June 9, 2024 • 39 mins
You can hear the second half of Mia's conversation with Sam & Nia here.
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What would you do if your husband cheated? And what if you found out about it at the same time the whole world did. That’s what happened to Nia. She found out her husband, Sam, had been unfaithful to her when all the data from the Ashley Madison website was leaked in one of the largest data breaches ever.
Sam & Nia participated in a documentary about Ashley Madison on Netflix - but in this episode of No Filter, they share parts of their story with Mia that they haven’t shared before.It’s a raw, honest conversation with a couple who have been through so much and a really intimate look at the complexities of infidelity and of forgiveness.
Sam & Nia’s Memoir: Live In Truth is available here.
Here’s a link to their YouTube channel.
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CREDITS:
Host: Mia Freedman
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Producers: Kimberley Braddish & Naima Brown
Audio Producer: Leah Porges
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on from Mamma. I'm Meya Friedman. You're listening
to the No Filter podcast and this story starts with
(00:33):
a wei, which is not something I've ever said about
an episode of No Filter before, but hey, I like
to keep things interesting around here. The name Ashley Madison
will probably be familiar to you, either back from two
thousand and two when the dating site for people who
wanted to have an Affair launched or the recent Netflix
(00:56):
documentary about it. Ashley Madison was a business and a
website that was set up specifically for married people who
wanted to have an affair with other married people. It
kind of operated on this idea of utually assured destruction.
It was pretty scandalous at the time. Their tagline was
life is Short, Have an Affair, and the CEO, a
(01:19):
bloke called Noel Biederman, capitalized on all that controversy. He
was this kind of over the top showman who would
go on TV and do all these interviews, and he'd
often drag his wife along as well, basically making the
argument that cheaters are going to cheat, why not monetize it,
and monetize it he did, Ashley Madison made tens of
(01:39):
millions of dollars. That was until twenty fifteen, when an
anonymous group who called itself the Impact Team, announced that
it had hacked the Ashley Madison website. After some frantic
attempts by NOL and the Ashley Madison management to stop
the Impact Team, they made good on their promise and
release the data. Not only did this mean that the
(02:01):
names of all the would be cheaters were released, but
also their home addresses, their bank details, and even things
like their sexual preferences. All of this stuff had to
be entered when you joined the website, and the leak
also exposed the fact that the site was mostly full
of men and that the women, well, they were bots,
(02:22):
as in they were not real. I remember when this happened.
It was massive news and journalists were scouring the list
for anything that was explosive, particularly people who were in
the public eye. Men that were in the public eye.
People's lives were ruined, People lost their jobs, their reputations
were destroyed, and some people even took their own lives
(02:43):
because of the consequences and the humiliation. And caught up
in this firestorm was one couple called Sam and Nia Raider.
They were childhood sweethearts and you may have seen them
if you've watched the Netflix documentary I Love Being a Dad.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I loved my wife. It was a beautiful marriage, but
it was also just like monotonous. I remember seeing an
advertisement for sure having a I was like, that sounds intriguing.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Before the Ashley Madison scandal broke, Sam and Nia were
pretty successful family vloggers, kind of like influencers before that
was a thing, and they made viral videos about their
lives together with their young family. One video that shows
a very happy Sam and Nia driving with their daughter
in the back seat while their lip synced to a
(03:33):
Frozen song really put them on the map when it
went viral, and it didn't caught the attention of Disney.
My one For Sam. It turns out that love was
(03:55):
in fact an open door, but maybe not in the
way Nia thought. The next video that they made that
went viral, this is where we comes in. So Sam
wanted to do something really big and splashy and to
get a lot of attention on YouTube, and Nia had
told him that her period was late. So what he
did he filmed all this, was to go into the
(04:17):
bathroom after she'd been to the toilet and get a
pregnancy test and extract some of her WII from the toilet,
put it on the pregnancy test, and tell her live
while he was filming and get her reaction.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So here I am, and I'm so excited. I have
a specimen. I have a specimen. I knew it would
be there. I don't know if it'll throw it off
because it's all diluted. But I also brought almost pregnancy test,
and this time around, I'm going to be doing the announcement.
At least I hope. I hoped so bad she's pregnant.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
The angle on it was that he was going to
know that she was pregnant before she knew that she
was pregnant. And yes, it went viral and they did
lots of interviews about it. I told you the story
was unusual. So that's the way. Sam and Nia share
a lot about their experience in the documentary and even
more in their book called Living Truth. But in the
(05:10):
course of the conversation I'm about to share with you,
they open up about a lot of very personal details
that they haven't shared before, even in the Netflix documentary.
I know that the biggest question you'll have, the biggest
question most people have when they hear Sam and Nia's story,
is how do you get past cheating? How do you
get past betrayal and public humiliation? How do you get
(05:33):
past the person who's meant to love you more than
anyone betraying you like that? Sam and Nia are disarmingly honest,
and as you'll hear, their story is actually a lot
more than just the Ashley Madison scandal. It's about love
and infidelity and betrayal and forgiveness and how all of
those things can take many forms. Here's my conversation with
(05:56):
Sam and Nia. The first time I became aware of
you guys, I was running a women's website part of
our company still today, and it was the we video.
I'm going to say it, Sam, how did the idea
of the pregnancy test come about? It was unlike anything
anyone had ever seen. What gave you that idea? How
(06:18):
much of it was about making good content and how
much of it about you just thought it would be
a really cool thing. Today.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It's funny because I was an er nurse at the time,
So it was kind of just normal for me to
find out when other women are pregnant before they did.
That was kind of a normal. And so we had
the YouTube channel. I was still working as a nurse,
and I'm testing this lady's year now and I'm trying
to figure out how we can make our next pregnancy
a big moment. Like everybody else in the blogging space
(06:45):
was like the pregnancy videos were huge, So like, how
can I do something nobody else has done? And yeah,
I clicked. It's like I got to do this to Nia.
I clicked her year and then get the pause of
pregnancy result before she does.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That was so wild, Nia, I mean, I assume you
discussed it before you posted it. How did you feel
about that?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I was so excited to be pregnant. I didn't even care,
Like it didn't even cross my mind much that my
pee was going to be. Like Sam has such grand ideas,
He's always able to see them all the way through.
I'm never thinking in my head like this is gonna
go viral, millions of people are gonna see my pee.
Like that just wasn't what was going through my mind.
And you know, once it happened, of course, I was like,
(07:24):
oh my gosh, I wish I explained, like, because people
are like, you're dehydrated. What that's so gross? You know,
Like I'm here all the things. There's a very logical reason.
I've had some moms back me up on it. We
lived in an older home with I guess it's thin
walls the wrong way to put it. You could just
hear everything. You can hear the walking around on the
ground anyway, And so I didn't flush the toilet at
(07:46):
night because it would wake the babies up, or so
I thought if I had flushed the toilet and then
a kid woke up, that happened multiple times. We had
two children at the time. That happened multiple times with
my babies, and so I just was like, I'm not
even gonna risk it, you know, I just want to
know all these people who are so annoyed by it,
like do you actually flush?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
A lot of people? Do understand them?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, I back you fully. Who flushes the toilet in
the middle of the night after number ones? Like why
would you? Nineteen million people saw that video and celebrated
with you guys afterwards, though you had a miscarriage, which
was devastating and I'm so sorry for your loss. And
that's when you saw the ugly side, isn't it, Because
(08:27):
some people said you just did the whole thing for
a publicity stunt.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
You know what was the reaction, Well, they first originally
accused us of faking the pregnancy, saying we can't get
a positive result, we can't get hCG hormone and diluted yurin,
which was false. You can, but we had people accusing
us of lying. And then the miscarriage happened, so people
doubled down, like, yep, they were absolutely faking it. Now
they're faking a miscarriage.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
It was so devastating. It just like I had no
expectations of that first video going viral, Like I just
was blind sided by the hate. Honestly, I feel like
in the other times that we've experienced, you know, hate
comments and stuff like that, it just I don't know.
This one really blindsided me because I was already grieving.
It was so so hard. It's still blows my mind
people truly believe I faked a miscarriage. It's crazy to me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You guys were a brand by this point, your family
was a brand. You know, you were going through something
really tough, and you also had to contend with everybody
else having their feelings about it, which in this case
was so cruel. Did it give you pause and make
you think, you know what, I don't want to expose myself,
our marriage, our family to this.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I never did. I always felt like I had nothing
to hide, even though I was hiding something. Yeah, this
is weird. I just don't mind it sharing private moments
with people. I think that started probably pretty early on.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Your marriage was, by all accounts, looked great. You had
a young family, you seemed happy. You were this gorgeous,
good looking couple. Still are pretty good looking, let's be honest,
ten years later. And I think that's really important to
look at that because a lot of people think that
cheating only happens in bad marriages, when you know, people
are really disconnected, maybe when they're not having sex anymore,
(10:05):
when they fall out of love. But it didn't seem
from the video, is that that was the case with
your marriage nw Nia. Of course you didn't know what
was going on, but Sam, can you just take me
a little bit inside your head at that time and
why you started looking outside your marriage and what you
were looking for.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I think a lot of people believe I was straying
and doing things behind your back while we're vlogging, And
it never happened while vlogging. So when you say you
saw a happy marriage and everybody looked happy, I was
keeping secrets, but I wasn't doing anything behind your back
from what people were seeing on the internet. But six months,
four months previous to starting YouTube, that was probably the
(10:44):
last time, or that was the last time I deleted
Ashley Madison. That was the last time I strayed, and
we found a church. So yeah, what was going through
my head? The first one? Gosh, let me think, how.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Long had you been married the first time?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
It was in our first year? How long? How many months?
And she knows these details better than I do.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I mean, had you have just been a few months
in Like I got pregnant. We had like a honeymoon pregnancy,
and I think, what is middle Towards the end of
my pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I was in nursing school at the time, surrounded by women,
and I made friends with a couple of guys who
are single, and they flirted with all the women they
went out with them. I kind of came along. I
feel like that was kind of the start. I started
becoming like my friends, but then of course they left
the scene, and I continued to make stupid choices. I
think it was just trying to find excitement in my life.
(11:32):
When I became a nurse, I hated the job. I
was like, what the heck did I do? I spent
six years for this job and I hate it, and
life just kind of hit me hard, and I think
I did a lot of this stuff, almost like self mutilation.
It was like, I hate myself, so let's just do
this to yourself. Do whatever you want. You know, God
doesn't want you to do this, but just do it anyway.
It's not that Neil wasn't fulfilling me in my marriage.
(11:53):
That wasn't the reason. Like, if you want to really
get down to the basic answer, I think I hate
saying a word, but boredom.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Maybe were you looking for attention. I don't mean to
sound cruel when I say that, But in your book,
I learned that you were in a rock band in
high school. It was called Free the Float, and the
first song that you wrote and recorded was All We
Want is Fame. You described yourself as a seventeen year
old as being an attention hungry class clown when you
(12:23):
were this twenty eight year old nurse. Was that how
you were feeling again that you wanted some attention.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah. Since I can remember, I was always imagining myself
in front of a large audience and being applauded. And
I would have watched my favorite bands, But it wasn't
their music I loved the most. It was their adoration
that they were receiving that I love the most. And
it was a really strange thing. I assume it was
from the lack of validation I got from my father.
(12:49):
Now as I look back, I kind of realized some
of that. But yeah, in nursing school, I also was
the class clown. I got class clown at the end
of the thing. So yeah, I was still constantly looking
for attention, cracking off in class. And I was even
sent to the office as an adult in nursing school,
which is.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
You got sent to the principal as an adult.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I know, it's so pathetic, and I still fight it today.
It's just an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
When you started to cross some lines, was it a
very clear line or was it things got a little
bit blurry in the way that you were behaving with
other women, Like is there a particular moment where you
crossed over a particular line that you can remember?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, I was always just walking right on the line.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
It was like signing up for freshion Madison and like
literally saying I want to have an affair. Like when
I got to that point, it's like, what the heck?
How did I get here? Like several years ago, I
would have never just blatantly chosen to have an affair.
It faded into that, you know, it was a slow fade.
And of course it started probably with pornography, and you know,
(13:53):
like in the documentary movies, I was so fascinated by
romance in that aspect of my marriage that a novelty
wore off and that was a bummer for me. So
I wanted to keep seeking that attention in that romance.
That's probably where it started. Just making eyes with other people,
women making eyes back at me. Just that the type
of romance that you don't know touching or anything, but
(14:13):
you just know as a thing between you two. That's
probably how it started. And then I kept calling.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
It's so interesting listening to Sam and Nia now after
they've shared so much of their lives with the world
on Netflix and with their own audience and community on
their YouTube channel. Because it's so clear that it's still
a very difficult conversation to have. I thought they might
be like, kind of bluse about it. But what you
can't see because you're listening to this is that Sam
(14:41):
and Nia are actually talking to me from their bedroom
while we're doing this interview. Behind them, I can see
their bed, and on the wall behind their bed is
a big blown up photograph of their family. It is
just so intimate, and I can hear their kids playing
in the background. They're not in the room, of course,
but I can hear them in another part of the house.
And what Sam is about to disclose next really does
(15:04):
feel like a private conversation between a husband and a
wife in the safety of their bedroom, sharing things that
they did not share on the Netflix documentary. I didn't
mean to get an exclusive, but here we are. How
far did you go?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Well, we've agreed not to talk about details. But I
had an intercourse one time physically, that was how far
I went intercourse one time with the prostitute. Emotionally, how
far I went? I kissed the girl, held her hands,
I guess that would be kind of just tell you how.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Emotionally it's kind of surreal. We're sitting here, you guys
are in your bedroom, You're talking to a stranger across
the other side of the world in Australia. We can
hear a storm in the background, which is kind of symbolic.
Your husband's sitting next to you talking about that time
he had sex. How do you feel It's.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
So weird because I can I can hear these things
as facts and details that like matter for us to
get to where we are today. Of course, I mean,
it's sad. It's sad that he got there. It's sad
that our marriage went through what it went through. But
I don't see what he's saying as him. When he
says these things. I'm envisioning a version of him, And
(16:16):
you know, that's a beautiful thing that I can sit
next to this version of Sam and that guy is
long gone, and I'm just so thankful for that.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
It still hurts her a little bit. I know it's
just facts, but every time we bring this stuff up,
it's painful for both of us. And I got to
be extra close to her after this and just kind
of remind her who I am.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
In the books, Sam, You're write, infidelity doesn't add spice.
It invites chaos. Even before the data breach with Ashley Madison,
what kind of chaos was it inviting into your life?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Well, first, just covering up the lies. I think the
chaos started within myself. I was supposed to have a
relationship with the Lord and I was praying to him.
Yet I was still doing these things. And then I
got further from the Lord. That was the first chaos.
There's no order within me like that. I stopped phoning
the manual that is the Bible, and so I was
just scattered. My emotions were scattered. And then bringing that
(17:10):
into my marriage. I thought I could handle that outside
of my marriage, but it turns OUTNIA had suspicions for
good reasons, because you know, my personality started changing, Like
my love for her started decreasing because I was distracted
by thoughts of other women. So that chaos enter to
the home. Then I was distracted. You know, getting down
before my kids was difficult because I was so side
(17:32):
trackted by my sneaking life. You know, that's the chaos.
It's like people think, let me take it.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Worthy you're doing really good. It's not easy to talk
about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I think a lot of people want freedom. They're like,
I'm want freedom for my marriage. Someone to go outside
of my marriage and seek freedom. But what I found
is I became enslaved rather than more free. And I've
started to understanding that freedom is actually just obeying the
laws of the Lord and the laws of nature, obeying
those and staying within it's confined. I explain this in
(18:05):
documentary that didn't make it, But I kind of look
at as like being in the swimming pool, Like if
you don't obey the laws of the water, you'll drown.
But if you do obey the roles and you swim
and you respect, it's a resistance against you. It's very
free if you can expect its boundaries. And so that's
what I've learned. And I look back and I see
that I was very much enslaved.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, tangled up in this webles lies Neor. It's interesting
he mentioned that you was suspicious looking back at that time,
Were you suspicious? Did you think maybe there was someone
else so that he was fooling around?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yes? Multiple times. A few times, like spot on, I
would specifically say, I think maybe you did this, or
I think maybe you are getting too close to this person,
I mean, spot on, and you would convince me that
I was wrong or that I was you know, yeah,
find my imagination. And of course, like we still had
a good relationship for the most part, you know, and
(19:00):
it was easy to believe it if he's you know,
convincing me and stuff. It was easy to convince myself
because I would list out the things that were going
well and kind of Okay, he couldn't be doing that
because x y Z.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
What were our x y z out of interest? What
were the things that were going well that made you think, oh, well,
he couldn't be having an effect because these things.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well like for starters, going to church with me and
our daughter, sleeping with me, being intimate with me, kissing me,
not just like randomly either, I mean we had like
one specific time that he had betrayed me. The evening
he'd come home and we had like a really sweet moment.
I sat in his lap, we looked at some stuff together,
we cuddled, and he had just been out with another woman.
(19:42):
Like it's strange and I don't understand it, but in
the moment when he confessed everything to me, I thought
everything was a lie, nothing had ever been real. But
now that I'm on the other side of it, I
can look at those and see how conflicted and just
like torn he I mean, I would have felt really
torn and conflicted just looking back at the pattern that
we had, Like those are some of the things we
still had closeness.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And fun I'm remembering, like during that time he was
suspicious and I was able to still love on her
and accept her love. I feel like it was probably
just like she was kind of my comfort, Like there
was chaos in those affairs outside of my marriage, Like
there's complications, you know, and you know, stupid things that
they were doing, or they decided not to talk to
(20:22):
me anymore or whatever that was kind of hurting me
or whatever. I hate this like that, I hate talking
about this. So that loud but Nia was my comfort
during that chaos outside of my marriage.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Nia. Sam found out that his name was in the
Ashley Madison Lake while the two of you were in
Seattle for a really important conference feel of logging career.
You just sat down for lunch and Sam dropped the bomb.
What do you remember of that moment?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I know, this is like a comical aspect of it.
But I was so hungry. I'm not eaten all day long,
and I.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Was like hungry, you're pregnant.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I wasn't, but I had just I just was no
I had just miscarried.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You also just had dental word had.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Dental work done. I had it all day long, and
I just I was just hungry, like you know, just
we had no kids. Rarely did I eat a meal
without children. I was looking for or to just like
having a good meal with my husband. So there's that
aspect of it, and I like really remember just like that,
and then just sitting down and almost immediately he's just
so intensely telling me this shocking news and embarrassing news.
(21:24):
It wasn't just the shock of like I did this
or I tried to have an affair. It wasn't just that.
It was like layered with embarrassment because of how public
it was, and then also the minimizing that happened in
the moment of like angry crushed. But let's try to
like let me think, let me try to wrap my
head around it. It was just a lot in one moment.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Did you think about going home, like you had to
go and turn up at this conference. It was all
over the internet. You had to be in front of people.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I did. I wanted her to go back home with me.
She wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yeah, I didn't want to go home. I mean like
this was like a getaway. We were getting away without
the children for a weekend, and this was an opportunity
like for our YouTube career. This is like a huge
deal to me. This was something like we were invited
to be a part of this crew of creators that
had been around for a while and in the space
way longer than we had been. Like, you know, in
(22:15):
a way, it's like we don't really belong, but here
we are.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, I wanted to go and I thought, to some degree,
I wanted him to face everybody. I like, I was
embarrassed and mad, and I thought, no, you go face
this together.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Sat that apology video that you did soon after then
everyone was, you know, screaming at you to make and
kind of you needed to make some kind of comment.
You looked terrified in that video. Yeah, what was going
through your mind?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I was just in self preservation mode. It was like
it's time to survive, and gosh, I did whatever it took.
I was extremely anxious, sweaty palms, extremely like snappy at nia.
It's like, we got to get this done. We had
to do several takes. I was feeling pressure from my audience,
(23:03):
from my family, even family I haven't heard from, was like,
hurry up and get a statement out there. People want
to know this, So I say, okay, I'll just tell
them what they probably want to hear, and of course
what I wanted them to hear.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I thought it was interesting that the name that you
chose on Ashley Madison, which was dirty little Secret Man.
There's a lot of self loathing in that in that name,
isn't there.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Absolutely that's hilarious. Yeah, is dirty little Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
It feels like you were not very proud of who
you were, even at the time you knew that you
were doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
That's interesting. I mean, that's a great point. I actually
never thought about that, but yeah, I was in a
place where I knew what I was doing. You're right.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, There's two types of reactions after you hear that
someone's been unfaithful. One is to not want to talk
about it, and the other is to want every single
detail in a bid to try and process it.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Which were you every single detail. I wanted all of
the information down to what socks he wore, Like, I
wanted to know every single thing I could possibly get
my hands on.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
And that was extremely extremely painful and exhausting. Sorry, I'm
not turn point out. For both of us. It was
just like, it's such a painful process because it was
just like just kept revisiting it over and over for months,
and then it was just yeah, a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Nia, what a rollercoaster for you? It almost made me
think when I was here reading the Book of Labor,
you know, like when you have contractions and it's like
there's another one coming, and another one coming, and another
one coming, and each time it crushes you. Like each
time you heard a new detail from Sam, you started
that cycle of anger, I imagine, and betrayal again. How
(24:50):
long did it go on for? And what were the
worst things that he told you? In terms of the
things that hurt the most. You don't have to be
specific about, but like the types of things.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
He really thought the physical things that he did were
going to be the most painful, and he said it
even I'm going to start with the worst and I'll
work my way down the list. But really the most
painful ones were actually the things he considered the lowest
things on the list. The very last couple of things
he confessed to me were just emotional things that didn't
really go anywhere. You know, one was just him pursuing
(25:22):
someone that didn't even reciprocate. Those hurt the worst.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That was your friend, right.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yes, I don't know if it was the friend aspect,
of course that plays a part in it, but I
don't know if maybe the emotional part too, Like that
was really really hard for me. I think I could
kind of wrap my head around like sexual fantasies and stuff,
but our love was so strong, and you know, if
he had a pornography addiction or sexual fantasies, I felt
like I could logically get my head wrapped around that.
(25:48):
But it was when his heart got brought into it
where I really couldn't. I really struggled with that, like
trying to make sense of it why I came there.
So yeah, I would say maybe two months before the
end of all the past confessions were out because he
would just remember them, like he just said, he would
just a memory would come to him and he would
just tell me, you know, sometimes out of nowhere, and
(26:10):
sometimes you would say, hey, I have something to tell
you were.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Used to living together through all of this. Did you
move out? Sam? Did you move Outnia? Like? How close
did you get to divorce?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah? I was kicked out of the house. Yeah, I
mean and respectfully left. Obviously I didn't exactly get kicked out,
but respectfully left because you didn't want me around. I
stayed at my pastor's house for a week. Yeah, and
then once I got back in the house, I stayed
in a different bedroom.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Did you think about divorce? Nia?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Oh? Yeah, in the beginning, the early days, it was
convinced like we were getting a divorce. There was no
other way around it.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
What about you, Sam, divorce? Yeah? Did you think it
was on the cards? Did you want it? Did you
want to be free to go and pursue these other relationships?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
No, my end, I never ever felt like I am
right to consider divorce. But yeah, I was definitely nervous
that Nia would choose to leave me.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Was there a moment where you went, you know what,
I can actually see a future for us. I think
we can get through this.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yes. I had a very clear moment actually before he
ever confessed anything to me. I just knew that the
Lord had told me we would be in marriage ministry
one day, and I came home and told him, And
looking back now, his reaction to me telling him that
was kind of like telling.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
What's marriage ministry?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Talking with and helping and sitting across from other couples,
like just being in the marriage space within our church,
within a church community, and just being available to support
other couples. And we had not gone through anything hard
at that time when I had that moment. So fast
forward to he's confessed everything to me and I told
him I want to divorce him. I was sitting in
(27:48):
the car again, praying, just literally praying, could you just
tell me yes or no? Like spell it out. I
was very like a child praying. And I had that
memory of before he ever confessed anything to me, where
we were reaching other couples and supporting other couples. But
that was the moment where I said I'm going to
stay and I'm going to fight. And I didn't feel
(28:08):
it yet, you know, I didn't feel like we're going
to be happy. I even thought I might be unhappily
married to him for a long time. I'm going to
work towards forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
How do you build trust back?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That took a long time, but it started with the
confessions and being as open to her as possible, so
she saw that nothing to hide and anything she asked
answering those questions honestly, and when she saw like me
answering those questions that were bringing myself pain basically torturing
myself by expressing so much about myself, That's where it starts.
(28:45):
And then after that, letting her call the shots basically
of my life, letting her kind of just tell me
what she's comfortable and what she's not comfortable with, and
just allowing and not fighting it even if I don't
understand it. She doesn't want me to do this, She
doesn't want me talking to this guy anymore. But I'd
actually never done anything with that guy, but she still
(29:06):
doesn't want me talking to him. So I was like, Okay,
I can't talk to anymore. Things like that, and setting
big boundaries and sticking to them, for example, not talking
to women alone, texting women, staying out at night, going
out with certain people, or actually only going out with
solid Christian men. Just really strict boundaries and think all that.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
If you've ever been cheated on or had a big
betrayal in your relationship, and forgiveness or staying together wasn't
an option. It might be confronting to hear that Nia
chose to forgive Sam after so much emotional and physical unfaithfulness.
A lot of people got really angry, interestingly, not just
at him, but at her. And maybe you're someone who
(29:50):
has religion in your life and you draw from that
well for your value system like they do. Well, maybe
you aren't a religious person, and some of Sam and
Nia's ways of making sense of what they've been through
aren't as relatable to you. But there's a whole layer
to Sam and Nia's backstory that you're about to hear.
That for me, really explained a lot about why they
both fought so hard for their marriage and their family,
(30:14):
and also how they approached the fact that Sam had
betrayed Nea. What I found really interesting to learn. Ni,
You've got an incredible story which could be an episode
all onto itself, but the fact that you tragically lost
your mother when you were just three. She was involved
in drugs. She sounds like she was an amazing person.
(30:36):
She followed bands around. Your biological father was in a
band or in a rock star or something. Did you
ever find out who he was? Did you ever meet him?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I've never met him, but yes, I'm aware of who
he is.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
And you were raised by your grandparents from the age
of three, who you came to call mom and dad,
and their marriage broke up due to infidelity when you
were a kid, and Sam, you had not a dissimilar experience.
Your father left your mum for another woman when you
and your brothers were quite young as well. How did
(31:10):
that shape both of your view of marriage because you
got together quite young, you were only fifteen, How did
that shape your view of marriage and what you were
looking for in a partner.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Just gave me a really clear vision of what I
wanted and what I didn't want really early on. I mean,
I didn't want someone who drank or you know, partied
or lived the kind of lifestyle that I saw within
the marriages that I saw break apart as a young child.
And also like informed me of like what I did want,
which was a Christian man who had strong morals, was kind.
(31:43):
Showed me what I wanted and what I didn't want,
and I stuck really hard to it. I think, I mean,
I was so young.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
But you know, Sam, what about you? It must have
hurt you terribly, saying how your mom suffered after your
dad chaded and then left. Did that make you think
about marriage when you got older?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, at the time, I feel like I probably mostly didn't.
Wasn't very observant of it. I don't have much recollection
of too much of it. Probably blocked a lot of
it out. I never saw like an intimate relationship between
my mom and dad, but for some reason, the fights
kind of stick out. My dad's temper stands out. He
was a good man, but for some reason those stand out.
(32:20):
He was a good mind until he left. He was
talking to another woman. I basically saw him do it.
He took me to the woman's house. We get back home.
My mom asked me what we did on the way home,
and I confessed to her what had happened, because I
felt guilty myself just being a part of it.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, that was an extraordinary betrayal, him taking you kids
to that woman's home. You got together really young, you too,
You're only fifteen. What was that like? Was it tempting?
Were you both still very much of your faith?
Speaker 3 (32:50):
We both had really strong morals. And that's one thing
that drew us together. We used to do little Bible
studies together, we prayed together. We worked hard to be
pure before marriage. I say we worked hard, but that
was a big, a big topic for us that we
tried to like overcome it, you know. But it was
also like I don't know, for me all so like
fireworks and rainbows and butterflies, like it was so magical
(33:13):
and like a movie kind of love in the beginning.
I mean, I don't know all the way through a
partner ever went away.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Sam, did you imagine that you would marry the first
woman that you were intimate with? Was that the plan
was that important to you?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
So all my friends they were out partying, having sex
with multiple women, trying to get me and looking at pornography.
They basically introduced me to pornography. But yeah, I was
adamant about saving my virginity for marriage. And then I
met Nia and she had all the same morals as myself,
and like she said, I saw what I didn't want
(33:48):
when I got older and my mom and dad, I
didn't want that for my family.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
We know so much more about childhood trauma than cycles
of behavior in families that get passed down through generations,
and we also know that everyone reacts differently to trauma
to betrayal. For Nia, she remained really steadfast in her
determination to break that cycle of infidelity and family are
people that she'd experienced. But Sam, like so many people do,
(34:15):
found himself repeating it so much so that when he
was at the kind of lowest low of his cheating,
he shared his secret with his dad in the same
way that his dad had with him when he was
just a child.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And I actually I didn never mention this in the book,
and I feel like I want to. Somehow, I kind
of introduced him to one of them, one of the
women I was having affair with when we were married
as an adult, and I kind of felt like, oh, yeah,
right on, cue.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
That's wild. You guys have got a very direct line
to God. It feels I feel I didn't realize he
was going to join in on this interview with some punctuation,
and I felt like.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
My dad was going to be proud. I remember that
feeling like I thought he would be proud. Oh wow.
It was such a stupid things, such an immature thought
as an adult to have that my dad would like,
Oh cool, you got women outside of your marriage.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
What did he say to you?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
He didn't say much, but he wrote Nia an email
and this is all new information. We've never ever talked
about this. Yeah, this is all kind of.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Hard to talk about because he's not with us anymore
and on them.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
But yeah, he was looking out for me. He knew
he was.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
And it didn't go very well because I didn't receive
the information very well.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Do you mean that he wrote you and email Niya
telling you what Sam was doing?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Well, maybe just saying I think Sam could be getting curious.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
He suggested it.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, it was like it wasn't like he told me,
you know, or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Sam. It's interesting that he introduced you to his the
woman he was having an affair with, and then you
went and repeated that pattern all those years later.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I mean, like my oldest brother, we talk about this
quite a bit. My dad. Basically he modeled for us
that that boundary can be crossed, like the number one man.
I looked up to cross that boundary and I'm looking
up at him saying, oh, okay, that boundary you can cross,
and that on that he showed me what it was worth.
It was worth six children and a wife had been
(36:16):
married to for so long as worth as home. I
think that really does damage to a boy, and it
teaches him something. It gives them a really hard lesson
that there's a lot to be had in an affair.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Wow, that's so interesting what you say, because I would
have thought that you would have gone, I'll never do
that because I saw what it cost. But what you
saw was that it was so worth it because he
walked away from all his children and his house and
his marriage. So it must be pretty awesome to have
an affair and do that. Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
That's all subconsciously though. Yeah, I did not want to
repeat what he did.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Thank you so much for sharing that. Just so you know.
This isn't the end of my conversation with Sam and Nia.
We stayed a little longer in their bedroom. What they
shared about their childhood's really put things in a different
perspective for me, because knowing that both Sam and Nia
from families that had been torn apart by infidelity, you
(37:13):
can see that their story began long before Ashley Madison
and that it's ongoing. I mean even now they're navigating
this together, and they're navigating all of it while the
Ashley Madison Netflix documentary is getting global attention. I mean
that's how I reached out to them because I saw
them on Netflix. So in part two of this interview,
why did they choose to participate in the documentary? Do
(37:36):
they regret it? And what's happened since then? How are
they talking to their kids about all of this now
that it's out in the open. Sam and Nea have
four kids and their oldest is fourteen. Her name's Symphony,
so we know that that means she's hearing about things,
and so are some of their other kids. Here's a
little bit about what we talked about in this next
part of the conversation.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Red Flags, run girl. Once a cheater, always a cheer.
I mean, you name it. I think every single thing
has been written in a comment third about how I
should I'm so dumb or he's so bad or we're Sophie.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
What kind of for that as there been from the documentary?
And does Sam ever get tired of apologizing? It's kind
of like this global punishment tour where he just has
to go and say I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Does Nia
have a red line now that would make her rethink
staying with someone who's cheated? Does she think everybody should
stay with a cheating partner? And if you like me
(38:30):
and your girlfriends are your lifeline. One thing in the
documentary that really hit hard was when Nia found out
that Sam had propositioned one of her closest friends and
that friend had just cut off ties with both of them,
and Nia hadn't known why. I wanted to know how
that part of the story ended as well. Just click
(38:50):
the link in the show notes to listen. I'm also
popping a link to Sam and Nia's book Live in
Truth in the show notes. This episode was produced by
Kimberly Bradish and Nama Brown, with sound production by Leah Pauges.
I'm mea Friedman. I'll see you in Part two.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on from Mamma. I'm Meya Friedman. You're listening
to the No Filter podcast and this story starts with
(00:33):
a wei, which is not something I've ever said about
an episode of No Filter before, but hey, I like
to keep things interesting around here. The name Ashley Madison
will probably be familiar to you, either back from two
thousand and two when the dating site for people who
wanted to have an Affair launched or the recent Netflix
(00:56):
documentary about it. Ashley Madison was a business and a
website that was set up specifically for married people who
wanted to have an affair with other married people. It
kind of operated on this idea of utually assured destruction.
It was pretty scandalous at the time. Their tagline was
life is Short, Have an Affair, and the CEO, a
(01:19):
bloke called Noel Biederman, capitalized on all that controversy. He
was this kind of over the top showman who would
go on TV and do all these interviews, and he'd
often drag his wife along as well, basically making the
argument that cheaters are going to cheat, why not monetize it,
and monetize it he did, Ashley Madison made tens of
(01:39):
millions of dollars. That was until twenty fifteen, when an
anonymous group who called itself the Impact Team, announced that
it had hacked the Ashley Madison website. After some frantic
attempts by NOL and the Ashley Madison management to stop
the Impact Team, they made good on their promise and
release the data. Not only did this mean that the
(02:01):
names of all the would be cheaters were released, but
also their home addresses, their bank details, and even things
like their sexual preferences. All of this stuff had to
be entered when you joined the website, and the leak
also exposed the fact that the site was mostly full
of men and that the women, well, they were bots,
(02:22):
as in they were not real. I remember when this happened.
It was massive news and journalists were scouring the list
for anything that was explosive, particularly people who were in
the public eye. Men that were in the public eye.
People's lives were ruined, People lost their jobs, their reputations
were destroyed, and some people even took their own lives
(02:43):
because of the consequences and the humiliation. And caught up
in this firestorm was one couple called Sam and Nia Raider.
They were childhood sweethearts and you may have seen them
if you've watched the Netflix documentary I Love Being a Dad.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
I loved my wife. It was a beautiful marriage, but
it was also just like monotonous. I remember seeing an
advertisement for sure having a I was like, that sounds intriguing.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Before the Ashley Madison scandal broke, Sam and Nia were
pretty successful family vloggers, kind of like influencers before that
was a thing, and they made viral videos about their
lives together with their young family. One video that shows
a very happy Sam and Nia driving with their daughter
in the back seat while their lip synced to a
(03:33):
Frozen song really put them on the map when it
went viral, and it didn't caught the attention of Disney.
My one For Sam. It turns out that love was
(03:55):
in fact an open door, but maybe not in the
way Nia thought. The next video that they made that
went viral, this is where we comes in. So Sam
wanted to do something really big and splashy and to
get a lot of attention on YouTube, and Nia had
told him that her period was late. So what he
did he filmed all this, was to go into the
(04:17):
bathroom after she'd been to the toilet and get a
pregnancy test and extract some of her WII from the toilet,
put it on the pregnancy test, and tell her live
while he was filming and get her reaction.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So here I am, and I'm so excited. I have
a specimen. I have a specimen. I knew it would
be there. I don't know if it'll throw it off
because it's all diluted. But I also brought almost pregnancy test,
and this time around, I'm going to be doing the announcement.
At least I hope. I hoped so bad she's pregnant.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
The angle on it was that he was going to
know that she was pregnant before she knew that she
was pregnant. And yes, it went viral and they did
lots of interviews about it. I told you the story
was unusual. So that's the way. Sam and Nia share
a lot about their experience in the documentary and even
more in their book called Living Truth. But in the
(05:10):
course of the conversation I'm about to share with you,
they open up about a lot of very personal details
that they haven't shared before, even in the Netflix documentary.
I know that the biggest question you'll have, the biggest
question most people have when they hear Sam and Nia's story,
is how do you get past cheating? How do you
get past betrayal and public humiliation? How do you get
(05:33):
past the person who's meant to love you more than
anyone betraying you like that? Sam and Nia are disarmingly honest,
and as you'll hear, their story is actually a lot
more than just the Ashley Madison scandal. It's about love
and infidelity and betrayal and forgiveness and how all of
those things can take many forms. Here's my conversation with
(05:56):
Sam and Nia. The first time I became aware of
you guys, I was running a women's website part of
our company still today, and it was the we video.
I'm going to say it, Sam, how did the idea
of the pregnancy test come about? It was unlike anything
anyone had ever seen. What gave you that idea? How
(06:18):
much of it was about making good content and how
much of it about you just thought it would be
a really cool thing. Today.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
It's funny because I was an er nurse at the time,
So it was kind of just normal for me to
find out when other women are pregnant before they did.
That was kind of a normal. And so we had
the YouTube channel. I was still working as a nurse,
and I'm testing this lady's year now and I'm trying
to figure out how we can make our next pregnancy
a big moment. Like everybody else in the blogging space
(06:45):
was like the pregnancy videos were huge, So like, how
can I do something nobody else has done? And yeah,
I clicked. It's like I got to do this to Nia.
I clicked her year and then get the pause of
pregnancy result before she does.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
That was so wild, Nia, I mean, I assume you
discussed it before you posted it. How did you feel
about that?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I was so excited to be pregnant. I didn't even care,
Like it didn't even cross my mind much that my
pee was going to be. Like Sam has such grand ideas,
He's always able to see them all the way through.
I'm never thinking in my head like this is gonna
go viral, millions of people are gonna see my pee.
Like that just wasn't what was going through my mind.
And you know, once it happened, of course, I was like,
(07:24):
oh my gosh, I wish I explained, like, because people
are like, you're dehydrated. What that's so gross? You know,
Like I'm here all the things. There's a very logical reason.
I've had some moms back me up on it. We
lived in an older home with I guess it's thin
walls the wrong way to put it. You could just
hear everything. You can hear the walking around on the
ground anyway, And so I didn't flush the toilet at
(07:46):
night because it would wake the babies up, or so
I thought if I had flushed the toilet and then
a kid woke up, that happened multiple times. We had
two children at the time. That happened multiple times with
my babies, and so I just was like, I'm not
even gonna risk it, you know, I just want to
know all these people who are so annoyed by it,
like do you actually flush?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
A lot of people? Do understand them?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, I back you fully. Who flushes the toilet in
the middle of the night after number ones? Like why
would you? Nineteen million people saw that video and celebrated
with you guys afterwards, though you had a miscarriage, which
was devastating and I'm so sorry for your loss. And
that's when you saw the ugly side, isn't it, Because
(08:27):
some people said you just did the whole thing for
a publicity stunt.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
You know what was the reaction, Well, they first originally
accused us of faking the pregnancy, saying we can't get
a positive result, we can't get hCG hormone and diluted yurin,
which was false. You can, but we had people accusing
us of lying. And then the miscarriage happened, so people
doubled down, like, yep, they were absolutely faking it. Now
they're faking a miscarriage.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
It was so devastating. It just like I had no
expectations of that first video going viral, Like I just
was blind sided by the hate. Honestly, I feel like
in the other times that we've experienced, you know, hate
comments and stuff like that, it just I don't know.
This one really blindsided me because I was already grieving.
It was so so hard. It's still blows my mind
people truly believe I faked a miscarriage. It's crazy to me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You guys were a brand by this point, your family
was a brand. You know, you were going through something
really tough, and you also had to contend with everybody
else having their feelings about it, which in this case
was so cruel. Did it give you pause and make
you think, you know what, I don't want to expose myself,
our marriage, our family to this.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I never did. I always felt like I had nothing
to hide, even though I was hiding something. Yeah, this
is weird. I just don't mind it sharing private moments
with people. I think that started probably pretty early on.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Your marriage was, by all accounts, looked great. You had
a young family, you seemed happy. You were this gorgeous,
good looking couple. Still are pretty good looking, let's be honest,
ten years later. And I think that's really important to
look at that because a lot of people think that
cheating only happens in bad marriages, when you know, people
are really disconnected, maybe when they're not having sex anymore,
(10:05):
when they fall out of love. But it didn't seem
from the video, is that that was the case with
your marriage nw Nia. Of course you didn't know what
was going on, but Sam, can you just take me
a little bit inside your head at that time and
why you started looking outside your marriage and what you
were looking for.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I think a lot of people believe I was straying
and doing things behind your back while we're vlogging, And
it never happened while vlogging. So when you say you
saw a happy marriage and everybody looked happy, I was
keeping secrets, but I wasn't doing anything behind your back
from what people were seeing on the internet. But six months,
four months previous to starting YouTube, that was probably the
(10:44):
last time, or that was the last time I deleted
Ashley Madison. That was the last time I strayed, and
we found a church. So yeah, what was going through
my head? The first one? Gosh, let me think, how.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Long had you been married the first time?
Speaker 2 (10:56):
It was in our first year? How long? How many months?
And she knows these details better than I do.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I mean, had you have just been a few months
in Like I got pregnant. We had like a honeymoon pregnancy,
and I think, what is middle Towards the end of
my pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
I was in nursing school at the time, surrounded by women,
and I made friends with a couple of guys who
are single, and they flirted with all the women they
went out with them. I kind of came along. I
feel like that was kind of the start. I started
becoming like my friends, but then of course they left
the scene, and I continued to make stupid choices. I
think it was just trying to find excitement in my life.
(11:32):
When I became a nurse, I hated the job. I
was like, what the heck did I do? I spent
six years for this job and I hate it, and
life just kind of hit me hard, and I think
I did a lot of this stuff, almost like self mutilation.
It was like, I hate myself, so let's just do
this to yourself. Do whatever you want. You know, God
doesn't want you to do this, but just do it anyway.
It's not that Neil wasn't fulfilling me in my marriage.
(11:53):
That wasn't the reason. Like, if you want to really
get down to the basic answer, I think I hate
saying a word, but boredom.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Maybe were you looking for attention. I don't mean to
sound cruel when I say that, But in your book,
I learned that you were in a rock band in
high school. It was called Free the Float, and the
first song that you wrote and recorded was All We
Want is Fame. You described yourself as a seventeen year
old as being an attention hungry class clown when you
(12:23):
were this twenty eight year old nurse. Was that how
you were feeling again that you wanted some attention.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah. Since I can remember, I was always imagining myself
in front of a large audience and being applauded. And
I would have watched my favorite bands, But it wasn't
their music I loved the most. It was their adoration
that they were receiving that I love the most. And
it was a really strange thing. I assume it was
from the lack of validation I got from my father.
(12:49):
Now as I look back, I kind of realized some
of that. But yeah, in nursing school, I also was
the class clown. I got class clown at the end
of the thing. So yeah, I was still constantly looking
for attention, cracking off in class. And I was even
sent to the office as an adult in nursing school,
which is.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
You got sent to the principal as an adult.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I know, it's so pathetic, and I still fight it today.
It's just an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
When you started to cross some lines, was it a
very clear line or was it things got a little
bit blurry in the way that you were behaving with
other women, Like is there a particular moment where you
crossed over a particular line that you can remember?
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, I was always just walking right on the line.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
It was like signing up for freshion Madison and like
literally saying I want to have an affair. Like when
I got to that point, it's like, what the heck?
How did I get here? Like several years ago, I
would have never just blatantly chosen to have an affair.
It faded into that, you know, it was a slow fade.
And of course it started probably with pornography, and you know,
(13:53):
like in the documentary movies, I was so fascinated by
romance in that aspect of my marriage that a novelty
wore off and that was a bummer for me. So
I wanted to keep seeking that attention in that romance.
That's probably where it started. Just making eyes with other people,
women making eyes back at me. Just that the type
of romance that you don't know touching or anything, but
(14:13):
you just know as a thing between you two. That's
probably how it started. And then I kept calling.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
It's so interesting listening to Sam and Nia now after
they've shared so much of their lives with the world
on Netflix and with their own audience and community on
their YouTube channel. Because it's so clear that it's still
a very difficult conversation to have. I thought they might
be like, kind of bluse about it. But what you
can't see because you're listening to this is that Sam
(14:41):
and Nia are actually talking to me from their bedroom
while we're doing this interview. Behind them, I can see
their bed, and on the wall behind their bed is
a big blown up photograph of their family. It is
just so intimate, and I can hear their kids playing
in the background. They're not in the room, of course,
but I can hear them in another part of the house.
And what Sam is about to disclose next really does
(15:04):
feel like a private conversation between a husband and a
wife in the safety of their bedroom, sharing things that
they did not share on the Netflix documentary. I didn't
mean to get an exclusive, but here we are. How
far did you go?
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Well, we've agreed not to talk about details. But I
had an intercourse one time physically, that was how far
I went intercourse one time with the prostitute. Emotionally, how
far I went? I kissed the girl, held her hands,
I guess that would be kind of just tell you how.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Emotionally it's kind of surreal. We're sitting here, you guys
are in your bedroom, You're talking to a stranger across
the other side of the world in Australia. We can
hear a storm in the background, which is kind of symbolic.
Your husband's sitting next to you talking about that time
he had sex. How do you feel It's.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
So weird because I can I can hear these things
as facts and details that like matter for us to
get to where we are today. Of course, I mean,
it's sad. It's sad that he got there. It's sad
that our marriage went through what it went through. But
I don't see what he's saying as him. When he
says these things. I'm envisioning a version of him, And
(16:16):
you know, that's a beautiful thing that I can sit
next to this version of Sam and that guy is
long gone, and I'm just so thankful for that.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
It still hurts her a little bit. I know it's
just facts, but every time we bring this stuff up,
it's painful for both of us. And I got to
be extra close to her after this and just kind
of remind her who I am.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
In the books, Sam, You're write, infidelity doesn't add spice.
It invites chaos. Even before the data breach with Ashley Madison,
what kind of chaos was it inviting into your life?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Well, first, just covering up the lies. I think the
chaos started within myself. I was supposed to have a
relationship with the Lord and I was praying to him.
Yet I was still doing these things. And then I
got further from the Lord. That was the first chaos.
There's no order within me like that. I stopped phoning
the manual that is the Bible, and so I was
just scattered. My emotions were scattered. And then bringing that
(17:10):
into my marriage. I thought I could handle that outside
of my marriage, but it turns OUTNIA had suspicions for
good reasons, because you know, my personality started changing, Like
my love for her started decreasing because I was distracted
by thoughts of other women. So that chaos enter to
the home. Then I was distracted. You know, getting down
before my kids was difficult because I was so side
(17:32):
trackted by my sneaking life. You know, that's the chaos.
It's like people think, let me take it.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Worthy you're doing really good. It's not easy to talk
about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I think a lot of people want freedom. They're like,
I'm want freedom for my marriage. Someone to go outside
of my marriage and seek freedom. But what I found
is I became enslaved rather than more free. And I've
started to understanding that freedom is actually just obeying the
laws of the Lord and the laws of nature, obeying
those and staying within it's confined. I explain this in
(18:05):
documentary that didn't make it, But I kind of look
at as like being in the swimming pool, Like if
you don't obey the laws of the water, you'll drown.
But if you do obey the roles and you swim
and you respect, it's a resistance against you. It's very
free if you can expect its boundaries. And so that's
what I've learned. And I look back and I see
that I was very much enslaved.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Yeah, tangled up in this webles lies Neor. It's interesting
he mentioned that you was suspicious looking back at that time,
Were you suspicious? Did you think maybe there was someone
else so that he was fooling around?
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Yes? Multiple times. A few times, like spot on, I
would specifically say, I think maybe you did this, or
I think maybe you are getting too close to this person,
I mean, spot on, and you would convince me that
I was wrong or that I was you know, yeah,
find my imagination. And of course, like we still had
a good relationship for the most part, you know, and
(19:00):
it was easy to believe it if he's you know,
convincing me and stuff. It was easy to convince myself
because I would list out the things that were going
well and kind of Okay, he couldn't be doing that
because x y Z.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
What were our x y z out of interest? What
were the things that were going well that made you think, oh, well,
he couldn't be having an effect because these things.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well like for starters, going to church with me and
our daughter, sleeping with me, being intimate with me, kissing me,
not just like randomly either, I mean we had like
one specific time that he had betrayed me. The evening
he'd come home and we had like a really sweet moment.
I sat in his lap, we looked at some stuff together,
we cuddled, and he had just been out with another woman.
(19:42):
Like it's strange and I don't understand it, but in
the moment when he confessed everything to me, I thought
everything was a lie, nothing had ever been real. But
now that I'm on the other side of it, I
can look at those and see how conflicted and just
like torn he I mean, I would have felt really
torn and conflicted just looking back at the pattern that
we had, Like those are some of the things we
still had closeness.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
And fun I'm remembering, like during that time he was
suspicious and I was able to still love on her
and accept her love. I feel like it was probably
just like she was kind of my comfort, Like there
was chaos in those affairs outside of my marriage, Like
there's complications, you know, and you know, stupid things that
they were doing, or they decided not to talk to
(20:22):
me anymore or whatever that was kind of hurting me
or whatever. I hate this like that, I hate talking
about this. So that loud but Nia was my comfort
during that chaos outside of my marriage.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Nia. Sam found out that his name was in the
Ashley Madison Lake while the two of you were in
Seattle for a really important conference feel of logging career.
You just sat down for lunch and Sam dropped the bomb.
What do you remember of that moment?
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I know, this is like a comical aspect of it.
But I was so hungry. I'm not eaten all day long,
and I.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Was like hungry, you're pregnant.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
I wasn't, but I had just I just was no
I had just miscarried.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You also just had dental word had.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Dental work done. I had it all day long, and
I just I was just hungry, like you know, just
we had no kids. Rarely did I eat a meal
without children. I was looking for or to just like
having a good meal with my husband. So there's that
aspect of it, and I like really remember just like that,
and then just sitting down and almost immediately he's just
so intensely telling me this shocking news and embarrassing news.
(21:24):
It wasn't just the shock of like I did this
or I tried to have an affair. It wasn't just that.
It was like layered with embarrassment because of how public
it was, and then also the minimizing that happened in
the moment of like angry crushed. But let's try to
like let me think, let me try to wrap my
head around it. It was just a lot in one moment.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Did you think about going home, like you had to
go and turn up at this conference. It was all
over the internet. You had to be in front of people.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
I did. I wanted her to go back home with me.
She wouldn't.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Yeah, I didn't want to go home. I mean like
this was like a getaway. We were getting away without
the children for a weekend, and this was an opportunity
like for our YouTube career. This is like a huge
deal to me. This was something like we were invited
to be a part of this crew of creators that
had been around for a while and in the space
way longer than we had been. Like, you know, in
(22:15):
a way, it's like we don't really belong, but here
we are.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, I wanted to go and I thought, to some degree,
I wanted him to face everybody. I like, I was
embarrassed and mad, and I thought, no, you go face
this together.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Sat that apology video that you did soon after then
everyone was, you know, screaming at you to make and
kind of you needed to make some kind of comment.
You looked terrified in that video. Yeah, what was going
through your mind?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
I was just in self preservation mode. It was like
it's time to survive, and gosh, I did whatever it took.
I was extremely anxious, sweaty palms, extremely like snappy at nia.
It's like, we got to get this done. We had
to do several takes. I was feeling pressure from my audience,
(23:03):
from my family, even family I haven't heard from, was like,
hurry up and get a statement out there. People want
to know this, So I say, okay, I'll just tell
them what they probably want to hear, and of course
what I wanted them to hear.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I thought it was interesting that the name that you
chose on Ashley Madison, which was dirty little Secret Man.
There's a lot of self loathing in that in that name,
isn't there.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Absolutely that's hilarious. Yeah, is dirty little Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
It feels like you were not very proud of who
you were, even at the time you knew that you
were doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
That's interesting. I mean, that's a great point. I actually
never thought about that, but yeah, I was in a
place where I knew what I was doing. You're right.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, There's two types of reactions after you hear that
someone's been unfaithful. One is to not want to talk
about it, and the other is to want every single
detail in a bid to try and process it.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Which were you every single detail. I wanted all of
the information down to what socks he wore, Like, I
wanted to know every single thing I could possibly get
my hands on.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
And that was extremely extremely painful and exhausting. Sorry, I'm
not turn point out. For both of us. It was
just like, it's such a painful process because it was
just like just kept revisiting it over and over for months,
and then it was just yeah, a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Nia, what a rollercoaster for you? It almost made me
think when I was here reading the Book of Labor,
you know, like when you have contractions and it's like
there's another one coming, and another one coming, and another
one coming, and each time it crushes you. Like each
time you heard a new detail from Sam, you started
that cycle of anger, I imagine, and betrayal again. How
(24:50):
long did it go on for? And what were the
worst things that he told you? In terms of the
things that hurt the most. You don't have to be
specific about, but like the types of things.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
He really thought the physical things that he did were
going to be the most painful, and he said it
even I'm going to start with the worst and I'll
work my way down the list. But really the most
painful ones were actually the things he considered the lowest
things on the list. The very last couple of things
he confessed to me were just emotional things that didn't
really go anywhere. You know, one was just him pursuing
(25:22):
someone that didn't even reciprocate. Those hurt the worst.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
That was your friend, right.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yes, I don't know if it was the friend aspect,
of course that plays a part in it, but I
don't know if maybe the emotional part too, Like that
was really really hard for me. I think I could
kind of wrap my head around like sexual fantasies and stuff,
but our love was so strong, and you know, if
he had a pornography addiction or sexual fantasies, I felt
like I could logically get my head wrapped around that.
(25:48):
But it was when his heart got brought into it
where I really couldn't. I really struggled with that, like
trying to make sense of it why I came there.
So yeah, I would say maybe two months before the
end of all the past confessions were out because he
would just remember them, like he just said, he would
just a memory would come to him and he would
just tell me, you know, sometimes out of nowhere, and
(26:10):
sometimes you would say, hey, I have something to tell
you were.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Used to living together through all of this. Did you
move out? Sam? Did you move Outnia? Like? How close
did you get to divorce?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah? I was kicked out of the house. Yeah, I
mean and respectfully left. Obviously I didn't exactly get kicked out,
but respectfully left because you didn't want me around. I
stayed at my pastor's house for a week. Yeah, and
then once I got back in the house, I stayed
in a different bedroom.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Did you think about divorce? Nia?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Oh? Yeah, in the beginning, the early days, it was
convinced like we were getting a divorce. There was no
other way around it.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
What about you, Sam, divorce? Yeah? Did you think it
was on the cards? Did you want it? Did you
want to be free to go and pursue these other relationships?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
No, my end, I never ever felt like I am
right to consider divorce. But yeah, I was definitely nervous
that Nia would choose to leave me.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Was there a moment where you went, you know what,
I can actually see a future for us. I think
we can get through this.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Yes. I had a very clear moment actually before he
ever confessed anything to me. I just knew that the
Lord had told me we would be in marriage ministry
one day, and I came home and told him, And
looking back now, his reaction to me telling him that
was kind of like telling.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
What's marriage ministry?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Talking with and helping and sitting across from other couples,
like just being in the marriage space within our church,
within a church community, and just being available to support
other couples. And we had not gone through anything hard
at that time when I had that moment. So fast
forward to he's confessed everything to me and I told
him I want to divorce him. I was sitting in
(27:48):
the car again, praying, just literally praying, could you just
tell me yes or no? Like spell it out. I
was very like a child praying. And I had that
memory of before he ever confessed anything to me, where
we were reaching other couples and supporting other couples. But
that was the moment where I said I'm going to
stay and I'm going to fight. And I didn't feel
(28:08):
it yet, you know, I didn't feel like we're going
to be happy. I even thought I might be unhappily
married to him for a long time. I'm going to
work towards forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
How do you build trust back?
Speaker 2 (28:20):
That took a long time, but it started with the
confessions and being as open to her as possible, so
she saw that nothing to hide and anything she asked
answering those questions honestly, and when she saw like me
answering those questions that were bringing myself pain basically torturing
myself by expressing so much about myself, That's where it starts.
(28:45):
And then after that, letting her call the shots basically
of my life, letting her kind of just tell me
what she's comfortable and what she's not comfortable with, and
just allowing and not fighting it even if I don't
understand it. She doesn't want me to do this, She
doesn't want me talking to this guy anymore. But I'd
actually never done anything with that guy, but she still
(29:06):
doesn't want me talking to him. So I was like, Okay,
I can't talk to anymore. Things like that, and setting
big boundaries and sticking to them, for example, not talking
to women alone, texting women, staying out at night, going
out with certain people, or actually only going out with
solid Christian men. Just really strict boundaries and think all that.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
If you've ever been cheated on or had a big
betrayal in your relationship, and forgiveness or staying together wasn't
an option. It might be confronting to hear that Nia
chose to forgive Sam after so much emotional and physical unfaithfulness.
A lot of people got really angry, interestingly, not just
at him, but at her. And maybe you're someone who
(29:50):
has religion in your life and you draw from that
well for your value system like they do. Well, maybe
you aren't a religious person, and some of Sam and
Nia's ways of making sense of what they've been through
aren't as relatable to you. But there's a whole layer
to Sam and Nia's backstory that you're about to hear.
That for me, really explained a lot about why they
both fought so hard for their marriage and their family,
(30:14):
and also how they approached the fact that Sam had
betrayed Nea. What I found really interesting to learn. Ni,
You've got an incredible story which could be an episode
all onto itself, but the fact that you tragically lost
your mother when you were just three. She was involved
in drugs. She sounds like she was an amazing person.
(30:36):
She followed bands around. Your biological father was in a
band or in a rock star or something. Did you
ever find out who he was? Did you ever meet him?
Speaker 3 (30:46):
I've never met him, but yes, I'm aware of who
he is.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
And you were raised by your grandparents from the age
of three, who you came to call mom and dad,
and their marriage broke up due to infidelity when you
were a kid, and Sam, you had not a dissimilar experience.
Your father left your mum for another woman when you
and your brothers were quite young as well. How did
(31:10):
that shape both of your view of marriage because you
got together quite young, you were only fifteen, How did
that shape your view of marriage and what you were
looking for in a partner.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Just gave me a really clear vision of what I
wanted and what I didn't want really early on. I mean,
I didn't want someone who drank or you know, partied
or lived the kind of lifestyle that I saw within
the marriages that I saw break apart as a young child.
And also like informed me of like what I did want,
which was a Christian man who had strong morals, was kind.
(31:43):
Showed me what I wanted and what I didn't want,
and I stuck really hard to it. I think, I mean,
I was so young.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
But you know, Sam, what about you? It must have
hurt you terribly, saying how your mom suffered after your
dad chaded and then left. Did that make you think
about marriage when you got older?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, at the time, I feel like I probably mostly didn't.
Wasn't very observant of it. I don't have much recollection
of too much of it. Probably blocked a lot of
it out. I never saw like an intimate relationship between
my mom and dad, but for some reason, the fights
kind of stick out. My dad's temper stands out. He
was a good man, but for some reason those stand out.
(32:20):
He was a good mind until he left. He was
talking to another woman. I basically saw him do it.
He took me to the woman's house. We get back home.
My mom asked me what we did on the way home,
and I confessed to her what had happened, because I
felt guilty myself just being a part of it.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, that was an extraordinary betrayal, him taking you kids
to that woman's home. You got together really young, you too,
You're only fifteen. What was that like? Was it tempting?
Were you both still very much of your faith?
Speaker 3 (32:50):
We both had really strong morals. And that's one thing
that drew us together. We used to do little Bible
studies together, we prayed together. We worked hard to be
pure before marriage. I say we worked hard, but that
was a big, a big topic for us that we
tried to like overcome it, you know. But it was
also like I don't know, for me all so like
fireworks and rainbows and butterflies, like it was so magical
(33:13):
and like a movie kind of love in the beginning.
I mean, I don't know all the way through a
partner ever went away.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Sam, did you imagine that you would marry the first
woman that you were intimate with? Was that the plan
was that important to you?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
So all my friends they were out partying, having sex
with multiple women, trying to get me and looking at pornography.
They basically introduced me to pornography. But yeah, I was
adamant about saving my virginity for marriage. And then I
met Nia and she had all the same morals as myself,
and like she said, I saw what I didn't want
(33:48):
when I got older and my mom and dad, I
didn't want that for my family.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
We know so much more about childhood trauma than cycles
of behavior in families that get passed down through generations,
and we also know that everyone reacts differently to trauma
to betrayal. For Nia, she remained really steadfast in her
determination to break that cycle of infidelity and family are
people that she'd experienced. But Sam, like so many people do,
(34:15):
found himself repeating it so much so that when he
was at the kind of lowest low of his cheating,
he shared his secret with his dad in the same
way that his dad had with him when he was
just a child.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
And I actually I didn never mention this in the book,
and I feel like I want to. Somehow, I kind
of introduced him to one of them, one of the
women I was having affair with when we were married
as an adult, and I kind of felt like, oh, yeah,
right on, cue.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
That's wild. You guys have got a very direct line
to God. It feels I feel I didn't realize he
was going to join in on this interview with some punctuation,
and I felt like.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
My dad was going to be proud. I remember that
feeling like I thought he would be proud. Oh wow.
It was such a stupid things, such an immature thought
as an adult to have that my dad would like,
Oh cool, you got women outside of your marriage.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
What did he say to you?
Speaker 2 (35:17):
He didn't say much, but he wrote Nia an email
and this is all new information. We've never ever talked
about this. Yeah, this is all kind of.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Hard to talk about because he's not with us anymore
and on them.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
But yeah, he was looking out for me. He knew
he was.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
And it didn't go very well because I didn't receive
the information very well.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Do you mean that he wrote you and email Niya
telling you what Sam was doing?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Well, maybe just saying I think Sam could be getting curious.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
He suggested it.
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, it was like it wasn't like he told me,
you know, or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Sam. It's interesting that he introduced you to his the
woman he was having an affair with, and then you
went and repeated that pattern all those years later.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I mean, like my oldest brother, we talk about this
quite a bit. My dad. Basically he modeled for us
that that boundary can be crossed, like the number one man.
I looked up to cross that boundary and I'm looking
up at him saying, oh, okay, that boundary you can cross,
and that on that he showed me what it was worth.
It was worth six children and a wife had been
(36:16):
married to for so long as worth as home. I
think that really does damage to a boy, and it
teaches him something. It gives them a really hard lesson
that there's a lot to be had in an affair.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Wow, that's so interesting what you say, because I would
have thought that you would have gone, I'll never do
that because I saw what it cost. But what you
saw was that it was so worth it because he
walked away from all his children and his house and
his marriage. So it must be pretty awesome to have
an affair and do that. Wow.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
That's all subconsciously though. Yeah, I did not want to
repeat what he did.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Thank you so much for sharing that. Just so you know.
This isn't the end of my conversation with Sam and Nia.
We stayed a little longer in their bedroom. What they
shared about their childhood's really put things in a different
perspective for me, because knowing that both Sam and Nia
from families that had been torn apart by infidelity, you
(37:13):
can see that their story began long before Ashley Madison
and that it's ongoing. I mean even now they're navigating
this together, and they're navigating all of it while the
Ashley Madison Netflix documentary is getting global attention. I mean
that's how I reached out to them because I saw
them on Netflix. So in part two of this interview,
why did they choose to participate in the documentary? Do
(37:36):
they regret it? And what's happened since then? How are
they talking to their kids about all of this now
that it's out in the open. Sam and Nea have
four kids and their oldest is fourteen. Her name's Symphony,
so we know that that means she's hearing about things,
and so are some of their other kids. Here's a
little bit about what we talked about in this next
part of the conversation.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Red Flags, run girl. Once a cheater, always a cheer.
I mean, you name it. I think every single thing
has been written in a comment third about how I
should I'm so dumb or he's so bad or we're Sophie.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
What kind of for that as there been from the documentary?
And does Sam ever get tired of apologizing? It's kind
of like this global punishment tour where he just has
to go and say I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Does Nia
have a red line now that would make her rethink
staying with someone who's cheated? Does she think everybody should
stay with a cheating partner? And if you like me
(38:30):
and your girlfriends are your lifeline. One thing in the
documentary that really hit hard was when Nia found out
that Sam had propositioned one of her closest friends and
that friend had just cut off ties with both of them,
and Nia hadn't known why. I wanted to know how
that part of the story ended as well. Just click
(38:50):
the link in the show notes to listen. I'm also
popping a link to Sam and Nia's book Live in
Truth in the show notes. This episode was produced by
Kimberly Bradish and Nama Brown, with sound production by Leah Pauges.
I'm mea Friedman. I'll see you in Part two.
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