JustPearlyThings - June 02, 2023


They Shamed Him for Not Having A Degree

Hosted by
Hannah Pearl Davis
Mentioned
Graham
Pearl EXPOSES This Fact About Modern Women You Would NOT BELIEVE What She Said

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

151.1

Word count

1,400

Sentence count

110

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So, for me, for example, really, if you look right back, probably personality-wise, we weren't the same.
00:00:18.520 Our values were clearly very, very different.
00:00:22.980 I like to be tidy, she like to be messy, that's fine, some people, either way, you know.
00:00:30.000 She 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.
00:00:48.100 And there was just no, I suppose, we didn't believe in the same thing.
00:00:59.420 And I tend, I bit a lot of it, and I think that then becomes, not just that, many different things.
00:01:11.880 It becomes a habit to, to bottle things, bottle things that, trigger you, press a button, if you like, of anxiety.
00:01:26.360 Right.
00:01:26.600 And 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.
00:01:47.220 I wasn't educated, and kind of looked her down at her nose at me.
00:01:53.960 Her father was, well, I did exactly the same thing as Graham, so he kind of liked, respected me for it, as I thought.
00:02:00.760 Her sisters were like, he hasn't even got a degree, and that was enough.
00:02:04.820 Even when I went self-employed, her brother-in-law, in my garden, said, sorry, have I, sorry, have I gone too far?
00:02:17.600 No.
00:02:19.480 But say to me, can anybody open a business?
00:02:21.960 You don't need any qualifications, anything like that.
00:02:24.800 But yeah, anybody can open a business, even you.
00:02:28.060 So, you know, there's triggers there, you go, actually, there was lots of stuff there going on, that I didn't see.
00:02:40.860 None of this sounds like anything crazy, though.
00:02:43.820 None of the, like, none of this sounds like anything that was that extraordinary.
00:02:48.080 If you look at it individually.
00:02:49.320 Right, like, none of these instances.
00:02:50.620 But then you can catenate it all.
00:02:52.060 Yeah, but that's what I mean, because a lot of the big criticism, because I don't,
00:02:58.060 how do I put this, I believe in the institution of marriage, but I just think the way it's set up today is insane.
00:03:05.800 And I don't know how, in good faith, I could recommend a guy does it, with, like, knowing what I, before I knew that.
00:03:11.600 But a lot of the criticism, like, from more of the, like, I'm conservative, so a lot of, like, the conservatives in my space will say,
00:03:18.160 well, why don't you just pick the right girl? 1.00
00:03:20.300 But, I mean, minus the toxic family, none of this is that crazy.
00:03:25.660 You know, like, a couple snide comments here and there, nitpicks, like, that sounds like normal relationship.
00:03:31.700 I mean, not the best relationship, but, like, that sounds like normal stuff that can happen in a relationship.
00:03:38.680 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:39.200 So, yeah, that's...
00:03:40.640 And here's the thing, if you haven't been in a relationship before, how would you know what's normal and what's healthy?
00:03:46.760 Was she your first relationship?
00:03:48.200 So it wasn't my first relationship, but she was, well, yeah, she was my first proper girlfriend.
00:03:51.560 Okay.
00:03:53.280 So do you feel like she, and I'm guessing she had more relationships before you?
00:03:58.980 Yeah.
00:04:00.020 I also found out the week after we got married, or got back off honeymoon, she had a boyfriend.
00:04:06.720 She was living in Bournemouth.
00:04:07.900 Right.
00:04:08.400 She moved to Swindon.
00:04:09.760 And it turned out that boyfriend was also living in Swindon, but she didn't tell me.
00:04:17.140 Oh, so you think she was seeing him too?
00:04:19.280 No, no, no, I don't think she was seeing him.
00:04:21.880 She would tell me about her ex-boyfriend.
00:04:25.120 And 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.
00:04:38.860 And the things that she was putting against me, like, actually, it kind of makes sense.
00:04:42.720 Like, this is like a repeating pattern.
00:04:45.940 So that's a similar.
00:04:47.440 And it turned out, she said to me, oh, yeah, I, so she said to me, she didn't know anybody in Swindon.
00:04:53.140 That's when she came to Swindon.
00:04:54.100 So I made sure she integrated my family and my friends, and got her a sat-nav, or, sorry, what do you call a sat-nav in America?
00:05:04.380 GPS.
00:05:04.960 Oh, okay.
00:05:05.420 Okay, we call it sat-nav, sat-nav navigation.
00:05:09.400 So she could get around Swindon, because, you know, when I'm not with her, she needs to get to certain places.
00:05:14.620 And 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.
00:05:25.580 That was the only people she knew in Swindon.
00:05:27.600 And then a week or two after, coming back from honeymoon, oh, yeah, that ex-boyfriend I told you about, he used to live there.
00:05:36.660 So I used to come to Swindon a lot.
00:05:39.200 Oh, so she lied to you about that.
00:05:41.200 Do you think this was her plan from the beginning?
00:05:44.620 What, to do what she did to me? 1.00
00:05:46.380 Yeah.
00:05:48.480 No, no, I don't believe it was, or at least not what I saw.
00:05:54.060 Do I look back and think, was this always going to happen?
00:05:59.520 I do think now, yes.
00:06:00.940 But I think a lot of it was more subconscious, as to actually her consciously doing it.
00:06:11.580 I don't think there was particularly a plan.
00:06:14.620 But I just think, there's a lot of subconscious things going on.
00:06:21.240 Why did you choose to fight for your son?
00:06:24.100 Because I love him with all my heart.
00:06:25.140 Did you ever think about not, because of all the trouble you had to go through?
00:06:37.020 There'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.
00:06:46.580 Because it's a little pressure.
00:06:56.360 I was like, why am I doing it?
00:06:57.600 Is this worth it?
00:06:59.200 It's just that self-doubt.
00:07:01.800 Not that he's not worth it, he's absolutely worth it.
00:07:03.900 I'd go bankrupt five times if I had to, to keep him.
00:07:07.060 I do, I spend five times the amount of money if I had to.
00:07:10.640 But it's that moment of where you, where you, where I was in this situation.
00:07:14.400 I'm saying you as a third person, sorry if I say you.
00:07:16.560 Um, and you realise how much is stacked against you, third person, stacked against me.
00:07:29.520 Um, and I was like, can I do this?
00:07:35.340 Can I do this?
00:07:38.080 And then just looking at photos, it was, no, he deserves this.
00:07:44.800 He deserves this.
00:07:45.760 And I always wanted, I always wanted to be a committed father anyway.
00:07:51.300 Um, there's a point.
00:07:52.660 And I spoke, so when I was in the contact centres, I spoke to a lot of fathers.
00:07:56.800 In fact, I was, no father spoke to each other when you first went in,
00:08:00.680 because they thought everybody was guilty apart from them.
00:08:03.000 Because you don't know who's guilty, who's not.
00:08:04.700 If you're not, I say you must be guilty of something, you know.
00:08:07.080 And I actually spoke to everybody, and the same story was going round.
00:08:11.820 Um.
00:08:12.100 The same story of the mother not.
00:08:14.840 Yeah.
00:08:15.760 Well, if I was in that situation, I don't know if I would fight, to be honest.
00:08:20.460 It's, it's actually very admirable that you did.
00:08:24.020 I, I used to really, um, think really low of dads that didn't, like, take the mom to court
00:08:30.940 and fight for their kids.
00:08:32.480 But, you know, the more I learn how at the drop of a hat, they can take you to court again
00:08:37.680 and claim abuse again.
00:08:39.480 I, I don't know if I would, honestly, if I was in your shoes.
00:08:44.680 Uh, if I had to go back to court, I would go back to court.
00:08:49.960 You know, it would, don't go wrong, it would be a difficult decision.
00:08:53.120 Um, but my son is worth more than that.
00:08:57.620 Um, and for me, he deserves better than that.
00:09:01.400 Um, I mean, I should have had 50-50.
00:09:09.680 I've been explained, it didn't happen.
00:09:11.100 But I, I, I couldn't have him not in my life.