Woman Breaks Down Unlikely Ways She Bonded with Amish Mother-in-Law (Exclusive)

When Lexi Lauren Mast and her now-husband Ammon first started dating in 2021, he formed a swift and natural bond with her toddler daughter. Lexi often found them spending time together, both genuinely enjoying whatever they were doing.

On one occasion, they all sat down to watch Finding Nemo at their home in Western Michigan. Lexi’s daughter was giggling along to the 2003 Pixar flick, but she was surprised to find her boyfriend matched the child’s amusement in full. Ammon laughed heartily at the animated clownfish, Dory and Bruce the shark.

It’s a vivid memory for Lexi, 29, who remembers turning to her then-boyfriend curiously. “Have you ever watched Finding Nemo?” she asked Ammon. No, he replied. This was his first time seeing what Lexi considered a classic kids movie, something she expected any person currently in their twenties would be completely familiar with.

“From that moment on, it clicked,” the professional photographer tells PEOPLE. “This dude did not experience anything I did as a child.”

Ammon, now 26, didn’t grow up watching cartoons or going to movie theaters. He never had any access to media or even technology in general until he was an adult. At age 18, Ammon made the decision to leave his Amish family and start a life beyond the insular, Luddite community.

Ammon’s departure was unlike most stories from other ex-Amish due to the unconventional circumstances under which he was raised. His father left the community when Ammon and his siblings were young, but their mother stayed. She raised the children as a single parent.

From age 3 onwards, Ammon grew up in a household dynamic that was practically unheard of within Amish circles: a single mother with three children and an estranged, largely absent husband.

Ammon’s father did visit, but only rarely. “Once a year, once every few years, he would come around to come say hi real quick and check on the kids,” Lexi describes of Ammon’s childhood. “It was always a really big problem for the community, obviously … His grandparents, his mom, they did not speak highly of his dad.”

There were many reasons why Lexi’s husband wanted to leave the Amish, but his father’s decision was a major influence as well. In fact, after Ammon left to start life in the “English” world, as the Amish call it, he formed a close relationship with his dad, as well as some uncles and cousins who left as well.

Unlike his dad, however, Ammon left before he officially joined the Amish church, meaning that he was never formally shunned by the community. His mother and sister are still Amish, but they welcome him back for visits.

Plus, Ammon’s family invites him to bring along Lexi and their three kids: her daughter from a previous relationship and the two children she and Ammon welcomed together.

At first, the idea of entering the famously traditional Amish world was daunting. Lexi tells PEOPLE she was “freaking out” before her first trip to Ammon’s family home, totally intimidated by the standards she expected they’d hold her to. She worried about her nose ring, her tattoo, her clothing. She didn’t know what she should say or how she should behave.

In reality, there wasn’t much for Lexi to fuss over at all. Ammon explained that she wouldn’t be judged for not following Amish rules because they simply did not apply to her.

“My husband was like, ‘Dude, you’re not Amish. Stop caring. Be yourself,'” Lexi recalls. “He said, ‘We’re not asking them to be English. You’re not Amish. Why are you worried about it?'”

Visiting Ammon’s family was a little awkward initially, Lexi admits, “but then I realized they were actually really accepting of me in their own little way.” And in the absence of that anticipated hostility, visiting the Amish has become “so fun,” she says.

“We get to do the buggy rides, the food, all of that fun stuff,” Lexi explains. “We get the whole experience, everything from the food to the open-door policy they have in the community. We see a lot of people, because Amish people are very much community people. They just show up at people’s houses all weekend.”

Lexi and Ammon’s kids — who are ages 5, 2 and 1 years old — have playmates during their visits too. They have four cousins, Ammon’s nieces and nephews; all of the kids are close to the same age, but clear differences in their lifestyles are already evident.

The people in Ammon’s former community speak both English and Pennsylvania-Dutch, though the children don’t start learning English until the age of 6. His nephew is old enough to speak both tongues, but Ammon’s nieces are still too young.

Not that it matters between the little ones. “Our kids just all interact and have so much fun, and they can’t even speak the same language together,” Lexi observes. The group of cousins has a blast together, playing and riding little kid-sized buggies around.

Authentic bonds are built in those instances where humanity pervades and blooms in that gulf between distinctly “inside” and “outside” worlds. For Lexi, it can happen with a similar simplicity to the children, but more often in moments laden with nuance.

Lexi sees the way her mother- and sister-in-law collect her morsels of English world; they look to her for honest advice, the type that’s only passed from woman to woman.

“They would probably never admit it to the community, but they absolutely do,” she says. “His sister has four kids, and she was asking me workout tips last time I visited. She was asking me workout tips, and what she could do just in her room to try to get in shape.”

It rings especially poignant given the absence of Ammon’s father: “His mom, she’s been through the ringer. His dad put her through the ringer,” says Lexi. “She was a single mom and Amish, and the thing with the Amish is she’s not allowed to move on from that. She’s not allowed to get divorced. She’s not allowed to find new love.”

She continues of her mother-in-law, “This poor woman is stuck forever, just alone in my eyes, even though she doesn’t feel alone because she has her church.”

It may come as a surprise that Ammon’s mother does open up about her innermost feelings to Lexi. In turn, Lexi reciprocates that trust and relies on her Amish mother-in-law for the same support.

“I can talk to her and vent to her about anything in my life or my relationship,” Lexi tells PEOPLE. “She’s like, ‘Call me when you need to.’ And I’ve had a time where I’ve needed to call her, and I did. And she helped me through things.”

Like any family with mixed views and traditions, Lexi’s relationship with her Amish in-laws is hardly seamless. Every so often, there’s a disconnect, of course, but instead of letting those bumps unravel their meaningful connection, Lexi laughs. She finds the humor in her mother-in-law’s totally foreign, sometimes backhanded remarks.

And she lets others in on the joke, too — a little over 48,000 others, to be exact, and she found her audience in the form of TikTok followers.

Lexi started posting videos about her life with an ex-Amish husband in 2024, and she quickly found viral success sharing tidbits about their story, his quirks and how they’ve adapted parts of the Amish lifestyle into their own home.

Lexi will also tell stories about her visits with Ammon’s family, including some of the interactions that hilariously demonstrate their cultural divide. In a video that reached over 426,000 viewers, she reviewed “things that my Amish mother-in-law has said to me that I’ll never be getting over.”

In the TikTok posted on July 24, Lexi recounted a time when her Ammon’s mother lamented his never having joined the church. After he reassured his mother that he’s glad he made the decisions he did, Lexi recalls his mom saying, “Well, it’s not like you found anything better than the church with your life.”

The content creator then looked directly at her camera with wide eyes. “His mom is really sweet and we get along really well, but that one hurt a lot!” she said, gesturing as if to put a dagger in her heart.

Ammon’s family is Old Order Amish, meaning they’re very strict about certain rules, restrictions and traditions. They can use a community phone booth to contact people, but that’s about the extent of the technology they allow, meaning that there’s no real possibility that they’d ever find out about Lexi’s online presence and her videos about having an ex-Amish husband.

It helps that Ammon is more than happy to talk about that side of his life. He’s completely fine with Lexi educating her TikTok followers about the Amish and talking openly about his background, the same way he was happy to field inquiries from Lexi’s family all night long when they were introduced.

“The first holiday we were together, my aunt and cousins just kept him up until 1 in the morning, asking him questions. Everyone was just so fascinated by it,” she tells PEOPLE.

Lexi had plenty of questions herself, and at the beginning of her relationship, she was continuously shocked by the reality of the Amish lifestyle. For one thing, Lexi still finds it “wild” how much her childhood differed from Ammon’s.

“At six years old, they’re already full-time employee, students, like working,” she says. “And it was so common for me to understand traveling or going [to] new places, but they really only see what’s within their community. They truly don’t get out much.”

Lexi and her family’s curiosity and enthusiasm are mirrored on the other side, whether it takes the form of Ammon’s eyes glued to Finding Nemo or his sister asking for Lexi’s home workout routine. Even now, eight years after Ammon left the Amish and four years after he fell in love with Lexi, she still gets to watch him discover aspects of modern life that feel so common to the rest of us.

“There are so many things that he’d just never heard of, so many interesting things. I feel like every day I could ask a new question, like, ‘Did you eat cereal?’ I don’t know!” Lexi says with a laugh. “I had to explain what the Olympics were!”