From Fiancé to Stranger, What Really Happened - VOTB

And we're back kind of I think it's been almost a year since dead eye and I have sat down

to do a voice to the broken for those of you who don't know dead eye two tongues.

He is the host of the what is your podcast called again.

I keep on.

The near death diary podcast.

Yeah, I keep wanting to call it the death diary podcast near death.

Yeah, that's kind of what it became.

Yeah, you know, there turns out there's not a lot of people who have near death experience stories.

You know, yeah, I mean, there's quite a few of them out there.

You see a lot of people that are on like channeling podcasts that have had NDE's,

but maybe they just don't want to talk to you because the way you look could be could be.

I mean, I'm used to that.

Yeah, that's funny.

So for those of you who don't know, we read emails from men and try to give some sort of

life advice to either talk about their situation to give them advice to improve it or to cheer them

on whatever the case may be.

We are opening this up to have wives right in if they would like to write in and get information

on their husband and man's perspective on what their husband's going through as well.

If you guys are interested in sending an email in and having it read on the show,

the email is tobebetterco at gmail.com.

Just make sure that in the subject line somewhere you put voice of the broken or VOTB

so that our email screeners know where to send it.

How's life been?

Pretty good, man, you know, we've, we're about to actually think right after this episode,

we are going to go hit the car lot.

See if we can't finally get the much needed company vehicle and it's, uh, it's been a lot of

grinding. You make social media, uh, we're finally kind of hitting that stride.

It's good.

We're getting that wide stride going.

And I think that's going to open up so many more doorways for us.

Uh, but man, we've, we've really just put, you know, the, uh, the balls to the wall and started

just, I mean, devote never pretty much second, you know, of our lives to, you know,

some of which have, you know, made me cross paths with you.

You and I have done a, uh, medicine ceremony now together, do a men's retreat together.

Um, the content life, man, you know, it keeps, it keeps coming and it's just getting better and better.

Should look into getting a van like a cargo van.

I know that you were talking about doing a, you know, you had asked me yesterday about, uh,

different vehicles and I thought about it last night.

Are you getting some sort of cargo van that you guys would be able to sleep in?

You know, you could put like a, a Murphy bed in there and like really build it out to do your thing.

And, uh, that would be cheaper than buying like a, you know, a, a done up bronco or an expedition or whatever it was.

You were looking at, definitely something to consider.

The, the bronco became kind of like a symbol of our, of our growth, you know, and, and we had set our mind on it.

And because it just looked so awesome, it fits us and like, you know, our, our chic.

But after looking into it and asking some, some, uh, people about long distance, like yourself, you know,

and things like that, we've kind of started to figure that we, uh, we, we were leaning towards something different.

Uh, we want it to be something that can be converted.

But what we really want is something strong enough to pull behind kind of a converted, uh, podcast studio.

We would like to go to these haunted locations with our star link and all of our, you know, solar and stuff.

And we set up and we're just outside, you know, the, uh, the, the actual haunted location.

Get a van because then you don't have to buy the extra conversion shit.

You just do your van up, put everything in totes and set up right there.

That's what I did. We have, we have a complete mobile setup.

When we take our van out, I have a, a 16, 15, I think is what is the pelican case, the big one.

And I've got my roadcaster for microphones, the mic stands, um, and then all of my camera and camera gear in it.

And then obviously I, I have a star link too, but that just, you just magnetize that to the top of your van.

Call it a day. I don't have any room on the top of my van anymore because we have solar panels across the whole thing.

But we are, we have solar panels in our van to the point where we can just run everything off of our inverter.

And I have four giant batteries in there. So like, my, my sprinter van is a diesel.

It's a 2500, but it's, it does everything that I need it to do.

And then some, and we have two beds in there now.

So that if carries with us, you know, she's, she doesn't have to sleep outside of, you know, we're in a, a not safe area.

Is that the one that's is to be better on the side of it?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a beast.

Yeah. We put a lot of money into that van, but you can, you know, hindsight 20, 20, I would have bought a smaller,

like a pro master or even like a Ford transit used something with less than a hundred thousand miles on it and just done it up myself.

But, you know, I bought a brand new sprinter van 2500 and then slowly started making changes.

And, you know, I, I actually planned on taking the shit on the road for long durations, which is why we set the solar up the way that we did.

We got a lot of money in the solar panels.

That's cool. The battery banks are way, way easier, you know, yeah. So, yeah.

All right. Let's jump into an email.

This one doesn't have a title, it just as VOTB exclamation point says, Chris, first off, I want to say, thank you for providing your experiences and insight to those of who of us who are struggling,

but also the good moments and positivity you share in your marriage.

I don't know where to start. Many emotions and struggling to find some direction, 38 male recently separated from my fiance of two and a half years at her request.

I do understand relationships are a two way street hints why I'm asking on behalf of my doing

doings and not speaking on her behalf. Okay. Good. This is a great start. We at our minz retreat last weekend. We were telling people that when you tell the story of what's going on in your life, not to tell what other people have done.

You need to speak on you because you're not responsible for other people's actions. So I like where this is going.

He wrote three weeks ago was a breaking point and uncomfortable couple hours drive home and near silence had me start a conversation when we arrived home.

At this point, she didn't know what she wanted and was done. We both got argumentative and she was done. The root cause of her ending the engagement was I had mentioned making some changes with my anxiety and fear of failing as a man to provide.

Protect and make sure the future was set up perfectly for them and I had failed to take action within the anxiety fear and being too prideful. I became very sharp and short with the kids as well as her.

I failed to see the children as children and expected perfection regardless of the eight year age gap. I stopped showing up for my partner and essentially checked out for the last year. She does not feel emotionally safe anymore and I understand that.

I have to accept that from my failure to act and not act. I let the stressors of my mind, avalanche and projected those as anger never physical towards anyone frustrated in moments and not knowing how to express things I snowballed gradually into louder, audible levels. So you started screaming.

Yeah, this is one of those things where like it doesn't matter if there's physical abuse or not. If you are treating your partner poorly for long durations of time, they're not going to stick around like you. You have to.

Be aware that it is your responsibility to lead your home that includes emotional leading as well as spiritually leading so like you bringing that kind of chaos and disruption into your home that throws everything out of whack.

And women don't have a sense of intimacy unless they're safety is in check. So like if they feel safe and secure and everything is good, their intimacy levels go up and everything, you know, maintains that happy home, you know, stasis for most men.

And I want to touch on the child thing to, you know, your, your, whether they're your kids or her kids, the children are, are your, it's your duty when you get into a relationship with children to help inform and raise these children and understanding that they have no life experience to go by and that's part of your duty as a man and as leader of your home to guide and be introspective and help them and have conversations instead of just coming down with the hammer and being nasty towards them because it doesn't teach anyone anything.

Other than you have a short fuse and don't know how to react.

That was like what I said at the men's retreat whenever I said that when I really hit my stride as a father was when I realized that my every moment was teaching one way or another.

Good way to look at it, you know, like I'm teaching them how I respond, how I react, how I handle stress, you know, and you start to see that come back in your children.

And man, you just set yourself up for an uphill battle because now you're battling your own problems that you didn't fix.

Yeah, you know, and they're shining back through in the form of this child, you know, who learned everything from you, you know, yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a big nasty circle, if you're not careful learn from watching you okay.

Yeah, very real true.

I didn't respect her decision to split up because I refused to give up on us now fully understanding she is not only protecting herself, but also the kids from an environment we both refused to relive from growing up in.

Eventually, the intimacy both physically and emotionally was gone. Conversations got short and we stopped being partners mainly over my doing.

I finally realized what I was doing and wasn't doing. I did a 180 degree flip overall. I had my wake up call, but unfortunately, it was too late.

Currently living together for the next week and a half until my new residence is ready for me to move in haven't been matter over anything really in weeks.

Started going to the gym again to help regulate hormones started therapy found a place to move into by her request.

And I've been reading like mad and I can see where I went wrong. She fell in love with me for a reason and I became everything but that.

I want to be I want to be better than before the strong passion, the protector, their peace, their safety, their confident, confident.

Sometimes it's too little too late, right? Women aren't going to stick around in a situation when you've shown them your true colors and whether you want to admit that this is your true colors or not.

This is your true colors right now and things get difficult. And there's disruptions, there's conflict, there's anger, there's resentment.

What you fall back on, that's your shadow self. That's the ugly version of yourself that you have to learn to integrate and work through to become more whole and to be able to be more responsive instead of reactive to see these situations.

This is a great opportunity for you. I know you were engaged two and a half years as a very short amount of time when you really think about the span of your life and you have a very big learning lesson right now that you can, you know, do what you're doing and start taking strides to become a better version of yourself so that when you meet somebody new maybe they'll line with you better and you'll be a better version of yourself for them.

And you pay attention to what he was saying so much of it seems to be like born out of, you know, being self conscious, you know, I was, I was, that's why he started arguing. That's why he started raising his voice and stuff was his, his feeling of an inadequacy.

I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this. You notice the first thing he does as soon as they split. He goes right back to the gym.

These are things that we should be doing the entire time, like not for even just a relationship, but for us as people like removing that cloud of doubt around you just makes you so much more capable and every way shape or form it gives you better temperament.

You know, it changes who we are. And I just think it's funny. You hear that almost every single time that you have like a breakup, especially one of significance. You know, this was about to be a wife or someone you're with for years. The first thing you start to do.

You start to do these inherent things. You're like, I know I should probably go to the gym. Well, now I got to attract another mate. So I have to, no, no, no, no, no, we stay on top of our game. You know, we, we have to, that's, that's the way we have to approach things.

Yeah, I think that when we get comfortable, you know, they say that the signs of a healthy relationship is that both people are gaining weight.

And I think that comes down to you're not as active. You know, you'd rather stay at home with the person that you love and watch TV and do those things. But we fall into this illusion that we are more capable than we are until we realize we need to be capable and our body doesn't perform.

And I went to this recently after tearing my peck and messing my backup. Like I didn't go to the gym for most two years. And you know, we talked about this. I started doing pushups again in the first night that I did it. I couldn't even get 10 solid like perfect pushups.

And it got to the point where before I went back to the gym, I was, I was able to get 50 in one shot without stopping.

And now I'm back in the gym again and doing the thing, but I'm having to train around injuries and shit. So like, you know, four months ago, if I was recalled to do something physically, I would have gotten gassed out relatively quick.

I don't think that I would have been as capable as I believed I was. And the time to figure that out is not when you're fucking needed. You know what I mean? So big time.

You're talking about talking about emotional scarring if you can't perform in a way that you are needed to for your family. Yeah, like, yeah, you know, that's, that's a hard lesson learned fellows.

And there's a whole lot of discussion that goes into what the gym does for our mental health. You know, we're not meant to be sedatory creatures. When you look at the last 200,000 years of man, we have been very physical beings. There's been lots of hiking, running, chasing, carrying, you know, picking things up and putting them down. That's how we've had to get our food and shit.

So it's not like we were, you know, Dordash creatures for the last 300 years, you know, yeah, we don't have a physical necessity at this point, not anymore, you know, it's it's a choice, which is wild, which is wild when you sit down and really ponder on that, you know, if we don't want to move around or whatever, you know, we, we don't have to write. Yeah, absolutely crazy.

Alright, he goes on to say the last couple of weeks have been amazing. We still talk throughout the day, communicate about how work was when I get home, talk about the kids, do things together as a family, et cetera, et cetera. Is there a way to come back from this?

What can you recommend from your viewpoint that I can do as a man to help me become better as an individual. So I do not repeat these steps with either her or a new partner if things aren't repairable.

I think that in this situation, the best thing that you could do is initiate couples therapy, even though you guys aren't technically a couple and she's trying to get you to leave and you've already signed a lease and you're trying to leave.

It's not over till it's over, you know, you can, you can ask her like, hey, are you willing to try to go to like couples therapy with me? I've already started going, I'm realizing my shortcomings, and I think that this could really help us and I don't want to to give up on us. You know, the worst it's going to happen is she's going to tell you know you're already in that position.

Yeah, so any thoughts on that now, I mean, I think, you know, that you said it pretty pretty well that it ain't over till it's over, you know, like you, you, he's, he's definitely able to take some reins at this point. And if he wants to make that his focus, he needs to be incredibly like a communicative with her. Yeah, yeah, fully transparent.

You know, I've always struggled with therapy, but what is is an act of like love and, you know, like a proclamation that you want to work on something.

You're willing to spend money on that something like you were willing to spend time on that something. That's a, that's a big declaration of I still love you.

I agree. I see why you would recommend that.

Well, I mean, so I, I actually have a hard time with therapy, too. I've had a couple of good therapists, but I've had, you know, double digits, bad therapists throughout my life. So like, people don't realize that you're therapist, you have to mesh. Like this is not one of those things that you're going to sit down on the first session get healed.

You're going to have to go three, four, five, six sessions to find out if you even really mesh with this person. And then you have to find a therapist that you fuck with.

And like real shit therapy is is home depot for mental health. They're not going to give you anything, but the tools that you need because you have to take care of your own shit.

So like you can go to home depot and buy everything that you need to build a garden and come home and build a garden that doesn't mean that food's going to grow, right? Like the home depot run with stage one of your healing journey. So as long as people understand that this is not an overnight thing. And if you stick to it, the tools and the resources that you can get from a good therapist can literally change your fucking life.

But you have to implement those things. You have to be willing to actually do the work. He goes on to ask Peaches a question. I don't think that he realizes that that she's not on here. Do you have anything to add before I pick up the email?

No, no.

All right. He said, do you think that she's totally giving up or is she waiting to see that if that change sticks? If it's six, 12 or 24 months from now, I will absolutely sit in it to make the change for myself.

Confused on why I didn't take action sooner.

I know why you didn't take action sooner. You didn't take action sooner because you didn't have to.

You now realize that she's not going to tolerate this behavior and you're like, oh, fuck, now I have to change.

Guys, if you wait until it gets to that point, your woman knows that you will never change until it's the last ditch effort to do something.

And that shows that you living out of a reactive state and not a proactive state.

You should be going to the gym and doing things for your mental health and keeping your hobbies and fucking

taking your woman on dates and working on being a good father by reading books and watching podcasts and, you know, joining other men's groups around fatherhood and trying to

constantly evolve. Your woman doesn't want to be with somebody who sits stagnant. Women want to be able to have growth in their life. They want to see that there's a real like

complete comprehensive future plan and like that future actually looks like it's going somewhere. No one wants to be where they are 20 years from now, like right now.

The goal is always forward. You know, it's constant progression. And if you are stagnant,

reactive and not motivated to do anything, what are you really offering your wife other than your time?

Because your time is spent sitting on a couch watching TV if you're not doing anything.

Yeah, I mean, we attach far more to our partners than then we realize, you know, we attach dreams.

We, you know, we, we attach, you know, like the bigger picture. Whenever you watch your partner start, you know, becoming lethargic or just like happy.

You know, I went to work. I did my thing. I'm home now. My shoes are off. I'm going to shower at rinse repeat.

If like your partner starts to slowly realize, like, oh, that's, that's what I saddled my horse to.

That's the big dream. That's the big picture. You know, it could be like really anything. Show some gumption. You know, hey, I, the world's going to shit.

It's summer and spring. I thought maybe we could do a garden together. I thought that'd be fun.

Just stuff to get you out of the house. Stuff to show that you're trying to better your, your home, your safety, you know, all of that.

That that's all saddled to who we choose, you know, as a, as a partner. And the moment you become a bump on a log man.

Talk about, you know, the, all the energy leave in the room. Yeah, that's us. That's, that's what we're doing forever.

We have our favorite sitcoms and shit like that. You know, we have Netflix. We got all the streaming platforms.

Let's do this till we die. Like hell now. Yeah, that's not what we're built for.

Not at all. Have fun making that work in any relationship.

He then goes on to say broken. I did this to myself and them anger at a lot of sacrifice to get us at this point in life.

And it's gone. As you've stated previously in the podcast, she holds that shield because you can't, you are still fighting.

I'd fight Grizzly's barehanded to protect them and keep fighting even though she threw the shield down.

You just negated everything that you've said in this email by shifting all of the blame to her when you failed to actually do the things that you are supposed to do.

If you want your woman to hold the shield, you have to be the warrior that that is she's willing to lay her life down for.

Sorry if that comes across a little, a little bitey, but yeah, he threw everything in the kitchen sink out of there at the end. Yeah, you know, uh, your, your accountability is very important here.

Uh, I know that you would fight endless monsters. How we, we would all do that, but you, you can't become the one yourself. Right.

He goes on to say, could it genuinely be too late to repair? Do I walk away and give her that piece?

But also struggle with living this nightmare every day. Do I keep fighting until she sees I'm not willing to give up and will make whatever changes necessary to truly provide for them better than before all while, uh,

pressure, all while pressuring her more. You shouldn't be pressuring her more. This needs to be, uh,

an ebb and flow between the two of you. I have a really hard time with this, dude. Like why, why are you fighting for this now, but not before she gave you the ultimatum.

I don't want to be with you anymore. This is over. If that's what it takes you guys to change your fucking lives to become a better person.

You've missed that opportunity because even if you do somehow get her to come back and try to make things work, you have to start over from the beginning because everything that you've shown her up until this point is that when things get hard, you're going to become anxious.

You're not going to follow through. You're not going to technically be a protector because protecting your woman is sometimes protecting her from you.

Like you have a lot of fucking work to do here and sometimes that work is best done by yourself.

Not just that. In her back pocket, she now knows like, you'll let it get hard.

Right. You'll, you'll, you'll let it get very difficult. You know, that's, that's hard to get someone to sign back up before.

Absolutely. I got, you know, uh, in my situation, how, how I would feel, you know, if I could get a, you know, a calm, you know, discussion.

A talk perhaps in the therapy, like you were saying, you know, hey, like, you know, like you were talking about journaling, like help, help her, have her help you understand where was my weakest points.

Like, you know, I don't, I can't expect you to come back to me. You know, I can't expect that I hope you do. But, you know, I'm still in love with you.

Can I know, like I, I feel like I know in my heart, but if you have any, any key points, because I want to go work on these, you know, because I need to work on these, you know, I think that's some of the conversation, some of the words that need to be exchanged.

Yeah. Absolutely. And those words need to be taken for what they are, not from a place of defense. You know, when you ask somebody to critique you and to give you your shortcomings, you have to be ready for that.

I'm not asking that's coming because it's going to fucking hurt. It's going to break down all of the opinions that you have of yourself. You're going to want to, you know, posture and be like, you know, I didn't do that or you did this and all of that, you just need to be like, all right, cool and write it down and then go and really truly reflect on it, because there's a lot of work that goes on there, and do not get mad at him. Yeah, you asked for it. Yeah, don't get mad at him. 100%.

All right, let's move on to the next one. All right, this one a little over three pages. You ready? Yeah, on to the next one. All right, this one's called the life I knew is over and I'm holding on for dear hope. Man, it's a fucking title.

My wife and I have been married for seven years and we have three children, a six year old, a three year old and a one year old. I'm active duty in the Navy. And I've currently been for 11 years.

The past six of those years, I have been deployed around the world for months at a time right at the start. There was an incident with infidelity on her part, which resulted in a brief separation while I finished deployment in a couple months after followed by a reconciliation by her coming back and asking for mental health support.

I got her help and ensured that she had support with our son, who was about seven months old at the time. I didn't forgive her at the time, but knew that with work, I could learn to love her again.

Oh, good learn to love her again. I don't know how I feel about that.

Verbage loves not enough, right? So like love is a feeling that's a choice that you make to love your person, but to learn to love them.

I don't know. For me, man, love is a undeniable force. You know, it's a wrecking ball. Like it doesn't take no for an answer. You know what I mean?

Why the fuck do you mean you got to learn that that doesn't make sense to me? Yeah. Yeah, the learn, the learn verb is just definitely weird for me.

I can understand, you know, learn to trust, you know, learn, learn new daily rituals, whatever, whatever, whatever, but to learn to love is is a lot that says a lot.

I eventually forgave her, but never forgave the act. So then you didn't forgive her about two years later, we tried for our second and found out we were pregnant while I was deployed shortly after I left. It was planned. Yes, it's mine.

This time around though, we weren't so lucky. Her kidneys had a blockage, which led to emergency surgery and her being bed ridden for months.

I was returned home on emergency leave and placed on my DET to work from home and support my wife still had to work still had to run a house.

During this time I broke, I hadn't dealt with the previous trauma and started yelling and making mountains of mull hills.

I got help seek therapy and support from an in-home nurse that was hired by TriCare.

This wasn't the last, I'm sorry, this wasn't too last as we then moved across the country and bought a new home. I had to switch providers and get on a wait list.

Then I got deployed again, no medical support for what I needed where I was and no support once I got back as I went on another wait list.

Fighting happened, adjusting to coming home was a struggle every time we both yelled at each other here and there, but the bad phases were always interrupted by a deployment.

And then we would honeymoon phase all over again. So you guys would separate come back and have that new phase for a little bit and then that new phase will roll off and you would end up right back where you were, which means you weren't ever actively working on anything. You guys were just rolling through cycles.

I mean, it's got to be hard being a military, you know, like a military family, you know, with deployments and such, like such large gaps in between, especially, you know, trying to, you know, I got to give them props, man, you know, trying to, you have a baby back home, you know, your wife's handling that, you know, essentially by herself, I'm sure she's got like some base or some military assistance, you know, whatever, but like the amount of space between life experiences being lost.

The amount of stress and pressure going on to the person in active duty, especially, or in the military, I mean, dude, I can't imagine, you know, not to mention how different everything is, you know, when you get back, you know, the longer you're gone, the more change happens, it's just like getting out of prison, you know, you've been gone for a year or two years, five years when you come home, it's a very different situation.

You know, I can understand this guy's frustration, I want to touch on the yelling at each other thing. This is this, how do I word this? I'm not a Yellor, right? Like I will, I will dad voice my children from time to time for a crop from across the house to get them to pay attention because there's a power in the dad voice, but I'm not screaming and yelling, there's a difference between the two, I don't believe that somebody who is emotionally regulated and have mastered their emotions will scream and yell at somebody,

I believe that they would find an outlet like walking away or deep breaths or something to reel that back in so that they can articulate what they need in a way that's going to ultimately give them success and any confrontation, verbal confrontation, right? Because screaming and yelling is not going to fix anything. The moment that two people are screaming at each other, you are currently in a verbal combat and nobody wins that situation because at the end of the day, you both feel like shit when it's over your both still angry and nothing gets resolved.

What's yours? What's your mechanism to calm down? Yeah, I just, I tell my wife, I need a minute, I walk, I'll walk away from somebody mid sentence. If I start getting to the point where I feel like I'm like about to become the Hulk, I will just disengage completely, you know, if it's somebody that I care about, hey, I'll be back in a few minutes. I need to go take a breath or I need to calm down. I say things like I love you and I don't want to talk to you that way. And if it's not my wife, I'll say something like I respect you and I don't want to talk to you that way. When it comes to my children,

because sometimes they do things that makes me want to Hulk. I have to remind myself that they are fractions of a life compared to what I've lived and they don't fucking know any better. And it's my duty to make sure that they know better. And if I'm screaming and yelling at them, all they're doing is becoming afraid of me and they're not learning when I'm trying to teach them, right? So those conversations have to be done from a place of love and understanding. And at seven and eight years old, I have to dummy down my speech to be able to make a seven and eight year old understand because they don't understand the words that I understand them. And they definitely don't understand the first

illustration that's behind it, especially if they don't think it's a big deal. For example, they made a huge fucking mess of our yard, dug a giant hole, made mud, like, and they got into the water hose without like they just did it. And I went out there and they were covered in mud and there was mud all over the ground. And like, there's a giant hole. And I went out there and turned the water off. I was like, what are you guys doing? And I'm like, we're playing in the mud. And I was like, you having fun? You're like, yeah, I'm like, you guys see what you did to the yard? And I'm like, well, you know, we were made mud puddle. I'm like, yeah, now there's a giant hole there. I need you guys to put all that dirt back into the hole, pat it down so that there's not a big dip there that I be trips in

or that we trip in. And then after they were done, we had a conversation about not getting into the water hose unless they ask us because we're on a well system. You drain our tank, blah, blah, blah. Like, but I could have been like, what the fuck did you do? You ruined the yard? Yeah, yeah. You didn't really ruin the yard. You made a fucking hole. It's all it's grass. It's a ground. It's going to, you know, it's going to repair itself. Why, why scream and yell over some shit like that, you know? Yeah, I mean, my whole perspective on, you know, a lot of people are like, you know, don't feed the trolls and stuff like that. Like, I truly

believe everything can be a learning experience. Yeah. Like those kids like, you know, that are out there, they did something wrong. Like, if you, you manage that correctly and everything. Now you have kids that are going to be more attentive to other people's surroundings, property, you know, like they're going to see the bigger picture with you just because you remained calm. You know, you gain, you gain structure from that you never do. Whenever it's the other way around, you know, everything's a teaching moment.

You know, people rag on me on TikTok or Facebook or something. I don't come out their comments cutthroat. I come at them like an irrational. Hey, like I, I expect you to, if you're going to talk out your neck at me, at least listen to my, you know, soft. This is this is being soft, still loving, caring to you, because I hope to teach you, you know, like this shit can't hurt people. This is a really ugly fucking thing, bro. You know, like, yeah.

People do that shit, though, because that's the way that they find joy in life. You know, they don't think that you're going to ever respond to it the way that you do, or they're doing it to get you to respond to them, because it gives them attention. I always check the following, you know, people that have little, little tiny following accounts. I normally don't respond to, but sometimes, sometimes they get me.

Yeah. I mean, if it's, if it can be used as a learning experience, man, and everyone's always don't feed the trolls. It's like, you don't understand the way I'm going to handle this is going to make a whole bunch of people be like, do two Shay sir. Yeah.

Yeah. My problem is, is even when I'm trying to be soft, I don't come across soft like you are, and they don't mean like you're soft. I mean that you're soft spoken and gentle. I come across as I fucking kill you.

We've had those talks, though.

Me and Cody, listen to that princess video on repeat, but only like the first, like few seconds of it, because I was like, man, I don't know how you can, like, when you're like, well, this is where you're going to sleep.

You know, like, I was like, you've listened to me. You sound so forceful, but you never even raised your voice. Like, how the fuck does he do that shit?

That's funny.

Yeah. That video is doing, it did pretty well on your page. The last I saw it was over 50,000 views or something. It was doing pretty good.

It's it. Yeah. I mean, across all platforms, it did really well.

All right. So he goes on to say shortly before leaving to where we are now, we found out we were pregnant with our third. This is the year that it ends.

Over the past year, my marriage has gone through a rapid collapse after a pile up of major life stressors. In January, our son Silas was born in April, we PC SD

And in May, we were still trying to get settled into our new house and a new routine.

Around that same time, I had to attack. I'm sorry. I had to attend training several hours away for about three weeks. When I got back, I took 42 days of baby leave from June to late July.

We had also had friends staying in our home from early June throughout late August. So there was very little privacy or breathing room during an already stressful situation. Season. How do you feel about people being in your house?

What uninvited? Just, I mean, in general, like, how do you feel about guests in your home?

I live a very particular kind of way. I don't really like, I don't really like it. You know, I don't like explaining to people if they have to take a shit, they got to carry water.

You know, you guys, if for those of you who have seen him TikToks, seen him on TikTok, taking bass and like a metal, like horse trough, he really does that. Like, that's actually his life.

First time I saw that I thought it was total content. Then we talked about it. Like, that is actually how he lives.

Spide choice. As wild. Yeah. It's simple. I don't own a lot of stuff. I own a lot of tools. Yeah. You know, but I don't own a lot of shit.

And I like it that way. I know that I don't like having to make like these create, you know, like, where am I going to move all my shit? Do I need storage?

You know, I've never been like ever. You know, I'm like a happy with a pot to piss in for real type person.

I don't I don't like people in my home, dude. Like, it's one of those things that I have so much shit going on in life that this is the one place that I am afforded true peace.

And if I want to lay on my couch with my clothes off, I can obviously not with the kids here. But, you know, if I want to fucking, you know, I don't want nobody sitting in my spot. I don't want people to touch my air conditioner. Like, I'm not trying to have to to

curate my day around the time that you wake up and the time that you go to bed because I'm supposed to be a gracious host. Like, I just don't like that shit. We have a another building on our property

that we have people come and stay on every once in a while. And if we're not up yet, they have their own little fucking building over there. They don't have to come in our house. They don't have to come on a porch. Like, there's a bathroom. They can just fucking stay there until we wake up. And that's been a game changer for me.

Yeah. I feel that. I mean, what type of company is going to come in and fuck with your air conditioner should anyway? You know,

because you don't want those types around. Not even a little bit hell. No. Not even a little bit. All right. He goes on to say during all of this, my wife changed plans from taking a lighter class load to becoming a full-time student, which I was concerned about because the year already felt overloaded that led to more and more fights about household priorities workload and expectations. I was not asking for perfection just for things to stay functional. But our arguments became more frequent and more emotionally charged. We started marriage counseling in late September through October

in November. There were some signs of improvement. And even our counselor felt as if things were still workable, although we were still fighting. Then in December after a trip to Levinworth, something seemed to shift hard. She became much colder, more distance, more critical, and less forgiving and late December early January during an argument. I took her phone out of her hand. I fully owned that I was wrong. And I have not tried to excuse it after I started therapy, got on medication and began working seriously on myself.

Our marriage counselor later said that he saw a significant improvement on my side and did not understand why things deteriorated as fast as it absolutely did. I'm willing to bet that she was cheating.

Yeah. That's a polar opposite. Yeah.

Something happened and it happened quick. What could that be?

Yeah. Even if it was an emotional cheating or having like emotional infidelity can look like having conversations with somebody that's not your partner about your life and getting validated from them.

Having that attention shift from trying to work with your partner to now focusing over here, because there's now a really big disconnect that happens and that drives a wedge.

So something to think about. On January 1st, our anniversary, she found out she was pregnant. We talked through the options together and I told her I would support whatever decision she made. She ultimately chose to have an abortion.

Right after that, there was almost a strange sense of sheer relief, but then very quickly she redrew completely.

Since then, she has been emotionally shut down toward me. Very certain the marriage is over and unwilling to consider repair even though counseling continued for a while and I kept trying to change my behavior and show progress.

Our counselor who has had a lot of experience said that the speed and certainty of the collapse seemed unusual to him compared normal marital breakdowns, especially given that there had been some signs of repair and some meaningful improvement in me.

He also became concerned after learning she has a history of depression and past SSRI use that has that she had not shared with him and because he said her current rigidity and certainty sounded similar to prior times she left.

I am not trying to diagnose her, but both he and I have questioned whether something bigger may be going on alongside the relationship damage.

I am a big, big proponent of not taking antidepressants and SSRIs.

Yeah, never been my thing either.

Have you ever looked at the statistics of those?

Well, I mean, like, you know, I suddenly had to be on them like after I was shy, you know, because it was like, like I was in a bad state.

I'm thinking, you know, everything they give me probably has a specific purpose.

I never was the type before then my mom wasn't the type.

My mom kind of raged hard against, you know, all of the riddle in epidemic and all that, you know, she wrote online journal or something called the divorce parents exchange or whatever where she was trying to like work in harmony with, you know, my sister's biological mom and was using that as kind of an example and everything.

But she raged hard against medicines.

But it was that one little stint in my life where I had to start taking antidepressants and I almost ended up terminated self deleted.

Yep. Same thing. Same exact thing.

My issue with SSRIs is when you look at the studies, 40% of the people that take the placebo and double blind studies have improvements.

We are the medicine, right? I truly believe that we have the ability psychosomatic is a thing we have the ability to heal ourselves through vibration and through belief and prayer and like there's so many things that our body is capable of doing we are designed to heal.

So 40% of the people that on a double blind study that takes a placebo gets better. 60% of people on SSRIs get better.

Out of that 60% how much of that as a placebo effect we have no idea.

There's no studies ever that have proven long term success for SSRIs.

You get on a mood stabilizer or SSRI. It does not cure what's going on. It acts as a mask.

If you're taking these things for therapeutic purposes because you have extreme trauma and you're trying to work through it with a therapist that's a very different conversation.

But there's so many natural things that you can take to like increase your natural serotonin that would do the same thing while you're going to therapy, right?

Whole lot of shit in that one for me. We're not doctors. This is just my opinion.

I mean, especially like the one that we miss more than anything sunlight.

Yeah. Well, of course there don't want to be inside.

It's crazy man. Air conditioning air conditioned. You got conditioned to you.

You don't want to be uncomfortable at all ever. Right.

A little fucking snowflake life.

Yeah.

When you think about it, we live in artificial environments.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's all in the word play air conditioning.

You know, they're not conditioning the air. They're conditioning you.

Yeah.

Sit inside. Don't get sunlight. Get sick all the time for handy pills.

Don't exercise.

Yeah.

All right. He goes on to say right now we are still living the same house in the same house and trying to co-parent day to day.

She can still be normal kind of or even warm at moments, which gives me hope.

But then she talks about leaving separation and planning a move on a longer timeline,

which creates a lot of emotional whiplash for me.

She has said that in her mind the marriage has already been over for a while that I am no longer her lover and only the father of her kids.

And that she wants things to stay amicable.

I'm trying to be accountable for my mistakes, keep working on myself and not pressure her.

But I am struggling with grief, confusion and the feeling that the relationship went from strange to to repairable to dead with a speed that still does not make sense to me.

What do you think about all this?

The speed, the speed of which it kind of indicates to me that there was an exterior force, not just like a degradation.

You know, like like the therapist was saying and like he said, especially with the earmarks of being able to repair here and there.

Right.

Something interrupted it, you know, and it's not always, you know, my head doesn't always run to, you know, she's cheating or or something.

It could be just something clicked, you know, but what that is and not communicating that, you know, with your partner.

It's really obvious something just you went completely cold.

You're checked out.

You're gone.

Can you tell me why leaving someone in limbo on that is awful, awful.

The cheating, the cheating thing that I got into infidelity to me is not always a physical thing.

It's having conversations about your life that doesn't need to be had with other people.

It's having inappropriate conversations about sex.

The innocent touches and flirts and things that people do like that energy shift and where you're giving your attention

will absolutely destroy anything that you've got going on in your marriage because your focus goes over here instead of staying on what's important.

So I just want to be clear that when I say something happened and that I don't necessarily mean that she was physically cheating.

I just think that her attention got pulled into another realm.

The SSRI could be a thing too. Maybe she could take in her meds. We don't really know that.

I got to be honest. I'm one of those people that when somebody tells me it's over, I'm not begging.

I'm not trying to stick around.

I would at the moment that she said the marriage has been over for a few months.

I would have went and found a place to live.

I will co-parent with you. We can do 50-50 custody.

We can start doing our mitigation for our divorce.

We can start talking to lawyers.

Whatever we need to do to figure out the parenting schedule and child support if that's going to be a thing.

I'm not going to stay where I'm not wanted.

I'm not going to beg somebody to love me.

I understand that I'm flawed.

Even now, in the best version of me that I have ever been,

because I do think that I am currently the best version of me I've ever been.

I'm still a broken, flawed, fucked up individual that struggles with shit every day.

Even though I'm not where I was, I'm still not where I want to be and I have a whole lot of work to do.

My wife is the same way.

We are supporting each other's growth and we're holding each other accountable.

We're having the hard conversations about our shortcomings.

That looks like sometimes parenting.

Sometimes it looks like relationship.

Sometimes it's, hey, husband, you're a dick when you talk to people.

We have these things to hold us accountable for growth.

But if she ever was like, hey, I don't love you anymore.

I don't think this is going to work.

I'm not going to fight to try to prove my value.

I've already shown her who I am and if she's like, this isn't it for me anymore.

Why would I put myself through that?

I'm not going to belly crawl through broken glass and gasoline and set myself on fire for somebody who doesn't appreciate me.

You know what I mean?

I just, I would leave on at that point.

Move on.

You ever hear that Tim growl song just to see you smile?

Yeah.

What does he say?

I told you that I was happy for you and if given a chance, I'd lie again.

You know, just to see you smile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's it.

Listen to that song, boys.

Take something from it.

Yeah.

Tim, Tim McGraw, uh, fuck me up as a young man with, uh, don't take the girl.

Uh, yeah.

So he just has never heard that and I put that on and we're both in the car fucking driving ugly crying sobbing and shit.

Yeah.

I mean, the last relationship that was, that was like a part of it.

We were together there for almost eight years, almost eight.

And like when it was over, it was real cold and it still fucked me up.

I mean, like, like, you give great relationship advice.

I'm sitting over here on the spiritual side.

You know what I mean?

Because I'm still like, man, she did a number.

But that was one of the things she said.

She's like, I remember being like, why aren't you like upset?

You know, like, why aren't like, why do I feel like I'm alone in in this morning?

Like I feel like, you know, and, you know, and she's like, well, because I was done two years ago.

Yeah.

I was just like, uh, yeah.

That's actually normal.

Um, they say that when people actually end their relationship, it has been over for a minimum of six months for that person before they got to that point.

And for people who are in long term relationships, like five years and longer, that timeframe is a whole lot longer.

They hold on with the, the hope of potential of what might come or they stay because they're comfortable in the life that they're living and they don't want to start over.

My question for you though is why were you so worried about what she was feeling instead of worried about what you were feeling?

Uh, I mean, just because it felt like, uh, I was like more alone in the sadness, you know, but misery loves company.

At the time, you know, I was processing it.

How it all went down was, was much like this lightning fast boom.

Just, uh, you know, and I was in the middle of home setting, getting self-reliant, all of that, like really doing what I thought was the best and the way it just crashing.

You know, and I remember just kind of longing for like, can you give me just like a little bit that, you know, our connection was like valid.

So were, so were you looking for her to hurt because you were hurting or were you looking for validation that you didn't waste your life?

Well, I was wondering, you know, because it was all starting to make sense to me in a way, you know, I was, I was very curious has to like how she could not hurt, you know, because I'm like, because I'm looking at it like, I fucking love you.

Like I have so much in me for you, and I just looked at her and checked out completely, you know, and yeah, rough.

That was brutal. I'm still reeling from it.

How long ago was that?

Two years.

Well, I don't want to divulge too much detail or whatever, but man, I mean, good for you for not jumping back into something, you know, I got to be honest as a content creator with the following that you have it would be very easy for you to find a relationship.

So good for you for taking the time to like work through your mental shit and like, oh, I'm, I'm still fucked up from it all.

Yeah, big time, big time.

Yeah, I might as much of my life was, you know, from the very start, you know, when it comes to relationships and stuff.

It's always had just like this touch of like true, what the fuck?

I was going to pull up another email and read another email, but we're almost to the hour mark, and I want to save some because we haven't been getting as many emails coming through for this.

So I think how do we, how, how do we get those emails?

By having people send us an email at tobebetterco.com if you would like to have opinions from the two of us.

Again, we have done this entire podcast based off of the mail, struggle and mail perspective of things, but ladies, I know that I see your comments.

I see your comments. You guys say that you watch the podcast, you see your husband's differently.

You understand their plight a lot more and you're getting a whole lot of value for what we're doing.

So if you would like to write in and on behalf of your husband, you can do that.

Just know that peaches is not here. This is the Chris and dead.

I show we're going to give it the best advice that we can possibly give you in the moment with the information that's given and try to help.

So again, that email is tobebetterco.com.

And I'm using our trauma to talk about other people's trauma.

Yeah, man, that's, that's it. Live life experience.

You know, that's the difference between those who went to school to learn about it and those who suffered through the shit.

So go figure, we know we're talking about how therapists, you know, we're both kind of like have our history with therapists.

We're like, yeah, I mean, you really do have to find the right one, especially for people like you and I, you know, intelligent dudes, you know.

But, you know, I, yeah, it's funny how we kind of end up becoming each other's therapy.

Yeah, it's like go figure Chris Burkett would be my fucking therapist.

Yeah, I would prefer the title friend.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, I am here for you and I love you.

So if you ever need me, I got you like I prefer that way better than the term therapist.

Yeah, no, I totally, I totally get it.

But I guess I'm just making the statement that this is very therapeutic for me.

Yeah, I get that.

Yeah, it is for me too.

With you, dear friend.

There you go.

Hey, let me ask you a question.

I get you don't have to answer it.

Do you regret any of the tattoos on your face?

Yeah.

Yeah, which ones?

You really want the skinny?

Yeah.

Cause I, dude, I regret all of mine.

Every one of my face tattoos, I regret.

These, these were supposed to be like really simple like runes.

Yeah.

And I wanted them to be single stroke and it blew out and then the guy chased it and it blew out and he chased it.

And it just got like mad thick.

Yeah.

Like now if I could take the spider web off of here and centralized it's like a spider web like more so like right there.

Okay.

Yeah, that would have been cooler.

There's, there's like things I would like to re, re-arranger or redo, but nothing I truly, you know.

See, I really like my eyebrow tattoos, but like I regret putting my yorminder up here, the world serpent.

And I regret my hustle harder.

I thought about lasering that off of there.

And I hate my chin tattoo, which is why I don't really ever shave my goatee off.

But like this doesn't bother me too much.

And I love my eyebrows.

I just, and this doesn't bother me.

I just wish that it would have been a thinner line, right?

Like so that it would have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I get that.

Well, that's a skull, man.

That needle goes in.

Fuckin.

A lot of, a lot of water out of the skin on the face too.

Yeah, I like to kind of feather in on the, you know, on anywhere super shallow like that.

You know, just kind of baby it, baby it in until you have like good saturation.

You gotta be, gotta be careful, especially like on the temple, like this area here.

Yeah.

How's so much the jaw and shit?

The jaw goes in real easy.

But we could redesign, we could redesign your shit.

Yeah, I'd have to get some laser removal first.

I've thought about doing a solid black line from the top of my filtrum to the bottom of my chin.

Over my lip straight down.

And I've thought about doing a line across my face.

And then I've also thought about a third eye tattoo.

But I don't know, man, I think about a point now where like, I don't know.

I would, I would want to like draw that shit on with a sharpie and wear it for a day or two and not leave the house so that I could see it every time I walked by the mirror to get a custom to it before I did it

because I don't want to have to laser removal anymore of my shit.

I mean, you could do sharpie or you could like actually put the stencil on.

Yeah, that stencil smears that, you know, I know that it'll, it'll get good for a little bit.

But the moment I step outside in this Florida heat, everything's turning purple, bro.

I'm not having that.

Have you used beast mood?

No, I haven't, dude, I haven't tattooed in like five years.

So anything that's new that's come out.

I'm not, I'm not privy.

I don't even, there's, there's the stencil anchor, bro.

That is like, like you can actually, you can get a good majority of it off to where it's no longer spring blue everywhere.

You're smurfing.

Yeah. But like you will be left with those fucking lines.

Oh, yeah, they have to say they sell like a special remover.

I think it's called beast mode.

That's funny.

There's like a remover that comes with it because if you want to get it off,

you have to use this other product that they sell is nasty.

Things have come a very long way from using deodorant.

Yeah.

Yeah, bro.

That's wild.

All right, dude, well, I appreciate you coming in here and hanging out with me today.

This is the first time back.

Hopefully we get some views and people enjoy the content and I will be hustling on my side too.

If you guys want to follow me on social media, it's dead eye two tongues.

Yeah, that's that's me on all socials.

Yeah, go give me a follow man.

Appreciate you.

Cool. Shout out your podcast too.

Yeah, if you guys want to go to it's the near death diary podcast to suggest you go to episode one,

that's going to tell kind of why I'm on this show with Chris.

I'm not going to be the relationship guru, but I can tell you an awful lot about healing trauma and,

you know, making the best out of a rotten situation and staying positive.

You know, go to episode one on the near death diary podcast.

That's my story.

You guys can kind of catch my drift and then when you see me and Chris talk,

it'll probably make a hell of a lot more sense.

Yeah.

All right, guys, with that being said, thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time.

There, guys.