In this episode, I speak to a good friend of mine, Graham, who shares his story of how he and his wife went through a rough patch in their relationship and how he managed to come out the other side. We talk about how he dealt with the aftermath of the breakdown of their marriage and how it affected his mental health.
00:00:00.000So, for me, for example, really, if you look right back, probably personality-wise, we weren't the same.
00:00:18.520Our values were clearly very, very different.
00:00:22.980I like to be tidy, she like to be messy, that's fine, some people, either way, you know.
00:00:30.000She moved into me, with me, in Swindon, from Bournemouth, into one bed flats, so you have to be tidy, because I was literally, you trip over everything, you know, it's a point where there's a little bit of mess, but you've got to be mindful of stuff, you know.
00:00:48.100And there was just no, I suppose, we didn't believe in the same thing.
00:00:59.420And I tend, I bit a lot of it, and I think that then becomes, not just that, many different things.
00:01:11.880It becomes a habit to, to bottle things, bottle things that, trigger you, press a button, if you like, of anxiety.
00:01:26.600And here's the thing, that her family, I didn't recognise her family, well, to be fair, at the beginning, her mother wasn't exactly great towards me, because I was a guy who did everything from grassroots.
00:01:47.220I wasn't educated, and kind of looked her down at her nose at me.
00:01:53.960Her father was, well, I did exactly the same thing as Graham, so he kind of liked, respected me for it, as I thought.
00:02:00.760Her sisters were like, he hasn't even got a degree, and that was enough.
00:02:04.820Even when I went self-employed, her brother-in-law, in my garden, said, sorry, have I, sorry, have I gone too far?
00:04:09.760And it turned out that boyfriend was also living in Swindon, but she didn't tell me.
00:04:17.140Oh, so you think she was seeing him too?
00:04:19.280No, no, no, I don't think she was seeing him.
00:04:21.880She would tell me about her ex-boyfriend.
00:04:25.120And if I look back, what she would say, oh, apparently he abused her as well by talking down to her, or not treating her nicely, this and that and the other.
00:04:38.860And the things that she was putting against me, like, actually, it kind of makes sense.
00:04:42.720Like, this is like a repeating pattern.
00:05:05.420Okay, we call it sat-nav, sat-nav navigation.
00:05:09.400So she could get around Swindon, because, you know, when I'm not with her, she needs to get to certain places.
00:05:14.620And she said she didn't know anybody in Swindon, and never really came to Swindon, apart from to see her sister, because her sister happens to live in Swindon, to be fair.
00:05:25.580That was the only people she knew in Swindon.
00:05:27.600And then a week or two after, coming back from honeymoon, oh, yeah, that ex-boyfriend I told you about, he used to live there.
00:06:25.140Did you ever think about not, because of all the trouble you had to go through?
00:06:37.020There's a point where I didn't see him for four months, and I had to turn my heart into a swinging brick, because that was the only way I could get on every day.