving. It's about leaving you, the person you've become and often in relationships without thinking about it. You got two young kids. You've been together for a decade or more. You've been together for two years or more.

And it's not what you thought it was or life became life. You want to leave the dead undesirable, frustrated, abused, lonely person that you are. And so my question for you, Beth, is this. Paint me a picture of you sitting down to talk to him. Do you want to go to war? Do you want to blow things up? Do you want to know what's wrong with you? Like, does this make you question, am I still beautiful?

Does he still desire me or does this make you want to fight for him?

Right. Well, I don't know about this, unfortunately. What about the third one so much because, you know, I kind of see this as he's the one going out and doing this stunt like some girl messaged him and was like, oh, I think you're really attractive. And he was like, well, I know you did it or whatever, you know, is him telling this other girl that, you know, how attractive he thought she was or whatever.

But I mean, it does make me angry.

You know, in what way angry for how dare somebody be in the heart of my husband or angry. How dare he did this? And he's he's throwing everything we've got away. Probably a little bit both, OK? And, you know, it does make you wonder, was this the first time he's done this? Is there other times? You know, I just don't know about that. He's done this.

And it also could be that the person on the other end of this phone, on the other end of this phone. Is a 72 year old co-worker. Who he says you're beautiful as all get out, probably not, but here's the deal, you don't know and you don't know because you have a secret now from him, which is that, you know, this thing and that you're secretly playing detective behind closed doors and you're secretly having all of these imaginary conversations with him.

You're secretly judging him, watching him like a hawk. And I'm not saying you're out of bounds on those things, but what I'm saying is you're living in secret to. And that's true. And so under my definition, under Mr. Perle's definition of infidelity, of cheating, it's this idea of holding a secret, right. And so you're not stepping out of the relationship erotically or physically with somebody else, but you're stepping out of the relationship as this 30000 foot hawk judge.

Right. Having fantasy conversations with yourself, with him. You've probably even imagined running into this other woman and how you're going to do whatever. You know what I mean? You start having this world and suddenly this guy laying down in bed with you has no idea that his wife is literally on fire from the inside out because you're carrying hot bricks to write. So can I ask you a couple of hard, hard questions, they're going to make me not a fan.

People on the Internet are not going to like that.

I'm asking you these questions and I'm asking you this not because you're the woman. If you were a guy calling me with the exact same question, I'd be asking these exact same questions. OK, this has nothing to do. I think women have taken heat for millennia for your job to make sure he stays fired up and at home and blah, blah, whatever, dude. So I'm not asking is because you're the woman, OK? Am I asking you this because you're the woman?

OK, good. All right. You're listening, right?

So do you wake up every day or most every day with a single minded mission to make your husband feel desired?

That he is sexy, that he is vulnerable, that he is safe and that he is loved. So probably it's a yes or no, probably not no, no, no.

As far as you feel comfortable and safe, do you try the wacky, intimate things that he's into or do you value yourself and your sleep and how you eat and how you exercise? Not to have a hot body? That whole thing's been perverted in is ridiculous. Not that, but so that you can be whole when you enter his space, when you enter into his world. I kind of lost children. OK, do you take do you love yourself enough to be whole so that when you OK?

Yeah, that's what I'm asking. I probably could do a better job. Well, it's not a judgment thing, it's just a thing to think you're right. Do you look at a screen more than you look at his eyes? Here lately, probably. OK, so here's all I'm getting that not that anybody causes anybody to do anything. I'm talking about an ecosystem or a context. I'm talking about people who cheat often don't hate the person that they cheated on, they don't want to not be in relationship with, they just want to feel alive.

They want to feel desired. They want to feel like somebody sees them and hears them and loves them. They want to feel that little bit of who this is a disaster. This could be dangerous.

And when couples decide together that we're going to create that world inside of our tight boundary up relationship, man, you can get a forest fire inside of a jar if couples do it right. And it it starts with one another saying, I'm going to create a context, I'm going to create a Emily Nagorski says, I'm going to create a world where it is all on here and no offs.

I'm going to create a world where it is all accelerator and very few breaks and we're going to honor and love one another in this context. And that still is not going to guarantee that somebody doesn't cheat because the price of love is hurt, the price of love is risk. And love is hard and love is scary. And so that's why direction secret free, here's some things I love, here's some things I don't love. Here are some things that would make my my world be less full of office and more full of Enns.

And man, there is just places where Eros desire, love takes off, and then, man, you're talking about a whole new planet for relationship development, for growth, for intimacy.

When suddenly you're the one getting those texts, you're the only one getting those text. You're leaving notes for him. He's working really hard in the gym, not just to have a hot body, but because he knows me when I work out, my brain is clear, my heart is clear. I do look pretty good. A testosterones run, my body is working and I can fully be present with our kids. I can help with energy after dinner.

I can help go to the store and I can clear the decks so the romance party becomes a gasoline fueled fire. But at the end of the day, you don't know any of that, Beth, because you haven't sat down, had a conversation. Cheating and infidelity start with secrets, may start with secrets. Every couple defines those differently, every couple has different values. Different things that are OK in one relationship and not OK in another relationship, but they start with secrets and so you're going to have to sit down and have a conversation.

Please don't have this conversation when you're fired up, when you're exhausted on the back end of another fight. Set up a breakfast, set up a lunch, set up a dinner where you go out and you say, Hey, I love you, we've been together 12 years, we've got two kids, we're exhausted fellas drifting apart. I found a message. I want to grab your phone. And if he throws a temper tantrum and says, I told you not to look at my phone, then he's a child and a baby and you can stop the conversation and say you're not ready to have this conversation.

We're going to have it. But you're not ready. And we're going to come back and we can do this again, because I love you and I love this relationship. But don't give up on your relationship for a series of text just because there's infidelity, just because there is, I got a lot of secrets. I have a lot of things that I probably haven't talked about with my partner. Don't don't throw out everything you mentioned. Right. You mentioned we've been through deaths together.

We've been through a heart wrenching loss of of a baby of miscarriage. We've been through all these things together. He's a good dad. He's a good man. He's looking for excitement. Or maybe he's a jerk, man, whatever. Start with a conversation. Beth, thank you so much for the call. Thanks for letting me spend a little bit extra time on this particular issue. We get a lot of conversations, a lot of questions about cheating, infidelity.

What does it look like? We're in a whole new world check to show notes for some of the books that I recommended, some of the authors here, Esther Perel, Emily Nagorski, and then we'll go from there. All right.

Let's go to the let's go back to the phones. Let's go to Cody in Summerville, South Carolina. Brother Cody, how are we doing? I'm doing great.

Excellent, brother. How can I help? So I am sentencing about to go to college and I feel that my family is just trying to drain me money. For everything, so you feel like they're draining you of money, one is a feeling, one is a thought and one is an action. So tell me what's making you feel this way then?

It's all three excellent things for so much money.

And I told them that I'm trying to go to college like I need money for college and any money for an apartment and a whole plethora of things. And neither one of my parents work and has worked for six to seven years.

How do they get by?

Man, I have another brother and he works all the time and he just fell in that sinkhole with them.

Hmm. Do they have any long term disabilities or are they just used to not work? My mother chooses not to work, but my father, he got he got her and he's waiting for disability, but disability is apparently taken five years. Wow.

So I can hear almost a hint of disgust in your voice. Is that fair? Yeah, it's very sad. OK, so I didn't at the beginning, I didn't hear. You're quite right. Are you say you're 17. I'm 19. Oh, you're 19. So do you still live at home?

Yes, I still live with them. OK, but I'm trying to get out of that environment because I know that violence is just that horrendous.

So when do you move out? That's why I'm here. I wanted to ask about when it should happen, when or how I should move out and about what tomorrow?

Why are you still there? I can't just get a place immediately. I can't I don't have enough income. Where are you working right now?

I am working at a gas station. I make on average almost all the time about sixteen hundred a month. Get another job, get two more jobs. Get three more jobs, what's holding you back? Of. Nothing, really. I mean, the only thing that's really holding me from the apartment is probably the income and also I assume that it would be better to have a roommate to help with the bills cut home and have. As that would be the best way.

All right, I'm going to give you some hard love your code because you called me. Is that cool? Mm hmm. Just a second ago, I asked you, did your parents have any long term disabilities? And you told me. My mom doesn't she just doesn't work, my dad does, but evidently Social Security or evidentally disability takes five years to come in. And in that sentence, I heard the disgust and the disdain and the frustration with your old man.

I heard the your disbelief of always having an excuse, my dad's always got a reason why he's not doing a thing. He's just saying, well, the checks are going to come and there's going to be this other thing. And so here's my here's the deal.

I heard that in you. If you really wanted your parents to stop taking your money, you would have moved out, you're 19 years old, you're an adult, you're old enough to be sent to war, you're old enough to buy smokes. You're an adult if you want out of the situation. Go to get out of the situation, start tomorrow, go get a second job, a third job, a fourth job, work like crazy. Talk to your brother and say, do we've got to stop float mom and dad?

They've got to start working. They don't have any reason to go to work right now because money just magically appears and they're robbing you of your future. But you're always going to have an excuse, man, you've got a model in front of you of people who lay down excuse after excuse after excuse, not to say that your old man is not hurt and long term disability sucks. It is debilitating. It takes your soul from you. It takes your dignity from you.

I'm not saying that he doesn't have some some serious challenges. What I'm saying is I'm already hearing you, Cody.

Well, you know, I kind of need to wait for a roommate and then do just go do it, man. Just go do it. Just go do it. Tomorrow, go get another job. It's it's in the middle of a month right now by the middle of next month. You should have an apartment lined up. You should have a deposit saved up. Go work like crazy. Go get it done, brother. And yeah, move out, man.

And then go to college. Go to a local community college here in Somerville, go find a local community college here in South Carolina, get started on your classes. Go to local trade school and make some smoke and money, being a mechanic, being an air conditioner guy, go to go to school at a local community college and get on whatever it is you're going to be getting on. But the day you stop putting these barriers in front of yourself, stop inventing excuses.

Well, I need this. Just go, brother. Run, run. You've got permission, freedom. And don't be a punk to your parents. They love you. And if they're not to show it, you take the high road treated with dignity, treat them with respect. Tell them at this time next month I'm moving out and they're going to say, we've heard that before, Cody. And then you put together your plan and you live and you work it out and go do it, OK?

After you move out, Cody, I want you to call me back. I want you to come back. Let me know how you feel. If you feel free, if you feel open, if you feel scared, I want you to give me a shout back. Let me know if things are going all right. Cody, you can do this. Just go do it. Just go do it. All right.

Let's go take one more calls. Go to Valentina in Flor, Fort Lauderdale, Valentino. What is up? How are we doing?

Hi, Dr. John. Thank you for taking my call. I'm a big fan.

Thank you so much. I'm a fan of yours. How can I help? Thanks. Well, I live in a Texas marriage for over nine years and I don't know what to do. I've gained weight. I'm a little depressed. I don't know what to do. So sexless marriage.

It's been sex for nine years or you have been married for nine years and it's evolved into this. We we've been there for nine years, and since we got married, it's his libido or his desire has decreased, he has been tested, his testosterone is low. Then we just recently tested and it's high now. It's normal, but his desire isn't there. OK. And it's hard for a woman to have a higher desire or I guess maybe I don't know if I'm the only woman that has this in America, but my husband has very desires.

We have intimacy once every two months, once every month, once every three months. It's very difficult. Yeah.

So you posed several questions there. So no one. No, actually, it's it's a big secret and it's a secret that weighs on the hearts of women, millions of women across the country. It weighs in the hearts and backs of millions of men across the country. Is this idea of expected libido? Guys are the cultural narrative, is it guys are just these sex crazed lunatics that are always wanting to do it and that's all they ever think about.

And wives are prepped for this. Well, you know, he's just going to and then they get to this marriage with a set of mismatched expectations and then things just go awry.

So out of just sheer curiosity, what are the things you've tried over the last nine years? Well, I've tried roleplaying. I've thought very sexy lingerie, even though I'm not into porn, and he was very insecure when we were dating and then suddenly it just took off all the porn out of the out of the house we were dating. Our sex life was awesome when we were dating. And then I even suggested, if you want if that stimulates you, you want to watch porn, we can try what they're doing.

And it just I don't know, we've even tried to set up a schedule, you know, to see if, you know, such days we can roleplay and, you know, we'll meet at a bar, we'll go to a hotel.

Nothing you've done to a point where you're trying to make it happen. What does he say? He's very ashamed. We had a huge fight a couple of days ago. I'm sorry. I'm getting emotional. No, of course, he just said that I have to deal with it and it's difficult. Yeah, absolutely.

We I mean, we're. We've been trying to have a baby, but like I told him, we need to try if we're trying to have a baby. We haven't been able to conceive in five years, but we both need to do our part. Right. I just feel lost. I feel very lonely. Yeah, I feel very alone, abandoned emotionally. I've never, ever cheated on my husband that I've never wanted to do that. And I don't want to do that ever.

I'm a Christian woman. I love my husband. So I don't know what to do, and I sank into a little bit of depression, I feel I gained 20 pounds because of it. I don't know what to do. So No. One, I want to applaud you for reaching out and being vulnerable. OK, thank you. Thank you for honoring me with your trust there. OK. Thank you. Second thing is, is trite as this sounds.

This is more than likely not a Vallentine issue. OK, and I want you to I mean, high praise to you for giving it all you had and for really trying to work through if it was situational based, if it was desire based, if it was all do fantasy based, whatever it happens to be.

It sounds like you've put in the effort and the love and the care and you've tried to really do your part there. And I salute you. OK, I want you to hear this.

The other side of you just got to deal with it. That's not an acceptable answer to me. And so we're this close. This call is hard for me is I can't talk to him.

Right. And so my guess is, well, I don't even want to speculate. There's so much that leads to low libido. There is so much that leads to the potential for sexless marriages. And it can be everything from, like you said, shame. That's all that's relational based all the way back from childhood. There could be this moment when you became girlfriend, you became wife. And he's got a picture of wife, which is really just an elevated mother, and guys don't like to sleep with their mothers.

And so it could be this big psychological quagmire. It could be something not testosterone related, but something other, more medically biological related. It could be that he is finding himself attracted to men and not women. It could be a hundred thousand different things.

And we've discussed that. Are you homosexual? Do you like men? He says no, he's not attracted to men. He's not a sex a drug addict at all. Right? He's not into drugs. He's not cheating. I've looked and not just.

Yeah, but so here's the deal. Here's the deal. Listen, listen, listen. This is going to be hard to hear, but he is not a puzzle to be solved. OK, and is not a problem to be fixed. He's a person to be with, and what I'm guessing is the amount of shame he is walking through the world right now is extraordinary. And people who are feeling shame think of a backpack full of cinderblocks and people who are carrying that around say things that they don't mean.

They get frustrated at the world just because their knees hurt, just taking simple steps. And so statements like you just got to deal with it. That's not a statement of somebody who loves and cares and desires somebody. That's a statement of somebody who's hurting, OK?

And so he's had an erection problem. So he has the right he does have that.

And the root of so much of that can be psychological and physical and trauma. It can be so much. Have you guys gone to see a counselor? Has he gone to see somebody psychologically? We have the first year of the marriage because from the day that we got married, we had intimacy that day and then five months later we did it and I kept, you know, pursuing him and nothing. So I did go to a counselor by myself.

At first he did go for one or two sessions, but then he didn't want to he was too ashamed to talk. There you go to a woman about the situation, about the fact that he can't get an erection. And it's difficult for men and for women. That's what he said.

Well, that's again, it's not that's just goes him trying to packages in a way that he can wake up every morning because the shame is pretty overwhelming. So he's got to this is not a you know, I think this is a half to. He has to go see somebody and talk about the things that are wound up in his heart and soul, and here's the thing, you can't make him do that. The more you try to control and pressure and push, that's more bricks and more rocks of shame.

And the backpack that he's already fallen over from. Right.

What you can do is you can go see somebody to deal with your frustration and your heartache and you can model for him what somebody standing a little bit taller and a little bit taller and a little bit taller.

Looks like, OK, OK, I want to I'm telling you this, but I'm also telling anybody watching this, anybody listening to this life is too short to live in a sexless marriage. Life is too short to live with bad sex with people who don't talk to one another, people who don't communicate, people put up for a decade with things that they don't like. They're not comfortable with things that they wish their partner was doing just because they they carry these secrets around.

They don't have hard conversations with one another.

And so we will go two years, five years, 10 years, 20 years without having hard conversations in. And suddenly, man, we find ourselves sitting on a couch again, two inches apart from one another and 2000 miles away. We're on different planets. Right. And life is too short for that. I'm speaking to the choir here. I know that the only person this can be hard to hear. The only person, Valentini, that you can deal with right now, the only person that you can change is you.

You can control your thoughts and your actions and the things that he says, the things that he doesn't respond to, a decade of trying to become his muse is war in your soul out? It's heavy and it's exhausting. And I want you to walk with a professional counselor for a season to make sure that that doesn't become your shame that you're carrying, that somehow your value is diminished because you couldn't accomplish this thing and somebody else. You have more value than that.

You've got more integrity than that. And you are worth more than that. And I want you to model for him what getting well, looks like what being whole looks like. I'm not concerned. The fact that he's got libido issues that happens. I'm concerned that he doesn't care enough about you to go to the ends of the Earth to try to be whole and well in men listening to this, men watching this, there is not an excuse to not be honest with the doctor.

There is not an excuse to not go see a counselor and say, help me. I am drowning the person that I love more than anything else in the world. Because of crap that I'm carrying that happened to me when I was a kid, there's no shame in not being able to put down your own bricks. Guys, I'm telling you, from a dude that struggle with it, it's hard. It is hard. But when we commit to somebody for the rest of their life and we tell them that we love them, we have an obligation to go to the ends of the earth.

The ends of the earth, that means going to have an awkward check at the doctor, that means sitting down with a therapist, male or female, I don't care, and saying, here's what happened to me when I was a kid. Here's what I see when I look in the mirror. Here's what a wife meant to me growing up. And all of a sudden I can't be. I was wildly in love, passionately in love while dating recklessly erotic when we were dating.

And now that we're married, I lost it. The whole role transmission, the whole thing changed. I'm terrified of being a dad, whatever the thing is. The combination of medical, psychological guys go see somebody. And this is not just about sex. This is about depression. This is about anxiety. This is about guys who are worried about being good parents.

I don't care what your issue is, guys get over it. The world needs us to step up and start feeling. The world needs us to step up and start being vulnerable. The world needs us to step up and start being with people not over them, connected to them, not in charge of them. And so I'm I'm I'm begging you guys, go talk to somebody that will hear you and that will love you.

All right, Valentina, thank you so, so much for this call. I want to thank all the callers today. Just remarkable. Beth and Cody Valentino, thank you so much for everybody writing in, everybody listening and watching. Thank you for walking on this journey with us. We were all of us, a real people were all on the same team. We're all just trying to figure out what the next wobbly crooked stick is going to look like.

And we all need each other. All right. As we wrap up the show.

Oh, man, I don't often do this. I don't often do this. But I'm going to go with the greatest song ever written. I mean, sometimes I bring my my JV game here, the greatest song ever written by the greatest rock band of all time. I'm putting a stick in the ground. I'm making a declaration. Ladies and gentlemen, here it is off there. Nineteen ninety six record white heat, white light, white trash. Social Distortion's greatest song ever written.

Mike in company rattle off this gem. It's called I Was Wrong. He wrote, When I was young, I was so full of fear, I hid behind anger and I held back the tears. It was me against the world and I was sure that I would win. But the world fought back and punished me for my sins. Well, I felt so alone and so insecure, but I blamed you instead. It made sure I was heard.

They tried to warn me of my evil ways, but I couldn't hear what they had to say. Here's the magic words, gentlemen. I was wrong. Self-Destruction got me again. I was wrong. I was fighting everybody. I was fighting everything. But the only one I hurt was me. I was wrong.

Who we could all say the words I was wrong followed up with. I'm sorry. What a world this would be. This is a Dr. John Delonas show.