A Bad Day at the Fair

The following is a transcript of the My Crazy Divorce podcast

Guest Name: Doug Loof
Release Date: 11.11.2021

 

Doug Loof: So I grew up in Eastern Wisconsin. Just about an hour north of Milwaukee, large family. I have 10 brothers and sisters.

Tom Milligan: Look, I’m from Utah. So big families are pretty normal here, but 10?! Doug Loof’s mom, I think out of necessity was a stay-at-home mom and dad worked in a factory.

Doug Loof: My dad worked at a factory for 53, 54 years, same factory.

Tom Milligan: 53 years. Man, these people do everything big. That just doesn’t happen anymore.

Doug Loof: I worked there when I was in high school, I worked second shift. So I think it was senior year. I went to school in the morning. Then I worked second shift at the factory and I hated every second of it.

I made it six months because there was a cute girl that worked there at the same, same area. It took me six months to get a date with her. Then once we went out and it really didn’t go anywhere, I was like, well, I don’t need that job anymore. So I quit that.

Tom Milligan: So we’ve learned three things about Doug. First, he doesn’t like factory work at all. Second. It takes him a while to ask somebody out. Finally, he’s really willing to invest in his relationships even before they start well. After high school, Doug moved away from Wisconsin and somehow landed in Minnesota.

Doug Loof: And I’m 19, moved away. Don’t know anybody. I lived above a flower shop. I had to walk across the roof of the garage to get to my apartment.

Tom Milligan: I think one of the best things about moving to a new place is that you can reinvent yourself.

Doug Loof: I’m like, you know what, I’m just going to start dating a lot of people because this isn’t working. I’m 19 and I haven’t had a girlfriend, you know.

Tom Milligan: Good for him. Play the field, have some fun, figure yourself out. Bravo, Doug!

Doug Loof: I put a lot of pressure on finding the right woman, you know.

Tom Milligan: So much for playing the field. At 19, Doug Loof’s out looking for the one and guess what happens when you go out looking for something, you sometimes find it.

Doug Loof: Then I go out the next week to Shopko and to get a toaster and some things. I walk in the store and I see Missy, she’s like, so she’s two years younger than me. So she’s 16, 17 years old at this point. I see her, I’m like, she’s like, hi, you know? So I’m walking around the store pretty slow. I’m stalling, pretty hard. I mean, I went in for two items, so they should not have taken me 45 minutes.

So I’m walking back down a different isle and I see her again. I’m like, hi again. She kind of giggled and said, hi again. So at this point I’m like, well, now it’s just going to be weird if I keep hanging around, you know, so I check out and I’m leaving the store and she’s near the exit folding clothes. She works at Shopko, by the way. I don’t know if I mentioned that, but she’s folding clothes with this other girl, blonde haired girl, and I’m leaving and she waves to me on her own and I’m like, so then I wave and I’m like, oh, okay. So I get outside. So finally I leave and I go to another store.

Tom Milligan: He left, I thought he wanted to date a lot. Come on, Doug Loof, grow a pair. If you want to date, you got to ask her out.

Doug Loof: So I go back.

Tom Milligan: Now we’re talking

Doug Loof: I walk around the entire store and I can’t find her anywhere. I’m like son-of-a… you know, and so then I see the blonde girl that she was folding clothes with by the changing rooms.

So I’m like, oh this will be easier, less pressure. You know, I’ll just go and talk to her about her and be like high school all over again.

Tom Milligan: Of course it’s like high school. You’re 19 and she’s folding clothes at Shopko.

Doug Loof: So I’m walking up to her, got a whole plan in my head, come up to the corner.

There’s a wall there and Missy standing right around the corner and I’m like, Ugh. I’m a talker. So for me to be speechless with a little bit, I was confused. So finally I’m like, ah, Hey, can you help me? She’s like, yeah, what do you need? I’m like, I need a date. Damn.

Tom Milligan: ‘I need a date.’ That was smooth, Doug.

Doug Loof: Then I saw her every other day until she graduated high school. Then she moved in with me. Then, that was it.

Tom Milligan: At least they waited until graduation to move in together. Everyone loves a romantic engagement story. So break out the tissue. You’re going to need it.

Doug Loof: At this point, we’re together for over for a year or just a little over a year we’re together. We’re like, we should get married.

Tom Milligan: Wait, what? We should get married. Seriously.

Doug Loof: Remember she’s 18, I’m 20. We’re kids.

Tom Milligan: And since we’re just kids.

Doug Loof: We should have a kid. Yeah, let’s just have a kid. Carter was born two years after we met almost to the day. He was at our wedding.

Tom Milligan: Doug and Missy were still kids, but now they’re married and have the first of their four children that had to be rough.

Doug Loof: So, we’re living an hour and a half away from my family, five hours from her. It was definitely a struggle.

Tom Milligan: I’ll bet. When my twins were born, my mother-in-law moved in for the first few weeks. I don’t know how Doug and Missy did it all alone. They were still so young. So, I asked why didn’t you just move closer to family?

Doug Loof: We moved around a lot. I will say it because, I am very much an entrepreneurial or free spirit kind of guy. So, like, I always tell people I will be the best employee ever for six months. Then after that, I’m going to be a shitty employee. Cause I get bored. I’m not happy. I’m bored. I want to do my own thing. It’s not, I don’t feel like it’s going anywhere.

Tom Milligan: I guess Doug isn’t one to settle down, but maybe there were other reasons to stay away.

Doug Loof: Her dad was very passive, aggressive, controlling, so like, you know. Just do what he wants or the day’s going to be miserable kind of thing. Well, it’s not my biggest fan.

Tom Milligan: I really can’t say for sure, but I think I’d keep my distance from her family too. So how did that affect our newlyweds?

Doug Loof: What that did was it kept her and I really close cause it was us. It was her and I.

Tom Milligan: It stayed that way for years just Doug and Missy against the world and life was good for awhile at least.

Doug Loof: We moved here in 2000 and our kids were in school. So, they’re in a lot of stuff. We were the new faces and we were young parents. We were barely, I mean, Missy was 24, 25. Let me say we’re young. But we met a lot of people really fast. Then we started our food business.

I mean, we know everybody now and I think it just put too many people into our relationship. I’m not going to say that was like, I should say I wasn’t going to say it was, but it was, that was the beginning of our demise.

Tom Milligan: Okay. So, it’s not just Doug and Missy anymore. They have kids, they have friends.

That’s not always bad, but it is different from what they’re used to, but couples have to adjust.

Doug Loof: That is clearly not the only issue we had. I think that was the start of the demise.

Tom Milligan: Damn well. What happened? Well, to put it mildly, Missy got too close to one of those new friends.

Doug Loof: His wife and his kids all worked for us part-time in the food business. He had a very good job, a diesel mechanic, but Missy liked them. We spent a lot of time with them and then they started helping us more and more. Then, so we were at this big music festival, really big festival. We got two trucks there. We got a frozen drink truck and one of our fire trucks did tacos.

He, my ex and I had got down there, set everything up. Then Brian, let’s just call them Brian, came down with our oldest, Carter and we worked there. It was an incredible night, super busy. Did really well. It’s like. We’re done. We’ve got everything cleaned up. I’m going home. Missy says, well, I’m going to ride home with Brian, keep him awake.

I’m like, that’s a little weird. She’s like, what do you mean? That’s not weird. I’m like, yeah, that’s a little weird. She’s like, it’s not weird. I’m like, I don’t, she’s like, I don’t know what are you talking about? I’m like, I’m tired too and it’s a little weird that you’re choosing to ride home with him.

Tom Milligan: Yup. It is weird. Trust your gut, Doug. Trust your gut.

Doug Loof: So, we get home. She gets home shortly after she comes in and she’s all over me. I’m like, no, and I’m not a jealous person. Never happened. I said, no, you’re just going to think of him.

Tom Milligan: Yeah. Doug has it figured out. So how did this happen?

Doug Loof: Because a diesel mechanic makes like $30 an hour. He’s taken off from his job to help at the fair every day, which he’s never done before. We pay our friends better than most people pay people, but we pay like 14, 15 bucks an hour. So, he’s not going to his $30 an hour job to come to the fair to work for half of that, I’m super stressed out, tired.

Like we’re working 18 hours a day for three weeks straight. I get to watch them two just have a great time together. Like every other day, her and I were fighting at the fair, 11 days long. The longest 11 days of my life. 

Tom Milligan: Even though I don’t know, Missy, I can just hear her saying he’s just a friend. Bullshit, Missy.

Doug Loof: I talked to him twice during the fair about like how this is weird. 

Tom Milligan: Remember earlier when I said Doug’s and my life, mirror each other? When my ex was having an emotional affair with one of my friends, I talked to him about it a few times. I also happened to record one of those conversations. I’ll include that recording at the end of this episode, if you’re interested. [NOTE: that transcript is included at the end of this article as well]

All right. So, Doug confronts Brian

Doug Loof: He’s like, I would never do anything that would jeopardize my family. My daughter means so much to me. Like I would never do anything to jeopardize that.

Tom Milligan: Missy’s just a friend, right? What a dick.

Doug Loof: There’s one day left in the fair we go home. We hadn’t been having much sex because A, we’re super tired and B, I was not in the mood. We’re fighting the whole time. You know, about him and her that night. We have incredible, probably the best sex we’ve had in five years.

Tom Milligan: Well, okay then at least that was a fun night. I hope they both slept well because this shit’s about to get real.

Doug Loof: We get in the car and we’re heading to clean up. I mean, it takes four or five days to clean up everything from the fair, you know, we leave in Story city and I sent her a link to a 30 day sex challenge, which we’ve done before. We’ve very rarely ever finished them because it is actually pretty hard to have sex for 30 days in a row.

Tom Milligan: I have to admit, I can’t even imagine having sex 30 days in a row, but I’d sure like to try someday.

Doug Loof: It took her like three seconds after she got that link to tell me she wanted a divorce.

Tom Milligan: Well, that escalated quickly.

Well, let’s remember the timeline here just the night before Doug and Missy had the best sex of their lives. So, I’m sure Doug is feeling like things are at least okay between them. So, the very next morning, just a few hours after this amazing sex. Before they leave for the fair, he sends her a link to a sex challenge that they’d done before and her response is I want a divorce.

Doug Loof: I’m like, you know, I mean, I knew that there was something that I didn’t like going on. But I never thought it was like break up your family type stuff.

Tom Milligan: You know sometimes it’s hard to see what’s going on right in front of your face.

Doug Loof: We did couple stuff together. Like we went tubing, river tubing two or three weeks before that, as a foursome.

Tom Milligan: Damn, that hurts, but let’s get back to the story. Remember, Missy had just let Doug know she wanted a divorce while they were on their way to work, awkward.

Doug Loof: We go to the fair. I kind of worked on one stand and she worked on the other. So just on purpose, and several times during the day, she’d come back over and check on me.

Tom Milligan: Gee, Missy, thanks for checking in. It means a lot.

Doug Loof: So, by that afternoon, we weren’t really talking about it anymore. Then the ride home, we didn’t talk about it at all. We get home kind of just not talking about it.

She says, well, I’m going to go school. She finished school shopping for the kids. So, you know, completely normal for her to go off and do that. She’s getting ready to leave and she comes out of the bedroom and she looks incredible. Hour passes, I get a text from his wife. Hi, is Missy home?

I’m like, Nope. She’s like, where is she? School shopping. She was like, did anybody go with her? I’m like, Nope. Why are you asking these questions? Then she responded. She was like, well, Brian went to get dog food two hours ago. Won’t answer his phone and has in the back and I’m like.

Tom Milligan: You know, at this point as victims of infidelity, we try to justify everything.

We actually gaslit ourselves to avoid the pain we know is about to happen. Doug Loof, just put it all together, but still hopes she’s actually school shopping.

Doug Loof: So, I look at the phone and her phone’s in a place that’s not anywhere near a Walmart or Target.

Tom Milligan: So, what to do.

Doug Loof: I’m insanely jealous at this point, jump in the car, drive to where her phone is.

It’s not around, calling a hundred times, you know, she’s not answering, he won’t answer his phone. She won’t answer her phone. Finally. She turns her phone back on, she calls me. I’m like, what? I’m like, you’re with him, aren’t you? She’s like, yes, I was. I needed to talk to him.

Tom Milligan: I needed to talk to him? What?

Doug Loof: I’m just so mad. Madder than I’ve ever been in my life.

Insanely jealous at this point and just hurt, jealous, mad. I’m like, where are you? And she tells me, I’m like, just pull over. I’ll meet you there because I don’t want to talk to her at this point anymore. I need a minute, you know, so I pull into the parking lot where she’s at and I jumped in the passenger seat of the expedition.

I’m like, what’s going on?

Tom Milligan: That’s a fair question. So how did she respond?

Doug Loof: I want to work on us.

Tom Milligan: I don’t know about you, but I just threw up a little in my mouth. I want to work on us. Don’t buy it.

Doug Loof: I can’t hardly even be mad because I got, you know, that’s what I wanted. Right.

Tom Milligan: Doug Loof, how can you be so blind?

Doug Loof: I didn’t know at that time, that work on us pretty much meant I’m not going to move out because I’m not ready to move out. I don’t have all my ducks in a row. I’m going to keep talking to him every day. I’m going to lie to you about it and you can’t be upset because we’re working this out.

Tom Milligan: Oh yep. He gets it. So why lead him on?

Why did she say she wanted to work it out?

Doug Loof: They both knew they weren’t ready. They didn’t have all this stuff ready. This all happened overnight. You know.

Tom Milligan: Six weeks later, Doug was served with divorce papers.

Doug Loof: I was not ready to just be like, okay, you’re having an affair with this guy. You got to go. No, I was not.

I’m like, my family is my family. Like, this is important to me.

Tom Milligan: But he had a plan.

Doug Loof: I immediately tell her I’m not living with you and going through a divorce with you, like that’s insane. She wanted to stay living together because she didn’t think she had the means to move out.

I thought that the struggle of being on our own and like missing the family unit might make her a reconsider.

Tom Milligan: And for that to work, Doug needed to buy time.

Doug Loof: She clearly needs time to come to her senses. Right and I did everything I could do to slow it down.

Tom Milligan: So, how did that work out? 

Doug Loof: I failed to really consider the fact that that just gave them more time to be together.

The more I resisted, the more she pulled away and the more money it costs.

Tom Milligan: Seriously. Is there an instruction manual these people are using? This one hit way too close to home. At some point, we all realize that no matter how badly we want things to be different, it’s time to bite the bullet and admit failure.

Doug Loof: That was October 12th, was the day that she was no longer willing or interested in being kind or a team.

Tom Milligan: Finally, now that Doug knew what was going on, he just wanted to get it over with. So, he made a settlement offer.

Doug Loof: There’s a lot of people that have a problem with like cashing out their ex when they leave or paying child support.

I don’t, I genuinely don’t have a problem with that. Like she built this life with me. We had nothing when we got together and she built it with me. I mean, I thought I offered actually, a fair deal. She ended up actually getting less than what I offered.

Tom Milligan: I hear that. So often people who fight during the divorce usually end up getting less than the original offer.

So just how much did Doug and Missy waste?

Doug Loof: I only paid for my attorney, not hers. I paid over $17,000 for my attorney.

Tom Milligan: That’s $17,000 and a year of his life gone. I asked Doug if he thought it was worth it.

Doug Loof: I could have given her the 17 grand, at least it would’ve went to benefit my kids.

Tom Milligan: I agree what a waste. What’s crazy is how emotional cheaters convince themselves that they’re not actually cheating.

Doug Loof: People that are stuck in an emotional affair. They do such a good job of downplaying it because they weren’t physical. They’re like, no, it’s not an affair. We never had sex. We never did any of that. That’s irrelevant if you ask me, like he was the first person she talked to in the morning and the last person she talked to at night.

Tom Milligan: That is the definition of an emotional affair, even though Doug and Missy were still married, still having sex and raising their children again.

Doug was now in competition for Missy’s friendship and emotional companionship. But since there was no sex, Brian and Missy felt justified in their behavior. Sadly Doug didn’t recognize it until it was too late. That is why emotional affairs always hurt worse than physical affairs. But whether it’s a sexual or emotional affair, cheaters always have an excuse.

They will always blame their partner somehow. So, what did Missy have to say?

Doug Loof: She didn’t like how I treated her when we worked together. But I treated her like all the other employees. But for me, I’m able to come home and she’s my wife. Now, she couldn’t do that. You know, the worst thing probably for us was working together.

I wasn’t like super kind but she was my wife and I probably should’ve still been super kind of delicate.

Tom Milligan: Really Missy? Doug Loof, wasn’t nice at work? My ex said I was too nice. Both excuses are bullshit, but most cheaters are very good at gaslighting. They make us believe that we’re at fault that whatever we did or didn’t do somehow justifies their behavior.

I was so taken in that I actually apologized to my ex. How embarrassing. Doug was better than me. He wasn’t buying it. This is how he calls Missy out.

Doug Loof: You’ve convinced yourself that I’m this awful person and you had no choice, but to leave. How do you convince yourself that you had no choice, but to rip her home apart?

Tom Milligan: Man, I’d love to hear her answer to that one. I asked how her relationship is with the kids. Doug held nothing back.

Doug Loof: My kids are very lucky to have an incredible mom. She’s not the same mom that she was. The entire time that we were together and we had children. The kids were number one priority. They are no longer number one priority.

Now it’s her and Brian are number one, which in my opinion, doesn’t make her as good a mom as she was. Also, what she’s teaching them about values and ethics and like that you can’t be as good a mom. Like a lot of my TikToks get a lot of backlash from women. When I say that, they are very defensive and they don’t even know her and they are super defensive, but I don’t know how anybody can argue that.

Like, I’m not saying she’s a shit mom. But you can’t do what she’s doing and done and be as good a mom as you were. That’s just not how it works. Like our job is to raise them to be moms and dads. If you’re teaching them to be angry, manipulative, vengeful, and to not like to sneak around and lie to your spouse.

She might not be handing them a test and be like, Hey, this is what you gotta do, but they’re watching. They’re learning from watching.

Tom Milligan: He’s not wrong. Our kids learn from watching us, but now that it’s over. How are Doug and Missy getting along?

Doug Loof: It’s honestly gotten worse every day since the increasement sign.

I try my best not to do it, but it’s a chess game. It’s a pong game. It’s like, how much can I try? I don’t understand how someone can be your soulmate and your partner for so long, and then be your enemy and want only bad things for you. Last year, when she registered the kids for school, she put me as the fifth emergency contact for our kids. The fifth, and our family’s not around here.

So, it was her. Her best friend and then two other friends that weren’t really in our lives for a few years and then me. Like you can’t accidentally do that. Our oldest is a senior. She planned his senior pictures when I couldn’t be there.

Tom Milligan: I know there are a lot of deadbeat dads out there, but did you hear the emotions in Doug’s voice?

He truly wants to be an active father, but she’s proactively excluding him from their lives. Everyone should hate hearing that, but it’s not just the kids missing from his life.

Doug Loof: I don’t know if it’s always that way in families, but like when I grew up, my dad’s family was the family we did everything with. Her family was the family we did every with. So, not only did I lose my wife, but I lost the extended family that I did everything with.

Tom Milligan: I feel that one pretty deep as well. You know, it’s very common for victims of emotional infidelity to wonder if their spouse ever loved them. Doug still wonders.

Doug Loof: I’m pretty sure she was in the me as fast as I was into her.

As I say that though, men and women are not good communicators to each other. Clearly, skipping to the end. I had no idea. So maybe I had no idea early on. I don’t know.

Tom Milligan: Man. It hurts to hear that because I just know how it feels. Usually, I try to keep my own experience largely out of our conversations, but this one just hit way too close to home.

It was almost impossible to separate my story from his. If there’s one thing to take away from today’s show is that affairs are never justified and they always cause pain. Even if you’re never caught, you have to live with the knowledge that you’ve betrayed your children, your parents, and your spouse, who you promise never to betray.

But most importantly, you’ve betrayed yourself. You know, what you’ve done is wrong. You know that there are no excuses, you know, it’s your fault, but you’re all too prepared to blame someone else. If you’ve had an affair, emotional or sexual end it now, confess your betrayal to your spouse and beg for their forgiveness.

They deserve your honesty for a change. Remember, keep reading. If you want to read the conversation between my ex-wife’s special friend, it really hurt at the time. But with the benefit of time, I can laugh at how transparent and ridiculous he sounds. I hope you like it. A special, thanks to Doug for sharing his story with us today.

 

The following is a transcript of a phone conversation between Tom and his now ex-wife’s special friend “Steve”:

Tom Milligan: I want to tell you a couple of things, and then I hope we can have a civil discourse.

I really want to hate you. I really do. But to be honest right now, I just kinda feel bad, not just kind of, I feel bad.

Steve: I feel bad too. This turned into something that, I mean it turned into something that I didn’t expect it to turn into. I don’t know how it did, to be honest with you.

Tom Milligan: Yeah. How romantic did it ever get?

Steve: It never got romantic. When I say this turned into something that it wasn’t that’s, what’s just completely boggling my mind. All we did was commiserate. That was it. That was mostly me to be quite honest.

Tom Milligan: It was mostly you?

Steve: Sure.

Tom Milligan: I thought you said that

Steve: She initiated a conversation, but I was the one who was really unhappy. So, I was the one who was doing most of the complaining. So, you know, it was just, I guess there’s no really other way to say, I guess we just had a connection and I felt comfortable talking to her.

So, I opened up about my marriage and that was it. Nothing more.

Tom Milligan: You never told her you found her attractive?

Steve: No.

Tom Milligan: Did she tell you she found you attractive?

Steve: No, that wasn’t discussed. I was unhappy. I don’t even know how we got into it. I mean, it, we were talking on WhatsApp. She was doing that. That’s what she said and something was said, and then I texted her. Then it was just a discussion about our marriages, right? There was nothing romantic about it.

Tom Milligan: So here’s my question. So you come out to our place, we go out to dinner, you texted both of us very nicely and politely and said, thanks. It was wonderful to get to know you.

We both responded. Then obviously you and I, that was the end of our texting behavior. But then you traded texts, literally hundreds over the next several days.

Steve: One day.

Tom Milligan: No, I’m sorry. I’ve got the texts. I mean, not the texts. I’ve got the phone records and it was literally, it started Monday morning while I was still in the air on the way to San Francisco. For some reason that hurts a lot. Then the other one that hurts just as bad is that you guys were texting all through the Packers game while she was texting with me. You feel how I can feel like I’m being used or being shared? I feel like I’m competing with you to be her best friend.

That’s not the way this is supposed to work.

Steve: I’m not going to deny that. I told her on Monday, we’re not going to be talking outside of work.

Tom Milligan: And have you?

Steve: No.

Tom Milligan: So here’s a question for you since you’re clearly very close to her, right?

Steve: I would not say that I’m close to her right now. We spoke, you know, for a week, week and a half, and then now we’re not.

Tom Milligan: Well, but during that time period, she confide a lot in you.

Steve: We confided a lot in each other.

Tom Milligan: Sure. What I care about right now is saving my marriage.

So when I say to you, she confided in you. It’s because that’s what I care about. I hope you understand that.

Male Speaker: I understand it.

Tom Milligan: Okay. So now having said that since she has commiserated with you, because she did open up to you because she did tell you every detail about what’s going on apparently, can I save it or not?

Steve: Yeah, I think you can I think she clearly loves you. I was just a convenience, right? I mean, that’s all, it was, I was a convenience. Somebody who would listen to her that, you know, that didn’t have any of your history. Didn’t know anything about your guys, but, you know, I guess that she found me easy to talk to, it was just pure convenience. I think I made it easier for her because I didn’t have any preconceived notions and I wasn’t judging her quite frankly.

Tom Milligan: Like I said, I want to hate you, but I don’t.

Steve: I’m sure I told you. Sure your wife told you I got a lot of respect for you. I like you. I like you as a person. Forget business. I respect you as a guy who has built an entire business here. I like you. I do, I would love to hate you, but I won’t. I can’t, you know, not to be this is going to come out sounding like a complete asshole. It’s not intended that way. But my attitude was there was nothing here that could be interpreted as illegal or immoral or unethical, nothing. So, from that perspective, I wasn’t really worried about it from a perception perspective. Could I have dealt without anybody saying anything? Yeah. I would prefer not to have anything said because nothing needs to be said, there’s nothing going on here that was nefarious. Nothing.

Tom Milligan: You snuck around, you hid it, you did some stuff that makes it look bad.

Steve: I’m not going to sit here and deny that I hated, but I have a wife who has a track record of believing that something is going on when nothing’s going on. I don’t want to have those conversations. So yes. Did I hide it? Yes. Do I wish I didn’t, I’ll put it this way. I wish I didn’t get caught. I’ll put it that way because all we were doing was confiding in one another. That’s it.

Tom Milligan: Okay. I guess what I’m going to ask you guy to guy.

Male Speaker: Sure. You don’t even just say because I’m already doing it. I’m not talking to her outside of work.

Tom Milligan: Let me handle my marriage.

Steve: Look. Two meetings with her today, where we were all with other people, there was no opportunity to talk to her. We have one one-on-one a week. That’ll be it. We’ll talk about business and that’ll be it. I mean, I don’t know what else to tell you.

Tom Milligan: I am and I appreciate that. So just to understand, I love my wife more than anything. I’m willing to do whatever it takes, including living in this fucking one, I checked into the Ramada Inn. One step below homeless shelter. So I moved up two steps up and so I’m now in the extended stay America, which is one step above a homeless shelter. This is what I’m willing to do, to try and save this.

Steve: Can I give you a piece of advice? Forgive her for Chris.

Tom Milligan: I forgave her 20 minutes after I found out. Did she tell you how that all came about? Did she give you the detail?

Steve: About how you found out? Yeah, but honestly.

Tom Milligan: I found lingerie in her suitcase.

Steve: Oh, that’s what it was. You unpacked her suitcase to do her laundry and she said that you never did that before. Either the one time that you did there was lingerie in her was in her backpack or a suitcase?

Tom Milligan: Suitcase.

Steve: Then she said all hell broke loose.

Tom Milligan: Yeah. So she gets home. She has a cold, I drug her up and put her to bed. I’m sitting there. It’s like 8:30 at night. So it’s not like I’m ready for bed. Trying to be a nice husband said, I’ll just have her laundry done for her when she gets up in the morning. What a great guy I am. I see that lingerie and I literally, I laid it out and I sat there, staring at it for about an hour. I’m like, what the fuck? I’m going. There’s no good explanation. So I go upstairs and I wake her up and I said, what the fuck is this? Her response was, “you went through my stuff?!”.