Part 2: When I Fall In Love
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I'm Barbara Schroeder, and now, Episode 2 of Bad Bad Thing. This is Mark Ingenier's wedding video from October 23rd, 1993. Ingenier looks lovely. She's wearing an off-the-shoulder, long, white wedding gown, and a small veil that looks like a halo on her curly blonde hair. Mark is dressed in a traditional black tuxedo, the quintessential handsome young groom. Don't cry, dude, it's winter, and you're coming my way.

There's an old timeless saying that kind of captures the magic of moments like this when young couples are starting out. Here's how it goes. The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. Mark and Janair had all three of those things when they got married. Both were in their early 20s. They were building a new life together, madly in love, and hoping to start great careers after graduating from college. Their future looked so bright.

This is Shelly Bounds, Jannier's first and pretty much only childhood friend.

Shelly told me that Jenner was kind of a lonely kid from a small family and that growing up, Jenner was a collector of things like Barbie dolls and anything to do with birds, bird figurines and paintings. Jenner loved birds. Her favorite color was purple. Her favorite music was anything by the Carpenters, the group called the Dixie Chicks back then, and Motown music. She didn't have a lot of friends. She was always at my house rather than at her house.

There were moments, you know, with her being a little controlling, I think. You know, she would like to take control on how Barbie furniture was set up or how her room was or trying to tell me, you know, what I should do with my room or, you know, you should do this or you should do that. She was...

But again, she was so sweet. I just overlooked it. Do you think Mark was a good match for her? Absolutely 100%. I thought Mark was a good match for her. It was just, and I mean, that was just her, he was her life. He was her life. I'm the bride. They danced a lot. Janair was singing to him. Yeah, it was a good time. Just a young couple in love. Just a perfect match. You know, they just were perfect together.

Mark and Janair's first dance at their wedding was to the classic love song, It Had To Be You. Janair is gazing up at Mark and you see her start mouthing the lyrics, With all your faults, I love you still.

Only a few people at the wedding knew just how accurate those lyrics actually were for the newlyweds because Mark and Janair's relationship did not have a smooth start. Mark and Janair met for the first time when they were both teenagers. Janair was working the counter at a Taco Bell. Mark walked into order, and I asked him during our first interview to tell me what he remembered about that exact moment when he first laid eyes on Janair.

I saw her right away. She was beautiful. But I was speechless. I couldn't talk. I didn't know what I wanted. I was so distracted by her. Mark just couldn't get up the nerve to talk to Janair that day. But he'd get a chance a few years later when they met again at a car repair shop. Both were in college now. Mark was 22 years old. Janair was 20. Mark remembered her instantly. So yeah, we started talking and I was intrigued by her right off the bat.

I was very shy. I just didn't say a lot to a whole lot of people. And she was the exact opposite of me. She said what she wanted. She had a cool look. She had jobs. She was a great student. She was a great athlete. She was all those things wrapped into one. I was just enamored with her. And did you make a move right away and ask her out for it?

No, no. As a matter of fact, she worked in the mall and I would go visit her from time to time when I was at the mall. And probably the third or fourth time, she finally just come out and said, are you going to ask me out or what? And I had to admit I had a girlfriend. And so that I said, I can't. And so she said,

"Well, I can't talk to you anymore." Mark was impressed with Janair's virtue. It made her even more attractive and elusive, which is why Mark broke up with his current girlfriend and then called Janair to ask her out on a date. My name is Mike Hartman. I've known Mark for more than 35 years.

We met as freshmen in high school. I remember he told us he had met this new girl. She didn't go to our high school, which was a big deal. Because it was cooler? Yeah. We went to a little school in the middle of cornfields, literally, very small. In Indiana? In Indiana, way back there. So she was a city girl, which for us was a big deal. And he was excited. He was smitten.

Mark Girardo was raised in a strict Catholic household, the second youngest in a family of 11 kids. Subjects like emotions and relationships and sex were never discussed. Mark was naive, inexperienced, and so shy that when things heated up between Mark and Janair, she took the lead. She told Mark, hey, sex is supposed to be fun. And, well, they started having a lot of fun together. She had, she was a

She was intense. She was, you know, exciting. I think it was her intensity, her approach, her feistiness, I think that was what was most appealing for him. She was also attractive. I mean, so that, you know, certainly added to the appeal.

So imagine how shocking it must have been for Janair when just three months into their relationship, Mark broke up with her. He told her he wanted to date other people, that it seemed way too soon to settle down at their age. Janair was crushed. What Mark didn't tell her was that he had met and fallen for a girl named Jamie in one of his college classes. Those two started going out, but after about three months, it was Mark's turn to be heartbroken. Jamie ghosted him, just stopped calling.

The next part of this story would be the perfect flashback scene in a movie about Mark and Jannere. Because after Mark recovered from Jamie's stinging rejection, he ran into Jannere at the shopping mall. They said hi, made small talk, and then left. Mark couldn't stop thinking about Jannere. And a few days later, he went back to the mall, the parking lot actually, and looked for Jannere's car, a cherry red Pontiac. He sat himself down on the bumper and waited for Jannere to get off work.

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So they dated for a while, they broke up for a while, they got back together again, and then you find out they're getting married. What did you think of that? To be very specific, I begged him not to marry her. I wasn't a great fan of hers. From the beginning, she worked hard to, we felt like, control him, to manage him. And there was conflict. She pushed away a lot of friends.

In fact, none of Mark's friends understood his love for Janair. They didn't like how she treated him or how upset she would get when Mark would hang out with them. But there was a night we went out as friends and came back to his and another friend of ours' apartment and she left this cassette tape in a boom box with a, you know, there's a little note on the tape player, play me.

And she had left a message. She was very unhappy that we had gone out. She was very, actually quite upset and had left a message, recorded herself and left what was a very creepy message.

kind of scary message for him about how he should not have done that and how, you know, and directed it a little bit to us as well. What did it say? How long was it? It was pretty intense. It was pretty scolding. It was pretty, it was a little scary, to be honest with you. And, you know, there were

some parallels in the entertainment world at that time that we like to use. It was the movie about the woman and the rabbit. Oh, Fatal Attraction. Fatal Attraction, yes. So, you know, that was the beginning of some big questions. Did Mark back down because of her intensity or was he, did he sometimes get frustrated? He backed down from the beginning. I mean, for me, that was kind of, Jenner sort of won, if you will.

Janair, she got him. She controlled him for all intents and purposes. She was a very controlling person. And how did Mark react to her controlling nature? Did he try to fight her? Did he just go along? No, no. I mean, he just was so used to it that he just let it go. You know, it just, he's not going to fight. He's not going to argue. You know, it's because at the end of the day, it's still going to be her way or no way.

Ultimately, she pushed away a lot of friends. And that's what, when it got to the wedding part, when I actually sat him down several weeks before and spent hours using beer and my not very good persuasive skills to try to convince him not to marry her as his best man. How did he react when his best friend, best man says, don't marry this woman in a couple of weeks?

As the romantic that Mark is, he, you know, I love her, I want to do this. If it doesn't work, so be it. That, you know, that's the way it will go. But I'm going to do this. At the wedding for the Bridal Party dance song, Jenner picked the classic Celine Dion duet, When I Fall in Love. When the newlyweds start dancing, this time it's Mark who's singing to Jenner, mouthing the lyrics, When I fall in love, it will be forever.

Janair is beaming at her new husband. Next, Janair danced with her dad to a 1950s song by the Five Satins called In the Still of the Night. They look like a happy father-daughter duo. But something else most guests at the wedding didn't know was that this moment of togetherness, of getting along, was unusual for Janair and her father. What was her relationship like with her parents and her family? Was it a big family, loving family relationship?

It was a small family. She has her sister and then her mom and dad. She wasn't close to her sister at all. They were okay. It was more so with her dad, I think, that, you know, there was just... She just really didn't have a relationship with him. We had a lot of conversations. There was a lot of turmoil, especially with her father, you know, being the alcoholic that he was then.

There were times I'd go up to the front door and knock, and I'd hear arguing, and just turn around and walk away. She disclosed her relationship with her father. So she had a difficult relationship with her dad. To say the least, that's how she would explain it. They argued all the time, and that was, I think, the basis for the relationship. And in my experience over the time I was with her, it's maybe an exaggeration, but I felt like they couldn't be in the same room

for more than an hour before they beat at each other's throats. He was an alcoholic and she was very hurt by that. So the way that he treated her, it was the way that he treated her that, I mean, it was just not a good situation. It was not a good situation. Did you ever overhear the arguments or would they be behind closed doors? No, I mean,

even being around her, if we're hanging out together or something, you know, he would just make, it would just be a snide comment or it would be something sarcastic to her, you know, that would upset her. I mean, it's, it's gotta be embarrassing if you think about it, you know, your dad's drinking and your friends are over, you know, you're, you're hanging out with your friends and you're having a good time. How embarrassing would that be? You know, to just,

Would she talk back or try to take him on in front of you guys? And what would happen when you would watch her talk back to her dad? You know, he always...

Here's psychologist Dr. Ramani Dravosala.

We do know in Jenn Air's case that she did have a difficult relationship with her father. There's a real risk that gets set in when a child grows up in a home that's characterized by a volatile parent. You know, this is why it's so important that parents be very regulated in their emotional expression. The sad thing is most aren't. But that chronic exposure to rage as a child could very well have been quite traumatic for Jenn Air.

dysregulation and certain antagonistic personality styles can, don't always, but can have their roots in childhood trauma. When these people become adults, when people experiencing this kind of trauma become adults, it's not unusual for us to see a pattern in them of poor emotional regulation, rumination,

Over-focus on their victimizer, like they can't let that thought go, revenge fantasies, and difficulty in cultivating healthy intimacy in an adult relationship. There's an interesting moment in Marc Ingenier's wedding video. It's when Marc Ingenier are about to do the traditional feed each other a bite of cake routine. You know, the part where couples often end up smooshing cake and icing on each other's faces.

Well, Mark and Janair begin politely feeding each other a piece of cake. But then Mark can't seem to help himself. He dabs some icing on Janair's nose. But before she can do the same to him, he smears his own nose. The crowd loves it. After a honeymoon in the Bahamas, the newlyweds moved into a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Indianapolis. Janair started working as a waitress. Mark got an entry-level graphic design job. And they bought their first house and fixed it up.

And that's where something happened that shocked Mark, because he was about to see a side of Janair he'd never seen before. That part of the story coming up on the other side of this break. Mark had always known that Janair was a confident, assertive person. But he saw an even more intense side of her one day while the two were out gardening and a mini crisis unfolded.

She was actually mowing the lawn. I heard the mower go by and then I heard her shut it off immediately and scream and went running off into the tool shed to get some tools. And I saw then the bird laying there fluttering and suffering. And she came back and she was screaming and crying and she asked the bird to forgive her and she thrust her

or pruning the shear of some kind into the bird's chest until it stopped fluttering. And I was just, I just couldn't have done that. Jenner was distraught for days. She loved birds so much, all animals actually. Once while scrolling through Facebook, she saw a photo someone had posted of themselves roasting an iguana they had killed. Jenner left a comment, "'You're a fucking asshole for hunting defenseless animals.'"

In the late 1990s, Mark and Janair were now both doing really well in their careers. Janair had finally landed a job that she loved with a real estate firm. She got to travel the country and set up trade shows. And Mark would eventually open up his own design and marketing firm. Throughout their marriage, the couple had talked about having kids. Janair even had names picked out, Audrey for a girl and Jack for a boy. But Janair never stopped taking her birth control pills. She told Mark she was worried she wouldn't be a good mom.

Mark didn't care that much about having kids, so they just never took that step. Instead, the couple doted on their golden retriever, Mesa, and a cute brown-and-black striped kitten that Janir rescued. She named her Gypsy. Janir would often say that Mark and her pets were all the family she needed. She wanted it to just be us. Why couldn't it just be us? Did she have any friends during your marriage, or would she specifically say to you things like, I want to be alone? She had work colleagues she was friendly with.

Very rarely would she, there would be a happy hour she would go to and I would go to her with. But she really wanted distance between her work life and her life with friends. So no, she really didn't have friends. Did you miss that? Were you like, I want to have friends and you just succumbed to that? Of course. You know, it was an adjustment to not want to be out with friends all the time. But she didn't want me to be out with friends. And, you know, there were, I was a source of some fights sometimes.

But eventually I guess I got used to it. When I read Janair's last letter, she actually explained why she wasn't so social. You'll hear an actress reading her words from here on out. I was not very good at making adult friends. As life got busy, I just felt that I could not make such a commitment to constantly invest in family and friends. I enjoy people. I just don't want to be a lousy friend. I really loved my fur babies.

Gypsy is the best cat and friend I ever had, even to humans. You can't beat her loyalty and ability to understand me. The breadcrumbs on this one were laid pretty early in the game. And when you read both stories, you hear, you sort of read her sort of manifestos and you read his recollection of the relationship. The problems were always there.

As the years went by, those little problems turned into some pretty big fights between Mark and Janair. They clashed about a lot of things many couples argue over. He blames me for not living within our means, but he was the worst with that. He has always done what he wants and doesn't not spend money. He'll get coffee, lunch, and dinner and drinks when he wants. He'll order and buy clothes when he wants. He never wears what he buys and then three to six months later throws those out for new ones.

But the major source of conflict in the Girardo marriage was when Mark would spend time with his friend Mike. Janair thought Mike was a bad influence on Mark, and Mike thought Janair was getting in the way of a great friendship. Did she know that you didn't like her? Yeah, it was mutual. It was pretty mutual. And then, as it happens in so many long-term relationships, little things Mark used to love about Janair, like her passion and intensity, began to bother him. She would take something...

And that obviously, as time goes on, this was not a short marriage. This was a relationship that lasted decades. As time passes, the stressors of real life kick in, that the cracks become clear fault lines. Like it goes from tiny things to big things.

He would rather avoid any conflict and talking to me about anything a normal couple would talk about, like household or finances, was conflict to him. Now, as far as me being conflict-adverse, I avoid conflict at all times, and I do, and I have. And in generic terms,

actually, I think, thrived on conflict. And she actually enjoyed it. She would provoke an argument and I would resist and resist and want to leave. And eventually I would snap and I absolutely would lose it. He was a terrible fighter. He throws temper tantrums, violent episodes of anger.

You're so cruel and mean in the way that he yells and talks to me. So, yeah, she's right. I was never violent. I was never violent with her, but I would lose my temper for sure. I would snap and lose it, and then she would just relish the moment of the idea that she had gotten me so upset, and as she said, acting like a howler monkey. He did not return equally the love, friendship, and support I gave to him. He took and took and took.

He was selfish, immature, and always thought of himself first and foremost. Always.

When we use the word narcissism, it's really important that we have clarity. And it's things like lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, poor frustration tolerance. I can't tolerate frustration or disappointment and that can often bubble up in rage. These are people who are deeply, deeply, deeply insecure. Having another life with another person who truly loved me and appreciated me in a supportive relationship would have been a better life for me. I suppose I would have had kids and been a great mom.

I suppose I would have been more confident and happy. I don't know. Both Mark and Janair had some qualities of narcissism because if either of them had been both self-reflective and reflective of how their behavior affected the other person,

they would have either stopped it or gotten out of that relationship. And that inability to do that, I remember narcissism by definition is really an immaturity. There's a psychological immaturity to it. There was a psychological immaturity to both of them. They were in adult bodies behaving like undeveloped adolescents. You're thinking selfishly and want your way and cannot be an adult in an adult partnership marriage. The other person must be an adult and it becomes a vicious cycle of shit.

His lack of maturity and impulsiveness projected his psychological crap onto me and turned me into his mother. Did she become like a mom in a way? In many ways. And she even said it herself, I'm sick of being your mother. And I said, well, stop being my mother. So she was. And you didn't fight back or say... I wanted to fight back, but you don't win a battle with Janair. And so I didn't always hold my tongue, but most of the time I just...

This is the way it is. And this is what I've learned to deal with. It was easier to give in. But there was some psychological dynamic keeping him in this game. And then almost it was like a self-sabotage that they were both playing into. And it was, I mean, honestly, the dynamic I saw there was what we'd almost classically label a codependent relationship.

that both people were in essence having their own pathologies magnified by the other. So they stuck around and would just each sort of play their triggers, their weaknesses and their pathologies and enable the other until the point it got dangerous. And that's, I think we forget that, that codependent relationships can actually be dangerous. Here's Shelley, Janair's childhood friend again. Did she confide in you that her marriage was going downhill?

She did not. She did not. I called her. Yeah, and she just said, why are you calling me? Where did you get my number? And I just said, Janair, you know, it's me. Let's chit chat. I almost had to...

About 10 years into the Girardo marriage, Mark did something that almost ended the relationship.

It happened while he was on an overseas business trip with his friend, Mike. We went to Berlin and he joined me on that business trip, saw the world outside of his world for the first time and never traveled outside of the U S. And so I was excited for him to see the world in a new place. He was blown away by the experience, his eyes, you know, he, he was just exuberant with this experience. And, um,

And it didn't take long that he met someone new and exciting and very positive. Long story short, their conversations, you know, quickly went beyond just the, what are you here promoting at this international travel show? And that was how, after lots of drinks and flirting, Mark and the stranger he had just met ended up in a hotel room in bed. And then Janair found out about it. How did she find out?

Did she have to do anything stealth or secret? Big time. I don't know. The whole thing was crazy. He must have denied it. And then she sent an email, somehow hacked his emails or his computers and sent an email to me under the guise of Mark's email, trying to get me to, you know, respond in positive ways.

I knew it. I could smell it in the email, if that makes sense. She was phishing you, basically. Big time. And we did actually, I don't know if we had words then, but she sent me an email after that that was pretty damning. And her and I didn't speak for many years after that. In fact, I'm not sure I ever spoke to her again.

Wow. Because she thought that you helped him have an affair. Yeah. And funny enough, of all the years I encouraged him to look beyond and get out of that, I didn't encourage that at all. I didn't do anything. I just, he joined me on the business trip and it happened. Yeah, I'm not proud of what happened. I let my guard down. I had been drinking and Janair and I had...

Not an argument, but I guess a few words. And not that I did it to get back at her, but I think I was in a place where I let my guard down. And yeah, there was an overnight incident. And she found out about it. And I apologize. And we worked through that. We went on to go to counseling, actually marriage boot camp for five days. And that helped a lot.

Once again, Janair forgave Mark. The marriage boot camp they'd attended really did bring them closer. And she believed Mark when he told her he would never hurt her again. But just when Janair was feeling like she was on solid ground, something new came along that upended her world. More about that after this break. We'll be right back.

Janair had been feeling so good recently. Her marriage was back on track, work was great. So good, in fact, that she had started setting up out-of-town photo shoots for her marketing clients without asking her bosses for permission. They didn't appreciate that and fired Janair. She was stunned. And now she needed to find something new to do. But she wasn't having any luck finding a new job. And her self-esteem plummeted. So, yeah, Janair, you know, she...

When she was younger and I met her, she had a lot of energy and she wanted to work and she was very enthused and she wanted to kind of set the world on fire. Did she have big goals like I'm going to

become X, Y, and Z and she never achieved those or did she just want to work? Her goals and what she wanted to do in her dream would be go shoot on a safari. And I don't mean shoot with a gun, I mean a shoot with cameras. She was loved. She was a communications major. She ran a camera. She edited film and she loved it. And she would have been a fantastic producer had she followed that dream. It's just something about

Her self-worth and her confidence that just this wasn't there, even though she wanted these things for herself. And she would tell everybody else what they were doing right or wrong, but she didn't have the confidence herself to just step up to the plate and do something. With Jenner not finding work in her career, Mark had an idea. Even though Jenner didn't know much about his business, graphic design, she was a good organizer. So he hired her to work at his own company.

This is Nyla Neely, a freelancer who worked with Mark and Janair. Was she talented? Yeah, she was so incredibly tenacious and detail-oriented, which is amazing in a business setting. I mean, like really, really great, particularly around a lot of creative people who aren't that. So she could really help keep there from being messes in the business setting. But she would have been a fantastic detective, I think, because she just would have...

And her memory for details seemed to be amazing. This is another one of Mark's employees, Max. He told me that while Janier was good at the business side of Mark's company, her input on the creative side wasn't always welcome. It just felt like everything sort of felt loaded. You know, if she came in and didn't like a design or the name of a company that we'd come up with...

She put it down or say it was terrible or try to push her own idea. But again, it always felt like, is this really what is going on? Is this really what you're all hung up about? Or is there something deeper that's going on here? I felt like I was able to see through a lot of the bravado and a lot of her grasps at power control.

And go, okay, this is a cover up for a deep insecurity. If I was a psychiatrist or a counselor, I would look at it and go, you just want to be heard and you want to be valued. And so because you feel that no one's going to give that to you, you're going to assert your power in a way that you can feel like you've contributed in some way to this. Did you feel sorry for Mark?

I did feel sorry for Mark. And I think, you know, from his perspective, it was like he was always trying to smooth the waters for other people's interactions with Janair. Like, he was an advocate for her. You know, he would see the best in everything. And...

Especially her. Honestly, I think he was always rooting for her and was wanting the best for her. What were the good things about her? When there was no stress or when there was no situation at hand, she was a fun person. She could laugh. I think that was almost some of the craziness of it because it's like she'd be so normal and then other times she would not be normal.

Some couples can do it, and I wished we could have, and I thought we could. But after four, five years of working together, it had tested our marriage on a daily basis. And when you work together, you can't turn it off. Of course, you go home and you talk about the same arguments you had at work and what this employee's doing wrong and that person's doing right. It put a lot of stress on our marriage. And honestly, when Janair was good, she was fine. Like, she was fine.

But you just never knew what you were going to get. And more often than not, it was tense. I think at the point where there was like three employees in the office, Mark and Janair, and those three employees sort of got together and went to him and said, look, this is terrible. It's us or her.

I think it's quite telling, though, that Jenner not only did not have any robust adult friendships, but also she had a spotty work history in terms of having really difficult antagonistic relationships with coworkers, losing jobs over interpersonal tensions. That tends to be the kind of work history you do see in someone with a dysregulated personality. The three employees who said they couldn't work with Jenner ended up leaving the company. Mark had refused to fire her.

So with Mark's business no longer what it was, he recognized the sad fact that it was time for a change. And it was, I guess, the perfect storm of the economy turning when it did in 2011, 2010-11. We decided to close the business, and it was really the best thing for our marriage as well. It saved our marriage for a while. And then, you know, when I closed the business, I had an opportunity to go down to South Carolina to help people.

build what was then a web development firm into a digital agency. So that was a great challenge for me. And Janair and I had kind of a renaissance of our marriage because she wasn't working for me. I didn't have employees. There wasn't the stress of where's the next paycheck coming from. And so it allowed us to be ourselves again and kind of explore the area. And so, yeah, it was a great time.

Mark and Janair had worked through their marriage troubles, and they felt bonded again. They documented their new life in South Carolina with lots of videos of the nature hikes they took with their dogs, Abby and Huck. Huck, look over here. And best of all, Janair found a new job. It was another marketing position for a parts manufacturer. Not her dream job, but it was a decent paycheck.

The Girardos settled into their new rented home in South Carolina. But they weren't really laying down roots, and they hadn't made any new friends. So a visit from an old friend, Nyla Neely, was very welcome. And once they moved to South Carolina, we kept in touch. Same thing, we were already keeping in touch through social media, texting and whatever. And so we were going to Georgia, California.

South Georgia one time and we were going to be going nearby Greenville. And so we stopped and hung out with them for the afternoon, you know, had lunch and laughed and had a good time. Could you tell, I mean, from your couple's perspective, did you think they were happily married? One of us, I don't remember, was like, how does Mark live with Janair? Because she's just like, he's so laid back and she's so intense and we'll just say what she, you know, like she just blurts stuff out. So it seemed like

And also maybe, you know, tries to manage work a little bit. So that seemed odd to us. But, you know, everybody's different. Everybody has different personalities. And if it works for you, it works for you. So we just let it go at that. As the joy of moving and starting over in South Carolina faded, two things happened to Janair that made matters worse. She started having some health issues, on and off again pain in the abdomen.

She was diagnosed with fibroids, non-cancerous growths in the uterus. She would need surgery someday. And then came this devastating blow. Janere lost her job. Her bosses told her it was because the company was downsizing. Janere couldn't believe she was back at square one again without employment. And she wrote about these dark times in that last letter. We were doing...

I think she said I shit on her about it, about her not finding a job. That just, that's just, that didn't happen. Um...

She struggled for a year and a half to find a job. And she was applying for the same jobs over and over again and getting nowhere. And so at one point I said, maybe you need to think about

you know, changing careers, pivoting, reinvent yourself. I said, I'll help you with the resume. I'll help you. If you want to go off to get some schooling, I'll pay for that. And she didn't want to do that. And so instead of supporting her and say, it's going to be okay and you should just keep trying, I guess she saw it as kind of shitting on her brain. I'm a loser for not figuring out what God created me for. I had so much potential.

I could not connect my career nor life to my talents and gifts and desires to make me a really great and happy person. I did work hard. I did my best with what I did do, but I never found my true passion with work nor hobbies to make money.

After months of constant rejection, Jenner finally did pivot her job search, and she got an offer. She began working as an entry-level cashier at the local Publix grocery store. It was not the career move she'd been hoping for, but Jenner dutifully put on the company outfit every day—black pants, white shirt, green apron—and she forced herself to smile as she was checking out customers.

Chenere had been working at the grocery store for about three weeks when Mark came to her with some life-changing news. He had been offered a new job. I had been looking for a while for a job. The South really never felt like home, and we never put down roots there. And I just happened upon a LinkedIn job posting for the creative director at the University of Delaware. And within a half hour, I got a response back from...

Someone at that time didn't know who she was, Meredith Chapman, who was the head of marketing at the University of Delaware. Mark's new job meant another move, but Janere was excited. She would get to start over again in Delaware, maybe get back into her career. Janere's depression lifted. She finally had all three of those things you need to find happiness in life, something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

And I was so happy looking forward to the fresh start at a new market. I spent six years in South Carolina not settling down or putting down roots. I lived out of boxes in a rental home to rental home the entire time in South Carolina because we knew we were not sticking around and wanted a better life elsewhere. This was hard on me. I need to fix what's bad and broken.

One of the last days at my employer there in South Carolina, there was the great eclipse is what they called it in 2017. And it just so happened to be lighting perfectly with Greenville, South Carolina, where we were.

So we took the time out in the afternoon and went to lunch on top of a rooftop bar and waited for it to come. And I guess it was like 1 or 2 in the afternoon when it finally came. And we were just ecstatic to be involved in seeing that. The marriage was a little rocky towards the end when she was depressed for not having worked. I was a little stressed on where I was going to go because I had that window to find a new job. And it was such a relief to just

Had a few drinks in the middle of the afternoon and watched the eclipse, and it was such a happy moment. In November of 2017, Mark moved to Delaware alone to start his new job, and Janair stayed behind to finalize their affairs and pack everything up. She would be joining Mark in a few weeks, right before the holidays. But while they were apart, talking on the phone almost every night, Janair grew uneasy. Because Mark had started talking so much about his new boss, this Meredith Chapman woman,

that Jenner looked her up online. Hi, everyone. It's Meredith Chapman again. Thanks so much for joining me for this Facebook Live broadcast. Most of you know I'm passionate about social media and teaching. Meredith was beautiful. Young, 32 years old. Jenner was 47. Under different circumstances, Jenner probably would have admired Meredith. She was everything Jenner used to be. Motivated, determined, successful.

And just like that, Janair realized she had something new she needed to do. Find out more about this woman, the one with the long, wavy brown hair, beautiful green eyes, and welcoming smile. I can't sleep. He made promises to me at our wedding, after boot camp, and throughout our marriage. Their immoral, unethical, and cruel actions have consequences. ♪

Thanks for listening. In the next episode, there's something that you don't know yet about Meredith Sullivan Chapman and why she fell so hard for Mark Gerardo. That and Janair's secret recordings of the affair coming up next in episode three.