Something Was Wrong - S21 E13: (1/4) [Annie + Lauren + Rachael] Deny, Deny, Deny

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

*Content Warning: death, emotional abuse, Alcohol Use Disorder, suicidal ideation, medical trauma.  For a list of related free and confidential resources, please visit: http://www.somethingwaswrong.com/resources Follow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo [e-mail] The SWW theme Song is U Think U, by Glad Rags. The S21 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Something Was Wrong early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes.

Pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening. You don't know anybody until you talk to someone. Hi I'm Rachel. I've been listening to Something Was Wrong since 2020.

Never did I think that I would be submitting a story to the podcast until one day everything blew up with one of my friends named Josh. We went to the same middle school. We went to the same high school for just one year. I changed high schools. I knew who he was vaguely in middle school and high school. We weren't friends at that point. And then in college, I ended up reconnecting

with a number of people from my first high school, which was East Lansing High School, and that was a group of friends that Josh was a large part of too. So that is how we originally met. I was closer with some of his guy friends, and it took a bit for us to actually become friends. He always positioned himself as the goofy one, the clown, always making jokes. A lot of the jokes he would make were very self-deprecating. He played it off as though he didn't have very much confidence in himself most of the time. There was a period in college where I had met his sister a number of times. She seemed really lovely, but I had never met his parents.

I know that his guy friends had known them for a long time. Obviously, when you're friends with someone since you were a small child, you get to know their parents fairly well. He did talk a lot about his parents. He was often bringing them up. There was a classic story that he was always talking about, which was that his mom dragged his dad on, I believe the show was Vicky Lawrence, an old talk show, and he was crowned as America's biggest couch potato. Around the time he was considering moving to Chicago, I had been living here for a number of years already,

and his mom had a pretty serious health diagnosis all of the sudden, which she would talk about all the time. He seemed like he cared so much about her, loved her so much, was very worried about her. He would do certain things like sign up for those races they have for certain diagnoses. He would be wearing the Livestrong bands, but it was for her diagnosis. It was a big part of his life. At some point he even got a tattoo for her diagnosis as well. He often loved to show that tattoo, particularly to women, myself, a lot of my friends. When I started spending time with his friends, got to know him better. It was always very much a friendship, very

platonic. He positioned himself as the one guy who can just be friends with the girls in the group. He often buddied up to them. He liked to gossip a lot as well. He came off as my mom did everything for me. I love my sister. It was definitely, I was raised by strong women. I always have women's backs at the end of the day. A few years into college, that's when I spent a lot of time with his close guy friends and we got fairly close. In the year or two leading up to me moving to

Chicago, he was oftentimes around. I lived in a college house with a bunch of girls. We were always having parties and he was always there. That's when we really became close. He was always very playful, very fun, pretty much up for anything. He wasn't in college. We all were. He was working as a butcher in the meat department at a grocery store.

He would have a bit of a different schedule and he would oftentimes party all night, hang out with us, and then wake up really early in the morning to go into the me department. He would come to my family's tailgates. He loved to try and buddy up to my mom as well. That was always one of his goals now reflecting back on it. And he would always brag too that moms loved him so much. We definitely maintained a friendship. He would come visit some of his friends that lived here regularly and I would go back there. Lauren and I went to the same grad school but we were in different programs. I was in the Masters of Social Work program, she was in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program. However, we ended up interning at the same place our second

year of grad school. We became pretty quick friends. We were somewhat similar. She's absolutely hilarious. She had ended a relationship a bit before I met her and started dating, getting out there more. One night in the summer, I had plans to do something with Lauren and a few of our other friends from our internship. And some of my guy friends from home, including Josh, were in town hanging out with some of the same group of guy friends that lived in Chicago. Josh called me and he was like, what are you doing? Let's hang out. I said, okay, meet us at this bar. This is where we're going. He showed up maybe 15 minutes after we

got to the bar. It was great fun. I mean, I always love mixing groups of friends too. That's always been one of my things. Lauren and Josh seemed to really hit it off. When I was still in college, he would always talk about how he had all these crushes on girls, how he wanted to date them so badly, and how he was in love with them. And nothing ever came to fruition at all. He always said, oh it's because my guy friends will all make fun of me if I bring a girl back. Whether that's true or not, I'm not sure at this point. So when he met Lauren and they really hit it off, I was like, oh my gosh, they should hang out. Josh came back to my place that night after the bar.

He was really trying to maintain his image of the nice guy. He was like, my guy friends are going to get an Uber and go home, but I'll walk you home. And I said, it's really not a big deal. I live half a block away from this bar. It's been a very safe neighborhood. He insisted. He ended up spending the night on my couch, but we were talking before I went to bed about Lauren. And he was like, I'm in love with her. Give me her number. So I gave him her number and then they started texting and they literally never stopped after that.

They're both so fun and so funny. This would be a great match. My name is Lauren. I'm 30. I'm from Chicago. I am in the mental health field. I work in a nonprofit mental health agency at Chicago. I'm licensed as an LCPC, so a licensed clinical professional counselor. I don't practice. I'm not actively providing counseling or therapy right now to people, but I currently run an outpatient mental health clinic, so I supervise therapists. For the first five and a half years of my career, I was specializing in assessing and diagnosing of mental health conditions and substance use disorders. I just think that that is really ironic.

When you think that you know all that can happen, you really don't. Rachel is also in the mental health field. We met doing our internship together at an outpatient mental health clinic. That intern year is a rough one. It's basically a full-time unpaid internship and they just throw you in and you just start doing therapy. It's pretty wild. There were like 10 or 12 interns and there were four desks. The windows were taped together. You just kind of go through the shit together and I think that's why Rachel and I, and there were others too in our cohort that bonded really quickly. Rachel and I were still friends after the end of our

internship which is a year long. One night we were out at a bar in the neighborhood that Rachel lived in. She was like, Hey, a couple of my friends are in town. They're going to come meet us at the bar. And I was like, Rachel's amazing. So I'm sure her friends are amazing too. And they were all of them. That's how I met Josh. Josh and I started talking and he said something about Taylor Swift, which is instantly a green flag for me. So we kind of like bonded over that, I think, and just hit it off. I realized though that he lived several hours away because he was just visiting. And so in my head, I was like,

well, this won't be anything. He lives four hours from here. But we ended up exchanging numbers and talked constantly since I was 24. He was 29. He's your classic charming guy. You could put him in a room with anyone and he could talk to them for hours. He's very extroverted. I'm that way as well. That was really appealing to me, someone who feels confident in themselves and I don't have to like babysit if we're at a family function. Also, what attracted me to him is that he came from a family that was very similar to mine, very much working class. They had a tiny house. There were times throughout his childhood where they weren't financially stable. And so like things I could relate to, he was a butcher.

That was his job. He told me that he went to college and that college wasn't for him. And he decided that he wanted to go into a trade. And I felt like he was very down to earth at the time. I don't want to minimize because I definitely had feelings for him that were very real. But also I was just at a time in my life where I was willing to tolerate settling for someone who would treat me poorly. The bar was real low. I talk about this with my therapist quite a bit because it is really upsetting to think about. I genuinely thought no one's going to ever want to be with me. That time of my life was really difficult. I look back at it now and I don't recognize any version of myself that I was. Josh was able to pick up on that. I was

going through a lot at that time. Like I had just lost my grandma who was one of my primary caregivers my whole life. I also gained like 80 pounds in grad school. My self-esteem was underneath the ground. It makes me so sad now because I didn't think that anyone would ever love me because of what I looked like. I thought when I met him, this is someone who's like on my level. We were both equally mediocre looking people. To this day, I would trust Rachel with my life. She had nothing but great things to say about him. She was pumped about us talking and hitting it off. I don't blame her in any way for how things turned out.

I think one of the first things I asked her was like, all right, tell me what's up, like, what's wrong with him? Does he hate puppies or women or something? And she was like, no, like, he is an awesome dude. I would be so thrilled for this to work out. And so that endorsement was really important to me. My relationship with Josh, it was quick. This is something that is not unusual for me, I guess, because I just don't really have the patience to like fuck around. I'm what those would call a serial dater. I used to be

ashamed about that. I think now that I'm older, I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing. I just have a lot of love to give other people. We texted primarily. There were some FaceTimes and calls in there. He drove up here to Chicago for our first date, which was a pretty awesome date. I'm a huge Cubs fan. So we ended up going to a Cubs game. It was a great time, like no notes. He drove four hours for our first date and I didn't see anything weird about it. You know, if I were talking to my younger self or a friend and they told me that I'd be like, well, are we sure that that is a good choice for us to be making? But how I was feeling at the time was we were clicking so well and none of it felt weird.

Not at all. It was pretty early on that we met each other's families. My sister is my closest family member. Her and I are very different and very similar in a lot of ways. She really liked him and I think he knew that her opinion of him was very important, if not the most important, so he went above and beyond to impress her and it worked. She really had nothing but good things to say about him at first. I wasn't in a whole lot of contact with my parents at that time.

My parents had separated right before I met him and so things were real hostile up in my family environment. My mom said like he was fine. She thought he was funny and he was always so polite, but my dad called her and so they were divorced at this time and said hard no on that guy. That's not the one.

I found that out recently after he died and I was like, okay, thanks for the heads up. Wish someone would have told me that he sucked. It was just strange to hear that after the fact and I wouldn't have expected them to tell me because we don't have that type of relationship Nothing sticks out to me about meeting his family specifically other than his sister was pretty intimidating But she was very sweet like once I got to know her and his mom and dad they were super lovely from the very beginning Josh painted this picture of my friends are not just my friends, they're like my family. I thought it was great. His friends were nothing but awesome, genuinely good people.

Rachel is included in that. He always just spoke so highly of them and I was so nervous to meet them because I knew how important they were. I got along with all of them. Great. I was invited to all of their weddings and I would go to the weddings with him and it was like we were celebrities because everyone's mom would be like, oh my God, Josh, you found this lovely girl. She's so outgoing and friendly, and you got to hold on to that one. Those are really validating things to hear. Here's Rachel. It seemed as though they were pretty serious relatively quickly.

At that point, Josh had never had a girlfriend, so a lot of us were excited for him, and Lauren's obviously wonderful. I still spent a good amount of time with him at that point. He was coming to Chicago a lot. She would come to East Lansing sometimes. Sometimes the three of us would hang out or we would hang out in a larger group. There was maybe one or two tailgates that he brought Lauren to as well. If I was around, I definitely would spend a decent amount of time with him.

Initially, they seemed like they were both really into one another and happy. Here's Lauren. July of 2017 is when we met at the bar. We were dating within a few months. We did long distance for about a year. He moved in with a friend and then we found him an apartment in February of 2019. So that would have been over a year since we officially started dating. Reflecting now, our relationship was quite normal and healthy at first, but it was when he got comfortable and when he gained my trust that things went south. When he moved to Chicago, the red flags really started popping up. I imagine that there were some beige flags before then too, during

that time when we were long distance, because we would drive like every weekend or every other weekend to see each other. I remember thinking this is kind of ideal because I get to spend time with him and then I get to go away. We have our own time. In the back of my mind, I knew from very early on that he was not the one for me.

When he took the leap to move here, I had any opportunity to say, don't do it. But I went with it because I thought this is my best shot at finding a person who actually would ever want to be with me. There was a pit in my stomach that whole time. Knowing that this guy is coming here, there is always this conversation with friends and family of like, yeah, he's coming here because I live here. There is always this conversation with friends and family like, yeah, he's coming here because I live here, but also like he has lots of friends here and he was eventually

going to move to Chicago anyway. When we were long distance, I didn't really see who he was as a person because you're only seeing the weekend version of them. He was living in a house with a roommate in Michigan at that time and I would spend the weekend there with them. I really loved going to see him. I love Michigan. It's beautiful there. It was really nice to get out of the city. When he moved to Chicago, I could see things more clearly.

He's very immature and very manipulative and all those things started coming out. I think that he kind of waited until he moved here because he knew how guilty I would feel if I broke up with him after he moved all the way here for me. It was tumultuous and stressful. I was realizing that we were incompatible in many ways. We weren't very enmeshed, but we would fight constantly. I was working a new job. He worked weird hours. His shift would sometimes start at like four in the morning, so he would need to go to bed at like seven.

Our hours were off, which I think honestly is another reason why it lasted as long as it did, because if we were spending more time together, it would be a nightmare. He was working a lot and he would use work to get out of things, kind of acted like he was a martyr with having to go to work, like, oh god, I got an early shift tomorrow, and it's just like, dude, we all have to go to work. Exhausting to be around. He's an energy vampire. He had a drinking problem when I dated him. Before we even officially started dating, I was like, listen, I'm a very empathic person and very communicative, but there's one thing that I can't handle and I'm not gonna tolerate

and it's drunk fighting. If you get drunk and you're an asshole, forget it. I'm not dealing with it. I've dealt with drunk assholes my whole life. Of course he was saying how understanding he was about that, but I quickly learned that he was the exact definition of a drunk asshole. I had to keep giving ultimatums, honestly, because it was so triggering and it was just miserable. We're in our 20s and we're in Chicago drinking and going out.

That was what our social scene was. So a lot of our social events involved drinking and he just couldn't manage it. He would black out. He would actually throw like temper tantrums. A friend of mine who I had a very small stint of like a romantic relationship with before I met Josh, he would just constantly bring him up and be so belligerently drunk

that you couldn't reason with him or there was no logic that could bring him back to reality. That friend who I referred to, it was just easier for me to stop talking to him. I am ashamed to admit that I had to tell this friend, it's easier if we just don't stay in touch because you're the number one source of my fights with my boyfriend. And my friend was very understanding. He wasn't trying to make waves and we have since become friends again and are close again. But it's just so strange to think that I would even stop talking to a friend because of the jealousy of Josh. It was my sister's birthday. It was actually like right after he and I met, so pretty early to even be bringing him around.

met, so pretty early to even be bringing him around. But I did and he got so drunk and he started accusing me of looking at other guys, which to be clear, my sister is married to a woman and most of the people at that party were gay and significantly older than me. He started making a scene. That night he was going to stay with me at my apartment and he refused to get out of the Uber and started walking around my neighborhood. It wasn't the best area that I was living in at that time either and wouldn't answer the phone and I would just be up worried sick all night about him. It was just these repeated behaviors of getting drunk, accusing me of cheating on him, accusing me of looking at other guys or not caring about him enough. It was just a lot of pressure to be with him.

It just so much work. This type of thing still bothers me. When people get blacked out drunk and behave in a way and then they don't remember it the next day. We have to live with the memory of what happened and how you acted, but you just get a pass then because you don't remember it. It is this way to avoid taking responsibility,

and he certainly took advantage of that. Countless times he would treat me like shit and then not be able to remember anything that happened. I eventually started documenting our nights out because our fighting would get so bad that I would start taking notes on my phone with time stamps of what he would say and what I would say and what would go on because I knew that the next day he would claim to not remember or he would twist it and make me think that I misremembered. Here's Rachel. One night Lauren and I went out

with other friends. Somehow Lauren and I ended up in an uber together, just the two of us talking and she had disclosed to me how he had been acting when he was very drunk and that he was being really really mean to her which was interesting to hear for me because part of me thought he doesn't act like that it wasn't that I didn't believe Lauren I completely believed her a 100%. Just I hadn't seen that side of Josh. As I started thinking about it more, I was thinking, well yeah, he does get very, very intoxicated at times. And I did remember, yeah, there were a few times early on when I first met him that he would say some mean

things when he was drunk. I must have just completely forgotten this, that he made me cry at a party once because he wouldn't stop bugging me about this one topic over and over and over again to the point where I was actually crying. Looking back on it now, I believe he was drinking a lot more than maybe some of us were aware he was. Lauren was saying that she would not allow him to treat her this way and I fully supported her in that. I thought it was wildly inappropriate how he treated her. If he was able to cut back on the drinking and not do this again, everything would be fine.

I just kind of followed what she was saying and how she felt about it. He did talk to me about it a little bit. However, how he was talking about it was more along the lines of we were both drunk and we got in an argument. There was no accountability. There was no acknowledgement whatsoever of the severity of the situation. He also would talk about it and seem very sad. talk about it and seem very sad. He had this ability to put up this front where he would seem very sad and very sullen

when he would talk about things like this. I saw it as potentially shame. I also wondered if he was just so drunk that he didn't necessarily remember what he had even sat or done. Was that pretty different than how you normally saw him? Yes, the antithesis of how I generally saw him. Before they broke up, when he had been living here for a while, he would never want to do anything.

I would text him and invite him to go do things with me because Lauren would be busy or something like that and he would decline. We would oftentimes go to a bar to watch a Michigan State basketball game or football game, and he would turn those invitations down. When I would hang out with him, it would only ever be with Lauren. I was still hanging out with Lauren without him,

but I was never spending time with him because he would decline every invitation. I thought it was very bizarre. It didn't seem like him at all. He usually would be up for doing things a majority of the time. And he also seemed more withdrawn when I would spend time with him. I remember there was one Michigan State basketball game, I believe. We went to a bar to watch him, Lauren and I, and he

seemed very reserved, which was out of character for him. I personally, being a therapist, interpreted it as maybe he's depressed. He seemed not himself. He seemed much more withdrawn, quiet, not wanting to do things. His mom is pretty sick, he is away from her, he really doesn't have that many friends here. And his relationship with Lauren at that point, this was when things were starting to get kind of bumpy. It was more Lauren and I socializing and it felt as though Josh was a bystander a little bit. It was

pretty fine overall. It was just different and he wasn't the person that I had seen him to be in the past. He was always so outgoing. Here's Lauren. Those last six to eight months I was with him, the old me was starting to emerge again. I was gaining my self-confidence back and he didn't like that. I am truly incapable of not calling someone out on their shit. My emotions are out there. I'm not a person who can easily suppress their feelings. I would just constantly be like, the way that you talk to me is fucked up and not okay, and you need to fucking do something about it because I'm not going to sit here and listen to you talk to me like that.

That's kind of when he would really start to use like manipulation and would often use having depression as an excuse. If I would try to confront him about something, it was constantly like, well, you're constantly nagging me and you're trying to make me feel bad, you know I'm depressed. And then I would end up apologizing. He knew that as a therapist, I am extra aware of those things. And of course, I want to be a support to him.

Maybe he was having depression but I don't think that that was a good excuse for his behavior. There was another time we went to dinner and then we met up with friends and we were walking to the Uber and there's a group of four men who said something to me but I couldn't make out what they were saying. But it was, like, clear that they said something not great. Josh turns to me and he's like, should I fight them? I said, why, what did they say? And he says, what, nothing, it's fine, it doesn't matter.

I said, just tell me what they said. No, it doesn't matter, just forget it. This is me being harassed by four men. And then Josh instigates a conversation about it and then won't tell me what they're saying. And so I was like, you just said those guys talk shit and you asked me if you should fight them. And he goes, what? And then he goes, I'm just going to get in a cab and go home. And then he gets in a cab, throws all of the food and bottles of water out of the cab onto the street. And then he gets out of the cab, throws all of the food and bottles of water out of the cab onto the street. And

then he gets out of the cab starts screaming at me. And then he goes, wait, what are we fighting about? It's like he Googled how to gaslight someone. He was straight up pretending that he had like amnesia. It worked so often because he would be like, wait, why are you mad again? What are we talking about? And I'd be like, do you have a head injury? Like, I don't understand. He would do it to confuse me and to throw me off. It was just constant stuff like that. What really pisses me off even more is there are people with mental illness and horrible life experiences who know how to behave appropriately. It's just so clear that he does things intentionally. It was just even so apparent to me at that time when I was so young and not as experienced with

these things. He was trying to isolate me and he was trying to control me. He would get really angry if I didn't text him where I was or who I was with, if I didn't respond in a timely fashion and like pick fights about that. We used to go to trivia with some of my friends from work. Earlier that day, my friend from work invited me and Josh to her birthday party, which was like in a couple of weeks. At the trivia night, she was just trying to be friendly and make conversation. She was like, Josh, did Lauren tell you about my birthday? Like, are you guys going to come? And he got so mad. It was instantly so uncomfortable. The tone just shifted. We all felt it. Suddenly it was like, God, let's get to the end of this game so we can all go home because it

was just uncomfortable. And so I was like, Hey man, what was that about? Is everything okay? Are you good? He's like, No, yeah, it's fine. And this was a repeated thing he would do. It'd be like, I'm fine. And I'd be like, okay, but you're clearly not your whole body language has changed. Like your tone of voice has changed. You haven't made eye contact with me. You've been short. You haven't spoken to anyone. You've been on your phone the whole time. Clear things that we all can pick up on these social cues that someone is not having a good time or someone is upset. Hours would go by and he'd be like, I'm fine. And then I would start thinking like, why do I always think that he's mad? What is wrong with me? Thinking

that he's constantly upset. Am I projecting something? The gaslighting would work. I'd be like, I need to ease up or I'm overreacting. And then suddenly, as soon as I would feel like that, he would unravel and it would just be like resentment coming out and it would be like, you didn't tell me about this party. You never invite me or never wanna include me in things. And I'm like, what? This was me telling you about the party.

I found out about the party 45 minutes prior to us meeting at the bar. Things like that, which would eventually lead to those feelings of like walking on eggshells. I started to learn what types of things would piss him off. And so I would just avoid those things because it was easier. What was so frustrating is him just being so blatantly upset. And then if you ask why, then it's deny, deny, deny.

And then suddenly it's like everything you've been mad about for the last, however many hours, weeks, months come up and there's just no ability to like communicate effectively about it or problem solve. It's just so fucked up. An ongoing theme of our relationship that I think is relevant and important. Josh had some hygiene issues, was very immature. If you said anything like, hey, do you wanna clean your sink before I come over? Like, complete lash out. You couldn't ever, ever say anything about that. His car specifically was a point of contention for us

throughout our whole relationship, and it's ultimately one of the biggest reasons about why we broke up. So his car was a complete disaster. Food, clothes, wrappers. It was almost like a hoarding situation. I eventually got frustrated because I would end up driving this everywhere because the car was such a mess that I literally like couldn't go in it because the seats were just piled to the ceiling of shit. Or he would be too embarrassed for me to go in it and see it that way.

Initially, I was really empathetic about it. I kind of attribute it to maybe he's depressed, right? Or he just moved here. Lots of big life changes and stressors. And I know that my hygiene and my life kind of gets out of sorts during hard times. So I would offer to help him clean it out. of sorts during hard times. So I would offer to help him clean it out. He would get super defensive and make me feel bad about embarrassing him or shaming him. And so then I would back off about it. This would continue for months with no change and with me just driving us everywhere. Eventually, I started bringing it up more regularly. I offered to just clean it myself as a gift or to pay to get it detailed or something. He would eventually get so mad when I brought it up that he would be furious,

completely shut down, make me feel badly about nagging him about it. And then at the same time he would say, okay, I'll clean it. I told you I would do it. He never cleaned it. Spoiler. I always knew about his lying. It was one of those things where I rationalized to myself why he was doing it or maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. He would lie constantly about stupid stuff and then about important stuff. He would lie about everything, not even a good liar. Ultimately, why I broke up with him is because I woke up from like April to November 2019. We were on and off, technically broken up. And I was totally responsible for this too. I would sometimes reach back out to him or we would

consider maybe trying again. And he would beg me to give him opportunities to prove that he was wanting to fix things. This period of time, I have a dentist appointment. No one loves the dentist, but I more than the average person have a really hard time at the dentist. I require Valium, panic attacks, the whole nine yards. I was getting a procedure done and I took the day off work. It was like a weekday afternoon and the procedure I was getting done required laughing gas. I never had it before and I had an allergic reaction to it. And I ended up getting really sick and throwing up everywhere, all over myself, all over the staff, all over the wall. It was so humiliating. It was so bad.

One of the worst experiences I've ever had. I'm also coming off of the nitrous and also on a shit ton of Valium. And so the staff was super nice and they're like, girl, who can you call to come help you out? I lived in walking distance. So I walked there and my plan was because they told me I would be okay to walk home. But I was in no physical shape to walk home at that point. Because of the time of week, my roommate was at work like an hour away. She didn't have a car. My sister was an hour away. I called Josh. He was 10 minutes away. I knew his work schedule. He'd just gotten off work. So I call him like, Hey, man, I really need you to help me out. I'm at the dentist and I really need a ride home and some clothes. Can you please do

that? And he's like some sort of war hero comes walking in with these clothes and the staff are like, what a sweet guy. And he's loving it. And I'm covered in my own vomit. We leave and I'm like so relieved to get out of there because I just need to go home. We go to leave and I'm like, all right, where is your car? And he's like, oh, my car is in the shop. I had to Uber here. I instantly knew he was lying. I was like, that doesn't make sense. How did you get to work? How did you get home from work today? He's like, something's wrong with it. He's kind of guiding me to walk down the opposite side of the street. That wouldn't make sense for

me to go. And I look and I see his car down the street. He has a very specific license plate. He has one of those customized ones. It was definitely his car. the street. He has a very specific license plate. He has one of those customized ones. It was definitely his car. There's no arguing about it. I was like, Josh, is that your car? And he's like, no, it's not. I'm like, okay, but I'm looking at it right now. Don't try to tell me that that's not your car. And then went ballistic on me, screaming at me in the middle of the street. And I was like, is this because you're still having cleaned out your car? It's been like over a year. He is just going bat shit crazy, accusing me of nagging him,

how he didn't have to come and get me, how he was doing me a favor. He's exhausted. And then he wouldn't drive me home. And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Like this is exactly why this isn't gonna work because like I can't rely on you. But laughing gas thankfully wore off pretty shortly after, but I was definitely on Valium and I was in horrible pain.

I was covered in vomit and blood and sobbing. Just had one of the worst experiences of my life. And this man wouldn't even drive me four blocks to my apartment. He did that another time too. I was in the hospital once and he told me and my roommate that he would drive me home. I specifically told my mom and sister, like they didn't need to come up because Josh would come after work and drive me home. I wasn't in for anything serious. I just had like a really bad case of the flu and I needed fluids.

He did the same thing. He showed up and we're walking out and he's waving to the staff as if he's just saved my life. And then I'm like, where's your car? And he's like, it's not here. I Ubered here. It just blew my mind.

If it were him, I would have left work, been to the hospital, brought him Gatorade, taken off work the next day, gotten him up to his apartment. I had to call an Uber for myself and I almost passed out on the stairs walking up to my apartment because he refused to do it. It's so embarrassing for me to even tell that story because I stayed with him after that. He tried to get me to feel that he was so embarrassed. He had a car that was unusable. I couldn't get into it. He didn't want me to say anything about it because he knew that he would have to acknowledge,

yeah, I still didn't get it cleaned. At that point, I had a 103 fever. I was fully on another planet. At that point, I had a 103 fever. I was fully on another planet. I would have gotten into anyone's car and gone home. I just needed so badly to get to my bed. It was some sort of pride thing and feeling inadequate. He didn't like when he wasn't the center of attention and that was really a problem for him. It was constantly in these types of moments with the dentist in the hospital, it was like, well, I have to work so early. I know you have to work early, but I'm also unwell and need you.

It was just wild. Fortunately, I had a lot of other friends and supports, too, in my life at that time. I didn't really want to put Rachel in the middle of it, but there were certainly times where he would start fights in front of other people and say really jarring, weird things in front of other people. And I would find myself reaching out

and like apologizing to Rachel. She'd be like, it's okay, don't worry, but we never really got into it he broke me honestly it was so exhausting to fight with him because we would just go in circles and circles it got to the point where I was just like well I don't have the energy to defend myself or like fight with you anymore and so I just kind of stopped caring as we were dating for longer and longer and people would ask like, oh, are you guys going to move in together? And he

would bring up marriage. The thought of those things made me want to die inside. I had a little bit of a reality check is when I had to get to a point where I was actually envisioning a future with him because he was older than me and he was feeling a lot of pressure to get point where I was actually envisioning a future with him because he was older than me and he was feeling a lot of pressure to get married. He was the only one out of his friends who hadn't been married, so he was kind of placing that pressure on me too. The thought of living with this man or spending one more moment with him was too much. It was way too much and so was too much. It was way too much. And so eventually I had to cut it off. November of 2019 is when I officially cut it off. When we broke up, I texted Rachel that we broke up and that I didn't want her to feel like she was in a weird position. And I totally

understood that she would continue to hang out with Josh and like be a support to him. And I wanted her to because I was very, very worried about his well-being when we broke up. I don't think he ever explicitly told me that he was thinking about suicide or that he was unwell or not going to be able to take care of himself, but I had that feeling very strongly. Like I was very concerned also because he doesn't have a lot of supports here. So she was one of his only friends that he had here. In the moment, I probably thought that it was a genuine threat. Now, looking back, it's so clear to me now that that was a manipulation tactic.

Here's Rachel. It was in that time where I was really trying to still be a friend to both of them and not take a side. However, I think that's when I started to wonder what's going on here exactly and I guess I started to think wow he really fucked this one up. Why can't you get your act together? It was a tough spot to be in during that period in which Lauren and Josh were very on and off. Josh was also actively on the dating apps and going on dates with other women, which made me incredibly uncomfortable. He was maybe going on a date once every

few weeks, once every week. He would tell me about the women he was going on dates with because I would ask because I'm interested and he felt like he could talk about these things with me. Again, it's that budding up to women thing he did. If I talk about my dates and everything, I can kind of be like one of the girls. So we'd oftentimes have conversations about the dates he was going on. And there were a few brief stints with, I think, two women, where he went on maybe a handful of dates with each of them. I have tried to find these women, and I have not been successful. I'm so curious what their perspective was on all of this, too.

But Lauren was very respectful. She has other friends in Chicago. In all honesty, at that point, I was really one of his two friends he had in the city. So I think she wanted to have him spend time with me because he didn't really have anybody else. I had gotten Lauren's perspective on it and I fully supported her, seemed like it was the best decision for her.

I could tell she still cared about him. He on the other hand seemed very sad and very depressed. And so I did try reach out more, kind of nudge him or push him into doing more social things. I did get to see him a little bit more at that point because at this time, I was really the only person he had in Chicago. So if he wanted to be social, he kind of had to hang out with me. It was always very much a friend vibe between us. That's all it ever was. I just felt very almost responsible for him. I'm a caring and empathic person

and I saw him going through what appeared to be a really rough breakup for him and he started appeared to be a really rough breakup for him. And he started going to therapy and he said he was starting to do things like exercise, trying to do a bunch of things to better himself, essentially. I honestly, Tiffany, don't even know if he actually went to therapy. I'm somewhat suspicious of that. He was dating a mental health professional and his only friend in Chicago is a mental health professional. So what can he do to present himself in a better light to them? Go to therapy. Here's Lauren. I don't know if I would do anything differently looking back but

it was always pretty clear like that he was more serious about our relationship than I was. Objectively, we weren't that far apart in age, but that developmentally, I think where we were, like 24 versus 30 was a really big difference. I'm 30 now and who I was when I was 24 is totally different. I met my current fiance pretty shortly after Josh and I broke up.

Weirdly enough, he was in a relationship too that had ended around the time that mine and Josh's relationship ended. And so when we met each other, we were fully in denial and doing everything in our power to not make our relationship serious. We didn't actually get together until March of the following year. I have a friend specifically who I met right after I met Josh. After he and I broke up she said this years later that it was like she didn't actually know me until Josh and I broke up. I was a totally different person. It was super validating

because I felt like she was basically saying that I was a very weird version of me when I was with him and that's exactly how I felt. I really am almost like dissociated from it because I like can't even recognize who I was at that time. I think Josh and other predators out there, they can smell that shit from a mile away. My life got instantly so much better when Josh was out of it. I got my sense of self back. Thank you so much for listening.

Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media Production, created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at Something Was Wrong Podcast.

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