Caller: “My Wife Is a Spoiled Brat”

The Dr. John Delony Show

Dr. John Delony hosts a series of calls addressing deep-seated struggles in marriage, identity, and family boundaries. The episode moves fro

Key takeaways

• Jeremy, a teacher, struggles with budgeting conflicts stemming from his wife's upbringing and recent autism diagnosis.
• Dr. Delony suggests using 'hand signs' or scheduled pauses to manage conflict when neurodivergent partners struggle to find words in the moment.

Main topics

• Marriage communication and conflict resolution
• Identity and purpose after career transitions

Notable quotes

Upbringing is a context. It's not an excuse.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable strategies for emotional self-regulati

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:05) Got married about three months ago, and it's kind of come with some unexpected challenges kind of around her upbringing She was raised kind of spoiled. She'll either shut down or get real upset with me and one time It was just about some shoes and then she's like how long are we gonna have to live like this? Speaker 3 (0:20) You're in a pickle and it's because your wife's a brat Speaker 3 (0:29) What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. So glad you pulled up a seat, hanging out with us. We're going to talk to real people who are going through real struggles. Talking about your mental and emotional health, marriages, kids, navigating conflict, communication, all of it. If you want to be on the show, I'd love to have you. Click the link in the show notes and we will work to get you on. Wherever you are in the world, we've got folks from all over the planet who call in and we will change your name. We will change your location. And what's important here is that we have a real honest conversation about how you can make some choices about what to do next. Speaker 5 (1:09) And Speaker 3 (1:09) if you have an Apple device, I want you to go to the App Store, pause this show, go to the App Store and get the Together app. I'm biased, of course, but I think it's the best marriage app on the planet. It's super cheap. It's less than six bucks and you can bring your spouse for free or you can do the whole thing by yourself because I know that some spouses don't have any interest in something like this, especially initially, but we do see that spouses join after a while when they start to see how their life is changing for the better too. But it is micro habits for your marriage. Things you can do that will bring you and your spouse closer to together, bring you back together and help you build something moving forward. So go check it out. It's called together by Dr. John Deloney, which sounds weird. Like I'm speaking in the third person, like the rock, but go pick it up. All right, let's go to Washington DC and talk to Jeremy. What's up, Jeremy. Speaker 3 (2:04) Dr. John, how are you doing? I'm good, my man. How are you? Speaker 4 (2:08) Oh, I'm nervous. I've been nervous for this all week, but I'm excited to talk to you. Well, Speaker 3 (2:11) man, I'm glad you called, dude. Thanks for calling, man. Thanks for pushing through the nerves. Speaker 4 (2:15) What's up? Well, of course. Speaker 4 (2:18) Me and my wife got married about three months ago. And it's kind of come with some unexpected challenges, specifically kind of around her upbringing. The example is we have some money fights occasionally. We're both on kind of the same page with money, but she was raised kind of spoiled. She kind of got everything she wanted, which is okay. But then we... But then as I'm coming, like I'm a teacher, we're living by ourselves. I'm obviously not rolling in cash over here. So we're talking about, I'm like, yeah, we can't buy this. whatever the conversation may be. And it just blows up. She'll either shut down or get real upset with me. And one time it was just about some shoes. And then she's like, how long are we going to have to live like this? Like, um, so that type of conversation. So I'm trying to know how to navigate that. Um, understanding like where she came from, um, of not understanding like kind of how to manage money as well, or not understanding the severity of it while also like controlling what I can control, you know, Speaker 3 (3:24) knowing I can't control her. So, I'm in an awkward position because I have a rule and that's to never talk bad about my buddy's wife or girlfriend. Speaker 5 (3:35) And Speaker 3 (3:36) also you called. So can we just, can you and I be on the same team and I'd be pretty straightforward with you? Pretty honest. Is that cool? Of course. Yeah. Okay. Um, you're in a pickle and it's because your wife's a brat and it's easy to. Speaker 3 (3:55) Like upbringing, super important. It lays the foundation for what we understand is reality, right? And we all as adults have to choose what comes next. And so the phrase I like to use a lot is upbringing is a context. It's not an excuse. Right. Speaker 3 (4:18) At the end of the day, y'all are going to have to wrestle with, does she want shoes or does she want you? Or you're going to have to ask yourself, do I want this calling? Which, by the way, the world is in desperate need of more male teachers. So I shout you out. I applaud you. I'll tell you as a taxpayer, just a regular old citizen, we are failing you. And it's become one of my life's missions to. re-imagine how we, like, to me, it makes sense and I can make an economic case for it, but that's a different call that teachers should be paid 150 grand. And so that when my son thinks, what's a job I want to do that I could really provide for my family and have a good life that he thinks teacher. Speaker 5 (5:05) And I think that would have a downstream effect, but Speaker 3 (5:07) the reality is you make 40 grand, like you don't. So it is what it is. So for you to have chosen this calling, right now, and I hate the word calling a lot of times, but it is what it is. For you to choose a life of service, you're going to have to choose. Do I want to do this life of service or do I want to cater to the whims of my wife? And that's just going to be a messy subject if, and this is where it's important, if you'll stay at the surface level here. Right. If the fights are about dinners, shoes, purses, what car we drive, then it's always going to be proxy wars too. An avoidance of the ultimate question is who are we going to be? What kind of world do we want to create? Right. And what kind of life do we want to create? Speaker 3 (6:01) Man, you're in a tough one. I would have hoped that you've given, I've been toying around with the idea of creating a, like the greatest premarital counseling on the planet. And you've just given me credence that I need to pursue that because this is a conversation I wish I've had multiple times before you got married, but here you are, right? Speaker 4 (6:22) Yeah. Well, the funny thing is we did talk about it before. I was like, I kind of want to wait to get married. We can save up some money. And I chose to. I was on board with financial struggling a little bit. But she was like, yeah, that's great with me. I understand we're going to be in a pickle. And then I'm kind of here getting surprised. With a little more context, she also recently got kind of an official diagnosis of autism, like high functioning. One of the big things was that she can't, I forgot what the word is, but she can't find the words in conflict in the moment. So I would imagine that contributes to not obviously not an excuse, but that contributes to also finding like a. Speaker 4 (7:09) resolution to our conflict. Like I really don't know how to manage that. I've never been around that that much. So sure. Um, and that Speaker 3 (7:16) diagnosis is super helpful. It provides a context, but again, it's not something you can't live a life of avoidance. And so what it means is for you and your wife, um, then, and by the way, I'll take back the word brat. If there's a neurological, like neurodivergent reason, then I'm, I'm a jerk. And so I take that back. Um, but, there's, here's what this means. That means that when something comes up and you realize, oh, we're on the precipice of a disagreement that she's going to, she doesn't have the neurological capacity or the skillset or a combination of both in this moment, then what we're going to do is we're going to have a hand sign. We're going to have a something and we're going to pause this so that, and we'll circle back to it at a regularly scheduled time when the emotions are much less, right? So she goes to buy shoes and you're like, we don't have any money. We have to pay the light bill. And then boom, then conversation's paused. And then we're going to circle back and say, all right, let's do this budget together. Let's see what we both value. And let's work through that that way. Is she working? No, Speaker 4 (8:27) so she's going to pharmacy school right now. Okay. So she's full time in that. And so some of this is a matter of not now, but later. Speaker 4 (8:38) Right. Is that fair? Right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I've been saying that and trying to come back to conversations, but it kind of gets to the point where it stresses her out, where she doesn't want to talk about it. And so I feel stuck of like, okay, she doesn't want to talk about it now. She doesn't want to talk about it later. Or can't talk about it. I don't know if it's can't or just, I don't know. I don't really know how that works. For you to parse Speaker 3 (9:01) through that, especially in the heat of the moment, isn't a good, it's not a good use of your time. It's not a good use of her time. What she has to have is a sober mind and say, I'm lacking a set of skills here that are critical. It's not like it would be nice if. They are foundational to doing a life with somebody else and having a good, whole, wonderful life. And so I've got to go do the work. I've got to go get some adult ABA courses. I've got to go. do some additional work on my own. I've got to go sit with a knowledgeable therapist and practice some of these things so that I can self-regulate and self-soothe in the moment because I committed to doing life with somebody forever. Speaker 3 (9:52) Right? It's different, but it's the same as I was an anxious train wreck, dude. And I burned my wife almost to the ground. And the job was not to sit there and white knuckle my way through it, but it was, I got to go meet with some folks and some specialists and I got to get to the bottom of why does my body react like this so that I can plug in with this incredible woman that I'm doing my life with. Speaker 3 (10:19) And absent that, if she says, I'm not doing the work, I can't do the work, I refuse to do the work, then you've got some hard choices to make moving forward. Yeah. And that might look like you just know the storm is coming. This is the woman I chose. This is the relationship I chose. I just know I'm going to mostly be budgeting on my own. Yeah. I will take care of the finances and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. It's going to have a net negative to your overall unity moving forward. But if that's the, if that's the landscape y'all have and that's the world you want to accept and so be it. Speaker 4 (10:55) Yeah. Speaker 4 (10:58) I'm trying to figure out what I can do in this as well. Cause in the budgeting that I do, I like doing it, but then it's every day I'm getting asked, can I get this? Can I get that? And yeah, that puts you in the position Speaker 3 (11:10) of being her dad and not her husband. Speaker 4 (11:13) Yeah. So that's kind of how I'm feeling. Speaker 3 (11:15) Yeah. Well, she's putting you Speaker 4 (11:16) in Speaker 3 (11:16) that position. What will she sit down with you and look at finances together? Speaker 4 (11:23) Um, she will, she will sometimes, um, But she doesn't say much about it or like to contribute Speaker 3 (11:32) to it. She just looks at it. She says, okay. So let me flip it. Are you a guy who shows up with a fully filled out spreadsheet that kind of runs over her? Speaker 4 (11:44) I would not say so. I would say I'd pull up with the EveryDollar regular. So you'll have a budgeting app Speaker 3 (11:53) you'll use? Yeah, I Speaker 4 (11:54) use it. Does she use it with you? She has it, yeah. Okay. Speaker 3 (11:59) So is there a way when she says, hey, can I buy this? Can I buy this? Can you simply say, look in the app? Speaker 4 (12:09) Yeah. I think, I mean, I would, yeah, it was weird at first because I was personal training before this. So my paycheck was different all the time. But now that I'm kind of consistent, I think that could be a definitely good option for, that makes Speaker 3 (12:23) sense. I think instead of just springing that on her, say, when you ask me, can I buy something? It makes me feel like I'm your dad and I want to be your husband. And so once a week, once a month, we sit together and say, here's how much money we're going to make. And as a teacher, you know what you're going to make for the next 40 years. And so like, here's what we know. And this is what it is, what it is. And so when you ask me that question, it puts me in a position of being the good guy or bad guy on something we decided together. And so I'm asking you a way you can love me is don't put me in that position. You can pull the app up and look. Speaker 3 (13:02) And some of that's just you asking her as a way she can love you. What you want is for her to begin practicing being an adult. Yeah. Speaker 4 (13:18) Because what am I able to do in conflict when in conflict like that or anything when she's not capable of. Speaker 4 (13:28) Like handling that I know in the moment you said kind of do it later, but even later it kind of ends up bad Are there like tools that you know that? Can help me control what I can control and act how I can act yeah, Speaker 3 (13:40) it goes smoother the two things I've seen be very successful and also Be completely not successful so it tends to barbell okay Okay, because the the crappiest part is like you said you can only control you that's the scariest part of being in a marriage of somebody All I can do is show up as the best version of myself. And I want that to be enough to get what I want and to be able to give my wife what she wants. And sometimes it's not, and it's frustrating. The number one thing is it's the proactive when you and her together say, hey, how can I love you? When you get stressed, how can I love you when you're having a hard conversation? And let her coach you. And if she says, I don't know, I don't,