Trying To Stay For The Kids, Never Works
Why trying to stay in a bad relationship for the kids never works.
In this video coaching newsletter, I discuss an email from a guy who credits my work for giving him the courage to get out of a toxic marriage and bad relationship. He had thought they should make it work for the sake of their daughter, but due to the toxic nature of his ex-wife and her family, he eventually left and now has full custody of their daughter.
He shares how he was originally interested in and dated her friend, but after she moved back to her home country of Germany, he started dating his now ex-wife. It’s an interesting story of personal discovery that way too many men find themselves in and are tormented about whether or not they should stay or leave to find someone else. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.
*Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. An affiliate link means I may earn referral fees if you make a purchase through my link, without any extra cost to you. Thank you for your support.
I’ve got a cautionary tale about choosing the wrong person to spend your life with, have a family with, be in a relationship with, or get married to, obviously, in this particular case. It’s interesting how this guy’s whole story came about. It’s an interesting turn of events of how he ended up married and now divorced. He credits my work with giving him the courage to leave.
So, this is for those of you guys that can’t wait to get a ring on somebody’s finger, may have made bad choices in the past, are about to make a bad choice, or maybe you’re in a situation like this now and you’re just tormented, like the old Clash song, “Should I stay, or should I go?” It’s a good email to go through to help you avoid making the same kinds of choices. Ideally, you want to learn from these other guys’ mistakes.
Viewer’s Email:
Dear Coach Corey,
I am an avid fan of yours, and I just wanted to share my experience of how your work helped me to move on from a toxic marriage. I am a 41-year old man with a background in engineering and am currently a successful sub systems contractor for the U.S. military.
My situation started way back in mid 2012 when I first met my ex-wife. I was at a coffee shop, when I spotted a group of hot looking girls sitting by the window. They were all very attractive but there was one in particular that really caught my eye. I have always been kind of fearless when it came to women and had a fairly decent history at picking them up. I strode on over to the group and introduced myself. I immediately started to chat up the one girl that I had my eye on.
Here’s the twist, my ex-wife wasn’t the one I had been initially interested in, my ex-wife Jessica, was actually sitting right next to the blonde and happened to be her best friend at the time. From the onset, she didn’t take too kindly to me and wound up being a major cock blocker.
That’s the interesting thing with women in groups. Women tend to be competitive. And if a guy comes over and approaches them and he’s interested in another girl, they resent it, “Why didn’t he hit on me?”
This was a pattern that repeated itself over the next few months.
Obviously, she was hoping that he would not date her friend and then end up dating her instead. So, her way of making that happen, or facilitating it, is to be a cock-blocker.
Me and the blonde did end up going on a few dates and I felt we had a good connection, but it was not to be. You see she was originally from Germany and was only in the states doing a study abroad program. After a few months, she was slated to go back to Europe to continue her schooling for an advanced nursing program. She told me she didn’t want to engage in such a long-distance relationship and broke up with me. I was heartbroken.
Here’s where my ex-wife comes back into the picture. About a week after my girlfriend had flown back to Germany, Jessica contacts me over Facebook.
An opportunist.
Her tone had completely changed, and she apologized profusely for treating me so bad.
So, that should be a red flag to you. She’s an ass the whole time, when in reality, she really likes you. But then again, you kind of see this with little kids. Girls that have crushes on boys, they act like they hate them, and vice versa. When in reality they’re just trying to mask the fact they have a crush. So, for an adult woman to be doing this — is she really a nice person? Is that a nice thing to do to somebody that you want to date, to just be an ass? That should be a red flag.
Because ideally, you want a girl who’s going to be nice to you. One of the first things I always tell women I meet is, “I want a girl who’s nice to me. Be nice to me, communicate, say what you mean, mean what you say.” And I just wait to see what they do. And unfortunately — and this is not just women — most people in society, their words and their actions almost always don’t match and they’re inconsistent.
Like I’ve said before, find people that are good for you, good to you, good for your soul. It’s so hard. They’re so rare. Just like Tom Petty said, “Good love is hard to find… You got lucky babe, when I found you.”
She insisted on making it up to me by cooking me dinner. I figured, what the hell and agreed.
So now, she’s being extra nice, because she wants something from you. Obviously, in this case she wants him, whereas before — let’s be real — she had been an absolute cunt to him.
Over the course of the evening, I learned that she had been jealous that she had not been the target of my affections.
What a surprise. No drama allowed.
I figured this was a prime opportunity and explained that there was enough of me to go around.
That’ a good comeback. I’ll have to steal that.
Jessica is a very beautiful woman, but her negative attitude and always pulling her best friend away from me turned me off.
Imagine if he had listened to that impulse. My, my, my, how the last decade of his life would have been different.
Over the next several months, we got pretty hot and heavy, but I just really saw her as friends with benefits. But Coach, I’ve got to tell you, this woman was an absolute freak in the sheets, some of the best sex I had ever had, even up until this day.
Dude, I get what you’re saying. It’s so true. It’s hard to give that up, even when you see those red flags. Think about the other women you’ve been with. Quite frankly, most women are not in touch with their bodies like some women are, and it really makes a difference in the bedroom. I’m not going to lie. It’s the way it is. Some women are just dead fucks. Some women just have no sensory acuity of the body. And other women, it’s like, oh my lord.
I wasn’t in love, but I was definitely in lust! She catered to my every sexual whim and it was great. I just didn’t want an official relationship, because I knew this girl was not really all there when it came to her emotions.
I believe that every man should adopt the ‘No Drama Allowed’ philosophy for their life. Because as soon as you start seeing that toxic behavior and they start dicking you around, or jerking you around, or their behavior starts being inconsistent, or maybe they come off as a little condescending at times, especially at the beginning, it’s a bad sign.
One day at work she texted me that she needed to speak to me about an urgent matter. Later that day, she dropped a bomb. She was pregnant, and the baby was mine.
Yikes. I remember my old business partner that I wrote about in my second book, “Mastering Yourself,” we talked about this extensively. He married his first wife when he was twenty-one, and it didn’t feel right. He had the same impulses, the same feelings about his ex-wife that I did about mine, as I talk about in “How To Be A 3% Man.” He was like, “It just doesn’t feel right. Something’s missing.”
He said, “I need to talk to you” to his wife, and she was like, “Oh I want to talk to you too. I’ve got some news.” He was going to tell her, “I’m just not happy. I’m leaving,” but she said, “I’m pregnant.” He was thinking, “Oh, shit.” And then nine or ten years later, after they ended up having two kids together, he finally had had enough and he left.
Man, so many people do this. I mean, I did it too. If you don’t trust what you’re feeling inside, if you don’t listen to your heart, what feels right, your intuition, it never ends well.
The things that happen when you don’t wrap up!
Yep, I’ve been there too, slipped one past the goalie. I mean, what was I even expecting? She wasn’t even on birth control. But I was in love. She was a babe.
I decided I would do the right thing and be there for my kid, but that wasn’t enough.
So in other words, he’s like, “I’m going to stay in it for the kids.”
Before too long, she was demanding that I marry her. Her family, who were mostly a bunch of scumbags themselves, didn’t help matters and I eventually caved.
Yeah, the marriage is going to make all of that go away. Now that you’ve put a ring on it, everything’s going to be awesome. Sure, okay.
Let’s just say, I was in for five years of non-stop drama.
No drama allowed, bro. You definitely should get one of these mugs. You can remind yourself every day when you look at it.
The only good thing that came out of that marriage was my daughter. I wanted to make this work so that I could create a good family for my kid.
Those are noble goals, but you can’t make good wine from bad grapes. You’ve got to have a good woman who’s good to you, good for you, good for your soul who’s a nice person. You’ve got to have a nice person if you’re going to be together for a long time. And she wasn’t nice, and you saw that she wasn’t nice, but you were like, “Oh, it’ll be fine.”
So, I slipped into being a weak-minded beta, thinking it would please my ex-wife.
Yeah, that just turned her into fucking Godzilla.
Needless to say, for those five years, my daughter grew up in a very toxic environment, as it was just one non-stop argument after another between her mother and I.
Boy, that just sounds like so much fun. I had a friend who, for the last three years of his marriage, he didn’t have sex with his wife. He would go to touch her, and she would grab him and just dig her fucking fingernails into him. The public image that we all saw was completely different, but when they were home alone, she was just a fucking lunatic. And now, he’s in a relationship with a girl half his age. So, there is hope.
In the last year before my divorce, I discovered your work. I have read your first book seven times and through it, I realized why my ex-wife had fallen for me so hard in the beginning. Without even realizing it, I was being aloof and acted like a man who was on about his purpose. That probably made me more attractive to her.
Absolutely. You were acting like a man.
I finally manned up and decided to ask for the divorce in order to get my daughter out of that broken home. I just wanted to tell your listeners that trying to stay for the kids, never works.
Yeah, it’s not your job to fix your crazy ex-wife. She was a lunatic and her family was a bunch of scumbags before you had her. It’s not your fault. But you did the right thing by taking care of you and your baby girl, which is really important. Because otherwise, if she grows up in that environment, she’s going to grow up to be a lunatic just like her mother and her mother’s toxic family.
The world already has enough of those kinds of women, so if we can have one less thanks to you, awesome, bro. You made the world a better place thanks to your choice.
Thankfully, I have full custody of my daughter, and we are now living over twelve hundred miles from her demented mother.
Thank you, Coach. If it wasn’t for your work, I don’t know if I would have ever had the strength to walk out of that marriage.
Bob
Well dude, here’s to you for saying, ‘No Drama Allowed’.
“Way too many people grow up in toxic families and broken homes where yelling, arguing and drama are a dysfunctional way of life. Many people make the mistake of trying to make an impossible relationship with a toxic person work. After much violation of their self and their dignity, they eventually realize that they deserve better. They take their power and their lives back that they may have originally given away in a fruitless attempt to keep the peace. It takes great courage and humility to admit that you made a bad choice for a romantic partner and leave that person to eventually find love again and create a much better relationship with a better quality prospect. Life is too short to spend it with people who despise and treat you poorly.” ~ Coach Corey Wayne
