Andrea Gunning

From her sister Marisa's perspective, Chris wasn't helping.

In her first marriage, they partied too much.

There was a lot of drinking and kind of over-the-top behavior.

When Saskia finally ended things with Chris, it felt like a new beginning.

I was confident in knowing that that was the right thing to do.

I had wrapped my head around, this is not the person that I need to put all my energy into anymore.

And that felt like a relief.

She started to really work on herself.

I went to therapy, you know, did talk about some of the issues with childhood, worked through some past relationship tendencies.

She'd never been in a stable, loving relationship or had one modeled for her.

As you heard in episode one, she gravitated towards bad boys and big personalities, chaos.

And Mike felt the opposite of that.

When she met her new boyfriend, Mike Levengood, she could tell right away.

This guy was her chance to build something different, something real.

He felt stable and he felt safe and he felt loving and he felt caring and he felt like a partner.

And I felt like, okay, I'm doing things differently this time.

Everyone in her life could see this was a positive change for Saskia.

Here's her sister Marisa.

I've always viewed her as my baby sister as a very strong person, but somebody who's vulnerable.

He worked out.