Teensy Tincy Trucks & Rails

Summary

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The Dream – “Teensy Tincy Trucks & Rails”

Episode Date: October 17, 2025
Host: Jane Marie
Guest: “Betty” (pseudonym; real name for privacy)

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Episode Overview

The Dream relaunches as a weekly interview podcast, maintaining its focus on the obstacles to the “American Dream,” but with more freedom in format. In this episode, Jane Marie is joined by Betty—her best friend’s cousin—who shares an intimate, twisty, and at times darkly funny tale. The story covers legacy, queer family secrets, and ultimately, the dissolution of a marriage to a man who bet it all on a miniature fingerboard business. The episode touches on family, hidden identities, precarious security, and—true to the show’s tone—the ways in which dreams get derailed by people’s secret selfishness and delusion.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Betty’s Family Background (02:09–05:43)

• Matriarchal Roots: Betty comes from a Polish Catholic family of five strong-willed sisters, each with unique paths—some working in industry, some raising families, some embracing queerness.
  • Quote: “Catholic Polish women tend to be pretty front and center…” — Betty (03:17)
• Family Secrets: Betty recounts her mother’s divorce, a long-term queer relationship, and the larger family’s tacit complicity in keeping these truths hidden for years.

2. Navigating a Queer Upbringing & Family Silence (05:43–08:07)

• As a child, Betty wasn’t let in on the secret of her mother’s same-sex relationship, despite the partner being a constant presence.
• Betty confesses to perpetuating the family habit of secrecy by continuing to maintain contact with her mother’s ex-partner privately.

3. Modern Dating & Meeting Stan (08:07–10:54)

• The Tinder Start: Betty meets Stan (her future husband) on Tinder in Portland, describing him as a charismatic, well-dressed, “boss business dude” with a briefcase.
• Red Flags: Jane highlights warning signs. Stan is deeply invested in “open relationships” from the get-go.
  • Quote: “You just said, like, three red flags in a row.” — Jane Marie (09:53)
• Love Bombing: Stan showers Betty with attention, travel, and romance—hallmarks of early-stage love bombing.

4. Years of Compromised Attachment (11:13–14:54)

• Open Relationship Chaos: Betty struggles with attachment and boundaries, enduring Stan’s dating other women—even while she’s visiting him, sometimes with visual evidence left by other partners.
  • Quote: “...some woman he was dating in Ireland would like. I think she purposely left marks on him so that I would see it.” — Betty (14:40)
• Sexual Assault: Betty shares a vulnerable moment about giving up casual dating after being sexually assaulted.

5. Long-Distance, Marriage, and Moving Abroad (13:46–22:53)

• Stan’s work takes him to Ireland and then potentially London. Only by marrying could Betty join him due to visa restrictions.
• Independent, Yet Dependent: Betty maintains a job until she is fired in London, which intensifies her dependency on Stan both financially and for immigration status.

6. The Security Illusion (22:53–25:06)

• Stan reassures Betty about his financial security but is vague and secretive about actual assets. He repeatedly emphasizes how much he’s contributed, shifting the burden to her once he loses his job.

7. The Dream Derails: The Fingerboard Business (26:53–34:24)

• Entrepreneurial Pivot: Stan decides, unilaterally and in secret, to apply for an entrepreneurial visa by starting a fingerboard (miniature skateboard) import/export business. Betty believes this “business” is outlandish and unviable.
  • Quote: “The business that was going to keep us in the UK...was to be a purveyor of miniature skateboards.” — Betty (28:12)
• Questionable Spending: Stan sells stock, burns through severance package money to buy fingerboards from around the world—without consulting Betty.

8. Financial Stonewalling & Therapy (32:36–34:29)

• Stan accuses Betty of being “bad with money,” but never opens budgeting discussions again when she agrees to it.
• Throughout weekly couples counseling, Betty cannot obtain clear answers about the family finances or Stan’s business progress.

9. Collapse, Disclosure, and Exit (37:28–44:47)

• With mounting pressure to file the correct visa paperwork, Betty discovers only £5,000 in the business account (not the £25,000 required) and learns Stan is out of funds, maxed out on credit, and desperate.
• Betty gives him $25,000—plus another $10,000—requiring him to sign a contract to repay her. Ultimately, the realization hits: they must return to the US.
  • Quote: “He was desperate, and he asked me for all of my money that I had been saving..." — Betty (39:24)
• Betty manages the logistics of dismantling their life, supporting Stan through what seems to be a breakdown.

10. Reflection & Resonance (43:53–44:48)

• Jane marvels at how Betty's experience is a microcosm of what many women go through in the dissolution of a marriage where a partner’s secretiveness, delusion, and financial recklessness implode the relationship.
  • Quote: “I love this story because it so encapsulates—it’s like such a perfect, simple version of what most women go through during a divorce.” — Jane Marie (43:53)
• Betty manages to reframe the tragedy with dark humor:
  • Quote: “He had a sticker on his yeti that said fingerboarding saved my life... You’ve got to laugh at this shit because otherwise you’re gonna end up in the pit. And I don’t want to be in the pit.” — Betty (44:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On family legacy:
  “They all have very unique personalities. No two are the same.” — Betty (03:15)
• On Stan’s delusions:
  “The business ... was to be a purveyor of miniature skateboards... These are fingerboards that are little toys that people do tricks [with]...” — Betty (28:12)
• The financial revelation:
  “I find out there is £5,000 in this account.” — Betty (39:23)
• On coping through humor:
  “I guess we’ll call it some cheerful despair. But you’ve got to laugh at this shit because otherwise you’re gonna end up in the pit.” — Betty (44:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|-------------| | Family background and matriarchy | 02:09–05:43 | | Queer family secrets and growing up | 05:43–08:07 | | Meeting Stan and dating adventures | 08:07–10:54 | | Open relationship red flags & trauma | 11:13–14:54 | | Marriage, visas, and dependence | 13:46–22:53 | | The fingerboard business begins | 26:53–34:24 | | Stonewalling, therapy, and financial chaos | 32:36–34:29 | | The crash, the exit, and aftershocks | 37:28–44:47 |

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Tone and Takeaways

This episode is delivered with the candid, wry tone characteristic of The Dream—blending personal narrative with pointed critique of the shadowy forces and systemic failures undermining the American (and, by extension, global) dream. Jane punctuates the conversation with cutting humor and compassion, while Betty’s self-deprecating wit and vulnerability bring the story alive.

Main Takeaway:
Betty’s story is both a darkly comic cautionary tale and a lens on broader questions of trust, financial codependence, and the way personal “dreams” can be sabotaged—sometimes by the very people closest to us.

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If you have a story about a derailed dream, The Dream invites listeners to call their tip line at 323-248-1488 or email [e-mail].

To support the show and hear episodes ad-free:
Visit thedream.supercast.com

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Transcript

[Jane Marie]

Hey dream listeners. There's now an ad free version of the Dream that you can subscribe to the Dream Plus@thedream supercast.com Five bucks a month gets you every single episode of this show with zero ads which you love and I love. And we're hoping that this will help us pay the bills and the main goal being that we can keep making this show. Go to thedream.supercast.com and subscribe. To make it Easy we have put the link in the show description. Just look down underneath this episode. It says thedream.supercast.com and just click on that. Easy peasy. You're gonna get a lot of extra stuff too. We're working on all that. Another thing you need to do. Please subscribe to our Instagram. It's the Dream X the letter X. Jane Marie. See you over there.

[Betty]

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[Jane Marie]

I'm Jane Marie and this is the dream.

[Betty]

I run the websites for four different nonprofit Michigan hospice brands and all of their social media. I create all the freaking content for all four of these goddamn brands and it's a team of one doing the work of about five.

[Jane Marie]

No, today's episode is not about creating social media for hospice companies. I just thought that was a funny job to think about like deathbed challenge or put a finger down if you're about to die. Now today's episode is about family, love, marriage and a swindler of the sort. I promise you've never heard all of this brought to you by someone very dear to me. Introducing Betty Real name. Other names have been changed to protect the guilty so you're my best friend's cousin.

[Betty]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

I've known you since you were a small child.

[Betty]

Yep.

[Jane Marie]

Also, you come from a very strong matriarchal family. And. And it's not just matriarchal. You all claim it as such.

[Betty]

Yeah. You know, I think part of it has to do with our Polish heritage.

[Jane Marie]

Catholicism.

[Betty]

Yeah. Catholic Polish women tend to be pretty front and center. And my mom was the middle daughter of five daughters. And they. All of my aunts and my mom are. They're very intelligent. They're very sort of self possessed. And they all have very unique personalities. No two are the same.

[Jane Marie]

How did those get nurtured? Because I know all of them and I was like, what? How come some of you get to be gay and some of you are young and some of you are like the boss of the GM plant and.

[Betty]

Like one of you is the boss of a family of all boys. Right. And knows how to do things like build shelves and, you know, lay concrete.

[Jane Marie]

Yeah.

[Betty]

And I don't know, I think my grandma, she was not a super affectionate mother. There was a little bit of emotional distance there. And they grew up during a time where my grandpa owned a little grocery store and all of them worked at the little grocery store growing up. So they were all really like a big part of the community. The Catholic community there in Jackson, the Polish Catholic community, which was a major during that time period. It was a kind of a boom town. So, you know, they were all. They all went to Catholic school. They were smart.

[Jane Marie]

Did your grandparents immigrate?

[Betty]

My great grandparents did, and they lived right next door to them growing up. And Jackson was like a city. It was like a little city. So they had sort of all the amenities. They were able to kind of be rapscallions around Jackson growing up in the 50s.

[Jane Marie]

They're so rad.

[Betty]

I'm still really close to them all.

[Jane Marie]

Can you talk just a little bit about your mom?

[Betty]

So my mom and dad divorced when I was 6 and I never really knew why until I was 24 and I was moving from Chicago out to Portland, Oregon. My mom came down to take some stuff, and she told me at that time that a relationship ended in her life with a partner who I knew all. All through my teenage years. And it was kind of an unspoken friendship. Yeah, it was. It was a. It was a friendship. We all sort of assumed it was more than a friendship.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Betty]

Yeah. So I was basically getting ready to get into a taxi to go to the airport, and she tearfully told me that her 11 year relationship with her partner ended and she could barely tell me what happened. She was so emotional about it, which was unusual. And so I definitely could see that that relationship meant a lot to her and she was heartbroken. At the end of the day, the reasoning behind that relationship ending was because my mom didn't feel comfortable being a part of the LGBTQ community. You know, she didn't want to go hang out with all the lesbians in Jackson. That wasn't her scene. She wanted to keep hanging out with her sisters. And, you know, there's this notion of kind of family ship and joining a community that is outside of that. And I also found out around that that my parents marriage ended because my mom had had an affair with a lady neighbor. So I think probably my mom was bisexual and she just didn't have the language, didn't have the comfort, didn't have the support from her family. I know that, like, my grandmother had asked her during my parents divorce, to never raise us with another woman. Huh. So that was.

[Jane Marie]

So they knew. They knew what was going on.

[Betty]

They definitely knew. And it's. It's weird thinking about it now that they all knew my entire growing up and like, I just remember feel. Just always feeling so angry and confused about it because, you know, I was a kid.

[Jane Marie]

Because you weren't let in.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Betty]

And I like this partner that. The devastating relationship that ended when I was 24, like this one, this woman was in my life like all of my teenage years. All through college. She frequently, you know, came to family events. She, you know, visit me when I was away at school. And I kept in touch with her, and I'm still in touch with her, but my mom did not know that I stayed in touch with her. So I'm just kind of, you know, I definitely continued the familial trend of keeping secret.

[Jane Marie]

So you grow up, you get married. What happens?

[Betty]

Okay, so I met Stan in Portland, Oregon, and he was my second Tinder date. So I was in a phase of dating where I was dating like it was my job. I'd scheduled two dates on the same day. My first date was a lunch date with another man named Stan. No, I dated. Yeah. So I had a day date with Stan, and then I had a evening cocktail with the Stan I ended up marrying. He was very charming and it was very fun.

[Jane Marie]

I knew you were gonna say he was very charming, but tell me what was charming about him.

[Betty]

So he was dressed so well and. And carrying around like a little briefcase, like he was a boss business dude or something.

[Jane Marie]

No.

[Betty]

Yeah. And, like, little monk strap shoes, you know, he was. He was. He was very handsome. And we went to this cute little cocktail bar in Portland, and I didn't know what to order because, I mean, I was, like, a poor graduate student. And he ordered an Old Fashioned, and I thought that was, like, the coolest thing ever. And I like, I'll have a gin and tonic. So it was romantic and fun and lovely, and I was totally smitten.

[Jane Marie]

Can you describe what he looks like besides his beautiful manner of dress?

[Betty]

Like a tall guy who rode his bike around Portland, you know, carrying a little briefcase. You know, he was giving that. So.

[Jane Marie]

Maddie, you just said, like, three red flags in a row.

[Betty]

I'm sorry. I know. Jane. This was. This was during. This was during a time in my life where I was not making good decisions for myself. And I was far away from my family. Like, and I was really set on, like, I'm gonna meet someone and they're gonna be my boyfriend. Like, we had great chemistry, good conversation, sexy times immediately. And it was fun. It was an adventure. He'd fly me down to, like, San Francisco.

[Jane Marie]

All the way from Portland. Come on.

[Betty]

Well, he was down there working, and, like, I thought that was exotic. Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

No, I love this for you. I love this beginning part.

[Betty]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was super love bombed. Big time. Major love bombs. And so it was kind of nice to, like, do nice things and eat a nice meal and.

[Jane Marie]

Sure.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Betty]

Sounds very, like. Like, I was basically an orphan, so.

[Jane Marie]

We all have a desperation inside of us.

[Betty]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

That's like I need to attach myself to another barnacle.

[Betty]

Yeah. And I felt super anxiously attached to this person. I knew he was a pioneer of open relationships at the time. This.

[Jane Marie]

You buried the.

[Betty]

I didn't.

[Jane Marie]

You didn't tell me this.

[Betty]

He. He would date other women, and I tried to have some sort of agreement with him about what that meant and, like, what was okay and, you know, sort of rules of engagement with that. And he. He was not very good at following these rules, so there were, like, a thousand red flags.

[Jane Marie]

Was he your age?

[Betty]

Yeah, same age as me. Same age.

[Jane Marie]

So he's got open relationship vibes from the jump or. When did you find this out?

[Betty]

Pretty much from the jump. And in my mind at the time, you know, how old was I? I was 32. And I was thinking, I can try that. I'm an open person. And I, you know, I dated around while we were dating and tried to do that whole thing, and that turned out to be unpleasant on a number of Levels for me in Portland. Say more.

[Jane Marie]

Say more. Tell me. What are you talking about?

[Betty]

Well, I decided that I was only going to date him, and I. But I wasn't going to put the fence around him to only date me because I'm a people pleaser. And so the reason why I decided to stop dating other people at the same time was because I got sexually assaulted and it really terrified me.

[Jane Marie]

Did he know about the assault?

[Betty]

I did tell him, yes.

[Jane Marie]

How soon did you tell him?

[Betty]

Immediately.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Betty]

I feel like the assault kind of helps him prioritize the rules that we had agreed on as far as dating other people. That was around the same time that he let me know that he was moving to Ireland for work.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Betty]

And I was totally heartbroken.

[Jane Marie]

What's his line of business?

[Betty]

It was working in the tech industry.

[Jane Marie]

Oh, tech. Okay.

[Betty]

Yes. And so this is such a wild story. I helped him prepare for the move, pack stuff up for him. You know, I. I was a girlfriend all the while, you know, like driving loads to Goodwill, listening to childish Gambino and just crying, just sobbing in my car. I was totally in love with him at this point.

[Jane Marie]

Did you guys say that to each other?

[Betty]

No. Oh, no, that was not said at the time.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Ad Voice]

All right.

[Jane Marie]

We're talking eight months in here.

[Betty]

Six months. Six months.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Betty]

Yeah. So he moves to Ireland. I basically think that the relationship is likely going to come to an end, but there remains this contact and we stay in touch. And we had a long distance relationship while he lived in Ireland for three years. And I would go to Dublin and stay every two or three months pretty much. And I mean, I got to travel and do lots of cool stuff and sort of a continuation of some love bombing there. But then also some very questionable practices in open relationshiping on his part while you were visiting? Oh, yeah, yeah. He would let me know that he'd been on a date and, you know, one of our rules was that they had to know about that I existed. Pretty sure that didn't happen. But some woman that he was dating in Ireland would like. I think she, like, purposely left marks on him so that I would see it. Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

Oh, like hickeys?

[Betty]

Like bloody scratches? Yeah, yeah, that is a thing.

[Jane Marie]

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[Betty]

This was a time in my life where I think I had very low self worth. My dad suddenly died two years before I met Stan. I was still hardcore grieving. I was super close to my dad and he was kind of the man in my life and losing that connection was profoundly difficult. And I didn't have any resources on how to deal with that grief at all. Like zero. Yeah.

[Ad Voice]

So.

[Betty]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

So you're in Ireland. He's dating other people. He's being a complete asshole, it sounds like.

[Betty]

Pretty. Pretty much, yeah. And I'm. And I'm. And I'm kind of just accepting the scraps. So three years of traveling back and forth between Portland and Dublin with this relationship, and it comes about that he was getting the opportunity to move to the office in London and we'd been dating for a long time at that point and I was like, I want to, I want to go to London.

[Jane Marie]

Yeah.

[Betty]

And we sort of talked about me moving to where he was and really the only way to do that is, is to marry the person. So. Sure. Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

Because you need a visa and stuff. Yeah.

[Betty]

Yeah. So I pretty much text did him a marriage proposal.

[Jane Marie]

Again, this goes back to the matriarchal family. Like the women are in charge.

[Betty]

Yeah. So I organized the whole wedding. We got married at City hall in San Francisco. I found a officiant. I did everything to make this happen. We got married in April in San Francisco and we both moved back to our respective places. Me, Portland, him, Ireland. And keep in mind, I'd only lived with him sort of air quotes around that for three months. I did one stint in Dublin for three months where I lived at his flat. So we hadn't lived together in a. In a real way.

[Jane Marie]

Yeah. You didn't do the day to day shit.

[Betty]

No, not at all. And I pretty much noticed immediately that maybe I made the wrong decision. I just, I. I started to see what the day to day looked like with him and I could tell that he was extremely focused on his job. And that notion of quality time was very difficult for him to comprehend. I had a tech job at the time too, where I was working remotely for an American company. So I had a means to support myself. I was independent. And within a month or two of living there, I got fired. It was shocking. It was Devastating and shocking. And, you know, then I really. I was already a dependent on his visa in a technical sense. Oh. And I. I became a dependent in a very real sense, and that was extremely difficult for me and it.

[Jane Marie]

Terrifying, I'm sure.

[Betty]

Yeah. So I had a few jobs. I did some freelance work here and there, but I was always very cognizant that I was dependent on him because he made a good living there. And he'd always try and make me feel very secure in what he was bringing in and what he had saved. So, yeah, I had this sense of security. Based off of that and based off of what he told me. He rarely would show me that. The physical proof of this, I just trusted. I trusted. When you work for a big company, you know, you get stuck, you invest. It's got. You got all this, all these moving parts with the. How the money works for you. And he wanted to live large because he'd never really gotten to live large before.

[Jane Marie]

And he wanted to get one of those guns that shoots money, like, at the strippers.

[Betty]

Exactly. And he wanted to shoot it at me. And, like, great for you.

[Jane Marie]

If it's real, you know, like, that's wonderful.

[Betty]

And it was. I think it was real for a little while, but then it definitely stopped being real very, very suddenly. We were in London for nearly seven years when his office decided to leave London and everybody got fired. The whole office got let go in the autumn of 2022. And in. In the spring of 2022, my mom died all of a sudden. So it was a pretty shitty year. And Stan. Stan gave the eulogy, gave the eulogy at my mom's funeral, and it was beautiful. Everybody was crying. That was another kind of a love bomb, too, that showing up in that way when he didn't show up for so many other mental and emotional reasons. So considering that our visa was tied to his work, and typically when you live in London on a worker, a skilled worker visa, you have 60 days from the time your employment ends to find a new sponsor, meaning a new job. Yeah. I was under the impression this whole time that that was what the plan was, that finding a new sponsor through work was going. That was going to be it.

[Jane Marie]

Easy peasy.

[Betty]

Yes. I thought the. A new sponsor would be found within 60 days and we'd move on with our beautiful lives in London. Yeah. So I started sending him jobs that I saw that came up through our network that he would have been qualified for. He never said to me, hey, Betty, I'm not really interested in working in tech Anymore. I'm super burned out, and I don't. I just don't want to. I don't want to do it. That was never a straight conversation that he had with me.

[Jane Marie]

Okay.

[Betty]

Whenever I sent these messages with these jobs, I never got any response back. And I finally approached him one day and said, hey, Stan, it seems like you're not really looking for a job. And it's almost been 60 days since the job officially ended. So what's the plan here?

[Jane Marie]

Yeah, do I live here still? Are we getting deported? Like, what?

[Betty]

Yeah. And the plan was that he decided on his own that he didn't want to look for a job. And in this sort of interim period where I was foolishly sending him job postings, he decided very much unilaterally to start his own business and get an entrepreneurial visa to sponsor us himself. So I asked, what does that entail? Like, how much does that cost? How long does that take? You know, regular questions that a person would ask in such a situation, and I would get kind of partial answers. A lot of defensiveness and a lot of stonewalling, even at this point, and, you know, accusations of, I'm not being supportive. He supported me for all these years, so there was kind of that throwing the gauntlet down of, I've been the breadwinner for all these years, so now it's your turn.

[Jane Marie]

Oh, my God.

[Betty]

And the business that was going to keep us in the UK on an entrepreneurial visa was to be a purveyor of miniature skateboards. What is that? These are fingerboards that are little toys that people do tricks. They do real skateboard tricks that you would do with your feet, but they do it with their fingers. There's. There's all. There's. Jane. There's all the equipment. There's the little rails, there's the half pipes. There's like, little mini swimming pools. There's all kinds of it. I know way too. I know way too much about this.

[Jane Marie]

You know, way too much now. But then when he was.

[Betty]

Sorry, it's bonkers. I knew that this was a hobby of his. I knew it was a hobby.

[Jane Marie]

That's not a hobby. That's like a fidget toy.

[Betty]

It's a fidget. Yeah, it is a fidget toy, for sure.

[Jane Marie]

What's the hobby part like? Oh, different grip tape.

[Betty]

Yes, Jane. Yes, Jane. Different grip tape is a part of it. No.

[Jane Marie]

Is this like dollhouses.

[Ad Voice]

Or.

[Betty]

I don't even know.

[Jane Marie]

Like, I respect dollhouses for some reason. I don't know why, but at Least like, dollhouses. Like, it requires you to do some things with, like, fimo clay, and.

[Betty]

You.

[Jane Marie]

Have to do some electrical wiring. Is there any electrical wiring going on in the fingerboard community?

[Betty]

No, but there is many. There is miniature, like, specialized machining of. Of skateboard parts that are true. There's skate. I think it's like, 1:10 do this interview.

[Jane Marie]

I feel like I cannot do this.

[Betty]

Just think about it as being a sad story. I can't imagine getting stonewalled. Like, I know. I know it's. I'm dead. I know. Like, you think that they'd be a jolly fun time, but no, like, can you. Can you imagine.

[Ad Voice]

No.

[Betty]

Can you imagine going to the. Whatever the hell. Whatever governmental body it is in. In London, going to them and being. And then being like, oh, so what is your business going to be here in the UK where you'll be entrepreneurial and, say, fingerboarding? I just can't imagine, like, the company's house there being like, yeah, that works for us as an entrepreneurial option.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

Yeah.

[Betty]

Like, we're definitely going to give you an entrepreneurial visa license because of this. Because of fingerboards, we started getting packages in the mail from all over the world, from, like, Venezuela and Korea and Japan and. And I'm like. I'm like, what? Why? What are all these packages? Like, what's going on? He. He was buying inventory from all these small makers from all over the world. Yeah, Jane. I was like, dude, I work at a nonprofit. I cannot support whatever is happening right now. He was using likely the severance he got and likely stock he sold that I didn't know about. That's a fun story. What?

[Jane Marie]

He sold stock in a tech company.

[Betty]

Oh, yeah. He decided to just throw every single penny he had at this endeavor. So I continuously would ask where. Where he was in the process. Where are you in the process? I knew. I knew we had to have £25,000 in, like, a business bank account. It took months for him. It took months for him to even get a business bank account. And everything kept stalling, and there were always all kinds of problems. So it took him 18 months to even launch his website.

[Jane Marie]

Oh, my. That's too long.

[Betty]

I know.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Jane Marie]

I had a website. I can launch one tonight.

[Betty]

Or you just open an Etsy store like a regular person. Yeah. And just start.

[Jane Marie]

Or look, do anything like a regular person. Any part of this.

[Betty]

Yeah, yeah. So all this while, we had been in couples counseling for two years, and one of. One of the first. Like, this is so fucked up. One of the first things he brought up to me, and that was a problem for him in our marriage counseling sessions, was that he said that I was bad with money and that we needed to write up a budget. And I was shocked, number one. And he basically called me a spendthrift. And so I said to him, I was like, I am 100% here. Let's do a budget. I've never done a budget before because I've always been really good with money.

[Jane Marie]

Yeah.

[Betty]

So let's do it. I want to. Since it sounds like you have some experience with it, let's sit down. I'm ready. Guess who never brought it up ever again after that. Never again.

[Jane Marie]

But you did two years of therapy with that being the starting point weekly.

[Betty]

Yeah. Yeah. In some of the last sessions, I would ask point blank, like, tell me how much money you have in the account that you got the severance into. And he would. I was like, just give me a ballpark. Like, just. You don't have to even show it to me. Just tell me approximately how much we have in the coffers to exist in London and let me know what I need to do to adjust. I was trying to be a reasonable human being about it and a good partner. I was trying to support his.

[Jane Marie]

This person's a lunatic.

[Betty]

Well, yeah.

[Jane Marie]

And you're giving him every chance of.

[Betty]

Yes. I kept throwing several bones out.

[Jane Marie]

Yeah.

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Did I talk too much? Can I just let it go?

I wish I would stop.

Thank you so much.

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[Betty]

So I didn't fully, I didn't fully understand how deep things were, how bad things were, until I took control of the situation and forced his hand at making an appointment with the lawyers that he had been dealing with for setting up his business and helping us with this entrepreneurial visa that he was working on. He tried to start the meeting with some gobbledygook nothingness and I took control of the meeting and asked them specifically, what do we do to stay in the uk? How much will that cost and how deep are we in right now? They sort of breadcrumbs me a little bit. They didn't spell out the entire scenario to me in that meeting, and I found out over the course of several days after the meeting exactly how much it was going to cost and how much he owed them and how likely unlikely our ability to stay in the UK was going to be. They said that we could expedite the application if we wanted to still apply for the entrepreneurial visa, but it didn't have a guarantee that we would be granted that license. I asked, how much is that going to cost? That would have cost, I don't know, like 10 grand. And then I asked, well, what do we need to get that application in? And literally the main thing the Last piece that was needed to make this application was we needed £25,000 in his business bank account, which I had no access to. I was under the impression that it was funded and that there was £25,000 in it at least. And I find out there is £5,000 in this account.

[Jane Marie]

No.

[Betty]

And I said, okay, well, can you move some of, you know, your savings and the severance, whatever you have ready for this business that you've been working on into that account so we can do this application? He has no money. I find out that the entire severance that he got from the job, which was sizable, was gone. And the stock that he had sold was also. The money from that stock sale was also gone. And I also found out that he maxed out his credit cards. And so he was, He, Yeah, he, he was at. He was desperate, and he, he asked me for all of my money that I had been saving for. On top of the death money I got from my mother. I'd been saving money for a down payment for a house for a long time. And when I find out when the writing's all on the wall and I'm finding out that essentially he needs $65,000 to save to get this all figured out. And you got to keep in mind. So things are moving very fast. We have two weeks to figure out how to stay in London, where we loved. Like, I loved living in London. It was amazing. So I had, I had given him $25,000, Betty. Yeah. So. And then I think I, I gave him another big chunk of money, too. I can't remember how much it was, maybe another 10 grand or something. And I, I, I wrote up a contract and I made him sign it saying that he was going to pay me back the money. And he was. That I did that. He was not happy that I, that I made him sign a piece of paper saying that he was going to pay me back. Then I finally, I saw all the writing on the wall and was just like, okay, this is ridiculous. This is not happening. We cannot do this. We cannot afford this. We're moving back to America. That is the final. That's the final straw here. And so I start dismantling my life. And in London, I sold as much stuff as I could. I had a fabulous garden there, and I donated it and still sold bits and pieces of it to people in the community. And I arranged for movers to come. And all the while I'm mobilizing and doing all this stuff. Stan is doing basically nothing. He's actively having A mental breakdown. Do you still believe that? I have to believe that. I think. Because I think if I think that he was putting on a show, that's really, really evil. And I really don't want to think I chose to marry somebody who hated me. I feel like you would only do that if you really hate a person. You'd only pretend to be suicidal if you really hated a person. And there were trips to the emergency room with chest pains and there was all anxiety attacks and all this stuff. So he was just falling apart left and right. And I knew that I could not fall apart. I made a very concerted effort and a specific choice to not fall apart because I needed to figure out as soft a landing as possible for myself.

[Jane Marie]

Well, you're a responsible adult.

[Betty]

This is true. And I also had to negotiate with our landlord to not charge us massive fines because we had literally just signed a three year loose gain.

[Jane Marie]

He did not. Knowing that he had drained everything, he's just like.

[Betty]

He was really living in a serious delusion.

[Jane Marie]

Did he think like Tony Hawk was gonna walk in the room and be like, hey buddy, this is the best fingerboard company I've ever seen. Let me invest. I wanna buy it for a million billion dollars.

[Betty]

He thought he was making a product that like a company that somebody would maybe wanna buy. Yeah, like a fingerboard conglomerate would wanna buy him every time he's.

[Jane Marie]

I love this story because it's like. Oh, so encapsulates. It's like such a perfect, simple version of what most women go through during a divorce.

[Betty]

Yeah. It was concentrated.

[Jane Marie]

It was concentrated. It's simple to explain. It's fingerboard company ruin my marriage.

[Betty]

Yeah. And it's interesting to think back on, on that specific idea that fingerboarding ruined my marriage because he had a sticker on his yeti that said fingerboarding saved my life. You know, I'm a big believer in like, I guess we'll call it some cheerful despair. But you've got to laugh at this shit because otherwise you're going to end up in the pit. And I don't want to be in the pit.

[Jane Marie]

Right.

[Betty]

You know, I got shit to do.

[Jane Marie]

The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere. We have a tip line open. 323-248-1488. That's 323-248-1488. If you have a story like Ben Betty's or unlike Betty's, or you can email us@helloittle everywhere.com and remember, go to thedream.supercast.com to become a member of the Dream Plus.

[Casey]

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[Jane Marie]

Hey dream listeners. It's finally here. The Dream plus where you can get every single episode of our show with no ads. It's $5 a month. It's the only tier. No commercials plus bonus content. This helps keep us independent, and your contribution will help change the way every listener hears the dream. We'll be able to take out the ads that we don't even know are getting put into this show, which is annoying to both you and us. We're also gonna have an amazing discussion board. The interface has it cataloged under ama. Ask me anything, but I don't love rules. So what I did is started a bunch of threads like Ask Dan and I Questions, General Chitchat, just to make friends and stuff. And every time I've been in charge of a discussion board, I've made a tab called Women Be Shoppin. And it's there. And we're just gonna talk about what we bought, and it'll be fun. That's the dream.coms u p e r c a s t.com supercast Please, please go. Subscribe. It's five bucks. It's less than a latte if you live in Los Angeles. See you there.