The Blueprint for Better Relationships & a Peaceful Life - Dr John Delony - #991

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
If you are married, your spouse should have all of the codes to your phones, email accounts and social media accounts, and you should have theirs, period. If your spouse isn't trustworthy or safe, you need to head directly into this challenge ASAP. You are worthy of safety and peace. If you're hiding things from your spouse, let today be your Independence Day from secret shame and fear. You are worth finally taking a full deep breath. How did people respond to that?

**Dr. John Delony** (0:22)
Not well, man.
Not well at all. The idea that privacy and secrecy are the same thing. They've been conflated and I think it's madness. I think it's madness. If you will create a human with somebody, but you won't give them the code to your phone, I can't think of anything more insane. That's insane.

**Chris Williamson** (0:46)
There's a lot of dissonance going on there.

**Dr. John Delony** (0:49)
Dissonance is like a kind way to say it. It's madness. It's madness.

**Chris Williamson** (0:53)
That is why.

**Dr. John Delony** (0:56)
Yeah, the number of folks that call into my show that are like, hey, I can't, I'm not going to give her my phone. And it's like, why? Like what is on that thing? It's like, well, it's mine. It's like, well, what is so, what are you hiding? Right? And I think every major pathology ends up, secrets fuel that, right? It's gasoline for pathology. And so man, if you can't have a place in your life with the person you're ride or die with, that you can say, like, can you check out my phone and get this picture off my phone? If that gives, if that causes you pause or worse, if your partner won't do that, yeah, man, you gotta have that conversation like now. Yeah. Why does that sound crazy? Does that sound crazy?

**Chris Williamson** (1:37)
I don't think so.

**Dr. John Delony** (1:38)
I'm an old married man. So maybe it doesn't occur to me.

**Chris Williamson** (1:41)
It would have done to me 10 years ago, but that's because there was loads of shit on my phone that I didn't want my girlfriend to see.

**Dr. John Delony** (1:45)
That's it.

**Chris Williamson** (1:46)
Whereas now I don't care. There's nothing on there that I need to be worried about.
So what blows my mind is that conflation, that privacy issue, that privacy versus honesty thing.

**Dr. John Delony** (2:04)
So my wife's a coach and I work in mental health, right? So people are flying in all the time to stay at our house for a few days, or we'll go out into the country where I've got a place and people will stay. I'll tell my wife, hey, I'm going out. Someone's coming in.
So that's private, but I'm not saying like, hey, right? I'm going to go run an errand, right? And she has clients, right? But the idea that, I don't know, I think they're conflated and I think that's madness. I think it's madness.

**Chris Williamson** (2:35)
One interesting thing is the openness to give your partner your devices and email accounts and messages and social media and all that sort of stuff, actually act a little bit like a guardrail for your behavior as well. Of course, of course. There's always stuff that's kind of ambiguous. Yeah. Some chick replies to your Instagram story, or it's somebody from your past that is associated with an ex or party or whatever. There's a million ways that this could go.
Your behavior with that person can be the beginning of just a little bit, a little sort of fissure or a crack. I got a ton of stick for saying that if guys want to remain loyal to their partner, but they've struggled to keep their dick in their pants in the past, it's a bad idea for them to go out to a nightclub and drink with their friends until three in the morning.
Both people didn't like that. On one side, the guys didn't like it because it felt controlling, and the girls didn't like it because it sounded like the guys were only loyal due to a lack of options. Look, if you're a mild version of a guy that likes cocaine, but he's trying to quit, being in a house with no cocaine is a fucking wonderful solution to that. It's way easier to avoid temptation than it is to resist it. You can be the most loyal guy in the world, but if you're 15 beers deep, and the wrong night with the wrong thing, and you kind of didn't know what was going on, and this is a terminal, like an existential problem that you've found yourself in now, just remove yourself from the situation. It's way easier and it's kind of the same with this, that if you and your partner have this level of honesty, transparency, openness, where you're just sharing each other's social media accounts back and forth. It's like, can you just see if such and such has messaged me? It's like, what's this fucking group chat with like, it's just dick pics. It's like, yeah, I know like fucking it's the boys, like as opposed to, oh, I hope she doesn't open that message on the thing.