My guest, Valerie, called off her destination wedding with 50 guests because she felt so lost,

scared, and alone with the challenges in her relationship.

But a book made her change her mind.

And today, she has a marriage that's light, playful, and loving.

And she knows how to keep it that way, with a blended family two ex-wives and an

autistic child she's going to tell us how she did it so you can do it too valerie welcome to the

empowered wife podcast i'm so excited to hear your story thank you laura for having me and i'm excited

to share my story to help anyone out there that can relate.

Well, take us back to what was going wrong in the bad old days.

Yeah, you know, we kind of jumped into our relationship super fast.

So I think the speed of the relationship, the baggage of the relationship, kind of jumped into our relationship super fast.

So I think the speed of the relationship, the baggage that we both had on his end, he had

two ex-wives, three kids, one nonverbal autistic.

And here I am as a single woman. I'm 42 years old, never been married,

and, you know, I'm ready to get married and have kids and start a family. So I didn't realize

how much that was to take on.

I thought, okay, you know, we're just dating, we're having fun.

We became official about a little over a month,

and then I ended up literally never leaving his house.

So I ended up just kind of moving my stuff over like four months in.

I think I left like one night. So it became pretty

intense fast. And, you know, on the outside, we looked awesome. Everyone thought, you know,

...