Caller: “My Husband Regrets Having Our Baby”

The Dr. John Delony Show

Dr. John Delony addresses three distinct callers navigating high-stakes life transitions, ranging from marital anxiety to complex family bou

Key takeaways

• Melinda's husband is experiencing intense existential dread regarding his child's salvation following a traumatic NICU experience.
• Dr. Delony suggests changing marriage 'default settings' through daily gratitude practices to combat fear-centric environments.

Main topics

• Marital anxiety and existential fear
• Setting boundaries with incarcerated family members

Notable quotes

What you go looking for in the world, you're sure to find.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a toolkit for individuals facing relational vola

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:05) My husband has recently expressed remorse about bringing our child into the world because they could one day reject Christ and potentially spend an eternity in hell. Speaker 2 (0:18) Good God. Speaker 1 (0:19) Yeah. Speaker 2 (0:20) This is a rare moment, but you stumped me on this one for a second. What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Speaker 2 (0:34) talking to real people who are struggling, who are going through life. Some people are celebrating. They're doing great, and they just want to figure out what's the next right step. Wherever you find yourself, whether you've got questions about your mental and emotional health, your relationships, your marriages, your kids, whatever you've got, that's what this show is about, pulling up a seat and figuring out what's the next right move. I'd love to have you on the show. Wherever you are in the world, click the link in the show notes, and we'll work to get you on. Let's go out to San Francisco, California, and talk to Melinda. Hey, Melinda, what's up? Speaker 1 (1:04) Hi, Dr. John. Thank you so much for taking my call. It's a true honor to speak with you. Speaker 2 (1:09) It's an honor to talk to you. It's not even, there's like no sunshine up yet. You're early on the West Coast, so thanks for calling. Speaker 1 (1:17) Well, yeah, I have a baby, so I don't sleep very much, so no problem. Speaker 2 (1:21) Nice, nice. Speaker 1 (1:23) Yes. So what's up? Well, my husband has recently expressed remorse about... bringing our child into the world because they could one day reject Christ and potentially spend an eternity in hell. And so my question, yeah, my question is, how do I both honor and understand this fear of his while also challenging his way of thinking? Speaker 2 (1:52) Jeez. Speaker 2 (1:57) Man, this is a rare moment, but you stumped me on this one for a second. Oh, Speaker 3 (2:02) no. Speaker 2 (2:03) Let me talk. I'll just talk my thought process out loud and we can kind of get there together. Where else in his world do giant fears kind of pin him down? Speaker 3 (2:18) Like Speaker 2 (2:18) economics, World War, the left is taking over, the right's taking over. Like where does he have things in his world where the weight of it feels so big that he makes big, grandiose statements like that? Speaker 1 (2:33) You know, this is honestly the first time I've ever heard him make this kind of statement. So we've been married for almost three years. I'd say the other fear in his life is when he stands before the Lord and has to be accountable. And he does have fear of like looking back on his life and God saying like, oh, what have you done? Even though he is like a wonderful person who gives himself fully to others. Yeah. And that's a tough, Speaker 2 (3:11) I wish I could just have a cup of coffee with him. That's like being married to you. And I'm going to, I'm going to put out into the world that you're the best wife ever. You love him just recklessly and y'all laugh together and have fun and all that. But that's like him opening his eyes every morning. Speaker 2 (3:35) And hoping to like being almost paralyzed and Speaker 1 (3:38) doing Speaker 2 (3:39) everything he possibly can because he thinks you're going to look at him and say, I hate you. Speaker 1 (3:47) Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:48) Right. And that's a, it's a way to miss out on the beauty of relationship. It's the way to miss out. It's completely misses the exchange of love. Right. Speaker 1 (3:59) And Speaker 2 (4:00) it makes it very, um, yeah, I would love to hear his story on how he landed in a place that Speaker 1 (4:07) relationship Speaker 2 (4:08) is so fear centric. Speaker 2 (4:14) And unfortunately, he's not on the phone. So what I would talk to you, what I would walk with you is asking yourself two scary questions. One, what can you control here? You can't control his innate existential fears that seem to guide every moment of his life, right? But you can control asking him, like, I've heard you. I don't want to hear that again. Speaker 2 (4:47) You've made your point clear. I don't want our child growing up in a home where one of us is saying out loud, I regret bringing you here. Speaker 1 (4:55) I Speaker 2 (4:56) don't want that air to be in our home. And so I'm asking you to find somebody else to talk to about that. Speaker 1 (5:01) Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:03) Whether that's a minister or a therapist or a group of friends. Speaker 2 (5:10) I don't want that air in this home. Speaker 1 (5:13) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (5:13) then if he looks at you and says, now, you know what? I get to say whatever I want because it's my house. Well, now you'll have to deal with that marriage issue, right? Speaker 1 (5:20) Right. Speaker 2 (5:20) Because honor and respect and kindness and love goes both ways. Speaker 1 (5:26) Right. The Speaker 2 (5:27) second question I would ask you is, you being honest with yourself, is this just a huge seasonal change? It has sparked a guy who clearly has some deep existential anxieties just about his... Not even on earth, but like the future, right? Is this him, suddenly his world is different. He's a dad now. He's a husband to a woman who's a mother now. And all of his identities have changed. And so he's saying things out of fear, out of frustration that he probably doesn't mean, or maybe he does. And so come into some sort of reality there. What do you think? Speaker 1 (6:07) Yeah, I think. Speaker 1 (6:10) Change is really hard for him. I think change is hard for everyone. We also, you know, our baby, we had to be in the NICU and there was an extensive surgery and it was a really rough way to start parenthood. Speaker 2 (6:26) Very Speaker 1 (6:26) scary. And so we didn't have control at the beginning. And we found out at my 20-week ultrasound about this condition. For half of my pregnancy, we were just, you know, very fearful of the outcome of our baby's life. And so I don't know if it would have been like this if we had just a normal. Speaker 2 (6:52) Sure. I Speaker 1 (6:53) don't know. So Speaker 2 (6:55) there's small things that happen in tiny bite-sized moments in a marriage and a relationship. And it sounds so trite and silly. I know that. Okay. But what we're doing is working with somebody we love or we're connecting with somebody we love. And we're, the aim here is to, for both of us to reset our default setting. Speaker 5 (7:18) So Speaker 2 (7:18) for 20 plus weeks or however long you carry this pregnancy, this baby meant terror. Speaker 1 (7:26) Yeah. Speaker 2 (7:26) Right. To you, to your husband. And there's no way that doesn't impact your relationship. Speaker 1 (7:32) Right. Speaker 2 (7:33) And so beginning to change our default setting to now this baby means love and opportunity and reckless joy and laughter and sleepless nights and millions of diapers. Right. Speaker 3 (7:47) But Speaker 2 (7:48) that default setting doesn't change in one big fell swoop almost always. Right. Speaker 3 (7:53) The way it Speaker 2 (7:54) changes is every morning you look at him and say, hey, before you go to work. what are three things you're grateful for about our new life, about our baby? And you give three things. And then right before you go to sleep, you say, what's your three favorite things of today? Speaker 1 (8:10) Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:10) And y'all begin to, what you'll, Brene Brown has a great quote that I love. It's what you go looking for in the world, you're sure to find. Speaker 1 (8:18) Oh, wow. Speaker 2 (8:19) And so if y'all begin to orient yourself towards not what could have been in this angst and every conversation becomes tense. And by the way, here's things that nobody talks about in these moments. There's serious financial ramifications here that impact your life. There's serious work complications. There's time off. There's all of that stuff, right? Yeah. There's identity issues. I've sat with, I mean, I can't even count the number of women I've sat with that. had this underlying, I can't believe my body didn't, like it's supposed to do one job. Speaker 1 (8:51) Yeah. Right? Speaker 2 (8:52) And it becomes this, I'm not, I can't even trust my own body, right? And that becomes disorienting. Totally. And so being able to have a new marriage, which by the way, y'all have a brand new marriage. The one you had is over, right? What do we want this thing to look like? And more importantly, how do we want our house to feel? And I talk about that a lot, like from like how fun that conversation is. But sometimes that conversation is, I want you to stop talking about X, Y, or Z. Speaker 3 (9:24) Right. Speaker 2 (9:25) Because if we both want our house to feel warm, to feel full of love, to feel whatever. Speaker 2 (9:31) And he's always been like looking at this baby, this sweet, how old, how many months old? Speaker 1 (9:36) Four, four months. Speaker 2 (9:38) I've got baby fever so bad right now. Like a little four month old. Um, and it's pretty great. Yeah. But also it's pretty not great. It's both right. It's, it's the best, worst thing ever. Right. Speaker 3 (9:51) Um, Speaker 2 (9:51) and. Speaker 2 (9:54) I don't, if you look at that baby and you're like, can't believe I brought you here. Like I may have doomed you for all of eternity. Like that becomes a pretty gnarly way of experiencing this magic. Right. And you change the default setting slowly over time. Speaker 1 (10:09) Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 2 (10:11) And I guess what I tell you, man, also there's only limited influence you have. Speaker 1 (10:19) Yeah. And he because of this, he doesn't want any more children. And he said, you know, we could adopt because then we'd be helping somebody already born. But right now he he's like, I think we should be done. And, you know, that's heartbreaking for me. It Speaker 2 (10:39) is. But you also have an equal vote at the table to say, I don't think we are. Speaker 5 (10:46) Okay. Speaker 2 (10:46) And say like, we got tension here, making big, huge life decisions with a four month old sitting here, especially after a one or two or three month NICU stay, not a good time to make like final declarations, right? Speaker 1 (11:02) Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:03) The guy who trained me, Dr. Andy Young, one of the most important men in my life, the guy who trained me on crisis stuff, he always, he told me personally, like, this is to you, John, but also globally, but. After a big life-changing event, don't change anything in your life for minimum of six months, but probably better a year. Don't sell your house. Don't quit your job. Just let the smoke clear on this new world you have. Speaker 1 (11:29) Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:30) And that is not how I operate. Like something big happens. All right, let's like, right. The stock market's going to go down. Let's sell everything. Let's move to the wood. Like that's my impulse and is like, just hang tight for a second. All right. Hang tight for a second. And so I, I would hear that and remember that you have an equal voice at that table. And if you find that he. won't hear you, shut you down. That is a point of tension. You hear me say this all the time. Tension's the doorway to great communication, to a great marriage. So the bigger conversation there is, the story I'm making up is that your opinions are more important than mine in this marriage. Speaker 4 (12:10) And that Speaker 2 (12:12) makes me feel small. That makes me feel less than. And he might say, you're right, I'm the man.