April 1, 2025 • 24 mins
Brandon opens up about his conflicted feelings while recounting the story of his second significant relationship, expressing love and consideration for his current wife while sharing this challenging chapter of his past.
Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com
• Meeting a beautiful redheaded woman at the gym who initially rejected him but later agreed to a date after learning more about him
• Discovering she was actually still married, not "going through a divorce" as she initially claimed
• Moving in together despite trust issues after she officially left her husband
• Experiencing a magnetic attraction that kept pulling them together through multiple breakups over five years
• Describing her contradictory nature - brilliant and capable (rebuilding entire kitchens after watching YouTube videos once) yet deeply insecure and inflexible
• Reluctantly marrying her after an ultimatum, then immediately regretting the decision
• Making the difficult choice to join the military to escape the relationship and restart his life
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Hello, welcome back to Brandon episode 9.
Where I last left off was thebeginning of my introduction to
the next significantrelationship in my life.
I'm having a tough timerecalling these memories and
(00:26):
trying to tell them asauthentically as possible in
what happened and how ithappened at the time because my
wife i love her very much andshe is the best thing that ever
happened to me in my life and ihope that i can get through this
(00:51):
and do these things withoutaffecting her in some type of
way because this is just metrying to tell my story and
there are some feelings thatbrew up inside me that make me
feel bad about doing thisbecause I'm recalling these
memories and I'm making thesememories public so Jew I love
(01:16):
you and I hope that this is notbothering you and if it is
please don't listen to theseportions because these are
really for everyone else not foryou so having said that back to
where i left off so my friendcalled me out and i saw this
(01:43):
redhead girl at the gym that iwas Insanely attracted to from
the outside looking in.
I didn't know anything abouther.
She walked with confidence.
She had the face of AngelinaJolie, the body of a fitness
model, and she dyed her hairred, not like crazy red, but
(02:03):
like a red tint to her alreadynaturally dark hair, but it made
it look a little red.
And physically the attractionwas just there.
She was just beautiful to me andsexy.
And it wasn't just me.
And I'll get into that in aminute.
So I saw her at the gym the nextday after my roommate calls me
(02:26):
out.
And I see my opportunity to askher out.
And I sit down next to her and Iintroduce myself.
And I just come out with it.
I say, hey, I think you'rebeautiful.
I would love to go out with yousometime.
And she just looks at me and shesays, no, she's not interested.
(02:47):
And I said, okay, thank you foryour time.
And I turn around and walk away.
When I was like, ow, that hurt.
Like getting rejected sucks.
I don't care who you are.
Getting rejected sucks.
We all try to pretend it doesn'tbother us.
It does.
I went back to a different partof the gym and I thought about
(03:11):
what happened and I collectedmyself and I was thinking,
everyone mistakes me for beingyounger than I am.
I'm 25 years old.
I have a son.
A lot of people think I'mregular college age, 19, 20, 21.
My whole life people havethought I was younger than I am.
(03:32):
So I was like, nah, I'm notgoing to accept that.
If nothing else, I'm going to goto her and let her know the
whole situation.
After I collected myself, I wentback to her and I sat down and I
just started talking.
I said, hey, I know you said noand I respect that and I
appreciate that, but I just wantyou to know I'm not just some
(03:52):
other college kid here.
I'm 25 years old.
I'm divorced.
I have a young son.
I'm not just a kid hitting onyou.
And then she seemed reallyreceptive to that.
And then that opened upconversation.
And that conversation led to hertelling me she had two kids
(04:15):
herself and she was 27.
So she was almost two yearsolder than me.
I know 25 and 27 is two.
When you put the birthdaystogether, it wasn't quite.
And we just hit it off rightaway.
It was fun.
We were talking.
And then at the end of theconversation, she said, yeah,
you know what?
I will go out with you.
(04:36):
I walked away from thatconversation, super excited.
Went back to my apartment laterthat day, told my roommate, I
asked her out and he was, yeah,see how they are.
You can thank me later forcalling you out, whatever.
And we ended up going out and itwas a blast.
(04:56):
We had a good time.
We ended up hooking up and allthat.
And then it wasn't until afterthat, she was like, I need to
tell you something.
And I was like, Oh God, what?
And she said, I'm going througha divorce currently.
I still live with my husband,but I'm going through a divorce.
(05:17):
And I was like, of course I hadquestions who wouldn't in that
situation.
I asked my questions.
She appeased me with heranswers.
And then we just kept going.
We kept seeing each other,obviously not very often.
Our situations were she was acollege student, a mother of
two, and I was a college studentand I had Ethan who I did get
(05:41):
half of the time during theweek.
I spent a lot of time with Ethanand sidebar there, that was
interesting to me because Iwould get Ethan, pick him up
from his mom.
And everything was cool.
He would come spend some timewith me.
Sometimes I kept him just oneday.
(06:03):
I'd still go back and forth andget him because me and his
mother didn't live that farapart.
Sometimes he'd spend two orthree days with me.
But as he got a little older,maybe less than one, I remember
he was wearing diapers.
I don't remember if he couldquite walk yet.
I don't think he could walk.
I would pick him up from his momand he'd be happy to see me and
(06:26):
ready to go.
When I would try to take himback to his mom, this is the
part that really got me.
He would wrap his arms around myneck and scream bloody murder.
He didn't want to go back to hismom.
My thought was, I feel so badfor her.
(06:46):
Imagine being a mother and yourson.
is screaming like that becausehe would rather stay with his
father.
And then it made me havequestions like, why would he
behave that way?
Is she mistreating him?
What am I missing?
What do I not know?
And I never found out that therewas anything wrong.
I didn't believe that she woulddo anything like that because I
(07:09):
thought she was a good person.
So I didn't have any hints thatthere was any reason he was
behaving like that other than Hejust missed me and wanted to be
with me.
And so I let it go, but ithappened for months, months and
months.
I couldn't even tell you howlong it went that he would just
(07:31):
cry and scream and hang on to mewhen I would take him back to
her.
And I did not like that.
I felt so bad for her.
I felt bad for him.
He had his reasons for feelingthat way.
And it was tough.
It was really tough.
So To advance the story of mynext relationship, my second
(07:52):
wife, Angie, and I continueddating.
On paper, she was an amazingwoman.
If you were to put down a resumeof a woman, right, and I were to
say to you on that resume, oh,get this, she has the face of
Jelena Jolie.
(08:13):
She has the body of a fitnessmodel.
She has a master's degree orshe's getting a master's degree
in chemistry and she has a 4.0GPA.
She literally can do anythingshe puts her mind to.
She can take wood planks andbuild dresser you would buy from
(08:37):
a furniture store.
She remodeled the kitchen in ourhouse.
I'm talking ripped the wholething out, cabinets, sinks,
laying down tile.
We ripped out the bathroom ofour home and moved the toilet
from one spot to the other.
She re-plumbed the entire home.
(08:58):
She ran all the electricaloutlets.
She re-electrical the entirehome because the old electrical
wiring was bad and not, itwasn't up to code.
There were parts in the wirethat There were literally like
two pieces of wire connectedtogether, taped and falling
(09:19):
apart.
It was an old home that weeventually ended up living in.
She was super smart,intelligence-wise, and also very
attractive.
On paper, you would think, oh myGod, she's the perfect woman.
But there's more to this story.
After a little bit of dating,she comes to me one day and
(09:42):
says, ah, no.
I did it, Brandon.
I said, what?
She said, I finally told myhusband I want a divorce.
I'm moving out.
And I was like, what?
You told me when we met you weregoing through a divorce.
And she tried to backtrack andsay, that's not what she said.
But I know what she said.
And she told me she was goingthrough a divorce.
(10:04):
But I was so deep at this point.
I just was happy that she wasleaving him.
And then it was going to be asituation where Where we had a
real relationship.
This made me question things.
It made me question her honesty.
It made me question herintegrity.
So I asked her, am I the firstone that you've ever had an
(10:29):
affair with that you cheated onyour husband with?
And she told me, honestly, shesaid no.
And I learned she had otheraffairs and she had been with
other men.
And I was like, what's differentthis time?
And she was just like, I loveyou.
I want to be with you.
I never loved any of them.
I didn't want to be with any ofthem.
You, I want to be with.
(10:50):
I didn't have the balls to endit.
I could have, I should have, butI didn't because I was so
enamored by her beauty and whatshe was capable of as a person.
I was like, all right, let's seewhere this goes.
She ended up renting anapartment right across the hall
(11:11):
from my apartment.
I opened up the door, walkedfive feet.
There she was, her and her twokids.
That wasn't something she askedme if it was going to be okay.
That wasn't something wediscussed prior to that.
She just did it.
And it was just like, okay, I'mdoing this.
Deal with it.
(11:32):
And so...
I did.
Eventually she asked me to movein with her.
I took the difficult step ofbreaking it to my roommate,
Jeff, that I was going to moveout and move in with her.
He took it in stride, eventhough I know he probably didn't
love it.
I felt an obligation to thewoman I loved.
(11:54):
She was putting a lot ofpressure on me saying she can't
afford to be on her own with twokids and needed help.
She was really good to my son,Ethan.
And that was also a swayingfactor that led in her favor,
right?
Had she ignored Ethan or treatedhim like he was this burden to
(12:17):
her or whatever, that probablywould have really pushed me in a
different direction.
But she was so good to him.
She treated him and loved himlike he was her own son.
That makes anyone feel...
Like, oh, this is a good personthat I'm with despite the other
(12:38):
things that I know.
Over time, as you live togetherwith someone, you learn their
other quirks and personalityissues.
She was deeply insecure, which Ididn't know because she seemed
so confident when I just saw herat the gym.
She walked, she had pride, likeshe was just proud and
(13:01):
confident, but She wasn't.
She was deeply insecure.
She had high anxiety, very highanxiety, anxious all the time,
nervous energy all the time.
I could never feel like I couldrelax with her because she was
just so angst ridden and alwaysneeded to be moving around.
(13:23):
She was a workaholic.
She had things to her liking.
That made me feel like she's notthe right person for me.
As beautiful as she is, she'sjust not the right person for
me.
I don't know if I could evertrust her based on what I know
about her and the way thisrelationship started.
And eventually we moved out ofthe apartment and into a house
(13:46):
together.
That's where the things occurredthat I told you about ripping
out a kitchen and a bathroom andredoing an entire house.
She died.
literally looked online how doyou lay tile she could go lay
tile how do you change theelectrical wiring in a home boom
done how do you do the plumbingshe would watch a youtube video
(14:08):
one time and she just did it youhave to respect someone that has
that kind of skill and abilityhow can you not i couldn't do it
i still couldn't do it to thisday i don't believe i could
watch any video one time onsomething that significant and
just go do it.
But she did it.
(14:28):
But we had a lot of otherissues.
And one of our issues was how tohandle children.
I felt her kids were young andlike they were brats.
I felt like they got away withtoo much, the way they behave,
the way they acted out.
And she just didn't handle themwell.
And I wasn't allowed to handlethem, right?
Because they weren't my kids.
(14:49):
This was her job to take care ofthat stuff.
And we would fight about how totake care of kids.
We would fight about how to takecare of exes.
Her ex was still completely inlove with her, didn't want to
let her go, was inappropriately,for our relationship anyway,
contacting her and trying tomaintain some type of
(15:12):
relationship that was clearlyabove exes that had children
together.
And we would fight about allthese things.
She was very...
pigheaded and stubborn.
She knew she was intelligent.
She had a photographic memory.
She was smart.
And so that translated into allareas of life that she thought
(15:35):
she was always right.
You couldn't tell her anything.
She was always right.
And her point of view was theonly one that mattered.
I'm not the type of person youcan be that way with.
I look for compromise in arelationship.
Two people don't get together.
and just, boom, are on the samepage on everything.
(15:55):
It takes work, sometimes hardwork.
You have to be able to give inthe areas you can live with.
You have to be able to give andlive to fight another day.
And if it's an area you justcan't give and can't live with,
you have to draw a line.
That person has to meet youhalfway or on your side of the
(16:17):
line, depending on thesituation.
And vice versa, you have to bewilling to do that for your
partner.
You have to be willing to meetthem halfway or sometimes you go
to their side of the line.
It just depends on what thesituation is.
And she just had it like, nope,I'm right.
You're wrong.
I do things my way.
No one else is going to tell mehow to do it differently.
(16:39):
That literally the words thatshe said to me.
So it was falling apart.
It became toxic to some degreebecause she We just couldn't get
along relationship-wise, but theattraction was still there.
We were super attracted to eachother.
We were like two magnets, twoheavy-duty magnets that you're
(17:02):
trying to pull apart.
And as much as we tried, webroke up multiple times.
I moved out three or four timesfrom living with her.
We ended it multiple times.
We just couldn't break away fromeach other.
Finally, at one point, she gaveme an ultimatum.
(17:23):
She said, we either need to getmarried or end this.
And at that time, things weregood.
It was a brief time towards theend where we were doing well.
She threw this ultimatum on me.
You need to marry me or get out.
And I'm living back in the housewith her.
And I was like, I need to thinkabout that.
And she got upset by that,offended by that.
(17:46):
And so I tried to let it slideand let it pass.
And then about a week went byand she approached me again with
it.
She said, you either need tomarry me or you need to go get a
U-Haul and get out of my house.
And she was dead serious, right?
I could see it on her face.
And I was really in a pickle.
(18:07):
I knew I didn't want to marryher, at least not at that point
in time.
We had been together almost fiveyears, but I also knew I wasn't
ready to call it quits.
There's a part of me that feelslike I should turn back.
If I would have turned back timeand called her bluff, I gave in.
I married her and almostimmediately I regretted.
(18:32):
We went to a courthouse, gotmarried, and right away I saw a
shift in her attitude, a shiftin her personality.
She became much more domineeringand demanding, maybe a
workaholic, maybe doing her ownthing a lot.
And I didn't spend that muchtime with her and she just kind
of let me be, let me do mything.
But after we got married, shewas pushing me like, okay, you
(18:56):
need to get your careertogether.
You need to get your lifefinancially going because I'm
not going to put up with someonewho's not doing well financially
in life and And the truth is Ihad been struggling to get a
career and get a job going.
And I had shared all that withher and I thought she was on my
(19:18):
team.
But once she portrayed thispersonality and this attitude, I
was completely turned off.
I also always had in my mind, Idon't know if I can trust her.
I never felt like I could trusther.
I feel like if you have theability to cheat on someone
(19:39):
multiple times, what makes meany different?
I never thought I'm so specialshe'll never cheat on me.
No, I didn't think that at all.
I actually thought when thingsweren't going well, she would go
cheat on me, whatever she'slooking for in the arms of
another man.
And frankly, I never knew if thetimes that we broke up, if she
(20:02):
didn't.
Go do that and finance.
She says that she didn't, butwho knows, right?
So it leaves questions.
I knew this was just a disaster,the sinking ship that hasn't
sunk yet and I needed to getoff.
So I decided to move out andleave her for good.
(20:24):
One of the ways I decided to dothat was to join the military.
Hmm.
Because I knew if I lived in thesame area with her and the same
town with her, we would nevercompletely separate.
It just wasn't going to happen.
She, like I said, that pool,that magnetic pool, it was too
(20:46):
strong.
We were bad for each other.
We were never going to have agood relationship, but we also
didn't have the power to breakaway.
Neither one of us did.
I can't get a career going whereI'm currently living in Dayton,
Ohio.
I can't break away in thisrelationship.
And just nothing was going rightfor me there, except for the
(21:09):
fact, Ethan.
I loved Ethan.
I still spent a lot of time.
He had grown close to her kids,which was also a difficult part
of the equation.
Her son was close to his age.
They got along well and had arelationship.
I was going through in my mindwhat to do.
And frankly, it was my mom.
(21:30):
That tips me over the edge.
I was asking my friends andfamily, what would they do if
they were in my situation?
What should I do?
It was my mom that said, you andEthan, you have a strong bond.
It's going to break that.
You need to get your lifetogether.
If that means joining themilitary and doing what you need
(21:51):
to do to get your life together,then that's okay.
Do that.
You're always going to haveEthan.
He'll always be your son.
You'll always have that strongbond.
And I listened to that and Ibelieved that.
And so under that decision, Idecided, all right, I'm going to
(22:11):
go join the military.
I'm going to become an officerin the Air Force.
I'm going to get a secondarydegree.
And because this undergraduatemass communications degree is
awful.
It was a worthless degree,frankly, if you weren't going to
be on the news or be a reporteror something like that.
(22:32):
It was just a bad degree.
And I decided I was going tofollow the path of joining the
military.
Less than six months ofmarriage, I had moved out and I
was going to join the military.
I'm going to backtrack a littlebit.
I skipped over a lot.
I went from being in college totalking about a relationship,
(22:54):
marriage and divorce.
So I'll backtrack a little biton the next episode and I will
tell you some other things thatwere important, pertinent.
I'll talk to you next time.
Hello, welcome back to Brandon episode 9.
Where I last left off was thebeginning of my introduction to
the next significantrelationship in my life.
I'm having a tough timerecalling these memories and
(00:26):
trying to tell them asauthentically as possible in
what happened and how ithappened at the time because my
wife i love her very much andshe is the best thing that ever
happened to me in my life and ihope that i can get through this
(00:51):
and do these things withoutaffecting her in some type of
way because this is just metrying to tell my story and
there are some feelings thatbrew up inside me that make me
feel bad about doing thisbecause I'm recalling these
memories and I'm making thesememories public so Jew I love
(01:16):
you and I hope that this is notbothering you and if it is
please don't listen to theseportions because these are
really for everyone else not foryou so having said that back to
where i left off so my friendcalled me out and i saw this
(01:43):
redhead girl at the gym that iwas Insanely attracted to from
the outside looking in.
I didn't know anything abouther.
She walked with confidence.
She had the face of AngelinaJolie, the body of a fitness
model, and she dyed her hairred, not like crazy red, but
(02:03):
like a red tint to her alreadynaturally dark hair, but it made
it look a little red.
And physically the attractionwas just there.
She was just beautiful to me andsexy.
And it wasn't just me.
And I'll get into that in aminute.
So I saw her at the gym the nextday after my roommate calls me
(02:26):
out.
And I see my opportunity to askher out.
And I sit down next to her and Iintroduce myself.
And I just come out with it.
I say, hey, I think you'rebeautiful.
I would love to go out with yousometime.
And she just looks at me and shesays, no, she's not interested.
(02:47):
And I said, okay, thank you foryour time.
And I turn around and walk away.
When I was like, ow, that hurt.
Like getting rejected sucks.
I don't care who you are.
Getting rejected sucks.
We all try to pretend it doesn'tbother us.
It does.
I went back to a different partof the gym and I thought about
(03:11):
what happened and I collectedmyself and I was thinking,
everyone mistakes me for beingyounger than I am.
I'm 25 years old.
I have a son.
A lot of people think I'mregular college age, 19, 20, 21.
My whole life people havethought I was younger than I am.
(03:32):
So I was like, nah, I'm notgoing to accept that.
If nothing else, I'm going to goto her and let her know the
whole situation.
After I collected myself, I wentback to her and I sat down and I
just started talking.
I said, hey, I know you said noand I respect that and I
appreciate that, but I just wantyou to know I'm not just some
(03:52):
other college kid here.
I'm 25 years old.
I'm divorced.
I have a young son.
I'm not just a kid hitting onyou.
And then she seemed reallyreceptive to that.
And then that opened upconversation.
And that conversation led to hertelling me she had two kids
(04:15):
herself and she was 27.
So she was almost two yearsolder than me.
I know 25 and 27 is two.
When you put the birthdaystogether, it wasn't quite.
And we just hit it off rightaway.
It was fun.
We were talking.
And then at the end of theconversation, she said, yeah,
you know what?
I will go out with you.
(04:36):
I walked away from thatconversation, super excited.
Went back to my apartment laterthat day, told my roommate, I
asked her out and he was, yeah,see how they are.
You can thank me later forcalling you out, whatever.
And we ended up going out and itwas a blast.
(04:56):
We had a good time.
We ended up hooking up and allthat.
And then it wasn't until afterthat, she was like, I need to
tell you something.
And I was like, Oh God, what?
And she said, I'm going througha divorce currently.
I still live with my husband,but I'm going through a divorce.
(05:17):
And I was like, of course I hadquestions who wouldn't in that
situation.
I asked my questions.
She appeased me with heranswers.
And then we just kept going.
We kept seeing each other,obviously not very often.
Our situations were she was acollege student, a mother of
two, and I was a college studentand I had Ethan who I did get
(05:41):
half of the time during theweek.
I spent a lot of time with Ethanand sidebar there, that was
interesting to me because Iwould get Ethan, pick him up
from his mom.
And everything was cool.
He would come spend some timewith me.
Sometimes I kept him just oneday.
(06:03):
I'd still go back and forth andget him because me and his
mother didn't live that farapart.
Sometimes he'd spend two orthree days with me.
But as he got a little older,maybe less than one, I remember
he was wearing diapers.
I don't remember if he couldquite walk yet.
I don't think he could walk.
I would pick him up from his momand he'd be happy to see me and
(06:26):
ready to go.
When I would try to take himback to his mom, this is the
part that really got me.
He would wrap his arms around myneck and scream bloody murder.
He didn't want to go back to hismom.
My thought was, I feel so badfor her.
(06:46):
Imagine being a mother and yourson.
is screaming like that becausehe would rather stay with his
father.
And then it made me havequestions like, why would he
behave that way?
Is she mistreating him?
What am I missing?
What do I not know?
And I never found out that therewas anything wrong.
I didn't believe that she woulddo anything like that because I
(07:09):
thought she was a good person.
So I didn't have any hints thatthere was any reason he was
behaving like that other than Hejust missed me and wanted to be
with me.
And so I let it go, but ithappened for months, months and
months.
I couldn't even tell you howlong it went that he would just
(07:31):
cry and scream and hang on to mewhen I would take him back to
her.
And I did not like that.
I felt so bad for her.
I felt bad for him.
He had his reasons for feelingthat way.
And it was tough.
It was really tough.
So To advance the story of mynext relationship, my second
(07:52):
wife, Angie, and I continueddating.
On paper, she was an amazingwoman.
If you were to put down a resumeof a woman, right, and I were to
say to you on that resume, oh,get this, she has the face of
Jelena Jolie.
(08:13):
She has the body of a fitnessmodel.
She has a master's degree orshe's getting a master's degree
in chemistry and she has a 4.0GPA.
She literally can do anythingshe puts her mind to.
She can take wood planks andbuild dresser you would buy from
(08:37):
a furniture store.
She remodeled the kitchen in ourhouse.
I'm talking ripped the wholething out, cabinets, sinks,
laying down tile.
We ripped out the bathroom ofour home and moved the toilet
from one spot to the other.
She re-plumbed the entire home.
(08:58):
She ran all the electricaloutlets.
She re-electrical the entirehome because the old electrical
wiring was bad and not, itwasn't up to code.
There were parts in the wirethat There were literally like
two pieces of wire connectedtogether, taped and falling
(09:19):
apart.
It was an old home that weeventually ended up living in.
She was super smart,intelligence-wise, and also very
attractive.
On paper, you would think, oh myGod, she's the perfect woman.
But there's more to this story.
After a little bit of dating,she comes to me one day and
(09:42):
says, ah, no.
I did it, Brandon.
I said, what?
She said, I finally told myhusband I want a divorce.
I'm moving out.
And I was like, what?
You told me when we met you weregoing through a divorce.
And she tried to backtrack andsay, that's not what she said.
But I know what she said.
And she told me she was goingthrough a divorce.
(10:04):
But I was so deep at this point.
I just was happy that she wasleaving him.
And then it was going to be asituation where Where we had a
real relationship.
This made me question things.
It made me question her honesty.
It made me question herintegrity.
So I asked her, am I the firstone that you've ever had an
(10:29):
affair with that you cheated onyour husband with?
And she told me, honestly, shesaid no.
And I learned she had otheraffairs and she had been with
other men.
And I was like, what's differentthis time?
And she was just like, I loveyou.
I want to be with you.
I never loved any of them.
I didn't want to be with any ofthem.
You, I want to be with.
(10:50):
I didn't have the balls to endit.
I could have, I should have, butI didn't because I was so
enamored by her beauty and whatshe was capable of as a person.
I was like, all right, let's seewhere this goes.
She ended up renting anapartment right across the hall
(11:11):
from my apartment.
I opened up the door, walkedfive feet.
There she was, her and her twokids.
That wasn't something she askedme if it was going to be okay.
That wasn't something wediscussed prior to that.
She just did it.
And it was just like, okay, I'mdoing this.
Deal with it.
(11:32):
And so...
I did.
Eventually she asked me to movein with her.
I took the difficult step ofbreaking it to my roommate,
Jeff, that I was going to moveout and move in with her.
He took it in stride, eventhough I know he probably didn't
love it.
I felt an obligation to thewoman I loved.
(11:54):
She was putting a lot ofpressure on me saying she can't
afford to be on her own with twokids and needed help.
She was really good to my son,Ethan.
And that was also a swayingfactor that led in her favor,
right?
Had she ignored Ethan or treatedhim like he was this burden to
(12:17):
her or whatever, that probablywould have really pushed me in a
different direction.
But she was so good to him.
She treated him and loved himlike he was her own son.
That makes anyone feel...
Like, oh, this is a good personthat I'm with despite the other
(12:38):
things that I know.
Over time, as you live togetherwith someone, you learn their
other quirks and personalityissues.
She was deeply insecure, which Ididn't know because she seemed
so confident when I just saw herat the gym.
She walked, she had pride, likeshe was just proud and
(13:01):
confident, but She wasn't.
She was deeply insecure.
She had high anxiety, very highanxiety, anxious all the time,
nervous energy all the time.
I could never feel like I couldrelax with her because she was
just so angst ridden and alwaysneeded to be moving around.
(13:23):
She was a workaholic.
She had things to her liking.
That made me feel like she's notthe right person for me.
As beautiful as she is, she'sjust not the right person for
me.
I don't know if I could evertrust her based on what I know
about her and the way thisrelationship started.
And eventually we moved out ofthe apartment and into a house
(13:46):
together.
That's where the things occurredthat I told you about ripping
out a kitchen and a bathroom andredoing an entire house.
She died.
literally looked online how doyou lay tile she could go lay
tile how do you change theelectrical wiring in a home boom
done how do you do the plumbingshe would watch a youtube video
(14:08):
one time and she just did it youhave to respect someone that has
that kind of skill and abilityhow can you not i couldn't do it
i still couldn't do it to thisday i don't believe i could
watch any video one time onsomething that significant and
just go do it.
But she did it.
(14:28):
But we had a lot of otherissues.
And one of our issues was how tohandle children.
I felt her kids were young andlike they were brats.
I felt like they got away withtoo much, the way they behave,
the way they acted out.
And she just didn't handle themwell.
And I wasn't allowed to handlethem, right?
Because they weren't my kids.
(14:49):
This was her job to take care ofthat stuff.
And we would fight about how totake care of kids.
We would fight about how to takecare of exes.
Her ex was still completely inlove with her, didn't want to
let her go, was inappropriately,for our relationship anyway,
contacting her and trying tomaintain some type of
(15:12):
relationship that was clearlyabove exes that had children
together.
And we would fight about allthese things.
She was very...
pigheaded and stubborn.
She knew she was intelligent.
She had a photographic memory.
She was smart.
And so that translated into allareas of life that she thought
(15:35):
she was always right.
You couldn't tell her anything.
She was always right.
And her point of view was theonly one that mattered.
I'm not the type of person youcan be that way with.
I look for compromise in arelationship.
Two people don't get together.
and just, boom, are on the samepage on everything.
(15:55):
It takes work, sometimes hardwork.
You have to be able to give inthe areas you can live with.
You have to be able to give andlive to fight another day.
And if it's an area you justcan't give and can't live with,
you have to draw a line.
That person has to meet youhalfway or on your side of the
(16:17):
line, depending on thesituation.
And vice versa, you have to bewilling to do that for your
partner.
You have to be willing to meetthem halfway or sometimes you go
to their side of the line.
It just depends on what thesituation is.
And she just had it like, nope,I'm right.
You're wrong.
I do things my way.
No one else is going to tell mehow to do it differently.
(16:39):
That literally the words thatshe said to me.
So it was falling apart.
It became toxic to some degreebecause she We just couldn't get
along relationship-wise, but theattraction was still there.
We were super attracted to eachother.
We were like two magnets, twoheavy-duty magnets that you're
(17:02):
trying to pull apart.
And as much as we tried, webroke up multiple times.
I moved out three or four timesfrom living with her.
We ended it multiple times.
We just couldn't break away fromeach other.
Finally, at one point, she gaveme an ultimatum.
(17:23):
She said, we either need to getmarried or end this.
And at that time, things weregood.
It was a brief time towards theend where we were doing well.
She threw this ultimatum on me.
You need to marry me or get out.
And I'm living back in the housewith her.
And I was like, I need to thinkabout that.
And she got upset by that,offended by that.
(17:46):
And so I tried to let it slideand let it pass.
And then about a week went byand she approached me again with
it.
She said, you either need tomarry me or you need to go get a
U-Haul and get out of my house.
And she was dead serious, right?
I could see it on her face.
And I was really in a pickle.
(18:07):
I knew I didn't want to marryher, at least not at that point
in time.
We had been together almost fiveyears, but I also knew I wasn't
ready to call it quits.
There's a part of me that feelslike I should turn back.
If I would have turned back timeand called her bluff, I gave in.
I married her and almostimmediately I regretted.
(18:32):
We went to a courthouse, gotmarried, and right away I saw a
shift in her attitude, a shiftin her personality.
She became much more domineeringand demanding, maybe a
workaholic, maybe doing her ownthing a lot.
And I didn't spend that muchtime with her and she just kind
of let me be, let me do mything.
But after we got married, shewas pushing me like, okay, you
(18:56):
need to get your careertogether.
You need to get your lifefinancially going because I'm
not going to put up with someonewho's not doing well financially
in life and And the truth is Ihad been struggling to get a
career and get a job going.
And I had shared all that withher and I thought she was on my
(19:18):
team.
But once she portrayed thispersonality and this attitude, I
was completely turned off.
I also always had in my mind, Idon't know if I can trust her.
I never felt like I could trusther.
I feel like if you have theability to cheat on someone
(19:39):
multiple times, what makes meany different?
I never thought I'm so specialshe'll never cheat on me.
No, I didn't think that at all.
I actually thought when thingsweren't going well, she would go
cheat on me, whatever she'slooking for in the arms of
another man.
And frankly, I never knew if thetimes that we broke up, if she
(20:02):
didn't.
Go do that and finance.
She says that she didn't, butwho knows, right?
So it leaves questions.
I knew this was just a disaster,the sinking ship that hasn't
sunk yet and I needed to getoff.
So I decided to move out andleave her for good.
(20:24):
One of the ways I decided to dothat was to join the military.
Hmm.
Because I knew if I lived in thesame area with her and the same
town with her, we would nevercompletely separate.
It just wasn't going to happen.
She, like I said, that pool,that magnetic pool, it was too
(20:46):
strong.
We were bad for each other.
We were never going to have agood relationship, but we also
didn't have the power to breakaway.
Neither one of us did.
I can't get a career going whereI'm currently living in Dayton,
Ohio.
I can't break away in thisrelationship.
And just nothing was going rightfor me there, except for the
(21:09):
fact, Ethan.
I loved Ethan.
I still spent a lot of time.
He had grown close to her kids,which was also a difficult part
of the equation.
Her son was close to his age.
They got along well and had arelationship.
I was going through in my mindwhat to do.
And frankly, it was my mom.
(21:30):
That tips me over the edge.
I was asking my friends andfamily, what would they do if
they were in my situation?
What should I do?
It was my mom that said, you andEthan, you have a strong bond.
It's going to break that.
You need to get your lifetogether.
If that means joining themilitary and doing what you need
(21:51):
to do to get your life together,then that's okay.
Do that.
You're always going to haveEthan.
He'll always be your son.
You'll always have that strongbond.
And I listened to that and Ibelieved that.
And so under that decision, Idecided, all right, I'm going to
(22:11):
go join the military.
I'm going to become an officerin the Air Force.
I'm going to get a secondarydegree.
And because this undergraduatemass communications degree is
awful.
It was a worthless degree,frankly, if you weren't going to
be on the news or be a reporteror something like that.
(22:32):
It was just a bad degree.
And I decided I was going tofollow the path of joining the
military.
Less than six months ofmarriage, I had moved out and I
was going to join the military.
I'm going to backtrack a littlebit.
I skipped over a lot.
I went from being in college totalking about a relationship,
(22:54):
marriage and divorce.
So I'll backtrack a little biton the next episode and I will
tell you some other things thatwere important, pertinent.
I'll talk to you next time.
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