Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
We’re the Vallottons, and we’re passionate about people! Every human was created for fulfilling connections in relationship and family, but it’s not always what comes easiest! We know this because of our wide range of personal experiences as well as years of working with people. 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.
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Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
136. Q&A (Long-Distance Dating, Sexual Disconnection, Co-Parenting)
In this Q&A episode, Lauren and Jason tackle four raw and relatable listener questions that hit at the heart of modern relationships — from rebuilding trust to navigating intimacy, distance, and co-parenting.
In this episode, they discuss:
💔 When words cut deep:
A wife is struggling to heal after learning her husband once fantasized about other women. Though he’s showing empathy and doing the work, she can’t shake the fear of abandonment. Lauren and Jay unpack how to rebuild safety after emotional betrayal and what healing looks like when your partner’s change feels real — but your heart still hurts.
🌍 Long-distance love:
What does it take to make a relationship thrive when you’re miles apart? The Vallottons share their best tips for staying connected across distance — from setting rhythms of communication to keeping emotional intimacy alive (even when FaceTime freezes mid-sentence).
🔥 When sex becomes a struggle:
He thinks more sex will fix the problem; she feels pressured and disconnected. Lauren and Jason explore how couples can move from obligation to connection, and why true intimacy starts with emotional safety, not frequency.
👩👦 Co-parenting with disrespect:
A single mom is raising her son alongside a dad who doesn’t treat her with respect. She’s worried about what her son is learning from their dynamic. The Vallottons discuss how to model dignity, set boundaries, and protect your child’s sense of honor — even when the other parent won’t play fair.
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We're the paladins.
SPEAKER_00:And we are passionate about people.
SPEAKER_02:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
SPEAKER_00:But that's not always what comes easiest.
SPEAKER_02:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience as well as our years of working with people.
SPEAKER_00: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_03:Welcome back to Dates, Mates, and Babies with the Balatons, everyone. This week we have some really great questions that people sent in for us to answer. You guys are gonna love them. Um it's great to be with everyone.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Hey everybody, it's been a while since we've done a strictly QA episode. Yeah. So we're gonna go for it. Ready to dive in?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, let's do it, babe.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. First question. My husband admitted that he used to fantasize about other sexual partners, uh, even men. And he's said some harsh things, like he enjoyed those sexual partners more than he's ever enjoyed me. In the healing process, he's recognized that that was wrong. He's been really empathetic and is doing a lot of work to rebuild trust, but I'm still stuck in fear and can't seem to heal from what he said. How do I move forward without constantly battling the fear of abandonment?
SPEAKER_03:Man, for starters, so brave to ask this question.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, very brave, very painful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I think we often want the grieving time to go really quick. And I think in this type of scenario, when you have prolonged um infidelity like this, where somebody's willingly fantasizing for years about other partners and talking about, you know, how it was better than what he's experienced, that's gonna take a while. Yeah. The the grief process, giving yourself permission to grieve the pain of one being abandoned and cheated on, and I think two wrapping your mind around how is our relationship, how is our sexual relationship, how is our intimacy ever gonna match that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And a lot of couples who um are have been in this fight before with pornography, you know, one one spouse is is struggling with pornography, this is the battle, right? Of how do you rebuild trust? So to me, your husband really needs to be in a program getting professional help from um from a therapist that really understands trauma, understands um how to help him break free of this cycle. And I think the other side of that is she probably really needs to see someone as well that understands trauma.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And they're not going to rebuild their old marriage, they're gonna have to rebuild a new marriage, which kind of sounds like a taboo thing to say. But the truth is, is that when infidelity happens like this for long periods of time, like I'm willingly lusting after other people, and I'm so deep in that um yeah, I'm doing it on a regular basis. We create the this unrealistic expectation, right? Like I'm I want I have this thing that's not real, that is now the bar for what I think would be exciting in sex, what I think would be exciting in marriage. It'd be the same if she fantasized about what a perfect husband would be all the time. And it's like, well, there's no such thing as a perfect husband. And so we have this, we have this desire for a partner to do something that isn't actually real, and on top of that, we you get to this place where what you what you are desiring is an orgasm and this crazy experience instead of a deep emotional connection and a deep relational connection. And I'm talking about the spouse that that's constantly like in his mind, allowing himself to go there. Is you create the these expectations that aren't actually real, that that don't actually exist. And so you have to go through a lot of healing, you have to heal your mind and heal um heal the relationship and make amends and go through that healing process. So part of the the restoration process for her won't just be him going, I'm really sorry I did that, which is great, but it will be seeing him show up different in the relationship. Yeah, seeing him emotionally connect with her deeply, seeing him understand what his unbridled um imagination, the lust, caused and cost her, yeah, and allow himself to figure out why was I doing that? What was the real cause of that, and getting all the way down to the root because her fear, her fear of that, of his relapse isn't gonna probably go away until he can actually come and bring a full circle, like regular evidence of this is what I did, this is how it happened, this is what I'm doing to clean up my mouse.
SPEAKER_00:I think when when a marriage gets to a spot like this, we have to recognize that when you get married to someone and you make a covenant with them to protect them by managing yourself really, really well, right? Like we make that covenant. When you break that covenant, you break the whole foundation of trust that your marriage is on. If that happened in a dating relationship, we would coach them like, don't get married to that person. If that person can't manage themselves well, you shouldn't marry them. But here you are, you found yourself in a marriage, you've already committed, maybe you have children, you've got years of marriage behind you, you don't want to get a divorce, fantastic. You still have broken trust to the degree that if you were not married, we would say walk away.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that you can heal. So I think what people who are married in this position have to realize like just because you're married legally and before God does not mean that you have much of a marriage in a spot like this. So the the journey forward truly is like it is as if you were single and broken, and you have a desire one day to be married, and you know that you have a lot of work to do before you're ready for marriage. What would you do to get yourself ready for marriage again? You would back all the way up and realize that this whole process is going to be about building trust with myself and then ultimately building trust with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and then getting engaged someday and getting married someday. Like it's a whole journey of healing. And you don't fast-forward through it just because you have a ring on your finger. There's no fast-forwarding the healing journey. So for couples to take a huge load of pressure off themselves and go, oh, this is not something we should worry about doing quickly. This is something we should consider doing well. Which, you know, for her, you're not going to trust him again until he goes on the whole healing journey. Just like you wouldn't actually date someone and marry them right away if they were in the middle of this kind of a mess. You would actually wait until they've walked through healing with professional help where you can actually see and measure growth, where they're showing up for you in ways that are deeply trust-building and confidence boosting. And there's got to be a lot of evidence for that kind of healing and growth before you can just go back to life as normal as a married couple.
SPEAKER_03:So I think a program like ShastaBlue Sky, you can go to ShastaBlueSky.org would be fantastic. You want to know that you're with people who are great at this and not just a general counselor. Um, because somebody who's really, really good at this is gonna take you through a process that's so much better than just a regular counselor or a coach. And so I really recommend a program like that. You also have to understand that forgiveness and healing are two completely different things.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_03:And so I think I'll we'll end with this, but forgiveness says, hey, I I recognize that God's going to have to get justice on my behalf. And justice looks different than what we think justice is. There's no justice in a broken life. And so you're releasing and allowing God to do that on your behalf, and but the healing process takes a while. This should hurt. If it didn't hurt and didn't take a while, something's wrong.
SPEAKER_04:Totally.
SPEAKER_03:So part of the bonding process in marriage happens when we heal and it happens going through uh when you work through this type of stuff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So absolutely. All right. Second question Do you have any advice for long distance dating? What helped you or couples you've worked with stay connected while you're living in different cities? So, yeah, I mean, we have an episode on long distance dating. I think the keys in there are really good. Uh, Jason and I never did do long distance dating, but we've walked with a lot of people who have. And so when this question came across my radar, I actually was thinking of a pretty recent scenario that we were involved with where we were helping somebody through actually recognizing red flags inside of long distance dating. And then ultimately this couple broke things off because it just didn't feel quite right. So maybe we could go into a few things that like challenges of long distance dating and what to look out for, and then ultimately, you know, how do you know when to move forward in long distance dating?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Do you want to start or you want me to?
SPEAKER_00:I can start. So um, you know, dating long distance is tricky because a dating journey is meant to be a trust-building journey. When you're dating somebody long distance, all you have is their word.
SPEAKER_04:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And so that's okay at first because, you know, we build trust in lots of different ways. We trust people all the time just because they've given us their word, right? Like you walk into a doctor's office and this doctor has a degree and he's treating your symptoms, and you you give him your trust, not because you know him or because you've seen his repeated success in your life, uh, but because you just are gonna give him his trust, give him your trust because this is what we do. We experiment sometimes. Or, you know, the mailman, you hand him something, you trust he's gonna get it to the post office in time and get it where it needs to go.
SPEAKER_03:He's getting paid to do it, he's trained.
SPEAKER_00:He's trained. So, right, so like this guy goes to church, maybe he's a friend of a friend, you know, he seems like a nice guy, you're taking his word for it. Everything you he tells you about his story or everything she tells you about her journey, you're taking their word for it. And you're getting to know them and it's casual, and then ultimately you have to figure out how to move forward. And the tricky thing about long distances, when you only have their word for it, it it can take longer to actually realize whether this person is A, telling the truth, B, honest and open and vulnerable about their story. C, are there any people involved in their journey that feel like bring validity and trust to the scenario? Like we should all be walking in community. Do they have that? You're not really sure because you're not there. So there's lots of things to look for and lots of really good questions to ask when you're in a long-distance dating relationship.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, for me, a couple of really important things is how do people handle their story? So, am I talking to someone that feels too good to be true? Where at some point, uh, long distance is great because you have a chance to build some really good uh emotional connection before physical connection. So I do like that part.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely.
SPEAKER_03:And being able to hear people talk through their story and their life and how they got to where they are and what they've done for some pain points and how they've built their life is awesome. Yeah, you want to hear hear somebody that is sharing real life things like their weaknesses and their fears and you know their process in life, um, especially as you date them longer. And then I also think that you can get to know somebody's community online even though they're not necessarily there. You had quite a bit of your community, babe, that was not here in person.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. My closest relationships were 2,000 miles away.
SPEAKER_03:Yep. And so I spent a lot of time on the phone with Summer, with Margaret, yeah, um, Mary Frazier, uh-huh, with those girls that were really important to you.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And what was cool about that is I could tell right away that what you were pre presenting to me was true based upon your friends, yeah. And how the type of questions they asked me, how they engage with me, yeah, how open they were, um, how protective they were of you.
SPEAKER_00:And so for me, like they all came to visit and meet you before we got married.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:We all spent time together. That was important.
SPEAKER_03:And then I think FaceTiming your parents was also big. And so there's this piece of well, we're long distance, and so you know, how can you really get to know somebody? And in today's day and age, yes, you don't get to see their daily interactions, which by the way, is massive. And don't get married before you actually are in the same city, yeah. Watching how somebody handles daily life for sure.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But can I get to know their community on Zoom? Absolutely. If they don't have any red flag.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely. That's a no-go. So, in my opinion, you really can't date somebody long distance. You really shouldn't date someone long distance who hasn't built community because there's too much on the line. You're not gonna stop your life and adjust everything that you've done, built, grown to take a risk like that on someone who hasn't actually done that in their own life yet. That is a really risky, that is a very risky thing to do.
SPEAKER_03:But you can build and grow towards uh each other and figure out like at some point you're gonna go, okay, I really enjoy our connection that we have. I really enjoy your friend group, I really enjoy your parents. Yeah, I enjoy whatever your business that you have, or you know, who you are as a person. Like getting more serious looks like us investing quite a bit of time, effort, energy, money into doing in-person connection. And and that to me is the ultimate.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I can think of a few couples who both dated long distance and then even couples who just didn't date long distance, just kind of dated normally, where like one person actually had a much more thriving and robust community than the other. The other person just hadn't had that type of experience yet. Like where they lived and what they how they grew up and what their life was like in their spot, they didn't have a really thriving community, but their new boyfriend or girlfriend did. And so there's nothing wrong with that if you can actually fold in and grow together. And if if both people have a real value for vulnerability and being known and building trust and having community and having people speak into your life, the red flag comes when there's an aversion to that and not an openness to actually building it together at some point, right? So, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's there's probably more things to look out for, but those are the things that kind of stick out to me today.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's great.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Question number three. Um, sex has become a pain point in our marriage. My husband thinks that we should have sex every day to fix it. He says we just need more practice, but that does not feel right to me. I don't have a desire for that. How do we get on the same page? I don't want to hurt him further.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean, honestly, I love her question for lots of reasons. You can see her compassion for her husband and desire um to want to fix things, uh, but also that pain point of not knowing what to do and not wanting to abandon yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_03:And so I I just want to stop and recognize like I think a lot of couples are in that spot. Totally. We've been in that spot before of I want I want more intimacy, or you know, you want something from me.
SPEAKER_00:Um and when your desires are different ultimately.
SPEAKER_03:So here's the thing is more sex that is disconnected doesn't equal connected sex.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_03:So I think you we have to put that in one that should go on like a that's a quote. Well, I just think we have to put it on the shelf somewhere and not forget that. Also, zero sex because you don't feel like it is also a bad plan.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. So sex is a gift, we have to put that on a shelf, right?
SPEAKER_03:Like we need to have a value for it. But I think what are we missing? What are we potentially missing is the question that I have for them. And when a woman feels safe when she feels seen, when she feels known, that desire to emotionally and physically physically connect grows, right? And so in marriage, as a man, that's what I'm pursuing. I'm pursuing, I'm taking my drive, my daily sexual drive. And I'm going, like, okay, I mean, just to be honest, I want to have sex, I want to score. Great. I take that motivation and I pour it into serving her, loving her, caring for her in a way that makes her naturally want to open up and want to be close to me. And so that's the challenge of if she just has sex with him because they somehow need to practice and having having better sex will make her want to have sex more. It won't. You'll just end up really frustrated. He'll end up frustrated over a long period of time. They have to crack the code of the pursuit and crack the code of how does she prepare herself to move towards him, and how does he help uh woo her in a way that, or how does he show up for her in a way that that helps her want to move close to him? And um, that could be everything from we've talked about this in our we actually had did a whole series, I think a year ago or two years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's been a while.
SPEAKER_03:On um marriage and um, I think sex inside of marriage as well.
SPEAKER_00:We've done a marriage series and we've also done a sex series. And inside the sex series is an episode all about sex in marriage.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And so I think for her going back and listening to those for him too, but really taking some time to answer this question. Do you feel known by your husband? Do you feel seen by your husband? Do you feel safe with your husband? Do you feel emotionally connected? If you don't, instead of having sex every day, do that every day.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_03:While moving towards one another. Yeah. That's because that's what he should be committing to. Hey, I want our our marriage to be better. And she has a drive to do that as well. Let's solve the issues that are keeping us from emotionally connecting deeply.
SPEAKER_00:That's good.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. Last one? Yeah. Last question for today. I am co-parenting with my son's dad, but we were never married, and he does not show me respect, although he's a deeply connected father. I'm worried about what my son is learning from him, the way his dad treats me. What can I do to protect my son's heart and keep peace?
SPEAKER_03:Man. I mean, I just have so much compassion for her. And um so I think anytime you're in your you are um parenting where there's two parents involved, you know, that that aren't under the same home. You have yeah, you have some of this dynamic of the way that my kids are being raised is different than the way that I'm raising them. And I'm watching things happen inside of my kids that make me feel nervous. So for starters, I think making sure that she doesn't dishonor his dad and talk bad about his dad just because she's afraid and feels pain. Because what that does, and the reason why I bring that up is that's the tendency. That's a natural thing to do.
SPEAKER_00:Is if you're feeling mistreated, you protect yourself.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Just because your dad does this to me doesn't mean you could right like, or talking bad about how her dad, how his dad treats, you know, her. When I was with your dad, he did the same thing too, you're just like your dad type of deal. Obviously, it creates a bunch of pain for him. It makes him choose sides. So he's naturally gonna want to protect his dad if he talked bad about his dad, especially if he looks up to him. You don't want to do any of that. So of and of course it's dishonoring. So part of I think what she can do is continue to build that emotional connection with her son while also having a standard and holding some healthy boundaries.
SPEAKER_04:Totally.
SPEAKER_03:So I think having conversations with him when he can hear you. So I spent a decent amount of time with my kids before you came into the picture, babe. Um, especially late at night. Like if I just put him down for bed, maybe I lay in bed for a little bit and emotionally connect. Emotionally connect, and then I talk about the thing that was painful. Hey, when when you treat me like this, it actually really hurts my feelings. You're a great man. I expect to be cared for by you, you know? And um, and constantly, hey, the if you have a need that maybe I'm not hearing, I need you to share it differently than being disrespectful and rude to me. But on the flip side, I also think because she doesn't know what the dad's talking about, she can start having conversations with him about hormones and about, you know, he's 13. So hey, what's part of what's happening, son, in you is you're growing into a young man, which naturally you want more territory, you want more responsibility, you want to kind of push against the rules, and that's okay as long as I feel cared for in it. My dad did a really great job of preparing me. I remember him telling me, You're not gonna want to hang out with me soon. That's just part of being 12 and 13 and 14, and that's okay, son. That's normal. Um, there is a rage happening inside of him. His insides are experiencing one day. I don't know if you remember this, babe, but our boys couldn't figure out day to day if they wanted to be a young boy or a grown man.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I think helping to explain that to him and going while you're in this process, I also need to feel cared for and loved and respected and hold those boundaries with him.
SPEAKER_00:I think too that this is an important part, a point in time in a boy's life where he is exposed to other men who are absolutely crushing it. And so, you know, if you're at church, like I'd be looking for the kind of men that I want to pour into my son and getting my 13-year-old son connected to the men's stuff at church or to the youth group or to youth leaders who know how to treat and respect women really well. He, I remember when our older children were in like junior high school, I remember my counselor telling me, Oh, Lauren, your boys have entered a season of life where they actually hate the sound of their mother's voice. It's true. And I felt so validated and offended all at once. But it's real, it's like a developmental stage where boys actually don't want to hear their moms tell them what to do and how to do it.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And it can create a lot of tension in a home, in a relationship, because as the mother of the house, you're like, whatever. I have been taking care of you for the last 13 years. Like, show some respect. And I think, yeah, I mean, our kids need to be parented in that and there need to be healthy boundaries. Um, however, it helps to realize what part of what they're going through is like a biological shift. And so I'd be looking for other men that can really reinforce some healthy, um, healthy relationships with women. The other thing that I feel to emphasize, because as I was reading this question, I felt a sense of like this woman really actually desires to feel cared for by her son's father. And I think I want to just say, like when you're in a when you're in a less than ideal family situation where there you're raising children without a marriage, without a partner, a desire for a loving partner is very normal.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:But you're not going to get that the way that you deeply desire it, outside of marriage, you won't get it. And actually, he has not covenanted to you to protect you in that way. So I'd be careful to look, I'd be careful about what needs you are looking for him to fill. You'll be disappointed time and time again if he's not prioritizing protecting you and you deeply want to be protected.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's not that your need is invalid, it's that you're looking in the wrong place for the source of that. And I think going on a journey of asking the Holy Spirit, like, where do I find my comfort, my protection, my connection if I'm not getting it there? And then simultaneously, so so when that happens, when you go on that journey with God and you actually come back to an alignment in like, where am I getting my sense of protection and connection? It empowers you to set really healthy boundaries. So, no, you're not gonna trash talk your son's dad in front of your son, but it is very appropriate to set healthy boundaries in front of your son. If you are spoken to with disrespect in front of your son, if you are treated poorly, you can absolutely in love set a boundary that models for your son. This is not actually how I'm okay being treated. So there's there's a journey there. I would get some coaching in that. I think that this is a really, really beautiful, like healthy journey to go on in learning how to take care of yourself and how to model self-respect for your son. But I think you should get coaching in it because it can be delicate when your heart's really involved.
SPEAKER_03:I agree. Me personally, I like a sport like jujitsu um for boys because it does teach respect. It has respect as a foundation and self-control as a foundation. And so it might be something that you think about, um, especially if there's a gym that's really good close to you. Uh, that's an area. And and I think without a dad in the home, having a place where young boys are around other men who are physical and giving that child a sense of confidence and a sense of um yeah, just capacity is really, really good.
SPEAKER_00:So it's great.
SPEAKER_03:Guys, thank you so much for jumping in um for going on this journey with us. Hopefully, you enjoyed our podcast today. If you have questions, send them to us. We love answering your questions. Otherwise, have an incredible week. We will see you next week.