The following program contains names, places and events that have been anonymized or fictionalized for the purposes of protection and safety. The following program is provided for entertainment purposes only, and any commentary from the hosts are strictly conjecture and should not be held as making any definitive statements about the truth or identity of any particular individuals or circumstances. If you or a loved one are involved in an abusive relationship, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

At.

1-800-799-7233 for support.

Hi, Hannah.

Hey, girl.

We're back. We got another good one today.

Yeah, I'm so excited.

Before we get into the stories, we got to talk about The Golden Bachelor really quick. And if you don't, the reason I bring it up is because I feel like people are going to want us to address the fact that there are dogfish accusations against the Golden Bachelor. Basically, Gary is the Golden and he was painted as a widow who was this wonderful, sweet guy who just wants to find love after this tragedy, which is.

Probably.

Real. But I don't know if we'd... I want to hear what people think if we would classify him as a dogfish because I think the show painted him differently than people are.

Saying he was. I was about to say reality TV really isn't reality, right?

Yeah. Is it just a dogfishy thing? People are saying he was dating a much younger woman, a month after his wife passed and that that was not obviously part of the story. Some people are saying his work was inflated that they're making him this restaurant tour, but he hasn't worked owning restaurants since the '80s. I don't know.

He owned a subway.

He owned one subway. Oh, my God. I don't have all the details either. This is breaking news, unrolling as we speak. By the time this episode airs, maybe it will all be debunked. But Golden Bachelor people, Dogfish among the Bachelor Nation?

I don't know. I think producers are Dogfish. Producers of the reality shows that are actually scripted. Let's be real. Come on. They don't think we're going to get on the Google Machine and find this stuff out.

That's what Dogfish... If you're a Dogfish, don't do it in a relationship. Go work.

In reality TV.

Put it all in there. Can't do it there. Make a living out of it and then tell the truth to everybody else. I wonder how.

Many of our listeners... If you guys listen to that, comment. Because if you guys watch that, we want to know. I need to know more information. I need to be educated. Also, just to give you guys a heads up, we got a concerning message. Someone was saying something about they don't want to listen to The Dating detectives anymore now that we have ads. So I just want to clarify just real quick that our ads you guys allow us to create more podcasts for you. So we really appreciate your support. I just wanted to preface this by saying that we're so grateful for you. And the ads are what help monetize our podcast that we can just create more for you.

So thank you so much.

We also genuinely love everything we have gotten to promote.

And it's cool. They actually send us the product so we can actually try it and make sure we love it first. We make sure.

We like it. We're not just advertising all Willy Nilly.

All Willy Nilly out here in front of everybody.

Anyway, should we get into this story? It's a big one.

Yeah. So this one's a dozy. This is like, a different dogfish, honestly.

I'm really, really looking forward to hearing how people respond because she's...

I'm ready to have a conversation about it. You're going to spoil because she's amazing. I'm trying not to say too much because I don't want to ruin the whole thing. But just listen, we're curious to know what you guys think. And also, you guys, I have warning, full disclosure. This is going to be a two-freaking-parter. Don't get mad at us. It's breaking my heart to even tell you that, but it's.

A dozy. We really have no choice. We didn't want to cut out all the.

Good.

Stuff or the bad stuff, really. But the meat of the story, we wanted to give you everything.

We just couldn't edit out enough to put it in one episode. We're sorry, but also not sorry. You'll be fine.

We love you. I am honestly dying to hear what people think. I'm so excited, and I love her for coming on. So let's get to her story because she is a badass.

Okay.

Lauryn, we are ready to hear what you have to tell us. I'm so excited to hear this. Thank you for being here. Yeah, take it away, girlfriend.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm so excited to be here. And I guess I'll just start at the beginning, set the stage a little bit. And really it started... It was a cold and rainy night. No, just kidding. I like her already.

Add some wind in the background, Molly. Any sound effects?

The dark, later breathing. But really, it was... So it was January beginning of the year. I was in my junior year of college. I had just gotten up to campus about a week early for winter semester. Because I went to college in a very cold part of the country, we did a lot of inside activities to try and help students get to know each other. It is also relevant to know that this was a Christian university. I grew up in a very Christian home. I'm still very devout Christian, but that does play into some of the the factors. And so they do a lot of get to know you things and activities. And the first Sunday up on campus, again, before the semester even starts, they will pair apartments of men up with apartments with women. And they do something called a sweet swap, which is where one of the apartments will be hosting and they make sweets. And then the other apartment will come and it's a good way to just get to know each other. And then every week on Sunday, they will swap. So you get to meet a new apartment of the opposite sex every week.

That's very sweet and wholesome.

Is this facilitating dating or just getting to.

Know each other? I was going to say sweet.

I think it sounded a little.

Bit more dirty than it is. That sounds like a dating program. Yes. I like it. Definitely, I think, under the premise of introducing people, making friends and acquaintances. Sure. But definitely to try to help people meet through dating.

Find their person.

You can find your- I.

Like that. That's smart.

-your person. If somebody made me sweets, I would be a lot more enticed to go talk.

To boys.

Make me cookies.

They need to feed us.

Yes. Exactly. And I had taken a little bit of a break from school where I was actually living in China the summer before to teach English to little kids. And so I got back. And this was my second semester back in the country. And so I was really excited to get to know people and start dating and doing all those things that you do in college. I had not had a ton of dating experience. Let's just say I had not had a lot of relationship experience. I dated guys, but it didn't always really turn into... I never had a long term relationship.

You were super young too.

I was. I was 22. And the apartment that my apartment was partnered with. Sweet swapping. Yes, sweet swapping with. It was an apartment of guys. And there was one guy in particular that I really hit it off with right off the bat. And his name is David. And we just had this immediate connection. It was so bizarre. We hit it off right away and we would sit and talk. And even when our roommates would be talking to each other just like as a group, like in a social situation, he and I would be like in our own little world. It just was so adorable. It was so adorable. Those things that you see in a Hallmark movie, like all the cheese, right?

Yeah. I like the cheesiness. The weird thing about it is that our roommates each tried to make it so that whenever we do something together, my roommates would make it so that I would conveniently sit next to him and his roommates would make it so that he would conveniently sit next to me. And so we each had this our apartments full of winged men and women trying to get us to connect. Oh, my gosh. That is so cute. But we didn't know that the other apartments were doing that. We always just ended up sitting next to each other. Then we were just in our cute little world, fully immersed in Hallmark.

Sweet swaps.

Looks like that. It's a sweet spot for us. Yes, it was. And we started dating almost immediately, so immediately that we didn't even have a first date. What did you do? We never even had a first date. We would hang out at each other's apartments. It didn't matter who else was around. It was just the two of us.

You were just in a relationship. Yeah. You were.

Focused on one another. You were so sweet and organic.

It just started so fast and we didn't even have the talk or anything like that. It was just so obvious to everyone that we were together... And so that went for about two weeks where we were just spending as much time together as we possibly could. And it really wasn't anything fancy. We wouldn't go to dinners or it was just spending time together. It was the most adorable, lame thing ever.

I think we love that, though. That's my idea of.

Like- It's so sweet. Also in college, that's like college because you all live so close to one another. It's like, why wouldn't we spend as much time together as we can?

Honestly. Absolutely. Whether we're at my apartment or his apartment, and that's how it was for the first couple of weeks. Then he got really sick. My roommates had gone over to the guy's apartment to hang out, and I was coming over shortly after them. We get there and David's not there. The roommates were all like, Hey, what's going on with David? I was like, What do you mean what's going on with David? It was in that moment that they looked at me and I was realizing that there was something that I should have known. That's when they told me that he was in the hospital and they gave me the information of where he was. I immediately rushed over to the hospital. I was really scared. This is the first time that I've had a relationship that seemed to have some real long term promise that I could see this becoming a long term thing and a really serious thing. I thought, Oh, my gosh, of course, it would happen to me that I'm two weeks in and this guy is about to... I don't know what. My mind went to the worst thing ever, and I was really scared.

I am also very nurturing by nature. My mom always thought that I should become a nurse because I'm a mother hen and I gather chickadees under my wings and I just want to take care of people all the time. I immediately went into that mode of like, All right, we got to make sure he's okay. I get to the hospital and I was afraid to show up by myself, but I didn't think it was appropriate to bring other people with me. Here I'm just walking into this hospital, and I'm surprised that they told me where he was because I wasn't family.

But I- That's a HIPAA violation, but it's fine.

Yeah, I was going to.

Say, okay. I mean, it was a pretty small town, so apparently everyone's family there. I don't know. But they let me into his room. I walked in and he was obviously in a hospital bed in the gown and the IVs and the cords and the beeping and everything all over the place. I was familiar with hospitals because my dad was in the medical field. But it's different when it's someone that you really care about.

It's.

So.

Scary. Right.

And that image just burns.

In your head. Exactly. And I didn't even know what was wrong with him. All I knew is that he went to the hospital with chest pains. And the fact that my dad is in the cardiac realm of the medical world was very much like chest pains. Oh, chest pains equal death.

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Well, first of all, I'd like to say they're very comfortable just to lay on. You get some sheets that are very stiff. These were great material. And the biggest thing about it is that the bed stayed pretty much the same temperature the whole entire night. Normally when I go to bed, I like it nice and cool in the bed. So you're nice and comfortable as your body starts to warm up. Halfway through the night, I start getting hot, and especially with you on top of me. I do.

I sleep halfway on top of him.

So trying to regulate temperature gets to be a little difficult. But I will say these sheets helped out a lot with that. I was comfortable all night long. When I woke up in the morning, I wasn't hot, I wasn't sweating. I highly recommend these sheets.

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I walk in and I see him all these, the medical equipment and the beeping. He was obviously not himself. He was on a lot of painkillers. I walk up and he woke up and I was like, Tell me what's going on. He was just immediately so grateful that I was there and just so touched. It was one of those things where I immediately felt validated and like, okay, I'm needed here. I'm wanted here. I'm doing good here. I can.

Understand that. When you're a nurturer, that's the feeling you get joy from being needed by others. That's part of that nurturing. I have it too. It's just you want...

You're so sweet. You just want them to be okay. And if you can help them be okay, then that is... It brings meaning to your life.

And I was there whenever I wasn't in class. If I wasn't in class, I was there at the hospital, but his family wasn't there.

Who saw him?

And his family lived close. So after a couple of days of being in the hospital, they diagnosed him with a lung infection. Wow. Oh, God. Yeah. It was really uncommon, especially for someone in their early 20s to get this lung infection. But that's what we were told. I just kept thinking, where is your family? Because they only lived like 45 minutes away.

Did you talk to anyone in his family or did he?

No.

So he didn't-.

Well, he told his family that he was there. Then eventually, they finally came on the last day. What? It was the weirdest thing. I couldn't figure it out. They didn't seem concerned that he was in the hospital. They didn't see. I just did not...

Are they just like, meet awful? They were just like, this is fine. They were just like, this is fine. They didn't seem like this is fine. Did he have a bad relationship? He had a bad relationship with his family? Or were they just-.

He was really close with his family. It didn't make sense to me because in my family, if you're in the hospital, like everyone, you have like an entourage. He dropped everything.

Yeah.

Especially if they're close. And he-.

If he had a distant relationship with them, that's what I assume. But you.

Said- No, he was close. He was super close with his family. He gets out of the hospital and he ended up having to drop out of school that semester and figured not waste any more money on rent.

He decided- Did he miss that much school? He missed.

The first week to 10 days of school of.

This- They were like it would be worth it.

Yeah, it's worth it for him to drop out. It was still before the withdrawal deadline. And so he could get his tuition and everything back.

Got you. It was- Start fresh.

Yeah, start fresh the next semester. Exactly. So he ended up moving back home just to save money. And so we were doing a semi long distance thing, which really isn't that far, but it seemed really far. I found that it was really difficult to get him to put as much priority into our relationship as I felt like I was. There were times that he would choose other things or other people over me when I felt like I should have been the priority in our dating situation. I know that it was still really new, but we got intense really fast.

The expectation was already set. Right. Was he just not calling and texting as much?

Yeah. He just wasn't involved. He wasn't communicating well. He wasn't making an effort to come and see me or meet me halfway. Okay. He just wasn't putting a lot of priority in because he was being pulled in other directions by different people and not setting boundaries.

Yeah.

Was he better fully from the lung infection or what was his recovery process?

Yeah, he had healed. He was good after they got him on some antibiotics and things like that. It took a couple of weeks.

So go see your.

Girlfriend, David. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. So it was totally fine. I don't really understand where his hesitation was. And so it was just one of those things that didn't make sense. And so in February, we were looking at Valentine's Day as a brand new couple. I was super excited to see him. I had put together a really thoughtful gift like, All right, we got to keep this train going, get some momentum. And he just wouldn't make it a priority to come see me.

And when you asked him, would he just ignore your questions or just not text you for a.

While or what? No, he would say that he needed to help other people. He needed to help his mom specifically.

Okay. Did you ever go to his mom's?

Yes.

Yeah, you said that. Did she need help? I don't know. Was he.

Helping her with? I don't even know. What?

Because my brain went to- Oh, my gosh. -the episode we just did where he said like, Oh, I have to help my mom. She's terribly.

Mentally ill. Oh, no.

I'm incapable of functioning. But then she wasn't. And she was totally fine. I've got that playing in my head.

Okay, so he's- I think, I mean, she owned her own business, and he was the oldest of five kids. And so I think she just wanted help.

Okay.

And he was obligated because.

He's the oldest. And I think he was a bit of a people pleaser. And so I think he just felt this connection that his mom needed to be his priority. And I think generally, that is great. Like having that relationship with your mom is amazing. It shows that you respect her and that you love her and care for her. But I think when.

You're- Yeah. And how they treat their mom, they say, is usually how they're going to treat you.

Right. And so initially, I didn't have an issue with it. But it kept coming up over and over and over. And I was like, Hey, even though we've only been dating a really short period of time, we're pretty serious. We've talked about really serious things. I need to start to see that you can make me a priority. And that is not always just going to be about mom.

And rightfully so, I think.

And that was.

The- I think a lot of listeners will relate to this. They're like, Yeah, girl, put your foot down.

And so it was actually he finally made time. I feel so irritated even saying that still. He finally made time to meet with me for Valentine's Day. And it was two weeks later, the end of February. And I had just had it. And so we ended up breaking up at that point in time. And I said, I think you need to go figure out what you want and you need to straighten out your priorities.

Good for you. You're like, I want something different in a relationship.

So I wish you well. Yeah. We didn't really talk much for about a month. And then he reached back out.

What?

I'm so surprised. No one saw this coming.

He came crawling back. Never.

No, this never, ever happens. After about a month, he had moved out of his mom's place and got in his own place. He called and was like, Hey, so I've got my own place. I would love it if you came to look at it and helped me decorate it. What do you think? I was missing him. I'm not going to lie, even though he had his jerk moments, I was missing him.

Of course, that's totally normal.

Totally.

I was like, blink, blink, blink. Okay. I would totally love to come. Yeah, he would be right over.

Especially if he's saying like, I've got my own place. I've set a boundary, saying the things that you needed to hear and see before.

He moved out. He got his own place. I was only so happy to come and help him decorate his new place. He was probably at this point, about 25 minutes away from where I was on campus. I went to his place and we started hanging out. It was about 3.2 seconds later that we were back together. Again, no one saw that coming. Big shocker.

To all- So surprising.

Yes. We were right back in the thick of it. He was a lot better about coming up to where I was to spend time with me. I would come down to his house and spend time with him. And so that was probably the end of March. Man, this all went so fast.

Yeah, it is moving fast.

It all went so fast.

But also in college, I feel like time moves quicker. A day is like a week.

So you guys connected in January and by March, he had already like you guys had broken up a little bit, and now you're getting back together. Yes. Okay, got it.

Again, it was right back into the depths of the Hallmark movie. There was actually, looking back, I can see there was a lot of love-bombing on both sides.

You were both love-bombing each other?

Oh, yeah. We didn't know, but it was very... I was so into it. I was so excited to have this relationship and to be with someone who generally treated me really well.

When you say you were also love-bombing, do you mean you were doing nice gestures? Of course, because you loved him, but out of wanting to make sure he stayed, what does it mean to you? Or is it.

Just how you just show your love or whatever?

Because I think you could just love.

Yeah.

I don't think there was any nefarious intent on either side. I think we were both acting a little bit out of fear.

So like the honeymoon phase a little bit?

Definitely, honeymoon phase.

And- But with a little bit of insecurity.

I get that. But definitely some insecurity on both sides. There were things that I wanted to make sure that he saw the best parts of me. Right. I did guard some of the real me a little bit, and he guarded some of the real him a little bit.

Totally done that.

We were both so just intense on the good things, like the lovey-dovey things, the spoil in each other, the over the top, everything that it was just a lot. But we were both totally there for it.

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Com/td. How long does this period.

Go on? So the end of April, I went on a family trip and he came with me.

Okay.

Meet the parents.

Yes. So he did meet my parents. And my brother and sister-in-law had also moved to the same town that my parents were in. So he met the whole family.

Wow. He met everybody.

Just about.

Okay.

And it was all very intense because they are all super protective of me. And so they grilled them. Oh, yeah.

That's cute. Do they like him?

Everybody immediately loved him, especially my mom. My mom just soaked him right up like a sponge. Adored him. And was like, Well, this is my new son. Sheimmediately- That's so sweet, though. -welcomes him. And we were on this family vacation and he proposed.

Wait, and what month was this? This is April?

This is the end.

Of April. January, February, March, April. Okay, so four months. Okay, I'm not panicking. Okay, that's fine. Kind of thing.

It was fast. It's okay. It's okay. That's okay. Part of the story. Yeah, it was fast. And so we get back from vacation, blah, da, da, da, da, da, hello world. We're engaged. And it was the end of the semester. I think that's part of why he did it when he did it, is because I was about to move back eight hours away with my family, my parents, because it was summer. Was that.

His way of saying, Hey, don't go. Just stay here. Let's get married.

Well, if it was, it didn't work because I still went home. Because I needed to work and save money to help pay for the next year's tuition and everything. I had actually noticed that there was a weird spot on my ring, a little tarnished spot. I was like, What is this? Not in a gold digger way, but this is a real ring, right? We took it back to the jeweler that he got it from and they took it back, no questions asked, gave him the money, all of that. We ended up going and getting the exact same ring made custom from another jeweler. But it also meant that I would be leaving in a week to move back home with my parents and work for the summer without my ring. Okay. Which wasn't a.

Huge- Do we know what happened with the first one? Like, no one just said anything. They were like.

We'll just give you money back. They just had a return policy. It was like, no questions asked situation. So we returned it and they didn't ask any questions. Nice. Nice. I didn't really care that I didn't have my ring, mostly because I was doing work where I wouldn't have worn it anyway. I was assisting with some wildland firefighting jobs type stuff. So it's pretty intense work. Good for you.

You're teaching English and China doing- She's fighting- Why?

You're.

Amazing. She's Mother Teresa.

I'm not. But I didn't care that I didn't have my ring because I wouldn't really ever be wearing it. And so I didn't really know too much about it. And I didn't really hear anything about the ring at all. And so I figured, great, everything's going fantastic and just doing my job and he's doing his thing. And then a few, not quite a month before the wedding. So our wedding was scheduled for August. So short dating, short engagement, all of it was really short. So in July, the end of July, he started to get cold feet and was talking about maybe we should call off the wedding or at least postpone it. I just don't know if this is right. And I started- It was.

Your idea, fella.

And I start to freak out because I'm like, whoa, wait a second. Hold on.

Of course.

And so I said, I think you just need to come down and visit and we just need to spend some time together. And if when we're together, it still doesn't feel quite right, then fine. Because I don't want to marry somebody if you're not sure. Yeah, sure. He came down and once again, as soon as we were together, we were right back in the Hallmark movie. We're like, No, we got this. We're going to do it. I think he seemed to feel a lot better once he was with me and we had talked through it. He was like, No, I think I just needed to be with you and whatever.

How did you feel after that? Were you secure?

Yeah, I felt fine. If he said he was good, then he was good. Let's do this.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because he and his family were eight hours further north from where my family was, we decided to get married in a city that was four hours in between. We split the difference- Between them. Oh, that's smart.

That's so nice of you.

Yeah. I mean, it makes it sound all servicey of me. No, the vendor I wanted was also in that city.

Listen, no one needs to know that. Listen, we don't know when to know that. No one needs to know that. It doesn't matter. You went above and beyond to please everybody.

You're still.

Mother Teresa to us.

Everybody is welcome. Okay, you're all welcome.

So it ended up being convenient as well. And so we get married and it's wonderful. I did finally get my ring late, late, late the night before the wedding. We met up in the- Just in time. -late that night before the day of the wedding. He brought me my ring and I was a complete fiancé at that point, just in the nick of time. We get married and we go on our honeymoon. It is also sweet and and adorable and mucky mucky, super disgusting, cute, honeymooners.

Literally.

Honeymoon. Okay. Yeah. Then the week after our honeymoon, we went on another vacation with my family. We did a lot of traveling back to back and- Yeah.

Because we had to get it in really fast because the semester was going to start. We then had to get back up to where we were going to live and get our apartment all set up and start living our lives. It was great. Everything was so wonderful. We're in our apartment. I started this semester as a full-time student. I was also working part-time at a restaurant. He was working part-time at a local grocery store and then part time at that same restaurant. We got to see each other at work a lot. You were together all the time. It really is the most adorable, disgusting thing ever. No, it is.

Really sweet. I like that.

That's the way you wanted. That's cute. We just could not spend enough time together. Our first couple of months were amazing. I loved... This sounds so cliché, but I loved playing house and having my person to come home to every day and.

Just.

That very-.

The.

Fantasy. Yes, that thing that everyone wants. And that's how it felt.

Of course. Yes.

And then a couple of months into our marriage, I was in our spare bedroom going through some stuff in the closet because I don't know about you all, but it takes me a while fully unpack my houses. We won't even talk about how long sometimes.

100 %. But it does not take me that long to go through someone else's stuff, but.

It's fine. I was going to say you're sleeping in.

The boxes. I'm going through some stuff in the closet. And I come across this box, and I've never seen it before. It says urgent, open immediately. I was like, Wait. This has been in the back of a closet for two months.

It's like sealed?

Yeah, it hasn't been opened.

What do you mean, sealed? With bubblegut?

What do you mean, sealed? Like with tape. Like with tape? Like a moving box. You know how you- And.

There's just nobody...

Okay. No one's opened it. So what happened? What was in the box? Yeah. So I opened this box and it is chuck-full of papers and folders and all kinds of paperwork, of debt, of bills. Oh, no.

Of.

Collections notices, of anything financial that is what you don't want. It is a whole box, chuck-full.

Of it. In the back of the closet.

In the back of the closet. And he's not home as I'm going through it. But I'm getting deeper and deeper and deeper, and I start to realize these are current. The accounts aren't current, but these are currently delinquent.

Yeah. Oh, my God. And now you owe the money, too.

Because you're married. Right. It's now my thing, right? Because we're married. What's it for? Oh, it's for anything and everything. It's for cell phones. Credit cards. Yeah, credit card, eating out, shopping, bills, everything.

He's just run up a.

Lot of everything. He's run amok, amok, amok.

Yes. Yes. No. Yeah, he had totally run amok. He had so many different bills. And so I started to make a spreadsheet so I could keep track of all these different things and start organizing it because that's just how my brain works. Yeah.

Because you're probably like, Okay, we need to nail this down.

Right. Let's get on top of this. I am really responsible.

Were.

You mad at him? I wasn't mad, but I was scared. I think I was mostly scared.

I don't blame you.

What is this? What does it mean? Now what? I grew up in a very financially stable household where it was very aggressively pushed into our brains that you don't spend more than you make. That was my mentality is you do not let a bill go unpaid. You do not like it. If you have to get another job, whatever you got to do, you pay your bills. So to find this whole box of unpaid bills was terrifying. I thought, Well, he's hiding this. When he got home, I was like, Hey, David, come here. What is this? And he's like, Oh, yeah, I totally forgot about that. Did you? And I was like-.

I'm sorry. Oh, boy. What? Oh, yeah, that.

Oh, David. Oh, that old thing?

Yeah. Well, and he wasn't mad that I found it. He wasn't upset.

No, of course, because now maybe he can get you to deal with it.

It was one of those things where I really don't know that he was actively trying to hide it. I think the box got stuck in the back of the closet, and he's just clueless with this type.

Of thing. Out of.

Sight, out of mind. Yeah, exactly. Because when I approached him about it, he wasn't shameful or upset or anything like that. He was like.

Oh, yeah, that. Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that. He was like, Oh, yeah, we probably need to take care of that. I was like, Can we talk about this? Why do you have this? What is going on? We hadn't dug into his finances before getting married as much as we should have. And I did not ask questions that I should have.

I still wonder if I don't know what I would ask. But at 22, I certainly would not have known what questions to ask.

Yeah.

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And now I'm sitting here with all of these bills, and I'm thinking, well, that's why when I asked about his checking account and he didn't give me straight answers, that's why he didn't say anything because we have this box of bills. I didn't push because I didn't want to rock the boat. I didn't want to make him upset because when he got upset, he would run away.

Yeah, he would say, I don't want to get married. He would... I don't want to- Yeah.

Like, he would go and he'd get in his car and he'd go for a drive and he wouldn't talk it out. He's very avoidant. He was very avoidant. I'm a talker. Yeah, let's- You need to talk it out. Hash out, drag out whatever we got to do and we'll talk through this. And he's not. He's avoidant. He'd get in his car and he'd drive away for a couple of hours, and then he'd come back and he would have been resolved. But I didn't get the resolution. Right. And so I didn't ask a lot of questions. And now all of those questions I didn't ask were making sense as to why when he said something and it didn't line up, this was why it wasn't lining up.

Yeah. Things started to be much more clear to you, it seems.

Yes. And so we're like, All right, let's spreadsheet this. Let's make a plan and let's move forward because we're married. So my wagon's hitched to yours and we're just going to make this work and we got to figure this out.

Yeah, we're a team.

Exactly. And so life continued on. Then out of nowhere, he started to have chest pain again. I don't remember the exact first incident of this chest pain, but I remember thinking when it came up again and he was like, Oh, I'm having chest pain again. I immediately thought, Oh, no, it's that same thing from earlier this year. He was very quick to say, No, totally different chest pain. Because the one in January was in his lungs, he said this one felt different. I thought, Well, different how? He said it felt like it was more like heartto heart pains. That freaked me out. My brain started to go to the worst places ever. I thought, No, not again. I thought that we dealt with this and we're done. But I was really mostly just worried about his wellbeing and how do we fix this? How do we find answers? And so we went to doctors and tried to figure out what it was. Eventually, we were able to get a diagnosis. It was one of those things where we went to the hospital over and over and over again because we just couldn't figure out what it was.

Now we're racking up all of this medical on top of.

Everything else. No one could give you any answers. No one knows anything.

They're doing all of the tests. I would get so stressed and I didn't know what to do. His family, once again, was not present. I would call my parents like, I don't know what to do. Can you help me? What advice do you have? My dad was in the medical industry, and so he gave some suggestions on different doctors that we could talk to or go to. That's how we ended up getting a diagnosis.

Did you have... You know how colleges have student health insurance? Yes. I guess you're under 26. So you were still, I don't know. No, but you're married. -the cystody of...

I don't.

Know how it works.

I can't remember if I was still on my parents' insurance or if I was on the college insurance, I was insured and he was on his parents' insurance.

Okay. I just didn't know if he was racking up a ton of.

More debt. Yeah.

We ended.

Up getting into some of those specialists and got a diagnosis of mitral valve prolapse, which is a condition with your heart. The what? It's basically a little flap in one of your heart atrium that doesn't close properly. It's a valve that doesn't close to the pumping of your blood through your heart and atriums. It doesn't do how it's supposed to do it. And most of the time you don't even know it's there. But apparently in him, it caused a lot of pain. I had even more questions once we found the diagnosis of the mitral valve prolapse, because that is not something that just pops up out of nowhere. Or as McKinsey said, it just pops up willy-nilly in front of God and everybody. It's something that.

Is- It's just all willy-nilly.

It's just all willy-nilly. It didn't make any sense to me how all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he would start having symptoms that were this extreme over something that was not an injury or an infection or something that happens to you. That was really confusing to me, but my first front of my mind thought was always, What do I need to do to help him get healthy? What do I need to do to help make sure he's okay? That is my default in most of my relationships is making sure that the other person is okay, which obviously can be very great quality to have, but it can also be very unhealthy. It's easy to lose yourself when you're so worried about saving somebody else. But it was shortly after that diagnosis that we learned that his parents actually had let his insurance lapse and didn't tell us.

Oh.

No. What?

Yeah.

What the- So he had no insurance and he's-.

And they didn't tell him either? Yeah.

So here we were early 20s. What can we say to them? He's already got debt. We now have multiple ER visits and specialists and all of this.

So.

I started adding to my spreadsheet.

And at this point, you're probably working to pay off a lot of.

His debt. Yeah. It just got to be a lot. And so we get that taken care of and take it managed, I should say, because it's not something that necessarily can be fixed, but we can... There's ways to manage it. And so once we got a diagnosis, we were like, Okay, so this is... We can now make a plan. This is what we need to do. I thought, okay, this is one step closer to having a normal relationship. This is one step closer to having a normal marriage and a normal life. And we don't have to worry about adding on to my spreadsheet of people that we have to pay every single month. We can start to take a crack at this debt and and and start to work towards our actual life together. And then we would go to dinner at his mom and stepdad's house pretty regularly on Sunday nights. I thought it was important to be close to family and to involve family in our lives. I wanted to build more support there, get to know them better.

Yeah, of course. Also, maybe seeing them more often might have them mention things like, Oh, by the way, we don't have insurance anymore. Sounds like they're the type of person you might want to check in on.

Yeah. Maybe we can build our relationship up to that point.

Yeah. So you don't have insurance anymore? Pass the potatoes.

Right. Like, would have been nice.

Yeah. So we spent a lot of time there. It was stressful for me to spend a lot of time with his family. His mom pushed for us to start having kids so fast and very aggressively. She was a pretty heavy smoker and she knew that he hated that she smoked constantly. She would say things like, Hey, if you two get pregnant and have a baby, I'll quit smoking.

That's.

So manipulative.

That's rude, but okay. He was pushing to have a baby as well. I don't know if he was influencing her or if she was influencing him. But either way, he and his mom were both on the baby train, and I was very solidly on that platform of this train is not leaving.

This one is not happening.

No. You were wanting to get the debt taken care of, right?

Sure.

I can't finish school.

I wanted to at least know him for a year. Can I.

Have some time to get to know this guy?

Got it. Right. And even when we were dating, we had talked about this. We talked about kids. We had very clearly said we wanted to wait a couple of years. We were so young and I hadn't finished school. He was just starting school. And so it was one of those things where it was like a no brainer to me that we would like, no, we're not even going to get a dog. You can have a fish. You can.

Have a fish. Oh, my God. You can get a plant.

Right? A plastic one.

Raise.

Your plant. You can't. Have to.

Yes. One night I came home and I was getting ready for bed, and I went to get my birth control out of the drawer and it was gone.

Shut.

Up. Are you serious?

Yeah, it was gone. And I'm not good at math in this. But there's only two of us that live there.

Like he stole your birth control? Get out of here.

What?

That is abysmal.

Yeah. So he moved it, which in hopes that I wouldn't see it. So I immediately confronted him and I was like, David, what the crap? What are you doing? Where's birth control? And he was like, What do you mean? And I was like, Okay, seriously? And he was like, Well, I hope that maybe if it wasn't in the normal place, you'd maybe just forget.

Not everybody forgets about important things, David.

Yeah.

David, rude. Just because you do doesn't mean.

That's also just very - He hid your birth control. I feel like that's a crime.

I know. I was going to say we should look up.

If.

There's any penalty for taking someone's.

Health care and medicine. I don't know if it's a crime, but I definitely think it's bordering non-emotional abuse.

Yeah, 100%. It's bordering?

I.

Mean- Very much so.

Yeah, that's.

Freaking awful. I made him show me where it was so that I could take it. He was like, Well, I really want to have a baby. I just basically looked him right in the eye and I said, Listen, you know that I practiced abstinence prior to getting married, so I can go a real long time. There's other ways to not get pregnant. She said, I can't.

Get pregnant. That is not what I thought you were going to say. The look on your face right now, you were like, Bitch, try me.

If you're going to keep the means of me protecting my body away from me, then I'm going to take my own means in protecting my body.

If you don't want to have a baby, you do things in order to not have a baby. If the only thing at your disposal is to not have sex.

Then that's what.

You.

Do. Yeah, this freaking guy. Yes.

She said, I.

Practice abstinence. I can go a long time. I love it. I love it.

I mean, that's just how I felt. It was also right around this time that he started to get some immense pain in the back of his head. He would get really bad headaches and there would be a lot of pressure in the back of his head. I was like, Oh, my gosh, are we having another medical thing about to happen? Then we know you don't have insurance still. I'm trying to go to school and work and all these things. I'm like, On top of it, you want me to have a freaking baby?

Yeah, that's a lot.

The pain and pressure in the back of his head intensified and his symptoms intensified. He would start to have these episodes where he would basically just lay in the fetal position on our floor and he would pass out and quit breathing. What? Breathing? Yeah. How long? Just temporarily. I'd have to shake him and get him to wake up and start breathing again. But again, he didn't have insurance. He couldn't get cleared for insurance. We had gone to the ER enough times by this point that I knew what they would do, check his basic vitals and things like that. I had taught myself how to do that so we could save ourselves $1500 and an ER entrance or admittance fee or whatever it's called. I would start to check his vitals. And it happened often enough that I would sleep with my hand on him. You know how moms get attuned to waking up?

Yeah, just to.

See if he's still breathing. And so I would sleep with my hand on him. And when he would quit breathing, I'd wake up and I'd have to get him to start breathing again. And then in the morning, he'd be fine. And I'd go off to school or to work and he'd be like, Oh, I just can't do it today. It just got to be a lot. But he was still pushing that idea of like, I think we should have kids. I think we should have kids. It was just absolutely blowing my mind that he wanted to to even explore that at this time. I knew that I was overloaded. I knew I had too much going on. I knew he was sick, and I knew that in my gut, I felt like that was not what God wanted for us either. I told him, I feel like this is not what's next for us right now. We have to take care of us first before we can take care of another child, of a being, of another human. And he did not receive it well. He went upstairs and went in the bedroom and shut the door.

And I remember laying on the floor and I was laying on the back just staring at the ceiling. And I just lost it. I was just sobbing and I was just laying there on the floor. I haven't ever even told this to anybody before. I just lost it. And I thought, How can I keep doing this? How can I keep going through this level of crazy? This is not the life that I signed up for. This is not the life that I've lived. I was always the good girl. I did everything I was supposed to do. This is not my happily ever after that I feel like you're promised. He eventually came downstairs and he saw me laying on the floor and he just put his coat on and he walked out the door and went for a drive. What? He didn't ask if I was okay. Like nothing. I feel like he's trying to.

Blame you and make you feel like you're doing something wrong or.

Disappointing you. 100%.

Yes. I mean, at the time I was hurt that he didn't even ask if I was okay. Because all I had been doing, our entire relationship was making sure that he was okay. He didn't ever even ask me. He never asked like, What were you doing? He never asked anything ever. Yet somehow I brushed it off and was like, All right, well, let's get back to figuring out how to fix David. I just moved forward. There were lots of late night calls to my parents, just crying. Just, Mom, I don't know what to do. We can't take him to the hospital. We don't have any money. I don't know what's wrong. It just got to be a lot. I was still doing classes full-time, still working as much as I could because he couldn't go to work all the time because of what he was going through. It felt like everything was on me to just keep our lives running. I'm the type of person that I am very good at getting into survivor mode where I'm just head down, get crap done, make it go. I was surviving. I wasn't thriving, but I was surviving.

And finally, my parents were like, We can't help you from here. We've done everything we can. We think you need to put a pause on your education and you all need to move down with us. And then that way, dad can help get you into the doctors here. And especially, we weren't really getting support from his family, even though they were close. And so at the end of this semester, we packed everything up. Our landlord let us out of our lease early. I think he just felt for the situation.

Yeah, when a health thing comes up like that.

It's- Yeah. And we moved eight hours south to where my parents lived and just moved in with them because we didn't have any money. And my my dad was able to get him into a few different doctors. But we first went to a primary care physician that I had seen for years. He knew my family really well, and we were able to get a diagnosis from there. It was infection called mastoiditis. You have a bone in the back of your skull called a mastoid, and itis is like an infection or inflamed. Infection. And- Oh. And he also had a deviated septum and some drainage issues in his sinuses. And it was apparently not draining right and getting stuck in his mastoid. And that was what was causing the problems. I don't know a ton about mastoiditis. That's not what my life specialty is in.

Never heard of it before, so I don't blame you.

But throughout all of this, we kept going back to that primary care physician, and he made a comment that really caught me and David off guard. He was like, Hey, so I think it's great that we're finding all these answers, but I really think that David needs to go and see a psychiatrist. Why? That all of these medical things that he's had, even just like that year, don't line up. That he thinks there's something else going on.

What do you mean? Yeah, I forgot that this was all in the course of a year. So he's had three separate serious health scares in one year. Yeah.

Just that he thought it was really odd for a young man to be having all of these issues and to have them so in such short succession, he was basically like, Hey, I think you need to go and see.

A psychiatrist. My brain is going so fast right now.

I know.

Keep going. There are so many things.

To do. The theories are flying.

You guys, Hannah's face.

Okay, so I want to hear- Is your brain hurting? Yes, I want to hear everybody else's theories, too. This is where we're cutting for the week.

There's so much more, you guys.

Everybody tell us what.

You think, and I promise you- You'll be wrong. -there's more than you think. Honestly, if someone- So much more than-If someone guesses it, we'll all send them a T-shirt because there's.

No way.

Anyone can guess where this story is going.

Yeah, there's definitely some more turns. I'm watching you guys, Hannah and I video chat. She's in L. A. M. In Tampa. And so we have to video chat when we do these. I'm just watching her face and it goes from her eyes go up and then her eyes get all squinty. It puts you in a place.

I really do love her storytelling, though, and I'm really grateful that she is sharing this because it's obviously a lot.

I can't wait for you guys to hear more. To hear the rest of it.

A privilege. -i'm dying. The usual stuff, guys. You got to go to our Instagram, data detectives podcast, also TikTok, also Facebook. And if you have any stories for us or anything you want to share, our email is investigate@thedatingdetectivespodcast. Com.

That's a new email address... I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt you guys. Now everything's plural and it makes more sense. It makes more sense. So all the other times and all the other 30 episodes or how many we said whatever the email was. But just note the email address is different now. Investigate@thedatingdetectivespodcast. Com. It's in the show notes. Email us your story.

Oh, nice little jam.

I'm a good singer. We really appreciate it when you guys share us on your socials and just share us with other people so that they can experience the dating detectives themselves. So thank you so very much. We are so grateful for you. Make sure if you want to sign up for the patron, it's only five dollars a month. You get an extra two... I always say two bonus extra episodes.

Two bonus, goodie, extra- You get.

Two bonus episodes a month. Just go to thedatingdetectivespodcast. Com, and you can subscribe to the patron. We love you guys.

I.

Listened to the latest one yesterday, and it was you and Justin telling your love story, and I swooped even though I had already been there.

You guys, my husband was on one episode of The Dating Detective, and he thinks he's a freaking movie star. It's not recorded, it's on video yet. We want to eventually. But he's like, I'm Tom Cruise. He wants a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He thinks he's a frigging movie star now, and he's talking about who his stunt man would be if he was a famous. And I'm like, You were literally on one podcast. Calm down.

I will be his manager. I believe in him. I think he could do it. I'm starting the Oscar campaign. He hasn't been in a movie, but it doesn't matter.

So next week you guys will hear part two. We're so excited to share it with you. And as always, trust your fan to wish you.

Bye.