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We’re talking about dating after divorce and abusive relationships. How do I start dating again? How long should I wait? What about those dating apps? What are some red flags? I share my most regrettable relationships after my abusive marriage and lessons I learned. This is Part 1 of a 2-part series.
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Transcript:
EP 117 Dating Trainwrecks Part 1
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast. Brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer songwriter, speaker and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help. [00:00:26] Now, here is Diana. [00:00:34] Hello everyone. Welcome. I hope that you are well. Everybody, we have joined the club. Brian and I are sick with Covid this week. We have dodged Covid for the last two years. In fact, we haven’t been sick with either a cold or a [00:01:00] flu or anything else in the last two years, and unfortunately we have it now. [00:01:08] So I’m gonna tell you a little bit about our experience. If you don’t wanna hear about our experience with Covid, go ahead and fast forward five minutes. But I started feeling some symptoms at work at my temp job. And everybody around me is sick and it’s a very small office and we’re all jammed in there like sardines, and it’s warm. There’s not a whole lot of circulation. And there’s not a whole lot of cleaning products like in the lunchroom. [00:01:41] There aren’t any Clorox wipes to wipe off the table you were sitting at or wipe the sink area near the microwave. And I knew when I went in there that I’m gonna get sick. My previous temp job, I went [00:02:00] into the office and everything was very spread out. It was very airy. There was airflow, air conditioning, and there was plenty of cleaning products. [00:02:10] If you touched a surface, you were required to wipe it down. And if you were sick, you could work from home. And when you came back to work, you had to wear a mask. For about a week before you could take that off. And so Friday I had been starting to cough. Now I cough a regular basis anyway because I have asthma and allergies. [00:02:37] And so when I go outside, I’m working in the garden. Yeah, I’ll come in and my nose is running or I’m coughing up whatever dirt was outside and I’m used to that. But this cough was a bit different. It was more deep down in the chest area and I was coughing all day at work and I felt really bad cuz everybody around me [00:03:00] was probably wondering if I was sick and I thought it was bronchitis because I’ve had bronchitis many times in the past. [00:03:09] Usually people with asthma, allergies, all that stuff from your sinuses eventually go down into your lungs if you don’t keep that clear. Saturday I started getting all the nasally stuff, the upper respiratory infection, I decided to go into urgent care and get some medication and get tested because we have Brian here who does not have a very strong immune system. [00:03:37] He stays home all the time. And so I went into urgent care and he gave me of course, antibiotics and prednisone and they gave me the test. And I don’t know about you at work, but to go back to work, you have to have a negative COVID test. Now, I did not get the results till Wednesday. [00:03:59] And [00:04:00] I told my supervisor that I was positive. And then probably around that time is when Brian started getting sick. [00:04:10] Now my symptoms were not very bad. I did not have a fever. I did not have the body aches. [00:04:18] any real discomfort. It just felt like a cold, upper respiratory junk. I went and got some lotion tissues and some nasal spray and I had my inhalers for my lungs and I was able to deal with it. With just over the counter products. I had some Thera flu type of drink. It was actually the France version. [00:04:43] I had my sister send me over some cuz actually the last time we were sick we were in France in 2019, and they have some really good stuff over there. I they don’t have the FDA over there, so they have some different medications that [00:05:00] you wouldn’t believe it, but they’re stronger than some of the stuff we have here. [00:05:05] So I had brought some of that home in my luggage. I’m not sleeping well though. I don’t sleep very well when I’m sick. I sleep like a rock normally. [00:05:15] Anyway, Brian has been with a fever. He’s taking it pretty badly. He’s had a 100.2 fever. But we have Tylenol, which that’s pretty much the only thing he can take is Tylenol. He’s had really bad headaches and he’s got the body aches and he didn’t take the test because he didn’t want anything stuck up his nose. [00:05:41] Yeah. The medical assistant that stuck the swab up my nose, she just like jammed it in there and it wasn’t very pleasant at all. I had taken a test again yesterday. It was one of those home kits you can get from the government. My neighbor gave me her kit, and if I’m doing the swab myself it’s totally fine [00:06:00] because I can control [00:06:00] how far that swab goes up that nose. Anyway I’m still positive when I tested yesterday, but I’m trying to keep an eye on Brian, make sure that if he is comfortable, he’s not sleeping well either. He’s very tired. The fatigue is kicking his butt. [00:06:19] But what is important, nobody really talks about is washing your hands. And I wash my hands constantly. I don’t touch door knobs. I use my arm, I back up into a door. I don’t touch light switches with my hands. [00:06:36] I keep wipes in my purse. I keep hand sanitizer in my jeans pocket. The little purse packs. but you don’t realize how much you touch your face with your hands and your hands are contaminated. And so that’s what spreads your germs is you’re touching your mouth, you’re rubbing your eyes. [00:06:55] And trust me, I rub my eyes all the time. I rub my nose a lot. [00:07:00] And so the one thing that the mask does do is it keeps your hands from touching your face, or at least you’re more aware of not touching your face. But I think that’s why I got away with it so long is that I practiced good hygiene. [00:07:19] I stay away from sick people predominantly. We were working from home instead of working in an office except for the last six months. And I think I got lazy at this last temp job because I didn’t wear a mask. It was so hot in that office, [00:07:37] But so I start my new permanent job a week from now. Very excited. But I’m trying to rest and take care of me and Brian and so I can test negative for Covid so I can go to work. [00:07:50] But anyway, that’s my experience. Take it or leave it. Please pray for Brian. [00:07:56] So anyway, [00:08:00] the show that we’re going to do today I had promised you is I had been doing my personal story, the 20 part series of my personal story. [00:08:13] And if you haven’t listened to that, go back and listen to the series. It’s, yeah, it’s one of those you have to binge watch because it builds on each other. But this particular episode can stand on its own because we’re gonna be talking about dating after divorce. My dating fiascos, my train wrecks, and I was gonna talk about it when I was doing my story, but I felt that it needed its own episode because. [00:08:43] it was so messed up. And there’s a lot of things that I wanted to say. A lot of lessons I’ve learned and maybe something that would help you. And I made a lot of mistakes, a lot of things I did, I regretted and I’m [00:09:00] gonna be open and honest with you and vulnerable today. [00:09:03] Yeah, some of it’s embarrassing. I have, processed all those things and repented of some of that stuff. And I’m here to help you navigate. Maybe you’re going through this right now. Maybe this is no man’s land for you. This is all new to you. And so [00:09:24] here we go. [00:09:26] So to start with dating after my divorce, I wasn’t even waiting until the ink was dry. I was jumping on dating websites right away. And this was a new concept and we’ve talked about this on previous podcasts. The last time I dated, I was in my twenties and I was not prepared for what I was getting into. [00:09:55] The concept seems really good. You make a profile and you [00:10:00] say what you’re looking for in a partner. And you put, what your hobbies are and a little bit of your background and you browse through other people’s profiles and you message the person you think would be a good match for you. [00:10:14] Of course, they have those ones that do the matching for you, like eHarmony and I searched for the Christians, of course, and I came upon this guy that was a good looking fellow, very clean cut looking, and he said in his profile that he was a preacher. He led a bible study and in that time of my healing journey, which was not very far, I thought I would be okay if I would stick with the Christian dating websites and [00:10:51] if I would date somebody that was a Christian and was a preacher maybe in the ministry, someone that loved Jesus, and I [00:11:00] would be okay. Sounds, sounds like that’s common sense, right? Sounds like that’s a good idea, but I did not realize that even on the Christian sites, there are a lot of wolves and sheeps clothing. [00:11:15] So this fellow looked like a cross between Patrick Duffy and what’s the name of that show where the guy gets the newspaper of the news the day before and there’s this cat. [00:11:30] And he goes and he tries to save people from horrible things that were gonna happen in the newspaper the next day. He looks across between those two people. And I messaged him and he wanted to meet me at a Bible study that he was doing at his church. Sounds good so far. but I had my martial arts class that night. [00:11:53] And I told him I couldn’t come. I was very consistent with my martial arts classes. We’ve talked about [00:12:00] that before. And he said you wanna meet at Denny’s after class and after bible study? And I thought, okay, Denny’s is safe. I said, okay, public place. So let’s come up with a name for this man. [00:12:16] This man was probably the one of the biggest regrets of my dating fiascos. the, Devil Wears Prada movie. I’ve never seen it, but I understand the concept. This guy is, the Devil Wears Cargo Shorts, so, I’m just gonna call him Cargo for lack of a better, more creative name. I don’t wanna say his name on here. [00:12:42] So I show up at the diner and he doesn’t look like his picture. He had a full beard, which he did not have in his picture, and he had red, bloodshot eyes. And I usually connect [00:13:00] red, bloodshot eyes with drug abuse. I just gave him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he was tired. But I was a little unnerved because he did not look like his profile picture. [00:13:11] I knew it was him, but that’s very common. You will see. [00:13:15] People’s profile pictures look a lot nicer than they are in person. It happens. People wanna put their best foot forward. But don’t put a profile picture up that, you’re much, much younger or you’re much skinnier, or you have a whole lot more hair. That’s deceptive. But I recognized his smile was the same. [00:13:37] I also noticed that he ordered food from pointing at the pictures in the menu, and I found out later he is just learning how to read. [00:13:49] And we started exchanging stories while we were eating our dinner. And you made this comment when we were [00:14:00] talking. And when you’re talking with a stranger and they ask you about your story, obviously I’m gonna bring up my ex because I had just been divorced like two weeks before, maybe even sooner than that. [00:14:13] I, it was very soon after my divorce. And he said that, I don’t think I wanna date you because you’re still in love with your ex-husband. And I was like, what? And I told him, the love has been gone for a very long time. And he insisted that I hadn’t gotten over him because I talked about him a lot. [00:14:34] And I said I want you to know where I’m coming from, what I went through with this man. [00:14:40] Okay, fine. So I went to the bathroom, I thought we were gonna go our separate way. So I came back out, going to say goodbye, and he started asking me more questions. And up to this point, I hadn’t talked about my salvation story. And so somehow we got into how we were both [00:15:00] saved. [00:15:00] And then all of a sudden he was very interested. And we wound up talking for hours at the Denny’s. And he decided he wanted to date me after all. And I had asked him much later when we were dating. Why did you decide to date me after you first said that I was still in love with my ex-husband? And he said that he. [00:15:25] Starving for affection had not been with a woman in many years and he was very attracted to me and he wanted me badly. Which is understandable. We decided to meet at a salad bar later that week and he gave me this big hug. Hello. And we did some more talking and he was witnessing to the waitress, which I didn’t expect. [00:15:52] I thought that was nice. And I invited him to come to my apartment and watch a [00:16:00] movie. Now again, I was gullible enough to think that a preacher coming over for a date. It would be an innocent evening. That’s what I expected. And we had gone out on a few dates and talked on the phone. So I’m expecting, yeah, we’re gonna have popcorn and we’re gonna sit on the couch and we’re gonna watch a movie in which it was Gladiator when it came out. [00:16:26] It was and when he came into the apartment, he gave me this big hug and he asked me to play a song on my piano. And so I was playing on my piano and he was hugging me from behind and was distracting me. So I stopped and it was very intentional, some sensual hugging from behind. And so I said, okay, let’s go sit on the couch. [00:16:49] And we’re sitting here watching Gladiator. We’re into 10 minutes of the movie. And keep in mind, we had only hugged at this point and nothing else,[00:17:00] neither of us had been with anyone in a really long time. Probably him more than me, but he reached over to kiss me and then all of a sudden he pulled me onto his lap. [00:17:15] I’m like, oh, okay. So we’re kissing and it’s getting pretty heated. And he asks me if I want to go into the bedroom. [00:17:24] And I said, yeah, because, we’re pretty turned on. And I’m at the same point as he is. It’s like walking through a desert and then all of a sudden you come across this buffet of food. and plenty of water. And it’s pretty hard to resist. Not impossible, but it’s very hard to resist when you have that vacuum. [00:17:51] You both have that vacuum and nobody’s putting on the stops at all. And he said, are you sure you want this? And I said, yes. It was [00:18:00] both consensual, at least from my point of view. So yes, we wound up in the bedroom and I won’t go into any details about that, but that wasn’t the worst part of the story. [00:18:13] We’re laying there afterwards and he says, I think we should go down to the courthouse and sign the papers since we’re married now. And I was like wait, what? and he claimed that the Bible says if you sleep with somebody, then you’re married. And I was like, no, it doesn’t say that. We’re fornicators but we’re not married. [00:18:38] And again, he is just starting to learn how to read. And I’ve got a bible college degree. I know my Bible very well. It does not say that we’re married. A lot of stuff in the Old Testament was cultural. Like you moved into your mother’s tent when you get married. And the [00:19:00] Israelites, they had their customs. [00:19:03] That’s not the custom we have here, at least in, in the United States. You go get witnesses, you go to the courthouse. But having sex outside of marriage is not the same thing as getting married, not in our culture anyway. Anyway, so he got really mad because I said, I’m not going to the courthouse with you. [00:19:29] The paint was burly dry on my divorce papers and my parents would have me committed if I got married to this guy. It was insane. So he started screaming at me that I took advantage of him, that I used him. And I was really shocked. And I said, I’m really sorry if you felt I took advantage of you, I thought we both consented to the sex. [00:19:55] That’s what this. [00:19:56] I did not force you to come into the bedroom. I did [00:20:00] not drag you on top of my lap. You initiated this. So I think he was, [00:20:07] there was a lot of things going on here. [00:20:09] Maybe he felt guilty about having sex, and that’s understandable. That’s what God does is hey you’re using somebody for your physical gratification that you’re not committed to. You’re not married to. And God’s telling you, Hey, you shouldn’t have done that. [00:20:27] And I understand that and. I asked him forgiveness. I’m really sorry if he felt I took advantage of you, but I think that he was just trying to manipulate me. I found out later that he wanted a a mother for his children that his ex-wife has custody over. He was trying to get custody of his children who were being abused by his ex-wife and her boyfriend. [00:20:57] I understand that he wants to get custody [00:21:00] of his children, but that’s not the way to do it. , so he left the apartment. He was really angry and I thought that would be the last I would see of him wrong. He messaged me on Facebook and he was trying to charm me into seeing him again. [00:21:16] So, being married would get points for the judge that he would have a stable home. But, Cargo was an abuse survivor. He was sexually abused and neglected, abandoned by his mother. Abandoned by his father who had PTSD from the war. He was out on the streets homeless. So Cargo took care of his sister and had odd jobs as a teenager. [00:21:43] Oh, that’s why he couldn’t read. He didn’t go to school. And he got married to the first woman who would marry him, which was his ex-wife. And she was very abusive. They had four children. His wife raped [00:22:00] him at knife point to get him pregnant because she knew that he wouldn’t leave her if she got pregnant again. [00:22:09] And yes, ladies and gentlemen, a woman can rape a man. He had been hit over the head with a telephone. Now these are the telephones in the seventies that are plugged into the wall and they’re very heavy. They’re probably a good 10 pounds. And she would hit ’em over the head with this heavy telephone. [00:22:31] And yes a man’s body can be stimulated to have sex on a physical level whether he wanted to or not. He did not want to get pregnant. He did not want to get her pregnant again. But he had met some senior citizens at his job once and they were Christians and they taught him how to read. [00:22:57] And that was how he became a Christian, [00:23:00] was they led him to the Lord. [00:23:02] So that’s pretty much what gave him the strength to leave when he got saved. And he wanted to, of course, serve the Lord. But yeah, there was a lot of, [00:23:13] that relationship was messed up. He had mental health issues. He had some physical issues, which was his blood pressure. Found out that’s why his eyes were always bloodshot was his blood pressure was very high and he wasn’t taking any medication for it. So it was like, okay, you need to go to the doctor and get checked out. [00:23:38] But he always had trouble holding a job because he wanted to be around people. He didn’t wanna do like a desk job or a job that was not around people, but he couldn’t make enough money in order to get his children back from his ex-wife. You [00:24:00] gotta pay for lawyers and court fees, and it was just a huge mess. [00:24:05] He was very controlling and manipulative and toxic just like my ex-husband was, and we would go back and forth between him breaking up with me and stalking me. He was always telling me what to do, he wanted me to practice submitting to him, red flag, we’re not married. I don’t have to submit to you. [00:24:29] Oh, one day he brought me a plant to take care of. I want you to practice taking care of this plant. It’s like taking care of children. I’m like, no. I was a nanny in college and worked at a daycare center. It’s nothing like taking care of a plant. Like I’m not very good with plants. At least during that time, I was not very good [00:24:53] taking care of any plants, they would die in my care. Children, I was okay with. And [00:25:00] during this time I was at the point where I was recording my album, still. My music, and he wanted to come to the studio with me. And he was trying to tell me how to sing and how to do my album artwork because I had worked with my best friend who was a photographer and we were doing artwork for the album, and he was criticizing the album artwork. [00:25:28] And that doesn’t look like an album cover. But that’s what it’s going to be. That’s what I want. And he do stuff like, come into my apartment. Now I had a two bedroom apartment because I had my bedroom. And then the other room was to hold all my stuff. Cause I moved out of a a three bedroom house and accumulated all this stuff from 13 years of marriage. [00:25:53] And so I had my book collection, I had my sewing machine, all that stuff. And I had my my music, my [00:26:00] piano. And so he would come into my my apartment and tell me I should sell all my stuff. What? You could sell all your stuff and you wouldn’t need a two bedroom apartment. [00:26:10] Why don’t you get a roommate? I’m like I don’t wanna get a roommate. You know what a roommate is? A roommate is the same thing as a marriage partner without the sex. That’s how I thought of it at this stage in my healing. I didn’t want to share an apartment with anybody. I wanted to be by myself. [00:26:29] I wanted to do what I wanted to do for a change in my life. And he lived with his father, with the P T S D and in a house and he wanted me to move out of my apartment and move in with him and his dad. And I was like, okay, all you have is a room. You want me to move into your bedroom with your father that’s got P T S D from the Korean War. [00:26:59] I He [00:27:00] never did anything rude or impolite or didn’t really scare me. But Cargo would tell me, just don’t make any sudden moves or don’t sneak up on him. He had this list of things not to do in front of him because it would trigger him to have a flashback of some sort. [00:27:17] Like, no, I’m not going to move into your father’s house. I have my own apartment. I have a job. He’s like, I wanna give you the world. I’m like, no, you just wanna control me. You don’t wanna give me the world . You don’t have a job. You don’t have your own place, which, everybody’s in a different stage of life and that’s fine. [00:27:38] But he just, it was one thing after another that I couldn’t deal with. he took me to see the movie Fireproof. [00:27:46] You Remember Fireproof, and that it was when it was still in the theaters and it had a book that came with it. And seeing that movie so soon after my divorce was a real mistake. And [00:28:00] I cried through the movie because part of me wanted the miracle of a saved marriage. Parting of The Red Sea. I wished that my ex-husband would have changed or that I hadn’t failed at my marriage. [00:28:14] But that didn’t happen. And I still had some misplaced guilt about the failure of my marriage. So Cargo and I went to Pancake House afterwards and he said to me, You should go back and marry your ex. It’s obvious you still love him. I was like, no. That ship has sailed. We are divorced. [00:28:35] I’m moving on with my life. What is wrong with you? This obsession with me and my ex because you’re reading me all wrong. [00:28:45] And I met Cargo’s kids who seemed like really good kids. We went on a road trip to California to drop them off because his ex lives in California and had a pretty [00:29:00] nice time together. and Cargo believed his ex-wife and her boyfriend were molesting the kids, but couldn’t prove it to the judge. [00:29:09] And the other things that he would do was, we were in bed one day and he sat on me and pinned my wrists down, which was the first time anyone had ever done that to me. And I said, what are you doing? He said, since you’re acting like a whore, I’m gonna treat you like a whore. I said, excuse me? Get off me right now. [00:29:39] And I told him to leave [00:29:40] because I’m having sex with you, that makes me a whore? So there’s something that’s messed up there. He’s initiating sex with me, and he’s enjoying the sex, but he calls me a whore. So I had a little bit more[00:30:00] self-respect and confidence in myself that I wasn’t going to be called names like that, but still, for some reason I was dumb enough to continue this relationship. [00:30:13] And it was an on and off relationship. And I went to his church to visit. He wanted me to visit his church. I don’t know what denomination it was, but it was very obvious they had some false doctrine going on, especially about concerning the Holy Spirit. They kept calling the Holy Spirit an “It”. No. [00:30:35] That’s not right. And Holy Spirit is a person with emotions, intellect, and will. The third person of the trinity. And so my flag went up there and some other things that were really strange on healing and the power of prayer. A little bit of obsession with demons controlling your life. [00:30:55] And so I, I told Danny I didn’t want to go to his church and he [00:31:00] didn’t like that. [00:31:01] You can go to your church if you want to. And I’m gonna go to the one I’ve been going to up to this point. [00:31:07] And I think the relationship started really coming to a point. [00:31:13] He would come over to my apartment and he broke my computer, did something to it, and I had that blue screen. And he wouldn’t fix it. I’m like, you’re gonna take the computer to repair shop and you’re gonna fix it. You got a virus or something in my computer, and I needed that computer. And he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t fix it. And I got really angry that I got stuck with having to pay for the repairs. And so I told him, you’re not allowed to touch my computer. Just don’t come over at all. [00:31:42] And I don’t remember where in the timeline this was, but we went to his sister’s house for I think it was Thanksgiving, and I met some of his other family members, which was his sister, her husband, and maybe an uncle. And I, I thought this was [00:32:00] very nice to be invited. And it was in the formal dining room. [00:32:04] I was just engaging in polite conversation and I thought it was a very good exchange. They were talking a little bit about politics and maybe some other topics, and I had added to the conversation as the night went on, and when we left and I got in the car, he was taking me home back to my apartment. He said that his sister told him that I was just like his ex-wife, and I was so insulted by that. [00:32:33] I was like, how could she think that I was anything like your ex-wife? [00:32:41] You look like her. I said, no I’ve seen the woman. I don’t look like her at all. I’m not a sexual predator. I’m not a rapist. and Cargo said, you have a dominant personality. So what is that supposed to mean? No one’s ever told me that I [00:33:00] had a dominant personality, and I don’t even know what that means. [00:33:05] He says I’m passive aggressive. [00:33:07] Okay. No, no one’s ever called me passive aggressive either. I’m a pretty straightforward kind of a person. If I have a problem with you, I’m gonna tell you to your face. [00:33:18] I am not talking and gossiping or saying one thing when I feel the opposite way. That’s the definition of passive aggressive. So I don’t know where he was getting that, or his sister. I just think you’d prefer you women to be quiet and stupid. [00:33:38] My brakes needed to be changed on my Volkswagen. And he told me he used to work for AAA and he would change batteries and change brakes. I was dumb enough to let him change my brakes, which if you know anything about Volkswagens, I found out is that you need a special tool to unlock [00:34:00] the brakes. [00:34:00] They do that on purpose, so you have to take your car to the dealer to get your maintenance done. Volkswagens are very high maintenance cars. And he screwed up the brakes somehow where, okay the car is stopping, but the brakes are really squealing. And I wound up having to take the car to the dealership and I asked them what is wrong? [00:34:25] Why is the brakes making that kind of noise? He said who changed the brakes? I said, one of my friends did. Says we can fix it, but it’s gonna cost you this amount of money. I said, no. I think I’m gonna have him fix the brakes because he’s the one that messed them up. If I can’t get him to do that, then I will be back. [00:34:44] I can’t remember if [00:34:45] he gave another shot at fixing the brakes, but it I never felt fully safe in the car after that. [00:34:53] And [00:34:54] anyway, I think the last day that I saw him, [00:34:58] he said he wanted to go and do [00:35:00] something. He never wanted to sit around and do nothing, just relax. It was he wanted to go to the movies. I don’t remember what picture we were going to see, but we were driving in my car. [00:35:10] His car was a junker. On our way to the movie theater we got into this big fight because I think we were talking about real estate, cuz I was in that real estate group. If you remember back from my story, and I wanted to invest in real estate. [00:35:31] and we got into this big fight about it and he didn’t really know anything about real estate, but he told me I should just trust God and go buy a house, even though I didn’t have the resources to do that with. I told him, I’m not ready to buy a house yet. I have to save my money first. I have to get caught up from being unemployed for six months. [00:35:51] And we got to the mall and he decided, he was in a bad mood and he didn’t wanna see a movie [00:36:00] anymore. Take me home right now. I should have just left him at the mall. Believe me. I thought about it good and hard about, get outta my car and you can go get your own ride home. Because he was really rude to me. [00:36:13] But I took him home and were yelling the whole time back and. He’s saying that I bring out the worst in him and all these other horrible things. I don’t even remember, thankfully. But I dropped him off at his dad’s and I told him I never wanted to see him again. And he said the same thing to me. I never saw him again. [00:36:34] I cut him off. That means I deleted Messenger and Facebook and that was a horrible train wreck of a relationship. And hopefully that you would take some lessons from that. [00:36:51] I failed to mention my relationship with Raul. If you [00:37:00] remember, [00:37:01] he was from the real estate investing group that I was a part of, the school that I went to, and he was my mentor. He was very cute with curly hair and from Spain. And he was a player. And I got hooked in this real estate investing group. It was very kind of cultish. I’ve mentioned this before when I talked about this group is [00:37:29] they followed the principles of The Secret and, wishing things from the universe and being positive and attracting things into your life that you want, like this big genie in the sky. But anyway, Raul was one of those people that, believed in all that hook line and sinker. [00:37:48] And, but again, he was a player and I found out he was pretty much playing every woman in that real estate group. Found out the [00:38:00] hard way that he was playing Me too. [00:38:03] And Raul was not a believer in any sense of the word. In fact, we had conversations. I was in his house and there’s this humongous crucifix on the wall and we had talked about God and his father left him when he was young and never really knew his father. [00:38:20] And so I said you have a heavenly Father right there. And I’m pointing to the crucifix. And he had no concept of the fatherhood of God, and in fact rejected the whole thing about Christ and salvation. And it stupid me, even though I knew, okay, this guy is not a believer, rejects and makes fun of my faith. [00:38:45] I still got suckered in. It was really cute and I was very interested in learning how to do the real estate. We would go to Village Inn after our real estate meetings and talk [00:39:00] and flirt and we were kissing in the parking lot and good kisser. We went hiking up the mountains at night with his dogs. [00:39:09] He had a German Shepherd, a really wonderful German Shepherd dog I loved. And I don’t know why I was dating him. [00:39:19] But yeah, I had in my head, okay, this is not going to progress any further. We’re not gonna have sex, we’re not going to go any further. I probably shouldn’t be kissing this guy in the first place. And he invited me back to his place, which that was a mistake again. I trusted him. We hadn’t really talked about that we were a couple or anything, but it was very late at night, probably 11 o’clock at night. [00:39:49] And his sister and his roommates were in along the same hallway as his bedroom. And we went into his bedroom [00:40:00] because there wasn’t any other place to talk. where it was quiet and we were making out on his bed, which is a huge mistake. Big stupid mistake. And I already told him when we were kissing, it’s not happening tonight. [00:40:17] I am not having sex with you. There’s people in the other room. I have to get up for work tomorrow, all this stuff. And I explicitly told ’em, it’s not gonna happen tonight. But unfortunately, when you keep going with making out in somebody’s bedroom, even though there are people in the next room, or you have convinced yourself that you had drawn a line in the sand, that you’re not gonna go any further. [00:40:46] your hormones start taking over. And just like before, you get so aroused. And again, you still have that vacuum of neediness and wanting to connect with [00:41:00] somebody and you’ve been neglected for so long that you want to go further, your body screams to go further. And [00:41:07] so yeah, I went past the point of no return for myself and next thing you know, I’m taking my pants off. So yes, it was consensual. I agreed to it and regretted it. [00:41:19] I had to leave cuz I had to get up the next day for one to get my car fixed at the Volkswagen dealer, which happened to be near his house and I had to go to work. And [00:41:31] yeah, that was an experience. And you’re probably thinking, it was about pregnancy and yeah, I had been on the pill for 13 years being married to my ex. I had not gone off the pill at that time. And so I didn’t have any fear of getting pregnant. But I definitely thought about getting venereal disease because, I found out he was a player and he was sleeping with all these women. [00:41:58] In fact, our,[00:42:00] [00:42:00] our real estate group had this banquet and he asked me if I would be his date for the banquet. And I went and bought a new dress and everything and I was talking to one of the girls and about the banquet and if she had a date and she was waiting for Raul to ask her to the banquet. Apparently they went last year together. I had mentioned to her that he had already asked me and she looked really shocked and disappointed and I think that’s when I figured out that he was sleeping around with everybody and she was a very nice gal. [00:42:37] Maria. But anyway, I’m sitting there at the Volkswagen dealer. I hadn’t showered and there was this old man in the waiting room and I was half asleep. I was just sitting on the chair waiting for my car to be finished. And this old man started a conversation with me and I don’t know what gave him the impression that [00:43:00] I would be interested in a hookup with this old man, but he gave me his phone number and I said you’re old enough to be my grandfather. [00:43:08] And I pushed the phone number back. I thought, oh, this is, the Lord just telling me, this is probably not the lifestyle that you need to be living. You probably look like you hadn’t slept, or you probably smell like sex. Hadn’t showered. I don’t know. But I got my car and went back home. [00:43:30] But he and I stopped seeing each other because I didn’t want to be in that real estate group anymore. And I found out that it was cultic, and they wanted me to be a part of these retreats and stuff. And I went to the one retreat because somebody was paying for me to go. And it was a lot of the positive thinking, The Secret, call the stuff you want out of the universe. [00:43:55] With my faith, I didn’t believe all that stuff. And [00:44:00] we lived by the border and Sheriff Joe Arpaio was the sheriff at the time. We had gotten into some argument about the border. My dad had a sailboat in San Diego and I had gone to San Diego to be on my dad’s boat with my dad. [00:44:20] And you have to go through all these checkpoints along the Mexico border on the way to San Diego and they check your car and they got the dogs sniffing. And they make sure that you’re not hiding undocumented people in your trunk. And then we had, me and Raul had gotten into this [00:44:36] argument at how evil Sheriff Joe Arpaio was about having these border checks. And I said, they sniffed my car too. They weren’t just stopping random cars, they were stopping everybody’s car to make sure that we weren’t smuggling humans in because there’s a lot of what they call coyotes [00:45:00] here, and they’re paid a lot of money to get people over the border at the suffering of the people that want to get over the border very desperately. [00:45:10] And so that’s very common here. So, we had gotten into this big, huge fight, he didn’t wanna talk to me anymore because, he’s Hispanic descent and I’m not. He thought I was unreasonable. [00:45:24] Okay. Agreed to disagree, but he cut me off . And I never saw him. I think he moved to Mexico and bought some land down there. But anyway, that was another regret that I had was Raul. [00:45:40] I’ve gone longer than I was expecting in the storytelling with my dating train wrecks. I think we’re gonna go to part two. [00:45:50] I’m gonna stop here. And next week I’m gonna finish up my story. And I’m gonna do some [00:46:00] takeaways, some specific takeaways from this to keep in mind when going through the dating process. So we’ll see you here next week. Have a wonderful week, and God bless you. Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful Podcast. [00:46:18] If this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You could connect with us at DSW Ministries dot org, where you’ll find our blog, along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week.