The Dating Detectives - The 18 Year Prison Sentence

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

Happy Dating Detectives Monday! This week’s story follows Daniel, who thought he had built a life rooted in love, family, and hard-earned stability—until things slowly start to stop adding up. What begins as a fast-moving romance turns into decades of marriage, children, and financial ups and downs… but beneath it all, there are cracks forming that he can’t quite explain. Missing money, shifting stories, and a growing sense that something isn’t right lead Daniel down a path to discovering the shocking truth. Click here to join our Patreon! For only $5 a month you will get 2 extra episodes a month, monthly virtual live events, and access to our community page. And now for $9 a month you can get all of that, plus ad free episodes!If you've been dogfished and want to share your story on the show, email [e-mail] or contact us through our website using this linkCheck out our new sister podcast The Dating Debrief on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Youtube, or wherever you get your podcasts! This episode of The Dating Detectives is sponsored by DeleteMe. Get 20% off your plan at joindeleteme.com/datingdetectives with code TDD.Get control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code DATING at MonarchMoney.com in your browser (not app) for half off your first year!This episode of The Dating Detectives is sponsored by Shopify. Sign up for a $1/month trial at shopify.com/datingdetectivesThis episode is sponsored by Wayfair. Shop Way Day from April 25–27 for up to 80% off with free shipping at wayfair.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 1-800-799-723 for support. Happy dating detectives Monday. Happy dating detectives Monday. All right. You know what? We got to review a comment and someone

was like unrelated to the episode, please never change your theme song. I love the theme song so much, which is so nice. But after you're just saying that, I think we need to change it to that. Sorry. Do you want me to start humming the theme song

instead of having action music? Oh, I always do when we're recording. I'm like, that's so much better. And then we get a sing on top of it, Happy dating, detect it all obnoxiously. And that'd be amazing. Yeah.

This is like when people say, would you still love me if I was a worm? It's like, would you still love us if our theme song was us just going, da-na-na-na-na-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Anyway. Did you imagine? Thank you guys for being here despite the fact that we're a little bit cookie. We have a guest today.

Yes. And it's a boy. Thank goodness. We love when men come tell their stories because this is not. a man-hating show, we promise. It's just statistically a lot of the stories we get are men being buttheads. Yeah. So having a, having a man come on and share his story just kind of opens up the lines of communication maybe and maybe it'll plant a seed for someone else that maybe they have a story to share that they're afraid to. And so I just think it sets, it sets a good example. So I'm glad that

he's here. So Daniel, yeah, is going to share his story. We will definitely talk to him about that specifically, we have to shout out and you'll hear on the episode. His wife is a listener who encouraged him to submit and she is awesome. I love her. That was the cutest thing ever. I love her so much. So thank you so much. The story is a doozy. He's an, you're going to love him. I mean, it's like, you're not going to love the dogfish. There's definitely some emotional abuse, some financial abuse. There is a death of a child we just wanted to let you know about because it's very hard. But the story is so important.

And he's like, he's just one of those guys where you're like, I like, I can, you're so dependable. Like I can just tell how dependable of a dad and a husband he is now, now that he's in a healthy relationship. And yeah, it took a long time to get there. A hundred percent. So we're going to let him share his story. But before we do, as always, thank you so much for being here and listening to our show and

supporting the dating detectives and allowing us to support you and allowing us to be a platform for you. Thank you for sharing your stories and sharing us on your socials. The community you guys have created is just amazing. So gratitude. Thank you so much. We do have a Patreon episode or episode option. If you don't know, our Patreon gets you two bonus episodes a month. Plus we do book club sometimes. We chat more. We just have early access to merch and live streams and stuff. So that's $5 a month. And then if you don't want ads on any episode, you can do $9 a month. You get everything on Patreon Plus ads to leave. Yeah.

Shall we? Give it over to Daniel. Yeah, let's get into it. We are excited to introduce you to Daniel. Daniel, you have the floor. Will you please take us on your journey? Sure thing. I will start at the beginning.

I met my wife, Rachel, back in 1999. So a long time ago, we were married for a long time. We actually worked together at a furniture place, and I had not been there very long. She worked in a different department than I did and had talked to her a few times on breaks and knew that she was a single mom, had two kids that were about 18 months old. And that's about the extent of what I knew other than just casual conversations. Single mom of 18-month-old twins? Twins, yes, 18-month-old twins.

Oh, wow. Good Lord. That's a lot. I had another friend that worked in the department with me, and Rachel and, and her friend that worked over there actually asked the two of us to go out on a double date one night. So I agreed to go. And like I said, I did not know a whole lot about Rachel other than the kids and casual conversations. I was a little bit excited about it because I was new here.

I had just gotten an apartment. I'd moved out. I'd been living with friends for a while at the time. I had just turned 20. I didn't have a car, so I didn't get to get out much. It's very difficult to meet people. The four of us were the only ones at this place that were under, I'm going to say 50. So it helped with the odds.

So I was excited to do so. And to be frank, being 20 and liking that sort of thing, I thought and assumed she was older than me and would be able to buy me beer. So that was just an added bonus. So we agreed and we went out and had a great time. I went with my friend. He had a car. So we picked them up and went out to dinner.

and went to kind of like a club afterwards and just had a good night and went home fairly uneventful after that. The next day was Saturday and I was just at my apartment by myself and it was in the evening and heard knocking at the door. This was before cell phones, not before cell phones, but before I had one, not every day I had one. So just beating on the door and I heard it and it was one of Rachel's friends. And this was in the evening, probably eight o'clock or or so. Wait, the friend that you gone on the date with or another friend? An entirely different friend. Okay.

And she introduced herself. She's like, hey, I'm Rachel's friend. Rachel's having a party at her apartment tonight. Want to know if you wanted to come? Okay, sure. Well, it sounds like she really liked you if she sent her friend to hunt you down and bring you to a party. Yes. Yes, less than 24 hours later. So I got dressed and hopped in and went to a party at her house. And it was a small party.

It wasn't a crazy wild party. maybe six, eight people, something like that over there. And we hit it off again, and I actually wound up staying the night over there after the party ended. And she took me home pretty early in the morning, probably around 6.30, maybe 7 o'clock in the morning. Oh, my. We'd been up all night. So she took me home, did not think too much about it. And we'd made plans to see each other again.

We saw each other a couple times and move fast. She was fun. I had fun with her. I did discover that she was not old enough to buy me beer. As a matter of fact, she had just turned 18. Oh, she just a baby. Yes, but I'm also just 20, so it's not a creepy or weird or anything. It was just a little bit of a disappointment that I didn't have a new beer connection. I love it. Didn't you have all the 50-year-olds at the furniture store? Just ask them. Actually, yes, that was my beer connection. I just thought I had a less creepy one.

I didn't have to have some 50-year-old driving to the liquor store on Fridays. I had my beer connections, and now I was seeing this woman that we hit it off. And she was fun, and it was easy and a good time. What I didn't know until a few weeks later, she had just gotten that apartment, probably a couple months before that first time we went out. She had moved out of her parents with her two babies, 18 months old, and the baby's father. They all moved into that apartment. Oh.

He worked over nights. So that was when I came to her apartment. It was after he left for his night shift at work. What? Wait, but when did you find that out? It was at least a couple of weeks in. Two or three weeks, yeah. How did you find that out?

She had finally told me I said something about coming over in the middle of the day. We saw each other during work, so it wasn't like we didn't speak. I think I had suggested something on the weekend or something to that effect. But then she's like, oh, yeah, he still lives with me. His name was Alex. He's like, Alex still lives here, but he works overnight. And she had posed it as, this is just a convenience thing. We're not together.

He works at nights while I sleep. He's at home sleeping while I am away at work. But we're not together. That is very common for people to say that. Well, just naive or didn't care at the time. I was 20. I was having my fun. and didn't care a whole lot.

Okay, y'all are apart, so this is weird, but I'll go with it. Did you have any concerns about being a stepdad? Or were you not even thinking that far? Yeah, because you're young. Not a whole lot. I was a bit of a partier. I did a lot of partying up until that point. And this was actually something in hindsight that got me to stop doing some of those things that I was doing.

So it was a blessing. It straightened me up. I don't need to be drunk or high every night anymore. So it didn't bother me. And a few weeks in, I wasn't thinking about marriage or anything like that. I was just having fun. She had babysitters. So I had met them a couple of times just very briefly, but not spent any real deal of time with them until two or three months in.

And she told me that she was having a birthday party for them at her apartment. and somehow it came up or another, oh, I can come, I don't mind, but he was going to be there. So that kind of came up like, well, Alex will be there. And that's when I found out she has not actually broke up with Alex. Did she tell you that was she like so, but I got to tell you, I haven't actually broken up with him. Yeah, he doesn't know about you. He doesn't know we're broken up, I think, was kind of what was phrased. What did you say?

If I'm being honest, I was young and I was getting late and I didn't care of. whole lot. I think a lot of people can relate to that. It's also just nice to have a guy on here and hear your dating story. Yeah. 20-year-old man. It's like, I want to know what's going on y'all's brains. It's very little. To be honest, there's not a whole lot of things. It's not hard to figure out what it is. So you were like, all right, this is fine. Let's roll. I think she had spun it into, I've been planning on doing this for a long time. I just haven't yet, but I'm going to now. And it got contentious as you would expect it to be. Sure.

When she finally did, we're together for, let's say, three or so months, and she's finally going to break it off with him. So naturally, in his eyes, I'm the other man. I'm the homewrecker. I'm the one that ended this. So he just despised and loathed me. Can't blame him. Being young and all that time is like, no, I hate him.

And those that back and forth. But looking back on it, of course, I can't blame him for it. he actually didn't know that I was unaware of his existence. You both kind of got played in the long run. Yes. All right. So birthday party. So that's what made everything known.

But she broke it off with him shortly after that. And I'm going to say within four months of us dating somewhere in that neighborhood, she was pregnant with our son Noah. Wait, for sure, it's yours? Yes. Once he was born, there was no question. Absolutely my spitting image. The second he came out, I'm like, okay, yeah, there's no question.

Aw. Welcome to The Dating Debrief, a podcast about dating in the modern age. Anyone who has found someone in L.A., I'm like, how, where, what app do I have to be on to find someone? Every season will follow one single through 13 first dates. I don't like to settle. I'd rather be alone forever than settle for less than I deserve. And after each one, we will sit down to spill the tea and sort the relax.

Wait, I love the love triangle. You're like, stop. I can't have you both. Get ready for a season of gossip. After we had sex, he kind of fell off the face of the earth a little bit. Chaos. Because he just wanted to sleep with everyone else in L.A. And a front row seat to real romance.

I want love so badly, but I'm also so afraid of having it. And by pursuing emotionally unavailable people, I kind of know how it's going to be. end. I'm Rachel Reckia and this is the dating debrief. And so Delete me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Yes, even you. I'm a private investigator of 20 years and when I tell you it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. They can get your

address, your phone number, your family members' names, and they can all be just hanging out all willy, willy on the internet machine, and it can have actual consequences in the real world and make everyone vulnerable. That's why I use, and I recommend you use, delete me. Delete me is New York Times Wirecutter top pick for data removal services. Basically, it's a subscription service that goes in and they find all the information that you don't want online and they retrieve it and they take it out. Take control of your data. Keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join Deleteme.com slash dating detectives and use promo code TDD at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is go to

join Deleteme.com slash dating detectives and enter code TDD at checkout. That's JoinDeletMe.com slash dating detectives code TDD.D. So you guys are happy about this, surprised, scared. I was happy. Even at that age, I knew I wanted to have kids. So there was a little bit of fear, but I was happy. I was excited. And actually, she was going to break up with me just about a week before.

She had left Alex and the reason I found out, and this is another thing that will help date the story. We had gone to Blockbuster when I went to run a movie. RIP. I told her I had a membership because it was close to my house. And while we're at the store, I'm like, hey, why don't we add your name to my account? So you come here, we'll get your own card. And she started acting very strange about it. He's like, no, no, no, no, I don't want to do that.

And we get back to the apartment and she revealed, well, I'm just not certain we're not going to be together. She didn't break it off, but that was her reason for not moving forward. But she didn't say why she didn't think you guys were moving forward? She just was like, I'm not feeling it. Yeah, for anybody that hasn't put the timeline together, she was 18 and had two kids that were getting close to being two years old. Yeah. She had those kids at 16. She got pregnant at 15.

Right. She had been with that same person throughout. And she's like, hey, I don't want to just jump straight into something. And it was reasonable. I was caught off guard, but it was a reasonable thing to say. And we wound up not breaking up or anything that night. And then that was about probably within a week that we've discovered that she was pregnant with Noah. Life comes at you fast.

It does. And we moved in together. She moved into my apartment and as ill-equipped as it was because it was just me. So I had a one-bedroom apartment. Her and the twins move in with me a few days later. And we got married before she was showing too much. Oh, my goodness. Probably within five to six months of our first date. How's your family like her? If they didn't like her, they didn't let me know. They accepted her. My parents were.

thrilled to be grandparent. I'm the oldest child, so they were thrilled to become grandparents. So we were married, and then a few months later, we had Noah. And for the first few years of being married, I was a new father. I liked the fact that I had new responsibilities. I enjoyed fatherhood, had the twins, had Noah, and everything was pretty good. We got along very well. We were very young and had no money. Something to keep in mind. We both worked at this furniture. We had no money whatsoever. Eventually, right before or right after Noah was born, we had bought our first house, a very, very, very small house.

It was about 10 square feet bigger than the apartment that we moved out of. But it was ours. And we struggled with that. And even back then with a mortgage payment of $514 a month, we struggled. It was three bedrooms, one bath. By the way, do the math, five people in one bath. Once kids get out of diapers does not work very well. Oh, that's so hard.

Yes, yes. We were in that house probably four or five years and got to the point where we couldn't afford it because I think the taxes and the insurance goes up with time and our payment at reached just what we thought was an astronomical $700 a month by one point. And we more or less walked away from the house and allowed it to get foreclosed on us. Oh, wow. Where did you go? Where'd you move into? We moved into a rental house. Okay. And we would stay in rental houses for a very long time from that point on. The first couple of years, I didn't see it.

After three, four years or so, kind of realized, you know, she's more open. She's more developing, and she's turning it into adult, in all fairness, too. She was a teenager when we met and got married. She normally creates a very tense environment. She communicates through yelling. And that wasn't always the... grew to that. Yes, she grew into it. To be fair, that's the only mode of communication I know. That's the only volume. You know you're yelling, though. You're just like, hi, and it happens to be loud.

That's that. There's that. And there are different degrees of yelling, though. And this was more of a scream. It was a, yeah, I can't talk to you. I have to scream and berate. And it was how she dealt with children. It's how we communicated. And I am pretty easygoing for the most part. I have very skin, shit rolls right off my back. I tend not to care much. So I developed the ability to, okay, I know she needs about five minutes of this, and I'll just nod my head. And I'll say I'm sorry for whatever I didn't do. And we can go on if it was anything too major, as long as I didn't load the dishwasher wrong. And that one may take a couple of days to get over. But, you know, the minor things. And that was mine been one of the things that I did wrong on purpose, because if I knew

if it didn't wrong enough, she would just do it herself. And I was in no way the perfect husband. and I was a kid myself. I had my flaws like everybody else. And I am a very logical-minded person. She is very emotionally minded. So logic doesn't always work and he did anything with somebody that's very emotional. Help that. I get it too.

I know it's hard because I don't think it's that we're not allowed to get angry. We're not allowed to even yell sometimes. It's just like a fine line. Yes. It's tricky. Well, my biggest pet peeve would be in an argument over something. I didn't put the ketchup back in the fridge or whatever it was. And she is at a volume that I'm concerned that the neighbors can hear.

It's literally that loud. I'm still at a three. You're at the 11. So that was communication for the most part. But other than that, kind of walk on eggshells a lot of the times, avoid the landmines. We were broke and happy for the most part until we got to about year seven of our marriage. And money had gotten even tighter. and I would look at it and not understand.

It's like, okay, if our bills add up to X and I make Y, why is greater than X in this, we should have money. We should pay all of these bills. We shouldn't be behind on anything. So where is it? Yeah. Where is it? And I could never get an answer.

There were large periods of time that I was the only one that work. And that was my choice. I wanted that with three kids. Childcare was to the point. It made more sense. That was one point where what she was making, if we added child care, you would literally clear $20 a week after you pay child care. I'm like, why would you work 40 hours for 20 bucks?

Yeah. But around that year seven, I had changed careers, actually became a plumber and was making okay money and decided to venture out on my own and open up my own company. Nice. Our landlord was a businessman and an investor, and I talked to him and got him to invest some of the startup money for me so I could buy some equipment, a truck, and do a little bit of advertising. And the problem that happened was I have impeccable timing. And I did this around 2008.

And I don't know if that'll stand out for you, but that was during the housing crash. Oh, yeah. And I was doing new houses. I started my business right before that. So I stayed in business for less than a year with no work. Money became tied. I went back to work. Now I've got to pay off this business loan while I'm doing this.

the kids are in school, so we're both working, but we're still staying broke constantly. And this was also about the time that MySpace was out and popular. Oh, God. Oh, God. Yes. And she was absolutely obsessed with MySpace and was on it. Because you got to pick your top eight, duh. Yes, yes, and build your own backgrounds and all of this. We all learn HTML code. It was legit. Yes. She was. was all about it. It was shortly after this time period that she actually came to me and told me she wanted to separate. Oh, gosh. Not divorce. We're at year seven, year eight, somewhere in that neighborhood. She tells me she doesn't want a divorce, but she wants to separate. And I start asking

her why, because I'm not in that mindset. It hadn't occurred to me. Hey, things are tough, but we're a family and all of this. Yeah. And she tells me it was the stress of the money situation, and she just couldn't deal with the stress anymore. We'd actually filed bankruptcy a while back. It didn't affect that business loan, but it was everything else. We had some debt, some back rent payments and credit cards and stuff like that. And she just couldn't handle the stress. We discussed it.

I'm like, are you seeing somebody else? Are you wanting to see other people? And she assured, no, this has nothing to do with that. I'm not dating. We're not getting divorced. I just need some time. So what was her plan moving with her parents? No, she doesn't.

doesn't have the best relationship with her parents, but she has an aunt that lives by. And she didn't have a plan, to be honest. I, you kind of like, okay, maybe you should go live with your aunt. But around this time period, because this all takes a few weeks, I'm trying to talk her out of it, trying to figure out what she can do, where can she live, where can I live, all of this stuff. And she had left one day and left the computer open, and I saw that she'd been talking to a guy on Myspace. Oh, no. A Myspace man.

Do you remember what you saw? I remember some of the pretty typical, Good Morning Beautiful and stuff like that, the typical stuff, a guy's texting. How long had they been talking? I didn't know well enough how to go back and look through the history. I just saw current things. And I knew. I confronted her about it and she, oh, no, this is a friend I had in high school. We're just chatting.

It's nothing in the world. It's blah, blah, blah. I don't. Your mentuition. Yeah, and I don't believe her. but I am also somebody that needs concrete proof. So we separate. She moves in with her aunt and the two oldest, the twins.

And myself and Noah actually move into a cousin's house temporarily. When we did so, I separated everything. She worked, but I made more money. We had the debt for the back rent payments that we had not paid, some utilities, and then we had a bankruptcy payment. So anybody that's never been in bankruptcy, the one we filed, the way it works is they don't erase your debt. consolidate it all. So when we make that payment every month, you come out and your credit's better

and all of that stuff, you don't do it, you get in trouble and your credit's going to be screwed for the next 10 years of your life. So that payment was only $250 a month. And that included her car and everything else and gets us out of trouble in about three more years. I said, if you will take that, I will pay off the $15,000 left on this business loan, the everything, about $30,000 stuff in general. And she agreed to it. And I just made her promise me, whatever you do, don't miss this. A, you won't have a car because they'll repo it and B, our credit is just screwed. She's going to move into her aunt's house where she has no bills. She doesn't have to pay for anything in the world other than this $250-ish dollars. And Noah's seven? You said it's been seven

years? Yeah, he's close to seven. Okay. And the twins would be like maybe about nine. And she goes and lives there and there's no divorce, so there's no custody or anything like that. But Noah lives with me full time. He'll go over there every now and then. The twins are coming and staying with me on occasional weekends and a couple of week nights. On average, I would have them at least two or three nights a week. And she would have Noah a little bit less often, but would happen. Well, it's only about three months into the separation and her car gets repoed. Because the one bill I left her, she couldn't pay. Oh my God. 250 a month. Yes. Oh no. And she didn't tell you. Not until the car got repoed. She had already missed a couple of payments by the time we had separated and I didn't know because she did pay the bills. And that was the agreement I'd said earlier that she didn't work for part. She was here, but before she didn't work. So that was the agreement because working construction work and I worked long hours and it was like, hey, you're home during the day. If you will handle the actual paying of the bills and I'll deposit my checks every Friday. You pay the bills and the distribution.

Right. And so it just stuck even after she worked. Because even once she did start working, she didn't work the hours I did. Because I would sometimes work two jobs at a time to try to get extra money to put in the bank and to get ahead. We never ever managed to get ahead for some reason. But we separate. And within about three months, I had paid off everything but that loan living at my cousins because he didn't charge me rent and managed to get a townhouse. I actually start getting suspicious that she is seeing people.

people during this and I'll admit I would drive by her aunt's house. We call that research, Daniel. That's called research. I like that much better. I did some research during this period. And the problem was it was what cars are not at the house. And it would be hers more often than not. Oh, no.

Even on nights where she had the kids, her car wouldn't be there. Yeah, don't like that. And now her aunt was there. She wasn't abandoning, but she wasn't there. Now, this is also the same person that during the daytime or when talking to other people, oh, I want quality time with my children. I spend all this time, but then when she has it, she doesn't. It was actually years and years later that our oldest, our daughter confessed to me,

goes, yeah, that whole time we were living there, I thought mom worked overnights. She said she'd be there. She'd tuck us in, and then she would go, and she'd be up in time to wake us up for school. She did not work overnight, spoiler. Bad. So this separation, keep in mind, is not about seeing people. It's about stress. It's about money.

It's this and that, because we're talking. she's pretending like we're trying to work on things or she doesn't want to see me right now. I was like, hey, can we go out on a date night? And no, I'm not there yet is what I would hear and stuff like that. But we were speaking. It wasn't bitter. I wasn't like, I hate you or any of this kind of stuff. You were giving her what she asked for, Sparse in time.

And I would go and I would be over there and hang out there at her aunt's house with her. And I'd get a chance and I'd go like snoop through her car. And I remember the first thing I found was a mixed CD. Oh, is this nice? Hi, hubba, hubba. Yeah, and the songs written. There was zero question that a man made this CD for her. Oh, no, I don't like it.

Starting something new is so hard. It's terrifying, too. Just so much work goes into whatever it is that you're trying to build and you're not sure if it's going to work out. If any of you have started a business, maybe started a podcast, I bet you understand what I'm talking about. What if no one listens? What if we fail?

What if nobody buys anything? I really genuinely think that one thing that makes it easier is a partner like Shopify on your side to help you get started. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce business in the U.S. There are household names like Allo Yoga, Allbirds, Thrive Cosmetics, Mattel, Heinz, Skims, Rare Beauty. Like so many big names use Shopify, but you can use it too. You get started with your own design studio. There's hundreds of ready to use templates. And Shopify helps you make your online store very accessible, beautiful, match your brand style,

and easy on the back end as well. If you're like me, you don't really know how coding works and you don't want to. So this makes it better. It's very easy to create marketing materials. Shopify has world-class experts in everything from managing inventory to shipping to processing returns and Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns. Another big thing, which I feel like is not common today with online platform, Shopify has 24-7 customer support. So if you're thinking about starting a business or maybe you've started and

it's just not as easy as you want it to be, I suggest Shopify. It really, really makes it easy. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash dating detectives. Go to Shopify.com slash dating detectives. That's Shopify.com slash dating detectives. The change in the seasons makes me want to declutter and get organized. You ever heard of spring cleaning? You can actually connect that to your finances. And Monarch money can help you stay on track with your financial spring cleaning and your money goals. So basically, you can let Monarch do it for you. So Monarch is a dashboard that

your entire financial life organized with no clutter, no mess, no scattered logins, just all your accounts, investments, properties, and more all in one place. So you can kind of monitor like your bank accounts and it'll send you an email or an update and it'll say this just deposited into your account or this is an unusual new transaction and it'll help you just put everything together. Let Monarch do your financial spring cleaning for you. One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered, Just accounts, investments, property, and more all in one place. Get your first year of Monarch for half off, just $50 with promo code dating.

Use code dating at Monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with code dating. I confront her about it and she said, oh, a friend of mine gave that to me or something to that effect. A few days later, I find her go bag in the trunk. her bag with her clothes and her makeup and all this. And I'm like, why do you have a duffel bag in the trunk? Oh, that's when I go to the gym. She has no gym membership.

But little things like that until we're probably five or so months into the separation. And we'd have the discussion, hey, if we know we're not getting back together as point, I'm thinking about filing divorce and everything. And we have the discussion like, look, if either of us starts dating somebody, let's both promise. we're not introducing them to our kids anytime soon whatsoever. Yeah, like I feel. And I feel very, very adamant about this because I forgot how I got there,

but I had already had enough proof about three different men she'd been with at this point. And she's still denying it, though. Oh, 100% denying it. But after this happens, I go pick up all the kids and they're talking to me. I'm like, hey, what did y'all do last night? How was your evening? Oh, great. we spent the night at Oscar's house.

Who's Oscar? Unfortunately, I know Oscar because we had just a couple weeks before gone on a date night. We went and had dinner and we went to some club. She likes to dance. I don't. I'm not very good at it, but I'll try every now and then. So you were still, this was when you were still open to saving the relationship. I was.

I was. I really was. And we get there and we had been there 10 minutes and some guy walks right up to her and gives a hug. goes, I still owe you a beer and like, what? And this was somebody she worked with at her current job. And he sat there and hung out with us at the table. I'm like, okay, that seemed weird. I didn't feel right about it, but it is what it is. I mean, you'd be rude to the guy. Yeah. He was actually hitting on a friend that was there with us. So I'm like, okay, maybe they do just work together and they'd gone out and an after work thing and bought around or something to that effect. But that was Oscar. When I found out a few weeks later, oh, we spent the night at Oscar's house. Oh, boy.

I was just livid not only because I had met him had that feeling of betrayal, but I was very clear that we don't introduce. And not only had you introduced. But you'll stay the night. That's a very vulnerable place to be. And just so you know, this man in his late 20s, when we stayed the night at his place, I mean the garage apartment at his mom's house. Oh, God.

Wait, this is like dangerous because we don't know any. about Oscar. Exactly. That's why we don't, yes. Oh my God. So we did file divorce papers. We found them online. We didn't use attorneys or anything. And we had no money, no property to split. We'd already been apart for this point about eight months. Yeah. And we just filed it and turned it in. And we're just now waiting on that 90 days. Do you go up here and then it's final? And at this point, I'm not wanting to speak to her much. at that stage. And I had been single and lonely, to be honest, throughout this eight-month period outside of that, because I was working. I paid off that loan by this point. I was working two and three jobs. And anytime I was not working, I was with my kids 100%. So I was insanely lonely. I had that

one encounter and that was it. And I remember one night she called me for something and I was somewhat short with her when she called when I answered. And she just leads with, well, do you really hate me that much. And in my mind, I already knew why she asked me. And I started to say, well, yes. Yes, I do. But I knew what it was going. So my loneliness kicked in. And I'm like, well, why do you ask? And it's clear she's talking about getting back together. So like, you know what? I'm not doing over the phone. Come over if you want to talk. Okay. Did I mention the loneliness part? So. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. On you. Yeah. Okay. So you're a lonely. She's talking about getting back together. But I also understand when you have kids together. It's like you want to make it work if you can. Like even if it's horrible. When she came over,

she told me what had changed her because keep in mind, her twins are technically my stepkids. Right. However, they called me dad. Their dad was not very much in the picture. They called me dad from the beginning to this day. I never will refer to them as my step kids. They're my kids. Yeah. And it was a football season. And our oldest son was playing football. And I was coaching his team. and I was sitting at a bench and I was just talking to some other mom and Rachel had overheard the conversation because during the conversation I said, yeah, I have three kids

and when she came over, she was like, oh, that just touched me that you still said that and worked divorced, still calm your kids. Of course, they're my kids. They're never not going to be. I have raised them. They're my kids. There are my kids.

You're going to change that. Coaching football. You're part of their lives. Those are my children. Absolutely. I'm not going to tell them you stop calling me dad now or anything crazy like that. No.

So she talks for a while, And one thing leads to another and it's getting sappy and emotional. And she's like, I'd like to give it another shot. And I finally concede. And then I do remember very clearly telling her, there's one thing that I need to hear. And she goes, oh, I love you. I go, okay, well, that's great. But that's actually not what I'm wanting to hear right now?

And she goes, what is that? Well, you broke up with Oscar already, right? No, but I will. Oh, no, ma'am. She was hedging her bets and had not even broke up with him. Because had I said no, she was just going to keep dating him. And I tell her in no in certain terms, I don't want you going over there. You call them and you break it off of a phone.

You left anything over there. It stays. I don't want you seeing him. They were no longer working together. And that was it. So I told her she couldn't stay the night that night because she had to go break up with him. And who knows? She probably went over there for one more.

I don't know. I just trying to not think about it, right? And we start seeing each other for a little while. and we're about a month or so in, and it's got to the point where she is staying the night over with me more nights than not. Are you happy at this point, or are you just like, I can't believe I'm with her again, but whatever, or what are you feeling?

I'm feeling less lonely. Okay. Is really and truly what I'm feeling. Yep, got it. What are you communicating to the kids? Just that we're trying and we're dating. Yeah. And one night a few weeks in, she's like, hey, I'm over here more often than not.

Can I bring, leave a couple of things over here? Oh, boy. And I'm like, yeah, sure, and fine. In my mind, it's a toothbrush, it's some pajamas, it's this or that, or whatever. I go to work the next day, she had called in. And when I come home, she had borrowed her aunt's truck and had all of her belongings and was unloading. And she moved in. You could have a drawer.

She's seen her and you can move in. Yes. And now there are five of us living in a two-bedroom town home. Oh, my God. We stay there for a couple more months and then move into an appropriate-sized rent house and we're together. And how's everything financially at this point? It's been a minute.

Oh, right now it's perfect because I've paid everything off and gotten ahead and have money and all of this, which was what she was waiting on before being frank. Right. Interesting timing. Ma'am.

She had a junk car that she had to buy off of a tote-the-note-type dealership when her other one got repoed and in a couple months, I'm getting her a new car and yeah, everything's fine financially at the moment because I was in charge of the finances. She's going to fuck it up again, ain't she?

Yes. Oh, God. That's the problem. I was never able to figure out, I swear if I made a million dollars a year, we'd be living paycheck to paycheck. So you are not seeing anything on your statements? To be honest with you, and this is my fault. She did it all and she was doing online. I didn't even know the passwords to the bank.

You were just like she's paid the bills. This is fine. Yeah, I put my check in the bank. This is a lot of relationships, though. So your story is helping someone right now, remember to go check. the state of their finances. And this is someone that you were with before, so there's already a level of trust there. You know her. Yes. So then what? So we move into a new rental house. And for a while, it's the honeymoon phase all over again. Yeah. We're back together. So it's great and it's wild and

everything. It's the honeymoon phase. So as far as that goes, I'm happy-ish. I regret my decision to take her back, but I may do. And more than just the fact that I'm having sex, again, I'm not lonely. I am a family person and I wanted my family together. I wanted my kids to have two parents living in their house. It was very important to me. So I had that. I would have suffered through her yelling and all of this at me all the time so that my kids

had two parents in the house. I didn't care about that part of it. About a year goes by and she actually does get an overnight job this time. It's real, though. She's a nurse's aide somewhere. And one night I was over at my best friend's Chris's house. And this was really common. We had a very small, tight circle of friends.

Chris had been my absolute best friend in the world since our freshman year of high school. Absolutely inseparable. I mentioned earlier when I had that first apartment. It was because I had been living with him and bouncing around places all the time. It was Friday or Saturday night. Well, we were at Chris as her. Chris was over and his wife and family and a couple others every single time. or if we went on a camping trip, of course Chris and his family's coming over or any kind of vacation,

anything, absolutely inseparable. And I was over at their house on a Friday night and she was working. And I had actually confided that I was at the point that I was ready to get a divorce. And I was going to initiate it this time. I just was unhappy. We had already gotten to the point where we're broke again somehow. With her running the books, again, she's paying the bills. And I told you I don't have access to the accounts and we don't have apps yet for the bank. Right. So I would call her in the middle of a workday to say, you know what? I forgot to bring my lunch.

Is there $5 in the bank so I can go to McDonald's? And the answer wasn't always yes. So that level of broke again. And just her working overnight, putting a strain and everything else, I just, I was unhappy. And I figured this out. I'm going to do this. Dating apps exist now. I see the commercials.

I can do this. I'll meet somebody else. Being somebody that got married when I was 20, I wasn't even old enough yet to be going to bars. So the whole thought of being single and having to go to a bar and meet somebody and all this, I literally never learned that skill because I was already married by the time I was old enough for that. And that's part of what made being single terrifying at the time. Yeah, totally. So I had talked to them about that and had the support and everything.

Don't get me wrong, they were all Rachel's friend too. But Chris and I, like said, had been inseparable for 20 plus years or that. point. So obviously him and his wife and everybody, I don't want to say we're on my side, but we're supportive of it. Well, before I have that discussion with Rachel and do anything, we find out she's pregnant with twins again. Twins again. You're out of your mind. Can you walk me through finding that out what was going through your head? So it was a double shock for a few reasons. It was obviously unexpected, unplanned. I found out why on all the commercials for the birth controls that pills, they say 99.9% effective and not 100. We were that point 0.001. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. Goody.

Oh my gosh. I had not had that conversation with divorce, so I just put it out of mind. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to leave her. We're about to have more kids. I'm not going anywhere. Was she excited about it? Yes. Okay. And you were like not, not excited, but not excited? Yeah, no, I was excited about having at that time what we thought was going to be a child. But yes, I was excited about that. And I love my kids and I never saw myself as having five kids, but she's pregnant. We're doing this. There's no second thought. There's no question. There's no anything. It's like, okay, I have five kids. And I was happy with it. Love every one of my children, wouldn't trade any of them

for the world. Life kind of became good again for Loa. And you're, and Chris and the friends are like, oh, okay, that makes sense. You have kids. now, so you're going to, or more kids now, so you're, ignore that conversation we had. Very much so. Because nothing changes. We're still over there every Friday and every Saturday. And now that Rachel no longer works overnight, she's back there. It's all part of the fold.

And I actually remember when we got the unscheduled sonogram. She was having some complications one day. It turned out to be nothing major, but we went and had a sonogram. And I do remember being at the doctor's office and they said, okay, I hear the heartbeat. And I jokingly said, right, just so long as you tell me it's only one. And he goes, yes, don't worry, it's only one. And then he pauses. And he goes, oh.

And then there's the longest 10 second pause you've ever experienced in your life. He goes, I'm sorry, there's two. And Rachel told me, I just turned white as a sheet. And don't even, I can't speak for a little while. I'm like, oh, my God. And we drove straight from that hospital over to Chris's house. And I just remember walking in and saying, hey, guys, we heard the heartbeats. and I just remember him to stand up,

you are fucked. I said yes. I said yes, we are. Oh my gosh. It's Way Day at Wayfair. Oh my God. I love you guys. I'm obsessed with Wayfair.

So from April 25th through April 27th, you got to go because you can score the best deals on anything for your home. It's like up to 80% off with free shipping on everything. Everything. To be honest, with you, I always find great deals on Wayfair all the time. It's amazing. They, they,

Wayfair makes it so easy to find exactly what fits your style and needs. Like, they have furniture and home decor and home improvement and outdoor stuff, which I built a pool a couple years ago, so I'm loving all the pool, patio stuff. And it's all on sale during Way Day. Way Day. And installation and assembly services are available for a very seamless experience. From shopping, ordering, and receiving, the whole process is seamless. The hardest, part is deciding what you want. You have to tell us what you're getting for Wayday, because Wayday is the sale to shop the best deals in home. We're talking up to 80% off with fast and free shipping on everything. So head to Wayfair.com

April 25th through the 27th to shop Wayday. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com, Wayfair, every style, every home. My attitude and a lot of things change at that point because I'm about to have two more babies. And I love that and I'm excited. It was tough. It was a high risk pregnancy for her. And I had actually been having back problems for a long time. And right before the time that she has put on bed rest, we found out I had to have back surgery. Oh, wow.

And a fairly major one that was going to have me incapacitated and I'm unable to work till about a month before the kids are going to get here. Oh, man. Awesome. So neither of us are working for. I was supposed to take six months off of work. I took three because I had to work because in that three months, my truck had been repossessed and we were behind. Oh my God, no.

Yes. We made the payments on her minivan because I was a plumber and we drive a work truck home. So it was less important for me to have one. I could still get to and from work. Yeah. Because I drove my plumbing truck home every day. Oh, my, yeah. We needed the minivan.

The boys were born very, very early and spent six or eight weeks in the NICU. before we could bring them home. But then from that point on, they were healthy. It was just they were under five pounds each when they were born. That's so much stress on you guys and you already have so much stress. Yes. But beyond that, and when we finally get to bring them home and everything, it is happiness. It's no sleep and all of those things, but I'm happy.

And a lot of those feelings I was feeling directly before that had gone away. Am I madly, deeply in love with her and all these things? No, do I spend a lot of time thinking, okay, once these two are out of the house, off to college or whatever, that's when I'll divorce. And I've got 18 years, almost like a prison sentence. I've got 18 years left. And then I can get paroled. I wasn't going to leave her. I wanted my kids to have that.

Yeah. More than the fear of dating, more than any of that, I wanted my kids to have that stability. Yeah. And we- She was a good mom? She loves her children, and I'm not going to say she doesn't. I am obviously not this woman's biggest fan, but she does love her children and wouldn't let anything bad happen to all my. We parent differently.

But a few years go by and getting to the point where the boys are seven or eight, and nothing has really changed in this time period. I'm happy with my kids. We do stuff occasionally. Rachel had actually started going to school online. She wanted to become a teacher, and neither of us went to college. But she wanted to do that. She had been working various jobs, but wanted a career. My job was turning into a career.

I'd been a plumber most of my life up to that point. I'd finally got the point where I'm working in management and working my way up the chain. So in my mind, okay, money's about to get a lot better. I'm about to start making manager money. And she's going to get a teacher position and move on up. And we know teachers don't make the most money in the world or even enough. But compared to what had been before, I'm doing the math and say. It can be more stable. It's a good schedule for it.

Yes. Kids. And add what I make and what a teacher should make. I'm like, okay, with this, this will be more money than we've ever made collectively. Right. We actually buy a house. And this was the first time since that first one we bought when I was 21 and she was 19. We'd been living in rental houses for over 20 years up to this point. And that always bothered me. There's no equity. I'm throwing money away. Yeah. Finally, we got to the point we go buy a house. Okay. And love the house. I am a fixture upper guy. So we'd bought one that was nice and it was big, but it was dated.

So I had no shortage of projects around the house to do and change. I loved it. And that's what made me happy. Yeah. It gets to the point where we become distant again. And we're together every day, but our sex life sucks. And that's like my first indicator. It really sucks.

And not just we've been married for close to 20 years or 20 years sucks. It just really is. bad. That's once a month, once every other month, something like that. And I just don't feel connected. And I am back to suspecting that she is cheating on me. What evidence do we have of this? Or is it just meant tuition? Just intuition, the distance. To be frank, I know she enjoys sex and we're not having it. So I've only so many conclusions to draw there. And it's more than just that, but that's a big part of it and I just do, but like I said, I am someone that needs concrete evidence. So I start researching around the house as much as I can.

We love to research. I love to research. Armchair sleuth. I can never, unfortunately, go through her phone because it absolutely positively never leaves her hand. Even in her sleep, that phone does not leave her hand. At one point, she is away somewhere at the store or at work or whatever, and I was home. In our house, the master suite has closets in the.

bathroom and it's two it's his and her so we had our own closets and i would dig through her closet looking for anything at any time i could just because i have that gnawing suspicion that feeling i remember finding some lingerie in there in a box it was through a website that you order it kind of thing and i'd never seen it she'd never work for me and i want to think it was probably a few weeks before valentine's day or something which we don't ever do stuff for that but i'm like you know what? Maybe that's why I haven't seen it yet. I don't do anything with it. I don't confront her. Well, Valentine's comes and goes. I don't see it. Weeks come by, months go by. And then next time I go look forward, it's gone. That reminds me of Love Actually, you know, the movie Love Actually,

where she sees the necklace and is like, oh, he's going to give me the necklace for Christmas. And then he gives her a CD. I will pretend I get the reference. I'm sorry, I do not. Oh my God, guys, it'll break your freaking heart. But this is breaking. But where's the lingerie? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So that deepens my suspicion, but it takes a long while and I don't get proof. And for me, I need proof just because I need it, but also because I fear that when we end this

and it's over and we get a divorce, I'm going to lose the kids, I'm going to this and that and all these things. So not only do I need the proof because I don't want to accuse and be wrong, but if I'm right, don't want this to go where I just lose everything. She lives in this house and has the kids. So you got to play it carefully. Yes. So I just continue on until eventually. It was the point where we were married. It was just before our 22nd anniversary. And the neighbors were over at our house. We had neighbors across the street. Now, this isn't Chris, who we're normally with. This was a Sunday and the newish next door neighbors happened to come over. So I grill hamburgers

and go swim in the pool. And we were out of something. We needed more buns or cheese or something. So Rachel and the neighbor ran to the store. Well, for the first time ever, I go inside and I look and see that Rachel left her phone. Oh. She was without her phone. So I am 100% going to take this opportunity to open it up and go through it.

And I open it up and I go through the text message. And she knows you have her password. Yes. because it was the oldest twins birthday that she uses that for everything so it wasn't hard to figure out. Yeah. Go through the text message and I see nothing. And I open up Facebook now because I remember my space. I'm getting that tingling and I'm going to see something on here and I go into Messenger and I see nothing.

Then I'm just scrolling and I am researching the hell out of this phone and going through everything, internet history and nothing. And then I come across an app that I don't recognize and I don't remember what it was called. now, something along the lines of telegram or one of those messages. It could have been telegram. Yeah. It could have been telegram. Something along those lines. No WhatsApp Telegram. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

I open it up. And the very first thing I see is a message chain with Chris. I knew it. The best friend? The best friend of over 25 years at this point. Closer with him than I was with

any family member, any relative, of anything, I cannot begin to tell you how close we work. What does it say, Daniel? So, well... Oh, no. I did not want to be right. Let's do this. The night before, I remember, we had gone to a friend of mine's wedding, and she had wore a particular dress, and here's one thing that bothered me. It was a keyhole dress, so I had the little hole for the cleavage right here.

And I remember making a joke about that. And during the wedding, apparently she'd gone to the bathroom and taken a selfie and sent it to him. And what killed me was he made the same damn joke I had made. His wife was actually out of town right then. And I do remember that weekend, Rachel kept saying, oh, we should have Chris over. We should do this. And this was very out of character for because she would sometimes say, we spend too much time with them. That morning, I should back up a little bit and say, before the neighbors come over, I remember we were out swimming before kids woke up in the pool and we started messing around in the pool a little bit and then went to the bedroom and

finished all this and I noted because the messages I was reading that day were them two talking back and forth about how he should come over and have sex with her in our pool. Oh, what? She had that conversation a couple hours after we actually did that. Daniel. So when you see these messages, what do you think? Because I feel like I would short circuit. I was close, but I wanted to keep reading.

And I see them sending nudes back and forth. I recognize some of the nudes that she sent as one she had also sent to me. I see them making plans to meet up and hook up. I have nest cameras, one over the garage, in the front door, and the back door. And she's giving detailed directions on how he can get past the camera. If you start in the neighbor's yard, you come up to the side, you slink around this wall, all up in the garage. I saw messages where she was going to go over there. And he said, be sure to come to the gate, come to the back door because I have a doorbell camera, but not a backdoor camera.

and three years worth of messages. Three years? The first message was not their first message together because that one was, oh, why didn't we discover this app ages ago? This is way easier to communicate. Oh, my God. My God.

How old are your latest twins again? So they are eight or nine. Okay. So I am just filled with rage. I knew she'd been cheating on me. I never, ever once suspected it was with Chris. We went on vacations together. We did everything.

And I will tell you, in all honesty, it would have hurt less, and she had an affair with my actual brother. That's how close we were. Who are you more upset with? Him, I think. Yeah. And I will say, when I talked about us being a tight-knit circle, I was not kidding. What do you do?

So I am just so full of rage. I don't know. to do with it. And I have to sit there and it takes them about an hour to get back. And I'm just sitting there with this for an hour waiting on them. And so I ask the neighbor if the kids can go hang out at his house for a little while so I can talk to Rachel when they get back. And don't say why, but he says, yeah. They come back and the neighbor goes across street. The kids do. Rachel comes in. She saw, I was standing with the phone next to me at the counter and I saw a look in her face. And I just immediately said, so how long? And she said, what are you talking about?

I said, how fucking long? And she goes, when it goes, how long have you been fucking Chris? And her jaw drops and everything, and she's stammering and won't give me an answer. And I said, I just found three years worth of messages. And she goes, yeah, it's been three years. She admits to what she's getting caught on. Yes, exactly. I try to call bullshit on it.

She sticks to it. And I'm like, all these questions. And I am screaming, but I'm not anything. I mean, yeah, how you would expect. Yeah. And you're allowed. But I'm full of rage. This is brand new.

And I'm trying to ask questions. I'm all this. And she's like, oh, yeah, it happened twice. And I said, the hell it did. I see more than that. Yes. And then she'll walk it back. And then later it was five times.

And then she settled on three was the story she was going to stick with. And I'm like, at first it was two, then it's five minutes three. I don't believe it. It doesn't matter. Right. It really doesn't. And right then and there, we're about two hours into this. conversation and I tell her to get your shit and get out of the house and I gave her about five minutes

to collect some clothes and I said go to your aunt's house do something I don't care what you do where you go out that is exactly what I said and she did and I said right now I'm going to tell the boys that something came up with your aunt and you need to go help her and you're going to spend the night said tomorrow you're going to come back I packed some more stuff up for her I'm starting to get an idea and sense about the money because as I'm loading your closet, I kid you not, I pack six laundry baskets with shoes. Okay, I feel very called out right now. Well, McKenzie, if you can afford them, that's fine.

There is a difference. But I pack her clothes, her shoes, her makeup and stuff like that, and she does go move in with her aunt. This was on a Sunday. I just called in and took the next week off of work. We were broke naturally, but I did some research on Monday. I needed a divorce lawyer. I found one.

And I told him this is a good end. Your first divorce was finalized, right? Or was it not? It never became finalized because we didn't show up for that 90 day after you filed. We filed, but we didn't appear. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. I'm not going to do that this time around. We actually own a house now.

There's going to be custody of the kids and all this. So I find one. I think I told him it was going to be a non-contested. I'm going to dictate all the terms to this. And we need to get my soon-to-be ex-wife to sign this. How much is it? And they told me it was like $2,500 retainer. Like a lawyer, they wouldn't give me a price.

But I called my dad and said, I don't like borrowing money. I really, really and truly don't. But I explained to him. He met me within an hour with the money. And... Dude, call Chris. Be like, excuse me, you owe me at the very least. Yeah.

Actually, I never called Chris. Really? I thought about it, and I thought about calling Chris's wife because she's a friend of mine. And we maintained a friendship throughout the time. She was out of town at a family reunion, out of state. And I was on the fence. I don't want to call her and ruin her trip. I also don't want her to not know and so on and so forth.

I got talked out of calling her, and she found out by the time she got back. But I didn't call them. I didn't confront them because it wasn't going to end well. How did she find out? He told her a half truth and half the story. She never reached out. I'd given word through others like, hey, I want to talk to her. She's still my friend.

I want to fill her in. I want to do all this. It was just clear that she didn't want to. She accepted whatever and they are still married. Wow. This is five years later. They moved out of state. She made him quit his job be a stay-at-home dad, wasn't allowed social media,

wasn't this, wasn't that. And then they eventually packed up and moved out of state. He actually sent me a very, very long apologetic text about six months later. It took that long. The thing is, at least he apologized. Rachel had still yet to do so. Well, she wasn't sorry. There was no apology ever going to talk about that.

Well, so here's the thing. After a few weeks, I've already filed this. And I told her, said, we're getting divorce. I'm keeping the house. I'm going to have full custody. said you'll have on paper the every other weekend kind of typical. I said, I'm not going to hold you to that. You can have them more often.

We'll do shared back and forth. But I want on paper that I have custody. Yeah. There's no child support due. I will keep their insurance on them. I will pay for everything. I'm already making considerably better money, you know, better money than I had ever made up to that point.

Yep. Yep. And this is how it's going to go. And at first, it's like, why would I ever agree to that? and all that. But some back and forth, and I just said, this is how it's going to go, period.

And on most all divorce papers, it says reasons for divorce is irreconcilable differences. I had them put infidelity on there. I had them write it on there. Infidelity. Yep. Yep.

Yep. And it mentioned it was her. 100% I said, it's going to be on there. A couple weeks goes by and she writes me some long letter and it was almost an apology without actually uttering the words,

I'm sorry. And how much she fucked up. and this and that and all of this. A lot. And she wouldn't blame me for never talking to her and hating her and all this stuff. And at the end of it, she phrased it. Funny these nights you get lonely, feel free to hit me up. I'm sorry.

What? Gross. Almost verbatim. That actually fucked with my head. That actually fucked with my head a little bit because I knew there would be lonely. I would this and I would that. You've had that before. I had that before and I will tell you now that part of me was excited.

about going out there and dating and doing all these things. I've never really done that. I've never got to date. But also, that was a lack of self-confidence. The last first date I had was in 1999 at this point. And we're in the year 2022. And I had not been on a first date since 1999. The other thing, to be honest, I wanted to lose weight. I had a goal in my mind. If I lose weight, I'll be more attractive. I'll find somebody quicker. I'll find a user, whatever it is. I just knew it would boost my confidence. So I was like, okay, I need to do that. I had a number I wanted to lose, and that was weighing on me. And then she started getting wishy-washy about what she was going to sign. So I kind of let her back into my life a little bit, let her come over. But in her mind,

I was giving us a second chance. Truth be told, I manipulated the situation and got my way. I got everything in the doors. I got the house. I got the kids. I got everything. She had the clothes she walked out the door with and lived with her aunt and that was it and I feel no guilt or remorse about that whatsoever it was like for your kids a lot of that yeah yes well and if I left her the house it would been foreclosed on within six months anyway guys have all the shoes she got and that's when I find out in that same brief period keep mind I have no passwords to anything I don't have the bank I don't have anything obviously I open up a new bank account I start logging in I log into the mortgage company because it's like, okay, it's about time to be two.

We owe the mortgage company $18,000. That she? Because her shoes? She hadn't made a payment in seven months. Oh, my. Oh, go. Wait, seven months. She hadn't made a payment in seven months,

and this is how long after you found out about the affair? Weeks. Oh, okay. So it was just not paying. Nope. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. And like I said, part of my fault in this is not following up. They were periods on that.

That I'd get the phone call from the mortgage company. I'm like, hey, and it's spam so you don't answer. You just, you know, who it's from the voicemail. And I say, what's going on with this? And oh, it was this or was that? I'm like, are we current? Because, of course we're current. I made the last one two days late.

That's why they call blah, blah, blah. But we're current. She's been telling me we were current. Wow. Oh, my God. Most of that period was during COVID, and that's the only reason they didn't foreclose on the house because they weren't allowed to foreclose on people during COVID.

Uh-huh. I worked all through COVID, just so you know, worked the entire time. So I didn't miss a single paycheck. I had to, at that point, file what was called a forbearance. So they took that $18,000, tacked it on the end of the note, and I could just start making my payments going forward.

And that's the only reason we got to stay. Oh, my God. She had been telling me the whole time that that was good, and that wasn't. I confronted her with that. And I'm like, what the hell? You told me it was current. And she's like, oh, I know, I have a problem.

I shop on Amazon too much. And I'm like, okay, you shop on Amazon too much. What do you buy? What have you bought that's worth $18,000 in the pay? I don't, I see Amazon here every day. Yes, but it's normally small stuff. Daniel, we have Amazonnesia. Well, that's exactly what she told me,

because sometimes I'll scroll in the phone in the middle of the night when I'm asleep and buy stuff and not realize it. That's me! I would be like, I want to see the Amazon account right now, and I would want to go through everything. I never did. That was one of two financial bombshells. Oh, man.

The other was a few weeks before this all happened. We'd had a really nasty hellstorm come through town. and we don't park in the garage there in the driveway. Well, they got beat the hell in this rainstorm. I had made an insurance claim, filed and got them both looked at and turned it over to Rachel that point. I put her down as a contact because I work all the time. I'm not going to answer the phone when I'm working. And she would take it.

She normally did that kind of thing. Well, time goes by. She tells me that we got denied. We have full coverage. How do we get denied? And she's like, oh, I've been on the phone with them for hours. And she would do her thing. Well, if you don't think I'm doing it well enough, you feel free to call them yourself or whatever.

So it's like, okay, fine, I trust you, whatever. A few weeks after, when I find out this bombshell about the house, I go outside of my truck and it's awful. I'm calling the insurance company. I'm like, you know what? I'm fed up with this. Well, sir, we sent you a check for $6,500 a month ago. She forged my signature on it and deposited it.

And you had no idea? Mm-mm. So at that point, can you press, like she stole from you? I could, but I just held on to that for a little while. If I ever need ammo for something, I'm going to. But I'm finding all this out. And then meanwhile throughout this time, I download Bumble and create my account. And I wait until I have a few matches and I'm talking to people.

A couple weeks go by. And I finally match with somebody that I'm going to go out on a date with. And I do. And it is my first time to go on a first date this millennia. So how did that feel? I was terrified. I was terrified. Now, we talked for days.

And we got a long time. I could talk to her and that wasn't the problem. It was just I have, and I say the first time to go on one, it is my first time to go on a date as an adult period ever. I wasn't old enough to drink the last time I went on a date with somebody. So I was nervous, but she was a great woman and it went fantastic. Oh, okay, Bumble. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Bumble saved the day.

That helped me. I had talked to a friend and they're like, do this one because the woman has to start the conversation, all that. And it's not me, just like, God, I don't even have pickup lines other than the cheesy joke ones. you tell people as jokes. So it takes some of that pressure away for me. Totally. I like Bumble a lot. I do too. And we went on to date with her and I will tell you, I knew I wanted to remarry. I am a family person. I want to be married. She did not. She'd already been divorced twice and was very clear. She didn't want to get married. And that was fine. I had no problem. There's no pressure.

I just met you. So it's not like, that's a deal breaker. In my mind, you know what? I'm going to deck this woman throughout the summer and then we'll just amicably, go our separate ways and I'll move on or whatever. It was. It's a healthy rebound. It was a very healthy. And she knew exactly where I was at. I had talked to her on our very first date. We sat there for hours at dinner and I told her this is my first date and all of this stuff. And she was exactly what I needed at the time. Yeah. And eternally grateful for that. And it was going well. Then something very unfortunate happened from there. We'd been together for about three months. And during that time period, Noah passed away. No. So obviously unexpected. It was a vehicle accident. I'm so sorry.

Daniel. Thank you. And this was three years ago now. We just passed the third anniversary of that. So obviously goes without saying changes absolutely everything in the world. Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, my God. Thank you.

Everything had been going well. I was at her house that night that had happened and find out the next day and all that. that. And I sent her text. I'm like, hey, something really, really terrible happened just so you know, I'm not going to be in contact for the next couple of days. Just wanted to give you heads up. A couple days go by. And I essentially ended the relationship right then. She was beyond understanding and would occasionally, you know, hey, can I send you some food? Got to do something. She was fantastic with it. But that day we found out there was an accident and we weren't sure where we was at. So Rachel was over and we're calling and we're trying to find out. And we find out, we find

hospital that we think he's just at and we'd go up there and found out that he had actually passed. And in the moment, I didn't feel right sending Rachel home by herself. Despite everything, none of that mattered. And nothing else mattered at the moment. So I'm like, you know what? Stay here tonight. Stay here with the boys. And we'd actually drag their mattresses off their bed into the living room, make a giant pallet. So I'm like, you know what, we'll do that. And there's just room for all of us there. We'll have the boys between us. That helps with that situation. And we did this over the next few nights. This involved in notifications. You have to make the arrangements and all of that.

So we're at each other's side for several days, the days and weeks that followed. Unfortunately, that turned into us getting back together again. Well, Daniel, I mean... Because now you're going through something together. Yes. That kind of trauma I can't imagine. And a lot of people can't. I feel like you guys at the time were the only two people who knew what you were going through. Right.

Absolutely. So it's understandable. It's regrettable because I know what I was doing to the kids. On again, off again, to kids who just want their parents to be together. But it turned into another one of those. I knew this was a mistake when it was happened, but we were there for each other. It was there was a comfort level to it. There was all of those things.

You both understood and no one else was going to understand what you guys were going through together. Yes. And throughout it, I'm here with the boys and I can be with them. And I just, like I said, despite everything, I didn't feel right. Just you go home and be alone. Yeah. And that's really what started it. Yeah.

Some months go by, and I don't even remember how many to be honest with you, and it kind of gets that point where, as far as relationship and everything, I need to move on with that part of my life and be done. During that period, had that accident not happened, I had actually felt very, very good. I knew this wasn't the woman I was going to be with forever, but I felt good. And in my mind, I knew I was not going back to Rachel, come hell or high water.

There's nothing in the world. I felt good about that. I knew I was done with her forever. Obviously, you can't foresee this, and this changes it. And then out of the blue, I get a message. And to preface it a little bit, I like to play poker. I play poker a fair amount. And I have got a buddy. I've had to form all new friends now because there was a horse. I lost my entire circle of friends. But I've got a buddy that hosts a poker game that I go to on the very, very regular. And there was a dealer that would come out there and deal for the game sometimes. that I'd met her a handful of times, thought she was cute. We had great banter we'd talk. When you're at a poker table, you're sitting there for hours on end. So you're talking and everything. Well, out of nowhere, she actually texted me and asked me if I was going to beat a particular game on Monday night. And it's the game that I go to.

It wasn't that game. It was a different one that I go to almost every Monday. I'm like, yeah, as a matter of fact, I am. And she goes, oh, well, cool, I'm going to be there. And we'll finally get to hang out when I'm not working. I'm like, oh, this woman's actually asking me. She's pursuing me. Aw, I love that.

I did too. It just was this great feeling because that's never happened to me. I'd always been married, so this is unique. This is cool. I really like it. And we went to that poker game and it was a weeknight game. So it's one that probably ends at 10 o'clock and it happens to be at a bar. And we went up to staying at that bar and talking until we closed the bar out.

And it fitted off and thought it was great. So the very next day I broke up. with Rachel for the final time. Well, because now you're confident. Once you realize that you are wantable, then it's easy to let go of what you had because you feel for so long that, oh, no one's ever going to want me again. But once you see that it's possible, then it's easier to let go. Absolutely.

Absolutely. It was honestly a feeling I had never felt. Yeah. I get that. How did it go breaking it off with Rachel? So it took a week to do. I told her and then she's like, oh, let's come back tomorrow. And it was, I think, Friday, I go back out with the poker dealer again.

She had to call me. Rachel did because one of the kids was not feeling well. And she needed some medicine from Walgreens. Well, Rachel never has money for anything in the world. So it was some of the siblings. I had to buy it. Oh. Yes, she had shoes.

Shoes, but not medicine for the kids. And I'm on this date, but it's getting close to being over. This is our first actual date. We had just gone out to dinner. and I took her home. So I went to Walgreens and I drop it off at Rachel's house and then leave and go home.

The next morning, I come over to end it for final. And she's like, I know you're seeing somebody. You're wearing your date shirt. And I'm like, Daniel, you have a date shirt. I should have known.

Apparently. I love it. I had wore it on both of the first dates I'd ever been on. Guys are so easy like that. And she knew about the other woman I had been dating up until that point, knew I broke it off, so she was aware of that. And during all of this same time period when I'm finding out about the financial loss and

the irresponsibility with money and how many different times she had cheated on me, and my daughter is just sharing all these different things. There was also a period of time that right after we'd gotten back together, I told you that she had a beater of a car from a tote-the-note place. I went to go get her a new one. Well, I had to do a little bit of work to be able to save up a little more down payment to go get a nicer vehicle. But we knew we only need something for a few months.

And then we thought our daughter, Lily's car didn't have much time on it. So we bought this and the thought was, okay, you'll drive it for three months. It was a very low payment. And then we will let Lily take over the payments over this in a few months when we go get you a nicer car. Now she has an upgraded car. Everybody gets an upgraded car. And we did that. And we got her car a few months later.

Lily loved the car. She took over since it was a buy here pay here kind of place. And it was a literal, you have to go there to make the payment. It was something like $150 a week was the payment. So Lily would bring her mom the cash every week whenever it was due. And then Rachel would go and make the payment. And we do this for some time. I think it was a two-year note.

Rachel might have drove it for six years. So it was about 18 months left on it. And it got to the point where she was down to her final three months of payment. She'd been talking about it. She was excited, happy. She was about to own this car outright. And she gets up to go to work one day and walks outside, and the car's not there. Where is the car?

Oh, God. Oh, God. It got repoed. Oh, my gosh. So she calls you probably in tears. Yes. Rachel had not made a single one of those payments. She took the money from Lily and did not make the payments.

That baby was giving her money. And she, what was she doing with the money? So I've never been able to figure this out. And this was a good couple years before. we eventually get divorced. And I remember Lily came over with a boyfriend because those two had been arguing over the phone and I'd been staying out of it because I had a little to do with the money.

I hate to say it, but I really didn't. So I just trusted her to handle it. And she comes over one night, Lily does, with the guy she was dating at the time who happened to have been working the bank or something. So good with money. And she came over and it's like, here's where I give you money.

She was like, I've Venmoed you sometimes and here's the record. And then other times I've done this. and she had a spreadsheet with everyone, because she had missed one or two, not going to lie, but did eventually catch up, but she had a very detailed record of it. And we were all sitting at the table. She was going over this,

and she'd brought this boyfriend for support because she admits she's not that good with money or this and that. And I am a numbers person, so I'm just doing this in my head, and I'm keeping up with it. But throughout this whole period, Rachel's like, you didn't do that? You didn't.

Just had this compelling story and all this and how it didn't. So she's denying that she was paid from Lily? vehemently and I'll be honest with you I hate it but it got to the point where I'm like okay Lily your irresponsibility is not our fault you didn't pay this you should have done this you clearly didn't because why in the hell would my wife be lying about this and Lily left in tears she had new car she was three months away from having it paid off she has no money for down payment on a new one she's been paying she's been stolen from and it was only a couple years later were divorced and Lily started talking to me about it and she's like, you know I made every one of those

payments and I was just heartbroken at that time. I'm like, my God, I know that now and I cited with your mom. I am so sorry. She threw away thousands and thousands of dollars on this. But that's your wife. Of course you're going to cite. Like you. I felt like it was my obligation. She was good at what she was doing. She was good at convincing you and gaslighting you. Very. Very. So after the divorce, I had my own bank account and was getting control of my money and depositing and watching it. At this point, I'm making the same salary I'd been making for about two years prior and realized after about three months that I was able to pay every one of my bills, buy groceries, take the kids out almost every week and entertain them, do stuff, and put money in a savings account.

So where was it all going? I have no idea. We had never, ever had a savings account, not once up until that point. And three months in, I've got more in savings than I've ever had. in my entire life and every one of my bills was paid on time and early. And I confront her. She, well, you just don't know how expensive it was. I'm like, no, I'm doing it now on one salary. And I know exactly how expensive everything is and could just never ever get her to own up to it, to admit it, to tell me where the money went. So we have no idea where she spent all this money or how she got y'all so far behind. No. And I know the little things like $10 at Starbucks every day adds up and all this, but it doesn't get you $18,000 in debt.

No, that's a lot. I think there's a lot about what she was doing on her own time that we'll never know because she is convincing herself a lie. Yes, I have one more big bombshell. Oh, my God. Okay, we're ready. So I told you, I've been dating that poker dealer for a while and the whole family loved her and everything at first, but it got to the point where the kids didn't love her.

and I didn't really see it going anywhere. And I actually ended that one. But it was, again, just like that first relationship, it was what I needed. I had a blast for six or seven months. Sure. She was fun, everything. I needed it, but it was time to move on. I went back on to Bumble.

And I spent a few weeks on it, made some connections, went on a few dates, until I actually wound up meeting the woman that I'm now married to. And as a matter of fact, we've been married tomorrow will be one month. Oh my God, that's a great. Congratulations. Thank you so much. And I will tell you that I would do things differently, but all of the shitty things that happened to me

got me where I'm at now, so I don't regret them. I love my life, my wife. I am so happy. My five kids grew to eight. Yes, five of whom live at home every day and the others are grown and whatnot. You have new babies. I do another set of twins.

No, what? Shut up! year old twins. Crazy. So when you met, I guess, tell us the rest of the bombshells if there are more things to tell us about Rachel, but then I want to hear how you made this relationship turn into marriage, healthy marriage. So I met Selma online, who I am now married to.

We'd been together for almost a year, and I'd already proposed. Then we knew we were going to move in. We had actually timed it a relatively long engagement because we wanted to get married right before spring break so that we could go on a honeymoon and know the kids were taking care of and didn't need to get taken to school. Cute. During that time period, we both had her own houses and we sold them so we could buy a new house.

Oh, you both were able to sell your houses. That's awesome. We were able to sell her houses. Now, I knew I was going to get hit for that $18,000. Yeah. That was going to come off. But luckily, I bought a house in a good part of town when the market was lower. I was going to make a huge profit.

She was making a good profit on hers. I knew I was going to make a huge profit. We sold it. My house was on the market for six hours. And I sold for both asking. Nice. And get the paperwork and everything. And they tell me how much my check was going to be. And I'd already done the math.

I knew what I owed. I knew what it was. I can subtract these fees and this. I had a general idea. It was smaller by $42,000. What? Apparently a couple of years prior, Rachel had gotten $42,000 behind on the mortgage and never told me and had filed a

forbearance and forged my signature on that paperwork. And I took a $42,000 hit on the cell of my house that I did not know what's coming. Are kidding me? I wish I was. Oh, my God. So the notary that notarized it was her cousin's husband. Did you sue them? Are we suing them?

Are we calling the cops? What are we doing? No. So she would absolutely be thrown in jail in due time. Selma talked me out of it. It wouldn't do anything for the kids to have their mom in jail. Very mature. Did come in handy.

Oh, that's levered for sure. Lily had given me advanced warning that Rachel was going to the Attorney General's office to file child support. Go ahead, bitch. I have custody. They live with me. You sign the paperwork saying this, so she didn't want me to reveal her confidence. But what it did was it gave me heads up. I'm calling lawyers.

I'm talking to people while I'm waiting on this letter to come in. I get my ammo. The first thing they tell me is when you get this, you're going to file for. child support on her because I can't believe she's not paying you child support. So I finally get the letter from the AG and I give Rachel a call. I said, so you want to explain this letter. Well, I just think it's not fair that you're making all this money and you're doing this well and I have to suffer and I can barely afford to feed the kids when they are over here. So I think you're due. So I said, okay, that's fine. And I told her, I go, this is what's going to happen next.

you are either going to have this reversed by the end of this week, or I'm going to go ahead and pay this deposit with the lawyer. They are going to file this. You're no longer going to have the kids every other day like you do now. You're going to every other weekend. I'm filing child support on you. And by the way, do you remember this insurance check and this forbearance letter that you forged my signature on? I've already checked the statute of limitations.

It's not up on either of those, and I'm going to have them filed at the beginning of next week. And would you know it within three days? I got a letter from the AG saying the case had been dropped. Period. What did you know it? Don't even try. Oh, be darned. How nice of her.

Not only that, but on the paperwork, she wrote that she had custody of the kids. Also, you lied to the attorney general. And that's an easy one to prove. And that's like a felony. That's like a felony. Oh, my God. You could have a few years on the statute of limitations on all of that. I was about to say you still have time on the statute of limitations.

I do. And I've got documentation. I was trying to keep that. I mean, you were kind of smart to be like, I know this might come in handy. I don't trust that you're just going to walk away. And anybody who says anything like, oh, that's kind of shitty. You would hold that over her head. Hell yeah, because clearly I need a bullet in the chamber.

It's so obvious that she is the villain in this story. Who does she think she is? So one thing that I haven't mentioned is about three years ago, Lily made Rachel myself grandparents for the first time. Oh. Have the sweetest little granddaughter. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

Lily had actually moved out of state before having the kid, which was just absolutely awful. My first grandchild out of state, and I barely get to see her. And she came and spent a couple weeks with me when she was old enough flight, six weeks and all this. And I flew over there to see her. But when she was almost two, Lily said she was ready to move back home. So I flew out there to her, rented a U-Haul, and drove her back home. That was an odd situation. My granddaughter's dad didn't really know it was happening.

She needed to get away from him and all of this. It was a little contentious. But they moved back and over the course of that first year, Lily's flying my granddaughter over there to him every couple of weeks, letting her stay for a week and then flying her back and forth and stuff like that. She had been trying to talk him into moving to New Mexico with us. And he had no family ties where they're at, but he was just on the fence with it back and forth and just didn't seem to want to do it.

and then one day Lily was having the conversation with him over the phone again. Like, hey, I'm not liking this flying back and forth. It's tough. Where are you at on moving to New Mexico? And that's when he said, oh, yeah, I'm coming next week. I'm moving in with your mom. No. Boy, oh, boy.

Why? So, first of all, not only did Lily not know this, apparently those two have been in communication the entire time. They chat on Instagram. They text. They everything. Are they sleeping together? Oh, God. I am only about 90% sure, yes.

Lily and Selma and all of us, yes, about 90% sure. And what the fuck is Lily doing about that? She is living. So before that, Lily lived with Rachel for about six months, and it became insufferable. She couldn't stand it. She doesn't have the best relationship with her because she's pissed off at what she did to me. And Rachel was always on her about rent. And who charges their child rent?

But she was and always on her and it's late, and you ate my this, you drank my Dr. Pepper, you did this. And it got to the point where she was just, I can't take it anymore. It would be cheaper to go get my very own apartment. She did. And then when she found out that he was coming over and was going to be moving in, she also found out it was going to be rent free. Oh, my God. Her own daughter had to pay. For sure, she's sleeping with him.

As McKenzie likes to say, the audacity. The audacity. I don't know where she got at Odazzo. She got an adage. $13,000. She forgot she ordered it in her sleep, but she needed to go return it. Yeah.

You guys solve the mystery for me. There it is. Disgusting. Oh, my God. I'm so sorry for your family. He was a couple years older than Lily, but still a lot of years younger than Rachel. What?

I'm shocked. And he lived there for close to a year. So he don't live there. no more? No, he recently got himself an apartment with a new girlfriend. Oh, oh, someone Oh. Ironically enough, I never could figure out how Rachel was affording to live in a rental house as an opposed to an apartment for so long, but shortly after he moved out, she did wind up losing that house and just recently had to move back into another apartment. So maybe it was rent-free, wink, wink, but then a little dry begging happened where you're like, oh, no, I can't make the

payment and then he's like, well, I'll do this month. All righty. So Lily doesn't have a great relationship with her, understandably so. The youngest twins are the only ones that do. The older twins and Noah, when it first happened, did not speak to her for months. Oh, man. And truth be told, it was only because they saw us getting back together that they started to have any relationship with her at all.

Right. But even now, it's still very strange. Well, I imagine when you were getting back together and saw that happening, that must have felt like you were maybe doing the right thing even though it felt bad. Yeah, that's what I was about to say. Oh, at least I'm bringing this family back together in some way. But I also felt like I was doing a disservice. The younger ones are a little too naive to it all. And that's their mom. And I wouldn't take anything from the world. So they don't have that opinion of her yet. But she's lucky that you care. And looking back now, do you think that she did take advantage

knowing that you would cave because you're such a nice guy or whatever? Without question. Like she knew that you'd given because, oh, He's a nice guy. I would give her money during the off periods and when we were off. It was like, oh, I want to take the voice to the movies. Can I have 100 bucks? And I would do it. She would find a way to make you feel bad about it as opposed to thanking you.

Yeah. And I'll admit, I told her throughout all of this, I was miserable. There had been plenty of time throughout the years I thought about I want a divorce. I want to be done with her. But I wouldn't because of the kids. And frankly, because I was afraid I'd lose everything. I don't want to start over. And I didn't know I could go as well as it did.

And I told her, you know what? through you running through all of my finances, you're keeping us in the poor house, you're yelling all the time. I would have never divorced you. I would have stayed married for the rest of our life just because that's who I am, not because I wanted to, not because I loved her, but that's just who I was. I'm like, you finally found that line that I wasn't going to allow you to cross. And that is the only reason I am where I am now, which is obviously a thousand times better of place. And I'm so glad it happened. I wish I didn't lose all my friends and my best friend in the world and all that in the process. but outside of that, man, I couldn't be happier.

Now that you're there, tons of people do the same thing or feel the same way where it's like, I will put up with so much for my children, for my family. How much should you sacrifice of your own happiness to keep your family together? I guess if your kids were in the same situation, what would you tell that? I would give somebody else different advice than I gave myself and be happy. Even my younger kids, I've heard from my parents and other, they talk about how much happier dad is and how much better they're, life is and how happy they are. And is there that piece of them that want mommy and daddy to be

married still and be a family without a question? But the happiness shows they know I'm happier. They're happier. It's a little difficult going back and forth of two houses. But I don't think they would have it any different way either. So don't wait until it's too late. Don't wait forever. It's two bad options to either stay together and be unhappy. That'll be hard for the kids or to separate and find happiness. That will be hard, but you're right. I think that's so real. They see you happy and that makes all the difference. You know. Yeah. No matter how young they are too. Yeah. And they're 14 now. They adjusted so much better. I was worried because they used to have both parents at home and I've always gone to work early in the morning and mom would wake them up and take

them to school and here they are in fifth grade and they live with me and it's like, you know what? I have to leave before they have to wake up. I'm going to have to rely on them to wake themselves up, and I can get their lunch ready the day before, but get to the bus stop and I was terrified. It would never happen. And those first few days it had to happen, I went late to work and I would go around the corner and park and just to spy and make sure they got off. You know, I want to make sure they get the bus doing research on my children. And they took to it from day one and never had a problem and did it for years. And now we're back with another family union. We have all that again. Someone may not be their mom, but they live in a fan.

family home again. And we have all of those advantages. The only difference is it's a happy home. And someone's talking about it. What a difference that makes. It does. And someone talks about it all the time. All of the kids, my kids, her kids, they'll see us standing in the kitchen and kissing or something. They'll do it with kids and ew, gross or get a room and everything. And she makes the comment. I so want my kids to grow up on a house where they're saying, ooh, gross, because we're so affectionate as opposed to would y'all stop screaming. Yes. Yes. That's so true. Yes. Oh, my gosh. that makes me so happy. I have a question about when you first started dating again, in general, and also

Selma specifically, because we talk a lot about how when men go on dates and say like, oh, my ex was crazy. Like, she was such a bitch. It's kind of like, all right, well, there's two sides to every story. And usually that's the red flag. Yes. You have a crazy ex. How did you communicate that in a way that didn't make you a red flag?

So I was very aware of that. And when you're having those conversations on a first date, first of all, I'm someone that'll turn anything into a joke if I can. And it's like, hey, why are you single? What happened? I would say, oh, well, we had a disagreement. She thought we had an open marriage. I didn't. We couldn't seem to come to terms on it.

We split up. Good line. And I would say, look, I don't want to sound like that guy. But she cheated on me with my best friend for years and years. It wasn't the only time. And that was it. And I wouldn't get too much deeper on first or second or even third or fourth dates. Now, some and I are closer.

And when we met, we formed a really strong bond. We both knew we were it for each other within weeks. And so I was able to share more. But I led with that. And she has not as drastic. She had a very rough patch of it, too. Her story's not that much better with her ex-husband. And I would lead with, I don't want to sound like this guy.

But hey, here's what really happened to me in my life. And, yeah, she doesn't like Rachel anymore. than I do. Well, a couple things that you did that I'm like, oh, my God, checked such good boxes is like gave enough information at the beginning but waited until it was a little deeper in to go into it. And then also prepping a line, like preparing what you're going to say when that question is asked is good because it is a tough question. And the fact that you like had your joke, locked and loaded in a way that anybody was going to be like, oh my God, that's horrible that happened to you. But also you have a good attitude about it and are ready to move forward. Great

advice for getting back out there and telling her story. And then your wife was like, oh my God, I listened to this podcast called The Dating Detectives and I believe you because the shit happens. She really does. Thank you both for listening to me. She is such a huge fan of yours. And I'll admit, I was unaware of the show other than hearing it on her phone all the time. And when we get in the car, that's what pops on. She actually composed the initial email to you guys. She asked me if I'd be willing to do it. She composed it. I went through an edit. edited some stuff because she'd heard all the stories. And I was the first to admit, I was not the perfect husband and I will absolutely positively never claim to be, especially in those first

few years. I don't want anybody thinking I'm just giving my side. I'm obviously giving my side, but I like to think I take some ownership and probably even more than I've conveyed here, that I'm not without flaws and life could have been better for her at moments too, all of those things, but it doesn't change the events, you know? Conversations. And just doesn't change. justify the events. When I confronted her about that initial affair with Chris and, you know, her telling of it, he initiated it. He texted her.

I have been thinking about you. And she goes, at first I thought it was a trap. Like you were trying to test me. First of all, bullshit. I have no idea who actually initiated it. That's her version of it. And then she's like, I ignored it for a couple of weeks. Oh, good for you.

Do you want a gold star? Well, and I said, why didn't you tell me about it? She goes, he is your best friend. And I knew that would just crush you. Is it so fucking him was better? You can own accountability with flaws in a marriage, but nobody should be stealing money from you, stealing money from her own kid,

cheating on you repeatedly, specifically with your best friend. The list goes on. You've got quite a story. And I'm so happy for you, genuinely. And thank you for coming and sharing, and I'm so sorry about no one.

That is just crushing. And you and Selma, I'm so glad you have her. And also just being a, man coming to the dating detectives. We don't get a lot of men telling their story. And it's not that it doesn't happen. We debate why we don't get as many men telling their story all the time.

Is it because maybe women don't get caught as easily? Or maybe men are just not comfortable sharing. And I get that. But yeah, you sharing will definitely help other people be like, this guy sounds awesome and it happened to him. So maybe I'm not ashamed. I appreciate that. Thank you so, so much.

Thank you to your amazing wife and your kids. You guys have been through a lot, but you've held it together. They're lucky to have you. Well, thank you so much. I'm happy to be where I am at without a question. Is your wife there? We can give her a virtual hug. Goodbye.

Let me see. Here she is. I told you she wouldn't be far. We just wrapped up and what a fucking story. I'm devastated, but also thrilled because of what I'm looking at. So McKenzie had to just hop off to pick up Ryan, but we want to say thank you again for sending Daniel. Oh my gosh, you're so welcome.

I know that you're always looking for men, and I know that it will make a difference because there's not a whole lot of them. And also it's just such a whack-a-doodle story that you're like, he's making this up, but he's not making it up. A lot. Oh, I believe it. I'm going to be thinking about this all day.

There's so many things. Oh, we could talk for the rest of the day and not cover it all, I promise. I believe it. I believe it. But the fact that you guys are happy and okay and doing well. I unquestionably upgraded and don't regret any of it. I believe it. I believe it.

And what a green flag is. She's a Danny a Texan. Just named. I mean, I'm on the Patreon. I've listened to every episode on the regular pod and the patron. It's fine. It's, you know, whatever. Whatever.

It's no real deal. No, but seriously, thank you so much. I'm just glad that the stories. Help anybody. That's all we want. So thank you. So, okay. First of all, I'm so glad that he's happy.

I'm so glad. And I'm so glad. Daniel deserves to be happy. And we love his wife again. Thank you so much for encouraging him to talk to us. Don't you love her? I love her. And also she was like, and I got my cousin to listen and I got this other person to listen.

She is spreading the good word and I love that. And when you guys share, like, this is like I don't know if Daniel would have found us. And also like this was quite a dogfish story. Well, because it just kept going all. Like he really got taken advantage of for 20 years. And it started so young. I loved the way he was so honest about, like, I don't know if it's, women, we do it too. Like, we get dignitized.

We're like, we're going to just stay with this person because we're getting our needs met. But I don't know. It's something I think we are pretty hush, hush about. And I'm glad that he was like, I was 20. I just wanted someone to buy me beer and a girlfriend. And like, that's okay. He was so honest about it. She was like, I just wanted something to buy me beer.

It was very refreshing. And you can be that way and not. That doesn't mean you deserve any of this. No, yeah, of course. But I loved, I'll be honest, it was refreshing to hear his loyalty. Like, it seemed like he was loyal. Obviously, he didn't do everything perfectly, but he was, you know, kind of loyal. Well, let's talk about that.

I mean, so we talked a little at the end, but he was loyal. And at the end, there were things I think he said he would have done differently, such as staying for the kids. And this comes up all the time. Like, he literally called it an eight. year prison sentence. Oh. He was like, I'll just stay until this kid is 18 and just serve my sentence.

And that is, I mean, I haven't been in that situation. So I can't personally relate. But it does seem like it keeps coming up that like the happiness of a parent does more for children most of the time than staying in an abusive relationship. Right. I think it's hard to be a good parent who then has to make. a decision that you know will hurt your children. Yeah. Even though it's the right decision in the long run.

It's true. I hope you want your kids to have better than you did. There were so many moments. I mean, if anybody gets anything out of the story, I hope it's that like you, that lesson, and then also like know your finances, know your finances, know your finances, know your finances, which is so easier said than done.

He said as soon as she was out of the picture, I was paying things. I was it. I could afford everything. She kept saying we were broke, but we suddenly were not. And the only difference was she was gone. He's like, what are you talking about? Man, I got savings.

Like, this is legit. What are you doing? So I just was listening to another podcast. I've mentioned it on the show before, but I would like to give it a shout out again, not sponsored, although I would love to collab with them. It's called Money for Couples. Oh, yeah. You've talked about them before.

I love it. Remede is the host, and he is like a financial advisor. And it's literally couples coming on who are in. usually deep shit financially. But it's like couples therapy meeting financial assistance because it's so emotional. It's not just about the numbers.

It's often about the psychology. And in this case, obviously I think it would be a unique situation given that she is absolutely gaslighting, lying, and manipulating him and just stealing. She's stealing. But I only... I'm just bringing up the podcast

as a recommendation for anyone, who has difficulty talking about money, which I'm pretty confident is 99.9% of people. Like, they're such hard conversation. So he is my fave. And if you have other financial resources, let us know. Because that's like the ticket to freedom and security. And she did not make that easy.

I mean, where was the money going? Where was the money going? We still don't know. Amazonnesia, I have not heard you say. and that wrapped me up. I made a video of it. And I was like, looking out of the door and I was like, and the boys make fun of me,

they're like, what did you order? And I'm like, I don't remember. And they're like, you don't know what you ordered. I'm like, well, I do know what I order, but I don't remember what I ordered. Like, do you know what I mean? Yeah. And you're like, oh, yeah.

Here's the thing, McKenzie. You are a hardworking woman who is self-sufficient and can you spend your money when you have it. And that's allowed. She was a lying. So I loved every time you're like, hey, I'm like that. I was like, no, you're not, girl. Like you're allowed.

This is your money. You're working for it. Right. And like he was made to feel like he was never good enough because they didn't have enough. And God, she was just so manipulative. He talked about how like, yes, he even knew when she was gaslighting him, but he was like, after a while, what can you do? Like, what do you even do? Yeah.

I was thinking about that because I think it's easy to be like, well, you know they're lying to you. Why are you putting up with it? And it's like, because I've got shit to do. I've got kids to raise. I've got money to make. What do you expect me to do? Right. His best friend.

Oh, that was. It was interesting to me that he said, I would, I expected this from her, but not from him. And I thought that was very telling. Like I was like, oh, man, that's a hit for sure. I get it. Because didn't even expect it from his best friend. Like he was like her. Yeah.

But him? That was really. heartbreaking for me. I said it when he brought it up, but I was like I, my friends are so much more consistent and like non-negotiable in my life than my relationships. Like I, I know that. Not that I haven't had wonderful relationships and I expect that I'll find someone who feels like it'll be amazing forever, but I'm like, I know my friends are forever. Yeah. So to have that shaken. I can't imagine. And they'll break your heart in a different way. And I will say Daniel, the fact that he was like, I didn't even need to have a conversation with him. He's a bigger,

human than me. He was the bigger person in that scenario. I'd be like, excuse me, you're not leaving until I get a full explanation. Exactly. Do you want to talk about why we settle for what we think we deserve and what we can earn? Because he talked a lot about his confidence being a part of why Rachel stayed in his life. Yeah, which is, that's a very good point because, and many of us do this, many of us have done this and can relate to it. When you have this feeling of a lack of self-worth, which many, if not all of us have, at least a little bit, right? We as people do not have enough confidence in ourselves to be like, I am worth more than this. So we're willing to settle, right? but we're also willing to settle for what we're used to, which is our comfort.

And so it's like when you're a young age, like Daniel was really young when he meets his girl, right? So he's learning from her, from his very first relationship. This is how it goes. So that's what you know and you don't know what you don't know. But then over time, she starts to degrade his worth. And so over time, he starts to realize what she's giving him is exactly what he's worth. it's what he deserves. And so that's kind of, but I know,

and I know guys are different than girls in that way, but it's kind of not. Like we're kind of still, yeah, I'm glad he was open about feeling insecure about his appearance and his weight and dating after 20 years. Guys, too, they just don't talk about it as much. Yeah, and it's, it's, I,

there's also the scarcity mindset where you're just like, yes, this isn't good, but maybe this is my lot in life. Like, maybe there's just not a lot of, there's not a better option out there for me. And we do have to really work. I have to work on that. Like we all have to work on that. Also going back to the beginning and his love for the children,

he, from the beginning, he was like dad immediately to kids that weren't even his. And so he was already invested, right? So what do we call that? The sunk cost fallacy, right? Well, we've already put so much into this. I might as well stay. But when there's children, it's like the sunk cost fallacy now becomes, these are other humans that are counting on me for my love that I've given them.

And now I can't take that away from them, right? So now it's not just this sunk cost fallacy. Now it's I've involved these humans in my life and I've superimposed myself into their life. I can't let them go. And because he's so loyal in his character in general, you know, that's kind of what kept him on the hook was those kids. And good for him.

And I'm glad that it worked out. And I don't know that it always happens this way, but I'm glad that in this case, like her daughter, her kids, the truth comes out. Like they can still have love for their mom and recognize that dad, Daniel, is also a wonderful part of my life that went through a lot. Like, like, I hope that that is the case as much as it can be, but I know that's not always the case, but I'm glad it was in this instance. Like, the way she stole from her own daughter with the car payment, I was just like, over.

I would lose my, like, what kind of parent does that to their child? And then when their child's like, no, that didn't really happen. And someone else is defending them. And you're like, yeah, like, at least then be like, oh, look, that's my kid. It's the behavior of an addict as well. And I don't want to necessarily, I can't confirm that. But it does feel like there's, yeah, it doesn't justify it. But I saw a lot of that behavior coming out.

Oh, God. But I'm glad that I'm so. glad that he shared his story because, again, it just goes to show you that women are not the only ones who get dogfished. Men get dogfish too. Women can be liars and they can be con artists. So I'm grateful for Daniel. We also, the last thing, I mean, I'm Noah losing Noah's devastating. And that was, that's just so hard. And a tragedy like that obviously affects a relationship. It did bring them back together, understandably so, because who else knows what they're going through? And that's the one person you can connect with and say they know my heart.

They know my struggle. They really, yeah, that's hard. And if anybody's, I don't even have words. It's hard. Yeah. And you didn't, you don't do anything wrong by reconnecting with that person. Because in that moment, this is the only person who understands what you're going through because they are the other parent. Only you two are the parents, right?

So it's like, they get it. different kind of navigation. It's a different kind of navigation. You feel a little bit less alone because this person gets you and they're the only one who gets you. And so you cling to that comfort of even though it's, you know, what they've experienced together. This is still somebody that he can relate to. Wow. Daniel's amazing. Daniel. I'm so grateful for him sharing. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Really. Really happy for him now. Encourage your guy friends that they can share too. Obviously, anybody can share. We want to be. be a platform for anybody who needs it. But encourage,

encourage the fellas in your life that if they, if they need a platform, they can share here. And if you're new to us, I mean, we do have stories of all kinds at this point, all different relationship dynamics. I mean, we haven't had like a submit, maybe we have. We haven't had like a polycule type story, but you've followed some polyamorous situations in your cases. I've worked with pollies and the nudes. Oh, yes, you have. Wait, what was the name of that episode?

I'm looking it up so we can make sure we tell. Oh, I don't remember. Mackenzie Undercover in the nude. That doesn't sound like it implies something. All right, so if you haven't listened to it, go listen to McKenzie Undercover in the nude. Get your mind out of the gutter. Yeah, you fillies.

Anyway, we love you guys. Thank you for listening, as always. Happy three years of dating detectives? Yeah, happy three years. This is such a fun time. How exciting. I know. It's been crazy.

We love you. And as always, just your fan tuition. Or your men tuition. Or your men or your mom tuition. Or whatever. We don't care. Your fish tuition.