Speaker 1: Life on Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose
Speaker 1: lands were never seated. We pay our respects to their
Speaker 1: elders past and present.
Speaker 2: Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was
Speaker 2: recorded on Gadigal Land.
Speaker 3: Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life
Speaker 3: on Cut. I'm Laura, I'm Brittany.
Speaker 2: Now I have a question for you, and this I
Speaker 2: think will have a few of you having some conflicting
Speaker 2: answers to this. Imagine meeting the love of your life,
Speaker 2: the man who you have been waiting for your whole
Speaker 2: life to come along and sweep you off your feet.
Speaker 2: We don't wait for men, remember no, we don't. But
Speaker 2: like you know, you don't pin yourself up to it.
Speaker 2: You're ready for it, and he really does. You just
Speaker 2: think that there is no one more incredible than this man.
Speaker 2: You have a well wind romance, you get engaged, you
Speaker 2: get married, and then very shortly afterwards, you find out
Speaker 2: that your husband has terminal cancer.
Speaker 3: You become his carer.
Speaker 2: You pour your love and your adoration into this man,
Speaker 2: only to find out whilst they are terminal and suffering
Speaker 2: with that diagnosis, that they've also been cheating on you
Speaker 2: throughout your entire relationship.
Speaker 1: I genuinely couldn't imagine being in this situation. It's one thing,
Speaker 1: and I feel like most people sitting at home right
Speaker 1: now have been in this situation.
Speaker 3: It's one thing to be cheated on, right.
Speaker 1: And to feel that ultimate betrayal, to have to work
Speaker 1: through that trust because some people do work through it,
Speaker 1: some people absolutely don't. But then to add the layer
Speaker 1: of do I have to then look after this person
Speaker 1: and care for them until they die because there might
Speaker 1: not be anyone else to look after them?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Do I put that betrayal to the side? I cannot
Speaker 1: fathom that question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is the big one, right, Like,
Speaker 2: what would you do if this was your situation? And
Speaker 2: it's not even just put it to the side because
Speaker 2: they don't have anyone to care for them. This is
Speaker 2: would you willingly still be that person's palliative care? Would
Speaker 2: you still willingly take care of that person until their
Speaker 2: end of life knowing that they have betrayed you throughout
Speaker 2: your entire relationship? And the reason why I asked this
Speaker 2: question is because this is exactly the situation that Kirsten
Speaker 2: Pills found herself in. She's written an incredible book. It
Speaker 2: is called Loving My Lying, dying, Cheating Husband.
Speaker 3: Really drove that home in the title, didn't she.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's definitely there's no ambiguity in this one.
Speaker 2: But Kirsten talks about the reasons why she made the
Speaker 2: decisions to stay, the reasons why she made the decisions
Speaker 2: to forgive, and this conversation so deeply centers around the
Speaker 2: idea of forgiveness, but not just forgiveness for her ex husband,
Speaker 2: but also for her own healing journey as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also about the complex relationship surrounding cheating.
Speaker 1: We've often spoken about the fact that it's not straightforward
Speaker 1: and there's not one black and white answer. We also
Speaker 1: delve into the fact that she loved a narcissist. And
Speaker 1: one thing that I found so surprising that we do
Speaker 1: get into at the end is not only how she
Speaker 1: handled the entire situation, but how she handled the end
Speaker 1: when he passed away. And I won't get too much
Speaker 1: into that, but for me, there were some really incredible
Speaker 1: pivotal moments that I don't know if I would have
Speaker 1: done the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that that's what a lot of
Speaker 2: people are going to be left when they leave. This
Speaker 2: conversation today is going to be wondering what would you
Speaker 2: do if you found yourself in this situation? Let's get
Speaker 2: into the chat with Kirsten. I came across Kirsten via
Speaker 2: social media and when I saw the title of her book,
Speaker 2: Loving My Lying, dying, Cheating Husband, I was so intrigued
Speaker 2: by what this entails. And I think your story is
Speaker 2: one that it will pull on so many people's heart strings.
Speaker 2: But like I said, it will really make your question
Speaker 2: what would you do in this situation? Kirsten, Welcome to
Speaker 2: the podcast.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: It's our absolute pleasure and I cannot wait to dive
Speaker 1: into this conversation. But before we do, everybody that comes
Speaker 1: on the podcast gives us their accident, unfiltered, their embarrassing story,
Speaker 1: and I know the conversation is about to get pretty heavy,
Speaker 1: but before we get into that, please embarrass yourself oh
Speaker 1: and humbling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So when you told me to prepare embarrassing
Speaker 4: the story, I thought there's so many but I couldn't
Speaker 4: think of what because I'm a walking embarrass very often.
Speaker 4: But I did. I don't believe it, but I did
Speaker 4: think about the time that I volunteered to give up
Speaker 4: TED talk, and it was the pandemic and I was
Speaker 4: stranded in Australia. I was living in Vietnam at the time,
Speaker 4: and my wardrobe was very reduced. So what to wear?
Speaker 4: So I found a dress in the op shop and
Speaker 4: I spent the entire month rehearsing my talk, not really
Speaker 4: thinking about the dress. I had it dry cleaned because
Speaker 4: I looked in every shop, so in the end it
Speaker 4: came from the op shop, and so I went to
Speaker 4: the venue put it on, and I realized I hadn't
Speaker 4: really checked whether the brass straps would be showing or not.
Speaker 4: This is like half an hour before going on stage.
Speaker 4: I finally checked and it looked like an op shop
Speaker 4: dress with brass straps showing. So I thought, what do
Speaker 4: you do? You know, I'm a woman of a certain age,
Speaker 4: so I can't really go on there looking like this.
Speaker 4: So I thought, okay, I went backstage. I went to
Speaker 4: the room where the workers have the props, and I
Speaker 4: found a roll of duct tape and took the braw
Speaker 4: and I taped my nipples down.
Speaker 3: You've all been there, I reckon, I've been.
Speaker 4: So that I was thinking in this context is probably
Speaker 4: not really embarrassing, but for me it was highly embarrassing
Speaker 4: because then I had to go into the room and
Speaker 4: the guy had to mic me up, and I was like, ah, well,
Speaker 4: I can't really open my dress because I'm not wearing
Speaker 4: a bra, but I couldn't tell him either, so I
Speaker 4: sort of.
Speaker 2: He's like trying to find somebody to clip a microphone onto,
Speaker 2: and you can, like, you can stick it in my
Speaker 2: duct tape.
Speaker 4: I said, I'm very private, I'll do it myself.
Speaker 1: So can I say if you put the roll duct
Speaker 1: tape or you put duct tape, if you put the
Speaker 1: wrong tape on your nipples, you will know about it
Speaker 1: because they've they've got special nipple tape, right, But if
Speaker 1: you're putting it down with some like hardcore hardware, when
Speaker 1: you've ripped that off, you know about.
Speaker 2: Duct tape can rip paint off the walls alone. What
Speaker 2: it can do to you when you try and take
Speaker 2: that stuff off.
Speaker 4: Well, that was the next part of the embarrassment, because
Speaker 4: I was so hyped up after the talk because it
Speaker 4: was a TED talk, so it was like one of
Speaker 4: this once in a lifetime opportunities I forget to take
Speaker 4: it off. So the next morning, the pain and the embarrassment.
Speaker 3: What have I done?
Speaker 4: I had forgotten Casin.
Speaker 1: I would love to know before we get into your story,
Speaker 1: who you were before you met your husband. How does
Speaker 1: a German who is an expert in Italian end up
Speaker 1: in Australia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, good question. I grew up in Germany in
Speaker 4: the seventies. It was a very grim place. It was
Speaker 4: post war. It was very cold. I mean it's still cold.
Speaker 4: And I just had this feeling I was born in
Speaker 4: the wrong country. So I had this strong calling. As
Speaker 4: soon as I finished school, I needed to get out
Speaker 4: of there. And for some reason I was brave enough
Speaker 4: to just book a typic on my own. This is
Speaker 4: before we had phones, you know, mobile phones, early eighties.
Speaker 4: To Jakarta, of all places, and I ended up there
Speaker 4: by myself. I spent a year in Bali in eighty seven.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a different place then.
Speaker 4: I don't think there was any yoga in or what
Speaker 4: then I can't remember. And then I thought, Okay, Australia
Speaker 4: is the next destination. So yeah, and so then I
Speaker 4: came to Sydney and I saw the blue sky and
Speaker 4: that was it. I needed to live in Australia.
Speaker 2: In your description about yourself, and it was one of
Speaker 2: the things that I thought, it really jumped out of me.
Speaker 2: And it's kind of a sidestep from what we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about. But you described yoursel as childless
Speaker 2: by choice. Yeah, what does that mean to you? And
Speaker 2: I guess like of a time and of an age
Speaker 2: when there was almost the expectation that women just have children.
Speaker 2: When you say it was your choice, was it something
Speaker 2: that you always knew that you were like, kids are
Speaker 2: not for me.
Speaker 4: I think it was my mother who put that idea
Speaker 4: into my head very early on, because she, I think,
Speaker 4: got frustrated that she got stuck in a marriage at
Speaker 4: you know, twenty three. I mean it was a different
Speaker 4: generation when, and that meant she had to then look
Speaker 4: after these unmanageable kids.
Speaker 2: Who just ran off and left her once they reached
Speaker 2: a certain age exactly.
Speaker 4: But it was also once I lived in Australia, I realized,
Speaker 4: you know, I was doing all of this on my own.
Speaker 4: So I was putting myself through university on my own
Speaker 4: because I'd sort of basically run away from home. I thought,
Speaker 4: if I have kids, then everything's going to cost me
Speaker 4: double as in going back to Germany, because in those
Speaker 4: days it was air travel, you know, it wasn't so common,
Speaker 4: you know, to just jump on a plane. And also
Speaker 4: I think my mother's experience, she said, oh, you know, marriages,
Speaker 4: I don't know they're trapped. I don't get trapped. And
Speaker 4: I just thought, I haven't yet found the right man,
Speaker 4: and I want to be that I can imagine being
Speaker 4: with until this human being I put into the world
Speaker 4: will be twenty or ready to be on their own. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you very personal, but do you now,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, have any regrets about not having children or
Speaker 1: do you still feel wholeheartedly that you made the right decision.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Interesting. I have quite a lot of younger friends
Speaker 4: who are still in their sort of thirties who asked me,
Speaker 4: you know, should I have a kid? Maybe not, because.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm asking for me basically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so my good friends, I do boot camp with them,
Speaker 4: we go on you know, these bike rides and so on,
Speaker 4: and I say, no, don't have kids. Just enjoy your
Speaker 4: life that way you can. You know, you can enjoy it.
Speaker 4: You can do whatever you want. You're not beholden. But
Speaker 4: now that I'm at this point in my life. I
Speaker 4: do miss the company of adult children. I have my
Speaker 4: nephew and niece. They were very intelligent, lovely human beings,
Speaker 4: and if I had kids of my own, I think
Speaker 4: I would enjoy being around them.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that's so hard is because like kids
Speaker 2: don't say kids forever, but it's a very big part
Speaker 2: of the parenting experience.
Speaker 3: As having little children.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like saying, yeah, I want to have kids
Speaker 1: and get through the first twenty five years so that
Speaker 1: I could have a couple of years as adults.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really make sense. It's like just get a friend,
Speaker 3: you know, you're an adult friend totally.
Speaker 2: But I mean it's really important, and I think it's
Speaker 2: really interesting because we've definitely had big conversations on this
Speaker 2: podcast about being childless by choice, but it's always been
Speaker 2: from people who have been within this age group, so
Speaker 2: they're currently going through that process in that period of
Speaker 2: like when all their friends have little kids. But it's
Speaker 2: so interesting to hear about what's that like when all
Speaker 2: of your friends and their little kids are our adults
Speaker 2: and you can have a conversation with them and you
Speaker 2: can have a relationship which goes beyond just wiping asses
Speaker 2: and getting screened at all night exactly.
Speaker 3: But you know, I was lucky enough.
Speaker 4: I did take my niece traveling, and so I had
Speaker 4: this girl, you know I've had I had it and
Speaker 4: she came out from Germany and lived with me for
Speaker 4: five months and went to school in Australia. So I
Speaker 4: did have it. But I have to say I do
Speaker 4: like little kids. I love them. And so I have
Speaker 4: lots of friends who are in their thirties who needs
Speaker 4: surrogate Grandma's.
Speaker 2: And You're like, yeah, I'm here, and then I'll hand
Speaker 2: them back. When I need to hand them back.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say you love them because you can hand
Speaker 1: them exactly. So what was your life like you had
Speaker 1: moved here and how old were you when you met
Speaker 1: your husband Gianni.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I moved here in my twenties and then
Speaker 4: I had a career and I lived here and lots
Speaker 4: of things, and then we met when I was forty
Speaker 4: three and I had actually just gone through early menopause.
Speaker 4: I was at work and suddenly I had this cruciating
Speaker 4: pain in my abdomen and I went to the doctor
Speaker 4: and she said, we need to take you over tomorrow
Speaker 4: otherwise you'll love the comblem. Yeah, I had assist. I mean,
Speaker 4: it happens, it's quite common. And then she said, you
Speaker 4: have to now be prepared to enter meno. Pause. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 4: I'm barely forty two. Maybe I was forty three, and
Speaker 4: I was in denial. And then it throws you into
Speaker 4: this depression because it was just came totally expected, and
Speaker 4: also it meant I had to be at home. I
Speaker 4: was living on my own and I was single. I
Speaker 4: had just moved to Sydney. I was enjoying my single life.
Speaker 4: I kept saying, I'm in love with the city, not
Speaker 4: a man. I don't need a man. I'm love with
Speaker 4: the city. Love that. But you know, Sydney is a
Speaker 4: hard city sometimes in that it's very large, so you
Speaker 4: can get quite lonely when you're a workaholic, and then
Speaker 4: you come home and your friends live on the other
Speaker 4: side of the city and you know it takes hours
Speaker 4: to catch up. So yeah, then that loneliness suddenly came
Speaker 4: and I thought, hang on a minute, I think I
Speaker 4: got everything the wrong way. I've forgot to have children.
Speaker 4: I forgot to have a family, even though it was
Speaker 4: never really in my plan what life should have been
Speaker 4: like at that moment, I thought, I have given everything
Speaker 4: this career and where is it now bringing me chicken
Speaker 4: soup while I'm on the couch.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, this is why you need that adult.
Speaker 2: Kid exactly in that did you have a moment afterwards
Speaker 2: where you decided to actively date or was meeting Johnny
Speaker 2: a moment of like Sarah indipity almost.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't go on to I guess it was
Speaker 4: r swoop in at the Yeah, but only as a lurker,
Speaker 4: Like I didn't actually upload my profocus. What about if
Speaker 4: my students see me and it's like as if they
Speaker 4: would have checked out?
Speaker 2: But no, that was a time when like online dating
Speaker 2: was still a bit taboo and people kind of poop
Speaker 2: poo died a little bit, and so it was kind
Speaker 2: of hard to go online dating.
Speaker 3: Poo pootera you can tell who has a little child?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yes, But really, coming back to your question,
Speaker 4: it was certain dipity. I was actually giving a talk
Speaker 4: in front of an audience, and afterwards there was this.
Speaker 2: Man who was exciting and different talk to me about chemistry,
Speaker 2: because I think sometimes chemistry, we have spoken about it
Speaker 2: so much. Chemistry can make you feel as though you've
Speaker 2: met your soulmate, that you and this person against the world.
Speaker 2: What was the chemistry that you experienced when you met Johnny?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was instant, as in he had
Speaker 4: these green eyes, which for an Italian is unusual, and
Speaker 4: they were really sparkling, and they were sparkling with mischief.
Speaker 4: And I still remember we were at the buffet after
Speaker 4: I had given this talk, in this lovely venue with
Speaker 4: a you know, view of the harbor, so everything was
Speaker 4: like very glamorous in the sense it was a typical
Speaker 4: sort of Sydney moment. And he poured me a glass
Speaker 4: of wine from the bottle of the buffet. But the
Speaker 4: way he looked at me, it was like as if
Speaker 4: he had stolen it, like a little boy.
Speaker 3: He had this.
Speaker 4: Boyishness about him, and yet he was actually thirteen years
Speaker 4: older than me. But that boyish energy also meant he
Speaker 4: was full of excitement and he wanted adventure, as in
Speaker 4: we both shared a love for travel. And he told
Speaker 4: me he had just come off a bike ride all
Speaker 4: around Australia on a yellow Harley Davidson. I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 4: you're different.
Speaker 3: You're a bad boy.
Speaker 4: You're a bad boy, and I love riding motorbikes too.
Speaker 4: I'd never written a Hali Davidson, but you know, I
Speaker 4: grew up on bikes, something smaller bikes. But I still
Speaker 4: I thought, oh, yeah, I'd do that with you, no worries.
Speaker 3: I thought you gonna say I would do that like him.
Speaker 3: Yeah I did that. That's the same thing, the same thought. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So how long did you date for him? Was this
Speaker 3: a well win romance?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: What was the initial dating period like with him?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a whirlwind. I guess I was ready
Speaker 4: for a whirlwind because I felt like, okay, you know
Speaker 4: that sort of experience of that early it was perimenopause,
Speaker 4: could say, but I wasn't expecting it because it was early.
Speaker 4: My doctor said it's ten years too early. Had sort
Speaker 4: of made me feel like, what's happening here? Am I old?
Speaker 4: This is it? And then suddenly I was feeling completely
Speaker 4: seen and heard. And he was the kind of person
Speaker 4: who showered me in compliments, in attention and in gifts,
Speaker 4: and he also did all those things, you know, taking
Speaker 4: me to beautiful dinners, to I don't know, the opera house,
Speaker 4: all of those things, and it just made me feel
Speaker 4: like magic, like i'd suddenly swapped this role from sitting
Speaker 4: on the couch, you know, moping, and then suddenly I
Speaker 4: am the lead in an Italian rom com.
Speaker 3: This is the pot of gold at the end of
Speaker 3: the rainbow burst.
Speaker 1: You hear that actually so often, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: doing a hire episode around it. But women in their
Speaker 1: forties and fifties where they feel like they're being replaced
Speaker 1: by the younger generation and they don't feel seen anymore
Speaker 1: or heard, or desired or wanted, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this man swoops in. Who and I'm jumping ahead here.
Speaker 1: Who sounds from the characteristics a bit like a narcissist
Speaker 1: love bombing. Are going to give them everything they want,
Speaker 1: going to make them feel like they're the only person
Speaker 1: in the world. And we find out soon that you weren't,
Speaker 1: unfortunately the only person. Can you say, now, in hindsight,
Speaker 1: do you think.
Speaker 5: He was a narcissist?
Speaker 4: Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3: I mean I was trying to ease into that. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: I could write a PhD about narcissism by not because
Speaker 4: I have researched it thoroughly, I wasn't really aware of
Speaker 4: the narcissistic personality profile at that time, and I just
Speaker 4: couldn't see it. I just thought, I mean, yes, I thought, well,
Speaker 4: he's a bit over the top, but you know, he
Speaker 4: was Italian. He was meant to be melodramatic. It sort
Speaker 4: of came with the territory, you know, that was part
Speaker 4: of his persona. So I did not see it for
Speaker 4: a long time. Obviously, now I know what love bombing is.
Speaker 4: Back then, I didn't know. I just thought, wow, you know,
Speaker 4: he feels like he's found you know, for both of us.
Speaker 4: We were saying, oh, this is a second chance, you know,
Speaker 4: in love, and we're both older second time around.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I think that this conversation, though, like your story is
Speaker 2: so different to anything that we've spoken about. When we've
Speaker 2: spoken about narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder or anyone who
Speaker 2: has like traits within the scale of it, the response
Speaker 2: is always to leave like that it's not possible to
Speaker 2: have a relationship with someone who's a narcissist. That you
Speaker 2: need to create as much distance as possible. But the
Speaker 2: very real reality is is that there are people who
Speaker 2: fall in love with narcissists and then spend their life
Speaker 2: trying to make that work. Or discovering things about them
Speaker 2: that don't necessarily meet up to the person that you
Speaker 2: think that they were or that they are. You were
Speaker 2: together for was it only two years?
Speaker 4: All up? I think it was four or five?
Speaker 2: Two years of being married, was it? And then he
Speaker 2: received a diagnosis?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's right, yes, yeah, Well so how did
Speaker 1: we get to engagement in the wedding?
Speaker 5: So how many years were you together before that happened?
Speaker 4: Everything happened very quickly in the sense I think in
Speaker 4: hindsight he probably talked about marriage from the minute we met,
Speaker 4: but only in that exuberance, Oh my god, you know
Speaker 4: you're the woman I marry you. I'm going to marry you.
Speaker 4: You know you're the person I want to spend the
Speaker 4: rest of what's left of my life with. Now I
Speaker 4: got off at the dream job. I was an academic
Speaker 4: at a university in Sydney, and we had entered a
Speaker 4: study abroad program with seven other universities aboard a floating
Speaker 4: university camp as a cruise ship. In other words, it
Speaker 4: was actually an American study broad program. And I was
Speaker 4: the Macquarie University representative. And I said to them, can
Speaker 4: I bring my partner? And I said of course do.
Speaker 4: So he came along, and so we had these four
Speaker 4: months about this ship traveling around the world teaching. Wow,
Speaker 4: just two weeks into the voyage, we were in Thailand
Speaker 4: when he dislocated his shoulder aboard the ship. We had
Speaker 4: to then have, you know, see the doctor in Bangkok
Speaker 4: go to the hospital. So then he was in a
Speaker 4: pretty bad shape from the morphin. It was very, very painful.
Speaker 4: So we just took a room after the hospital and said, right,
Speaker 4: well stay here for two nights, three nights, and then
Speaker 4: go back to the hospital. And I had a friend
Speaker 4: with me from the ship, and she said, well, while
Speaker 4: he's dozing conked out on painkillers, let's go, you know,
Speaker 4: and check out the tailors downstairs. And so there's all
Speaker 4: these tailor shops that make you bespoke anything you want,
Speaker 4: and these particular ones were specialized in wedding dresses, and
Speaker 4: so they hit my friend, who was a forty five
Speaker 4: year old single American up with these wedding stressfolders. She said, no,
Speaker 4: not me, definitely not me, but maybe her. Anyway, we
Speaker 4: found this incredible piece of fabric which incorporated all of
Speaker 4: Johnny's favorite colors. He loved colors, especially sort of yellow orange, bright,
Speaker 4: you know, pink, and we just took a fabric sample
Speaker 4: back to the room and by then the painkillers had
Speaker 4: worn off. Was still in pain, but the smile was
Speaker 4: back on his face. He saw the phoebik, he said,
Speaker 4: that's fabric for a wedding day. Let's just do it.
Speaker 4: Let's just get married on the ship. And because he
Speaker 4: was in this state, it sort of felt like, Okay,
Speaker 4: it's a moment of celebration, and you know, why not.
Speaker 4: And we knew we had a sea passage coming up
Speaker 4: of two weeks at sea, and my students were getting
Speaker 4: very antsy doing you know, cabin fever. So we all
Speaker 4: decided it's a great party. Let's just have a great party.
Speaker 3: So that married with the students on the sea. Yes, shoulder, Yes.
Speaker 2: I can only imagine after this, after getting married, spending
Speaker 2: this time overseas, and you know, even the relationship itself
Speaker 2: being in a four year mark, like you're still in
Speaker 2: this there's still this like bubble of just love and adoration.
Speaker 2: And then you found out that Johnny was actually quite sick.
Speaker 2: What happened there? When did you get that diagnosis? And
Speaker 2: I guess like when you did find out that he
Speaker 2: was very unwell. Was it something that they they were
Speaker 2: trying to treat it first, or was it a termin
Speaker 2: diagnosi this straight away?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it wasn't terminal straight away. So we actually
Speaker 4: had signed up to go on that ship for another voyage.
Speaker 4: So the idea was, we'll just keep, you know, traveling
Speaker 4: around the world on this ship forever until I retire
Speaker 4: or whatever. But then it was the global financial crisis
Speaker 4: and the first thing that the Royal Caribbean Company took
Speaker 4: off their schedule was, of course our not profit making
Speaker 4: a study abroad program, and so that was very sad.
Speaker 4: But I had a year of long service leave up
Speaker 4: my sleeve. So immediately he said, right, we'll just keep
Speaker 4: traveling anyway, Let's just hatch another plan. So we spent
Speaker 4: many many weekends coming up with this amazing plan and
Speaker 4: we booked everything down. I mean, I'm not normally like this,
Speaker 4: but somehow we got into it, and we booked this
Speaker 4: trip around the world. You know. It included I don't know,
Speaker 4: two months in Buenos Aires studying Spanish and all sorts
Speaker 4: of incredible stuff. The night before we were meant to
Speaker 4: go to the next destination, so a week before this
Speaker 4: incredible trip was starting. He found a pea sized lump
Speaker 4: behind his right ear and he said, I think I
Speaker 4: may have a problem. I said what, because he was
Speaker 4: a bit of a hypochondriac, so I didn't actually take
Speaker 4: it seriously. I had once had a little enlarged lymph
Speaker 4: node in the Doctorum, yeah, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: It's nothing.
Speaker 4: It's nothing. So we were then in cans, far away
Speaker 4: from Sydney, far away from our stuff which we had
Speaker 4: sort of put in storage, and there was no diagnosis,
Speaker 4: and so that took a while before we got the
Speaker 4: diagnosis and it was okay, you basically have to go
Speaker 4: back to Sydney and have this looked at by a specialist.
Speaker 4: We can't do it up here. And then by the
Speaker 4: time we got the diagnosis, it was the cancer has
Speaker 4: spread to the lungs and to the lymph nodes. It
Speaker 4: wasn't yet declared terminal, was stage three. I mean, I
Speaker 4: didn't know anything about the staging of cancer. He was
Speaker 4: a trained medical doctor and he knew that this is
Speaker 4: really serious.
Speaker 2: I can only imagine when you are in a loving
Speaker 2: relationship and you married, the diagnosis of cancer is something
Speaker 2: that it would bind you together in terms of like
Speaker 2: wanting to support each other, but the diagnosis in itself
Speaker 2: would be so much for the two of you to
Speaker 2: work through, and the treatments and everything else that goes
Speaker 2: with it. But the thing that makes your story so
Speaker 2: interesting is what you discovered whilst your partner was so unwell.
Speaker 2: And I mean I would love to get into how
Speaker 2: that came about, but basically, at this point in time,
Speaker 2: you discovered that your partner, who you're committed to, who
Speaker 2: you're working through this cancer diagnosis, was also having affairs
Speaker 2: outside of the relationship.
Speaker 3: How did you discover that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that was I think a year after this
Speaker 4: operation to the lunk. So he did actually recover, got
Speaker 4: his strength back, and you know, you never know. You
Speaker 4: can't see the cancer, so you don't know. A year
Speaker 4: later we were actually going on he had sort of
Speaker 4: this idea because you've been you know, you had to
Speaker 4: put your hold on life because of me. We had
Speaker 4: to cancel all these travel plans because of me. Let
Speaker 4: me take you to this beautiful eco lodge, you know,
Speaker 4: north of cans and we'll have a lovely weekend. As
Speaker 4: we were driving there, we stopped in the shopping center
Speaker 4: just to run a few errands, and suddenly he dropped
Speaker 4: the newspaper, and I thought, that's odd, and I could
Speaker 4: see suddenly there was no strength in his hands, and
Speaker 4: suddenly he could even no longer walk. His gait was funny.
Speaker 4: But even a few days earlier, already I had noticed
Speaker 4: that his voice started sounding like he'd swallowed a helium balloon.
Speaker 4: And I thought, that's really odd. And food got stuck
Speaker 4: in the corner of his mouth, but of course I
Speaker 4: tried to ignore it, thinking I was just tired. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And then he said he was a trained doctor. He said,
Speaker 4: we need to go immediately to the emergency department. This
Speaker 4: is an emergency. He said. Look, before we go in there,
Speaker 4: we need to download the medical files so that we
Speaker 4: can show them that I actually have this history of cancer,
Speaker 4: so that they will take us seriously. But he couldn't
Speaker 4: at that point, he couldn't really operate his own inbox,
Speaker 4: and of course all his passwords had always been off limits,
Speaker 4: which in hindsight of course red flag. In that moment,
Speaker 4: he had not choice but to give me his passwords
Speaker 4: so that I could download them for him, And as
Speaker 4: I did, I noticed a strange subject line on my
Speaker 4: way out of that inbox, and I thought, that's very odd.
Speaker 3: What was it was?
Speaker 4: What a beautiful woman? But it wasn't from me or
Speaker 4: to me, and I thought, it's about some other beautiful woman.
Speaker 4: Then also when he was in the hospital, it emerged
Speaker 4: this was actually the cancer had spread to the brain.
Speaker 4: It was now a stage four and he needed immediate
Speaker 4: urgent brain surgery. So of course there was all this
Speaker 4: you know, drama, as in, they didn't provide an ambulance
Speaker 4: to drive all the way from Cans to the next
Speaker 4: hospital where he could be operated, which was five hundred
Speaker 4: kilometers further south. It was raining, tropical wet season, so
Speaker 4: I became the untrained ambulance driver because there was no transfer,
Speaker 4: and it was all highly dramatic and extremely stressful, I mean,
Speaker 4: of course for both of us really. So when we
Speaker 4: got there, to child's will, we had to take I
Speaker 4: had to just take a hotel room. And I noticed
Speaker 4: the night before the operation there were a lot of
Speaker 4: women on his Facebook page appeared wishing him well, and
Speaker 4: there was a lot of sort of traffic going on
Speaker 4: by people I had never heard of, and I thought,
Speaker 4: hang on, what's going on here? And that was the
Speaker 4: password he wouldn't share with me. He shared that with
Speaker 4: his brother and he said, look, I'll put my brother
Speaker 4: in charge of the Facebook. And I thought, I'm in
Speaker 4: charge of everything here.
Speaker 3: Were at that point you were like, there's something or.
Speaker 4: Something behind it. Yes, I'm your wife, and not only
Speaker 4: you know have I been driving you in as an
Speaker 4: ambulance driver. I have been cooking for you. I've been
Speaker 4: doing everything for you. So it felt like I was
Speaker 4: being left out. And that's when I realized there's something
Speaker 4: that's not right anyway. I waited for three weeks because
Speaker 4: I thought, who am I to do this while he
Speaker 4: is in this very vulnerable state?
Speaker 2: And also there's two massive things that are going on
Speaker 2: at this point in time. There's your partner. When you've
Speaker 2: been given a stage four diagnosis, you know that this
Speaker 2: is terminal now, and so you're like, okay, well, on
Speaker 2: the scale of severity, is infidelity worth me having a
Speaker 2: conversation with right now when right now we're fighting to
Speaker 2: try and maintain as much longevity in life. It must
Speaker 2: have been such a challenging thing to go, well, when's
Speaker 2: the right time to bring up a conversation in that But.
Speaker 1: The curiosity of just trying to find out exactly what
Speaker 1: was in that email, how many emails there were? When
Speaker 1: was the time that you thought I've had enough, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go investigate this more and log back into
Speaker 1: the emails, because I would have been straight in there,
Speaker 1: like you're a better woman than I, Because if I
Speaker 1: had have seen that email and I had his password same,
Speaker 1: I would have gone back in later that night.
Speaker 4: Yes, but it was exactly like you just said, It
Speaker 4: was that conundrum. It's not really on his mind right now.
Speaker 4: You know, the man is looking death into the you know,
Speaker 4: staring at death. So who am I to bring this
Speaker 4: up right now?
Speaker 2: And the conversation is never going to go down the
Speaker 2: way it would go down if death wasn't on the doorstep.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 2: If you had that conversation around infidelity with anyone else,
Speaker 2: there would be the groveling, there would be the apology,
Speaker 2: but I would only assume that there's bigger things on his.
Speaker 3: Mind in that moment.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this on my way to work
Speaker 1: today and I was speaking to my partner Ben about it,
Speaker 1: like I was running the conundrum by him and also
Speaker 1: asked him what he would do. You know, if I
Speaker 1: was dying and I had cheated on you. But he
Speaker 1: raised a really good point that was He's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily about having the conversation with your partner,
Speaker 1: but it's just about you understanding and knowing and deciding
Speaker 1: if you want to ask those questions, because if the
Speaker 1: time comes where he passes away and you never got
Speaker 1: the chance to ask who, what, why, when you're the
Speaker 1: one that needs to be able to live the rest
Speaker 1: of your life without knowing. So when did you decide
Speaker 1: to go back in to the emails?
Speaker 4: That's exactly what was going through my mind, exactly that
Speaker 4: I just wanted to have that clarity because I knew
Speaker 4: that he would change the password the minute he had
Speaker 4: recovered enough to go back, you know. So I well,
Speaker 4: it was the night before. I mean I had thought
Speaker 4: about it for three weeks, but I had distracted myself.
Speaker 4: I went to yogat Dorn think about it, you know,
Speaker 4: be mindful or you can think about it. All I
Speaker 4: could think about was it. So then the last night
Speaker 4: I thought, Okay, I've just got to do it. I'm
Speaker 4: just going to have to have a quick look just
Speaker 4: to put my mind at ease, because, like you just said,
Speaker 4: what if he dies and I never have this clarity.
Speaker 4: So I bought myself a bottle of wine, of course,
Speaker 4: to have enough courage to be reckless enough to actually
Speaker 4: do this. And I remember sitting there thinking, oh my god,
Speaker 4: I should have got two bottles because what if, and
Speaker 4: a gin and a gin and some whiskey, because what happens.
Speaker 4: If I'll find something that'll be devastating, I'll definitely need
Speaker 4: some more. Anyway, when I heard the doors of the
Speaker 4: bottle shop downstairs go down, I thought, that's it. I'm
Speaker 4: just going to press interer nout and just get it
Speaker 4: over and done with and yeah, and so then what
Speaker 4: I found was actually a lot worse than what I
Speaker 4: could have imagined. He had gone back to women that
Speaker 4: he had known before we got together and resumed those
Speaker 4: relationships physically physically, and yes, I mean they were overseas,
Speaker 4: and he traveled overseas frequently, so a lot of it
Speaker 4: was also not physically. Because he was an incredible and
Speaker 4: that's how I felt for him. He was incredibly charming
Speaker 4: writer of letters or emails. He was addicted to his keyboard.
Speaker 2: And yeah, when you found that, like when we say,
Speaker 2: worse than you ever could imagine, do you have an
Speaker 2: idea of how many women it was, how many other
Speaker 2: relationship he was managing to maintain at the same time.
Speaker 5: I guess how serious they were too?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think serious, quite serious. Some of them sort
Speaker 4: of offered to take him in or look after him
Speaker 4: should the cancer become I mean this is you know,
Speaker 4: once the cancer was known or the diagnosis was known,
Speaker 4: so quite serious. Yeah, maybe about five active.
Speaker 2: When you found that out and you did have a
Speaker 2: conversation with him. How did he react?
Speaker 4: So I initially thought, Okay, maybe I just don't tell
Speaker 4: him because his mind is right now, he's probably he
Speaker 4: might not even want to see them ever again, if
Speaker 4: he's just focused on his survival on you know, this moment.
Speaker 4: Because I'm in a brain surgery and then having a
Speaker 4: stage four diagnosis, it's massive, So who am I to
Speaker 4: spoil that for him? But I just couldn't hold it in.
Speaker 4: I just couldn't. So eventually I thought, okay, I'll write
Speaker 4: him a letter, and I actually said, look, it's not
Speaker 4: for me now to let's not have an argument about it.
Speaker 4: It happened. Okay, I'll stay by you because this is
Speaker 4: a different situation. Obviously, if he hadn't been ill, there
Speaker 4: would have been only one way to go about this,
Speaker 4: and that was to divorce, to not stay together. So
Speaker 4: I told him, and the way he reacted was to say, well,
Speaker 4: if it's all your fault, And first of all, he said, okay,
Speaker 4: how many do you know about? Okay? And I could
Speaker 4: see he's probably thinking, oh, my god, how much of
Speaker 4: it does she know? What else doesn't she know?
Speaker 2: But also probably like, how can I minimize the damage?
Speaker 3: Where can I lie?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 3: Where can I cover up some of it?
Speaker 5: It just made me flash back to my trauma.
Speaker 1: I was also dating a doctor for a couple of
Speaker 1: years and we were getting married. We had the whole lot,
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and he ended up having a double
Speaker 1: life with multiple multiple women and he was marrying someone
Speaker 1: else as well, not just like lighthearted cheating and word
Speaker 1: for word. When it came out and I discovered it
Speaker 1: and confronted him, he also blamed me and said this
Speaker 1: is your fault, Like, this is your fault what you've done.
Speaker 3: You're ruining my life.
Speaker 1: Like everything that you just said is classic narcissism. When
Speaker 1: you were reading these emails for the first time, how
Speaker 1: did you feel in that moment? Because it sounds like
Speaker 1: that you made a really quite a quick decision to say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to stand by him regardless. Was it as
Speaker 1: quick as you're making out and as easy as you're
Speaker 1: making out?
Speaker 4: No, it wasn't. The first thing, of course, is I
Speaker 4: was frantically trying to reconstruct the timelines. When did he
Speaker 4: actually see them? Hang on, where was I in that moment?
Speaker 4: And then when I did reconstruct some of it, I
Speaker 4: was devastated, thinking, so here I am prepared his you know,
Speaker 4: green smoothie or whatever, or working on the ship, working
Speaker 4: really hard. Because we had had this conversation before we
Speaker 4: went on the ship. I said, Tim, you might get
Speaker 4: bored because I would be having to work very hard,
Speaker 4: as in it's very intense. You live with your students,
Speaker 4: it's all new stuff. And they did have an opening
Speaker 4: for a mental health or a doctor or whatever, and
Speaker 4: he said, no, you know what, I'll just come as
Speaker 4: a student and I'll just study. But clearly, and that's
Speaker 4: one of the things he said, one of the reasons
Speaker 4: why I had to resume some of these affairs is
Speaker 4: because you were always focused on your work and you
Speaker 4: weren't there for me. You were always tired, you were
Speaker 4: always busy, a load of rubbish. It's like, yeah, well
Speaker 4: we could have maybe had that conversation rather than just
Speaker 4: going off. So that was one of the things. But yeah,
Speaker 4: coming back to how did I rect Obviously I didn't
Speaker 4: immediately make that decision. We actually both said okay, we
Speaker 4: need time out. But we couldn't have time out immediately
Speaker 4: because he needed to after that brain surgery. He needed
Speaker 4: then to have seven weeks of radiation therapy, and I
Speaker 4: was there. I was there to be his chauffeur again,
Speaker 4: in his cook and we just got on with the job.
Speaker 4: It just was like, okay, let's just get on with that.
Speaker 4: Let's not talk about what I found. Let's just because
Speaker 4: it was confronting for him. I mean, the radiation therapy
Speaker 4: was terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this reaction that happens, Like your reaction when
Speaker 2: you find out something that's awful is often anger. It's
Speaker 2: often very like harsh and very like very visceral. And
Speaker 2: then as time goes by, O, when it is, your
Speaker 2: feelings often migrate into something else. When you say that
Speaker 2: you then had so many so much time because he
Speaker 2: needed to still be cared for, could you feel your
Speaker 2: anger or your upset and you're hurt. Could you feel
Speaker 2: that softening? Could you feel yourself forgiving him?
Speaker 3: In that period?
Speaker 4: Not so much. In that period, I kept myself very
Speaker 4: busy as physical exercise. I like became this runner. I
Speaker 4: just ran away from it all and I exhausted myself physically.
Speaker 4: But then what we did is we said, okay, let's
Speaker 4: have a month out. We need time out. And then
Speaker 4: he went back to Italy. I'm sure he well. I
Speaker 4: said to him, do whatever you have to do in Italy.
Speaker 4: I don't care. And I went and checked myself into
Speaker 4: a ten days silent meditation retreat in Thailand because I
Speaker 4: thought I needed a crash cause in forgiveness. And I thought,
Speaker 4: if I live with real monks in a real monastery,
Speaker 4: maybe I become spiritually awakened, you know, by osmosis, and
Speaker 4: able to keep my heart open when it's broken. But
Speaker 4: what that experience did for me, I don't recommend it
Speaker 4: for everybody. It did work for me. And you know,
Speaker 4: I was sitting I was actually the only white Western
Speaker 4: woman in that monastery at that time, and you know,
Speaker 4: sitting there in my white robes at dawn in the
Speaker 4: deserted meditation hall at Ah. I thought, gee, am I
Speaker 4: going mad? What am I doing? But then I also thought, okay,
Speaker 4: what will the future look like? And one of the
Speaker 4: helpful things, and that is I think why I had
Speaker 4: turned to Buddhism, because I thought maybe they have tools
Speaker 4: to teach me about forgiveness and compassion. One of the
Speaker 4: monks said to me, okay, he shared with me the
Speaker 4: parable of the second arrow, and I still love this parable.
Speaker 4: He said, the first arrow we cannot control. We all
Speaker 4: experience suffering. In fact, that is the first noble truth
Speaker 4: of Buddhism. But the second arrow is our choice. And
Speaker 4: I took that to mean that why we can't avoid pain,
Speaker 4: we can choose our suffering. In other words, I could
Speaker 4: go on and just drink a bottle of wine every
Speaker 4: night and call him the body bastard in a slurred voice.
Speaker 4: Or I could maybe find another way. And I thought,
Speaker 4: maybe there is a way I could actually grow from
Speaker 4: this experience rather than be erased by it and so
Speaker 4: broken by it. Exactly, I didn't want to be that broken,
Speaker 4: And I, you know, is sitting there in that meditation
Speaker 4: hall I had a very good idea by the end,
Speaker 4: what my second arrow could look like.
Speaker 1: When you came back from that, did you ever get
Speaker 1: to sit down and talk to Gianni and actually just
Speaker 1: make him answer these questions tell you everything? I mean,
Speaker 1: did you want to know the intricacies in the details
Speaker 1: of these affairs? Or for you was easier to just
Speaker 1: accept that it happened but not want to know anything,
Speaker 1: because I know for me, I wanted to know everything.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know how many people, how he did it,
Speaker 1: when he did it, why.
Speaker 4: He did it, and did that help you?
Speaker 1: It actually did, because I realized he was so crazy
Speaker 1: that I dodged a bullet, like by knowing the details,
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this is so much easier for
Speaker 1: me to walk away from now. But if I just
Speaker 1: knew that there was an affair and I didn't know
Speaker 1: the details, I would have I think I would have
Speaker 1: found it harder to move on.
Speaker 4: I think by then I had pieced together a lot
Speaker 4: of the details already and the timelines, and so because
Speaker 4: of course, by the time we got back together, I think,
Speaker 4: in hindsight, what was it? Maybe he had another six
Speaker 4: months after that I felt like, do we really need
Speaker 4: to go? I mean, we tried, and then it was
Speaker 4: just too painful. You know what, it's not relevant. The
Speaker 4: man is dying, what's the poor cares really and he
Speaker 4: was no longer interested in them by that stage. He
Speaker 4: was really just interested in well, he only had the
Speaker 4: energy to be in the here and now, and so
Speaker 4: it we didn't know, we didn't do what you did.
Speaker 4: I think, of course, if the scenario had been different,
Speaker 4: and perhaps if it had been that scenario where he
Speaker 4: wasn't obviously dying and so on, I probably would have
Speaker 4: wanted to know all the details. But in this context, no,
Speaker 4: it didn't matter anymore.
Speaker 2: A lot of people when they go through cheating, when
Speaker 2: infidelity is present in the relationship, is often this feeling
Speaker 2: of like, well, what we had wasn't real, like that
Speaker 2: didn't exist. Did you think that or were you able
Speaker 2: to kind of realize that some people are able to
Speaker 2: compartmentalize feelings and that they're able to feel real for
Speaker 2: you in this respect, but still able to do these
Speaker 2: things that are incredibly hurtful and almost live side by
Speaker 2: side themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think a lot of our experiences were real
Speaker 4: simply because also they were so unique, you know, like
Speaker 4: this trip around the world on the ship and so on,
Speaker 4: and also because a lot of those women were actually married,
Speaker 4: so he could never have the things that we did
Speaker 4: together with them, Like even I guess sleeping together overnight
Speaker 4: would have been difficult. In fact, I know it was
Speaker 4: because they had to obviously go out of you know,
Speaker 4: work out ways to do that. So that was real.
Speaker 4: But what I found really hard to tolerate is or
Speaker 4: to get my head around or to find peace with,
Speaker 4: was the fact that he would lie in bed next
Speaker 4: to me, and had done so before I found out
Speaker 4: texting these women yeah all the time, And I was like,
Speaker 4: but you know, here I am helping you with your
Speaker 4: especially once he had relied on me already on the ship.
Speaker 4: He was relying on me to help him dress him
Speaker 4: after he had the operation in Cape Town for the shoulder.
Speaker 4: So there I was, you know, pulling up his pants,
Speaker 4: going to work on the ship, and the next thing
Speaker 4: he would spend all morning just chatting with his women,
Speaker 4: and perhaps at night when I was lying in bed,
Speaker 4: I mean not so much on the ship because the
Speaker 4: internet was terrible.
Speaker 3: That didn't worry. That might have been the only thing
Speaker 3: stopping at the time.
Speaker 1: But there's this idea, and like people used to say
Speaker 1: to me exactly that, But was it real?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like those years weren't real or that
Speaker 1: he didn't love you? And I still to this day
Speaker 1: say the same thing. I say, Oh he loved me,
Speaker 1: he just loved other people too, and his love wasn't normal,
Speaker 1: And like, you have to believe that because otherwise you think, well,
Speaker 1: I've just wasted all these years of my life.
Speaker 3: I have to.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of people are going to
Speaker 1: be in their cars or whatever right now saying bullshit,
Speaker 1: that's not love.
Speaker 3: And I get it.
Speaker 1: I understand that, but I know what those years were like.
Speaker 1: And whilst I think he is a fuck with for
Speaker 1: what he did, you have to hold onto this fact
Speaker 1: of well, he did the wrong thing, but he still
Speaker 1: loved you in whatever way. You need to understand that.
Speaker 4: That's right. And I agree with that. I think that
Speaker 4: was exactly the case for us too. I do believe,
Speaker 4: and I also believe that he really wanted to, you know,
Speaker 4: break his patterns perhaps and not go back to these women.
Speaker 4: I do believe that when he said to me, you know,
Speaker 4: this is a fresh start, he really believed it. But
Speaker 4: he just couldn't pull it off. And I think, as
Speaker 4: you would know, the problem with narcissists is they can't
Speaker 4: love themselves, so therefore they can't really love others in
Speaker 4: the way that we expect them to. And they need
Speaker 4: this constant validation from the outside. And so that's yeah,
Speaker 4: And it almost makes you feel like you have to
Speaker 4: have empathy or compassion for somebody who is that incapable
Speaker 4: of having that love fully?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what have you learned about forgiveness?
Speaker 4: Oh so just where do I start? Yeah? Look, I
Speaker 4: really realized, as I was saying before, when I was
Speaker 4: sitting there, you know, as that woman who was looking
Speaker 4: towards a broken woman working too hard, drinking too much,
Speaker 4: to forget that she had left the man she had
Speaker 4: loved when he was dying, I thought, okay, forgiveness could
Speaker 4: be the opposite to that. I didn't want to be
Speaker 4: that broken, you know, woman Haggard. You know, I thought
Speaker 4: forgiveness could perhaps be that antidote. And what I've realized
Speaker 4: it's really a form of radical self care. It's a
Speaker 4: form of self healing because it gives you agency by
Speaker 4: letting go and by setting them free, and you're setting
Speaker 4: yourself free. And I think that's what it really It's empowering.
Speaker 4: That's what I learned about it. Yeah, did he ever
Speaker 4: apologize to you? No, you know, narcissists can't say sorry really,
Speaker 4: but he did say he acknowledged that he had hurt
Speaker 4: me and that he made me suffer, and that was
Speaker 4: good enough. That was his way of apologizing. And again
Speaker 4: we're talking about a man who was dying and a
Speaker 4: few months after that he did die, So from that perspective,
Speaker 4: that was good enough for me, and that was his
Speaker 4: form of apologizing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really beautiful to hear you speak about this
Speaker 2: because your empathy for someone who we are taught to
Speaker 2: have no empathy for because they lack empathy themselves. I
Speaker 2: think the thing that is such a standout is the
Speaker 2: fact that the reason why the person who's like the
Speaker 2: victim of a narcissist gets hurt so bad is because
Speaker 2: we still have empathy for them. We have empathy for
Speaker 2: the fact that, as you said, they're not able to
Speaker 2: love themselves, or they are that broken bird, or they
Speaker 2: do the things that are incomprehensible to people who don't
Speaker 2: have or don't live within this spectrum of narcissism or
Speaker 2: behavioral sort of narcissistic personality disorder. Because we would never
Speaker 2: treat people like that, but yet you still manage to
Speaker 2: not only forgive, but have the empathy for the why
Speaker 2: in how he does it. And I think that that's
Speaker 2: just such a testament to what a kind hearted person
Speaker 2: you are.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: I mean, the empathy is lacking in the narcissist, and
Speaker 4: in the hypersensitive person it's in abundance, sometimes too much.
Speaker 3: Also often why they're attracted to you as well.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 3: Yes, you've wrote in.
Speaker 1: Your book about as Jarnie was dying, finding a different
Speaker 1: kind of intimacy.
Speaker 5: What did you mean by that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it occurred to me when it was only
Speaker 4: the two of us at the end, like literally there
Speaker 4: we were, you know, in finals Queensland. The weather was
Speaker 4: doing its thing as in dramatic tropical weather. We did
Speaker 4: actually have a category five cyclone.
Speaker 1: He heah, and then we had it followed by a
Speaker 1: real one.
Speaker 4: It felt very precious and it felt like that was
Speaker 4: such a unique intimacy that obviously he could only I mean,
Speaker 4: that wasn't replicable, like you can you know, share your
Speaker 4: in your sexual intimacy with multiple partners as he did,
Speaker 4: but there was only me that he shared that intimacy with.
Speaker 4: So it felt like a privilege, and it really felt
Speaker 4: like a gift. And there's this wonderful quote by ram
Speaker 4: das the American Guru, who says, we're all just walking
Speaker 4: each other home. And it felt like my role then
Speaker 4: was to walk him home to his final destination and
Speaker 4: to be there to hold his and and to make
Speaker 4: peace with him, because I think he also it was
Speaker 4: a beautiful Yeah, it was a beautiful time being there
Speaker 4: with him in this that was real intimacy in his
Speaker 4: most vulnerable state, in his most vulnerable state, when he
Speaker 4: you know, I could have I mean I could have
Speaker 4: just I don't know, kicked him out of the bed
Speaker 4: or whatever, like he was completely vulnerable, and to be
Speaker 4: there and to honor that that was a real privilege. Yeah.
Speaker 1: How do you feel like your thoughts around relationships and
Speaker 1: love and intimacy now have changed?
Speaker 4: Has it affected you.
Speaker 3: I don't know, are you? Are you dating again?
Speaker 5: Has it affected what you want from your relationships?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think I remain a trusting person and that
Speaker 4: I always say jokingly, and now I work more on
Speaker 4: the relationship I have with myself that is actually much
Speaker 4: more important. I mean it sounds maybe selfish, but really
Speaker 4: you have to work on the self love and especially
Speaker 4: the EmPATH amongst us need to also foreground that a
Speaker 4: little bit, And it's another sort of survival strategy. You know,
Speaker 4: you can't really others if you're not having a nurturing
Speaker 4: relationship with yourself, which also means knowing what your boundaries
Speaker 4: are and honoring them. So I think I'm getting better
Speaker 4: at the head sort of honoring my boundaries and just saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: this is what I need.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, this might be a really hard question to
Speaker 2: answer because the alternate you can't really compare to because
Speaker 2: you didn't experience it. But do you think finding out
Speaker 2: and like living through this time away from him, this forgiveness,
Speaker 2: this acceptance, do you think that ultimately it made dealing
Speaker 2: with his death easier or do you think it was
Speaker 2: still as hard. Did you still feel as in love
Speaker 2: with him at the end, or was it almost as
Speaker 2: though there was a sense of not obligation because you
Speaker 2: wanted to be there as well, but just a sense
Speaker 2: that you could make closure with it easier than had
Speaker 2: you had this blissful relationship right until the end.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, obviously we can't know these things, but
Speaker 4: I definitely think yes, in the sense that already, when
Speaker 4: on the ship, I had to look after him, and
Speaker 4: it was that was really hard too, because the ship
Speaker 4: was swaying, we got into you know, storms and so on.
Speaker 4: I had somehow taken on that maternal love, or rather
Speaker 4: I was forced to also this well of maternal love
Speaker 4: sort of sprang forth, which sort of mixed with the
Speaker 4: romantic love. And so that maternal love, the caring, the
Speaker 4: looking after him, the day to day business of cooking
Speaker 4: the meals for him, making sure he ate that anti
Speaker 4: cancer that helped. Yes, shifted, Yes, it shifted, It definitely shifted.
Speaker 4: But I also thought about, you know, what would it
Speaker 4: have been like had I not known before he died?
Speaker 4: What would it have been like find out after he
Speaker 4: had died? And I think that would have been so hard.
Speaker 1: Oh worse, yes, worse, But there's no resolution, that's right,
Speaker 1: And at least this way that you had, I guess
Speaker 1: a level of closure.
Speaker 2: I agree, because you would literally be like the man
Speaker 2: I loved I didn't know. You wouldn't have a chance
Speaker 2: to even have those grounding conversations around the why.
Speaker 4: Yes, I know.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would be asking or thinking to
Speaker 1: themselves right now, did he have another option for someone
Speaker 1: to look after him?
Speaker 3: Did he have other.
Speaker 1: Family or friends or like, could you have made the
Speaker 1: decision to walk away knowing he would have been cared for.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, and you still chose to stay. Yeah. I
Speaker 4: mean his brother was overseas, so technically it would have.
Speaker 4: But yes, it could have. Yes, definitely.
Speaker 3: I just there's a part of me.
Speaker 1: I mean when I put myself in this position and
Speaker 1: I had this conversation with Laura, and I had it
Speaker 1: with my partner Ben straight away. Ben was like, I'd
Speaker 1: give you to someone else to look after, and he
Speaker 1: was like, if you've been doing the dirty on me?
Speaker 1: And I thought about it, and I thought, there's a
Speaker 1: part of you that can't. There's no closure if you
Speaker 1: walk away, and if there's no forgiveness, And this forgiveness
Speaker 1: is the most powerful thing.
Speaker 3: And you often don't forgive someone for them.
Speaker 1: You forgive someone for yourself so that you can move
Speaker 1: on with your life and not have this hatred cloud
Speaker 1: hanging over your head constantly. And I think people get
Speaker 1: mixed up with that the reason for forgiveness, and people
Speaker 1: would judge you for forgiving someone, like how could that
Speaker 1: person stay and look after someone when he did that
Speaker 1: to her.
Speaker 3: But it's not necessarily for him.
Speaker 4: That's right, You do it also for yourself, because I
Speaker 4: wanted to be able to live with the echoes of
Speaker 4: my deeds, as in, I wanted to be able to
Speaker 4: know that I've done. I wanted to be able to
Speaker 4: live with it. And also when I was eighteen, I
Speaker 4: dropped out of high school and I ended up working
Speaker 4: in an old people's home, actually looking after the dying,
Speaker 4: completely untrained. They didn't have any hi, you know, measures then,
Speaker 4: and I knew it was very sacred to be able
Speaker 4: to hold space. These were often people who didn't have family,
Speaker 4: so I was the person holding their hands, and I
Speaker 4: was eighteen, but I just felt it was such a
Speaker 4: privilege and it was so sacred, and so I knew
Speaker 4: that if I stayed with him until the end, we
Speaker 4: would have this wonderful closure, or we could, and we did.
Speaker 4: And also a friend had said to me, narcissists very
Speaker 4: rarely changed, but it is possible sometimes at the end
Speaker 4: of their lives, like when they're staring death in the face,
Speaker 4: they can sometimes change. And I believe that there was
Speaker 4: and the Buddhas saying, you know, can clean up a
Speaker 4: lot of karma in those last moments. I do believe
Speaker 4: that he did change that none of that was any
Speaker 4: more important. And the other thing he did, which was
Speaker 4: he kept saying thank you a lot, and I had
Speaker 4: the feeling that he was healing himself with gratitude.
Speaker 3: And I couldn't heal it with apologies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Do you think the other women knew that you existed,
Speaker 5: that he was married?
Speaker 4: Yes? They did, Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: Did you ever feel like you wanted to reach out
Speaker 1: to any of them in contact?
Speaker 4: I did?
Speaker 3: Oh, please do tell So the night before.
Speaker 4: The funeral, I had to write the eulogy, and I put,
Speaker 4: you know, we put this lovely flyer together with all
Speaker 4: these collash of photos and there was us, you know,
Speaker 4: all over the world and all these photos and him
Speaker 4: as a younger man and so on and off his
Speaker 4: family of course, and then I was so angry. I
Speaker 4: don't know. The anger came up in a way because
Speaker 4: perhaps it was the reason for that, maybe because I
Speaker 4: could never really yell at him, say you fucking bastard,
Speaker 4: because you can't yell at a dying person with those words.
Speaker 4: So I had to swallow that, and it came up
Speaker 4: that night. I just thought Jesus. And that was the
Speaker 4: other night I drank an entire bottle of red wine.
Speaker 4: I didn't make a habit of.
Speaker 1: It, but I always send bad emails on a few
Speaker 1: where a few ones don't we.
Speaker 4: And I was looking at this frog perched on the
Speaker 4: rand on a chair. Thing that's him, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: And I was yelling at the frog, you know, in
Speaker 4: his slurred voice, and you know. Then I made a
Speaker 4: pot of tea, soaped up. And then I thought, okay,
Speaker 4: there's only one thing I can do to get over this,
Speaker 4: and I rang his lovers. I had the numbers in
Speaker 4: his diary. And the first one answered, and she knew
Speaker 4: immediately who I was, and she already knew that he.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not him calling, is it. He's underground now?
Speaker 4: And it was from his phone. I guess, I guess
Speaker 4: I can't remember now. And I said to her, look,
Speaker 4: I knew he meant a lot to you, because this
Speaker 4: woman had been in his life for longer than I
Speaker 4: had been, because he had known her for much longer.
Speaker 4: I wanted to let you know that the film is tomorrow,
Speaker 4: and I wanted you to somehow be able to be
Speaker 4: part of that, even though that you're over there, and
Speaker 4: she just said, You've just taken this huge weight off me.
Speaker 4: I feel so relieved. I felt so terrible. And then
Speaker 4: I rang another one and she said the same.
Speaker 5: Sorry, Robbie is she was doing.
Speaker 1: She was married and she knew that you existed. She's
Speaker 1: sorry and has the weight on her shoulder because you've
Speaker 1: called her out on it. But you did that so nicely,
Speaker 1: Like were you ever did you ever call any of
Speaker 1: these women and not be such a beautiful person, Like
Speaker 1: did you ever call them and say no? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: like like you really hurt me, like you should be ashamed?
Speaker 3: Did you ever ever take that tactic?
Speaker 4: No? I didn't. There was one I really actually had
Speaker 4: empathy for her because her husband had just also died
Speaker 4: very terrible circumstances, and she I really believe that she
Speaker 4: genuinely felt terrible for me, and we were basically in
Speaker 4: the same boat. Suddenly here we are widows. So we
Speaker 4: actually kept writing to each other for a while back
Speaker 4: and forth. But then she just kept telling me about
Speaker 4: her problems with her husband. I thought, yeah, that's enough.
Speaker 4: Now that's what I'm not you know, I'm not podcast Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's right. But it was sort of like, well, we're
Speaker 4: all in this together, so we all loved the same man. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And I think the first one I rang, I think
Speaker 4: she would just really embarrassed me. Could hear the embarrassment,
Speaker 4: and that was enough. She was really embarrassed, Yeah, and
Speaker 4: annoying that you cousin. Thank you so much for coming
Speaker 4: and for sharing your story. I mean, I think everyone
Speaker 4: who listens to this is going to go home and
Speaker 4: if they're in a relationship, is going to have that
Speaker 4: conversation with their partner.
Speaker 3: What would you do?
Speaker 2: It was the first thing I thought when I saw
Speaker 2: your book and I saw the title, and your generosity,
Speaker 2: your empathy, your kindness absolutely exudes out of you, Like
Speaker 2: it is such a beautiful thing. And I don't think
Speaker 2: that everybody would respond in the way that you have,
Speaker 2: that's for sure, you know. I think there is a
Speaker 2: lot of people out there who would hold onto that
Speaker 2: anger and hold on to that fury.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's actually thank you for saying that. But
Speaker 4: I think of it as I say, I had to
Speaker 4: save my own life, and if I had stayed that
Speaker 4: angry woman, that wouldn't have served me, you know. And
Speaker 4: I was getting old. I was looking in the mirror
Speaker 4: going Do I want to look like? Do I want
Speaker 4: all these lines? These anger lines?
Speaker 1: Know?
Speaker 4: What can I do? So well?
Speaker 2: It is called Loving My Lying, dying, cheating Husband, and
Speaker 2: it is available at Awkward bookstores. We'll put a link
Speaker 2: in the show notes as well. For you, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for coming and being part of the pod.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me.