Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
120. Q&A (Breakups, Second Marriages & the Biblical Role of a Man)
In this honest and heartfelt Q&A episode, Jason and Lauren answer your real relationship questions—from navigating breakups to leading well in marriage. Whether you're dating, newly married, or wrestling with relational roles, this episode will give you insight, encouragement, and a few powerful reframes.
🔹 What does it mean for a man to promote his wife?
Jason expands on his view that a man’s role is to provide, protect, and promote—and breaks down what it really means to elevate the people in your care.
🔹 "How do I do a breakup well?"
Lauren and Jason offer practical guidance for ending a relationship with honor, clarity, and emotional health—especially when it’s still painful.
🔹 "Can Lauren talk about being someone’s second wife?"
Lauren opens up about what it’s been like to marry a man with a past and how she’s navigated insecurity, redemption, and sacred second chances.
🔹 "My wife is controlling... how do I lead biblically?"
Jason shares a compassionate but convicting perspective on male leadership, emotional safety, and what women really need from their husbands.
🔹 "We’re on a break… how do I move forward?"
For anyone stuck in the “are we or aren’t we” season, Jason and Lauren speak to love, fear, communication breakdowns, and the difference between working through tension and ignoring red flags.
Related resources to check out:
- Ep. 118 – The Role of a Man & the Rite of Passage Our Sons Are Missing
- Ep. 114 – What Happens When a Woman is Forced into Fight or Flight Mode
- Foundations of Masculinity Course – Now available for men ready to lead from strength, tenderness, and truth.
👉 Whether you're dating, married, or leading your family, this episode will help you dig deeper, ask better questions, and grow into the man or woman you’re called to be.
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We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.
Speaker 1:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection but that's not always what comes easiest. We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.
Speaker 2:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
Speaker 1:Welcome back everyone to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins. We're excited to be with you.
Speaker 2:We sure are. Hello everybody, Hope you had a great last week. We sure had a fun time here in Reading. This past week it was Rodeo Week.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, rodeo Week is our favorite weekend of the year. Probably Well, maybe 4th of July, but gosh, rodeo Weekend's incredible.
Speaker 2:Reading really shows up during Rodeo Week. We had a good time, and then our little girl graduated from preschool this week, so, wow, it's officially summertime in our house.
Speaker 1:She's growing up.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's true, it is true. I'm sure that there's plenty of you out there who are celebrating graduations and milestones and heading into summertime as well. So here we go. Today. We thought we would give you a Q&A episode, as we have had a handful of great questions come our way in the last couple of months.
Speaker 1:Yeah, while you're looking at the questions, I want to remind everyone we have our Brave Co-Conference coming June 11th through the 13th here in Redding, california. If you have a son that's 12 to 18 years old, we have an incredible rite of passage for him. It's a 3.1 mile tough mudder course. We just finished working on it this weekend and, honestly, it's phenomenal. So if you're a man and you want to welcome your son into manhood, this is an incredible way to do it. Also, if you've never been to one of our conferences, they are phenomenal. So we do massive team challenges and competitions and all kinds of cool stuff. Michael Koulianos is our guest speaker, so go check it out bravecoorg. You can find it there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be an incredible event. It really is, and whether or not you have, you know, boys that need to go through the rite of passage such an incredible event to come and be a part of, and then that the body of Christ would be able to surround these young men and actually walk them through that initiation, like you need men of all ages. So get there, guys.
Speaker 1:All right, let's jump into these questions.
Speaker 2:Okay, sounds good. So we're going to start with a clarifying question, which I really appreciate. We have done a couple of different episodes where Jason has mentioned the role of a man being to provide, protect and to promote. Now, obviously those three things are. We're boiling a lot of things down and we're saying the role of a man is to provide, protect and promote. One woman wrote in specifically and said what does he mean by promote? Provide and protect makes sense. I'm not sure what he means by promote. So I thought we could go into that a little bit more, especially just as we're edging towards the Braveco conference and talking a little bit more about men makes sense. You want to dive into that, babe?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great. So when you think about promote, think about Jesus with his disciples. It's discover, develop, deploy really with his disciples. It's discover, develop, deploy really. And so one of the, again, big roles as a father is to help your family discover what it is that God's put them on this planet to do and call the things out of them that you see in your children and even in your wife, you know. And then to get behind them and to encourage, to lend strength, to pull resources in.
Speaker 1:To one way I'll say just recently you were writing a book kids. Sometimes you have a meeting in the middle of my workday that I move things around in my calendar to make sure that I can help develop that skillset, help develop what God's doing in your life by helping out practically with the kids. And so I know for me my dad was the one that really helped push me in the direction of counseling. You're great with people, you love them, you're so compassionate. He found that gift in me and he helped me to really hone it. And so you see that with the disciples, a lot with Jesus. Jesus is giving them tasks to do, he's encouraging them, he's training them, he's helping to bring out the different skill sets that Father God has put into all of us, and so it really changes the tone when a father steps in and a mother.
Speaker 1:Honestly, when a father and mother step in and go, okay, what are the skills that we want to grow in our children? What are the things that they're naturally gifted at? What are the areas that maybe Liam's great at, that Edie's not great at, that we can grow in Liam, or what's that area of passion that Edie has that we could pray into, pour into, put some fire in the deploy. Again, I look at I just really look at how much my parents, especially my dad, because of the line of work that he's in, has opened up doors for you and I, babe, even in like the like we're talking about the publishing. I published a book because of the open doors that my parents have given us, and so that's a lot of it. It's how can I leverage my strength, my insight, my time, my resources to really help my kids discover, develop and deploy into who God's called them to be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a couple of things I think about when I think about that promotion kind of role that a man would hold in a home, and I think it's largely a posture Like not all men have tons of resources or connections or even ideas about how to develop and deploy certain things. I think sometimes it can be largely a posture of I'm here to make you great, I'm here to help you become great, and the humility of actually want you to be greater than I am. I want you, as my kids, to surpass my levels of skill and expertise and strength and I want you to become amazing. I think it's a lot of that at the core. And then, as you discover what you have to give away that you would be open-handed about it.
Speaker 2:And I remember a conversation that you and I had before we got married, where I was trying to decide if I wanted to marry you or not, and you actually said to me if your world doesn't feel bigger and more possible because of me in it, I don't want you to say yes. And that was to me. That was so reassuring because I knew that, although I was saying yes to a finite list of variables in marrying you and taking on three stepchildren, I didn't have to wonder if you wanted my horizons to be big. I knew that you wanted that and so for me at that time. It was less about what do you have to give me, what can you offer me, what connections do you have for me? And way more about like your heart posture of wanting me to become everything I was created to be. So I think, at minimum, it's that you know, it's the heart posture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, when kids are really little. You know every dad has more, has has um more resources and assets and friends than the kids you know, and so I think, even when they're small, it's what, what are the little skill sets that I can pour into, that I can help them in, and it's true. So it's a really incredible part of being a dad.
Speaker 2:Or a man of any kind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, he's offering that For sure, great question.
Speaker 2:Okay, next question how do I do a breakup?
Speaker 1:well, do you want to start with this?
Speaker 2:well, sure, um, you say I'm out of here. Yeah, later, gator, how do I do a breakup? Well, I, you know. The question came from a girl who says I've dated really well, we've done a good job. We, we did a great job. I'm going to see him around. I'm going to. I know his parents. You know how do I break up? Well, I don't want to crush his heart, but I know that this relationship isn't going anywhere past here. How do I do a good job?
Speaker 2:So, you know, in the context of having done a good job in dating and you just have to kind of let somebody down easy, I think you have that simple conversation and thank you, thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate the time and the energy. It's been helpful for me to date you. I think dating is for the intention of learning who it is that you ultimately want to be with and what kind of person is a good fit and a good match for you. And you don't discover a lot of that unless you date. So, acknowledging the privilege that it's been and the gratitude you have for the process, and then just saying you know, we've reached a point in this relationship where I don't actually have vision for us together beyond here. So, in order to respect myself and you, I think we need to end things, which to me is going to look like dot dot dot. So I would say one thing is, when somebody, when one person, wants to break up and the other one doesn't, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Great, if you date really well, then breaking up is. You know it's sad but is like it's still part of the dating process in the sense that you're taking care of somebody's heart, so that's great. Somebody wrote in and said can Lauren talk about being someone's second wife? Babe, it's been such a privilege for you, why do you expound on that?
Speaker 2:I know, well, I was thinking like, okay, that's not really a question, it's more of a topic of interest, but it is an interesting thing to consider.
Speaker 1:Especially as more and more women are dating older men, and I say that because the age of getting married is increasing. Yeah, married is increasing, and so there's a lot of women and men, of course, that are marrying people that have already been married before. So what's that like? What are the challenges? What have you found has been easy? What's been hard? That type of stuff.
Speaker 2:So interestingly, I've touched on this in a couple different episodes. My journey in being somebody's second wife, I think, has been unique. I talk to people right who are in blended certain situations that would cause a decent amount of vulnerability and insecurity at times, like that would be a common feeling. If you're somebody's second wife and you've ever felt self-conscious or vulnerable or insecure, you would be a normal person Like those are very normal feelings.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, I haven't had a lot of those moments outside of our parenting dynamic, so the hardest parts about being your second wife for me have been in helping you raise the big kids, and that actually didn't have as much to do with the fact that I was your second wife as it had to do with they have a biological mother who's not me, and co-parenting is a challenge. I mean, parenting on a good day is a challenge. Co-parenting with another adult that doesn't live in your house, that may or may not share all of your convictions or rules or, you know, homes are different places, obviously, right, like we're all individual people, so we're all going to do things a little bit different. That's why co-parenting can be such a challenge. So, naturally, that was the hardest part for me about being your second wife is is having to to raise children with you that I didn't birth, yeah, um. But I will say this there's a lot of things that you find out where your insecurities lie inside of your intimate relationship with your husband, like inside of a covenant relationship with your husband.
Speaker 2:Marriage is such a mirror, and so when there's an added element of my husband's been married before, then the mirror of marriage shows all the things that are there in present. So when there's insecurity, that is visible, when there's vulnerabilities or tendencies for comparison or whatever it might be, those rise up. It might be those rise up. And so I think that to be somebody's second wife requires a decent amount. To do it well would require a decent amount of self-awareness, because you have to be able to distinguish what is yours versus what is his and part of his past. Here's where, to be really honest, this is what I boiled it down down to. I don't know if this is relatable to everybody, but early on I was like oh yeah, he's been married before, but we both have a past. So just because jason was married before doesn't mean that he's the only person in this relationship that has other relationships to compare to or to contrast with, or you know he's. He's had experiences with another woman. Well, I've had experiences with other men I wasn't married.
Speaker 2:Wait what yeah I wasn't married, but I know what it's like to care deeply for another person. I know what it's like to have a physical relationship with another person. I know what it's like to have emotional ties with another person. No, we didn't. I didn't ever have kids. No, I had never had sex before marriage. But he's not the only one in this relationship with a past. So I just actually feel like I kind of demystified and disempowered. The lie that would try to come in that would be like he's been married before. He's thinking about his ex-wife, or what if he's comparing me to her Because I was able to go like well, for starters, I'm awesome and he doesn't need to do that. And if he is, that's him, not me. Secondly, he's not the only one with a past. I could sit here all day long and compare him to boyfriends I've had, but I don't, and so chances are he's not doing that either.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:I just really kind of disempowered that thing that would try to intimidate.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it is common for women to run up on that.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:It's just only an indicator of deeper issues that would be there whether you were dating somebody with an ex-spouse or not.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Whether it's insecurity or vulnerability, those issues would be there.
Speaker 2:Now your circumstance might be exacerbating those things and making them really obvious to you and that's just an invitation, I think, to like deal with it and really address it in a powerful way that brings healing and wholeness.
Speaker 2:So I'm friends right now with a few different people who are in I'm somebody's second wife situation and I think there's a sadness that can come sometimes when you realize like, wow, my spouse has a whole nother chapter of his life that was deeply impactful that I wasn't actually a part of. There's like a storyline and I enter the story at a very different moment and he's had this whole other journey and for me it's less about insecurity or vulnerability, it's more about, like man, my partner went through something really tough and I wasn't there. I didn't experience that with him, but it's really impacted who he is. So I think there's a lot of like existential questions and feelings that come with depth of relationship and covenant. Anyways, I just think this is a layer of it. So I don't know that this is a great answer to that question, but I'm kind of just talking around some of the thoughts I've landed on inside of our context as we've gone throughout the years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great Do you want to add to it? Are there things you can think of?
Speaker 1:Well, I do think in a lot of ways that nowadays people have a lot of relationships and a lot of history and a lot of experiences, whether or not you've been married before or not, and the biggest pieces that make a healthy relationship are back to those. How do you do conflict? How do you do communication?
Speaker 2:How do you do emotional connection? Do you know how to?
Speaker 1:build trust with each other, each other, and if your relationship is full of health in those areas, then the I've been married before or I've been, you know, in a relationship before, is almost just this like, uh, factual piece to the puzzle. If you have those other areas, if those the weaker those other areas are, the more glaring the I've been married before comes into play and the insecurity and the mistrust and all that. And so it really is back to it's reflecting back on how deep is your connection together Right, on how deep is your connection together Right, and mirroring back the fact that you have to shore that up, or everything else that you've ever done in your life bleeds into the relationship. Yeah, all of your experiences, right. So it's a great question. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:All right, I'm going to ask this next one.
Speaker 1:Do it.
Speaker 2:This is a man who wrote in and said in I condensed his message.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2:Okay, my wife is extremely controlling and I don't feel like it allows me space to be the leader. I want to dig into what it looks like biblically to be a man and a leader and learn what women truly need from men so that I can steward my position well. I like his approach to the question because he's going what do I need to do in order to help my wife be less controlling, so that I can actually do what God put me in this family to do, which is to lead alongside her? So he's recognizing a problem, but he's wanting to take a lot of ownership himself, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:I love this. It's a great question, it really is. So the we talked. I think you should go back and listen to the, where we talked about protect, provide and promote the role of a man, because it will save me a bunch of, you know, answering that question. And he can do that easily. He can also go to bravecoorg and sign up for free and our foundations of masculinity course takes him through that as well I just want to like link those resources in the beginning, that's good.
Speaker 1:Okay, what does he do with his wife? For starters, there's not very many people in this world that want to control just to control. People are controlling because they're afraid. People are controlling because they're afraid that their needs aren't going to get met or they're feeling powerless one or the other. And so for a wife, her greatest needs are to feel safe, seen and known.
Speaker 1:And when you're in a relationship where someone is really controlling, it means that you have to set boundaries in a way that protects the relationship. So that's a very challenging thing to do. It's not easy. You're going to have to become a master at boundaries, so you're literally going to need to go and read the boundaries book and get really, really good at it. But I'm giving you a piece to the puzzle because, for instance, if I'm controlling Lauren, she can say hey, babe, I love you.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're really afraid. I actually can't be in a conversation that's like this, where I feel controlled. Would you like to rephrase that or would you like to talk about it differently? But I can't do this. So you have to start setting boundaries in a way that still protects your connection but says hold on a sec, I respect you and you respect me, but you don't want me to control you and I don't want you to control me. I also think inviting her into counseling, inviting her into working on the relationship, is a really, really good start. So do our six-week marriage intensive in the fall, when we do it we don't have an exact date or go sign up for marriage counseling and do it in a way that invites vision. So, gosh, I want to build the strongest marriage possible with you, and I'm looking at 20 years from now and I just have so much vision for what I want you to feel how I want you to feel taken care of and where I want to be.
Speaker 1:I know that there's some areas, some pain points in your life that you'd really want me to focus on and there's some places that are in your life or my life that I would really love for us to grow in. Inviting her into that space is going to be really helpful. Ultimately, the role of a man is to bring peace to chaos. A man every place where you see a man be passive, you see chaos. Eve is talking to Adam, or, sorry, Eve is talking to the serpent in the garden. Adam passively stands by. All of a sudden, their world is in chaos.
Speaker 1:What should Adam have done? He should have confronted. We can just go down the line over and over and over again and you look in your life, the areas of your life where you've been passive. Now the flip side is you could get just as controlling as her and it adds the same amount of chaos. So what is his job? His job is to come in and to confront the chaos and to bring order back into the relationship. And that's not by controlling her, that's by really learning how to control himself super well and provide a place where she feels safe, seen and known yeah and so that would be, you know, a really great step in that direction.
Speaker 1:I would highly encourage him to jump into braveco, you know maybe come to the conference Run with some guys. Jump into a group it's free. Going into our 12-week discipleship course is free. Start a group Run with some other men and do this together. Ask these questions together, learn how to confront the chaos in your life with other men in your life.
Speaker 2:That's good and grow that Great question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, okay, maybe we can both take a stab at this. Next and final one Okay, I've been dating someone for five months. We have community, we have communication issues. She withdraws and we've talked about it. She's overwhelmingly worried about whether I'm the one for her or not. We are on a break and we're on a week-long break right now. I love her, I know she loves me, but I don't know how to get past this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's tricky. It's tricky when you are in a relationship. You're like we've got some issues here, but you can see over the obstacle and you're like, if we could just get over this obstacle we'd be great. I love her, she loves me, we're great together, but there's this thing. What do you do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like this. There's two issues here in my opinion. The first issue is they've got, of course, some communication challenges. The first issue is they've got, of course, some communication challenges, and that probably needs to get solved before they can answer the next question, which the next question is. She's overwhelmingly worried about whether I'm the one for her or not.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If I, really if you and I were in a dating relationship and I really enjoyed our relationship but we had communication issues. So every two weeks we got in a blow up argument and it ended up poorly and you were coming to me saying I'm just not sure that you're the one. I would say, hey, can we table whether or not we're right for each other as far as the one, can we work on our communication issue and, again, probably take a course or you could listen to even the boundaries book would be great. There's lots of different ways to solve that issue. You could even get a marriage course and just go through the communication portion of it, which would work well.
Speaker 1:But really start to work on brave communication and get really good at that and then start to evaluate right, because if you don't communicate well, it basically means that you're not enjoying a large portion of the relationship and you're going to have a lot of questions whether or not you are right for one another. Because again, especially for a woman to feel safe, seen and known, if you can't communicate through conflict in a way that brings connection you can't communicate through conflict in a way that brings connection that's going to be a massive pain point for her. So my pitch to him is hey, slow your roll on marriage, really work. Come up with a plan. Create a plan together on what you should do for the communication. How can you grow that skill set?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What are you guys willing to do? Maybe go to counseling together. Maybe pull an older married couple in that's really great at it. But really work on it, be diligent, set a timeline. Hey, let's work two months on our communication, so it's whatever. It's May 18th or 19th, it's May 19th today, whatever it's.
Speaker 2:May 18th or 19th.
Speaker 1:It's May 19th today. We're going to do June or July 19th. If you've been in a five-month relationship and you enjoy a lot of the relationship, except for this piece, it's really worth it to pour that time, effort and energy. What this does for you is it will either build a lot of trust or be really confirming yeah, if he can't follow through or she can't follow through, you want to know now, before you get married, that the person you're with either can follow through or cannot follow through. If they follow through really well builds a ton of trust for the future. That's great. That's my thought.
Speaker 2:I think it's a good thought. I don't really have much to add. I think it's fantastic and that's my thought. I think it's a good thought. I don't really have much to add.
Speaker 1:I think it's fantastic and yeah, I agree, it's great.
Speaker 2:Okay, All right folks.
Speaker 1:Guys, thank you so much for sending in questions. We love it when you guys send in questions. Yeah, if you have questions for us as we're going through our podcast episodes, please just shoot us either an email, what's that?
Speaker 2:email babe Datesmatesbabies at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Or you can is it just Datesmatesbabies? It's not like Lauren Datesmatesbabies. Datesmatesbabies At gmailcom. At gmailcom, yeah. Or you can send us a DM on our Instagrams, but other than that, y'all have an incredible week. We will see you next week. See you, dates, mates and babies with the valentines free audio post-production.