I’ve Been Cheating on My Fiancée for Years

What this episode is about

The discussion revolves around an individual confronting the fallout of years of infidelity during their engagement, particularly as they face the impending birth of twins. The individual acknowledges their past actions, seeks therapy to address habitual lying, and grapples with the emotional complexities of their relationship and future.

Key takeaways

• Cheating is often less about desire for others and more about a deep dissatisfaction with oneself.
• A wake-up call can take many forms; for some, it's as dramatic as a partner's medical emergency.
• Acknowledging your flaws is the first step; accountability isn't just for the bold, but the broken too.
• Therapy is a brave commitment, often highlighting that the hardest truth is the one we hide from ourselves.
• Building respect for oneself requires facing the ashes of past mistakes—growth blooms in the most unexpected places.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Dr. John Delony (Host) · 12 min speaking
• Unknown Caller (Guest) · 5 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Better Health

Notable quotes from "I’ve Been Cheating on My Fiancée for Years"

• And [snorts] yeah, I've actually signed up for Better Health and I've been talking to a therapist for that amount of time.

  about Better Health · at 1:32

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Companies & orgs

• Better Health — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:36

Full transcript with timestamps

0:06 I have been uh cheating on my uh fiance um for all of our relationship which has been about 3 years and we are now expecting twins and it has blown up and we don't know how to move forward. Well, I want to applaud you for coming out and just saying it, taking ownership ma'am. That tells me that you're actually interested in what's the next right thing to do, right?

0:36 Yes, sir. Yeah. Does she know? Does she I'm sorry. Does she know about your affairs?

0:45 Yes. Okay. Does she know the full extent? Yes. All of it? All of it? Okay. How far along is she in her pregnancy?

0:57 Um, about a month. Okay. So, y'all are four weeks in, 8 weeks pregnant. Where are you?

1:05 Uh, I would say four weeks pregnant. Okay. Um, so ask me a specific question how I can help. Man, we all just sitting there in the ash of a burned down house saying what do we do now? Yeah, I've been uh I've actually found your show about um four weeks ago when this all blew up. Um and [snorts] uh yeah, I've actually signed up for Better Health and uh I've been talking to a therapist for that amount of time. Mhm.

1:42 Um, and found that I've been uh lying to myself and having dysfunctional pathological lying, habitual lying, and trying to get out of that.

1:53 Um, so I I I believe I've been I'm taking the next right step. Um, it's uh just trying to I want to give you a little bit of a timeline. this kind of all blew up and uh uh September 19th and I had the the uh the largest like the worst wakeup call um ever.

2:18 Yeah. That this is wrong. So, um um that time uh was when I um I shoot um just say it, ma'am.

2:38 It I ended up she works for a government agency that I can't name. Mhm. Um and so she uh has, you know, she gets thoroughly background checked and um because I'm with her, um I also get thoroughly um checked. So um

2:56 that being said, I applied for the Secret Service and had done all the things and had gotten to the point of the polygraph, took the polygraph and admitted to a lot of things in that polygraph. Mhm.

3:09 Um, and on the n I think it was either the 19th or before, I knew she was about to go into her meeting for her security clearance and I knew that they were going to discuss me.

3:22 And so I called her 2 days before then and I told her what happened. Why'd you call her instead of showing up in person? Um, I am not entirely sure except that I knew that I needed to say it.

3:45 Okay. Um, are you all in different parts of the country right now? No, sir. We live probably about 30 minutes away. Um,

3:52 okay. And we weren't uh her her schedule's a lot. Um, so Okay. All right. So, so you you disclose this two days out. Yes.

4:02 Okay. And obviously it all blew up, but when I disclosed what I disclosed, I I only disclosed a fraction of it.

4:11 Okay. And um so um about, you know, it blew up about 4 weeks later. Uh um more more came out because she got access to everything and was looking through everything and um [snorts] yeah and uh you know she asked me the questions and I s told her um the truth and then about uh the real and then after that happened um she she had a uh uh she got really upset. Um she had a um she has a brain condition

4:55 and she had a massive seizure. Mhm. Um because of the stress on her body and uh

5:02 she was technically dead for 3 hours. [clears throat] And her best her best friend had texted me that that that was what going on. And that was my that was my wakeup call of this needs to stop.

5:21 Yeah. So, what is um what is cheating get you? Cuz it's it's solving a problem in your life. What is it? It was uh now that I've been to therapy, I I believe it was because I was coping with uh not being happy with myself and

5:43 yeah, feeling appreciated and you know, using porn and whatever else it was um made me feel good for a little bit and so that was my coping mechanism.

5:54 I don't know that it made you feel good as much as it distracted you or made you feel numb from not liking the guy in the mirror.

6:01 Yes, sir. Huh? And so the strange thing about not liking the guy in the mirror or or feeling dead in your own skin is the world we have. And bro, I'm trained as a the like I I'm trained to train therapist, right? Like I get that. That's my whole world. And the path to you becoming a man that you respect for the first time in your life is doing the next right thing. Action.

6:38 Yes, sir. And it may cost you your I mean your your your relationship with this woman may be over. You getting the dream job you want may not happen at this moment in your life. It will one day, but not today. I guess what I'd tell you is becoming a man that you respect so that others can anchor into you, which is what our world desperately, desperately needs is going to come with a hellacious amount of accountability here.

7:11 Yes, sir. Right. Or as Paul Thomas Anderson once famously wrote, you may be through with the past, but the past may not be through with you.

7:19 Yes, sir. And I want you to I'm telling you that to let you know the relief you feel that you finally put everything out on the table that that it will get hard again. It'll get really hard again, right? And that doesn't mean it's not the wrong path. In fact, that [snorts] is 100% the path is walking through it. Right.

7:41 Yes, sir. So, the I guess the elephant in the room is does she still want to be with you? Obviously, this is way more complicated now that you have twins coming.

7:50 Yeah. Um she's we've talked about it. Um and uh I've expressed my um obviously I want to still be with her and I want to take responsibility, you know, for everything I've done and also for the children coming. Um

8:09 well, let's separate those real quick. Okay. Okay. Anytime somebody has that sense and it has been there for a long long long time of feeling dead inside, one of the things they don't ever want to do is hurt somebody, which makes their actions, cheating on somebody, hiding money, lying. It makes those things seem even more insane. But my guess is you don't ever want to hurt this woman. Is that fair?

8:39 Yes, sir. Okay. I want you to be super super clear that your pursuit of her, your repursuit of her is not in an effort to take away her pain because you feel real bad, right?

8:59 Yes, sir. Okay. I want to make sure that you have decided I want to wake up every day for the rest of my life and choose to love this woman so recklessly. that I'll do whatever it takes to make sure that she knows on a minuteby minute, hour by hour, yearby-year basis that she is safe and loved. And if you can't make that commitment right now, don't.

9:27 I I can and I do. Okay, that's a big commitment because here's here's why. You've never done that before.

9:34 No, sir. And so you're going to have to give yourself a dump truck load full of grace moving forward because you're you're entering into a thing that you want to do and you don't know how to do it. You don't know what it feels like to do it and you have a a an allergy to discomfort, to boredom, to the mundane, right?

9:57 Yes, sir. And that is life. And so cool. If you say you're all in, awesome. you you're going to show up for your kids, right? You're going to do that. But are you going to show up for her?

10:14 Yes. Okay. I don't want the weight of that statement, that commitment to to go unnoticed. You should have felt a squat bar on your back just go with a whole bunch more weight on it. Okay.

10:29 Yes, sir. Because becoming somebody that that another person can anchor into till death do you part takes responsibility.

10:40 Yes sir. Okay. It's a responsibility that more and more and more men need to take but it is a responsibility. Okay. So, my guess is neither of y'all are in a place to make here's what we do next cuz it's still too everything's still too fresh. She almost died.

11:02 Yeah. The guy she was going to marry she found out was a fraud. Oh, and you're having twins on top of having a neurological condition which is going to be a whole different kind of pregnancy, right?

11:13 Yeah. Yeah. It's just a lot. So she's probably operating on a minute by oh by the way the government shut down which that's great like so she's on a minuteby minute right?

11:24 Yeah. So what has she told you about rebuilding this thing from the from the bedrock up? Um, obviously we established that, you know, uh, [clears throat] all the I I took care of all the apps, all the things that I was doing, Instagram, Facebook, like, you know,

11:45 they're gone. You've deleted them. They're off. Oh, not just that. I I went and I took the account. I took deleted the account, then I deleted them out of my phone. Great. Um, and I'm the whole nine yards because I was using I was misusing all kinds of apps. Okay. So, so here's the thing. I want you to continue to go back to her

12:05 on a week-by-eek basis for the first two or three months. Okay? And say, you get to decide what rebuilding trust looks like, and I will walk the path you lay before me. I want you to make that a weekly ritual. And she will probably say,"I don't want to be your mother. I don't know even." And then when she says that, I want you to say, "That's totally cool. When you are ready, I'm here. And here's the things I've done in the meantime. I'm on week four with everything off my phone. Here is my phone unlocked if you want to see it. By the way, the passcode to my phone is X, Y, or Z."

12:54 Yes. By the way, I've pulled my credit report. Here is everything I owe. I want you to see that I'm a person of character cuz I am going to rebuild this from the floor up. And my hope is over time she begins to say, and here is I've been to counseling this many times. I am in the gym. I am like here's the things affirmatively I am doing not to win her back but to become somebody that is trustworthy that she can anchor into. And every time you fudge something, you kind of bend the truth a little bit. You're going to stop. You're going to call her and say, "You asked if I was headed straight home and I said yes. I actually am stopping to get coffee and then I'm going to come straight home.

13:40 I'm going to be 100% honest with you." And you're gonna have to practice when you do veer left or right. You've been doing it for so long. You're going to have you're going to slip and fall. You're going to go through the shame, go through the guilt. You're going to go boom. I'm going to call you right back. And this is how I'm going to practice being a person of integrity.

14:00 Yes, sir. And at the end of this path, she still may say, "I don't want to be with you." There still may be lingering consequences. And part of being a person of integrity is if you do this for a year and you come to the realization that I don't want to be with you romantically long term, you have to be a person of character that puts that on the table. I'm going to hurt you again. My hope is that doesn't happen. But this is integrity. It's whole. It's the root word is integer. whole, but she gets to decide the path moving forward.

14:46 And if she chooses to take you back, then she has a responsibility to practice being less emotionally reactive to give you a path back and to not beat you up 24/7, 365, 44. Like, that's part of y'all coming back together. But right now, you own the cleanup. You blew the house to smitherines. You own the cleanup. and she gets to tell you which part of the yard you're going to start cleaning up first. Slow, steady, step by step by step. And by the way, go to every single appointment, every single OBGYn appointment, every single doctor's appointment because you also are going to be a dad who freaking shows up.

15:33 I'm going to go to I'm going to take off work. You're going to Well, if you leave again, you're fired. Fine. I quit because these kids that aren't even born yet are more important. I will be a dad who shows up. And in so doing, you're going to show her that you're a guy who shows up. And in so doing, you're going to prove to yourself the person you absolutely um burned from the inside out on this deal. You're going to prove to yourself, I am a man who shows up. I'm a man who can weather the truth. I am a man who is going to do things in my life. I'm going to play music. I'm going to exercise.

16:04 I'm going to get a hobby. I'm going to get a side hustle. I'm going to be a guy who doubles and triples and quadruples down on the woman in my life because I'm a guy who doesn't let myself get dead in my own skin. And that is a choice that we make. And so, you've been using apps as a numbing device, as a drug. You're going to have to backfill that with positive activities, positive action. I'm going to start serving in my local community. I'm going to become involved. I'm going to become a man that I respect when I look at him in the mirror. not who's perfect, but who is working, grinding to do the next right thing. And then maybe she'll consider re-anchoring into you.

16:41 You got a long road to hoe. But listen, I'm proud of you for saying I take ownership.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "I’ve Been Cheating on My Fiancée for Years"?

Dr. John Delony (Host), Unknown Caller (Guest).

What is "I’ve Been Cheating on My Fiancée for Years" about?

The discussion revolves around an individual confronting the fallout of years of infidelity during their engagement, particularly as they face the impending birth of twins. The individual acknowledges their past actions, seeks therapy to address habitual lying, and grapples with the emotional complexities of their relationship and future.

What is mentioned in this The Dr. John Delony Show episode?

1 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Better Health. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "I’ve Been Cheating on My Fiancée for Years"?

The episode runs 17 min; the transcript is about 2,633 words in 48 timestamped sections.

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