Teen Mom: 10 Shocking Revelations From Matt Baier’s ‘You Have No F–king Idea’
Published on July 21, 2017. Updated January 3, 2018Teen Mom OG has taken fans on a wild ride since 2009 as audiences have followed the stories of Farrah Abraham, Maci Bookout, Catelynn Baltierra and Amber Portwood. Along with many ups and downs, there has been love lost and love found, and for Amber Portwood that love has been with Matt Baier. Since first being introduced to him in Teen Mom‘s fifth season, many have questioned Matt’s intentions and their criticisms were raised after he made the headlines for old tweets showing his past interactions with other Teen Mom stars and questions about how many children he really has. To clear up the rumors and be able to tell his side of the story, the 47-year-old decided to release his own book You Have No F**king Idea: The Naked Truth About My Life. Here are the 10 most shocking revelations from Baier’s side of the story:
10. Intro to MTV
When fans first met Matt in season five of Teen Mom OG they were shocked to learn that the two had begun a relationship during his first trip to Indiana when they met for the first time face-to-face, and while fans were skeptical about him, so were the crews. Matt admitted that in that season there were already some episodes filmed before he was brought in so he had to stay upstairs while filming until they were ready to introduce him, and as he began working with them, it was a little tense at first. “This crew, the majority of them, had seen Amber grow up. It wasn’t hard to see that they were wondering, ‘Who’s this forty-something guy and what is he after?'” Now, however, he insists they trust him. “Several seasons later, I can say that we’re close friends. They realized that I was the real deal. But, they had their suspicions and didn’t hide them, and I give them credit for that. That shows how close they are to these girls. They were protecting Amber.”
Source: MTV9. “Fame Whore”
As soon as Matt made his way into Amber’s life everyone thought he was just trying to seek fame and live off of MTV stardom, but in his book he insists the opposite is true. When he first started tweeting Amber the show had been off while she was in prison and he had no idea it was going back into production. “When we officially started dating, I knew that she was going to be filming and that cameras would be in her house. I, however, made it clear I wanted no part of the show. I didn’t want to be on it. I didn’t want to make appearances. I didn’t want to ‘have a storyline.’ Basically, I was more than happy for Amber to go back on the show, but I wanted no part of it other than to sit in the background and cheer her on. I know this goes against all of the ‘fame whore’ claims that have been made about me. Sorry to disappoint.” Despite him refusing to be on the show, Amber forced him. “She told me I had no choice but to appear on the show. More specifically, she said that she couldn’t be with someone who wouldn’t appear. Though I protested a bit, she explained that she had always been upfront with her fans and that Teen Mom followed the story of her life. If someone was going to date her, she informed me, they had to be on camera with her, as she wasn’t someone who only wanted to show fans ‘parts of her life.'”
Source: Instagram8. The Love Story
After three years and many stories, fans think they know Amber and Matt’s story but, as it turns out, there is much more to it than we knew. According to Matt, he first saw Amber while flipping through the TV and saw her on Dr. Phil and was drawn in by her story, so he went on to Twitter to find out more. “We connected first by talking about our addiction, and this led to more conversations, including ones normal friends would have, like Amber talking about her dating life and who she was seeing at the time. Yeah, you read that right. Amber was dating other people […] I considered our relationship friendly and platonic.” After direct messaging over Twitter for awhile, Matt gave Amber his number and the next day she called. “None of the conversation had anything to do with a romantic relationship,” he added and revealed that he initially lied about his age. “I told a little fib. I told her I was thirty-seven […] of course, she would later find out my real age and, while it didn’t sit well with her that I wasn’t truthful, I explained the same reasoning that I’m explaining here.” After their conversation, which lasted nearly eight hours, Amber contacted Matt again after a few days. “We talked for six months. Then Amber asked if I would want to come out and visit her. Like any friend, I was excited to meet her in person. At the time, there still wasn’t anything romantic happening.” However, his two day trip turned into nine when Amber kept asking him to stay, and after he left Amber blocked his number because she was nervous about having feelings for someone who was so much older, but it was her cousin, Krystal, who convinced Amber they were good together. “I had no idea Amber had blocked me and would only find this story out from her later on. I walked through my door and wasn’t home for more than five minutes before she called me and said, ‘You need to come back here. Take the pictures on your wall with you.’ Amber’s the one who made that phone call.” In fact, in the book’s foreword, Amber insists she was the one who pursued Matt, not the other way around. Despite being sober, Matt says his love for Amber made him relapse when they began dating, but also made him stop again. “When we met, she still didn’t believe I was 100% sober. Her perception was spot on.” She found his pills and flushed them down the toilet. “That was it. I never took a pill again,” he wrote.
Photo by Jen Lowery/SilverHub/REX/Shutterstock7. Childhood
In order to tell his story, Matt started at the beginning including an explanation of his childhood. He explained that growing up he had a large Italian family and they were all very close-knit, but when his grandparents passed away things changed and they started to grow distant. Matt was one of three children with two older sisters, who are ten and nine years older than him. “We were close, but I was more of an annoying little brother than a friend.” While he seemed to have a solid family life, they had their issues and the biggest was his dad’s drinking problem. “Due to this, almost every night there would be a huge fight in my house,” and he said, “Regardless of her knowing he had a problem, my mother would never openly admit that he had issues with alcohol.” He added that while there were blowout fights there was never any physical violence. When he was nine, his parents got divorced and although his dad promised to come see him he never did. Unfortunately, Matt and his mom didn’t have a close relationship where they could talk about anything and he started getting into trouble as a teenager, leading to his downward spiral into drugs.
Source: Starcasm6. The Alcohol
Before Matt’s descent into drugs, he recalled a scary experience involving alcohol while he was still just a kid. “My first experience with anything drug-related was before I was a teenager. It involved alcohol. I’m sure my mother remembers this like it was yesterday. I decided to get into the liquor cabinet and drink an entire bottle of Canadian Club Whiskey when I was twelve. My mother came home and found me laying on her coffee table, covered in puke.” He added that his mother then got very angry and concerned her son was going to be just like his father. “Finding me drinking truly shook her up and brought intense flashbacks of what life with my father had been like for her.”
Source: MTV5. The Drugs
It didn’t take long for Matt to then turn to drugs and he said he was fourteen when he took his first pill. “It was a tablet that was a mixture of acetaminophen and oxycodone that I got out of the medicine cabinet in my family’s bathroom. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t care as long as it helped numb the loneliness I felt.” He described his addiction as quickly overtaking him when he realized how easily he could get prescriptions for painkillers from doctors because of his sports-related back injury. “Eventually I started going to different doctors and complaining about my back pain, a lot of which was real and some of which wasn’t,” he wrote, explaining that he got away with that for many years. “The day that it hit me I had a major drug problem, I had doctors who were on vacation or I couldn’t get appointments. So, I ran out of pills. Just for one day. I got so sick I wanted to kill myself.”
Source: MTV4. MASAC
Matt revealed he lived in a drugged up state for years and carried on many relationships in an effort to try to fight off his loneliness and depression and ended up in a 17-year on and off again relationship with a woman named Michelle. In the book he reveals it was thanks to Michelle he got sober for real the first time after she lured him to a courthouse saying they had a “property issue to settle.” Instead, he was there to be forced into a rehab program at MASAC the Massachusetts Alcohol, Substance Abuse Center out of Bridgewater State Hospital which is run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, meaning the patients were more or less prisoners. They wore jumpsuits and were in confinement and, although he rejected the help at first and had “the worst attitude in there,” an interaction with a fellow patient opened his eyes. “The strangest day for me was when it was his day to be released and he was arguing to stay in. He said he didn’t want to go […] I walked over to him and said, ‘Man, are you crazy? Why would you want to stay in this place?’ He turned to me and said, ‘I have no home. I live on the streets. Here, I’m sober and I get three meals a day and a warm bed to sleep in.’ In that moment, I realized I was really pissing my life away.” After his own release Matt stayed sober for “a few years,” but revealed, “I did relapse. I relapsed when I got to Indiana. Once. And this is going to sound really screwed up, but I relapsed because of love. I stayed sober until I met Amber. I hadn’t experienced those feelings before.”
Source: Wetpaint3. His Children
Teen Mom OG fans are well aware of all of the rumors and scandals that plagued Matt and Amber once he became a star on the show, and one of the most talked about was the issue of how many children he really has, and that is something Matt really wanted to clear up. Matt finally revealed the true story about his kids and explained the reason he took so long to speak out about it because his children didn’t ask to be public figures. “So, if I discuss them, the scrutiny that comes with being a public figure shifts from me to them. Is that fair?” His first child, Christopher, who fans met on Teen Mom OG in season six; Matt and Christopher’s mother were married at 18 and had Christopher around the same time. When Christopher was one, his mom took him and left and remarried, and Matt knew it was best for his son, adding that he was ordered to pay child support and “never missed a payment in 17 years.” After that, Matt began a relationship with his manager at the fast food restaurant he was working at and “two little girls were born a year apart during that relationship. They were beautiful, happy babies born of a loving mother, and a father who thought drugs were more important than baby formula.” Unsurprisingly, one day that woman packed her daughters up and left, and were soon adopted by the woman’s new husband. “The court initially ordered that I pay more money in child support than I was making at the time […] When the adoption was finalized, I had overdue payments, but they got paid off completely and I was never ‘delinquent’ in my child support.” Then Matt entered a long relationship with Michelle, the woman who finally sent him to get help; they had Brooklyn and Andrew together. Matt also insists he paid child support every month once they split and even paid for his daughter’s college education. While those are his five biological children, he also revealed that another ex, Stacey, claims Matt is the father of her son, but has never demanded a DNA test and hasn’t asked him for child support. Then there is a woman whom he had a brief relationship with who also claims she had his child, but is also the woman who he says started many of the lies and rumors about him. The woman ordered a DNA test from Matt but he missed it in the mail: “I was still a raging addict, most likely between addresses at the time and never saw it. Anyone in the child support world will tell you that if you don’t respond, then it’s game over. You pay and like it.”
Source: Wetpaint2. The Book
One of the most surprising revelations from “You Have No F**king Idea” actually had nothing to do with Matt and Amber or Teen Mom. In the book, Matt reveals that back in 2008 he actually wrote and self-published a book titled “Guys Don’t Rat On Guys” under the pseudonym Grey Baker. “The book which I must say is pretty good for being written by someone whose brain was completely encapsulated by pills,” Matt said, explaining that it was the reason one of the most blasphemous tabloid reports written by Radar Online was posted. “Judy, who claimed to run a sexual assault charity, had heard about my book and the story intrigued her. She asked me to come out to Tampa to meet with her […] When I arrived, I soon became uncomfortable with some of the things I observed regarding Judy and her charity. It didn’t take me long for me to realize that I wanted nothing to do with it, so I got myself a plane ticket as soon as I could and headed home. It totally makes sense Judy would want to twist this to the tabloids, as from my interactions with her, it’s clear she enjoys attention and money.” Thanks to his newfound fame, it seems Matt Baier is planning a re-release of his book “Guys Don’t Rat On Guys” in the fall of 2017 under his real name and included the first two chapters of the book at the end of “You Have No F**king Idea.”
Source: Wetpaint1. That Woman
While it was Matt’s mission to confront all of the endless tabloid rumors about him and tell his truth, a lot of it seemed to come back to one particular woman — the woman whose child he is paying child support for with no proof that it is his. According to Matt, they had a brief fling during one of his breaks from Michelle and when it ended there was no drama. “That is, until several months later when she called me to tell me she was pregnant. I asked her straight out who the father was, and she told me. Another fact: the name she gave me wasn’t mine. A second phone call happened and she told me I was the father, followed by another call telling me I was the father, and so on and so on with the occasional threat she would utter, like, ‘I am going to ruin your f–king life.’ Funny thing is, I distinctly remember each phone call ending with her asking me for money and having a sob story attached to it.” After discovering he had to pay child support, he didn’t hear from her for a while. “I didn’t hear a single word from her for years until, many years later, I ended up with Amber and on Teen Mom. Boom. Here she comes with story after story after story. She first called MTV and told an executive producer that I had twenty children and demanded to be a part of the show. She called Dr. Phil. She called Maury. She called every tabloid outlet she could find a number for in an effort to make money — and then she contacted me.” When Matt did get to talk to her and asked why she was so determined to tell all these awful and untrue stories about him, “Her answer was: ‘For fun!'”
Source: Previously TV