You're tuned in to Positively Terrible. I'm producer Dan and each week my buddy Scott and I discuss surviving and thriving after trauma. It's a journey that started when Scott, his wife's fiancee, and her boyfriend walked into a bar. This week Scott and I are taking it back to the beginning. Settle in my terrible listeners. Today's episode is going to be Positively Terrible. Hey Scott! Dan. How are you? I'm doing great. How are you? Man, I'm doing pretty well. Thank you for asking. So here it is. Episode one. It's going to be released. But we've been working on this frankly for two years. That's way too long. It feels surreal coming back to it, doesn't it? It really does. Tell us how this started, man. Oh boy. That is a wonderful question, Dan. You know, as we say in the opener, this started when Scott, his wife's fiancee, and his boyfriend and her boyfriend walked into a bar together. And that's the story that we're going to be telling today. And at the time it was a pretty heavy thing as you can imagine. We're smack dab in the middle of a pandemic. I've got a lot of things going on personally, mentally. I'm at my breaking point and I uncover a whole lot of stuff. And it feels like it was a different lifetime at this point. It feels like I was a different person at this point. The story that I tell today is a pretty heavy one, at least from my perspective, probably yours as well. But boy, I can't even feel that anymore. It's been an amazing year and a half, two years. And I'm just glad we can come back and look at it with a new perspective. And that we've got this podcast here that is going to be hopefully doing something positive for people. But I think that it's been a journey and that's what we wanted to start documenting. And listening back to where I was and what was going on, it's like I can't even relate to the person anymore who I was two years ago. Yeah, it's pretty incredible to think about how much change you've gone through, how much change we all have gone through in the last few years. Really, the whole world is a different place than it was pre-pandemic. But this is not a podcast about the pandemic. This is a podcast that started with a very specific ordeal that changed your life. And really, anyone who's going through traumatic events, the thing that we want to talk about most is how people get through those traumatic events and how people's lives are different and generally speaking, usually better at the end of that. Yeah, and Dan, when I started going through all of this and you threw out a podcast idea, I said no. I don't know if you remember that my first... I don't remember that. Well, my first answer was no. I thought it was a good idea. Well, my first answer was no. I thought it sounded like a cool idea, but I didn't initially see a way to do this that wasn't angry or wasn't aimed at someone who brought me a lot of trauma. Over a few days of thinking about it, I can't remember if you and I talked directly about it, but I did come to the realization that I'm going to get through this. And man, it's going to look good when I'm on the other side. And I wanted to find other people who have done that. So what I will say is that today's format is me telling kind of the story, and that's my design so that we can have some context behind it. But the podcast from there starts to turn into an interview podcast. If you don't want a sad story, just skip ahead to the next episode. You don't even need this one. Yeah, you don't, although there will be context in it that does come up in many future episodes, so it is worth a listen, in my opinion, but it is not required. And we want to talk about people thriving after their trauma. Not want to. That's what we've done, and it's been a kind of an amazing journey there. And when I look at some of the stories that we have recorded, people are resilient, people are strong. And definitely, and I want to share that. I will also say that, you know, getting behind a mic and talking about this stuff, part of it was to save me. I don't know. I'm not going to sit here and say my life was in danger. Necessarily, there were times when I thought it might have been, but not because of my own desires. But if I did not open up and if I did not share the level of shame that would have been inside of me, even though I wasn't the person who did something wrong, would have just destroyed me. And I made that decision early on. Talk early, talk often. And did I ever learn a lot about me, about others, about surviving, just because I wanted to talk about it? Or I shouldn't say wanted to. I decided to. Yeah, I think a good lesson about shame in all of that is. Share it and odds are you're not alone. Yeah, but Dan, you know, this did start with my journey. We're all on journeys. Life is a journey. How have the last couple of years worked out for you? I too have been through a lot of change in the last couple of years. For a very brief and quick summary, thanks to the help of my family and my therapist, who I have worked with a ton and is fantastic. I changed careers. I have essentially doubled my income. I have quit drinking and have enjoyed the lack of alcohol. I do not feel like that thing that was such a big part of my life is missing. I feel like my life is better without it. So I've been through a lot of changes too. And I'm sure we'll have more opportunity to talk about those as well. But yeah, man, it's been a heck of a couple of years. Yeah, it feels like everything's changed. It feels like a lifetime ago for me. I know that because of the pandemic, a lot of things have changed for a lot of people. But life has changed for a lot of us. It feels like a different world that we're living in today than we did pre-pandemic. And most certainly because of the circumstances in my life, I feel like I'm in a different life. I felt like my future died is the way that I used to say it at that time. But really, I think that it altered the course of my future for the better. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. And with that, let's get on to the story. I want to hear a fucked up story. A man, his wife's fiance, and his wife's boyfriend, they all walk into a bar. That man was me. This summer, during pandemic summer too, during what was probably the hardest couple of years in a lot of people's lives, when I was isolated, depressed, sad, crying a lot, just wanting my wife to be there, I started unraveling a story. And it's a story that's hard to tell. But you want to know something? The story is kind of the best thing that's ever happened to me. I've learned a lot about myself. I learned I'm fucking strong. I learned to love myself. I learned that some days I've got to put myself first. I never did that before. I was married for 15 years, with her for 18. And for none of those years did I ever think about what I needed. It's about trying to make her happy. There were years where her mental health and her depression pretty much dictated my life. And seeing through the lens of where I'm at today, I realized that she'd weaponized it. That her mental health and her depression had been a weapon. That her mental health and her depression were her ways of controlling me. I am what I thought was a happy, until the pandemic, a happy, successful, fun, funny man who every year thought that the year was better than the year before it. But I still know now that I was abused. I'm going to rewind to January of 2021, and my cat was dying. It's been a tough year. Pandemics. 2021 starts and I think, okay, it's gonna get better. Worst is behind us. My cat's dying. It sucked, man. And I had to take this thing to the vet every day for fluids, every other day for fluids. And I had to learn how to do fluids. I'm doing this alone. My wife was never there. She had stories of why she wasn't there. She worked for a major shipping company. She had a job. She was a good worker, but she wasn't there. She worked for a major shipping company. Everything's being shipped today. She's saving the world, basically, with her job. And I'm not exaggerating. She'd talk about the vaccine shipments that would come through and would look so proud of how she was doing her part. And she'd work overnights. She'd go in early evening, come home for a couple hours between shifts, and go back to work. She was so proud. And I was proud of her. She never had a ton of confidence and sometimes felt bad about not having what she considered a career. And holy cow, look at how important she is right now. So I was alone. And it was winter, and it was a COVID surge, and I couldn't leave the fucking house. I literally forgot at one point that I could leave the house. February, we had so much damn snow that leaving the house was difficult. And I forgot I could even do it. But right now, it's January, and I'm taking care of this cat, and I've never felt so alone in my life. And then February hit. And that's when the snow hit, and that's when I felt the most isolated I ever have. And there were days when my wife would get off of work on a Saturday and then go to Target for five hours and come home with nothing. Didn't feel so good. And then on Sundays, she'd make plans with friends. Although she'd always complain that she never had friends, she'd always have plans with friends on Sundays. The only two days during the week where she didn't have plans was on Saturday. And then on Sundays, she'd make plans with friends on Sundays. The only two days during the week where I really got to see her, she wasn't there. It was her mental health, and she was taking care of herself. And I was glad she was, but goddammit, was I isolated, and I've never been so lonely in my life. And one night, she met a friend for coffee, actually someone to talk about a new job. And I said, how late are you staying out tonight? And she said, oh, we're just getting coffee. And she texted me and said, heading to my friend's. We're gonna hang out. And I was so fucking sad. I just wanted to set expectations. If she wanted to go out, she could go out. But I asked her how late she would be because I was so fucking lonely. And I needed her there. And I needed to prepare myself if she wasn't gonna be there. My cat was dying. The prior month. Started smoking weed. And it changed my life. It slowed everything down. It let me see things with a perspective I've never seen before. And on this night in February, I'm high. But I had some insight for the first time. That this ain't right. That I'm begging her. I'm literally begging her via text to come home. She won't answer my calls. I'm fucking begging and she's telling me how important it is to spend the evening with her friends. And I said, if you don't come home, I don't know if we should keep doing this. She didn't come home. A lot of things happened in the next month, including her getting fired from her job, which I did not know about and probably have never said out loud because it's only become clear to me in recent weeks that she got fired from a job. She told me she was still going to work. She told me she got hurt at that job. When in fact, the night that a husband, a fiance, and a boyfriend went to a bar, I found out she fell at the fiance's house. But I could start to see clearly and it was just a glimpse and it wasn't enough. I told her I wasn't sure we should do this. Then a boy shows up at our house. Guy she worked with. Nice guy. He's player number three. He's the boyfriend. I'm player number one. The fiance is player number two and the boyfriend's player number three. But player number three shows up and I'm cool with it. Like, it was annoying. Whatever. This guy shows up, is in love with my wife. My wife has a story that she tells that she had a little emotional affair. And I think about how, you know, how close maybe I've come to that where I haven't crossed lines. But it's easy to make a friend, especially when you're working with them. I mean, it's easy to get a little close. Our cat just died. We're in a pandemic. Nobody's emotions are normal. So I think that we are at a point where we can start over. Okay, it's out there. She fucked up. Whatever. I don't care. Let's move on. This is a good thing. But she falls into the deepest depression I've ever seen and leaves. She says she's in a hotel and doesn't want to live. Not that she wants to die. But that she doesn't want to live. That she can't face anyone. That she's so ashamed. And that she's a shitty person. How would that make you feel? It's hard to be angry when you think your wife might be ready to kill herself. I even packed a bag for her. Met her at a bar, had some drinks. It was nice. Wanted her to be... Okay, I wanted her to have some clothes. I wanted her to be home in a week after wearing her clothes that I packed for her. But she doesn't come home. There are days she barely talks to me. There are days where I fucking think she might be dead because I haven't heard from her in 24 hours. I can't breathe. I didn't want to die, but living was really fucking hard. So what did I do? I started therapy. I didn't start therapy for me. I started it for her. I started it because I wanted to set an example and show what it would be like. Show her by leading and show her the success that I could have. And in that first month, I talked about her. I talked about us. I talked about her. I talked about her. I talked about us. The only thing that mattered to me and the only thing that had mattered to me for 15 years, for 18 years, was her. So I talked about her and how I could be there for her and what did I say and what should I not say and what are the risks and how do I be a better husband, the guy that can be strong enough for her. And she keeps claiming that she's going to try to call therapists. Maybe she did one week and didn't click with them. In my second month, I started talking about me. So I think we're in April right now. And I decided that, man, I need to control the things that I can control. And I tell my therapist that I'm just not me. There are so many things inside of me that I want to do that I can't do. I'm just not me, there are so many things inside of me that I want to do that I just don't do. And he's like, like what? I start begging, like I want to change the world. I see my wife in this state and I just want to somehow be this like mental health advocate. Maybe someone who lobbies, I don't know. But we need more access to mental health in this country. We need more people to talk about it. We need it to be a thing that people care about. And then I said, I like public speaking. I don't do that. I like writing, I don't do that. I like music. There are days where I can't even get out of my car because I just want to hear one more song. And then the next song starts, I'm like, shit, I can't go home now. And I end up driving for 45 minutes because one more song turns into one more song turns into one more song. Fucking love music, I thrive on it. I didn't listen to music from the start of the pandemic. I wasn't drinking coffee and coffee, man, coffee. It makes you feel good. It's something about music does too. But coffee, I know that my day is going to be a little bit better if I have a cup of coffee. But I didn't even have it in me to have a cup of coffee. So if you're talking through that with my therapist, I went to the coffee shop that weekend by myself. I'm really good at doing things by myself. Never had anyone to do things with. I was always waiting for her. A lot of things I never got around to, but I got pretty good at doing things by myself. So I went and I got a cup of coffee, got some beignets, sat there by myself, fed the meter for about an hour so there's no rush to go. I just wanted this to be some me time. And then a week later, the following Saturday, I went back and did it again. And either that Saturday or the following, I walked up and the woman working in the counter kind of pointed at me and was like, Scott, right? She said my name. I didn't know that I needed to be seen. But that small gesture changed my life. I always thought I couldn't remember names, but I still recite the names of the people that I met later that day because I was so inspired and so felt so seen and felt like she just made my day better that when I went to my friend's house later that night and I met his neighbors, husband, wife and child and another family member and her child came over, I can tell you their names right now. Always thought I couldn't remember names. And the reason I thought I couldn't remember names was because I'd been gaslit for 15 years. Everything I thought happened, I was told did not happen the way I thought it did. So I gave up. I gave up, I was tired and I didn't even try to remember things. I thought I couldn't. But the woman at the coffee shop inspired me. I could do it. So I kept going back to the coffee shop every week. I kept going and talking to people. I kept remembering names. And in the meantime, things are becoming clearer. I'm thinking about what is next. I'm realizing that what I need in my life is resolution. I don't need my marriage. I need resolution. And I start offering my wife divorce and she keeps saying no. I keep telling her things that I need from her in order to not just do it. And she gives me just enough to think that maybe it's going to work. I set July 8th as my deadline of the day that I'm going to tell her that we need to get divorced because that's my birthday. And I thought, well, I'm going to have a new birth. It's getting just enough. But on my birthday, she barely showed up on time, didn't tell me happy birthday, and didn't give me a gift. And then she got upset that I had an issue with any of that. It was my fault, right? She really, really, really did a nice job of making me feel like everything was my fault. Shortly after my birthday, she texted me from work that she'd had a car accident. And I responded and said, why didn't you tell me? Kind of weird. She got into a car accident, got insurance involved, got a ride, got to work. And then she told me she was in a car accident. Doesn't make sense to me. Even if that's the story, my wife didn't think of me when she got into a car accident. I wasn't needed. And one of the things that I have to work through in therapy still is that the most important thing in my life is to be needed. And I've nodded nothing more than to make her life better or easier or to be needed by her and to have her get into an accident and sent me a text from work. It made me feel like an afterthought. And I responded and said, well, when was this? Where? What time? And she responded and said she was too busy to answer. And I responded that she could have answered any amount of time it would take to say that. Any amount of time it would take to text me and tell me she's too busy to answer. And then we fought over text for 45 minutes because she was too busy to send a text, but still never told me when and where and what happened, what time. Kind of weird, huh? Later that night, she sends me a really nice text. And of course, sending me a text because she's not fucking home. That tells me the details, says I'm sorry, says I know you don't believe it, but I love you. And it made me feel better. But I also know she's really good at, when she crosses a line, giving me what I need. She's always been really good at that. I've always known that she was lying because that's the time when she gave me what I needed. Kind of crazy, isn't it? Did I know this? But I was abused. So she needs a rental car and she needs help getting it because there's a rental car shortage and thank God there was a rental car shortage because this helped me unravel all of the mysteries. I went in to get the rental car for her and they asked me for the claim number, which I can pull up on my phone. And holy cow, when I pull it up on my phone, there's a time, date and location that do not match. Hmm. That's weird. First thing I do is Google the location. And it's a mile and a half from the interstate. She told me it happened on the interstate. Why did you drive a mile and a half? Well, I need to find a safe place to park it. Google Maps is great. I went and looked at the exact address, mapped it out from the interstate. It was one mile east and half a mile north. So the safe place you could find, you had to drive a mile east. You decided that was the street that was safe. Took a left, drove half a mile and found the perfect parking spot for your car. Yeah, that's what happened. I Googled the address again, found the name of the resident who lived there. Googled his name. His Facebook says he works for the same company she works for. Interesting. Or had worked for. It's a job she left earlier in the year. Oh, well, Scott, that company employs so many people around the city. They've got lots of locations. OK, sure. Got it. However, his title is the same as yours. Air Ramp Supervisor. Air Ramp Supervisor is only a title in this city at the location that is at the airport. Oh, well, he worked there three years ago. He's been gone for three years, I gave him a ride home once. OK. You got into a car accident. And your first thought isn't to text your husband or call your husband. It's to go to this address that you dropped someone off once who briefly worked with you three years ago. But his Facebook says he started two years ago and left less than a year ago. Facebook's wrong. OK. I let it go. Mainly because we had a good relationship. I let it go mainly because we had plans the next day with some friends of mine. I just wanted to have a nice day. But in the morning I woke up and I started writing down my questions. And my questions weren't to talk myself out of anything or into believing anything. It was just to have an objective list here and say, wow, that's a lot of questions. Or, no, there can be answers to these 15 questions about a car accident. So I didn't ask them, but we went to hang out with friends. It was about 2 p.m. when we met with them. And things were a little tense at first, as you might imagine. I made a couple of comments that probably wouldn't have in normal times. But remember, I've got 15 questions about a car accident. And then we have a nice day. Until 8 o'clock when she goes outside, starts crying, telling me that her mom is like begging for her forgiveness for entering the information into the insurance claim wrong, because her mom was our insurance agent. She could make me feel so small, man. And it was a tactic. I meant that little to her. This was part of her strategy. And this was her strategy working. Upset me, embarrassed me in front of my friends, hurt me, so she can storm off. And later I found out that she had a date with the fiancé at 9 o'clock that night. So started a fight at 8 o'clock. Make it my fucking fault that she has to leave. She wouldn't get into the car with me. She wouldn't talk to me. She said she was walking, so I just went home. There was no point of chasing her. And somehow she got home without me noticing, even though the first thing I knew she was going to do is go to the car and leave, because that's what she did when she was mad. I still missed her. I think I thought I had more time, so I went in the house for 10 minutes, then went and sat by the garage. And after an hour of sitting by the garage, I opened it up and the rental car is gone. So I go to the bedroom and I see her backpack's there. I decide it's time to look through it. I found some love notes in there from the guy who lived at the house. What a coincidence. All these coincidences. So I Google them again. I'm pretty fucking good at Googling. Find a phone number. Can't believe I find a phone number. I find two of them. One of them is a landline and one of them is a cell phone, and I call them both. And when I call the landline, I get an answering machine and it says the name of the family. Okay, the same last name as the guy who lives at this house. This number is correct. I also called the cell phone. Left a message. It said, hey, this is Scott, if my wife is there, didn't call her my wife, stated her name. Have her call me. It's an emergency. To me, it is an emergency. My wife's missing. Heh heh heh. And I'm pretty sure she's with a guy. So a few minutes later, I get a text that says, who dis? And I say, it's her husband. Have her call me. And he just replied, what? I said, it's her husband. It's her husband. He said, what kind of harassment is this? And I started sending him fax and pictures. But I wanted him to see that, okay, I'm here. This is her stuff. Here's pictures of us together. Here's a note with your name on it. I decide I'm going to see him. I texted him, I'm coming in peace. I'm not a violent man. I hope you're not either. But I'm going to see him and it's about 1130 at night and I'm trying to reach my wife. And she finally calls me when I'm five minutes away and is denying, denying, denying. And then I recited the love note from him verbatim. And she said, okay, fine. You meet me at the house. We're going to talk. And she said she's an hour from home. I said, good. See you in an hour. Or else I'm going to come back to his house in an hour and it's going to be an hour later. And it's going to be a bigger scene. I'm not trying to make a scene, but I'm pretty sure that the longer this takes, the bigger scene it's going to be. So she shows up an hour later, takes every minute of that hour before she walks in the door. We fight. She goes to bed. I get a text. It's player number two. It's the fiance. He's asking questions. He's buying in. He says, so she doesn't have a restraining order against you? My wife, the woman who I would do anything to make happy. And then his next text was, and you're not CPD? Chicago Police Department. How diabolical is that? She wanted him to think that her ex-husband, me, was a corrupt cop who had raped and stalked her and she needed a restraining order against. It's a good way to keep someone from looking into the details any further. And I was texting this guy proof that I was in her house. And I was driving to his house to show up to introduce myself to him. And he thought I was her stalker slash rapist. I was going to show up at a man's house who thought I raped and stalked his fiance. He could have killed me. I wouldn't have blamed him. So he says, you're not CPD? And I replied, LOL. I'm actually over it. It ripped the fucking band-aid off. It really did. I wasn't even mad anymore. I knew at this point there was nothing I ever could have done to make that woman happy. And I immediately go into this, like, excited that I finally can move on with my life mode. And he shows up and it's even worse than I thought. I don't know that they're engaged at this point. He says, she wears my ring, doesn't wear mine, has a job that she says makes it difficult to wear a ring. And that's why she doesn't wear it. But I go upstairs after he and I talk and I wake her up and she gets super pissed at me waking her up. I don't think she has a right at this point to get pissed at me waking her up. But she always does try to reframe arguments to make it about what I'm doing wrong. And I pulled the blanket off of her, which is a more aggressive move than I would like to admit to, even though it's not that aggressive. I think in the moment right now I just met my wife's fiancé that I might have this right to do it. I just pulled the blanket off and holy shit, she's wearing a ring. You can imagine that there's some yelling. What I don't realize at this point is poor player number two has locked himself out of his car. So he just met his fiancé's husband that he did not know about. And now he's got to wait for his dad to bring the spare key. So he's outside and he hears some yelling and he hears some banging, which was doors slamming and drawers slamming because I was making her get out. And he starts banging on the door. So I come downstairs and let him in. And to me, this is a great thing that this woman who claims that I rape and stalk her there's some witness there to see that she is not hurt. Because I don't know what this woman's capable of anymore. I wake up the next morning. I've got a decision to make. Am I going to run from this? Am I going to hide in shame? Am I just going to get divorced from a woman and never tell anyone the real story? Because that's kind of the thing that I do. It's to feel shame. It might be to leave a good impression. It's to feel shame, might be to leave a few details out that I'm embarrassed about. But I texted my friend who I'd been out with yesterday, the one that witnessed the fight we got into and said, can I call you? I told her everything. I told Player Two that I was suspicious of Player Three. And he'd also worked at the same company. Their time overlapped to some extent. So that was one of the things I told him that made him realize that, oh yes, there's some stuff going on here. So the next day he reaches out to Player Three and he has to go through mutual friends because Player Three's blocked him on every channel that he can because Player Three was told that Player Two had raped my wife. But Sunday night I get a text saying, I'm meeting Player Three. This is from Player Two. I'm meeting Player Three at the bar in 15 minutes. Want to come? So that's when a man, his wife's fiancee, and her boyfriend walk into a bar. I met you back at Tonic Fest. I confess. I was nervous and stressed. We kissed and thought you were the best. I was right. And that night we got into a lot of that fight. That I want, I shot you in the face. It was fake. I offered you a spring. You declined. I said, if it's a night, decide to change your mind. You did. Yeah, you did. Now what? I got you in my life. It's all right. Let me know. I'm free. I'm just glad to have your company. Then we got real up against that. We were the fastest cat. Now we got out of the blue. I am so lucky I found you. Remember, you like to fight. Well, whenever I was to fight, was always that I should say, because I love you to this day. It was fake. I offered you a spring. You declined. I said, if it's a night, decide to change your mind. You did. Yeah, you did. Now what? I got you in my life. It's all right. Let me know. I'm free. I'm just glad to have your company. I'm free. I got you back in time to confess. I confess, I was nervous and stressed, because I thought you were the best. And I was right.