Divorce to RV Living (Truth About Our Relationship)

how did we go from the brink of divorce to full time our beam in a 400 square foot RV welcome back to the RV Odd Couple my name is John and I'm Mercedes long story short we sold all of our possessions to live this dream of freedom independence and adventure and we're doing exactly that in today's video we're gonna share with you the back story of long story short which is a quick story of how we got to full time our being and what we do today to keep our marriage strong as ever because what good is living this awesome independent adventurous life if the person you're sharing it with and you are at odds right so happy not gonna work exactly having a good marriage is really key we're not trying to say that our being can save every marriage but I would say that it saved our marriage and so this is a little bit of the back story of how we dug this hole and this is how we got out of it so Mercedes and I met almost 11 years ago now back in 2008 and we were both living alone we were friends for the first year that we met and we fell head-over-heels in love with each other we we were with each other all the time we did everything together and we were pretty happy Mercedes wanted to get married right away I did not and in the beginning Mercedes didn't want to have kids well that's true okay I didn't mean to bait-and-switch him but I kind of did and it's just that I grew up right what you want changes yeah and let's be real guys I hit the jackpot right there's no way this girl eventually is gonna wake up and find the right guy not me that's just what I thought my friend used to say that you and Mercedes working out or slim to none and slim just left the building that they used to say that but ultimately we we made a decision after being together for five years to get married and Mercedes talked me into having a baby I was 49 years old and so we got married we got pregnant six months later Mercedes left her jaw and come over to work for my remodeling company who it was doing pretty good but when Mercedes came in it really took off I wish I could take all the credit but it's you know what it is we realized how good we work together because being opposites is excellent in a team because I am strong where he is weak and he is strong where I am weak so we were so crazy busy we had multiple crews it was insane we started winning awards all the time people started waiting a year to get our services done and all we were doing was what we've always done which is to give people the best service and to do exactly what we tell them we were gonna do yeah company took off but I did start working 70 80 hour work weeks and then we had the baseball glove incident a baseball glove incident it was scary oh so Mercedes I get home Mercedes starts making me dinner I sit down on the table and I have this memory of my dad in a baseball glove and I start telling Mercedes about this story and I cannot say the word baseball glove I just couldn't I couldn't find the words and I started getting this strange lashing out of the corner of my eye yeah and so we take him to the hospital and mind you this is not the first time I've taken my husband to the hospital usually I Drive but he's so headstrong that he normally drives well this time he lets me drive so I'm thinking oh my god he's dying he's scared yeah and I was yeah and it was it was a real wake-up call for us the doctors basically told us it was stress I was working too hard I was too stressed out I didn't have a stroke I was in good condition I was in good health but it changed everything in the way we looked at the way our life was going out I was the money was great but the workload was just way too much and I could I just couldn't handle it anymore it wasn't sustainable and so right along that time I think we had also gone on a trip to Florida it was November and the temperature was excellent and we look at each other and we're like why are we living someplace that smells what are you doing so we made a decision to sell the company to a guy that worked for us for quite a few years great integrity and marine and sold our house and we started planning on buying our dream home in Florida yeah and so at this point you think it's gonna be perfect right this is what Disney when they say happily-ever-after beautiful wife 49 years old sell my company move down to Florida on the Gulf of Mexico boat in the backyard right it's perfect no it's the darkness in the hardest time of our lives were better for going through it but it was hard Mercedes now is pregnant we arrived there the house is a mess and I start getting to work it's time for me to remodel this house and make it the dream house that I knew with that it could be while he was working on remodeling I guess Jimmy Buffett was on the radio a little too much and five o'clock started getting a little earlier yeah I had I went from working 80 hours a week and running crews and taking care of lots of different customers every week to having nothing to do it except to remodel and make this house my dream house so a the baby came on my 50th birthday saige and I have the same birthday except for four hours I got my timing out a little bit he was born at 4:00 in the afternoon so God does have a strange sense of humor that's right it was a perfect picture we were the youngest couple in the neighborhood we had one of the nicest homes in the neighborhood everybody was older than us outside looked great but the inside was dying we're both dying we're dying we were so isolated from each other and at that point Mercedes asked me for a divorce she said I'm done something crazy started happening when we were looking at selling the house and getting the divorce right because we had to work together two separate things and I found the little house to rent and he was going to put his tools in the garage and her garage and buy an RV and go off and live my life of independence freedom and adventure but we're working together to get these things done this wasn't like I hate you you're not knowing it NASA yeah we knew that we were gonna have to be a part of each other's lives forever and she was gonna have birthdays and stuff so we were trying to work through certain things and so something happened though we were suddenly able to be brutally honest with each other because one of the things that had happened before was we wouldn't fight we wouldn't talk we would just go in separate rooms there are separate levels I was in the house before it finally closed and on the day that it closed we met at the closing table that was a pretty that was a really probably one of the worst days of my life was sitting down and sell on the house that I felt that I had worked my whole life for and it wasn't Mercedes fault it was it was me and and it was drinking's fall right so so we sold the house Mercedes is over at her rental unit and that's where she's gonna live with sage and I'm gonna go buy an RV and I something hit me that day at the closing where I just saw real Claire took a really good look at the way my lifework looked and I I wanted to watch sage grow up I wanted to be more involved with sage his life I wanted to change diapers I wanted to be involved with her raising and so that night I actually left the closing I went back to the house with Mercedes and then she told me his 30 cry no I don't want to cry but but it was a shift because when you have nothing to lose you can be like this like more honest and so I started seeing him doing the little things you know and it's funny because back then a poopy diaper and you'd be like I'm gonna die and now he takes he cleans up that poopy like it like a cancer teeth I give her sours I'm involved with raising her which I've never experienced before she actually prefers that he brushes her teeth and they have their own things that belong to them now and so it actually ended up being the best thing that happened to us and and also we got rid of so much stuff that worked us on that journey it was really really good but oh boy was it hard but it builds you right and so the other thing that happened is I started working on myself stop trying to control him and what he's doing gave him the space and then he's he's suddenly being this man that I'm like whoa this is the guy that I married you know because I saw how he was with his first three kids and I love that that that made me want to have kid with him that's his own fault right I got three older beautiful children yeah and we had talked about our being even in the in the big beautiful house but the more I so long story short she seduced me the night we closed on the house I went over to help her with a few things in the house to get her ready for her new life in her apartment that night I ended up the night there yeah yeah I'm a lucky guy so I started trying to sell her on the idea hey let's let's take the time that we're here in this rental let's move into an RV full-time and let's create a brand new life for ourselves something really important started happening instead of him watching his shows and me watching my shows on separate TVs right we started watching YouTube on the same television together and cuddling in the same couch we were done that you know I'm making plans and start planning for what this life's gonna look like and then we started looking at our B's and then we started started buying all the stuff our being helped save our marriage in five ways and so the the number five is that it gave us a plan right we were we were unified on the same plan we were working towards a common goal like we hadn't done in years exactly so we so our days became filled with planning about the right RV the right truck the right equipment the right tools that we need to live this lifestyle along with we made a decision that we wouldn't try to do what these other youtubers were doing which was just to document it yeah but we we were gonna do it in a way that was really clear and honest even if it was embarrassing to ourselves which we've done and tell the truth about it and talk about the things that no one else was gonna talk about it so we're going backwards here so the fourth way that are being helped save our marriage was roles and this can take on many many forms yeah and this was huge it was clearly defining what mercedez role was and what my role was and my role is the outside Marcedes role is the inside and we share the roles of sage well yeah and I don't try to go outside and organize his tools because I were to do that I put him in alphabetical order yeah and I would how Stroke John is taking this role of the man he's handling the stuff outside he's he's got this stuff in charge even the way he drives the truck is hot sometimes it's like oh I can't do that that's incredible you have these roles not just on setup day and travel day kind of thing but we have these rules in our day-to-day is just so fulfilling in our marriage number three is adventure this is the fun part because we're on the adventure of our lives together we're live in one day at a time we're doing where we're documenting everything as we go or figuring out the right way to do it we're also figuring out the wrong way to do it exactly pretty popular on mistakes but we're having a great time and it's it's it's we both are loving our lives right now we're in love again we are cohesive again we're still staying on our goals we have to work together every day for the next video or the next this and we're both raising sage together yeah and it's such an adventure like we took you guys along on our Sedona adventure so the other the second way that our bean has really helped our marriage is that it forces us to work it out no more you live upstairs I live downstairs you can't stay pissed off for long in an RV you know I'm too damn old to waste any more time I'm a blessed man I have a beautiful wife I have a beautiful family I have three older beautiful children who are all doing great and there's just no time to waste so that when I get pissed off at Mercedes I gotta figure out a way to get over it quickly and one of the ways that we're doing that is we're talking about everything I may take five or ten minutes and take a walk around ya know whether it's to the dunes right now or on the beach or through the mountain trails that we're staying just depends on what we our number one reason why our being is great for a marriage it's teamwork yeah it's completely teamwork yeah it's a hundred percent teamwork Mercedes and I do everything together we're together all the time we rely on each other but the truth is is we're on the same team and ultimately our goal is to document this whole process what it's like what to do what not to do so that ultimately we can help other people live the life and enjoy independence freedom and adventure that's our goal but it's really hard to achieve that that goal if you can't get along with the person that you're with and one of the things that really cemented it clear to me was right before we left Florida best friend came over checked out the RV for the first time and we had her watch or buying mistakes yes yes first video any of our friends ever watched and we I was showing it to her and at the end of the video she starts crying and she's like you guys are a team right you guys are together so if you liked this video or have a heart give it a thumbs up if you don't have a heart or don't like the video give it a thumbs up make sure you subscribe hit the bell for notifications and watch the next video it's even better than this one be free and RV whoa

Channel: RV Odd Couple

Views: 424,867

Keywords: Healthy marriage, Rv relationships, RV Drama, rv life, rv living, rv living full time, truth about rv, truth about rv living, rv, rving, rv divorce, rv love, loloho, rv life truth, saving your marriage from divorce, saving your marriage, how do i save my marriage, rv fight, rv love story, love rv life, love rv, marriage in rv, marriage in rving, rv odd couple, rv advice, rv travel for beginners, dark side of rv life, full time rv living, full time rv, fulltime rv

Id: 8l0JiIpXgCo

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019