Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons

141. When Life In Your 30's Doesn't Go As Planned

• Jason and Lauren Vallotton

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In this deeply honest episode, Jason and Lauren Vallotton talk about the quiet disorientation that can surface in your 30s — especially when life doesn’t look the way you thought it would.

They open with a vulnerable admission: you can have the life you once prayed for… and still feel unsettled inside it.

Lauren shares how her 30s revealed something unexpected — it wasn’t that she needed a better plan. She needed a different version of herself. Together, they explore how what feels like breakdown is often actually recalibration.

This episode is for the woman who has checked the boxes, carried responsibility well, made thoughtful decisions… and still feels like something doesn’t quite fit.

You are not failing. You are becoming.

IN THIS EPISODE, THEY DISCUSS:

The Disorientation No One Prepared You For | “This isn’t a breakdown. It’s a recalibration.” 

Jason and Lauren unpack the “picket fence” script many of us subconsciously follow — the belief that if we do X, life will look like Y. What happens when you do the right things… and it still doesn’t feel the way you expected?

They talk about why this tension often surfaces in your 30s — when decisions carry weight, comparison gets louder, and responsibility leaves less room for fantasy.

The Three Griefs Nobody Names | “Sometimes the pain isn’t your life… it’s the funeral of the life you expected.”

Lauren gives language to three quiet griefs many women carry:

  • The grief of the timeline — the life you thought would have happened by now
  • The grief of identity — when the version of you that worked in your 20s doesn’t work anymore
  • The grief of outcomes — when you did the “right things” and life still got hard

Together, they gently ask the question many women haven’t stopped long enough to consider: What are you grieving that you’ve been calling “just stress”?

This conversation is tender, grounding, and full of hope. Because sometimes what feels like disorientation isn’t failure — it’s reorientation. And letting go of the dream life might be the very thing that makes room for a truer one.

If this episode resonates, share it with a friend who’s navigating her own season of becoming.


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Welcome Back & February Check-In

SPEAKER_00

We're the ballotins and we are passionate about people.

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Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.

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But that's not always what comes easiest.

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We know this because of our wide range of personal experience as well as our years of working with people.

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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_01

Welcome back everyone to Dates, Mates and Babies with the Balatons. It's great to be here with you guys.

Last Week’s Focus On Men

Turning To Women’s Disorientation

SPEAKER_00

It sure is. Happy February. We are already halfway through the first quarter of 2026. There's a lot going on and lots of good stuff happening. Guys, if you didn't get the chance, I would say go back and listen to last week's episode. It is all about God's plan for forming men, which is just such a timely message, considering the Brave Co. Ride of Passage event that's coming up next week, you guys, in Jacksonville, Florida. So there are uh links to that event information in the show notes. Check it out. Listen to last week's episode. And then this week, we have got the other side of the coin for you. We're gonna talk a little bit more specifically about women this week. So we've got some great topics of conversation coming up in the next couple weeks along those lines.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's true. This week we wanted to jump in and really focus on like there's there's something that happens for women when they hit their late 20s and early 30s that feels really, really relevant. And actually, babe, I think it's really important because you you've talked about it a lot.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And I think that it's one of the things that caught you off guard in life is like you can have everything that you want in life, almost everything that you prayed for in life, and still be like, oh my gosh, what is happening to my world?

When Life Is Good Yet Off-Plan

SPEAKER_00

It's true. We've got a we've been work, I've been working on a really fun project for the last year. And we will kind of announce at the end of this episode. Here's your teaser. At the end of this episode, I'm gonna let you know about the project I've been working on for the last year pertaining to this topic specifically. But yeah, I would say, you know, in my early 30s, I hit a spot where I felt really disoriented in life. And ultimately what happened for me was I got to a spot in life where I thought, wow, nothing has gone as planned. Nothing about my life looks like I thought it would when I was young. Yeah. And my life is good and beautiful, and I can see God at work in my life, but nothing is as I thought it would be. And you only get one life. So that's kind of a disorienting feeling. And there's like a reckoning that has to happen, I think. And the more I've spoken to women in that age range, kind of that late 20s, early 30s time frame, I do think that it is kind of across the board a real season shift. And I think it's helpful to kind of talk through it a little bit because it impacts, obviously, for women out there, we're kind of going through this internal wrestle that happens in our 30s. And then it absolutely impacts our relationships. There's friendship dynamics that are impacted by this disorientation. If you're married or have families, there's there's a lot that the implications are widespread in the lives of women in this age range. And I think it's helpful to talk about it because it's something that honestly goes unnamed quite a bit. Uh so yeah, we're we're gonna kind of like dive into it a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I guess my question is for you, what did it feel like in when you like when did you start to notice I feel a bit disoriented in life? Yeah, like this isn't going as planned for you.

Early Faith, Big Choices, Closed Doors

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So there was a little bit of that all along. I would say, you know, I became a Christian in high school, and then I really started following the Lord really hard in college, and that led me to California where I attended BSSM for a couple of years. And you know, that that those were my 20s. My 20s were, well, my early 20s were about me running hard after God. And the thing about your early 20s is that most of life's big achievements and big unanswered questions are all ahead of you still.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00

So, you know, as a as a somebody in my early, my late teens or my early 20s, I am pursuing God with all my heart. I am positioning myself to follow him. And I'm wondering what my life is going to become? It's all very exciting. It feels like I don't yet know who I'm gonna marry. I don't yet have a family. I'm not exactly sure what my career is gonna look like yet, but it all feels very exciting because I'm following God. Yeah. Then some of these big questions start getting answered in beautiful ways, right? Like answers to prayer. So I meet Jason Valatin.

SPEAKER_01

Are you gonna meet a really incredible guy?

Marriage, Stepfamily, And Responsibility

SPEAKER_00

And yeah, like I, you know, for great marriage. Yeah, long time you wonder, like, who am I gonna marry? What's that gonna be like? So then in my mid-20s, we got married. And of course, our story is unique that in that I also became a stepmom when I got married. So, you know, in one day, on June 4th, 2011, a couple of the biggest questions I'd wondered my entire life got answered. Who am I gonna marry? And what's it gonna be like to have a family? Like we did that on one day. And so by the time I hit my late 20s, there's a big chunk of my life that has been decided. And on one hand, that there's a lot of peace in that and a lot of fulfillment in that. And on the other hand, there's a reckoning because in the answer to that question, a lot of other doors close for you. So you kind of go from having like the world is my oyster to Reading, California is my oyster.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

Unanswered Dreams And Infertility

SPEAKER_00

This one man for the rest of my life, these kids, whether it's easy or hard, like this is it for me. This is what I'm doing for the rest of my life. And I think that can be quite sobering when you sink into the reality of okay, the reality of marriage is a great marriage is a lot of work. The reality of raising children is it's a crack ton of emotional, physical, mental energy. This is what I've signed myself up for. Here we go. And so I think, you know, by the time I got to my early 30s, yes, a lot of my lifelong prayers had been answered. But whoa, the weight of responsibility, the gravity of raising a family, the grind of having a beautiful marriage that is a lot of work. And then also some of the left-hanging unanswered prayers that still feel like dreams in my heart that I, because of the choices I've made, now I'm not sure that those dreams are ever gonna come to pass. So for me, what that looked like, it was unique, right? Like for me, it was I married a man who was married previously, had three children, had a vasectomy, and now I'm married to him. And in my daydreams before we got married, I'm like, yes, and then we're gonna live happily ever after, and we're gonna reverse that vasectomy, and we're gonna have so many kids, and it's just gonna be this like Brady Bunch movie, and let's do it. Well, of course, things don't really happen exactly as planned. So, you know, I'm in this awesome marriage, but it's a lot of work. We're raising kids together, we're blending a family, it's taking every ounce of me. I I don't actually know that I'm ever gonna have babies of my own. We've tried now for a number of years, and we're walking through some infertility. So, so that's my story. Zoom out, and then I'm gonna stop talking and you can jump in. Zoom out is this is the time of life where you go, I've made some big decisions, I've made some big choices. Here I am. This is what real life feels like. It's what real life looks like. It's no longer a dream. I'm living in it, and it's really hard. And not only that, I'm not sure that some of my deep desires are ever going to be fulfilled. And I have to reconcile all of that inside of me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. The I I do think that your 30s really is where you start to realize that the weight of your decisions, the comparison between what you thought your life was going to be and what you think other people's life is as well. I mean, that's a lot of it, right? It is. You're looking at your friends, you're looking at, you know, acquaintances, you're looking online, and it's like, God dang, that that girl's got what looks like a more appealing life or an easier marriage, or man, their kids get dressed in the morning without 5,000 negotiations, you know, all these things, whatever. And and then on top of that, these responsibilities that you have day in and day out, day in and day out. Like very few people tell you hey, as you get older, responsibilities get more, pain gets greater, your freedom gets less.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And this is called life.

SPEAKER_00

It's called adulthood.

SPEAKER_01

This is adulthood, and this is what life's gonna be. And so there really is like this grief process and like you said, this this reckoning. Like, take us through a bit of the grief process.

Adulthood’s Weight And Comparison

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so I would say we have to, and I'm only gonna speak to women about this because I only know what this is like as a woman, but we have to be able to name the disorientation. And that's where I think, you know, we culturally we don't do that a lot. I mean, you know, get on social media and you'll find all the all the accounts that are aimed at moms with young kids, right? There's like a billion out there trying to just help you through the day, which let's applaud that. Thank you for all the help. I love feeling like I'm in a boat with other people. However, you know, the best, the best toddler tools can't actually get me out of feeling disoriented in my own life. We have to be able to name that disorientation and like you said, kind of walk through like a bit of a grief process. So I think we have to accept, okay, this isn't actually a breakdown. This is an opportunity to really recalibrate. I need God's truth in my life in order to align myself with what is true and good and real in life and know what to do with the stuff that I can't answer for. Whether it's the unanswered dreams or the fact that this is harder than I thought it would be, all of that. I really need God's truth.

SPEAKER_01

So ultimately and a reframing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, a reframing.

Naming Disorientation And Reframing

SPEAKER_01

Right. So the recalibration slash reframing is this wasn't meant to break me down. No, this isn't a problem. This is how life was designed. Yeah. And unless I was set up to really see and understand, unless you had a really great mentor that walked with you very closely in this and is telling you, like, hey, this is part of, and I'll say this as a man. This is part of being a man. Part of being a man is you make all these decisions, you have all these ideas of what life's gonna be like, but responsibility demands time and intentionality. And the weight of carrying that time and intentionality and having responsibilities is heavy. There's a pressure there.

SPEAKER_00

There is.

SPEAKER_01

But there's also a deep fulfillment in it. So yeah, take us through the griefs.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. So I, you know, we could say sometimes the hardest part of life isn't really the life itself, but rather the dying of the things you expected it to be. Yeah, that's true. Right? When we are disappointed or when our expectations aren't met, there's a pain there. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that something's wrong. It just means that there's something to grieve. So a lot of times I think it's grieving a timeline. So, man, I thought something would have happened by now. I'll say briefly on that. Like, we've been married for 15 years, but my best friend from childhood only just got married in 2025. She got married a year ago this month. And so for 15 years, I walked with her through all of our 20s and 30s. I've walked with her in her singleness season. And I can say her in her singleness, like grieving the timeline, I thought this would happen by now. It was, it coincided perfectly with my grieving of not having had babies of my own. I thought this would happen by now. So that universal feeling of this timeline is not what I expected, is a grief.

Grieving Timelines And Outcomes

SPEAKER_01

It's interesting because for me, like just as a man, I'm thinking about this. I'm grieving the timeline of I was gonna have my kids were gonna be out of the house right now. Yeah. And I was gonna be doing, you know, hunting and fishing, doing what I want to do when whenever I want to do it. And being able to reconcile that for me was the first part of like accepting where I'm at and being okay with like, no, this is actually a better story.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

But wow, some days I'm like, I almost had all that freedom.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The timeline. There's a there, I think our 30s is a real opportunity. It's potentially one of the first times in our life that you you're old enough to go, wow, I have loads of disappointment because this has not happened yet.

SPEAKER_01

For sure.

SPEAKER_00

When you're in your 20s, you're like, all right, I'm waiting. I can wait. I'm good. And then in your 30s, you're like, I've been waiting too long. I just think there's like a tipping point.

SPEAKER_01

You still have that young energy when you're young.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. The second grief would be more of like an identity grief, right? So I think in our 20s, we figure out what works for us. And then in our 30s, something happens where the version of me that worked in my 20s doesn't work anymore. And there's actually a calling higher and a calling up that happens. I think as we mature in our 30s, we realize oh my goodness, I need to grow in this area again. It's almost like the layer of the onion, whether it's internal growth or like inner healing or a skill set that really needs developing further. But this grief of identity, the stuff that I thought I had down from my 20s, I'm being confronted with myself again in my 30s. And I am being called up. And that's very uncomfortable. And there's a grief there because there's a requirement of growth. If we're going to move through our 30s, there's a requirement of growth that's quite uncomfortable at times. And I know for myself, my goodness, my 30s was a massive self-awareness decade where I went, shoot, I thought I had it together in some of these areas. And I have got some healing to do. I have got some growing to do. I have some ownership to take. I have some issues I need to sort out.

SPEAKER_01

Well, kids and marriage will do that to you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Right. So I think that's a lot of it is I'm not who I thought that I was. And and I'm having to become someone. I'm in this process of becoming someone that I I didn't see that coming.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that's a it's a very stretching process.

Identity Grief And Growth

SPEAKER_00

Coupling the identity grief with the grief of timeline, it they really go hand in hand. Cause I think one of the things that happens in our 30s, when you get to that spot where you're disoriented and disappointed because of the timeline of your life or the expectations you had, it often reveals areas where you need to grow and take a lot of ownership. And that's really uncomfortable a lot of the time. So even for single people, it's, I think there's there's in your 30s, it's we you get to the spot where you go, I have to own that I can't control the timeline of things. And I have to own that I have to grow through this in spite of my disappointments, in spite of my unanswered prayers, in spite of my, you know, lack.

SPEAKER_01

The not being able to, I think the hardest part, I think, is not being able to control the timeline.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And because I think it'd be like someone saying, Well, if you do this, you'll get X thing. And we spend a lot of our 20s, like, okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do that, and I'm gonna do this thing over here. And I still didn't get that thing that I really wanted the way that I wanted it. And so that I really, you know, for us, I'll just put it in really clear terms. We started to try to have kids after my reversal. And man, at first you're like just excited to try, and then you realize this is not working, it's not happening. And then so you go one level more, right? Like, we're gonna do IUI and we're gonna do this thing, and we're gonna be really diligent, and we're not gonna miss a day, and I'm not gonna get in a hot tub for like a freaking long time. Yeah, years I didn't get in a hot tub. I forgot about that, and I'm gonna get this thing that I really want. Yeah, and then it doesn't happen, right? And it's not happening, I can't control it. Like that really messes with you. It's a grief, it's so painful to have to do that and to continually have to recalibrate. Oh, it's not like a one time, it's like I'm over and over and over being reintroduced to myself to go, you don't have control over the thing that you want the most.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Yeah, yeah. That we might maybe we would just call that like a grief of outcomes. Like the outcomes are just not adding up. And we're losing time. A plus B is not equaling C, and I do not know what to do.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm running out of time.

Control, Faith, And Acceptance

SPEAKER_00

Running out of time. I'm feeling pressure, all the things. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it's probably worth our time, just as human beings, but women specifically, since we're kind of aiming this at women today. It's great to identify is there something that you're grieving that you've just been writing off as stress? Like I'm stressed about dot, dot, dot. What is the stress? What is the if you could actually name the stress and pull it back a little bit to go, is there a disappointment? I need to grieve. Because actually the grieving process moves us through that reality to a place of real acceptance. And what's ultimately happening to us in this season of disorientation is it's a formation season.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00

And one of the things that I've learned for myself is that my formation seasons ultimately are preparing me to be the person who I did dream of being. And the outcomes are not guarantees, but the process is about formation. So grief is a part of how we get to a place of peace and surrender and hope, regardless of circumstance, regardless of outcomes. So that grief bit is really critical.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, you have to move to a place of real acceptance and then into trust and faith. Yeah. And we often bypass the grief because we want to get into faith and hope and trust, not realizing that grief is that.

Book Reveal: Past The Picket Fence

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely. Guys, this is probably just the start of a conversation where I told you that I have been working on a project for the last year, and I'm very excited to announce that in mid-March I'm going to be releasing my first book.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, man. It's amazing.

Why Formation Is The Roadmap

SPEAKER_00

The crowd goes wild. You know, I was pushed over the edge by my girlfriends to write this book and to kind of take on this project. And my book is called Past the Picket Fence, a memoir for life in the messy middle. And girls, I am speaking to you and I'm speaking to myself in this book. And I do tell my story in this book, largely surrounding my journey of motherhood. But I'm speaking to women about this disorientation and about this process of formation that we all go through. And I am so excited about it. I'm so grateful that my friends challenged me to write it. And it was quite a quite a year, guys. Writing a book is like, whoa. I mean, I've always wanted to do it. So I'm only thankful. But man, it was a cost. It was actually so fun. I had so much fun on the project, but it's coming out mid-March. I'll be sure to give you guys more information. And we're probably gonna take the next couple of weeks to unpack these topics a little bit more because it's top of mind for us at the moment and very relatable. So hopefully this was fun. Surprise! No, I have a book coming out. You're gonna start seeing it on social media. And listen, I'm self-publishing, so it's great. I'm not gonna say we're not going for New York Times bestseller, but listen, just having the book out there.

SPEAKER_01

Reading Times bestseller.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I don't know. Dates, mates, and babies podcast audience bestseller. We'll say that, right? No. I'm just celebrating. It's a it's a labor of love, and I'm excited for you guys to have it if you want it.

Closing Gratitude & What’s Next

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's such an important book. It really is. It's such an important book because so many women are in the phase of life and get into the phase of life. Of life where you go, man, what is my life? And how do I go through this process of dreaming, becoming, and letting go in this process of formation? And in really where is the roadmap? And so you've done such a fantastic job of creating a roadmap for women to really get back to a place where they love their life and enjoy their life and feel powerful in their life. And so I'm really proud of you, babe.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

You've done a fantastic job.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01

And guys, be looking for that. But thanks so much for listening. We love you. Have an incredible week. We will see you next week.