Lori and David Sims: Blending a Family With a High-Conflict Ex

Lori Sims went from a single mother with one small son and a clean house to living with five boys, four of them David's and three of those triplets. She and David had read the books, taken the questionnaires and seen a counselor first. It nearly ended the marriage anyway.

Our guests this episode are Lori and David Sims, the couple behind Nacho Kids and the Nacho Parenting Method, which they built about thirteen years ago out of their own failure to blend the way the books prescribed. They now run the Nacho Kids Academy, a podcast and private coaching for stepparents. They have been together fifteen years, and both of them will tell you how close it came: David spent a stretch expecting to come home to divorce papers, and the only thing that kept Lori there was not wanting to uproot her son again.

The core of the method is that the incoming partner is not the parent. Best friend, confidant, mentor, cheerleader, sometimes closer to the kids than the biological parents are, but not the parent, because the role was never open and every attempt to fill it gets rejected. David describes his own mistake plainly: he was trying to lift one person out and put another in.

Lori and David were handling two high-conflict exes with different methods, one running years of litigation and one running emotional and verbal conflict, and this episode is mostly about what they did with that. Loyalty binds put on the children, including being told what happens at one house stays there. The Friday afternoon email that swallows a weekend. Scheduling exactly when they would read it and when they would talk about it, and refusing to discuss it at dinner. Lori's five-minute timer for being angry. Moving contact into a parenting app. The two questions she asks before replying. And what genuinely supportive looks like from a partner, which turns out to be the opposite of joining in. They also talk about the physical cost, and the year Lori lost so much weight her doctors were looking for something serious.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why the stepparent role fails when you try to fill a parent role that was never available
• How loyalty binds get put on children, and what it looks like when they come home
• What to do with the Friday afternoon email that is designed to take your whole weekend
• Lori's five-minute timer: feel it fully, then stop
• The two questions to ask before you reply to anything: is it true, and would this help in court
• Why moving contact into a parenting app gives you back control of when it reaches you
• What supportive actually means from a new partner, and what it is not
• What to settle before you blend, from money and car insurance to household changes

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What to look for in a new partner after a toxic relationship
5:30 Meeting Lori and David, and why the blending books failed them
7:00 Trying to fill a role that was never available
9:30 Two different high-conflict exes, and the loyalty binds on the kids
13:00 The Friday afternoon email, and years of perfect rebuttals
18:30 Supporting a partner through legal abuse without adding to it
23:00 You are not the parent, and the changes to make before you blend
26:00 Red flags, and why they are red rather than pink
30:00 The five-minute timer, the parenting app, and scheduling the conflict
35:00 What the stress did physically, and where to find them

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Nacho Kids: https://nachokids.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.