Two of Brandon Johnson’s former partners, Amber Rasmussen and Athena Klingerman, are sharing the moments that pushed them to leave their marriages in Paramount+’s new three-episode docuseries Don’t Date Brandon. Speaking to Life & Style, both women described patterns of alleged infidelity, deception, and emotional abuse they say defined their relationships, and the hard-won clarity that ultimately helped them move on.
Athena Klingerman Says Lies Spilled Into Work: “I’m Done”
Klingerman says her final breaking point came when she realized the lies she suspected at home had extended to Johnson’s professional life. After dealing with what she calls “infidelity, lies, scheming [and] scamming,” she recounted phoning his workplace to ask for him — only to be met with an alarming question from his boss.
“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,’” she told Life & Style. “I’m like, ‘OK.’ And he says, ‘Do you have cancer?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh God, what is happening now?’”
According to Klingerman, that call revealed Johnson had been fired weeks earlier. She alleges he’d been leaving the house each day as if he still had a job, while concealing that he’d been terminated and had allegedly tried to reroute company contract payments to a personal account.
“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,” she said. “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. 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.”
Klingerman’s account forms a central piece of Don’t Date Brandon, which tracks multiple women whose experiences with Johnson intersect in disturbing ways. Her decision to leave, she says, was the culmination of years of suspicion and a final incident that made staying impossible.
Amber Rasmussen Describes Leaving As A Process, Not A Moment
After Klingerman, Johnson met Rasmussen online and the pair quickly married. Rasmussen says her decision to end the relationship wasn’t triggered by a single event, but by an accumulation of troubling behavior she couldn’t ignore.
“I had moved, obviously, from Oregon to Washington, so in a sense I kind of got myself stuck up there for many years,” Rasmussen explained. “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.”
Rasmussen describes the difficulty of breaking free from what she calls a “cycle of abuse,” one marked by ups and downs that complicated her exit. Ultimately, approaching a milestone in their marriage crystallized her resolve.
“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,” she said. “It wasn’t until we were coming up on our fifth wedding anniversary that I realized I needed to leave. I kept saying, ‘Amber, you cannot go past five years. Physically, mentally … I can’t do this.’”
Rasmussen’s story, like Klingerman’s, underscores how prolonged manipulation and mistrust can erode a relationship over time, and how distance and support helped her take the final step.
Healing, Boundaries, And Moving Forward
Both women emphasize that life after leaving wasn’t simple. Klingerman says she initially tried to date too quickly after their divorce, only to realize she hadn’t addressed the trauma she was carrying.
“I took a year and a half or so off of dating. I initially tried quickly to, like, make myself occupied, right?” she said. “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.”
When she did reenter the dating scene, Klingerman says she met her now-husband about 14 months later. “We’ve been together for nine years. So I feel very lucky,” she shared, adding a message for others: “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.”
Rasmussen echoes that sense of rebuilding and setting firm boundaries. Calling her experience with Johnson “the bottom of the barrel,” she says she learned to trust her instincts and refuse to compromise them.
“I just knew not to ignore those gut instincts,” Rasmussen 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.”
Don’t Date Brandon: Release Details
Don’t Date Brandon brings together voices from Johnson’s past to present a broader picture of their experiences, with first-person accounts that mirror the women’s comments to Life & Style. The three-episode docuseries premieres on Paramount+ on October 28, with all installments available to stream the same day.
By centering the survivors’ perspectives and the concrete moments that finally prompted them to leave, the series aims to spotlight the warning signs of coercive control and the work it takes to rebuild. For Rasmussen and Klingerman, those moments were stark, personal, and ultimately life-changing.
