Hey, on today's show, we're going to talk to a young woman whose mom tragically passed away when she was young. And as she approaches her mom's age, she's starting to become more anxious and more anxious. We're going to talk to a great dad whose wife had an affair and is not interested in keeping the marriage going. And he wants to know what to do next. And we're going to talk to an awesome young woman who is recovering from a rough bout of covid, who just wants to know how can I turn my anxiety alarms off and what can I do next?

Stay tuned.

Hey, what's up, what's up? This is Deloney with a Dr. John Boloney show, taking your calls about your life, your relationships, schools, marriages, parents, your mental health, your depression, your anxiety, your ADHD, your bipolar disorder. How are you going to love better how you are going to deal with people you are frustrated with on this show? We talk about all of it.

And it's your calls. It's your emails, your notes. And here's the thing. I'm not immune to this. I'm walking alongside you. And so whatever's going on in your life, whatever's going on in your heart, in your mind, in your home and your schools, in your neighborhood, in your country. Jeez Louise, give me a shot at one eight four four six nine three thirty to ninety one. That's one eight four four six nine three thirty to ninety one.

Or you can go to John Villone Dotcom show and you fill out the form. It goes right to Kelly and that she will go through it and see if you are a great fit for the show. So we've got a new segment today and it's a one time segment just for today. And it's where I tell you that I did something that I got on this show and said never, ever do. And here's the consequences. So if you're watching this show on the YouTube's, that's one of those Internet TV shows that people with camcorders can make.

You can see I've got these permanent scars on my arm all up and down my arm here. You may be blinded by my incredible tan if you're watching this, but beneath that glare that's coming off, my skin is forever scars on my arm. And here's why I'm doing Christmas break. Me and my son were clearing some brush out at the house. That sounds way cooler than it really is in your mind. I know you immediately thought I had, like, this red Filson outfit on and a matching Carhartt jacket and cool hat.

I didn't look like I look like an idiot.

My son looks good and we're clearing brush, cutting down just junk and shenanigans.

And I got covered up in poison ivy, which is not a thing in January except in the south. It's super is a cover up and poison ivy. And what did I do? You know, I did I asked my wife, hey, I've had this before. Here's what I did. And she's like, yeah, that's a good idea, which is to get some, like, calamine lotion, put it on there and just ride it out.

But I did something even better. I did something. That I got on this podcast and said, I hate it when people do this, and I thought, you know, I hate it so much, I think I'm going to do it. I got on the Internet and looked up remedies for poison ivy. And then I ended up with, oh, I wonder whether I can use all of these voodoo magic, dragon encrusted essential oils, which, by the way, can cure cancer.

It solves math problems. It can bring fairy dust into it, can do anything. It's actually bringing the polar ice caps are refreezing due to essential oils. Those things can do anything.

And I thought I bet if I Google essential oils and poison ivy. So what I did and you essential oil wizards out there are going to grown at this. But I covered myself day after day with straight oregano oil because oregano oil will solve everything.

And evidently in the essential oil world, oregano oil is basically turpentine. It's gasoline. And I poured it on my flesh and then Christmas night or Christmas Eve night, which I spent in the E.R., by the way. And I don't even go doctor. I'm a doctor. Years I did that night because I was taking a shower in big chunks of my body started coming out. It was coming off as I was showering.

And I remember thinking, oh, that doesn't look good. And so I got a shower and I showed my wife and I said, hey, I know I'm prone to drama. She knew what she married.

We dated a long time. But I said, I'm going to show you this. It doesn't look great and I should do it. And she without even breaking, she said, we're going to the hospital right now.

And I was like, it's not. And it was bleeding all that. But I mean, chunks, not just skin was coming off. Parts of my body were coming off. So I went to a rural E.R. in the middle of the night. And to his credit, the doctor walked in and he goes, all right, I just want to be I want to be honest with you guys. It is Christmas Eve and I'm in a rural E.R., I just want you to know what kind of doctor I probably am and we all had a good laugh about it.

And then I had to go back with the healing, but I'm going to be scarred for the rest of my life. Moral of that story, No. One, this is my confession. I did what I said. Don't do don't go on the Internet and look for health advice. I know it's so cool to be like, oh, you know what? They're so smart. They're and edgy and cool. And if you just eat pork rinds and frogs, you're going to get ripped stupid inor.

It's dumb, it's dumb. Talk to doctors or people with degrees who know what they're talking about when it comes to medical advice, not voodoo people who are going to.

Tell you to put essential oils all over your body. And number two, if you do something that you tell everybody not to do, you've got to be woman enough are man enough to admit it. So this is me telling you I'm an idiot and I did what I said I was going to do.

Don't put oregano oil on skin burns because evidently chunks of your body will fall off. All right. That's it. That's my that's my usher moment of the day. We're going to go straight to the calls. We're not going straight to calls. We're going to get to the calls after my mouth for five minutes. Let's go let's go to Stephanie in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Stephanie, what's going on? Hey, you're a pilot. You know about poison ivy, right?

I do. I've had it before. Did you douse yourself in essential oils and have to go to the E.R.?

So I did have to go to the doctor in calamine lotion. All of that I know in bed for a few days.

See, your my Stephanie, we are brother and sister, you see in my heart. Feel good if you're from Canada or the Northeast and you're like, what's poison ivy on you?

OK, Stephanie, what's up? How can I help? OK, so when I was 12 years old, my mom passed away of colon cancer.

Oh, man. How old are you now?

I'm thirty three now, OK. And she was 41 when she passed.

Oh that sucks. I'm sorry, Stephanie.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And so from the date of her diagnosis to the date of her death was only 16 days we heard.

No.

And it was just really fast and very shocking to everybody. But I'm 33 now and I'm married and I have two kids.

Life is good.

But the closer that I get to 40 or I just read it and I'm nervous and anxious, I now have eight more years.

But I, I dread 41. Yeah. I have like a mental block about it and just want to know how baby I could work through that for myself and for my family.

Yeah. So how old are your kids. I have a six year old daughter and a three year old little boy.

OK, so as much as you turning forty one, keep an eye out for the older that your kids get.

Yeah. Because you've got a 12 year old girl in there that is just hunker down. Hold the fort down. Right. Right. Yeah. All right. So tell me about your mom.

She's awesome. And we were I can hear you smiling through the phone, by the way.

Just tell me about her.

Yeah, she was awesome. She was a wonderful mom. I mean, she still when she got sick, she still did my hair every day. We picked my clothes out every day. We went to the grocery store together every week and helped her cook most nights. Every weekend we're in the kitchen, you know, making desserts and her famous chocolate cake. And and she was just very loving, physical touch.

And she was just like a perfect mom, huh? Yeah, she was awesome.

So tell me about your dad. And he's he's great to he really said that when she passed away and he never dated, he never remarried, he still wears his wedding band to this one.

Yeah, I mean, he's he committed his life to my older brother and myself when she passed away. And he was already committed, but even more so and yet in the gaps and tried to be mom and dad. Yeah.

So what is this this dread? What does it feel like?

I don't want to leave my family like she left us. I know the hole that was left after she passed away. And I dread that for my husband and for my kids. Does that hurt? Is still there? Of course. Yeah.

When you. You just gave me a thought. How does it feel? You're driving down the street and you are, you know, a few, you're getting closer right to that 41 and you feel it. What does it feel like? Just a pit in my stomach. Yeah, they get that warmth in your stomach. Yeah, yeah. And then tell me the thoughts that have gone through your head.

Oh, gosh, just that that I just don't want to leave, I don't want to leave them because I love the life that we're building. Of course, I don't want them to feel the hurt that I felt that my dad felt and that my brother I don't want my family to feel that.

How did you grieve her loss when you I mean and again, even if you knew it was coming, you can't there is no there is no process for a 12 year old.

Right. And wonderful, loving mom that was plugged in and all of a sudden it just vanishes. How do you agree that loss? How have you grieved it over the years?

I was very angry at first, of course, I became extremely independent because she did so much for me. I became independent and I'm still very independent to this day.

But I feel like I grieved it well and every day carefully, even though my dad kind of offered it to me and I'm like, oh, no, that's not for me. Looking back, I probably should have, but, you know, I'm going to answer you there.

But I'm also going to speak to everybody. There's this idea that every time there's a tragedy, everyone's got to run to a counselor. And one of the one of the.

Trauma counseling phrases that we live by is most people are OK most of the time. That doesn't mean that they're going to be perfect. They're not going to have permanent scars. Obviously, you will forever. This is an extraordinary woman that just got yanked from the cosmos, just took her from me. But that doesn't mean you have to go and spend the next five years with a therapist. Right. So if you felt great and you still feel strong, they're good for you.

OK, I want you to feel like you screwed something up and she had done something that now certainly on a poor trajectory somewhere, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So you didn't go see a counselor. You had friends, family, community around you? Oh, yes.

Lots of my best friends. Their mother stepped up and helped me get through the teenage years. And yeah, I really jumped in to church and had a great community of people around me in school days. Yeah.

So here's you're in a pretty unique spot. So have you ever heard of ases adverse childhood experiences? No. If you haven't, there's it's a remarkable it's basically a new direction that just talks about childhood trauma can set us up down the road for increases in things that we would never expect, like stroke and cancer and heart disease and obesity, things like that, that up until just recently we haven't connected. We've been chasing biological interests.

We never thought that the inflammation spun out from those traumas, especially the cumulative traumas, can can send us down these these hard, hard health paths.

Right.

And one of the cornerstones of this research is that one of the most important things that can help a kid who's experienced a robust, dark trauma like you did is a buffering adult people, the community that step in those gaps that are there for kids and you can't take the hurt away.

Nothing will take that hurt away, but will help a kid get to the next day and to the next day and to the next day. And they don't lose that ability to learn how to connect.

And so, you know this. But wow, I just want to call it out. What an absolute gift your old man was. What a gift.

Those men and women who stepped in the gap and the teachers and the coaches and the just the folks who probably showed up with meals all through your childhood.

And it may have been it may have been a blessing, but you didn't have to deal with also the hard stuff of getting to know a step mom and watching your dad fall in love with someone. You didn't experience that. And that's not always a bad thing. Mean sometimes that's a wonderful thing.

But wow, what a what a what a great moment that brings us to right now. OK, well, great. A great life that brings us to right now.

Here's what your brain is doing. It is just scanning the environment for ways and things that you are going to be taken from your family. Right. You get that pain. It is not going to it does not want you to be the person who inflicts that pain on the people around you.

Do you go to the doctor regularly now that when you have colon cancer, obviously every time you ever go to the doctor, they ask you about it? Have you been screened or are you healthy? You good?

Yes, I've been screened. I've had a colonoscopy. I had that last year. And I'll have another one and every other year at this point. And yeah, I've had genetic testing to see if I have any kids or genes because my grandma, both of my grandmothers had cancer as well. And I don't carry any cancer genes right now, of course, unless I get something.

So. So here's the magic, Stephanie. You're not going to get cancer at 41. Yes, you're not. Does that mean you're bulletproof? No. Does that mean a bus may not come along? No, you're right. Does that mean that a meteorite might fall? No. But you're not going to get cancer, and I'm telling you that out loud for this, because our trauma alarms, our anxiety alarms don't always follow math, right? They don't always follow facts.

And so what I want you to commit to over the next five to six years is two things. Number one, you have a ringside seat to the value of every day that most of us walson through life don't have. And sometimes that insight can be seen as a burden or you can work really hard to acknowledge it as the gift that it is. And you go to sleep tired every day because you suck the life out of that day. Right.

And so I want you to it sounds like you're on that trajectory. You've got a beautiful family. You've got people who love and care about you. And you are so thoughtful about the people around you. Not even you're not even telling me I'm scared I'm going to die.

That's not your words. Your words are. I'm scared. The people that I love are going to be hurt. You are a special rare air woman, Stephanie.

And they need to they need to keep your DNA and replicate you because we need more of you in this world that no one continue on that checking every day for how can I drain this day for the joy drain this day for the experiences and the adventures and drain every drop of love and connection I can have that day right now.

Number two, obviously keep yourself well. And I said I had two things. I got three, obviously do the things you need to do to keep yourself.

Well, it's man I have talked to so, so, so many people over the years who have somebody who's got heart disease in their family or cancer or anxiety or depression. And their response is to bury their head. Or to drink it away or to sleep with somebody else and somebody else and somebody else and somebody else and somebody else away, right.

To do anything to numb it. And you're not you are facing that demon head on. You're getting colonoscopies every year, which you're just a barrel.

It's a circus.

Right? Everyone loves a colonoscopy every other year. Right. And so you're facing it head on.

You're a true, true gangster. And the third thing is this. When those thoughts start spinning, I want you to speak out loud affirmatively. No, thank you. I'm healthy and I'm going to be here when I'm 41. OK, and what I want you to start doing is speaking out loud, and people don't think you're nuts now. Don't do it in a target, they'll call somebody. But when you're driving right or you're laying in bed and you just have had an extraordinary day with your kids and your husband and your stomach starts getting that warmth like, oh, what if I'm not here?

That's when I want you to whisper to yourself, no.

I'm not going to get cancer. I want you to smile big and I want you to take a big, deep breath. I'm not. I'm not going to get cancer because, you know, that's the truth, and if the thoughts start spinning and they come quicker and more, I want you to step up, get out a piece of paper and write them down. And I want you to demand evidence from those thoughts. Am I going to get colon cancer at forty one and leave my family?

No. Did the unthinkable happen to me as a 12 year old girl? Yes. Am I going to continue continue to love these crazy people because the end of the road is the same for all of us, right?

For you it's going to be 94, but for all of us with the same road. And so, man, we're going to just continue we're going to drain the life of all of its adventures. Enjoy. But I want you to write those thoughts down when they become heavy, heavy and heavy. And I want you to make sure you commit to staying vulnerable people, staying open with people. My guess is. The alarms will get louder the closer you get forty one, the closer your daughter or your son gets to 12.

It's going to get louder and louder, and if it gets loud toward, you can't function to where when your kid goes to school, you find yourself where you're just you're crying, where you find yourself being unreasonably over the top. Like you can't go outside because I don't want you when you have those moments or every headache, you think, oh, this is it, and your heart starts racing. You go straight to the Internet. Don't do that.

By the way, that's when you may need to go step in and see somebody. Now, you didn't need to see someone as a counselor. You had great buffering adults. Maybe now that you're older and you're heading into a season, you're going to have to have a season of practice to learn some adult skills.

Right. Some adult control over your thoughts and actions. And that's just a skill to practice. That's totally normal. We should all be doing that. And you've got some extra special reasons. But my guess is you're going to have those fleeting moments, those heavy moments. But you're well, Stephanie, and you're not broken. You're not sad. If your body and your brain remembers a trauma that heavy, that means your normal. That means your body's working great.

I mean, you're still a great mom and a great wife to your husband. That means everything's plugging along. That means you're just not going to forget that wonderful, wonderful woman. She's just not going to evaporate into the mist. Right.

Thank you so, so much for that call, Stephanie, as you get closer, if you know there's the chance that Dave fires me, Dave Ramsey fires me the next four or five years, strong to quite strong. Let's be honest, I'm not super good at this show.

But if we're both still around, when you turn forty one, please call me back, because I would love to hear how you are navigating that. I know you can be doing it well and the people around you are going to be loving you, loving you, loving you.

Man, the world needs more Stefanie's. All right. Let's go to Jeremiah and Los Angeles, California. What's up, brother? Jeremiah, how are we doing?

Hey, Dr. John. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing all right, brother. How are we doing? Oh, you know, it's one of those days.

It's a good day to day. So, you know, it's all I can say about that. That sounds ominous, man, but that could mean a lot of things. Somebody's calling from Los Angeles. So what's going on? How can I help? So I'll just get straight to the point. I've been with my wife for 14 years, 12 married, found out last year that she was kind of having an affair with somebody at our local gym here.

Hey, can I stop? Can I stop you right there?

Yeah, sure. What is kind of having an affair? I mean. Well, I guess to me, I mean, I'm I'm think of it as like a physical or more of a emotional than a physical, so I just they kinda suck.

It was a violation of your boundaries. Don't say of let's just call it what it is, OK? Yeah.

Yes. She was she was having an affair OK with it with a guy at the gym. And it was probably, you know, going on for about six months. I kind of had an inkling to it, you know, before, before I found out officially. But I mean, it was just kind of in the back of my head, but officially found out last year for sure that it was going on. And so it's been a year since then when I found out.

And just things right now are rocky. You know, we're we're trying to work it out. Well, I guess I'm trying to work it out, but really, it just seems like a one way street with us. You know, I'm trying trying everything here, and I've never reached out to anybody else besides my brother, family, stuff like that. But, you know, I saw your program on YouTube and, you know, I was listening to it.

I was like, you know what? I'm going to reach out to Dr. John. And that's where that's where we're at. I appreciate your trust, brother.

And it's just important to acknowledge I know we hear about this all the time. All the time. All the time. But this sucks, man. I'm sorry this happened to you, man.

Now, thank you. I appreciate it. So when you and your wife sat down and talked about this, I don't know if you saw text messages or you saw she was sending him photos or something like that, you find out, then you sit down and have the conversation.

Is the conversation like. So conversation was I found out at work, you know, with the text messages actually from the guy's wife that she was seeing. Hmm. So I got the text messages. I'm thinking in the back of my head, like, now this is this is fake. You know, I didn't know the number. I'm just putting it put everything behind me. I'm like, no, that's not real. And then they sent the text messages back and forth.

And I'm just like, oh, my gosh, my world just crashed.

Yeah, dude. So you talk to your wife, you talk to your wife. How does that go? MAN Yeah, your heart's broken.

You never know what dad is, right? You're not eating.

Yeah, I had that conversation go for the most part. I mean, I came home early that day and I you know, I took her by the hand and my daughter was in the room. So I said, you know, let's go to the back. I got to ask you something. And yeah, I was real levelheaded. Cool. I wasn't angry or anything. I just I wanted to just, you know, hear it from her, like, is this for real?

Like I mean, I showed her the text messages and everything. And, you know, like I told you before, I kind of had an inkling. So when I saw those, I just was like, oh, my God, oh, my goodness. You know, like, I can't believe this right now. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, she was very dismissive about it, just like, oh, no, he's just a friend, you know.

And then after we talked about a little more, it's like other things start coming out like, oh, he's my best friend. I can talk to him a lot. And mind you, he's a stay at home dad itself and she's a stay at home mom. But she has been for the last ten years. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know. I just was I just was in shock. Dr. John.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Think so. My heart was in a thousand pieces.

I'm over there trying to pick it up, trying to put it back together. And that's what I feel like I've been doing the last year and it just doesn't seem like it's going anywhere.

So her first response was denial and a lie. When did she circle up and say, finally admit, like, I've been seeing this dude? I mean, I would say probably like a couple of weeks after we had, you know, we were having conversations all the time about it. Yeah. And, you know, it just you know, she just finally said, like one day, like, you know, like like he's my best friend.

Like, I just want to see him all the time. And it just was that was another killer. It's like, how do you say that this guy is your best friend when I'm your husband and we're supposed to be best friends? You know, we're supposed to be the ones talking all the time. We all were.

You was this a total shock to you or you all have been problems in your marriage and you all talked about being distant in the past?

No, no.

That's that was another thing is like we I always felt like our relationship was very close. You know, we're you know, we're always we're always honest with each other. We're always talking to each other. And then, you know, for this to come about, it just was, like I said, a total shocker. I just couldn't I just can't wrap my head around it, honestly. Yeah, I am. So, so.

So why do you want to stay in this relationship now? Because I love her, I mean, she's the love of my life, I've been out there for 14 years. We have two beautiful girls together and we we both come from broken marriages. Yeah, my my mom and dad got divorced when I was in my and when I was 18, and she didn't have her dad pretty much most of her life. So and he still isn't a part of her life to this day.

She's so when you say she's not invested, she has no interest and she she telling you, I want to be divorced.

She's she's brought it up a couple of times, but it's never the triggers never been pulled on it. She's she's talked about separating. You know, I just don't I just don't feel the same way about you. You know, I feel like we're on two separate paths and it's like, you know, I've always been on the same path, Dr. John. I work all the time to provide for the family. You know, that's my role as a man.

I feel like I came from that type of background. And, you know, I don't know if it's some type of resentment she holds towards me because I get to leave every day and leave her with the kids or what it is I.

So I'm going to tell you this, Jeremiah. You're going to make yourself stone insane, trying to get inside her head and figure out why she's thinking the way she's thinking.

Right. OK, and when we get hurt or we get scared or we get out of control, that's a temptation managed to get. I know why they did that because of X Man. You're going to make yourself nuts, you know what I mean? And it's probably a thousand different things. And what I'll tell you is it's a fool's errand. You're never going to fully get there and you're just you're going to drive yourself mad.

So here's the man I. Man, give me straight, doctor. Yeah, I'm going to here's the thing, you can't change her mind, right?

She's an adult and she's going to have to make that decision. What this tension is and what this back and forth is and what this. I don't know. On her end and the tension you feel in your own house, walking on eggshells in your own house. And my guess is it probably vacillates between this is my damn house, I'm going to be who I want to be. And then also, you're on eggshells because you want to make her mad and then you're starting to feel yourself lose it, right?

Yeah, exactly. And then you talk to yourself. You have these pep talks on the way home. Your heart rate gets up, you get kind of fired up about it. And then the next day you're going to bring flowers. You're just going to start spinning yourself out.

So there's the important part of the just your being adults. Right. And I know I'm talking this is a pot talking to kill here, but two adults have got to get in a room and have this conversation. But there's a reason underneath that you need to have this conversation because only to have this conversation right. You just need to make some decisions. But I'm going to tell you right now, you are not passively influencing your daughters. You are affirmatively hurting them.

OK, OK.

They are absorbing this tension. They are absorbing your back and forth, your wife's indifference, whatever she's saying about you when you're not there, her staring at her phone all day while they're in her presence are not all of that stuff they're absorbing. And here's the deal, brother. They are in their little minds. How old are they?

Ten and six. Oh, gosh. Yeah. And they're 10 and six year old. That's about the age of my kids. Every every interaction with their parents, every bit of tension they are absorbing is their fault. And they're going to spend their life trying to fix it. Hmm, not a good thing. No, it's not all of that tension, all of that ambiguity, frustration they absorb and sometimes kids try to solve that through being perfect.

Sometimes kids solve that through addiction. They saw that through one relationship after another, after another. They solve that through the the they go on religious walkabouts, whatever that may be. But they spend their life chasing that down. Very similar situation you find yourself in, right?

Yeah.

And definitely all that to say is this. You have got to. I have a hard conversation in a in a respectful, kind, dignified way because there is a chance that your wife is a terrible, terrible wife and an extraordinary mom.

She might be a great mom to these girls. She might.

She loved those kids. Oh, yeah, she does. She's a great mother. I'll never, never take that away from her. She's the she's the best mom because.

Well, just like I said to the first caller, that we need more guys like you in the world. I appreciate your heart here. My guess is this is probably a long time coming. And whether you missed it or whether your wife was highly deceptive. Usually it's a it's a it's both. And some sneaks up on people or something doesn't sneak up on people.

Whatever happens today, I need you to go to your wife and say, listen, for the sake of our daughters, they're absorbing this. This is Rewa writing in their hearts what relationships look like, what relationships feel like. And they are taking all of this tension on their hearts. We can't do that to our daughters. We've got to make some decisions in this house. And I love you. I want to be your husband. I'll go to the ends of the earth to figure out how to make this work.

And please don't give up on us. Let's go get a marriage therapist. Let's go get us go.

All right. And and let her make a decision. Yeah, and I know that's a scary thing because there's a reality that she's going to say I'm opting for, not you. And that's very scary, right?

It is very yeah. That's heartbreaking. That's, uh. Yeah, that's all in man. And it sounds like she. Hello. Does she care about you? She says she does OK. Obviously, I mean bad behavior, I mean the affair nonetheless, she's still in touch with this dude. Are they still interacting, talking all the time? No, they're not talking at all, actually, the day after I found out, we went and changed your phone number and and all that kind of stuff.

So she said she hasn't been in contact with him at all since then. Also to if I could just mention it, like with our our sleeping arrangements. And so she's out on the couch, OK, I'm in the bed by myself, you know, intimacy that out of nothing. We're not none of that's going on.

When's the last time you all when's the last time you slept together? Like slept together or sexually, sexually? Yeah, it's probably been about like a month and a week, something like that.

Okay, um. When's the last time you sat down and said, we just need to have a grown up, intimate, direct conversation with one another? Just just actually the other day, honestly, how to go, you know, it went better than I thought. I sat down, I talked to her. I let her know that I was I was in contact with you guys with your show. Sure. And I let her know that Wednesday I'm going to be talking to Dr.

John. He's a counselor, stuff like that. So I let her know that I'm reaching out there to to try and make this work. Sure.

Have you all got to see a marriage therapist? Have you gone, Joe? No, she won't go.

We've had that conversation. She's like, well, what are they going to tell us? And I was like, well, they'll tell us what we need to do. Yeah. You know, and it's like, that's what I was saying. It's like a one way street with this relationship. It seems like right now it's like I want to reach out, I want to save it. But it's just doesn't seem like she doesn't want that. She doesn't want to save it.

Does she want you to be the bad guy here? Does she want you to be the guy that breaks it off? What's keeping her from walking out the door?

That's what I'm saying. I don't know. And I think that's what she wants, is for me to make the decision. I said, you know what? No, this is your decision. I am not making the decision because I don't want to make that decision. I don't want to leave the relationship. I want to be with you. I love you. Yeah. You know, and I don't know. I think she's waiting for that. That's maybe that's why she's not we're not sexually active anymore.

Maybe she's holding out on me for that reason. I don't I have no idea.

Again, don't get in her head, man. OK, make yourself bananas. There's a thousand different reasons why intimacy happens and doesn't happen and all that. Yeah. I'd love to talk to you if she'll call the show.

I'd love to love to talk to her to get her what's going on in her heart. Mind if she would. But all I can say is this. If she won't have an adult conversation, if she did, if she won't make an adult decision.

Yeah. For you, for herself. You'll have to make some decisions for your daughters, OK? Yeah, sooner rather than later, and my hope, hope, hope again, man the most naively optimistic guy on the planet and I'm not naive about it. I just have seen people come back from so many different breaks, come over so many obstacles because they fight in the claw and they say, I'm not giving up on this thing. I thought this marriage was an ash and we're going to we're going to redraw.

We're going to rebuild it and we're going to create something better and new and different. It's not the old thing that we just reconstruct.

We're going to do something remarkable. I've seen it over and over and over. I've had moments in my marriage, dude, that I was like, oh, man. Things going down, going down, going down. Yeah, we hung on and we rebuilt something new. We're still rebuilding something new. And I think every marriage is continually rebuilding and rebuilding and adding and growing.

I've got high hopes for you, man, but I do as well.

But chances are very high.

She's got to she's got to make a decision sooner rather than later for those girls. So here's my challenge to you.

Do what I just said.

Sit down there and have that hard conversation on behalf of your daughters, on behalf of you, on behalf of her. She's killing herself, man. She's got to make a decision and you can let her know equivocally. I will not in this marriage, period. And but we've got to fix this. I want you back in, sleep in the bed with me. I want you to go to marriage counselor. You know, we're going to give you tools.

They're going to help you have hard conversations with one another, tell the truth with one another, be open. You may hear things, but I promise you will hear things about you over the last decade that you don't like, that you didn't even know you were doing. But you're going to hear a man. That's what a marriage counselor will do to give her a place to be fully honest and open with you.

And there'll be a referee there. But also, someone's going to teach you a teacher is going to give you guys some tools you can work on and rebuild this thing from the floor up.

But those little girls are hanging in the balance, man. They're hanging in that tension and they're absorbing every second of it.

Man So the last thing is, man, I'd love her to call a show. We will. I'll move her to the front of the line if she'll call the show and or shoot me an email or go to John Dulaney dot com show, let her know that she's Jeremiah's wife and we'll move to the front. Sure. I'd love to hear her perspective on this. She's probably not going to, but I'd love to hear from her. But, man, we're thinking about you and let me know how that conversation goes.

Let me know that final decision is me. A note back and we'll let the listeners know how things played out.

Don't give in to despair, Jeremiah. Don't give in to treating her Leiston with dignity and respect, because at the end of the day, that's just going to bring you down and drowned you. So you've sounds like you've taken the high road on this and continue to even if you get the worst of worst news that she's moving out and the things over, continue to think about those girls, continue to think about what you can bring to the table as a person of integrity and dignity and treat your wife with respect, regardless of how this thing plays out.

She's still the mother of your kids. I hate that man. All right.

Let's go to Sharon in Atlanta. Sharon, what is going on? How are we doing?

A Dr. John, thank you so much. It is an absolute pleasure just to even talk to you. I'm so excited.

It's a pleasure to talk to you. How can I help? OK, so I actually had covered starting on Christmas Day and I'm a recovering Merry Christmas.

Right. I know. And what a way to start the new year. But yes, I actually just went through like like on a scale of one to ten, it was literally a twelve. Like that's how bad it was. I never get sick, but I'm just like mentally and physically just so exhausted because it was just so draining and, you know, just being stuck in a room the whole time for two weeks. And you have you have all these goals in mind.

Like you start you want to start the New Year with all these goals and you have plans. And I feel like everything got kind of put on hold for, like just kind of asking what your pain is like, what you think. How do I how could I get myself back on track just to get back to kind of normal, almost like that.

Yeah, you just gave me like ten different shows with the material just here. All right. So no one you didn't slightly get derailed. Your whole twenty twenty one got blown up before it started. Right. You're that kid. I don't know if you were in Cub Scouts, but they have like the Pinewood Derby where they make these fancy cars and they all get a line on these ramp and they let them go. You're is the one kid that got stuck right when they dropped it and all the other kids went down and looked all smooth and pretty.

And you're just your car sucked. It just got stuck there, right.

Went nowhere. And so there is no one. You got to be honest about what happened. You got blowed up before you even got to go up. I'm going to I'm going to trademark that. That's the smartest rap kind of thing I said today.

You got blown up before you got to go up number two. How honest do you want me to be with you, because you share and sound like a really kind person, a lovely human, and I can play high level, I can be super blunt and Jocko will connect with you can just be direct.

Which one? I would like for you to be as honest as possible. I mean, it's just because I'm a very social person and and I've been out of work since I'm a flight attendant. So it's just it's just been so hard because I've been in my bubble this whole time. Yeah. Getting it out, you know, even socializing. I got to learn. It's just been weird. I just feel like I'm in a weird place in my life right now.

And yes, this is exhausted.

OK, so here's I'm going to walk you through real fast. Everything in a nutshell. And I want you to just hold your breath while I do it, OK?

OK, ready and ready.

Almost a year, we'll say nine to ten months of varying stories between if you get this, you're going to be dead. It's not a big deal. What's going to happen. And you're a flight attendant, so I'm going to get laid off. Am I going to keep my job or are we going to do. Oh, I've got to be on this plane. They're making me fly with all these people. We're all going to get sick. We're all going to die.

Oh, my gosh. And I love my friend, but I kiss that boy. He's probably got it. He's going to die every sniffle for the last nine months, you thought, oh, this is it. This is death. Right. And then I want to hang out with people. It's not that big a deal. We're in Atlanta. It's not even in the south. So they say so we're all good in Atlanta. And then it's you get it on freakin Christmas, right.

And then you start thinking backwards to all the people I was around. Did I hurt somebody else? Because that's the other thing, right? It's not only I might have it and be hurting other people, not even mean to, but someone else going get sick and die because of me. And and then it goes over and over. And I blew up my family's Christmas plans and my friend's plans. And what about twenty, twenty one? I got this new journal with all these frickin ribbons in it that was going to help me on my day planner journal and month and goals and and it all just blows up and you are super, super sick all by yourself in a bed on Christmas Day.

And so there's one word for that. And it's just called trauma, OK? And there's so many influencers on the Instagram like.

So you had it for twenty four hours. It's no big deal with you or there's newscasters being like everyone to die. Right. The reality is for some people is not a big deal. And for others it is the scariest terrifying thing. I've got friends at work. I've got friends in my family. I've got I got friends, my family, I got family members. I've had people who have had it not that bad. I've had people that were terrified.

Right. It is what it was definitely scary.

You got real right. There you go.

And you probably like my idiot self you I went to the Internet to see what I could do and what would happen, and then they just really fanned the flames of joy. Right. Because what else are you going to do when you're stuck in a room by yourself?

And I never. Go ahead. Go ahead. I never and that's another thing.

Like I never get sick. So that's why I think it really hit me hard because, like, I actually had to go to the doctor twice and I was so sick, like, I didn't think I honestly did not think I was going to make it because my breathing was so bad. And it just hit me like, oh, my gosh, this is real.

And then you start thinking, oh, I don't ever get sick. But I did this time I'm going to be one of the ones. Right. So all it to say is your brain is trying to do the best it can to take care of you. And your year got blown up at the end and at the beginning, the one the one holiday that you've had since you were a little girl, that everyone just goes, ha, that got blown up, your work got blown up, your health got blown up, everything just blew up.

And so what I want you to do and this is going to sound ridiculous, just go with me on it, OK?

I want you to hold some sort of miniature funeral for what was going to be. OK, and you can be as funny about this, you can get a glass of wine and some friends on Zoome and you can be silly about it or you can be teary and weepy about it. OK, but I want you just to be honest about I want you to have a moment, a ceremony, a a moment of just check in and pause where you're going to grieve what just happened because it sucks.

Right? And it's not just that you got Koven that's really, really sick. It's all of it. All the scary. All of the year it all culminated in it all just goes boom right there on your body.

Right. And then you had to sit for two weeks alone, sick, alone. There's nothing worse than being alone. There's nothing worse than being sick alone. Right. With just screens and sleep and screens and a doctor and then almost death and then. Right. So it's just on and on. And then you have to let this fantasy of what, twenty, twenty one was going to be go. And then I'm going to give you some joy, OK.

There is a wonderful saying by the great they're the great meditating gurus, but that every breath is a chance to start over. Right, every breath is a chance to start over. And so I don't want to undermine what just happened. It's a big deal. And your bodies wrecked because of it. And that means your heart and your soul and spirit aspect of it. Hold a funeral, acknowledge what was acknowledged, what blew up in your face, and then say it's Tuesday, January, whatever.

I'm starting today. Right now, I'm going to start twenty, twenty one, however late we are, and hey, after what happened the last few weeks with the the all the stupid stuff going on in the country with politics and all that, why not start late? All right. That's true.

So good you're beating the system here. So way to go.

So you now have a level of empathy for the scared people that you're going to be walking up and down the aisle with on your in your work. You're going to have a new level of empathy for folks that you work with who haven't got it yet, who are terrified they're going to get it.

You have a new level of empathy of what it's like to be just freaking alone. You have a new level of empathy for what getting sick looks like, the difference between media coverage.

Right. What's real and what's not. You now have an insight to that you didn't have before. You would you want it if you want to experience it? No, but you have it now, right.

And that is a firm, beautiful foundation of empathy, love, compassion. And now there's no stopping me. Now, you had it, now you had it. Now it's on twenty, twenty one right now. Sharon from Atlanta. Game on, sister.

I'm going to go get it right now. You can do whatever you want. And you can tell that I love. Yeah, I actually just this is a picture like I just pictured like a whole sunshine after you said that.

That's what it is. I didn't even look at it that way. Yeah, definitely, because there's other people that are probably are going through, especially after holidays.

OK, don't do that. OK, Sharon. Sharon, don't do that. Don't compare your situation to somebody else. Well, at least I didn't have that right. Don't do that. Your grief is your grief is your grief.

You get to own it. It's sucked. It was if you got covered for 48 hours and you just had weird, weird, weird buggers. Right.

And rocket diarrhea and that's it.

And you have a friend who went to the hospital and she was put on a ventilator for four days before she got to come on. Both of you have a right to your hurt. OK? Don't minimize it, don't minimize it, and don't be like, will you let other people in other countries have food? Don't do that. That's why I want you to hold a ceremony for what happened to you.

OK, OK, hold it was what it was. And then, yes, the sun comes up and it may not come up on the landscape we wanted. It may not come up in the home that we wanted. It may not come up in the in the at the school we wanted to be at. It may not come up with the guy that we thought we were going to be, whatever the thing is.

But the sun always comes up, it always comes up. And then we go back to what the ancient meditators would say is.

Every breath has a chance to start over. And I've been guilty, guilty of, like, man, it's it's May I've blown this year. I can't wait till till New Year's. Right. I'm going to start over New York. That's so stupid. I blew a whole year, man. So all you lost is three weeks, that's when you were in it to win it. By the way, can I share and I wanna thank you for that call.

Here's what I want you to do after your funeral. I want you to shoot me a note back, and I'm going to read what your note is after you have this miniature funeral. Again, it can be funny. It can be serious. I want you to let that go.

The fantasy of twenty twenty one is going to be pop rocks and fireworks and flowers and is not suck. I got covid. I'm stuck in bed. I almost died. But now the sun's coming up. And what are we going to make of it. Right.

And then I want to hear what you're going to do. I want to hear what you gonna write down.

Here's the person I'm going to be in twenty twenty one more empathetic, more loving, more looking people in the eye and saying, I see you for the first time.

That's going to be awesome. And then here's man, this gets me a little bit ranty and I won't because I want to wrap the show up here.

But you guys, I talk a lot about you've got to match your pictures with words, right? We often use the same words and we mean different things. covid is a great example about how different disciplines use the same words and then they run off into the woods with totally different meanings. If you guys remember back in February or March of last year when this thing started making its way around the world, I was in Manhattan when they closed Broadway.

I was on Broadway with my friend Ken Coleman. We were walking down Broadway when they walked down, said Broadway is cancelled. And we both looked at each other like that is the sound super great. And they said canceled until further notice. And no one had ever heard of anything like that ever happening.

So we were downtown New York when this thing started. We started falling like a bunch dominos. And there was some modeling experts, some epidemiologists and modeling folks who made some predictions early on at University Science Labs and they again lab. Some of you guys think of labs with beakers. Some labs have people in them. Some labs have computers in them. So I'm using the word liberally. Liberally here. Liberally is. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

And they said, hey, we think 13, 14 million people are going to die or whatever wild number it was.

So here's a thing in science. When they say I think this. For scientists, that means game on because the whole practice of science is based on iron sharpens iron peer review. Oh yeah, I am going to reject your null hypothesis. I'm going to go try to find out where you're wrong. I'm going to look in the gap. Look in the gap. Look in the gap.

And then shortly, a few weeks later, it had been revised down, we think seven million people.

So those folks took those new models, new information, new data, and they're making new models and new models. And they're they're reducing, reducing. They're getting better and better and better. So science has a built in mechanism when it's honest with itself. For I think this here's my hypothesis.

Here's what I think is going to happen.

And then all other scientists in that area, in that field or in peripheral fields, they go to war, do they is on. And it's this beautiful refining process to try to get to truth. Right. But you know who doesn't have a refining process, politicians in the media, because they all walked out the next day and said 40 million people are going to die and they have no ability because of ego, because of narrow minded thinking, short term thinking, they have no way to go back and say, oh, you know what?

The best information we had last week was 14 million people. The latest data tells us it's going to be 10 million. That's a great news, everybody. We're going to keep learning the best we can doing what we have in our pockets right now.

But the number is getting smaller. It's still way, way, way, way, way too big. But they can't do that.

They have to look at each other and start saying, well, you lied when you lied. Well, you're stupid. Science is dumb.

And it's this this cross talk that happens in marriages, that happens in families, it happens in businesses, happens in schools where people are using the same language and they're using it to mean different things. God almighty, if politicians could say these magic words, I'm sorry, I learn new information, I'm changing, I'm changing what I said the other day and I'm going this way. And if we all cheered those people, you know why? Because that's wisdom.

The ability to say, oh, dude, I got new info, I got new info, and now I'm wiser and I'm going to restate something that I said, I'm going to say something differently.

I changed my mind and we all cheered for them. Oh, can you imagine that if the media was able to come out on a Tuesday after making a big report on Monday and be like, hey, we got that one wrong, woops, you are bad. We got new information. We screwed that up. Here's the new thing. Or we didn't screw it up. We just tried our best with what we had. And we got we got new information.

Let's say you say the words I'm sorry, B. People of wisdom. B, people have said, man, I've got new info. All right. So we wrap up the show. I talk on that all day long.

Oh, man. All right. So I'm in it now. Everybody. I asked another young person in the office, I need the best song of twenty twenty one. No, I said the best song ever. It happened to be the best song of twenty to a song that has existed since twenty twenty one started. That should have been clue number one. So it's off a record that was recently released. It's called Anyone by Justin Bieber, and it goes like this Dance with me under the diamond says Justin, sleep with me.

See, let me see me. Let me stop you right there. No Justin Bieber. Now we're just going to go and wraps a good tune, man. I listen to it. It's good. No, no, they're waving me off. I'm a fan of his older albums, but we're going to we're going to go ahead and wrap this here. You can read two more lines. We'll see how it goes. If it's not you, it's not anyone.

Not anyone. I tried. Justin, this has been the Dr. John Talent Show.