KAITLIN, from New Hampshire, has recently faced a lot of judgement after revealing on her social media that she was in a relationship with her dead husband’s brother. Kaitlin was married to her husband Aaron for four years and had a son together. They both developed a drug addiction which made their relationship unhealthy and caused troubles in their marriage. When Kaitlin went to rehab to get clean, Aaron sadly passed away in 2016 from an overdose. While grieving, Kaitlin found comfort speaking with her husband’s brother Rory, which was a surprise as he wasn’t fond of her when she was married to his brother. While grieving, the two became close and fell for each other. They were hesitant to let their families know about the relationship and when they did, there was a lot of shock at first, especially from Aaron and Rory’s mother, who never thought Kaitlin and Rory would be close or get together. After sharing her story online, Kaitlin received a lot of negative comments on her videos, with many people calling her 'sick', but it doesn’t bother them. Rory told Truly: “Something bad happened to her and something bad happened to me and we ended up finding comfort in one another so the negativity doesn’t do anything to us." Kaitlin and Rory have now been together for seven years, have two children of their own and are raising their children from previous relationships together.
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00:00This is Caitlin. She fell in love with Rory.
00:05After my husband Aaron passed away, I found love with his brother.
00:09I have gotten comments online about our relationship saying,
00:12oh, that makes me sick.
00:14I thought it was a little weird.
00:17My first thought was, how would Aaron feel?
00:20I knew he would not like that at all.
00:23He would not be happy.
00:24Did you feel guilty?
00:26Um, thank you.
00:30Who wants cereal?
00:33Whoops.
00:35Aaron and I actually met when we were in elementary school.
00:39I was 18 when I started dating him.
00:43So when Aaron and I first got together,
00:45we abused prescription drugs together.
00:48And then when I got pregnant, we both stopped.
00:51Then after, like, when Cam was like six months old,
00:53we started using pills again.
00:56We've moved on to harder drugs.
00:59We would just, like, fight a lot when we were getting high.
01:02Like, we would turn into different people.
01:03Like, it was really not healthy.
01:08So when Aaron and Caitlin were together,
01:10I definitely was not very fond of her
01:13because I just didn't really trust her.
01:17While we were using, our personalities changed so fast,
01:20and the things that we did were so out of character for ourselves.
01:25In 2015, we were stealing from people.
01:29We were doing whatever we could to get high,
01:31and it was just terrible.
01:33So I decided that I really wanted to go to rehab and get help.
01:39While I was at rehab,
01:41I could hear it in his voice that he was still using
01:43every time that he called me.
01:45I just revoked the consent so that he, um,
01:48they wouldn't tell me when he was calling.
01:50I just could not ever imagine, like, not being with him.
01:53Once I was separated from him and I was at rehab,
01:55I was like, I think that I would be okay if I wasn't with him.
02:00But I never imagined the whole situation flipping.
02:05A week before I was supposed to get out,
02:07I got the phone call that Aaron had overdosed,
02:10and he passed away.
02:13Closed my eyes back then.
02:14Even if we weren't together right in that moment,
02:16we were eventually going to be together, I thought.
02:20I know that I did what I had to do to protect my own sobriety,
02:25but it has been hard to, like,
02:27kind of deal with the survivor's guilt of that.
02:30I would never have imagined getting a phone call
02:34that my younger brother died.
02:36On top of losing a brother,
02:38I felt very bad for Kaitlyn and Camden.
02:41Camden was a huge concern of mine,
02:43just didn't know what his future looked like
02:46without having a dad, you know what I mean, and everything.
02:48And I was like, oh, my goodness.
02:49Rory actually called me, and it was just so weird.
02:54I was not expecting his voice to remind me of Aaron's so much.
02:58It was such comfort.
02:59Like, I was like, oh, my God.
03:01I guess the conversation I had with Kait
03:04was met with a type of a different side of her
03:07I hadn't seen before, compassion and understanding.
03:11Rory started to come to visit me and Camden on the weekends,
03:15and that's kind of how we started getting closer.
03:27Grammy's home.
03:28Grammy's here, yay.
03:30First, we were kind of both hesitant
03:33on letting our relationship be known to our families.
03:38We didn't want them thinking that, like,
03:41we didn't care about Aaron.
03:43Can you guys go play for a little bit?
03:44Hi, son.
03:45I want to go one more time.
03:47Go play.
03:48Me and Jess, we've always gotten along,
03:50but after he passed away, we clung to each other even more
03:53because I was the closest thing to Aaron.
03:56I never, ever, ever, ever, ever would have thought
04:01these two would end up together.
04:04I thought it was a little weird.
04:07Is that a good word?
04:09My first thought was, how would Aaron feel?
04:13I knew he would not like it at all.
04:16He would not be happy.
04:18But after Rory and I had a conversation about it,
04:22once I looked at it the way he was looking at it,
04:25you know, and you can't help who you have feelings for.
04:27You just can't.
04:28She was part of our life.
04:30She had Camden.
04:31She was always going to be around anyways,
04:33and it's not my determination who my kids are with.
04:38As far as my grandson's concerned,
04:40I thought it would be great because Rory and Aaron
04:43were raised in the same household,
04:45so they had pretty much the same values.
04:47So I knew that with her being with Rory,
04:51then Camden would be raised with the same values
04:54that Aaron would have raised him with.
04:56Camden was really young when his dad died.
04:58He was only 2.
04:59And when Rory and I got together,
05:01he just took on the position of the dad role for Camden.
05:05I had mentioned to Kate about me talking to Cam
05:09to see if he wanted to call me dad,
05:11and Katelyn was completely okay with it.
05:14Ended up just kind of asking like,
05:16hey buddy, I know I am your uncle,
05:18but if you want to call me dad, I would love that,
05:22and you could definitely do that.
05:26And his face lit up, and I've been dad since.
05:30Since they have all the kids,
05:31I think they've both definitely grown a lot.
05:34They've come into who they are.
05:36Katelyn's definitely come a long way.
05:39Well, I still am a drug addict in recovery, technically.
05:43But yeah, I know.
05:44It's a lot different.
05:45I think that we had a lot of obstacles to overcome together,
05:50and that was a lot of mental work.
05:52Did you feel guilty?
05:56I think, yeah, I struggled.
05:58I had questions about whether or not we were making
06:02the right decision in being together.
06:04But like Rory said, Aaron wasn't an option,
06:07and that was the only person who I cared about
06:10opinion on that matter, really.
06:12I have gotten comments online about our relationship,
06:16saying like, oh, that makes me sick.
06:19Yeah, like an uncle-daddy or whatever,
06:21and I like to correct him.
06:23I say, it's dunkle.
06:24It's not daddy-uncle or uncle-daddy.
06:27It's dunkle.
06:28So you embrace dunkle?
06:29No, I'm just, I'm totally being a smart-ass.
06:32But the negativity doesn't do anything to us.
06:35So you felt happy to be able to call him dad?
06:37Yeah, because I'm lucky that I have a dad.
06:41He was happy to like have that?
06:44Yeah.
06:45Yeah.
06:46I think we're good for one another.
06:48Almost seven years in, we have proven to be a great team
06:53and create a beautiful family.
06:55If you had a message for Aaron, what would it be?
06:58Kate and Cam are good.
07:01Just because.
07:13Aaron's biggest concern was always Kate and Cam.
07:17So I think he would be happy to know that, of all people.
07:26If Aaron knew about this now,
07:29and seeing what we've been through and where we are today,
07:32I think he would be very comforted that somebody's there
07:37and how you guys are doing.
07:39Yeah, I think he'd be very proud of where we started
07:42and where we've come.
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08:21Big smile, big smile, big smile.