Dirty Laundry: The Divorce Podcast

Epizode

• Encore: The Gay Husband, the New Husband, and the Mormon Wife — with Jessica Frew 02.07.2026 54min

  Send us Fan Mail Jessica Frew's first marriage looked like a great fit from the outside. Then she found something on their computer. Her husband Steve was gay — and couldn't yet admit it to himself. In this encore episode, Jessica shares the seven years of gradual mourning that followed, the affair that finally ended the marriage, and how she and Steve built a co-parenting relationship so intentional that they now host a podcast together alongside her current husband Matt. She also talks abou...
• S4 E37: Stay or Go? Getting Clarity on the Hardest Marriage Decision — with Betsy Pake 25.06.2026 42min

  Send us Fan Mail Betsy Pake is a master coach, speaker, and founder of the Navigate Method. She has also lived this question herself for nearly a decade before finally getting clear. In this episode she talks about what keeps women stuck, why taking accountability for where you are is actually empowering rather than letting anyone off the hook, how to calibrate for action rather than words when you're trying to figure out if someone is really willing to change, and the difference between sett...
• S4 E36: Emotional Intelligence, Dating After Divorce, and Why EQ Changes Every Relationship You Have with Kristen Harcourt 18.06.2026 56min

  Send us Fan Mail Emotional intelligence isn't something you either have or you don't. It's a skill. And it might be the most important one you can build when you're navigating divorce, co-parenting, and figuring out who you are on the other side of a relationship. Kristen Harcourt — business coach, speaker, podcast host, and emotional intelligence expert — joins Alex and Amanda to talk about what EQ actually looks like in practice: how to regulate your emotions in real time during a difficult...
• S4 E35: Husbands May Come and Go, But Diamonds Are Forever: The Divorce Jewellery Dilemma—Keep It, Redesign It, or Sell It? with Jessica of Jessica Jewellery 11.06.2026 44min

  Send us Fan Mail The engagement ring meant everything when he gave it to you. Now it's sitting in a drawer and you're not sure what to do with it. Sell it? Save it for your kids? Or turn it into something that finally feels like yours? Jessica of Jessica Jewellry joins Alex and Amanda to walk through every stage of the post-divorce jewelry journey, from the woman who calls fresh out of a split wanting it gone immediately, to the one a decade later who's ready to redesign it into something tha...
• S4 E34: A Dad's Mission to Support Teen Mental Health — with Chris Coulter 04.06.2026 46min

  Send us Fan Mail After the most difficult experience of his life, Chris Coulter spent a decade speaking with more than 2,000 parents who were struggling to understand what was really going on with their teenagers. What he found was a consistent gap — parents dismissing warning signs as normal adolescent behavior, and teenagers who wouldn't open up to the people who loved them most. In this episode Chris talks about his daughter Maddie, what he learned in the years that followed her passing, a...
• S4 E33: Coercive Control, Counter-Parenting, and Protecting Your Kids — with Dr. Christine Cocchiola 28.05.2026 47min

  Send us Fan Mail She spent 27 years married to her abuser. She was a domestic abuse counselor the entire time. And she still didn't recognize what was happening to her until year 20 of her marriage. Dr. Christine Cocchiola — licensed social worker, professor, therapist, survivor, and protective mom — joins Alex and Amanda to talk about coercive control as the foundation of all abuse, not just the violent incidents we're taught to look for. She explains the dark tetrad of personality traits th...
• S4 E32: The Legal Fight to Make Canada's Courts Prioritize Abuse Survivors — Part 2 with Kathryn Marshall 21.05.2026 42min

  Send us Fan Mail Over half of all criminal cases in Canada involve intimate partner violence or sexual assault. And those are the exact cases being quietly pushed to the bottom of the pile when courtrooms run out of time and resources. In part two of her conversation with Alex and Amanda, Kathryn Marshall breaks down how trial stacking is working against abuse survivors, what the Hockey Canada trial revealed about how the criminal court system treats victims, why she believes Zoom court has ...
• S4 E31: Suing the Government Over a Justice System That's Failing Survivors — with Kathryn Marshall 14.05.2026 30min

  Send us Fan Mail Hundreds of domestic violence and sexual assault cases are being thrown out before they ever get to trial. Abusers are walking away with no criminal record and nothing on their file. And survivors are being silenced in the process. Kathryn Marshall of Marshall Law is suing the federal government over it. In this episode she breaks down exactly how the justice system is failing abuse survivors, why she now tells some clients to skip criminal court entirely, and what it actuall...
• S4 E30: Mother's Day — The Good, The Guilt, and The Working Weekend 07.05.2026 31min

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda get candid about the reality of Mother's Day — why it so often becomes the most exhausting day of the year, why divorced moms are doing something categorically different from married moms who think a solo weekend qualifies as the same experience, and why giving yourself permission to skip the celebration entirely is not only valid but sometimes the healthiest choice. They also get into mom judgment, the mental load of co-parenting versus count...
• [From the Vault] The Stepmom Experience 30.04.2026 40min

  Send us Fan Mail Stepmoms are expected to show up like a parent, step back like a stranger, and never complain about any of it. Jamie Simkins — licensed therapist, stepmom coach, and stepmom twice over — has been there herself. In this episode from the vault, she gets into the real dynamics of blended family life: navigating a high conflict bio mom, connecting with stepkids before ever trying to discipline them, why stepdads get to be heroes while stepmoms become the scapegoat, and why she ca...
• S4 E29: Author, Founder, Advocate, and Survivor — Ismena Toscan on Protecting Every Child in Canada 23.04.2026 31min

  Send us Fan Mail One in three Canadian girls has experienced childhood sexual abuse. One in eight boys. These aren't abstract numbers — they're children in classrooms, on hockey teams, in families across the country. Ismena Toscan is 15 years old. She is a survivor, the founder of the Hula Hoop Initiative, the author of two children's books on body autonomy and personal safety, and someone who has already spoken at the House of Commons in support of the Keeping Children Safe Act. In this epi...
• S4 E28: Surviving Divorce After Domestic Violence — with Mae Scott 16.04.2026 44min

  Send us Fan Mail Mae Scott joins Alex and Amanda to share the full story of escaping her abusive, narcissistic ex‑husband, a respected lawyer who was eventually sentenced to 12 years to life in prison. This episode goes inside the escalating violence, the therapist who warned her she had to leave immediately, and the five felony charges that finally led to his conviction. Then we walk through the part no one talks about: the nine‑month, $100,000 battle for supervised visitation, the foreclosu...
• S4 E27: Keira’s Law, Reunification Therapy, and Why the Systems Meant to Protect Children Keep Failing Them — Part 2 with Philip Viater 09.04.2026 53min

  Send us Fan Mail In part two of this conversation, Philip breaks down the legislation that came out of that loss — Keira’s Law Law, passed unanimously across all party lines — and what it actually does to change how judges are trained on domestic violence and coercive control. He also gets into why reunification therapy has no standardized training, no governing body, and no consistent methodology, why the Department of Justice's own HELP Toolkit confirms abuse is relevant to parenting but th...
• S4 E26: Parental Alienation, Institutional Betrayal, and Why Family Court Keeps Getting It Wrong — with Philip Viater 02.04.2026 38min

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with Philip Viater, a family lawyer with 17 years of experience at VP Family Law Group, for one of the most candid conversations about the failures of family court we've ever had. Philip breaks down why parental alienation is predominantly used as a defense against abuse rather than a genuine diagnosis, why he views it as junk science not recognized by the DSM, and why the moment someone raises it in his cases he considers it a red fl...
• S4 E25: The Prenup Episode: Why More Couples Are Choosing Prenups — and What You Need to Know Before You Do 26.03.2026 40min

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with family lawyers Sean Valentine and Ryan Osbourne — co-creators of I Do Prenup, an app that lets couples generate a real marriage contract in hours for a fraction of traditional legal costs. They break down who actually needs a prenup and why the answer is basically everyone, what three things must be included in any agreement, why couples who do prenups have lower divorce rates, what happens when grandma and grandpa are the ones d...
• S4 E24: The Mom Identity Crisis Nobody Talks About — with Dale and Annabel from We Are More Than Moms 19.03.2026 33min

  Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with Dale and Annabel, the duo behind We Are More Than Moms, to talk about why the postpartum identity shift is so disorienting, how they built a thriving community for career-driven women who refuse to shrink themselves after having kids, and why the early parenting years are such a genuine test of a relationship. Dale also shares what it was like growing up as a child of divorce — including years in a nesting arrangement — and how t...
• S4 E23: Roommate Syndrome, Bad Marriage Advice, and the Tool That Tells You Whether to Stay or Leave 12.03.2026 48min

  Send us Fan Mail Most couples don't fall out of love dramatically. They just slowly stop paying attention to each other — until one day they look up and realize they're running a household with a stranger. In this episode, Alex and Amanda sit down with marriage coach Monica Tanner to talk about why the advice you've been given — don't sweat the small stuff, compromise, just let it go — might actually be accelerating the drift. Monica introduces the idea of skillful communication over lazy com...
• S4 E22: Coercive Control: How to Build Your Case Before You're Ready to Leave 05.03.2026 48min

  Send us Fan Mail If you're in a controlling relationship, start writing everything down — today. Not someday. Today. Family lawyer Maryam Manteghi explains exactly how a journal becomes the foundation of a coercive control case, why abusers follow a predictable playbook, and what women can do right now to protect themselves whether they're ready to leave or not. Coercive control isn't one dramatic event. It's a pattern — and you can't prove a pattern you never documented. Maryam also brea...
• S4 E21: The Tort of Family Violence — One Case That Could Rewrite Canadian Divorce Law 26.02.2026 36min

  Send us Fan Mail Coercive control and family violence finally have a legal price tag in Canada — and the Supreme Court decision that could make it permanent is coming any day. For the first time in Canadian history, a judge looked at twenty years of coercive control inside a marriage and said — that has a dollar amount. Family lawyer Maryam Manteghi breaks down the Alawalia case, the new tort of family violence, and why the Supreme Court of Canada's imminent decision could change divorce for...
• S4 E20: Emotions Are Running Your Divorce — And Nobody's Talking About the Bill 19.02.2026 30min

  Send us Fan Mail Anger makes you call your lawyer over nothing. Guilt makes you waive spousal support you're owed. And everyone walks into family court thinking they're about to win something — which is precisely when things go sideways. In this solo episode, Alex and Amanda get into the mechanics of emotional sabotage in divorce: how guilt leads to lopsided concessions, why anger turns a $300 problem into a $1,000 phone call, and the surprisingly pervasive myth that there's a winner and a lo...