Chapter Eight
Going Through the Motions

DURING THE COUPLE OF YEARS LEADING UP TO THE reality show, Terry’s career was on a slower track. He was home all the time enjoying being a dad and not having to be on the road 24-7. He loved spending time with the kids and taking Nick to hockey or soccer games. Despite being as famous as he was, Terry would hang out on the sidelines with me and make conversation with the other parents. People were always warm and friendly to him, and he was the same way back. It was nice that my kids had both of their parents cheering them on.

My relationship with Terry at this point was becoming difficult, and it certainly wasn’t like a honeymoon. It was more like we were going through the motions. Our sex life was one of convenience for him. And for me, I had so much on my plate with running the household that by the end of the day I was exhausted from taking care of the never-ending flow of people, employees, and friends who were in our home on a daily basis (our housekeeper was part-time, which meant I cleaned up at the end of each day). I would crawl into bed and hit the sheets. I was dead tired, but I looked forward to time alone with my husband to try to reconnect.

Just because I was ready for bed and some snuggling didn’t mean Terry was. At eleven P.M. he’d head into his bathroom, turn the TV on, and start his beauty regime of showering and shaving his whole body. It seemed like we could never go to bed at the same time or get on the same schedule. He marched to the beat of his own drum. If Terry could have made some conversation with me or reached over and tenderly touched me and rubbed my shoulders, I probably would have been more responsive to him, but he always seemed so distant.

I was so used to his indifference that I just let it go. I never really spoke up for myself because I didn’t want to start a big argument in the middle of the night by saying things like “Shut off the TV. How about having a little conversation?” or “Do you even care what I did today?” If he couldn’t see that he wasn’t paying attention to me, it wasn’t worth starting a whole argument about it. I could never win, so I just sort of gave up. Then, he woke me up for sex after I had fallen asleep. Sometimes I just had to get back up and sleepwalk through it. It really confused me why he didn’t spend time with me when I was awake waiting for him. I was basically doing my wifely duties. It became unemotional, and we sort of functioned on that level for a while. I tried to keep it as civil as possible, and so did he. We just existed, together but separately. He never seemed like he wanted to talk about his personal feelings. He couldn’t look me in the eye. I just needed a little emotion from him but couldn’t get it. We became strangers to each other.

I wasn’t happy, and I made excuses for my life. Who exactly out there has a perfect marriage? I thought. I looked at it and began to rationalize to myself: I think deep down that my husband really loves me. I know he loves the kids, too. I know that he loves having us there for him. At that point, I just didn’t know how to change anything. Our backs weren’t up against the wall enough to where I was ready to either jump or lunge. We were focused on the kids, and that was really what our connection was at that time. I felt like we were still on the mend from his first infidelity, and in spite of everything I still wanted to try to make our family work. I was giving him a second chance!

Brooke and Nick were still going to Saint Cecilia’s Catholic School in Clearwater. We had a typical household where I would get up in the morning and make the kids breakfast and pack their lunches. We would race off in the Suburban and drop them off at school. Nick was involved in sports and Brooke was taking piano and singing and dancing lessons. I always tried to have the kids involved in after-school activities. When they came home, we’d do homework together. That was the kind of lifestyle we led.

Because we only had one girl and one boy, each child was treated like an only child. They each had individual love, individual hugs, individual time with us, and many kisses. We had two absolutely beautiful children, and they were raised with morals, values, a conscience, and love. They didn’t get everything they wanted, in spite of what most people think. They were good kids. They didn’t talk back. They had manners and knew how to behave. We took them everywhere with us—restaurants, airplanes, wrestling events, and red carpets. They were such good kids, so well adjusted and loved by their peers. We were proud of both of them.

We hated the thought of leaving them home with a babysitter or nanny, and I never sent them to camp for the summer because they liked being home with their parents and pets. Life was good.

My relationship with Brooke was wonderful, and it still is. I’m very close with my daughter. Brooke and I are completely open with each other, because I always wanted to be honest with her and prepare her as best I could for all the things that happen in a young woman’s life. Growing up, Brooke asked me what it was like the first time having sex. And she asked me about the first time I got my period. I didn’t want things to be a surprise to her, so I was always straight up with her about everything (even my disappearing condom story from my teens that I mentioned earlier). I called Brooke “my little girlfriend” from the time she was a baby. She was my bud. Same with my Nick. I love having a son! He has always been such a beam of light in my life. He’s always happy and in a good mood. He’s respectful of both of his parents. He got extremely good grades and has always been popular and had a lot of friends. When people meet Nick, they instantly love him! He’s athletic, good-natured and he’s just always been a good kid. Sometimes I would miss my kids so much I would pick them up early from school and we’d go shopping. Or we’d just come home and cook and watch TV.

I had kids to have kids. Next thing you know, they start preschool and then they’re with teachers all day. They’re gone! So I would use all of those sick days and keep them with me. If I could have, I would have had two more kids. I guess that’s why I had so many pets.

I’m not going to say pulling them out of school was the best thing to do, but both of my kids were very bright students and levelheaded. I didn’t think it would ruin them, especially considering their passions went beyond the traditional school curriculum. Human life experiences are so much more important than having perfect attendance at a school.

BROOKE HAD ALWAYS BEEN THE LITTLE ENTERTAINER AT THE house. It wasn’t just Terry, so I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. At two and a half years old, she could barely talk but was already reciting the words to nursery rhymes. She watched The Little Mermaid and The Wizard of Oz and she could memorize all of the words to those songs, singing them with perfect pitch. At only a few years old, she had a memory like a steel trap and still does. She would make everyone sit on the couch, then come down from her room wearing a twirly dress and perform one of the Disney numbers for all of us. Brooke had a natural ability at the piano as well. I thought it was cute, but I had no idea that it would turn into something that she would want to do for the rest of her life.

When she was fourteen years old, she expressed interest in singing. I was in our pool at our Willadel home floating around on a raft getting some sun when Brooke came outside and slammed the phone book down on the pool deck. “Mom, that’s it!” she exclaimed. “I want you to call someone for me because I want to get into acting, modeling, or singing.”

I lay there smiling to myself and thinking a simple phone book wouldn’t offer the answers. While many parents often try to get their children into acting or modeling, Terry and I never pressured our kids toward any type of career in that direction. But it wasn’t us pushing Brooke . . . it was Brooke pushing us. It was clear that she was determined and wanted her mother’s help.

“It’s Sunday and we can’t call anybody this afternoon,” I said. “Nobody will be at their offices.”

“No, Mom,” she shot back. “Call anyway because this is something I really have to do.”

I got out of the pool and turned to the modeling and talent sections of the phone book. I took a shot in the dark in the bright sunshine and left a few voice mails for people at various agencies. Whether they would return our calls or not, Brooke immediately felt better that I reached out and tried. She’s so cute.

Monday rolled around and I actually got some phone calls back. I guess that “Brooke knew best” even early on! One call was from an agency in Clearwater that teaches young girls how to do makeup and prepares them for photo shoots. Brooke met with a woman named Diane at the agency and they decided to work together.

Brooke’s interest in music quickly took center stage over the acting and modeling. She was inspired by all of the artists I love and listen to from my era: Toni Braxton, Teena Marie, Amy Grant, Carole King, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Luther Vandross, and Elton John. She started playing piano with me and also with a piano teacher at an early age. We knew that we had to get the right person involved so she wouldn’t lose interest in moving forward as she got older. She began working with a talented piano teacher named Theo who taught her the Alicia Keys and Norah Jones styles of piano and vocals. It was then that I realized Brooke could be the next star in our family.

Lights, Camera, Reaction

It’s been said that, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” That certainly proved to be the case for our family when we entered the world of reality television.

In 2004, VH1 approached us to do a one-hour special entitled Hulk Hogan: Stage Dad. Producers from the Florida-based production company Pink Sneakers came to our Willadel home for a meeting and explained the vibe of the show, which would entail Terry playing “stage dad” and helping Brooke with her music. Brooke was still working with Lou Pearlman in Orlando, and he realized that Brooke had huge potential. She was doing small concerts and actually working with a live band!

They felt this would be a great vehicle to help launch Brooke’s singing career as well as put Terry’s career back on the map. He was still wrestling now and then, but he had slowed down quite a bit due to hip and knee surgeries. It was probably a bigger draw just to see Hulk Hogan at home.

I think Brooke’s singing and dancing background came from me and her stage presence came from Terry. I would always have music playing in the house, and I sang and played the piano ever since the kids were small. At parties we had, I’d sing karaoke into the mic, and jump up on the coffee table and sing and dance. Brooke and Nick loved my outgoing style and my ability to have fun and not worry what other people thought. I really think that between their dad being a showman on TV and me being one at home, Brooke and Nick loved music and loved people! I took Brooke to lessons and the recording studio. What the heck, if the show would help the kids, then I was on board! We felt that with Terry’s recognition, we could help Brooke break into show biz, too. And with her musical ability VH1 was the perfect platform.

Camera crews filmed us for three months straight, mostly following Brooke closely on her career. Once shooting wrapped, our lives returned to just as they had been before. One morning, I was watching the news and the ticker message at the bottom of the screen said that Britney Spears had fired her longtime manager, Larry Rudolph. Although it was a long shot, I thought maybe he could help Brooke launch a career. I called Terry and he felt Rudolph was probably not interested in an unknown. But when I get a gut feeling like that, I fight for it. I knew what I had put into Brooke and what she was capable of doing. And I knew that if Larry Rudolph met Brooke, she could deliver. I had instilled confidence in her, which added to her talent and winning smile. So I had Terry make some calls, to get a hold of Larry Rudolph’s office. He returned our call that same day and, surprisingly, he said he would be very interested in helping Brooke. It was an exciting moment for the family and especially for Brooke. They ended up working together for a whole year, and Rudolph was very instrumental in her development as an artist. Things were moving forward in the right direction to record Brooke’s first album.

VH1 was extremely pumped up about the footage that was shot for the special. Hulk Hogan: Stage Dad aired and resulted in really high ratings. VH1 asked us to continue in our own reality series called Hogan Knows Best.

The producers and directors tried to find our unique personalities for the new show based on what we did on a daily basis and what our interests were. Brooke was the aspiring singer and Nick was the typical little brother. He portrayed a modern-day Dennis the Menace, but in a good way. I was a regular June Cleaver—America’s mom, but the wife of a celebrity and mother to two kids who were becoming famous in their own right. I wasn’t acting my role. I was really just being myself. I was a fun-loving, unpretentious, easygoing wife. I didn’t have servants around to wait on us. There was no “Don’t touch me I’m in my Chanel suit.” Ultimately, it was my own personality that was coming through. First and foremost, I was Terry’s wife and a mother.

We didn’t know how the behind the scenes of a reality TV show worked. We thought that reality meant that the production crew would be sleeping in our house with us. I was kind of bracing myself for the worst. Then, we realized that the crew people don’t stay up for twenty-four-hour shifts. They come over to your house and work an eight- to ten-hour day and follow you around doing whatever happens in your life.

It was a huge learning curve to get used to shooting the show. For instance, we spent the majority of our days walking around with mic packs hooked to our hips. Many times in the early days we’d forget that the mics were still on us and go to the bathroom; the crew would hear us peeing.

The whole family didn’t know how the producers were going to put together all of these pieces of footage they were gathering. I really didn’t think they were going to feature me very much at all. I had some small scenes at the beginning. For example, I would pop my head in and say, “Brooke, you have a phone call.” I expected that. I didn’t care. Terry was in it predominately, and then it was Brooke and then Nick and then me. I was fine with that because I was all about Terry and the kids launching and sustaining their careers. I was all about supporting them.

When we saw the first episode edited together with funny music and camera angles, it was just an absolute riot. It was comical to see our family portrayed in a way that made us realize that we were pretty funny! Once we realized how it all worked we wanted to bring more of it! It turned into a very rewarding experience.

I became a creative consultant on the show because the production crew kept looking to me for guidance about what the family was doing, since we were all in different directions. We didn’t have wardrobe or makeup people, because Brooke and I had fun doing our own. During Terry’s wrestling days, his bright red-and-yellow tights got him way more attention than the wrestlers who wore boring black. The colors grabbed you and made you want to stop switching channels and take in the action. Although these looks didn’t work out well in public, they really popped on television. I wanted to do same thing for the visual look of our reality show. In every scene, we wore bright colors like turquoise and yellow, and it made Hogan Knows Best a very colorful Florida show. Even though it was kind of goofy, it really worked.

Living in a house where they shoot a television show every day isn’t easy. A camera crew of twenty-eight rang our doorbell each morning at eight A.M. During that first season, five major hurricanes ripped through our area of Florida, so we mostly had to shoot indoors. Equipment like additional lights were attached to the beams in the ceiling of our kitchen. We even had a tint on many of our windows to block out the natural light, so it was dark in the house. It was expensive for production to take this stuff down and put it back up every day, so we just lived with it after the cameras left. It was like our house became a set at a television studio. Things were often so surreal that it felt like we were in the movie The Truman Show. We started to forget what day it was and what real life was like outside our front door.

It would take two weeks to shoot one episode during season one. After being sandwiched together all day, work was finally over at around eight P.M. Terry, the kids, and I would go out to dinner and then we’d come back home and all go off and do our own thing. Even though we were family and I love my kids more than anything, we definitely needed a break from each other.

We really didn’t know the impact the show was going to have until it aired. Fans quickly began to recognize all of us, which was something new for Nick and me. When fans would tell me that I was their favorite TV mom, at first it freaked me out. Moms said they liked me because they could relate to me. Men said they liked me because I was a sexy mom. Teenage girls came up to me because they were excited to meet Brooke and Nick’s mom. Prior to this, if I was noticed, it was because I was Hulk Hogan’s wife. Now, I was becoming a sort of persona in my own right, just being the wife and mother in the Hogan household. It’s heartwarming when you’re commended for doing what you love.

Sometimes, men would approach me and say, “I can’t believe you’re the mom. I thought you and your daughter were sisters.” Flattery will get you everywhere! I actually found an old fan letter the other day from a man who wrote that I was beautiful and that Hulk was the luckiest man in the world. It made me feel good because, although I felt that my husband might have appreciated me privately, he was always kind of mechanical about it in public. So it was nice when I heard it from a random fan.

Seeing myself all the time on television was a new thing. At first I thought, Oh my God, I look so fat. Then I let go of those feelings and stopped being so hard on myself. This was reality television, and the world was seeing me for who I really was. Whether we were shooting part of an episode where I had just woken up in the morning or I was glammed up for a night out with Terry, I was seen at my best and my worst. I didn’t feel the need to be skinny to be married to Hulk Hogan or to be the mother of my kids. The public was acknowledging me for what I did as a wife and mother, rather than for how I looked—although I did catch some flak about my wardrobe! I’m just not great at picking out clothes, so I wore whatever I felt like, if it matched my mood. I guess all the years at Catholic school wearing a uniform sort of ruined my ability to figure out “free dress.” I always worked out in the gym. But after doing it and watching grams of fat and carbs and living by the scale and mirror, I just got burned out. There is just more to life than a perfect figure!

I believe the public embraced our characters on the show because we weren’t afraid to reveal the private side of our lives. Everything was so fun filming as a family. Reality TV was great. The acting started when the cameras stopped rolling, and the conversation ended, too.

Extreme Measures

After we shot the first season of Hogan Knows Best, a wrap party was definitely in order! The reality was that everyone on our reality show worked their butts off and it was time to let loose and celebrate a job well done.

At around eight P.M. after our last day of shooting, the crew and our family headed over to Shephard’s on the beach in Clearwater. About sixty of us had dinner and drinks while a live band played. At about one thirty in the morning Terry wanted to go home, but I wanted to stay for one more dance. The kids were still dancing and having fun with the crew, and so was I.

“Can’t we wait to leave?” I asked. “I love this song, and the band is still playing.” Terry got more irritated when I insisted on not going home. I didn’t want to leave, and neither did the kids. We were all having fun . . . all of us except Terry. I had another drink and continued to get my groove on regardless of his attitude.

When we got home, Terry immediately ripped into me. “I wanted to leave an hour earlier and you didn’t listen to me,” he said. “You were partying all night and I was tired. I’m so sick of this crap!”

“What are you sick of?” I asked, confused. “I wasn’t dancing with any guys. I was dancing with your wrestler friend’s wife, Toni! What’s your problem?” I replied. “I work full time and do everything for you, and you sat back and glared at me all night!”

“I’m just sick of this,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

What couldn’t he stand anymore? He was the huge partier. Not me. He’s the one who talked openly and candidly about his drug and alcohol abuse and pain pill addiction. He was just jealous. I wasn’t trying to make him jealous. I just have an open personality and was being friendly and social as I always am. In retrospect, he was probably already setting up to leave me when the show wrapped. I did drink two or three glasses of wine after shooting, out at dinner, but I’ve never been an out-of-control drunk! When I drank, I’d get happy, laugh, and talk. And if I did lash out after having a couple of glasses of wine, it wasn’t because of the wine. I was just sick of the situation I was trapped in, sick of being taunted.

I was forty-five years old, and now Terry picked up the phone and called my mother at two thirty in the morning. “I can’t control Linda anymore,” he yelled into the phone. “She’s out of control and drinking all the time. I’m sick of it. I need your help. I’m sending her home. You deal with her!”

I was shocked at Terry’s behavior. Not only did he ruin the fun we were all having at the wrap party, but I was shocked and alarmed that he called my mother three thousand miles away telling her I was basically an out-of-control drunk. I was pissed at Terry for overreacting and scaring my family!

The next morning, he told me he was sending me to California whether I liked it or not. He gave me an ultimatum: check into rehab or don’t come back. When I arrived in California, it was like walking into an intervention. Terry had brainwashed my parents into thinking I was an alcoholic without them even hearing my side of the story. My mother scolded me and said she couldn’t believe my behavior. She told me that she was driving me, or I was to drive myself, to rehab at the Betty Ford Center.

Terry was Hulk Hogan—Mr. Wonderful to most—and people assumed that his word was the word because he was so famous. They were blinded by his star power. The cards were stacked against me. He convinced them that I had a problem and I needed help. If only my family knew what I was really dealing with! I got into my Mercedes and drove to Palm Springs where the Betty Ford Center is located. I was advised by Terry and my family to put in a full month of rehab at the center. Oh my God, I thought, I can’t see my kids for a month? I hate him! How could he lie and do this to me? It felt like a conspiracy!

The next day, I met with a counselor and she asked me a series of questions about my drinking history.

“I don’t really have a drinking history,” I said. “I do drink two or three glasses of wine with dinner. Other than that, that’s about it. I have kids and I’m shooting a television show all day, so there is no time to just sit around and get drunk.”

“Two or three glasses of wine?” the counselor asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“Three glasses is my max, because I have to get up in the morning with the kids.”

“Tell me about your police record.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“No.”

“Have you ever gotten a DUI?”

“No.”

“Have you ever blacked out from drinking?”

“No.”

“What about prescription medication?”

“I don’t take any medication. Sometimes I take Excedrin.”

“So you don’t take any prescribed medications?”

“No. I don’t have any prescriptions for anything!”

“Any dependencies?”

“No, just my kids and my animals.”

“Then why are you here?”

“My husband got angry with me because we were out and I had a few drinks. It was a party, and I was dancing and having fun.”

“Sounds like your husband is a little jealous.”

“Probably,” I responded with a sigh. “My father had a drinking problem years ago, and I think that maybe my family thinks I have one, too. But I don’t drink in secret or private. I drink in public at a restaurant, or at home with my family and friends.”

“I don’t think there is any need for you to be here,” the counselor stated. “But if you want to stay, you can.”

I decided to stay at the Betty Ford Center and prove everyone wrong. I had my blood tested and there wasn’t a trace of alcohol or drugs in it. After four days of being in there with people who had AIDS and serious drug and alcohol dependencies, I started to realize this was not the place for me. It was scary, in fact. I had never seen people in such bad shape—blisters on their fingers and lips, with their teeth actually rotting.

After a few more days, I said enough is enough. I didn’t want to leave the Betty Ford Center without my parents’ permission, but I hated every minute of it and wanted to get out of there. I didn’t miss drinking wine. I just missed my children. My mom insisted that Terry decide.

I called Terry from Palm Springs and told him that I wanted to leave rehab early and come back home to Florida. He told me that I could come back as long as I promised to be good and stop drinking for a while. I think he realized how his little plan was turning into a serious life-changing event for not only me but our kids. They missed their mom!

At Betty Ford I had time to think about the state of my marriage. I think the whole reason Terry insisted on sending me to rehab was because he was beginning to lose control over me. For years, I was behind the scenes while Terry basked in the spotlight. I was fine with that. But now I was getting noticed. I wasn’t just this girl behind the man, at Terry’s beck and call. I was now seen as almost an equal to him, and I think it kind of bugged him. Like I always say, “There is only room for one star at the top.” And it was always him. Ironically, I was only doing the television show to help Terry and our children. I never jumped into showbiz before. It wasn’t my calling. I liked decorating, fixing up our home, and taking care of our kids and animals. I didn’t want to be famous. I didn’t need the adoration of anyone except my family and dogs! I loved being a housewife and mom. But now that I was a television personality just like Terry, he kept saying I was out of control.

I wasn’t out of control. I just wasn’t in his control.

One of the ways Terry would control me had to do with the children. Whenever I wanted to put the kids in school in California, he would immediately get on the phone and set Brooke up with a big business deal in Florida. He would always undermine my plans and overpower me with his contacts to continue to keep everything in Florida. Terry would also use the kids against me. If I said red in front of them, he’d say it should be blue. If I said it was okay for Nick to go on a field trip, he would say that it wasn’t. It seemed that it didn’t even matter whether it was good for the kids or bad for the kids, everything had to go the opposite direction from me. Parents have to always take a unified front when it comes to their kids. He never did that.

Terry would also control me with his moods. He would get into a bad mood for no reason at all, and I would ask him over and over what was wrong. Was it something I did? Something I said? I always felt like I was at fault for his sadness. But this was just another way for him to manipulate and control me. When we would get into an argument, he would often break things that I loved. I had an antique wagon that I used as a bassinet for Brooke and he picked it up and threw it across the room one time. He tore my shirt, threw lamps, and held me down on the bed with his hands around my throat during arguments. Slamming doors. Pounding walls. I was always afraid he would kill me in one of his rages. I started to get fed up with it all, the abuse, the manipulation, which I figured stemmed from his jealousy or something! But what could I do? There was no way to talk it out when he was in a rage like that. So I would usually just get in the car and leave.

I wish I had been more aware of the signs of a controlling husband earlier on. While I’m on the subject, here are some of them:

 

1. He calls you all day long to keep track of your whereabouts, probably to avoid crossing paths.

2. He knows how to push your buttons and does it often.

3. He embarrasses you in public.

4. He shoves, grabs, and/or pushes you during an argument. You become submissive because you’re afraid of triggering another violent rage.

5. He intimidates you by threatening to take away your most precious things, such as your children, pets, homes, and friends.

6. He dictates the rules and tries to control everything in your life—what you do, where you go, what the money is spent on, and so on.

7. You feel like you’re being held hostage emotionally, because you’re afraid to speak your mind.

8. He convinces you that you can’t function and that you’re incompetent without him in your life.

9. He never confesses to anything, no matter how much evidence you have. Then he turns the tables saying that you’re the one who’s crazy.

10. He eavesdrops on your conversations and becomes impatient when you’re spending time with your friends and family.

 

When I left Betty Ford, I drove myself back to my house in California. I was by myself and happy to be out of that place. I didn’t know if I was going to try to keep my marriage together because I was so bitter and angry at him. I wasn’t as angry about him sending me to Betty Ford as I was at the fact that he turned my family and kids against me. I wondered how my husband could do this to my children. Alcoholism? They didn’t even know what that was. He scared them into thinking something was wrong with their mom. He even had my own mother believing it, and she wasn’t around! I realized he’d had an intervention. Why? Something I never saw coming. Something I didn’t understand.

I did think about leaving him at that time. I just didn’t know how. That was probably one of the biggest moments of depression that I ever went through. I didn’t want to go home, but I missed my kids! I just didn’t want to face Terry. I didn’t want to make it work anymore. I was mad as hell at him. I was mad at my parents for not listening to me. They felt I was out of control at that time. If I had said I wanted a divorce, they would have thought I was spiraling further out of control. I had to regain my self-confidence and my composure. I had to get the control back that was taken away from me so unfairly. I was being bullied in my marriage. I realized at that point I couldn’t be the victim anymore.

I really wanted to go back home because my kids needed me. I flew back to Florida just to be with them. They were so happy to see me. I can’t tell you the joy that filled my body once I held my two kids again. I’ll never let anything ever come between me and my kids again.

Terry was glad to see that the kids were so happy. I think he also saw me as defeated and dependent once again. He had finally regained the control he so desperately needed. I remained on my best behavior, all the while being a dumb fox! I knew what he was doing! I also knew in my heart of hearts that I wasn’t the one with a dependency problem!