The #1 Cause of PAIN in Relationships! | Dr. John Delony

What do you think is the biggest cause of pain in relationships today? Me over us really? Yeah me over us how I feel right now or how you made me feel not My body responded and you did this I need to deal with that or I've got some hard choices to make You did it. You did it. It's me over us. I Think um, and this this would go back to the question you asked earlier It was a watershed moment when I heard Estelle Pearl talk about The 9-eleven towers analogy, she was talking to a couple who had experienced infidelity and She said one of the greatest challenges couples experiences. They want to I just want to get back to the way things were and she likened it to You couldn't go on September 12th and sweep up all that dust and glass and steel and rebuild those towers with that stuff They fell Wow two choices You can walk away and let nature take it back over and it will or you can hire some experts You can excavate that you can design build grieve come together and build something Beautiful a nod to the past but something going this away. That's hopefully stronger, right? Those are your two choices, but you what you had is over and so I've taken that into my own home My wife and I right now we've never been parents of an eighth grader and a second grader This is a new marriage and so could build something new It'll have a lot of the features of the old one But this is new because eighth graders stay out later than second graders. All right, right We're used to going to bed at 9 o'clock Ain't doing that anymore because I got to pick him up, right? So we have a new marriage and if you keep saying I just want to get back to the way it was I'm gonna get back You end up dragging each other back And so if we put we said I do then us Becomes number one Wow, and that's a that's not a popular thing But I know I got exercise. I got to eat right? I got to get some sleep so that I can show up for us All right, so it sounds self-serving, but it's not I got to do these things I can be whole so I could show up for what we're building new on your on your show The dr. John Deloney show you have a lot of Colin aspects as well when people are talking You're you're coaching they're telling you their challenges you've been doing this for the last few years now What is the big reasons for struggle in Relationships or causes of divorce that you're seeing lately. I know kind of historically what that is. Is it more financial burden? Is it more? Is there infidelity or people wanting more to like sneak around? Is it a lack of intimacy? Is it? Family dynamics of the other families. What is the main cause of friction in? Relationships or marriages today? I think if I'm looking at symptoms, it's gonna be money and infidelity Really some scale of infidelity. Yeah, some version of and people are calling in and tell you about this wild stuff Yeah Underneath it. I think it's a broader picture to your real talks about this beautifully the world changed and Men just want things to go back to the way they were and women want men to do new things without New a new set of tools. Give me an example. And so you've got what how's the world changing for men and women today in Relationships that you're hearing about. Um, I watched it in my house. It was it growing up. I'll give you this a good example So my dad's a homicide detective. He's a bad dude. He's a smart man He's very fair very kind and also a good guy, but he's also right a lot, you know win arguments with with a hostage He's got a good he knows how to build a case He can build the evidence around a case and my mom grew up in this culture that Christian women had no business going to college. You have a job in a role and this is it at 41 or 42 she went back and took her first and she didn't go back. She went took her first Community College class Oh, and my dad everybody been supporting her. You should go you should go she finally did it Then the next semester she took another one and then she had one professor say you're real smart. No one ever said that She went again at 57. She graduated with her PhD at 63 She got tenured at a university and this past summer at 70 something. She was did her last summer at Oxford Okay, so this is wild back half. That's awesome. But in my house in real time, I watched somebody who hadn't gone to college who didn't know she had a voice who was reading this literature for the first time and Being like, hey, wait a minute. I think you're wrong And so in the end, here's my belief. I think I'm right Well that changed the dynamic of our home right and my dad is a super forward-thinking guy. He's like, okay I know you're smart, but this feels like this way and Texas homicide detectives don't have feelings right? All right, right. So it was this it was them learning together They've been married 50-something years and I got a ringside seats to you better learn some new tools, man Because she's in a world where her voice matters now. She's in a world and think of this in Seven nineteen seventy when my mom got married. She was not allowed to get a mortgage without my dad's signature She couldn't get a bank account without my dad's signature. We think that was a thousand years ago That's my mom and so to grow up in a world where? You got to go have your husband signed for you to get a checking account To all the sudden you're teaching at Oxford and you're in London by yourself in your 70s That's a big arc and it's easy to go. Yeah, I should just be that way there's a lot of relationship like Okay, I want it. I was so badly want to love you right now I don't know how I'm out of tools The tools I have were from the old era when I had to show up and sign for you Can we learn together my right and there's a humility there and there's an empathy there and let's figure it out and so I think in a world now where We expect everybody to be everything you're a co-earner you're a co-parent you're a co-manager No, lover You're a coat You got to be beautiful until you're 90 because we're gonna be have be sexually active until we're a thousand years old You got to be we have to believe the exact same things about this whole list of things It's a lot but it can carry that that's a lot. All right, and so the world shifts and so if we can always remember Us comes first. What does that mean? That means sometimes I tell my wife. I don't know if I believe this anymore I don't know if I believe this particular thing about our faith tradition and she doesn't go. Oh she goes Yeah, tell me more about that and she asks me in a month. Hey, what do you think about that? I can't even reading on that. I read this book cuz you told me about that and I want to walk with you I read this book. Have you read? Let's then bite this couple over cuz they're real smart and they think this way too. Let's hear what they have to say That's a different path because it's about us. It's not about being right. It's not about me not about my discomfort. It's about us Why didn't keep that in mind that's big when people change their beliefs in a relationship around politics money religion Parenting family, whatever these things are Does that hurt a lot of relationships long-term when you have the similar beliefs when you first got together the first few years? But five ten fifteen years down the line We've got some different beliefs that we don't believe anymore. Can you still make a relationship or marriage work with a lot of different beliefs? Yeah, we confuse values and beliefs. What's the difference values are what we anchor into. This is who we are. We value Everybody's welcome at our table Period we value curiosity. I just read this thing and this is wild. Let's figure that out We value Community what that we value we believe in fill the bike we value faith Why in the world would you read a book if you weren't open to having your beliefs changed? That's why you read that's why you listen to this podcast because you believed that Cupcakes were the best food for you. And then you get a diet expert on here They're like that's gonna kill you and you go my beliefs are different My values of I want to live a healthy life and be good steward of my body. We both value that cool We were both told that Endless amounts of cardio was the best way to be healthy We value being a good steward of our body. Hey, I learned a new belief. We got to do squats now Interesting and so I think couples don't make enough space for I Want I want my wife's beliefs to change. I want mine to change our values That's where you get when I don't value hospitality anymore. Now, they're gonna sit down and figure that out. I don't value Family like I did we need to talk about that. And so if couples say here here's what here's who we're gonna be Let's put that on a wall in the house Boom we're gonna anchor into this and then our beliefs Man, I hope those change over time if I still believed but I believe when I was 18 God help us all me Wow, I mean, why do you think this is fascinating? I really like this concept of values over beliefs and Really allowing your beliefs to be flexible or open-minded beliefs, but it sounds like a lot more stronger foundation of values But loose but flexible Beliefs is that what I'm hearing you say is like be open-minded to your beliefs being shifted or evolving Yeah, I saw this I saw this in a way that was really transcendent during Cove So I grew up the last 20 years my professional life. I grew up if you will in the university setting So I don't remember who it was. I think it was King's College I'm gonna make it up go it kicks off and BAM. We think I'm making up a number we think 35 million people gonna die every scientist I knew and Most of the scientists I didn't know there were epidemiologists that were modelers that were virologists they said awesome game on and They go to their model with their data and the new data in the new data and then within a couple of weeks someone goes Boom, we think it's 12 million and the scientific community cheers We're less wrong We are 35 minus 12 million people safer. Hooray and I had just left the university and gone to a media company and I was exposed to that whole ecosystem and I realized politicians and Many media outlets don't have a oh, thank God. We were wrong. Thank God. We've got new information Now if you state it you got to die on it if you put a belief out there It's the end of time you've etched it in concrete. The value should be we're gonna find the right answer. We value truth I believe this is true today. If I get some new information tomorrow, I should come out with trumpets Yeah, dude, we got new information interesting because we value truth. We don't value being right. We don't value being first Wow That's a big difference. And so with my now there's problems in the scientific community There's a lot of sure sold out There's there's issues but by and large the picture was when you do a scientific study you reject the null, right? Like I want to be less wrong I want to find out if I'm wrong or not Not I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure you know, I was right Right Wow what a different world that is it's a different it's a different way of approaching the world So I celebrate literally when my wife comes in and goes and just have been praying over this I've read something new. I sat with the counselor last four months. I think I believe this right now The homeostasis of our home isn't threatened by that. In fact, it's celebrated because we are building us I might have to say we need to build a new marriage around that because it's new But we value curiosity. We value belief in one another. We value our marriage. We value our kids. And so Let's figure that out. But we can't be Grab onto those beliefs. They'll kill us. I'll drown us. I'll pull you into water It sounds like most people that get into a dating relationship or a marriage Don't have a true value system that they communicate with each other. They're not clear on it They're not clear on the vision of their relationship Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a lot of people and I'm this was my whole History get together based on chemistry chemicals feelings and it's harder to talk about values