Divorce Lawyer James Sexton: #1 Conversation Every Couple Should Have Before it’s Too Late (Use THIS 3-Step Script TODAY!)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce, but
it ends. If something fifty percent or more of the
time ends in pain and heartbreak, it's actually reckless to
do it.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, to number one
health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
one of you that come back every week to listen, learn,
and grow. Today's guest is someone that I've been dying
to sit down with ever since I came across as work.
It is meaningful, it's powerful, and the best part about
it is that it's direct and to the point. Our
next guest is the author of How to Stay in Love.

(00:34):
Please welcome to On Purpose, James Sexton. James, it is
great to meet you. It is great to meet love
connecting with you offline for a few moments just before
we started, and I mean it. I've been watching your clips,
watching your interviews, thinking you have so much value to
share with our audience. And I know this is your
first time here, but I hope it's going to be
the first of many. So thank you for being.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Thank you for having me. I have to say I'm
a fan of the work and I've always found your
conversations to be something that actually moved me forward in
my own thought process. So it's really really lovely to
hear from your team and to come and sit down together.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, thank you for saying that. That means the world.
I want to dive straight in, James, because you know,
I think we all hear this statistic and I want
to check even if it's true. Is it true that
fifty percent of marriages and in divorce actually.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
A little over fifty percent? Yeah, it is. It's a
frightening statistic when you hear it, because I've often said it.
It actually creates the legal supposition that marriage is a
negligent activity. You know, in the law we have this
idea of negligence and recklessness. So negligence is a failure

(01:45):
to perceive a substantial but high likelihood of harm, and
recklessness is a conscious disregard for a substantial and unjustifiable
risk of harm. And you could make the argument that
if something fifty percent or more of the time ends
in pain and heartbreak, that it's actually reckless to do it.

(02:09):
And you know, I'm always vexed by the thought that
how do we gauge the success of something? And so
divorce is clearly a failure of marriage to sustain. But
then you have to think if over fifty percent of
marriages and in divorce, how many people are unhappy with

(02:31):
the decision they made to marry but stay together for
the children, or because they don't want to give away
half their belongings if you're conservative and say it's another
ten percent, maybe twenty percent. Now we're talking about something
that has a fail rate of seventy percent or so.
That to me is just shocking. It's stunning. But the

(02:52):
statistic that people don't talk about is that eighty six
percent of people who divorce are re married within five
years of their divorce, which to me actually speaks to
the importance of marriage. That someone who's gone through this
process it's ended in a manner different than what they

(03:13):
had hoped for, right, and they still okay, let's try
it again, you know, And what does that say about
our need for that connection, how important it is to
us as humans. So, yeah, but the unfortunate news is
that that is a very high fail rate by any regard.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, and I think most things, if you heard something
had that fail rate, you'd probably not even try even
remotely even with anything. Right, So, if someone said, hey,
this investment has a you know, fifty percent chance of
failing or going wrong, you'd probably not consider it. Of course,
why do people still get married?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think probably for a number of reasons. I mean,
one is it's assumed for many years that it's the
right thing to do, which is in and of itself strange,
because the supposition that one should marry in the face
of those statistics is shocking. And even the fact that

(04:12):
it's considered indelicate. Like if someone said to me, oh, jim,
I'm getting married. The proper response is, oh, congratulations, that's wonderful,
But it would be perfectly reasonable to say, really, why,
why why are you doing that? Like, what is the
problem to which marriage is a solution? What is the

(04:36):
reason that this particular permutation of a personal, religious, and
or legal relationship is important to you or to your
soon to be spouse? But it would be considered terribly rude.
I would never, in polite society say to someone, oh,
why are you getting married? Because it just feels like

(04:56):
such a pessimistic view of things. But it isn't pessimi
if you look at the numbers. And I actually think
it's an interesting thought exercise for people to have you
know why am I getting married? What is the problem
to which marriage is a solution? We look at any
other technology in our life. You know this mic stand,
you know the glass of water, and I can say, okay,

(05:19):
the problem to which this is a solution is it
would be awkward for me to hold a microphone in
my hand, and we need to amplify our voices in
some fashion. So you can answer the question pretty easily.
But marriage, even asking the questions considered rude.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Yeah, that I've never thought about it like that, and
I'm actually thinking about it as you're saying. It's fascinating
that we've confused the emphasis on a wedding versus a
marriage too. So right, you spend more time planning your
wedding and you do preparing for a marriage.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Well, I jokingly talk about the wedding industrial complex. You
know that it's it's a you know, billions of dollars business.
And of course, like what about it wouldn't be appealing.
I mean, weddings are I love it? There? I get
misty eyed at weddings. Nothing about my job has made
me the slightest bit less excited about a wedding. The

(06:13):
idea of two people coming together and standing before family
and friends and saying I found my person out of
eight billion, I found my person. You know, how could
you not get sentimental about that? It's it's such a
beautiful thing. And but you know, saying I do isn't

(06:36):
saying I can, like at best, it's saying I'll try,
and we just don't. We don't say that out loud,
and I think we might be poor for it. I
think it would be better if we had a more
honest and realistic view of marriage, because there's nothing more
fun than getting married, but being married is much more challenging,

(07:00):
and we spend so much time in the excitement and
the sort of pheromones of you know, we're gonna have
this cake and we're gonna have this which, by the way,
of course, it's so much fun, like at any event
with cake I'll go to. But it really is something
that we would do well to take the being married
part from the beginning more seriously.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, I've I've officiated a few weddings and there's never
been a time when I haven't not wanted to cry.
Like I'm trying to hold it together, and the only
thing in my had is don't cry do it together.
It's so hard because I'm the same. I love love,
I'm fully present. It's something that gets me right my soul.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Hearing for the yeah, and I love hearing the speeches
and the vows. And you know, my friend, I'll share
a personal experience. My oldest son, Noah, got married a
couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Oh wow, congratulates wonderful. Why exactly why he has good
health insurance? And she would know they have a lot
of They had good reasons. He's so so and he's
also a lawyer, so he's thought it through and she's
a lawyer. But I knew I would be very moved
by it. I'm I'll let you in on a secret
that I'm I'm very sensitive, you know. I For someone

(08:14):
who's been described as the sociopath you want on your
side in the courtroom, I'm actually I think my superpower
is that I'm extremely sensitive and I'm very prone to tears.
And I'm very prone to usually tears over things that
move me. And my son and his now wife, after
used to saying that because his girlfriend for a long

(08:34):
time that was fiance and now it's wife. They wrote
their own vows and I fully expected that I would
get tearyut during the ceremony, but when she was reading
her vows to him, to hear someone talking about this
little boy that I helped raise to a man and saying,

(08:58):
you know, you're the strongest man I know, Like you
make me feel so safe, Like I could not have
tears pouring down my face because it was just such
It felt like a finish line of sorts. It felt like, oh, okay,
like that's the man she sees that man like I know.
I don't see my own kids, clearly, nobody does. We

(09:18):
all think they're the most beautiful, handsome, wonderful. But to
have this really intelligent young woman, you know, looking at
my son and saying like you're a hero to me
was one of the most powerful emotional moments in my life.
And I found myself, as I do it every wedding,

(09:38):
just just cheering for them, just hoping they'll defy every
statistic and every odd and they'll they'll keep the feeling
they have at that moment. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah. And at the same time, it's that paradox, isn't it,
Because I think I got married nine years ago and
still with my wife and we've been together for twelve years.
And now I look back and I think to myself,
I didn't know. I didn't have a clue, could you
what I was saying? Yeah, like I said, I loved
my wife that day and that I believe that, you know,

(10:12):
we were meant for each other and everything, and I
had no clue. Like the last nine years have been
so much more illuminating about a commitment I made. And
it's almost like I made a commitment with far less information,
far less insight, far less growth. And so what I
wanted to dive into with you, And there's so many
things that want to impact from everything you've just said.

(10:34):
But I want to help our audience understand from your
perspective and from your insight and from your experience. Like
we've just talked about the most beautiful moment and you
hearing you describe your son's vowsand that moment, it's there
can't be anyone who's listening right now who isn't just thinking,
oh my gosh, that's beautiful. I love that. And then

(10:56):
you're someone who's seen countless couples break apart.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, my day job is facilitating the demise of unhappy marriages. Yeah,
And I've done it for twenty five years at the
highest level, and you know, I'm very glad it has
not taken out of me my appreciation for love and
my appreciation for how important romantic love is and how
beautiful of a connection to people can have. But yeah,

(11:23):
I have seen good people at their absolute worst, and
I have seen intimacy weaponized in the most brutal ways.
And so I see the risk that we take. But
what it causes me to be very mindful of love is

(11:46):
how brave it is to love. Because you should be
scared to get married, you should be scared to love anything,
Like to love anything is sort of insane because every
marriage ends. It ends in death or divorce, but it ends.
And to love anything is to open yourself up to

(12:06):
the inevitability of losing it. And so there's a good
argument to be made that you just should never open
yourself up that way because the pain that will come
is so great. And yet we love, We love constantly,
you know, because the reward of it is so amazing

(12:29):
and so beautiful. And that's why, you know, if you're
not scared, it's not brave. It's only brave if you're
scared and you do it anyway, And so a wedding
to me feels brave like the marriage you just described.
You know, you and your wife for nine years in
so you're not newly weds anymore. The honeymoon's past, you know,
especially if you have children. We have children, that it's

(12:50):
really okay. So that's that's another chapter. So what you'll
what you'll see, though, is even what you're saying now
that oh, these nine years were something different of a
journey that I anticipated, and I promise that the next
nine and the next nine and the next nine. You
have no idea, you know, none of us, do you know.
My grandmother used to say, if you want to make

(13:11):
God laugh, tell them your plans. Yeah, and so I
but the idea too again of having a partner in
that of someone who like, I'll hold your hand, you'll
hold mine, and let's let's do this together, because it's
so much better, you know. And I don't think I
can learn everything I need to know about myself from myself,

(13:34):
like I need help. I need people who see my
blind spots and love me and are cheering for the
good in me, you know, and forgiving the weakness in me.
So there's something to me about again, even in facilitating
the demise of unhappy marriages and seeing how wrong this
can go. It's like, you know, in the presence of death,

(13:56):
we're most aware of the beauty of our life, and
in the presence of illness, we're so aware of our
good health. I think doing what I do has made
me appreciate love in a very deep way.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
There's such a truth in what I'm hearing from you
and even sensing and feeling from the way you're sharing
what you're sharing, And it's it's so interesting because if
someone's scared before they get married or before they fall
in love, we usually tell them that's a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
We usually be like, oh no, no, usually be sure
you should know, right, Like if you don't know, and
it's almost like, well, now, how could you? Like, it's
it's putting yourself, you know, it's trying to get someone
to hold your heart and hold this fragile, vulnerable, deepest
part of yourself and not knowing if they'll be able

(14:46):
to hold it properly.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah. Yeahs in decades. You know, I'm fifty two years
into my journey of being a human being, and I'm
I'd like to think I'm starting to become myself, starting
to understand myself much better. And that's after, you know,
a long time of reflection and therapy and all those things.

(15:07):
So it's so hard to know yourself to then know
another person you know, and then to be in such
an intimate tie with this person, and again in a
way that requires a tremendous amount if you're going to
do it right, a vulnerability, candor bravery, just the ability
to say, you know, I mean. It really is almost discipline,

(15:31):
like the trading what you want now for what you
want most, you know, and what you want most is
deep long term connection with this other person. But sometimes
what you want now is just like, let's get through
the day. Let's not have an argument or a difficult conversation.
But sometimes, you know, just like we have to go
to the gym, just like you have to lean in

(15:52):
to these uncomfortable things. That's a lot of what my
writing is about is about the idea of leaning in
to moderately uncomfortable conversations for the good of the long
term relationship. Because you know, it's so easy to want

(16:12):
to have your day to day go smooth in your
relationship that you start telling each other what the other
person wants to hear, and not, you know, sharing what's
really going on in your head and in your heart.
But I think, what if what we really want is
long term, deep connection with another person, we can't do that.
We have to be disciplined. We have to say, Okay,

(16:34):
I'm going to be radically candid with this person about
what's going on.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
I think a lot of what we've touched on so
far is this really root emotion? Like what's really happening
beneath the surface? And I wonder not what are the
top three reasons people get divorced that they say in
the courtroom, or that they may say the first time
they meet you or to their therapist. What are the
three root top three root reasons that you have discovered

(17:00):
that lead to someone getting divorced.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah. The most common question anyone who finds out what
I do for a living ask me other than oh
my god, you must have some great stories. And usually
they're very pleased because I'll tell them one of the
more outrageous ones, like oh, and then he cut the
car in half with the chainsaw and said, okay, you
pick which half you want. You know, things true story
that's crazy true story.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, okay, you.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, you know, I have a lot of fun at
a cocktail party. I have a lot of those. But really,
what what people are you know asking? I think they
want me to say, oh, cheating or financial impropriety, because
that gives us a sense of control. Okay, I can

(17:46):
monitor my client. My client comes out of me. But
I can monitor my spouse or partners whereabouts using my phone,
and I can you know, be vigilant about you know,
like keeping an eye on what's going on with them
and other people. And it gives us a sense of control. Yeah, okay,
I'm worried. You know, financial impropriety is a huge piece
of a lot of divorces. But you know, okay, I

(18:08):
can try to monitor finances and stay actively involved in
it so we never have that happen. But really, underneath
those things is what you know, Those are the symptoms,
not the underlying illness. And I think the underlying illness
it's maddening for people to hear, but I think it's disconnection.
I think the number one marriage killer is disconnection. I

(18:30):
think we fall in love incredibly fast, and we fall
out of love, and we fall into those big marriage
killers much more slowly, or or really kind of the
way that people go bankrupt very slowly and then all
at once, you know, and by the time you've gone

(18:53):
over that cliff, I actually think it may be too
late to do something about it, which is why I
very big on the idea of like preventative maintenance and
not getting to that place. But I think disconnection from
your partner, from yourself, from your true self. You know.
I think I've been representing people in court for twenty

(19:14):
five years and divorces, and I think the most dangerous
lies we tell are the ones we tell ourself about
what's making us happy, what's not, what's important to us
and what isn't, how we've changed and how we've stayed
the same, how our partner has changed, and how we
feel about it. We lie to ourselves about those things

(19:36):
so that we can sort of navigate a comfortable day
to day reality. But long term, I think that is
a very very dangerous thing. So I would say disconnection
from yourself and from your partner. I would also say
that the biggest marriage killer is is we stop seeing
our partner and we stop making them feel seen, because

(20:00):
I think we become blind to the things we see
most often. You know, whoever discovered what it wasn't a fish,
you know. Like I have a couch that I've had
for I think probably twenty years. I couldn't tell you
what color it is because I sit on it every
day at some point, but I've just become blind to
it because it's just there. It's the couch. It's always there.
You know. If I got a new one, then I

(20:21):
would probably be very mindful of it. But I think
it's the same thing. In a long term relationship. There's
a temptation to say, oh, I found it. I found
this person. We did the thing. We're in the rings,
we connected to each other. We're good. Like I don't
have to worry about that anymore. I can worry about
all the thousand other natural shocks. The flesh is there too,
you know, and in fact, like this, this thing, this

(20:45):
connection is so important that you know, when you think
about when you're dating someone, you feel interested and you
feel interesting, and those are both equally intoxicated, you know,
like it's it's lovely to sort of dive into someone
like this is our first conversation. It's exciting for us,

(21:07):
like we're kind of a mystery to each other, and
you know, we know a little about each other enough
that we're interested, but we want to know more, you know.
And when you feel interesting, like it's lovely. It's lovely
to have someone say like, oh, and then what did
you do and where did you grow up? And you know,
like it makes you feel sort of oh yeah, I

(21:27):
guess I joke because every summer we have lost student
interns who come to the firm for a couple months
and share their talents with us, and it I always,
I always feel so proud to be a lawyer when
they're around, because it's something they aspire to so much,
and you know, it's my day job for so long
that I sometimes forget like oh oh yeah, Like there

(21:50):
was a time where the only thing in the world
I wanted. It was like everything I did was I
want to be able to someday walk into a courtroom
and say, James J. Sexon for the plaintiff, you know,
and and then I do it. I've done it so
many thousands of times that it's really easy to forget
that what a privilege, that is, what a goal it was,

(22:11):
and I achieved it. And when you're around people that
are chasing that same dream. You say, oh yeah, like
I forgot. And I think it's the same phenomenon in marriage,
like there was a time where all of us went,
I just I just want to find someone, like I
want to find my someone. I want to find someone
who loves me and sees me and I'll love them

(22:32):
and they'll receive my love. And then you have it
and you just kind of okay, I got that now,
and I'll move on to other things. And so I
think when when you feel, you know, there's I always
say about New York City that there's a kind of
loneliness in New York City that I don't see in
a lot of other cities, because you're so surrounded by people,

(22:54):
and yet you feel very alone sometimes because everyone's sort of,
you know, in their lane, and you know, it's a
city where you know, someone can just fall down in
front of you and people just keep moving, you know,
and it's so odd to be surround Like when you're
home by yourself, if you feel lonely, it seems situationally appropriate.

(23:15):
But if you're sitting in a room with hundreds of
people and feel incredibly lonely, that's a very different kind
of loneliness. I think when you are with the person
who's supposed to be your deepest connection and you feel
lonely and alone, that's a very unique brand of misery.
So I think a lot of that comes from not
feeling seen anymore, and I think that's something that kills

(23:39):
marriages in a real way.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Yeah, yeah, I like those two and I appreciate those
answers so much more than the surface answers of And
we will talk about cheating, and we will talk about
money at some point, but I much prefer the disconnection
and the lack of being seen as points of contention,
because I think you're spawn because when you didn't wash

(24:02):
the dishes, someone felt like you didn't see them. When
you forgot to pick up something on the way back
from home, they felt you were disconnected. When you sat
on the couch both watching the same show but never
looking at each other, you felt unseen, like that that's
what you felt, That's what was going on.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
And that phenomena, that reality, I think actually can be
flipped in the other direction to our benefit. Because you know,
you've been married, and I don't want to put you
on the spot, but you've been married nine years I'm
willing to bet that if your wife was here and
I said to her, when do you feel most loved
by Jay? Like, tell me some moments, tell me some

(24:44):
things he does that makes you feel loved. I bet
there's some answers you would know, like he listens to
me when he cares for our family member, whatever. But
I bet there'd be some that you go really that
like that little thing like that, that, to me is
such a beautiful expression of like what a mystery it is,

(25:09):
you know. But but there is something about these little gestures,
like you give the example of like the dishes in
the sink, and it is that's like a death by
a thousand paper cuts. It's this little thing that's like, yeah,
I don't I don't care enough about you to do this,
and I don't value your time enough, Like it can
feel that way. But also the act of like doing
the dishes without being asked to do that is such

(25:31):
as the opposite. It's such a sense of like, oh, no,
I did this because I love you, like I did
this because I don't want you to have to do it,
like and there are so many little things when you're
in love and when you feel loved that I bet
your spouse like there.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Right now, I told me before, so you know, and
I'm pretty sure everyone goes through this. So my wife
gets into bed before me, maybe by a couple of minutes.
She's brushed her teeth, she's done everything, she's going to bed.
I'm getting I'm just about to get in a bed,
and she's like, can you give me some water? And
it's like that, so if I if I snap and
I go no, get it yourself, like I'm getting into
bed too.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Right right? Or or if you get the water before
she even asked, yes, yeah, and you say before you ask,
I knew you'd want a little bit. Yeah, Like that's
such a feeling of yeah, oh, like you didn't you know.
Or even if you just get the water and put
it on the nightstand and don't look for credit, Yeah, yeah,
and you just do it. And you know. I had

(26:31):
a client I talk about it in the book who
I was talking to her after we'd been many miles together.
It was a very ugly divorce, and we were sitting
outside of the courtroom and I said to her, because
we've been some miles, so you start having more casual conversations.
And I said you know, was there a moment that

(26:53):
you knew the marriage was over? And she said, yeah,
I remember it, and I said what was it? And
she said, there was this granola that I really like
and I used to have it for breakfast. I'd put
it on my yogurt and I would have that every
day and they only sold it at this one store,
and my husband used to always get it for me.

(27:15):
And whenever like the bag was running out, magically like
a new bag would be there. She's like, and it
always made me feel loved. It always made me feel like, oh, like,
look like he and he wouldn't even say like, oh,
I got your granola, like who we're prone to do
as men, you know, we're like, I opened that jar.
We love that. But he didn't even look for credit.
He just would do it. And it was and she said,

(27:35):
like it just always made me feel so like he
sees me, he knows what I need. He tries to
get ahead of it, said in one day, the granola
ran out and I thought, oh, that's strange, and she's like,
I didn't get my own because I thought, oh no,
maybe he's just didn't notice, you know. And a couple
more days went by, and granola never got replaced, and

(27:58):
she said, and I thought, okay, this is over, Like
it's starting to move in the wrong direction. And I
just remember thinking, like, what a what a powerful moment,
but what a very relatable one. You know. The funny
ps to that story is I said to her, was

(28:20):
there anything like that that you did for him?

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (28:25):
And without hesitation, she said, yeah, blowjobs. And I'd spit
out my coffee, like I literally spit coffee across the
courthouse hall way. And I said, really, she said yeah.
She said, you know, when we were like dating and
first married, like it was just something I did a lot,
like it was you know, it didn't take terribly long

(28:46):
and always put him in a great mood for the day,
and you know, he would like text me later and
be like, oh my god, this morning was so fun.
And she goes, and then for some reason, like you know,
once the kids came and stuff, we didn't have as
much time alone together. And she said, I didn't really
much occasion, and so I would say like, oh, well,
we'll wait till tonight and then we can both you know,
we'll have sex and we'll both enjoy it. She's like,
but now I think about it, and I think, like,

(29:07):
oh yeah, like that was probably like the equivalent of granola.
Now I'm not saying these are the same. I think
they're quite different. But but whatever it is, like whatever
that little thing is, not that that's little, but whatever
it is that your partner does for you, whatever kindness
they show you, selfless kindness that they show you, whatever

(29:29):
gesture of warmth and love and prioritizing your joy and pleasure,
that's so important. And it's so easy to lose it.
It's so easy to just not even know that you
lost it.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, And I think it's so important that there's recognition,
gratitude and reciprocity for it, because I think often when
someone's doing something for a long time, it's like the couch. Yeah,
you stop thanking them, you stop noticing it, you stop
honoring it. And that that part is equally is important

(30:06):
because that person at one point will feel underappreciated. And
these are such they're simple.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
These are such simple thing, Like it's so easy.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
But it is that it is so easy. It's not
the birthday or the wedding animals.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
And that's what we put so much on, is these
giant gestures and but the truth is, like, if you
texted your wife right now and just said I married
the prettiest girl in the world, Like, what does that take?
What does it take? My wife?

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Would you send me a picture of it making a
funny face?

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got a good one. Yeah. Like,
but but I bet it wouldn't be something that's uncommon
for you to say. I think if I say, yeah,
I think that that, what does it cost? What does
it cost to just take a moment and say, you know,
I'm so glad, I'm so glad I have you. I'm
so glad you chose me. Like, what does it take?

(31:00):
It's such a low percentage move. And if that's the secret,
Like if that's the thing that keeps that connection wired,
Like what if it's not these giant things. What if
it's not we have to go on vacations at this
between we have to have a date night and it
has to be very formal. What if it's just these
little gestures that at the beginning of a relationship you

(31:25):
feel them in your toes. I mean, you know, you
just the feeling of intoxication when someone sees you and
admires you, Like it's such a beautiful feeling. Why would
you not just try to maintain that and what do
you have to lose? Like if you did that, the
worst thing that could happen is they don't really notice totally.

(31:47):
And that's okay. You're not much poorer for that, you know,
it's a low investment.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
So much of this is based on at least so
much of what we grew up on. Like for me,
for example, my mom, incredible woman bredren of the family,
cooked a fresh breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, dropped
us to school, helped us with our homework. Everything, everything
that's good about me is to do with my mom.
And but when your mom does it, you assume that's

(32:34):
just what life is. And so when I married my wife,
and my wife also loves cooking and it's part of
her love language. But to me, getting a hot meal
was normality. And so even though my wife showed it
as a way of showing love, because I had it
for my mom as like a base level expectator. So

(32:54):
you're you just not know, yeah, you just don't see it.
And it took me a moment and I would actually
watch my wife cook, and then not only did my
appreciation for my wife, change my appreciation for my mother change,
realizing what it took to do that for all those years.
But it's almost like.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
And what a gift that is?

Speaker 2 (33:11):
What a gift?

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Like, what a gift that loving your loving your wife
helped you love your mother in a different way? Like
that That's what I mean when I say, like this
transformative power of love is that you know, I remember
when my sons were first born, my admiration for my
then wife was so like because she wasn't just this

(33:32):
woman I had dated in college or this woman I
had met. She was a But you're like a mom,
you know, like and you love this little organism the
same amount that I do. And like, so you do,
like have so many occasions to deepen your connection to
this other person, which deepens your connection to these other
people you know in your life. And but yeah, I

(33:52):
think that that we we certainly And you know, I
have to say when you were talking about, you know,
growing up in a home where mom, you know, made
these lovely meals and then to be married to a
woman who does the same, and so to you, this
is sort of you know, normal.

Speaker 4 (34:06):
You can take you for granted, right, You can easily
take it for granted, but that's also very often how
people end up in very negative relationships.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
So if you grew up in a home where your
mother or your father or both had substance use disorder,
you think, oh, this is how a man is. Men drink,
you know, so you're much more prone to marrying someone
who also has substance use disorder and looking at it
and saying, oh, well, no, that's just what men do.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
I have.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
I have represented victims of domestic violence and animate partner
abuse for twenty five years, and I've represented perpetrators of
domestic violence. And I'm not excusing anyone's abuse of anyone else,
but ninety nine percent of the time, in my experience,
they grew up in a house where there was a

(35:00):
They grew up in a house where violence and intimate
partner abuse was how you treat someone or how you
are treated by someone, and they they just don't see
how toxic of an environment. This is. So sometimes what
you just described as a way to deepen connection and
love to yourself, you know, to your partner, to and

(35:22):
to your you know, your your your mom, it's also
that same phenomenon, that same cognitive habit that can create
in us, like we may be repeating the patterns that
we watched the people around us, like mothers and fathers
and grandparents, the way they communicated with their spouse. There's
no class in love, like there's no you know, I

(35:45):
can tell you with certainty. I've used algebra very few
times in my life, you know, I have had almost
no use for so much of like dividing fractions that
was taught to me. But but there was never a
class about how to love, how to be loved, how
to be in a deeply connected relationship with another human being.

(36:08):
So you really just learn on the job, you know,
and you learn by watching the people around you. And
if you have people around you that do it well,
it's an incredible blessing. You know. This is a gift
we can give to the world, is to demonstrate how
to love and be loved. Like I often talk about,
you know, in this sort of masculinity crisis that there's

(36:28):
been a lot of discussion about how you know, there
are there are not as many role models for men,
young men who want to look at what what should
a strong capable man look like? What does you know?
We talk a lot about toxic masculinity. But what does
non toxic masculinity look like? I'm interested in that, like,

(36:49):
what what does it? What is the positive masculine? And
I found myself thinking about most of my examples of
it came from literally ritre or film, you know, like
characters who were strong, protective men, self sacrificing, putting themselves,
you know, below in terms of importance the people who

(37:11):
they were there to protect or love. And so I
think we have we need each other so much as
a core unit, a family, a society, and then just
as a world, like we need to be able to
look to examples of how to love and how to
receive love, and we don't. There is a I think

(37:34):
a tremendous absence, a drought of that. You know, I
know a lot of unhappily married people, and not just
as a function of my professional life. I know too
of my friends who are married. I can really only
think of a handful who I look at them and go, oh, yeah,

(37:56):
that's good. Yeah that's really good, and they're really glad
they're in it. But man, when you're around it, like
it's it's like the warmth of the sun, Like it's
such a beautiful thing to see that in practice, and
we need to find ways, I think for young people
or even newly connected people like people who are thinking

(38:18):
about marriage, to be in the orbit of that, yeah,
you know, and to learn from it because we just can't.
We don't teach it. We can't. I don't know that
we could necessarily teach it in the textbook. You know,
you can read all the books you want about swimming,
but you learn in the pool. Yeah, you know. And
I think we're you know, we break in relationship and
we heal in relationship. I think it's the only way.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, I mean talking about the masculinity piece, I was
reading that the two times men are most likely to
cheat are when their partner's pregnant and when the first
child is born or when a child is young.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Makes sense to me, that's consistent with my observation.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
I have something of a PhD and infidelity, having been
a divorce lary so long, and I've seen it from
both sides.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
And I'd love to talk about why, but I think
the fab theory. Yeah. The fascinating part to me is
that I spoke to a lot of men as well,
friends who haven't cheated, but they talked about how when
they had their first child just how hard it was
to be second priority to their partner. And when we
talk about we can't teach a class, to me, it

(39:28):
sounds predictable and something you can prepare for, because no,
wonder you're going to be second priority because there's this
helpless little baby that demands attention.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
You actually want that baby to be. Then you start
feeling guilty about why do I want this correct and
why do I feel that way? But see, you know again,
I think it's a perfectly understandable feeling. Yeah, it's an
understandable but you and it can be articulated to your
partner in a way that doesn't created defensive reaction. I think,

(40:02):
because you want your partner to love that child that much,
and you love that child that much. But yet there
is something about like losing a little of your love
and attention that is hard for me. And what a
lovely thing for someone to say, Like if it's said
the right way, if it's said like, well, I'm feeling neglected,
of course the response would be, well, what do you

(40:23):
want me to do? Like I got two hands, there's
only so many hours a day I'm sleep deprived. My
body's a train wreck right now, like what do you?
And now I got to worry about you?

Speaker 2 (40:31):
And that's the script that's right, and an.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Understandable script, like I get that frustration, how a woman
would feel in that situation. And yet perhaps if it
was parse differently, you know, the feeling of like I
admire so much what you're doing, like I'm falling in
love with you all over again, watching you spin these
plates that are so important to both of us and

(40:55):
giving our child this gift that only you can give.
And yet I have to say and maybe I'm selfish,
and maybe I'm foolish, and maybe I'm a child myself,
Like I just I miss something about the warmth of you,
and I hope we can find a way, you know,
to take time to like see each other and connect

(41:19):
to each other. It's so interesting how if you just
and maybe it's because I my job is to sort
of parse argument. You know that maybe it may be
uniquely qualified for this, But I find myself thinking that
that almost any of these sentiments, there is a way
to parse it that I think it can actually deepen
connection And it doesn't bring a defensive response because if

(41:43):
you say you know, well we haven't had sex late,
Like we're having so much less sex of what used to,
Like what's going on? Immediately, your partner's response is going
to be, well, what, you know, you've been working all
the time and you know when you come home you're tired,
and I don't know that you want it you want
me to initiate, Like what am I supposed to? And
now we're just having this thing, whereas if you just said,

(42:04):
you know, oh, like I missed like feeling connected to you,
you know, like I love like the smell of you,
and I love the feeling of your warmth, like and
I got it. We have to like I have to
really make time if I haven't made time for that,
Like I really have to. I really want to what
partner wouldn't hear that and go, oh, well, yeah, that's

(42:24):
important to me too, and let's you know, like, yeah,
let's make a point of doing that. Like I really
don't think this has to be But again, perhaps it's
a function of the times we're living in. We're so
hyperpartisan all the time, and we're so on the defensive
all the time from everything and everyone, you know that
perhaps we're just not approaching those interactions the right way,

(42:47):
and I'd like to think that those same phenomenon can
be spun in a direction that can reverse that.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Yeah, it's almost like we only know how to share
eye emotions through a negative lens.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Right, are you?

Speaker 2 (43:03):
We're not doing this enough?

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right?

Speaker 2 (43:04):
We used to do this? Where's this gone?

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Right?

Speaker 2 (43:07):
And all that language is looking at the gap, the scarcity,
the missed opportunity, whereas what you just said was, hey,
I'd love to connect again, or hey i'd love to
you know, make some time for this again.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, and remember when we did it, Uh, it wasn't
that so God? I was thinking about it the other day,
you know that we went for that walk and how
nice it was.

Speaker 2 (43:27):
Yeah, it's a positive thing to move towards.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Right, and now we're there again.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
You know.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
It's I've always one of my favorite phenomenon, is it.
You know we've all been to like a dinner where
there's a couple of couples and one of them you're
just like, man, there was some kind of fight on
the way here. Yeah, like they just got that there's
this energy between them of like you know, terse, you know,
and you're like, I hope they're not like this all
the time, but it might have just been on the
ride over. And if I found as an experiment is

(43:52):
if you say to that couple, so, how did the
two you meet? Yeah, there's a softening that happens very
quickly because all of a sudden they're in telling the story.
They're transported back to Oh, I was here and she
was in the dorm and we met and we were
on there and they're remembering, you know, they're remembering viscerally,
you know, that connection. And I think if we use

(44:14):
that in our current relationships to instead of saying hey,
we're not like you said, focusing on the gap, instead
bringing us back to you remember when we did this
was God, that was so fun. I remember that so much.
Oh I stumbled on this picture on my phone. You know,
Apple just suggested this one for me. Look remember that,

(44:37):
you know, and you go, yeah, we should. You know,
we have to make time to do that again. Who
wouldn't Who wouldn't go, oh, yeah, that was really nice,
you know. And then even if there is some resistance,
even if the person says, well, we can't really afford
to go there again right now, or oh you know,
it's everything going on at work right now such a
bad time, there's at least this shared intention, shared experience

(45:00):
of going back to that. I mean, why are we
as a species take a million pictures on our phones
because we want to like hold on to it. You know,
I went to a concert. I tend to not go
out a lot at night because I get up so early,
but I went to a concert recently and it was
my first time being at a concert in many years.
And everyone had their phones, you know, they're recording you know,

(45:23):
whatever song you know, And I found myself thinking, like,
do you think that that little box is going to
capture this this giant room we're all in and the
vibration of this music. It was a nine Inch Nails concert,
so it was like really heavy, and I just thought like, oh,
you're missing the whole thing. You're missing the whole thing

(45:45):
because you're trying to hold on to something that you
won't be able to hold on to. This will be
a poor, poor copy of something. So maybe just you
know again that human desire to capture it so you
can have some small taste of it again in the future.

(46:06):
Maybe there's a way that that can be used to
like reconnect us to who we were what we felt
and maybe bring it back to the present. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Absolutely, It's such a part of that passing of an
argument as you talk about it, and part of that
ability to initiate. I feel like at the root of it,
there's a struggle that we have with our ego where
it feels like we don't want to be the one

(46:36):
to look like the beggar, or look like the needy one,
it look like the weak one. And so there's this ego,
the vulnerability.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
It's scary, I tell you, I struggle with that in
every relationship. My longtime assistant, Teresa has been with me
a long time. She's a wonderful, wonderful assistant, and she's
really the brains of my office. You know. She keeps
the machine running. And I actually have times where it's

(47:05):
hard for me to say to her because I'm moving
so fast between things like could you heat up my
lunch for me? Now? She has offered this a million times,
Like she's happy to be of assistance to me in
any way. Like she's a wonderful resource in that regard,
and she's by nature that kind of person, like I
see it in a relationship with her husband and her kids.

(47:25):
Like she just nothing makes her happier than feeding her
family or feeding the people around her, And everyone who
calls my office is like, oh my god, Teresa is
the best, Like they all love her because there's a warmth.
And I still have a hard time, even with such permission,
I still have a hard time being vulnerable enough to

(47:46):
say I need help, because that's what I'm saying, Like
it's a minor thing I'm asking for help for, but
I'm saying I need help. And that's hard for me
to just hard for anyone to do, to say I
need help, because there's a vulnerability, there's this fear. But
what if the person goes, well, I don't have time
to do that right now, and then that pain, Like
that's such a child wound, you know, that feeling of

(48:08):
like not wanting something and not getting it and asking
for it, being brave enough to ask for it and
not getting it. That I certainly understand that pain.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Yeah, yeah, And it's one of those ones that you
almost have to be willing to go to with the
right partner. I feel like with the right partner, with
the right person, you almost are willing to go there
more often because you know they're not judging it, like
with someone like Theresa in the assisting capacity.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yeah, but I think you fix that by this step
of trying, because every time you are vulnerable in that
way and the person shows up, that becomes a less
terrifying and a deeper intimacy, I think, like a deeper connection.
And so to give that example, and I have allowed

(49:00):
myself to say, like, I'm sorry, I'm going a million
miles an hour, is there any way you could just
like heat up my lunch? And she goes, of course,
oh my god, of course. And then she takes the
extra step of like she puts it on like a
nice little tray, and she brings like a little drink
along with it, and like she puts a little you know,
a little chips next to it or something. And then
I feel so loved, like legitimately loved. I feel legitimately seen.

(49:24):
I feel like not only did you give me what
I asked you for, but you gave me like more.
And that is just one example of like a relationship
that you know. And of course then I feel that
way now about her, like if she ever says like,
oh I need some time off for this, I'm always
of course, of course, because she always shows up for me.

(49:45):
I always try to show up for her. I want
to reciprocate that. So I think again, it's it's a muscle, yeah,
that we have to exercise for it to get stronger
and stronger and stronger. But that's where in a long
term relationship, where you've both been brave enough to do
that and to show up for each other, that's where
I think you have these people that have this like
they're just thicke as thieves, you know, they have this

(50:07):
bond that never ends up in my office.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
If you are designing a contract for marriage for more
in love, what would you put in it?

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Oh? Wow, I'm a lawyer, so we tend to be
for both in our contracts. I would put specific behaviors
I would put I would put a mandatory weekly check in,
and I would even create a structure for it. I

(50:38):
would say that every week, I want to share with you,
and I want you to share with me something I
did this week that made you feel loved. And then
I want you to share with me something that made
you feel less loved or less seen, or where I
got it wrong, Like I want you to tell me

(50:59):
where I got it wrong. Bravely and then maybe praise sandwich,
tell me something I can do for you this week
that would make you feel loved, that you think might
make you feel loved, or that might be because I
want to be good at this job, Like I want

(51:19):
to be good at this job, and it's a job,
like loving another person is. It's a it's a career,
you know, it's a vocation. And I think you have
to be brave enough to talk about those things. And
so I would put that in a contract. I think
that's not a hard thing to do. That that doesn't
cost anything, and I think that it wouldn't take a

(51:41):
lot of time necessarily, and it would stave off a
tremendous amount of things. I would also commit to, or
pledge to, to hear the things that we say to
each other as coming from a place of love and connection.
You know, even when we say something the other person

(52:02):
might not want to hear that, it's coming from a
desire to protect the bond. So I would say that
is a very worthwhile and worthy pursuit to say, look,
we've we've decided we want this particular permutation of relationship.
You know, love is loaned, it's not permanently gifted, and

(52:28):
so if we want to protect and preserve it, I
think saying to each other that we have to have
this unflinching ability to kind of hit send now, like
say to the person like, hey, you know, this thing's
little and I never wanted to get big. But then
you also have to be willing to hear that as

(52:48):
coming from a place not of you're doing it wrong,
but from a place of I want this to stay wonderful.
This is important to me, you know, And I think
if those provisions could be complied with, I think that

(53:08):
would be very helpful to people. I also think again,
you know, in romantic relationships, and you know, this is
I think part of the reason why cheating becomes such
an issue. You know, sex is the glue, Like it's
the glue. Like sex is incredibly important to people like that.

(53:30):
I mean, it's the difference between having a roommate and
having a spouse, you know, Like there's a there's a
romantic element to it, there's a sexual element to it,
there's a physical not even purely sexual, there's a physical
element to it. I can't tell you how many men
tell me, yeah, we stopped having sex, or we started

(53:50):
having it very infrequently, some women, but mostly men. And
I can't tell you how many women have said to
me in the context of divorce that, yeah, like, the
only time he ever touched me was sex, Like it
was just prelude sex. The only time you ever kissed
me was a pre laude. I mean, come on, when
you first start dating, you could make out for hours,

(54:12):
Like literally, there's just nothing more lovely than just the
kissing this person. When's the last time people really made
out with their spouse, you know, or just like held
their hand or just touch the nearness of them. Good relationships,
there's a lot of that. There's a lot of this
physical connection. And so again, I don't think you have

(54:34):
to write into the contract any particular frequency or specifics
of what sex would need to look like. But I
think you have to make somewhere in that contract, especially
if I'm going to take a pledge that you're going
to be my partner in this, in this physical aspect
of things, if we're going to be monogamous. You know,

(54:56):
I used to say in the context of dating that
if you're going to rob me of solitude, you owe
me companionship, because I enjoy solitude. So you have to
be better than that, and companionship is better than that.
So if you're going to rob my solitude, you owe
me companionship. If you want us to pledge to each

(55:17):
other that we will be each other's sexual outlet, we
will be each other's sexual connection, we will be each
other's intimate touch connection. Again, by intimate touch, I don't
even necessarily mean sex. You know, there's an intimacy in
holding someone's hand. There's an intimacy and having your hand
on their leg, you know anything you wouldn't do it
to a stranger on the subway. Put it in that category.

(55:39):
And I think that if we're going to have rules
in the relationship, which I think there are good reasons for,
then we owe it to each other to see where
that is now. Again controlling for the possibility that that's okay.
If that shut you know, shifts, I think it's okay.
Like I don't think if you sustained the electricity of

(56:02):
the initial physical bond people have, like when you're first
dating someone in your hand brushes theres and you just
like feel it in your toe, like you if you
did that for nine years, man, you would never get
anything done. Like you just wouldn't like society would crumble
because we'd all just be like, oh my god, she
walked past me and I smelled her hair, you know,
like you just would have that intoxication all the time.
But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, Like,

(56:26):
let's remember that there is some importance to this. It's
what makes that relationship a unique and special relationship. And
I think it's very easy for people to find surrogate activities,
whether it's pornography, whether it's you know, infidelity, whether that's
with a person who's a sex worker, whether that's in

(56:46):
the context of an affair, even whether that's in the
context of an emotional affair versus a physical affair. I
think it's all about starting to say, Okay, I'm not
getting what I need in this relationship anymore, and it's
going to be hard to have that conversation, so I'll

(57:06):
just have this little thing instead. You know, I can't
have a meal right now, so I'll just have like
a little snack bar. But if that becomes the staple
of your diet, you know, I see this a lot
with men in pornography, and I hear from a lot
of my female clients that say, like, yeah, he started
like being much more into porn, and and I think
that that is a surrogate activity for a very real

(57:29):
need in all of us that for whatever reason, is
no longer being met, because again, we're no longer the
perfect thing we were, Like perfect is the enemy of good,
you know. And so I think we have to be
conscious and communicative about when the physical aspects of our

(57:50):
relationship are changing. And again in a non defense invoking manner,
So you don't say, why don't you ever hold my
hand anymore? Like the last thing I want to do
is hold your hands, yeah, Whereas if you just grab
my hand and just go like I just want to
hold your hand for a minute, Like who wouldn't go,
oh okay, like yeah, that's nice, you know.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Yeah. And that's why you say that teating's actually a symptom,
not a route. You don't believe that it's the reason
marriages end, and you don't believe it's the root of
the issue. It's actually because there's a disconnection.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
I have a very high degree of competence in that
I think I spent a lot of time with the
cheated and the cheated on, you know, or the cheater
and the cheated on. I spend a lot of time
with every permutation of infidelity, and I've talked to people
in very candid ways about their affairs, men and women,

(58:48):
and there's a an emptiness and a sadness in people
that have gone that route. Some times, it's surprising because
they will say, yeah, this had nothing to do with
my wife, Like this had to do with me, like

(59:11):
and how I felt like it wasn't her. She was
loved I've always loved her, I still love her. I
just needed this, you know. And they didn't really see
like in that moment, they weren't thinking about their commitment.
They thought, well, this has nothing to do with that.
This is just like a human need, like I'm hungry,
so I'm gonna eat. And again, these are powerful forces

(59:33):
in us, you know, the desire for sex, the desire
for food, the desire for like these are basic core
human things, you know. So I think infidelity is something
that is a function of disconnection and a function of
how fraught the conversation is with your partner about desire

(59:57):
and how it changed. I mean, how much do we
really understand our own desires? You know, it's it's there's
something mysterious about it, you know, like why do you
like dark hair or blonde hair? Why do you like,
like why do any of us have these weird preferences?
You know, Like, but they're there, you know, and maybe
they're rooted in you know, Freud is right, they're rooted

(01:00:18):
in some you know, very basic childhood things. Or you know,
maybe they're purely chemical. You know, it depends on who
you ask. But but they're a mystery to us. I
mean I certainly know it's a mystery to me. Like
I don't like, why are breasts so appealing? Like they
don't really do anything unless you're an infant, you know,
like they're just and yet they just make me happy,
you know, Like I don't know there's something in me

(01:00:39):
that's like, oh, you know, like that finds those appealing.
So what is it? I have no idea, you know,
what is it that when I see a man who
has you know, stubble or a nice beard on his face,
I don't feel any desire towards that. And yet many
of my female friends or gay friends are like, oh,
I love that's so sexy, Like what is that? Well,

(01:00:59):
it's just in it's just part of us, you know,
So I think that's what makes it hard to articulate. Yeah,
you know to our partner when it's not being met.
Maybe we don't even realize because we're not looking on
ourselves close enough.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Yeah, that's why I think the marriage contract that you
just laid out is so important, right, because it's so
and also a big part of it is a lack
of understanding of men and women. Like when you said
a few moments ago, you were just like, you know,
people have desires. We have a desire to eat, like
you know, it's the same thing. It's like, as a man,
that makes a lot of sense in our brain. And

(01:01:32):
the compartmentalization also makes a lot of sense. Like I've
always said to when I'm talking to my friends who
are girls who are having trouble and dating, and I'll
be like, yeah, he sees this is this, and he
sees this is that, Like they're not connected. But I'm
a man. That makes sense. And it's almost like we
have such a limited understanding. And I'm not saying it's
only gender based, of course, but there's such a limited

(01:01:55):
understanding of how the human brain and mind work. Because
someone saying, well, no, I put the commitment above my desire, right,
because the commitments more important, and the other person goes, well, yeah,
I just let my desire slip above the commitment.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
But you can have both, like I genuinely believe, you
can have the desire and the commitment, like both can
be fulfilled. You know, I think so because I know,
of course, you know, there's a chapter in my book
called go without or Go Elsewhere, and that essentially says
that most people, if they're unwilling to actively communicate with

(01:02:28):
themselves and with their partner about what's going on with
their desire sexually, then you have two choices, and they
both suck. Go without or go elsewhere. Nobody wants to
go without, and going elsewhere is a very fraud terrain.
But it's not surprising to me that the conversation about
this has become so challenging because we live in a
society that rightfully made some big, big changes in the

(01:02:52):
last fifty years to what does it mean to be
a man? What does it mean to be a woman? Right?
Like we that is to reign still, right, I mean,
I growing up. You know, men in my generation, you know,
you're either Richard Simmons or Clint Eastwood, those were your
two choices, like you either were, you know, very stoic

(01:03:12):
and very or you were gay. That was what the
two choices were, or you were a feet you know.
And now, thankfully, one of the beautiful changes that I
think has happened in society is we recognize that all
of us have, if you want to call it, the
masculine and the feminine in us. We all have varying
ratios of it, and we've changed what it means to
be a man and to be a woman. But we've

(01:03:34):
kind of treated dantruff with decapitation because we've said, hey,
these these fixed models of what is a man and
what is a woman, and how do men behave? And
how do women behave? And what is a man's natural tendency?
What is a woman's natural tendency? We realized those were
prisons and those were creating unequal and unjust outcomes. So

(01:03:56):
I applaud that we've taken this step to go all right,
but not all men okay, but not all women are
that way. But we've gone so far and over correcting
as we as a species are prone to doing that,
I think now we're not It's like scandalous to acknowledge
what you just acknowledged, which is when when I'm talking

(01:04:17):
to a group of women who I'm friends with, and
I say, they're describing something that you know, a man
in their life did, and I go, oh, I know
exactly what that, Like no he saw this, or oh
no he thought that. They go really like like I
was speaking, like I have a Rosetta stone in a
language they don't speak. And by the way, it goes

(01:04:37):
the other way, yes, Like there are so many times
I will listen. I have an office full of women
and sometimes of different generations, and they'll be talking to
each other, and it's a small office, so I can
hear their conversation. And sometimes I feel like I'm like
Margaret Mead observing maybe Yanamomo, you know, like I'm just
like a cultural anthropologist who's been dropped into a different planet,

(01:05:00):
you know, because they're talking about like I had. One
of them said something the other day about she was
describing a date she went out on. She said, oh,
he did that thing where like when I got up
from the table, he kind of went to get up
and then didn't know if he should get up or not,
you know, and the other young woman goes, oh, I
love that, you know, And I thought that is the weirdest,

(01:05:24):
and yet I get it, you know, like because it
it was like a vulnerability and also a sense of chivalry,
but also a sense of content, like being self conscious.
And and I thought, like, God, if you said to
a guy, you know, here's I'm going to be your
new dating coach. I'm going to be a new pickup
artist guy, you know, like maybe this is my next career,
you know, And and you point out these strange little things,

(01:05:47):
you know, But to do that, we have to acknowledge that,
you know, there are limits to our our understanding of
the opposite sex, and that there that there is some
difference between us again hormonal, biological on a very basic level. Yeah,
and you know, I think even men, men's experience of

(01:06:12):
sex I observe as a man and as friends of
many men, it's like much more reductionist and simple. Like
we're very like you know, it's like eating like it's like,
oh it's great, yeah, like unloaded the gun. You know,
we're good. Whereas like women, in my experience and observation,

(01:06:32):
it's like, well what feels good like one day two
days later, doesn't feel as good. And again, some of
that is probably hormones, Some of that is but I
think like learning to navigate a relationship, Perhaps same sex
marriages have less of a fraught relationship with that because
you understand each other's perhaps biology in a different way.
But I think opposite, you know, heterosexual relationships, we are

(01:06:55):
really trying to navigate a creature that has some distinct
differences from physically and hormonally. And I think without good communication,
how are you supposed to learn that language.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
I'm sure you hear this a lot as well, where
like after a while he just didn't want to communicate,
or like they just didn't want to communicate, where like
what you're suggesting is still part of a healthy relationship
dynamic where you can initiate something and even if it's
not met immediately, there's a certain point at which there's
a conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
But it wasn't on the first date. Yeah, it wasn't
on the first day. I could see that. See, that's
the thing that I think makes marriage such an interesting
entry point for a conversation about love, because I don't
know that the too correlate.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
I agree, year and.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
I certainly don't think there's called I don't think marriage
makes you really love each other more deeply or more
likely to be fidelitous on it does that at all. No,
you may have the opposite effect in some way. But
what it does give us as an entry point into
we were at some point so enamored with each other

(01:08:20):
that we said, out of the eight billion options, I'm
picking you. I mean that is a gigantic Like I
live in New York City. There's a lot of restaurants.
Sometimes I am paralyzed by the number of choices when
I go, okay, I'm an order something. There's so many options,

(01:08:41):
all within three blocks of my apartment, eight billion options.
And you chose this person and they chose you. So
at some point there is this abundance of goodwill, this
abundance of connection. And when I wrote the book, it
really wasn't meant for people who were in crisis. It

(01:09:03):
was really meant for people who were not. It was
meant to be a wedding gift. It was meant to
be something you give to engaged couple to say, it's
like you just got the new car. Here's how you
maintain it so that it stays. Because this is a
car You're going to drive for the rest of your life,
so don't you want to take care of it. If

(01:09:24):
I said to you, you're going to have one car
for the rest of your life, you would change the oil,
you would check the time, you would do routine preventative maintenance.
Because this is the only car I'm ever going to have,
and if it starts to fall apart, it's the only
car I have, and I don't want to walk everywhere.
So I am going to take very good care of this.
And so I think leveraging, like when you say people

(01:09:47):
say and I hear it all the time, are absolutely correct, like, hey,
just stop talking to me. Is that a function of
the fact that the way we were communicating wasn't productive.
It made this person feel defensive, It made them down,
like because at some point you were still connecting. And
it's so so there was a there was a story
you were writing and you lost the plot and that's okay.

(01:10:11):
Like I love to read, and I read at night.
It's sort of like my brain's signal to go to sleep.
And I have to tell you so many times I'm
reading and I'm tired and I'm in bed and I
realize I don't remember what the last several paragraphs were,
so I have to sort of stop and go, Okay,

(01:10:31):
let me go back, let me go back to where
I lost the plot. That's what I would say is
that if you're at a place in your relationship where
unfortunately one or both of you are not communicating anymore,
I don't think the answer is keep going in that direction.
I think the answer is where did we lose the plot?

(01:10:52):
And then I think there are some ways to try
to correct back to it. You won't be surprised to
hear that when people tell you the story of their life,
they're usually the hero. And so when when people come
into my office and they tell me the story of
their marriage, yeah, you know. David Byrne in The Talking
Head said, facts all come with points of view in
facts don't do what I want them to. And I

(01:11:15):
think that my my career has been a real example
of that because you do. It's actually how I know
I'm probably going to get along with the client is
if when they tell the story of their marriage, they
they're neither the hero nor the villain.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
Yes, yes, you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
Know, like if I said to you, tell me about
your marriage, and you said you know, here's the things
I think I do right, and here's the things I
could get better at, and here's the things I'm abysmally
bad at and I'd like to get better. We're in
a good place, yeah, exactly, we're in a good place.

Speaker 2 (01:11:51):
But that's not happening when you go to get a divorce.
That's the point.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
It's like, when you go to get a divorce, usually
I've got a halo, they've got horns. Of course, let's
get after it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Yeah, yeah, of course, because you want to get someone onside.
And then you yeah, I have similar and I mean
I coach people and couples and work with people, and
like you said, people people lie to their kind of
therapist coaches in that lane. And that's for sure, because
someone will come to me and said they have their
heart broken, and then as time goes on, they will
send me emails that the other person sent them, and

(01:12:22):
the emails actually seem really thoughtful and comprehensive and like
very emotionally intelligent and articulate. And you're like, what you
told me that this person was the devil, And now
I'm reading their emails because you had to share them
with me because of some context.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
That's why I said I think the most dangerous lives
are the ones you tell.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
Yourself yea, yeah, yeah, and you need them for somebody I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Don't even know. Sometimes you don't even know that you're lying. Yeah,
like you just you know, you're just so caught in
your view of the thing, and we hold on to
that so tight, you know, like because it Yeah, I
feel like if if, if we can acknowledge that we're
a mystery to ourselves, you know that that feels powerless
and frightening. I mean, so much of what we do
wrong we do for a feeling of control we don't

(01:13:06):
actually have. Yes, Yes, I think that might be the
secret is to like learn how to find you know,
there's an axiom that if you don't learn how to
find joy in the snow, you'll have less joy in
your life and precisely the same amount of snow. Yeah.
Like so I feel like, if you don't learn how
to find joy and peace in chaos, you will have

(01:13:32):
less joy and peace. Yeah, precisely the same amount of chaos. Yes, So,
because chaos is the lack of control, you know. So
I think that's a big piece.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Yeah, I love that. I love that, Yes, I learned
a lot of similar lessons in the monastery. When I'm
totally digressing that we're on this two to three day
train journey in India from north to south forty eight
hours roughly with a bunch of stops. It's a long journey.
And the toilets are so dirty India. I don't if

(01:14:00):
you ever been, It's like the toilet on a public
train in India is like walking into a sewage system.
And so I decided I'm going to fast for three days,
like I'm not going to eat because I can't. I
don't want to use the bar.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
I don't want to be in that pisode.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
Yeah yeah, and so and I'm getting off at the
stops to meditate because the train, a public train in
coach is like yeah, your bodies, there's like no like
and I've we've got I meant to have a bunk,
but I have my seat because everyone's sitting next to me.
These people sitting on the floor, lying down on the floor.
They've got their cycle, they've got their tires, they've got everything.

(01:14:33):
So I get off at the stops to meditate, and
then my teacher goes to me after it goes what
are you up to and I go, my monk teacher
and I go. He goes, what are you doing? And
I go, oh, well, like I'm getting off finding a
quiet spot meditating because this because it's a long haul
and it's like ten twenty minutes. And then I jump
back on the train when I hear the hear the
you know, the train's about to take off, and he goes,
do you think life's going to be like the chaotic
train or do you think it's going to be like

(01:14:55):
the peaceful start right? And I was like, oh, I
get it, and he was just like, learn to meditate
on the train, is the teacher? Yeah, And it's your point.
It's it's the same thing as like, learn to meditate
on the train.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
But I think there's value also, like in the context
of what we're talking about, because it's very funny to
me when people say, you know, we've been having some
rough patches in our marriage, so we're gonna go on
vacation together. And I think there's value in that because
we're gonna give each other our undivided attention. But I
don't think it's like why those TV shows like The

(01:15:24):
Bachelor and things like that, like it's not hard to
feel in love with someone when you're on a beautiful,
idyllic setting and you have nothing to do all day
except sort of love on it show, like with within
bikinis and shorts. Like, like, the hard part is in
the midst of all of the day to day, how
do we maintain connection? Like how do we find peace

(01:15:46):
in the storm? Because life is constantly going to be
the packed train and the storm and the chaos. So
how do we maintain that depth of connection? Because, by
the way, that's when we need it, Like, when you
need serenity that comes from meditation is not when you're
sitting by the idyllic, beautiful stream in the peace and

(01:16:07):
quiet that is by definition going to be a peaceful,
serene moment. Like you need to find that in the
chaos of the day to day, and you need to
find it on the packed train. So yeah, I mean,
how do you learn to do it except to do it?

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
Yeah? Absolutely? Should everyone get a prenup?

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
Yes, Well, I'll actually take a different approach to that.
Everyone has a prenup. You have a prenup. Everyone has
a prenup. It's either one that's written by the government
or it's one that's written by you and the person
who you allege you love more than the other eight
billion other options, but every because what is a prenup?
A prenup is a contract where two people agree to

(01:16:45):
specific rules that will apply to their marriage if it
ends in something other than death. It's a weird way
to parse it, but it's completely one hundred percent accurate.
So all marriages end death or divorce. You hope yours
ends in death. That's a weird thing to say, but
it is. You hope it ends in death till death
to us part. But if it doesn't, there's a rule

(01:17:07):
set that will apply. Who should right that rule set?
Whether you're on the left or the right or the
unhappy middle. Right, now, we can all agree that the
government there's some issues, whatever government we're talking about, Like
every country, everyone goes, there's some things. I don't anyone
who's ever been to the DMV. I've never walked into

(01:17:30):
the DMV and thought these people should be in charge
of everything. This is great, this is the best and
brightest minds working in the most efficient manner possible. I
should let them make the rules that govern my marriage.
So if you don't have a prenup, what you're saying,
is I trust the government, present and future, a government

(01:17:52):
I haven't even seen yet. Because instead of writing this
contract with my partner and amending it from time to
time if we'd like changing it as our circumstances change,
I'm going to trust that the rule set that will
be in effect at a time in the future, uncertain

(01:18:13):
that that will be a rule set that is best
for me. That's crazy, That's absolutely good. There is nothing
about that that is rational at all. What you're simply
saying is I don't want to have this conversation right now.
I'll just whatever whatever they're serving at the restaurant, I'll eite.
And I think that that's very shortsighted. But it's a
function of the fact that we've been taught to view

(01:18:36):
prenups a certain way, and that is that you have
a lack of confidence in the staying power of this relationship.
I think that's changing, and I'm grateful for that, not
just from a professional standpoint, because there's never been a
divorce layer that made very much money on prenups. It's
just not a high profit item litigation. There's much more
money in helping people tear each other to shreds in

(01:18:56):
a courtroom than there ever was in mediation or in
prenuptial agreements. Prenupial agreements, if anything, are bad for divorce
lawyers because they simplify the uncoupling if it happens, because
you have a rule set. Yeah, but I always I
think we need we are seeing. I think some changes
in the way we're normalizing prenups as a society, and
I think that's really really healthy.

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
Well, I think it's even in the way you just
spoke about it, because I think when you realize, oh,
you have one anyway, and when that kind of locks in,
you go, oh, yeah, we because you know, that's the
fascinating thing about marriage is that you don't even it's
been so normalized that you don't even realize that you're
getting into a contract with the stay and the most.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
Legally significant thing you will do in your life other
than dying. Seriously, like you buy an apartment, there's lead
paint disclosures, a hud one, there's a million forms that
disclose informa. You get married. You can't get a pamphlet, nothing,
literally nothing, you get no explain it. The first time
most people learn what happened legally when they got married
is when they're in my office, which is the worst

(01:19:59):
possible time to learn that. Like, you don't want to
learn how to fight when you're in a fight, totally,
you need to learn in advance as far in advance
as possible. So I have always thought like we would
do the world a tremendous service by having anyone who's
gonna get married have some premarital education. Yeah, at least
understand what you're signing on for the problem with it

(01:20:20):
is without a prena it is it is the most
significant contract you would ever sign, the marriage contract. Okay,
but it can be changed without your consent and without
your knowledge by the government in giant ways, and unlike

(01:20:41):
other contracts, Like if I if I had a contract
to like, what's a contract? Most of us do like
an apartment a lease? A lease is a contract. So
I'm going to rent this, Well, I'm gonna give you money,
you're gonna let me stay in this apartment. Totally fair contract.
If one day you, as a landlord come in and say, oh,
I know we have that contract. You're going to be
in a different apartment it's much smaller and smells, Then

(01:21:04):
what do I say, okay, well, then no, you're breaking
the lease. So now I'm not going to pay you.
That's fair. That's not how it works in the marriage contract.
In the marriage contract, when the state says, oh yeah,
alimony now has a formula, or alimony is no longer taxable.
Right now, this is what we're going to do with
a division of property. You can't say, oh, well, that's

(01:21:26):
not the that's not the rules I signed on for.
So now we're just gonna end this. Well no, no,
you're not allowed. You're not allowed. You can't opt out
of the contract. And they can change, the government can change.
So again. You know, I have lots of conservative friends,
and they're all very quick to talk about your marriage
is so important and no fault divorce is the scourge
of the universe. And I always say to them, I'm like,

(01:21:46):
you have a tremendous amount of confidence in the government
if you're getting married without a prenup, a tremendous amount,
because you're saying, not only is the present rule set
that I don't necessarily understand acceptable to me, but any
future rule set. And over the last twenty years, at
least in the United States, but most countries that I
can think of. There has been shifts in government were

(01:22:10):
at any particular time someone would say, oh, I think
the president is terrible. I have several friends that four
years ago thought the president was terrible, and I have
friends who think that this current president is terrible. So
whichever side of the aisle you're on, we should have
a healthy distrust of allowing the government to make a
contract for us that we can't get out of. And
I think that's what a prenup. Prenup takes it out

(01:22:32):
of the hands of the government and puts it, I
think where it belongs with these two people. But what's
the problem. It's not the expense. One of the cheapest
things we do. We have to have that conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
Yeah, well, it's it's a great It's actually side a
friend who got married recently and you know, in love
everything else, and before the marriage, they decided to do
a prenup, and he was talking about how hard it
was to bring it up, how hard it was to
have the conversation, but he was saying that it actually
gave them all the skills they'll need. My god, it's well,
the most difficult conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
To tell you. I've had a number of clients NNNY
who come in and say, I don't even know how
to bring this up. Like, I represent a lot of
people in finance, a lot of men in finance, young men,
late twenties, early thirties, high net worth, and they're marrying
someone who's not in that space. So they're marrying a
yoga teacher, they're marrying, you know, someone who's an artist.

(01:23:23):
And they say, look, I have a lot of confidence
in the marriage. I wouldn't mary this person if I
didn't believe in it, but I, you know, I want
to have some protections in place. And these are people
who are phenomenal at their jobs. Their jobs involve a
tremendous amount of risk. Like there's so much less risk
adverse than I am. Like they, you know, they move markets,
you know, and they make big bets, you know, and

(01:23:47):
they're terrified of saying, hey, you know, we're getting married
and all, like there's going to be rules that, you know,
govern this, and like maybe we should be the ones
to make the rule because it's met with such a
sense of what do you mean? And by the way,
it also creates in the person who has perhaps less

(01:24:07):
incentive in that situation to have a prenup, that a
prenup would be worse for them rather than better in
the event of a divorce. Again, at that moment, you
don't know what the future holds for anybody that that
person has plausible deniability as to why they're against it.
Like they're not going to say, well, no, I don't
want to preenn up because I want to be able
to take you for everything you're worth. What they would
say is, oh, well no, why would you need a prenup,

(01:24:29):
Like we're going to stay married forever? Don't you wouldn't
you bet on that? You bet on this stock? You
won't bet on this. But here's the problems. It's not
betting on a stock because you know, investing in a stock,
I know my maximum loss is whatever I put in right,
so it goes to zero, so I know what my
loss is. It's more like shorting the stock, where there's

(01:24:51):
almost no limit to how much you could potentially lose
because you're talking about a future you that you can't
foresee at this moment what it's going to look like.
So yeah, it's the same phenomenon that I think. But
it's But I have had clients who then come to
me and say, you know, even if we never got
a prenup, having conversations about it, Yeah, was so good

(01:25:17):
because really the way that I and I do get
calls from a lot of particularly young men but both genders,
saying how do I have a conversation about a prenup?
And I've always thought a really great entry point is
to say what I believe to be true, which is
it's very hard to feel loved if you don't feel safe.

(01:25:39):
That everyone should feel safe. Like I've represented victims of
domestic violence for many years, and I can tell you
if you love someone, you want them to be safe.
It's fundamental, right, So I think that's a good entry
point to say, what do we each need to feel safe?
And most of the time I think if you parse
it that way, you know, if someone said to me, look,

(01:26:02):
I will marry you and I but in the event
we split up because you have more than me. I
don't want to have nothing. I want to have some security.
Who could argue with that? Who could argue with the
logic of that? Like, of course, of course, and by
the way, I don't want you to be with me

(01:26:22):
purely out of the sense that well, what am I
going to do. I'm gonna be destitute if I'm not
with you. I want you to have the option of
not being here. Like if your spouse is only not
cheating on you because you're tracking their location, what kind
of security is that really if that's the only thing
preventing them. So I think it's the same thing like
saying to someone, look, I want to feel you're owed something,

(01:26:42):
but are you owed everything? Okay, we agree, you're not
out everything. Hey, I'm going to need help from you
if we split up. Of course you're going to need house.
So let's figure out what that looks like. Let's have
a conversation about how to make each other feel safe.
That feels like an act of love to me.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's yeah, And that's a much
healthier way to have that conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
And I think it's totally honest. I really do. I
think it's totally honest because even a lot of my
job is figuring out what people are actually trying to say. Yeah, yeah,
you know, like when someone says I want fifty to
fifty custody, I want fifty to fifty custody, Like, no
sane person analyzes their time with their children by percentages,

(01:27:24):
like I never when my kids were young, When you
know I've only spent forty seven percent of the time
with this Grab your glove, billy, we got to go
outside and have three percent of time, Like that's insane.
It's an insane way to analyze something. So really, what
is a man saying If he comes in and says
I want fifty to fifty custody, he's saying I don't
want to be an uninvolved second class parent. I don't
want to be like the fun parent and the other
person does all the big decisions in heavy lifting, Like

(01:27:46):
I want to be actively involved in the hard part
and the fun part. That's a very worthwhile sentiment.

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
Like that's the thing we need to learn to say,
because when you hear that, there's just so much argue
with it. Yeah, there's so much depth to it, there's
so much.

Speaker 1 (01:27:58):
Well, when you argue both sides of every issue for
twenty five years, you really do start to figure out
that a lot of this is like what we're saying
underneath what we're saying, like the position that we're taking
versus the principles behind it. A lot of this is
just like miscommunication, And I don't mean miscommunication and that

(01:28:21):
you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I mean that we're not
really even in touch with what we're trying to say,
you know, because again even the practical example of like
well we never have sex anymore, we don't have sex
as much as we used to common refraining people's marriages,
what you're really saying underneath that is so lovely, like

(01:28:42):
that I love that aspect of us. When I don't
have it, I miss it.

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
Who wouldn't want.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
To be told when you're away I miss you? Why?
Because when you're here it makes my life better. What
could be sweeter than to have someone feel that way
about you? But when you say it is oh, you're
only office again tonight, well okay, now I'm on the defensive.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:04):
Well and by the way, and me saying well, I
have to I've got this, you know, whereas if you said,
you know, I'm terrified, like I want to be a
really good provider to you, like you've trusted me to
keep you safe and to give you and our kids
the things we need. And I feel that weight sometimes
and like I don't know, maybe I'm doing too much,

(01:29:25):
But God, I'd rather do too much than do too
little because I'm terrified I'm going to fail. You. Who
wouldn't say to that person, okay, you'll go, And also no,
I'll love you even if you fail. Yeah, Like, what
a lovely thing if we could just put down that
ego driven myopia that we all have, because I think

(01:29:46):
underneath all of this, you know, I don't believe people
do evil because they're evil. I think they mistake it
for happiness.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Yeah, I mean, even just hearing you say that, just
like you know, kind of gives me goosebumps and just
kind of hits that because you're like, gosh, how many
how many people would save the time, the money, the energy,
the pain that they go through simply because we didn't
explain our anger. We just expressed it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
Right, and we didn't understand it ourselves. Yeah, you know,
I joke that I don't do much mediation. I used
to do more of it. Litigation is more lucrative, so
unfortunately it's taken aback and I've gotten I'm very good
at courtroom work, so I've sort of found a niche
that you know, works for me. But I used to
joke that mediation you're I used to say I was

(01:30:40):
an English translator because I would always do shuttle diplomacy
and I would put them in separate rooms and I
would get them to talk to me candidly about what
they were dealing with, and they would say, like, you know,
I don't want to bring the kids around that horror
of a girlfriend to hesitad it. And then I'd go
in the other room and I'd say, you know, she
has some concerns about how the children are being exposed

(01:31:04):
to new relationships, and I'm sure when she's in a
new relationship, that's that's a concern you could share. And
he's like, well, yeah, of course, you know we shouldn't
both be, you know, introducing the kids to someone we're
not serious about. I'm like, exactly, you know, you don't
want your kids to feel untethered in that. Now we're
having a useful conversation. But if I'd let them go
at it with each other the way, the minute it

(01:31:25):
comes out, there's this feeling of like, you know, and
now we're positional, and now we're right at it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:32):
Yeah, what's something you've heard in your office or in
court that broke your heart?

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
I said, I'm sensitive, so I think a lot of
things break my heart.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
I I've developed such a professional callous that it shocks
me sometimes because things that should right just dur on
my emotional radar. But I think I would be I
think I would be much less effective at what I
do if I let that happen, you know, Like I

(01:32:09):
I have a friend who's a pediatric oncologist, and I
said to him once, how do you do that job
and not just cry all day? Like you're just with
children with cancer all day. I can't. That would be
like one of the rings of hell for me. And
he said it's not hard. He said, I that's I'm

(01:32:31):
here to be of service, and I will be less
effective if I allow myself to do that. So I
have to learn to turn that part of me off.
I have to see this, not lose my humanity, not
lose you know. There's a saying from Risus Sardonicus. He said,

(01:32:52):
I have resigned myself to temporary complicity with evil in
order to attain certain specific objectives for people whose suffering
is greater than my need to maintain moral purity. So
I think sometimes so good, I find myself saying I

(01:33:15):
believe I represent the client, but I also represent the system,
and I don't always believe in the client, but I
have to believe in the system. And so the things
that break my heart most often is when I am
used as an instrument for cruelty to another person, or

(01:33:36):
when people in a courtroom lose because they can't afford
better representation. I think in our judicial system in the
United States, unfortunately, you get as much justice as you
can afford sometimes, and it's not supposed to be that way.
It's supposed to be equal protection under law. It's really
supposed to be. It's what drew me to the field

(01:33:58):
is this sense that, like a multi millionaire and a
poor person have equal protection under law, and you're supposed
to have vigorous representation. But this is like any other field,
like there are people that are excellent at it, and
the people that are excellent at it very often rise
to the top and start to only represent I jokingly

(01:34:19):
say that, you know, I represent all kinds of people,
gay people, straight people, black people, white people. I don't
represent poor people very often. You know, I'm eight hundred
and fifty dollars an hour, and so people sometimes get
less apt counsel that's less expensive, and the only thing
more expensive than a good divorce lawyer is a bad one.

(01:34:40):
So I think sometimes that's a very unfortunate reality of
our system. I'd like to think that it's some chapter
in the not too distant future, I'll be at a
place in my career where I can just like quit
private practice and work for like a legal services agency.
I've seen a couple of my colleagues do that, and
I'm just cheering for them because they suddenly bring like

(01:35:01):
this massive amount of experience and talent to bear for
to create access to justice. So I think the things
that break my heart in courtrooms are not what you'd think,
which is the day to day testimony of listening to
the pain of people and their children. It really is
when the system fails. There are some judges that should

(01:35:21):
not be wearing a robe like they're supposed to stand
for something, and some of them don't. And a bad
lawyer can screw things up, but a bad judge can
really screw things up in a gigantic way. They have
they're given power, and with great power comes great responsibility,
and some of them do not deserve it. They do not,

(01:35:45):
they are not they won a popularity contest, Like New
York has an elected judiciary, so they won a popularity contest,
and we're blessed. I have some judges I appear in
front of who they are perfect for the role. They
have the temperament, they have the experience, they have the empathy.

(01:36:05):
But there are some that you know, they're drunk on
the power of it. They're mad at the world, they're
mad at their own ex wife or ex husband, and
they're taking it out on people in a courtroom. And
when that happens, that's there's a powerlessness in that that
I have a very hard time navigating because I can't

(01:36:27):
be the outcause, like, I don't know how to fix that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:47):
How does someone know if they should keep trying to
fix a relationship, Boy, it's time to get a divorce.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
I mean, that's such a subjective assessment. I'm a fan of.
You know, there's that old axiom that you know, quitters
never win and winners never quit. But if you never
win and you never quit, you're an idiot. So at

(01:37:15):
some point, like at some point, I think people have
to know it's time, you know. I was a hospice
volunteer for many years, and the biggest thing that anyone
who works in hospice will tell you is that people
call hospice too late. Like, there's so much that you
can do in palliative care if they come to you earlier,

(01:37:41):
and they come to you early in the process. If
someone has a terminal diagnosis, even if they're not ready
for hospice care yet, you can put a plan in place. Okay,
when we hit this milestone, we're going to do this.
And when we hit this, we can't add years to
your life, but we can add life to your years.
You know, by the time people are in my office,

(01:38:02):
it's so far down that road that it's I think,
quite hard to find your way back. So I think
when you've reached the point in a relationship where you
have made real, good faith efforts to identify and address

(01:38:23):
the distance and that has been wholly unsuccessful, and the
other person is not committed, maybe not in the same
level of commitment as you, but not committed at all,
because identifying that there is a problem as the first piece.
So if the other person is saying no, there's no problem,

(01:38:45):
I think there comes a point where again, sometimes happily
ever after means happily ever after separately, and I'm a
believer in divorce. I'm not. I mean, of course, i'm
as a divorce lawyer, I have a self interested in
saying that, but even in my own life. I divorced
twenty years ago, and my ex wife is very dear

(01:39:07):
to me. She's still a dear friend. She's been remarried
for fifteen years, very successfully, much longer than we were
ever married to a wonderful guy. I just got to
spend a lot of time with them at my son's wedding,
and we had a lot of laughs and a lot
of shared time and space together in these two boys
who we both loved so much. And I think that

(01:39:29):
was an example of you know, when I when my
ex wife and I twenty years ago, when we decided
we were going to divorce, we had a very difficult
and honest conversation at the kitchen table, and our kids
were I think three and four at three and five
at the time, and we loved them more than anything.

(01:39:53):
And I remember she said to me after we'd had
this very teary, very difficult conversation, we were both really honest
with each other about ho deeply unfulfilled we felt and
how much we loved each other, but that there's a
lot of people that you love that you might not
be well married too. And I remember she said to me,

(01:40:14):
if sheer power of will could make two people love
each other, we would love each other forever. I remember
thinking it was so honest and so true that sometimes love,
just the feeling of love, is not enough to sustain
this very particular kind of connection to people are going

(01:40:36):
to have. Like my sons thankfully grew up in an
environment of tremendous love and a deep connection to both
their mom and I. But they laughingly now say as adults, like,
how were you and mom ever married? Like you have
nothing in common? You don't like any of the same things,
like and I laugh and I say to them, yeah,

(01:40:56):
we're We're incredibly different. Like in the best relationships, it's
like the ven diagram. There's the you, the me, and
the Wii, and there's some overlap, you know, and us
it just wasn't you know, but we were you know,
we met when we were eighteen. You know, she was beautiful,
you know, I was cool, and I had a motorcycle,
Like I don't know, like those are the things that
matter at that age, you know, we're making this decision.

(01:41:17):
Like I often say to people, you know, if I
said to you you can have any car you want
when you were eighteen, what car would you have had?

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
It'd have been some sports cars. Got quite like, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:41:33):
If then I told you, oh, that's the only car
you're going to have for the rest of your life,
do you think eighteen year old you would think, well, wait,
it's not going to fit a car seat. And when
I'm eighty, how am I going to get in and
out of it? So that's what we're doing when we marry,
Like we're this young, Like I I wish I was

(01:41:54):
twenty five again because I still knew everything, like I
knew everything when I was twenty five. If you asked
me like now, I'm humble enough, like life will humble
you enough that you go, oh yeah, Like the list
of stuff I don't know gets bigger, yeah, not smaller, yeah,
and my humility grows, And I think.

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):
So true.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
We're we marry at an age rightfully, so where we
you know, we want to have kids, maybe we want
to you know, our biological clocks are ticking. We're so
gassed up on hormones and love and sex and everything.
So we're making this gigantic life decision at an age
where we still think we know everything, but our prefrontal

(01:42:39):
cortex isn't even necessarily fully developed. So what do you
think is going to happen there? You know, we have
to be willing to say, you know, hey, maybe maybe
we made the wrong decision, maybe we made the wrong choices. Again,
I'm a fan of doing everything you can. It's just
like hospice, do what you can, do what you can
to sustain your life and have joy and quality of life.

(01:43:03):
You can have a lot of impairments happened to your
body and still have a tremendous quality of life, a
wonderful quality of life. But when you've reached the point
where now we've tipped to the direction where my quality
of life, my prognosis is so bad that the inevitable
is going to happen sooner rather than later, that's when
we should start talking about Okay, what now? Yeah, And

(01:43:24):
that's what I think this just is.

Speaker 2 (01:43:26):
Yeah, you talking about your former partner and your two
sons and obviously being at the wedding like it's so
fresh for you, And I was thinking about it because
I think a lot of people go through this. You
probably hear a million times, and I've had so many
friends talk about this, But is staying together for the
kids actually hurting the kids?

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
Well, this is a really important question because I think
a lot of people stay in challenging relationships for the
benefit of their children, and I don't think that's a
b I think when you have children with someone, a
a lot of difficulty comes with children. We don't like

(01:44:08):
to talk about that in polite society, but children are
antagonistic to marriage. We talked about it earlier in this conversation,
like they take attention away from each other, and that,
by the way, that's one of the great things about
having children is it's not all about you anymore. And
that's good, you know, but it's also challenging emotionally, and
we feel guilty to say it out loud, you know. Again.

(01:44:29):
One of the great innovations I think of our present
time is that for a time there was a book
called The Mask of Motherhood, where before the internet, you know,
women were constantly how's the baby. Oh, it's great, everything's great,
it's great, everything's great, it's great. And meanwhile they're like,
oh my god, like this is horrible. I'm exhausted. I
love this baby, but I want to kill it sometimes

(01:44:51):
because it won't stop crying and I feel out of control.
And now I think we have a society where I
think there's a tremendous amount of like, you can say
that and other women will go, yeah, it's okay. I
felt like that too. We're supposed to feel like that.
It's okay. Didn't mean you don't love your kid. That's beautiful,
that's wonderful. But I think we've got to a place where,

(01:45:12):
you know, some of those hard things to talk about
we don't talk about in the context of relationship. And
I think there is value in having bonds that tie
us together, like children. But the skill set of a
spouse and the skill set of a parent are different.

Speaker 2 (01:45:33):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:45:34):
You know, I would like to say I was not
a great husband. I'm not like I have a number
of deficiencies, you know, like I'm impatient, I'm you know,
some of the things that would make me a make
a good husband. I don't possess. I'm an excellent ex husband.
I'm reliable, I'm communicative, you know, I'm dependable, I'm very

(01:45:59):
child focused. I'm a really good father. You know, I'm
a really good father. So I think sometimes people come
into my office and they say like, oh, he was
a terrible husband and I don't want him to have
any time with the kids, And then you kind of go, well,
wait a minute, is a bad father Because even though
some of the skills might overlap, you know, like patience

(01:46:19):
would be good in both of those roles, they're very
different roles. So I think identifying that is important. I
think what the long term behavioral research on children and
divorce says. And there's a great book called The Unexpected
Legacy of Divorce that was the longest term study ever
done of children of divorce, and what it essentially found

(01:46:42):
is that although divorce and conflict, parental conflict correlate right
makes sense, people that have a lot of conflict often divorce,
that the parental conflict is what it's most damaging to children. Yeah,
loyalty binds and witnessing parental conflict is harmful to children.

(01:47:09):
It stands to reason that many children of divorce have
grown up in part or in long in a home
filled with conflict, because people with lots of conflict often
get divorced. But it's not the it's not the divorce,
it's the conflict that is, and the parental conflict that's
so harmful. So I would certainly say, if you are

(01:47:31):
struggling in your relationship and you have children, you have
a tremendous incentive to figure out, is there a way
for us to reconcile this relationship temporarily or long term
in a way that doesn't betray our core identities or ideals.

Speaker 2 (01:47:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:49):
But if you are in a relationship where you are
your children are surrounded by conflict in the ecosystem of
your home, I don't think you're doing them any favors
gutting it out and staying together Because I again, I
don't think the goal of marriage should be we did it.

(01:48:14):
We did it, We made it to death, we were
miserable for the last thirty years, but we did it.
Like It's that seems strange to me. I think the
goal should be marriage satisfaction and are we I would
hope that it the end of your life, you are
still married to your wife and that what she would

(01:48:37):
say of you is he made my life better. He
helped me figure out who I am. He helped me
become the most authentic version of myself. Like, what more
noble goal could there be to life than to find

(01:48:58):
someone and love them and help them become who they are,
you know, and help them, like help you become who
you are and who you're meant to be. So if
that's the goal, if the marriage isn't facilitating that result,
they do what you can to fix it. But if

(01:49:19):
it can't be fixed at some point, I think letting
go is hard, but I think it's right.

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):
Yeah, And there's also what you said, there's a nuance
there because if it's the conflict that affects the kids,
the conflict can exist when you're together and when you divorced,
of course, So if you're still having that distance, but
you're still talking about the other person in an unhealthy way,
and there's constantly games with the kids.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
In every permutation of that. Yeah, And that's the stuff
that the way people unintentionally harm their children with permission
of their own conscience, you know, and they genuinely believe
they're like helping their children, you know. But that's the danger. Like,

(01:50:03):
divorce is so challenging because you know, there's become an
increasing amount of attention paid in the legal system now
to parental estrangement. And parental estrangement can sometimes be rooted
in something genuine. If someone's a bad parent, children eventually
don't want to be around that person. But sometimes parental

(01:50:26):
estrangement is caused by alienation, which is the active interference
in the parent child relationship and the natural development of
that bond. And sometimes it's what's called negative gatekeeping, which
is where you could have been helpful in helping your
co parent stay bonded to your child that instead you
chose to do nothing. Yeah, so one is an active

(01:50:47):
interference and the other is a passive, you know, and
very often what you see in contested ugly custody cases,
which I do a lot of, you see some combination
of those things. So like dad steps on the rake,
he does something stupid, he yells at the child the
way he shouldn't have, He punishes them in a way
that he shouldn't of and mom could have helped the
kid navigate that better. But instead, because she doesn't like Dad,

(01:51:12):
she weaponizes it. And she has the permission of her
own conscience because she goes, I'm protecting my child. But
it's so subtle, Like that's the dangers, you know, Like
when it takes a rare kind of crazy person to
say your dad is a bad person and you shouldn't
love him, but it takes nothing to do Hello, here,

(01:51:37):
it's your dad. Yeah, I just said dad's a bad person.
I have to say it out loud. You know. It's
the difference between Oh, how is how is your weekend
with dad? What'd you guys do?

Speaker 2 (01:51:48):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:51:48):
We went to the park and we, you know, met
his new friend Cindy. Oh yeah, oh that's nice. Would
you got would would you have to eat? Oh? We've
got pizza da. Oh that's great. What was Cindy like?
Oh she's really nice. She's got pretty blonde hair. And
she likes to ride bicycles. Oh that's so. You like
to ride bicycles too, So that's nice. I'm not surprised
that dad likes her, because Dad likes bicycles too. You know.

(01:52:08):
All right, go upstairs, you know you at school tomorrow morning.
Let's figure out what we're gonna do. And I'm so
glad you're back. I missed you so much when you
were with dad. Are you okay?

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:52:20):
You okay? Did everything go okay? Are you all right? Yeah?
What'd you do? You went to you went to the park.
You went to the What it's been so cold out?
Why did you go to the all? You went? Did
you just? You and Dad went Cindy? Who who's Cindy?
Who's Cindy Dad's friend? Does you mean Dad's girlfriend? Does
Dad have a girlfriend now? And he's not selling anyone

(01:52:40):
that he has a girlfriend?

Speaker 2 (01:52:42):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:52:43):
You know, well, you know what, go upstairs and uh,
you know, get whatever you do. Like I just told
this kid so much. And the part of the judicial
system because as a lawyer, it doesn't matter what I know,
it matters what I can prove. So you know what
the judicial system solution to that is, We'll assign a
lawyer to the kid, and the lawyer is going to

(01:53:04):
sit down with the kid and say, does mom ever
say bad things about Dad? And guess what the answer is, No,
I didn't say what did she say that was bad
about dad? She didn't say anything bad about dad. She
asked what did you have to eat? I missed you.
It's nice that you're home. Like, who's Cindy? I was
asking a question. He brought her? This person around our child.

(01:53:25):
I don't know who they are, you know, so I
just wanted to ask my oh, oh, who is she?
But meanwhile, no, you sent a whole message to that kid.
And by the way, be a grown up, like love
your kid more than you hate your ex, because all
you have to do in that situation is do what
you do as an adult, which is pretend. Like I

(01:53:47):
remember my son, Noah was now twenty eight when I
just got married. I remember him when he was about
four years old having pneumonia and he had like one
hundred and four fever and he was burning up and
he was in my lap, and I remember like it
was yesterday. I remember the doctor said to us because

(01:54:10):
we called him panicked, and the doctor said, okay, if
it goes to one hundred and five, you got get
him to the emergency room. And I remember him like
so like it's a visceral memory, so sick, and I
remember being like, it's okay, it's okay, buddy, it's okay,
you're okay, you're okay, it's okay, you're okay. No, you're fine,

(01:54:31):
You're you're just sick. Right now, It's gonna be okay.
Don't worry about it's okay. Everything's going to be fine,
because that's what you do like, that's what you do.
He did not need me to do what. I'm even
recalling this memory twenty four years later, and he's fine,
he's on his honeymoon, he's fine. Like, but I'm literally
ready to cry thinking about it, because I remember being

(01:54:53):
so terrified. I'd never been that scared in my life.
I loved this thing more than I'd ever loved anything,
and I thought, oh my god, he's gonna die. But
what he needed me to do in that moment is
be strong and lie. He needed that from me, And
so do that. Just do that. I don't care if

(01:55:14):
you're upset the dad's dating Cindy, and the dad really
stepped on the rake and should have told you, Hey,
I'm gonna introduce our kid to this girl i've been seeing,
and you guys should have had a conversation where you say, like, Hey,
is this someone you're serious about before you take them
around our kid, and what are you going to tell
the kid? And give me a little info on this
so we can figure out how to send the right
message together. You know, that's not the place to have

(01:55:37):
that with the kid. You have to have that with
your co parent. But again, we don't teach people. We
don't teach people how to do relationships, and we don't
teach him how to do when relationships end, And with
fifty percent or more of marriages ending in divorce, we
could do better at teaching people how to be good
ex husbands and good ex wives how to be good

(01:55:58):
co parents after divorce. But nobody wants to buy that book.
Nobody wants to buy that book because they all think
they're grad at it. They all think they're great at it.
And I have some clients that are abysmally bad at it,
and a lot of what I have to do is
give them credit where credit's not due. I have to
say to them, like, right, but of course you would

(01:56:18):
never do X, Y and Z, because I know you,
and I know you're a good person. I know you
love your kids, you know. So I have to play
little mind games with them and say to them all
the time, like you know, they'll say, well, I'm gonna
introduce you know, the kids to my girlfriend this weekend.
You know, do I have to tell her? I'll go,
Do you have to? Now? You don't have to, but
of course you should. Of course you will, like you're
wouldn't you want to know if she was gonna Yeah,

(01:56:40):
and obviously this person you're introducing them to you you know,
I'm sure you're not doing that with someone that you
like met on Tinder and you're you know, gonna know
for two weeks like this, I'm sure this is a
serious relationship. And they're like, well, yeah, it's sort of serious.
I'm like, because if it's not, you know, you might
obviously you might want to wait a little bit, you know,
And like, I have to be in the position where
I'm educating them as.

Speaker 2 (01:57:00):
To without educating them.

Speaker 1 (01:57:01):
Yeah, You've got to kind of be that because I'm
their advocate. Yeah, yah, absolutely, I'm their ravocant. But the
truth of my profession and the best of us that
do this because i could say it about my colleagues,
although I've never been their client in the courtroom, at
the negotiating table, I am a vociferous advocate. I'm a weapon,
you know, I'll advocate for whatever crazy position is necessary
in that situation. Behind closed doors, I'm this like, I'm

(01:57:24):
very blunt with my clients. I'm very candid with them
because they don't need me to tell them what they
want to hear. They need me to tell them what
they need to hear. So I'm very, very honest with
my clients behind closed doors, I will tell them, you're
going through a process where you could spend fifty thousand
dollars arguing over a sixty thousand dollars bank account, and
if you win, you didn't win sixty thousand dollars, you

(01:57:48):
won ten thousand dollars, and if you lose, you lost
one hundred and ten thousand dollars. Like so divorce is
like that. I mean I had a case, a multi
million dollar I were at a state probably worth thirty
forty million dollars. The settlement fell apart because of a
toaster oven, a forty eight dollars toaster oven, because it

(01:58:11):
was the one issue they couldn't agree on as division
of personal property. And I just remember being in the
room and thinking, I could on my phone right now
with prime delivery, have every person in this room get
one of this toaster oven tomorrow, and they're going to
blow this thing up over this because it wasn't about
the toaster. They did blow they did blow it up. Yeah, yeah,

(01:58:31):
And listen was great for the lawyers. Great for the lawyers.
We get paid to fight when your lawyer is telling
you the settlement's good. Let's take the settlement. I'm acting
against my interests. I get paid for the fight like
you don't. And I manipulate people's emotional state for a living,
like I make a judge feel sympathetic to my client
antagonistic to the other side, and make the other side

(01:58:52):
feel scared or vulnerable. I make my client feel safe,
like I manipulate people's emotional state for a living. That's
the job you. You don't think I couldn't use that
to gas my client up and feel terrified so that
they need me to do more work. Of course I could,
of course I could. I could turn that right on,
and I could well, you know, listen, it's all fine now,
but what if forces are aligning against you. I could

(01:59:13):
scare the crap out of these people and get them
to give me hundreds of thousands of dollars. The way
you build a reputation, and this is a business where
you live and die by your reputation, is by not
doing that. Yeah if by being really honest with your clients,
by being really blunt with your clients. And that's what
I try every single day to wake up and do
and all of the best of my colleagues. I suspect

(01:59:33):
that that's what they do.

Speaker 2 (01:59:34):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. It's painful though, because it all comes
down back to what we've been talking about this whole time,
which is this personal growth and ego of not in
every whether it's you being mad at your partner when
you're together, whether it's you being on the honeymoon or dating,
whether it's you thinking about divorce, it's always your ego

(01:59:55):
and your control and your desire for power that's constantly
getting in the way, even to the toaster of then,
which is that final straw of no, I want to
have the final say and they should feel the rat
and not me. And it's it's that growth of like,
when are those insecurities not going to be mine anymore?
And one of those you know, because hopefully I'm getting

(02:00:16):
divorced and that I can move on from that. But
if I'm still upset that the person's with Cindy, like
that's just pulling me. I'm still controlled by that.

Speaker 1 (02:00:24):
By the way, it's perfectly okay to feel jealous, it's
but I totally agree. I think all of these problems,
whether they're in the context of divorce or in the
context of navigating a functional relationship that's having challenges, or
employer employee relationships. You're right, it's all ego based things.
Neil Postman was one of my mentors at NYU, a beautiful,

(02:00:46):
prolific writer about culture. He used to say that technology
offers us real solutions to imaginary problems and imaginary solutions
to real problems. And I think marriage is an imaginary
solution to a real problem. The real problem is we're alone.

(02:01:08):
You feel terribly alone. This world is easier to navigate
with someone. You can't learn everything you need to know
about yourself from yourself. You need someone who sees your
blind spots. There's nothing more wonderful than feeling loved, other
than perhaps giving love and having someone feel your love

(02:01:30):
who you love. So these are all real problems. Yeah,
But the idea that I'm going to get a piece
of jewelry on my finger and I've got that locked
down now and I'm going to not feel this, that's Look.
I represent some of the wealthiest people in the United States.

(02:01:51):
I am in the finance capital arguably of the world.
Some of my clients are worth billions of dollars. My
wealthiest client is probably worth about eight billion dollars. He
is as bad at this as anyone. You cannot buy
your way into it, like you can't. You know, There's

(02:02:11):
there's no amount of money that you can spend to
fix disconnection between you and your partner. There's no birken
bag you can buy them. There's nothing you can do
that will replace some of these fundamental things and the
struggles like money. You know, neither you nor I grew
up with money, and I think when you grow up

(02:02:36):
without money, I don't know if this was your experience,
it certainly was mine. Money came to symbolize everything I
didn't have, Like if I have money, I'll feel safe.
If I have money, I'll feel valuable and worthy. If
I have money, I'll feel secure. And then you get
money and you just have money, like you don't, you

(02:02:58):
still feel unsafe, You still feel are some things easier.
Of course, of course money's important, and it does make
some things easier, and it does give some modicum of security,
but from the fundamental challenges of life, like these real challenges.
So those are real problems. I think marriage again, asking
the question what is the problem to which marriage is
a solution?

Speaker 2 (02:03:18):
Is the key who falls for divorce more men or women.

Speaker 1 (02:03:22):
Women by a significant majority. It's over seventy percent of
divorces are accepted by women. Unfortunately, though, that's a statistic
that gets unfairly weaponized quite often.

Speaker 2 (02:03:32):
How should we process it? What does it tell us?

Speaker 1 (02:03:34):
So the popular antagonism in the what do you want
to call it, the mana sphere, or in misogynist spaces,
whatever you might want to call it, in spaces that
are there to defend men's perspective, is that women are
somehow coming into the casino of marriage, amassing a lot

(02:03:57):
of winnings and then cashing out. And that's why the
number of women is in the seventy percent in the
commencement of divorce actions. What I have found in my
own practice is that that although that is certainly the case,
sometimes that more often than not, it is that men

(02:04:19):
more often than women go out for milk and never
come back, or just come home one day and say
I'm leaving. Part of that has to do with children.
I think we know you can be a Bella Abzig
feminist if you'd like to be, and I think you
would concede that if you met me a man and said, Jim,

(02:04:42):
tell me about yourself, And I said, well, I'm divorced.
I'm a lawyer. I see my children every other weekend
and once a week for dinner. They live with their mom.
This would in almost no way shape your opinion of
me as a parent. Whereas if I was a woman
and I said I'm divorced. The children live with their

(02:05:03):
father and I see them every other weekend and once
a week for dinner, there's some part of you that
would go, yeah, wrong with her drug issue? Or like
is there like you know, substance you or is some
mental health like what? So why? Because the overwhelming majority
still of primary care of children is on women. So

(02:05:23):
I think that the reason why women are more often
the plaintiff in the divorce action is that we have
created a society where for a man to walk away
say bye, I'm out, it's easier. And so when that happens,
and it happens often, I have women who come into

(02:05:44):
my office and say, what do I do? He left,
mortgage hasn't been paid, I don't know, like, how am
I going to do X, Y and Z? And I say, okay,
we have to file a divorce action, and they go wait, no,
I don't want to file a divorce action. I'm not
the one who wants a divorce he is. I want
him to come back and for everything to be okay, okay,

(02:06:07):
but he's not coming back, and everything's not okay. But
what you need is the mortgage to be paid and
an order that gives you temporary child support. And the
only way I can do that is to get a
judge a sign. And the only way I can get
a judge a sign is to file a divorce action.
So then what happens is we filed the divorce action
and then nine times out of ten the guy who

(02:06:30):
went out for milk and never came back. I can't
believe you filed for divorce. She well, she's the one
who filed for divorce, and you kind of go okay, no,
like you killed it. She buried it. I get it,
but like you killed it, Like what are you talking about?
You know? And by the way, I'm not suggesting you
should have stayed. There's lots of good reasons why a

(02:06:50):
marriage might end, but just leaving and not confronting again
it's the same problem, right is Is it surprising that
in a marriage where people were afraid to have difficult
conversations that they might essentially do the equivalent of ghosting,
like I'm just going to leave, I'm just out, you know.
So that's where that statistic, I think is, it's abused

(02:07:14):
because if only again, if only, if only, like I,
in some ways wish we lived in a world like
Sultsanitzen said, where where if only there were just evil
people and we could just segregate them from the rest
of us and live our lives in peace. It's not
how it works. The line of good and evil runs
right through the human heart, and so there is not

(02:07:34):
a simple answer that, oh, yes, women are just gold
diggers and they're filing for divorce because they're cashing their
chips out. I have seen many many women commence divorce
actions where they were taking a gigantic economic hit. I
have a client who recently we filed for divorce, knowing
that under the prenup what she's going to get, she's
no longer going to have private jets. No, she is

(02:07:55):
going to take a significant cut in her lifestyle. But
she's like, yeah, but I I need to be free
of this relationship, you know. And so to suggest that
that statistic proves this other thing I think is very
self interested by the people that are positing that theory.

Speaker 2 (02:08:29):
Who suffers more from divorce, men or women?

Speaker 1 (02:08:34):
I think the world is cruel to both in different ways.
I think there is sometimes a tremendous economic burden put
on men that is well beyond their capacity. I've seen
child support awards and spousal maintenance or alimony awards that

(02:08:56):
are so gigantic that it just literally cripples a man,
especially when someone's lost their job, and then the courts
are very quick sometimes to say, well, you're earning capacity
is commensurate with your last employment, so you'll find another job.
So the world can be cruel to men in that way.
And also I think there even though we abolished what

(02:09:19):
used to be called the maternal presumption, which was a
presumption or used to be called the tender years doctrine,
which is the presumption that women are better custodial parents
to children than men, we still live in the world
and there's a tremendous amount of bias, and there are
a lot of really good dads and a lot of
really awful moms and vice versa. But to suggest that

(02:09:39):
because someone gave birth to a child, like under your
skin is under your sovereignty. To assume that that person
is a better caregiver to a child is absolutely ridiculous.
So men are terribly hurt by the divorce system and
the divorce industrial complex in those ways. They don't have

(02:10:01):
the time with their children that they probably would benefit
from and that the children would benefit from. And it's
very easy to weaponize those things. Women, the divorce system
is sometimes very expensive to get the relief that you're
entitled to. The barriers to entry into getting that award
is very challenging. And I think post divorce, my observation

(02:10:27):
has been a divorced man his prospects for future relationships
are better. Yeah, I think when and again, this is not,
you know, an indictment of I believe me. I'm sure
that there are exceptions to this, like there are to everything,
but by and large, women, in my observation of many, many,

(02:10:54):
many many clients, divorced men have a much bigger menu
of options. Like there's you know, a guy gets divorced
in his early forties and he's got a couple of kids,
he can usually get women in their twenties and their
thirties because they'll look at it and go, oh, instant family,
just add me like great, Like I'll be a step

(02:11:14):
parent and you know, I'll get involved in this. Maybe
we'll have our own kids too, but even if we don't,
I'll get to have something quasi parental. And by the way,
there will also be divorced women who he you know, hey,
our life lives are similar. We have co parents, we
have these things. Let's get together and let's get married
and Brady bunch it. You know, women, I think get
a shorter end of the stick on that. I think

(02:11:35):
that there are a lot of men who see a
woman who's divorced, even a young, beautiful, intelligent, articulate woman
who's divorced through no fault of her own. Perhaps maybe
she had made a bad choice and this is not
was not a good person for her for her children,
and a lot of men will look at it and go,
he's got baggage. I don't want to deal with that,

(02:11:55):
and I don't want what comes with that. Again, many
men step up in that situation. And I think I've
had the amazing experience of watching some men step up
where I've had these young female clients and they get
divorced and they're just convinced their life is over. They're like,
I'm thirty four years old, i got two kids that
I'm divorced, you know. And then some guy, very often

(02:12:17):
like unexpected, like a young guy with no kids who's
never been married, steps in and is like a hero,
and you know, a couple of years later, I'm going
to their wedding, you know. And a few of them.
I have one couple in particular I'm thinking of, She's
had the greatest post divorced life and greatest post divorced
marriage I've ever seen. And now they have a baby together,

(02:12:38):
the two of them, and this guy really stepped in
to be a step parent for her kids in a
beautiful way, and you know, it's amazing. But I think
as a general rule, my observation has been it's divorces
is hard on men and hard on women in just
different ways.

Speaker 2 (02:12:55):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, James, it has been such as you
were talking to you today, and I feel like I'm
learning so much and just what's really incredible talking to
you about it is that you really do have this
wearability to go from being really logical and rational about
something to them being really emotion to a motive about it,

(02:13:15):
and it's Yeah, it's really beautiful to watch. I really,
I really appreciate you can oscillate between the two quite
comfortably and gracefully, and it's really powerful just just taking
it all in. And again, the reminders are powerful yet simple.
And that's a wonderful thing because it's that with which

(02:13:37):
we're stumbling and those are the same things you're all
stumbling over.

Speaker 1 (02:13:42):
And so and it's a wonderful commonality for us.

Speaker 2 (02:13:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:13:45):
Yeah, it's a wonderful part of our humanity.

Speaker 2 (02:13:47):
It's great to know that that's what it is. That
it wasn't some big thing that you didn't become or
that you didn't become successful, or that you didn't you know,
something that was so far away, and.

Speaker 1 (02:13:57):
That it was right there right And the thing, the piece,
the piece we're all looking for, may not be so
far away. Yeah, you know, the questions we need to
ask may not be so complicated, and the things we
need to do to sustain or repair our relationships they

(02:14:18):
may not be that inaccessible. It may be right inside
of us.

Speaker 2 (02:14:22):
Yeah. We end every interview with a final five. These
questions have to be answered in one word to one
sentence maximum however, I'll probably break my own rule, knowing
how good our conversation's been, and.

Speaker 1 (02:14:33):
So you known from my brevity.

Speaker 2 (02:14:35):
Yeah, James X. And these are your final five. So
the first question is what is the best advice you've
ever heard or received? And of course it can be
intertwined to love. So what's the best love advice you've
ever heard or received or given?

Speaker 1 (02:14:50):
The best advice I've heard in general, and it applies
to love as much as it applies to anything else.
Is the hard thing to do and the right thing
to do, or almost always the same that anytime you're
confronted with a choice, that the harder thing is usually
the right thing. It's easier to sleep in than to exercise,

(02:15:11):
but it might be the right thing to exercise. It's
easier to just hold your tongue and not share with
your partners something that needs to be shared. But the
right thing to do is to do the hard thing.
So the hard thing to do and the right thing
to do are almost always the same thing.

Speaker 2 (02:15:26):
It's great on so I love that never had it
on the show. Question number two, what is the worst
love advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 (02:15:34):
Happy Wife, Happy Life?

Speaker 2 (02:15:36):
Why is that such people.

Speaker 1 (02:15:37):
Say it all the time, and whoever created that, I
want to just throttle them. I have an amendment to it,
and that is it should not be happy wife, happy life,
because what's meant by that is just shut your mouth
and just do what she tells you. And that's you know,
And I just think it's terrible advice. I think it's

(02:16:00):
way to build estrangement between two people. It's a way
to disconnect. I think it could be amended to happy spouse,
happy house. I think that's true. I think that if
you can help your partner find joy, that your joy
will be more accessible and their desire to help you
find joy will be more accessible to them, and it

(02:16:21):
creates a positive cycle. So I would say I would
say happy wife, happy life is the worst advice. The
other the runner up would be follow your heart, Follow
your heart. That's one of those things people say like
it is what it is. It's like a thing you
say when you don't really know what to say, because
I genuinely you know, like I don't know that you

(02:16:45):
should listen to your brain because your brain is lying
to you all the time. It's good to listen to
your body because your body doesn't lie to you. You know,
it doesn't have the agenda that your brain has. But
your heart really saying is listen to what I think
what my mind is telling me, My heart is yang

(02:17:06):
and that's that's dangerous.

Speaker 2 (02:17:08):
Yeah, Yeah, I like both of them. Great picks. There's
something you've really talked about today which was a resounding
kind of principle, was this idea of it's so much
raising above just pleasure and happiness and comfort, and this
idea of being with someone who wants you to become

(02:17:30):
the most authentic version of you and vice versa. And
that's such a different thing that you think you're signing
up for when you get married, because most people were
just signing up for you make me happy, you make
me feel good, and those are a part of that,
and those are important, and no one's saying those things
are not critical, but signing up to say, well, the
long term, that's going to evolve into I'm going to

(02:17:54):
help you become the most authentic version of you, and
you're going to help me become And that's a massive
evolution from you make me happy right.

Speaker 1 (02:18:01):
Now, because I think it says something of our humanity.
Because my personal belief my personal experience has led me
to believe as a human being. You know, I was
raised very Catholic, very religious, and I've since left faith,
you know, but I still believe in God, and I

(02:18:22):
still like the concepts, and I don't believe in a devil,
you know, I don't believe that there's this nefarious evil force.
But if there was a devil, I think his principal
function would be to tell us what I think many
of us secretly believe, and that is that we are

(02:18:47):
so awful that God couldn't possibly love us. And I
think there is some part of us as human that
sees all the ugliness in us, that's in all of us,
all the selfishness, all the greed, all the lust, all
the envy, all of it, all of it, all of

(02:19:09):
our humanity, that piece of our humanity, and is convinced
and doesn't want to say out loud that if someone
knew us, they couldn't possibly love us. Like that's I
think our deepest fear, our deepest fear, is that if
you knew me, you wouldn't love me anymore. And so

(02:19:32):
the opposite is true, which is when when you feel
truly known, your good parts, your bad parts and loved.
That is the greatest feeling. Like that is the greatest
experience a person can have. And by the way, we
have it very often with our children, where like we

(02:19:54):
don't care, like no, no, they make mistakes, but it's okay.
I love them anyway. Oh no, they're bad at this,
but it doesn't matter. Love them any like. I see
them works and all, I see all the bad and
all the good and the whole amalgam, and I love
them anyway, like I love them with all my heart.
So to me, I think that's that's the core of
it is. We're just afraid that if someone knew us,

(02:20:16):
they wouldn't love us. So we add all these other
things on, well how can I make this person feel pleasure?
And how can it? And anytime they don't serve my pleasure,
well now they're failing my needs. And we create all
these ways to self sabotage relationships, when in fact, what
it really is is we don't really love ourselves. We
don't think we're worthy of love. And I think, again,

(02:20:37):
I'm not really Christian, but I think the most radical
message that Jesus said in the Gospels was essentially that
we are worthy of love, not that we should love others,
but that we should love ourselves, that we should believe
that we are worthy of love, God's love, the love

(02:21:00):
of each other. And I genuinely think if we gave
each other the grace like gave ourselves the grace we
give each other, you know, like because if you described
to me all of the horrible things about you right now,
Like if the mics were off and you said to me,
you know, Jim, I know that we've met and we've
now had a lovely conversation, But if you got to
the core of who I am, I have all of

(02:21:21):
these horrible things, and you told me about all these
selfish things, like people do all day long in my office,
they tell me all the horrible things they've done. And
I was to say, Okay, that means you're human. Yeah,
and that means you're human. That doesn't mean you're an awful,
terrible person. You screwed up. You did some things that
maybe you shouldn't have done. You should learn from that,
you should figure out how to not do that. You

(02:21:42):
see what it's led you to. But like it's okay,
Like I don't think you're a bad person, Like that's
the loveliest thing in the world. And that's what I
think love can be at its best and marriage can
be at its best. Is that creation of that authentic self? Yeah,
I'm doing great with the one word answer.

Speaker 2 (02:21:59):
Well, I said no, no, no, I wanted you to. I was
really happy about that. Question Number three, what's the question
people never ask before marriage but absolutely should.

Speaker 1 (02:22:10):
I mean, I'll go to my earlier question, which is
what is the problem to which marriage is a solution
for you?

Speaker 2 (02:22:15):
Specifically?

Speaker 1 (02:22:16):
Yeah, why am I getting married? Yeah? And why is
this other person getting married? And are those goals aligned?
I think that's a very worthwhile question. Yeah, I think
that would be the best question to ask. I think
is that what is the problem I am trying to
solve by getting married, and what is the problem that

(02:22:37):
this person is trying to solve? And are those goals aligned?
I also think it's worthwhile to ask at the risk
of being unromantic, although it's fairly obvious I'm a romantic
at heart. I think there's also some really practical questions
people should ask, like unit person or a morning person,

(02:22:57):
are you okay with dishes in the sink? Because I'm
not at all ever you know what I mean, Like,
are you a neat freak or somebody that's kind of
you know, do you leave your socks everywhere? Can you
tolerate someone who leaves their socks everywhere? I do tend
to leave my socks everywhere, So I think, you know,
having some honest conversations about you're not just gonna loo
because your wife's your wife, she's also your roommate, she's

(02:23:18):
also your business partner, she's also your vacation companion. She's like,
she's got a whole bunch of jobs, just like if
that was a job description for your companies. Yeah, it's
a long one, you know. So have some practical conversations
about like the nuts and bolts of being married and
the nuts and bolts of having a life together.

Speaker 2 (02:23:35):
Yeah. Great, answer a question number four. What's a lie
that couples tell themselves at the start of a relationship
that ultimately breaks them.

Speaker 1 (02:23:46):
Two opposite lies that this will change things and that
nothing will change in different measure. So sometimes people marry
and they go, well, he was the most fidelitous boyfriend,
but now that we're married, he'll be committed. Well, you know,
he drank a bit too much when we were together,
but now you know, and she was a bit of

(02:24:08):
a compulsive spender. But once we marry, that'll rain in
and we'll settle into it. So thinking that this person's
going to change, and that the act of marrying someone
will change fundamentally the relationship, and also thinking, I'm marrying
this person how they are now, how I am now,
and it will never change. We will always be what

(02:24:30):
we are to each other. It will always feel the
way it currently feels. We will never change that much.
I think that's ridiculous. We change a tremendous amount with
each passing decade of my life. I look back and go,
oh my gosh, what changes in me? Not just my
hair and my back hurting, Like, what are the changes?

(02:24:50):
There's so much change as to how I approach things.
So I think the two lies are that nothing will
change and that things will change.

Speaker 2 (02:25:00):
Gray answer. I love that. Fifth and final question. We
asked this every guest who's ever been on the show.
If you could create one law that everyone in the
world had to follow, what would it be.

Speaker 1 (02:25:10):
Shortly after your eighteenth birthday, you would have to spend
six months or so volunteering for hospice. I think we
shield our society from death, and I think it infects
the way we look at life. It morphs in unhealthy

(02:25:31):
ways the way we viewed death, and it causes us
to focus on a lot of the wrong things. A
divorce is a death of sorts. It's not surprising to
me that I went from hospice to divorce work because
it's all about endings. Everything is ending all the time.

(02:25:54):
And so I think if at the age of eighteen,
everyone had to do mandatory service where they spent time
working with the terminally ill, I think it would change
fundamentally the way that our society was structured. I think
that you would. I think so much of our world
is designed to take your attention away from the fact

(02:26:14):
that you're definitely going to die, Because if you thought
about the fact that you're definitely going to die, you
wouldn't really care so much about what everybody else is selling.
You would be much more focused on what really matters
in life, and you wouldn't chase so many phantoms. So
I would say that we would do society a tremendous

(02:26:35):
service to do that. An answer number two to that
would be, you know, there would be like a mandatory
waiting period to get married, Like, it should not be
something that you can do just with fifty bucks by
a guy who's dressed like Elvis when you're in Vegas
hopped up on hormones and alcohol, like it should be.
There should be, Like you know, with guns, there's like

(02:26:56):
a waiting period. You know, you get a driver's license,
you know, like a written test, you gotta practice, you
get like a learner's permit, and then there's restrictions on
how much you're allowed to drive. Like married man, it's nothing.
You just here.

Speaker 2 (02:27:09):
It is.

Speaker 1 (02:27:09):
Knock yourselves out, kids, figure it out, you know. I
think there would be some some form of pre marital education.
Maybe you have to talk to people that have been divorced.
You have to talk to people that are divorce lawyers,
you have to talk to some people that have been
successfully married that volunteer for the gig, and then you
can decide if you get married or not.

Speaker 2 (02:27:29):
That's a great answer. I love it, jam Sexton. The
book's called How to Stay in Love. If you don't
already follow James across social media, make sure you subscribe
on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, everywhere and James. Honestly, I love
this I hope you will come back on. I feel
like there's so much more we can explore, There's so
much more we can go into. But I'm so glad
I suspected it would go there. Yeah, there's three hours?

Speaker 1 (02:27:51):
Is it really? You know? I can always there's very
few conversations that I can say that about. But it's
really lovely, because there's no thing more lovely than when
I absolutely lose track of time in a conversation and
it feels like it was a half an hour and
I go, how long was that? So this is one
of those. So of course I would very much welcome
the chance to sit down again. And I'm really glad

(02:28:12):
we made this connection.

Speaker 2 (02:28:14):
Yeah, thank you, James, very welcome. You're awesome. That was amazing,
very incredible.

Speaker 1 (02:28:18):
Thanks Matt.

Speaker 2 (02:28:18):
If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Dr Gable Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable.

Speaker 1 (02:28:32):
So a tree doesn't go over it's hard and thick,
does it.

Speaker 2 (02:28:35):
It goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable.

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