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If you just found this show, you're going to want to start at episode one. This is the true story of my life. I changed some names and details to protect the innocent. It is marked explicit. Proceed with caution. I wanted the red flags to burn. I didn't want them to be real. I wanted him to be real. I wanted the love to be real and...
wanted to gaslight myself into the love story that I always wanted. You probably think this story is about you. I'm Brittany Ard and this story is mine. After sleeping with him all night and the cuddling and waking up to his sweet smile, they put my concerns to the back of my head.
So we had just had sex. I'm in bed naked and he had gotten up to get in the shower. He was getting ready so I could take him to the airport. He was leaving that morning to fly to Arizona for his son's football game. And he had left his phone on the nightstand on his side of the bed face up. His phone buzzed a few times.
It was a little weird because he never left his phone anywhere or out. And I looked over at his phone. I didn't touch it, but there was a Bumble notification. I was like, oh, they're probably trying to get him to renew his subscription or get back on the dating apps. I didn't have any reason to think that he was cheating or that there was somebody else that he was talking to.
My initial feelings were not anger or I didn't pick up the phone and throw it at him. I needed to process what I thought it was or what I thought it meant. He came out, grabbed his phone, went back into the bathroom to like finish getting ready after the shower. The door was open. So we were sort of talking as he was packing and getting ready. It was intense.
normal in love conversation. We were talking about him heading to the football game when we were going to see each other. Thanksgiving was coming up that week. So it was going to be at least 10 days before we were going to see each other again. As he was finishing packing, the things that had happened before
During the trip, especially the night before, the different red flags and then now this Bumble notification started swirling in my head. I needed time to process, so I let it go, drove him to the airport, kissed him goodbye, came back and talked to Anna.
I was like, hmm, this is a little strange. But you were like, oh, I'm sure it's nothing. It's probably just a notification of like a account renewal or something to that effect where you sort of blew it off as like, OK, this can't be. And I think you said, I don't think he's still on Bumble. That sort of was the trigger of like, OK, I'm going to pay attention because this is something's not quite right.
and made you at least more alert. You know, it still for me was not a red flag. I'm not a good judge of red flags. I was married to a red flag for 20 years. You know, I still was very hopeful that it would be what you wanted it to be instead of what it was appearing to be. Kanan and I are still texting like we always do. He's being super sweet. Almost home. Miss you and sleep well.
I love you, Freckles. Love you so much, babe. You have such a beautiful family, inside and out. Please let Greg know how much I enjoyed meeting him and I can't wait to be interrogated again. Tell your son to have a great game. I miss you, but before I start telling you all the ways, happy birthday to Alex. Great job, Mama. Look at you raising future leaders.
Tell me all the ways. How do you feel after spending time with my family? You keep exposing me to shit I don't or didn't have. And baby, let me tell you, once you've had steak, it's hard to go back to spam. But those finer things in life are actually so simple. I met your amazing cousin who maybe took a few bites of food at dinner because he was too busy watching the rest of the family enjoy themselves.
Anna's still a pitbull, but so loving and honest. I just want us to grow into those type of friends who constantly pick on one another. So instead of Elf on the Shelf, I can just hide her glasses. Your kids are so warm, just like you. They both made me feel so welcome and that means more to me than you know. I need you to know that I don't have this. I don't have this at all. My family is small and scattered.
I don't have cousins who I keep in touch with or know very well. I essentially grew up an only child and my family. I'm just scared and feel bad that I can't match you with what you give me but will always look for ways to be your equal. You match my soul. That's all that needs to be equal. It makes me happy that you feel comfortable with them. I've spent a long time surrounding myself with people that match my heart.
I can't wait to hear about the Arizona game. I love the book you made me. It means so much to me and makes me feel special to you. I wanted to be wrong. I wanted the red flags to burn. I didn't want them to be real. I wanted him to be real. I wanted the love to be real. And that connection and the moment, I wanted to gaslight myself into the love story that I always wanted.
After he left, not having him in my presence, not smelling him and being close to him and having that dimple smiling at me, the things that I had noticed over the trip started becoming apparent red flags.
The only thing I know about him is what he's told me. He's the one that told me that he used to be a bad guy, that he was the problem in his previous relationships. And as I'm sort of processing all of this, right before he left for his flight, during sex, he had said almost to himself, like a thought that he was saying out loud, I can't believe this has been on the shelf for a year.
And it was because I had taken a year off of dating. It didn't sound like he was saying it to me. It was like an afterthought of his. When I wasn't with him face to face or we weren't actively texting, the attraction was tamped down a little bit. And thinking about how he was acting with Greg and how it looked like he was mirroring Greg, it started to...
feel like all of the love and all of the connection that I had with him was him mirroring me. I always sit on one leg and so I would go and sit on one leg on his couch and so did he. I felt so comfortable with him because even just the physical mannerisms were me. So me falling in love with myself
In that moment, all of the flags that had shown up over that weekend sort of started rolling into this, this guy isn't who I think he is. I mean, who gets the story of their wife's death wrong? That's when I decided I wanted to talk to Brianna about posting him in a social media group that...
women use to help each other through dating. Some people might think it's weird that I go to my 26-year-old daughter for dating advice, but it's one of the perks and pitfalls of being a young mom and us essentially having grown up together. For me, it's that different perspective because we have the same brain, but we have a different heart. Mm-hmm.
I was working from Greg's, working down in his basement while we were down in California. He came down and told me you had seen it. And I remember you telling me and said you wanted to post. I remember the main thing that I'd said was, if you post him and there's nothing, you're still going to feel that way. Like if you're at the point where you want to post him, you're not trusting something. So you're either going to post him and
and not hear anything, but you're probably still going to have those feelings or doubts, or you're going to post him and there will be something and then he'll be upset. And I did not listen to your advice. I didn't say you couldn't. No, I didn't. And it was... Well, and it's because I think that I... You were at that point. I was at that point where it wasn't just the Bumble notification. If you're really at that point, you don't trust him, you don't feel that way, then it's kind of time to post.
My therapist has decided I'm an autodidact, which means that I self-teach or I self-learn. If my computer breaks down, I don't go to the repair shop, I fix it. If my tire goes flat, I replace it myself. I'm not going to wait for three hours for AAA to show up. If I need a website made for one of my companies, then I build it and was ready to solve this problem.
So I posted him in the group and it's a simple question. Does anybody have any tea or know any red flags? And added a picture from his dating profile to that post. And then I waited. I spent the rest of the day anxiously looking at my phone every time I got a notification to see if somebody had commented something that was going to tell me that the man I loved had been lying to me.
I was also concerned because sometimes people in the group will screenshot the post and send it to the person that was posted. And I didn't want to be sabotaging this relationship. I didn't want it to be true. And I didn't want him to think that I didn't trust him. I still needed to be with him. I love this man. And I...
didn't want it to not be real. It was only a few weeks before that we had been on this amazing three-day road trip. Kanan had asked if I wanted to go out to watch his son play football. So we took this trip around Washington
When we got into town, we went straight to the game and it was freezing. He had us sitting in the family section and so we were sitting there but we didn't sit near anybody else. There weren't any other parents that he talked to while we were there.
He went to the locker room after the game to see his son. And the plan was that we would go grab dinner or something. So I went to the hotel bar and grabbed a drink. I was waiting for him. And he called me and said that his son had decided to go out with friends and, you know, whatever, teen boys, which does, I mean, it makes perfect sense to me.
He would tell me how excited his son was about meeting me because I would leave pasta dishes when his son was coming into town for the weekend and I'd send him with a dish of pasta. He would take the dishes out and then send me pictures of like him and his son mowing down on them like next time we're going to need two. And his son really loves them and he's super excited to meet his new stepmom and
Kanan would talk to me a lot about his son's career and the things that were happening on the football side and say, I have to go meet this guy. He wants to talk about a new contract. And would you be willing to look over that contract? And he would send me the contract. So I was heavily invested in his son's life and everything.
had not ever met him. I got lots of pictures and stuff. He was on TV. So I watched the games. I felt like I had a connection with his son without actually having met him. I'm used to stepping into a mother bear role with kids, especially if they've had loss. With my mom being an addict, I
lost all that time with her, even though she didn't pass until I was in my 40s, I can relate to what it must have been like for him. And then my two sons that I adopted lost their parents. It's just natural for me to gravitate towards kids that have experienced that loss.
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It felt weird to me that his son wouldn't have made a little bit of an effort to meet me and that Kanan wouldn't have sort of required him to at least stop by and say hi. If it was accurate that he was kind of as invested in this relationship as his dad had said that he was.
And the next morning when we woke up, we drove by his son's house and he was like, if he's up, we should, you know, stop by and say hi. And we drove by and he was like, oh, I don't see his car here. He must be at some girl's house or whatever. But I don't know, you know, what his car looked like. I don't, you know, I don't even know if that was his kid's house. Like it's a college campus. So he was just like, there's his apartment. Is it possible that
I didn't meet him because he doesn't even know I exist. And he didn't even know I was at the game. Or was he really just going out with friends? Who takes their girlfriend on a three-day road trip to meet their son and you don't meet that person? We were just going to head back to Seattle, but we weren't in a big rush. So when we're driving back, I had been texting with my dad a little bit and he was like, why don't you guys stop by?
We didn't have a plan to meet my parents. My parents' property is near a rest stop. So you can literally drive into the rest stop and hop the fence. I had brought it up to Kanan and he was like, oh yeah, that'd be fun. And then he sort of backpedaled a little like, you know, I don't know if we should stop. I wasn't prepared to meet your dad. I was like, they're so...
They're so chill. We're literally going to stop there for a few minutes. We ended up stopping at the rest stop, hopping the fence. My parents came over in their little Ranch Ranger vehicle. It's like a little tiny truck.
and there's only two seats and then the bed of the truck. Kanan and I hopped in the back of this truck, like crisscross applesauce. My dad drove us around the property. There's almost 100 acres. We didn't tour the whole thing, but my dad has cut trails in almost everywhere. My name is Gary Ard, and I am Brittany's dad. ♪
I know her whole story from a child, of course, until now. And she's been through some tough times. But those tough times have made this amazing woman that appears to me can kind of take on anything that comes at her. I'm not sure she thinks that, but...
I sure do. Most people would, if they would have conquered one of them, they would have felt their life was complete and they'd move on. Most of my boyfriends, when they meet you, are intimidated anyways. Perfect. As nature intended.
You know, we went down near the cliff. My dad took pictures of us with the valley and the mountains in the background. There wasn't a lot of conversation between them, but it was this fun little sort of drive around. I didn't get any good vibes from him when we were out there. I want to say I had some bad vibes because I kind of did, but I couldn't describe it because we didn't spend enough time to know.
But it's that millisecond when you meet people and it's like, "Yeah, we're going to have to get more information to know this one." Something didn't seem right to me about him. But you were happy and you had been happy. And so what do I know? I don't know him that well. And you guys were in a rush to get out of there.
I didn't know that that was his initial thought. And it doesn't surprise me that I didn't know that because the one thing about my dad is that no matter what I'm doing or what I've done, he supports a thousand percent. So like he said, he saw that I was happy and that's the road that he goes down, even if it's rough.
I love that my dad has the confidence in me to let me be human and have my own experiences. He hasn't ever said, you shouldn't do this, don't do that. Even when I was a child or a teenager, it wasn't ever about humanity.
controlling my path. It was about making sure that I felt confident in my choices on that path. I like that I get to learn and fuck up all on my own and know that kind of however I do that, my dad is going to be there to have my back. We hopped the fence back and got back on the road. And by then we were an hour and a half away from Seattle and
We got into town probably by four. He dropped me off at my house and then went back to Tacoma. As I'm thinking about this trip, the whole point of it was for me to meet his son. So I was disappointed not meeting him. It made sense in the moment. My kids would do the same thing to me.
But looking back on where we sat and the conversation around not getting to meet his son, it definitely raised red flags about whether or not his son even knew I was there at the game or if he even knew who I was or who had sent the pasta dishes with his dad.
There's so many different things that came up. We didn't stay in the hotel close to the stadium. We stayed at the one farther away. Like there was all these different things that looking back, it was pretty clear that he didn't want me to meet his son. My phone buzzes and I get a notification from this social media group. Emily was the first woman to comment on my post, something damning. What I know now is that
When we got back from that road trip, he dropped me off at my house and went on a date with Emily, the first woman that I found out about. You were messaging with the girl two weeks ago on Hinge. You told her you were on a road trip for the weekend. Our road trip. You may want to be a good person, but you're not. I am so disappointed in myself for believing your words. You are not to contact me or my family.
No, I did not. Two weeks ago, I was with you. I have not matched and messaged anyone since you. I'm not asking for excuses or more bullshit about how you weren't actively matching and messaging with women. I know that you were. I spoke with one. I'm curious about why. It sounds exhausting. I came to you open, genuine, and honest. Is this just who you truly are? If so, own it.
Well, I definitely know it's bullshit now. I know what I did and I know what I didn't do. And that, I will definitely own. You don't have to worry about me being dramatic or contacting your family like you said earlier. That's not me. But then again, how would you know? I want to be a good person, but I'm not. Finding out the way I did fucking hurt. I wish your son the best. I would have happily gave you my phone or whatever you needed to feel secure.
Pretty sure I've done that for five months already. There's nothing I wouldn't have done for you. Be well. I'm crushed. I really wish things would have worked out differently. I truly thought I had found my person. Same here. I didn't understand the depth of it. I still don't know where the lie ends and reality starts.
For that first month, I was nauseous the entire time. Every notification was more and more information confirming that the last five months had been a lie. Here's Brianna. And the new information wasn't, it's another girl he cheated on? Because I think that that's one thing. Like, we knew he was a cheater. So if it was like, oh, another girl, that kind of would have been like...
okay, shitty, but whatever. But when we got to the like learning that the basics of who he was describing himself to be were just factually wrong. And I remember at first people were telling different stories and we had no idea what to believe or what to say. And we like to investigate and deep dive on people and we couldn't.
like figure anything out. So I think there was a while where it was just like, what the hell is going on? And no way to know what was true or not, because nothing was lining up, nothing to really be corroborated. So it was... All of the stories were different. It was like my reality TV show update, where every time I went to the gym, it was like I was seeing the next episode and I'm like...
What are we going to hear now? This sounds so exhausting to do as like a person. Like you are not making any real connections with anyone because every single story you're telling and every single thing is just fabricated on some piece of a lie. Everything has to be a lie for your story to still work with what has actually happened. I remember when I came in and was like, she's alive. She's alive.
His ex-wife is alive.
Graphic design by Najella Shama. Opening theme by Youth Star and Miscellaneous. If you want to know more about Britt, follow her on social media. You can find her at brittany.ard on all platforms. If you like what we're doing, don't forget to hit that follow button wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. And also, give us a rate or review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
