Meet KENDA-RUTH STUMPF, Founder of The Hero's Spouse (part 1 of 2)

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Foreign.

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Hello friends and welcome. Midlife crisis,

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also known as mlc, is often dismissed as a cliche,

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but the reality is far more serious. During this period, individuals experience

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a profound psychological and emotional upheaval leading

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to impulsive and self destructive decisions that they later regret.

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Despite the clear signs of instability, MLCers are currently allowed to file

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for divorce and make irreversible financial and legal choices,

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often to the devastation of their long term spouses and families.

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Thank you for joining us today because now you are going to hear people from

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around the world as they tell their story in their own words about their

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bomb drops and beyond you.

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The stories and events discussed in this podcast

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are based on our guest experiences and are intended for informational

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and entertainment purposes only. They should not be considered legal,

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medical or professional advice. Any names, locations or

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identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.

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Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead or real events

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are purely coincidental. The views and opinions expressed by guests

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are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or the

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podcast creators. Listeners should consult with a qualified

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professional regarding their own circumstances.

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Hi listeners. Today I have the

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queen of mlc. This is Kenda Ruth Stump.

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She has gone. She's gone through midlife crisis with

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her husband Chuck. She was inspired to start

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a Facebook group which is now I believe to be the

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largest Facebook group for midlife crisis left

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behind spouses Forward, moving spouses MLCRs.

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It is phenomenal. She offers one on one coaching,

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she offers thrive membership group. She has quizzes on

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her one of her pages of where you can take the

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quiz for free and see if possibly your.

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Your spouse is in midlife crisis. She has the

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most resources I have seen anywhere.

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So I am so excited today to introduce you guys to Kenda.

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So. Hi Kenda, welcome. Hello Tina.

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So. So tell me when. Okay. So many

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years ago your husband, how did, how did Chuck's crisis start?

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So I never, I was never sure of what the trigger really was.

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But the Crisis was in 2005 so we are

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going way back in fact, bomb drop was

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one year ago and four days. I mean 20 years ago.

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Four days. I was gonna say. Wait, what? So 20 years

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and four days. I just realized that. Wow.

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Yeah. Yeah. So his crisis and did you

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see it coming? Did or was it. No, I didn't see it coming at

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all. And maybe I should have. You know we were never the

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perfect couple and we hadn't been together.

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We weren't one of those long term couples. I was young, I was

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32 and a half, he was 39 and a half. And we'd

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been married, I think we were married almost seven years at that

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point versus the average age of or

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length of marriages. I think I'd have to look at the statistics maybe about 17.

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The average age of bomb drop is 47,

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46 to 47 for both men and women. About.

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And so he was right at that. 39 and a half, approaching 40,

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which is common but still below the average. And me being

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not even 33 yet I was very young in the group so

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I was, I was just a baby. I mean we had people in the group

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that could have been my parents. So we weren't long term

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married, we didn't have kids yet, all of that. And I had struggled

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with employment because I was in the biotech industry which can be volatile.

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So we'd already had ups and downs going on. But we

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had a bomb drop and we were, we'd been discussing having kids and

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that we were going to wait until I had been at a job for

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a period of time because we wanted. And that was my,

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my goal as well. We wanted to be stable and I

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didn't want to start work and then just get pregnant. I didn't think that was

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feel that was fair to a job. And suddenly

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he said no, I don't want kids anymore. And for some reason

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must have been intuition, I just knew that that meant something more than it

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usually did. And a few days later I was discussing

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this with his brother's wife, my sister in law while he was telling his parents

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that everything was over. Yeah. And then when I came

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home he told me that and my sister went home to her husband and

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that's what he told her. And she says well that's not what we talked

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about. And I'm at home falling on the floor. Wow. That was

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how my memory of that was. So within I

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that week I went to the library and just checked out everything about infertility

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and 35 or pregnancy and, and having children after 35 because

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somehow I just knew something was real that, because that and that

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was my focus. So you. That's a little different. So it's not like

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to the library looking for. About divorce or midlife

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crisis or you were researching

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fertility. Yeah, I wanted to know. I knew that my

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marriage was in a crisis but it wasn't a midlife crisis thing yet. This is

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within the first 24, 48 hours.

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So it was. I know something's big and I

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know that we are no longer going to be trying to have a baby

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within a next year and I am almost

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33, and I know that they've said infertility

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hits 35, and you already

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know. And for those who don't, I was probably already infertile,

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so probably a coincidence. But we now have five adopted

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children, so I didn't know that at the time, but turns

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out, yeah, that was going to be a reality for my life.

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So I didn't find much. Within two weeks, I had

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found a divorce. I. I kind of crossed over to. And was also picking up

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marriage books and that sort of thing, and I found divorce

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busting. Chuck had probably said something about, oh, maybe it's just a midlife

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crisis.

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Yep. Yeah. The only husband I've ever heard of that says,

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well. I think it was a throwaway

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comment. And I've seen that said by some,

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but they're just trying to give you something to latch onto,

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but it's not. They don't mean it, even if it's

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real. And sometimes they might mean it, but they don't know that it's a subconscious

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comment. So when he said that, what did you think? I latched onto

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it enough that when I saw it in the book and what I

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did is I was flipping. What I would do with books typically is I flip

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through the chapters and see. I just look for what applies.

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Yeah. And I saw a chapter on midlife crisis and divorce busting,

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and I flipped straight to it and read that one. And I saw what I

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had been experiencing for the last. I was probably two weeks in, maybe three,

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and so not very long in. But I saw what I had been

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experiencing just in those few weeks. Mm. I was like, oh, my God,

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just right now, this is it. And so

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then I just pivoted completely to midlife crisis.

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And I saw that there was a website, a forum,

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a website and forum for divorce busting. And I went there,

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and she had several different groups in the forum,

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and I joined the midlife crisis group, and that was it

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for me. I was on that. I was in that group for years. For three

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or four years about. Yeah. Because this was back in 2005.

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This was in 2005. So I probably joined the

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divorce Boston group. April 2005.

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Wow. And so that was where I got

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started. And then I also had joined Jim Conway's

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group, and Jim Conway is the author of Men in Midlife

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Crisis, which back then we considered

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many, everywhere consider considered the bible of midlife crisis.

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Jim Conway was a minister, and so it was

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a very religious text, but it was one

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of the only main texts out there as well.

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So he. And he had a group, and it was a religious

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group as well, but they met live.

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And back then we didn't meet face to face. It was a chat,

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so we had to learn to do the chat. And it was a moderated chat.

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So a few times, I think it was twice a week, Jim was in the

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group, and other times he had a leader that would open

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the group and would moderate for him. But it was really great when Jim was

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in there because Jim would be there to answer our questions.

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Wow. Okay, that was very. How were you guys doing these,

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these in person chat? Was it like a. A zoom kind of thing? Was it

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video? So there was no video. It was just text.

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So it was just. Think about how you chat on Facebook.

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I think probably it was probably through. A forum kind of

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thing that he. Had set up, but he had. But he had a room.

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So it was just set up and you typed and it was

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back and forth. But because it was live. Yeah, like that.

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And he had, he had an assistant there because there were many

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questions that everybody asked. So he had some. I don't want to call them canned

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answers, but you asked this question. And so he had some answers that were

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always the same. And so he'd paste them in, which was really helpful because what

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that meant is I saved a lot of those. And I can say, here's what

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Jim Conway says about this and it's. And he's consistent

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on it then about certain things.

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And I, I had those saved. So I know what Jim. Jim's ideas about

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these things are, and that was really helpful. And Jim was very nice,

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very helpful. I liked him better than his moderators

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because he's the minister, but his moderators were a lot more fundamental

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on the standing than he himself was. Let me

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ask you, did Jim Conway personally have a midlife

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crisis? Yes, he did. And that's how he wrote the

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book. I think many of us would call what he had more transition,

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but that might not be fair. Also, I don't want to minimize his experience,

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but he never left home and he didn't have an affair.

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But Jim Conway did have an extremely traumatic

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childhood. And he would be an example of somebody

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who then overcame so much from

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what he had, was raised in, to kind of cross over the tracks

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to a different world. He was, he earned

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his PhD, so probably the first in his.

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In his family to go to college and then graduate

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school and then PhD, and he was the leader of probably

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what we would call a megachurch today, very large

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church. And he said his interest

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Back then had always been actually working with youth. But with his midlife crisis,

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he started to write about midlife crisis. He would be what

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we would probably call a low energy wallower. He never left home. His wife

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also wrote several midlife crisis books. I think they were doing that together.

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Sally wrote some. And so I had both of

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their books and they were very helpful.

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But it was really helpful to talk to Jim personally.

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What I found was the most helpful, more so than

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just talking to him. But Sally was the one who had some of the terms,

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such as, I have the terms about contact types,

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and I call them clinging boomerang, which is really a

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boomerang with a certain subset of it. But I have a boomerang.

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Wait, are you the creator of these terms? So I created these

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terms, boomerang, clinging, boomerang being a type. But boomerang,

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vanisher, off and on and vanisher. So those off and

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on, vanisher being a distant contact. Sally described them

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as drop in, droplet and dropouts.

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So drop in would be where a boomerang would go.

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Drop lit would be off and on. So that was like,

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well, droplet, you know, it didn't have a good

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definition. Went from the name and drop out.

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So I thought, I need definitions that seem more clear.

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And that is the same with Jim's stages. When Jim took

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his stages, he looked at Elizabeth Kubler Ross's stages of grief

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and dying and he applied those to midlife crisis.

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He used the same terms, with the exception

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of bargaining, which he called replay. And that

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is absolutely a good one. Replay is a great name for that.

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Then he added one which was,

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@ the end, we have acceptance. Right before that he

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added withdrawal. And I one time asked him,

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you know, what is this withdrawal and why? And I don't remember

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getting a very clear answer on that.

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I don't buy into that as another stage that should be in there.

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It's confusing. First thing, there's withdrawal all the

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time. Are we withdrawing from the alienator? What are

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we withdrawing from? And so I think telling people that there's this withdrawal

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is going to confuse them because they're looking for withdrawal and they're seeing different

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kinds of withdrawal. And so they see, oh, it's listed as a stage.

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My person is in the stage right before acceptance. They're almost

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out and that's not how it is. Right. And then I also

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took some of those stages and I found the names that Elisabeth Kubler

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Ross and therefore Jim used. It's not that they're not accurate, but I

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don't Think they're good names for the stages because

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they're names that are can be

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applied outside of the stages such as anger or especially depression.

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Stage four is called depression in

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Elizabeth Kubler Ross and then Jim Conwyn and

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midlife crisis is depression, all of it,

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whether it is hidden, masked, overt or

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covert depression or overt which is what we would consider what

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we think of when we see depression. So the depression

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stage is usually when you see them start to go into what we think of

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as depression. But some mlcers, a low energy wallower may

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appear that way the whole time. So I split

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the replay bargaining stage into

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00:14:43,174 --> 00:14:46,318
types, not stages and I call that stage

236
00:14:46,414 --> 00:14:49,742
liminality. And I split it into two

237
00:14:49,766 --> 00:14:53,390
types, a replayer type and replay stands for do

238
00:14:53,430 --> 00:14:57,262
over. Jim Conway said this is when they want to do everything over and

239
00:14:57,286 --> 00:15:00,648
they go to about age 17 but they may go to younger ages as well.

240
00:15:00,814 --> 00:15:04,228
And it's I'm trying to do over my life. So those

241
00:15:04,284 --> 00:15:08,532
ones are high energy. And then there's those who seem to be standard

242
00:15:08,596 --> 00:15:11,972
depression and they're lower energy even if they're seething

243
00:15:12,036 --> 00:15:15,876
with anger. But they kind of are low energy. And those

244
00:15:15,948 --> 00:15:19,300
ones are not. They don't always stay at home. But they're more

245
00:15:19,340 --> 00:15:22,692
likely than a high energy to stay at home or stay at home for a

246
00:15:22,716 --> 00:15:26,480
longer period of time before moving out. They are also

247
00:15:26,950 --> 00:15:30,350
everybody is more likely than not to have an affair.

248
00:15:30,510 --> 00:15:33,998
But the higher energy do have higher rates

249
00:15:34,014 --> 00:15:37,710
of affairs physical especially there

250
00:15:37,750 --> 00:15:41,662
you're gonna have a high energy. Can somebody be low energy wallower for like

251
00:15:41,686 --> 00:15:45,374
two or three years sort of covertly depressed

252
00:15:45,502 --> 00:15:48,862
and and then maybe hit limerence and become a

253
00:15:48,886 --> 00:15:53,160
high energy replayer. Is that what you call it? You probably

254
00:15:53,240 --> 00:15:56,584
could but usually what you'll see is you'll

255
00:15:56,632 --> 00:16:00,360
see them be one type other

256
00:16:00,400 --> 00:16:04,280
than that in the beginning you will see the

257
00:16:04,320 --> 00:16:07,864
low energy wallowers want to be high energy. They try to

258
00:16:07,872 --> 00:16:11,208
be because the high energy is the where it's fun. I call the high energy

259
00:16:11,264 --> 00:16:15,240
replayers. They're the bachelor party ones. They are the frat boys or

260
00:16:15,280 --> 00:16:18,936
girls and that is the fun lifestyle. That is you're

261
00:16:18,968 --> 00:16:22,760
trying to avoid the low energy, the depression

262
00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:26,808
and you're still depressed. But you're avoiding what we, what we

263
00:16:26,944 --> 00:16:29,420
see as depression, the melancholy.

264
00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:32,888
And so who doesn't want to go out there and have fun?

265
00:16:33,024 --> 00:16:36,744
That's the high energy affair. That's the addictions

266
00:16:36,792 --> 00:16:40,440
that you see out there, the high party lifestyle. And so

267
00:16:40,480 --> 00:16:43,688
a low energy person will try that and they fail at it

268
00:16:43,824 --> 00:16:46,792
maybe it's just that they're not good at it. Maybe addictions don't do it for

269
00:16:46,816 --> 00:16:50,202
them. Maybe they're not, they're not really into drinking. It just

270
00:16:50,226 --> 00:16:54,074
doesn't take for them. Maybe they didn't find an affair partner

271
00:16:54,202 --> 00:16:57,642
that worked. Maybe nobody. Maybe they just got rejected

272
00:16:57,786 --> 00:17:00,202
and they just didn't find the right person. Maybe they just weren't lucky at it.

273
00:17:00,226 --> 00:17:04,026
But oftentimes it is part of their temperament that they were.

274
00:17:04,098 --> 00:17:07,162
They were always going to be a low energy wallower. And so you might see

275
00:17:07,186 --> 00:17:10,682
them try that for several weeks, even a few months, but they

276
00:17:10,706 --> 00:17:14,252
will fall back into their low energy pattern and stick more toward that.

277
00:17:14,426 --> 00:17:18,168
They may even leave and come home and just wallow at home

278
00:17:18,304 --> 00:17:22,136
if they don't fall into their own apartment and low energy.

279
00:17:22,288 --> 00:17:26,420
And that low energy could just be seething angrily, but it's low.

280
00:17:26,720 --> 00:17:30,232
And they may maintain that. Now limerence can bring

281
00:17:30,336 --> 00:17:33,624
somebody into a higher energy. Yes. It doesn't mean that. That it will.

282
00:17:33,792 --> 00:17:37,160
But limerence can also mimic replay or

283
00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:40,936
limerence. So limerence, somebody who isn't really in a midlife crisis

284
00:17:40,968 --> 00:17:44,652
could be. Could seem to be in a midlife crisis of limerence or you

285
00:17:44,676 --> 00:17:47,804
can that somebody who is close to it. You could be tipped into a

286
00:17:47,812 --> 00:17:51,596
midlife crisis for there if

287
00:17:51,668 --> 00:17:55,628
you'd. You'd have to have the other pieces ready in the Perfect Storm,

288
00:17:55,804 --> 00:17:59,132
but that can do it. So maybe you were going to have a. What if

289
00:17:59,156 --> 00:18:02,444
you were going to have a midlife crisis at 46 but all the right pieces

290
00:18:02,492 --> 00:18:06,492
and a limerence came along at 41 that could

291
00:18:06,516 --> 00:18:09,862
do it. Yeah, but you have to have the. Right background at

292
00:18:09,886 --> 00:18:14,022
that as well in your situation. Your husband left,

293
00:18:14,126 --> 00:18:17,890
came back. Left, came back several times.

294
00:18:19,230 --> 00:18:23,158
Eight. Eight. So there were eight times.

295
00:18:23,294 --> 00:18:27,062
But I don't want people to get scared about that. I was very picky about

296
00:18:27,086 --> 00:18:30,950
counting each little time. So there were some big and

297
00:18:30,990 --> 00:18:33,948
there were some little ones where he tested. And I just,

298
00:18:34,134 --> 00:18:38,096
I counted each one of those as a tick of yes, came back.

299
00:18:38,248 --> 00:18:41,776
And I did that for a few reasons. Number one, I want people

300
00:18:41,848 --> 00:18:46,224
to understand the crazy and I want to be authentic with that.

301
00:18:46,392 --> 00:18:50,080
I want you to see what it really was. So there

302
00:18:50,120 --> 00:18:53,312
was a time where he came home and I

303
00:18:53,336 --> 00:18:57,200
am pretty sure he came home with the absolute purpose of testing so

304
00:18:57,240 --> 00:19:00,522
that he was hard working. I don't even know. No,

305
00:19:00,546 --> 00:19:03,354
I don't think it would be anchor checking because that's checking on.

306
00:19:03,442 --> 00:19:06,830
Hey, where are you? How are you doing? What was the testing?

307
00:19:08,050 --> 00:19:11,114
Testing to see how Much he could get away with before he. Oh, oh.

308
00:19:11,162 --> 00:19:15,194
He could have even done it in. Yeah. Testing rather than checking.

309
00:19:15,322 --> 00:19:18,954
Right, right. So in other words, he didn't really have

310
00:19:19,122 --> 00:19:21,390
any. True.

311
00:19:22,370 --> 00:19:25,610
He wasn't really trying to come home on that

312
00:19:25,650 --> 00:19:28,410
time. And I don't know that for sure. I have, I didn't ever ask him.

313
00:19:28,530 --> 00:19:32,042
But he came home on that weekend right after that. So he probably came

314
00:19:32,066 --> 00:19:34,922
home on a Monday. I don't know if it was Friday or Monday. But the

315
00:19:34,946 --> 00:19:38,794
weekend right after that we went to a regular vacation

316
00:19:38,842 --> 00:19:42,074
spot. We went to Leavenworth. We stayed in a motel there

317
00:19:42,242 --> 00:19:45,818
for the weekend and it was awful.

318
00:19:45,994 --> 00:19:49,418
On the way there he was while we're driving,

319
00:19:49,514 --> 00:19:52,718
he got out to get gas and he was either calling or

320
00:19:52,774 --> 00:19:55,902
texting her. I can't remember what I did with that

321
00:19:55,926 --> 00:19:58,142
one. Was that when I got out of the car or was that another time?

322
00:19:58,166 --> 00:20:02,222
I sometimes get the, each incident mixed up, but he

323
00:20:02,246 --> 00:20:05,934
was basically through this, through, through this

324
00:20:06,022 --> 00:20:09,342
weekend, poking at me to see how far he could take

325
00:20:09,366 --> 00:20:13,198
it. And so on this occasion

326
00:20:13,374 --> 00:20:17,454
I told him, you need to leave when we get home. And there

327
00:20:17,542 --> 00:20:21,086
are two occasions where I say I kicked him out. I have

328
00:20:21,158 --> 00:20:24,094
had to revise that to say too because in the past I said there's one

329
00:20:24,102 --> 00:20:27,342
occasion where I kicked him out, but really this is the second one.

330
00:20:27,446 --> 00:20:30,622
This is actually the first one that happened because this time

331
00:20:30,646 --> 00:20:33,822
I said, you need to leave when you get home. The second one

332
00:20:33,846 --> 00:20:37,310
is several years later in the future where I actually packed his

333
00:20:37,350 --> 00:20:41,086
bags, greeted him at the door and so it was

334
00:20:41,158 --> 00:20:44,382
more obvious of a kicking out. But this, this one,

335
00:20:44,566 --> 00:20:47,966
I, I had him do it when we get home,

336
00:20:48,118 --> 00:20:51,582
you need to leave. And he did. So I didn't need to

337
00:20:51,606 --> 00:20:55,118
do a push, I didn't need to get his bags. From my

338
00:20:55,174 --> 00:20:58,798
memory of this, he did it, but it was kind of his

339
00:20:58,854 --> 00:21:02,142
purpose. He was trying to drive me to do

340
00:21:02,166 --> 00:21:05,342
it. And there were other times when he was already living at home where

341
00:21:05,366 --> 00:21:08,590
he would try to get me there, but it was

342
00:21:08,630 --> 00:21:12,498
clear he was ramping up to leave again. And the whole point

343
00:21:12,554 --> 00:21:16,402
was that he needed to make the decision. But on this particular weekend he had

344
00:21:16,426 --> 00:21:19,730
just gotten home and since the whole reason was to see what

345
00:21:19,770 --> 00:21:23,150
he could get away with, I wasn't gonna let him get away with it.

346
00:21:23,530 --> 00:21:26,562
On those other times I discovered he was about a 3 monther.

347
00:21:26,706 --> 00:21:30,530
After about 3 months he either wanted to come home or

348
00:21:30,570 --> 00:21:34,050
he would go try and leave. And that could have been the energy dynamics with

349
00:21:34,090 --> 00:21:37,612
her or just his own. But probably between the two

350
00:21:37,636 --> 00:21:40,940
of them as well. So he would

351
00:21:40,980 --> 00:21:43,772
come home and then after about three months,

352
00:21:43,956 --> 00:21:46,092
it might be a little less than three months, you'd start to feel it,

353
00:21:46,116 --> 00:21:49,804
maybe the energy would ramp up more and more and more and

354
00:21:49,892 --> 00:21:53,436
he would start taunting. And you could tell she was

355
00:21:53,588 --> 00:21:57,388
really trying to get him to leave. So I'm sure

356
00:21:57,524 --> 00:22:01,320
his taunting was probably based on her emotional blackmail of him.

357
00:22:01,950 --> 00:22:06,294
And my job at that point was to get

358
00:22:06,382 --> 00:22:09,590
him to make his own decisions and to be

359
00:22:09,630 --> 00:22:13,302
detached and to be strong. And if he

360
00:22:13,326 --> 00:22:16,690
didn't ever leave, if he were to stay and stay and stay and stay,

361
00:22:16,990 --> 00:22:20,950
then things would have been different. If he were to stay and, say, insist on

362
00:22:20,990 --> 00:22:24,742
staying and, well, I can just do whatever I want,

363
00:22:24,926 --> 00:22:28,352
then that would change the dynamics. But. But he would try to hide things.

364
00:22:28,376 --> 00:22:32,048
And, yes, I know what he was doing. And if I found

365
00:22:32,104 --> 00:22:35,968
things. So I found paperwork for her daughter,

366
00:22:36,144 --> 00:22:39,440
who was. Who had been in drug rehab and some different incidents

367
00:22:39,520 --> 00:22:43,056
in jail, or she was a stripper at a local

368
00:22:43,128 --> 00:22:46,864
strip club. And so one day he left her court paperwork

369
00:22:46,912 --> 00:22:51,060
on the table. That sort of. So it was very obvious.

370
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:54,932
And one day he left his phone open. It was not open to

371
00:22:54,956 --> 00:22:58,836
anything, not a big deal. But I think there was one kind of innocuous

372
00:22:58,868 --> 00:23:02,000
message, but I think she was on it or her daughter was on it.

373
00:23:02,540 --> 00:23:06,116
So he was just leaving tiny clues around, hey, what's this?

374
00:23:06,188 --> 00:23:09,796
What's this? But those are just in the last week or two before

375
00:23:09,868 --> 00:23:13,380
he was going to leave anyway. And so it

376
00:23:13,420 --> 00:23:16,640
was, am I going to do the dirty work or are you?

377
00:23:17,260 --> 00:23:21,132
And at that point, I made a choice that

378
00:23:21,316 --> 00:23:25,004
because he was doing it to get me to do the dirty

379
00:23:25,052 --> 00:23:28,492
work, I was leaving it for him. Now, if he hadn't been

380
00:23:28,516 --> 00:23:32,172
doing it for that reason, There are some MLCers out there who are

381
00:23:32,196 --> 00:23:35,660
just like, yeah, I can do whatever I want. I'm not leaving. They aren't doing

382
00:23:35,700 --> 00:23:39,260
it for you to do the dirty work. That's different. But he was very

383
00:23:39,300 --> 00:23:42,684
adamant about. It was like, I want you to make the

384
00:23:42,692 --> 00:23:46,092
decision for me, or I want one of you to make

385
00:23:46,116 --> 00:23:49,056
the decision for me. And I said, well, I think we've both made that.

386
00:23:49,128 --> 00:23:51,952
I think we both have. You need to be a man and make your own

387
00:23:51,976 --> 00:23:55,632
choices. And it's a really

388
00:23:55,736 --> 00:23:59,248
hard thing to do when you're trying to figure

389
00:23:59,264 --> 00:24:02,640
out what you should do yourself and then help others what they should do.

390
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:06,720
Because it's not always the same. It's not even the

391
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:10,368
same in your own situation. Six months in the future,

392
00:24:10,504 --> 00:24:14,048
Right. You know, there might be a six months in the future where he is

393
00:24:14,104 --> 00:24:16,574
trying to say, I can do whatever I want and I'm not leaving. And I

394
00:24:16,582 --> 00:24:19,822
will say, okay, then you are out, and I

395
00:24:19,846 --> 00:24:23,358
will. And so it's not always a do as I say, not as I do

396
00:24:23,414 --> 00:24:27,022
situation, but I have had to struggle with that

397
00:24:27,126 --> 00:24:30,670
myself. Is when I'm helping other people, am I

398
00:24:30,710 --> 00:24:33,774
doing what I'm advising? And I know then that I have

399
00:24:33,782 --> 00:24:37,470
to look at each situation. And I'm sure there are many times

400
00:24:37,510 --> 00:24:41,006
in my own situation where I wasn't doing the best thing

401
00:24:41,158 --> 00:24:44,342
that I. If I'd been advising myself, I wasn't following the

402
00:24:44,366 --> 00:24:47,290
advice. It's hard. It's hard to do that for yourself.

403
00:24:47,950 --> 00:24:51,238
It really is. And so there I messed up a whole bunch.

404
00:24:51,334 --> 00:24:54,902
Just as we all are going to mess up. And in midlife crisis, especially with

405
00:24:54,926 --> 00:24:57,878
a clinging boomerang, you can mess up.

406
00:24:58,014 --> 00:25:01,414
And it's kind of like a trampoline. You just. You just bounce

407
00:25:01,462 --> 00:25:04,710
through it. And what a clinging boomerang is, is your

408
00:25:04,750 --> 00:25:08,182
mlseer needs reassurance from you. They are

409
00:25:08,206 --> 00:25:12,256
very attached to you and they don't

410
00:25:12,288 --> 00:25:16,656
really want out of the relationship. They may want to poke at you,

411
00:25:16,808 --> 00:25:19,260
but they don't want to lose you.

412
00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:23,552
And they want reassurance that you are going to be there.

413
00:25:23,736 --> 00:25:26,928
And you have to be careful with that, because how much codependence is that?

414
00:25:27,064 --> 00:25:30,220
And if you are not a strong person, if you are a codependent person,

415
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:33,920
I am very concerned about somebody who is

416
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:37,686
codependent and standing because they need to get

417
00:25:37,758 --> 00:25:41,366
independent, learn independence, and then interdependence

418
00:25:41,478 --> 00:25:45,542
independence, interdependence later. Because codependence and standing is

419
00:25:45,566 --> 00:25:49,526
not a good combination because that would be a recipe for later continuing

420
00:25:49,558 --> 00:25:53,410
codependence and abuse. And so you need to be able to

421
00:25:53,790 --> 00:25:56,290
set boundaries, be strong,

422
00:25:56,750 --> 00:26:00,864
know who you are in yourself, and then you can choose that

423
00:26:00,982 --> 00:26:04,520
standing and go forward with it from there.

424
00:26:04,820 --> 00:26:08,316
And what I told him a few things were.

425
00:26:08,468 --> 00:26:11,132
And I had to get to this place. When he got reassured,

426
00:26:11,276 --> 00:26:14,908
he wanted me to believe in him. And once he knew that I was standing,

427
00:26:15,004 --> 00:26:18,012
it took a few years and that I was not going to give up on

428
00:26:18,036 --> 00:26:20,860
him and that I was not going to file for divorce.

429
00:26:21,020 --> 00:26:24,828
And he did file, and that was done quickly. He unfiled

430
00:26:24,924 --> 00:26:27,898
with my agreement. We signed that away. That was out of the picture.

431
00:26:28,004 --> 00:26:32,366
No more lawyers involved. Within the first few months was

432
00:26:32,438 --> 00:26:35,374
I said, as long as you're. And this is near the end, as long as

433
00:26:35,382 --> 00:26:39,102
you're being an inappropriate spouse. We will not have a relationship.

434
00:26:39,166 --> 00:26:41,610
You cannot. We're going to go. No contact.

435
00:26:42,070 --> 00:26:45,902
And that was my strong. No contact. And that was when

436
00:26:45,926 --> 00:26:49,150
he was not. Well, I. It wasn't quite when he was not living at home.

437
00:26:49,270 --> 00:26:52,862
It was his warning or what I told him, this is

438
00:26:52,886 --> 00:26:56,222
what is going to happen when you leave again. And it was not

439
00:26:56,246 --> 00:26:59,502
an if we both knew, because we can tell. You can tell

440
00:26:59,526 --> 00:27:03,182
where the trend lines are going or the writing on the wall that he

441
00:27:03,206 --> 00:27:06,846
was going to leave again. The alienator was ramping

442
00:27:06,878 --> 00:27:10,170
up her energy to get him out. And he was doing it.

443
00:27:10,470 --> 00:27:13,758
And you could see it from him that he. He wants to leave

444
00:27:13,774 --> 00:27:16,250
and he doesn't want to leave, and he wants to, and he doesn't want to.

445
00:27:16,630 --> 00:27:20,374
And so I just told him, okay, well, when that happens,

446
00:27:20,542 --> 00:27:23,782
as long as you're being an appropriate, inappropriate spouse. And I don't know if I

447
00:27:23,806 --> 00:27:27,654
actually used that term with him, but it's the easiest clinical,

448
00:27:27,702 --> 00:27:31,222
generic term I can say for globally. But as long

449
00:27:31,246 --> 00:27:34,854
as she is in your life, and that means everybody that has been an influence

450
00:27:34,982 --> 00:27:38,662
for pulling you away, that is not a friend of the marriage. And that

451
00:27:38,686 --> 00:27:42,774
meant her family, even though her family themselves weren't inappropriate. But any

452
00:27:42,862 --> 00:27:46,154
people who had instigated the affair, anyone like that, as long

453
00:27:46,162 --> 00:27:49,322
as those people are in your life, you are not allowed to have me

454
00:27:49,346 --> 00:27:52,602
in your life. That. And I told him, that does not mean that I will

455
00:27:52,626 --> 00:27:55,994
divorce you. But that does mean what our. One of the counselors

456
00:27:56,042 --> 00:27:59,514
we had spoken with the year before that had said is, yeah,

457
00:27:59,562 --> 00:28:02,938
that does mean emotional divorce. There is an emotional divorce

458
00:28:03,034 --> 00:28:06,650
that means people can live without the paper that says

459
00:28:06,690 --> 00:28:10,826
you're divorced legally. For years there have been people that are split

460
00:28:10,858 --> 00:28:14,534
up. They even have other partners for 30 years. Just like emotional affair,

461
00:28:14,662 --> 00:28:17,270
emotional divorce. Yep. And I said,

462
00:28:17,310 --> 00:28:20,406
so your life. So the bomb

463
00:28:20,438 --> 00:28:24,262
drop was April 2005. Do you recall what year this was?

464
00:28:24,446 --> 00:28:27,290
So March 20, 2005, was the bomb drop.

465
00:28:28,110 --> 00:28:32,102
So this was 2008 in

466
00:28:32,126 --> 00:28:36,118
the summer. Wow. When I gave that hard

467
00:28:36,174 --> 00:28:39,118
boundary. So three years later.

468
00:28:39,294 --> 00:28:43,646
Yes. It took me a long time to get to that hard boundary

469
00:28:43,758 --> 00:28:47,710
of absolute reassurance. I think it was around the spring when

470
00:28:47,750 --> 00:28:51,406
he came up with what I realized was your height of. Your height

471
00:28:51,438 --> 00:28:54,974
of cake eating. The height of cake eating is

472
00:28:55,062 --> 00:28:57,998
when he said, well, you know what? I know you're going to be there,

473
00:28:58,134 --> 00:29:01,454
because I can just. And I don't know which order it was.

474
00:29:01,542 --> 00:29:04,958
I can leave you in the morning, and then at night I'll

475
00:29:04,974 --> 00:29:08,142
change my. My mind and leave her, or it was her in the morning and

476
00:29:08,166 --> 00:29:11,678
me, but because he knew I was never going to leave

477
00:29:11,694 --> 00:29:15,166
and never going to divorce him. And that's

478
00:29:15,198 --> 00:29:18,862
when I realized, okay, well, that's when he could come

479
00:29:18,886 --> 00:29:21,650
home if he were to do that and say, I don't have to leave.

480
00:29:22,390 --> 00:29:25,598
So that's when I knew I have to do that hard boundary.

481
00:29:25,774 --> 00:29:28,894
And it takes me a while to figure out how to apply it, what words

482
00:29:28,942 --> 00:29:32,382
to use. And he's home. So it's the next time when

483
00:29:32,406 --> 00:29:36,538
you leave. And so as he was preparing to leave, and by

484
00:29:36,594 --> 00:29:40,042
preparing, I don't mean he's out there packing his bags, but as

485
00:29:40,066 --> 00:29:43,530
you can feel, it's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And during this time,

486
00:29:43,570 --> 00:29:47,510
were you still doing the. The Jim Conway stuff or any other?

487
00:29:48,370 --> 00:29:52,762
So I hadn't been on Jim Conway's site quite as much. I might occasionally

488
00:29:52,826 --> 00:29:56,586
drop in. So I'd

489
00:29:56,618 --> 00:30:00,990
been there through that time. I'd been there through 2007. And he was home for

490
00:30:01,030 --> 00:30:04,830
an entire year of. The entire year of 2007, he was

491
00:30:04,870 --> 00:30:08,254
home. And at

492
00:30:08,262 --> 00:30:11,758
that point, and during that time, I knew that this did not mean midlife

493
00:30:11,774 --> 00:30:15,198
crisis over. This did not mean reconciliation. I just knew I had

494
00:30:15,254 --> 00:30:19,570
an MLCR who was now at home and had taken his affair underground.

495
00:30:19,910 --> 00:30:22,958
So 2008 came along is when I. I don't

496
00:30:22,974 --> 00:30:26,446
want to say ramped back up, but what eventually happened,

497
00:30:26,478 --> 00:30:29,966
and I know we're kind of going back and forth in this timeline, what,

498
00:30:30,038 --> 00:30:33,982
what happened was his mom, she had heart problems, and the

499
00:30:34,006 --> 00:30:37,454
alienator was a certified nursing assistant,

500
00:30:37,582 --> 00:30:41,230
and she had originally worked at a retirement home with him and

501
00:30:41,270 --> 00:30:45,358
gotten fired very quickly. And now she'd gotten a job at the hospital, and turns

502
00:30:45,374 --> 00:30:49,070
out she worked on the same wing or ward as

503
00:30:49,190 --> 00:30:53,170
the cardiac ward where his mom was now a patient.

504
00:30:53,580 --> 00:30:57,140
And that meant that he went to see his mom, and he was now able

505
00:30:57,180 --> 00:31:00,148
to tell me, hey, I saw today.

506
00:31:00,284 --> 00:31:03,680
Whereas he'd taken his affair underground. So he's hiding that.

507
00:31:03,980 --> 00:31:07,172
But if you see your mom, you're allowed. I'm not

508
00:31:07,196 --> 00:31:10,388
going to say you can't go see your mom. That would be so

509
00:31:10,444 --> 00:31:13,716
wrong of me. And so he has a reason to publicly

510
00:31:13,748 --> 00:31:18,000
tell me he has seen the Alienator. And this is January of 2008.

511
00:31:18,300 --> 00:31:21,780
And so from that point on, her energy ramps up.

512
00:31:21,900 --> 00:31:25,520
And by point on, it's only like two or three weeks. It was

513
00:31:25,900 --> 00:31:29,572
the end of first week of February. Was it something like

514
00:31:29,596 --> 00:31:31,492
that? Unless it was the first week of March, I'd have to look at.

515
00:31:31,516 --> 00:31:34,916
No, my notes. I watched

516
00:31:34,948 --> 00:31:38,276
him leave one day for work, and he pulled out a cell phone.

517
00:31:38,468 --> 00:31:41,812
He was not allowed to have a cell phone anymore. That was the agreement

518
00:31:41,876 --> 00:31:46,198
when he came home. He came home in January of 2,

519
00:31:46,339 --> 00:31:49,726
2007. He. The agreement was, as soon as your

520
00:31:49,798 --> 00:31:52,926
cell phone plan was up, no more cell phone.

521
00:31:52,958 --> 00:31:56,814
You are to get rid of it completely. We'd tried switching phones,

522
00:31:56,942 --> 00:32:00,974
switching numbers, none of that. Nope, no cell phone at all.

523
00:32:01,062 --> 00:32:04,286
And his phone plan was up in April, So we agreed

524
00:32:04,318 --> 00:32:06,942
to wait that long. Cause he wasn't going to. He wasn't going to budge on

525
00:32:06,966 --> 00:32:10,910
that piece. But so April of 2007,

526
00:32:10,950 --> 00:32:13,828
his phone plan was up. So he had no phone from then. Well, it turns

527
00:32:13,844 --> 00:32:17,412
out, gave him a phone. And so he hid it for that from April or

528
00:32:17,436 --> 00:32:21,316
May of 2007 until now. January to January,

529
00:32:21,388 --> 00:32:24,340
February of 2008. So I saw him get in his car,

530
00:32:24,380 --> 00:32:27,524
where he had always hidden his phone in his bag, pick it up. And so

531
00:32:27,532 --> 00:32:30,692
I knew immediately what's going on if he has a phone, because there's only one

532
00:32:30,716 --> 00:32:34,836
reason for him to have a phone. Right? So don't

533
00:32:34,868 --> 00:32:39,060
do this. I. It took me a few minutes, so I wasn't

534
00:32:39,140 --> 00:32:42,212
right behind him tailgating him. But I got in the car and followed him to

535
00:32:42,236 --> 00:32:45,396
work, where I confronted. I really wanted

536
00:32:45,428 --> 00:32:48,724
to confront him loudly, but. And I just

537
00:32:48,812 --> 00:32:51,892
said, I know you have a phone. And I hounded him at work before he

538
00:32:51,916 --> 00:32:54,400
started, until he caved. No.

539
00:32:54,780 --> 00:32:58,420
And after that, I knew what

540
00:32:58,460 --> 00:33:01,092
I had told him before and that what I said was, if you're with her

541
00:33:01,116 --> 00:33:04,212
again, you are not allowed to live at home. You'll have to leave, and you

542
00:33:04,236 --> 00:33:07,572
have to leave immediately. So. But I was

543
00:33:07,596 --> 00:33:11,402
still scared. This is a Saturday. I got an appointment with

544
00:33:11,426 --> 00:33:15,514
one of my mentors, and I think I wasn't able to see her until Sunday.

545
00:33:15,682 --> 00:33:18,794
It was. That was the emergency appointment. I was like, I gotta talk to you.

546
00:33:18,802 --> 00:33:21,482
I gotta talk to you. And so Sunday I talked to her, and she's like,

547
00:33:21,506 --> 00:33:23,242
yeah, you know what you're supposed to do? You're supposed to kick him out.

548
00:33:23,266 --> 00:33:27,050
I'm like, okay, darn. So on

549
00:33:27,090 --> 00:33:30,986
Sunday, he had me bring him a battery for his motorcycle

550
00:33:31,018 --> 00:33:35,348
or something to Costco. He thought everything was fine. I had his bags packed,

551
00:33:35,524 --> 00:33:39,012
and when he got home, he came in our back door through

552
00:33:39,036 --> 00:33:42,052
a back alley, And I escorted. Literally, I had the bags in

553
00:33:42,076 --> 00:33:45,460
his or whatever car, and I escorted him through

554
00:33:45,500 --> 00:33:48,916
the house through one door and out the next. It feels

555
00:33:48,948 --> 00:33:52,520
horrible, and you feel bad, and at the same time, you feel very empowered.

556
00:33:52,860 --> 00:33:56,560
You feel both in and out

557
00:33:56,940 --> 00:34:01,016
and with the, you know, you're being inappropriate and you know the rules

558
00:34:01,188 --> 00:34:04,640
here. And you do that knowing. I did

559
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,020
that, Knowing exactly where he was going to be.

560
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:11,520
Yes, it is her house. It's almost always her house.

561
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:15,232
Years later, and perhaps only a few years ago, he did tell me that he

562
00:34:15,256 --> 00:34:18,672
spent one night during one of these times. I don't know when, at his friend

563
00:34:18,696 --> 00:34:21,580
Scott's house. So tell me where we were, though.

564
00:34:26,370 --> 00:34:30,234
Well, and it wasn't. It was a. An absolute requirement that he

565
00:34:30,242 --> 00:34:33,450
leave. We'd agreed on this a year before. He was home

566
00:34:33,490 --> 00:34:36,682
for a year and three weeks about. And this

567
00:34:36,706 --> 00:34:39,930
was one of the rules upon that. That supposed to.

568
00:34:39,970 --> 00:34:43,390
Again, unless you just do her, like seeing her, because you're.

569
00:34:44,050 --> 00:34:47,434
Yeah, no, absolutely not. You have to

570
00:34:47,442 --> 00:34:50,714
leave. My mentor even said, you should have his bed

571
00:34:50,762 --> 00:34:52,954
sitting by the front door as a reminder. And I said, I'm not going to

572
00:34:52,962 --> 00:34:55,602
go that far because you don't want that hanging over your head for your rest

573
00:34:55,626 --> 00:34:59,150
of your relationship. Yeah, So I did that.

574
00:34:59,530 --> 00:35:02,562
But I had his bags packed and he walked out.

575
00:35:02,746 --> 00:35:06,258
And like I said, you do that knowing that he's going to go straight

576
00:35:06,274 --> 00:35:09,138
to her house. Unless that was the time he spent one night at Scott's.

577
00:35:09,154 --> 00:35:11,122
But if he spent one night there, he. The next night he was at her

578
00:35:11,146 --> 00:35:15,490
house. You just have to have the confidence

579
00:35:15,570 --> 00:35:19,330
or assurance that if

580
00:35:19,370 --> 00:35:22,710
you are standing and that's what you want at that point,

581
00:35:23,490 --> 00:35:27,210
this is a clinging boomerang. He. He's gonna be there. That that

582
00:35:27,250 --> 00:35:30,922
relationship with her was toxic. She was most likely a

583
00:35:30,946 --> 00:35:34,554
borderline personality with several of the things she had done

584
00:35:34,722 --> 00:35:37,830
through and to us and to herself through this.

585
00:35:38,530 --> 00:35:42,090
And Ken, did he realize that she was toxic and did he

586
00:35:42,130 --> 00:35:45,066
realize. Did Chuck realize going through a midlife crisis and.

587
00:35:45,218 --> 00:35:48,628
Yeah, so he did. I think so.

588
00:35:48,684 --> 00:35:52,400
Yeah. I think he realized these things because of who I was.

589
00:35:54,060 --> 00:35:57,428
So in the beginning, we did the midlife crisis. He said that thing.

590
00:35:57,564 --> 00:36:01,268
I got the books and he saw them, and I said, hey,

591
00:36:01,284 --> 00:36:04,308
if you want to read them, they're here. But I didn't push that. But knew

592
00:36:04,324 --> 00:36:08,084
about them. They weren't a secret. I don't

593
00:36:08,212 --> 00:36:11,608
like people going and talking to their spouses about it,

594
00:36:11,724 --> 00:36:15,232
especially if they haven't said anything to you, they will

595
00:36:15,256 --> 00:36:18,176
then say, oh, you know what? I just said that to get, you know,

596
00:36:18,248 --> 00:36:21,744
because I thought that would get you, you know, off my back. Or, you know

597
00:36:21,752 --> 00:36:24,464
what? I changed my mind. You know, it's not really that or one of the

598
00:36:24,472 --> 00:36:28,064
common ones. I can see how you think that people want to

599
00:36:28,072 --> 00:36:30,912
bring the evidence. Look at, you know, all of these things you're doing. I can

600
00:36:30,936 --> 00:36:33,760
see how you would think that, but it looks like it, but it's not really

601
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:37,696
that. So do not bring the evidence.

602
00:36:37,808 --> 00:36:41,340
Especially if they didn't bring it to you first. But even if they did,

603
00:36:42,460 --> 00:36:45,668
if they bring it to you later on and say,

604
00:36:45,724 --> 00:36:48,964
hey, can you tell me about this? And they seem authentic. It's not a

605
00:36:48,972 --> 00:36:52,400
manipulative ploy to trick you. Yeah, go ahead.

606
00:36:52,700 --> 00:36:56,052
But even then tread carefully because

607
00:36:56,076 --> 00:37:00,244
it. Could be a push if you start. Exactly. And tread

608
00:37:00,292 --> 00:37:03,412
carefully because maybe it's fine in the beginning, but where does it turn? Where does

609
00:37:03,436 --> 00:37:07,092
that conversation go? So he knew all

610
00:37:07,116 --> 00:37:10,778
the time. He knew about divorce. Spouse. People don't know about my forum

611
00:37:10,874 --> 00:37:14,426
that the spouse doesn't know. They don't know about my Facebook page,

612
00:37:14,458 --> 00:37:17,562
which is good. It's meant to be private. Sure. And I don't want.

613
00:37:17,746 --> 00:37:20,990
Did he see the toxicity in his little pee?

614
00:37:21,410 --> 00:37:24,746
Oh, absolutely. He saw the toxicity

615
00:37:24,778 --> 00:37:28,042
on her. And some. Doesn't matter if you were in limerence for someone.

616
00:37:28,146 --> 00:37:31,402
So one of the very first things that. A couple of the very first

617
00:37:31,426 --> 00:37:33,590
things that happened before I knew about it,

618
00:37:34,530 --> 00:37:37,642
she had a diamond ring from I believe her grandmother.

619
00:37:37,786 --> 00:37:41,434
And he took her. And I think it's not that he took her, but I

620
00:37:41,442 --> 00:37:45,670
think she made sure to come along to something at his parents house

621
00:37:46,370 --> 00:37:50,090
immediately. Like maybe a week after moved out of our house, she was

622
00:37:50,130 --> 00:37:55,930
wearing this ring and she told them that she was engaged to him and

623
00:37:55,970 --> 00:37:58,786
out texting. In front of him. Yes.

624
00:37:58,858 --> 00:38:02,114
Wait, he's married to you? Exactly. How did

625
00:38:02,122 --> 00:38:05,570
that go over so well? First thing, remember that he'd already announced them

626
00:38:05,610 --> 00:38:09,234
several weeks before this. Oh, that's right, yeah. Divorcing. So they knew that.

627
00:38:09,322 --> 00:38:12,546
Now they know that he's. He's already leaving me. He has an apartment now

628
00:38:12,618 --> 00:38:16,002
left, so he's moved out. So this is after bomb drop or about six

629
00:38:16,026 --> 00:38:19,122
weeks before he gotten into his apartment, which was a sublease from a friend,

630
00:38:19,146 --> 00:38:21,842
which is why it took that long. Now he's out of that apartment. This is

631
00:38:21,866 --> 00:38:24,590
sometime summer or just maybe it's a little before that.

632
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,952
But actually I think this is right after. This is right after

633
00:38:28,976 --> 00:38:32,952
the affair became physical. So it had been an emotional

634
00:38:33,016 --> 00:38:36,936
affair. But I say that there are emotional affairs where

635
00:38:37,008 --> 00:38:40,184
the people really think they're just friends and they

636
00:38:40,192 --> 00:38:43,900
don't realize. And then there are emotional affairs where they're waiting

637
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,240
and they know it's more than they're limerent,

638
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:51,266
they're planning. This was one of those. They were planning it to be physical,

639
00:38:51,408 --> 00:38:54,590
but they're just way time and that was one of those.

640
00:38:54,710 --> 00:38:57,774
So almost not fair to call it the other kind of emotional affair.

641
00:38:57,902 --> 00:39:01,342
Yeah. So I think this was after it

642
00:39:01,366 --> 00:39:04,846
had become physical and she has now to him,

643
00:39:04,998 --> 00:39:08,222
she is him and she goes into the

644
00:39:08,246 --> 00:39:11,502
parents house and they're just. They're not always the greatest people,

645
00:39:11,526 --> 00:39:15,534
but they're polite. And so, you know, I think it's more what

646
00:39:15,542 --> 00:39:18,862
are we going to do? What do you do? And so you're just like polite,

647
00:39:18,926 --> 00:39:22,290
you put on congratulations like yeah, hello.

648
00:39:22,630 --> 00:39:25,930
And she announced to them, I guess from what I've been told,

649
00:39:26,710 --> 00:39:28,250
she was engaged to him.

650
00:39:30,550 --> 00:39:33,934
And he told me, I asked him

651
00:39:34,022 --> 00:39:37,598
how do these things make you feel when you have these two women?

652
00:39:37,734 --> 00:39:40,878
And he said, well, first thing makes you feel really good

653
00:39:40,934 --> 00:39:44,600
because you've got two people who want you. And you're torn because

654
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:49,220
you also have this control person here and

655
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:53,820
it's. You don't know how because you. It's mixed messages within yourself.

656
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:59,128
In their brain. Yeah, exactly. You've already

657
00:39:59,184 --> 00:40:01,980
got the midlife crisis, other stuff.

658
00:40:02,640 --> 00:40:06,392
So she had just before he moved, she'd been fired from their

659
00:40:06,416 --> 00:40:09,020
job, so they'd worked.

660
00:40:10,490 --> 00:40:13,666
And now the other. One of the other things that happened is he's

661
00:40:13,698 --> 00:40:17,122
now had a bad happened around the weekend that they

662
00:40:17,146 --> 00:40:20,354
might have gone physical back before that, but now he's out

663
00:40:20,362 --> 00:40:23,810
of work and he's having problems with his work

664
00:40:23,850 --> 00:40:27,330
and labor and industries. And so

665
00:40:27,370 --> 00:40:30,626
she has called work, which is her former

666
00:40:30,698 --> 00:40:33,630
employer and threatened to sick her lawyer on them.

667
00:40:35,220 --> 00:40:38,000
To Chuck is a serious breach of boundaries.

668
00:40:39,300 --> 00:40:43,160
And so I think he's kind of embarrassed about that.

669
00:40:43,620 --> 00:40:46,812
She is writing him letters every time he is able to go into work.

670
00:40:46,836 --> 00:40:50,028
And he does go into work. And these letters are.

671
00:40:50,084 --> 00:40:53,612
And buying him cards. And Chuck hates. He complains about the cost of

672
00:40:53,636 --> 00:40:56,172
birthday cards and now I have to buy them. But she's writing him these long

673
00:40:56,196 --> 00:40:59,868
letters and cards. Now this is a woman who is seven years older

674
00:40:59,884 --> 00:41:03,486
than I am and she's. He is. She has

675
00:41:03,638 --> 00:41:07,310
web of the cards and she circles these areas and writes tears and

676
00:41:07,350 --> 00:41:10,542
points an arrow to the tears. And he has just left

677
00:41:10,566 --> 00:41:13,230
for work. You just left for work a few minutes ago. And I'm missing you

678
00:41:13,270 --> 00:41:15,330
so much and I can't wait to give you a baby.

679
00:41:16,950 --> 00:41:20,990
These are letters like this? Yes. And they're just let filled letters about

680
00:41:21,110 --> 00:41:24,158
how I miss terribly. I mean it's

681
00:41:24,174 --> 00:41:28,192
like Somebody written by a71.

682
00:41:28,296 --> 00:41:31,472
Right, right. Because you can have healthy 17 year olds.

683
00:41:31,496 --> 00:41:33,860
This. They are crazy.

684
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:39,056
And there were stacks of these and the stacks of these were.

685
00:41:39,208 --> 00:41:41,980
This was from this time until.

686
00:41:43,080 --> 00:41:46,400
So June, July and August of just that one. Those three

687
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:48,900
months with these letters and cards.

688
00:41:50,120 --> 00:41:53,180
So a lot for a person to take.

689
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:58,016
But it also, wow, look at how important and wonderful

690
00:41:58,048 --> 00:42:01,808
I am that somebody loves me this much. That the dynamic.

691
00:42:01,824 --> 00:42:05,280
It's kind of a love bombing. Whereas is this person. Right. It is a

692
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:08,448
type of love bombing. It is. It's a complete love bombing.

693
00:42:08,464 --> 00:42:12,060
Because in crazy or wow, she really loves me. It's both.

694
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:16,672
It really is. And when you are in that weakened and you don't feel confident.

695
00:42:16,816 --> 00:42:20,340
Yeah, that's a real ego boost. Totally even scary.

696
00:42:20,870 --> 00:42:23,370
So you get both of those things going on for you.

697
00:42:23,990 --> 00:42:27,630
Isn't it like a dopamine rush or something like that? Oh, yeah, I would.

698
00:42:27,670 --> 00:42:31,326
I would think so. It is a rush of everything and that you've got limerence

699
00:42:31,358 --> 00:42:35,010
already going in on it. So it's just helping that limerence.

700
00:42:35,910 --> 00:42:39,054
So he has had all of those things going on that are

701
00:42:39,222 --> 00:42:42,942
making it seem. It might not even feel toxic so

702
00:42:42,966 --> 00:42:46,480
much as it feels scary in the like, is she a stalker

703
00:42:46,630 --> 00:42:50,172
or does she really love me? You know, he doesn't. I don't think

704
00:42:50,196 --> 00:42:52,828
he would use the word toxic at this point. Yeah,

705
00:42:52,844 --> 00:42:55,612
that's nice. Do love their victims sometimes? Oh,

706
00:42:55,676 --> 00:42:59,180
absolutely. A weird kind of love, but absolutely.

707
00:42:59,260 --> 00:43:03,480
Yeah. And then he. When he decides home,

708
00:43:03,780 --> 00:43:06,924
it was my birthday and he talks to me, I want

709
00:43:06,932 --> 00:43:10,012
to come home. And okay,

710
00:43:10,076 --> 00:43:13,392
we work this out that he has to go to a neighbor's house who is

711
00:43:13,416 --> 00:43:16,860
our friend's house to stay and he

712
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:21,040
moves out of her house when she's at work. And then I made

713
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:24,608
him go break up with her in person. I said,

714
00:43:24,744 --> 00:43:27,632
this is the only time I did that. But I said, you need to be

715
00:43:27,656 --> 00:43:31,340
respectful and people may not understand that,

716
00:43:31,960 --> 00:43:35,060
but you can disrespect one woman, you disrespect.

717
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:39,564
And yeah, she might have been disrespecting my marriage and me,

718
00:43:39,752 --> 00:43:43,092
but I don't want to be that person. Right. And I think for the time

719
00:43:43,116 --> 00:43:46,692
she knew that it was me that made it had him do that. But from

720
00:43:46,716 --> 00:43:49,796
then on, when he broke up with, I wasn't able to do that because he's,

721
00:43:49,828 --> 00:43:53,332
you know, I had to let him do it. It would be enabling.

722
00:43:53,476 --> 00:43:56,212
But the first time I did that, and I'm still glad I did it,

723
00:43:56,236 --> 00:43:59,040
that. So he went that night and broke up with her at her work.

724
00:43:59,420 --> 00:44:02,772
And apparently at night, at 1am afterwards was went and took

725
00:44:02,796 --> 00:44:06,810
a pregnancy test. She is a month shy for 41.

726
00:44:07,270 --> 00:44:11,370
She says she took a pregnancy test and it was positive. So here's the

727
00:44:12,150 --> 00:44:15,678
evidence of toxicity. A few days later,

728
00:44:15,734 --> 00:44:18,558
she calls him or he calls her to con. Hey, how are you doing?

729
00:44:18,614 --> 00:44:22,350
I feel so bad. One of those. And she tells him,

730
00:44:22,390 --> 00:44:26,222
I have this pregnancy test. You should come and see it. Come over.

731
00:44:26,406 --> 00:44:29,614
And I'm like, no, you shouldn't go there. I'm trying to

732
00:44:29,622 --> 00:44:31,534
get him to not do it. No, you have to let me go. I have

733
00:44:31,542 --> 00:44:34,980
to. And I really want a baby too. And what if she. All that stuff

734
00:44:35,060 --> 00:44:38,708
because remember how we started with we don't want children anymore? That's right.

735
00:44:38,844 --> 00:44:41,620
That was just a ploy. And I knew that. I knew that the whole time

736
00:44:41,660 --> 00:44:45,220
because we both wanted kids. And in that last year, he'd been

737
00:44:45,260 --> 00:44:48,932
a big driving force on it. I wasn't. I wasn't holding back. But he

738
00:44:48,956 --> 00:44:53,040
was the one who had lists of names and was bringing them up and things,

739
00:44:53,660 --> 00:44:57,204
so. And then he was taunting me that summer about who he was going to

740
00:44:57,212 --> 00:45:00,390
have a baby with instead. Yeah.

741
00:45:00,970 --> 00:45:04,482
So here he is. Can he really have a lot of

742
00:45:04,506 --> 00:45:07,970
patience? And I mean, you must have a really

743
00:45:08,010 --> 00:45:11,666
strong belief system because this is a really tough

744
00:45:11,698 --> 00:45:14,770
for you to go back and forth. And it's like a roller coaster.

745
00:45:14,850 --> 00:45:18,914
And this is. This is only the first few months. This is March.

746
00:45:19,082 --> 00:45:22,190
And now this is August 24th, when we.

747
00:45:22,730 --> 00:45:26,032
When we moved out on her. When he moved out from her. So this is

748
00:45:26,056 --> 00:45:28,704
probably August though, when she is a little bit.

749
00:45:28,872 --> 00:45:32,848
So we're. We're not very far in. This is five months into

750
00:45:32,904 --> 00:45:36,560
a midlife crisis. So you're still, you know, in. In MLC land forward,

751
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,192
moving south. I'm still a baby. Mm. Oh, totally. Yeah.

752
00:45:40,336 --> 00:45:44,528
Figure that out. Yeah. And so it. It is crazy.

753
00:45:44,624 --> 00:45:47,408
And I will tell you strength at home,

754
00:45:47,464 --> 00:45:50,912
but I completely failing and falling apart at

755
00:45:50,936 --> 00:45:54,570
work completely. I mean, it was. It was awful.

756
00:45:55,790 --> 00:45:59,330
And that's kind of how it works for me when it. When it comes to

757
00:45:59,950 --> 00:46:02,918
is I do okay in one and the other place I like,

758
00:46:02,974 --> 00:46:06,726
I don't do. But he.

759
00:46:06,878 --> 00:46:10,710
So he went while he's driving to go to see her for

760
00:46:10,750 --> 00:46:14,678
this and so she can show him me stick. I'm looking up,

761
00:46:14,734 --> 00:46:18,022
how do you fake a pregnancy? Because I'm like, I know there's a way to

762
00:46:18,046 --> 00:46:21,628
do it. I just know. But I didn't have time to do that while he's

763
00:46:21,724 --> 00:46:25,452
there with me. And I looked up that some of those,

764
00:46:25,476 --> 00:46:28,284
and this was 20 years ago, they could be different now.

765
00:46:28,452 --> 00:46:31,612
But you have that window. Maybe it's 20 never.

766
00:46:31,716 --> 00:46:35,372
You wait after you pee on the stick and then

767
00:46:35,556 --> 00:46:38,748
after that you're not supposed to look at them after

768
00:46:38,804 --> 00:46:41,852
this window either. There's a time, a period

769
00:46:41,876 --> 00:46:45,180
of time if you let it go too long then it changes from negative to

770
00:46:45,220 --> 00:46:48,842
positive. And so if you just hold onto that

771
00:46:48,866 --> 00:46:52,122
stick, eventually it'll start to say positive. And it

772
00:46:52,146 --> 00:46:54,618
depended on the brand. So I didn't know what brand but I said but there's

773
00:46:54,634 --> 00:46:57,850
a good likelihood that stick which had bit which was negative would

774
00:46:57,890 --> 00:47:01,350
now appear to be positive. And she could just show that to him.

775
00:47:01,890 --> 00:47:04,170
And so he had to get home and I had to tell him that.

776
00:47:04,210 --> 00:47:07,514
But he wanted the baby so desperately. He was going to believe, he wasn't going

777
00:47:07,522 --> 00:47:11,230
to believe me. He wasn't saying I was lying. He just explained

778
00:47:11,580 --> 00:47:15,060
I have to believe they true and I understood that. I mean he wasn't saying

779
00:47:15,100 --> 00:47:18,852
anyone was lying. He wasn't, he wasn't doing an MLC monster on me,

780
00:47:19,036 --> 00:47:22,324
his, his friend Scott, ever. We were all telling her, you know,

781
00:47:22,492 --> 00:47:25,732
we underst, we, yeah, there could always be the possibility

782
00:47:25,796 --> 00:47:29,092
of this, that she's being truthful. Does turn out that a few

783
00:47:29,116 --> 00:47:32,324
months after that she had a full on hysterectomy. Somebody who had

784
00:47:32,332 --> 00:47:35,668
a full on hysterectomy only a few months later is probably not

785
00:47:35,724 --> 00:47:39,412
fertile at 41. So you

786
00:47:39,436 --> 00:47:43,668
know, take that right there. But she

787
00:47:43,724 --> 00:47:47,268
then had a doctor's appointment, she said I'm

788
00:47:47,284 --> 00:47:51,476
just like, no, she doesn't really have a doctor's appointment.

789
00:47:51,588 --> 00:47:54,964
And no, you know, we're not going to enable this

790
00:47:55,052 --> 00:47:58,800
charade she's got. So no you're not. Doctor's appointment her.

791
00:47:59,340 --> 00:48:02,436
So then when I said she could go to it. Okay, whatever,

792
00:48:02,468 --> 00:48:05,890
you know, you cannot tell me not to go to the doctor's appointment. It's like

793
00:48:05,930 --> 00:48:07,830
eye roll and okay, whatever.

794
00:48:08,570 --> 00:48:11,298
So that one got conveniently canceled.

795
00:48:11,474 --> 00:48:14,770
Oh really? I'm shocked. And then

796
00:48:14,890 --> 00:48:17,890
just faded away and I never heard about it again. I don't, we don't,

797
00:48:17,930 --> 00:48:21,074
I, I don't ever remember her hearing about some sort of a

798
00:48:21,082 --> 00:48:24,790
miscarriage even he, I don't remember. Maybe he heard

799
00:48:25,210 --> 00:48:28,450
both of us never. And he will even to this day he might

800
00:48:28,490 --> 00:48:32,242
still say well I don't know for sure. And not that

801
00:48:32,266 --> 00:48:35,042
he doesn't know for sure. And he says yeah, I, I, I agree with you

802
00:48:35,066 --> 00:48:39,570
that it probably wasn't even, I would say probably, but 99.9999,

803
00:48:39,610 --> 00:48:42,482
that sort of thing. Yeah. But no, he will always say,

804
00:48:42,586 --> 00:48:46,418
you know, you never know. And that's actually non midlife

805
00:48:46,434 --> 00:48:50,050
crisis. Chuck will always say, you can never say something with that certainty.

806
00:48:50,130 --> 00:48:53,790
That's just his. He doesn't like people being certain of something,

807
00:48:54,820 --> 00:48:58,700
but he, he needed

808
00:48:58,860 --> 00:49:01,996
to believe that because of his desire

809
00:49:02,028 --> 00:49:05,388
to be a father as well. And so that's another

810
00:49:05,444 --> 00:49:08,972
toxicity piece. So a few. Then we

811
00:49:08,996 --> 00:49:11,628
had a few more backwards where he was in and out. And these were only

812
00:49:11,684 --> 00:49:15,308
like two weeks, a week, a month between that

813
00:49:15,364 --> 00:49:18,588
time and January 31,

814
00:49:18,644 --> 00:49:22,596
let's say. So this is September and January,

815
00:49:22,668 --> 00:49:26,292
a few more. And in December when he was at

816
00:49:26,316 --> 00:49:30,020
home, she said that she had water on her brain

817
00:49:30,180 --> 00:49:33,812
water and it wasn't going

818
00:49:33,836 --> 00:49:36,004
to be fixed. She wasn't going to have it fixed unless he came back to

819
00:49:36,012 --> 00:49:39,700
her and she would die. And I call that

820
00:49:39,740 --> 00:49:43,120
indirect suicide. So that's another toxicity thing.

821
00:49:43,980 --> 00:49:48,494
So there's that one I've heard that can be in. In partner

822
00:49:48,542 --> 00:49:50,170
poachers or ap.

823
00:49:52,070 --> 00:49:55,694
Yeah. And so, you know, clearly she wasn't going to go kill herself. She was

824
00:49:55,782 --> 00:49:59,050
doing an indirect and making it something that was really not real.

825
00:50:00,070 --> 00:50:03,262
And of course, as soon as he would take doctor appointment with

826
00:50:03,286 --> 00:50:06,290
her, a doctor appointment would suddenly be canceled.

827
00:50:07,350 --> 00:50:10,690
I mean, I think there was only the one with the fake pregnancy.

828
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:16,120
So there's that. Then she had

829
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:19,384
her mom very sick. I mean, these are elderly people.

830
00:50:19,552 --> 00:50:22,552
And I. There were a couple times, I think, where. And I don't know if

831
00:50:22,576 --> 00:50:26,152
this was in this next year during 2006 or

832
00:50:26,256 --> 00:50:30,008
could have been doing. It wasn't 2007 because the Fair was underground.

833
00:50:30,184 --> 00:50:32,808
So it could have been in 2008, but probably 2006,

834
00:50:32,864 --> 00:50:36,264
where she would call and if he went during the times he

835
00:50:36,272 --> 00:50:39,760
was at home and say, you know, I really need some comfort. She's really

836
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,360
not doing well right now. And that's what friends would do. They would come and

837
00:50:43,400 --> 00:50:46,540
stay with me. Male friends would not.

838
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:51,152
Male friends who you are having an affair with would not.

839
00:50:51,256 --> 00:50:54,960
Male friends who are married and who you have had an affair with during

840
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:58,144
that time. Everybody know, knows these things,

841
00:50:58,312 --> 00:51:01,980
but that's what she would. So these are forms of emotional blackmail also

842
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:04,936
that right there, the indirect suicide,

843
00:51:05,048 --> 00:51:08,392
the faking a pregnancy, those are all types of

844
00:51:08,416 --> 00:51:11,688
emotional blackmail that she was using against

845
00:51:11,744 --> 00:51:15,320
him in his weakened state. So he's doing these things

846
00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:19,176
and then he's bringing those things me and bringing the monster

847
00:51:19,208 --> 00:51:23,336
and toxicity to me. So some of the things that a forward Moving spouse

848
00:51:23,368 --> 00:51:26,632
might be seeing. And they're seeing it as

849
00:51:26,656 --> 00:51:30,130
coming from their MLSer. We don't know.

850
00:51:30,170 --> 00:51:34,082
It might really be the alienator acting through the

851
00:51:34,106 --> 00:51:37,602
MLC also. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Because a lot

852
00:51:37,626 --> 00:51:39,310
of MLCers give their.

853
00:51:40,090 --> 00:51:43,870
Give handover power.

854
00:51:44,170 --> 00:51:47,922
Yeah. Power to their alienator because

855
00:51:47,946 --> 00:51:51,138
they live on that shortened electronic lease that we call the cell phone.

856
00:51:51,314 --> 00:51:54,908
And that was a problem as well. So his cell

857
00:51:54,924 --> 00:51:57,080
phone. So he would erase the history.

858
00:51:58,260 --> 00:52:01,836
Finally, he'd just leave. If he wanted to contact me, he'd go to a payphone.

859
00:52:01,868 --> 00:52:04,844
They still had payphones back then. He'd even go to a payphone that was.

860
00:52:04,932 --> 00:52:08,508
And call me from payphone, that sort of thing. Because we.

861
00:52:08,564 --> 00:52:12,044
We saw each other regularly. There were.

862
00:52:12,212 --> 00:52:16,236
On what boundaries I was set. There were times where we would get together regularly

863
00:52:16,268 --> 00:52:20,092
and go biking or go skiing if he was with her. And then

864
00:52:20,116 --> 00:52:23,356
it would be sneaking off. There were times I realized, what am I doing?

865
00:52:23,428 --> 00:52:26,540
Being the. You're becoming the affair partner. Why am I doing

866
00:52:26,580 --> 00:52:30,172
this? This is crazy. I need to stop. And then I would

867
00:52:30,196 --> 00:52:33,868
make an excuse saying, oh, he's tame. He really needs it now.

868
00:52:34,004 --> 00:52:36,844
Dumb me. Oh, so we'll start up again.

869
00:52:37,012 --> 00:52:39,160
So things like that,

870
00:52:39,700 --> 00:52:42,360
where those are, you know, that's on me.

871
00:52:44,020 --> 00:52:47,532
But that was. That was a lot of 2006 was just up and

872
00:52:47,556 --> 00:52:51,250
downs like that, back and forth like that of him coming, him going, her doing

873
00:52:51,290 --> 00:52:54,866
these things. She had a hysterectomy during that. He was supposed

874
00:52:54,898 --> 00:52:57,890
to come home, but she had the hysterectomy and he was there caring for her.

875
00:52:58,010 --> 00:53:02,034
I got mad and said, you better get your ass home this day. And to

876
00:53:02,042 --> 00:53:05,122
be perfectly honest, I felt really bad because usually I didn't do that sort of

877
00:53:05,146 --> 00:53:08,418
thing. And she,

878
00:53:08,554 --> 00:53:12,546
I mean, I feel. Sounds so terrible this forgetting that this is an alienator,

879
00:53:12,578 --> 00:53:16,474
but this is a woman who just had a major surgery. Right. Yeah. I mean,

880
00:53:16,562 --> 00:53:19,562
not that she should have my husband taking care of her. Right. I mean,

881
00:53:19,586 --> 00:53:22,870
I don't want to point it out that way, but I think I said it

882
00:53:23,170 --> 00:53:26,586
like, as she was about to come home. Right. And he

883
00:53:26,658 --> 00:53:30,510
was like, oh, my God, I'm trying to leave for my wife.

884
00:53:30,930 --> 00:53:35,082
But I. I understand that. I really, really do.

885
00:53:35,186 --> 00:53:38,730
And I really did. And the dilemma that he was in,

886
00:53:38,850 --> 00:53:42,680
which is terrible because you don't want to be that understanding,

887
00:53:43,900 --> 00:53:48,560
which. And. And sometimes being that understanding is

888
00:53:49,020 --> 00:53:52,260
not always a good thing. It's a little bit like having

889
00:53:52,300 --> 00:53:55,732
too much empathy is. You get yourself into too

890
00:53:55,756 --> 00:53:59,204
much trouble sometimes you have to sit on one side of getting impaled by

891
00:53:59,212 --> 00:54:03,236
that fence. And I think I have some impaled marks

892
00:54:03,428 --> 00:54:07,012
from sitting, you know and trying to be understanding of each side a

893
00:54:07,036 --> 00:54:09,780
little too much. Where is.

894
00:54:10,240 --> 00:54:13,704
Well, I, I, you know that that means sometimes you don't stand up for yourself

895
00:54:13,752 --> 00:54:17,192
as you need to. Even when you know what you need to do.

896
00:54:17,376 --> 00:54:20,020
Myself stuck in that still today.

897
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:24,952
But I, you know, you can know what's right and know what you're supposed to

898
00:54:24,976 --> 00:54:28,456
do. Doesn't mean it doesn't mean you're doing it. And that's

899
00:54:28,488 --> 00:54:31,780
really hard. You know, it came through in the end.

900
00:54:32,240 --> 00:54:35,322
I got there and I got faster than,

901
00:54:35,426 --> 00:54:38,714
than most situations and that's not necessarily

902
00:54:38,762 --> 00:54:42,590
my fault at all. And I was able to detach

903
00:54:43,490 --> 00:54:46,602
and I got to detachment well. And I think one of the reasons I got

904
00:54:46,626 --> 00:54:50,378
to detach is I was blessed enough

905
00:54:50,434 --> 00:54:54,330
to have what I call a knowing. And I had the beginning

906
00:54:54,410 --> 00:54:58,218
again backwards before he even left yoga class

907
00:54:58,274 --> 00:55:02,492
one day I was just sitting, sitting there and I, I had this full

908
00:55:02,596 --> 00:55:06,492
peace for about 30 seconds and it was like waves just washed over me.

909
00:55:06,676 --> 00:55:09,964
And it was just this everything is going

910
00:55:09,972 --> 00:55:13,692
to be fine and the gonna be fine. I knew it meant that going

911
00:55:13,716 --> 00:55:17,052
to come through it together. And then through

912
00:55:17,156 --> 00:55:21,052
I had little miniature reminder knowings of that

913
00:55:21,236 --> 00:55:24,700
and confirmation in his behaviors and that he did keep coming home.

914
00:55:24,820 --> 00:55:26,520
It was validated through that.

915
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:30,584
I don't know how it would have been if that hadn't happened if the validation

916
00:55:30,632 --> 00:55:33,576
wasn't there through his behavior. Right. Good point. Overall,

917
00:55:33,608 --> 00:55:38,200
how many years was it from. 2005 until so 2008,

918
00:55:38,320 --> 00:55:41,700
October was when he left her for the last time.

919
00:55:42,240 --> 00:55:46,232
And at that point, remember I had said that you cannot be with

920
00:55:46,416 --> 00:55:49,576
that. I said the hard line of as long as you're

921
00:55:49,608 --> 00:55:52,954
in an in an inappropriate spouse you can have

922
00:55:52,962 --> 00:55:55,710
contact with. That was only part of that boundary.

923
00:55:56,290 --> 00:56:00,202
That boundary also included we

924
00:56:00,226 --> 00:56:03,990
cannot be together for so many months. And I said 12

925
00:56:04,770 --> 00:56:08,490
when you leave again, there's a 12 month.

926
00:56:08,610 --> 00:56:12,442
Because he had come home eight times and

927
00:56:12,466 --> 00:56:16,474
we did not have a transition homes. And I tried transitions but

928
00:56:16,482 --> 00:56:19,870
we didn't have another place he could stay. Some people have second houses.

929
00:56:20,430 --> 00:56:23,990
Some people have, you know, hey, with my parents. He refused.

930
00:56:24,150 --> 00:56:28,050
He refused to try on anyone other than that neighbor who was a friend.

931
00:56:29,070 --> 00:56:32,294
And even that was only going to the neighbor would

932
00:56:32,302 --> 00:56:35,570
have kept him forever. But Chuck wasn't going to handle that.

933
00:56:36,110 --> 00:56:39,430
He refused to ask. And we didn't have the extra money

934
00:56:39,470 --> 00:56:42,886
to get him another apartment. Although I, I don't use credit cards but

935
00:56:42,958 --> 00:56:46,586
I was going to get as many. I would have, you know, robbed Peter

936
00:56:46,618 --> 00:56:50,314
to pay Paul at multiple times and stacked up credit cards

937
00:56:50,362 --> 00:56:53,514
to get, you know, 12 months onto that. He would,

938
00:56:53,602 --> 00:56:56,810
he would have been horrible with that. I would have done it. So let me

939
00:56:56,850 --> 00:57:00,282
make sure I understand this. Yeah. You were like, he could come

940
00:57:00,306 --> 00:57:03,450
back, but he had to stay. You could be together, but he couldn't come

941
00:57:03,490 --> 00:57:06,938
home for 12 months. He had to stay somewhere else for 12

942
00:57:06,994 --> 00:57:10,430
months. Yeah, there had to be a change. Yeah.

943
00:57:11,020 --> 00:57:14,580
And each midlife crisis will have an

944
00:57:14,620 --> 00:57:17,828
axis on what issues you're dealing

945
00:57:17,844 --> 00:57:21,220
with. So some

946
00:57:21,260 --> 00:57:24,420
people, it might be that you're dealing with somebody who is

947
00:57:24,540 --> 00:57:28,164
whether they are truly a narcissist. But maybe the narcissistic tendencies

948
00:57:28,212 --> 00:57:31,044
were higher and you have to deal with those.

949
00:57:31,212 --> 00:57:34,820
Maybe were codependent and had actual

950
00:57:34,900 --> 00:57:38,080
addictions. And we're going backstory. Not. This isn't just c.

951
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:42,360
Maybe there had been emotional abuse that you

952
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:45,624
recognized in hours. It was this back on

953
00:57:45,632 --> 00:57:48,860
this house hopping or the revolving motel door.

954
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:52,840
And I had been trying and I hadn't succeeded yet

955
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:56,168
on getting that to stop. I tried, okay,

956
00:57:56,184 --> 00:57:59,672
well, why don't you sleep on the couch for a month? And we

957
00:57:59,696 --> 00:58:03,080
both had bad backs, so that never worked. I mean, it was even

958
00:58:03,120 --> 00:58:06,758
more insane when I said, okay, well, just not in the same bed. I'll sleep

959
00:58:06,774 --> 00:58:10,342
on the couch for a month. I had a bad back too. But also the

960
00:58:10,366 --> 00:58:14,278
betrayed partner gets punished by sleeping on the couch. No, that didn't work.

961
00:58:14,414 --> 00:58:17,558
How about you sleep in the van? It was a camper van, so it wasn't

962
00:58:17,574 --> 00:58:20,246
like I was saying go sleep in the car or the doghouse,

963
00:58:20,278 --> 00:58:23,974
literally. But no, that didn't work either because I mean, he was just.

964
00:58:24,062 --> 00:58:26,770
It was just like a separate bedroom. That was the house.

965
00:58:27,150 --> 00:58:30,886
So it really couldn't be live in my own house but have separate

966
00:58:30,918 --> 00:58:34,944
rooms. It couldn't be that. And so it needed to be.

967
00:58:35,032 --> 00:58:38,752
You are going to live somewhere else. Like and it's a dating

968
00:58:38,816 --> 00:58:42,336
thing and a counseling. You can go to counseling. We are a couple.

969
00:58:42,368 --> 00:58:44,900
Just like when you're dating and you don't cohabitate.

970
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:49,040
And let me ask you here, because I know Pete, I know

971
00:58:49,080 --> 00:58:52,576
couples that back in the gosh, I guess it was like

972
00:58:52,648 --> 00:58:56,224
70s, maybe around the Jim Conway era.

973
00:58:56,272 --> 00:58:59,072
I'm not sure of his era. But you know, way back in the 70s and

974
00:58:59,096 --> 00:59:02,560
80s and they, you know, husbands who had

975
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:06,016
10 year crisises came back and wives made them sleep

976
00:59:06,048 --> 00:59:08,608
on the couch for a year. Is that, is there a thing to that?

977
00:59:08,664 --> 00:59:11,260
Like, is that how you came up with that 12 month thing?

978
00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:16,272
Oh, I came up with it because I had tried a

979
00:59:16,296 --> 00:59:20,128
month of this. A month? Oh, the short term, yeah. It just kept getting.

980
00:59:20,184 --> 00:59:24,154
It was your idea. It wasn't like a Jim Conway. No, it was just

981
00:59:24,242 --> 00:59:28,202
experience. After eight tries, I just kept expanding.

982
00:59:28,266 --> 00:59:32,426
Okay. Yep. Months didn't work this many. Months this many apart didn't work this many.

983
00:59:32,578 --> 00:59:35,594
And I knew it had to be something weighty. And I was like, should it

984
00:59:35,602 --> 00:59:38,426
be 6 or 12? 6 or 12?

985
00:59:38,578 --> 00:59:41,882
And I had to. You had to say, stick with it, though. You couldn't be.

986
00:59:41,906 --> 00:59:43,674
It could be 6 or 12. And did you tell them, did you. Tell them

987
00:59:43,682 --> 00:59:46,778
up front it was going to be 12 months? I said 12 months. The only

988
00:59:46,834 --> 00:59:50,826
thing. So I was very concrete, sort of. How can you say, very insertive.

989
00:59:50,858 --> 00:59:54,314
Here's how I did it. When you leave. And we

990
00:59:54,322 --> 00:59:58,202
knew it was when again, you know, you cannot come home for sick for

991
00:59:58,226 --> 01:00:01,722
12 months. But what I didn't say was if it was 12 months from

992
01:00:01,746 --> 01:00:05,098
the moment he left our house or from the.

993
01:00:05,154 --> 01:00:09,098
He left her. And that was because. What if he came to.

994
01:00:09,154 --> 01:00:12,282
Left our house. And what it was, was it was either July 31st or

995
01:00:12,306 --> 01:00:15,164
August 1st. So July 31st,

996
01:00:15,322 --> 01:00:18,680
whichever one was a Tuesday, I believe he was when he

997
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:22,232
left. And what if he was at her house

998
01:00:22,256 --> 01:00:25,672
for week? Well, then, you know, yeah, we can base it on when he

999
01:00:25,696 --> 01:00:28,872
left our house. And. But if he was

1000
01:00:28,896 --> 01:00:32,184
at her house for nine

1001
01:00:32,272 --> 01:00:35,112
months, three months, yeah. Right.

1002
01:00:35,216 --> 01:00:38,728
So that wouldn't be very far if you, you know, should he have one.

1003
01:00:38,784 --> 01:00:42,896
Drug, it's like 12 months out that she shot of heroin or whatever.

1004
01:00:43,088 --> 01:00:46,304
And so he left in October. I was. So it

1005
01:00:46,312 --> 01:00:50,512
was August and September. He was at her house. And one

1006
01:00:50,536 --> 01:00:53,744
day in October he showed up at church. And I. Since I'd said. And I

1007
01:00:53,752 --> 01:00:56,864
was not good at this, no contact. I would go to kind of like where

1008
01:00:56,872 --> 01:01:00,192
he worked aisles, just so look down the aisles and he'd see

1009
01:01:00,216 --> 01:01:03,744
me and his face would light up and I'd just walk or something like

1010
01:01:03,752 --> 01:01:07,572
that. But. And I would go and leave something in his car. And by

1011
01:01:07,596 --> 01:01:11,172
something, I mean a tiny, tiny sticker on the back

1012
01:01:11,196 --> 01:01:14,612
of the steering wheel or a little stone. Because I would

1013
01:01:14,636 --> 01:01:17,684
carry these heart stones. And it seems sentimental,

1014
01:01:17,732 --> 01:01:21,172
but neither of us are sentimental. But he said

1015
01:01:21,196 --> 01:01:24,916
he noticed these and I found that he was carrying them. Aw. And he was.

1016
01:01:24,988 --> 01:01:28,292
No cards saying how much you miss him on and on and on

1017
01:01:28,316 --> 01:01:31,796
and on. No word. But because I. I made

1018
01:01:31,868 --> 01:01:34,916
art with these stones. They were prayer dolls. Oh, pretty prayer

1019
01:01:34,948 --> 01:01:38,960
dolls. Yeah. And he.

1020
01:01:39,340 --> 01:01:42,484
And they were part of the midlife crisis art that I did.

1021
01:01:42,652 --> 01:01:45,844
Oh. So he. And he knew that.

1022
01:01:45,932 --> 01:01:48,852
And so this particular stone, that was a heart one I found, he would keep

1023
01:01:48,876 --> 01:01:52,084
him in the car so she wouldn't see them. So that's why he

1024
01:01:52,092 --> 01:01:55,780
didn't have him, you know, like, carry him into her house and things. And he

1025
01:01:55,820 --> 01:01:59,598
said he noticed when I put this sticker on the. A sticker.

1026
01:01:59,724 --> 01:02:03,210
Wow. On the back. He said, yeah, I noticed that. I would just go and

1027
01:02:03,250 --> 01:02:06,202
get into the back. I would get into the. It was parked at Costco and

1028
01:02:06,226 --> 01:02:08,938
put something on the back. No words.

1029
01:02:09,114 --> 01:02:12,250
And so. And it wasn't like, you know, something. Not even a note, but just

1030
01:02:12,290 --> 01:02:14,362
a thing that he could tell I'd been there in the front, where it was

1031
01:02:14,386 --> 01:02:17,514
obvious. Because I'll tell you, if you put a sticker on the back

1032
01:02:17,522 --> 01:02:20,762
of my steering wheel, I. Three months later,

1033
01:02:20,786 --> 01:02:23,978
I might not know what they are. Right. I don't think I would notice.

1034
01:02:24,154 --> 01:02:27,250
But he says he. He wouldn't remember it if I said it to him today.

1035
01:02:27,290 --> 01:02:30,818
You're like a little fairy. Yeah. Going in and said that.

1036
01:02:30,874 --> 01:02:35,058
He said fairy dust. He said those were so.

1037
01:02:35,114 --> 01:02:39,590
Those. During this dry spell of communication,

1038
01:02:40,170 --> 01:02:43,282
I still gave him reassurances that it

1039
01:02:43,306 --> 01:02:46,658
was. I was still there. Yeah. And they're wordless,

1040
01:02:46,754 --> 01:02:49,954
like, things, so they were meant to be, you know. You know what this means?

1041
01:02:50,122 --> 01:02:53,532
I'm still here. And so when he

1042
01:02:53,556 --> 01:02:57,132
did show up, he didn't have to say anything. It was,

1043
01:02:57,156 --> 01:03:00,812
you know, you. You contact me when you are done with

1044
01:03:00,836 --> 01:03:04,204
her, when she's gone, when you get rid of her. And he didn't have to

1045
01:03:04,212 --> 01:03:07,612
say anything. What happened was I was at CH and

1046
01:03:07,636 --> 01:03:11,292
I went to first service. And I went to. I had started going

1047
01:03:11,316 --> 01:03:14,876
to first service a few years before because he always complained about how church interrupts

1048
01:03:14,908 --> 01:03:18,130
the middle of my day. And I liked second service.

1049
01:03:18,300 --> 01:03:21,734
But I changing for, oh, fine, I'll go to first service, whatever.

1050
01:03:21,782 --> 01:03:25,110
Even though he wasn't going. Just as, you know, that accommodation.

1051
01:03:25,190 --> 01:03:27,782
So I went to first service and now I'd been to Sunday school and I

1052
01:03:27,806 --> 01:03:31,030
was walking across to the parking lot and

1053
01:03:31,070 --> 01:03:35,062
here comes Chuck. And I was like. And it's like there

1054
01:03:35,086 --> 01:03:38,902
was only one reason Chuck doesn't go to church, and especially

1055
01:03:39,006 --> 01:03:42,182
that church. It was. And mine, where I,

1056
01:03:42,206 --> 01:03:45,558
you know, we went. He didn't usually go. He worked on Sundays and he didn't

1057
01:03:45,574 --> 01:03:49,212
usually go. Anyways, he complained. Mm. So he's only there

1058
01:03:49,236 --> 01:03:53,068
for me. So I just turned around and walked back into second

1059
01:03:53,124 --> 01:03:55,560
service with him right there.

1060
01:03:56,020 --> 01:03:59,212
And I remember sitting there just going like this, staring at

1061
01:03:59,236 --> 01:04:03,948
him. What's going on? Going on and

1062
01:04:04,004 --> 01:04:07,644
not knowing for sure. I knew going on in

1063
01:04:07,652 --> 01:04:11,160
the sense because that there's only one reason.

1064
01:04:11,620 --> 01:04:16,160
But we hadn't spoken because we're sitting in church and.

1065
01:04:16,620 --> 01:04:20,068
And what he talked to Patrick the neighbor again

1066
01:04:20,124 --> 01:04:23,924
or who. And he is going to stay in Patrick's

1067
01:04:23,972 --> 01:04:27,332
separate room. Told Patrick it was only going to be a few

1068
01:04:27,356 --> 01:04:30,692
weeks, not for 12 months. And what

1069
01:04:30,716 --> 01:04:33,812
it was was I did let him say it was. It ended up being 12

1070
01:04:33,916 --> 01:04:37,588
months from the our house but told him that because I didn't

1071
01:04:37,604 --> 01:04:40,612
want that answer. That was the one thing. Put it 12 months from when I

1072
01:04:40,636 --> 01:04:43,872
left our house and. But wait, back up to

1073
01:04:43,896 --> 01:04:46,784
church. I'm confused. Did you not talk to him? Like when you saw him in

1074
01:04:46,792 --> 01:04:50,720
the parking lot, you just walked up beside him without saying anything. So Sunday

1075
01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:54,048
school had just gotten over and right after Sunday school second service

1076
01:04:54,104 --> 01:04:57,500
starts. So he's approaching there to go 11 o'clock service.

1077
01:04:58,120 --> 01:05:01,840
So it was right about to start. So you both just walked. Did you sit

1078
01:05:01,880 --> 01:05:05,456
next to him? Yeah, and I was. And I'm slightly

1079
01:05:05,488 --> 01:05:08,820
hard of hearing. So yeah, young and

1080
01:05:08,860 --> 01:05:11,444
hard of hearing with all the 80 year olds. So I always sit in the

1081
01:05:11,452 --> 01:05:15,188
front row. And this is a larger church than

1082
01:05:15,244 --> 01:05:19,076
say because we're in Tacoma, Washington and

1083
01:05:19,148 --> 01:05:22,420
so it's a, it's a little bit fuller than churches where I am

1084
01:05:22,460 --> 01:05:25,668
now. We're in the front row so it's not

1085
01:05:25,724 --> 01:05:29,076
talking time. So I'm

1086
01:05:29,108 --> 01:05:31,520
just okay, here we are.

1087
01:05:32,140 --> 01:05:36,158
And Peyton's holding my hand and we're in church. So I,

1088
01:05:36,214 --> 01:05:39,246
I can't even remember what we talked about afterwards. I mean I'm sure, hey,

1089
01:05:39,278 --> 01:05:42,110
what's going on? Even though I know parts of what's going on. But he's,

1090
01:05:42,190 --> 01:05:45,742
he's staying at Patrick's house and it, it was a while, it might have been

1091
01:05:45,766 --> 01:05:48,334
a few days before I know that he's told him it will only be a

1092
01:05:48,342 --> 01:05:50,890
few weeks. I'm like, you know what, that's a problem.

1093
01:05:51,270 --> 01:05:54,250
What, what stage do you think he was in at this point?

1094
01:05:54,550 --> 01:05:56,970
12 month clock started.

1095
01:05:57,910 --> 01:06:01,152
So it is really hard to

1096
01:06:01,176 --> 01:06:05,392
figure out stages because I had seen liminality,

1097
01:06:05,536 --> 01:06:09,280
but I was never sure about liminality. And I had seen

1098
01:06:09,320 --> 01:06:12,736
liminality during his year. No, wait,

1099
01:06:12,768 --> 01:06:15,824
it wasn't during this period right before when he'd been

1100
01:06:15,832 --> 01:06:20,000
at home in 2008. So we're still in 2008

1101
01:06:20,120 --> 01:06:23,420
during that spring I was. I believe there were these.

1102
01:06:24,120 --> 01:06:28,180
I. I've talked about liminality. I have a few articles on intervented.

1103
01:06:28,800 --> 01:06:33,336
Internality is something that you might not recognize when it happens until

1104
01:06:33,408 --> 01:06:35,460
hindsight or not at all.

1105
01:06:36,640 --> 01:06:40,472
Or you might not be the one to see it and so is

1106
01:06:40,496 --> 01:06:44,104
it happening. Or you might so many other pieces that you don't

1107
01:06:44,152 --> 01:06:47,432
know. And for Chuck, I think

1108
01:06:47,456 --> 01:06:51,288
it was these experiences doing in our yard. He decided he

1109
01:06:51,344 --> 01:06:54,866
had to cut down trees. He became

1110
01:06:54,898 --> 01:06:58,274
known as the guy who cut down trees. And then we moved over to East

1111
01:06:58,322 --> 01:07:01,506
Wenatchee. He started planting tons of trees,

1112
01:07:01,618 --> 01:07:05,522
which is the strangest thing, but he wanted to cut down trees, but he

1113
01:07:05,546 --> 01:07:09,170
wanted to do it by hand. That was the big deal,

1114
01:07:09,210 --> 01:07:12,882
was by hand. Then when he had the one

1115
01:07:12,906 --> 01:07:16,498
of them he had to have professionally done, it turned out it didn't

1116
01:07:16,514 --> 01:07:19,350
have a disease. And he looks at me and goes, oops, sorry.

1117
01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:22,100
He just always wanted that tree gone.

1118
01:07:23,480 --> 01:07:26,940
But the next thing was he wanted to get rid of the stumps. And again,

1119
01:07:27,480 --> 01:07:30,944
it had to be by hand. And I think that was the

1120
01:07:31,032 --> 01:07:34,592
big important part of it. So this was all about getting

1121
01:07:34,696 --> 01:07:38,352
himself involved manually into the

1122
01:07:38,376 --> 01:07:42,048
nature of it. And one

1123
01:07:42,104 --> 01:07:45,882
day he was out working on a

1124
01:07:45,906 --> 01:07:49,642
cherry tree stump in the front yard and at least

1125
01:07:49,666 --> 01:07:52,906
one or two of these in power line issues. So that there were some validity

1126
01:07:52,938 --> 01:07:57,002
to some of them. But it was raining and

1127
01:07:57,026 --> 01:07:59,802
he said, hey, can you come help me? And for an hour or two,

1128
01:07:59,826 --> 01:08:02,350
I went out there and I helped him. And it was amazing.

1129
01:08:03,810 --> 01:08:06,986
He had like. It was like this trench in the front yard digging.

1130
01:08:07,018 --> 01:08:10,714
And I could feel the addiction of it right then. If I'd gone

1131
01:08:10,762 --> 01:08:13,976
back inside, I. I'm not going back out there. But while I was out there,

1132
01:08:14,138 --> 01:08:17,532
was not leaving. I was like, no, we almost got this just

1133
01:08:17,556 --> 01:08:21,100
under here, just under here. And we had little hand saws. And I could really

1134
01:08:21,140 --> 01:08:24,492
feel what healing in those moments. And it was a few

1135
01:08:24,516 --> 01:08:28,960
hours, like one, two hours that we were out there in the mud.

1136
01:08:29,380 --> 01:08:33,260
And I could feel that you were just.

1137
01:08:33,300 --> 01:08:37,260
You were getting into the earth, becoming one with it. And I

1138
01:08:37,300 --> 01:08:40,340
think that's what liminality, parts of it would feel

1139
01:08:40,380 --> 01:08:43,540
like. And for him,

1140
01:08:43,660 --> 01:08:47,108
it's going to look different for different people, I think needed

1141
01:08:47,124 --> 01:08:50,468
to be that kind of active thing rather than

1142
01:08:50,524 --> 01:08:54,164
a mental thing. Liminality for me would probably be a

1143
01:08:54,172 --> 01:08:57,380
lot of thinking, but for him, he probably has to be

1144
01:08:57,420 --> 01:09:01,332
physical, get it going. And if you were to ask him

1145
01:09:01,356 --> 01:09:04,852
about it later, he might not be able to verbalize thoughts that went with

1146
01:09:04,876 --> 01:09:09,044
it but me I. I work with

1147
01:09:09,212 --> 01:09:12,868
so it would be different. Mm. So that was a real turning point.

1148
01:09:13,004 --> 01:09:16,740
The. Yeah. I think some of those things and that

1149
01:09:16,780 --> 01:09:20,532
year the tho. Those times he writing to me while I

1150
01:09:20,556 --> 01:09:24,148
was at work which was this other job in emails telling

1151
01:09:24,164 --> 01:09:27,540
me how he didn't understand. I don't get why. Why do people care about

1152
01:09:27,580 --> 01:09:31,346
why his. Because his family was really upset at him for the back and forth.

1153
01:09:31,468 --> 01:09:33,990
I just wanted to be people care about what I'm doing. I guess I'm different

1154
01:09:34,030 --> 01:09:38,290
than everybody else that you know, why do they care where I am at?

1155
01:09:39,630 --> 01:09:43,974
And I was telling, responding, going it's like I'm banging my head against

1156
01:09:44,062 --> 01:09:47,750
a brick wall. You are driving a car with the alienator

1157
01:09:47,830 --> 01:09:51,410
still in it. So I don't want to buy that car.

1158
01:09:52,030 --> 01:09:54,822
Why are you trying to sell me this car? You tell me you want to

1159
01:09:54,846 --> 01:09:58,272
come home and you're not gonna come home while

1160
01:09:58,296 --> 01:10:02,128
you're still with her. And then I'd cave and he'd come home. But that's

1161
01:10:02,144 --> 01:10:04,352
the thing is if you wanted to prove to me that he wanted to come

1162
01:10:04,376 --> 01:10:07,360
home, why can't I just come home? Prove to me you wanna come home by

1163
01:10:07,400 --> 01:10:11,184
not being with her. And that was it.

1164
01:10:11,272 --> 01:10:15,072
That was. And I knew that it

1165
01:10:15,096 --> 01:10:18,576
was not ever going to work. Continue to repeat

1166
01:10:18,608 --> 01:10:21,904
this cycle where eight times he'd come and gone come in. Come again.

1167
01:10:21,992 --> 01:10:25,558
We would've continued to repeat that until we got that

1168
01:10:25,694 --> 01:10:29,702
piece where there a space between it of

1169
01:10:29,806 --> 01:10:33,462
you cannot just come from her to me. There has to

1170
01:10:33,486 --> 01:10:37,490
be a space. You have to show that

1171
01:10:38,030 --> 01:10:41,702
I am more important than is by saying

1172
01:10:41,806 --> 01:10:46,838
I am. You are willing to have a space without where

1173
01:10:46,974 --> 01:10:50,576
you're reassured that I'm going to be here. And he's

1174
01:10:50,608 --> 01:10:54,848
still not willing to do that because I don't have anywhere to go. Poor baby.

1175
01:10:55,024 --> 01:10:58,064
And I wasn't going to feel sorry for him but because

1176
01:10:58,232 --> 01:11:01,500
I didn't know what to do and I didn't have,

1177
01:11:01,800 --> 01:11:04,928
you know, I didn't have some to go and it wasn't. I wasn't trying to

1178
01:11:04,984 --> 01:11:08,928
make some layer up but. And then one time I even asked my mentor,

1179
01:11:09,024 --> 01:11:12,112
the same one that was very strict and she's like, you know,

1180
01:11:12,136 --> 01:11:15,264
what do you want to do? Or maybe should you And I don't know if

1181
01:11:15,272 --> 01:11:18,552
she was just asking me a question question because the next

1182
01:11:18,576 --> 01:11:21,176
time is like don't ask me that. You know, the answer is I shouldn't.

1183
01:11:21,208 --> 01:11:24,968
Don't ask me. Because she asked me something and I was like

1184
01:11:25,024 --> 01:11:28,232
okay, I guess I'M supposed to let him home because I think that's what she

1185
01:11:28,256 --> 01:11:31,672
said I should do. And I did. For Easter. My goal is to be home

1186
01:11:31,696 --> 01:11:34,680
by Easter. He told me when that. On two in 2008.

1187
01:11:34,800 --> 01:11:37,944
And so he was. Even though every time I did

1188
01:11:37,952 --> 01:11:41,272
that. Really new mistake was 12 months up. No,

1189
01:11:41,296 --> 01:11:44,210
that wasn't. That was before the start. Oh. Oh, okay.

1190
01:11:44,290 --> 01:11:47,870
Easter of 2008 was another. I kicked him out on.

1191
01:11:48,730 --> 01:11:51,602
At the end of January or early February.

1192
01:11:51,746 --> 01:11:54,994
Uhhuh. I let him back in at Easter. Then his.

1193
01:11:55,082 --> 01:11:58,750
Then he was at. Gone. The last time he left the house was July 31.

1194
01:11:59,130 --> 01:12:03,250
July 31, August 1. And then left

1195
01:12:03,290 --> 01:12:07,122
her again. October. So here's what happened after that. Because he

1196
01:12:07,146 --> 01:12:10,404
didn't tell Pac the neighborhood. Mm. That it

1197
01:12:10,412 --> 01:12:13,332
was supposed to be for a whole year. And I was like, how is this

1198
01:12:13,356 --> 01:12:16,420
gonna work? Oh, my God. And Patton lived right next door.

1199
01:12:16,580 --> 01:12:20,372
He had been our next door neighbor, which would have been really bad because,

1200
01:12:20,396 --> 01:12:23,796
I mean, he was literally too close. You know, that would have been a bedroom.

1201
01:12:23,908 --> 01:12:28,228
Yeah. But he had a couple years before, bought a little

1202
01:12:28,284 --> 01:12:31,892
flex stucco house about

1203
01:12:31,916 --> 01:12:35,332
three blocks away. And it had two apartments,

1204
01:12:35,396 --> 01:12:38,708
plus the apartment Patrick lived in. So three. And so Chuck had

1205
01:12:38,764 --> 01:12:42,160
the second bedroom in Patrick's apartment for free.

1206
01:12:43,100 --> 01:12:46,520
And so it was a few blocks away. But walking.

1207
01:12:46,860 --> 01:12:50,440
But not like you should walk there at night. No. Yeah.

1208
01:12:50,860 --> 01:12:54,440
Still distant. Not. Not in. Not in Tacoma.

1209
01:12:55,420 --> 01:12:58,580
So he was. But what

1210
01:12:58,620 --> 01:13:01,060
happened? And he had. He had Patrick. He said, it'll be a couple weeks,

1211
01:13:01,100 --> 01:13:03,790
you know, and then I'll be back. I'll be home. And I was like,

1212
01:13:03,910 --> 01:13:06,782
what? So then Thanksgiving came,

1213
01:13:06,806 --> 01:13:10,270
and I went home to grandma, just recently moved in with my mom.

1214
01:13:10,390 --> 01:13:11,530
She was 90.

1215
01:13:12,950 --> 01:13:15,770
And I left on Wednesday night.

1216
01:13:16,150 --> 01:13:18,490
And Thanksgiving morning,

1217
01:13:18,870 --> 01:13:22,414
Grandma's out, I think, getting some toast in the kitchen, and she collapsed in my

1218
01:13:22,422 --> 01:13:25,470
arms. Oh. And I'm sitting there

1219
01:13:25,510 --> 01:13:29,410
thinking, oh, my God, it's Thanksgiving Day, and my grandma's gonna die in my arms.

1220
01:13:30,590 --> 01:13:33,590
And EMS arrives,

1221
01:13:33,750 --> 01:13:37,238
you know, me holding grandma and all of that. And several

1222
01:13:37,294 --> 01:13:41,254
weeks later, we discovered that it was. She had a urinary tract infection. But for

1223
01:13:41,262 --> 01:13:44,838
those, it was really difficult. Once that resolved, she was much

1224
01:13:44,894 --> 01:13:48,822
better. But just. Just. That is like,

1225
01:13:48,846 --> 01:13:52,166
my mom can't do this. She needs help.

1226
01:13:52,318 --> 01:13:55,952
My mom lived a hundred miles from me, and I

1227
01:13:55,976 --> 01:13:58,700
had lost my. The Friday before,

1228
01:14:00,440 --> 01:14:03,632
so I didn't have to worry about, you know, because if I hadn't lost

1229
01:14:03,656 --> 01:14:07,200
my job, there would have been no way. So it was so

1230
01:14:07,240 --> 01:14:10,848
perfect. Lost job due to the. Not good at

1231
01:14:10,904 --> 01:14:13,540
compartmentalizing the trauma. Oh.

1232
01:14:14,360 --> 01:14:17,792
But. And it wasn't a career track job. Still, it sounds like it was

1233
01:14:17,816 --> 01:14:21,792
right before skinning. Yeah. Of those, you know, it's coming.

1234
01:14:21,976 --> 01:14:25,200
Oh, yeah. So I'd had. I had jobs during the.

1235
01:14:25,240 --> 01:14:28,752
His crisis, one that I had when I started, and then I was out of

1236
01:14:28,776 --> 01:14:31,648
work for a year after that. And then I got another job at it for

1237
01:14:31,704 --> 01:14:34,912
exactly two years and then that

1238
01:14:34,936 --> 01:14:37,920
one. And that was a great job for the first year and a half.

1239
01:14:38,040 --> 01:14:41,072
But then when his. When he came home in 2008,

1240
01:14:41,256 --> 01:14:43,100
he would come to my office.

1241
01:14:47,760 --> 01:14:51,320
He would come. He would come to my office all the time. He would call

1242
01:14:51,360 --> 01:14:55,512
my office if he called. And I answered. And it wasn't call. I was

1243
01:14:55,536 --> 01:14:59,432
the working as the receptionist. So I had to answer the phone. And you

1244
01:14:59,456 --> 01:15:02,700
couldn't have. You couldn't see who was calling?

1245
01:15:03,040 --> 01:15:06,820
No. Calling right into the phone. Yeah. And it's him.

1246
01:15:09,440 --> 01:15:12,760
And it was one of those. So they can all tell

1247
01:15:12,800 --> 01:15:16,460
what's going. Going on. Oh, awful.

1248
01:15:16,620 --> 01:15:19,840
Awkward. Yeah. Awkward. Oh, yeah.

1249
01:15:20,500 --> 01:15:24,640
Yeah. So that didn't last. And it was. It was a big relief.

1250
01:15:25,140 --> 01:15:28,332
Big relief. But now I am free to tell my

1251
01:15:28,356 --> 01:15:32,252
mom. Okay, you know what? I. She didn't ask me. I do this alone.

1252
01:15:32,316 --> 01:15:36,124
And I needed it so bad. I'm going to go home and

1253
01:15:36,132 --> 01:15:39,292
I'm going to town and come back. I don't know if I went home on

1254
01:15:39,316 --> 01:15:42,752
Saturday and came back on Sunday. I think I came or went home Sunday and

1255
01:15:42,776 --> 01:15:45,744
came back on Monday. But I mean, I literally went home.

1256
01:15:45,912 --> 01:15:49,136
I said. And that. Because it wasn't

1257
01:15:49,168 --> 01:15:52,448
that Chuck couldn't come to our house, it was that we could in the same

1258
01:15:52,504 --> 01:15:55,760
house. And that solved all of our

1259
01:15:55,800 --> 01:15:59,460
problems because now we didn't have to pay for a separate residence.

1260
01:16:00,040 --> 01:16:04,352
We didn't have to burden anybody. And it also gave

1261
01:16:04,416 --> 01:16:07,944
Chuck this excuse. Excuse for people

1262
01:16:08,112 --> 01:16:11,432
that helped him save face, which you don't always want to

1263
01:16:11,456 --> 01:16:14,520
do back home. And you're helping your mom and grandmother.

1264
01:16:14,600 --> 01:16:18,152
Exactly. And he could tell people, yeah, my wife has gone to help her grandma.

1265
01:16:18,296 --> 01:16:21,704
And that's a valid reason for many wives to do. Totally.

1266
01:16:21,752 --> 01:16:25,848
And I had this wonderful experience from

1267
01:16:25,904 --> 01:16:28,888
then through July. I came home August 1st.

1268
01:16:28,944 --> 01:16:31,432
We had planned and it was.

1269
01:16:31,536 --> 01:16:35,336
I wrote a manuscript during that period and

1270
01:16:35,408 --> 01:16:38,968
I continued. I had just started building my website in

1271
01:16:39,024 --> 01:16:42,680
August, and my

1272
01:16:42,720 --> 01:16:46,328
mom took care of me in the sense of I had

1273
01:16:46,384 --> 01:16:49,380
the food fairy, who is a really good cook.

1274
01:16:49,680 --> 01:16:53,060
Just food literally would just come up here

1275
01:16:53,360 --> 01:16:56,616
on this hand tray and be set down next to the computer

1276
01:16:56,648 --> 01:17:00,322
where I was Working laundry

1277
01:17:00,386 --> 01:17:02,870
was done for me. Not kidding.

1278
01:17:03,210 --> 01:17:06,530
It was amazing. And what I did though was

1279
01:17:06,570 --> 01:17:10,210
I went home beginning every other week. And then

1280
01:17:10,330 --> 01:17:13,458
as the year progressed, I extended it by a

1281
01:17:13,514 --> 01:17:16,962
day and then a day and then a day. And we

1282
01:17:16,986 --> 01:17:21,234
got Tuck into counseling. And then I eventually joined

1283
01:17:21,282 --> 01:17:24,834
him because I was there not only during the weekends, and so we were

1284
01:17:24,842 --> 01:17:29,198
going to counseling together during those times. I was home through

1285
01:17:29,254 --> 01:17:32,574
that year and by the end, I think by the end,

1286
01:17:32,582 --> 01:17:34,970
I might have been home for a week and not home for a week.

1287
01:17:35,510 --> 01:17:39,582
By the end of that, by August, in fact, by that time I

1288
01:17:39,606 --> 01:17:42,782
was like waiting, counting the days. Even though I love being with grandma, I was

1289
01:17:42,806 --> 01:17:45,598
counting the days till I'm completely home. Aw.

1290
01:17:45,734 --> 01:17:49,310
And so that I was this. 2009. So it was

1291
01:17:49,350 --> 01:17:52,954
2009. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

1292
01:17:53,002 --> 01:17:56,410
And by then I had pretty much filled out most of the

1293
01:17:56,450 --> 01:18:00,346
website. It was a early phase of the website, the design

1294
01:18:00,418 --> 01:18:04,458
and all of that. But I'd wrote many articles because the articles

1295
01:18:04,474 --> 01:18:08,310
on the website were the book. As I'm writing the book. I am

1296
01:18:08,850 --> 01:18:12,042
putting out the chapters as, as articles in the.

1297
01:18:12,146 --> 01:18:15,770
For the website on that. And you know what? Kinda. I'll be right there

1298
01:18:15,810 --> 01:18:19,428
because I'm gonna start part two. Going to be a part two and,

1299
01:18:19,484 --> 01:18:23,092
and we're going to. So we're going to stop it right here. Part two is

1300
01:18:23,116 --> 01:18:26,644
going to start with the end of 2009 and what happens

1301
01:18:26,692 --> 01:18:29,780
in 2010. Sounds good. Stay right there.

1302
01:18:29,820 --> 01:18:33,396
Okay. Wow. Thanks for listening to Kenda

1303
01:18:33,428 --> 01:18:37,044
today. So that's a lot of back and forth. I can't believe the patience

1304
01:18:37,092 --> 01:18:40,692
she had. That is amazing. Just revolving door.

1305
01:18:40,756 --> 01:18:44,036
And she hung in there and, and now it's been,

1306
01:18:44,108 --> 01:18:47,602
let's see, that started in 2005 and then he, Chuck was

1307
01:18:47,626 --> 01:18:50,290
home in 2009 and now it's 2024.

1308
01:18:50,410 --> 01:18:53,170
So what is that you guys?

1309
01:18:53,330 --> 01:18:54,750
2025, actually.

1310
01:18:55,210 --> 01:18:56,750
2025,

1311
01:18:57,770 --> 01:19:01,842
wow. So Chuck has been home for 16 years.

1312
01:19:02,026 --> 01:19:06,530
So they have, you know, they have restored their marriage and

1313
01:19:06,650 --> 01:19:10,354
their family is thriving with five little foster children

1314
01:19:10,442 --> 01:19:13,944
that they took in as infants. And so they've got a

1315
01:19:13,952 --> 01:19:17,336
super busy household. And Kenda continues

1316
01:19:17,368 --> 01:19:21,176
to expand her midlife crisis knowledge and

1317
01:19:21,248 --> 01:19:24,488
offerings. So I'll just tell you now she's got.

1318
01:19:24,544 --> 01:19:28,696
You can check out her website, midlife crisis marriage

1319
01:19:28,808 --> 01:19:32,376
advocate.com and on there you'll find

1320
01:19:32,448 --> 01:19:36,136
information about Thrive membership. The one on one coaching.

1321
01:19:36,248 --> 01:19:39,618
She's got a quiz on there and asking, you know, if you.

1322
01:19:39,754 --> 01:19:43,058
To help you figure out if your spouse is in midlife crisis. She's got

1323
01:19:43,114 --> 01:19:46,306
a free little midlife crisis course.

1324
01:19:46,458 --> 01:19:49,842
It's just a three parter that you can do over, you know,

1325
01:19:49,866 --> 01:19:53,522
a couple hours. It's just self paced. And anyway,

1326
01:19:53,586 --> 01:19:57,090
just lots of information. For anybody who's new to this,

1327
01:19:57,210 --> 01:20:01,010
I highly recommend that you go check out midlife crisis

1328
01:20:01,090 --> 01:20:03,310
marriage advocate dot com.

1329
01:20:03,700 --> 01:20:06,844
Okay, so we didn't finish today with Kenda

1330
01:20:06,892 --> 01:20:10,124
and there's a lot more. So we're gonna, we have a part two coming out

1331
01:20:10,212 --> 01:20:13,820
and we're gonna hear about how she started the

1332
01:20:13,940 --> 01:20:17,132
her forum, the website. And we're gonna bring

1333
01:20:17,156 --> 01:20:21,228
it all the way up here to today to 2025. So stay

1334
01:20:21,284 --> 01:20:25,080
tuned for part two. Check it out. Thanks for joining us today.