Narcissists, Gaslighters, and Cheaters, Oh My!

Hey friends — we're hitting pause for a few weeks, and we wanted to pop in before we go. LAH is deep in the final countdown to her first solo art exhibit, Auroras in Sad Prose — an immersive show that weaves together her nature-inspired artwork, poetry, and a curated playlist of music that has carried her through healing and heartbreak. It's beautiful, it's personal, and it's all hers. We could no...

The system failed her. She told the truth anyway. Part II picks up with Emma making the drive back to his house — not for reconciliation, but for answers she was never going to get. She arrived to find a man who looked like a total mess, said nothing about her new car, and within minutes set a large knife in front of her on the bed. What followed was assault. Coercion under the guise of reconnecti...

Three weeks. That's all it took. Emma spent five years healing after a particularly brutal relationship ended in 2018. Five years of solo travel, self-improvement, building herself back up from the inside out. By the time she met him at a tattoo shop, she was — by her own account — at a psychological peak. More extroverted than she'd ever been. Solo traveling. Thriving. Finally ready. He was stoic...

Angel was raised by a woman she called the Vortex of Solitude. Someone who could walk into a room, and you could feel the darkness. She was also, in Angel's words, genuinely funny. Charismatic. Someone Angel loved — the way you love the mother you were given, even when she was the one doing the damage. Angel's story starts at the very beginning. A car accident when Angel was a year and a half that...

She's back — and she's healing, but she's not done. Shirley, our guest from the season two episode  The Relative Truth , returns with a long-awaited update. After nine years with a man who cheated with his own cousin, Shirley has done the work: betrayal coaching, a podcast of her own, and a hard-won emotional reckoning — including one final, tearful goodbye to the house that held all of it. B...

Some people leave the church quietly. Becky Garrison stayed and took notes. A satirist, journalist, and Yale Divinity School-trained religious critic, Becky spent over a decade as Senior Contributing Editor at The Wittenburg Door — the nation's oldest, most irreverent Christian satire magazine — before the institution gave her more material than she bargained for. Her latest book, Gaslighting for...

The pumpkins are out. The candles are lit. Behk & LAH are back for their annual Cozycore Autumn episode — and this one comes with gifts. 🎃🕯️ In this year's cozy special, we're slowing all the way down. Fuzzy socks, fall playlists, self-care rituals, and the kind of warm conversation that feels like a blanket you didn't know you needed. We're also sharing some personal updates, pulling back th...

We're taking a little detour from the narcissists this week. Consider it a palate cleanser. 🎃 In this special Halloween edition, Behk & LAH are setting the toxic relationships aside for one episode to bring you all the spooky autumn energy you didn't know you needed. Favorite fall rituals, cozy simmer pots, pumpkin everything — and then things get a little darker. Personal ghost stories that...

This is the final chapter of Emily's story. It is not a sad ending. In this episode, Emily brings us into the life she has built on the other side of everything — a partner who shows up with honesty and imperfection and genuine commitment, a relationship built on open communication and real intimacy, and, for the first time in a long time, the feeling of being truly safe. She also talks about the...

Emily thought her second marriage was a fresh start. It was not. In this chapter of Emily's story, she takes us into the betrayal she never saw coming — a husband living a secret life as a sex addict who had been using her photos to catfish other men online. Her image. Her face. Her identity — weaponized without her knowledge or consent. This is the kind of violation that doesn't just break trust....

Emily has stage 4 terminal cancer. Emily has stage 4 terminal cancer. When Behk heard her story, she knew it needed to be told. Emily said yes. This is the beginning of something different. Over the coming episodes, we'll be following Emily through the defining chapters of her life — her military service, the PTSD that followed, the toxic relationships that tested everything she thought she knew a...

Annie looked like she had it all together. She was terrified someone would find out she didn't. In this episode, Annie opens up about the relationship that found her in the middle of rediscovering herself — healing her faith, exploring her identity, cautiously stepping back into dating. The man she met seemed exciting. He became a nightmare. And in a small town where everyone knows Annie's name, h...

He was charming, intense, and exactly what Lauren needed during the loneliness of a pandemic. He was also on his eighth marriage when they met. In this episode, Lauren opens up about the two years she spent inside a relationship that moved fast, felt all-consuming, and slowly revealed itself to be something she needed to survive rather than enjoy. Love bombing that flipped to gaslighting. Emotiona...

The legal system is supposed to protect survivors. Professor Dale Margolin Cecka is here to talk about why it often doesn't. In this episode, Behk & LAH sit down with Professor Cecka — Director of the Family Violence Litigation Clinic at Albany Law School — for one of the most important conversations this podcast has ever had. She brings decades of legal expertise to the questions survivors ar...

Bryan almost lost his marriage. He's here to tell you what saved it. In this episode, Behk & LAH sit down with Bryan Power for a conversation that doesn't happen enough on podcasts like this one — a man who looked at his own behavior honestly, traced it back to where it came from, and did something about it. Bryan opens up about the unresolved childhood trauma that quietly followed him into hi...

Amie is a therapist. She still didn't see it coming. In this episode, Amie Schulz sits down with Behk & LAH to share something that takes real courage to say out loud — she got caught in an emotional affair with a coworker who turned out to be a covert narcissist. What started as a blurred boundary became a full campaign of manipulation, professional sabotage, and a smear operation designed to...

Kris survived a 17-year marriage. Then she fell in love again — and somehow that was harder. In this episode, Kris opens up about the relationship that found her on the other side of a long marriage and promised everything she'd been missing. The whirlwind. The love bombing. The engagement ring. The hope she kept choosing even as the messages piled up, each one revealing a little more of the doubl...

Veronika is still in the courtroom. She's also building something for everyone who comes after her. In part two, we pick back up with Veronika — still fighting, still standing, and somewhere in the middle of one of the most exhausting battles a person can face. Her ex hasn't stopped. The legal abuse continues. And Veronika has decided that if the system won't protect survivors, she'll build someth...

Veronika left. He just found a new way to keep hurting her. In this episode, Behk & LAH share the story of Veronika — one of LAH's friends — a woman who has spent her life navigating high-conflict men, starting with an emotionally abusive father and ending up in a relationship that became something far darker. She was drugged. She was raped. She built a life around her three children anyway. A...

Penny's grandfather had two families. He called the second one "the others." That tells you everything you need to know about where this story begins. In this episode, Penny takes us through a family legacy that was broken long before she arrived — a grandfather whose cruelty shaped a father who never learned how to show up, and a daughter who grew up feeling the very specific ache of being emotio...

Cleo lost her sister-in-law — the woman who had become one of the most important people in her life. And then someone new arrived. And things got worse. In this episode, Cleo opens up about grief, generational trauma, and what happens when a toxic person enters a family that is already broken open by loss. The manipulation. The fractured relationships. The helplessness of watching someone you love...

Buddy is back. And he is doing the work. A year ago, Buddy sat down with us fresh out of a whirlwind marriage that unraveled in ways nobody saw coming. Today he's back — lighter, clearer, and with the kind of hard-earned perspective that only comes from actually doing the hard things instead of just talking about them. In this episode, Buddy opens up about what healing has genuinely looked like ov...

We told you part two was a lot. We meant it. In the conclusion of Buddy's story, things escalate in a direction nobody saw coming — including a stint in jail that changed everything. Again. Buddy takes us through the aftermath, the turmoil, and ultimately the clarity that only comes after you've been through something truly unhinged. Stay until the end. Buddy has something to say to the men listen...

Four months of long distance. One whirlwind proposal. What could go wrong? In part one of Buddy's story, he takes us through the romance that felt like fate and the marriage that revealed itself to be something far more complicated. Severe bipolar disorder. Alcoholism. And a series of red flags that made perfect sense in hindsight and absolutely none in the moment. We're leaving you on a cliffhang...

Amanda Arnier is back. And she has been busy. When Amanda last joined us, she was in the middle of telling one of the most unhinged true stories we've ever heard on this show — a husband who presented himself to the world as a devout, family-first Christian man while secretly maintaining a gambling addiction, multiple affairs, secret lives, and a career in male escorting. The Dichotomy Diaries wen...