Everything, All Of You...
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This episode is brought to you by The Hartford, a leading provider of employee benefits and income protection products that is dedicated to standing behind U.S. workers to help them pursue their goals and get through tough times. For more information about The Hartford, visit thehartford.com slash employee benefits. We've also got a link in our show notes. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot,

Shopify helps you do your thing, however you cha-ching. From the launch your online shop stage, all the way to the we just hit a million orders stage. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify's there to help you grow. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash special offer, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash special offer. Um, how are you? Most people answer that question with fine or...

but obviously it's not always fine, and it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain, to just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated. Depending on who you ask, marriage has many meanings. To some, it is simply a social construct or a legal agreement.

Many people view marriage as a sacrament of their faith in God. Others see it as the highest expression of love and commitment, an example of your faith in love and in each other. No matter how you define marriage, if you are in one or have been in one, you know that it is a complicated relationship. It takes a lot of effort to stay married, but for some of us, the effort is worth it.

I've been married twice. I've learned that I love being a wife. I just like being married. I mean, I think that's because I did choose. I'm two for two choosing good husbands, but there's also a comfort in marriage, in knowing that you have a partner for life. So if a

You lose a person who was once your friend, your romantic partner. I can't say lover. It's such a hard word for me to say. I'm such a prude. Your co-parent, maybe. Your roommate, your companion. It is a loss of what was and what could have been. The grief of divorce is steeped in redefining how you see yourself and your life.

In asking what does love really mean and how do I give and receive the kind of love I need? This month at Feelings & Co., we are exploring the emotional rollercoaster of divorce. Just like each of us have a specific, unique fingerprint, every marriage is as unique as the two people in it, which means that every divorce is also unique.

We were together for seven years. Throughout that entire time, I was super aware that he was profoundly unhappy in some way, but there were always enough other layers of things that made sense to be able to rationalize that away. That's Anna. Anna is 33. She lives in North Carolina, and this year she started the process of divorcing her husband, Greg.

The reason for the divorce is fairly simple, and we'll get to that later, but the emotions around this divorce are incredibly complicated. Today, we're going to tell you the story of this one marriage, how it started and how it ended. Whether a marriage lasts five years or 50, being in one will change you because having a spouse is like having a mirror held up to you every day.

They see every version of you. And sometimes knowing you have a witness makes you see parts of yourself that you weren't aware of. In the 10 months since Anna and Greg have decided to divorce, Anna has stared at her reflection from the seven years that the two of them were together and realized that the person looking back was not who she wanted to be going forward.

To understand how the end of this marriage changed Anna, we first have to understand how it all started. When Anna was 24 years old, fresh out of college and unsure of what she wanted to do for a career, she did what a lot of people do. She got a job in the service industry. Anna worked at a farm-to-table restaurant in North Carolina, hostessing and planning events at the restaurant. And one day, a new chef started.

I just was drawn to him. He was just like hot and tall and commanding and looked so good in his like full chef outfit and would just stomp around in his clogs. And I was like, yeah, I like everything about this person. The chef's name is Greg and he is just so attractive and not just physically, but yes, physically. Greg is a guy who is doing what he loves. And honestly, that's very hot.

I don't know what I'm doing with my life, but this is an opportunity and I'm just going to commit fully to it. And I love...

the context in which like we're both taking the thing so seriously, you know, it's like theater, you know, everyone's just acting and putting on their costumes every day and doing the lineup and talking about what we're going to do and make it special for everyone. And there's just so much magic in that. Like, I just want to be around him and, you know, talk about food and flavors and have him bring me little snacks in the office and go to the bar down the street after service and like,

you know, make out in the alleyways. It was just fun. Like being just kind of a person about town, we're leaving our restaurant and the industry vibe of everyone's getting off and having their shift drink. And yeah, it just was so, it felt so fun and young, but also so adult at the same time. And I think that was definitely part of it, of feeling like, wow, this is a career driven person. And I'm like,

Yeah, I'm just like drawn in by not the power of it, but I guess just the decisiveness maybe. And like many service industry romances, Anna and Greg were able to flirt and hang out at work, which was great because that's where they both spent most of their time anyway. We just made every excuse to like plan events together and go to the farmer's market together and run errands for the restaurant. Like we drove to

like 45 minutes outside of town to take our blender to get repaired at this specialty shop. And it was like playing house, but playing restaurant as our jobs. This is so sweet. We love it. Anna is just smitten with Greg. She loved being around him. She started pursuing a relationship with him pretty quick and he seemed to reciprocate. But after being together for a little while, Anna realized there was one issue with their dynamic.

There was always a sort of invisible distance between us. We obviously had sex. It was always consensual. Like it was always, we wanted to do it, but it wasn't great. It felt very much like the act of the thing. Like, of course it feels good to have sex with someone, but it did not feel connective in the way. Like it could have just been, I could have been anyone or anything.

which sounds so bleak. I hear myself say it and it sucks, but even just in like making out, there was a feeling of not pulling away, but also not pushing forward, if that makes sense. My like codependent impulse was to lean further forward and say like, oh, maybe like I'm just doing something wrong or I haven't figured out what he likes or wants or yeah, like just deeply disconnected in what I see now is just like such an obvious fundamental way

But Anna is still really into Greg, and their relationship moves along quickly. They move in together after three months, and three months after that, when Greg is offered a new job in Charleston, Anna decides to move with him. Was there even really a full conversation? And I think the answer is probably no, because that's, again, sort of the theme of the whole relationship, right? There's a nugget of an idea, and instead of fully, openly saying,

dialoguing about a major life decision. We just are like, yeah, yeah, that seems good. Let's just go do that and see how it feels. In Charleston, Greg throws himself into his new job and Anna is just in a shitty little apartment in an unfamiliar city trying to figure out what she's going to do.

We were already on a different page about what we were doing. To me, I'm like, I'm going to move with my cool chef boyfriend and I'm going to figure out how to have some sort of life in this foodie town and we'll figure it out. We'd get there and it's just a hot swamp and I'm just by myself in the basement with these dogs while he's just at work and then comes home super late and we're just, again, not talking.

This period that Anna calls the Dark Ages wasn't just about being lonely in a new city or missing her boyfriend who was at work all the time. There was also something else going on in their relationship, something Anna wouldn't know about until years later.

Before they moved, a doctor had given Greg a nine-month prescription for painkillers after a bad back injury. Greg had struggled with substance abuse before, but this was a prescription.

So he was managing it super well, which is a classic addict brain. Like this is I just need this little amount to be able to get through the day. And that's like I've got the timing down. I know when to take it so that like I'm able to function and no one's going to know. And then after work, we're all just going to go get drinks anyway. And so it doesn't matter. And at that point, like, you know, that's the cycle.

Everyone at this age in this industry is just like getting fucked up all the time, every night, every day, whatever. And you do what you need to do to get through. He was also just like a pack a day smoker. And we went out and had three cocktails every night. So like there was enough like other context for being just like hungover and grouchy and, you know, sallow and all that stuff that I could rationalize. Like, yeah, of course, we're tired and cranky and like having a slow start to the day or whatever.

Greg is distant, both emotionally and physically, and Anna still isn't working, so she's really, really lonely.

I had some friends back home. Basically, my core friend group was my college crew and folks I had lived with after college for a couple years. But when I broke up with my college boyfriend, we all just lost touch. And then because I got into this relationship with Greg so quickly and threw myself into it so fully, I really lost all of those people and connections. And then when I moved away, it was just like cutting ties.

ties, like cutting the anchor from my hometown, from my friends. So I really did just let everything go and fold into just this life with Greg and then wait for it to start, you know, blooming in another direction. And so we found a really sweet, sweet house up in this like

cute neighborhood 15 minutes outside of town. But going from like the bad apartment, dark ages, first few months of Charleston to this like really sweet park circle house where we had a screen in front porch and could walk to a coffee shop and like

And I was like, oh, we've done it. We're doing the thing. That to me is the golden period where we were super happy. I had found this cool bakery job. He was doing his job with his friend and we had found some people. We had started doing our little vegetarian pop-ups and finding our little

food community of folks. And so that in my brain, that was enough of a foothold where I thought, okay, like now we've turned the tables and we're doing it. We are doing a life here. We've got everything back on track. And his personality just like changed in a way where I thought, oh, okay. Yeah. He seems different. He seems happier now. He seems better now. Maybe we really did just need to get into this like different house, different situation. Like

this seems great. We're really on it. I mean, yeah, a few months into that probably is when I proposed because I thought, okay, yeah, we made it through the hard part. I had a few really hard, dark months, but now have found our footing and now we're back on the clear path forward, which is, okay, we both have our cool food jobs. We're fully committed to this community. We

We've got our house that we love. So what's like now what? Now what in our relationship? Because we're still not feeling that connected. Like what do we do? From my perspective, I thought him feeling lighter, seeming happier was just because our cute life was happening. I was like, great. Okay. Like perfect. It's all like what we thought it was going to be. It was really hard for a while, but now like everything's great. And of course he's just so in love with me that that's like why he feels better. Yeah.

Things don't feel perfect, but they feel better. And Anna takes that as a sign that the two of them should take their relationship to the next level.

My little bleeding romantic heart was hoping like, okay, he's going to come home to the house full of candles and he's going to be so charmed. And I've got this beautiful proposal planned and said my little speech. And that's going to be the thing that lights him up. And I'm going to know for sure that he's happy inside. And this is the thing that that's all it took. Like, okay, now we're in it. And that's just not what happened. He seemed super overwhelmed.

It was his birthday. He had worked a long day. He got home from work that day and I was sitting there sweating in my room full of candles and was like, you know, do you want to be married? And he sat on the couch and kind of quietly just said, of course.

Super low-key, super, super underwhelming, not sparkly. And that was that. My sick puppy little brain, I was like, okay, well, I did the cute thing. I did the moment. I crafted the memory. This is our story now. This is how it goes for us. And maybe it just doesn't feel like people say it does. Oh, the way the whole team winced while listening to this tape together.

Because you can see it. We can see it. Anna in the present day can see it. It was one of the times in her relationship that Anna ignored her instincts. She could feel at a cellular level that she and Greg did not have the kind of connection she always imagined that she would find. But instead of listening to the voice in her head that said, Anna...

Is this what you really want? Does this really feel right? Do you want the answer to, do you want to spend the rest of your life with me to be sure? Anna decides that that voice is wrong. If she had listened to that voice, the voice might have told Anna to ask more questions. And maybe Anna would have gotten the answers that she needed.

That the distance with Greg wasn't just because he was stressed out. That when they moved into that cute new house with the front porch, Greg was also in withdrawal from the painkillers he'd been prescribed. That Greg didn't know himself well enough to even say sure. But Anna didn't ask any questions. And she wouldn't have answers until years later. All Anna knew was that she and Greg were getting married immediately.

And it didn't feel like she thought it would. I kind of just thought everyone who was actually in love was just lying. Everyone's just lying to themselves and everyone around them. And no one really feels that good. That's a fake story thing. And then from there, my brain also goes to

Okay, well, no, it's like it may be true for other people, but like I'm just effective. Like I'm just never going to feel that way. And so I was just like, maybe this is just what it feels like. And thinking, you know, I'm really great. And I think this is like cute and perfect. And he doesn't seem that into it. But like, I guess maybe that's okay. Like, I guess that's just what it is. Yeah.

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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Anna has done the thing that only happens once or maybe a few times in someone's life. She looked at another person and said, I want to be tied to you forever. I want to rely on you. I want to support your dreams. I want to build a life with you. I want to wake up to your stinky, hot garbage breath every morning. And it feels...

And culturally, we have made marriage the apex of romance. Like the ultimate expression of love you can reach is to ask someone else to sign a legal document tying your finances together.

But historically, and even today in many cultures, marriage has not been about romance. Marriage has been about joining families, creating partnerships, or giving women stability in a world where they couldn't work or earn their own money. Maybe your grandparents weren't wildly madly in love. Maybe your grandmother couldn't get her own mortgage, bank account, or credit card until 1974.

And even the big romantic gestures that we all think of are actually just products of capitalism. The reason diamond rings are a quote-unquote tradition is because in the 1930s, De Beers Diamonds had a popular marketing campaign pushing diamonds.

Being in a marriage, even a loving one, even a great one, is about so much more than sex and romance. There's so much admin to marriage. Who's paying the water bill? Are we out of milk? When did the dog get her a heartworm pill? Is it a pill even? Do we have a lawnmower? Does it need gas? So as Anna and Greg planned their wedding, Anna thought, look, there's so many great things about this relationship.

We have similar goals and ideas about the world. Why can't that be enough? I had given him an engraved spoon as an engagement gesture. And then I bought myself a tiny, like just a plain rose gold copper band as like my own engagement ring thing. Cause I couldn't wear anything with like

stones or anything at the bakery. Just funny that I was like, I'm going to just set this whole thing up. Like I've got you the spoon. Don't worry. I got myself this little ring. We're engaged. This is new age. She's proposing to him. This is fine. I'm totally into it. And, um, we're not going to do a big wedding because we don't want to like, I don't know the thought of everybody looking at me tends to make my stomach turn. But I think also, um,

On some level, I was like, that is just absolutely not what this is. Like, this is not a love to put on display. We are not that type of couple. I cannot imagine us having a wedding. It would like, not only would be the most awkward, weird event of all time, like he would fucking hate it. I would hate to be looked at. And maybe someone would actually see it for what it was, you know, on some level, like, oh no, no.

someone's going to call the bluff if we throw a big party and say, look, we're doing it. And so we skipped all that. And again, it would have been an opportunity for me to reach out to all of my friends who I had lost and lost touch with. And I think of it now, you should just really want to have a big fucking party. Why wouldn't you want any excuse to just get all your friends together and dance with your boo? But I just did not feel that way at all

And wanted to just keep on our little isolated train of we're doing our own thing, our way. It's different. We love it. I'm deciding it for us because I'm asking questions and he's saying, of course, and not an enthusiastic yes. But that's good enough. And so...

Yeah. Keep it moving. Some of you listening might be confused about how someone can so easily ignore their feelings like this, how they could not see the many, many red flags raining down upon them. And to you, I say, congratulations on not struggling with codependency. I very much relate to Anna.

If you are not familiar with codependency, here is a brief and not exhaustive summary. Codependents are often close to emotionally unavailable people, people who struggle with addiction, and we think we can fix them.

Codependents hate upsetting other people, disappointing other people. We let other people's opinions, other people's feelings dictate how we feel about ourselves. We ignore our own feelings. We worry about others.

And we think we have to earn love through our actions and not just by being ourselves or existing. It's exhausting because you're constantly doing and saying what you think other people want you to. And it is lonely because you lose yourself along the way. Anna is deep in her own codependent behaviors when she meets Greg, when she dates Greg, when she proposes to Greg, and when she marries Greg.

So we got married at the courthouse with just our parents as witnesses. And one of his family friends took photos. And on our wedding night, we – and this, I think, is actually really beautiful and pure. Our wedding night, we got a hotel room at this, like, cute, arty hotel in town. My dad was friends with someone and got us a deal on one of the, like, very top floor rooms with a little terrace. And it was cool and beautiful. And

So he checked in and drank champagne and took a shower in the fancy shower and put on our fuzzy robes and got room service. And we're watching Sweet Home Alabama on our wedding night. And like, I think we probably had a quick fuck, but it was just like not about the sex at all. It was just like, we're just having a good time as friends. There was just like a sort of specific resignation to sex.

not celibacy, but like that, like we are just not connected in that way. And that's like, we both were aware of that. And it was too uncomfortable to talk about it. Like I had tried so much at that point poorly, but in getting married, we both were just saying like, yeah, this is like good enough, I guess. And so like, it really wasn't, we were just fine to have a bad sex life. And we were like, this is just what it's going to be.

And that's what it was for a while. After they got married, the biggest change in their relationship is with Greg. He finally gets really, truly sober. Back when he had tapered off the opioids, he'd replace them with drinking and would occasionally take a painkiller if he could get his hands on one. And Anna had no idea how bad it had gotten.

He just kind of came to me one day and was like, "I'm not good. I actually have to stop everything. I'm not going to be drinking anymore. I'm not going to be smoking anymore." So much of the unhappiness and shame that was so apparent in him, I had assigned to his addiction.

Or at least that made sense. And that was the core thing that we talked about. Again, I'm like, dude, you're still like, you clearly hate yourself. You clearly just are like on some level, do not love yourself. And so how could you possibly love me? Which, yeah. Oh my gosh. That was the hardest part.

And so then it became this weird, this weird like internal contest with myself where I thought, okay, if I can figure out how to help him love himself, then he'll love me the way I love him and we'll be happy. Again, my brain is just locked into this.

the addiction mindset and thinking like, okay, you're like, you just are, you've never addressed all of the shitty things that happened in your teen years with your parents. And there's the deep shame coming from that. And you just don't think you deserve anything good. And so like, those were things that made sense to me to lock into. And I thought that the sexuality stuff was just bleeding through

from there. And once he got sober, there was like a distinct shift in our sex life. And that was really hard for me because of course I can't say like our sex life was better when we were just wasted all the time and having, you know, like that's obviously not what I want for someone, but it was like, it was just an obvious correlation that I couldn't ignore.

Oh, like you seemed more into this when you were also less conscious of the experience. And now that we're having sex sober, you're even less...

here with me. We were not in therapy together at that point, but I had... Our schedules were just so bad. Like, we barely saw each other. We had one day off together a week. And then other than that, like, truly we're ships in the night. So it became this awful rhythm of, okay, it's our one time to hang out. Do we have an intense conversation or do we go to a movie? And so, like, you're really making snail's pace progress at that rate.

The night that it started unraveling, we had gone to a movie and had come home and I was like fixing a snack in the kitchen and was feeling like a little bit emotionally neglected. And so I did say, I said, like, I'm feeling a little prickly about this distance between us right now. Or like, I just wish you were in here hanging out with me, basically. And he was sitting on the couch and just said, I've been talking to my therapist a lot about

these feelings that I've been having and we're trying to work out what they mean and what I want to do with them. He said, yeah, I think I may be gay, but I'm not sure. And I said, okay, let's talk about that. Thank you so much for sharing. What does that mean to you? Where is that coming from? And he said, I've just been having a lot of these specific fantasies and these impulses and

It was like being hit with a fucking psychological Mack truck. I thought I had done such a good job of skirting any possibility of being blindsided by some thing when in fact I had just like been teetering around these half swept up breadcrumbs of something that I was just like ignoring for years.

It felt like this sort of iceberg where he's willing to share a little bit. I can tell there's so much more underneath, but I have to be very delicate about approaching it because I don't want to shut it down. But I know that there's more to it. So it's this patience game of me bending in whatever way to try to ask the right question, to get him to say the thing so that he feels safe enough. And it just...

bled into days long conversations where I just was trying to ask a lot of questions and hold space and remind him that I love you no matter what and this is all I've ever wanted is for you to just actually be honest with me and again at first it was okay you're having these fantasies tell me what they are like

Is this a fun, sexy game? Do you want to talk to me about the things that you're thinking about? And we'll see if that's like fun. Do you want to go on dates? Do you want to open our relationship? Do you want to try pegging? Is there any like version of us being together that is something you want? Or are you saying this isn't it at all? That was the question I was just asking over and over in as many different ways as I could because he just at first was so unsure for days and days.

The first 24 hours, I was clinging to the possibility that there was like some shape of us shifting things or opening things that would work and make everyone happy. He didn't want to go on dates. He didn't want to like open the relationship. He wasn't feeling confident or interested in actively exploring. After, I think it was like just two or three days, he said, Anna, I just, I'm just gay. And...

I said, "Okay, yeah, I think that makes sense." It sounds to me like what you're saying is you want to be in a monogamous relationship with someone with a penis. And that cannot be me. So I guess we're getting a divorce.

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It's been seven years since I had my last baby. Seven years, which doesn't feel possible because it feels like I just had him. It goes really fast, except when you're in it, every decision you make feels like a huge one because it is. This is a whole human being and you're responsible for keeping them safe and loved and growing and thriving. By heart gets it.

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that reached places I hadn't unclenched in seven years because it just sort of like this thing washed over me in a way where it just all made sense. And I finally could hear this person that all I wanted this entire time was for him to just say anything real and have me be able to hear it. I probably took...

30 seconds to, for that deep breath moment. And then, you know, just immediately felt like I want to just hold this person and make sure that they feel so safe and loved and seen and okay. I just said, you know, thank you for saying it. I'm so proud of you. I know you mean it and I love you no matter what.

And I probably said everything, all of you always, which was one of the parts of our wedding vows, because that part I do mean. That's really one of the things I have clung to is that I didn't get it wrong. Like I met Greg and I thought, this is a person that I want to know forever. And I still feel that way, you know?

Like all I've ever wanted is everything, all of you always. And I don't think that's unreasonable. I just want to know what is real, what is true. And I want to know you forever. And I want you to continually update me on the things as they change. And I will love you through it all. And that is still true. Greg came out to Anna in December 2022, a few weeks before Christmas. They were both emotionally wrecked and the idea of family time and holiday cheer seemed impossible.

Anna volunteered to make up an excuse and call both of their families. And he was like, no, I just want to tell them. And for him to say, I'm ready to tell my parents and your parents that I'm gay. I was like, if he's ready two days later to sit my dad down and tell him what's going on. From there, there have only been galvanizing moments where my brain finally got what it needed, which is the truth washing over and reaffirmation of

This is actually what is real. And so it was just like continuously overwhelmed by those two things being true, like the before times and the now and the future. Being confronted with an absolute truth like my husband is gay, it was, oh no, I'm

He is programmed differently than I thought. I've been with a person who's been in hiding this entire time. I kind of thought so. I asked a million times, couldn't get a straight answer, no pun intended. And now here it is. And so buckle up. I've got to process this.

like all these lies I've told myself and let myself believe. And I do not feel like Greg did anything to me. I have at no point felt angry or lied to. I don't blame him for anything at all. I like, I feel so sad for every turn and circumstance that I've

That set him up to feel how he felt for so long and how heavy that must have been for 35 years. And I feel proud of having created a life and a partnership in which he did ultimately finally survive.

feel safe enough to trust someone outside of himself, to say it out loud, to know that he would be okay no matter what, and to trust me enough, um, as a person to trust that I, that I did mean what I said, that I would love him no matter what. And for him to be able to believe that that part felt really good and sacred and special and, um,

And again, in like the, in the fucked up codependent way, it just was like, okay, well at least like this was all worth it. You know, like at least I did, you know, I was able to like serve this purpose for this person, you know, like, like I, I know that his life would have been totally different if it wasn't for me. Not to say that I saved him by any means, but I can say with confidence that I, that I tried, um,

every single way that I could have to be supportive and open and encouraging and shame-free in every sort of dialogue that we had. And it just took seven years for him to believe me and then for him to believe in himself and to be clear-headed and clear-eyed enough to look inward and be able to pull that out. You can't grieve something you didn't love. And Anna really loved Greg.

And when he came out to her, there was a tremendous loss for both of them. And that's grief. Not just the primary loss, but the waterfall of losses that follow. Seven years of a relationship is a lot of threads connecting you. It is not a single snip, but an unweaving.

I was grieving what I thought was going to be the path of my life. But if I'm also really honest, the path was always kind of blurry. I never could quite picture what it was going to look like for us. I do remember Googling how to cook rice because I even have a rice cooker and it's pretty intuitive and straightforward. And I've done it almost every day for years, but just felt so...

On my ass, like someone had just pulled the rug out from under me in a way that I did not see coming. I just felt like the veil of reality was just so thin at that point where I just like it was just a dreamlike haze of that liminal.

existence of being completely out of breath. That's the biggest heavy thing that I carry now. I start to try to poke holes in things that are good because I don't feel like I can trust them. Yeah, I have to trust other people to tell me things. Yes, that's true. And that's by far the most human experience I've ever had. This is a very specific experience

type of thing to go through. It's not uncommon. It does happen. My particular version is especially layered. And it just had to take this time. I hate that it did. I hate that it took the time

from me. I wish it wasn't now eight years of my life or whatever, but I wish that Greg hadn't spent 35 years in the closet. I wish that grief wasn't as messy and time-consuming as it is, but I also in that moment was aware like, okay, you cannot rush this part. This is the part where I want to take our time. Yeah.

And so that was what I said to Greg in finding a therapist. I said, if there's anything I could ask for you at this point, it's that you let me take my time with processing this in the way that I feel like I need to. And that is just, that's what I need. I need someone to help me listen and talk through and understand way less about like what is real and what's moving forward, but like how do I make sense of everything that

has been our life for the past years and years. So there really just are no regrets. If your definition of a successful marriage is unconditional love, is having no regrets, then maybe this could be considered a successful marriage. There's a sun catcher in my kitchen. It hangs on a string and it turns and sways throughout the day, throwing rainbows across the room.

Any movement, any passing cloud, and the shapes and colors change. Our stories are like this too. Turn it over, let time pass, and you see something new. In the 10 months since Greg came out, he and Anna have slowly transitioned into a new phase of their relationship. They've been in therapy together for months, and they've been in therapy for months.

Greg moved out in April of this year after several months of us being in therapy together and taking care of some of those logistics to-dos. We separated our banking and we got COVID together. One of our dogs died suddenly. We had these deep conversations.

grinding gears of moving forward experiences and finally reached a point where we were ready for him to move out. And so once he moved out at the end of April, I mean, it's the isolation piece right all over again, except I'm in my own house in my own town. And I thought, shit, I need to actively connect. So I started just being much better about

building my platonic web of connection, just being kind of doubly invested in work stuff and work friends and my core group of freaky weirdos who I have met in town. Greg and I lived in our house for three years and never had anyone over. Like we, I think I had

two friends over two times or something. And I was like, oh, I'm going to have a dinner party. It was actually a dog birthday party to be very specific. Shout out to Ophelia, the 13-year-old pit bull. So I hosted Ophelia's birthday with all of our queer friends. And I was out in the yard with my dogs and looking in the middle of the night, just looking into my house. And it was full of my friends. And I just thought, this is what I want

My house is full of people and it never has been. And it felt like my house. It's like, this is, I can build my life here. That's obviously the biggest takeaway is knowing that I can take care of myself and that I can trust my instincts and identify the people who are worth putting in the time and worth trusting and worth building things with. And Greg is on that list. You know, like we are,

better than we've ever been. Like this is all I've ever wanted, which is just to actually know who he is and what he's thinking about and how his brain works and how he's feeling about stuff. I would love for us to still spend significant events and stuff together. He's just like one of my best friends on the roster. You know, at the end of all of it, I just get a gay best friend who I've had a lot of awkward sex with. Love that for us. Yeah.

Anna is at the point in their breakup where she's ready to move forward and find a romantic relationship. She's starting to date again and is finding it much easier to tell people what she's looking for, what she likes, and she's making sure to listen to her instincts. She's at the beginning of a new chapter and she's excited about what's to come.

Divorce has been a part of many stories we've told on Terrible Thanks for Asking, but it's never been the center of the story. And our dream for an episode was to talk to two people, right? Two sides of a marriage, two sides of this story. Greg wasn't interested in that when we were interviewing Anna.

But then our producer Claire McInerney got an email. I emailed Greg. So I was just kind of telling him, I'm just double checking. You're okay with us talking about your sexuality and your drug addiction. You know, as Anna understood it, kind of told him what was covered. And then I said, and of course, if you wanted to talk to us, the door is still open.

And he responded like three days later and he said, I'm in. I'm off on Wednesdays. And it was a Tuesday. So I called him the very next day and we talked for hours. We were still sleeping in the same bed and she would be crying herself to sleep every night and not like a soft voice.

quiet cry like fucking wailing and i can't do anything about it and i like if i touch her like touch her back like that's gonna make it worse and so i just i stayed in it um because i've you know i was like you deserve this like you did this to her this is your fault you did not hear greg in this episode but you're going to hear him in the next one that's in two weeks

I'm Nora McNerney. This has been terrible. Thanks for asking. And that was Anna. Big, big thank you to Anna for being so wonderful, so brave for sharing this story with all of us. We have a lot of divorce coming up. It is all divorce this month at Feelings & Co. Over on the Terrible Reading Club, we have an interview with Betsy Crane, the author of the

truly beautiful divorce memoir, This Story Will Change, and an interview with Harrison Scott Key, the author of How to Be Married, the craziest love story ever told. Harrison's book and our conversation is about his wife cheating on him and how he decided to stay and try to save their marriage.

We also have a daily show called It's Going to Be Okay, which is kind of like a warm hug to start every morning. So if you are going through something difficult, if you've been through something difficult, if honestly you just need the opposite of a doom scroll in your day,

You can find that wherever you listen to your podcast. Again, it's called It's Going to Be Okay. If you are a subscriber to TTFAPremium, you will also have access to a bonus episode with a financial expert. We're going to be talking about money and divorce, which is really, really, it's a lot.

Terrible Thanks for Asking is a production of Feelings & Co. We are an independent podcast company. Feelings & Co. is literally the only place I've ever heard people talk about feelings. I think we invented them?

Our team is me, Marcel Malakibu, Claire McInerney, Megan Palmer, and Michelle Planton. Our supporting producers are Kim Morris, Bethany Nickerson, Rachel Humphrey, Jamie Zimmerman, and David Farr. Supporting producers are listeners like you who support us at the highest level over on our Patreon. If you want to financially support our show, you can subscribe via Apple Podcasts right in the app.

On Apple, you will get bonus episodes. You will get ad-free episodes. You'll get our entire back catalog. You could also consider joining on Patreon, which has all those same perks, plus so much more video content, office hours with me, sometimes Marcel. It's a nice little community and we have different levels as well. There are a lot of ways to support this show and one of them is what you're doing right now, just listening.

Sharing our work with other people helps us continue this work and rating and reviewing wherever you get podcasts. If you have any questions, complaints, comments, we listen to them. I really mean that. It means a lot to us. Thank you. And if you...

are dealing with a broken heart right now, there's a little bonus treat for you. This is a message from the brokenhearted, from our sister podcast, It's Going to Be Okay. It is just a few minutes long. It's episode 27 of It's Going to Be Okay, and it's called Don't Be Afraid, Just Feel the Pain. I'm Nora McInerney, and it's going to be okay. We take a great risk

When we fall in love, we turn to a person, hand over our raw, beating heart and say, hold on to this for me, will you? Just hold on to it. And please, whatever you do, don't drop it on the ground and then step on it. Why would I step on it? They might ask. Who would do that? Never mind, we might say, feeling silly for a moment. Because why would they?

I listened to a lot of sad songs as a child, songs about heartbreak and loss, songs that made my heart ache for the way my heart might ache someday, songs that gave me a sense of what it might feel like to be betrayed, to have someone promise me one thing and do another, because even people who make their promises with the best of intentions don't always keep them.

This year, so many people I know have been going through it romantically and not in a good way. Several people I love woke up one day to the news that the person they loved no longer loved them back. The life that they thought they had was not real, and the life that they had planned on had just poof, evaporated.

Each time, it was every heartbreaking song ever written all rolled into one, their life seemingly reduced to a series of cliches, every following moment dedicated to picking that scab, pressing the bruise, trying to find reason in the unreasonable, trying to find an answer to the question, what is wrong with me? Why don't they want me?

When it comes to the people I love, the answer to that question is always going to be because they have terrible taste. That's why. And I do say that. And I do mean it. But that other question, what is wrong with me? There's nothing wrong with you. I mean, there's nothing so wrong with you that would make another person stepping on your heart reasonable or excusable. There's nothing wrong with you for feeling scared when something scary happens, for being hurt when someone hurts you.

There is nothing wrong with you for being wrecked by the wrecking ball. If it hurts, let it hurt. A child I know who has also heard a lot of sad love songs wrote one themselves. And while I do not know the tune, the lyrics are worth hearing and remembering and telling to ourselves as many times as we need to hear them. Don't be afraid. Just feel the pain.

If love drains from your body and blood washes from your veins, don't be afraid. Just feel the pain. Don't be afraid. Just feel the pain. If someone you loved left you and someone closed the door, don't walk away. Just feel the pain. Don't walk away. Just feel the pain. This episode feels sadder than I want it to be.

this than I intended it to be. And I don't want to make you sad. That's actually the opposite of what this show is supposed to do. But those words from a little kid remind me that sometimes, even when it is the hardest thing in the world to believe, the thing that is going to be okay is you. It's Going to Be Okay was written and recorded by me, Nora McInerney, in my office. And by office, I do mean closet.

We are a production of Feelings & Co., an independent podcast production company that also brings you terrible things for asking. What exactly is going to be okay? I don't know. It changes every day, but I do want to know what you think it is. So call us at 612-568-4441 or email me at igtbo at feelingsand.co.

This episode of It's Going to be Okay was brought to you by The Hartford.

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