February 13, 2025 • 34 mins
Writer Hannah Pittard discovers that her best friend and her husband are sharing a secret.
You can find Hannah’s latest books here: We Are Too Many: A Memoir If You Love It, Let It Kill You: A Novel
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Andrea Gunning. Our season of weekly stories is
coming to an end, but don't worry. We'll be back
soon with more episodes. So if you have a story
of your own that you'd like to share on the podcast,
email us at Betrayal pod at gmail dot com. In
the meantime, we want to do something new and exciting.
This month, We're taking short creative essays submissions from listeners.
(00:22):
The theme is resilience in the face of a devastating betrayal.
We want to hear the story of how you healed
scars and all. Here's the catch. The limit is a
thousand words. If your story stands out, it might be
featured in a bonus episode. Please save your submission as
a PDF and email it to Betrayal Pod at gmail
dot com. Okay, now onto the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
At this point, my heart has just dropped. Then I
feel like I'm going to vomit. The betrayal felt so
intentional and possibly it was a long time coming.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Betrayals often come with a loss. On this show,
we've heard stories from people who lost the love of
their life or their understanding of who that person was.
(01:34):
Others have had their children, their home, or their money
taken from them. We've told stories about people losing their
sense of self. But no matter the betrayal, everyone we've
talked to has held on to one thing, their story.
Even when they lost everything, they still had the truth.
(01:56):
But then we heard Hannah Patard's story.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I remember writing stories from the time I was a
little girl.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Today, Hannah is an accomplished author. Stories have always been
a big part of who she is. When she was little,
Hannah's family lived on a farm outside of Atlanta. There,
her imagination would run wild.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
We had horses, chickens, born kittens. It was a wonderful time, but.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It wasn't a wonderful time for everyone. When she was
in elementary school, Hannah's parents began a bitter divorce. Hannah
was the youngest of three, and at first the siblings
all had each other, but eventually her older siblings went
off to boarding school and Hannah was left at home
(02:47):
in the middle of her parents' custody battle.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I was constantly getting interviewed by a different therapist. It
felt to my mind like we were constantly going to
see a judge.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Her escape was reading.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I read, and I would just go into this fictional
dream and block out the noise of whatever was happening
in the other room.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
That's when she started writing stories of her own.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
By sixth grade, I was writing poems, horrible, sad, sac poems,
and as a thirteen fourteen year old, I had started
writing little sketches and just became pretty serious about it.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Writing felt exciting. It allowed her to get lost in
worlds of her own creation. But in her real life,
Hannah was lonely, so she asked her parents to send
her to boarding school. She thought it would be her
chance to start over, to reinvent herself, But when she
got there.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I was still meek, naturally introverted, living in my head
writing stories.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Hannah chose Deerfield Academy, a school known for its challenging academics.
It was cutthroat, but Hannah hardly noticed.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I was blissfully unaware of what an elite institution it was,
and I was blissfully unaware of any kind of real competition. Truly,
the worst part of it was what I was doing
in private to myself.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
By tenth grade, Hannah developed an eating disorder, and as
a note to listeners, we're going to talk about some
details of her experience. For Hannah, controlling food was a
way for her to feel a false sense of control.
It only made the divide between her and her peers
grow wider.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You're a kid with a secret, and it's a really
big secret. It is a secret where you are hurting
your body in this intentional way, and you're not relying
on the world, and you're not trusting anybody else because
you don't want to get caught. You're just so much
by yourself socially, I was definitely isolated and isolating.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
She kept her head down and focused on her studies,
especially her English and creative writing classes.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
By the time I graduated, I'd won a couple writing awards,
so I had this idea that maybe I was good,
or I could be.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Good for college. She went to the University of Chicago
and got her degree in English.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I was too intimidated to take a single creative writing class.
I didn't want to be told that I wasn't as
good as I felt like i'd been on Deerfield's campus.
I thought, if I'm not saying what I want, then
nobody knows to be disappointed in me or embarrassed on
my behalf. Oh, you didn't get it. You wanted to
be a writer, and you didn't get it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Pursuing a real writing career terrified her, but she dreamed
of a master's degree in fiction writing, so she sent
in a few half hearted applications.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I think I sent them something that I might not
even have reread, and swiftly was rejected. And I'm so
glad that I was rejected, because it was a wake
up call that if you want this, you have to try.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
She spent the next year honing her craft as best
she could.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I paid off. I got into several different programs and
ultimately ended up at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
She packed up her life and headed to Charlottesville. And
she made a promise to herself, the same one she'd
made before boarding school.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
You're going to get to grad school and you're going
to become the social person that you know you want
to be. You're going to change your life.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
From her first day in the program, that vision felt
within reach.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
The program had its very first meeting, all of the
second years in the program were there, and all of
the new first years were there. I will always remember
the first time I saw Trish. She was captivating.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Trish was a second year in the program.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
She had on a great outfit, red lipstick, I think
she had on a pair of yellow belly flats. Her
hair looked amazing. She just was cool.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Trish was everything Hannah was not, and Hannah wanted to
make a good first impression.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Back then, I was being plagued with situational roseatia, which
I've had all my life. If you made eye contact
with me, I either cried or blushed. And it's not
just blushing, you know. I think sometimes people hear the
word blush and they think of like these two little
cherries on either side of your cheeks. It's like a
(07:54):
rash that crawls up my neck and makes my cheeks blatchy.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So when she introduced herself to the group, she'd turned
bright red, and Trish noticed.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I'm still bright red, and she came over and she
put her hand on my arm, and she said something like,
it's really sweet how you blush when you're nervous. It
makes you seem authentic. That was pretty excited that she'd
noticed me. She made me feel seen and we became
friends after that.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That day was a new beginning for Hannah. She was
starting to have this social life she'd always wanted.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
People from the program would call to invite me out,
and they'd come back to my house for house parties,
and meanwhile, we're all just reading and writing and going
to coffee shops. It was the fantasy that I'd imagined
for myself.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And at all these events, Hannah would watch Trish command
the room.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Trish seemed so comfortable in her skin. She seemed comfortable
being pretty. She seemed comfortable being perceived as somebody who
wanted to look pretty. Meanwhile, I am all day long,
non stop, thinking about my body. During this time, I
(09:17):
was so embarrassed of having anyone think that I wanted
to be pretty or sexy or feminine, even though that
is desperately what I wanted.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Trish started calling Hannah to hang out, and her confidence
began to rub off on Hannah. For so long, Hannah
had been trying to make herself small emotionally and physically.
For instance, she would only wear sports bras.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I was eliminating curves, but I was also eliminating the
embarrassment of being perceived to somebody who wanted to be sexy.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
But Trisha inspired Hannah to make a change.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
For the first time ever. I stopped wearing jogbras, and
then I started wearing skirts with her encouragement, and I
started showing off my body. I'm coming out of my shell,
and she's helping me come out of my shell.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Trish liked to go out. It was something Hannah hadn't
really done before, but pretty quickly she realized she liked
it too.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
When Trish would call me, it was meet me at
this bar. She drank beers, she drank shots, and so
I started drinking beers and I started drinking shots, and
I noticed that it was a lot easier to be
at bars and easier to talk to tawnies and strangers,
and I followed her lead.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Over time, Hannah began distancing herself from the other first years,
and she was spending more and more nights with Trish.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I felt like, here, at last, is a friend who's school,
who I can talk to and go out with. Here's
my first female adult friend. Her friendship when I was
feeling so vulnerable was transformative.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Trish was Hannah's first real friend, and their bond only
grew stronger. During Hannah's second year in grad school.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
We were brought closer by the fact that my stepfather,
who had adopted me, was sick my entire second year.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Trish knew what
Hannah was going through. She had lost her own dad
a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
She understood grief, and she understood loss. And when I
would become quiet or start crying at a bar, she
was not judgmental. She knew how to act around me.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Hannah's other grad school friends just didn't get.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It, and so I ultimately ended up isolating myself from
them and sort of glombed onto Trish and the Charlottesville
music scene.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Trish was dating a guy named George, a poet in
the program. The two of them were very plugged into
the live music scene in town, so they would often
bring Hannah to shows. That's how Hannah met Patrick. He
was a musician in a local band.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Trish and George they loved the band. They love this guy,
Trish said, one night, you got to meet him. He's
so great, he's so cute. He had a girlfriend, so
I didn't think of him as a love interest, but
I did meet him and I was like, ah, he
is cute.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
During this period, Hannah was often traveling home to spend
time with her family and visit her stepdad in hospice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Trish knew that I played a lot to scrabble with
my family, and she knew that Patrick played scrabble. And
I never would have made the first move to be
in touch with Patrick because I didn't really know how
to have male friends at that point in my life.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
But Trisha insisted that the two of them should hang out,
so she gave Patrick Hannon's number.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I got a phone call one day from Patrick saying,
Trish says, you play scrabble. I said, yeah, I play
scrabble and he said, okay, well I'm on the downtown mall.
Why don't you bring your scrabble board and let's play.
And I said, I thought you have a girlfriend, and
he's like, this isn't a date. I do have a girlfriend.
I want to play scrabble. And I thought, oh, okay, weird, bizarre,
(13:45):
I'm not doing anything. So I went. We played scrabble
at a coffee shop and we just started playing scrabble
all the time, and he became my first male friend.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Like Trish. Patrick was confident, maybe even a little cocky,
but they had a real connection.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
He's a really smart guy, and he was an excellent critic,
and his brain was razor sharp, so we had great
conversations and he was so much fun.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Their relationship was platonic. Even after Patrick broke up with
his girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
He just started dating a lot of women, and I thought,
this is so wonderful. I've got a male friend who
I get the male perspective from he gets the female
perspective from me.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
But their dynamics started to shift after Patrick had a
major surgery. It meant he needed to spend a lot
of time resting at home.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
His recovery corresponded with the beginning of the grieving process
because my stepfather died, and we started spending just a
ton of time together.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Hannah would even bring Patrick long to check on her mom,
who was now living outside of Charlottesville.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I took Patrick out to my mom's farmhouse one day
and the three of us played scrabble, and it was
like the first time I saw my mom laugh. And
the two of them loved each other. They got along
so well, and it got to the point where my
mom would call Patrick when she'd come into town and say,
(15:25):
I'm going to the grocery store, and Patrick would go
to the grocery store with her. He would take her
to bars. I mean, he was helping her find small
amounts of joy.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
She started to see a different side of him as
they grew closer. They started going out with Trish and George.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
The four of us had become this kind of Charlottesville unit.
I would see Patrick and we'd play scrabble, and then
we'd go to a bar and meet up with Trician George.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
The four of them were always out together, talking to
strangers and laughing until the bars closed down.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You feel young and invincible, and this is where stories
are happening. You're interacting with people, you're overhearing strange bits
of dialogue.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
She was finally living life, and she was channeling these
experiences into her writing.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I had so many ideas, and I was still getting
all of my writing done, and because I was in
my twenties and made of elastic, I'd wake up the
next morning at seven and just start writing.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
She was a good writer. She regularly submitted to literary magazines,
and she was getting published.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
It felt like this fantasy that I had was within
my reach. As long as I keep trying. As long
as I keep trying, I keep writing, there's a possibility
that this could be my life.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And Patrick actually started to write short stories of his own.
He wasn't in school or in their writing program, but.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Hanging out with Trish and me, fiction writers, hanging out
with George, a poet, he did start writing stories.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
The two of them would often spend scrabble games talking
about books and story ideas. Hannah also trusted Patrick to
read her works in progress.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
He would get wistful sometimes and say, I don't know
how you're like how you are. You're just so cool
and you're such a good writer, and nothing seems to
bother you, And of course inside I am nothing but
roiling turmoil.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
With these kinds of comments, Hannah started to wonder was
Patrick into her.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It felt good to be seen, and it felt good
to be perceived as attractive, and it felt good to
have this attractive man perceive me as attractive, and before
I knew it, I was crushing pretty hard on him.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
She wasn't going to make the move. She knew Patrick
had other women in his life, and it was hard
to tell for sure if the feelings were mutual. And
then it was.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
One of those nights that was not uncommon for the
four of us, where we had shut the bars down.
We went back to his house. You know, he'd kind
of been doing that thing where he was touching my
elbow with his elbow and making eye contact a little
too long. He's making some inside joke references about things
that we'd been talking about during scrabble, and it's just
(18:25):
incredible tension that is mounting. Then at a certain point,
probably like four in the morning, George and Trish went
back to their apartment and I was going to call
a cab, but.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
She didn't call a cab. They kissed, and she spent
the night.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
We went from being best friends to one night makeout
to basically living with one another. There were so many
mornings when I would wake up and I would look
over and I'd see that it was Patrick in bed,
and I would think, I am so lucky. I get
to do this for the rest of my life. I
actually like the person that I'm waking up with, And
(19:07):
it was just it was bliss.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
They were in love. Still, much of the time they'd
spend together was in their group.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Before it was non stop double dating with Trish and George.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
But eventually the group's lifestyle started to catch up with Hannah.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Trish and Patrick weren't just drinkers. They were late night drinkers,
and so that's what I became too. For a little while.
There were a lot of moments where I would reflect
on what I was doing and how I was behaving,
and I'd be pretty scared.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
She didn't like what heavy drinking did to her who
it made her become, and she certainly didn't like what
alcohol did to Trish.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
She could be pretty aggressive, she could be rude, She
could piss people off in bars.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
When Trish got like this, it would set Patrick off.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
He had a bit of a temper too, so their
tempers could kind of go up against one another.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Knights would often end in fights, and even when they didn't,
things like this would happen.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
The four of us were out, Tricia and I were
at the bar. George and Patrick were sitting where we
could see them, but it was pretty packed, and she
was saying, I knew he'd come around. I knew he'd
realize he loved you. I knew it. I just knew it.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Trish wasn't being the supportive, encouraging friend Hannah had first met.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
She wanted to just remind me that he hadn't crushed
on me as hard as I'd crushed on him at
the beginning, and she always loved to point out that
she had been friends with him first.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Instead, it felt like she was going out of her
way to cut Hannah down.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And this drove me a little bit crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
When Hannah started dating Patrick, her relationship with her best
friend started to shift. It seemed like Trisha always had
something to say, and it felt like at times she
was undercutting Hannah's relationship with Patrick. After Hannah graduated, a
window opened. Her mom offered Hannah and Patrick the chance
(21:35):
to live rent free in her mother's farmhouse outside the city.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
We needed a new place to live, and we were broke.
I was waiting tables, he was gigging and teaching music,
and we were so desperate for money. I was desperate
for money. So when my mom offered this free place
to live, it was not lost on me that this
(22:01):
farmhouse came with a happy coincidence of having some emotional
distance from Trish and what felt to me like her
constant oversight. So we had this kind of break, and
I thought it was magical, just magical.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Moving into the farmhouse allowed Hannah to make writing her priority.
She submitted more stories for publication and even began writing
her first novel. To her surprise, Patrick wanted to do
the same.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
He started wanting to focus on writing, and some of
the stories were good, and he got a lot of
publications all on his own.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Other times he leaned on Hannah.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
It felt like every time I got a story accepted,
his first response would be, you should tell the editor
about this story I just wrote. And every time I
would email the editor and say, hey, there's this great
story that I just read by a friend of mine. Right.
And he got a few publications that way, but.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
His success was limited compared to Hannah's, and he struggled
with being farther away from town. It took a toll
on Patrick.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Every day I'd get up, i'd write, and at three
thirty I would drive into Charlottesville and start my shift
at the steakhouse and he'd stay home, and that's where
he started drinking during the day.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Hannah's mom also noticed a change in Patrick. She once
called Hannah during her workshift and.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
She said, I saw Patrick this morning. He was wearing
a robe, and I said, well, it was morning, mom,
and she said yes, And I saw him again just
now and he's still wearing a robe, and it's five
o'clock in the afternoon. It was a moment when I
realized she could see what I could see that troubled me.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Life in the farmhouse wasn't working for Patrick, Hannah was worried.
She knew they needed a change. That's when her book sold.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
When I got that book deal, it was all of
those dreams, everything I'd wanted for so long.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And the good news didn't stop there. On top of
the sale of her book, Hannah was offered a teaching
position in Chicago. Plus Patrick was offered a spot in
an MFA program in Boston. He could complete it and
then go meet Hannah in Chicago. They decided it would
be a great change, a fresh start.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
So we knew that we were going to be leaving Charlottesville,
and at about the same time, George and Trish decided
that they were going to move to New York.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Trish and George were also ready for a new beginning.
By this point, they were married and Charlottesville was feeling
small with big changes coming, the group became nostalgic. Trish
and George were still Hannah and Patrick's close friends, and
no one knew when they'd all be together again. So
for their last couple months in Virginia, Hannah and Patrick
(25:09):
moved back into town to relive the old days as
a group of four.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
And suddenly it was like the four of us together again.
But I think what I told myself was, we all
are doing this because it's a last hurrah, and we
know that things are about to change. We're moving to
Chicago and they're moving to New York, and therefore it's
a last hurrah.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Right away, they fell back into their old patterns. Hannah
always ended the night feeling hurt or embarrassed, but whenever
she asked Patrick if they could cut back on time with.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Tritian George, he would say, they're part of my past,
They're part of who I am. I don't know how
to have a social life without them.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Patrick was in a fragile place, and Hannah knew that
Trician George made him feel like his old self, so
instead of demanding that they cut off their friends, she
went along with it, at least for the time being.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I will just deal with it. I've always dealt with
the things that are uncomfortable. I can handle it. I
can handle it. It'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
It was clear to Hannah that she'd outgrown the group.
It was a challenging couple of months, but then it
finally came time for Hannah and Patrick to move on.
He spent a year in Boston and then we.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Moved to Chicago, and I wrote another book.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Through this big transition, Patrick was there for Hannah.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
He made me feel desirable. He made me feel intelligent,
and he made me feel like it was so obvious
that I would be ambitious, and it was so obvious
that I was going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
He was her champion. But when it came to his
own career, he felt discouraged. He was writing his first book.
Unlike Hannah, he had a difficult time getting published. So
once again his mental health took a turn for the worse.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
He really was struggling with giving up who he'd been
in Charlottesville, which was a big fish in a small pond.
His band was the popular band at the time when
he was living in Charlottesville, so he'd gone from kind
of like Golden God in Charlottesville to a dude struggling
(27:30):
to find work and writing his first novel in Chicago,
living with a novelist who's got a full time job.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It wasn't an easy time for Hannah either. Her second
book wasn't finding a publisher as quickly as her first.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And then my agent was shopping that second book and
it was getting rejected. And that's when Patrick proposed.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
She said, yes, Finally they had some thing to look
forward to. So they started planning the wedding.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
We wanted it to be small, intimate, Charlottesville based. It
was a beautiful wedding.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Of course, Tritian George were there. Even though those last
couple months together were rocky for Hannah, they remained the
couple's closest friends.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
They were the origin story, That's how I met him.
So they were one of three couples who were there
that were not somehow related to us.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
The day was everything Hannah hoped it would be.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
We did our own vowels, We wrote them together, and
we put on like it was like a scene that
we did. He cried. I felt so happy. I felt
so happy getting married to him.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
And then and then her book did find a publisher.
And she sold a third book right after that. She
was elated, but Patrick wasn't.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
That third book deal I think really really hurt him.
I think my shadow just got bigger for him and
he started feeling smaller.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
He turned to Tritian George for support.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
They always made him feel like the person he had
been in his twenties. In Charlottesville.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
They made more of an effort to see Trician George
with vacations and visits back and forth.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
It felt like they were our best couple friend again.
They were always there. They were always there.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Hannah also helped Patrick secure a teaching job when she
got a new role at a university in Kentucky. The
move and the job did little to help Patrick and
his dreams of a book deal.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
He'd gotten close a couple times, but it just didn't
happen for him.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
By this point, they'd been together for nearly ten years.
Hannah was accomplishing everything she wanted in life. Meanwhile, her
husband was miserable and she couldn't help but feel that
he resented her for her success. He was lost and
grasping for any sense of purpose. She didn't know how
to help him. Finally, Patrick was given an opportunity. The
(30:17):
second summer after they moved to Kentucky, he was offered
two prestigious writing residencies.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
One was in France and one was at Yadoe, and
there was a two week down period between the residencies.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It would mean a lot of time apart, but Hannah
thought this was good for Patrick and for their relationship. Besides,
she'd be traveling a lot that summer promoting her third book.
She told Patrick to go.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
The idea was by the end of July, we would
be back in Kentucky together, he would get therapy, and
we would figure things.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Out between France and his next residency in the States.
Patrick he had a week off and he spent it
in New York visiting old friends.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
He decided to go to New York City and stay
with our very good friend Hugh. And the idea was
he would go back and forth between Hughes place and
Trisias and George Place so that he wasn't a burden,
and then he goes to Yado and he keeps writing.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
And that's what happened, or so Hannah was told. The
week after Patrick went to a second residency, Hannah needed
to be in New York for her book launch. She
was going to crash with their friend Hugh, just like
Patrick had the week before. She got in a day early,
and the night before her book launch, she and Hugh
stayed a bla talking randomly. They got on the topic
(31:46):
of jealousy.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
And I said something like, oh, I'm not a suspicious person,
and he said, maybe you should be more suspicious. And
I said, that's a really interesting thing to say, and
he said, you should ask me questions.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
She didn't know where this was coming from, but Hugh
seemed serious, like he had something he needed to say,
like he was trying to tell her something.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
And I said, is this about Patrick? And he said yes.
And I said, did something happen when Patrick was in
New York last week without me? And he said yes.
At this point, my heart has just like dropped and
(32:36):
I feel like I'm in a vomit And I said,
did Patrick have sex with someone? And he said yes.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
She knew the question she really wanted to ask. She
was just afraid of Hugh's answer.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But finally I said, did he have sex with Trish?
And Hugh said.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yes. On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
My agent sent me an email and the subject was
have you seen this? And I opened it and I
read it, and I read it again and I wasn't
able to really make sense of what I was reading.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team,
email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal
Pod at gmail dot com, and be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and
(33:45):
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced
by me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced
(34:07):
by Caitlin Golden and Monique Leboard, with additional production by
Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlyn Golden.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing support
from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music
(34:28):
library provided by mybe Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts
Hey, it's Andrea Gunning. Our season of weekly stories is
coming to an end, but don't worry. We'll be back
soon with more episodes. So if you have a story
of your own that you'd like to share on the podcast,
email us at Betrayal pod at gmail dot com. In
the meantime, we want to do something new and exciting.
This month, We're taking short creative essays submissions from listeners.
(00:22):
The theme is resilience in the face of a devastating betrayal.
We want to hear the story of how you healed
scars and all. Here's the catch. The limit is a
thousand words. If your story stands out, it might be
featured in a bonus episode. Please save your submission as
a PDF and email it to Betrayal Pod at gmail
dot com. Okay, now onto the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
At this point, my heart has just dropped. Then I
feel like I'm going to vomit. The betrayal felt so
intentional and possibly it was a long time coming.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I'm Andrea Gunning, and this is Betrayal, a show about
the people we trust the most and the deceptions that
change everything. Betrayals often come with a loss. On this show,
we've heard stories from people who lost the love of
their life or their understanding of who that person was.
(01:34):
Others have had their children, their home, or their money
taken from them. We've told stories about people losing their
sense of self. But no matter the betrayal, everyone we've
talked to has held on to one thing, their story.
Even when they lost everything, they still had the truth.
(01:56):
But then we heard Hannah Patard's story.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I remember writing stories from the time I was a
little girl.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Today, Hannah is an accomplished author. Stories have always been
a big part of who she is. When she was little,
Hannah's family lived on a farm outside of Atlanta. There,
her imagination would run wild.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
We had horses, chickens, born kittens. It was a wonderful time, but.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It wasn't a wonderful time for everyone. When she was
in elementary school, Hannah's parents began a bitter divorce. Hannah
was the youngest of three, and at first the siblings
all had each other, but eventually her older siblings went
off to boarding school and Hannah was left at home
(02:47):
in the middle of her parents' custody battle.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I was constantly getting interviewed by a different therapist. It
felt to my mind like we were constantly going to
see a judge.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Her escape was reading.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I read, and I would just go into this fictional
dream and block out the noise of whatever was happening
in the other room.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
That's when she started writing stories of her own.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
By sixth grade, I was writing poems, horrible, sad, sac poems,
and as a thirteen fourteen year old, I had started
writing little sketches and just became pretty serious about it.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Writing felt exciting. It allowed her to get lost in
worlds of her own creation. But in her real life,
Hannah was lonely, so she asked her parents to send
her to boarding school. She thought it would be her
chance to start over, to reinvent herself, But when she
got there.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I was still meek, naturally introverted, living in my head
writing stories.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Hannah chose Deerfield Academy, a school known for its challenging academics.
It was cutthroat, but Hannah hardly noticed.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I was blissfully unaware of what an elite institution it was,
and I was blissfully unaware of any kind of real competition. Truly,
the worst part of it was what I was doing
in private to myself.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
By tenth grade, Hannah developed an eating disorder, and as
a note to listeners, we're going to talk about some
details of her experience. For Hannah, controlling food was a
way for her to feel a false sense of control.
It only made the divide between her and her peers
grow wider.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You're a kid with a secret, and it's a really
big secret. It is a secret where you are hurting
your body in this intentional way, and you're not relying
on the world, and you're not trusting anybody else because
you don't want to get caught. You're just so much
by yourself socially, I was definitely isolated and isolating.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
She kept her head down and focused on her studies,
especially her English and creative writing classes.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
By the time I graduated, I'd won a couple writing awards,
so I had this idea that maybe I was good,
or I could be.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Good for college. She went to the University of Chicago
and got her degree in English.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I was too intimidated to take a single creative writing class.
I didn't want to be told that I wasn't as
good as I felt like i'd been on Deerfield's campus.
I thought, if I'm not saying what I want, then
nobody knows to be disappointed in me or embarrassed on
my behalf. Oh, you didn't get it. You wanted to
be a writer, and you didn't get it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Pursuing a real writing career terrified her, but she dreamed
of a master's degree in fiction writing, so she sent
in a few half hearted applications.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
I think I sent them something that I might not
even have reread, and swiftly was rejected. And I'm so
glad that I was rejected, because it was a wake
up call that if you want this, you have to try.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
She spent the next year honing her craft as best
she could.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I paid off. I got into several different programs and
ultimately ended up at the University of Virginia.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
She packed up her life and headed to Charlottesville. And
she made a promise to herself, the same one she'd
made before boarding school.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
You're going to get to grad school and you're going
to become the social person that you know you want
to be. You're going to change your life.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
From her first day in the program, that vision felt
within reach.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
The program had its very first meeting, all of the
second years in the program were there, and all of
the new first years were there. I will always remember
the first time I saw Trish. She was captivating.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Trish was a second year in the program.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
She had on a great outfit, red lipstick, I think
she had on a pair of yellow belly flats. Her
hair looked amazing. She just was cool.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Trish was everything Hannah was not, and Hannah wanted to
make a good first impression.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Back then, I was being plagued with situational roseatia, which
I've had all my life. If you made eye contact
with me, I either cried or blushed. And it's not
just blushing, you know. I think sometimes people hear the
word blush and they think of like these two little
cherries on either side of your cheeks. It's like a
(07:54):
rash that crawls up my neck and makes my cheeks blatchy.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
So when she introduced herself to the group, she'd turned
bright red, and Trish noticed.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I'm still bright red, and she came over and she
put her hand on my arm, and she said something like,
it's really sweet how you blush when you're nervous. It
makes you seem authentic. That was pretty excited that she'd
noticed me. She made me feel seen and we became
friends after that.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
That day was a new beginning for Hannah. She was
starting to have this social life she'd always wanted.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
People from the program would call to invite me out,
and they'd come back to my house for house parties,
and meanwhile, we're all just reading and writing and going
to coffee shops. It was the fantasy that I'd imagined
for myself.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And at all these events, Hannah would watch Trish command
the room.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Trish seemed so comfortable in her skin. She seemed comfortable
being pretty. She seemed comfortable being perceived as somebody who
wanted to look pretty. Meanwhile, I am all day long,
non stop, thinking about my body. During this time, I
(09:17):
was so embarrassed of having anyone think that I wanted
to be pretty or sexy or feminine, even though that
is desperately what I wanted.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Trish started calling Hannah to hang out, and her confidence
began to rub off on Hannah. For so long, Hannah
had been trying to make herself small emotionally and physically.
For instance, she would only wear sports bras.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I was eliminating curves, but I was also eliminating the
embarrassment of being perceived to somebody who wanted to be sexy.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
But Trisha inspired Hannah to make a change.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
For the first time ever. I stopped wearing jogbras, and
then I started wearing skirts with her encouragement, and I
started showing off my body. I'm coming out of my shell,
and she's helping me come out of my shell.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Trish liked to go out. It was something Hannah hadn't
really done before, but pretty quickly she realized she liked
it too.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
When Trish would call me, it was meet me at
this bar. She drank beers, she drank shots, and so
I started drinking beers and I started drinking shots, and
I noticed that it was a lot easier to be
at bars and easier to talk to tawnies and strangers,
and I followed her lead.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Over time, Hannah began distancing herself from the other first years,
and she was spending more and more nights with Trish.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I felt like, here, at last, is a friend who's school,
who I can talk to and go out with. Here's
my first female adult friend. Her friendship when I was
feeling so vulnerable was transformative.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
Trish was Hannah's first real friend, and their bond only
grew stronger. During Hannah's second year in grad school.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
We were brought closer by the fact that my stepfather,
who had adopted me, was sick my entire second year.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Trish knew what
Hannah was going through. She had lost her own dad
a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
She understood grief, and she understood loss. And when I
would become quiet or start crying at a bar, she
was not judgmental. She knew how to act around me.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Hannah's other grad school friends just didn't get.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
It, and so I ultimately ended up isolating myself from
them and sort of glombed onto Trish and the Charlottesville
music scene.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Trish was dating a guy named George, a poet in
the program. The two of them were very plugged into
the live music scene in town, so they would often
bring Hannah to shows. That's how Hannah met Patrick. He
was a musician in a local band.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Trish and George they loved the band. They love this guy,
Trish said, one night, you got to meet him. He's
so great, he's so cute. He had a girlfriend, so
I didn't think of him as a love interest, but
I did meet him and I was like, ah, he
is cute.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
During this period, Hannah was often traveling home to spend
time with her family and visit her stepdad in hospice.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Trish knew that I played a lot to scrabble with
my family, and she knew that Patrick played scrabble. And
I never would have made the first move to be
in touch with Patrick because I didn't really know how
to have male friends at that point in my life.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
But Trisha insisted that the two of them should hang out,
so she gave Patrick Hannon's number.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I got a phone call one day from Patrick saying,
Trish says, you play scrabble. I said, yeah, I play
scrabble and he said, okay, well I'm on the downtown mall.
Why don't you bring your scrabble board and let's play.
And I said, I thought you have a girlfriend, and
he's like, this isn't a date. I do have a girlfriend.
I want to play scrabble. And I thought, oh, okay, weird, bizarre,
(13:45):
I'm not doing anything. So I went. We played scrabble
at a coffee shop and we just started playing scrabble
all the time, and he became my first male friend.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Like Trish. Patrick was confident, maybe even a little cocky,
but they had a real connection.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
He's a really smart guy, and he was an excellent critic,
and his brain was razor sharp, so we had great
conversations and he was so much fun.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Their relationship was platonic. Even after Patrick broke up with
his girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
He just started dating a lot of women, and I thought,
this is so wonderful. I've got a male friend who
I get the male perspective from he gets the female
perspective from me.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
But their dynamics started to shift after Patrick had a
major surgery. It meant he needed to spend a lot
of time resting at home.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
His recovery corresponded with the beginning of the grieving process
because my stepfather died, and we started spending just a
ton of time together.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Hannah would even bring Patrick long to check on her mom,
who was now living outside of Charlottesville.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
I took Patrick out to my mom's farmhouse one day
and the three of us played scrabble, and it was
like the first time I saw my mom laugh. And
the two of them loved each other. They got along
so well, and it got to the point where my
mom would call Patrick when she'd come into town and say,
(15:25):
I'm going to the grocery store, and Patrick would go
to the grocery store with her. He would take her
to bars. I mean, he was helping her find small
amounts of joy.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
She started to see a different side of him as
they grew closer. They started going out with Trish and George.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
The four of us had become this kind of Charlottesville unit.
I would see Patrick and we'd play scrabble, and then
we'd go to a bar and meet up with Trician George.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
The four of them were always out together, talking to
strangers and laughing until the bars closed down.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You feel young and invincible, and this is where stories
are happening. You're interacting with people, you're overhearing strange bits
of dialogue.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
She was finally living life, and she was channeling these
experiences into her writing.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
I had so many ideas, and I was still getting
all of my writing done, and because I was in
my twenties and made of elastic, I'd wake up the
next morning at seven and just start writing.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
She was a good writer. She regularly submitted to literary magazines,
and she was getting published.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
It felt like this fantasy that I had was within
my reach. As long as I keep trying. As long
as I keep trying, I keep writing, there's a possibility
that this could be my life.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And Patrick actually started to write short stories of his own.
He wasn't in school or in their writing program, but.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Hanging out with Trish and me, fiction writers, hanging out
with George, a poet, he did start writing stories.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
The two of them would often spend scrabble games talking
about books and story ideas. Hannah also trusted Patrick to
read her works in progress.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
He would get wistful sometimes and say, I don't know
how you're like how you are. You're just so cool
and you're such a good writer, and nothing seems to
bother you, And of course inside I am nothing but
roiling turmoil.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
With these kinds of comments, Hannah started to wonder was
Patrick into her.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It felt good to be seen, and it felt good
to be perceived as attractive, and it felt good to
have this attractive man perceive me as attractive, and before
I knew it, I was crushing pretty hard on him.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
She wasn't going to make the move. She knew Patrick
had other women in his life, and it was hard
to tell for sure if the feelings were mutual. And
then it was.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
One of those nights that was not uncommon for the
four of us, where we had shut the bars down.
We went back to his house. You know, he'd kind
of been doing that thing where he was touching my
elbow with his elbow and making eye contact a little
too long. He's making some inside joke references about things
that we'd been talking about during scrabble, and it's just
(18:25):
incredible tension that is mounting. Then at a certain point,
probably like four in the morning, George and Trish went
back to their apartment and I was going to call
a cab, but.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
She didn't call a cab. They kissed, and she spent
the night.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
We went from being best friends to one night makeout
to basically living with one another. There were so many
mornings when I would wake up and I would look
over and I'd see that it was Patrick in bed,
and I would think, I am so lucky. I get
to do this for the rest of my life. I
actually like the person that I'm waking up with, And
(19:07):
it was just it was bliss.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
They were in love. Still, much of the time they'd
spend together was in their group.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Before it was non stop double dating with Trish and George.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
But eventually the group's lifestyle started to catch up with Hannah.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Trish and Patrick weren't just drinkers. They were late night drinkers,
and so that's what I became too. For a little while.
There were a lot of moments where I would reflect
on what I was doing and how I was behaving,
and I'd be pretty scared.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
She didn't like what heavy drinking did to her who
it made her become, and she certainly didn't like what
alcohol did to Trish.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
She could be pretty aggressive, she could be rude, She
could piss people off in bars.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
When Trish got like this, it would set Patrick off.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
He had a bit of a temper too, so their
tempers could kind of go up against one another.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Knights would often end in fights, and even when they didn't,
things like this would happen.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
The four of us were out, Tricia and I were
at the bar. George and Patrick were sitting where we
could see them, but it was pretty packed, and she
was saying, I knew he'd come around. I knew he'd
realize he loved you. I knew it. I just knew it.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Trish wasn't being the supportive, encouraging friend Hannah had first met.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
She wanted to just remind me that he hadn't crushed
on me as hard as I'd crushed on him at
the beginning, and she always loved to point out that
she had been friends with him first.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Instead, it felt like she was going out of her
way to cut Hannah down.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
And this drove me a little bit crazy.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
When Hannah started dating Patrick, her relationship with her best
friend started to shift. It seemed like Trisha always had
something to say, and it felt like at times she
was undercutting Hannah's relationship with Patrick. After Hannah graduated, a
window opened. Her mom offered Hannah and Patrick the chance
(21:35):
to live rent free in her mother's farmhouse outside the city.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
We needed a new place to live, and we were broke.
I was waiting tables, he was gigging and teaching music,
and we were so desperate for money. I was desperate
for money. So when my mom offered this free place
to live, it was not lost on me that this
(22:01):
farmhouse came with a happy coincidence of having some emotional
distance from Trish and what felt to me like her
constant oversight. So we had this kind of break, and
I thought it was magical, just magical.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Moving into the farmhouse allowed Hannah to make writing her priority.
She submitted more stories for publication and even began writing
her first novel. To her surprise, Patrick wanted to do
the same.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
He started wanting to focus on writing, and some of
the stories were good, and he got a lot of
publications all on his own.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Other times he leaned on Hannah.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
It felt like every time I got a story accepted,
his first response would be, you should tell the editor
about this story I just wrote. And every time I
would email the editor and say, hey, there's this great
story that I just read by a friend of mine. Right.
And he got a few publications that way, but.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
His success was limited compared to Hannah's, and he struggled
with being farther away from town. It took a toll
on Patrick.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Every day I'd get up, i'd write, and at three
thirty I would drive into Charlottesville and start my shift
at the steakhouse and he'd stay home, and that's where
he started drinking during the day.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Hannah's mom also noticed a change in Patrick. She once
called Hannah during her workshift and.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
She said, I saw Patrick this morning. He was wearing
a robe, and I said, well, it was morning, mom,
and she said yes, And I saw him again just
now and he's still wearing a robe, and it's five
o'clock in the afternoon. It was a moment when I
realized she could see what I could see that troubled me.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Life in the farmhouse wasn't working for Patrick, Hannah was worried.
She knew they needed a change. That's when her book sold.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
When I got that book deal, it was all of
those dreams, everything I'd wanted for so long.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And the good news didn't stop there. On top of
the sale of her book, Hannah was offered a teaching
position in Chicago. Plus Patrick was offered a spot in
an MFA program in Boston. He could complete it and
then go meet Hannah in Chicago. They decided it would
be a great change, a fresh start.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
So we knew that we were going to be leaving Charlottesville,
and at about the same time, George and Trish decided
that they were going to move to New York.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Trish and George were also ready for a new beginning.
By this point, they were married and Charlottesville was feeling
small with big changes coming, the group became nostalgic. Trish
and George were still Hannah and Patrick's close friends, and
no one knew when they'd all be together again. So
for their last couple months in Virginia, Hannah and Patrick
(25:09):
moved back into town to relive the old days as
a group of four.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
And suddenly it was like the four of us together again.
But I think what I told myself was, we all
are doing this because it's a last hurrah, and we
know that things are about to change. We're moving to
Chicago and they're moving to New York, and therefore it's
a last hurrah.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Right away, they fell back into their old patterns. Hannah
always ended the night feeling hurt or embarrassed, but whenever
she asked Patrick if they could cut back on time with.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Tritian George, he would say, they're part of my past,
They're part of who I am. I don't know how
to have a social life without them.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Patrick was in a fragile place, and Hannah knew that
Trician George made him feel like his old self, so
instead of demanding that they cut off their friends, she
went along with it, at least for the time being.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
I will just deal with it. I've always dealt with
the things that are uncomfortable. I can handle it. I
can handle it. It'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
It was clear to Hannah that she'd outgrown the group.
It was a challenging couple of months, but then it
finally came time for Hannah and Patrick to move on.
He spent a year in Boston and then we.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
Moved to Chicago, and I wrote another book.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Through this big transition, Patrick was there for Hannah.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
He made me feel desirable. He made me feel intelligent,
and he made me feel like it was so obvious
that I would be ambitious, and it was so obvious
that I was going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
He was her champion. But when it came to his
own career, he felt discouraged. He was writing his first book.
Unlike Hannah, he had a difficult time getting published. So
once again his mental health took a turn for the worse.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
He really was struggling with giving up who he'd been
in Charlottesville, which was a big fish in a small pond.
His band was the popular band at the time when
he was living in Charlottesville, so he'd gone from kind
of like Golden God in Charlottesville to a dude struggling
(27:30):
to find work and writing his first novel in Chicago,
living with a novelist who's got a full time job.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It wasn't an easy time for Hannah either. Her second
book wasn't finding a publisher as quickly as her first.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And then my agent was shopping that second book and
it was getting rejected. And that's when Patrick proposed.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
She said, yes, Finally they had some thing to look
forward to. So they started planning the wedding.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
We wanted it to be small, intimate, Charlottesville based. It
was a beautiful wedding.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Of course, Tritian George were there. Even though those last
couple months together were rocky for Hannah, they remained the
couple's closest friends.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
They were the origin story, That's how I met him.
So they were one of three couples who were there
that were not somehow related to us.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
The day was everything Hannah hoped it would be.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
We did our own vowels, We wrote them together, and
we put on like it was like a scene that
we did. He cried. I felt so happy. I felt
so happy getting married to him.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
And then and then her book did find a publisher.
And she sold a third book right after that. She
was elated, but Patrick wasn't.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
That third book deal I think really really hurt him.
I think my shadow just got bigger for him and
he started feeling smaller.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
He turned to Tritian George for support.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
They always made him feel like the person he had
been in his twenties. In Charlottesville.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
They made more of an effort to see Trician George
with vacations and visits back and forth.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
It felt like they were our best couple friend again.
They were always there. They were always there.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
Hannah also helped Patrick secure a teaching job when she
got a new role at a university in Kentucky. The
move and the job did little to help Patrick and
his dreams of a book deal.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
He'd gotten close a couple times, but it just didn't
happen for him.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
By this point, they'd been together for nearly ten years.
Hannah was accomplishing everything she wanted in life. Meanwhile, her
husband was miserable and she couldn't help but feel that
he resented her for her success. He was lost and
grasping for any sense of purpose. She didn't know how
to help him. Finally, Patrick was given an opportunity. The
(30:17):
second summer after they moved to Kentucky, he was offered
two prestigious writing residencies.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
One was in France and one was at Yadoe, and
there was a two week down period between the residencies.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It would mean a lot of time apart, but Hannah
thought this was good for Patrick and for their relationship. Besides,
she'd be traveling a lot that summer promoting her third book.
She told Patrick to go.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
The idea was by the end of July, we would
be back in Kentucky together, he would get therapy, and
we would figure things.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Out between France and his next residency in the States.
Patrick he had a week off and he spent it
in New York visiting old friends.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
He decided to go to New York City and stay
with our very good friend Hugh. And the idea was
he would go back and forth between Hughes place and
Trisias and George Place so that he wasn't a burden,
and then he goes to Yado and he keeps writing.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
And that's what happened, or so Hannah was told. The
week after Patrick went to a second residency, Hannah needed
to be in New York for her book launch. She
was going to crash with their friend Hugh, just like
Patrick had the week before. She got in a day early,
and the night before her book launch, she and Hugh
stayed a bla talking randomly. They got on the topic
(31:46):
of jealousy.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
And I said something like, oh, I'm not a suspicious person,
and he said, maybe you should be more suspicious. And
I said, that's a really interesting thing to say, and
he said, you should ask me questions.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
She didn't know where this was coming from, but Hugh
seemed serious, like he had something he needed to say,
like he was trying to tell her something.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
And I said, is this about Patrick? And he said yes.
And I said, did something happen when Patrick was in
New York last week without me? And he said yes.
At this point, my heart has just like dropped and
(32:36):
I feel like I'm in a vomit And I said,
did Patrick have sex with someone? And he said yes.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
She knew the question she really wanted to ask. She
was just afraid of Hugh's answer.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But finally I said, did he have sex with Trish?
And Hugh said.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yes. On the next episode of Betrayal.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
My agent sent me an email and the subject was
have you seen this? And I opened it and I
read it, and I read it again and I wasn't
able to really make sense of what I was reading.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal team,
email us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal
Pod at gmail dot com, and be sure to follow
us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod. We're grateful for your support.
One way to show support is by subscribing to our
show on Apple Podcasts, and don't forget to rate and
(33:45):
review Betrayal. Five star reviews go a long way. A
big thank you to all of our listeners. Betrayal is
a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment
Group and partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive
produced by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fason, hosted and produced
by me Andrea Gunning. This episode was written and produced
(34:07):
by Caitlin Golden and Monique Leboard, with additional production by
Ben Fetterman. Associate producers are Kristin Mercury and Caitlyn Golden.
Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Crincheck. Audio
editing and mixing by Matt del Vecchio, additional editing support
from Tanner Robbins. Betrayal's theme composed by Oliver Bains. Music
(34:28):
library provided by mybe Music and For more podcasts from iHeart,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts
Host
Andrea Gunning
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!