| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Engaged Seven Times?
00:05:08
|
|
| All right, let me take your calls here, and I'm interested in every aspect. | |
| If you're dating, what's a red or yellow flag? | |
| But if you're married, did you miss a yellow or red flag? | |
| That's a good one. | |
| All right! | |
| Marie in Minneapolis. | |
| Hello, Marie. | |
| Oh, hello, Dennis. | |
| Yes, so my first husband. | |
| It was, I'll list it off for you. | |
| Alcohol use, expletive use, erratic behavior, was a gypsy. | |
| He didn't have his green card, entered this country illegally, but he was smart, well-read, well-traveled. | |
| You know, you would meet him at a party, and he was the life of the party. | |
| He was romantic, chivalrous, wanted kids, but what I thought was head trauma. | |
| It was probably a little bit of mental illness. | |
| And I had been engaged seven times before I finally married him, and my mom was kind of pushing me because I was 34, had never been married and never had kids. | |
| I took the leap of faith and got pregnant on our wedding night, and then again, and then he took his own life. | |
| 2016, but he had abandoned us after I let him back into the country. | |
| But my point was that despite that I saw all those red flags, I really saw the good in him. | |
| And there were many good things. | |
| And I thought, oh, well, maybe if he had a drink card, it would be different. | |
| You know, even though he drank, he wasn't drunk. | |
| He was South African, so it's kind of the lifestyle over there. | |
| But the red flags were all there, and those red flags are a little bit in my daughter's. | |
| So I'm certainly paying the price, but I don't think I would change anything because I have two beautiful children. | |
| You never remarried? | |
| Oh, yes. | |
| The day he abandoned me, the next day I met my current husband, who is St. Joseph in all the ways that you could ever imagine. | |
| It's quite extraordinary. | |
| Well, you know, among the many reactions I have is you're a living example of something I believe as strongly as I believe that I'm speaking to you now. | |
| Everyone has an incredibly interesting biography in them, or autobiography, if you will. | |
| Your story is mesmerizing. | |
| I didn't interrupt you, and I actually bit through my lip so hard I'm bleeding. | |
| I so wanted to say, when you said you were engaged seven times, I wanted to say, you were engaged seven times? | |
| How does that even happen? | |
| You don't have to answer it now, because we don't have the time, but I just want to tell you, that really took my breath away. | |
| You're the first that I've met who was engaged seven times. | |
| How long were you two married? | |
| Well, total three years, which produced two children. | |
| So you said, I'm very curious, are these two daughters, is that right? | |
| Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | |
| They're almost like... | |
| An uncle twin, 15 months apart. | |
| When he entered back into the country, that's when... | |
| Well, when I left South Africa, that's how I got the second baby. | |
| All right, well, that's not my question. | |
| My question is, you said something to the effect that they had some of his characteristics. | |
| Probably both of mine, but I've always had a job, an employee of the month, high-achieving. | |
| And he was many... | |
| No, no, no, wait. | |
| Do they have any of his problematic characteristics? | |
| Yes, yes. | |
| Like, do they drink? | |
| Yes. | |
| No. | |
| Well, the middle child, she's only 15, but I know the experiments. | |
| How do you have a middle child if there were two of them? | |
| Because the third child came from my second husband. | |
| I see, okay. | |
| The third girl. | |
| Alright, so I have one more question because I've got to go to other callers. | |
| I have to admit, you're fascinating to me. | |
| So what lesson would you learn that you would pass on to women dating? | |
| If the man drinks, say goodbye? | |
| I let go of a lot of things as a devout Catholic my whole life. | |
| I had a list. | |
| I had been around. | |
| I had wonderful people that I was engaged with before. | |
| But at 19, I wasn't ready to get married. | |
| At 22, I wasn't ready. | |
| But I felt like my dad had passed. | |
| All right. | |
| Okay. | |
| Listen, thank you. | |
| Bless you. | |
| I'm glad you're married to St. Joseph. | |