Committed is back for season 3! On October 9th host Jo Piazza will once again peel back the curtain on a marriage to bring you the intimate and raw stories of couples trying to make it work.

This season, Jo talks with a couple reeling from a fatal diagnosis of ALS, two husbands who sold their home for a nomadic life on the open road living in an RV, a husband and wife who decided to invite another woman into their marriage, a couple who broadcast their engagement to the world on the show 90 Day Fiance, and many more. So join us for season 3. We’re all still figuring this out… together.

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 On this bonus episode, Jo shares an excerpt from her novel, How to Be Married, that inspired this podcast.

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We followed Sarah and her fiancé Spider for nine months, through their wedding planning, trying to have a baby, a miscarriage and through Spider’s detention with ICE just a few months before their wedding.

 

Sarah depends on Spider for more than love and emotional support. She’s legally blind and she relies on Spider to help her get through her day. She can’t drive. There aren’t many jobs she can do.

 

Sarah and Spider have always been nervous about Spider’s immigration status but it took on a new weight and meaning once they got engaged and started to plan to have a family. They decided they wouldn’t let Spider’s status stop them from having a family. This is their journey to try to figure out how to live in a constant state of limbo.

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Ashley DiBella is so proud of her husband Juan and his work. She wishes she could sing it from the rooftops, but she can’t because a lot of people have very strong opinions about what Juan does. Now Ashley wants to set the record straight about what it’s really like to be married to a border patrol agent, the dangers her husband faces, the things she’s scared of and the good things he does that aren’t usually mentioned by the media. This is the first episode in our two part season finale. The first part is what it’s like to be married to a border patrol agent. The second is what it’s like to be in love with and want to marry someone who crosses the border illegally.

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Shannon is a survivor. As a child she was repeatedly abused and raped. She became pregnant by her rapist at age 12. She wanted to commit suicide as a teenager. All of the trauma made her believe she wasn't capable of love. She constantly felt like she had to earn love, affection and protection. And then she met Lee in college. Lee had never experienced abuse or trauma, but he knew he wanted to make Shannon feel safe and loved. Today Shannon and Lee are married with six children. This is their story of strength and bravery, of what it takes to rebuild your life and embrace love, marriage and parenthood after a childhood of abuse and assault. This is a story about what it takes to be a partner who learns how to make that survivor feel safe and how to build a family that looks nothing like the family you grew up with. 

 

For a long time Shannon wasn’t sure if she even wanted kids. Growing up the way she had was enough to make her think she might not be able to be the kind of parent she wanted to be. But meeting Lee and falling in love with him changed that. 

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What’s it like to be married to a famous professional athlete. Samantha Didn’t know much about professional race car driving when she met the bad boy NASCAR star Kyle Busch. But after they fell in love she was thrust into the wild traveling circus of NASCAR. It wasn’t part of her plan. But real life isn’t about plans. Kyle and Samatha were about to embark on an incredible journey of love, marriage, infertility and hope.

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Maddie Corman thought that she knew everything about her husband Jace. They’d been married for 20 years. But Jace had a secret and in 2015 that secret became very public knowledge when Jace was arrested for the downloading and file sharing of child pornography. This is the story of their marriage—before, during and after. It’s a story of betrayal and one of hope. It’s about both anger and love and it’s one of the hardest stories we’ve reported and told here on Committed. Maddie is raw and honest about her pain and rage as a wife and mother. But she’s equally as honest about what it takes to forgive someone. 

We would like to offer a warning to our listeners. This episode contains strong language and references to child pornography and child abuse. If this is a trigger for you please consider that before listening.

We also want to provide resources for victims of sexual violence.

• National Sexual Assault Hotline - 800.656.HOPE
• The National Center for Victims of Crime https://victimsofcrime.org/

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Caroline Van Hemert and her husband Pat were in their mid-thirties and the realities of adulthood catching up with them. They knew they wanted to take a grand adventure before starting a family so the pair set off on a six month, 4,000 mile expedition from the Pacific rainforest to the Arctic coast, a journey that was beautiful, harrowing and, at times, life-threatening. And in many ways that grand trip prepared Pat and Caroline to take care of each other and themselves even better before having their two sons. This is a story of love and adventure and the places where the two find one another.

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Vause and Kayden were teenagers when they met and fell in love. Today they're the first queer married couple to work together in a legal brothel. This is how they found their way to a healthy marriage, through communication, setting boundaries and finding careers that give them confidence and self-worth.

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Larry and Linda Drain have been forced to separate after 33 years of marriage so that Linda can get the healthcare benefits she needs to save her life.

Linda has a severe form of epilepsy and the medications that help keep her potentially deadly seizures at bay cost thousands of dollars per month. But if they stay married they're in a sort of purgatory where they don't qualify for subsidized benefits and can't afford private insurance. And so now Larry and Linda have no choice but to live on opposite sides of the city. Sometimes they can't even afford gas to see one another. This is how they're dealing with the intense emptiness of being forced to live apart from the person you love the most. 

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