13. Infidelity, Divorce, and Cancer: The Suck Trifecta

Tracy: Hi. Welcome to another episode of Tell Me How You're Mighty. I am here today with Martina, and Martina left us a message about her amazing, mighty story of not only being chumped and going through a divorce, but doing it with cancer and raising teenagers on her own .

Martina (message): Hi, have a great story for you all about being mighty with cancer and three teenagers with an ex who decided that life would be more fun living over 2000 miles away.

It has been a roller coaster ride, but I am proud to say that after two years post divorce and three years since DDay, I am much happier and much mightier, despite being on a crazy regimen of medications and having been told about eight months ago that I had six months left to live.

Tracy: Welcome, Martina. Tell me how you're mighty. Let's start off with that.

Martina: Good morning, Tracy. Thank you for allowing me to share my story. I am mighty in ways that I didn't think were possible.

As you said, I'm a chump, and thanks to your book, I no longer carry that title with shame, but am able to embrace all the wonderful things that that includes mostly an inventory of my strengths and my badassery, which has gotten me to your podcast this morning, thankfully.

Tracy: Well, it was like an amazing you put a lot of mightiness in 90 seconds. We were intrigued. We're like, we have to get this woman.

Can you tell me about your jump story, like how you came to the blog or the podcast today?

Martina: Sure. Yeah. So I was married for 20 years. I was happily married

for many of those years, although I realized that my ex had a foot out the door probably at least for ten of those years. And he was on several occasions at the point, actually, where he moved out because he loved me but was not in love with me. To quote from your book and to quote from him.

We had our final parting of ways during the pandemic.

Tracy: That's super rough.

Martina: It was rough. And he had actually lost his job about a year before, and I was no longer in love with him. But I was raised in a very strong Catholic tradition, and I really believed in my commitments and honored those always. And I believed in my children and the integrity of my family, and I wanted very much to maintain that integrity.

But we finally decided after about a year of the pandemic that we would divorce. And I was trying very hard to make my peace with that when he decided to take a trip to South America to visit his family.

And it was about a week into that trip, I still hadn't heard from him.

Tracy: You've got kids at home, I presume?

Martina: Yes, kids at home.  He did not share the itinerary.

Tracy: And there's a pandemic going on, am I correct?

Martina: Yeah. And his home country was actually hit pretty hard during the Pandemic, so of course, we're all wondering.

And the kids asked me to check in if he had even arrived, and I logged in after not being able to communicate with him. I logged into our Mileage account that I'd had access to throughout the marriage, and I was unable to log in.

And so about a week later, by that point, he had contacted the kids and let them know he had arrived safely. About a week later, I actually had him on the phone finally, and he was about to hang up, and I said, you changed a password. Why did you do that?

And he said, oh, we'll talk about that when I get back. And I asked him then: "What's her name?"

Tracy: You knew?

Martina: I had a pit in my stomach when I asked the question.

Even though we had agreed to divorce, this was still my partner of 20 years. This was still someone I had raised kids with and shared a life with, and had still just the sliver, the tiniest sliver of hope that we would somehow reconcile.

And so, you know, what's her name? And his response was simply, "She has nothing to do with this."

Tracy: He says she has nothing to do with it? So were you thinking when he said, "I love you, but I'm not in love with you," that there was someone else, or you waited till he just disappeared to South America during the Pandemic to put those two and two together?

Martina: I had had many separations over the years where he had moved out, come back with apologies and deep love and the desire to reconcile.

This was a cyclical event for the last probably ten years of our marriage. I think it happened three times.

So I lived on hopium.

I lived on the idea that we would wander off into the sunset on a beach somewhere in old age, holding hands, and that was always my vision, and that kept me going a lot of times.

Tracy: But what a power move to just to break up with somebody and then come swanning back into their life.

I mean, you have to have a lot of narcissism to do that. To think that someone who wants you after you've made this deep commitment with them and you have children and they're just like, yeah, later. And then to be yoyoed like that.

It is such a such a power move on his and it makes you very vulnerable. Do you look back and think, "I wonder if there were other people?", like when he was doing that?

Martina: Yeah, I'm convinced there were others.

He was in an industry where he was surrounded by beautiful women in tight dresses who were seeking camera time. And so I imagine that there were others.

Like many chumps, I'm an empath. And I thought every time he went through this rollercoaster ride, it was because he was depressed. He was hurting. He just needed me to understand him more and be patient with his process.

And the last time he moved out before DDay, a couple of years before DDay, before the Pandemic, I actually told him to move out because I had just really reached my breaking point and had seen no evidence of the change that he had been promising for so long.

And about three or four months into that new apartment experience, he came to me and he said, "I really love you, and I really want to be back with you." And I said, "Well, okay. We can talk about it. We can work towards that."

And he said, "Well, I already told the kids we're back together."

Tracy: He did not!

Martina: And he had already canceled the lease on his apartment. And I said, "Well, you need to go get that apartment back because you're not just moving back in."

I've played this scene a few times by that point. Supposedly, there were no apartments available anymore, and so he did, in fact, move back. But in my heart and in my gut, I knew it was a mistake, and nothing changed. Of course.

Sarah: It's funny, Tracy, because last week we were talking about sort of analyzing these people and the fact that actually there is a disorder here that we shouldn't try and try and work out, because there's not much you can do about it. But it sounds just listening to this, it's just exhausting for everyone concerned.

Why do people put themselves [in these situations]? You can't help but try and analyze this behavior and go, what on earth was going through his head as he was behaving like this?

Tracy: Pure selfishness, I imagine. And the other thing is,  I would say is:  Who cares? Is it acceptable to you?

Is it acceptable to your children to be flavor of the week until he changes his mind and wants to go to another apartment or South America or wherever the hell it is? He nobody nobody wants to live on that emotional rollercoaster.

How dare he? I guess that's my feeling now. I don't care what makes you tick. How dare he?!

Sarah: How dare he? But also, how do these people get any pleasure out of life? I mean, just the whole sort of juggling everything out, moving in and out, and 1 minute you want to be with someone, then you don't. It just sounds the more you hear these stories, the more you realize that there's a high level of disorder in these individuals.

Tracy: Yeah, I completely agree.

So, Martina, I'm kind of curious. It sounds like the Pandemic is putting this distance and he's gone, and you're thinking even though he's come back, before, you're thinking it's done, it sounds like your life got better in many ways.

Can you tell us a bit about that kind of mightiness? How did you pull yourself together after that last one. I can't even imagine how terrified you must have all been not hearing from him. Even if he had a history of pulling stunts like this to not hear during a pandemic, and he's traveling.

Martina: Yeah, we didn't hear from him until I mean, he did land within a few hours and reach out to the kids.

I had already gone through the mileage account by that point, and the wheels were spinning in my head.

When I did speak to him a week later, a week into what was, I think, a two and a half week trip.

And I asked about what's her name and found out that she had nothing to do with this.

He said that we were already divorced, actually. And I said, oh, I didn't get that memo.

Apparently, within a day or two of us having the conversation about, yes, we need to move forward with the divorce, he had actually driven to the courthouse, found a parking meter, filled out paperwork, paid the fee, and filed for divorce.

I just hadn't been notified yet.

Tracy: Oh, my God.

Martina: And so he came home every day, looked me in the eye, went to his space that we had set aside for him where I didn't dare tread, and never said a word to me.

But, yes, this is part of that whole justification, right, is that we were already divorced, because he'd filled out a document.

Tracy: That he never told you about?

Martina: Right. He never told me about it.

Tracy: Wow.

Martina: I remember seeing the mail from the court addressed to him, and I thought, oh, he's got another traffic violation. How interesting. It never occurred to me that someone could be so disrespectful to me after a normal marriage -- highs and lows, good the bad, the ugly, but I would say more good than bad most years -- despite everything that I've already shared.

So I told him on that day, don't come back, and moved his things into the garage, that I could.

When he did return from South America, he received a remote control and was able to get his things from the garage. And that was probably my first mighty step, because it took a lot of strength.

As most of us chumps are empaths, we want to get closure. We want to find out the where and the why and what could I have done? And I didn't really get that. We had a couple of meetings face to face, and they were disasters because I was so raw.

Tracy: There's no closure.

I mean, there's only no contact and distance, and that's your closure. I mean, in time, you realize that there are people like this. They're monsters. He's a monster.

You had good times with a monster. I don't know, maybe he looks nice in a pressed shirt or something, or he's good on a dance floor.

But I'm like, here's a guy who can casually betray you and just walk out.

So I'm putting him in the Not Nice pile of barbed wire monkeys.

I don't know. Sarah, what do you think?

Sarah: I find my ability to be shocked still continues, and it shouldn't, because I've heard so many of these stories now, and we've both lived through very similar behavior. We've experienced it. But I still feel shocked. I mean, I'm still staggered that people can carry on like this and think it's acceptable or even in their own heads.

How'd you do that? What was going through his head as he put the paperwork in for his divorce without telling the person he was divorcing? I mean, it's just a staggering level of dysfunction.

Tracy: Absolutely. It's as if there aren't ethical ways to leave someone or break up. There's many ways to do it and not be shabby and cruel. I mean, this is just cruel. The guy's cruel.

But I want to turn back to your mightiness, because I'm not going to give it all away, but I'm going to read a little litany of things that you did like, two months after this shit show.

Two months, you're in a better paying job.

You had refinanced your home so that your three teenagers didn't have to relocate.

You went on a retreat.

You were a cowgirl.

Can you tell me a little bit about all the things? You've really found your mighty. You put his shit in the garage, you send him the remote control, and then you took your life back.

Martina: Yeah, you know what? I had this sense of energy and power and agency and was really just focused on moving forward with my life, and I felt really good.

I don't want to dismiss the pain. There was a lot of pain. There was a lot of screaming. There were a lot of tears. But I thought, okay, what can I do? And I found a retreat. It's called Unbridled, and it's going on a dude ranch with a small group of other women and spending time with horses, and it was so out of my comfort zone. It was the perfect antidote to all of this.

And I was so blessed because the founder was really gracious, and I couldn't afford it, and she allowed me to do a trade, and it was transformative in so many ways.

And I got back from the retreat and finished refinancing the house. I wanted my kids to have stability. I knew that that was a big priority for me, and I had already gotten a new full time job, so I was feeling pretty on top of my game.

I had family photos taken of the four of us, and I looked pretty fierce, I got to say.

And I don't like being photographed, but those were great photos.

And I think there's a glow even on my driver's license photo, there's a glow in it. I felt very empowered,

And then I went to donate blood. During all of this I was a regular blood donor throughout the pandemic and I was rejected a couple of times for anemia. I thought, well that's really odd. I'm not usually anemic.

Over a series of months and series of doctors visits I was referred to get an endoscopy where they put a camera and look at your stomach to see if maybe I had an ulcer or something that was causing the anemia. Instead they found that they could see a lot of tumors on my stomach. And after more tests and CTs, I was told in the emergency room that I had metastatic disease.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not good with euphemisms. I like to be a straight shooter. And the only thing I could think of I was racking my brain. Metastatic. Metastasis. Oh my God. They're telling me I have cancer.

And I was healthy in every way. Lifelong vegetarian, worked out, walked, did all the things you're supposed to do to stay healthy, pretty much.

And the worst thing happened. The worst possible thing.

So this was about three months after the divorce I learned that I have stage four cancer.

And after some genetic testing they found out it is a very rare cancer mutation that I think it affects about five to 700 people a year in the United States.

There is no cure. There is no treatment that has been proven. And as my oncologist told me last week, I am living on a razor's edge. B

Tracy: But you're still here.

Martina: But I'm still here.

Yeah. And really I think that is my message for all the chumps out there and would be chumps and chumps who don't know they're chumps yet: That you can live.

You can still live out loud. You can live with joy in your heart. You can thrive even after the worst thing has happened and even after the worst other thing has happened. Many worst things.

Sarah: Here what strikes me though, listening to this is, as you say, living life on a razor's edge. How brilliant that you are not wasting any more of your life on him. And that now you can live life on your own terms. And I think that's another important message. That life is precious. None of us know what's round the corner and none of us want to spend it wasting it on these people that are prepared to treat us like that.

Tracy: Yes, completely agree.

Martina: One of my points of gratitude after all of this was I have my kids. They are amazing humans. And I don't have to really share custody because he moved in with Schmoopie and lives 2000 miles away.

But also that I don't have to go through this with him.

I also really believe that those people who are sitting on the fence like I was for probably five years, sitting on the fence knowing I was unhappy, knowing I was in a loveless dying marriage...

Don't live with that contempt. Don't live with that gaslighting. Don't live with the affairs.

Being a solo parent isn't too bad a gig. You get all the joy with it as well as all the work.

But if you stay, you might make yourself sick.

Sarah: Yeah, I think being a solo parent, I'm a solo parent of now four teens, and I think it's amazing. As my friends quite often point

out to me, you were looking after five children. You weren't looking after four children.

Being a solo parent is a lot easier than being in a two parent relationship with someone that isn't actually doing any parenting, that's just introducing all this disruption.

Tracy: That's it. It's the chaos that'll kill you.

I know, it sounds woo woo. And we don't make ourselves have cancer, and cells divide, and sometimes there's just shit luck. But I can't help but wonder what living with all that stress does with your health.

You were living on a razor's edge of abandonment constantly.

As the mother of three children with a guy who not only couldn't be there, but was just always kind of power tripping on, pulling the rug out from you. I find that unforgivable.

I really do. I mean, if you're going to go, go pay the check, pay the child support, whatever it is, make a clean break. But to sit around and toy with people, to toy with your children, to toy with a woman who gave you 20 years of your life, it's monstrous. It really is.

And I think it must take a toll on your health. And you're still here. I think having freedom must also help your health.

Who knows what tomorrow brings? But as Sarah said, thank God you have this time for you and your kids, and it's not being spoiled by a bastard.

Sarah: Yeah. Your kids must be so proud of you, of what you've achieved, the strength that you've shown them.

Martina: Yeah, I hope so. Two of my daughters have gotten tattoos to honor me or our relationship in some way, which I think is really cool. My eldest daughter started a GoFundMe right before she went off to college.

I'm incredibly grateful to my children. They are my North Star.

And my only purpose right now, other than staying as well as I can, is to make memories with them, to love them fiercely.

And in thinking about even coming on this show, I realized that infidelity is a lot like cancer, and it fills you with self doubt. You wonder, did I cause this?

Could I have done something to prevent this? And as you've already suggested, Tracy, the answer is no.

You can't really control all the circumstances.

You also as with cancer, you have this illusion of certainty, of a future ripped away from you in a moment you get that diagnosis or you get that phone call, and all of a sudden, everything you anticipated or thought you knew about what's ahead is torn away from you.

You have anxiety and grief that alternate in waves and that have profound impacts on how you meet the day every day.

And cancer comes with fatigue. But as I recall, infidelity was pretty exhausting as well. It's a lonely journey, whether you're going through chumpdom or going through cancer.

I mean, ultimately, I have an amazing community of friends and supporters, but when I go into that CT machine every two months, I have to go alone. No one can hold your hand through that or the Pet scan or the other million tests that you have to do.

And you have this realization with cancer, as with infidelity, that you no longer have control over your destiny. And if you let that consume you, it will consume you. If you let that define you, it will take over your life. And so the best advice I got after I was diagnosed, I reached out to someone who was 86 who had my same rare mutation, and she said, "Martina, don't live the cancer. Whatever you do, don't live the cancer."

And I guess my message to Chumps out there listening, and those who are going through this horrific, horrific experience of infidelity, which is brutal even when you've already decided you're ready for divorce, is don't live that experience. Don't cover it up. Don't try and fast forward, because you really can't.

You have to go through it, but don't let it define you either. I don't live the cancer. There are days when it overwhelms me, and I have a hard time functioning, and my kids know that. But most of the time, I am busy making lists of things that I want to do yet.

Tracy: Right. And crossing things off that list. What's on your list?

Martina: Well, I can tell you what I've done already. Okay. I have gone snorkeling with sharks off of Hawaii, off of Honolulu. That was terrifying and amazing.

I have gone kayaking with whales off Maui, and a whale came right under the kayak. I was with my son. That was transcendent.

I have returned to the faith of my childhood with all my misgivings, and that has been a source of strength and transcendence as well, because there is nothing like a beautiful choir and a beautiful Gothic cathedral to make you go, wow on a Sunday morning.

I took my kids to meet their extended family in Europe, and I took them to one of my favorite cities, Berlin. And I was very much struggling at that point, but they helped me find the right trains and made sure we didn't get lost too badly.

I try to go to the opera when I can. I love opera. I think it's totally transcendent as well, so I do those things.

I am hoping to get to Paris next year with a good friend who's living there for a year. So I'm always looking ahead and adding to my list as it gets smaller.

Tracy: You're in the lifetime hall of champions for mightiness.

Martina: Thank you. Live fiercely, that's all I can say.

I was told, what, ten months ago, that I had about six months left on my liver, and this was from a very esteemed doctor at one of our nation's finest institutions. And it was a few days before Christmas, and I felt like I'd been sucker punched.

And it took me about two days to recover from that information.

And then I thought about it and I thought, how does this affect how I live my life? Do I live my life any differently knowing that I've got six months on this liver?

And I realized I wouldn't move to Bali and I wouldn't drink myself into a stupor.

I want to play Scrabble with my kids. I want to walk my dog on the trails by my house. I want to spend time with horses. So I volunteered at a horse rescue.

I found the ways to bring those things into my life that matter to me. And maybe Bali someday, but life is pretty good just doing the ordinary, wonderful things that we get to do.

Tracy: Can I just interrupt to say that's what makes you beautiful?

Because you appreciate your kids and your dog walks and your ordinary life, and you were saddled with somebody who had all those gifts and had to go 2000 miles away to a fuckbuddy. I mean, you're just not the same kind of people. You're just far too cool to have ever been with someone like that. These are lessons for everybody.

Martina Yeah, thank you.

Sarah: Well you take the joy. It's those small things in life, isn't it? The playing Scrabble, the horses, the animals, the little things. And I do think that people like your ex, they have an inability to realize what's really important in life. They're constantly in pursuit of another dream, more material things, another relationship, and they fail to realize what actually matters.

Tracy: Yeah, absolutely. For all the loss, it's like however much longer your liver has and who knows? Because you're beating the odds now, maybe your doctor doesn't know -- it's that you have authenticity and you have real connections. You know, that's what matters.

Sarah was talking about (her stepdad) Cliff. I lost my uncle this year. You get to the end and you're surrounded by your family. You're like, these are the rock stars of life. The people who gave, who loved with their whole hearts, who were present for the people in their life, who showed up.

The Show Up people. That's who matters. And you're clearly a show up person. You're there for your kids. I can't believe you're going through this. And the guy is like 2000 miles away from his children!

However he feels about you -- and he's a jerk -- his children live with a threat of being motherless, and he is not there.

I'm sorry to keep coming back to what an asshole he is, but I really just can't get over it.

It's just the contrast. I am struck very much by the contrast.

Enough about him. You are amazing. Martina, thank you so much for sharing your story. Is there anything else you'd like to say to folks?

Martina: No. I so appreciate having a space to share.

I would just again repeat, don't make yourself sick by staying.

I know I didn't cause my cancer, but I also know that four years before I was diagnosed, my liver was totally healthy. And so I really do believe there's a correlation. I know that doesn't equal causality, but don't make yourself sick by staying.

You can leave. You can gain a life. You can have a rich life. There's a lot of fear that keeps us in an unhappy marriage, a lot of sense of responsibility.

We all exhaled. We all exhaled.

Even my kids exhaled when we knew he wasn't coming back. And that breaks my heart to say, because he was very important to their lives growing up.

But you can't control another person's behavior. Just don't stay for everybody else. Take care of yourself first so you can be the best parent that you can be and the best person you can be.