Amber Rasmussen and Athena Klingerman opened up about their abusive relationships with ex Brandon Johnson in Don’t Date Brandon, and they revealed the final straws in their relationships while speaking to Life & Style.
Klingerman said that she dealt with “infidelity, lies, scheming [and] scamming” during their relationship, though she finally decided to leave Johnson once she realized his lies bled into his work life.
“The very, very last thing that happened for me was calling into his work and asking to speak to him and his boss answers and says, ‘Um, Athena, I need to ask you a serious question.’ I’m like, ‘OK.’ And he says, ‘Do you have cancer?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh God, what is happening now?”’
Klingerman recalled learning that Johnson had been fired from his job weeks earlier. “That’s when I realized my husband’s been pretending to go to work every single day and [I had] no idea where he’s been going. Didn’t tell me the truth, but he had switched the banking information on the contracts with other companies they work with to his personal one and was trying to scheme and scam and got caught doing it,” she said. “I just thought, ‘OK, nothing’s ever going to change. You have no moral compass. I’m done.’ And I filed probably a couple of days later.”
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Following his split from Klingerman, Johnson met Rasmussen online and they quickly wed. When she finally found the courage to leave him after years of abuse, Rasmussen admitted there wasn’t “just one thing” that led to their split. “I had moved, obviously, from Oregon to Washington, so in a sense I kind of got myself stuck up there for many years,” she said.
“It was a combination. It was faking cancer. I couldn’t prove it though. It was the lies. It was the cheating. It was everything,” she continued. “There were so many red flags, so many question marks. And I just knew I had to get back to Oregon. And once I got to Oregon, I knew I was close. But once you’re in a cycle of abuse, it’s harder than you think to get out. And so it’s the ups and the downs.”
It wasn’t until Johnson and Rasmussen were coming up on their fifth wedding anniversary that she realized she needed to leave. “I kept saying, ‘Amber, you cannot go past five years. Physically, mentally … I can’t do this,’” she recalled.
Now that their experiences with Johnson are in the past, Klingerman and Rasmussen are both in happy relationships. However, it wasn’t easy for them to move on.
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“I took a year and a half or so off of dating. I initially tried quickly to, like, make myself occupied, right?” Klingerman said of her experience after their divorce. “I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, I look like a crazy person. I don’t trust anybody. I think everybody’s psycho.’ So I immediately took that time, did a lot of counseling, dug deep, did some healing, went back out into the world.”
Klingerman eventually started dating again, and she said she met her current husband 14 months later. “We’ve been together for nine years. So I feel very lucky,” she shared. “I don’t suggest anybody leaving a psychotic relationship and jumping right into dating unless you’ve done the work and you’re healing or you’re ready to not look like a crazy person when you start dating.”
As for Rasmussen, she said she viewed her relationship with Johnson as “the bottom of the barrel” and that “it’s only up from here.”
“I just knew not to ignore those gut instincts,” she said. “I’ve been with, you know, my guy now for six plus years. And I told myself that the minute I get any inkling that I feel like I need to look at his phone, look at his computer, wonder what he’s saying, then I’m out. I’m out. And I’ve never once had that feeling. Thank goodness. So I’m more secure in just trusting myself.”
All three episodes of Don’t Date Brandon premiere on Paramount + on October 28.
