New Life LIVE

New Life: Hello everyone, happy Friday. Welcome to New Life Live. On today's show, we have a special guest, Dr. Henry Cloud, and Dr. Jill Hubbard. I know Henry is the special guest, but Jill, you're the special guest as well. You're the regular guest.

It's interesting because I was telling Jill before we came to air that Henry was with us way in the beginning, before time. Back when we were the boys and then I got added. You were the girl. You were Dr. Jill.

But it's interesting because not only is Henry a well-known author with 46 books, New York Times best-selling author, Boundaries is like a second Bible to so many of us in the helping field as well as people who need help. I was thinking back over some of my favorite books of Henry's. I love Changes That Heal. It is something that we've used in groups as well as just referred to. It is so good.

Another one he did with John is Safe People. I remember the first time reading that one and I thought, "We're the people that have to be safe." It's just really amazing what an impact Henry's work has had. But also Jill, just even being able to work with each other, helping so many people. Henry, I know I'm saying all these things about you and you're blushing and all that kind of thing, but what has been the most rewarding thing about this incredible career of yours helping people?

Dr. Henry Cloud: That's kind of easy to answer. I really don't mean this in a super spiritual way, but the most rewarding thing is it's been like a worship experience. Literally. Because when you begin to get really into the trenches of where life breaks down and where it's supposed to be and trying to close that gap, that whole time has been a journey of seeing God show up.

But also learning that He really has some stuff to say about how things get better. The farther I've gone into this and you learn all the science and all that, you go, "Wow, that's what the Bible says." I think whoever wrote the Bible must have known something about the brain and about the emotions and about relationships. Literally, I'm not trying to sound weird, but it has been the deepest spiritual and worship experience. That's just true.

New Life: I love that. So many times we will say it's like a front-row seat to what God is doing in the lives of so many people. We collectively, the three of us, I know have heard so many stories of what God has done before and after and the possibility that God can resurrect a life that to some people would just write it off.

Dr. Henry Cloud: I wrote a book last year called Why I Believe, which is just my testimony of how I learned what I know now because I was really, really depressed and it's what He did in my life.

New Life: I love it. You can get it through New Life if you want, and as well as your devotional that you put out last year too. It's interesting, Henry, to just walk that journey with God helping people. You've been faithful to the call that's been on your life and you're not done yet. You've got miles to go before you sleep.

Dr. Henry Cloud: That's kind of weird because I'm like 100 years old now. I literally said this because of the stuff I'm learning and doing and all this kind of stuff. I feel like I'm just starting. The ceiling comes off of who you thought He was and what He can do all the time.

New Life: I love it. We'll be back. To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now, back to New Life Live.

Welcome back. We are so glad that you joined us today. Today we're going to talk with Henry and Jill, and they're going to talk with lots of people. Can I tell a funny Henry story before we jump into serious stuff? Okay, so Henry, the first time I was on radio with you, I don't know if you remember, but I asked you—you were sitting to my left—I said, "Henry, what do I do?" You said, "Just relax, just be yourself." I said, "No, Henry, how do I work the equipment?" Like, thank you, I know that, but how do I work the equipment?

Dr. Henry Cloud: Well, you asked the wrong person. I can tell you how to be yourself because what other option do you have? I don't know which button to push.

New Life: I love that. That's Terry Mac's job. We'll ask Terry those questions. All right, we're going to go to the calls right now and we're going to talk with Abigail, who's calling us from Minneapolis. Her mom told her to call and so we're always happy with moms telling people to call us and that they actually listen. That's right. How can we help you, Abigail?

Abigail: Hi, I was calling because I've been having so much issues in my marriage and I don't think it's going to change. So I want to leave, but I just want to make sure that I'm making the right decision.

New Life: Okay, say more. What is the big main issue in the marriage that is pushing you to leave?

Abigail: Finances, money.

New Life: Okay. Can you say more about that? Is he working? Is he gambling? Where's the money going that's coming in?

Abigail: He's working, but we don't put anything together. So it's like I pay my bills, he pays his bills, but I don't get anything from him, even if I ask him for money. Like the days I'm struggling sometimes financially, and I would ask him, he won't help me. This has been like six years and I don't think it's going to change because I have talked to my pastors, I have talked to other people that have talked to him, but he just refuses.

He does have a lot of money because most of his assets are in West Africa, Ghana, and where he has built properties. He has like salons, he has Airbnb, he has purchased land, building homes and stuff, but I just don't get anything from him.

New Life: So if I understand it, he has and makes all the money, but he won't give any to you. Is that it?

Abigail: Yes.

New Life: And you've been married six years?

Abigail: Yes, this year will be seven, but it's been six years.

New Life: Second marriage?

Abigail: This is my first marriage.

New Life: How about his? Is it his first marriage?

Abigail: Yes, it's his first.

Dr. Henry Cloud: And he is a believer?

Abigail: Yeah, he's a pastor.

New Life: What? Okay, but there's no coming together, right? Becoming one?

Abigail: No, and he doesn't want for us to do anything.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Is he a pastor of Joey's church and his name's Joey, or does he have a board of elders that oversees this guy?

Abigail: No, he's a pastor for one of the branches for a church that is in West Africa, Liberia. They have one branch here. So he's the pastor for that one here.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Okay, but who does he answer to?

Abigail: To be honest, he doesn't answer to anyone. He does whatever he wants to do. That's one of the problems too, because he doesn't listen to anyone.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Okay, does he believe the Bible?

Abigail: He says he believes the Bible, but for me, I do not see him read the Bible. You know, like the way families can have devotions and where you study, like do a Bible study, he does not do that.

Dr. Henry Cloud: I wasn't asking if he puts it to practice because clearly in one area he's not. He would be listed in what the scriptures call a person who may have the gift of teaching, but there's—he's probably an elder. One of the requirements of an elder is to take care and manage his own household. Furthermore, Paul says he who doesn't take care of his own household, beginning with his family, is worse than an unbeliever.

If I'm an overseer of this church and I've got a guy that is clearly violating the requirements to do his office, then I would hold him accountable. Now here's why I'm saying this, not so you can have Bible studies with you, which would be great. But what I'm saying is for any kind of change when somebody's in denial and resistance and won't take feedback and doesn't care, then what we have to turn to is we have to turn to consequences that have leverage over him.

So what I would want to think about is who can I contact in his overseeing body and say, "Your pastor is not doing what the scripture says." A, and B, you said he's unwilling to go to marriage counseling?

Abigail: Yes, he won't do anything. Like anything that's going to build the marriage up, that will build our life together, he does not want to participate in anything.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Okay. So who in his life does he care about what they think about him and has leverage? Are there donors to this thing? Are there friends? Are there extended family? Who can come in and surround him? Because what the scripture says, when your boundaries aren't being listened to, then we do things that increase the leverage to contain somebody who's in denial. Who is in the circle that has some kind of power relationally or otherwise to get his ear? Who can you appeal to?

Abigail: It would be his step-mom, like his father's ex-wife. She's the one that he listens to sometimes, but I do not have a relationship with her. So I don't talk to her like that and she does not speak English.

Dr. Henry Cloud: That's the only person that has any influence over this man?

Abigail: Pretty much, yes, that's what I know of.

New Life: No friends? No other family?

Abigail: He has some friends, but he don't listen to anyone. So his family, my family, friends that he knows, even like pastor friends, they all always have like pastor friends.

New Life: What about the church? Somebody's listening to him preach.

Abigail: No, they do not.

New Life: He doesn't have a congregation, Abigail? I'm wondering why you married this man.

Abigail: Yeah, he do have a congregation, but the congregation is like, "Okay, I'm here today and we all are here," but I don't think they go deeper than on the surface of everything. You know, what we're going to do—meetings, things like that.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Okay. So I would try to find somebody, a few people in this congregation that would go with you and sit down with him and say, "Dude, this isn't okay. If we're going to come to this church, we can't support this" and so forth. That's A.

B, I would tell him, "Would you go to marriage counseling with me?" To which he will say no. And then you can say, "I'm going to go to marriage counseling, not counseling for myself. I'm going to marriage counseling since I'm going to be talking about you and what steps I need to take in this marriage to make it work or not work, and it's going to affect you, you might want to be there."

Sometimes they'll show up if they know they're going to be affected by some decisions. And then wherever that goes, the next thing I would do before bailing on everything is I would talk to a good family attorney because there is a such thing as a legal separation that puts financial—it's just like a divorce, but it's not a divorce. It's a financial requirement, and he would be required, possibly, to begin to change this behavior. That might break through the denial, but that would be a step before going the nuclear option. That's the way I would look at it.

New Life: And Abigail, you said that you pay bills and he pays bills, right? That you guys share in that. How do you get money? Do you work?

Abigail: So for me, I work. I'm a caregiver, so I work for him. He's like self-employed.

New Life: Okay, but he makes more money?

Abigail: He makes more money. And you know the strange things, since I met this man, I have never seen his paycheck, but he makes a lot of money because he has businesses that people work for him.

New Life: Yeah. So he said, "I do," except for my bank account, right? He's keeping that. Well, and a whole list of other things, including listening to my wife.

Right. So Abigail, if you are having a hard time with money and you guys are sharing the bills, I might let him know that, you know what, there's certain bills I'm no longer going to be able to pay as well. So obviously the ones that would affect him, those are the ones I would give back to him and let him know that you can't do that. Then just pay for the things that just pertain to you as you're taking these steps. But yeah, you need somebody to walk alongside you and you do need legal advice.

New Life: You know, it's interesting about this too. Henry, you said in a previous show, confrontations don't always work, but consequences do. Isn't that something along that same line? And it sounds to me like, Abigail, you keep going at him with "you need to pay me" or "you need to share money" and there's a marriage breakdown here that we need to—that needs to be addressed. But I think that the next best step is what I love what they both said: talk with a lawyer, talk with a pastor, get moving in the direction of connection. It makes a difference.

Dr. Henry Cloud: And after you've taken several steps that are relational attempts to win him over, like Matthew 18 says—you start by yourself, you take a few, you get a couple of others, then you get a bigger group, and it actually says at that point you tell it to the church. That one gets kind of complicated. But then the last one is a separation, saying, "Until A, B, and C happens..." This is after you've gone through all the other attempts. "If you won't come to the table, then I can't live with you until it does."

Sometimes that consequence will break somebody, but it's a separation in the service really of trying to save the marriage or make it better before you go down the divorce route. Obviously, there's other situations, but you're not being abused or physically in danger or anything like that.

New Life: The interesting thing about that process though, Henry—Larry? Henry! Where did that come from? Henry! The interesting thing about that though is because some people, like we think that divorce is the answer. Like we just have to get divorced, not realizing that there's a lot of work that happens to get a divorce, and that you can get a lot of clarity if you move into that space of understanding. Sorry, I'll get myself back together.

Dr. Henry Cloud: I was talking to a doctor friend of mine who went to a financial planning seminar for doctors right when he got out of medical school. The guy stands up and says, "So given your profession," they were all surgeons, "given your profession, I'm going to give you a lot of different financial plans for your life and a lot of different options, but I'm going to give you one that given your profession, I guarantee you, if you follow this one plan, you'll never have financial problems." Everybody gets out their pencils. He goes, "Here it is: one wife, one house."

Once you go down—the Bible even talks about divorce as sometimes it happens, but if you go in with a fever, the first option they give is not amputation. There's a process that you go through that reveals whether or not that's the only option for certain circumstances. But you don't jump there.

Another thing I just want to say about boundaries. I hear a lot of times people say, "My husband this" or "My wife this" or "My friend this" or "My mother whatever," and I read Boundaries and now I'm going to have some boundaries and I'm going to divorce them or I'm never going to talk to them again.

New Life: Right. They weaponize them.

Dr. Henry Cloud: I say, "Well, you didn't read the book if you think that's what it says." That's not God. If that had been God's first boundary, this thing would have been over in Genesis 3. God is not slow about His promises. He's wishing that all would come to repentance and He has lots of interventions before one day He will turn out the lights and separate. But that's a long step away.

I just talked to a couple the other day. I was preaching on marriage and they came up and said, "We've got the greatest marriage. We were divorced and then we started to learn some things to get better and now we're happily married." Hold on.

Welcome back. I want to encourage Abigail to get a copy of Boundaries and begin to just get the connections that what Henry and Jill both talked about. I know there's so many complex factors when it comes to marriage, but we do know clarity can bring a lot of kindness into the situation and we don't want to jump ship before we get some clarity. I want to also mention that we have New Life courses that are available online. They're going to start January 29th. We have Lose It For Life, Healing Is A Choice, and Take Your Life Back.

These courses you'll meet every week with a facilitator and a small group and it's really a great way for you to get onto your new life. A lot of times we just want something different, but we have to take time out and do something to head us in that direction. We want to invite you to join us at a New Life course. You can find all the information at newlife.com. All right, we're going to go back to the callers and we're going to start with Lisa, who's calling us from Lansing. She listens on SiriusXM. Hello, Lisa. Thanks for calling. How can we help you today?

Lisa: Hi. Can you hear me okay?

New Life: We sure can.

Lisa: Okay. I just because I'm in the car right now for privacy. I just—I used to listen to Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend on Family Life Radio out of Lansing back when my kids were little. So our marriage is a year older than your ministry here at New Life, 36 years.

I've heard you guys on and off and then I listen when I can on Sirius now when I'm in the car. I just love what they preach, what they talk about, their books they've written. I'm not a stranger to boundaries. I need to read the book, but I've listened to all this good advice and yet I'm still finding myself in this lovely dichotomy of a 36-year marriage to a man whom I truly love, but also has a beer addiction and is a very loving, highly functioning, highly functioning alcoholic.

We have this large family we've created with God's help obviously, God created it, and I am a Christian. He has been confirmed as a Christian. I'm not sure all the way about his practicing his faith with Christ, but definitely with God. He loves his family and all of us, so it's apparent that there's Christianity in his life, but I don't know how practicing he is.

You'd think before you get married, you would know whether the person has been truly saved or not. But when you get married at 18, 19 years old—we're still young, we're in our mid-50s—you don't always ask those questions that you should be asking. A lot more things were going on in our brains than that and we were having a baby. So we started out pretty rough, but we beat the odds. Every single odd you can think of, we've rewritten the book, we beat the odds, we're outside the parameters of normal by any textbook standard.

And so I'm just wondering how to cope. I'm yelling too much again. I've been to Al-Anon. I've done it. I talked to Parent Talk, Kevin Leman and Randy Carlson's group when they were on the radio and in Lansing at one point. We've done the pull the rug out in the worst way. I screwed up really bad and did it the dumbest way. The Jellinek Chart is real, but I don't like it, but it's real.

Dr. Henry Cloud: What is the "pull the rug out"? What does that mean?

Lisa: Like "pull the rug out," like Kevin Leman said. "You've got to pull the rug out." Well, he meant, I think he meant set boundaries like you just said to the other caller about consequences. I think he was saying—I'm not sure what that meant—and I went home kind of baffled from Lansing and drove an hour home and thought, "What is going on?"

So I said to myself later, like a dummy, pulled the rug out in the worst way a woman could and tried to leave the marriage, which I didn't really want to leave and he didn't either. So then a war ensued which was just absolutely wonderful—very sarcastic I'm saying that. Our neighbors had a great show and we provided a lot of entertainment.

But we're still together and our children have survived that entertainment and they are wonderfully successful. Don't ask me why. My God is a good God. That's the only God who's gotten us through so much. He's God. Our children are immensely talented and successful, and that's because of God and Christ and our faith and our love for each other. We have this really good side of our marriage, this dichotomy, and we have a really bad side of our marriage.

New Life: Lisa, we hear there's a lot been going on in that 36 years. How can we help you the best today?

Lisa: Buttons, buttons, buttons. How do I change my buttons? My sponsor in Al-Anon used to say, "Change your buttons." He got me last night right in the door. He's been sick with the flu and here he is. We've got seven grandchildren, four children. I was watching the kids yesterday. Came home and in between a dad with dementia, you know we're the sandwich generation, we're taking care of a lot, we have lots of layers. Mom's fighting cancer, his mom's fighting cancer right now.

New Life: And what happened, Lisa? And so you came in the door...

Lisa: And so I walked in, he pressed the button. And it was a winner. It was a winner, winner chicken dinner. There I am off to the races yelling back. All it was was he made fun of me for going to the doctor. He said, "Oh, you haven't gone to the doctor this week?" Because he's anti-establishment, anti-institution.

New Life: Okay. So we are going to go to a break. We're going to go to a break and you're going to take a big deep breath and I hear all the energy that goes into trying to unravel 36 years. And now that you want to have that good next 36 years—I mean, that's possible, right? So the big question, Lisa, is what?

Lisa: Buttons. How do I change my buttons so I'm not reacting and giving him a reason to drink?

New Life: Okay. All right. Ooh, that's a great question. All right, hold that thought. We're going to get some answers from Henry and Jill. And it's always something when you've been married a long time, that's why we do what we do. We want to help you get clarity so that whether you have buttons or not, you know where they are. We'll be right back after this.

Today's podcast is brought to you by Club New Life supporters who give a monthly donation because they want to continue to offer help and hope in these very, very difficult places. To find out more about Club New Life, you can go to our website, newlife.com, or call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now, if you're new to us, we drop an episode every weekday. We would love it if you would rate or write a review, which helps more people discover help and hope and helps us share wisdom with as many people as possible. Now let's listen to our counselors as they help people walk through life's hardest places.

Welcome back. I want to encourage Lisa to get a copy of Boundaries and begin to get the connections that what Henry and Jill both talked about. Welcome back. We are talking to Lisa. She's been married 36 years. They've been through a lot together. Her basic question was how to get rid of the buttons, right Lisa? And so we're going to talk about how to deal with those buttons. Henry, I'm going to start with you.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Well, buttons always have a context. There's something outside that's pushing that button. Sometimes it can be something inside that pushes the button from something that comes outside, but something triggers it, as the popular word. If you are unable to contain your internal response to the triggering button, which is him and his behavior, I would say first of all, you've just got to find a way to step away from the trigger.

When that's happening and you think you're going to lose it and you're going to start a war or whatever the goofiness is that he's going to react to, all you've got to do is say, "You know what, this doesn't feel good to me right now. I'm going to take a walk." Or, "I don't really want to talk about this. Let's talk about something else." Something that contains it and gets you away from it, A.

B, there is a probably a theme to the buttons. There are a lot of different buttons, but those buttons hook up to the same panel of what the accelerator is. And so I would start to look at what is the theme of his behaviors when he's out of control, when he gets emotionally unregulated, is it when he tries to control me, is it when he doesn't pay the light bill or whatever it is, when he turns the kids against me, whatever it is.

And you find that and then that theme becomes an issue to talk about. You don't talk about all the other noise. Just say, "You know, I love you, I want to be close to you, but when this happens, I move away and I don't think you want me feeling distant from you and I don't want to be distant to you." And I would objectify the actual dynamics.

Then you've got to do the real hard stuff, which is what do you bring to the party about your own still unresolved wounds that this triggers, right? Maybe from your past grown-up years, who knows where it comes from? Connected to that are some skills. A lot of times we have buttons that get pushed because there's an absence of a skill that would immunize us against that button.

So if you have certain skills of knowing how to say what, when, or how to communicate in this way, or how you calm down a person that's enraged or whatever it is, that skill set—here's the paradox: the more competent you feel in any situation, the less triggered you get. Jesus didn't get triggered and he could go into the worst situations because he was in control of himself. Now sometimes everything he had said wasn't listened to and he might turn over some tables in the money-changers, but your strength is going to calm down your nervous system and your reactivity and all those points will kind of load on that.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Okay, so Lisa. First of all, he's a high-functioning beer-aholic. Any addict is invested in shutting things down. They're not invested in getting help and opening things up and talking about our feelings. They want to shut things down. So one of the best ways is to keep the focus on the other person.

It sounds like he makes comments to undermine you, which then triggers your feelings, as Henry was talking about—your lack of confidence, and then the need to explain and react defensively. And so you've got to see this pattern, this dance, that you guys have been doing for 36 years and what's your part of it. Because see, if he can provoke you and you start yelling, he can go, "Look at you. Look at what you're doing." And then it's all about that and he can go along and just continue to function how he's functioning.

So you said you went to Al-Anon. One of the things they teach there is healthy detachment. Before you walk in the door, you have to prepare yourself. No matter what he says to me, I'm going to do what Henry said, I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to pause and I'm not going to answer. And it's going to be hard to sit on your hands like that and not answer and leave the room. Go to the bathroom, take a timeout, and regather your thoughts and realize that he's doing that to destabilize things.

He doesn't even—maybe doesn't even realize he's doing it, but because he's been doing it so long. And so when you gather your thoughts, then you can come back in a way that doesn't jump into the content, but that can say, "You know, this kind of dance that we do, I don't really want to do it anymore. I don't want to play that way." Right? And you just step out of it.

Dr. Henry Cloud: You don't want to hit the tennis ball back and start a volley. But here's a great response when he does something like that. Be very calm and look at him and say, "I'm curious. What were you thinking that comment would do? I'm just curious. What were you trying to make me or somebody else feel?"

And you're putting it back. He's trying to avoid that and you're saying, "I'm not going to take that. I'm just going to reflect back. That's an interesting comment. What were you hoping to achieve there?"

New Life: I love that. Lisa, I would encourage you, if you guys have never done anything like an intensive, we've got one coming in a couple of weeks in California. Make the trip. And it's warm here. And it's not warm in Michigan. So join us at our intimacy and marriage intensive in Orange County. Hold on and we'll get you the information that you need for that. But it is worth doing. You've invested 36 years into this marriage. Let's not be miserably married. Let's do the work.

Thank you Jill and thank you Henry. We're going to go back to the callers.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Becky?

New Life: Yes sir.

Dr. Henry Cloud: That's great. I'm the worst at book titles, but if you ever write one, that should be the name of it: Miserably Married. Because everybody will say, "Hey, that's us."

If my goal were just to write a book that sold a bunch, then I would entitle it How to Fix Him.

New Life: You sure would. You sure would. Oh goodness. Well, now with that being said, Bee, we're talking to Bee from San Francisco. She listens on the internet. We're so glad that you called, Bee. How can we help you today?

Bee: Hi. You can hear me, right?

New Life: Yes, we sure can.

Bee: Okay, sorry. I'm in the car too. For 15 months now, I've been in a mutually enjoyable, caring, yet confusing, dysregulating for me, friendship relationship with a Christian mixed-signals male, possibly avoidant. Because of the stronghold of my mental anguish from this friendship that's undefined that I want way more of, I'm wondering do I need to quit him, go no contact?

Dr. Henry Cloud: What are the mixed signals?

Bee: It's a flirty, fun friendship. There's light affection. He's...

Dr. Henry Cloud: What is "light affection"? What does it look like? What are the activities that you're calling "light affection"?

Bee: We, you know, kind of like—he would hug and a quick peck on the—it went from the cheek to the lips, a quick peck, but he does that with other women at church a little bit. And then just like massagey, like neck or scratchy shoulder...

New Life: Touching?

Bee: Yeah, a lot of light touching, affection. Just mutual, like...

Dr. Henry Cloud: If I ask God in the Beverly Hills, does this look like platonic behavior or not?

Bee: No.

Dr. Henry Cloud: No. And I don't mean immoral or anything. I'm just trying to put it in a category. Would he do the same thing with his sister, unless he's from certain states?

Bee, you can hear the music. We're going to go to a break, so I don't want to be in the middle of it. She might hear the music. That's right. Bee, we hear that it's a struggle and we're going to get you clarity, but we've got to take a break and on the other side of that break, we'll have some more information. And we won't make any comments about certain states, will we Henry?

Dr. Henry Cloud: I didn't name any.

New Life: That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Thank you, Bee, for calling, but don't go anywhere because we're going to be right back after this break. You're listening to New Life Live. 1-800-229-3000.

Welcome back. I want to take a minute just to say thank you to all of you who are financially supporting New Life. You are making a difference in the lives of so many people. And if you haven't yet taken the chance to support New Life financially, you can do that today. You can call us at 1-800-NEW-LIFE or you can text NLM to 28950. You are making a difference and I want to say thank you in advance for being part of what God is doing through New Life.

Right now we are talking with Bee, who's calling us from San Francisco, and she's been having this confusing relationship with a guy from church, I think that's where she met him. So Jill and Henry...

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Bee, we want to know if this guy has actually taken you out on a date. Like have you spent any one-on-one time with him away from church, or is he just seeing you at church and being really touchy and flirty and kissing multiple women?

Bee: No. We spent—hung out on our own since December, last for a year. And the—I have to admit, the pursuing of maybe the friendship, the inviting and the touching that's—I say my love language—innocent has been more initiated by me, but he, you know, he's fine with it and he does it back a little. He does, yeah.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Okay. So if he's giving you none of these signals, but inside you have mixed signals coming from inside of you, not from him...

Bee: No, he's giving a lot of verbal mixed signals and some physical mixed signals.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Like what? Those are just descriptive. I need sentences. I'm not very smart. What does he say?

Bee: He says that he can't—he's looking so forward to spending time with me, that the best—we had an unforgettable evening and I have incredible back rubs and...

Dr. Henry Cloud: Incredible what?

Bee: Back rubs. And that he loves me and...

Dr. Henry Cloud: I get it. I'm going to give you a little decision tree here. I'm going to give you a map, a matrix. Okay. Here's what I would do. I would say to him, "You know what, obviously I like you, you've said that you like me, but I've got a problem. I'm confused. When you do this and this and this, then I get confused as to what kind of relationship you really want. Is this a friendship or is this kind of maybe more than a friendship or different than a friendship?"

A, and B, if he says, "I do want more, I think I want more," then I would ask very specifically, "Dude, it's been a year and two months, three months now. Why are you still pansying around? Why haven't you said that?"

And here's why I would ask that. Because you've got to determine, A, if he says, "No, I just want to be friends," then you've got to say, "Well, it confuses me, so we need to really act like friends." But if it is the other—if he does want more—then why haven't you said it? Because that's going to get him to own a couple of things: either "I wasn't sure how you would respond," or B, he's got some fears.

And then you want to say, "Well, if that's true, you go work those out and show up." You might want to go to your doctor and see if you're healthy. But if you're stuck somewhere and then I want you to go figure that out and when you get it figured out, then come back. But this continuing to go to La-La Land, he's not owning his intentions. And at some point you have the DTR in every healthy relationship: Define The Relationship. Where women, men too, but a lot of times they make a mistake is there's enough breadcrumbs on intermittent reinforcement schedule, like a slot machine, that you get some hope up because you got this breadcrumb. And then you keep going. I don't want you spending the rest of your dating career in a batting cage where you're learning how to bat without ever going to the real game. I don't want you wasting more time.

Dr. Jill Hubbard: Right. And Bee, you admitted to doing more of the initiating. So he's passively in this relationship, right? You do all the pursuing, he just shows up and he doesn't make any commitments. Like Henry said, he doesn't own his intentions. And so in your confusion, I'm wondering what if you didn't do as much initiating? What would that look like? Because sometimes if we over-function for another person, we allow them to under-function. And a lot of times it's because we're afraid that they won't. They won't pursue at all. But I think you need to know that now because you cannot be both sides of this relationship. And at some point he's got to kick in or, you know, this is just going to be flirty, fun, and frustrating.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Ultimately, and I know there are outliers, but women want to be desired without conflict. They want to know their man wants them. They want to see him initiate and show up. They want to see him making plans in some form or fashion that he delivers on and a track record of them feeling protected, secure, and all that stuff. You are living in La-La Land and if that is a predictor, you want that to change before you do something serious. And if it's not, then you've got a great warm-up act, but you need to go to the main show.

New Life: Well, you know, we're going to be ending the show in about a minute, but you know what I thought of just now is your book, Henry: How To Get A Date Worth Keeping. You can probably get a copy Bee at amazon.com, but I love just that definitive "what are you doing in the relationship?" Both sides, right? DTR. Define the relationship. That also is good for families, that's good for literally—how do you show up in the relationship and what are you expecting from somebody else?

It has been a delight to have you with us today, Henry, the OG. Twice in one week. We love it.

Dr. Henry Cloud: Go to drcloud.com/community.

New Life: Thanks so much for listening. We hope something you heard will help you live in freedom today. If this content was helpful for you, we would love it if you would take a minute, leave a review, post about it, and rate it. Remember, we have resources and workshops online for you as you continue your journey. Go to newlife.com to find out more information and thank you for being part of the New Life community. We know that God desires all of us to live a life of wholeness and healing and we're so glad that you're here.