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July 10, 2025 17 mins

Amy and Kat got a voicemail from Melanie in Knoxville about her current life status. She shares a home and two kids with her partner. They even got engaged somewhere along the way, but there’s still no wedding. While Melanie is mostly okay with that, questions around faith, last names, and what to call their relationship keep bubbling up. Does it even matter if they never make it official? Amy and Kat share their thoughts and personal experiences, and hopefully after listening, Melanie will have a better idea of what feels right for her.

Email: heythere@feelingthingspodcast.com

Call and leave a voicemail: 877-207-2077

HOSTS:

Amy Brown // RadioAmy.com // @RadioAmy

Kat Van Buren // @KatVanburen

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
All right, break it down.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
If you ever have feelings that you just fons Amy
and Cat gotcha Covin locking No, brother, Ladies and folks,
do you just follow an the spirit where it's all
the front over real stuff to the chill stuff and
the m but Swayne, sometimes the best thing you can
do it just stop you feel things. This is Feeling

(00:27):
Things with Amy and Kat.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Happy Thursday. Welcome to Couch Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
This is the Q and A episode to our Feeling
Things podcast.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
I am Amy and I'm Kat And quick disclaimer before
we get into today's listener question. I want to remind
everybody that although we're answering questions, this does not serve
as replacement for actual mental health services. But we always
hope that it can help you in some way.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
And sometimes the questions are light, sometimes they're heavy. I
would say today's is medium medium, but it's a serious
life decision and the questions aren't going to always specifically
relate to you. But you never know what we're going
to say because it could be applicable. We could go
on a tangent in a lot of areas to you
never know what's going to happen. This is a voicemail

(01:13):
that we got and I actually summarized her situation and
I'm just going to read it instead of playing the voicemail.
I do believe it's cool to say her name got
confirmation from Shannon. In the background, she says, yes, this
is from Melanie in Knoxville. Again, I'm just summarizing the voicemail.
So Kat, you can be thinking of your professional advice.

(01:36):
That's not really advice, but it's not what advice real advice.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Well it's not. I'm not giving you any mental health
services R. That's a way.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
It's like we can't assume me if things.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Go wrong, right, It's like this isn't therapy, but it
might be something you would hear perhaps from a therapist.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
I would do it too.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I can't know.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Okay, So you know I.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Was in that that Christmas movie. No, I was in
Holiday Harmony.

Speaker 5 (02:04):
Remember did you have to wink? Ye oh yes, I remember.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
They had a I had a wink in the script.
It's part of my script. It said Amy wink. They
took out the wink.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Because you couldn't do it. Well, you're doing You're doing it,
am I winking?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I know?

Speaker 3 (02:18):
But the wink is not supposed to be.

Speaker 5 (02:20):
It's supposed to be like a cute it's.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Supposed to be like but I can't do that. It's
supposed to be you know, like like I got you, Like.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
It's so cool when people do that's so cool.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
It is so cool. But I was either going.

Speaker 5 (02:33):
Or wait, did you try to do it? Take it out?
Take it out.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
They're like, we're just going to remove the wink and
I was like, trust I know. It's like, okay, my
big scene in the bathroom, but it was a pivotal moment.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
But they loved you so much they just changed the
scene to work for you.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
I think it was too late. I was already the
scene needed to happen no matter what.

Speaker 5 (02:55):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
So this is for Melanie in Knoxville and summarizing that
she is been with her partner for ten years. They
own a home, they have two kids together, and he
has another kid from a previous relationship. They're engaged, however,
they've never gotten married, and the reason behind this is

(03:17):
they had some tax issues and he didn't want to
bring that into a marriage, so that kind of put
the brakes on all of that. So even though they're
quote unquote engaged, she doesn't really say like fiance.

Speaker 5 (03:29):
Because they got engaged a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Or I don't know when the engagement took place, but
they've been together for ten years, and so I think
she's like, this is this my partner. It just feels
weird to her to say fiance because they've got these
two kids, so she isn't big into weddings or courthouse ceremonies.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
So they've just kind of.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Stayed in this space, even though now I guess they're
to the place with his taxes that he could get married.
Like he said something to her like I'll go to
the courthouse tomorrow. She doesn't want to just go to
the courthouse to wants something a little more meaningful than that.
She's mostly fine with their situation, but she's wrestling with
some feelings like not sharing a last name with her kids,

(04:10):
struggling with what to call her partner. Boyfriend sounds too young,
fiance feels weird, and then she has some faith based
guilt about living together without being married. So she just
wants to know does it even matter? Is she overthinking it? Well,
if it matters to you, it matters, That's what I.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
Was gonna say, Like that's a hard question for to
ask anybody else. It sounds obviously you're writing this email,
so it sounds like it matters to you.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
She's a voicemail said right, voicemail.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
I think the question or what she has to figure
out that we can't figure out for her, is what
about this matters?

Speaker 5 (04:44):
Like something in here matters to her.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
It sounds like there's some things that bring feelings up
for her, the shame and gilt you named, the feeling
something about her kids not having Maybe there's some sadness
or grief around having that different last name. Maybe it's
some sadness and grief around things going a different way
than she originally planned. But something matters, So that's okay,

(05:07):
Like if somebody else would of be like, oh, who cares?
It's basically like you're married. Just it's fine. If that
doesn't matter to them, doesn't mean it doesn't matter to you.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Aren't they common law? Common law marriage?

Speaker 5 (05:17):
I think? Is what is that twelve years? Oh, it's
only seven, And.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I believe every state could be a little bit different
depending on where you live and what they recognize as
common law.

Speaker 5 (05:28):
And what does that even mean?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
It just means by law you've been together and you're
living together for so long that technically we consider you marriage.

Speaker 5 (05:35):
You could join mayor FI all your taxes to you.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Good question. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
We'll have Shannon look that information up for us. The
situation does remind me of my parents' divorce a little
bit because of some irs issues.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
My dad had going on at the time.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
So my dad left when I was nine, but then
my parents never officially got divorced. I was eighteen, but
he left my mom for another woman and they were
together and they lived together that entire time. So from
when I was nine I was eighteen, he was still
married to my mom but living with his girlfriend for
ten years.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, so kind of like this but different.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
Was this as a favor to your mom or is
this work out for both?

Speaker 2 (06:15):
It was a win win for I guess both of them.
But my mom wasn't filing for divorce because I think
she would have taken my dad back. But then my
dad wasn't filing for divorce because financially that would have
been really bad for him. And in this by doing
it this way, he was able to give my mom
the house, and I think if he had sold the
house at that time, or they got divorced and split

(06:38):
it like the irs was going to take a certain amount.
It just would have been bad for everybody. And look,
I don't know what my dad had going on. Our
finances with my dad. If you listened to the podcast for
a long time, you know a lot of my issues
with money were the rollercoaster that I experienced with him,
or things that I saw the ups and the downs,
which made me just think, oh, I'm going to ignore
money because that seems like zero fun. But my life

(07:00):
doesn't look anything like I thought either, Like, this is
not how she saw her life. And your faith has
you questioning some things, and that was me with my divorce.
Like I literally woke up this morning. I didn't even
hadn't even listened to this voicemail yet, but I woke
go this morning.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
I thought, I'm like, huh, it's so crazy.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
My life looks nothing like what I thought it was
going to And now I'm in a really good place
and there's difficult seasons, but I'm I'm actually pleasantly surprised.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
So with you, you're in a situation.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Where you're happy, You've got your kids, and it doesn't
look like what you thought, but you can't worry about
what other people think. If I was worried the whole
time about what other people thought, then maybe Ben and
I wouldn't have gone through with our divorce, which ultimately
I think I do think we are both happier for it.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
So that's our situation.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Aside, back to my parents' situation, I couldn't see as
a kid, like why they navigated it the way that
they did.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
It seemed so bizarre to me.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
But as an adult now that's walked through a divorce
worson is learning about finances and the ins and outs. Now,
I'm not saying what they did was right, but I
get it now. I'm like, oh, it was a workaround.
It was a way, a little loophole of sorts for
them to have some space my dad to figure.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Some stuff out.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
And shout out to my mom for putting up with it,
because she probably should have just filed for divorce, but
she didn't. And then I guess my dad's girlfriend she
understood what was going on, so then she's fine with
my dad legally staying married to my mom and then
they're living together. I don't know what kind of shady
business is going on up in there. So do they
file their taxes every year together my parents?

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Yeah, good question. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (08:43):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
And now they're both passed. I can't ask them things
like that, but yeah, who knows. I know that my
dad would write my mom checks every month, but because
they were not legally divorced, they had no court saying
this is how you're handling kids. I lived with my
mom the time. There was no custody with my dad,
no agreement. I didn't have to be with him a

(09:04):
certain amount of time. I own, I saw him when
I wanted to see him. Wow, But I was always
with my mom.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
I never thought about that. Because they weren't divorced. There
was no like he gets to have you guys, or
he has to pay this amount.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
No, they just agreed on an amount that I guess
made sense. And then he did that and it was
like he all can stay in the house.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I'll leave, you know.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
And then he took care of things for me, like
when I turned sixteen, he got me a car and
then he paid for my gap. He should have made
me get a job, is what he should have done.

(09:48):
I didn't get a job.

Speaker 5 (09:49):
Should he have made you get a job.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
My senior year, I ended up being a nanny, so
I earned money that way.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
There's things that I wish he would have done differently
to teach me about money and taking care of myself.
But I think he I had some guilt about, well,
if I'm not showing up for her in this way,
then I'll show up like sort of, well, okay, here's
a car and here's a gas card. And then he
paid for my college. And I just didn't have a
lot of responsibility that I wish I would have had.

(10:14):
And I think as I was the youngest, because my sister,
she's four years older than me, and she remembers it differently,
like she had jobs. She was a waitress, and I
mean I was a hostess for six weeks.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Does that count? But she had a different experience.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
You're also thinking because I had a job from the
second I turned sixteen could get a job. I had
a job, that does not mean I learned how to
be responsible with money. I just I don't know what
I did with it back then, and I am still
learning in my thirties how to save and how to
manage money, how to check like I did not look

(10:49):
at my bank accounts for a long time too, and
I was not married, so nobody else.

Speaker 5 (10:53):
Was taking care of it.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
So I think this is highlighting that thing we do
when we visualize something else happening, We usually visualize it
in best case scenario. So I wish you would have
maybe get a job. Then I would have known X,
Y Z, and I would have done this, this, and this.
We don't know that you could have gotten a job
and spent that money on drugs. Oh gosh, we okay,
Like I don't know, Like sometimes kids when they have

(11:16):
too much money, that's when they have disposable income. When
they have like, we don't know. I don't know that
that's where you would have gone.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
I had gotten that job at that heavy machinery place
and lost my arm.

Speaker 5 (11:28):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Like that's really thinking about that.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
But did you know when I took one of those
tests in high school that tells you what kind of
job you're supposed to have, it told me I should
work with heavy machinery.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
I don't know, like like an excavator or like in
a factory.

Speaker 5 (11:49):
I don't know. Why did you take it? Seriously, I don't.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Know what this is?

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Like, Okay, I don't know. I don't know what to
do with this.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
I don't know what to do with this information. I
think it was like, this is probably where you're gonna
really thrive.

Speaker 5 (12:07):
So like exactly, you literally could have lost your arm.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Right, so, like you know, you never know where life's
gonna take you.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
This poor listener who doesn't voice smeail one's advice. I've
derailed this thing in fifty different directions. But I think
moral of the story is, don't think about what other
people are thinking about what you had.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
To do for yourselves in your situation.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
And if they may not know his tax issue or whatever,
that's nobody's business.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Why y'all were never married.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, yes, and it was wise likely for y'all to
do it this way if there really was iris issues,
and good for him not wanting to bring you into that.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yes, So that's the real deal.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
And Annie f Down said this on I don't know
what podcasts could have been hurt, and it's stuck with me.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
I've probably said it on here before.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
As long as we are comparing our lives to others,
and we're looking to others to see how we're doing,
we're always going to come up wanting. So no matter
if you're judging how other people's families look, what other kids,
how their last names work, what kind of wedding they had,
you're always going to be missing something. We all play
that game, but that game doesn't work for us. It

(13:14):
never ever will. We're never going to do that, and
then long term be like, oh, I'm doing great, like
you're always going to find something where you feel that way.
And it is so we were talking about this earlier.
It is so easy for other people to look on
the outside and say, well I would have done this,
or I would have done that, or you should have
done this, or why are they doing that? Without having
all the pieces. Until you're in a specific situation, nobody

(13:38):
has the ability to actually make a sound judgment on
what somebody should do or shouldn't do. So if you
are speaking to Melanie now, if you are looking at
your life and looking at what you currently really want,
because it's what you want and what's important to you,
that's one thing. But if you're looking at your life
and thinking how you were talking, this isn't what I

(13:58):
thought it was going to be, Well, maybe that wasn't
what you needed, or maybe there's some like deconstruction.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
There, Well, I also think that what I thought my
life was going to look like I'm assuming the positive.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
It's the best case scenario, like you were saying, when
really like.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Why why don't I think through possible other things that
could have gone wrong? That you were spared because you
went this route and I think acceptance of your situation,
like this is where you are, so I would surrender
any of these feelings, like if you have faith based guilt,
work through that and surrender it because that's.

Speaker 5 (14:38):
And do you really believe that?

Speaker 4 (14:39):
I think that's I grew up saying I would never
Why would I ever want to live with my boyfriend
or fiance before I get married? Because you know, you
hear like what's not as fun or doesn't feel different
or this or that? Well guess what, I didn't blink
and I yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
But some people still would want it in a traditional sense.
But I'm saying to do that for her, like if
if she's your'd of been living with a for ten years?

Speaker 4 (15:00):
Yeah, children, like is that really something you believe or
is that something that you were taught to believe and
you haven't sat down and wondered like, wait, does this
feel right? To me, because if it doesn't, you are
allowed to let that go. And I think letting beliefs
we have held for a long time is really hard.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Really hard.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
And I think that if she does want to get married,
which sounds like that is important to her, she just
doesn't know what type of wedding she wants to have.

Speaker 5 (15:25):
This is a.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Beautiful thing that you have your kids, his kid from
a previous relationship. Y'all have this family. Y'all can create
something special, create a celebration. You don't even have to
call it a wedding.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
She lives in Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Speaker 5 (15:42):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
They're currently only eight states that recognize common law marriage,
according to Shannon Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas,
and the District of Columbia. So don't see Tennessee on
that list. So maybe you're not common law marriage. But
either way, but.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
That's cool or that aside what other kids can be like,
yeah to my mom and dad's wedding, and I remember.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
It, yeah, And I got to be a part of
planning it, and we it was this big celebration and
we each thought of little special things we wanted to include,
or things we wanted to say, or a tradition you
want to start on that day and then every year
as part of that anniversary you do some sort of
family tradition together. And I would just look at the

(16:21):
gifts that have come from this ten year relationship, and thankfully,
he sounds like he's done with all the irs mess
So be thankful and have gratitude that that is behind
you and you weren't drug into it, because you know
what some guys would maybe or girls would hide it,
not say anything, marry you and then be like, oh, yeah,

(16:41):
bet devs going to jail, right, so I owe the
irs two hundred thou or something like that.

Speaker 5 (16:48):
Yeah, that happens anyway.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
I hope this was.

Speaker 5 (16:51):
Helpful and we learned something new about amy.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, if things don't work out here, you know where
to find me heavy, So good luck with that, Melanie.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
We can't wait to hear.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
We love an update of what y'all decide to do
to celebrate your relationship, because that's what this is, and
to make it official because you deserve that. I think
that deep down that is something that you want and
that would be important to you. So figure out a
way to do that and include everybody and the people
that you love and surrender the rest. Email us call
us eight seven seven two O seven two A seven

(17:25):
seven is the number, and then hey, they're at Feeling
Things podcast is the email.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
Put couch Talks in the subject.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
And then let us know if we can say your
name or not. If you want to be anonymous, just
say that and also follow us on socials and YouTube.
We are Feeling Things the podcast and we hope you
have the day you need to have.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Bye bye,

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