Heartbreak, failure, and honesty

There has been a string of psychologists, clergy members, adopted moms, family, and friends who have all tried to explain why I am the way I am. I think it’s in our nature to always wonder why… but I’m no therapy expert, so I’ll leave that mystery to the professionals. Instead, I’ll tell you what I am.
I see relationships as value driven. Growing up and moving every year I always saw people as temporary, and they represented temporary value.¹
In a recent Q&A I did on reddit, one user aptly described a similar situation he faced:
[Chris] sounds like a child of parents who took risk… I never gave a fuck about money growing up because we didn’t have it but we didn’t need it… I plan each day like a corporate job but my meetings are helping do chores or people in my community and meetings to learn more about my community.
At a certain point, you come to realization that money is fleeting, and certainly never assured. What is though, are your relationships with those around you.
There were times I wore clothes donated to me by a loving bishop.² Times my father got a better job because of a personal connection. Throughout my entire life, I’ve been supported by the network of people we were able to find.
And still, while I cherished these relationships… they were always temporary.
As a child, I’d tweak little things about me each move. “Don’t be as into beanie babies next time… don’t wear clothes with logos you don’t know, try making friends with the teacher next time, etc.” I’d change little bits about myself and see how the people around me reacted. Because nothing was permanent, I could be a little more “experimentive” with those personal tweaks. As an adult, you would call my behavior reckless.
I like to think I was just trying to fit in.

Interestingly enough, we usually learn the most when we fail; and boy did I fail. Hilariously enough, it seemed each tweak I’d make to try and fit in would only result an even worse idea… (really dude, you thought you could pull off the cool soccer kid? You were just into theater 6 months and yo yo before that). I was kinda clever though… lets call it a 90% success rate at goal and 10% failure.
At a certain point, the concept “failure” turned into “difficult but effective way to learn, quickly.” Ever since I can remember, I’ve embraced failure as simply a testing method… and that’s what I do, test.
It’s important to note that in order to be a good test, you must be unbiased, and shed failed results without hesitation. Moving every year meant that people in my life were temporary, it was rare that the consequences of my actions would follow me more than a couple years at most. As a kid, it let me be “reckless” in my testing, at least if wearing XXL hoodies didn’t work out and everyone hated me, I’d meet new people next year.

Unfortunately, as you grow older, the consequences of your testing start to be more complex. What happens if you date the smart librarian or the peppy soccer player? What happens if you’re the selfish Goldman Sachs employee, or the loyal church youth leader? Inevitably, you end up hurting someone.

I grew up Mormon, and talk extensively about it on my IGTV. I had been promised happiness if I lived that life with devotion, and I did. I never touched alcohol or drugs, was a virgin until marriage, served a 2 year mission, and married in the temple. For a good 26 years of my life, that promise of happiness held true, up until it didn’t; And just like every other test, I shed that part of me entirely, leaving the church, getting divorced, moving to a new city, and started off to test again… that departure still hurts my friends and family to this day in a devastating way.

So what do you get when you mix a semi successful newly ex-mormon bachelor with a new job and city? A lot of testing. In a way, I was never able to experience adolescences, and I was rapidly making up for lost time. 9 months into this I met Meredith, a beautiful girl from Tennessee who I consider to be my true first love, the smartest woman I know. She was recently coming off of a divorce as well, and we were both in a weird spot. I think we both knew it was too early to jump into a relationship, but our love was electric, and we dove into that test with both feet. People would later refer to us as the “ideal couple” or “the only people we know who have true love”.
Meredith had grown up in a very conservative small southern town. One day as a child she had told her father how badly she wanted to (and still does to this day) be an astronaut. “Blondes don’t become astronauts…” was the reply, and so she was raised. Once we started dating, we visited six countries, countless states, cultures and places she had never seen. I believed in her, and saw her potential as the brilliant woman she was as simply suppressed by a culture.
We grew together, as she allowed me to just “be me”. I had someone who loved me unconditionally, and helped me see the bad parts of me differently. It was ok to be selfish, as long as I was selfish for good. It was ok to be logical, as long as you logically considered the heart. All the energy I had previously spent trying to be something I wasn’t was suddenly allowed to be diverted to efforts.
My career accelerated at an unprecedented rate.

I had everything they promised I needed to be happy: Money, a good career, loving wife, a house; That acceleration and rapid success made me want to go faster and faster, and before I knew it I was working on projects that were having sweeping negative societal impacts³ and it really started to get to me. I crashed, and made some crushing mistakes. One of those mistakes was cheating on my wife, Meredith.⁴ I told her the next day, and she knew before asking.
In a Hail-Mary move, I suggested we move to Cambodia. “I’m juggling too much right now, and all I want to focus on is us… If we move to Cambodia, we can pause all this work pressure and focus on each other for as long as it takes.” I had failed the marriage and tech guy test, it was time to start a new one.

I don’t know why she came. I suppose she didn’t really have a choice, we left so fast she barely had time to think of any other options. Marriage (love), to Meredith, meant that this was the only person you’d always place above yourself. Someone you selflessly love, and sacrifice for above all else. It’s someone you can’t imagine living without, because they are your whole world. And I was that for Meredith, up until I wasn’t.

We made a good effort of it here. One of the most beautiful things about Siem Reap, Cambodia is that everything can go slow. We had all day to do nothing, read, lay in bed and talk/cry together. In a weird way, we learned more about each other and ourselves in that short time than we had in years.
I think that we could best be described as more iron man and captain america. Amazing friends, truly in love, inspire each other... just hard to understand someone who is so vastly different than you. Ultimately, our paths were meant to divert, for both of our happiness… and it sucks.
There’s something strange about breaking up with someone you’re still in love with. Keeping each other at arms reach because we know it’d hurt more if we reached in. She believes in true love. If you truly love someone, and want them to the most happiness life can offer, how can you stop them for pursuing that?
Meredith and I grew in ways I never knew was possible. I wouldn’t trade our experience for the world. I like to think that when I’m 70 I’ll finally be the person she knew I could be; and while the timing of it all is tragic, I’m grateful for the moments we were able to steal from this world. I love you Meredith, better days lie ahead.
¹ This is oversimplified. My family had times of joblessness and times of wealth.
² I was 9ish? Funny enough, they were his sons old clothes, and predominately sports oriented. Being a super-nerd, I had no idea about sports, and would often catch major flack about being a “poser” as I wore my sports jersey shirts with no facts to back them up. I had to google what being a poser was the first time I was called it.
³ Marketing as a whole can have both great and negative side effects, just like any industry. This was during the time of Trumps early presidency, and it was apparent there were problems in our relevancy algorithms. The romantic side of the technology is that when YOU search “best mexican food near me” you want to see home made tortilla’s and good salsa for under $4, while someone else may want to see a more bar focused mexican place with a good happy hour. In theory, a good marketing software is simply giving you what you wanted, faster. That’s good. However, when we change “best mexican food near me” to “border patrol policy” or “Charlottesville, VA rally” and two people are getting different information (facts), that’s a problem. How can we have a reasonable discussion when we are dealing on two entirely different factual planes?
⁴ Many of you know that Meredith and I lived an open relationship. Cheating can still occur in this situation, as all it takes is a breach of trust.
