How I Prepared My Heart For Marriage After Divorce

A single hard question lit the fuse: if you say you want marriage after divorce, what have you actually done to prepare? We pull that thread all the way through, telling the truth about loving the feeling of being loved more than the person, the sting of financial insecurity, and the moment infidelity forced a mirror we could no longer dodge. The story is raw, sometimes funny in its honesty, and always aimed at growth—not image.

From there, we map the rebuild. Faith became a compass rather than a slogan, giving us the discernment to see relationships as they are and to hear correction as love instead of attack. Therapy did the heavy lifting of naming biases, tracing old patterns, and breaking codependency without breaking compassion. We cleaned the environment a future partner would enter: clear co‑parenting lanes, exes and family roles set with respect, and boundaries that protect softness. Stability wasn’t a flex; it was a promise—money right, credit steady, a home in order—so intimacy isn’t forced to carry the weight of survival.

We also talk about learning from healthy marriages and wise mentors, borrowing rhythms that fit and leaving what doesn’t. The “thermostat” idea ties it together: a husband sets conditions—cooling conflict, warming care, and guarding time for connection. No tired debates about who brings what to the table; the table is already set, bills paid, and love invited to flourish. If you’re rebuilding after heartbreak or trying to lead with integrity the next time around, this conversation offers a blueprint that’s honest, practical, and full of hope.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage for the next chapter, and leave a review to help others find these conversations.

Transcript

First Marriage And Wrong Motives

Financial Strain And Fragile Ego

Confession Of Infidelity

SPEAKER_00 0:05

And we're back for another conversation. Um, as always, I am grateful for everybody who tunes in, every download from the podcast app, every view, like, and share. Thank you all. Um, today's conversation live from the Carlos Speaks Podcast is going to talk about. I think it was a good question. The question was proposed to me. You talk very often about looking forward to being married after divorce. What have you done to prepare yourself for that? Hey, look, I love the accountability. All right, because if you're gonna talk about it, be about it, right? Um, I think in order to fully answer that question, I gotta go back a little bit, a lot of it. Um, I was first married uh in, and again, none of our truths and experiences are our own. So sometimes when you express yourself, you have to do it with the sensitivity that comes with being considerate of who had that experience with you. Right? Cool. Also, healing is not linear, like I said on the previous episode. So sometimes you're gonna have days where things are a little bit more um sensitive than others. All right, cool. Because I will never call people's names out, I would never um attack people for my experience. So let's get into it. I was first married in June of 2016. Um, and I'll be honest with you, uh, the woman that I married uh was an amazing woman. Truly, she was. Um and if I'm gonna be honest in hindsight, I married for the absolute wrong reasons. But I made them into the right reasons. Um this young lady was very, all the things, very dependable. She loved me down. But if I'm gonna be honest, there were some, I was at the point in time, I was a uh I was a juvenile probation officer in Charleston, South Carolina. And um money was tight. In my experience back then, they didn't get paid well. And so um there were some financial gaps in my life where um she definitely helped me cover down. Um and again, she provided me things that I didn't provide myself as it pertains to um my identity, loving me for who I was, accepting myself, um, and then ultimately helping me uh in a way that led to my increased codependency, right? All the things. So anyway, um she called me one day and said, babe, I think um I think I'm gonna join the military. And I had been in the military already. Um, and I was like, no, that's a terrible idea. Why are we doing that? No, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. And she said, Well, at least think about it. Because that's something that I think I want to do, and I would love your support. So I did what she asked, and I thought about it. And what I came up with was this would be great for us. Not her. I said, this would be great for us. Because I already knew, again, I'm in the military, so I know the benefits that come with being active duty military. So immediately, rather than selflessly thinking about her, I selfishly thought about us, me, and said, you know what? I think that's a great idea, babe. And she was like, You sure? Yeah, absolutely. Great idea. Um, so ultimately she joined. Um, and I supported her through boot camp. Um, and then when she graduated boot camp, um I reached out to her family. I said, Hey, I think I'm ready to uh marry your daughter. Love their family. She comes from a great family, and they loved me too. And they said, you know what? That's amazing. We love it. Yes, let's do it. They asked me why I want to do it. I gave all the right answers, um, and I got their blessing. And so um I asked her to marry me. She said yes, and she was over the moon happy. And um initially I was too. Um, so we relocated together to her first duty station. Um, and once we got settled, I was unemployed. Um, I was waiting for some things to transition in my life. And during that waiting period, she took care of everything. All the bills, she made sure we ate. If my son needed something, she showed up. Um all the things. And so in my ego, because I wasn't carrying my financial load, um I was frustrated. And I did not create an environment where she could be soft, where she could be feminine, where she felt loved above anything else. Um, case in point, there was one day she came home from work. Um and the military can be a very unforgiving place for a woman. Um, she came home from work and she came in, and the dishes were not clean, right? And uh immediately she started, she dropped her stuff at the door. She was like, why this kitchen look like this? And you be here all day. Now, why she say that to me? Because I ain't no, I ain't no, you can't be talking to me. Again, my ego is fragile. She's paying, she's making all the money, you know. Um, and we just live in this kind of tense situation um where we have our ups and downs, our good days, our bad days, and the bad days are really bad, and the good days are very few. I said to something to this effect, who are you talking to? And that turned into one of the biggest arguments we ever had. And it didn't even have to be that way, in hindsight. Um, so anyway, I just wanted to highlight that example to show you the state of existence we had in our marriage. Um, after a while, um I got situated. I got my active duty orders, um, and I was making money. I was making really good money. Um, and so now that a lot of my needs are being met, right, I'm sitting with myself and I'm realizing that I'm now giving myself things that she gave me, and now that I'm meeting those needs for myself, I'm reconsidering why I married this woman. And this is ooh. Because how do you how do you reconcile that? How do you admit to yourself that I may have married this person for the wrong reason? I may have married this person because I'm selfish, I may have married this person not because I love them, but because I love the way they love me. Again, we have real conversation here. So go ahead, lean back in, come back in. So there were times where I traveled without her, um, because my son still lived in South Carolina. Um, and so one weekend I went home to visit my son. Um, and by this time, like all my friends live back home. Everybody I used to know lived back home. And um went home to visit my son one weekend. And um, while I was there, I cheated on my wife. Because a lot of times we have to we have to say the thing. We have to say it in order to feel the conviction that comes with it. Because if we don't say it, then we don't live in the the reality of what it means and the gravity of what it means. And we bypass the the conviction by not saying it. I I did something when I went home or something bad. No, I cheated on my wife. I told you, listen, this is a place of transparency and honesty. So I cheated on my wife, and um this is the first time in my life I I felt terrible about something like this. Granted, before I got married, I haven't had a relationship where I cheated before. I've had relationships where I didn't really consider my partner, but this was the first time where I had uh a moment of infidelity, and I, oh, God beat me down. Because I I know what the covenant of marriage means. And this is my first marriage. I know what it means to be married under God to exchange vows, to say to death, do us part. So for me to to do this to a person that one I'm married to, two did not deserve it, three would never do this to me. Beat me down. I'll never forget it. It was October. October 2016. I came back home. And of course, I ain't gonna say nothing. What I look like. What I look like is saying that to my wife. So I get home, and um we vibing. And I wanna say maybe, maybe two weeks go by. And one day she asked me, she was like, hey, what's wrong? And I was like, don't you, man?

unknown 11:25

Ain't that wrong?

Consequences And Separation

Rushing Into A Second Marriage

Humbled And Returning To God

What I’ve Changed And Why

Boundaries, Money, And Wholeness

Setting The Thermostat Of Life

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Voice high, lying. She squinted her eyes at me and was like, What's wrong? I log in, nothing, because baby, you got you got if you ain't got a picture, video, 4K, 16 eyewitnesses, and I'm all of them gonna be liars. If you ain't catch me redheaded, I wasn't in the paint. So I went to the gym, and while I'm at the gym, it's it's heavy on me. I can't even focus on my workout. I got crack levels of caffeine in me, and I can't even really get through the workout because I feel terrible. And I go home, and my wife was in the kitchen. Never forget it. I'm watching TV, and we had one of those open layout apartments where uh the kitchen space goes into the living room space, so there's not a wall or anything, there's no barrier between the living room and the kitchen. She was uh washing dishes. I was on the couch. Y'all, I had this beautiful 85-inch UHD TV. It was curved. That TV, that TV ran me, that TV ran me 5,000 beans. 5,000 beans. And um I said babe. And one thing about a woman, she gonna know. She said, what Carlos? I said, um, while I was at home, I cheated on you. And again, one thing you gotta do is say it. And you gotta give it how it came. The person that you're with deserves that. They deserve that honesty, they deserve that truth. And um, she didn't say nothing. And I have my eyes glued on the TV, buddy. I was not gonna break contact with that TV. The next thing I know, a glass candelabra from the island in our kitchen flew by my head. And it was the grace of God that it didn't hit me. But it hit my TV and it shattered the TV. Y'all, oh God, I was I I was oh my heart broke for the TV. I wasn't even concerned about me. I almost died. My TV though, and then I realized we had three candlelibers. That was just one, which means the other two are probably on their way. I was right. I shot out that back door, ran down the street, and ran for my life and called my mama. I said, Ma, she trying to kill me. My mama said, What she, what you do to her? My mama's a girls' girl. So my mama, okay. I said, This is what happened. She said, Sound like you're about to get what you deserve. Don't call me back. Do, do, do. So she calls me, she being my wife at the time, calls me and says, Come back home. I said, Okay. I come back, I stand by the dough because I'm scared. And that's what consequences do to you. They'll put you in a place of fear. Right? Because you did something that goes against what you said you would never do. And the consequence of that scares you. And we talked about it. She understood. She wanted to stay together. I sat with it and I said, I can't. I can't sit in this because I don't love you how I should. I don't love you how a wife should, or how a husband should love his wife. And if we stay here, I'm going to hurt you again. And I don't want to do that to you. And as much as it breaks my heart to give you the truth, because I love you, I gotta tell you the truth. To my own detriment, I gotta tell you the truth. And so ultimately, um we divorced. Um, and she went on to um be happy, to have kids, get married, and I love that for her. She deserves all of that. Um now for me, the space in that between my first marriage and my second marriage um was one very short. Um I didn't do the work that was necessary to find me. Um, I didn't do the work that was necessary to seek God in order to have a godly marriage by first becoming a godly man. Um so when I met my second wife, and again, you know, healing is not linear. We have sensitivities that fluctuate, right? Met my second wife, and I was head over heels. I'm talking about enthralled, right? And um there were a lot of incompatibilities that I overlooked for the sake of wanting to be with somebody. Um, there are a lot of uh spaces in our relationship that uh we did not lean into um that we should have. Um so that caused us to, I think, make some decisions based off what we felt and not necessarily what was real or what was discussed or what was decided upon or agreed upon. Agreed is the best word. So that experience comes and goes. And so, as I've stated before, that divorce, that breakup is the thing that humbled me more than anything else. Um, because it put me in posture to build my relationship with God. Like I've said on previous episodes, it was in the darkness of that divorce that I found God because I lost the thing that was most important to me, which was that marriage, that person. I had idolized that relationship over everything else. So when that relationship had become broken, I was lost because I didn't have my guiding principle. Mind you, the guiding principle should have been God all alone. I tell y'all, we haven't real talk. So I say all of that to say that those experiences brought me to where I needed to be in the first place, which was in a space with God. Because when we do things under relationship, you have a different type of discernment. And for the people that aren't church folk, you make better decisions because you see the situation for what it is and not what you want it to be. You have a different level of grace and patience when you are in a position to hear God as it pertains to your relationship. You have the better ability to step outside of ego and offense because you believe that your partner is dealing with you from a place of love first. So, because I believe that you love me, I'm going to believe that what you're bringing to me comes from a place of love and not attack. So if you look at what it means to be an Ephesians man with a Proverbs woman, the connecting piece between those two individuals is love, right? Which is ultimately a reflect a reflection of the relationship you have with God. Right? So the first thing that I've done, I've put myself in a position to have a relationship and honor my relationship with God above anything else and anybody else. That's the first thing that I've done. The second thing that I've done is I've gone to therapy. Because there are some things that I can't reconcile in myself by myself. Because I'm a lot of me. I'm biased. I want to see the best in me. So I'm going to avoid the dark things that take away from what I think is the best of the best part of me. So I'm going to sit down with the lady. We're going to talk about where I went wrong. We're going to talk about the things that have influenced me to be conditioned to think the way that I think, my traumas. We're going to dissolve those, dismantle those, give me a solid place in my life where I am important to me. I know who I am. And I don't have a dependency on anything somebody can bring to me. That's number two. Number three, I fixed all the relationships in my life. Why is that important? Because I think that as a man, it's my responsibility to create an environment that when my wife comes, she don't got to deal with baby mama drama. She don't got to deal with drama for my exes. She don't got to deal with an unhealthy relationship with me and my mama or anybody in my family. It's my responsibility to curate the environment to cultivate the woman that she gets to grow into being my wife. That's important. Because as a man, if your wife got to come into your life and fight off these people herself, you are doing her a disservice, and I think that's cowardly. It's your responsibility to put all them people in their place. No, this is where you as a co-parent. This is where you are as my ex-wife. This is where you are as my mom. This is where you are as my children, and this is where you get to be as my wife. Make room for that woman. What else have I done? I put myself in a position where I can learn from healthy marriages, spiritually and naturally. And I can take those lessons and sift them for myself to keep the things that are applicable to me, applicable to me, right? And then disregard or put away the things that are not. I got my money right. I got my credit right. I own my house. So that I can be the best opportunity for this woman when she meets me. Because I don't want to be in pieces. Watch this. When I meet her and put her in a position where she can be just as broken as me. I'm talking to somebody and I need you to pick that up. You can be broken and bring somebody into your brokenness and break them as they come. And now you mad because they can't put the pieces you together because they in pieces. And neither one of y'all ain't got no peace. All right. Watch it. So those are the things that I feel like are the leading contributors to ensuring that I am in a healthy place to date, that I'm in a healthy place to be in a relationship. I'm in a healthy place to connect. And I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't delve into the spaces where people are having frivolous conversations like, what do you bring to the table? Or should a man go 50-50? Or look, bro, I ain't I ain't got time for that. Because at my house, the bill's gonna be paid regardless of who lives in it. Don't miss it. And get you a good church, get you a good community of good men. That those are the things that I've done. Those are the things that have contributed to the man that I that I've become, the man that I'm growing into, and the man that I pray that I grow into. The man that I'm called to be. It's my responsibility. I'm the facilitator of my life. It's my responsibility to make sure everything operates as it should. There's a I got a lot of wise men in my life. Um one in particular says that as a man, you set the thermostat in your life. And what that means is if it's too hot, you cool it down. If it's too cool, you warm it up. And that goes to say you set the conditions in your life. You put people in their place. And not from an egotistical place, it's from a healthy place. I love you, mama, and I'ma show up and be the best son that I can. But when I become somebody's husband, I gotta ensure that I do that in a way that best fits my marriage. Hey, bro, I love you. You my dog, you gang. I can't go out Friday, baby. That's that's date night with my wife, dog. And I'd rather let you down than let her down. And if that's a godly friend, you'll be like, all right, cool, bro. I get it. I get it. Because hey, but you ain't gonna live with me. Yeah, go home, dog. Or even for the single friends that I have, right? Because I'm single. So when I go out with my married friends, hey, bruh, the tide done turn. Go home. Go home, bruh. Go home, go home, go home. Go, hey, call that woman, stop by Waffle House, take her some food, and you go home. Because any space in your life that's willing to bring you down is a detriment not only to you, but to your marriage. Those are the things that I've done. Hopefully, this fully answers the question. Um, and yeah, yeah, that was, and again, you know, live in your truth, but don't be naive to the fact that those experiences belong to other people too. That helps you be accountable. So thank you for today's conversation.