I Knew Divorce Was The Right Thing To Do, But I’m Having A Hard Time Moving On.

I knew getting divorced was the right thing but I’m H having a hard time movingon what’s up Tyler Brandon how’s it going man uh it’s going good it’sactually going really good good I’m glad to hear that you know those days when you wake up and it’s just like um youjust feel motivated yeah those are a few and far between sometimes I know like can Ibottle this up like I I already went I worked out like I went to bed early last night like just hitting my daily chargemy just you know feeling alive so good for you man yeah well I I uh I before weget started I I owe our listeners an apology from last week we um we usuallyrecord Mondays and Wednesdays and being being The Tech Guy between the two of us uh we went to loadup to go record on Wednesday and somehow I got kicked out of my own account on my own computer and I couldn’t figure outhow to get back in yeah we we were sitting here just liketrying to do it and like after a while I was like I forget it forget it like we’re GNA have to get somebody who knowswhat they’re doing in here so apologies for last week we should be back on schedule here Mondays and Wednesdays butuh yeah that was my that was my bad yeah hey you’re doing you’re doing great man you’re doing the best you can so just

The Decision

keep it up yeah that’s all that’s all I can do man we probably ought to get you to take over the tech duties oh yeahyeah that’d be a great idea um well um we have an awesome guesttoday and we’re excited to have her here uh Vanessa welcome to the show thank youum if you could give us a little bit of context a little bit of background as to where you’re at and what’s going on thatwould be awesome yeah so umabout how many years ago was it now what year is this 2025 yeah so um really farback context um back in 2016 I had an ectopicpregnancy and which was really painful physically and emotionally of course umand a little scary too and then about a month after the ectopic pregnancy I’dgotten like a um a medical shot for it to stop the pregnancy instead of having like a tube removed or anything my dadwas diagnosed with cancer the next month later and my body was still kind of struggling with the topic pregnancy andthen that October U my dad passed away so that whole summer I was just like umholding myself together I think I was just I wasn’t I don’t even know if I was in fight or flight but definitely likeyou know in shock you know I’d never face anything like that like double dutyyou know like that um and then the next couple years it was just like familymember after family member um and friend after friend just kept dying everybodyjust kept dying um like my husband and I’s grandparents all of our grandparentsdied within two years um his grandfather died the night two nights before my dad died um and then um I had a couplereally close friends pass away um I had um we lost a pet we had tomove out of our house cuz it had black mold in it um I got into the mold and Ijust started get like not well I just I think I was just too like overwhelmed with all the loss of everything and then

Emotional Aftermath

it was just like you know major life event after major life event and um myhusband hit a tree on a tricycle in 2017 um going about 35 miles an hour andhe fell um launched off an embankment and he fell and broke his left hip umand crushed his right foot and broke his left ankle um so he was then on the couch for about 3 months in Boots andnot able to move or walk very well so I’d assist him with a lot of things and um and he was our main bread winner Iwas so stressed out um by the time we started walking um I unfortunately hadlost my job at that time um like I had to take my one of my one of our pets tothe vet because she had a split tongue and she looked like she got in a bad fight you guys it was just it was insaneum I was holding it together as best I could and I thought I was doing okay butthen I started not to be able to sleep all at night I would wake up panicking and just like just fight or flight likeI could not turn off intrusive thoughts um so then my body started to like kindof um have like hypoglycemia type reactions and things like that I wasn’table to eat very well and literally just kind of shut down as soon as my husband was able to start walkingagain my body shut down and I’ve been kind of like in this free shutdown mode for years and thought I had cancer Ithought I had Lyme disease it actually looks like I might have Lyme disease and now since my body’s been in fight orflight for so long I have to like put it back into dormy it’s kind of like kind of like cancer in a way so um but withchronic stress you know things your your immune system won’t you know get back online so anyway went down a lot ofrabbit holes a lot of trails I’ve learned a lot I kind of became my own practitioner and everything um but myhusband checked out he could not handle the fact that I wasn’t able to perform Iwasn’t able to go to work very well I really rallied for a couple years that I just got sicker and sicker and then Igot more in stressed and more stressed because he was very um verbally abusive to me and um it just got worse and worse

Grieving Divorce

and his criticisms and he got just more more and more distant and more and more distant um started using marijuana forthe pain for him um and I was just youknow we were just so focused on him that we just didn’t have a chance to focus on my healing or my health or anything likethat and he kind of just left me in the dust honestly um and then I started seeingsome things that I’d seen before in our relationship which is little bits of porn little bits of looking at womenonline and I confronted him about it one day and he didn’t really say much hejust started getting teary and was like this is all so hard and blah blah blahand um I think he was seeing someone at the time but he wouldn’t tell me about it he called for a separation in 2018 wemoved out of our apartment and we weren’t living together I moved in with my mom and he went to live in the in afriend’s house in their basement and then about three months of that um Christmas time came around hedecided that he had this kind of like a come to Jesus moment he was smoking weed I guess and started reading first Peter3 or something like that and decided that God was speaking to his heartand um so he moved he moved in with my mom and I at the apartment um I was barely able to makeit to work I was bedridden for almost three weeks during that time um I was incredibly incredibly illand I think I had like mono or something weird like that it was it was wild I kept going to the ER but they couldn’tfigure out what was going on with me and I was researching like crazy which probably didn’t help my nervous system at all but um which I’m not you knowexcited to admit but here we are so um and then so we bought a house and thehouse had mold in it and it was awful it was terrible we had to gut the entire house here I am sick working on thishouse stuck in fighter flight um we didn’t have a bathroom all winter I was using a Home Depot bucket outside in themiddle of the winter to go to the bathroom in and we had gosh yeah we had no bathtub we had no kitchen we hadnothing and so Sean my ex-husband’s name is Sean um we literally like try to scry

Coping Mechanisms

to get this house put together so we could just have like you know functioning um uh roof over her head itwas just insane you guys it was just like chaos after chaos after chaos andum Sean was having Affairs at the time and I didn’t know it he had his third affairwhile we were trying to work on the house anded an affair with that woman and then at the same place that he metanother woman and started having an affair with her um and now we’re into like 2020 that was the year of covid umwe didn’t lose our jobs because we had essential jobs so um we’re working on this house he’s in an affair NS oneAffair um tons of signs tons of red flags he’s crying a lot he doesn’t wantto talk to me he’s being secretive with his phone um you know I didn’t really notice thing because I was in my ownstuff you know um I start to get like some weird emotional attachment to someguy at work someone who I would never pick out of the crowd just because I was feeling so isolate and lonely and justlike desperate for you know any kind of like male attention but not really putting it out that I was desperate formale attention I was just attracted to this guy at work um nothing romantic ever happened between us but I knew inmy own heart that it was wrong for having like some emotional feelings for someone else that clearly was in arelationship and I was in a relationship so um yeah nothing ever happened with thatit was just kind of like one-sided on my end and anyway um 2021 comes around andSean gets more and more distant and then he’s in another affair um I started having nightmares about him being withother women and so I confronted him one afternoon and he did the darvo on melike straight up it’s not my responsibility to take care of you in this relationship anymore and so hedidn’t answer my question he wouldn’t answer my question and he looked straight at me he didn’t blink all the usual signs that people would give ofsomeone’s lying right like they’ll blink they’ll look away they’ll but he went straight into blaming and attacking meand and pretending to be the victim in this situation and I let it go cuz he I believed him and turns out that he had

Support Systems

been seeing this girl for a couple months before I asked him that question and they’d been um at some point startedhaving oral sex and then full sexual intercourse by the time the end of the summer came around and and she wasmarried and had four children um so by the time I found allall this out like I was panicking on a daily basis I was having panic attacks and a lot of anxiety I couldn’t sleepSean was very mean and distant to me um he sat me down one after one morningafter I had desperately tried to get his attention with some lingerie and something that looked kind of cute andthey just started just yelling at me and sat me down was like I don’t love you anymore I don’t even like you I love youas a person but we’re done and you need to move out um and I was like okay and his momlived on the property too at that time she had moved in and so she took a lot of his attention a lot of his energywhen he was home um and she didn’t know what was going on I don’t think um butapparently his brother knew what was happening and so did his dad so the Betrayal was kind of for meat some point like you know triplefold betrayal like family members knew what was happening and no one told me whatwas going on or that Sean had mentioned that he met someone and um it’s hissoulmate right like what they all say when they’re in Affairs she’s my soulmate she gets me she was there forme when I needed her you checked out Vanessa you’re dying you were sick you didn’t want to live anymore it’s likeyeah when you feel that ill and you’re that stressed out you don’t want to live anymore um I was just praying to God ona daily basis like if you wake me up in the morning you have a purpose for my life so it sounds dramatic but that’sthe honest truth um yeah so I wanted to reconcile with Sean because obviously Iwas like super scared and I still loved him I never stopped loving him I still love him even today even though I don’tlike who he is I still kind of love parts of him um and I did thatattachment thing that people go through when betrayed spouses go through that intense attachment that you get umwhat’s it called it’s like a hyper I can’t anyway it’s not a hyperfixation it’s more of

Reflecting

like almost like um uh oh there’s a term for it I can’tremember it anyways it’s a popular term in like the affair recovery sort of platform group I’m sure you guys know ofit if you heard it but um it was awfulum I was attacked spiritually physically attacked in the night there were several nights I was saying out on our RV inbetween Sean’s on and off affair with this woman so I felt like I was contending with her for his time andattention and um so we weren’t really sleeping in the same bed every single nightand this went on for months and I didn’t have the guts enough to just like youknow what I I mean I even moved out a couple times and then would come back and I just I couldn’t leave for good andI knew deep down in my heart that this is very unhealthy but I was sotraumatized and so scared that I just kept coming back for more like thinking that it was going to change and it wasnever going to change Sean did not check himself into any program no recovery program I was the one who checked usinto a counselor who looked up a fair recovery and got us all sorted out with that and I was I was rallying like hardI was really rallying he was done with me he was like f you I hate you he wasso angry with me because I was so ill and I could not function and so so

New Goals

bitter that he treated me like a his worst enemyand that was traumatizing of itself so I was just praying all the time and asking God for strength like what do I do so Istarted sending him videos about like um you know sexual integrity and all these other things and it was wild so fastforward a little bit longer we tried to leave Spokan and go on a little trip around the United States that didn’twork out um my emotions and my flooding and my triggers were so intense after wemoved out of our house um sold her house and we went to go travel andthen I I couldn’t stop exploding I I literally could not stop Imy my nervous system was so shot um and then if I had a mental or emotionalbreakdown he would yell at me or he would just stand there with his arms crossed looking at me sometimes he wouldtell me things like look how crazy you are you’re a narcissist you’re this you’re that it was ugly So eventually Isaid I’m going to leave and he brought me back up to Spokan celan area we wereabout near we’re around the boisey area in Idaho I don’t know if you guys know where that is so we were about ninehours out so he drove me back to quane and dropped me off at my friend’s shop apartment and then we were separated forprobably a good three solid months before he decided that he wanted to rally for the relationship but it wasn’tin a way that seemed like um was going to work because by that time I had educated myself pretty welllike he needs to be in his own recovery and he wasn’t doing his own recovery and you guys the biggest reason why I leftwasn’t because necessarily because I couldn’t handle it anymore I think the biggest reasonwas that I asked him I was like why aren’t you in a ther with was talking with a therapist why aren’t you in somesort kind of therapy and he said I’m just not ready for that and then he and then basically itcame down to like well I shouldn’t have to do that because I said I’m sorry and I stopped the badbehavior right we all know what that means yeah so so you left how long agowas this that was in the spring of2022 okay wait excuse me yeah spring of 20 excuse me no

Embracing Change

2023 um I have not moved in with him since 2023 I told myself I would stayseparated from him until he started doing his own recovery work and I started seeing the fruits of recoverywork or unless you’ve seen a seat or a really good therapist that could help him sort some things out um and he wasin denial he kept you know saying I’m not a sex addict I’m not this I’m not that I’m like I don’t know what is goingon I don’t know if you are not but I caught him with porn and he’s had girlfriends over the years um that hewould just play off and then tell me that I’m jealous and insecure and I need to work on my insecurities so I wouldn’t be sojealous um so he can have his female friends and his porn and everything elseright I don’t know if he’s a sex addict but you guys I think he was able to hideeverything so well because I was so naive and so Gable and I was so easilycontrolled by him that um I don’t I don’t even think Iknow the half of it honestly so so here we are now and I wedivorced January 1st of this year oh so really recent and I know it was probably forthe better and then he called for the divorce I had all the divorce papers already to file but I was dragging myfeet because I was so afraid to like cut that last cord of Hope of like oh it’sgoing to work oh he’s going to come around he’s gonna you know at least go see a seat he’s gonna get a goodtherapist who’s GNA hold him accountable he’s going to start telling the truth but I think he was in another affair alllast summer with I think with his um his last Affair partner who he thought was

Moving On Tips

his soulmate so gotcha but yeah guys I’m just really struggling I just I’m really traumatized still for sure do you guysdo you have kids we don’t we I lost two kids being with him and maybe that’sGod’s Providence or provision I don’t I don’t know I hate to think of it that way but yeahokay we were together for 24 years too just to put some back story on yeah alot I I guess just before we jump into this I just want to say I’m really glad thatyou’re here and man it sounds like it’s been quite a ride for you um you’ve beenthrough a ton so um I just want to witness that and let you know that you’re seen there um I’m wondering likecurrently in your current state right now I’m thinking first and foremost justkind of Basics before we get into this the other stuff umum the classic maslo hierarchy of needs um you have your physical needs met foodshelter now better than a Home Depot bucket in the backyard yeah okay um yeahand then you’ve got your safety needs which would be your personal security being able to provide for yourself-employment your health how’s your how’s your health now is it still allover the place yeah yeah um are you in a safe place nowemotionally do you have your physical needs met yeah I have physical needs Myeah okay all right and then and then we’re getting into like the other needs that I think you probably called in foryour love and belonging and esteem and self-actualization that kind of stuff right um but it sounds like you’ve beenin it for so many so long and so many years that your body never did get a chance to actually slow down and catchup to the to the like the wave of stressthat came through all of those deaths and loss and your pregnancy and plus plus your husband’sproblems um yeah so yeah so I guess what I’m getting out is is that we want to build from the ground up before we jumpinto some self-actualization thing if your if your body can’t even function and if you’re not safe then that stuffisn’t going to be able to come to fruition anyway but it sounds like you’re doing the basics right now of trying to care for yourselfyeah yeah um I agree with Tyler like it’s got to start with you I mean your

Joy in Independence

healing has to start with like it’s not about him the and and when we talk aboutyour healing Vanessa you have a lot to heal from um there’s a lot of grief to process still it’s no wonder to me thatyou have autoimmune issues oh yeah no it’s a no-brainer yeah um there’s justso much there and I can I mean it’s coming up right now it’s just right thereum thank you for believing me because that’s been the whole Crux of us notreconciling because Sean was so angry with me because my body wouldn’tfunction and he told me threatened me many times that you ever get fat or sickI’m leaving you wow and I got I gained a lot ofweight and then I got really sick and he wasn’t joking he leftH yeah well we we do believe you um Brandon you can speak for yourself butit’s very very common with a lot of the partners that I work with when they’ve been in it for a long time to have somekind of autoimmune problems that they almost feel crazy because they can’t ever quite find what’s going on buttheir their body just doesn’t function the way that it’s supposed to and it is it is connected to the trauma thatyou’ve experienced over the years so yes we we both believe you um it’s something that’s common we see a lot okay and it’s

Conclusion

and it’s kind of a a crappy thing when you get a situation like that where we don’t I don’t care what we call yourhusband’s problems whether you call it addiction or not he’s at least a Serial cheater and and he has a problem thatway and to have him be the one to add some of the struggles to you and thenturn around and say if you if you break down or if you get fat whatever that’sjust totally toally clueless and ignorant and um and I hope that he listens to this and understands that he’s got a long ways to go before hewould ever be in the right spot to cultivate any kind of good relationship with somebody so this is where Brandon stepsin before I start saying things I shouldn’t yeah I can tell please say things youshouldn’t I’m ready well and and maybe that’s part of the anger stage of ofgrief with your divorce and it’s it’s time it’s okay for you to be pissed athim um and and the reality is is Vanessa I think there’s a lot that you’ve had toprocess and deal with and I think there’s a long way to go still with all the grief and and all of that stuff andI think there’s a lot of tools and things that you can do different because obviously what you’ve tried to do hasn’t

Encouragement

fully worked and it’s left you with chronic stress and autoimmune disease like what are some things you can do toto process and surrender and to feel the feels and to allow yourself to move thatenergy out of you um there there’s a lot to do there but I but I feel like inmany ways instead of doing that you’ve been in a Perpetual state of of fear andTrauma because you’ve been in this relationship and the relationship is like he keeps like traumatizing you andyour attachment and your shame and your trauma brings you back to like well I want to cling to him and then he hurtsyou yeah and so like you never get in a full state of safety absolutely that youcan go through some healing and yeah um like what a what a blessing that you’redivorced like it it really truly is I know that I know I know that like there’s part of your heart that’s thathurts but what a blessing that you’re divorced get some space it’s time forVanessa to focus on Vanessa and to not continue to be traumatized and notcontinue to be hurt and you were with a person who was continuing to do that right right so now that you have thisspace it’s it’s time for you to say okay okay what can I truly do for for meright now and what kind of boundaries do I need to make sure I have in place that I don’t just go back to this Perpetualstate of drama right right yeah what do you think about thatVanessa um I agree and I’ve known for a while that that’s where I am um so eventhe last like two months I’ve really had to have some really good boundaries and I’ve gotten a lot stronger with I don’ttalk with him um anymore about relationship stuff um he’s sent me somepretty long text messages about you know um what he’s goingthrough or what he thinks or wanting closure and this and that and I don’treally respond to to those messages because I don’t want to fight with him I don’t want to get into itum I still have to have some contact with them but other than that I try to keep it nocontact um we do have a couple of bills that are not necessarily I guess sharedI guess you could say but um yeah I’m still you know kind ofdependent on him for a few things to pay for a couple things um how so how sowell just like a some smaller bills like my cell phone bill we’re still on thesame account he pays for that he pays for car insurance he pays for um there was another bill he paysfor so I’m um also alimony payment I get like a spousal support payment everymonth from him so I mean we’re talking this is fresh this is two months thatyou’ve been divorced yeah um but but Vanessa I would I would go almostoverboard in disconnecting from him um in in having whatever those bills arelike figure it out like disconnect from him make sure he pays his alimony so that you can pay your phone bill um doyou know why do you know why I would suggest that so it does it havecontrol yeah it’s there’s a there’s a part of you that that’s having a really hard time letting go yeah for sure andso and so like and it sounds like to me and and I could be wrong on this helikes to toy with you where he’s he’s pushing you away he’s cheating on youhe’s doing all these things but let me send you this long text about what’s going on with me in my life yeah oh andI just had my come to Jesus and let’s work on it for a minute right like that’s that’s exactly how it’s beenlike he’ll he’ll you know he would kind of wrote me back in and like pull my heartstrings because he would have tearsand I’m really trying and I’m really doing this and I’m really working hard and and then I would think to myself like I don’t see what are you doing likewhere’s the work like you don’t included me I don’t know your counselor’s name I don’t have their phone number I don’thear n none of that right all the things that we know we should be seeing as as abetrayed spouse like to rebuild some trust and so recently Super Bowl SundayI had a moment of weakness and a couple days before that I was so lonely and soI so lonely cuz he um he has his whole family in this area and now I’m notincluded so my whole entire family’s gone my whole friend Circle was hisfriend Circle so my friend circle like socialness is pretty much gone um andthat’s really been isolating for me too so he’s kind of controlled the narrative behind every single person and everysingle social interactions that we’ve had and then people have seen me react the ways that I have over the years sothey believe him and he’s the nice guy right so everybody believes him becausehe’s The Golden Child and then I get pinned as this crazy narcissist who justcan’t get her health together and no wonder Sean no wonder you left because she has depression and she’s sick whatguy just wants a wife that looks like that right we don’t blame you for having an affair or whatever um thefamily you so it’s not just been Shawn that I’ve lost in my marriage it’s beenmy whole entire world my whole entire world is almost been like pretty muchgone like but Vanessa if like I want you to hear what you’re saying in it likeyour world revolved and and still some revolves around him yes right and so soyou got to look at that and say and that sucks that sucks to lose those friends and the connection to family and allthose things I I get it that sucks but then it’s like okay how do I make it so that my world doesn’t revolve around himright right right and that’s what I’ve been trying to slowly kind of figure outum but I think what keeps happening with me isum is just like these little tiny ties or connections that I have with him and unfortunately I have pets that live withhim and I had I took the pets and they came to live with me in my mom’s apartment a while back but then itdidn’t work out I was going to have to Shell out a lot of money that I didn’t have just to keep them and he offeredhe’s like I’ll hang on to them for you if you want until I was like yeah until further notice here you go um so I’vereally done a lot better but anyways like the roping and coming in back backand forth um he kind of like will come in and out of my life he’s gone on two vacations and then went on a road tripand then I knew we were divorced and I’m not going to be invited or go right I’m not going to expect to go um but it wasreally heartbreaking for me because one of them was a family vacation and that’s been planned for 3 years and Iwasn’t I because of him I you know didn’t get to go that was recently andit just wrecked me and then a couple weekends before that was Super Bowl Sunday I reached out to him I like heyif you’re doing anything you have any plans I’d love to come hang out with everybody you know just for something todo wasn’t because I really missed him or wanted to see him it was just mostly because I was trying to make sure that Iwasn’t alone and lonely and um he said yeah that sounds good he’s like I’m nota was hanging out with you and and then he was basically like okay that sounds good and then Super Bowl Sunday comesaround and I don’t hear anything from him and I kind of figured I’m not an idiot like okay he’s he’s ghosting me umand he did he left town and I wasn’t mad about that it’s just that it was n degrees outside and the cats that I havethat live with him they’re in an RV and if it’s nine degrees outside and my petsare in an RV by themselves you know I had this conversation with him at Christmas like please just let me knowwhen you’re going to be out of town so and leave the RV open so I can at least go take care of the cats because they need to be taken care of or checked onit’s just that simple um and he made a huge deal about it both times he gets really defensive and he gets really meanand then he blames me for things like Sean that’s not what I’m asking I’m just asking you to have some common courtesyfor the cats and for me that’s it um so novels of text messages after that andit was like betrayal all over again it was like you know it triggered that wound within me so yeah I hear youon he’s definitely like toying with me and it just sends me for a loop and Ihad to go out there yesterday to pick up some things that I requested from him I asked him if I could have some camping gear and a couple of other things and hesaid yeah so I know he was home and we didn’t I didn’t see him he didn’t come out of the RV and I didn’t go knock onthe door um he offered to leave while I came to visit the cat so he’s also Ithink been told to have like very little contact with me from his therapist cuz he’s playing the victim card which isshe’s abused me she’s done this and that and the other thing and I’m just like oh jeez whatever good have his spacethat’ll be a blessing for you yeah yeah I it’s kind of it’s kind of interesting you know I’m kind of going along withwhat Brandon’s saying and hearing this even as you’re checking in on all of this like you can you can even hear itin what you just shared like oh there still is all this messy stuff that has to be navigated and there’s this stillthis attachment that you’re wrestling with yourself um Brandon do you remember this is goingto be really weird I promise I’ll try to tie it in here but uh do you remember like playing like roller hockey acrossthe street from our house when we were kids oh I dominated I was I was sogood I remember the first time we got rollerblades we started trying to learn how to rollerblade and then we startedplaying like street hockey with all the neighborhood kids and occasionally you know you’d get going too fast and thenyou’d fall and just like get a massive raspberry you know like one of those like it’s not just a bruise but like ascrape that becomes a massive scab on like your legs or your elbows or something um as we’re talking the imageI got was was this that going through the hell that you’ve been through you’vebasically fallen and gotten Road Rash across your whole body and as that thing starts to heal it’s kind of its ownweird blessing and curse but the body knows how to heal itself by scabbing over that scab then starts to shrinkitself a little bit at a time as the cells heal themselves but then the body starts to itch and it wants you toscratch and so you I don’t know if you play this game or not Brandon but you’d have this big scab and you’d start tofeel the loose parts and you’d want to pull them off but you don’t want to pull them off to the point that you bleed right right and then you pull ittoo hard and then you bleed and eventually you reopen the scab over and over and over again even SC and and whatit does is it actually takes longer for the body to heal and it makes the scarsbigger and deeper um and I kind of feel like emotionally I’m hearing this sameprocess go on for you right now there’s so many wounds and the place where you’re tryingto find the healing is continually pulling you back into that orbit of himit’s almost like you can’t help yourself you can’t help yourself and then you’re pulling that scab off again and going likeoh why I’m bleeding again like damn it like yeah what what the heck and uh andI think what Brandon’s going I think you’re on the right track Brandon is what can we do some of these things aregoing to naturally have to be a process some of them we can’t avoid them being a process but what are the things that Ihave control over that would get me as much space as possible so that I could maybe put aBand-Aid and some Neosporin over the top of that thing so I don’t keep scratching it so I don’t keep pulling at it becausethat’s actually extending your process rather than allowing you to kind of gothrough this difficult pocket of man I’m in no man’s land right now likeemotionally physically even where I live maybe um man I keep turning back to theplace that that at least felt some kind of safe because it’s what I knew even though really what I have ahead of me isa whole new Wilderness to go explore um does that make sense been in a Wilderness oh absolutely absolutely umI defin definely know that I’m a whole lot stronger than I’ve ever been before up until this point I don’t feel strongmost days because I’ve been so much grief and so much emotional you know mental pain and whatever um but forexample he texted me randomly like last week and he was like oh I saw you at thegrocery store and sitting in your car um and I was going to come over and say hibut I told myself that I’d go into the store first get what I need and if you were still there when I came out I’dcome over and talk to you he’s like but when I came back out you weregone and he and then he says I wish he’s like I I should have come over andtalked to you first and that was it I didn’t I didn’t respond to that message at all when he sends me messages likethat or something that seems like it’s kind of trying to rope me in or um I don’t respond to those things I onlytalk to him about pets if needed or financial if it’s needed and that’s itVanessa I um I’m just going to be kind of directum with my thoughts and my what I’m thinking iswhat is and why is the reason um a beautifulpowerful smart woman like Vanessa is showing up so desperate andsettling for scraps um and I understand the grief I itsounds like you’ve been through hell and back but I would guess that there’s something even beyond that somethingabout your childhood your trauma that says it’s okay like like it seems likeyou can’t see beyond him that you’re having a hard time realizing that you can build other relationships you cancreate life that you want it can be beautiful and like f him in a way likeand I’m sure like we can forgive him and all that that’s what I mean by f him umoh well I don’t know some days I can some days I can’t so some days it’s a good F him some days it’s not so goodright right so so but for you like look my life’s my H my life is not his forthe taking anymore my emotions my spirituality my ois like I’m freakingawesome and I love myself and I am deserving of love actual love and it doesn’t feel like youknow that doesn’t feel like you believe that I try to tell myself those things because I’ve I’ve I’ve listened to thethe podcast and I’ve read the books and I’ve been to the counseling and I’ve gone through the things and I am I’ve been a church G my entire life off andon and so um none of those ideas or concepts are new and you’re not the only person that’s you know told this to melike you need to find your power you need to take your power back take all your energy back and stop giving it and honestly I mean I really truly you guyswill know exactly why this happens to people like me um in my childhood in mychildhood I was severely neglected by both of my parents there it is and socrumbs I’m used to crumbs I’m used to trickle truths I’m used to everythingthat my ex-husband did I was primed by him the entire relationship even morethan I was primed in childhood to be okay with being alone isolated notincluded Ed I mean my parents did love me they I I know they did and they didthe best they could with the knowledge that they had but also my parents did not um engage with me on an emotionallevel hardly ever and so when Shawn came along it was like this breath of freshair for me which was oh my gosh like you pay attention to me you listen to me umnow I have a best friend and someone to talk to and you’re not leaving and now we’re intimate together you know all ofthe things and that intimacy also had some things with me that were um tiedinto my childhood I was molested by a sibling for many years um which isreally hard to to to deal with her face and I’ve done some endr work with thatand I feel pretty good about that but that those wounds from my childhood you guys know how betrayal trauma works assoon as you’re traumatized and you want to like cling to this person who’s just so abusive to you like all the otherthings everything that I’ve ever not dealt with in my life as a grief or a trauma just comes to the surface andI’ve been just completely bombarded by shame and guilt and regret I meanthere’s a lot of other parts of my story that we don’t have time to talk about um and Sean knows all those parts of mystory and every single part of my story has come back to bite me in the butt and I told him those things in confidencebut in betrayal trauma he’s like it was your dad it was this it was that it was that was like no it was you those thingsdid happen to me but we’re not talking about those things right now we’re just talking about like what you’ve done inthis relationship with me and but Vanessa I got to say there you ended upin a relationship and stayed in a relationship with him I did because ofthe belief systems and the trauma that you’ve been through right and so youryour ex-husband is is giving you an awesome opportunity right now likeyou’re you have it right now do you know what that opportunity is um really just I thinkaccountability um and also um learning how to walk away from people thatdon’t give me what I deserve they don’t give me what I deserve I’ve learned good boundaries Imean there’s lots of things that opportunities that he’s given me I did not have good boundaries with Seanbecause I I didn’t have good boundaries with myself I didn’t know how to stand up for myself self and what he’s really taught me in all of this if I don’t takeanything away from all of this it’s good boundaries and um but but Vanessa howyou G have how you gonna have good boundaries when deep down you believe people are going to neglect you and hurtyou and you’re desperate for love and you need to do everything you can how you going to actually be strong in yourin your boundaries if those belief systems are undermining having those boundaries you see what I’m saying yeahum I I love your answer your answer is awesome but like your ex-husband isproviding you an opportunity to consider that you are not what your trauma hastold you that you are and and like you’re you you don’tneed to be desperate for love this is easy easy for me to say through this experience you can look at this and sayokay I’m going to rewrite my story um and I’m going to learn how to um let anabusive partner Go and show up as a powerful person and expect that in my future relationships I’m going to havesomebody who actually loves me um because I’m not what my trauma says thatI am and there are so many things that you can do it sounds like you’ve done some EMDR there’s so many things you cando to just go process that out and reprocess that trauma and change those belief systems um but those beliefsystems need to be dealt with or else you’re going to continue to create this with Shawn or you going to go continueto create this with another person next person right which I don’t want to do I don’t want not for myself or the nextperson right I don’t want to attract the same you know um really just kind ofmanipulative personality types that see that oh this I could totally just winthis girl over and just use her yeah Sha Sha and I’m not trying to blameyou or anything but Shawn and the way he’s acted in your relationship is a manifestation of what you believe aboutyourself yeah you understand what I just said yes yes yeah that’s the that’s thehard part about this Brandon is because when you go through the hell that you’ve been through it’s so easy to stay on thehell that you’ve been through and so because it’s what you’re used to it has to work in levels so it’s like okay I’vegot to remove myself from hell that I’ve been in I got to find some safe place I got to learn how to ground myselfemotionally I got to learn how to start grieving the loss of this old thing and then I get to start going and wow likewhy did I stay for that long and what is it about that belief in me that I’m thatI’ve believed I was worthy of the scraps for so long when I got to I have to goand this is a beautiful part the accountability part is the freedom part that says I need to go look at myselfand continually grow into a new belief system about myself that you know I wantI want my beliefs to align more with what Brandon just said that I’m beautiful smart and powerful and thatthat somebody who who ends up with me will be lucky rather than oh man somebody paid attention to me okay likei’ I’ve got to hurry and like attached there um yeah you know and so so you dothat a little at a time you start you get the space that you need and that’s why I think Brandon was pushing so hardon the space you get the space that you need to feel safe enough to then startlooking Inward and going all right is it going to be more I probably have some more trauma work to do from the mostrecent trauma and that is totally connected to my past trauma like you said it earlier today like man he doesthese things and all of this stuff floods back in it’s like of course it does that’s what the brain and the body do andunfortunately and fortunately you have the power to address those things even though it’s not your fault they happenedto you yeah um and that’s that’s what you have in front ofyou do do you see how um sha is like a drug to you ohabsolutely you guys it is wild yeah the the no I’m so cognizant of it but thenmy everything in my being has just been like pulling me like some days I feel itso intensely and just feel like oh and I’ve pray and I’ve like you know even physically with my hand like pretendlike I’m chopping the cord you know like trying to like detach myself and um it’sit is wild how it works and like I see it but then I’m like wow look at what mybody and my brain are doing right now like I am I am so intertwined with this person in such an unhealthy way thateven though I have been so disrespected and so just like on I’m still wouldtake him back like no like where is my self-respect like yeah yeah I it’s likeit is like a drug it’s like and sometimes even thought like oh I’m racing down the freeway to go get my little bit of hit of Shawn so I have mytiny little bit of dopamine so I feel good for a few days myself oh my goshlike so you guys know that people like me when they’re coming out of a trauma Bond it’s like kind of you’re like likeyou’re trying to come off a heroin yeah it’s freaking yeah well it makes sense though too whenyou look at attachment and how it works but yes it is like it’s crazy to keep going back there it is like it’s ownaddiction but like any addiction you’re going to have a really hard time dealing with the roots of the issue if you ifyou’re continuing to use so to speak right if you’re continuing to dabbleback into that relationship then you’re continuing to just kind of like numb outand and pick your scabs like Tyler was talking about right so so you need to gain some sobriety so to speak and yeahso like I would I would get pretty proactive with a support system I would and I don’t know your financial ssituation but I would get a good therapist maybe you already have one umI would find a good group to go to I would connect with other women who are going to say like hey Vanessa how’ youdo this week like did you have boundaries with him like are you working on your own trauma stuff are you doingyour own self-care are you gaining that safety that Tyler talked about um areyou working on that like are you staying Centered for you are you are you grieving and practicing emotionregulation like are you are you doing that and and if you can say yeah I’m doing that then you’re going to be ableto have boundaries with him no problem it’s going to come natural um it’s not going to take everything that you’ve gotright so um yeah I you just coming on and openingup and talking about this is awesome because what I see is that you’re getting conscious about what’s going onand you’re like hey I this has got to stop like I want this to stop so you’re at least becoming aware and you’retrying to not fall into the same traps like you’re trying hard not to but Ithink there’s some other things that you need to do to solidify yourself so that you can actually do this because it’sgoing to be really really hard that structure and that team would be helpful even a 12ep a sponsor a group umyeah I have one of those yeah for sure I don’t have a sponsor yet but it’s called regen so it’s like the precursor youguys know what that is like the precursor to a 12 step or something oh nice yeah so that’s beenlike it’s been weird I don’t know if I like it and I haven’t been for two weeksbut I need to go back and and if that’s not the one keep looking until you findyour people people who can support you and learn with you and and help you withempathy we can connect you into people like there’s but but there’s going to be the side of you that’s that’s going tosay but I’m the I’m the broken sick unlovable one so I don’t know if I really want to put myself out there todo that so you’re going to have to have the courage enough to do it anyways yeah I definitely don’t havelike the broken sick unlovable one but I think like um because I really do wantto get well I do want to get better I don’t want to have um This Love Thistoxic love addiction with an abuser anymore umum yeah yeah I’m glad you said it that way because that’s what it isthat’s what you’re kind of dealing with yeah um okay yeah well I know we’rewe’re we’re out of time today Vanessa hopefully this will be helpful to you especially if you go back and listen to it again um I want to say thank you forcoming on I hope it’s helpful to you I know it’ll be helpful to other people who are probably finding themselves in similar kinds ofsituations and uh so so thank you Vanessa don’t be a stranger we’d love to hear from you and and hear about yourjourney um there is hope ahead there is light there’s a new life that’s going tobe so much better than all of this pain you don’t have to live in the pain forever um you can process things youcan manage things you can get healthy um and I believe that you will so um justtake one step at a time all right so thank you to our listeners for beinghere uh we love having you here we love hearing your comments we love having you on as guests and uh until next time keepon keeping on