Brandon Held-Life Is Crazy -Episode 9

The speaker is sharing the story of his second significant relationship. He was initially attracted to a red-headed girl at the gym and asked her out, but she rejected him. He later approached her again, emphasizing that he was not just a college kid and they started dating. She revealed that she was going through a divorce and they continued seeing each other. The speaker then introduces Angie, his second wife, who had many impressive qualities. However, he discovered that she had cheated on her husband multiple times before and questioned her honesty. Despite his doubts, he chose to continue the relationship. Hello, welcome back to Brandon Howe, Life is Crazy, Episode 9. Where I last left off at the last episode was the beginning of my introduction to the next significant relationship that I had in my life. But I'm going to say this, in some ways I'm having a tough time going back to these memories and recalling these memories and trying to tell them as authentically as possible in what happened and how it happened at the time. Because, you know, my wife, I love her very much and she is the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. And, you know, I hope that I can get through this and do these things without affecting her in some type of way because this is just me trying to tell my story. And, you know, there are some feelings that grew up inside me that make me feel bad about doing this because I'm recalling these memories and I'm making these memories public. So, to Jew, I love you and I hope that this, you know, is not bothering you and if it is, please don't listen to these portions because these are really for everyone else, not for you. So, having said that, back to where I left off. So, my friend called me out and I saw this red-headed girl at the gym that I was, you know, insanely attracted to from the outside looking in. I didn't know anything about her. You know, she walked with confidence. She had the face of Angelina Jolie in the body of a fitness model with, you know, and she dyed her hair red, not like crazy bright red, but like a red tint to her already naturally dark hair, but it made it look a little red. And so, you know, physically, the attraction was just there. She was just beautiful to me and sexy. And, you know, it wasn't just me and I'll get into that in a minute. So, I saw her at the gym the next day after my roommate calls me out and I see my opportunity to ask her out and I sit down next to her and I introduce myself and, you know, I just come out with it. I say, hey, you know, I think you're beautiful. I would love to go out with you sometime. And she just looks at me and she says, no, she's not interested. And I said, okay, thank you for your time. And I turn around and walk away, you know, and I was like, ow, that hurt, you know, like getting rejected sucks. I don't care who you are. Getting rejected sucks as much as we all try to pretend it doesn't bother us. It does. So, you know, I went back to a different part of the gym and I thought about what happened and I collected myself and I was thinking while I was there, I was thinking, you know, everyone mistakes me for being younger than I am. You know, I'm 25 years old. I have a son. You know, a lot of people think I'm regular college age, you know, 19, 20, 21. You know, my whole life people have thought I was younger than I am. So I was like, no, I'm not going to accept that. No, you know, if nothing else, I'm going to go to her and let her know the whole situation. So after I collected myself, I went back to her and I sat down and I just started talking and I said, hey, you know, I know you said no and I respect that and I appreciate that, but I just want you to know, like, I'm not just some other college kid. You know, I'm 25 years old. I'm divorced. I have a young son. You know, I'm not just a kid, you know, hitting on you. And then she seemed really receptive to that. And then that opened up conversation. And, you know, that conversation led to her telling me she had two kids herself and she was 27. So she was actually almost two years older than me. I know 25 and 27 is two. But, you know, when you put the birthdays together, it wasn't quite two. And we just hit it off right away. You know, it was fun. We were talking. And then, you know, at the end of the conversation, she said, yeah, you know what? I will go out with you. And so, yeah, I walked away from that conversation. Super excited. Went back to my, you know, apartment later that day, told my roommate, I asked her out and he was like, yeah, see, see how they are. You can thank me later for, you know, calling you out, whatever. And so, you know, we ended up going out and, you know, we went out and it was a blast. We had a good time. You know, we ended up, you know, going all the way, hooking up and all that. And then it wasn't until after that she was like, well, I need to tell you something. And I was like, oh, God, what? And she said, well, you know, I'm going through a divorce currently. You know, I still live with my husband, but I'm going through a divorce. And I was like, you know, of course I had questions. Who wouldn't in that situation? I asked my questions. You know, she appeased me with her answers. And then, you know, we just kept going. We kept, you know, seeing each other. Obviously, not very often, right? Because our situations were, she was a college student, a mother of two, and I was a college student and I had Ethan, who I did get, you know, half of the time during the week. I spent a lot of time with Ethan. And, you know, sidebar there. That was interesting to me because I would go get Ethan and, you know, pick him up from his mom and everything was cool. And then, you know, he would come spend, you know, some time with me. Sometimes I kept him just one day, but, you know, I'd still go back and forth and get him because me and his mother didn't live that far apart. Sometimes he'd spend two or three days with me. But as he got a little older, like, you know, maybe one, less than one, I remember he was wearing diapers. I don't remember if he could quite walk yet. I don't think he could. You know, and I would come pick him up from his mom and he'd be happy to see me and he'd be ready to go, you know. And then when I would try to take him back to his mom, this is the part that really got me. He would wrap his arms around my neck and scream bloody murder like, you know, he didn't want to go back to his mom. And initially my thought was, oh, I feel so bad for her. Like, imagine being a mother and your son is screaming like that because he would rather stay with his father than come with you. And then, of course, then later it made me have questions like, you know, why would he behave that way? You know, is she mistreating him? You know, what am I missing? What do I not know? You know, and I never, ever found out that that was the case or there was anything wrong. I personally didn't believe that as a person, you know, she would do anything like that because I thought she was a good person. You know, so I didn't have any hints or, you know, thoughts that there was actually any reason that he was behaving like that other than he just missed me and he wanted to be with me. And so I let it go, but it happened for months. I mean, months and months. I couldn't even tell you how long it went that he would just cry and scream and hang on to me when I would take him back to her. And I did not like that. I felt so bad for her. I felt bad for him. Right. He had his reasons for feeling that way. And it was tough. It was really tough. But anyway, so to advance through the story of my next relationship is my second wife, who ends up being my second wife, Angie. Her and I continue dating, you know, and like on paper, she was an amazing woman. Like, if you were to put down a resume of a woman, right, and I were to say to you on that resume, oh, get this, she has the face of Angelina Jolie. She has the body of a fitness model. She has a master's degree or she's getting a master's degree in chemistry, and she has a 4.0 GPA. You know, she literally can do anything she puts her mind to. You know, she can take wood planks and build like a dresser you would buy from a furniture store. You know, she remodeled the kitchen in our house, and I'm talking ripped the whole thing out, cabinets, sinks, you know, laying down tile. We ripped out the bathroom of our home, and we shifted, we moved the toilet from one spot of the home to the other. She re-plumbed the entire home. She ran all the electrical outlets. She re-electrical the entire home because the old electrical wiring was bad and not good. It wasn't up to code. I mean, there were parts in the wire that they were literally like two pieces of wire connected together and taped, and it was falling apart. You know, it was an old home that we eventually ended up living in, and like she was just super smart, intelligence-wise, and also very attractive. And so on paper, you would think, oh, my God, she's the perfect woman, but there's more to this story. So after a little bit of dating, she comes to me one day, and she says to me, I did it, Brandon. I said, what? She said, I finally told my husband I want a divorce. I'm moving out. And I was like, what? You know, you told me when we met you were going through a divorce, right? And she tried to backtrack and say, that's not what she said, but I know what she said. And she told me she was going through a divorce, right? But I was so deep at this point, I just was happy that she was leaving him. And then it was going to be a situation where we had a real relationship. But this made me question things. It made me question her honesty. It made me question her integrity. So I asked her things like, am I the first one that you've ever had an affair with, that you've cheated on your husband with? And she told me, honestly, she said no. And I learned she had other affairs, and she had been with other men. And I was like, so what's different this time? And she was just like, I love you. I want to be with you. I never loved any of them. I didn't want to be with any of them. You I want to be with. And so I didn't have the balls to end it. I could have. I should have. But I didn't have the balls to do it because I was so enamored by her, enamored by her beauty and enamored by what she was capable of as a person. And so I was like, all right, you know, let's see where this goes. And so I did let it go. And so she ended up, you know, renting an apartment literally right across the hall from my apartment. Like, I opened up the door, walked five feet. There she was, you know, her and her two kids. You know, that wasn't something she asked me if it was going to be okay. That wasn't something we discussed prior to that. She just did it. Right. And it was just like, okay, I'm doing this, you know, deal with it. And so I did. And then, you know, eventually, as time went on, she asked me to move in with her. And so I took the difficult step of, you know, breaking it to my roommate, Jeff, that I was going to move out and move in with her. And, you know, he took it in stride, even though I know he probably didn't love it. And I wasn't happy to do it. Right. Because I felt an obligation to him. But I also felt an obligation to the woman that I was with. And I had loved at the time. So it was a conundrum. And she was putting a lot of pressure on me saying, you know, she can't afford to be on her own with two kids by herself. And she needed help. And so and she was really, really good to my son, Ethan, you know. And that was also a swaying factor that led in her favor. Right. Had she ignored Ethan or treated him, you know, like he was this burden to her or whatever, that probably would have really pushed me in a different direction. But she was so good to him. She treated him and loved him like he was her own son. And so, you know, of course, that makes anyone feel like, oh, this is a good person that I'm with, even despite the other things that I know. And so over time, as you live together with someone, you learn their other quirks and their personality issues. Right. I mean, she was deeply insecure, which I didn't know because she seemed so confident when I didn't know her and I just saw her at the gym. You know, she walked like she had pride, like she was just proud and confident. But she wasn't. She was deeply insecure. She had high anxiety, very high anxiety, you know, anxious all the time, nervous energy all the time. You know, I just could never feel like I could just relax with her because she was just so angst ridden and just always needed to be moving around. She was a workaholic. She, you know, she just had things to her that made me feel like, well, you know, she's not the right person for me. Right. As beautiful as she is, she's not the right person for me. I don't know if I could ever trust her based on what I know about her and based on the way this relationship started. And I just wasn't sure. And so, you know, eventually at some point we moved out of the apartment and we moved into a house together. And that's where, you know, the things occurred that I told you about, you know, ripping out a kitchen and a bathroom and just redoing an entire house. You know, and she just she literally looked online. You know, how do you lay tile? She could go lay tile. How do you how do you change the electrical wiring in a home? Boom. Done. How do you do the plumbing? You know, just she would watch a YouTube video one time and she just did it. I mean, you have to respect someone that has that kind of skill and ability. How can you not? I couldn't do it. I still couldn't do it to this day. I don't believe I could watch any video one time on something that significant and just go do it. But she did it. But, you know, we had a lot of other issues. And, you know, one of our issues was how to handle children. We I definitely felt like at that time in life, her kids were young and I felt like they were brats. I felt like they got away with with too much the way they behave, the way they acted out. And she just didn't handle them well. And I wasn't allowed to handle them. Right. Because they weren't my kids. This was her words, not mine. And it was her job to take care of that stuff. And so, you know, we would fight about how to take care of kids. We would fight about how to take care of exes. You know, her ex was still completely in love with her, didn't want to let her go, was inappropriately, for our relationship anyway, contacting her and trying to maintain some type of relationship that was clearly above, you know, exes that had children together. And we would fight about all these things, you know, and and she was very pigheaded and stubborn. Right. She knew she was intelligent. She had she had a photographic memory. You know, she was smart. And so that translated into all areas of life that she thought she was always right. You know, you couldn't tell her anything. She was always right. And her point of view was the only one that mattered. And I'm not the type of person that you can be that way with. You know, I look for compromise in a relationship. Obviously, two people don't get together and they just, boom, are on the same page on everything. Right. It takes work and sometimes hard work. But you have to be able to give, you know, in the areas that you can give and you can live with. You have to be able to give and live to fight another day. And if it's an area that you just can't give and you just can't live with, you have to draw a line, you know, and that person has to meet you either halfway or on your side of the line, depending on the situation. And vice versa, you have to be willing to do that for your partner. You have to be willing to meet them halfway or sometimes you go to their side of the line. It just depends on what the situation is. And she just had it like, nope, I'm right. You're wrong. I do things my way. No one else is going to tell me how to do it differently. You know, literally the words that she said to me. So it was falling apart. It became toxic, really, to some degree, because we just couldn't get along in a sense of a relationship-wise. But we were also like, the attraction was still there. We were super attracted to each other. We were like two magnets, two heavy-duty magnets that you're trying to pull apart. And as much as we tried, I mean, we broke up multiple times. I mean, I moved out three or four times from living with her. And, you know, we ended it multiple times. We just couldn't break away from each other. And so finally, at one point, when she gave me an ultimatum, she said, you know, we either need to get married or end this. And at that time, things were good. It was a brief time towards the end where we were doing well and things were good. And she threw this ultimatum on me, like, you need to marry me or get out, right? And I'm living back in the house with her. And I was like, well, you know, I need to think about that. And, of course, she got upset by that, offended by that. And so I tried to let it slide and let it pass. And then, you know, about a week went by. And she was like, she approached me again with it. And she said, you either need to marry me or you need to go get a U-Haul and get out of my house. And she was dead serious, right? I could see it on her face. And I was really in a pickle. I knew I didn't want to marry her, at least not at that point in time. And we had been together almost five years at this point. But I also knew I wasn't ready to just call it quits and cut it off. I mean, there's a part of me that feels like I should turn back, you know, if I would have turned back time and called her bluff, you know, it was actually that a bluff. But I didn't. I gave in. I married her. And almost immediately, I regretted it. You know, we just went to a courthouse. We got married. And right away, I saw a shift in her attitude, a shift in her personality. You know, she became much more domineering and demanding. You know, whereas before, she was just maybe a workaholic, maybe doing her own thing a lot. And I didn't spend that much time with her. And she just kind of let me be, let me do my thing. But at that point, after we got married, she was pushing me like, okay, you need to get your career together. You need to get your life financially going, because I'm not going to put up with someone who's, you know, not doing well financially in life. And the truth is, is I had been struggling to get a career and get a job going. And I had shared all that with her. And I thought she was on my team. But once she portrayed this personality and this attitude, I was completely turned off. You know, I also still always had in my mind, I don't know if I can trust her. You know, I never felt like I could trust her. You know, I feel like if you have the ability to cheat on someone multiple times, you know, what makes me any different, right? You know, I never thought, well, I'm so special, she'll never cheat on me. No, I didn't think that at all. I actually thought in a minute when things weren't good and weren't going well, you know, she would go cheat on me and she would find, you know, whatever she's looking for in the arms of another man. And frankly, I never knew if the times that we broke up, if she didn't go do that and find that. She says that she didn't, but who knows, right? So it leaves questions. And I had questions, and I knew, like, this was just a disaster. This was a sinking ship that hasn't sunk yet, and I needed to get off. So I decided to move out and leave her for good. And one of the ways that I decided to do that was to join the military because I knew if I lived in the same area with her and I lived in the same town with her, we would never completely separate, right? It just wasn't going to happen. Like I said, that pull, that magnetic pull, it was too strong. You know, we were bad for each other. We were never going to have a good relationship, but we also didn't have a way, the power to break away. Neither one of us did. And so I lamented, you know, joining the military to get out of this situation. You know, I can't get a career going where I'm currently living in Dayton, Ohio. I can't, you know, break away in this relationship. And, you know, just nothing was going right for me there except for the fact that I had Ethan, right? I loved Ethan. I still spent a lot of time with him. He had grown close to her kids, which was also a difficult part of the equation. You know, her son was close to his age and they got along well and, you know, they had a relationship. And so it just, it all wasn't easy. And I was going through in my mind what to do. And frankly, it was my mom that tips me over the edge. You know, I was asking my friends and family, what would they do if they were in my situation? What should I do? And it was my mom that said, look, you and Ethan, you have a strong bond. You have a really strong bond. And she said, that's, nothing's going to break that. You know, you need to get your life together. You know, if that means joining the military and going and doing what you need to do to get your life together, then that's okay. Do that. You're always going to have Ethan. He'll always be your son. You'll always have that strong bond. You know, and I listened to that and I'd heard that and I believed that. And so under that decision, I decided, all right, I'm going to go join the military. You know, I'm going to go become an officer in the Air Force. You know, I'm going to get a secondary degree. I'm going to go for a master's degree. And, you know, because this undergraduate math communications degree is awful. It's awful. You know, it was a worthless degree, frankly, if you weren't going to do, you know, like be on the news or be a reporter or something like that. It was just a bad degree. And I didn't follow that path. And so I decided I was going to follow the path of joining the military. And so after a short amount of time, less than six months of marriage, I had moved out and I was going to join the military. And that's what I'm going to pick up. I'm going to backtrack a little bit because obviously I skipped over a lot. Right. I went from being in college to talking about a relationship and a marriage and a divorce. So I'll backtrack a little bit on the next episode and I will tell you some other things that were important and pertinent. And I'll talk to you next time.