Midlife Marriage Red Flags | What Is Financial Infidelity? - WTF Just Happened?

SPEAKER_02: This is What the F Just Happened.

SPEAKER_00: The podcast that proves life is messy, midlife is so wild, and laughter is definitely non-negotiable.

SPEAKER_02: So grab a cocktail or a mocktail or your favorite emotionally supportive snack, and let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02: Hello, welcome back everyone. This is Hillary, and we're so excited that you're joining us again on What the F just Happened. Today's episode title is Plot Twist, the day Susan from Wells Fargo hard launched my marriage spiral. So this is gonna be the story of Hillary's spiral from unhappily married into a happily divorced. There's a lot of twists and turns that go back, right? So this is kind of where the marriage had gone so silent that NASA said, yeah, we're not picking anything up on our end.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's scary. Like NASA level silence. That is very concerning.

SPEAKER_02: It was highly concerning, and it definitely had been a slow descent into that. I'll give you a little bit of the overview and then we'll kind of go a deep dive. But married young, which in hindsight, for me, not for everyone in the world listening. Some people in their early 20s are incredibly mature and make good choices. I was not one of them. We'll hear about that probably on further episodes. But I was a young 23 when I met my former husband. Okay. And probably wasn't really looking like strategically at the long haul of where we were compatible.

SPEAKER_02: Did our families and not saying families mixed, I don't mean it that way, but looking at, let's say, his family and his relationships with his siblings, his parents, could have been an indicator if I had sort of eyes wide open. Well, what do they tell us? We you also marry the family. You marry the family. And what's funny is they say you marry your dad, but my dad is phenomenal. I definitely did not marry my dad. I like took the mold of my dad and then said, hmm, maybe I'll do a 180, and I marry that person.

SPEAKER_02: So, but yes, you marry the family, and I had in at my young age, and again, emotionally immature, I was more about the ring and the wedding and the fun. I wasn't really looking at strategically of the finality. Yeah. Was can I go the long haul with this person? Do our characters align? Do our values align? Can we overcome the hurdles?

SPEAKER_01: Did you have like I just wondered like, did your family or his family kind of were you guys close with them? Were they able to kind of talk you through, like, you know, are you guys ready? Did you do any premarital counseling? I just wonder, like, what does that look like? Because I was also around the same age.

SPEAKER_02: We didn't. Um, I would highly encourage that now. Yeah. But no, his family, his parents were unhappily divorced, had a very contemptuous divorce, had some other stuff, which actually looking back, completely comes into play into my marriage. Not not the same stuff, but similar patterns of just not being truthful. And what he learned. And what he learned and what was modeled for him, but I'm not trying to disparage them. He has two lovely sisters, and he has lovely who are wonderful people, one married to an exceptional person, and they have wonderful, like I have wonderful nieces and um a nephew.

SPEAKER_02: Sorry, they have three nephews and a niece, and they're one those two produced a phenomenal case. But my ex did not obviously was not modeled well. And my modeling was as much as I adore my family, and I have incredible siblings, I have incredible parents. I did not see the marriage get modeled in a way where communication was on the forefront. My parents, respectfully of each other, did things behind closed doors.

SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that was a definite, like that is the era. That's the era nobody, you know, everything was done behind closed doors.

SPEAKER_02: Very much. I remember my mom, I was graduated from high school, and my aunt was over from my graduation from New York. And my mom, I walked in and she was crying to my aunt. And I said, Mom, I'm just going down to San Luis Bisco for college. The JC, by the way, not Cat Polly. I wasn't that smart. So, but I said, I'm I'm just going down to you know, done to Cal or Anaquista in St. Louis. And she looked at me and said, I'm not crying about you. And it was the first time I thought to myself, oh, maybe my parents are having a disagreement.

SPEAKER_02: I know. Now it's but yes, it was it was done privately and yeah. So I would we got so we got married young. No, there was no pre it wasn't right. We weren't, we were married by just a judge. I was Jewish, he was Lutheran, so there was no type of any type of religious connection, there was no premarital counseling. There were red flags, and I was just too young to realize that some of the pattern of behavior when he got angry was probably gonna get worse and play out later in life. Right. And I should have questioned that more.

SPEAKER_02: I should have right delved into that.

SPEAKER_01: So like your rose-colored glasses were more about being young, excited for your wedding ring, for your wedding, for the, you know, the rose-colored like a head that you thought the whole often circumstance. Right. I didn't really look. I think a lot of people, but a lot of people, I feel like our age bracket when we talk to them, that is the same. Right. Um, but yeah, it's definitely one of those things that you um don't have a lot of knowledge. So you put the glasses on and you just move ahead.

SPEAKER_02: Exactly. And I'm so thankful I did because I have the most wondrous daughters who I wouldn't have. So that's where in perspective right hindsight would have done it all over again, would have known going in, unfortunately, that it wasn't gonna work out and it wouldn't work out for so many reasons, but I'm so thankful I'd have them. But yeah, it was um flash forward now. We're in our early 30s. I have three amazing daughters. They're young. We have them within three years of each other. We started a little late.

SPEAKER_02: So we're like my girls. I love them so much. They're so fun, right? And so yeah, started at 30 and then had um first daughter at 30. I had the next daughter at 31 and my last daughter at 33. So they were wedged in there.

SPEAKER_01: So you had like a long you kind of had some years. What did you do in the Viennan years? Just worked. Oh, okay. We're working. So you didn't have them like right at 23, 24. Oh, okay. Got married and we waited. And I think I intentively waited.

SPEAKER_02: Did you already just work and did like No, we did. I think we wanted to travel the world, but we were working and we were saving up for a house, which we I think we bought our first home when we were because we got married at 24. I think we bought our first home, our first house in 26 years. So we already, right, when we had Ashley, we had moved into a home. So our first home we bought maybe at 28, 27, 28. So we're just right, and I wasn't we weren't big savers, but I'm just saying we were that was like business working really hard, going to work all day, right?

SPEAKER_02: Had a couple dogs, enjoyed each other enough. Yeah. But I don't think right, we weren't spending 80 hours of work with each other. It was like we'd spend nights and weekends, and things were okay. Yeah, they were fine. Yeah, I'd say a very up and down. Some days were really great, and then when he was in a bad mood, you sort of just walked on anxious running. Yeah. So now you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01: And you're getting taught like in your own mind, because there's no real lessons from what we've learned from either our parents to no fault of their own. You just kind of think this is marriage. This is marriage, right?

SPEAKER_02: You're in the thick of it, you're gonna make it work, you're married. There were moments briefly before as children, I thought, hmm, maybe, maybe I don't want to be married to you the rest of my life. Like maybe I am starting to see some things I don't love, but not enough to sort of do anything different.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, society tells you keep going, have kids, and get going.

SPEAKER_02: You guys are yeah, and also I kind of honestly thought to myself, which again was probably immature, was I don't really want to be divorced at 25. Yeah. Right. And again, granted, I'm so thankful I wasn't because we didn't have kids until we're at 30 and over. Right. So hard launch over that. And we're cruising along. Right with kids. We are cruising in silence now. We have hit the silence era.

SPEAKER_01: Um, like what do they say? Like, um, when you have little ones, they're like, you're uh just like passing ships in the night. Yes, we were passing ships in the night. Whether that's a good marriage or not, there is a point where everyone's passing ships in the night.

SPEAKER_02: 100% because you're so busy. And so tired. Right. So busy. I wasn't working, I was able to stay at home with the kids, which was incredible. And whether you work or you're home, both are so complicated and so hard. Going through your day. Yeah. So busy, having, you know, dinner, bath, getting kids into bed, sleep, knowledge moving, lunch is made. Right? All of that. So, so flash forward. And kids are probably at this point now like four, five, well, maybe three, actually, three, four, oh, six. I mean, they're little and ring, ring, ring.

SPEAKER_02: Your phone rings. Phone rings. And on the other line is Susan from Wales Fargo, who is just happy as a clamp. Almost sounds like she's calling to tell me I won her prize. But the prize was dead.

SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02: And she said, Mrs. X, hi, this is Susan. I'm calling about your home equity line. So cheerfully. Yeah. Yeah. And I said, Awesome. We have one. What can I help you with? And she we don't owe anything. Back in the day, just so everyone knows, this is a million years ago, when you got a mortgage, they also gave you a home equity line. Oh, so right. So just sort of like came with the house. Oh. So I mean, granted, maybe I don't know, we had good credit. There was already equity in the home. But at some point it was like pre-approval.

SPEAKER_02: If you have 200,000, here you go. Exactly. So we need 100,000 that I knew of, right? Just sitting there. Yeah. And I don't, we didn't apply for it. We didn't go and get one to like remodel. So it was just this thing. Now it's a little different. I think now you actually applied for that or you go get them. But this is probably this is probably like, you know, 2005, whatever it was. So we had one and she's calling to let me know that the entire line has been used up. So it's like a hundred thousand dollars plus, like low hundreds.

SPEAKER_02: So not only have we used the entire line. No, not you. Not me. Because I'd have a lot of things. I don't even know why she was calling. Yeah. I had no idea she was calling, right? But yes, she's calling to let me know when was she was asking actually when was our payment coming in? And I shockingly said, What what do you mean? Which then led me to doing a little inquiry into, well, okay, what has happened? And I pulled a credit report, and now I find out that there's actually like another$70,000 owed on credit cards that I know nothing about.

SPEAKER_02: So we now uh used our entire credit line on our house, which turned out, well, you guess was playing properly.

SPEAKER_01: When she calls you and you think she's like joking, were you were you um feeling like they had the wrong number? Or did you get were you in shock? Like that would be a crazy phone call to get to say not only do you have 100,000 is being has been used and you're wondering what the F it but was used on, and not, and then you're late. Uh and you obviously were like, okay, this is crazy. Red flags start popping up about you not using it, right? What and what it was used on 100%. Like, you'll get into that later, Ms. I don't know what it raised your garage.

SPEAKER_01: What was it used on?

SPEAKER_02: Right. Well, okay, okay, you'll get to that. So if she calls me now immediately, it's like all of a sudden, your heart, well, first of all, right, you've got a stomachache. And she's like, no, this is right, this is this, this is this. And she's confirming everything, but she's just so happy. Oh, a little bit. Happy. She, I don't think she thought she was oh like my divorce. Exactly. Yeah. But she was thought you could tell that it turned. Yeah. She went from cheerful, when is our payment coming?

SPEAKER_02: to oh, I'm so sorry. I'm giving you this news. This is right terrible.

SPEAKER_01: But we right, heart in my conversations around the dinner table are at night when she goes home to tell her family that she has to like deliver news to people that I ruined another marriage. Yeah, I ruined another marriage today, and there's massive embezzlement happening. Okay. Right, personal internal embezzlement. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: No, so yeah, it was one of those where I mean my heart was pounding, and I'm just thinking to myself, what has happened? Like, what the F? Mm-hmm. How do I not know? Right? I have little kids, right? I'm raising them. He's in financials, so I'm not questioning anything. Yeah, he worked for like a big It was right. It was Merrill Lynn shooting. And then uh he was a stockbroker. So it was just baffling to me. But in my panic, it did occur to me that I should look. I think back in the day, I don't remember what it was back then.

SPEAKER_02: I was able to pull a credit report. I think you can like get one a year. You probably still can for free. And I pulled the bureaus because obviously I have both of our socials. Mine was cleaner. I had a target card, right? And we had some student loan debt that we had merged in our early 20s together. Was the number low at that point? This is on me. His was the oh my gosh, how do you owe$70,000 on credit cards? Plus the hundred thousand X. Plus the$100,000. So, and maybe I'm wrong on my years. I might have been like further into I'm trying to think of when.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, did he cut did he pull up with like a new red Corvette? No, this must have been like more 2008 time. No, he this is exactly it. So when someone enters home that night, I I don't even know what to say. How do you even handle that? There's nothing kids. Little kids, we have a conversation after the kids go to bed. What in the hell is going on? There's not a drug addiction, there's not any type of other addiction.

SPEAKER_01: So no like porn, no um like uh like going to the strip clubs, no, I mean things that as a person looking at like a marriage like that, you would think there's gotta be something wasting constant money on crap.

SPEAKER_02: Right. I I'm finding like no, nothing. So what it turns out to be is from the silence behind that when you pulled that curtain back, what there was was so this must have been a little bit further. It must have maybe like 2008. Market had turned. Okay, yeah. So it had to be seven, it turns out he started after college when everything you literally could throw a dart and that stock was going up. This is the Qualcomm days. So, anyone not listening, Qualcomm was a company that there was a period that literally every day it like doubled.

SPEAKER_02: You were making a lot of money. Yeah, Qualcomm. And it you so you could was a stock that you just I mean, you bought in and you were just shocked at how much it had gained. Little side note, we're probably the only people in Qualcomm history that sold it a loss, but whatever. Just just a chin bit. So it turns out that my former husband wasn't a he wasn't an amazing stockbroker. He was amazing at getting people to give him money to invest. So he was such a good skill and clear. He had the skill to people and to talk people into giving him money.

SPEAKER_02: Exactly. And then the management of it, not so awesome. But I don't know that, right? And this is his job, right? In the early years, he's doing phenomenally well. We have a house, right? We no, we're not driving carvettes, we're driving a normal, right?

SPEAKER_01: I mean, but you were like decent. You had like you had your like a Volvo. You were you were like, I've been big, you got XL. Yeah, to church.

SPEAKER_02: You had like good, like what what what people thought. Exactly. The more we looked, we had more, right, more flash than cash, and we weren't flashy, but we had a home, we had kids, we had two cars, we took trips to right Disneyland. Yeah, we stayed at the Grand California and all of these things. And this is what it turned out to be is when life turned. So this must have been more 2008 timeline. I wasn't aware of the turn. And this had been going on for years. So this didn't just start. This was we're paying our expensive California property taxes with our home equity line.

SPEAKER_02: Well, if you've been doing that for a few years, that's gonna write. I think they were 16,000 a year at that time. That's wild. So you're clipping at a quick rate, and then if you're going to Disneyland, a family of five twenty thousand dollars for five days. Right. So you're you're keeping up with a lifestyle that you maybe created four years ago that you could afford, but now you can't afford because you didn't work, so he was just pulling from that to keep your lifestyle up. Exactly. Okay, and then all of a sudden you start right with one credit card, and what happens?

SPEAKER_02: You max that credit card out. And you rob Peter to pay Paul on every side. Yeah. So it's this constant revolving door. And I'm not saying this about stockbrokers. This was my own personal experience of I personally was married to somebody who, with that mentality, thought, I'm gonna make it all back. Right. You're never gonna have to tell her. It's like gambling. It's right, it's like professional gambling, but I'm gonna make it all back. It's all gonna be paid off.

SPEAKER_01: She's never gonna like how hard can it be to get a couple hundred thousand dollars within a certain amount of time. It can't be that it's so hard. No, I mean, in his eyes, he's probably thinking, I'm gonna get a tip, I'm gonna get something to like it's all gonna be good.

SPEAKER_02: Exactly. We're gonna we're gonna hit big and it's gonna come back. And she's never to tell her anything. And this is looking back, this is what came from this is right, this is what came from the silence. During the silence, when life was hard and he was stressed out and work was getting complicated, we did not have the communication our marriage for him to tell me what was actually going on. So all of a sudden, all of the silence, me allowing him to run the financials, not ask the hard questions, not to get on the banking accounts, all of those different things.

SPEAKER_02: This is what that came from. So, right. So, Susan, love Susan, she's a superstar because she actually helped me then plot my path forward. Without her, I literally would never have known what to do. Wait, Susan, the same lady that called you? Yes, because it hard-launched me saying, I finally know where the ground is, right?

SPEAKER_01: The ground is Oh, you're saying Susan ultimately helped you. She didn't ask you it. She was actually the one that you called back and said, My husband's a liar and embezzler. Please help me get my life on track. Okay, gotcha. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. She was the one who kind of like I didn't call her like today and say, I just want to recap you on my life because when you call me that day, my life be uh shut like shattered and and it was in shambles. And here's where I'm at. She probably would love that because she probably goes to bed with like really like you think so.

SPEAKER_01: This is like 14 years ago. Whoa, but I mean, wouldn't it be funny if you're like, you ruined my life? And let me tell you now, I thank you for doing that because I have an amazing life now.

SPEAKER_02: I only send you a Desboros gift card because you hard-launched me into like, oh, banal ha life. But yeah, so that was crazy. Dark silent era, right?

SPEAKER_01: The silence as large as NASA can't detect any sound. Crazy. Literally, partially, I want to touch on too like when you are in um, you said like silent NASA silence, it's like it was silent because you were in the thick, you said, like we talked about this earlier, you lived with your head, quote unquote, in the sand, but we all kind of do as moms when they're we're raising little ones. Where if you don't know like what your husband is doing in terms of his work, which I mean, I could easily say that about Chris.

SPEAKER_01: I don't, I couldn't name and go through every single thing he did at his companies over the years. Like, I just was raising the kids. I had my own small, I mean, I was a flight attendant, but like I would come and go. He did the finances for the most part. So you on the bank accounts? Yes. I mean, I was, but when we moved, that's a whole nother story. But when we moved to Idaho, he moved here first because the girl, I was waiting for the girls to get done with school. So he opened our Wells Fargo um tier.

SPEAKER_01: And that's uh that will be on your when we do it. We're going to do a podcast on debt. Yes. And coming back from divorce and um coming back from uh um losing a spouse because the the the that those topics are really important. And honestly, just also coming back from any financial crisis. Okay, yes. Because there's so many more where there's medical. Yes, there's just in life. So I have a lot to share on that in terms of why I was on a home equity line, why I wasn't on our home equity line, all of that.

SPEAKER_01: But all that to say, um, I feel like this is a good time to say. Like you were had three little girls in the thick of it. You didn't ask every day, you didn't check your bank accounts, you were just making lunches and doing what you needed to do. We're getting kids right. I was I was keeping my children alive. Exactly. Oh my gosh. And thankfully they all, I mean, yes, to uh not be um crass or um not sensitive to anyone that's lost a child, of course, but it's a miracle that we have kept our kids.

SPEAKER_02: I I mean I I've never left anyone in a store. I never left anyone behind. There are moments where I think, oh my gosh, is right? How did we get through the day? Because it's so chaotic. But I wasn't. I was on, let's say, the bank account, but I wasn't on the bigger ones because of just the structure of how he was paid through his brokerage account. Okay, right. So went into an account that let's say went in how they were paid into like a Barr Stearns account that I wasn't on. But I didn't see all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02: I saw our little small normal checking. I think we probably had a small savings. Yeah. But I wasn't in going through the finites, I wasn't going to the tax accountants every day.

SPEAKER_01: And unless you're, I feel like you're raised in a household. Which I wasn't, where your parents teach you to be very financially savvy, very on top of checking accounts, what's your budget, all of that. You were just married, raising the girls, and he was working and doing what he needed to do to provide.

SPEAKER_02: And I was absolutely not raised in that family. I was raised in the I thought a credit card was like free money. Total girl math. Well, yes. Oh, and putting it on this like oh, it's a little plastic thing.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah. That's that's cute. Oh my gosh, that thing is worth like$20,000. And then I have to pay$20 a month for 232 years. Exactly.

unknown: Right.

SPEAKER_01: So I never, I was not raised potentially sad.

SPEAKER_01: Um were. I mean, I'm learning more now in my 40s than I ever was ever taught to no fault of anybody's. And like it's just, you know, that's just how some families were raised, and that was how our family worked.

SPEAKER_02: It worked very traditionally, where I was home, blessing, and then he didn't handle the money. I mean, joke, joke, right? He was handling the money, not handling it properly.

SPEAKER_01: Were your normal bills paid, like your um, not your well, was your house payment paid paid, your electric, your gas, all of that. It was covered by like a normal paycheck, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02: If he had a job, it was the bigger things that, for example, wouldn't impound our taxes. Yes. So it's that crazy twice-year hit in California, where if you're not putting money aside, you get the bill and you know, you just use the home equity line. Right, right. So I think when we bought the house, and this is back in like 2000, the property taxes were$10,000. Because at that time, our neighborhood had a bond. And so the bond added like$2,000. But I mean, that was a lot. I mean, I know that same neighborhood now, let's say people moving in those taxes are probably$40,000 a year.

SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh. It's crazy. But California's just expensive that, right? They're just expensive.

SPEAKER_01: So Okay, so come to normal bills, yes. Come to the part where you address him after the kids go to bed. You are um like, what the F? Where is this freaking money? Does and and start from there, like, what does he say?

SPEAKER_02: I get silence. And no, it's not cocaine, no, it's not horn, no, it's not drugs. I get anger, anger that I'd found out, anger that I was questioning him.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, imagine what he was carrying though. Like, I'm not giving him any, I'm just saying that's that gives me a stomachache.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, and and my point being was to him, we could have sold our home. I could have gone back to work. Like, there are things that you have to communicate to your spouse before you have financial infidelity that you can then make decisions together. I was not included on those. I was excluded for a variety of reasons, of which I maybe we'll never get the answers to. I never did. Yeah. But I got more silence. I got a lot of hands up, meaning I'm not gonna talk about this. I did finally get, because unfortunately, we had to go through bankruptcy because there was no solution.

SPEAKER_01: We're still together and you were like, we're gonna like you agreed, we're gonna we have to start bankruptcy. You had no problem. You had a choice.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. There was no choice because the the bills in Grinnet, the home economy line was part of the house. That wasn't it. It was to save the home because now I'm aware of the negative amount that we're every single month is happening. The only choice is to go into, and it wasn't just white but clean because of the income or like what our assets were. It was a repayment plan. Okay. And it was that was the only option. So talk to a bankruptcy attorney. Absolutely horrifying. The most horrific time in my life was to stand in bankruptcy court with my husband at the time and to stand in front of a bunch of other people, and they're going through literally every inch of your life and everything you spend money on.

SPEAKER_02: And how effing pissed you were that you had nothing to do with it, but you had to stand right there next to him. Horrific. And I remember getting back into the car after coming out with our attorney, which we had like no money to pay the attorney, but we did a couple thousand dollars or whatever. And I remember him saying to me, I can't believe you still love me. And I said very directly, let's be very clear, I don't.

SPEAKER_01: Okay. And I just want to touch too on like when you after you guys left the courtroom, like, how many years uh before everything got found out, were you already like, were you good? Were you struggling with the marriage? Were you like, why how am I still married to this person? I just want to know, like, how yeah, how what does that look like? Were you guys good for a while? Or was it in when you walked out of the courtroom, you're like, fuck this shit, I'm out of here. I would say both.

SPEAKER_02: So we had a marriage which was very quiet. And I would say quiet, volatile, but quiet, meaning he would go through it and of course, I'm this is my perspective. Obviously, I'm a party to this, but I'm a pretty even keel person personality-wise. And he was one that you had to sort of walk on eggshells around. So when things were good and he was in a good mood, it was awesome, life was grand. When whatever was going on in his mind or something at work, or whatever was going on, which I was not allowed to hear that heart, and probably didn't have the emotional capability to sort of get that out of him.

SPEAKER_02: I would say now being older and more sort of diverse in my skills, maybe if I had had those, I could have made it in an area where he was more vulnerable to tell me what was really going on. But in his mind, he would never disclose what was going on. So when he probably got stressed, looking back, he would get either angry and have huge explosions and then he would ignore me for a few weeks. Now, granted, that is not a healthy marriage.

SPEAKER_01: No, but I mean, I actually have I mean, I know lots of marriages like that. I mean, whether it was and but what money issues or just communication issues or not, it's it's very, it's not a it's not uncommon.

SPEAKER_02: No, and that's and that's sad, right? Because all of a sudden you're you walk in eggshells around them, and then everything's good, life is good, right? And I it was a period with the girls where we would I was very careful for like I did not confide in him. And I might just look at my marriage now, which is so incredible, and I'm married to like the best human on earth, and I don't know how I got so lucky, and we'll talk about that. But we can talk about anything. I can be completely transparent and vulnerable and 100% myself in my hard marriage, hard conversations, and have hard conversations, and now I have someone who's totally on my side.

SPEAKER_02: Still gonna make you dinner tonight or you're lying. Yeah, and rooting for you. But back then, this person, I don't and it's not that he wasn't rooting for me in my first marriage. It was that he wasn't able and emotionally capable of being transparent with what was going on in his world to allow me into that. I couldn't do it with him, he couldn't do it with me. So it had this whole secrecy, and we know we wouldn't. Because there were no skills learned at first. No, it was just we're so volatile.

SPEAKER_02: So not volatile, and not we screamed and yelled and had fights. It was he got really angry, would blow, and then he would ignore me until he was finally over whatever the issue was. So in our 40s and 50s, we're learning now um that that's called stonewalling. Oh, is that what it's called? That's called stonewalling. Yes, I thought it was called being an asshole.

SPEAKER_01: Well, it is it's called being a dick. Um, but it uh yes, in the uh therapist uh realm or whatever, you know, there's so much learning now that we've done, right? Yes. Stonewalling, uh narcissism, uh child, uh child trauma, all the all the buzzwords, right? But um, okay, so you leave, you leave the court call.

SPEAKER_02: And I think to myself, as I tell him, no, I don't love you anymore. And I really meant it. I mean, this was like we didn't have infidelity in that he left me for someone else, or he was cheating on me physically with someone else or emotionally. This was all financial and it was heartbreaking. And it's like I've got these little kids. Yeah, heartbreaking. So what am I gonna do? Right. And I have no problem going back to work. I was in sales, I used to work, I was successful. But it was just that it was you could see, it was almost like that blink where you see your entire life about to come ahead of you and you know what's coming, and you know it's gonna be really messy and really ugly.

SPEAKER_02: And so in those moments, I it because it didn't take, it was another probably 18 months, two years.

SPEAKER_01: So this was like a I would consider it like a crossroads. Like, am I gonna stay because I'm afraid to get divorced and afraid of what people in your maybe city would think, or you didn't want to go through, you know, and just want to like so many people stay.

SPEAKER_02: And I stay. And I didn't stay with the intent of being happy. I stayed with the intent of plotting my way out. Which is amazing. It was so badass. Yeah. Well, I just I just knew that based on the history, what was gonna happen when I asked for divorce, which did happen, was no good. I could have planned it better. We'll talk about that. But I knew it was going to get really messy, really ugly. It was all gonna come out with money, which what money did we even have, right? So I stayed and I went back to work.

SPEAKER_02: And I went back to work full time, and I'm thankfully still with my amazing company who I've been with for 17 years, and they were the biggest blessing in my life, and we've had so many.

SPEAKER_01: So, did you work and you learn you are were already in sales and you're still on sales. So, like you learned um to like stash away money because you knew you needed to hit a number before you could actually take the girls and leave.

SPEAKER_02: I knew exactly. I knew that when I filed for divorce that he was probably never gonna help again. I had this sort of gut innate knowing that he was gonna bat, he was gonna bail.

SPEAKER_01: And you already owed so much money. What was he gonna give you? So much money three dollars from the his pocket that he found from like my 30s.

SPEAKER_02: Here's my 30 cents. But it's really interesting is I stayed for a minute and I got myself into a position, and I'm not saying I stockpiled money because I didn't, and I should have stockpiled some money. I should have been smarter with some of the financial moves, but I got myself into a position where I could at least know I could take care of myself and the girls, not in the same home, right? Like not the same way. Yeah, but I knew that I if if what I thought was coming ahead, I could still like keep us afloat.

SPEAKER_02: And that was my biggest concern was how do I, because this is gonna be really hard for the girls. The girls obviously had no idea what was going on. Right. And right, I had by the time I got divorced or filed, I should say, I had moved out of our bedroom like six months ahead of time. We weren't sharing the same bedroom. The girls were cute because they were so close in age that they all, even though they had like two, one had a separate room and then two girls shared, they all had moved into the same room.

SPEAKER_02: They had a bunk bed in a bed. Totally. Because they were so little that's it. They still would do that now. They would do that. So I had moved, exactly. I had moved into one of the other girls' rooms. And that's just because we were in a hard spot in our marriage. And so I physically need to remove myself from just being in the same bed as him because I just was disgusted, to tell you the truth. Yeah. But yeah, so flash forward, I mean, I don't want to make this like a million years long because divorce is hard.

SPEAKER_02: But it got so I file, so flash forward now to okay, it's time to file. And I'm gonna guess give you a little story. I went to Vegas with a bunch of my girlfriends and I looked around the room and said, Okay, I think y'all are hot and I want to make out with every single male in here. And I had we had the best weekend. Yes. I literally came back and I told him I was filing.

SPEAKER_01: I think I got back like on a Monday, and I So you got a glimpse a glimpse of maybe um like a fun girlfriend weekend that you didn't really experience because you got married fairly early, right? If that I never had one of those. Yeah, you never had girlfriend weekends. Um, and so you go to Vegas and you're like, oh my gosh, is this what the single life is about? I'm freaking going home and I'm I'm out of here.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I because I really myth of fun, sweet. It was, you know what it was. It was that I was so emotionally gone. Yes. There was no recovery in this marriage. Yes. There was no amount of therapy, and I had been in therapy, and one of my therapists who was amazing said, the ship has gone down. You are drowning with it. You are either getting off and taking your kids, and you're going to hit the shore, right? You're gonna swim to the shore and you're gonna get up and you're gonna rise, or you're gonna all go down in the boat.

SPEAKER_02: So, which are you going to do? She had met my former spouse, he had come in for a session. This was right before I went to Vegas, and I thought to myself, I'm getting off. Yeah. And it it is one of those moments where I was so excited.

SPEAKER_01: I mean, I can imagine you were so excited, but thinking about like women out there that are like stuck and just crying and in this mundane groundhog day of sadness, and you know, how have a husband who's just loser central, like you, that was a hard decision for you to say, even though you were over it. It's easier to do when you're disgusted with them, they growed out, you're over it, your finances are, you know, you're working hard for yourself, all of that. But that is such a it's so scary and but so amazing.

SPEAKER_02: It was, it was so scary. But I was so, and that's what I would say to the people who are in the thick of it, who are in the depletion mode, especially if you haven't asked for it, like if someone's come to you with it, because when I presented him with this and it actually happened, then he went into the I'll do therapy, I'll do whatever. Oh yes, let's make it work. I mean, we had been married at that point for like 14 plus years, 15 years. Yeah. So it was a long marriage. I I just was done. I was so over it.

SPEAKER_02: I was so done. I got a glimpse of oh my gosh, I got I want to dance. Yeah. I want to surround myself with people, whether I have another partner in my life or not. I want to be happy and I'm miserable and I don't want to be in this date anymore.

SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so that was kind of and what is you told me the meaning of um when you file that is called. Okay, so then yeah, flash forward to the divorce.

SPEAKER_02: Yes. Um, because divorce is messy and ugly, and I don't care who's getting divorced. I had a one girlfriend go through who was pretty amicable. Her former husband was wonderful, and he made sure that she was taken care of, the kids were taken care of. Every other divorce I've ever seen or heard about, messy AF. Yeah. So messy. Yeah. And what happens is, in my unprofessional experience, is that all that is left is splitting financial. So it's all about money and it's all about power. And so it becomes right where now someone has to win and it becomes this thing of in our case, it was splitting debt.

SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, we weren't splitting anything except$140,000 in debt. Right. Or no. So$170,000 or 80.

SPEAKER_02: Well, granted, we've done a little of the BK and write something after that, and we had the repayment going. But no, like when we literally I had to short sell our house because the house, the home equity line had taken us over. This is now the time where home vows have crashed. So it was like an absolute financial mess. Right. But there was still a And your Volvo. I don't think you touched on your Volvo. No, the fact that like you get a call from the bank and the Volvo's about to get repossessed because what I thought was paid for and titled was not.

SPEAKER_02: He of course took the car that had a title on it, left me with the other car. That I mean, so mean so much mess.

SPEAKER_01: But like when you're a mom and you have three little kids, you need a freaking car.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, you need a car. So I mean it's a little to thankfully talk to them and they were able to let me catch that car up and didn't get repossessed. Thank God. It wasn't in my name, first of all, it was in his name. But then right, so now I filed for divorce, and now things are uglier than you have ever thought. So here's the fun fact: this is my marriage. I went into it not knowing anyone on the police force. Didn't know, right? And then now I'm gonna flash forward three weeks. Right, I could go probably I'm in the local Starbucks and I'd say, Hey Officer Joe, see you at three.

SPEAKER_02: Okay, what what you what do you mean? They're coming, the police are coming to your house? Coming to my home because now we have someone, because he wouldn't leave the house. He's calling them and he's telling them that I've come home, I'm drunk, I'm scaring the kids, you know my alcohol intake. I mean we had you hardly drink. I probably had like three sips of wines out with a girlfriend. You just were excited to see the outside world. I was so excited. So they were not drinking, would never drive drunk, would never come home to my children drunk.

SPEAKER_02: So with that kind of stuff, calling for child welfare at checks.

SPEAKER_01: I mean just grasping he was grasping for any straw to like give it to you, sistick it to you.

SPEAKER_02: A hundred percent. So we uh flash forward after I became very well acquainted with the entire police force, which thankfully was a small force. I had gone to them one day because he had done something physically, which never hit me, but he had pushed me, and I thought, oh, now we're starting to take a turn. And so I'd gone and filed a report. I'd just come home from that police station with one of my daughters, filing there's a report, and he threw something at me. So I walked my way up the stairs, called the officer who I had just left.

SPEAKER_02: They came and unfortunately, I mean got a little dramatic, they physically removed him from the home. He would never have left my house. So now we're in restraining order era. Yes, right? We are in he going to the court and the judge saying, Okay, if you follow through on this, he's gonna lose his licenses because he's a licensed stockbroker. I said, Don't give a shit, right? I don't care. At this point, I don't even care. So yeah. So we went into that. We went into the hard spin into divorce, which was ugly, and I knew it was gonna take a long time to split negative 20,000.

SPEAKER_02: So are you saying they should have signed you for uh housewives of Northern California at this point?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they should have signed me up for you're an idiot.

SPEAKER_02: No, I know we're married, so but I would have made a good show because that's you know, that's or like maybe the real real housewives of negative equity. So so hard launches, we're splitting zero. I mean, literally, we're splitting debt. That is what we are left with. And that shockingly took almost like I think close to two years to get done. Wow. So what I got done was bifurcation.

SPEAKER_01: So bifurcation is when the court Yes, I did not know what this word meant. And so she had to tell me what this means because I thought she was saying like fornication is. I a hundred percent of she was saying bifurcation. I was like, I've never heard of that. What does that mean? And she said, Well, I also uh turned to fornication.

SPEAKER_02: Yes, if you want to fornicate legally, you go get something called bifurcation. And what bifurcation is is when the court returns you to single status, and then you legally are single, so you can go. And you get to go and you get to go on, yeah. You get to go meet all of these hot, amazing men. Or not, or not, that will be a story. But no, I actually met some really amazing men, and this is back in the day when match was a big thing. It's actually where I met my husband, although we had grown up together, didn't realize it.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I was on like a oh woo woo, all right, yeah, it was time to go and had so much fun. But yeah, so bifurcation, they make you single. It takes a lot longer to split negative debt. Which you didn't care. I mean, why would you which basically Hillary just taking in on anyway because the other person wasn't gonna pay? Right. But divorce took a very, very long time. So I think it was like a year and a half, almost close to two years, before like finally he realized, okay, I might as well just let this be.

SPEAKER_02: Right. And then granted, and maybe agreed to pay some stuff that he was never gonna pay off, which happens.

SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so that was, I mean, you know, and then Okay, so then yeah, by that time, you are divorced, you are living where in your own apartment, in your own house. What did you get for the girls and you?

SPEAKER_02: So we finally um we stayed in our home. This is during that time when lots of homes were going into foreclosure because of the crash. Right. We were not one of them, but we were thankful. It's it's like if you look back and think so many blessings. It was a crazy time. So many blessings though came from it. Is and this is where I think life, if you maybe choose to look for that, and I'm not saying this is applicable to everyone because people walk through really hard stuff. So I'm not trying to diminish what other people walk through.

SPEAKER_02: For me in my life, I can speak to is I feel like when I look around, there's always a silver lining. Yes. So my silver linings were this all blew up and went down in a time when houses were going into foreclosure and banks were letting you either re-like.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they were called like a we had, yeah. I mean, I knew lots of people. You could right, you could basically redo your loan so you can get a cheap payment.

SPEAKER_02: Yes. And so I did not qualify for that. I could have qualified financially because I made enough, but the person the bank who owned, which actually ironically was actually kind of funny, Wells Fargo. Susan from Wells Fargo. Okay. Wells Fargo is fine. I don't bank with them. But at that time, they were the actual mortgage holder. Um they were sorry, they were my servicer, and Wells Fargo was doing whatever that loan modification was. Loan modification, yes, yes, yes, for everyone on their servicing my loan, but there was another entity who owned my loan, and they did not allow that.

SPEAKER_02: So I had to short sell my home, but I was allowed to stay in my house for I want to say close to like almost two years. Yeah, I've heard without a payment. Yeah. Because we were in that time frame when so many people were in foreclosure. They just did I hadn't gotten to that point in the processing. So I was able to stash a bunch of money. Amazing. So by the time that like I'm gonna bless such a blessing, right? Yeah, it was one of those where I think they even gave me like three thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02: Like it was just to to go to do whatever you need to make it easy to short sell. Yeah, right. And I ended up selling my home, and it was so sad because honestly, if I had been able to loan mod and keep the house because it was in a beautiful neighborhood, of course. I'm sure it was zero millions now. It's oh my god, the house is sold now for over two million dollars. It's crazy. I know we sort of like 700,000. I know, and it was a hundred thousand equity line that basically we were short by like thirty thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02: And I didn't have it, I didn't have the extra money to obviously bring us up, pay off the right, pay off the equity line, pay off the property taxes. So it was just it was fine. Yeah, the house needed. So how it worked. It worked how it worked. Silver lining. I moved us into a very cute three-bedroom condo. I had them look past my now 580 credit score. Right. When before this all went down, the bankruptcy, I was like an 800, came down to a 580, especially after the short sale. Right. So I had some wonderful people look past, like not just look at me on a credit report.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Because you're more than your credit report people. Right. Really? More than your credit report. The number does not reflect who you are as a person. Sometimes it just reflects circumstances. I mean, yeah, look at you're the perfect example. It's like they looked past me and said, okay, she's got a great history with her employer. She makes good money. She is local. People knew me. I was part of the church. I was on charities for like, you know, a children's. I mean, I was part of a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02: Right. And they let me get the condo and we lived there. And it was like the biggest blessing ever. It was old. It needed to be remodeled. It was like I loved it because it was like I could do nothing wrong to it. I'd never I hadn't been a renter in so long. Yes. But it was, yeah, it was like the biggest silver lighting blessing of my life. And it was a tiny, it was a place I could then relaunch. Yeah. Like relaunch from the burning ashes and you could like rise like a phoenix.

SPEAKER_01: So and so like what did rebuilding um look like, you know, day to day? You move into this condo, you love it. It's not, you know, it's not new what you're used to. It probably has no granite count. I mean, it's probably old and oh, it had like parquet floors that had the big old rock wall. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes. It has, I mean, but it was clean and it was negated neighborhoods. As soon as snuggled in and started your life with your girls, your husband's off doing who knows what.

SPEAKER_02: He had left. Um, so he unfortunately, which is sad for my girls, but when I filed for divorce after the restraining order, the way ours went was again another blessing. We went in front of what you had to do was had to go to mandatory, like family mediation. Right. So we went there. He kind of lost it in front of the mediator, which wasn't surprising because in situations that were pressure, like very pressure cooker, he would kind of go a different way, accused me of a bunch of different things.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah. He was blowing up our phones at all hours in the day, mine the girls. I was able to produce these records. They called the girls in. The court immediately awarded me physical and legal custody. Yeah. He had to have supervised visitation because of his behavior. He didn't follow through on that, and he sort of bailed. Yeah. And so we had many years, unfortunately, for my children, which was tragic, was he was in and then he'd be gone for six months. Oh, yeah. And then he would come back and then he would be gone for six months.

SPEAKER_02: And so he was very in and out, just not being a financially not helping them at all, but he was also then emotionally helping them. And then when he would come back, he was incredibly toxic. And so the time I think he finally came back, and this is a while later, this is maybe like a year and a half later. Now I'm in a relationship, a very solid relationship with the person who I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you did your wild, you sewed your oats, you went a little wild, you did all your dating, you were on apps, you did all that, settled back in, ended up meeting your um now amazing, so wonderful husband um on match, but you knew him prior. You knew him prior, and we met quickly because I was like the role.

SPEAKER_02: You already checked out so long. I also checked out in the very beginning. I should say, I will before we moved out of the home, in the very, very beginning, we were doing the nesting. So I would leave for the weekend and go skip the girlfriend or my parents, and then he would come to the house. So the girls could stay at the house. Yeah, this is before like things went sour. Yeah, and he got the police kept knocking at your door. So the very beginning, but I was already on match and I was over going on dates.

SPEAKER_02: And and I met Sean uh very soon. I mean, we probably met within the first like I was probably like four months. Did not really start dating. We became like very, very good friends because he was going through his own story, his own divorce. He had his own emotional stuff that he had to work out and process. But because we had grown up together, we weren't let's say friends from where we had grown up, but same high school, same class, very friends and friends, knew each other, like just going home.

SPEAKER_02: Right. And so we became like best friends constantly lots of stuff you could connect on and talk about. So much stuff, and just the nicest human. He was just incredible, and he still is incredible. Just a wonderfully beautiful, gracious, generous, kind, loving, all amazing. I mean, there's just not adjectives to describe him.

SPEAKER_01: And you guys are so solid and so happy, and he's such a wonderful man. You've been married how long?

SPEAKER_02: So we're over a decade um together, about 14 years. Okay. And I I just, yeah, I mean, if I had known, and this is where, like, again, a silver linings, I needed to stay in my marriage for the length of time I did and go through all the things I did. Yes. Because if I had done it any differently, I wouldn't have met him when I met him. And the lessons that you and the lessons, but he was also recently like separated in the process of getting divorced. Not maybe his choice, right? But excuse me, just niece.

SPEAKER_02: But uh, but yeah, it was one of those where, yes, I mean, we like I never knew marriage could look like this. I did, I mean, looking back on my first one and all of the sadness and quietness and the the things that we just didn't go through together. And I'm so interested to hear about how you and Chris got through things together and how you went through all those periods together.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because we did stay together. And look at our friend group, like most of our friend group is still on their first marriage. Absolutely. I have a friend group in California where I would say over half of them are on their second marriage. And it I just think uh, you know, it's not about like if you're in a shitty spot in your marriage, like the grass is greener on the other side. It has to be like, what is your journey? What do you what were you taught? What are the lessons that you're taking?

SPEAKER_01: Are you willing to stay and work those out? If there's not detrimental hello, financial ruin, infidelity, physical, all of those types of things that I feel like people, I mean, I whatever it is that you can actually get past with therapy or not. Absolutely. But you know, it's just a part of like our journey.

SPEAKER_02: Like, yes. And I think honestly, if I had been, if he had come to me and he was a he was resilient.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, was there any part of you where you were like, okay, like if maybe I can stay with him? If he had come, I mean, shoulda, woulda, coulda. And I don't like to actually live ever passed like that.

SPEAKER_02: It came that way. Okay, okay. And with a hand, um, we're not gonna talk about this. And I mean, it was like dragging out, well, what have you been using this money for? I mean, hi, it's easy. I've stopped making as much money. Tides have turned, I'm not working hard, right? It should have been so much easier, but no, I there was no salvaging this one. But yes, there are so many, I think, times when someone you can come to a hard place if you're aligned and you can absolutely walk through that fire and a hundred percent clear it.

SPEAKER_02: We have I'm right. Um anyone who's been married for a long time, I'm sure could sit down and tell us any of those stories. Absolutely. I was not one of them.

SPEAKER_01: He was not, he was not in it to win it. Yeah, and that was just um the journey and the path that you were given. So I feel like some of the big takeaways on this episode are, you know, for anyone listening who's in the thick of it, like, you know, what do you want them to hear?

SPEAKER_02: I would say the takeaways are listen to your inner gut always, right? If your intuition tells you that you're in a marriage with someone who is not aligned with you, and I'm not talking about values or character, who is not aligned with you on emotional connectivity, do everything you can to try and get aligned. I'm a very big fan of work. Work as hard as you can to keep the marriage going, if at all possible. Do all of the things, right? All of the resources. Take every ounce of help, go to your church, go to therapy, sit down.

SPEAKER_02: I don't care if you have to strap them in a room, like try and get aligned. If you realize, or if someone comes to you and they basically present you with a divorce, and this is not something you have or can choose to like move forward, right? You don't have any persuspicion on that, or you know it's not gonna work, then and I think we'll dive deeper into this on a different episode, is you have to treat it like a business. And it's so hard because you're so emotionally, it's so difficult, right?

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all of the pain. I have a girlfriend, uh a newer girlfriend that I met through um uh just like a women's group that I'm in, and maybe she'll come on our podcast because she um had what she thought was the most amazing, beautiful um love story marriage, has you know, just has a daughter. Um she was totally blindsided. Like, I mean, so she's in her um mid-40s, um, and she's just and so that she lives in a small town. Her husband blindsided her with her best friend. Oh, and so they are mingling amongst the city, and she feels like she is stuck in her home.

SPEAKER_01: She cannot go anywhere. She's like, that was my this is my city too. We've lived here, we grew up here. Right now they are together in the city out at events, charity events, whatever. She's like, I was the one that was blindsided. She's like four, I think she's actually maybe she's like 45. I am 45. I have a teenage daughter who goes to the local high school, and I am the one trying to pick up the pieces of my life. She also talks about escape, which is you guys will hear on one of our other episodes, is kind of like what I dive into um uh with my grief is escaping with like travel and all of that.

SPEAKER_01: She's like, Sada, I do the same thing because she has this grief. So she was totally blindsided. So, all that to say, um, are there any um Yeah, I mean, it's it's such a I think depending on where you're in, that's so sad.

SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, sorry I hear that for your friend. I was different because it was my choice, but I would say do all the things. If someone comes to you, then as much as you possibly can, take a very, very deep breath. Tell yourself every morning you're gonna get through it, you're gonna make it. There could be the most beautiful life.

SPEAKER_01: I think that's she's amazing and she's really I know I there's so much good for you ahead. Just like I truly do believe that for myself. Yes, there are.

SPEAKER_02: I mean, looking back, I never ever thought I would be this gloriously happy. And I'm so lucky. But for people going through it, just know you're waking up, you're going to treat it like a business, you're going to put your business hat on, and you're going to, as strategically as you possibly can, plot your way out and be one step ahead.

SPEAKER_01: And by one step ahead, I mean if someone presents you with a divorce or you want to get divorced, my quick little tip and trick in your area, you call it what are your uh let's just say, let's end with like um give some good resources um to end this podcast. What are some good resources that you can provide for any woman who is listening going through this?

SPEAKER_02: I would say if you know you're going to go through a divorce where you have attorneys, and we started with attorneys and then I got rid of mine because we couldn't financially afford it and we're getting nowhere. Was you call the big local attorneys and you have a consult with them, most of them do consults for free. The minute you do a consult, even if you don't use them, your spouse cannot contact them and use them. That's wild. So that's one of the first things. And if I am if you're a lawyer out there and listening and that's inaccurate, DM us, right?

SPEAKER_02: But yeah, that is my understanding, is they can't be conflict. Conflict of interest. I would imagine. So that's the first thing. You absolutely do, if you let's say you are in the position of wanting to maybe get a divorce, a thing I did not do properly was I did not do the deep dive with the finances. I should have figured out a way to get access to the accounts. I should have gone, I should have started stashing money, even if just$20,$30. But do it if you know it's coming, right? If you see the run was on the wall or you're starting to feel like it's not gonna work, I don't care if you do it for years, but$20 here.

SPEAKER_02: Are you saying when you go to the grocery store? Yes, I'm saying take a$20 back. $20 or$100 out when you go to the groceries. Yes, and you open up your own account and you open up a credit card, like you start to plot because it's a business now. Yeah, this is news. Yes, emotions are out. Emotions are out. Even if you're crying yourself to sleep at night, I don't care if it's for half an hour a day. You put those emotions on the shelf and you treat it as a business. And you have to look at what is this gonna look like when this all goes down.

SPEAKER_02: You need to have money, you need to have credit, you need to have resources. So I don't care if you're getting books, I don't care if you're listening to other podcasts. There are podcasts on divorce. There's a site called Hello Divorce that um you can look at where it's more mediation, it's kind of walking through a smaller rate, but there's small amounts where you can get resources and some other guidance. But trying and educate yourself and prepare yourself for what's gonna come ahead. And I'm gonna tell you in my experience, all that it comes down to, regardless of emotions and kids, is you're either fighting for kids and money or you're fighting for money.

SPEAKER_02: But money is always in the play. Right. So the question is, and that becomes a power thing, especially if you're the one asking, they only can control you with money. And so really make sure that you have that heart of your game ready to go because it's going to get, even to the best of them, it gets a little messy.

SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's all really great info. And what advice? Um, and this is interesting because the reason Hillary and I do this podcast is because we found like a lot of similarities between um, you know, just kind of her life going through divorce and my life going through grief. There are so many crossovers, right? So as you're talking right now, everything you're saying is like to in my mind, I'm thinking, it's a business. My husband, my husband passed away. I still have to pay our taxes. I still have to pay like it all the things you're saying actually technically relate to my grief journey.

SPEAKER_01: I can cry my eyeballs out 23 hours of the day, but there is an hour in there where I have to unfortunately pick up my freaking, pick up the pieces to my life and still pay the bill so I could stay in my house or figure out what I'm doing with my life. So it is very similar, which is why I thought that our um this podcast would be so helpful for so many people because there's so much crossover. Um, I think where we should end is what um wonderful, happy advice can you give to women that are in a really bad place, that are um either recently divorced, um, you know, newly divorced, whatever.

SPEAKER_01: Like, how can they look for the silver lining in each day and find that there is something to live for? If they haven't already found a partner, like what if you're just it's and this is the same thing for grief, which we'll talk about in my story. Was like, if you just feel like you're floundering out there and life is just like a groundhog's day and you're just sad or your kids are older, whatever, like how can you find how did you find that joy each day to like get up and get your girls going and then you know be on the journey to actually meet Sean down the road?

SPEAKER_02: Like, because every day you get you can wake up and you look in the mirror and you think I can reinvent myself. You are at whatever at whatever age, whatever age, whatever position you're in, whatever is going on in your life, just know that you are beautifully made, right? You are loved by many, probably, right by one, by many, by family. You first and foremost, you have to love yourself. Just give yourself all the grace and all the time and all of the tears that are needed. And start figuring out kind of like now like to do what is it that you want to do?

SPEAKER_02: What is it that you are want to like accomplish on this earth? Exactly. And I'm talking about like if you want to go and get your hair highlighted, if you want to go for a walk, uh-huh, you want to go to a park, or you right, whatever it is, every single day. Just wake up knowing that you are beautifully made, everything you're doing is okay, and it's for a reason. It's for a reason, and it's okay to feel how you feel. That today you may feel terrible, the next day you might feel okay. But do take the steps to get to know yourself, know that you are perfect exactly as you are, that like there is a whole life ahead.

SPEAKER_02: You can become anything you want. I like there is no restriction on what you can do. No, and I'm not talking about like even if like there's no money. I had no money. I know, but every day I could wake up and think the next path ahead. I just kept saying to the girls, I don't know what it's gonna look like, but in my heart, I just knew it was going to be so much better. Like I just believed it. I don't know why, but I just knew it was going to be something that I couldn't even envision for myself.

SPEAKER_02: And I had it had and I hadn't come from. So I would say, wake up, give yourself a huge hug, right? Give yourself as much grace.

SPEAKER_01: Or and if you're having a shitty day, like I the other day, I was supposed to come over to Hillary's and do a podcast, and I was a crying mess. And she's like, Go to bed, go to bed, take a zannies. Yeah, take a zannies, go to bed. That's why we're not we're not suggesting you do that. No, like put on, put on a stupid show.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, put on a show and do something, take a bath. I was talking to someone last night. They said, Oh my god, taking a bath once a week makes me so happy. Yes, take the bath, yeah, stand on the shower. Put on the music, make the mood, yeah. Sit in the shower and cry. And I did scream that feel better the next day. Do you all the things? Yeah, do all the things, but know that there are a group of people out there that love you. Yes, right, including us, including us, right? But reach out. I would say don't stay in the shower crying.

SPEAKER_02: Reach out, ask, tell people how what's going on in your world. I don't care if it's like you're close to a coworker.

SPEAKER_01: How many times do I differently do voice my voice text crying?

SPEAKER_02: I love them because you're being authentic and you're being real and you're letting us have an insight into how you feel. Because it's all not like, right? It's all not rainbows and candy. Right. So take the moments that suck and know that 10 minutes from now you might feel differently. The next morning you might feel differently. Or eight minutes, eight minutes. Eight minutes. We're gonna talk about that. But things will get better, right? Things are going to look different. It might take more time, especially if you're blindsided.

SPEAKER_02: But there is a whole other world. There is a view of when your eyes work out there that you absolutely can find joy and laughter. And you might look back and think, I didn't even know I could become this person. Oh my gosh. I think that's so that's my closing. My closing is don't answer the phone if Will Spargo calls you ever.

SPEAKER_01: Or anyone at Spargo, you're a great thing. You don't have to get on the apps right away. Um not. Um, glass of wine is good. And we're going to have an episode uh titled Eight Minutes, and it has to do with uh having a girlfriend that you can connect with for eight minutes. That will literally um change the trajectory of your day if you have eight minutes to talk to someone. That will be another episode. But we are so thankful that you guys listened. Hillary, you are a joy to me. You are such a badass mom, you are an amazing, beautiful wife.

SPEAKER_01: If in fact, I did send Sean uh the picture, the hot picture of you uh from us going out the other night. And he was like, oh my gosh, my wife is hot.

SPEAKER_02: And I will add if anyone is going through anything, right? We have our Instagram, send us a DM. We will be looking at them. Obviously, not a licensed therapist, but we've got you. Yes. And if nothing else, maybe we can give some guidance on resources. But reach out if you need us and we'll see you next time. We will see you next time. Bye.

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