I'm Divorced - The Story I Don't Talk About. #grindreel

this is one of those videos that I have thought about making for a while but then tech leader Patrick made his video about how his wife left him and I don't want to make it because I didn't seem appropriate this happened long ago and I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to ride the coattails of your video Patrick this happens like years ago but this is for you I know it sucks I've been there I'm with you bro but it's probably a lot harder for you because you had a kid this video has nothing to do with code this video has nothing to do with motivation really it might not be your cup of tea and I know that my ex-wife's mom watches these videos so Kito's kai Kista you'll always be my finished mom if you've been watching my channel you might have seen a live stream where I'm like yeah no I don't want to get married been there done that and I'm like wait what you were married hold were you I was young and dumb that's how old I was I'm 29 years old right now I got married when I was 20 and then I got divorced when I was 24 right around 18 19 years old I was in school for mechanical engineering in Atlanta Georgia and then I met a girl online finished girl and we talked for a few years and went back in force I was a lot younger than her dropped the l-word a few times you know talked like all day every day I was super enamored I guess what's the word like the honeymoon phase you know and it was the same on her end because the new culture for me new culture for her after a few years I was like you know what you know if I ever come out there I'll take you on a date like wink you know it's like kind of obvious that if we could date we would probably date so I bought a plane ticket to go to Finland with my student loans being the smart 19 20 year old that I was and a few weeks before I take the trip to go to Finland she emails me and says that hey I'm really excited for you to come but I've met someone else and I was like we would really like to be honest I was pretty pissed off I wasn't expecting to go there and like marry her right away or anything I was you know it's pretty pretty mad and I tried to refund my ticket but it was close to the departure date so I couldn't and I got there and I was staying at her place which seemed kind of odd because she had met someone right and after a few days we end up like making out in the kitchen and we kind of hit it off and me being this guy back then I thought I had won her over you know super cringe to think about you know I thought that I was better than the other guy because I got her to like like me more than the other dude and at the end of the trip she like called up the dude was like it's not gonna work out anymore and they oh man it makes me retrench real hard to think about that now you know like I was this white knight basically shining armor that thought I had saved her from this other guy that wouldn't commit I didn't want to have labels and you know I was like I'll commit I'll be there for you like you've big cringe so after the trip from Finland I came back to the US and she came to visit me for a few weeks for a Christmas but that was really it and we kept trying to figure out how we're gonna see each other how we're gonna make this work you know cuz long distance sucks if you've ever done it which well I wouldn't recommend it and we decided you know what we're probably we're probably just gonna end up getting married anyways we've been talking for so long we've been talking for years and things are going so great like might as well just go ahead and get married right this sounds like from your and you're like well there's a problem right there Josh like but when you're in it you know you're just blinded by it and there's nothing that anyone can say to tell you otherwise everyone's trying to be supportive but at the same time they're like Josh what are you doing and I'm sure they ever say the same thing to her I tried to bring her to the United States and you can't really do that when you're a broke college kid you have to get a fiancee visa and you have to get a sponsor and that cost a lot of money and then she has to go back and wait for the visa to be processed before she can actually come back and live here with the green card so I decided you know what I'll just go to Finland so I looked up a bunch of schools in Finland and they had a mechanical engineering degree there I was like cool so if we get married I can move there and I can re-enroll back into school and just keep on going and now we can be together and live our lives and it'll be great that's what we did I got all the paperwork I bought another ticket with my student loans and I told my parents was like hey I'm getting married and I'm going to Finland and that's what I did I took one checked bag went to the airport got on an airplane and and moved there when I got there I didn't really know any Finnish at all I moved in with her at her place and then we went to the courthouse and we got married in a little finished court and they're like mom and dad were there while I was there for a few months waiting for the visa to process because you're allowed to be in Finland while you're technically not like you don't have like a resident permit or anything you're just waiting for the residence permit to process I was just there I was just kind of in limbo didn't really know any Finnish didn't really have anybody to go meet and if you've never been to Finland or any of the Nordic countries you'll know that it's really difficult to meet people when I got the visa I applied to a school in Finland on the Russian border and I went there to take an entrance exam and I thought it was kind of funny that they wouldn't let me just transfer in being that I had already been in college for a few years and they said no you can't transfer in sorry we don't care about your previous experience everyone takes the entrance exam no degree no free pass and I take the test and the test has like calculus 3 on it physics 3 on it this really difficult chemistry on it wait what holy crap there's like 17 year-olds taking this and they're finishing it way faster than me the school was free it had 25 slots for the degree program that I wanted to do it was in English and there was like thousands of people that I applied for it few months later I got the results of the entrance exam I had just been playing a bunch of video games and doing nothing and the relationship between me and the ex-wife it was okay right still in the honeymoon stages it was it was whatever she would get pissed off that I didn't want to come to bed at the same time as her with whatever which I thought was kind of weird but the results said no sorry you didn't get in but you've been placed on a waiting list you're number nine on the list to get into this engineering school and I was like well who was gonna give up why would nine people give up a free bachelor's in mechanical engineering that just seems really dumb that wasn't part of the plan and really have a plan B I get another email one day when I'm getting my hair cut hey congratulations you've been accepted I was like wait what holy crap and so we pack up our stuff and we move to the Russian border and I start school there by this point in time kind of like the honeymoon phase just kind of worn off and I'm starting to have like this culture shock and I'm wanting to do things that I want to do I wanting to just talk to people like I'm used to talking to people I want to just kind of eat the foods that I'm used to eating and I just kind of want to go back to you know how how I'm used to doing things and I can't do that anymore and I'm sure that was stressful for her and it was kind of stressful for me I have to go to school at the same time and she's working and she was a hair hairdresser cosmetologist I guess it was a pretty interesting experience because I started failing the courses right off the bat in Finland I started failing the math classes because the teacher would come in write stuff on the board and just walk out if you've never been to Finland Finnish people are very blunt they'll just tell you what they're thinking no matter what there's no small talk they just tell it to you how it is and if you're from the South like me where everyone's like Oh bless your heart instead of saying boy are you dumb they just beat around the bush with everything here in the United States everyone has to sweet-talk it or kind of just say it without saying it because they don't want to offend you in Finland people don't care they just tell it to you how it is and that that's really jarring at first but now I would say that's kind of like big reason for why I am the way that I am now these days because I can appreciate that thank you for being honest instead of just pretending like everything's gonna be okay I remember specifically because I went to ask the math teacher for help one day and she said okay Josh let's look at it what do you think happens here and I'm like I don't know and she looks at me dead dead-ass in the eyes and she's like are you dumb I remember like can you say that to me as a teacher just taken back and I was like I guess so I get I guess I am because I I don't know how to do it you know that was the point when I was like well this is just gonna happen this is how it is here I guess during school between the stress of trying to pass classes and her kind of adapting to living with me and her working and trying to figure out what it's like to live with someone that you've never really lived with more than like three weeks things started to get stressful and you start to realize that you didn't know the person that you've thought you thought you did things started to kind of just go downhill I never claimed to be like a like a perfect husband or like that I didn't do anything wrong but I will say that like I was always supportive and I was always trying to you know be as logical as possible and I know everyone in the comments is like well there's your first problem right there Josh you're talking to you telling me now right but I think I was a pretty decent husband but I think the stress on her end of maybe being the provider role was kind of too much and I think over time she kind of started to resent me for that because I would go to school full-time and she would work and I would say things like hey look man it's just your turn right now you I know you got to work but when I when I graduate and I get this degree I can start making money and I can I could pamper you a little bit you know and I can I can do all the things that you want to do that you're having to put on hold because you have to deal with me and understand at the time like I didn't think that was like really right for me to have to kind of say that stuff I was like this was all part of it you know you're already doing what you want to do full-time I just just gotta wait for me to catch up for a minute and she would say things to me over the course of these few years that I think almost could be qualified as like emotional abuse this is not a fun topic to talk about but a few notable phrases that I remember her saying to me very bluntly was why are you so dumb I feel like I'm in jail being married to you I wish we never got married you might have to work at Walmart because your degree won't be worth anything you aren't man enough I remember one time she said to me like you're a sex addict and I was like we mumble like once every other month are you talking about and then also being from the United States where males are typically circumsized at birth in Europe they don't do that and she would make remarks about that too right it looks like it's broken why is it so weird you know I can't deal what it is just I'm not really sure why it started to ramp up like that it went zero to 100 real quick I know like if you're watching this video I can forgive you for saying those things but I'll never forget because those were really I guess they're just kind of like hurtful things to say to somebody and you're not sure why you're being told this stuff I would try to like you know calm her down and relax and be like look man I know that you have to pay all the bills and stuff right now and I know it's stressful that I'm in school full time and that you're working full time we don't have the time and the money to do the things that we want to do but you shouldn't talk to me like this and I'm not sure why you're saying these things it's to begin with but you know just give me my time I'm doing the best I can and even though I was like failing at the time trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong with school and stuff when you go to tell people about these things like these remarks that you're you know getting told a lot of people are just like hey yo man up Josh or it's not that big of a deal or you know you grow up or you know grow a pair stuff like that but I never really engaged with the arguing because I prefer to be kind of level-headed and just talk about things you know I don't I don't make rash decisions when I'm angry I don't make decisions when I'm sad I don't make decisions when I'm happy I just talk about things and try to think things out the best I can and so whenever these huge emotional I guess arguments would come up she would never really get a response out of me because I would just kind of be like are you done do you feel better now you know I think because I didn't give a reaction amplified her end of things so throughout the course of school as this relationship kind of devolved we kind of grew apart right I would try to do things around the house I'd try to like spend time with her but like things are smart the same anymore you know I try to cook food give her a foot rub whatever right I think it was a pretty decent husband in that regard but when there wasn't anything to do I just play video games and for whatever reason she just hated video games and I tried to explain to her I was like it's really cold outside I don't have any friends right now we don't have any money and this is free so this is what I'm going to be doing in hindsight right I'd go back in time and slap myself and like learn code or something but at the time it seemed it seemed fine because there's a lot of stress you don't want to deal with it throughout the course of school I started to find these books with the Finnish word divorce labels on them like wait what is this I didn't know quite enough finish to be able to decipher what it all said so I take pictures and send them to my Finnish friends that I had it at school I just had like two and then one day I came home from school and I was at my computer doing some homework and I think and she came and slapped a piece of paper down on the desk that said sign it I was like what is this she says you know what's going to happen anyway and I said what you talking about and she's like this is a paper for divorce I kind of I refused to sign I said get his paper his paper out of my face we can go to couples counseling we can work it out I'm not sure really what these issues are for these past few years but you've never really wanted to address it or talk about it and when I signed up to be a husband when I said I do you know there's thick and thin right rich or poor or whatever like that's what I signed up to do and and to be honest I was kind of like I was crying at this point in time and she was laughing saying like we can still be friends and I remember saying I will not be friends owned by my wife and I like went like this and I kind of like slammed it down on the table like looking at her and I think that was like the first time I'm like that I had ever kind of like raised my voice more than just what you hear right now and she was laughing and said the neighbors are gonna think we're fighting and I was like you know just kind of like in tears just like shaking here like all this is just going down the drains thinking about the ramifications of being divorced and alone in Finland with school still left to do so she put a pin kind of in my hand it was my hand was shaking she put the pin in my hand and I just kind of signed it and I just kind of pushed it off my desk but I just was like really confused and upset so I started asking was like why all of a sudden what made you come to this conclusion why are we doing this and she would only say we are different people as I said earlier in the video I think it was because it was my lack of self sufficiency my lack of independence she would get really frustrated with teaching me things I didn't understand right away I tried to learn how to use the bank accounts and she said like why are you so dumb why can't you understand Finnish like aren't you learning that at school and just let me do it you know it's fine whatever just just let me do it and you know I tried to become efficient I tried to do things myself but like she wouldn't she wouldn't help me do these things and and if she did take five minutes to try and help me do it she'd get really frustrated when I didn't understand it or she wouldn't trust me to do things like I got my finished driver's license she would be like no you can't you can't drive in the snow today it's too snowy and you don't have experience with that or like okay what can you show me how to drive in the snow I can't no it's it's I don't want to do it let's just no I don't want to basically had no financial control over anything in the relationship even at school most times I had to ask for lunch money and I was pretty emasculating to be honest or she would be like okay Josh I put money in for lunch today and then I'm like supposed to be super thankful for it or something a bit well thank you so much for putting money into my account so I can swipe my card and and get lunch today I remember thinking like why yeah that's like being treated like a kindergartner at the time but what do you do right you don't have any control in the relationship you just kind of do what you're told at the point and I remember thinking this is not a husband-and-wife relationship at all and she was probably thinking the same thing she felt like this was your job but pay off for my stuff you know you're the man and when you talk to people about this stuff they just say like man up quit being a baby you know deal with it well you know it's your job you know figure it out suck it up and I tried not to man but like you know it's difficult towards the end of the relationship she left me in the apartment alone for weeks at a time and she went to go live with her parents occasionally I would have to ask for money to be put into my account so that I could get lunch and whenever I'd have to call her and be like hey can I have some money I don't have any I don't have any money to get lunch at school today I don't have any money for groceries she'd be like it's gone already what did you spend it on and get super frustrated and it got to the point where I just wouldn't I wouldn't ask for money because I didn't want to have to beg like a child and get discipline I would get lunch at school because it was so cheap and you would get a plate and you go down the line and I remember I would always like pack the plate full of food you know I eat as much as possible on a Friday because I know on the weekend I didn't really have any food and I just suck it up and just have a couple days where you don't eat you know because it was better than calling up and begging like a child for money yeah I never I never told anyone that thank you for watching this I never told you that if you're watching this her mom I never told you guys this I just not ask I ate ketchup a few times for dinner that was neat I also ate toothpaste a few times dinner that was neat her mom would help me with money sometimes when I when I ran out of money and I was just there alone but I never want to take advantage of that so if you're watching this like I know that you helped me with money it was nice but I shouldn't have to call my my Finnish mother-in-law just so that I can eat lunch I'm still to this day not really sure why she was so unhappy with me there was a lot of gas lighting and there's a lot of mental mind games and you know if she had a valid reason that she could find to tell her friends and family then she could basically divorce me right away because the paper that I signed previously had a six-month wait period we were supposed to kind of like go into like deliberations or think about it like is this really what you want to do but if she had a valid reason she could skip that 6-month period and just divorce me so for example when she would just leave me alone at the apartment for a couple months she would hide candy around the house and one time she left candy in the box where we had the condoms I realized this was like an actual trick if I took the candy she would question why I was going into the box where we kept those while she wasn't there especially if I took the candy didn't say anything she would also say lots of things like it's fine you can do whatever you want while I'm not there it's fine just go ahead do what you want and you know this is all just bait to get me to cheat so that she can escalate the 6-month waiting period and just divorced me and when they divorce you they take your visa if I had called her up and been like why did you put candy here like this is just obvious bait for you to see if I'm going to the condom box while you are not here to see if I'm using them basically or wondering why it even need to go there because I she has done things like this before and I called her out on I was like why doing this and she would just laugh and be like oh ha ha ha ha it's not funny like I don't understand what these games are another time she went through my computer and read all of my facebook messages to see if I was cheating that's fine right I don't have anything to hide I'm not dumb enough to cheat and give you an actual reason to tell your friends and family why you hate me all of a sudden so when I got back from class one day I found a little post-it know like right like this big just kind of tucked into my monitor and she's crying hysterically on the bed and I walk in and I take this little this little note and I read it says moved to Norway or wherever and be with that hoe I don't care my elbow kind of bumped into the table and turned the monitors on I noticed that my Facebook was on and all these messages were popped up at the bottom I thought it was kind of odd she apparently had found a message that was like eight months old from a girl that I used to date that's from Norway I used to date her when I was like sixteen though you know for just like two months and then she moved back to Norway cuz she was just an exchange student and because Finland Norway border at the north she's like hell's Finland I was like it's pretty great and how's the relationship but I'm like it's not that great we'll probably get divorced so I turned around to the wife laying on the bed hysterically crying and I said do you think I'm cheating she has a fiance and they're getting married and this message is four months ago did you go through my stuff and this is what I would like to call the the trickle truth and she said no it was just like that and I said oh I don't I don't keep my computer on and she said well I turned it on and it just popped up I was like I don't really use Facebook on my computer just on my phone well I tried to log into mine and it just automatically logged into yours I said I don't have my information saved you tried to guess my password and she said well I was just trying to see if I could figure it out for fun and the messages popped up these messages are months and months and months old they wouldn't just pop up you'd have to go into the message history scroll through click on them and get them to pop up that way and she's like okay fine I had to know I thought you were cheating on me you've been so quiet lately and I'm like you've made me sign a divorce paper I don't I don't have much to say I'm just trying to graduate finish school and get a job and get out of your hair we're technically still married on paper for the next six months I'm not going to cheat on you or do anything I'm still your husband I'd still like to work it out but there's really nothing else I can do and again she started laughing and said it's not that bad I just didn't because things with us you know aren't going well you know so this was just all again just a big facade I guess to try and beat me into something the main thing that mattered to me at this point in time was that I signed a divorce paper and I have six months left of a valid visa before they take my visa and they deport me back to the United States so it was a one-to-one relationship I have six months left to legally be in Finland and I have six months left of school which was I had one shot to finish and graduate if I have failed a single class I wouldn't have time to stay and retake it my visa would have been taken and she always told me that I'm not gonna file it until you know until you finish school I'm not like that but I didn't believe it in my head you know you've done enough other things to where I don't I don't believe it anymore if I had failed one thing basically I would have been getting deported back to the United States which is so funny thing about deported back to the United States you don't hear that phrase a whole lot and banned from the EU all of Europe for for ten years and the thought of restarting school at 24 years old back again in the United States and picking up where I left off after I had just basically completed a degree was just it was just a no-go the degree transfers but the the classes don't because the titles don't line up like calculus three isn't called calculus theory in Finland so that was a really big moment for me realizing that like I have one shot at this and I am completely responsible for myself none of my family showed up to my wedding I know we got married in the courthouse and then we also got married in an actual church right so I was standing up at the altar and on her side of the church is you know her family and then on my side of the church is just empty pews that was a really weird experience none of them showed up to my actual graduation for the for the degree none of them actually even visited me in Finland while I was there so at that point is pretty much do or die and I studied like a madman I explained the situation of my teachers and basically I just worked my ass off had to pass every single class I had to pass classes that I failed I had to write a thesis in Finland you have to write like a 60 page thesis and then I started applying to basically every single job that I could during the marriage I had blown up to about 240 pounds you know shield your eyes I was a big boy back then you know had that marriage wait so one day I took a good look at myself in the mirror I didn't have a shirt on and I was like you're gonna be back on the market here soon Josh I wouldn't I wouldn't want to touch this so you better you better get in shape here then I remember as I started to go to the gym a lot my collarbone started to show and that's really weird to think about your how you not see collarbones that was a big boy and she would guilt-tripped me and say your collarbones are starting to show you're getting too skinny that's not healthy and I was still like not skinny it was it was just a lot of projections of insecurities I guess but I started to line up some interviews before I graduated school and I started to get to the final phages phases of all this stuff and I had about three weeks left I found a company here in Utah that I got to the final stage with and I didn't tell her any of these places that I was applying to or interviewing to because I did once and she's like that's a stupid company it'll never hire you so then finally towards the end of things like she was living with me again but I would go to my friend's house just because it wasn't healthy for us to be in the same place anymore and the company that I was applying to here in Utah that I got my first job at had called but I didn't answer they couldn't reach a finish phone number so they left a voicemail on my skype and this was supposedly the final step of the interview that I had been waiting for because I literally had no plan to I had nothing to go back to in the United States if I was just gonna get deported anyways my parents had just been sued and lost their house and they were homeless and so like I was really trying to figure out something I was frantically trying to call them back called and it just went to voicemail every single time I thought I had missed the opportunity to accept the offer because I didn't know anything about jobs then and I was just losing my mind like oh no this was my chance to here and then I lost I didn't I was like well I just listened to the voicemail and the guy was like hey I couldn't reach your phone number listed here for some reason but I just like to congratulate you on getting an offer here as a mechanical engineer and I'd like to read your verbal offer letter to you and I'm like I remember I dropped the phone and I just ran over to my friend and I just gave him a big hug and he was like dude what because he's finished right and finish people they don't have touched they're not very touchy-feely people and I just gave him the biggest hug in the world he's like dude and I'm like I did it man and he was like you did it man and then he hugged me back I never forget that bro moment dude never forget that bro moment thanks for listening to me complaining those few years you know because he was like the only guy that would actually be like dude man that sucks and I appreciate you for hearing me out because you were the only one that actually did so I accepted the job offer I sent in a bunch of paperwork and got everything going you know but I didn't have any money or anything like that her mom gave me like 300 euros very very last day I said goodbye to everybody and she drove me to the airport I remember she like tried to give me a kiss on the lips and said like I will always love you and I like turn my head so that she couldn't do it because I was like no no no not after this you know like this isn't too much like I don't know what you were planning if I didn't find a job and like no and like I just I said okay bye went up the escalator to the airport and I kind of like turned around and I looked through the glass and she was kind of just like hysterically crying again but I had been through so many phases of this hysterical crying that it didn't it didn't mean much to me you know as the last time I ever saw her last time I've ever been to Finland really a 36 hour plane ride later I got to Utah I showed up at the airport I got my little rental car they let me have and that was it and then we started a new air been here ever since questions you might be wondering did you have any kids no no we didn't have any kids to this day even I don't actually have the divorce paper I have a marriage certificate that I took here that I thought I might need at some point but I'm pretty sure that's not valid anymore but I've actually never seen the divorce certificate I just assumed that she filed the paper but I never got married I never registered as married here in the United States anyways will I ever get married again no never again I don't get anything out of it it's too much risk involved for me well what about if want to have kids Josh well I don't want to have kids there's a there's a lot of kids out there already without loving parents that I think if I wanted to have kids I would I would go adopt a kid or just go be you know go go do like the big brother thing and just try and mentor some kids that that don't really have families or maybe foster some kids I guess that's it that's the story about how I got a degree in Finland while being married and then getting divorced and almost deported and I would like to go back to Finland and visit now that I actually have some money I would I would say was like almost like in an emotionally abusive relationship and as a man you're told a lot to just kind of man up and deal with things and just kind of suck it up and yeah I don't know i think those last few moments when i was really kind of getting it into gear kind of really let me know what i could do like let me know what i was really capable of right went from 240 pounds down to like 180 pounds got really skinny and then I started to bulk up again and like I went from having flaps to having abs and just really pushing myself to the limit of what I could do with with kind of like no one else has helped I think that's kind of a big part of what made me who I am today so I guess that's it thanks for listening to my story and I hope you guys have a good Thursday I'll see in the next one [Music]

Channel: Joshua Fluke

Views: 901,112

Rating: 4.8823299 out of 5

Keywords: joshua fluke, code bootcamp, javascript, how to code, web development, brand, developer interview, developer jobs

Id: Hi1RRvqjpjI

Length: 30min 3sec (1803 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

Thank you for these videos! Go steady, stay strong! Much love from Sweden!