Hello there! I’m Mark White, a certified marriage and relationship coach. I want to share my story with you, so grab your favorite beverage and find a comfortable seat before reading this as it’s going to be quite extensive. I’m going to share things that are very personal and if these things deter you from seeking my services, I completely understand. Full disclosure, I’m going to overshare in this story. It’s all truthful, but won’t paint me in the best of light. However, I sincerely hope that the story is more endearing than alienating. If you’re going through marriage or relationship struggles, give me an opportunity to save your marriage or relationship. If you’re willing to do the work, I guarantee I can give you positive results.

To understand my story and how I arrived at being a certified relationship coach, we have to go back quite a few years. In 1999, I married young. I was an active duty US Marine and married a woman quite a bit older than me who was a divorcee with a child only 12 years younger than I was. She was one of the funniest human beings I’d ever met. Two weeks after marrying, we found out she was pregnant. Four weeks after that, we found out she was carrying twins. Those twins will be 27 in the year 2026. That marriage didn’t last long. I married a woman with the sense of humor and the accountability of a 15 year old boy. She was my best friend and for a while, I thoroughly enjoyed every day of it. The laughs were great, but when you have kids, jobs, bills, and responsibilities, that personality type doesn’t hold. I wished we had waited to have kids. She left when the girls were two and a half years old, leaving her older daughter with me for a few months while she got settled. That was spring of 2003. I raised my daughters mostly by myself with the help of my parents. She was in and out of their lives. She was not a bad person at all, and from what I hear, she’s just still trying to grow up, even now in her mid-fifties. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but I do hope she’s doing well and has found happiness. While I was sad that marriage ended, it was not the end of the world for me, so it didn’t really motivate me to change.

In July of 2010, my dad was in a life-changing vehicle wreck that left him with a traumatic brain injury. He was in a coma for a number of days and the hospital for a couple of weeks before they sent him home. However, even once he was home, he was still non-ambulatory, required 24/7 care, and was being fed through a PEG tube. This was an adventure, but we did help him heal over time. Unfortunately, after recovering 85-90% of his cognitive and physical abilities, tragedy struck again. My dad was what is referred to as a brittle diabetic. This means they are a diabetic that floats between being a type 1 and a type 2 diabetic which makes managing their blood glucose very difficult. In November of 2015, while my mom was at work and I was at my home a 20-minute drive from my parents’ house, my dad decided he needed to make some repairs to the roof of the house. This wasn’t out of his skillset as he was a career carpenter. Once on the roof, apparently he had a hypoglycemic episode due to his diabetes and fell off of said roof. He landed on his head breaking his neck, inducing a subarachnoid hemorage, and leaving him with, at least, the third traumatic brain injury of his lifetime. Again, we were at the hospital for a couple weeks while the professionals tried to determine the extent of his injuries. As of 2026, he’s still alive, but we recently put him on hospice at only 69 years old. The multiple traumatic brain injuries have induced what is referred to as secondary Parkinson’s disease. This is a condition with all the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease but not caused by genetics.

While staying with my dad during his hospital stay in 2015 after his second accident, I was returning from the cafeteria with a bottled drink and this nurse in an isolation gown was walking backwards from the nurses station. I stopped short to attempt to prevent colliding with her, but she kept walking backwards and nearly walked over the top of me. She turned, gave me a look implying that it was all my fault, gave me a “hrmphf” while flaring her nostrils and walked past me. It was instant love. When I walked into my dad’s room, my mom asked me, “What was that all about?” I said, “I have no idea, but I’m going to find out.” The next night, I looked everywhere for her but to no avail. I asked the nurses at the nurses’ desk and they refused to share any information with me. I was heartbroken. It turns out that wasn’t her regular unit and she worked in a completely different building on the other side of the hospital and had just been floated to that unit the night before. Fast forward two years and I’m sitting at the house flipping through Tinder. All of the sudden, I see a familiar face. It’s the nurse. My heart soared, and of course I swiped right on her. I believe I may have permanently left a thumb-swipe impression on my phone from my exuberance. She reciprocated the swipe. We went on our first date in June of 2017 and, with the exception of my travel for work, spent everyday of the next nine years together. She’s the love of my life. I prayed for years that God would send me someone my equal, and did he ever. Nine years, many jobs, and two kids later, she’s still the greatest thing that ever happened to me and I can’t thank God enough for sending her my way. Neither of us are perfect, but we’re both pretty awesome in our own rights.

In October of 2025, I was sitting at my house one midmorning, hanging out my kids, and I see lights shining on my wall. I look out the window and I see a car in the driveway with it’s headlights on. Then I move to another window and see a person walking around in my yard like they own my house. They then redirect and enter an area of my property where strangers shouldn’t be, a covered carport where I store large tools such as welders, cutting torches, concrete mixers, and large tool boxes. I retrieved a sidearm from my gun cabinet, stepped out on my front porch in my pajamas, gun at my side, and clearly and assertively asked this person, “Who are you and what are you doing on my property?” Keep in my mind I had two young children in my house and I was there alone. The person turns and approaches me from about 35 feet away and introduces herself as city codes enforcement. I didn’t realize until this moment that it was a woman. She said that I was in violation of city codes because I didn’t have a permit for my daughter’s chickens. I calmly, but assertively, told this woman that I didn’t believe I needed a permit to grow food on my own property. I told her to write me a citation and we’d go to court and talk about it. She said she would be in touch via the mail. The whole verbal interaction lasted about 90 seconds and neither of us raised our voices. I would also like to stress that during this interaction I’m still in my pajamas on my covered front porch with my small children inside. After leaving my home, this lady drives to the local police station and fabricates a story that I threatened her with my firearm. This was obviously a complete fallacy. I am both a US Marine and was a state of Tennessee law enforcement officer as recently as June of 2025. I am well-trained in firearms and firearm safety. I’m also intimately familiar with Tennessee gun laws and know better than to verbally threaten someone while holding a firearm. Nonetheless, several hours later, the city police department SWAT team rolled an MRAP in our front yard with what appeared to be about an 11-man SWAT team. They telephoned me inside my home and said they had a warrant for my arrest. I stalled long enough for my wife to get home to take our children. Our son is severely autistic, non-verbal and still in diapers at eight years old. Once I passed off my children, I surrendered myself to the police. Needless to say, we’ve trounced them in court. Just to be clear, I had my house SWAT’d because I had unpermitted chickens and I hurt the code enforcement lady’s feelings. Unfortunately, because of these fabricated charges, I lost my six-figure job in tech and was basically unemployable until I beat the charges.

A week after I was arrested, my mom had quadruple bypass surgery and I had to move to my mom and dad’s for a number of months. The plan was that the kids would stay with me on days my wife worked and then with her on days she didn’t work. However, my kids didn’t want to go home without me so we all ended up living at my parents’ house for the next three months, including my wife. This was not an ideal situation. There was a lot of stress and tension. About two weeks before we moved back home, one of my older daughters came to visit us, mostly to see my mom. She and I weren’t on great terms. While she was there, we got into a huge argument. She was only there two days. After leaving and heading back to South Carolina, my daughter, in retaliation for the argument we had, called DCS and made a false complaint that I was abusing my autistic son. This call triggered an investigation by DCS. For the record, both my mom and my wife accuse me of showing favoritism to my son. He’s my best buddy and I honestly couldn’t imagine my life without him. This was literally just a way for my daughter to hurt me because I hurt her feelings by sharing the truth with her. Just to recap, at this point over the last 3 months, I had been arrested under false allegations, my mom had life-altering surgery, I was caring for my disabled dad 24/7, me and my entire family were living at my parents in their tiny 1500 sq ft house, I was maintaining both my home and my parents’ 15 acre non-working farm, and now my disgruntled daughter created another extraordinary headache in my life by making these false allegations to DCS. What a wild ride. My pastor recently preached sermon about sometimes we need to spend some time in the fire like Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. You probably remember them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but if you recall the story, they were cast in as three, but were observed as four. I assure you that Jesus-Christ is walking with me everyday because I alone could not withstand the trials and tribulations I’ve been dealt over the last year.

Daniel 3:25 He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.

After moving back home with my family at the beginning of February, things were not the same. My wife was cold, distant, she was less patient with the kids, and just all around unhappy. I spoke to her multiple times, and she just kept claiming she was tired and that work was consuming her. The truth is she had conspired with DCS and made a deal with them that if she left me with the kids, they would let her keep them. Additionally, she had hired an attorney and had been preparing to file for divorce and for an order of protection. My wife had threatened to leave me before and said she would do whatever necessary to keep the kids as Tennessee is basically a 50/50 custody state. She wasn’t lying. I had been working part-time at night waiting on the time where all this craziness would work itself out so I could go back to my high-paying career. On March 9th, after working all night, I woke up in the early afternoon. My wife was in the bathroom getting ready. She said she was going to take the kids to the park with her brother’s girlfriend. Five minutes later, there was a knock at my front door. It was the city cops and they said someone had reported a domestic dispute at my house. She used the cops as cover to leave so that she could take the kids. I’m still processing my feelings on this to this day. This absolutely destroyed me. I honestly never believed she would leave. It was especially hard as my youngest daughter was my church buddy and we were in church every Sunday morning. It was beyond heartbreaking having to explain to folks where my baby girl was. This put me in a depression beyond explanation. It was debilitating. I don’t want to get into the depths to which I fell because of this, but just know, it was the lowest point of my life. However, I am a child of God and a US Marine. Nothing is going to keep me down.

After spending a few days trying to figure out what my new normal was going to be and realizing I couldn’t do this on my own, I had to make some changes. First, I continued to go to church. Every time the door was open, and sometimes when it wasn’t, I was there. I moved back to my parents’ house because nights alone were not conducive to good mental health. Here I was, no job, no family, no money, and living back at my childhood home. Something had to change, so I dove into relationship science. I was watching ten hours a day of video from other marriage coaches and counselors. I was consuming books recommended by these counselors at a breakneck pace. I simultaneously started a two counseling programs and my accredited marriage coaching certification program all at the same time. At this point, I’ve watched thousands of hours of video, I’ve read a multitude of books, and I’ve successfully completed all three programs I started. These aren’t the only things I’ve done. I’ve gone back to school beyond finishing my programs, I’m working out again, I started bowling again, and mostly, I’m just reclaiming my life. I had made my wife and kids the center of my universe, and on paper, that sounds good, but it causes an imbalance. Part of healing after any traumatic situation is taking ownership of your part in it. Had I completed all of this education before the situation with my daughter and the lady from codes enforcement in my city, I could have completely avoided both of those situations. I honestly had little to no clue about the psychology of women or how relationships actually worked before all this happened to me. If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I would bet you also have no idea how relationships work.

Here is what I’ve learned. First and foremost, modern men are working from the wrong marriage blueprint. Everything I was taught about women growing up is wrong. Most men and women are completely unaware of their psychological makeup. Prior to this experience, I had no understanding of attachment theory, frame theory, or why women do what they do. I had no idea what kind of man I was supposed to be to keep my wife happy and engaged in our marriage. As a Christian, I knew the man was supposed to lead, but I wasn’t really sure what that meant. My wife is brilliant, strong, and capable. She doesn’t need me to lead her. And in most things, that’s correct. However, contrary to modern progressivism, men and women are significantly different, especially psychologically, and there is a certain type of leadership women need from men and there is a certain type of support men need from women. Due to the psychological makeup of men and women, these roles are not interchangeable. I know these are not necessarily popular opinions, but I’ve done the research, I’ve read the books, I’ve attended the groups, I’ve spoke to the professionals, I completed the courses, and I can assure you, these things are true. Men need male friends and hobbies. They need to be the best version of themselves. There is so much more I’ve learned that I could literally write a book on it, many already have, and I’ve read most of them at this point.

In closing, please let me help you avoid the pain I’ve endured. Let me circumvent the absolute heartbreak I’ve had to live through. Give me an opportunity, and I guarantee you, as long as you’re willing to do the work and have the patience, I can give you positive results. Take care and God bless.