Rudy A: Rebuilding After a 20-Year Marriage Ended

Six months is how long Rudy A spent at the bottom of it. His parents were not speaking to him, old friends had stopped returning calls, and the meetings he used to be invited to had stopped appearing on his calendar at work.

Rudy A is a creator who makes content about marriage, divorce, and rebuilding, mostly for an audience in their twenties and thirties who have not been married yet and want to hear what it actually looks like. He was with his high school sweetheart for twenty years, married for sixteen, and he grew up in a Hispanic Catholic family where divorce was not on the menu and the shame of it landed on his parents at their church before it landed on him. He found Been There Got Out through one of the community's own followers.

In this episode Rudy walks through what happened after he filed. Four years of couples counseling that clarified rather than fixed, and his comparison of it to joining a gym and then eating the same way at home. Three months of silence from his parents. His ex-wife's account reaching their mutual friends before his did, and what that did to friendships that went back to sixth grade. The same story arriving at the company they both worked for, and his standing there shrinking meeting by meeting. Shingles at thirty-eight, and nerve damage he still feels under stress. Lisa connects it to something BTGO tells clients constantly, which is that the account that lands first is the one people tend to believe.

The rest is how he got out of it, and none of it is grand. Comedies when he needed to laugh. Walks outside and saying good morning to strangers. Going to a movie by himself, which he says taught him more about who he was than the previous decade had. Movie reviews on a YouTube channel with a few hundred subscribers, which turned into interview work at a convention. A smaller and healthier circle of two or three friends. And the conversation with his kids on the day he told them, where he said they were going to prove everyone wrong, which he credits for the co-parenting relationship he and his ex-wife have now.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• What a smear campaign does to friendships, family, and standing at work
• The physical cost of a long low period, and the point at which he got help
• Why he credits therapy with the turnaround, in his own words
• Rebuilding a circle from two or three people instead of a crowd
• Doing things alone on purpose, and what he learned from it
• The conversation with his kids, and how it set the tone for co-parenting
• Why staying together for the kids models the thing you do not want repeated
• Confirmation bias, and why the account that lands first tends to stick

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 A 20-year relationship, and a community where divorce carries shame
3:00 Parents who stopped speaking for three months
6:00 Couples counseling, and what four years of it settled
9:00 Deciding to prove everyone wrong about divorced families
12:00 The kids were always listening, and what they copy
15:00 The day he told them, and setting the tone
17:00 The smear campaign: friends, family, and standing at work
20:00 Shingles at 38, and six months at the bottom
23:00 Getting out of it: walks, movies alone, saying hello to strangers
27:00 Learning who he was outside a marriage

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.