Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on from Mamma. I'm Meya Friedman. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the No Filter podcast and this story starts with
Speaker 1: a wei, which is not something I've ever said about
Speaker 1: an episode of No Filter before, but hey, I like
Speaker 1: to keep things interesting around here. The name Ashley Madison
Speaker 1: will probably be familiar to you, either back from two
Speaker 1: thousand and two when the dating site for people who
Speaker 1: wanted to have an Affair launched or the recent Netflix
Speaker 1: documentary about it. Ashley Madison was a business and a
Speaker 1: website that was set up specifically for married people who
Speaker 1: wanted to have an affair with other married people. It
Speaker 1: kind of operated on this idea of utually assured destruction.
Speaker 1: It was pretty scandalous at the time. Their tagline was
Speaker 1: life is Short, Have an Affair, and the CEO, a
Speaker 1: bloke called Noel Biederman, capitalized on all that controversy. He
Speaker 1: was this kind of over the top showman who would
Speaker 1: go on TV and do all these interviews, and he'd
Speaker 1: often drag his wife along as well, basically making the
Speaker 1: argument that cheaters are going to cheat, why not monetize it,
Speaker 1: and monetize it he did, Ashley Madison made tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars. That was until twenty fifteen, when an
Speaker 1: anonymous group who called itself the Impact Team, announced that
Speaker 1: it had hacked the Ashley Madison website. After some frantic
Speaker 1: attempts by NOL and the Ashley Madison management to stop
Speaker 1: the Impact Team, they made good on their promise and
Speaker 1: release the data. Not only did this mean that the
Speaker 1: names of all the would be cheaters were released, but
Speaker 1: also their home addresses, their bank details, and even things
Speaker 1: like their sexual preferences. All of this stuff had to
Speaker 1: be entered when you joined the website, and the leak
Speaker 1: also exposed the fact that the site was mostly full
Speaker 1: of men and that the women, well, they were bots,
Speaker 1: as in they were not real. I remember when this happened.
Speaker 1: It was massive news and journalists were scouring the list
Speaker 1: for anything that was explosive, particularly people who were in
Speaker 1: the public eye. Men that were in the public eye.
Speaker 1: People's lives were ruined, People lost their jobs, their reputations
Speaker 1: were destroyed, and some people even took their own lives
Speaker 1: because of the consequences and the humiliation. And caught up
Speaker 1: in this firestorm was one couple called Sam and Nia Raider.
Speaker 1: They were childhood sweethearts and you may have seen them
Speaker 1: if you've watched the Netflix documentary I Love Being a Dad.
Speaker 2: I loved my wife. It was a beautiful marriage, but
Speaker 2: it was also just like monotonous. I remember seeing an
Speaker 2: advertisement for sure having a I was like, that sounds intriguing.
Speaker 1: Before the Ashley Madison scandal broke, Sam and Nia were
Speaker 1: pretty successful family vloggers, kind of like influencers before that
Speaker 1: was a thing, and they made viral videos about their
Speaker 1: lives together with their young family. One video that shows
Speaker 1: a very happy Sam and Nia driving with their daughter
Speaker 1: in the back seat while their lip synced to a
Speaker 1: Frozen song really put them on the map when it
Speaker 1: went viral, and it didn't caught the attention of Disney.
Speaker 1: My one For Sam. It turns out that love was
Speaker 1: in fact an open door, but maybe not in the
Speaker 1: way Nia thought. The next video that they made that
Speaker 1: went viral, this is where we comes in. So Sam
Speaker 1: wanted to do something really big and splashy and to
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention on YouTube, and Nia had
Speaker 1: told him that her period was late. So what he
Speaker 1: did he filmed all this, was to go into the
Speaker 1: bathroom after she'd been to the toilet and get a
Speaker 1: pregnancy test and extract some of her WII from the toilet,
Speaker 1: put it on the pregnancy test, and tell her live
Speaker 1: while he was filming and get her reaction.
Speaker 2: So here I am, and I'm so excited. I have
Speaker 2: a specimen. I have a specimen. I knew it would
Speaker 2: be there. I don't know if it'll throw it off
Speaker 2: because it's all diluted. But I also brought almost pregnancy test,
Speaker 2: and this time around, I'm going to be doing the announcement.
Speaker 2: At least I hope. I hoped so bad she's pregnant.
Speaker 1: The angle on it was that he was going to
Speaker 1: know that she was pregnant before she knew that she
Speaker 1: was pregnant. And yes, it went viral and they did
Speaker 1: lots of interviews about it. I told you the story
Speaker 1: was unusual. So that's the way. Sam and Nia share
Speaker 1: a lot about their experience in the documentary and even
Speaker 1: more in their book called Living Truth. But in the
Speaker 1: course of the conversation I'm about to share with you,
Speaker 1: they open up about a lot of very personal details
Speaker 1: that they haven't shared before, even in the Netflix documentary.
Speaker 1: I know that the biggest question you'll have, the biggest
Speaker 1: question most people have when they hear Sam and Nia's story,
Speaker 1: is how do you get past cheating? How do you
Speaker 1: get past betrayal and public humiliation? How do you get
Speaker 1: past the person who's meant to love you more than
Speaker 1: anyone betraying you like that? Sam and Nia are disarmingly honest,
Speaker 1: and as you'll hear, their story is actually a lot
Speaker 1: more than just the Ashley Madison scandal. It's about love
Speaker 1: and infidelity and betrayal and forgiveness and how all of
Speaker 1: those things can take many forms. Here's my conversation with
Speaker 1: Sam and Nia. The first time I became aware of
Speaker 1: you guys, I was running a women's website part of
Speaker 1: our company still today, and it was the we video.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it, Sam, how did the idea
Speaker 1: of the pregnancy test come about? It was unlike anything
Speaker 1: anyone had ever seen. What gave you that idea? How
Speaker 1: much of it was about making good content and how
Speaker 1: much of it about you just thought it would be
Speaker 1: a really cool thing. Today.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I was an er nurse at the time,
Speaker 2: So it was kind of just normal for me to
Speaker 2: find out when other women are pregnant before they did.
Speaker 2: That was kind of a normal. And so we had
Speaker 2: the YouTube channel. I was still working as a nurse,
Speaker 2: and I'm testing this lady's year now and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to figure out how we can make our next pregnancy
Speaker 2: a big moment. Like everybody else in the blogging space
Speaker 2: was like the pregnancy videos were huge, So like, how
Speaker 2: can I do something nobody else has done? And yeah,
Speaker 2: I clicked. It's like I got to do this to Nia.
Speaker 2: I clicked her year and then get the pause of
Speaker 2: pregnancy result before she does.
Speaker 1: That was so wild, Nia, I mean, I assume you
Speaker 1: discussed it before you posted it. How did you feel
Speaker 1: about that?
Speaker 3: I was so excited to be pregnant. I didn't even care,
Speaker 3: Like it didn't even cross my mind much that my
Speaker 3: pee was going to be. Like Sam has such grand ideas,
Speaker 3: He's always able to see them all the way through.
Speaker 3: I'm never thinking in my head like this is gonna
Speaker 3: go viral, millions of people are gonna see my pee.
Speaker 3: Like that just wasn't what was going through my mind.
Speaker 3: And you know, once it happened, of course, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, I wish I explained, like, because people
Speaker 3: are like, you're dehydrated. What that's so gross? You know,
Speaker 3: Like I'm here all the things. There's a very logical reason.
Speaker 3: I've had some moms back me up on it. We
Speaker 3: lived in an older home with I guess it's thin
Speaker 3: walls the wrong way to put it. You could just
Speaker 3: hear everything. You can hear the walking around on the
Speaker 3: ground anyway, And so I didn't flush the toilet at
Speaker 3: night because it would wake the babies up, or so
Speaker 3: I thought if I had flushed the toilet and then
Speaker 3: a kid woke up, that happened multiple times. We had
Speaker 3: two children at the time. That happened multiple times with
Speaker 3: my babies, and so I just was like, I'm not
Speaker 3: even gonna risk it, you know, I just want to
Speaker 3: know all these people who are so annoyed by it,
Speaker 3: like do you actually flush?
Speaker 2: A lot of people? Do understand them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I back you fully. Who flushes the toilet in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night after number ones? Like why
Speaker 1: would you? Nineteen million people saw that video and celebrated
Speaker 1: with you guys afterwards, though you had a miscarriage, which
Speaker 1: was devastating and I'm so sorry for your loss. And
Speaker 1: that's when you saw the ugly side, isn't it, Because
Speaker 1: some people said you just did the whole thing for
Speaker 1: a publicity stunt.
Speaker 2: You know what was the reaction, Well, they first originally
Speaker 2: accused us of faking the pregnancy, saying we can't get
Speaker 2: a positive result, we can't get hCG hormone and diluted yurin,
Speaker 2: which was false. You can, but we had people accusing
Speaker 2: us of lying. And then the miscarriage happened, so people
Speaker 2: doubled down, like, yep, they were absolutely faking it. Now
Speaker 2: they're faking a miscarriage.
Speaker 3: It was so devastating. It just like I had no
Speaker 3: expectations of that first video going viral, Like I just
Speaker 3: was blind sided by the hate. Honestly, I feel like
Speaker 3: in the other times that we've experienced, you know, hate
Speaker 3: comments and stuff like that, it just I don't know.
Speaker 3: This one really blindsided me because I was already grieving.
Speaker 3: It was so so hard. It's still blows my mind
Speaker 3: people truly believe I faked a miscarriage. It's crazy to me.
Speaker 1: You guys were a brand by this point, your family
Speaker 1: was a brand. You know, you were going through something
Speaker 1: really tough, and you also had to contend with everybody
Speaker 1: else having their feelings about it, which in this case
Speaker 1: was so cruel. Did it give you pause and make
Speaker 1: you think, you know what, I don't want to expose myself,
Speaker 1: our marriage, our family to this.
Speaker 2: I never did. I always felt like I had nothing
Speaker 2: to hide, even though I was hiding something. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is weird. I just don't mind it sharing private moments
Speaker 2: with people. I think that started probably pretty early on.
Speaker 1: Your marriage was, by all accounts, looked great. You had
Speaker 1: a young family, you seemed happy. You were this gorgeous,
Speaker 1: good looking couple. Still are pretty good looking, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: ten years later. And I think that's really important to
Speaker 1: look at that because a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: cheating only happens in bad marriages, when you know, people
Speaker 1: are really disconnected, maybe when they're not having sex anymore,
Speaker 1: when they fall out of love. But it didn't seem
Speaker 1: from the video, is that that was the case with
Speaker 1: your marriage nw Nia. Of course you didn't know what
Speaker 1: was going on, but Sam, can you just take me
Speaker 1: a little bit inside your head at that time and
Speaker 1: why you started looking outside your marriage and what you
Speaker 1: were looking for.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people believe I was straying
Speaker 2: and doing things behind your back while we're vlogging, And
Speaker 2: it never happened while vlogging. So when you say you
Speaker 2: saw a happy marriage and everybody looked happy, I was
Speaker 2: keeping secrets, but I wasn't doing anything behind your back
Speaker 2: from what people were seeing on the internet. But six months,
Speaker 2: four months previous to starting YouTube, that was probably the
Speaker 2: last time, or that was the last time I deleted
Speaker 2: Ashley Madison. That was the last time I strayed, and
Speaker 2: we found a church. So yeah, what was going through
Speaker 2: my head? The first one? Gosh, let me think, how.
Speaker 1: Long had you been married the first time?
Speaker 2: It was in our first year? How long? How many months?
Speaker 2: And she knows these details better than I do.
Speaker 3: I mean, had you have just been a few months
Speaker 3: in Like I got pregnant. We had like a honeymoon pregnancy,
Speaker 3: and I think, what is middle Towards the end of
Speaker 3: my pregnancy.
Speaker 2: I was in nursing school at the time, surrounded by women,
Speaker 2: and I made friends with a couple of guys who
Speaker 2: are single, and they flirted with all the women they
Speaker 2: went out with them. I kind of came along. I
Speaker 2: feel like that was kind of the start. I started
Speaker 2: becoming like my friends, but then of course they left
Speaker 2: the scene, and I continued to make stupid choices. I
Speaker 2: think it was just trying to find excitement in my life.
Speaker 2: When I became a nurse, I hated the job. I
Speaker 2: was like, what the heck did I do? I spent
Speaker 2: six years for this job and I hate it, and
Speaker 2: life just kind of hit me hard, and I think
Speaker 2: I did a lot of this stuff, almost like self mutilation.
Speaker 2: It was like, I hate myself, so let's just do
Speaker 2: this to yourself. Do whatever you want. You know, God
Speaker 2: doesn't want you to do this, but just do it anyway.
Speaker 2: It's not that Neil wasn't fulfilling me in my marriage.
Speaker 2: That wasn't the reason. Like, if you want to really
Speaker 2: get down to the basic answer, I think I hate
Speaker 2: saying a word, but boredom.
Speaker 1: Maybe were you looking for attention. I don't mean to
Speaker 1: sound cruel when I say that, But in your book,
Speaker 1: I learned that you were in a rock band in
Speaker 1: high school. It was called Free the Float, and the
Speaker 1: first song that you wrote and recorded was All We
Speaker 1: Want is Fame. You described yourself as a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old as being an attention hungry class clown when you
Speaker 1: were this twenty eight year old nurse. Was that how
Speaker 1: you were feeling again that you wanted some attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Since I can remember, I was always imagining myself
Speaker 2: in front of a large audience and being applauded. And
Speaker 2: I would have watched my favorite bands, But it wasn't
Speaker 2: their music I loved the most. It was their adoration
Speaker 2: that they were receiving that I love the most. And
Speaker 2: it was a really strange thing. I assume it was
Speaker 2: from the lack of validation I got from my father.
Speaker 2: Now as I look back, I kind of realized some
Speaker 2: of that. But yeah, in nursing school, I also was
Speaker 2: the class clown. I got class clown at the end
Speaker 2: of the thing. So yeah, I was still constantly looking
Speaker 2: for attention, cracking off in class. And I was even
Speaker 2: sent to the office as an adult in nursing school,
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 1: You got sent to the principal as an adult.
Speaker 2: I know, it's so pathetic, and I still fight it today.
Speaker 2: It's just an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1: When you started to cross some lines, was it a
Speaker 1: very clear line or was it things got a little
Speaker 1: bit blurry in the way that you were behaving with
Speaker 1: other women, Like is there a particular moment where you
Speaker 1: crossed over a particular line that you can remember?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was always just walking right on the line.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was like signing up for freshion Madison and like
Speaker 2: literally saying I want to have an affair. Like when
Speaker 2: I got to that point, it's like, what the heck?
Speaker 2: How did I get here? Like several years ago, I
Speaker 2: would have never just blatantly chosen to have an affair.
Speaker 2: It faded into that, you know, it was a slow fade.
Speaker 2: And of course it started probably with pornography, and you know,
Speaker 2: like in the documentary movies, I was so fascinated by
Speaker 2: romance in that aspect of my marriage that a novelty
Speaker 2: wore off and that was a bummer for me. So
Speaker 2: I wanted to keep seeking that attention in that romance.
Speaker 2: That's probably where it started. Just making eyes with other people,
Speaker 2: women making eyes back at me. Just that the type
Speaker 2: of romance that you don't know touching or anything, but
Speaker 2: you just know as a thing between you two. That's
Speaker 2: probably how it started. And then I kept calling.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting listening to Sam and Nia now after
Speaker 1: they've shared so much of their lives with the world
Speaker 1: on Netflix and with their own audience and community on
Speaker 1: their YouTube channel. Because it's so clear that it's still
Speaker 1: a very difficult conversation to have. I thought they might
Speaker 1: be like, kind of bluse about it. But what you
Speaker 1: can't see because you're listening to this is that Sam
Speaker 1: and Nia are actually talking to me from their bedroom
Speaker 1: while we're doing this interview. Behind them, I can see
Speaker 1: their bed, and on the wall behind their bed is
Speaker 1: a big blown up photograph of their family. It is
Speaker 1: just so intimate, and I can hear their kids playing
Speaker 1: in the background. They're not in the room, of course,
Speaker 1: but I can hear them in another part of the house.
Speaker 1: And what Sam is about to disclose next really does
Speaker 1: feel like a private conversation between a husband and a
Speaker 1: wife in the safety of their bedroom, sharing things that
Speaker 1: they did not share on the Netflix documentary. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to get an exclusive, but here we are. How
Speaker 1: far did you go?
Speaker 2: Well, we've agreed not to talk about details. But I
Speaker 2: had an intercourse one time physically, that was how far
Speaker 2: I went intercourse one time with the prostitute. Emotionally, how
Speaker 2: far I went? I kissed the girl, held her hands,
Speaker 2: I guess that would be kind of just tell you how.
Speaker 1: Emotionally it's kind of surreal. We're sitting here, you guys
Speaker 1: are in your bedroom, You're talking to a stranger across
Speaker 1: the other side of the world in Australia. We can
Speaker 1: hear a storm in the background, which is kind of symbolic.
Speaker 1: Your husband's sitting next to you talking about that time
Speaker 1: he had sex. How do you feel It's.
Speaker 3: So weird because I can I can hear these things
Speaker 3: as facts and details that like matter for us to
Speaker 3: get to where we are today. Of course, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's sad. It's sad that he got there. It's sad
Speaker 3: that our marriage went through what it went through. But
Speaker 3: I don't see what he's saying as him. When he
Speaker 3: says these things. I'm envisioning a version of him, And
Speaker 3: you know, that's a beautiful thing that I can sit
Speaker 3: next to this version of Sam and that guy is
Speaker 3: long gone, and I'm just so thankful for that.
Speaker 2: It still hurts her a little bit. I know it's
Speaker 2: just facts, but every time we bring this stuff up,
Speaker 2: it's painful for both of us. And I got to
Speaker 2: be extra close to her after this and just kind
Speaker 2: of remind her who I am.
Speaker 1: In the books, Sam, You're write, infidelity doesn't add spice.
Speaker 1: It invites chaos. Even before the data breach with Ashley Madison,
Speaker 1: what kind of chaos was it inviting into your life?
Speaker 2: Well, first, just covering up the lies. I think the
Speaker 2: chaos started within myself. I was supposed to have a
Speaker 2: relationship with the Lord and I was praying to him.
Speaker 2: Yet I was still doing these things. And then I
Speaker 2: got further from the Lord. That was the first chaos.
Speaker 2: There's no order within me like that. I stopped phoning
Speaker 2: the manual that is the Bible, and so I was
Speaker 2: just scattered. My emotions were scattered. And then bringing that
Speaker 2: into my marriage. I thought I could handle that outside
Speaker 2: of my marriage, but it turns OUTNIA had suspicions for
Speaker 2: good reasons, because you know, my personality started changing, Like
Speaker 2: my love for her started decreasing because I was distracted
Speaker 2: by thoughts of other women. So that chaos enter to
Speaker 2: the home. Then I was distracted. You know, getting down
Speaker 2: before my kids was difficult because I was so side
Speaker 2: trackted by my sneaking life. You know, that's the chaos.
Speaker 2: It's like people think, let me take it.
Speaker 1: Worthy you're doing really good. It's not easy to talk
Speaker 1: about this stuff.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people want freedom. They're like,
Speaker 2: I'm want freedom for my marriage. Someone to go outside
Speaker 2: of my marriage and seek freedom. But what I found
Speaker 2: is I became enslaved rather than more free. And I've
Speaker 2: started to understanding that freedom is actually just obeying the
Speaker 2: laws of the Lord and the laws of nature, obeying
Speaker 2: those and staying within it's confined. I explain this in
Speaker 2: documentary that didn't make it, But I kind of look
Speaker 2: at as like being in the swimming pool, Like if
Speaker 2: you don't obey the laws of the water, you'll drown.
Speaker 2: But if you do obey the roles and you swim
Speaker 2: and you respect, it's a resistance against you. It's very
Speaker 2: free if you can expect its boundaries. And so that's
Speaker 2: what I've learned. And I look back and I see
Speaker 2: that I was very much enslaved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tangled up in this webles lies Neor. It's interesting
Speaker 1: he mentioned that you was suspicious looking back at that time,
Speaker 1: Were you suspicious? Did you think maybe there was someone
Speaker 1: else so that he was fooling around?
Speaker 3: Yes? Multiple times. A few times, like spot on, I
Speaker 3: would specifically say, I think maybe you did this, or
Speaker 3: I think maybe you are getting too close to this person,
Speaker 3: I mean, spot on, and you would convince me that
Speaker 3: I was wrong or that I was you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: find my imagination. And of course, like we still had
Speaker 3: a good relationship for the most part, you know, and
Speaker 3: it was easy to believe it if he's you know,
Speaker 3: convincing me and stuff. It was easy to convince myself
Speaker 3: because I would list out the things that were going
Speaker 3: well and kind of Okay, he couldn't be doing that
Speaker 3: because x y Z.
Speaker 1: What were our x y z out of interest? What
Speaker 1: were the things that were going well that made you think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he couldn't be having an effect because these things.
Speaker 3: Well like for starters, going to church with me and
Speaker 3: our daughter, sleeping with me, being intimate with me, kissing me,
Speaker 3: not just like randomly either, I mean we had like
Speaker 3: one specific time that he had betrayed me. The evening
Speaker 3: he'd come home and we had like a really sweet moment.
Speaker 3: I sat in his lap, we looked at some stuff together,
Speaker 3: we cuddled, and he had just been out with another woman.
Speaker 3: Like it's strange and I don't understand it, but in
Speaker 3: the moment when he confessed everything to me, I thought
Speaker 3: everything was a lie, nothing had ever been real. But
Speaker 3: now that I'm on the other side of it, I
Speaker 3: can look at those and see how conflicted and just
Speaker 3: like torn he I mean, I would have felt really
Speaker 3: torn and conflicted just looking back at the pattern that
Speaker 3: we had, Like those are some of the things we
Speaker 3: still had closeness.
Speaker 2: And fun I'm remembering, like during that time he was
Speaker 2: suspicious and I was able to still love on her
Speaker 2: and accept her love. I feel like it was probably
Speaker 2: just like she was kind of my comfort, Like there
Speaker 2: was chaos in those affairs outside of my marriage, Like
Speaker 2: there's complications, you know, and you know, stupid things that
Speaker 2: they were doing, or they decided not to talk to
Speaker 2: me anymore or whatever that was kind of hurting me
Speaker 2: or whatever. I hate this like that, I hate talking
Speaker 2: about this. So that loud but Nia was my comfort
Speaker 2: during that chaos outside of my marriage.
Speaker 1: Nia. Sam found out that his name was in the
Speaker 1: Ashley Madison Lake while the two of you were in
Speaker 1: Seattle for a really important conference feel of logging career.
Speaker 1: You just sat down for lunch and Sam dropped the bomb.
Speaker 1: What do you remember of that moment?
Speaker 3: I know, this is like a comical aspect of it.
Speaker 3: But I was so hungry. I'm not eaten all day long,
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 1: Was like hungry, you're pregnant.
Speaker 3: I wasn't, but I had just I just was no
Speaker 3: I had just miscarried.
Speaker 2: You also just had dental word had.
Speaker 3: Dental work done. I had it all day long, and
Speaker 3: I just I was just hungry, like you know, just
Speaker 3: we had no kids. Rarely did I eat a meal
Speaker 3: without children. I was looking for or to just like
Speaker 3: having a good meal with my husband. So there's that
Speaker 3: aspect of it, and I like really remember just like that,
Speaker 3: and then just sitting down and almost immediately he's just
Speaker 3: so intensely telling me this shocking news and embarrassing news.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just the shock of like I did this
Speaker 3: or I tried to have an affair. It wasn't just that.
Speaker 3: It was like layered with embarrassment because of how public
Speaker 3: it was, and then also the minimizing that happened in
Speaker 3: the moment of like angry crushed. But let's try to
Speaker 3: like let me think, let me try to wrap my
Speaker 3: head around it. It was just a lot in one moment.
Speaker 1: Did you think about going home, like you had to
Speaker 1: go and turn up at this conference. It was all
Speaker 1: over the internet. You had to be in front of people.
Speaker 2: I did. I wanted her to go back home with me.
Speaker 2: She wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't want to go home. I mean like
Speaker 3: this was like a getaway. We were getting away without
Speaker 3: the children for a weekend, and this was an opportunity
Speaker 3: like for our YouTube career. This is like a huge
Speaker 3: deal to me. This was something like we were invited
Speaker 3: to be a part of this crew of creators that
Speaker 3: had been around for a while and in the space
Speaker 3: way longer than we had been. Like, you know, in
Speaker 3: a way, it's like we don't really belong, but here
Speaker 3: we are.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: No, I wanted to go and I thought, to some degree,
Speaker 3: I wanted him to face everybody. I like, I was
Speaker 3: embarrassed and mad, and I thought, no, you go face
Speaker 3: this together.
Speaker 1: Sat that apology video that you did soon after then
Speaker 1: everyone was, you know, screaming at you to make and
Speaker 1: kind of you needed to make some kind of comment.
Speaker 1: You looked terrified in that video. Yeah, what was going
Speaker 1: through your mind?
Speaker 2: I was just in self preservation mode. It was like
Speaker 2: it's time to survive, and gosh, I did whatever it took.
Speaker 2: I was extremely anxious, sweaty palms, extremely like snappy at nia.
Speaker 2: It's like, we got to get this done. We had
Speaker 2: to do several takes. I was feeling pressure from my audience,
Speaker 2: from my family, even family I haven't heard from, was like,
Speaker 2: hurry up and get a statement out there. People want
Speaker 2: to know this, So I say, okay, I'll just tell
Speaker 2: them what they probably want to hear, and of course
Speaker 2: what I wanted them to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that the name that you
Speaker 1: chose on Ashley Madison, which was dirty little Secret Man.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of self loathing in that in that name,
Speaker 1: isn't there.
Speaker 2: Absolutely that's hilarious. Yeah, is dirty little Yeah.
Speaker 1: It feels like you were not very proud of who
Speaker 1: you were, even at the time you knew that you
Speaker 1: were doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I mean, that's a great point. I actually
Speaker 2: never thought about that, but yeah, I was in a
Speaker 2: place where I knew what I was doing. You're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, There's two types of reactions after you hear that
Speaker 1: someone's been unfaithful. One is to not want to talk
Speaker 1: about it, and the other is to want every single
Speaker 1: detail in a bid to try and process it.
Speaker 3: Which were you every single detail. I wanted all of
Speaker 3: the information down to what socks he wore, Like, I
Speaker 3: wanted to know every single thing I could possibly get
Speaker 3: my hands on.
Speaker 2: And that was extremely extremely painful and exhausting. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 2: not turn point out. For both of us. It was
Speaker 2: just like, it's such a painful process because it was
Speaker 2: just like just kept revisiting it over and over for months,
Speaker 2: and then it was just yeah, a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: Nia, what a rollercoaster for you? It almost made me
Speaker 1: think when I was here reading the Book of Labor,
Speaker 1: you know, like when you have contractions and it's like
Speaker 1: there's another one coming, and another one coming, and another
Speaker 1: one coming, and each time it crushes you. Like each
Speaker 1: time you heard a new detail from Sam, you started
Speaker 1: that cycle of anger, I imagine, and betrayal again. How
Speaker 1: long did it go on for? And what were the
Speaker 1: worst things that he told you? In terms of the
Speaker 1: things that hurt the most. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: specific about, but like the types of things.
Speaker 3: He really thought the physical things that he did were
Speaker 3: going to be the most painful, and he said it
Speaker 3: even I'm going to start with the worst and I'll
Speaker 3: work my way down the list. But really the most
Speaker 3: painful ones were actually the things he considered the lowest
Speaker 3: things on the list. The very last couple of things
Speaker 3: he confessed to me were just emotional things that didn't
Speaker 3: really go anywhere. You know, one was just him pursuing
Speaker 3: someone that didn't even reciprocate. Those hurt the worst.
Speaker 1: That was your friend, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't know if it was the friend aspect,
Speaker 3: of course that plays a part in it, but I
Speaker 3: don't know if maybe the emotional part too, Like that
Speaker 3: was really really hard for me. I think I could
Speaker 3: kind of wrap my head around like sexual fantasies and stuff,
Speaker 3: but our love was so strong, and you know, if
Speaker 3: he had a pornography addiction or sexual fantasies, I felt
Speaker 3: like I could logically get my head wrapped around that.
Speaker 3: But it was when his heart got brought into it
Speaker 3: where I really couldn't. I really struggled with that, like
Speaker 3: trying to make sense of it why I came there.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I would say maybe two months before the
Speaker 3: end of all the past confessions were out because he
Speaker 3: would just remember them, like he just said, he would
Speaker 3: just a memory would come to him and he would
Speaker 3: just tell me, you know, sometimes out of nowhere, and
Speaker 3: sometimes you would say, hey, I have something to tell
Speaker 3: you were.
Speaker 1: Used to living together through all of this. Did you
Speaker 1: move out? Sam? Did you move Outnia? Like? How close
Speaker 1: did you get to divorce?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was kicked out of the house. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean and respectfully left. Obviously I didn't exactly get kicked out,
Speaker 2: but respectfully left because you didn't want me around. I
Speaker 2: stayed at my pastor's house for a week. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then once I got back in the house, I stayed
Speaker 2: in a different bedroom.
Speaker 1: Did you think about divorce? Nia?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, in the beginning, the early days, it was
Speaker 3: convinced like we were getting a divorce. There was no
Speaker 3: other way around it.
Speaker 1: What about you, Sam, divorce? Yeah? Did you think it
Speaker 1: was on the cards? Did you want it? Did you
Speaker 1: want to be free to go and pursue these other relationships?
Speaker 2: No, my end, I never ever felt like I am
Speaker 2: right to consider divorce. But yeah, I was definitely nervous
Speaker 2: that Nia would choose to leave me.
Speaker 1: Was there a moment where you went, you know what,
Speaker 1: I can actually see a future for us. I think
Speaker 1: we can get through this.
Speaker 3: Yes. I had a very clear moment actually before he
Speaker 3: ever confessed anything to me. I just knew that the
Speaker 3: Lord had told me we would be in marriage ministry
Speaker 3: one day, and I came home and told him, And
Speaker 3: looking back now, his reaction to me telling him that
Speaker 3: was kind of like telling.
Speaker 1: What's marriage ministry?
Speaker 3: Talking with and helping and sitting across from other couples,
Speaker 3: like just being in the marriage space within our church,
Speaker 3: within a church community, and just being available to support
Speaker 3: other couples. And we had not gone through anything hard
Speaker 3: at that time when I had that moment. So fast
Speaker 3: forward to he's confessed everything to me and I told
Speaker 3: him I want to divorce him. I was sitting in
Speaker 3: the car again, praying, just literally praying, could you just
Speaker 3: tell me yes or no? Like spell it out. I
Speaker 3: was very like a child praying. And I had that
Speaker 3: memory of before he ever confessed anything to me, where
Speaker 3: we were reaching other couples and supporting other couples. But
Speaker 3: that was the moment where I said I'm going to
Speaker 3: stay and I'm going to fight. And I didn't feel
Speaker 3: it yet, you know, I didn't feel like we're going
Speaker 3: to be happy. I even thought I might be unhappily
Speaker 3: married to him for a long time. I'm going to
Speaker 3: work towards forgiveness.
Speaker 1: How do you build trust back?
Speaker 2: That took a long time, but it started with the
Speaker 2: confessions and being as open to her as possible, so
Speaker 2: she saw that nothing to hide and anything she asked
Speaker 2: answering those questions honestly, and when she saw like me
Speaker 2: answering those questions that were bringing myself pain basically torturing
Speaker 2: myself by expressing so much about myself, That's where it starts.
Speaker 2: And then after that, letting her call the shots basically
Speaker 2: of my life, letting her kind of just tell me
Speaker 2: what she's comfortable and what she's not comfortable with, and
Speaker 2: just allowing and not fighting it even if I don't
Speaker 2: understand it. She doesn't want me to do this, She
Speaker 2: doesn't want me talking to this guy anymore. But I'd
Speaker 2: actually never done anything with that guy, but she still
Speaker 2: doesn't want me talking to him. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I can't talk to anymore. Things like that, and setting
Speaker 2: big boundaries and sticking to them, for example, not talking
Speaker 2: to women alone, texting women, staying out at night, going
Speaker 2: out with certain people, or actually only going out with
Speaker 2: solid Christian men. Just really strict boundaries and think all that.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been cheated on or had a big
Speaker 1: betrayal in your relationship, and forgiveness or staying together wasn't
Speaker 1: an option. It might be confronting to hear that Nia
Speaker 1: chose to forgive Sam after so much emotional and physical unfaithfulness.
Speaker 1: A lot of people got really angry, interestingly, not just
Speaker 1: at him, but at her. And maybe you're someone who
Speaker 1: has religion in your life and you draw from that
Speaker 1: well for your value system like they do. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: you aren't a religious person, and some of Sam and
Speaker 1: Nia's ways of making sense of what they've been through
Speaker 1: aren't as relatable to you. But there's a whole layer
Speaker 1: to Sam and Nia's backstory that you're about to hear.
Speaker 1: That for me, really explained a lot about why they
Speaker 1: both fought so hard for their marriage and their family,
Speaker 1: and also how they approached the fact that Sam had
Speaker 1: betrayed Nea. What I found really interesting to learn. Ni,
Speaker 1: You've got an incredible story which could be an episode
Speaker 1: all onto itself, but the fact that you tragically lost
Speaker 1: your mother when you were just three. She was involved
Speaker 1: in drugs. She sounds like she was an amazing person.
Speaker 1: She followed bands around. Your biological father was in a
Speaker 1: band or in a rock star or something. Did you
Speaker 1: ever find out who he was? Did you ever meet him?
Speaker 3: I've never met him, but yes, I'm aware of who
Speaker 3: he is.
Speaker 1: And you were raised by your grandparents from the age
Speaker 1: of three, who you came to call mom and dad,
Speaker 1: and their marriage broke up due to infidelity when you
Speaker 1: were a kid, and Sam, you had not a dissimilar experience.
Speaker 1: Your father left your mum for another woman when you
Speaker 1: and your brothers were quite young as well. How did
Speaker 1: that shape both of your view of marriage because you
Speaker 1: got together quite young, you were only fifteen, How did
Speaker 1: that shape your view of marriage and what you were
Speaker 1: looking for in a partner.
Speaker 3: Just gave me a really clear vision of what I
Speaker 3: wanted and what I didn't want really early on. I mean,
Speaker 3: I didn't want someone who drank or you know, partied
Speaker 3: or lived the kind of lifestyle that I saw within
Speaker 3: the marriages that I saw break apart as a young child.
Speaker 3: And also like informed me of like what I did want,
Speaker 3: which was a Christian man who had strong morals, was kind.
Speaker 3: Showed me what I wanted and what I didn't want,
Speaker 3: and I stuck really hard to it. I think, I mean,
Speaker 3: I was so young.
Speaker 1: But you know, Sam, what about you? It must have
Speaker 1: hurt you terribly, saying how your mom suffered after your
Speaker 1: dad chaded and then left. Did that make you think
Speaker 1: about marriage when you got older?
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the time, I feel like I probably mostly didn't.
Speaker 2: Wasn't very observant of it. I don't have much recollection
Speaker 2: of too much of it. Probably blocked a lot of
Speaker 2: it out. I never saw like an intimate relationship between
Speaker 2: my mom and dad, but for some reason, the fights
Speaker 2: kind of stick out. My dad's temper stands out. He
Speaker 2: was a good man, but for some reason those stand out.
Speaker 2: He was a good mind until he left. He was
Speaker 2: talking to another woman. I basically saw him do it.
Speaker 2: He took me to the woman's house. We get back home.
Speaker 2: My mom asked me what we did on the way home,
Speaker 2: and I confessed to her what had happened, because I
Speaker 2: felt guilty myself just being a part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was an extraordinary betrayal, him taking you kids
Speaker 1: to that woman's home. You got together really young, you too,
Speaker 1: You're only fifteen. What was that like? Was it tempting?
Speaker 1: Were you both still very much of your faith?
Speaker 3: We both had really strong morals. And that's one thing
Speaker 3: that drew us together. We used to do little Bible
Speaker 3: studies together, we prayed together. We worked hard to be
Speaker 3: pure before marriage. I say we worked hard, but that
Speaker 3: was a big, a big topic for us that we
Speaker 3: tried to like overcome it, you know. But it was
Speaker 3: also like I don't know, for me all so like
Speaker 3: fireworks and rainbows and butterflies, like it was so magical
Speaker 3: and like a movie kind of love in the beginning.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know all the way through a
Speaker 3: partner ever went away.
Speaker 1: Sam, did you imagine that you would marry the first
Speaker 1: woman that you were intimate with? Was that the plan
Speaker 1: was that important to you?
Speaker 2: So all my friends they were out partying, having sex
Speaker 2: with multiple women, trying to get me and looking at pornography.
Speaker 2: They basically introduced me to pornography. But yeah, I was
Speaker 2: adamant about saving my virginity for marriage. And then I
Speaker 2: met Nia and she had all the same morals as myself,
Speaker 2: and like she said, I saw what I didn't want
Speaker 2: when I got older and my mom and dad, I
Speaker 2: didn't want that for my family.
Speaker 1: We know so much more about childhood trauma than cycles
Speaker 1: of behavior in families that get passed down through generations,
Speaker 1: and we also know that everyone reacts differently to trauma
Speaker 1: to betrayal. For Nia, she remained really steadfast in her
Speaker 1: determination to break that cycle of infidelity and family are
Speaker 1: people that she'd experienced. But Sam, like so many people do,
Speaker 1: found himself repeating it so much so that when he
Speaker 1: was at the kind of lowest low of his cheating,
Speaker 1: he shared his secret with his dad in the same
Speaker 1: way that his dad had with him when he was
Speaker 1: just a child.
Speaker 2: And I actually I didn never mention this in the book,
Speaker 2: and I feel like I want to. Somehow, I kind
Speaker 2: of introduced him to one of them, one of the
Speaker 2: women I was having affair with when we were married
Speaker 2: as an adult, and I kind of felt like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: right on, cue.
Speaker 1: That's wild. You guys have got a very direct line
Speaker 1: to God. It feels I feel I didn't realize he
Speaker 1: was going to join in on this interview with some punctuation,
Speaker 1: and I felt like.
Speaker 2: My dad was going to be proud. I remember that
Speaker 2: feeling like I thought he would be proud. Oh wow.
Speaker 2: It was such a stupid things, such an immature thought
Speaker 2: as an adult to have that my dad would like,
Speaker 2: Oh cool, you got women outside of your marriage.
Speaker 1: What did he say to you?
Speaker 2: He didn't say much, but he wrote Nia an email
Speaker 2: and this is all new information. We've never ever talked
Speaker 2: about this. Yeah, this is all kind of.
Speaker 3: Hard to talk about because he's not with us anymore
Speaker 3: and on them.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he was looking out for me. He knew
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 3: And it didn't go very well because I didn't receive
Speaker 3: the information very well.
Speaker 1: Do you mean that he wrote you and email Niya
Speaker 1: telling you what Sam was doing?
Speaker 3: Well, maybe just saying I think Sam could be getting curious.
Speaker 2: He suggested it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like it wasn't like he told me,
Speaker 3: you know, or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Sam. It's interesting that he introduced you to his the
Speaker 1: woman he was having an affair with, and then you
Speaker 1: went and repeated that pattern all those years later.
Speaker 2: I mean, like my oldest brother, we talk about this
Speaker 2: quite a bit. My dad. Basically he modeled for us
Speaker 2: that that boundary can be crossed, like the number one man.
Speaker 2: I looked up to cross that boundary and I'm looking
Speaker 2: up at him saying, oh, okay, that boundary you can cross,
Speaker 2: and that on that he showed me what it was worth.
Speaker 2: It was worth six children and a wife had been
Speaker 2: married to for so long as worth as home. I
Speaker 2: think that really does damage to a boy, and it
Speaker 2: teaches him something. It gives them a really hard lesson
Speaker 2: that there's a lot to be had in an affair.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's so interesting what you say, because I would
Speaker 1: have thought that you would have gone, I'll never do
Speaker 1: that because I saw what it cost. But what you
Speaker 1: saw was that it was so worth it because he
Speaker 1: walked away from all his children and his house and
Speaker 1: his marriage. So it must be pretty awesome to have
Speaker 1: an affair and do that. Wow.
Speaker 2: That's all subconsciously though. Yeah, I did not want to
Speaker 2: repeat what he did.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing that. Just so you know.
Speaker 1: This isn't the end of my conversation with Sam and Nia.
Speaker 1: We stayed a little longer in their bedroom. What they
Speaker 1: shared about their childhood's really put things in a different
Speaker 1: perspective for me, because knowing that both Sam and Nia
Speaker 1: from families that had been torn apart by infidelity, you
Speaker 1: can see that their story began long before Ashley Madison
Speaker 1: and that it's ongoing. I mean even now they're navigating
Speaker 1: this together, and they're navigating all of it while the
Speaker 1: Ashley Madison Netflix documentary is getting global attention. I mean
Speaker 1: that's how I reached out to them because I saw
Speaker 1: them on Netflix. So in part two of this interview,
Speaker 1: why did they choose to participate in the documentary? Do
Speaker 1: they regret it? And what's happened since then? How are
Speaker 1: they talking to their kids about all of this now
Speaker 1: that it's out in the open. Sam and Nea have
Speaker 1: four kids and their oldest is fourteen. Her name's Symphony,
Speaker 1: so we know that that means she's hearing about things,
Speaker 1: and so are some of their other kids. Here's a
Speaker 1: little bit about what we talked about in this next
Speaker 1: part of the conversation.
Speaker 3: Red Flags, run girl. Once a cheater, always a cheer.
Speaker 3: I mean, you name it. I think every single thing
Speaker 3: has been written in a comment third about how I
Speaker 3: should I'm so dumb or he's so bad or we're Sophie.
Speaker 1: What kind of for that as there been from the documentary?
Speaker 1: And does Sam ever get tired of apologizing? It's kind
Speaker 1: of like this global punishment tour where he just has
Speaker 1: to go and say I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Does Nia
Speaker 1: have a red line now that would make her rethink
Speaker 1: staying with someone who's cheated? Does she think everybody should
Speaker 1: stay with a cheating partner? And if you like me
Speaker 1: and your girlfriends are your lifeline. One thing in the
Speaker 1: documentary that really hit hard was when Nia found out
Speaker 1: that Sam had propositioned one of her closest friends and
Speaker 1: that friend had just cut off ties with both of them,
Speaker 1: and Nia hadn't known why. I wanted to know how
Speaker 1: that part of the story ended as well. Just click
Speaker 1: the link in the show notes to listen. I'm also
Speaker 1: popping a link to Sam and Nia's book Live in
Speaker 1: Truth in the show notes. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Kimberly Bradish and Nama Brown, with sound production by Leah Pauges.
Speaker 1: I'm mea Friedman. I'll see you in Part two.