0:00:03 Every single marriage ends in death or divorce, but it ends.
0:00:06 But the majority of them end because of slippage.
0:00:07 And what does slippage mean?
0:00:08 Slippage is…
0:00:10 James Sexton is back.
0:00:12 The world’s leading divorce lawyer.
0:00:13 With over two decades of experience,
0:00:16 he offers practical, no-nonsense advice
0:00:17 for maintaining healthy relationships.
0:00:21 We live in a society that presumes marriage is a good idea.
0:00:24 You’re about to do something incredibly dangerous
0:00:27 that fails so much of the time.
0:00:29 And I think it has almost nothing to do with love.
0:00:31 But if you get married, here’s what I will tell you.
0:00:32 Have you talked about a prenup?
0:00:36 Getting married without one is a fairly risky activity.
0:00:39 But the truth is, having a child with someone
0:00:42 is the most risky activity in relationships.
0:00:45 There’s so much stuff a person can do to torture you
0:00:46 if they have a kid with you.
0:00:47 And what I’ll tell you is,
0:00:49 the people who are obsessed with their children
0:00:51 stop paying attention to their partner,
0:00:53 which leads you right to my office.
0:00:55 Okay, so if you were to give me one piece of advice
0:00:57 to prevent me and my partner ever ending up
0:00:58 in your consultation room.
0:01:01 If there’s a core message to my approach to relationships,
0:01:04 it is that’d be the only advice I’d ever give to anybody.
0:01:08 James, if you think about the divorces you’ve seen in court,
0:01:10 was there ever a case that broke your heart?
0:01:13 Yeah, it was a case that I won that I should have lost.
0:01:15 I remember looking at the judge and thinking,
0:01:17 like, if letting this happen,
0:01:20 she’s going to lose because she’s poor.
0:01:21 And she can’t afford a lawyer.
0:01:24 And he’s going to win because he can’t afford a lawyer
0:01:26 that knows how to put a document into evidence.
0:01:28 And there’s something really wrong about that.
0:01:37 [MUSIC]
0:01:40 James, our last conversation, I think,
0:01:43 did almost 10 million downloads and views across platforms.
0:01:47 And I can’t imagine the amount of messages you get
0:01:49 on a daily, weekly, monthly basis from people
0:01:52 that are interested in the subject of divorce,
0:01:54 but also the sort of interconnected subjects of love
0:01:56 and marriage and all of these things.
0:02:01 When people contact you, what do they typically say?
0:02:03 You’re absolutely right.
0:02:05 I mean, the number of people that contacted me
0:02:08 after our conversation exponentially increased.
0:02:10 It also very much broadened the palette of things
0:02:12 people contacted me about.
0:02:14 So a lot of my prior work,
0:02:17 a lot of my writing prior to our first conversation
0:02:21 was very much tied to just relationship issues,
0:02:22 divorce-related issues.
0:02:24 So I would get a lot of messages from people saying,
0:02:25 “I’m going through a terrible divorce.
0:02:27 I’m dealing with this situation.
0:02:29 Even though you can’t represent me
0:02:31 because I’m in a different state or a different country,
0:02:33 could you give me some general advice?”
0:02:36 So people would reach out with very specific
0:02:39 to my career topics.
0:02:42 I got a lot of people talking to me
0:02:45 about the conversation we had about our dogs
0:02:53 and about loss and about the nature of aging and endings.
0:02:55 And whether it’s the ending of a marriage
0:02:58 or the ending of a dog’s life or our own lives
0:03:03 and how the loss of our pets brings us more sharply
0:03:06 into focus about the mortality of everything around us.
0:03:10 So yeah, I mostly get people saying,
0:03:15 “Oh, you gave voice to something that I’d felt.”
0:03:18 And it was meaningful to me to do that.
0:03:22 And I try to write people back and just say,
0:03:23 very briefly, like, “I’m so glad
0:03:25 that something in my perspective resonated with you.”
0:03:31 If there was one message that you could give
0:03:32 to everyone that messages you.
0:03:35 So one singular message, it was a broadcast message
0:03:37 and you had to send it to everybody that’s messaged you
0:03:39 about all of these interconnected subjects.
0:03:41 But you could only say a couple of sentences
0:03:42 and you think it’s the couple of sentences
0:03:45 that would most serve all of them in one go,
0:03:46 regardless of what their issues are,
0:03:49 because it’s a fundamental message about love and marriage
0:03:50 and divorce and all these things.
0:03:51 What would that message be?
0:03:55 I mean, I’ve always said that I think the core truth
0:03:57 I’ve learned in my life is that the hard thing to do
0:03:59 and the right thing to do are usually the same thing.
0:04:03 So I would often challenge anybody who reaches out to me
0:04:06 about anything that they’re struggling with.
0:04:08 I would say to them that what is the hard thing
0:04:09 to do in this situation,
0:04:11 because that’s probably the right thing to do.
0:04:14 The other thing I would say is that,
0:04:18 although I really appreciate that someone would reach out
0:04:20 to me in the hopes that I could give them some answer,
0:04:24 I pretty strongly believe
0:04:27 that the only Zen you find on mountaintops
0:04:28 is the Zen you brought up there.
0:04:33 And so I think a lot of the truth we know,
0:04:37 when we hear someone say it out loud,
0:04:40 it resonates in a way,
0:04:42 but it’s because we knew it was true.
0:04:43 We already knew it was true.
0:04:45 Maybe that person gave voice to it.
0:04:47 When you said the thing about Zen and mountaintops,
0:04:50 can you say that again and what did you mean?
0:04:52 Yeah, I mean, you can also parse it
0:04:54 as the only wisdom we find on mountaintops
0:04:56 is the wisdom that we brought up there.
0:05:01 There’s all of these sort of Zen parables of the monk
0:05:03 who like in Batman Begins,
0:05:05 sort of in his flip flops and robes,
0:05:07 sort of wanders up the mountain through the cold,
0:05:10 trying to find the Zen master at the top of the mountain
0:05:12 who has the wisdom that he can then share with him.
0:05:16 And very often that wisdom is inside of all of us.
0:05:17 That wisdom is something that,
0:05:20 whether we want to call it our gut,
0:05:22 whether you want to call it your soul,
0:05:23 whatever you want to call it,
0:05:25 that the wisdom is inside of you
0:05:29 and that we want, I think,
0:05:30 sometimes to have other people
0:05:33 validate it for us or say it out loud,
0:05:35 because perhaps we’re not as articulate about it,
0:05:38 but to have someone give voice to it
0:05:39 gives us the ability to go,
0:05:41 “Okay, okay, so it’s not just me.”
0:05:43 And I think that’s what I mean
0:05:45 when I say the wisdom we find on mountaintops.
0:05:47 I think we travel very, very far
0:05:53 to find a joy and a wisdom that’s inside all of us.
0:05:57 On that point, as you were talking about it,
0:05:59 and the reason I was so piqued by it is
0:06:01 I’ve got so many friends over the years
0:06:03 who have been struggling in relationships
0:06:05 and in their life and in their marriages
0:06:09 who have thought that the answer to all of those problems
0:06:10 was to basically get on a plane
0:06:13 and move country or city to go somewhere else.
0:06:15 And so when you were saying that,
0:06:17 I was thinking, I was thinking back to a conversation
0:06:18 I had with my friend many years ago
0:06:20 where he said, “You know, I’m going to move to Spain.”
0:06:22 And his life was in ruins really at the time.
0:06:25 His partner had just cheated on him and was pregnant.
0:06:29 And he thought moving to Spain would solve the problem.
0:06:30 So I remember the conversation with him
0:06:31 where I said, “By the way,
0:06:33 all the problems are buying a plane ticket with you.
0:06:36 Like they’re going to Spain with you.”
0:06:38 Wherever you go, there you are.
0:06:41 So I had a friend who was a hairdresser.
0:06:44 And I remember once talking to him
0:06:46 while he was cutting my hair.
0:06:50 And we got on the topic of, you know,
0:06:53 because both of us are someone that people talk to.
0:06:55 You know, people talk to me about their problems
0:06:56 and their relationship as a function of my work
0:06:57 as a divorce lawyer.
0:07:00 And people sit with their pair of stylists
0:07:02 and they’ll talk, particularly women,
0:07:03 will talk for a long period of time
0:07:05 about the things that are stressing them out
0:07:05 and upsetting them.
0:07:08 And what he said to me is, you know,
0:07:12 a lot of women in particular come in and they say,
0:07:14 “I want to cut, I want to cut it all off.
0:07:15 I want to cut it all off.
0:07:16 I want to cut it very short.
0:07:18 I want to cut it very different.
0:07:18 Like I want to just hold it.”
0:07:22 And he said, you know, there was a time early in his career
0:07:24 where he would give them what they were asking for.
0:07:26 So if they came in with super long hair
0:07:28 and they said, “I want a little short, very bob cut,”
0:07:29 you know, he would do it.
0:07:31 And then he would get a call from them
0:07:33 a few days or weeks later going,
0:07:34 “Oh my God, when can you fix it?
0:07:35 Like what do we do?”
0:07:37 And he said, what he started to figure out
0:07:40 is what they’re really saying is a very human thing,
0:07:42 which is, “I don’t want to be me anymore.
0:07:44 Like I don’t want to be me anymore.
0:07:45 Like I can’t do it.
0:07:47 Like it’s all too heavy right now.
0:07:49 Like can I stop being me?
0:07:50 Can I look different than me?
0:07:52 Can I, because maybe if I look different than me,
0:07:54 I’ll feel different than me.
0:07:55 And maybe I’ll do things differently
0:07:57 than the way I’ve been doing them.”
0:08:01 And I think that’s so human, you know, to say.
0:08:02 And that’s the same thing about,
0:08:03 “Okay, that’s it, I’m just going to move.
0:08:03 I’m going to move.
0:08:04 I’m going to move.”
0:08:07 I’m just as guilty of this as anyone.
0:08:09 When I’ve had a really stressful, difficult week
0:08:12 carrying all of my clients chaos and stress
0:08:14 and there’s just bombs falling from the sky
0:08:15 constantly in my line of work.
0:08:17 I go, “That’s it, I quit.
0:08:17 I’m done.
0:08:17 I’m done.
0:08:19 I’m just going to do media stuff.
0:08:20 I’m just going to write books.
0:08:21 I’m not practicing law anymore.
0:08:23 I’m never setting foot in the courtroom again.
0:08:23 Mic drop.
0:08:24 I’m out.”
0:08:27 And the reality is, I’m tired.
0:08:28 I’m just tired.
0:08:32 Like, or, okay, if it’s true that I’m at a place
0:08:34 where I’m transitioning it, then just cut back.
0:08:36 You don’t have to cut all your hair off.
0:08:39 And I said to my friend as the hairdresser,
0:08:40 so now what do you do?
0:08:42 Do you try to talk them out of it?
0:08:43 And he said, “No.”
0:08:45 He said, “I kind of play a trick.”
0:08:49 He’s like, “I do something a little different,
0:08:50 but not so different.”
0:08:53 And then I play up in my reaction to it,
0:08:55 like, “Oh, I love it like this.
0:08:56 Look at how it’s so nice.
0:08:58 I didn’t take as much as you said,
0:08:59 but I think this is really…”
0:09:02 And he said, “And very often they’re thrilled.”
0:09:04 Like, they just go, “Oh, yeah, this is great.”
0:09:06 Because it was symbolic.
0:09:08 Like, it was a symbolic thing for them
0:09:10 that, “No, I’m going to do something different
0:09:12 and I’m going to look a little different
0:09:13 when I look in the mirror.
0:09:14 And when I look in the mirror,
0:09:17 it’s going to remind me to be different.”
0:09:19 But that’s inside of you.
0:09:20 Like, I mean, for me,
0:09:24 we wake up every single day
0:09:26 and decide to be who we are
0:09:28 or to continue being who we are.
0:09:32 And one of the reasons why this is always so present
0:09:35 in my mind is because as a divorce lawyer,
0:09:38 people have this very clear image
0:09:40 of who they are and what their life’s going to be
0:09:41 and very intentionally,
0:09:43 they went and put on the white dress and the tuxedo
0:09:44 and they took the vows and they were like,
0:09:46 “This is the path. This is the path.
0:09:50 I’m taking this path and this is who I am.
0:09:53 I’m Bob’s wife or I’m Jen’s husband
0:09:55 and I’m going to be a mom or I’m going to be a dad
0:09:56 and I’m going to, this is what I’m going to do.”
0:09:59 And then it blows up, whether it’s five years later,
0:10:00 10 years later, 20 years later,
0:10:03 when the kids go off to college, whatever it might be.
0:10:06 And then what they’re really struggling with is,
0:10:09 “Wait, who am I? Who am I now?
0:10:10 Like the barns burned down.
0:10:12 Like what do I do? Like what?
0:10:15 I’m not Bob’s wife, then what am I?
0:10:16 You know, I’m Bob’s ex-wife?
0:10:18 That’s a terrible thing to be.
0:10:20 I don’t want to be defined by what I’m not anymore
0:10:21 and used to be, you know?
0:10:23 So what do I, who am I now?
0:10:28 And, you know, watching people over the course
0:10:31 of their divorce navigate that
0:10:35 is one of the most inspirational things in the world
0:10:38 because people are so much stronger
0:10:40 and more resilient than they give themselves credit for
0:10:42 when they’re in the crisis of it.
0:10:45 Was there ever a particular case that
0:10:49 you think about that broke your heart?
0:10:52 You didn’t try to make me cry again, Stephen.
0:10:53 This feels unfair.
0:10:54 No, it’s interesting because I didn’t,
0:10:57 our conversation last time was so interesting
0:10:59 because we spoke so matter of fact
0:11:02 about the subject of love and marriage.
0:11:05 And then for me to also learn at the same time
0:11:07 that you are a deeply emotional person,
0:11:08 what is the one case?
0:11:14 I’ve had a few.
0:11:16 I mean, one of them I wrote about in my book
0:11:19 which was I represented,
0:11:21 it was a case that I won that I should have lost.
0:11:24 I was, I represented a pimp.
0:11:26 That’s what he did for a living.
0:11:32 And he owned a variety of illegal businesses.
0:11:34 He’s in prison for a long time now.
0:11:39 But at the time he had very brutally abused
0:11:41 a woman who he had children with
0:11:45 and we went to, there was a family court proceeding.
0:11:48 And the lawyer on the other side of the case,
0:11:52 the lawyer who represented his co-parent,
0:11:56 his victim, if you will, was very inexperienced.
0:11:58 She was an assigned lawyer.
0:12:00 So I was privately paid as I am.
0:12:02 And she was assigned by the state.
0:12:04 So she was getting I think at the time $25 an hour,
0:12:07 something like that versus my $750 an hour.
0:12:11 And she was quite new as a lawyer.
0:12:12 She was right out of school.
0:12:15 She wasn’t quite sure of what to do and how to do it.
0:12:18 And I was fairly experienced.
0:12:22 It was a perfect storm of like the worst factors of the system.
0:12:26 It was someone who could afford a very good lawyer,
0:12:28 against someone who couldn’t afford a good lawyer
0:12:30 and therefore got an inexperienced lawyer
0:12:34 that wasn’t terribly sure of themselves in a courtroom.
0:12:37 And a judge who was very impatient,
0:12:39 who just was in a bad mood that day,
0:12:41 I don’t know what he had for breakfast or what it was,
0:12:42 but he was an older judge.
0:12:44 He’d been on the bench for probably too long.
0:12:45 He retired a few years later.
0:12:49 The key piece of evidence they had was a photograph
0:12:52 of the way that my client, of this woman’s face
0:12:55 after my client had allegedly beat her up quite badly.
0:12:59 And getting a photograph into evidence is very easy.
0:13:02 But it requires a very specific phrasing.
0:13:04 So what you say is,
0:13:07 “I’d like this to be marked for identification.”
0:13:10 You mark the photo and then you hand it to the witness
0:13:12 or you hand it to the court officer who hands it to the witness
0:13:15 and you say, “I’m showing you what’s been marked
0:13:17 as petitioners one for identification.”
0:13:19 Do you recognize that?
0:13:19 Yes.
0:13:21 What do you recognize it to be?
0:13:22 It’s a photograph.
0:13:27 Does that photograph fairly and accurately depict your face
0:13:29 after he beat you up?
0:13:31 Or does it accurately reflect your face
0:13:33 on the date you’ve been discussing?
0:13:34 Yes.
0:13:36 Your Honor, I’d like it put into evidence.
0:13:36 That’s it.
0:13:37 It’s easy.
0:13:40 Does it fairly and accurately depict?
0:13:44 For whatever reason, most likely lack of experience,
0:13:45 opposing counsel,
0:13:48 I guess didn’t know how to get a photograph into evidence.
0:13:51 Now, normally in that situation,
0:13:53 a judge will be helpful.
0:13:56 Like they will just jump in and say,
0:13:58 “Ma’am, does this fairly…”
0:14:00 But this judge was just not in the mood.
0:14:03 And opposing counsel said,
0:14:05 “I’d like this to be marked.”
0:14:07 And then she said, “Could you hand it to the witness?”
0:14:09 And she said, “What is that a photo of?”
0:14:10 So I did my job.
0:14:11 I said, “Objection.”
0:14:14 She’s asking about the contents of a document, not in evidence,
0:14:16 which is my job.
0:14:19 Judge said, “Sustained.”
0:14:21 Which means?
0:14:23 Which means my objection is correct.
0:14:25 So she said, “Okay, I’m sorry.
0:14:27 Who took this photo?”
0:14:31 And she said, “I don’t know who took it.”
0:14:34 She says, “Okay, well, what is it a photo of?”
0:14:36 Stood up again.
0:14:36 Objection.
0:14:39 Asking about the contents of a document, not in evidence.
0:14:44 And I could see opposing counsel getting flustered
0:14:45 because she didn’t know the words.
0:14:50 And my internal dialogue at that moment was,
0:14:52 “Just say it.
0:14:53 Like, just get it right.
0:14:54 Like, just say it.
0:14:55 Just say it.
0:14:56 Does it fairly and accurately depict?
0:14:57 Does it just say it?”
0:15:01 Like, and I remember looking at the judge and thinking,
0:15:03 like, “You’re letting this happen.
0:15:06 You’re letting this happen.
0:15:06 Don’t let this happen.”
0:15:08 Like, she’s poor.
0:15:12 She’s poor.
0:15:14 That’s why she’s going to lose.
0:15:16 She’s going to lose because she’s poor.
0:15:18 And she can’t afford a lawyer.
0:15:20 And he’s going to win because he can’t afford a lawyer
0:15:22 that knows how to put a document into evidence.
0:15:24 And there’s something really wrong about that.
0:15:27 And the judge didn’t.
0:15:29 The judge just let her drown.
0:15:31 And she asked three or four more questions
0:15:32 that were the wrong questions.
0:15:37 And then she just said, “I don’t know.
0:15:38 I don’t know what to say.
0:15:38 I’m sorry.”
0:15:39 And then she just sat down.
0:15:42 And the case got dismissed.
0:15:44 And we walked out.
0:15:50 And as we walked out, my client patted me on the back.
0:15:53 And he said, “You know, a good lawyer is better
0:15:54 than 20 stick-up men.”
0:16:01 And I remember thinking, “This is not a good day.
0:16:02 It’s not a good day.”
0:16:07 And that case, that was a long time ago.
0:16:12 And it still stayed with me because it was, I did my job.
0:16:15 And I, you know, I represent my client,
0:16:16 but I also represent the system.
0:16:19 And I don’t always believe in my client,
0:16:20 but I have to believe in the system.
0:16:23 And I have to believe that I am not
0:16:27 it’s not my right to judge people’s case.
0:16:28 It’s the judge’s right.
0:16:30 Like, I believe in this system.
0:16:32 I believe in the adversarial system.
0:16:37 But watching someone lose who shouldn’t lose
0:16:41 and winning when you know you shouldn’t win
0:16:43 does not feel good in this line of work.
0:16:46 Would you take that case again?
0:16:50 Exact same case, exact same person, exact same scenario.
0:16:52 You’re asked to go and do it again tomorrow.
0:16:54 Same opposition lawyer.
0:16:55 I would, yeah.
0:16:57 Well, first of all, it’s many years later
0:16:58 and I still know that lawyer.
0:17:00 She’s actually become a really good one.
0:17:01 And I’m really proud of that.
0:17:03 If she was equally inexperienced, the same woman,
0:17:07 the same circumstances, the same victim.
0:17:11 You know, if I knew it was going to go that way,
0:17:13 I probably, I would turn it down.
0:17:14 I mean, I turned down a lot of cases.
0:17:19 I don’t actually know if today I would represent him anymore.
0:17:21 It’s a hard question for me to answer.
0:17:26 See, I think you don’t always, you don’t know in the consultation.
0:17:30 And like, it’s not like this guy came into my office
0:17:32 and said, yeah, I beat this woman terribly.
0:17:35 Would you retain, would you represent me?
0:17:37 Like, that’s very different.
0:17:39 No one’s ever done that in my, in my office.
0:17:42 Like he came in and he said, yeah, she’s accusing me
0:17:43 of all these horrible things.
0:17:45 I didn’t do any of it.
0:17:46 But you knew he did.
0:17:48 In my gut, I think I knew he did.
0:17:49 Yeah. The more I got to know him.
0:17:51 I mean, in a consultation, you don’t know.
0:17:53 Like in a job interview, you don’t know what kind of employee
0:17:56 somebody’s going to be, you know, sitting across from someone
0:17:59 in a one hour consultation, most of the time I’m talking,
0:18:01 telling them about their rights and obligations
0:18:03 and how the legal process works.
0:18:04 Like I don’t really get to know them.
0:18:07 But throughout the process, I started to figure out like,
0:18:09 yeah, there’s, this guy did this.
0:18:12 You said you turned down a lot of cases at, you know, these days.
0:18:12 Yeah.
0:18:15 What are the kind of cases that you would absolutely turn down
0:18:16 irrespective of remuneration?
0:18:20 I turned down cases where I feel like the person,
0:18:22 I mean, a lot of times I turn down cases
0:18:23 that I don’t think they need me.
0:18:27 Like I don’t think you need to bring a gun to a knife fight.
0:18:29 Like I think if you can do it with a scalpel,
0:18:30 don’t use a chainsaw.
0:18:31 And I’m a chainsaw.
0:18:33 So like, don’t, you don’t need me.
0:18:40 And so I, I, I’m very honest with people about you don’t need me.
0:18:42 I’m not the right tool for the task.
0:18:44 But there are a lot of cases I turned down
0:18:46 that I think people are using.
0:18:48 They want to weaponize the legal system
0:18:52 to punish their ex for their transgressions real and perceived.
0:18:55 Like they want to, their spouse was cheating on them
0:18:57 and they want to just litigate them into submission.
0:19:00 They want them, force them to spend a million dollars
0:19:02 in counsel fees by making ridiculous motions
0:19:06 and by minimizing, you know, their access to the kids
0:19:08 and making them fight for every single hour of visitation
0:19:09 they get with the kids.
0:19:12 Like I, I’m not interested in being a weapon
0:19:14 that’s used for, for that purpose.
0:19:19 Presumably sometimes your job is to get custody of kids.
0:19:19 All the time.
0:19:23 Which means that you’re basically taking children away from a parent.
0:19:25 You can look at it that way.
0:19:26 It’s a harsh way to say it.
0:19:28 But yeah, I’m jokingly said that before,
0:19:30 because when my kids were little,
0:19:32 and they would have those like, you know,
0:19:33 bring your dad to school day.
0:19:37 And you know, it was like, oh, this is my dad.
0:19:39 He’s a firefighter and this is my dad.
0:19:40 He’s a doctor.
0:19:41 And I always felt like my sons were like,
0:19:42 this is my dad.
0:19:44 He’s the reason why your firefighter dad only sees you
0:19:45 on alternate weekends.
0:19:48 You know, and that felt a little strange, you know.
0:19:49 And there were times where actually I,
0:19:51 my kids were in school with people whose divorces
0:19:54 I had handled, you know, their parents.
0:20:00 But yeah, I think I do have a tremendous impact on,
0:20:01 on people’s access to their children,
0:20:02 both positive and negative.
0:20:05 Like I help, I help people get access to children
0:20:07 that’s being withheld from them.
0:20:11 I help people address parental alienation
0:20:12 and negative gatekeeping,
0:20:15 the kinds of things that are really becoming
0:20:18 much more insidious and prevalent in our culture,
0:20:21 where, where people are using children,
0:20:24 essentially as weapons against their ex who they’re mad at.
0:20:27 I mean, look, breakups on any level are difficult, you know,
0:20:30 and there’s usually hurt feelings and anger in a breakup.
0:20:32 And I don’t think that’s abnormal.
0:20:33 Like I think you lose someone,
0:20:36 whether it’s to death or whether it’s to divorce
0:20:36 or just to split up.
0:20:38 There’s some anger, you know, there’s resentment.
0:20:39 Why don’t you love me?
0:20:41 Why don’t you love me the way I love you?
0:20:42 Why don’t you want to be with me anymore?
0:20:43 What does this say about me?
0:20:44 Does this mean I’m a bad person
0:20:46 because you don’t want to be with me anymore?
0:20:48 Like this, these are really universal themes.
0:20:51 Like there’s almost no one in the world in any culture
0:20:53 that if you go to them, breakups that they don’t go,
0:20:55 you know, they get it.
0:20:56 Like they get it.
0:20:57 My friend’s going through a breakup at the moment.
0:21:00 He’s been with his partner for many, many years.
0:21:02 And I, when he sent me the voice note explaining
0:21:04 like we’ve been together eight years,
0:21:05 we’ve kind of broken up four times.
0:21:10 But he’s being broken up with.
0:21:13 So he’s the, he’s the sort of victim per se.
0:21:13 And-
0:21:14 Which is the better one to be.
0:21:15 Really?
0:21:15 Oh yeah.
0:21:17 You want someone to break up with you?
0:21:19 Oh, I mean, well, here’s what I’ll say.
0:21:22 Because I’m, I have something of a PhD in this one.
0:21:26 I have to say when someone has been broken up with,
0:21:27 there’s a tremendous amount,
0:21:30 unless it was by some patently awful behavior, you know,
0:21:33 like they got caught with the girlfriend or the boyfriend,
0:21:36 red-handed, like then it’s no one’s going to give you much sympathy.
0:21:38 But if someone dumps you,
0:21:40 like it’s not, it’s not me.
0:21:41 It’s you.
0:21:42 Like they just dump you.
0:21:46 There’s a tremendous amount of sympathy.
0:21:46 Like if somebody called,
0:21:48 if I called you and I said,
0:21:49 “Dude, I just got broken up with.”
0:21:51 You’d be like, “Oh, May, come on, man.
0:21:52 Let’s, let’s go out.
0:21:53 Let’s, that’s tough, man.
0:21:54 We’ve all been there.
0:21:56 Like don’t tell, you know, what happened.”
0:21:59 But when you break up with someone,
0:22:03 there’s only so much sympathy people will give you.
0:22:04 Because, you know, well, we broke up.
0:22:07 And if you’re so upset about it, get back.
0:22:08 What did you do it for then?
0:22:10 Like you, whereas sometimes, you know,
0:22:13 you’re just the one who called it.
0:22:16 Like it’s not, it wasn’t a happy relationship.
0:22:19 It wasn’t like you’re sad that it had to end.
0:22:21 You know, like I didn’t want to break up.
0:22:24 I wanted the relationship to stay good.
0:22:25 And it didn’t.
0:22:27 So one of us has to be the grown up and say,
0:22:30 “Okay, this thing’s over now.”
0:22:32 But I think that person actually sometimes deserves,
0:22:35 you know, just as much sympathy as someone who got dumped.
0:22:37 Because they’re both someone
0:22:38 who’s experiencing a loss of sorts.
0:22:41 Even if it’s a loss that, it’s like, you know,
0:22:42 I mean, it’s a terrible metaphor.
0:22:45 But if someone said to you, “I have lung cancer,”
0:22:47 you would go, “Oh my God, that’s horrible.
0:22:48 Like, are you okay?”
0:22:50 If someone said, “Well, I was a smoker for 50 years
0:22:51 and I got lung cancer.”
0:22:53 It’s not like you go, “Well, what did you think?
0:22:55 I mean, of course you’re still going to go.
0:22:56 Oh my God, that’s terrible.”
0:22:57 It’s not like you deserve it.
0:23:00 It’s, I mean, yes, it’s shocking.
0:23:02 It’s not as shocking if you’ve been smoking for 50 years.
0:23:04 But it’s still quite sad.
0:23:07 And it’s still a journey this person’s going to have to go through.
0:23:07 So it’s the same thing.
0:23:09 It’s like, I just went through a breakup.
0:23:11 Well, who’s, who picked,
0:23:12 who decided to break up with who
0:23:15 before I tell you if I feel bad for you or not?
0:23:17 Like, I don’t think that’s a fair way to approach a breakup.
0:23:18 A lot of people want to own it.
0:23:19 They want to own it.
0:23:20 They want to say that they broke up with them, right?
0:23:21 As well, because that-
0:23:22 That’s very popular.
0:23:24 Well, there’s something empowering about it.
0:23:25 Yeah, it was my decision.
0:23:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:23:28 Or the like, well, I’m glad they did.
0:23:30 Because I’ll tell you the truth, I was about to.
0:23:31 I was about to break up with that person.
0:23:33 You know, yeah, that’s very common.
0:23:35 I think that’s a pride thing, though.
0:23:39 Because, you know, there’s something about the rejection
0:23:44 of it’s, you know, a great example of this for me,
0:23:48 which is very, it’s always vexed me professionally.
0:23:52 So a lot of people, I’ve handled a lot of divorces where someone
0:23:57 breaks up with in a heterosexual marriage
0:24:00 because they are coming out as gay or lesbian.
0:24:03 Okay, so they end the relationship.
0:24:05 So in the heterosexual example,
0:24:08 man and a woman are married to each other for a period of time.
0:24:12 And the man says, I’m ending things with you because I’m gay.
0:24:15 I’ve realized that I’m gay and I’d like to live my life as a gay man.
0:24:21 My thinking, as someone who’s never had that happen to me,
0:24:24 my thinking, and perhaps it’s naive,
0:24:27 like my experience has taught me that maybe I’m just strange,
0:24:28 which I kind of knew.
0:24:30 But this is another example of it.
0:24:34 If a woman broke up with me
0:24:41 and said, I’m breaking up with you because I’d like another man better than you.
0:24:44 That’s very hard to swallow.
0:24:47 It’s like, I want one like you, but better than you.
0:24:49 Whereas if she said, I’m leaving you
0:24:51 because I’d like to go be with a woman now.
0:24:55 It’s like, well, I mean, I don’t have that.
0:24:57 Like I can’t give you that.
0:24:58 It’s not like I want someone who’s a better dancer.
0:25:00 I want someone who’s funnier.
0:25:03 I want someone who has different parts than you.
0:25:04 And okay.
0:25:08 I mean, that feels a little less like you’re not rejecting me necessarily.
0:25:12 You’re rejecting my entire sort of gender.
0:25:13 You’re basically saying this isn’t who I want.
0:25:16 The opposite actually happens.
0:25:23 Those are some of the most brutal and vitriolic, awful divorces you could possibly imagine.
0:25:26 And they’ve actually gotten worse over the span of my career.
0:25:29 Because over the 25-year span of my career,
0:25:32 when I started, when someone said,
0:25:35 okay, my husband is leaving because he’s gay,
0:25:37 and now he’s going to live as a gay man,
0:25:40 it was actually okay to then say, yeah,
0:25:42 and he’s a pervert and a horrible human being.
0:25:47 And because there was just such a widespread homophobia at the time.
0:25:48 I mean, you know, Will and Grace,
0:25:50 like Will couldn’t even kiss his boyfriend on TV.
0:25:52 He wouldn’t really even have a boyfriend.
0:25:56 It was like so, you know, young people today have no idea
0:26:00 how in my lifetime that has changed so much.
0:26:01 Not to say there isn’t still homophobia.
0:26:04 Not that there’s still not heteronormativity.
0:26:06 But the reality has changed tremendously.
0:26:08 The boots on the ground reality.
0:26:12 Now, if your spouse leaves you for,
0:26:16 if I was married and my spouse left me for a woman,
0:26:19 and I’m upset about it,
0:26:23 I’m opening myself to an accusation of being homophobic.
0:26:28 And the truth is, like, no, whoever she’s leaving me for,
0:26:29 it’s really upsetting.
0:26:33 Or whoever she’s been sleeping with, male, female, anything,
0:26:35 it’s upsetting because they’re with another person.
0:26:40 So I think there is, in that phenomenon of people’s breakups,
0:26:43 the sense of like, well, I was going to break up with them anyway,
0:26:45 is like a pride thing.
0:26:50 I think there is a tremendous amount of stuff
0:26:53 that we carry around when it comes to those breakups.
0:26:55 I’ve always wondered what heartbreak actually is.
0:26:58 Because I flip between thinking, okay,
0:26:59 it’s like you mentioned the word rejection.
0:27:01 Is it a blow to our self-esteem?
0:27:05 Is it the loss of a future that we had like built in our head?
0:27:06 Yes.
0:27:07 If you can understand what it is,
0:27:10 I was thinking, how do I give my friend advice on it?
0:27:13 Then I know what the advice should be or the support should be.
0:27:15 Because if it’s a loss of this future,
0:27:17 then okay, I know, I’ll say this.
0:27:20 If it’s his self-esteem, okay, I’ll boost his self-esteem.
0:27:20 Yeah.
0:27:22 So I think it’s all of those things.
0:27:24 But I think it’s an ending.
0:27:26 And I think that endings are hard.
0:27:30 I think that saying to what I always try to do
0:27:32 when I have friends going through a breakup
0:27:36 and even with clients is that every beginning
0:27:39 is born of some other beginning’s end.
0:27:43 So we talked about this the last time we sat down together,
0:27:47 where I said that I only got Kaba because Buster died.
0:27:48 Which is your dogs?
0:27:49 Yeah.
0:27:52 My dog that passed away 13, 14 years ago
0:27:53 and my dog that’s now 13 years old.
0:27:58 And one, I only got one because the other died.
0:28:01 And I love both of those dogs so much.
0:28:04 But if I’m being honest, I guess I have to say,
0:28:09 I’m glad that I lost Buster so that I could have Kaba.
0:28:11 That sounds terrible.
0:28:13 Because I don’t mean it like, oh, I’m glad that he did.
0:28:16 But death, like that ending was part of life.
0:28:19 Just, and it made room for the beginning of the next thing.
0:28:22 And what I always try to focus my clients on
0:28:26 is that this relationship is ending.
0:28:30 And there has to be honoring that,
0:28:34 mourning that, feeling that, seeing it as the transition
0:28:37 that it is, grieving the loss of it.
0:28:40 But also realizing that every ending
0:28:41 is the beginning of the next thing.
0:28:45 And there has to be an ending for the next thing to come
0:28:47 and for the next beginning to happen.
0:28:53 And I have now watched that cycle for thousands of clients
0:28:57 over a span of 25 years where their life is ending.
0:28:59 Who they, I was this person’s husband.
0:29:01 I was this person’s wife.
0:29:05 I was a dad who lived with his kids full time
0:29:08 that had them every Thanksgiving, not every other Thanksgiving.
0:29:10 That I had them every Christmas Eve,
0:29:13 not alternate years in even years they’re with me
0:29:14 and odd years they’re with her.
0:29:16 Like, what are you talking about?
0:29:19 Like, this was who I am, who I’m dying.
0:29:21 Like, who I am is dying.
0:29:23 And I don’t know who I’ll be next.
0:29:28 And when you’re in that, right?
0:29:30 And when it’s your first divorce, it’s not mine,
0:29:32 but it’s yours, you know?
0:29:34 It’s very hard to see.
0:29:38 Like, just like when someone dies, you know,
0:29:41 when Buster died, I said it last time.
0:29:45 I said, I will never do this again.
0:29:47 I will never love anything like this ever again.
0:29:50 I’ll never let my heart be broken like this again.
0:29:53 I’ll never open myself up like this again, ever, never.
0:29:54 This is the worst pain.
0:29:56 Why would I ever do this?
0:29:58 Loving anything is stupid.
0:29:59 It’s insane.
0:30:02 You’re opening yourself up to the inevitability of loss.
0:30:03 And yet,
0:30:09 Kaba was such a joy.
0:30:12 And now, I’m near the end of that.
0:30:13 And what do you do?
0:30:18 Well, I like to believe that now I’m not saying
0:30:21 that’s not going to be as painful when it happens.
0:30:21 It will be.
0:30:25 But I no longer believe the world is ending.
0:30:29 Like, I understand that, like, the beauty of who he is
0:30:33 was born of the emptiness that had to be created
0:30:35 by the loss of Buster.
0:30:36 Like, I understand that now.
0:30:42 And so, like I said, will I do it again?
0:30:44 There’s going to be a period of time where I’ll say no way.
0:30:45 And same thing with love.
0:30:46 Like, people get divorced.
0:30:49 I had a client last week say to me,
0:30:52 they’re right kind of in the middle of their divorce.
0:30:56 And I said, you know, 86% of people are remarried
0:30:57 within five years of their divorce.
0:31:00 And they said, oh, I am never doing that.
0:31:01 Are you kidding?
0:31:03 I am never doing this again.
0:31:05 And every time they say that, I laugh.
0:31:08 Because I think to myself, I’m like, you’re so wrong.
0:31:09 And I get it.
0:31:10 Like, you don’t see it right now.
0:31:13 Like, right now, I know you think that’s true.
0:31:15 Like, but you will love again.
0:31:17 And you will, when you love again,
0:31:19 like, you will feel it.
0:31:20 And you will be in it.
0:31:24 And you will go, oh, and this one’s perfect.
0:31:25 And this is great.
0:31:26 Like, I’ve done divorces for people
0:31:28 that spent a million dollars in counsel fees
0:31:30 and went through absolute hell.
0:31:32 And when they’re about to get remarried,
0:31:34 I go, you know, we should do your prenup
0:31:36 so that you don’t ever have to do that again.
0:31:38 Like, I’ll do it for free if you want.
0:31:39 Like, let’s just do it.
0:31:42 And they go, no, no, no, this, this is real.
0:31:43 This is real.
0:31:46 And I sit there and I think, like, oh my god,
0:31:48 you’ve just, you’ve learned nothing at all.
0:31:50 That was real too, until it wasn’t.
0:31:54 Like, but, but this is, you know, perhaps, you know,
0:31:56 love is a delusion brought on by inadequate lighting.
0:31:57 I don’t know.
0:32:01 But there’s, there’s something in us that, you know,
0:32:02 feels that pain.
0:32:04 And then there’s something in us that forgets that pain.
0:32:06 And I think that that, you know, that’s a good thing.
0:32:07 That’s a good cycle.
0:32:09 I think life is a game you can’t win.
0:32:13 And so you play it to the utmost.
0:32:16 To love anything is insane because you are accepting
0:32:17 that you’re going to lose it.
0:32:18 It’s a quote you said.
0:32:21 You think life is a game you can’t win?
0:32:24 Yeah, I don’t think there’s any winning.
0:32:25 You die.
0:32:28 Like, that’s the only truth.
0:32:34 The only, you know, it, every story, you know,
0:32:35 starts the same.
0:32:36 You were born.
0:32:39 Like, every Wikipedia page starts the same.
0:32:40 They were born.
0:32:44 And every Wikipedia page will end exactly the same.
0:32:45 They died.
0:32:46 That’s it.
0:32:48 Everything that happens in between is your life.
0:32:51 But those are the only two inevitabilities.
0:32:54 Those are the only two real things for certain.
0:32:57 So I look at it as it’s a game you can’t win,
0:33:01 meaning if you pursue money,
0:33:05 like your money will eventually be useless.
0:33:07 The things you accumulate with it will be useless.
0:33:09 Every car you own, someone else will either own it.
0:33:12 Some day it’ll get to the scrap junkyard someday
0:33:13 or it’ll give it to somebody.
0:33:15 Like, it’s all your material possessions
0:33:16 will be utterly meaningless.
0:33:19 Like, we all went through this when the COVID lockdowns first started.
0:33:21 Everybody was like, you know, I’ve got all this money
0:33:22 and I’ve got all these travel vouchers
0:33:23 and they’re like, yeah, you can’t go anywhere now.
0:33:25 And it’s like, oh, okay.
0:33:26 Well, what do I, you know,
0:33:28 you started to see the limitations of things.
0:33:30 Have the power go out in your house sometime.
0:33:32 And it’ll remind you that like, oh, wait.
0:33:34 Yeah, like everything I have,
0:33:36 I just have like this much of a grip on it.
0:33:38 All you got to do is just take that away
0:33:40 and it’s gone and that’s, that’s it, you know.
0:33:42 And it’s the same thing with our health.
0:33:45 It’s the same thing with, you know, everything like,
0:33:48 everything is totally fine and wonderful.
0:33:50 And then you have a terrible splitting headache.
0:33:53 And then the only thing that matters is that headache, you know.
0:33:54 And then that headache goes away.
0:33:59 And for like a day, you go, I don’t have that headache anymore.
0:34:02 But did you wake up today and go, I don’t have a headache.
0:34:04 Oh, and the power’s on.
0:34:05 Isn’t that great?
0:34:07 You know, and I don’t have cancer.
0:34:08 Isn’t that good?
0:34:09 You know, no, you don’t.
0:34:11 You walk around going like, oh, you know, I really, why aren’t,
0:34:13 why aren’t my page views where they’re at?
0:34:14 Or what happened with this?
0:34:16 And why did that person be so nasty to me?
0:34:18 Like we get caught up in all this stuff.
0:34:21 When in fact, the only thing that, you know, again,
0:34:23 if you keep, you know,
0:34:25 Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher said,
0:34:29 like keep death and everything horrible in your line of sight.
0:34:30 Sort of Memento Mori.
0:34:33 Because nothing will bother you that much
0:34:34 if you have that there.
0:34:38 So I think life is a game that, look, we’re playing it.
0:34:39 We’re doing our thing.
0:34:41 Love is, but all love, all relationships end.
0:34:44 Every single marriage ends in death or divorce, but it ends.
0:34:46 Every relationship ends.
0:34:49 Your child, you will hopefully predecease your child,
0:34:50 but your child will die someday.
0:34:51 That’s the nature of it.
0:34:58 So we have created a culture where we really try not to talk about that.
0:35:00 We really try to just keep that out of our gaze.
0:35:02 Let’s not talk about it.
0:35:06 Our only depictions of death are preposterous.
0:35:09 They’re like the person in the death bed being like,
0:35:10 “I love you all.”
0:35:13 And then you just, beautiful.
0:35:14 You know, beautifully done.
0:35:16 Death doesn’t look like that.
0:35:19 If you ever spend time with people on their death bed,
0:35:22 I was a hospice volunteer for many, many years,
0:35:24 and I spent a lot of time with people who were dying,
0:35:26 actively dying.
0:35:27 And I have to tell you,
0:35:31 like you hang out with somebody and say, “It’s not pretty.
0:35:33 It doesn’t smell good.
0:35:36 It doesn’t sound good, but it’s real.
0:35:37 It’s natural. It’s okay.
0:35:38 It’s where it’s all going.”
0:35:41 And the reason why I say this is not to be morbid.
0:35:44 It’s that we’re doing ourselves a tremendous disservice
0:35:46 by not acknowledging this,
0:35:48 because I can tell you how many families
0:35:49 when I was a hospice volunteer,
0:35:53 when their family member, their loved one would die,
0:35:56 would say to me, “It’s not that they died.
0:35:57 It’s that they died terribly.
0:35:59 They died without dignity.”
0:36:02 And I would say to them, “No, they died like everyone dies.
0:36:03 Like, it’s okay.”
0:36:06 Just because it wasn’t like on TV,
0:36:09 where you, you know, like sort of fade out
0:36:11 and say a few final words and then fade out.
0:36:14 Like, no one, very few, if anyone dies that way.
0:36:15 It’s not how it works.
0:36:17 So we’re not doing anyone.
0:36:21 Like, this is the part I don’t understand,
0:36:24 is that we don’t want to talk about divorce.
0:36:27 You know, we don’t want to talk about death.
0:36:29 We don’t want to talk about endings,
0:36:31 because I think there’s something in our brain that says,
0:36:33 “If we talk about it, we’re going to make it happen.
0:36:36 And if we don’t talk about it, we’ll prevent it from happening.”
0:36:39 And that seems to me insane.
0:36:44 Because these are things that are absolutely inevitable
0:36:45 when it comes to death,
0:36:50 and highly likely when it comes to divorce.
0:36:53 So why not bring them back into the discourse?
0:36:53 And I’ll tell you the truth.
0:36:58 I think one of the reasons why my conversations
0:37:01 have become something people are interested in
0:37:04 is because I think we’re all fascinated by this,
0:37:06 but we don’t want to talk about it over dinner conversation.
0:37:08 And we don’t want to, you know,
0:37:10 but we know it’s important.
0:37:12 Something in us knows, knows it’s important.
0:37:14 Like, this is something that needs to be talked about
0:37:15 and thought about.
0:37:17 You did your thesis.
0:37:21 Your master’s thesis on the subject of death titled…
0:37:22 Well, you do your research.
0:37:25 On metaphor and mortality, the semantics of death and dying.
0:37:25 Yeah.
0:37:27 Why would you write your thesis on the subject of death?
0:37:29 Well, it was a different life.
0:37:31 So this is before I went to law school.
0:37:35 I had gotten out of college with a degree in psychology.
0:37:38 And I decided I wanted to…
0:37:40 I was a hospice volunteer.
0:37:40 I…
0:37:41 Why?
0:37:46 If that’s my therapist, that question.
0:37:48 I can give you the answer.
0:37:52 So I… When I was quite young,
0:37:55 I think I was about six or seven years old,
0:38:00 my mother was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer
0:38:01 called leomyo sarcoma.
0:38:03 It’s a soft tissue sarcoma.
0:38:05 And it’s very rare.
0:38:09 I was way too young to understand what was going on.
0:38:11 I just… I remember my mother crying…
0:38:14 The sound of my mother crying in the bathroom
0:38:17 and running the sink so I wouldn’t hear her crying.
0:38:19 But I knew she was crying.
0:38:21 And I didn’t really understand what death was.
0:38:23 Like, I understood that my gerbil had died.
0:38:26 But I grew up Catholic.
0:38:28 So I remember, like, you got to go to heaven
0:38:30 and that sounded pretty good
0:38:31 because it was like a really nice place, apparently.
0:38:36 And I remember hearing my mother talking on the phone
0:38:40 to her sister and talking about the fact that she had six months.
0:38:45 And I remember my sister, who’s six years older than me,
0:38:48 explaining to me that mom was sick and she wasn’t going to get better.
0:38:51 And I remember being so young
0:38:53 that I didn’t really understand what that meant,
0:38:55 but it was scary and everyone was very upset.
0:38:59 And then my mom didn’t die.
0:39:03 What had happened is, depending on how you looked at it,
0:39:06 either it was a miracle or it was science,
0:39:09 and that is that the tumors had encapsulated itself,
0:39:13 meaning that the immune system had essentially closed up around it
0:39:15 so it didn’t metastasize or spread in any way.
0:39:17 They went in, they did surgery,
0:39:20 Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and she was fine.
0:39:21 She was well.
0:39:25 And then five or six years later, it came back.
0:39:29 And again, I got told your mom has six months to live.
0:39:32 It’s at that point I was, like, old enough to understand what that meant.
0:39:35 And I was terrified by it.
0:39:36 I was saddened by it.
0:39:39 And once again, she had surgery.
0:39:44 She had all kinds of procedures and things that had to happen to deal with it.
0:39:48 But once again, she just miraculously sort of ducked a bullet and she made it.
0:39:51 And three years later, it came back again.
0:39:55 And then they said, you know, your mom has six months to live.
0:39:57 And I remember by that point thinking,
0:40:01 yeah, you don’t know how many times we’ve had this conversation.
0:40:03 Like, I don’t believe you anymore.
0:40:04 Like, and it’s okay.
0:40:07 Like, I’m not afraid because I’m not like, it’s not going to happen.
0:40:09 I know that something’s going to happen and it’ll work out.
0:40:10 And it did.
0:40:12 Once again, she had surgery again.
0:40:16 She had seven surgeries over the course of my into my 20s.
0:40:20 And every single time the prognosis was bad and every single time
0:40:24 they kind of took more pieces of her, unfortunately,
0:40:27 because the type of cancer this is sometimes gets into other organs.
0:40:31 And so they had to take, you know, they had to take ROVERYs,
0:40:33 forced her into metapause in her 30s.
0:40:37 Then they had to take, they had to change the way her had to do a bowel resection.
0:40:38 They had to do all kinds of awful things.
0:40:41 And, and it changed her.
0:40:43 It was a painful life for my mom.
0:40:44 It was very hard.
0:40:48 And I remember though, from a very young age,
0:40:50 being forced to think about death,
0:40:54 being forced to sort of see death as something that was just there
0:40:56 and that it was part of things and that there was no way around it.
0:41:00 And it, it just became familiar.
0:41:05 It became sort of this person in our home, you know,
0:41:07 this possibility that was always there.
0:41:12 And I remember every time I would get the call
0:41:15 that my mom’s cancer had come back,
0:41:18 there would be some part of me that thought,
0:41:19 Oh, is this the phone call?
0:41:23 Like, is this the one where this time she’s going to die?
0:41:24 Like, is this the one?
0:41:26 And most of the time it wasn’t.
0:41:30 And 10, yeah, 10 years ago,
0:41:35 once again, she had a recurrence.
0:41:38 She was supposed to have a very complex surgery.
0:41:41 My dad and I sat in the waiting room.
0:41:42 My parents were married for 50 years.
0:41:45 And we sat in the waiting room.
0:41:48 It was supposed to be an eight hour surgery because it was very complicated.
0:41:53 And the doctor came into the waiting room a half an hour into the surgery
0:41:56 and said, you know, we opened her up.
0:41:57 It’s like a bomb went off.
0:41:58 There’s nothing we can do.
0:42:01 We’re going to close her up and put her on hospice.
0:42:06 And she passed away eight years ago.
0:42:08 After, you know, she was on hospice for over a year.
0:42:11 And she died with us all around her.
0:42:19 And there was something about the reality that we had been able to talk about
0:42:23 death for so long that there was a tremendous piece there.
0:42:28 Like there was a tremendous sense of, well, this was going to happen.
0:42:31 You know, this was part of our life, you know,
0:42:32 that this was what was going to happen.
0:42:34 And she had a tremendous piece about her
0:42:37 because it had been part of her life for so long.
0:42:40 So when I was in my late teens,
0:42:43 I think my mom had had three or four rounds of this cancer thing.
0:42:49 I just remember thinking, I have to confront this.
0:42:51 I have to spend time around death.
0:42:53 You know, again, I’m strange.
0:42:55 You know, I was always afraid of spiders.
0:42:57 I didn’t like spiders when I was a kid.
0:42:59 So when I went off to college, I bought a tarantula
0:43:03 and I put it in a glass terrarium next to my bed.
0:43:04 So that every morning I would wake up
0:43:07 and there was just this giant spider sitting there next to me
0:43:09 and I’m not afraid of spiders anymore.
0:43:11 And it got rid of that very quickly.
0:43:13 And so I thought, you know,
0:43:15 this is something that’s been around me all the time
0:43:18 and it’s something I’m not quite at peace with.
0:43:19 So I’m going to confront it.
0:43:22 And I went and did a hospice volunteer training.
0:43:25 And I remember, you know, it was a weird thing for like a 20-year-old to do.
0:43:27 I had just gotten out of college.
0:43:28 I was 21.
0:43:31 And I think I was the only person under 60
0:43:32 who was in this volunteer training.
0:43:35 And hospice training, hospice volunteer training,
0:43:36 I would recommend to anyone
0:43:40 because they do things like they make you write your eulogy.
0:43:42 Your own eulogy.
0:43:43 Your own eulogy.
0:43:43 Yeah.
0:43:45 Yeah, they make you write your own eulogy.
0:43:48 Like, and it can either be if you died right now,
0:43:49 what would the eulogy be?
0:43:53 Or if you died in your idealized future, what would it be?
0:43:56 They make you write your own obituary.
0:44:00 Like they make you confront the reality of thinking about death
0:44:03 and thinking about your own death and death of the people around you.
0:44:08 And then after you’ve been through the training,
0:44:11 they assign you families.
0:44:17 And I intended initially just to do it as sort of a part-time thing
0:44:19 in the summer after I’d graduated college.
0:44:20 I was working as a waiter.
0:44:24 And I had a lot of time during the day because at night I was waiting tables.
0:44:29 And I got assigned to a bunch of families one at a time.
0:44:31 And I loved it.
0:44:36 It was the most life-changing thing I’ve ever done.
0:44:42 There is something about when you’re a hospice volunteer
0:44:46 and you’re just brought into a home and you’re just there to be of service.
0:44:49 If they want to talk, we’ll talk.
0:44:53 If you want me to help do the dishes so that you can hang out with your loved one,
0:44:54 that’s great.
0:44:54 I’ll do that.
0:44:56 I did yard work.
0:45:00 And a lot of times people because caring for someone who’s terminally ill
0:45:02 in your home is hard.
0:45:06 And things like I want to run out to the store and get a few things myself.
0:45:08 Like that’s hard because you don’t want to leave this person alone.
0:45:13 So a lot of times I was just there to sort of be relief just to sit with someone.
0:45:23 And every time I would walk out of a hospice home, I felt like,
0:45:26 I don’t know, I felt like a zen monk.
0:45:28 I felt like I could hear the rain.
0:45:32 I just felt like I’m alive.
0:45:36 Like that’s not happening to me yet.
0:45:38 Like I’m not there yet.
0:45:41 Like that’s not someone I love in that bed.
0:45:43 Like I have love for this person.
0:45:44 I want to be there for them.
0:45:45 I’m here of service, but that’s not my father.
0:45:46 That’s not my brother.
0:45:47 That’s not me.
0:45:49 It will be someday.
0:45:50 And one day it was.
0:45:51 One day it was my mother.
0:45:53 But it wasn’t me.
0:45:56 And I have to tell you there’s something about going through that experience
0:46:01 when you’re in your 20s, when you’re so self-centered and you’re supposed to be.
0:46:03 You’re kind of supposed to be self-centered and you’re supposed to say,
0:46:05 like, all right, what am I going to do with this life?
0:46:06 What am I going to do with these hands?
0:46:07 What do you mean?
0:46:11 But there is something about it, that stage in life to be told,
0:46:14 whatever you do with these hands, whatever you do with all this,
0:46:15 that’s where it’s going to end.
0:46:16 That’s where it’s going to end.
0:46:18 Best case scenario.
0:46:19 Best case scenario.
0:46:22 It’s going to be in your own home with your family around you.
0:46:27 Worst case scenario, it’s going to be on the street somewhere, be maturely, you know.
0:46:29 So I was fascinated with death.
0:46:32 And I decided I was going to go to graduate school
0:46:35 and I was going to study Thanatology.
0:46:36 I was going to study death and dying,
0:46:38 but there really aren’t any programs in that.
0:46:41 So I went to New York University’s Department of Culture and Communication.
0:46:47 And I found Neil Postman, Dr. Neil Postman, who was going to be my.
0:46:53 Because NYU, back then and still, it gives you a lot of opportunities
0:46:54 to kind of create your own curriculum.
0:46:57 As long as it’s something serious, you know, academically serious,
0:47:01 and as long as you can put together like an amalgam of classes from different disciplines,
0:47:04 they’ll let you put together something very individualized.
0:47:12 And so I put together a study about the cultural approaches we have to death and dying.
0:47:17 And my master’s degree thesis was called The Semantics of Mortality,
0:47:21 or I’m sorry, metaphor and mortality, The Semantics of Death and Dying,
0:47:24 and it was published in a journal called The Etcetera,
0:47:26 which is the Journal of General Semantics.
0:47:31 And what I did is I studied the words we use to talk about death
0:47:34 and what they reflect on how we think about death.
0:47:40 So like, you know, I remember when I was a kid and our dog,
0:47:44 when I was a child had to be euthanized.
0:47:46 I remember the doctor saying we’re going to put him to sleep.
0:47:48 And I remember thinking, no, you’re not, he’s going to die.
0:47:49 He’s not going to sleep.
0:47:51 Like, I’m going to go to sleep later.
0:47:53 Like, he’s not going to go to sleep.
0:47:54 He’s going to go to death.
0:47:57 Like, why are you calling it that?
0:47:59 And I understood why, obviously, as an adult.
0:48:03 Like, it’s A, in a primitive culture, someone, it’s an eternal sleep.
0:48:04 It looks like, I mean, you’re asleep.
0:48:05 You look like you’re dead, you know?
0:48:06 I’ve held a mirror under somebody.
0:48:07 You’re like, all right.
0:48:12 And I will, I understand where these, like doctors,
0:48:16 I explored doctors talking about we lost the patient.
0:48:17 Like, what, what, what?
0:48:18 You don’t know where he is?
0:48:20 Like, no, you, you know what Rumi said?
0:48:22 No, we lost the battle.
0:48:23 The battle against death.
0:48:25 You’re definitely going to lose that battle.
0:48:28 Like, that’s, they, the death’s record is amazing.
0:48:30 Death, death always wins.
0:48:34 Like, so if you’re setting it up for that battle,
0:48:36 like, that’s a, that’s a bad battle.
0:48:37 We just don’t want to confront it.
0:48:39 They’re doing, that’s the essence of why we use the words,
0:48:40 like, pass on, pass away.
0:48:45 Which is fascinating to me because it is the only certainty we have.
0:48:50 And we act as if we are certain it’s something bad.
0:48:56 When in fact, absolutely no one can say with certainty what it is
0:48:58 and what happens, except that it’s inevitable.
0:49:02 Having spoke to so many people in their final days, weeks and months
0:49:05 and final minutes, I’m really compelled to understand
0:49:08 what I can learn from them about how I should be living my life
0:49:13 based on the types of things they then say to you, focus on, prioritize.
0:49:16 Yeah, that’s, that is true.
0:49:18 Like, you can learn a tremendous amount from that.
0:49:20 And here’s what I will tell you I learned.
0:49:22 They don’t talk about death.
0:49:25 Like, you go through this hospice training where they’re,
0:49:28 they’re, they’re very much preparing you to talk with people
0:49:31 about their fear about their death or their imminence of their death.
0:49:35 And all people really want to talk about is their grandkids,
0:49:40 their kids, their wife, their husbands, what they did for a living
0:49:42 and what they liked about it.
0:49:45 Like most of the time people talk about like the things that made them happy.
0:49:49 Like I, I spent a lot of time just listening to people tell me about,
0:49:52 tell me happy stories about their life.
0:49:56 Tell me moments that, and it made a lot of sense to me.
0:49:58 Like it made a lot of sense to me.
0:50:03 Like if I said to you right now, like what are five moments in your life
0:50:09 where you just felt loved and happy, like you could stop and close your eyes
0:50:13 and, and, and there’d be like, and what a comfort it would be like to have those.
0:50:17 And every once in a while, like when you’re in that moment,
0:50:20 you go, I’m in one of those right now.
0:50:23 Like I’m going to remember this moment, you know.
0:50:25 And, but most of the time you don’t.
0:50:27 Like most of the time it just happens.
0:50:30 And then you look back and you go, God, remember that kiss, you know,
0:50:34 or remember that, you know, that meal or remember that.
0:50:35 And, and you don’t see it when it’s happening.
0:50:41 And that for me is, is what I really learned from doing hospice work,
0:50:45 was that like all these people wanted to tell me about was,
0:50:49 you know, when they were alive, like really alive,
0:50:50 not laying in a bed dying.
0:50:54 Like they want to talk about like, yeah, I did this or I saw that.
0:50:57 And, you know, I learned it in my mom’s passing.
0:51:01 I remember my last day with my mom before she became so ill
0:51:05 that she was not mobile and not, not really functional to have a discussion with.
0:51:09 I just remember we just sat there and I told her about like
0:51:11 how great my sons were doing her grandchildren,
0:51:12 how great they were doing.
0:51:20 And, and I talked about how happy I was and like just how great life is and how great I fit.
0:51:23 And I just remember like she just was, I remember thinking like,
0:51:25 oh, that’s what I would want.
0:51:28 Like I would want to know that like, yeah, you did it.
0:51:29 Like you did great.
0:51:32 Like look at, look at all this stuff that’s here because of you, you know.
0:51:39 And to me, like that, that’s what hospice work very much taught me was it taught me that, that
0:51:44 no one’s really going to care that much about, you know,
0:51:47 some of this stuff that seems so fucking important.
0:51:50 Like it’s just not that important.
0:51:54 Like, like the people talked about their kids.
0:51:55 They talked about their grandkids.
0:51:58 They talked about, you know, the love of their life.
0:52:04 Or if they, if they had survived that love and, and they, you know, they talked about how like,
0:52:08 oh, maybe, you know, maybe I’m going to get to see them again, you know.
0:52:15 And, and it’s very funny because I remember, I remember talking to someone a few years ago
0:52:21 and saying something about, oh, I wish my mom had been alive to see me do, you know, this thing.
0:52:25 And they said, oh, I, I, you know, I bet she’s seeing it.
0:52:28 Like I bet she’s seeing it from, you know, because this person was religious.
0:52:32 And I remember thinking, you know, I don’t believe that, but I really hope I’m wrong.
0:52:34 Like I really hope I’m wrong.
0:52:35 That would be amazing.
0:52:36 Like that’d be wonderful.
0:52:38 It’d be beautiful, you know.
0:52:43 So I think hospice, for me, the reason why I, I got into the hospice work,
0:52:46 the reason why my research interests became death related,
0:52:53 was that, that I just think life is better when you have those things
0:52:58 in front of you, when you, when you remind yourself of the inevitability of endings.
0:53:00 We’re just the imagination of ourselves.
0:53:03 Those are words that you said.
0:53:05 You said, we’re just the imagination of ourselves.
0:53:08 There’s nothing to be afraid of everything’s connected.
0:53:11 We’re just in one state of being now, and then we’ll be in a different state of being.
0:53:14 There’s probably a benevolent force out there.
0:53:19 That was something that came to me as a function of, of, of, of my,
0:53:24 my experiences with psychedelics very early in my life is, was that realization,
0:53:28 was the realization that everything is connected and that there is some benevolent
0:53:32 something underneath all of it and that there’s nothing to be afraid of.
0:53:37 And I think some of that was a function, of course, of, of growing up in an environment
0:53:40 where you couldn’t deny death, where it was sort of always present.
0:53:47 And perhaps that was on my mind at that stage in my life when, when I had those profound experiences.
0:53:49 But that stayed with me.
0:53:50 That’s never gone away.
0:53:56 That’s been very, very much a part of my view of things that, that,
0:54:02 that perhaps we are just one consciousness experience itself subjectively.
0:54:08 And that we, we are just, you know, I heard, was it Pete Holmes, the comedian recently talking
0:54:11 about how, you know, people say that like, oh, we came from nothing.
0:54:12 I don’t believe in God.
0:54:13 I believe in nothing.
0:54:15 And yeah, he has this whole bit of that.
0:54:16 I was like, really?
0:54:20 So like, instead of believing in God, which is something that you can’t touch,
0:54:23 can’t prove, can’t photograph, and science can’t prove or disprove.
0:54:26 You believe in nothing, which is something you can’t see, touch, feel.
0:54:27 Science can’t prove or disprove.
0:54:32 Like, so if you’re nothing just spontaneously, you know, creates everything,
0:54:33 that’s pretty impressive.
0:54:34 Nothing in this game of things.
0:54:38 So I think, I think that I am very much a believer in the fact.
0:54:42 I like to believe whatever the name of it is, whatever we want to call it.
0:54:47 Having spent a lot of time with hospice patients and having thought a lot about death.
0:54:54 I’d like to think that we, you know, we are drops of water and that when we die,
0:54:58 we return to the sea, that we just merge with our creator again.
0:55:03 And I’m not, I’m not really worried that Jim stops existing.
0:55:08 Like, because I don’t remember what I was before Jim.
0:55:12 So I have no reason to think it was something terrible.
0:55:15 And I don’t know what I’ll be after I’m Jim,
0:55:18 but I have no reason to think it’s going to be something terrible.
0:55:21 It could just as easily be, it’s going to be something fantastic.
0:55:26 And then I’m going to get there and go, what, what, why didn’t I get here sooner?
0:55:27 You know, and if there’s a God that he might grieve in me and be like,
0:55:30 yeah, why are you guys so fixated on not getting here?
0:55:31 It’s awesome.
0:55:36 You know, like that temporary thing, like there’s a reason why as an organism,
0:55:38 you’re supposed to just, there’s all these things that’ll kill you.
0:55:41 Like it’s supposed to be that that happens sooner rather than later.
0:55:45 But like that’s, it’s a very uncomfortable thought.
0:55:49 Like it’s an uncomfortable thought that like this might be hell.
0:55:53 Or this might be the part that we should be afraid of.
0:55:57 Like this might be the part that’s really hard.
0:56:02 Like maybe what’s before it and what’s after it’s really the easy part.
0:56:05 And what’s happening here is what’s challenging.
0:56:10 Like when someone dies, I’ve always thought to myself,
0:56:14 like when someone dies, like the people who suffer the living,
0:56:17 like the person who’s passed, they’re gone now.
0:56:18 That’s why I never believed in the death penalty.
0:56:23 Because they were like, we’re going to punish this person by, they’re going to die.
0:56:24 I’m like, well, my grandmother died.
0:56:26 I didn’t like to think that it was a punishment.
0:56:30 Like put them in a box, feed them terrible food.
0:56:32 That, that sounds like a punishment.
0:56:35 You know, like, you know, make them watch bad TV.
0:56:38 I don’t know something, but death, like death to me doesn’t,
0:56:40 I don’t like to think of death as punishment.
0:56:46 I, I, I’m enjoying this ride and I’m enjoying this body and I’m enjoying all of this.
0:56:48 But I’m not terrified of that.
0:56:50 I’m genuinely curious.
0:56:52 I’m genuinely curious.
0:56:56 And when the time comes, I want to face it with open,
0:56:58 with, you know, clean hands and an open heart.
0:57:03 Where does acceptance play in dealing with an ending?
0:57:05 Like how important is it to accept?
0:57:09 And when you, when you meet your clients as a divorce lawyer now,
0:57:14 is part of the suffering, the resistance to accept the situation?
0:57:15 Yes.
0:57:17 Even if it wasn’t your fault, because, you know,
0:57:21 this is sometimes people conflate this idea of acceptance with like,
0:57:23 you know, justification.
0:57:24 I’m not saying justification.
0:57:26 I’m saying accept this is the situation you find yourself in.
0:57:27 Yeah.
0:57:31 I think that’s very, very astute and very real.
0:57:33 I think there’s a step before acceptance.
0:57:35 So there’s a number of steps before acceptance,
0:57:37 but, but the first one is acknowledgement.
0:57:42 Like I think you have to acknowledge that something is happening before you can start,
0:57:46 because acceptance has to do with adjusting your emotional state and reaction to it,
0:57:49 changing the level of tension in your body about it.
0:57:51 You know, like every time I’ve ever gone to the dentist,
0:57:54 you know, there’s this part of me, it’s like, oh, here it comes.
0:57:55 Oh God, here it comes.
0:57:55 It’s gonna hurt.
0:57:56 Here it comes.
0:57:57 You know, and it’s like, I’m ready.
0:57:58 I’m bracing.
0:57:58 I’m bracing.
0:58:01 And I have to remind myself like, wait, stop.
0:58:02 Don’t do that.
0:58:04 Yeah, stop.
0:58:05 Soften.
0:58:05 Soften.
0:58:06 Soften.
0:58:07 Over and over.
0:58:08 Soften.
0:58:10 And it’s one of the reasons I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu,
0:58:14 because when you’re a white belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, everything is like
0:58:17 resisting everything, you know, trying to stop everything.
0:58:21 And, and then you, you start to learn like, oh, no, no, no, like soften,
0:58:24 like yield, like just, you know, protect the neck, move the hand.
0:58:25 Okay, go ahead.
0:58:26 Try and choke me.
0:58:27 Like you’re not going to do it.
0:58:34 Like, and, and there’s something about that, like not trying to resist the thing, but trust.
0:58:37 What you were saying there about trust in how natural
0:58:42 something is, but it’s acknowledging first, okay, here is the reality of my situation.
0:58:44 This marriage is ending.
0:58:51 Like there, there’s a, there’s a, a Zen parable or saying I heard many years ago,
0:58:59 which is if you don’t learn to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life
0:59:02 and precisely the same amount of snow.
0:59:07 Reality is reality.
0:59:10 Like I broke my favorite teacup.
0:59:13 I can be happy about that.
0:59:15 I can be angry about that.
0:59:16 I can be sad about that.
0:59:18 Either way, my teacup is gone.
0:59:19 It’s gone.
0:59:20 That’s it.
0:59:28 Like, and so I think that the acceptance piece first requires, okay, my life is finite.
0:59:30 My life is finite.
0:59:35 My marriage is not permanently gifted to me.
0:59:36 Love is not permanently gifted.
0:59:44 It is loaned, whether it’s the life of my, my life, the love of my dog, the love of my
0:59:46 romantic partner, the love of my children.
0:59:47 It is on loan to me.
0:59:49 It is not permanently gifted.
0:59:51 So that’s just acknowledgement first.
0:59:58 Then it’s not pulling from that, yielding from, like it’s, it’s about softening, softening and
1:00:02 realizing that, okay, so now what do I do with this?
1:00:03 Like, what do I do?
1:00:04 You know, there’s something about,
1:00:09 Mike, my therapist once said to me, we were talking about,
1:00:15 we were talking about like, resisting change in life.
1:00:18 I was going through a transition in life and, and I was having a hard time with it.
1:00:22 And he said, you know, he said, you’re very curious.
1:00:30 He said, you, you try to like, swim against the current and it’s not going to work.
1:00:36 Or you just let go and let yourself go with the current and that’s not going to work.
1:00:42 So you try to like, I’m going to be the ocean and that doesn’t work.
1:00:43 He’s like, surf.
1:00:46 He’s like, surf.
1:00:48 He’s like, surfing is kind of the perfect balance.
1:00:51 Like you’re not trying to fight the wave.
1:00:54 You’re trying to take it where it’s going to take you,
1:00:58 but you’re going to impose yourself on the process a little.
1:01:00 You’re going to use technique, patience.
1:01:04 You’re going to use your body and you’re going to try to just see,
1:01:07 because there’s an element in surfing, just like in jujitsu,
1:01:10 just like in so many things in life of like yielding,
1:01:13 but also maintaining an active role, right?
1:01:21 And I think that is in the demise of a relationship or the loss of someone because
1:01:25 of death or again, any transition, any ending.
1:01:30 First, it’s about acknowledging the reality of what we had, what we were,
1:01:33 you know, what our health was, whatever it might be.
1:01:39 And then saying, okay, and now this has changed and I can resist it or I can yield to it.
1:01:41 I can accept that this is what’s happened.
1:01:43 It is snowing.
1:01:44 My teacup is broken, whatever it is.
1:01:50 And then you can see what’s next because again, we don’t know what’s next.
1:01:53 We don’t know what that will lead to.
1:01:56 Like some of the worst things, some of the moments in my life where I went,
1:01:58 oh my God, I’m never getting through this,
1:02:01 gave way to some of the greatest moments in my life.
1:02:05 Like just when the just when the caterpillar thought its life was ending,
1:02:10 it became a butterfly, you know, but it had the world had to end.
1:02:16 Like imagine being the bird in the egg, you know, you’ve been warm and happy.
1:02:18 Imagine being in the womb.
1:02:21 Like you’re warm, you’re happy, everything’s being fed to you.
1:02:24 It’s like lovely, you’re just buoyant and floating around.
1:02:28 And now if you’re that bird, you got to break through a shell
1:02:31 and get into this cold, weird world and you don’t know how your wings work yet.
1:02:34 Or if you’re a baby, it’s like all blood and screaming.
1:02:39 But you got to do that to get to the next thing and the next thing is beautiful.
1:02:43 Like the bird only gets to fly because it broke through the egg
1:02:45 and it only broke through the egg because it was brave enough
1:02:48 to destroy the only world it’s ever known.
1:02:50 And that’s how I look at divorce in some ways,
1:02:55 is that divorce is like this whole, whether I’m the one ending it
1:02:57 or my partner is the one ending it,
1:03:01 like something is ending that I never thought was going to end.
1:03:02 And it’s done.
1:03:03 And now what?
1:03:05 I don’t know, I don’t know what.
1:03:07 But I have no reason to think it’s going to be horrifying.
1:03:12 It might be incredibly beautiful, but it’s the road ahead of me now.
1:03:16 And that to me, there’s something very beautiful about that level of acceptance.
1:03:17 But the lights are off.
1:03:20 The lights are off on that road.
1:03:22 It’s a road with no street lamps.
1:03:24 And that’s what the uncertainty of…
1:03:25 Yeah, it’s scary.
1:03:26 It’s scary, right?
1:03:29 Humans are particularly bad with dealing with uncertainty.
1:03:31 I learned this when I studied Uber Labs,
1:03:33 which is this laboratory they had at Uber
1:03:34 to figure out how to build the perfect taxi app.
1:03:37 And they discovered that much of the reason why we love Uber
1:03:39 is because it kills the uncertainty that we used to have
1:03:41 when we called the taxi on the phone.
1:03:44 And then we had to stand there for seven or maybe 17 minutes,
1:03:45 hoping that it was coming.
1:03:49 And it’s the same analogy you might find if you go to an airport
1:03:51 and it says flight is delayed.
1:03:54 Now, flight delayed is much worse than flight delayed two hours
1:03:55 because I can work with that.
1:04:00 But flight delayed with no certainty around how long
1:04:02 I’m going to be stood in this airport for is like mental torture.
1:04:05 And the truth is there is something…
1:04:06 I’m not…
1:04:08 Look, I’m not Pollyanna about it.
1:04:12 Like there is something terribly frustrating, upsetting,
1:04:14 difficult about your flight being delayed
1:04:16 or your flight being canceled, for example.
1:04:20 But I, in Frankfurt, Germany,
1:04:22 I had the…
1:04:25 I think it’s the best meal of my entire life
1:04:27 at a little tiny restaurant.
1:04:33 I only had that meal because I was flying back from Poland
1:04:38 and had a stop in Frankfurt that was supposed to be for one hour.
1:04:40 And because of snow,
1:04:43 they canceled all the flights essentially to the United States.
1:04:45 And I was stuck in Frankfurt for the night.
1:04:50 Now, I certainly had a few moments of like,
1:04:51 are you kidding me?
1:04:53 Like I have work, I have this.
1:04:54 I thought…
1:04:56 But then something in me went, okay.
1:04:58 Like you can be upset about this all you want, man,
1:05:00 but it ain’t going to make the flights happen.
1:05:02 And you can’t walk home from Frankfurt.
1:05:04 So what are you going to do?
1:05:07 You’ve not been in Frankfurt or see what happens.
1:05:10 And I walked around Frankfurt
1:05:14 and I found this amazing little restaurant.
1:05:15 And it was, I think, still to this day,
1:05:17 the best meal I’ve ever had in my life.
1:05:19 And I’ve gone back to Frankfurt three times
1:05:21 just to eat at that restaurant.
1:05:23 And the hotel that I found,
1:05:26 because I was like, all right, I need a room.
1:05:27 I need to get a room somewhere.
1:05:29 Turned out it became one of my favorite hotels
1:05:30 and I stayed there several times.
1:05:33 So, you know, again, if you’d said to me in advance,
1:05:37 “Jim, would it be awful if you got stuck in Frankfurt?”
1:05:39 I would be like, “Oh my God, that’d be so bad.
1:05:40 I have a court appearance tomorrow
1:05:43 and I have this to do and I have that to do.”
1:05:45 My life would have been so much poorer
1:05:47 if I hadn’t gotten stuck in Frankfurt.
1:05:50 I had like four amazing trips
1:05:52 and a bunch of amazing meals
1:05:53 and all these incredible experiences.
1:05:57 Because one time, my flight got canceled because of snow.
1:06:00 And I tell you something, I’m really, really glad
1:06:01 that flight got canceled.
1:06:02 I wasn’t at the time.
1:06:04 At the time, it was very frustrating.
1:06:05 I’d call my assistant in the middle of the night
1:06:07 and be like, “All right, you got to cancel all my stuff.
1:06:08 You got to reschedule.”
1:06:10 But the truth is, like, you just don’t know.
1:06:11 You just don’t know.
1:06:12 You won’t know.
1:06:16 You won’t know until you’re sitting ideally in a bed
1:06:18 and there’s a hospice volunteer sitting next to you
1:06:21 and you’re telling them all about the amazing meal
1:06:23 that you had in Frankfurt that one time.
1:06:26 Not, “You know, my flight got delayed once.”
1:06:31 You said earlier at the start of this conversation,
1:06:34 no one intends to end up in the consultation room
1:06:36 with a divorce lawyer.
1:06:37 But I wondered when you said that.
1:06:38 I thought, “Do you know what?
1:06:39 I bet you’ve met someone in your life
1:06:41 that didn’t tend to end up there.”
1:06:43 I mean, someone that got married
1:06:47 because they wanted the divorce.
1:06:48 Yeah, yeah.
1:06:49 I’m sure I have met…
1:06:53 So I’ve met people because I’m in the high net worth
1:06:54 and ultra high net worth space.
1:06:59 High net worth we define as like 10 to a few hundred million
1:07:02 and ultra high net worth is like 500 million end up.
1:07:09 In those spaces, yeah, there’s certainly our people
1:07:13 that get married to a wealthy person
1:07:16 for what will be great financial benefit.
1:07:20 But a lot of them are not planning
1:07:22 on cashing the chips out necessarily.
1:07:24 They see it as a possibility.
1:07:27 But they more often are like,
1:07:29 “Oh, no, I’d like to ride this ride as long as possible
1:07:32 because the amount of money I’m going to have access to
1:07:35 with this person is much greater
1:07:38 than even if I divorce and take some of their things.”
1:07:45 So that is certainly the overwhelming majority of people
1:07:52 like 99.999% of clients I have met in a 25-year career
1:07:54 did not mean to get divorced.
1:07:54 Because I was…
1:07:57 They move towards divorce and eventually many of them go,
1:08:01 “Oh, yeah, I saw early on we were doomed.”
1:08:04 But love is so intoxicating.
1:08:06 We fall in love so fast, you know?
1:08:09 And we really do have a tendency to…
1:08:13 In the early days, we tend to just be so forgiving of a person.
1:08:15 I mean, thank God that passes to some degree.
1:08:19 Could you imagine when you first are with your romantic partner,
1:08:20 like they brush up against you
1:08:23 and it’s like electric that feeling, you know?
1:08:24 Because we couldn’t…
1:08:26 What would we as a world get stuff done
1:08:29 if we felt like that forever about our romantic partner?
1:08:30 If 10 years into the relationship,
1:08:32 when your partner brushed up next to you at the sink,
1:08:35 you went like, “Oh, God, you wouldn’t get anything done.
1:08:37 Like you wouldn’t get anything done.
1:08:39 We would be a very unproductive world.”
1:08:42 So thankfully that fades and changes.
1:08:46 I hope it never goes completely away for any couple,
1:08:48 but it becomes manageable.
1:08:50 You start to see this person a little more clearly,
1:08:52 hopefully still with tremendous optimism.
1:08:55 What’s the quickest marriage you’ve ever represented?
1:08:56 Quickest marriage and divorce?
1:08:56 Yeah.
1:08:57 Marriage 72 hours.
1:08:59 From marriage to divorce?
1:08:59 From marriage to divorce.
1:09:04 Yes. Marriage to annulment in that situation.
1:09:07 But I’ve seen divorces that were 72 hours.
1:09:09 Were they drunk? What was the…
1:09:10 Yeah, it was the…
1:09:11 In one, it was that they were drunk.
1:09:13 In one, it was…
1:09:16 I don’t know how to put it.
1:09:20 It was almost like a game of chicken that went too far.
1:09:24 They had just sort of started dating.
1:09:25 And one of them was like,
1:09:27 “I bet you wouldn’t get my name tattooed on you.”
1:09:28 And they’re like, “Oh, yeah.”
1:09:30 And then they went and got their name tattooed on each other.
1:09:31 And then they were like,
1:09:34 “Well, I bet we wouldn’t get…
1:09:35 I’d like you so I’d get an engagement ring.”
1:09:36 And then they went and got an engagement ring.
1:09:38 And they were like, “Oh, yeah, well, I would…
1:09:40 Would you marry me?” And then they got married.
1:09:42 And then I think they probably had a great night.
1:09:44 Like that night was probably…
1:09:46 That might have been some mind-bending sex.
1:09:48 But then two days later, they were like,
1:09:51 “Wait, do you don’t actually want to have kids?”
1:09:52 “Oh, because I do.”
1:09:56 And they realized they were just fundamentally incompatible people.
1:09:58 Have you seen any patterns there with compatibility then?
1:10:01 So if a couple walks in and they’ve been together for…
1:10:05 I guess when you look back at the types of people you’ve represented,
1:10:11 is there a certain length of engagement and boyfriend/girlfriend phase
1:10:14 that is typically conducive with it working or not working?
1:10:16 No, I don’t see that pattern.
1:10:17 I’m constantly…
1:10:20 I’m very fixated on pattern recognition.
1:10:21 So I’m constantly thinking…
1:10:24 I’m always looking at same religion, different religions,
1:10:26 or religious versus non-religious.
1:10:31 Or older and younger, older man, younger woman, younger man, older woman.
1:10:31 Like what…
1:10:32 What permeatation?
1:10:35 Same culture, different culture, same races, different races.
1:10:41 Like first generation to the U.S. or both first generation or neither.
1:10:45 I don’t see those patterns.
1:10:46 I really…
1:10:49 If I did, I’d be the first to say it.
1:10:51 You know, I don’t hesitate to say stuff.
1:10:53 But I’ve not seen those patterns.
1:11:03 I have found, if I was to say there was any pattern, it really is…
1:11:08 I think substance use is probably the main thing.
1:11:14 Like that if one or both people are big drinkers or drug users,
1:11:18 that’s usually a good indication that the marriage is going to lead to divorce.
1:11:26 Because substance use issues tend to get worse in either both people,
1:11:29 which causes all kinds of second order effects.
1:11:36 Or more commonly, one person when they have kids or when they reach a slightly different stage in life
1:11:42 scales back on alcohol or drug use.
1:11:48 And the other person has an unhealthy relationship with the substances and it gets further down.
1:11:50 And that’s the direction that it goes in.
1:11:51 I had…
1:11:52 You said something earlier, which really piqued my interest as well,
1:11:55 which kind of relates to this, is you said love is loaned.
1:11:59 And I immediately thought of a friend who brought me to a restaurant one day
1:12:04 to basically tell me that him and his wife were being divorced.
1:12:10 And the way they described it was quite heartbreaking because it seemed like they had a good relationship.
1:12:15 It’s kind of like they got busy with their jobs and the kid and they forgot to water the plant.
1:12:19 It’s like the only way I can describe it, because they’re like good people.
1:12:21 They didn’t really appear to argue at all.
1:12:23 They had this kid, they’re both CEOs.
1:12:25 She’s a CEO, he’s a CEO.
1:12:28 And it’s like they raise the kid and forgot to water the relationship.
1:12:29 Yeah, yeah.
1:12:33 I’ve always phrased that as they lost the plot.
1:12:38 Because when you get married, you’re trying to write a story together.
1:12:40 And sometimes I think you lose the plot.
1:12:44 Like, you know, when you’re reading and like all of a sudden you stop and you go,
1:12:47 I don’t really remember where I am in this.
1:12:50 Like, and you got to go back a few pages to like, oh, okay, I remember this part.
1:12:51 Let me start there.
1:12:54 I think sometimes we lose the plot.
1:12:58 And I think that happens in every relationship, every long term relationship.
1:12:59 I think sometimes you lose the plot.
1:13:03 Like, other things are going on at work or you have kids and kids require a tremendous
1:13:04 amount of your bandwidth.
1:13:05 So I get it.
1:13:12 But I think if you lose the plot, that’s where it’s like hard to…
1:13:15 It’s A, it’s, again, acknowledgement of it.
1:13:19 Like awareness, truth, being honest and saying, hey, I feel like we lost the plot.
1:13:22 Like, I feel like there’s, you know, we lost the plot.
1:13:23 How do we get it back?
1:13:24 Like how…
1:13:31 But the problem is when you say to your partner, hey, I feel like we kind of lost the plot.
1:13:38 Rather than hearing that as, hey, this is really important to me.
1:13:40 You’re really important to me.
1:13:41 Yeah, work’s important.
1:13:44 Kids important, but you and me, you and me, that’s really important.
1:13:47 Like it’s equally, if not more important.
1:13:49 So I feel a certain way.
1:13:51 I feel like we’ve lost the plot.
1:13:53 And I’m not saying that’s your fault.
1:13:54 I’m not saying it’s my fault.
1:13:54 I’m saying it’s the kid’s fault.
1:13:56 I don’t know whose fault it is.
1:13:57 I don’t really care.
1:13:59 But I don’t want to lose the plot because I care about you.
1:14:01 And in this plot, this story is important to me.
1:14:02 People don’t hear it that way.
1:14:04 People hear it as we lost the plot.
1:14:06 Well, what do you want me to do about it?
1:14:08 Like, you know, okay, so I’ll just ignore the kid?
1:14:09 What do you want?
1:14:09 What, what, what?
1:14:10 What do you want?
1:14:12 I’m sorry, I’m doing the best I can.
1:14:16 And that’s like, that’s not the way to hear that.
1:14:17 I understand.
1:14:18 I think it’s very human to hear it that way.
1:14:22 But I genuinely believe that, that, you know,
1:14:24 yeah, it’s like you forgot to water the plant.
1:14:26 Like, and nobody meant to kill the plant,
1:14:29 but you killed the plant because you weren’t thinking about the plant.
1:14:31 And by the way, let’s right there.
1:14:34 You’ll walk past it every single day.
1:14:35 You just not once thought,
1:14:38 oh, yeah, I got to remember to water the plant.
1:14:40 And so I think it’s very easy in marriage,
1:14:41 in long-term relationships.
1:14:46 It’s very easy to just forget that this is,
1:14:48 you’re borrowing this, you know,
1:14:49 this is not yours.
1:14:51 Like this person is not yours.
1:14:53 This person is loaned to you.
1:14:57 And it’s, by the way, it’s the same with death.
1:14:59 Like this person is loaned to you.
1:15:02 They could be taken away by divorce or by death.
1:15:03 They could be taken away.
1:15:05 Every marriage will end in one of those two things.
1:15:06 Death or divorce, for sure.
1:15:08 You’ve used this word slippage before.
1:15:08 Yeah.
1:15:10 When does it happen?
1:15:11 And what does slippage mean?
1:15:16 I mean, slippage is, everyone understands slippage, I think.
1:15:17 Like it’s not like you eat cake,
1:15:19 and then the next day your suit doesn’t fit.
1:15:22 Like you just make lots of little choices.
1:15:24 And those little choices add up,
1:15:25 and all of a sudden your suit doesn’t fit.
1:15:27 And you go, wait, when did that happen?
1:15:29 You know, and I think it’s the same thing in relationships.
1:15:32 Like we, you know, Ernest Hemingway said in,
1:15:33 the sun also rises.
1:15:37 I went bankrupt the same way anybody does,
1:15:38 very slowly and then all at once.
1:15:42 And I think that’s how, that’s slippage.
1:15:44 Like it’s just little raindrops
1:15:46 that eventually become the flood.
1:15:49 And I think that’s what happens in relationships
1:15:52 is you start to, with good intentions,
1:15:55 you’re focused on other things.
1:15:57 Maybe you start to go, hey, I got this.
1:16:02 Like, ’cause when you were single, finding the one was big.
1:16:03 That was big.
1:16:05 That was a big priority in your life.
1:16:07 And then you found them.
1:16:09 And then there’s like a whole bunch of just high fiving
1:16:10 and celebration.
1:16:11 And it’s like, oh, it’s so great.
1:16:12 I found the one.
1:16:13 You found, you wanted the one too.
1:16:14 And you found it, it’s me.
1:16:15 Is this great?
1:16:18 And then you go, all right, we got that.
1:16:20 Now what other stuff?
1:16:21 You know, what other stuff can we do?
1:16:22 ‘Cause now like I’m super charged.
1:16:23 I got you.
1:16:23 You got me.
1:16:24 We’re gonna do this thing.
1:16:25 And you go, and what do you do?
1:16:27 You make new life for you.
1:16:29 Make careers or you go amazing places.
1:16:30 Like you’re, it’s not enough.
1:16:33 It’s not enough to just go, we got each other and it’s so fun.
1:16:36 And let’s just tuck in here and just stay together, you know.
1:16:39 And I always laugh with friends, by the way,
1:16:42 because I can always tell when someone’s like in love,
1:16:44 ’cause they put on a couple of pounds, you know.
1:16:45 ‘Cause they really do.
1:16:47 ‘Cause they’re just, they just go like,
1:16:49 do I wanna like get up and go to the gym or do you go,
1:16:51 I like sit on the couch and eat popcorn and watch something.
1:16:52 Yeah, let’s do that, you know.
1:16:54 And it’s just sort of like, you know, you’re just so,
1:16:55 it’s love weight.
1:16:56 It’s like happy love weight.
1:16:58 And I love when I see it on somebody,
1:17:00 like it looks good on everybody, you know.
1:17:03 Much better than like, if you believe me,
1:17:05 like if you look at photos of me from when I had an eight pack,
1:17:07 it was the most miserable time in my life.
1:17:10 ‘Cause I’m at the gym just trying to beat the pain out of me,
1:17:11 you know.
1:17:16 So I think it’s very, very normal that people,
1:17:20 in that heaviness of that, okay, so when that fades,
1:17:24 and now we’re like in a sustainable pattern of a relationship,
1:17:25 and you’re focusing on other things,
1:17:29 little tiny things start to, you know.
1:17:30 And you don’t wanna make a thing of it.
1:17:32 You don’t wanna say like, oh, by the way,
1:17:34 calling a foul here, throwing a flag on that play.
1:17:37 No, you just sort of go like, oh no, it’s this little thing.
1:17:38 It’s not a big thing, don’t worry about it.
1:17:42 And I think that is how the process begins,
1:17:44 and it leads right to my office someday.
1:17:47 Jordan Peterson said something to me.
1:17:48 Jack, have you got my phone?
1:17:53 I just wanted to play you this 30 seconds of something he said.
1:17:54 Nobody keeps telling me I have to have a conversation
1:17:55 with Jordan Peterson.
1:17:56 It would be fascinating.
1:17:58 I imagine two people are telling him the same thing.
1:18:03 My friend is going through some difficulties in his relationship,
1:18:05 and I sent him this little clip,
1:18:07 which I honestly, I keep this clip saved in my phone,
1:18:09 but I’ve listened it to so many of my male friends.
1:18:10 That’s a compliment.
1:18:13 But this is what Jordan says, and it relates to slippage.
1:18:16 Here’s something to understand about your marriage.
1:18:17 Okay?
1:18:19 You are gonna have to listen to your wife 90 minutes a week.
1:18:20 Okay?
1:18:23 And you might as well just get that through your thick skull.
1:18:25 Now, why?
1:18:27 If you listen to her enough, you can make peace,
1:18:28 and you can play.
1:18:30 So there’s a huge benefit.
1:18:34 If you don’t listen to her, that will accumulate,
1:18:37 and you’ll listen to her in divorce court.
1:18:39 Someone sent me that.
1:18:41 I don’t think it was you.
1:18:42 Someone sent me that.
1:18:43 So, yeah.
1:18:46 I mean, I think that’s a piece of what I’m talking about for sure.
1:18:50 It feels a little like the advice last time I was on,
1:18:53 I was saying I found offensive, which is happy wife, happy life.
1:18:55 Like, I think there’s this sense of like, well,
1:18:58 what a man has to do is just sort of tolerate the,
1:19:02 like, listen, I don’t think most men,
1:19:06 like, don’t want to listen to their wife for 90,
1:19:09 because that seems to me, and I know he’s being hyperbolic,
1:19:11 and I love Jordan’s work, and I find him fascinating,
1:19:12 and I really enjoy him.
1:19:16 But when someone says to me,
1:19:18 like, oh, you have to listen to your wife for 90 minutes a week,
1:19:20 like, that feels like you’re going to sit there and be like,
1:19:23 how many more minutes do I have to do this for?
1:19:27 You know, there was a time where you couldn’t wait to hear her.
1:19:31 Like, she was interesting, and she was interested.
1:19:34 But do you think the women that are listening to this right now
1:19:38 that have husbands and boyfriends think their husband and boyfriend likes it
1:19:41 when they said, hey, we need to talk about something?
1:19:46 But see, when in your life has someone saying that to you
1:19:48 been a precursor to something good?
1:19:49 Hey, we need to talk about something.
1:19:53 That never, that’s like, you know, is this siren a good siren?
1:19:54 When is this siren ever good?
1:19:58 Like, there’s certain phrases we really need to have a conversation.
1:20:01 That is not a good entry point.
1:20:03 And that’s not, because it means there’s something wrong,
1:20:07 but before you get to that, like, how many women,
1:20:13 you know, would say that, you know, in the interaction with their spouse,
1:20:17 like, they don’t want like a let’s have a 90 minutes in the penalty box
1:20:18 where you have to listen to me talk to you.
1:20:20 Like, that seems terrible.
1:20:25 You know, the thought of having to do that as like a practice
1:20:29 sounds sort of like, all right, well, if I endure that for 90 minutes,
1:20:31 the bonus is I get sex or something.
1:20:32 Like, and that seems crazy to me.
1:20:37 As a divorce lawyer, if you think about the divorces you’ve seen in court
1:20:40 and you’ve sort of consulted on, et cetera,
1:20:44 do you believe that if that couple had spent 90 minutes a week sat down,
1:20:46 openly being honest with each other,
1:20:48 they would have ended up in your consultation room?
1:20:54 I think if they’d made a practice like that as something deliberate,
1:20:56 I mean, maybe it would make a difference.
1:21:02 I think what’s more important than the structure of a ritual and the time,
1:21:05 I have a better practice than that.
1:21:10 I have, so I have a chapter in the book called Hit Send Now
1:21:15 where I talk about sharing with your partner kind of promptly
1:21:18 when something has rattled you the wrong way.
1:21:21 Without saying we need to talk, like just giving like,
1:21:24 and I suggest people do it via email so that it’s like,
1:21:27 you can say to your partner like, hey, listen, like,
1:21:28 I want you to reflect on this.
1:21:30 Like, you don’t have to answer right away.
1:21:31 You don’t have to be defensive.
1:21:34 And also you can be careful about how you parse it
1:21:36 because not everybody’s very sure-footed in their speech, right?
1:21:38 So sometimes people, if you just try to do it face to face,
1:21:40 sometimes it’s not going to come out clearly.
1:21:42 So if you’re writing, you can edit it and be careful with it.
1:21:51 But I genuinely think sometimes people just need to check in in a relationship.
1:21:54 And by the way, you have to, if you want that,
1:21:59 you also have to be willing to accept that in your direction, right?
1:22:02 So I have a friend, I have a friend who read my book
1:22:04 and he’s a friend who actually then read my book.
1:22:09 And he said that he and his wife go for a walk once a week.
1:22:13 And they make a deliberate practice during that walk
1:22:18 of sharing with each other one or two or three things
1:22:24 that the person didn’t do perfectly in their relationship that week.
1:22:26 And they hear it with love.
1:22:28 Like they deliberately from the beginning go,
1:22:29 we’re hearing this with love.
1:22:31 We’re hearing this as a practice.
1:22:33 It’s a deliberate practice because our goal
1:22:36 is to have a great relationship and keep it great.
1:22:37 So we’re going to hear it that way.
1:22:39 We’re not going to hear it as a criticism.
1:22:42 We’re going to hear it as I love this relationship enough to be honest with you.
1:22:44 I want you to have, you know,
1:22:47 I’d rather you have an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie.
1:22:48 I’d rather not have resentment build up.
1:22:53 And then they always finish that walk with three things
1:22:56 that the person did that made them feel loved
1:22:57 or feel good or whatever.
1:23:00 And that’s so you’re ending on that positive note.
1:23:02 And they said they’ve never had a week
1:23:04 where they didn’t come up with something.
1:23:06 That happy wife, happy life phrase,
1:23:09 there must be a reason why it became cliche.
1:23:11 Why it became popular.
1:23:12 Well, it became popular
1:23:14 because I think so many people were willing to accept
1:23:17 the unbelievably ridiculous model of relationships
1:23:19 that’s led us to a 56% divorce rate
1:23:23 and probably another 20 or 30% staying together
1:23:24 unbelievably miserable
1:23:25 but not wanting to give up half their stuff.
1:23:29 So yeah, like every misery loves company.
1:23:30 Like everybody is sitting around going like,
1:23:33 well, listen, women are like that.
1:23:34 You got to spend 90 minutes with them.
1:23:36 Happy wife, happy life.
1:23:39 Like I just, I just don’t accept that.
1:23:42 I don’t accept that it has to be awful.
1:23:45 Why is it not happy husband, happy wife though?
1:23:48 Well, in reality, it is.
1:23:51 I think in reality, it’s happy husband
1:23:53 and happy wife equals happy marriage.
1:23:56 But why did it come into culture that way around?
1:23:58 Because I think there’s a,
1:24:01 well, I mean, my personal opinion on this
1:24:04 is I think men are probably easier to please in some ways.
1:24:08 I think men are either hungry or horny.
1:24:10 So like either feed us or have sex with us.
1:24:12 And that’s kind of, we’re most of the time pretty happy.
1:24:15 Like I don’t, we’re not, you know,
1:24:17 like which curtains should we pick out for the house?
1:24:18 Like we’re not that caught up in that.
1:24:20 I don’t know a lot of guys caught up in that.
1:24:22 Like when it came to weddings,
1:24:24 like most of the guys I know weren’t when they were young men
1:24:26 going like, what is my wedding gonna be like?
1:24:28 I can’t, here’s what I’m gonna do.
1:24:30 Like it was very like, is there DJ or a band
1:24:32 and what will the bar have?
1:24:33 And that’s kind of what they were into.
1:24:35 And everything else was like, cool, babe, whatever you like.
1:24:37 Like I’m excited to see you excited.
1:24:38 That’s what matters to me.
1:24:39 – So men are simple.
1:24:41 – I think men are quite simple, yeah.
1:24:42 And I think women, and by the way,
1:24:44 this is not a criticism of men.
1:24:46 It’s not a criticism of women.
1:24:48 And again, it’s a generalization, I understand that.
1:24:50 But like women, I think, thank God.
1:24:55 Women are much more nuanced in my experience.
1:24:59 Like they notice more sometimes, or different things.
1:25:02 Like I think men and women bring different things to,
1:25:04 and again, not every man, not every woman,
1:25:05 but like I genuinely believe
1:25:08 that we bring different gifts to relationships.
1:25:10 And when we embrace that,
1:25:12 and by the way, that polarity when we’re dating
1:25:16 is the greatest thing in the world.
1:25:18 But of course, it gets challenging
1:25:22 because this person’s not just your sexual partner
1:25:24 or romantic partner, they’re your roommate.
1:25:25 They’re your co-parent.
1:25:26 They’re your travel partner.
1:25:27 Share a bathroom with them.
1:25:30 Like you got like, this is a whole nother thing
1:25:30 when you get married.
1:25:32 The French have a saying that, you know,
1:25:34 marriage turns a lover into a relative.
1:25:40 And the truth is like, not any of, like, you know, your lover,
1:25:43 you have this sort of, you know,
1:25:46 it’s why affairs are so intoxicating and wonderful
1:25:47 because you just get the best parts.
1:25:49 You don’t have to, you don’t have to, you know,
1:25:51 pick up this person’s socks.
1:25:52 You don’t have to listen to the fight
1:25:54 they got in with their cousin.
1:25:55 You know, you don’t have to be like,
1:25:57 I got to spend 90 minutes with them.
1:25:58 You know, you can actually,
1:26:00 you’re just getting the good stuff,
1:26:03 the passion, the sex, the, you know, which again,
1:26:06 you can have, we can do relationships
1:26:08 however we decide we want to do them.
1:26:09 That’s what’s cool about it,
1:26:12 is the two people in it is what matters.
1:26:14 And I think even before social media,
1:26:16 we were very much about,
1:26:18 well, how is everybody else doing it?
1:26:20 Because I guess that’s the right way to do it.
1:26:23 And so yeah, happy wife, happy life was like,
1:26:27 listen, just here, you know, like just,
1:26:29 just make her happy because then she’ll shut up
1:26:30 and you can just watch football.
1:26:33 Like in it, I mean, look, that never appealed to me.
1:26:34 That was never interesting to me.
1:26:38 I think a lot of people absolutely buy
1:26:40 into that model of relationships.
1:26:42 What’s more interesting to me
1:26:46 than people who’ve just given up, right?
1:26:48 People who’ve just said like,
1:26:49 yeah, I know the hard thing to do
1:26:50 and the right thing to do are the same thing,
1:26:51 but I’m just going to do the easy thing
1:26:54 because it’s like, what’s more interesting to me
1:26:57 is that I think sometimes people screw up
1:27:00 their relationships with completely good intentions.
1:27:05 And the example I give in my book about this is sex.
1:27:10 I think most people who’ve been in a long-term relationship
1:27:12 will say, yeah, you know,
1:27:14 the sex has become kind of predictable.
1:27:17 Like it’s become kind of, it’s not as novel, you know?
1:27:24 And I think that happens for the absolute best of intentions.
1:27:27 And it would be really lovely if we just acknowledged that
1:27:29 because here’s why it happens, right?
1:27:32 You get with a person, you’re first dating,
1:27:35 first time you, you know, you get sexual with the person.
1:27:38 You throw every trick you’ve got at that person, right?
1:27:40 You do all the things that you think they’re going to like
1:27:43 to see what are they going to like, right?
1:27:44 Do they like the same stuff that other people like?
1:27:46 Or do they like something different?
1:27:46 Or they, you know, what do they do?
1:27:48 They like the same things you like,
1:27:49 and you throw everything at it.
1:27:51 And you start, okay, they don’t like that.
1:27:52 Okay, this they really like.
1:27:54 Oh, they make really nice noises when I do that.
1:27:56 Okay, and you start to, and then what do you do?
1:27:59 You start to get more efficient.
1:28:00 Like, oh, I know she doesn’t like that,
1:28:02 so I’m not going to do that, but I know she likes this.
1:28:03 I’m going to do that a whole lot, right?
1:28:05 And she does, I hope, the same thing.
1:28:07 She does that he loves it when I do this
1:28:09 and the sound that comes out of him when I do that,
1:28:10 I say, what do you do?
1:28:11 You play the greatest hits.
1:28:13 You play the greatest hits, because why not?
1:28:14 And by the way, there’s only so many hours in the day
1:28:16 and we got some stuff we got to get to.
1:28:18 So let’s really throw the greatest hits at each other
1:28:19 and we’re going to have a great time.
1:28:21 Well, what did you just do?
1:28:24 You were trying to make each other really happy
1:28:25 and be a really good lover to each other,
1:28:26 but what did you just do?
1:28:27 You just created a routine.
1:28:29 You just created a routine.
1:28:31 And here’s the other thing about humans,
1:28:32 which we all know, if you’ve ever had a sexual partner
1:28:33 for more than six months,
1:28:37 then you’ve noticed the patterns.
1:28:39 And by the way, you’re thrilled with them
1:28:40 because you’re doing the greatest hits.
1:28:42 Like I went to sea spring scene to hear Born to Run.
1:28:43 That’s what I’m there to see.
1:28:45 Like I love it.
1:28:46 Do the greatest hits.
1:28:48 But then if they do something different,
1:28:51 there is some part of you that goes, what was that?
1:28:52 Where did that come from?
1:28:53 That was, we don’t usually do that,
1:28:54 or we don’t do it in that order.
1:28:56 And by the way, sometimes that’s exciting, right?
1:28:58 Sometimes it’s like, yeah, let’s have sex in the laundry room.
1:28:59 What? We got a bed right over there?
1:29:00 Yeah, we always do it over there.
1:29:01 We do it in the laundry room.
1:29:02 Like, I don’t know.
1:29:03 That’s fun, right?
1:29:04 It’s fun to do something different.
1:29:06 Well, we get to a place where now,
1:29:07 when we do something different,
1:29:10 we start to feel like we’re going to have to have a conversation about it.
1:29:12 Because it’s like, well, why did you do that?
1:29:15 That’s strange or that, or sometimes people go,
1:29:16 why did they do that different thing?
1:29:18 Are they like, is it they’re watching porn?
1:29:19 Are they cheating on me?
1:29:21 Where did they get that idea from?
1:29:22 Is that something that they wanted?
1:29:23 They want to start doing that?
1:29:24 Is that part of the greatest hits?
1:29:25 And I didn’t realize it.
1:29:27 Do they not like what I’ve been doing?
1:29:32 And we start to sabotage again with good intentions from day one.
1:29:34 All you wanted was to make your partner happy
1:29:37 and they wanted to make you happy and look what you did.
1:29:38 You made a routine.
1:29:41 So the only way out of that spiral
1:29:44 is to call it, to talk about it.
1:29:46 Call it out, to say, hey, you know,
1:29:48 it feels like things are kind of in, like we’re in a,
1:29:50 you know, is there anything I could do different
1:29:51 or you might want different?
1:29:55 And I think there’s lots of ways to have that conversation.
1:29:56 How do we not have that conversation?
1:29:58 Like what’s the worst way to have that conversation?
1:29:59 The worst way to have that conversation is say,
1:30:01 how come you don’t do this anymore?
1:30:02 You used to do it all the time.
1:30:05 Or you know, I’ve never, why won’t you ever let me this?
1:30:06 Or why don’t you ever try that?
1:30:08 That’s the worst way to do it.
1:30:10 Blame.
1:30:11 Blame and also it’s on you.
1:30:12 Yeah, why did you do it?
1:30:14 Or also that it’s like,
1:30:16 because immediately the person’s reaction to that
1:30:20 is going to be, well, here’s why, you know, because of this.
1:30:21 Well, because you this, you know, well,
1:30:23 how come you never do this?
1:30:25 Like, and it turns into that.
1:30:28 And I think there’s a million other ways to do it,
1:30:29 all of which are better.
1:30:32 The best one in my opinion,
1:30:35 but I’m a lawyer and I’m dishonest a lot of the time,
1:30:37 is, you know, manipulation.
1:30:39 I think that there’s very positive,
1:30:41 I manipulate people’s emotional state for a living, right?
1:30:43 Like, that’s my job is to make the other side scared.
1:30:44 My client feels safe.
1:30:46 The judge feel good about my client.
1:30:47 Bad about the other side.
1:30:49 So like, I try to use my powers for good.
1:30:53 And I think here’s a great way to use that power for good.
1:30:56 I think if there’s something going on in bed
1:30:58 that you want to try or do,
1:31:00 and you don’t want to have the clinical converse,
1:31:02 you don’t want to call an audible in the middle of sex
1:31:04 and just start doing something different
1:31:06 and have your partner go, “What the heck was that?”
1:31:08 I think a great one is,
1:31:11 “Oh my God, the dream I had about you last night.”
1:31:14 Oof, you just, you don’t even want to know.
1:31:16 “Wait, what? What was the dream?
1:31:17 What was the dream that you had?”
1:31:18 No, no, I don’t even, I don’t know.
1:31:20 It’s because I had dairy before, better something.
1:31:22 I don’t know, I had the dirtiest dream about you.
1:31:24 You tell me what human being,
1:31:26 male, female, gay, straight, anybody,
1:31:28 isn’t going to go, “No, for real, what?
1:31:29 What was I doing?
1:31:30 What were you doing? What was it?”
1:31:32 Then you tell them.
1:31:34 You tell them the thing that you’d be interested
1:31:35 in doing and they go,
1:31:37 “It was you and your brother.”
1:31:40 Okay, if that’s something you’re looking for,
1:31:42 I don’t know how to get it.
1:31:43 I’m very persuasive.
1:31:45 I couldn’t give you an entry point for that one.
1:31:47 But if it’s something that you wanted to do,
1:31:49 you say, “Yeah, this dream and this is what happened.”
1:31:52 And your partner may react as, “Oh, really?
1:31:54 Like, you would like that?”
1:31:56 And then you can go, “Yeah, no, I mean, I don’t know.
1:31:59 I just, it was in my brain, so I don’t know.
1:32:00 Like, it seemed weird to me too.”
1:32:03 And then you can back out of it without it being a thing.
1:32:05 Or you can go, “I don’t know, maybe.”
1:32:06 Because if their reaction is, “Oh, yeah, I would.”
1:32:08 Is that something you’d want to do?
1:32:10 It’d be like, “I don’t know. Maybe it is subconsciously.”
1:32:11 Try it sometime.
1:32:14 How many times do people end up in divorce court
1:32:16 because the lights went out in the bedroom?
1:32:19 I mean, how many would admit it?
1:32:20 Or how many is it really the case?
1:32:22 Well, because here’s what I’ll tell you.
1:32:25 I would say a good, at least 80% of the people
1:32:28 that ended up in my office and Fidelity was a piece of it.
1:32:32 But that tells me that sex is a big piece, you know?
1:32:35 Because most people who are in genuinely satisfying
1:32:36 sexual relationships with their partner
1:32:38 aren’t looking to have other sexual relationships.
1:32:41 Some people are just addicted to sex, though.
1:32:44 And I say this because I’ve got some friends who,
1:32:46 people always think I’m, like, projecting,
1:32:47 and I’m, like, secretly talking about myself,
1:32:48 but I’m actually not.
1:32:51 I’ve met a wide spectrum of individuals
1:32:53 and their relationship with sex varies wildly.
1:32:56 Some people, I just think, are going to cheat forever,
1:32:57 regardless of who they’re with,
1:33:00 because they have some, like, trauma related to the chase
1:33:02 and sex, and then some people are kind of,
1:33:04 you know, don’t have sex at all.
1:33:05 So on the end,
1:33:07 where you’ve got that almost sex addiction behavior,
1:33:13 I’m just wondering if, I guess the question there,
1:33:15 the broader question was about how much
1:33:17 is the lights going out in the bedroom?
1:33:20 Does it relate to people ending up in divorce court?
1:33:22 Well, I remember listening to your conversation with Gad,
1:33:26 and him, you asking him flat out,
1:33:28 like, so how much of the motivation is sex?
1:33:31 Like, and I think his answer was like,
1:33:34 a tremendous amount of evolutionary biology is tied to sex.
1:33:36 Like, a tremendous amount of our motivation is born of sex.
1:33:39 It’s about sex, food, and not becoming food.
1:33:41 That’s like our three primary motivators.
1:33:44 So I think sex is incredibly important.
1:33:47 I also think sex is constantly thrown into our line of sight.
1:33:50 So I think you can’t discount that.
1:33:52 I mean, I think sex is on social media,
1:33:56 on, like, the amount of sex that is put in our face,
1:34:00 constantly now, is shocking.
1:34:00 It’s shocking.
1:34:01 I mean, compare it.
1:34:05 Do your grandfather has not seen as many breasts
1:34:10 in one lifetime as you’d see in one visit to Instagram?
1:34:12 Like, I mean, there is just so much cleavage going on.
1:34:15 It’s, she just can’t even, so I think fundamentally,
1:34:17 like, of course it’s being thrown in our light of sight.
1:34:19 Advertising everywhere, it’s surrounded.
1:34:20 We live in a sex saturated environment.
1:34:22 How long have you been a divorce lawyer?
1:34:23 25 years.
1:34:26 So since that time, things like only fans have emerged
1:34:28 in pornographies but become commonplace.
1:34:30 I imagine at the start of your career,
1:34:32 the term pornography probably wasn’t used much in divorce.
1:34:33 No, hardly ever.
1:34:34 Hardly ever.
1:34:35 Is it used now?
1:34:36 It’s everywhere now.
1:34:37 It’s everywhere.
1:34:39 And there’s a lot of unique things that have,
1:34:40 I’ve watched evolve in my career.
1:34:43 The proliferation of revenge porn,
1:34:48 the number of people that have concerns about audio, video,
1:34:51 photographs of them, you know, because every,
1:34:52 I mean, the proliferation of it is also a function
1:34:54 of the fact that everyone has a video camera
1:34:58 and everyone has a camera, a sophisticated camera
1:35:01 in their hand, you know.
1:35:03 So there’s a tremendous amount of concern about,
1:35:06 you know, this person has images of me, photos of me.
1:35:10 Tremendous amounts of, you know,
1:35:13 cheating has gotten much, much easier than it used to be.
1:35:15 I mean, the idea of like connecting
1:35:17 with a potential sexual partner
1:35:18 and also having conversations with people
1:35:20 we have absolutely no business having conversations with
1:35:23 and having neutral entry points to get into.
1:35:25 So like, you know, it used to be like,
1:35:27 maybe you see the attractive soccer mom
1:35:28 at your kid’s soccer practice
1:35:30 and she’s married and you’re married.
1:35:33 But like, if you saddled up next to her and started talking,
1:35:35 you’re having a conversation with a group full of people.
1:35:37 And if you called her on the phone at the house,
1:35:38 that would be weird, right?
1:35:41 But if you like message her or you add her on Facebook,
1:35:43 it’s not weird because our kids are on the same soccer thing
1:35:45 and maybe there’s a Facebook group for the soccer parents.
1:35:47 And then she posts a picture of herself
1:35:48 when she was on vacation and you say,
1:35:50 oh, where did you guys stay?
1:35:51 We were thinking about going to Jamaica.
1:35:53 And then she’s like, oh, this and then you go, you know,
1:35:55 and suddenly we’re having a conversation
1:35:56 and it’s private, nobody else is there.
1:35:57 We’re alone in a room.
1:36:01 So I think it’s pretty, you know,
1:36:05 it’s become very conducive to cheating.
1:36:08 And it’s also become a way for there
1:36:10 to be a tremendous amount of evidence of cheating
1:36:13 that accidentally lands in the hands of your partner.
1:36:15 So like, I can’t tell you how many times like,
1:36:17 I know he’s passed now, Steve Jobs,
1:36:20 but like divorce lawyers own a tremendous debt of gratitude
1:36:22 for the amount of business he sent our way.
1:36:24 Because Apple’s integration of its devices
1:36:29 makes it incredibly common that the text message
1:36:32 from your lover comes up on your kid’s iPad
1:36:34 because you didn’t realize you logged into the same Apple ID
1:36:36 and it comes up on the iMessage.
1:36:38 And now your spouse is looking at the text
1:36:41 about how great the sex was yesterday.
1:36:43 And like, I’m not being funny.
1:36:45 That’s like a once a week thing
1:36:48 that happens in divorce lawyer’s offices.
1:36:50 And I know it wasn’t intentional.
1:36:52 I know he wasn’t like, I’m gonna mess up some marriages.
1:36:54 But the truth is, is it, you know,
1:36:56 it creates an easier opportunity for people to cheat
1:36:58 because people can clandestinely communicate
1:36:59 in ways that they used to not.
1:37:01 And they have these neutral entry points
1:37:02 that lead to something negative.
1:37:07 And it’s become something where you get caught
1:37:09 because there’s a tremendous evidentiary trail now.
1:37:12 So I think these are all, you know,
1:37:14 these are all factors that have made it harder.
1:37:20 But again, porn only fans, like all those kinds of things,
1:37:25 these are just more sort of outlets for the same, you know,
1:37:27 it’s like, you know, there’s a thousand restaurants
1:37:30 and there’s only one menu, you know.
1:37:33 And that’s all this is, is all the same stuff
1:37:34 just in different permutations.
1:37:36 Like a divorce lawyer 50 years ago
1:37:39 was dealing with some of the exact same things.
1:37:40 It’s different technologies.
1:37:44 It’s different, you know, manifestations of the issue.
1:37:46 But it’s all just heartbreak.
1:37:50 It’s all just males and females that tried to make it work
1:37:51 and somehow it came apart.
1:37:55 Do you think marriages are good for love?
1:37:57 And like, what’s your view of marriages?
1:37:58 I’ve been thinking-
1:38:00 I think marriage and love have very little to do with each other.
1:38:02 I’m fine with getting married.
1:38:03 My issue is the wedding.
1:38:04 I’m not a big fan of weddings.
1:38:07 I think, I don’t know where this tradition of weddings came from,
1:38:09 but getting like hundreds of people in a room
1:38:11 and doing this whole, the big gaps,
1:38:12 the amount of time you have to wait.
1:38:18 Waiting three hours to be fed the length of it.
1:38:20 The fact that it’s so stressful.
1:38:22 And it causes, some of my friends I’ve watched
1:38:26 like 12 to 24 months of stress and agony and arguments.
1:38:27 But it’s like one day.
1:38:29 And I just go, I don’t know.
1:38:32 But have you ever been to a wedding that was non-traditional?
1:38:33 Yeah, like-
1:38:35 And then you go, oh, that’s cool.
1:38:36 It was like a party.
1:38:37 Yeah, and it’s like them.
1:38:38 And they took all the bullshit out.
1:38:39 Because I have to say something.
1:38:41 Like I, see, I’m the opposite,
1:38:44 which is I don’t really believe in the legal institution
1:38:44 of marriage.
1:38:46 I think it has almost nothing to do with love.
1:38:47 I think it’s largely performative.
1:38:49 I think if people were madly in love,
1:38:50 they’re madly in love and they could either marry
1:38:52 or not get married and it’s not going to change anything,
1:38:54 except the legal status of things.
1:38:58 But I love, but I love weddings.
1:38:59 Oh, I love weddings.
1:38:59 I love them.
1:39:01 I get misty-eyed at every wedding.
1:39:02 My son just got engaged.
1:39:03 I can’t wait, like it’s going to be so,
1:39:08 because I think that, I think there’s something so fun
1:39:10 about like a big group of people all getting together
1:39:12 and having a party over something as noble
1:39:14 as two people finding each other
1:39:16 in a world of 8 billion people.
1:39:18 And like, I think there’s something about like a group
1:39:19 of people all getting up and going like,
1:39:21 we’re going to be cheering for you
1:39:22 and we’re going to be here for you.
1:39:24 And like, I love good food.
1:39:27 And I love, like, I love being with people.
1:39:30 Like, I think if, I think if the first time
1:39:32 everybody you love is in one room is your funeral,
1:39:33 you’re an idiot.
1:39:35 Like, I think there’s something really beautiful.
1:39:37 Like, I have to tell you, I, you know,
1:39:38 I got divorced many years ago.
1:39:44 But I have amazing photos of my mom from my wedding,
1:39:45 because it’s like how many times in your life
1:39:47 do you put on like a fancy dress
1:39:49 and have your hair done and all that stuff.
1:39:51 And my mom lost her hair so many times
1:39:53 because of chemo and all those other things.
1:39:55 And when she passed, like she was so sick for so many years.
1:39:57 And I was so afraid when she died
1:40:01 that that’s how I would remember her is in that bed sick.
1:40:03 And I have to tell you, I look at those pictures
1:40:06 of my mom from that wedding, smiling so big.
1:40:09 And, you know, and it, I’m so glad I have those photos.
1:40:10 I’m so glad.
1:40:11 And I wouldn’t have had them
1:40:13 if we hadn’t had this stupid party, you know.
1:40:16 And I remember deliberately saying to the DJ,
1:40:19 because I was what, 22?
1:40:20 Yeah, I was 22.
1:40:21 I remember saying to the DJ,
1:40:23 do not play that stupid chicken dance thing.
1:40:24 Do not play that.
1:40:25 Like, we’re not doing that stupid thing.
1:40:26 We’re not happening.
1:40:29 And I don’t know when it happened,
1:40:31 but my mom must have like gone to him
1:40:33 and been like, play the chicken dance.
1:40:34 And he was like, I’m not supposed to play the chicken dance.
1:40:35 And she was like, yeah,
1:40:36 but you’re playing the chicken dance.
1:40:38 She, they played the chicken dance.
1:40:39 And I would tell you something.
1:40:41 I will have that memory of my mother
1:40:42 with that’s doing that stupid chicken dance
1:40:45 in my head until I die at it.
1:40:46 I’m really glad I have it.
1:40:47 Like, I’m really glad it’s there.
1:40:48 So I tell you, like, I,
1:40:52 I think weddings are a blast.
1:40:53 And I think if you’re in love with somebody
1:40:55 and you love them so much that you’re like,
1:40:56 all right, we’re going to do our thing.
1:40:58 Go have a wedding.
1:40:59 Don’t get married.
1:41:00 Don’t get married, have a wedding.
1:41:02 Because getting married and having a wedding,
1:41:04 the two don’t have anything to do with it.
1:41:06 When have you ever gone to a wedding?
1:41:08 And at the end of the wedding said,
1:41:09 I just need to see the paperwork.
1:41:11 Could you just show me the marriage license now?
1:41:13 I just need to make sure before I give you the gift
1:41:14 and before I leave,
1:41:16 I just want to make sure everything was notarized properly.
1:41:18 No, no, what did you do?
1:41:19 You didn’t see wedding.
1:41:21 You don’t say, I’ve never saw my parents’ marriage license.
1:41:22 They could have made the whole thing up.
1:41:23 I don’t know.
1:41:24 But have the party.
1:41:25 Have the party.
1:41:26 Why not have the party?
1:41:27 And don’t have somebody else’s party.
1:41:29 You just described somebody else’s party
1:41:32 where you wait for three hours and screw that.
1:41:34 Why would you even have to sit down dinner portion?
1:41:35 The pastoral derbs is the best part.
1:41:36 So just do that.
1:41:38 You can do it however you want.
1:41:41 Like if there’s a core message to my book
1:41:43 and to my approach to relationships is,
1:41:46 you get to do it however you want.
1:41:50 You know what almost all the people in my office have in common?
1:41:52 They all tried to do it a particular way
1:41:54 that somebody told them that’s how they’re supposed to do it.
1:41:56 And it didn’t work.
1:41:59 And it’s got a terrible track record.
1:42:04 Like the way that most people do it fails 56% of the time.
1:42:06 So do it different.
1:42:08 You got plenty of room to do it different.
1:42:11 And the only two people that are qualified
1:42:14 to decide how to do it really are the two of you.
1:42:16 Out of eight billion choices,
1:42:19 you picked each other, throw whatever party you want to.
1:42:23 If your friends love you, they’re going to love that party.
1:42:25 And even if they don’t love it, they’re going to go like,
1:42:26 you know what, that was them.
1:42:28 That was very them, you know?
1:42:29 That’s great.
1:42:32 And this is really what me and my partner kind of decided on.
1:42:34 We talked about having like a wedding or whatever.
1:42:35 And I was like, do you know what I’d love to do?
1:42:38 And this is really inspired by seeing so many of my friends
1:42:41 planning their weddings and looking very miserable in the process
1:42:44 and having to basically cut back on things they loved in their life
1:42:45 because they’re saving.
1:42:47 They’re saving for the wedding in two years time.
1:42:49 So they can’t go out on Friday evening.
1:42:50 They’re going to have to cut back date night
1:42:52 because they’ve got this wedding in two years time.
1:42:53 Great start to a marriage.
1:42:57 And I just always think to myself, why don’t you take,
1:42:59 say if it’s a hundred K, let’s say that you’re spending on the wedding
1:43:02 or if it’s 10 K, why don’t you just divide it in 10
1:43:05 and have 10 mini parties and invite lots of, you know,
1:43:07 and then you get all these memories.
1:43:08 You know the answer to that question.
1:43:10 Because who’s that wedding for?
1:43:11 It’s not for them.
1:43:13 It’s not for them.
1:43:13 It’s for the audience.
1:43:18 And the more this is, this is why we’re driving 100 miles an hour
1:43:20 towards a brick wall in our culture.
1:43:24 Because we are now doing it for the audience.
1:43:26 We’re not doing it for us anymore.
1:43:27 And we have to live in our skin.
1:43:29 We have to live in our own lives.
1:43:31 We have to live in our own relationships.
1:43:33 So what we’re doing for the audience,
1:43:35 because it looks good for the audience,
1:43:38 like this is why we’ve become a culture
1:43:40 with white teeth and rotting gums.
1:43:43 Because we don’t actually care what it is.
1:43:44 We care what it looks like.
1:43:48 That’s why so many people that three weeks ago
1:43:51 were hashtag blessed, hashtag best wife ever
1:43:53 are in my office having a consultation
1:43:54 and are having an affair
1:43:58 and are having because underneath that air of.
1:44:00 And by the way, how many celebrities?
1:44:03 How many celebrities are denying?
1:44:07 I have celebrity clients who their press releases,
1:44:09 their interviews, they’re talking about how happy they are.
1:44:10 They’re in my office.
1:44:14 We’re actively negotiating the dissolution of their relationship.
1:44:16 They haven’t lived together
1:44:18 because they lived in their separate homes on separate coasts
1:44:19 for the last year and a half.
1:44:22 But they show up for each other at the red carpet
1:44:23 and they do their thing.
1:44:26 And then they part ways and don’t talk to each other.
1:44:26 But why?
1:44:27 Why are we selling it?
1:44:29 Because we’re selling a dream to people.
1:44:30 We’re selling a dream.
1:44:32 And see, what’s interesting to me is,
1:44:36 I actually think reality is prettier than the dream.
1:44:40 And so if, why would you start your relationship
1:44:44 with an homage to fakeness
1:44:47 or to someone else’s vision of things?
1:44:49 Why not start it with an authentic expression
1:44:52 of who you are to each other
1:44:54 and how much you mean to each other.
1:44:56 And like then the paperwork, whatever,
1:44:57 the paperwork’s the paperwork.
1:45:02 Do you have celebrity clients
1:45:04 who are literally in fake relationships?
1:45:05 Yeah, 100%.
1:45:05 100%.
1:45:08 I have celebrity clients that are in fake relationships.
1:45:10 I have celebrity clients that are
1:45:13 in financial arrangement, fake relationships.
1:45:15 I had this big conversation with my friends the other day
1:45:17 because, you know, there’s a couple of like
1:45:21 big celebrity names have broken up that we’re aware of.
1:45:23 And I went back through their Instagram
1:45:26 just to see the way that they portrayed their relationship.
1:45:28 Because whenever you see a celebrity relationship,
1:45:31 it’s like, perfect, perfect, perfect, over.
1:45:32 Yeah.
1:45:35 Well, they do what I call the Rosie O’Donnell, right?
1:45:38 Because Rosie O’Donnell, for years,
1:45:40 there were rumors that she was a lesbian.
1:45:42 And she did this whole thing about how she had
1:45:44 a crush on Tom Cruise and she’s not a lesbian
1:45:46 and she has a crush on Tom Cruise
1:45:47 and she’s not a lesbian and did that.
1:45:48 And then finally one day she was like,
1:45:49 “Of course I’m a lesbian.
1:45:50 Everyone knows I’m a lesbian.
1:45:52 Everyone’s known that for years.”
1:45:55 And I felt like it’s like you just gaslit the whole culture.
1:45:56 Like, and that’s all celebrities do.
1:45:58 They just gaslight us about their relationships.
1:46:00 Like they just do the like, “Oh, we’re so in love.”
1:46:03 So all these vicious rumors started by people that hate us.
1:46:06 And meanwhile, yeah, the whole thing’s eroded.
1:46:09 But see, that’s not a celebrity alone phenomenon.
1:46:12 Like what’s great about celebrities is
1:46:13 they have enough distance between them
1:46:15 that they can hide that.
1:46:18 Because most of them own a home in Miami,
1:46:20 own a home in LA, own a home in New York,
1:46:23 and then they have some place in Europe usually or Italy.
1:46:26 Like they have enough room to lose each other
1:46:27 and to be okay with it.
1:46:29 And just be like, “Yeah, we’re living our lives.”
1:46:31 They just have to be careful about not being seen out
1:46:32 with other people.
1:46:37 I always wonder if the public portrayal
1:46:40 of a perfect relationship correlates to a bad one,
1:46:41 if you know what I mean.
1:46:44 Like I think the people that would sit on Valentine’s Day,
1:46:46 sprinkle the rose petals,
1:46:48 then they’d get their puppy and their husband
1:46:50 and then they’d say, “Right, can you take that photo?”
1:46:52 They’re probably taking 20 or 30 photos.
1:46:53 For me in my head, I go,
1:46:56 “People that like publicly portray a perfect relationship,
1:47:00 is that like a cloak of the insecurity or is it?”
1:47:01 I think so.
1:47:03 I mean, I think that, and again,
1:47:05 this is a function largely of social media,
1:47:06 but I think there is…
1:47:10 But we all sort of, it works.
1:47:13 And that’s why I think people keep doing it, right?
1:47:15 It’s like there’s a bad reward system at play here.
1:47:19 But like, so I live in Manhattan
1:47:21 and I live right near,
1:47:24 and my office is right near the vessel.
1:47:26 And the vessel is this amazing beautiful sculpture
1:47:29 in Manhattan, in the West Chelsea.
1:47:31 And my office actually overlooks the vessel.
1:47:33 It’s beautiful in the Hudson Yards area.
1:47:35 And so people, tourists from all over,
1:47:37 come to take a picture by the vessel.
1:47:40 And so every time I’m walking to and from the office,
1:47:41 I pass the vessel.
1:47:45 And there are always at least 100 people
1:47:47 taking pictures by the vessel.
1:47:50 And I find it absolutely hilarious,
1:47:52 because one of the things you see all the time,
1:47:54 and it’s usually women,
1:47:56 but men sometimes are guilty of it,
1:48:00 is the photo of the person pretending
1:48:02 that they’re not having their photo taken.
1:48:04 So it’s like they’re just sort of standing there like this,
1:48:06 or like they look over this way.
1:48:08 And their friend is taking the picture from over here.
1:48:11 And I think to myself, when you post that,
1:48:14 what are, who took that picture?
1:48:17 Or are we to believe that the paparazzi were following you?
1:48:19 Like you’re just a regular person.
1:48:22 So clearly you set this up.
1:48:25 But here’s the thing, like the thing about us as humans is,
1:48:27 I don’t know that we look at that photo and go,
1:48:29 what is that?
1:48:31 Like, I mean, look at like high,
1:48:34 we just like look at high fashion photos
1:48:37 in like any magazine, Vogue, L, things like that.
1:48:39 Look at the position of people’s bodies.
1:48:43 Like, oh, seriously, pause this, whatever you’re doing.
1:48:44 And look, do that.
1:48:48 Like, bizarre, no one sits.
1:48:50 Again, visually looks good.
1:48:50 I get it.
1:48:52 Maybe it makes the clothes look a certain way.
1:48:54 No one sits like that.
1:48:57 So the thing of like the rose petals and the,
1:49:00 like, who does that really?
1:49:01 And if they’re doing it, are they doing it?
1:49:03 Because they think that’s what you’re supposed to do.
1:49:05 Why? Because they saw it, right?
1:49:08 All those rose petals, all those performative,
1:49:09 we’re madly in love.
1:49:10 Look at how in love we are.
1:49:12 Look, guys, quick, look at how in love we are.
1:49:13 It’s shower sex.
1:49:16 It looks good, but all you’re really doing
1:49:17 is just putting on a show.
1:49:21 And that show leads you right to my office.
1:49:22 And the reason we like the show
1:49:25 is because we want to believe in the fairy tale.
1:49:28 Because if we see it in my favorite celebrity couple,
1:49:30 then it almost keeps the hope alive for me.
1:49:36 It’s the antidote for the statistics around divorce.
1:49:38 It’s the antidote for the heartbreak I saw in my home.
1:49:41 It’s the antidote for the misery I see around me.
1:49:44 It’s, look, fairy tales exist just like Disney.
1:49:45 And that’s why we want it.
1:49:46 I get that.
1:49:47 And that’s why people do it.
1:49:49 I understand why we do that.
1:49:52 But I think it’s also like pornography.
1:49:56 It’s a, I don’t want to say an idealized version.
1:50:02 It’s a stylized version of something people actually are doing.
1:50:07 But if you start to think your sex life is inferior
1:50:10 because it doesn’t look like pornography,
1:50:14 you’re modeling it against something that’s very unnatural
1:50:15 and not real.
1:50:19 And that is not indicative of what actual sex looks like
1:50:23 or feels like or how it works logistically
1:50:25 or how bodies work logistically.
1:50:30 So we’re getting educated the wrong ways.
1:50:31 And it’s, again, not to tie, you know,
1:50:33 go from like marriage to sex to death.
1:50:36 But it’s the same problem I had in my master’s thesis.
1:50:40 It really was like we convince what we always,
1:50:42 we shield people from death.
1:50:44 We hide it from people.
1:50:47 Like if someone, if I said my grandmother’s dying,
1:50:50 I want to take my kids to sea, you’d be like,
1:50:52 what kind of sick bastard are you?
1:50:54 Like if you said, oh, I’m going to walk around the graveyard
1:50:57 or I’m going, you don’t talk about death.
1:50:58 You don’t talk about these.
1:51:00 Why? Why?
1:51:01 If these are things that are important,
1:51:04 if these are milestone things in our lives,
1:51:08 not talking about it is not going to prevent it from happening.
1:51:12 So why not talk about honestly, like what’s really going on?
1:51:14 Like I have to tell you ever, you know,
1:51:16 again, the antidote to some of this stuff
1:51:18 is to say like, who took that picture?
1:51:18 That’s weird.
1:51:19 Like you didn’t know they were taking it?
1:51:21 Oh, because you were looking in the other direction.
1:51:23 Like why not just start saying like,
1:51:25 yeah, I’m not going to be full of shit.
1:51:26 I remember many years ago.
1:51:29 I remember like waking up in New York City
1:51:31 and my ex-girlfriend from many years ago
1:51:35 was like pissed off at me because it was Valentine’s Day
1:51:39 and I hadn’t texted her and like told, said happy birthday to her.
1:51:40 But I was in New York, so I was on a different time zone.
1:51:43 So it was six AMYs where I was, I hadn’t even woken up yet.
1:51:47 And she’d sent me a screenshot of another couple
1:51:50 who were like with the, you know, the rose petals
1:51:51 and the roses and stuff.
1:51:53 And she was infuriating herself
1:51:57 based on an Instagram post she’d seen of another couple.
1:51:58 And I was being attacked
1:52:00 because I wasn’t meeting that standard.
1:52:04 Yeah. And this is why I think we are living in a moment
1:52:06 where there is more comparison than ever.
1:52:07 You must see that in your office, right?
1:52:09 I see it in my office constantly.
1:52:11 I see it in life constantly.
1:52:12 How does that matter?
1:52:15 By the way, it’s not just in the relationship thing though.
1:52:17 Because of course people post their greatest hits.
1:52:20 People are constantly flaunting their relationship
1:52:22 and showing everyone their relationship.
1:52:24 But it’s not even just your relationship
1:52:25 with your significant other.
1:52:27 It’s your relationship with yourself.
1:52:30 If I see one more person posting their workout routine
1:52:32 their sauna and cold plunge,
1:52:35 the diet routine of the, you know, their hashtag beast mode.
1:52:38 If I see one more person posting how their parenting routine
1:52:40 and the wonderful intricate snacks
1:52:42 that they make for their children.
1:52:46 Like all day long, there is an idealized stylized version
1:52:48 of every single aspect of our life
1:52:51 that is so much better than the gag reel that we’re living.
1:52:53 And we’re watching it.
1:52:57 And we’re comparing ourselves to it and our partner to it.
1:53:00 And we’re going, how come my partner doesn’t look like that?
1:53:01 They don’t look like that.
1:53:03 Like all these videos of the person like
1:53:06 getting up in the morning, who you set up the camera?
1:53:08 There’s someone set up a camera.
1:53:14 Like, and I really feel sometimes like I’m the crazy person going,
1:53:15 guys, do you not see this?
1:53:16 Like, do you not see this?
1:53:19 Do you not see that this is what’s making you unhappy?
1:53:21 You’re unhappy with yourself.
1:53:22 You’re unhappy with your partner.
1:53:24 You’re unhappy with your relationship with your partner
1:53:26 because you’re comparing it to fiction.
1:53:32 And because it’s on your phone, instead of on the movie screen,
1:53:33 you think it’s real.
1:53:36 Sometimes comparison can wake us up to things
1:53:37 that we needed to know, though.
1:53:40 And I think you’re the story of you going to the theme park
1:53:41 that day, which I was reading about,
1:53:46 and seeing that couple who were pretty idyllic.
1:53:49 Highlights to you that maybe this wasn’t…
1:53:51 They just had their 20th wedding anniversary last week.
1:53:52 Yeah, yeah.
1:53:52 Well, what happened?
1:53:54 So you were at a theme park with them.
1:53:57 So I was with my ex-wife and our young kids,
1:54:01 and these were college friends of ours
1:54:03 because we were college sweethearts, my ex-wife and I.
1:54:08 And we were at a theme park with them, with our all-young kids.
1:54:12 And, you know, my ex-wife’s a lovely person.
1:54:14 I think she’d say nice things about me, too.
1:54:16 I’m a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
1:54:19 I think she’d tell you I’m a spectacular ex-husband
1:54:21 and have a leave a lot to be desired as a husband.
1:54:23 Probably fair comment.
1:54:26 And I would say that, you know, there’s a lot of people I love
1:54:27 that I wouldn’t want to be married to, and she’s one of them.
1:54:30 She’s very happily remarried for a long time to a great guy.
1:54:33 And we were at this theme park with them,
1:54:36 and they’d been married for roughly the same number of years
1:54:37 that we were at the time.
1:54:40 And I remember the kids wanted to go on some ride,
1:54:43 and it was like the permutations of seating.
1:54:45 It was like three and three, and they had two kids.
1:54:47 So we were like, “Okay, I’ll sit with these two kids.
1:54:48 You sit with these two kids.”
1:54:51 And they said, “Great, we’re going to just hold hands
1:54:52 and go for a walk.”
1:54:56 And they like held hands, and they started walking away.
1:54:58 And I remember looking at them and thinking,
1:55:01 “Well, they really like each other.
1:55:04 Like, they really like each other.”
1:55:08 And I remember thinking like, “I don’t feel that way about her.
1:55:11 Like, I love her, but I don’t feel that way about her.”
1:55:14 And it just, it wasn’t like, and then I went home,
1:55:17 and we got divorced, together some more time.
1:55:21 But I remember when we decided to divorce,
1:55:25 we had some very honest conversations with each other
1:55:27 about marriage, and about when we’d felt, you know,
1:55:29 we were very good at post-gaming it,
1:55:30 because we stayed friends.
1:55:34 And I said to her, “You know, I remember this moment
1:55:36 when we were at the theme park with…”
1:55:40 And she goes, “Oh my God, I remember that exact same moment.”
1:55:42 And I said, “Yeah, and I thought like,
1:55:43 they went off and we’re holding hands.”
1:55:46 And I remember thinking like, “I don’t love her like that.”
1:55:49 And she was like, “Jim, I’m not making this up.
1:55:50 I thought the exact same thing.”
1:55:53 She’s like, I remember seeing it and thinking like,
1:55:54 “Yeah, like I don’t…”
1:55:56 Like, if they took our kids on this ride,
1:55:58 we wouldn’t be holding hands walking through the park.
1:56:00 And why?
1:56:03 We just didn’t have that between us.
1:56:04 What is that?
1:56:06 I don’t know. That’s magic.
1:56:08 I don’t know. That thing, that thing.
1:56:10 That magic part that nobody can really explain.
1:56:12 I don’t know. It’s the thing.
1:56:14 It’s the reason why I’ve never been homophobic,
1:56:17 because I happen to be heterosexual,
1:56:18 but I couldn’t explain why.
1:56:21 Like, I don’t know if it’s a combination of biology,
1:56:22 cultural pressure.
1:56:23 I have no idea.
1:56:26 I just know what sparks something in me
1:56:27 is what sparks something in me.
1:56:29 And I don’t think I have a right to say
1:56:32 to another adult who has those feelings about another adult
1:56:35 that they have, that they’re wrong and I’m right or something.
1:56:36 I genuinely just feel like,
1:56:38 I don’t know, there’s something magical about love.
1:56:41 I mean, there’s something magical about romantic attraction
1:56:44 and the feeling of like deep connection to each other.
1:56:48 I mean, I’ve known that couple now for the entire 28 years
1:56:50 or that they’ve been married,
1:56:54 and they are legit super into each other.
1:56:57 But they are the least performative people you’d ever meet.
1:57:00 They’re very focused on each other.
1:57:02 Like, they really like each other.
1:57:06 Like, she refers to him as her boyfriend.
1:57:07 They’ve been married for 28 years.
1:57:10 They have two kids that are like adults now,
1:57:11 and they should be like,
1:57:13 “Oh, well, my boyfriend’s coming home next week
1:57:16 “from work trip,” and like, she means her husband.
1:57:18 But like, she refers to him as that.
1:57:20 And like, he refers to her as my girl.
1:57:22 Like, he’s like, “Yeah, well, my girl and I,
1:57:23 “we’re gonna go do this.”
1:57:26 And I’m always like, “Dude, like 28 years of marriage,
1:57:28 “and that’s how you guys feel about each other.”
1:57:28 Like, and it’s legit.
1:57:30 It’s not like a thing.
1:57:31 It’s like legit. – What is that?
1:57:32 – I don’t know.
1:57:33 If I knew that, man, I’d find a way
1:57:36 to tell people to do it and bottle it.
1:57:37 Like, I don’t know.
1:57:37 I’ll tell you what it is.
1:57:39 It’s beautiful.
1:57:40 It’s beautiful.
1:57:41 It’s fun to even be around.
1:57:43 Like, it’s fun to be around.
1:57:46 When you’re not in a challenging marriage,
1:57:49 being around that is like the warmest,
1:57:50 most wonderful place.
1:57:53 It’s not surprising to me that their two sons
1:57:56 are like two of the most amazing young men I’ve ever met.
1:57:57 – How do they hug you?
1:57:59 – I think they, I’ve never watched them argue.
1:58:03 I imagine, so I imagine one answer would be privately.
1:58:06 But from what I understand,
1:58:08 ’cause I have tried to reverse engineer
1:58:10 a little bit with them, like, what is it?
1:58:11 ‘Cause I’ve talked about them enough in media now
1:58:13 that they know I’m like, I always text them like,
1:58:15 “Hey, I talked about you.”
1:58:17 And when the book, they were like,
1:58:19 “Oh, yo, I was like, “Hey, Paige, whatever.”
1:58:21 They thought it was quite funny.
1:58:23 I think they play fair.
1:58:27 Like, they, I don’t know, they never lost the plot.
1:58:31 They seem to really, I hope this comes out the right way.
1:58:33 They love their sons.
1:58:34 They really love their sons.
1:58:36 They’re two amazing parents.
1:58:38 But it seems to me like they both,
1:58:41 they view each other as the most important thing.
1:58:43 And she’s always looking out for his happiness
1:58:44 and he’s always looking out for hers
1:58:46 and it’s an equal measure.
1:58:50 Like, I think she is very focused on him
1:58:52 and what will make him happy.
1:58:56 And he’s very focused on her and what will make her happy.
1:59:01 And they both take tremendous joy in each other’s joy.
1:59:02 And I think they both feel,
1:59:06 and they have, I will say, they have been through some things.
1:59:09 Like, she had metastatic breast cancer at one point.
1:59:12 She had all kinds of, and they weathered that storm.
1:59:15 They weathered that storm with grace, humor,
1:59:17 and even deeper connection.
1:59:21 And again, I don’t know if it’s partly luck
1:59:25 that they, like, just hit the lottery with each other.
1:59:29 But I think some of it is just that they pay attention.
1:59:32 Like, it’s important to them.
1:59:34 You’re in a relationship, but you’re not married anymore.
1:59:36 You weren’t married previously.
1:59:38 Will you ever get married again?
1:59:41 I’ve said before that I don’t think marriage is important to me.
1:59:47 I don’t, marriage from where I’m sitting
1:59:52 is a contract that was written by the state
1:59:56 that is supposed to define in some general way
2:00:00 what this relationship is and create a set of rules that govern it.
2:00:04 And if you do a prenup, you can change that set of rules.
2:00:06 But you’re still saying, you know,
2:00:09 “I really want to get the government involved in this situation.”
2:00:15 I have no part of me that in my relationship goes,
2:00:18 “We really need to get the government involved in this.”
2:00:20 I just don’t, that’s just not in me.
2:00:26 And I, and it’s not only not in me, it just seems absurd to me.
2:00:26 Marriage seems absurd.
2:00:33 To me. I understand why people get married.
2:00:36 I think I understand it better than most people.
2:00:39 But it just, to me, doesn’t make any sense.
2:00:40 Why do they get married?
2:00:43 I think I need a lot more time.
2:00:44 I think it’s cultural pressure.
2:00:45 Okay.
2:00:46 I think it’s performative.
2:00:51 I think it’s because we live in a society, if not a world,
2:00:53 that presumes marriage is a good idea.
2:00:58 I think that that is tied to medieval institutions.
2:01:02 It’s tied to things that are way before us.
2:01:04 And it’s tied to partly land ownership.
2:01:06 It’s partly tied to religious concepts.
2:01:09 It’s partly what Freud talks about in civilization.
2:01:12 It’s this content, so we’re not all killing each other over mates.
2:01:18 We’ve structured society around this idea of turning pair bonds,
2:01:21 which, by the way, is a very healthy permutation
2:01:22 with which to raise children.
2:01:28 And it fits our biology quite nicely in terms of the amount of time
2:01:31 that a child’s in gestation versus, you know.
2:01:38 But I think we’re just running a program that was here before us,
2:01:41 and that we’ve been taught as how it’s supposed to be.
2:01:42 This is what you do.
2:01:45 Like, again, ask the question.
2:01:47 You think it’s a bad idea, don’t you?
2:01:47 Getting married?
2:01:48 Yeah.
2:01:49 I think it’s an incredibly bad idea.
2:01:51 I think it’s an incredibly dangerous idea.
2:01:53 I don’t think it’s a bad idea.
2:01:54 I think it’s a dangerous idea.
2:01:56 There’s a difference between those two things.
2:01:57 Like skydiving is a dangerous idea.
2:02:00 I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but it’s a dangerous idea.
2:02:04 It depends on how much joy you place on that thing, right?
2:02:07 Like, for me, the joy of jumping out of a plane,
2:02:09 as compared to the danger of jumping out of a plane,
2:02:12 precludes me from jumping out of planes.
2:02:13 Maybe I’m missing out on something.
2:02:14 That’s OK.
2:02:15 I’ll live with it.
2:02:16 There’s lots of cool stuff to do.
2:02:17 I haven’t gotten bored yet.
2:02:20 Marriage is kind of the same thing.
2:02:23 Like, I think marriage is, again, like–
2:02:30 because, again, turn around the question, which is we know facts,
2:02:31 facts.
2:02:34 Marriage is overwhelmingly unsuccessful.
2:02:37 It is way more dangerous than skydiving.
2:02:39 Yes, you die from the skydiving.
2:02:42 But the chances of a catastrophic skydiving incident
2:02:45 is, like, 0.0003.
2:02:48 And one where you die is 0.0001.
2:02:52 It’s, like, very limited, the chances of dying from skydiving.
2:02:54 Whereas the chances of divorce, again,
2:02:58 56% divorce rate, how many stay together who are unhappy
2:03:00 and they just stay together because they don’t give a path
2:03:02 or stuff or for religious reasons or whatever.
2:03:05 This is a technology with an unbelievably bad failure rate.
2:03:08 Do more people die from marriage or skydiving?
2:03:10 Well, I think more people wish they were dead from marriage
2:03:11 than skydiving.
2:03:15 I think most people’s sense of self, many people’s sense of self,
2:03:17 dies as part of an unhappy marriage.
2:03:19 Like, it’s not a question of will you die.
2:03:22 It’s that you’re alive and not living your life in a way
2:03:26 that’s enjoyable or in a way that’s authentic to who you are.
2:03:29 And I think a lot of people are doing that as a function
2:03:30 of the choice that they made of marriage.
2:03:33 And again, I’m not saying don’t get married.
2:03:37 But what I’m saying is, when someone says I’m getting married,
2:03:40 why is it impolite to say why?
2:03:41 Why?
2:03:46 You’re about to do something incredibly dangerous
2:03:49 that fails so much of the time.
2:03:50 Why not just say, why?
2:03:52 I’d like to– I’m not saying, why would you do that?
2:03:53 It’s stupid.
2:03:54 I’m saying, why?
2:03:58 Because most people’s answer doesn’t make any sense.
2:04:02 Well, because, you know, I don’t want to be alone.
2:04:05 Wait, you have to get married to not be alone?
2:04:06 Join a church group.
2:04:07 I don’t know.
2:04:08 Join a baking squad.
2:04:09 Join a softball team.
2:04:10 You won’t be alone.
2:04:11 What does that mean?
2:04:14 Well, I want to have, you know, regular sex.
2:04:17 Okay, I don’t know that getting married is the solution to that.
2:04:20 Like, it’s not a guarantee of regular sex.
2:04:23 Like, that’s not– you know, so if the question–
2:04:25 first of all, you’re not even allowed to ask the question why.
2:04:29 If anything, if you don’t say, oh my god, that’s so great,
2:04:30 you have intimacy issues.
2:04:34 People say for the kids, you know, it’s good for the kids and–
2:04:34 Which kids?
2:04:36 The kids you’ve already had or the kids you’re going to have?
2:04:38 You’re saying we’re getting married so that we–
2:04:42 And by the way, again, okay, you’re saying societally it’s good for–
2:04:47 I mean, I think what you’re saying is it’s good for a mother and a father
2:04:49 in a household with children together, right?
2:04:51 So the polarity of male and female.
2:04:53 Again, I know a lot of same-sex couples
2:04:55 that have raised very successful happy children,
2:04:57 so maybe you’re saying a two-parent family is a good thing
2:04:59 that it doesn’t have to be male and female.
2:05:00 Whatever, okay, that’s all true.
2:05:02 What does the marriage license have to do with that?
2:05:04 What does the government getting involved have to do with that?
2:05:05 It gives me security.
2:05:07 What security?
2:05:10 Secure– you’re saying something that fails 56% of the time
2:05:11 makes you feel like you get security?
2:05:13 That’s a really weird sense of security.
2:05:15 If I said to you, I’ve got an airbag in my car
2:05:17 that doesn’t deploy 70% of the time,
2:05:19 would you drive around feeling safe?
2:05:23 Or would you go, like, this is a lottery I don’t want to participate in.
2:05:26 I’m just going to strap myself in and do something else
2:05:29 because I’m not going to rely on this 30% airbag.
2:05:32 You wouldn’t have a job.
2:05:34 Well, that’s main reason.
2:05:35 I don’t know.
2:05:38 I mean, listen, I’ve been saying for years
2:05:40 that I think I have tremendous job security
2:05:43 and it makes me very happy on one level
2:05:45 and it makes me very sad on another level
2:05:46 that I have such job security.
2:05:49 I think– I think– I don’t think we’re getting better at this.
2:05:51 I think we’re getting worse at it.
2:05:54 And I don’t think by the time I retire,
2:05:56 which isn’t that far away,
2:05:59 like, I don’t think we’re going to get so good at it
2:06:00 that I’m going to be out of a job.
2:06:04 As an entrepreneur, I’m always looking for ways to connect and to create.
2:06:07 And that’s why I decided to launch the conversation cards.
2:06:10 I turned to Shopify, who also spawned this podcast,
2:06:12 and Shopify made it so easy
2:06:15 to set up an online store and reach all of you
2:06:17 no matter where you are in the world.
2:06:19 I remember the challenges we faced
2:06:21 when we first launched the Diary of a CEO conversation cards,
2:06:24 managing inventory, ensuring a seamless checkout process,
2:06:25 and reaching our audience.
2:06:27 Shopify stepped in and made everything
2:06:29 so straightforward and efficient.
2:06:32 It was like having an entire team of experts by our side,
2:06:36 allowing us to focus on creating content and connecting with you.
2:06:37 What I love about Shopify is,
2:06:39 no matter how big you intend to grow your business,
2:06:42 they give you everything you need to take control
2:06:44 and take your business to the next level.
2:06:46 And to say thank you for listening to this podcast,
2:06:48 we’re giving you a trial, which is just $1 a month,
2:06:52 and you can sign up by going to Shopify.com/Bartlet.
2:06:53 The link is in the description below.
2:06:56 More and more people are getting pre-nups.
2:06:58 You said to me that a lot of people contact you these days
2:06:59 asking for you to help with pre-nups.
2:07:01 One of the interesting things we were talking about
2:07:03 before we started filming was,
2:07:05 it’s really uncomfortable to turn to your partner
2:07:06 and ask them for pre-nup.
2:07:09 I know a lot of people say that,
2:07:12 and I think it’s a question of how you enter the conversation.
2:07:14 Again, I guess because I get paid to talk,
2:07:17 and I’m used to talking sometimes about difficult things
2:07:20 with the judge or revealing things
2:07:22 that are hard to reveal about someone
2:07:24 and trying to make sure that they’re not viewed negatively,
2:07:26 even though they might have behaved negatively.
2:07:27 So I think pre-nup,
2:07:29 it’s all about how you bring up the conversation.
2:07:33 And my preferred entry point for a pre-nup
2:07:34 when I talk to someone is,
2:07:36 every single person who gets married has a pre-nup.
2:07:39 It’s either written by the government
2:07:41 or it’s written by the two people who love each other
2:07:44 more than the other eight billion people in the world.
2:07:49 I personally think that the two people in a marriage
2:07:52 are better qualified to create the rule set of their marriage
2:07:55 than politicians they don’t know,
2:07:58 especially when you consider the nature of politicians.
2:08:01 They want a popularity contest.
2:08:04 They manage to offend as few people as possible,
2:08:06 and they change constantly.
2:08:10 So you’re signing up for the most legally significant thing
2:08:12 you’re ever going to do other than die
2:08:17 with a rule set that no one ever explains to you in advance
2:08:22 and that can be changed by people who don’t know you
2:08:26 based on who won a popularity contest.
2:08:28 That seems smart to you.
2:08:34 Or did the two of you decide what the rules are going to be?
2:08:37 And then starting from the beginning,
2:08:39 which is where you are if you’re doing a pre-nup
2:08:40 because you’re about to get married,
2:08:43 okay, then you live your life in accordance
2:08:45 with that rule set together.
2:08:46 And when one of you is deviating from it
2:08:48 or when a red flag goes up,
2:08:50 like you go, “Hey, how come you’re doing it that way?
2:08:51 Remember, we have that rule set.”
2:08:52 And so I like that.
2:08:54 I think pre-nups,
2:08:58 I think pre-nups even having a conversation about a pre-nup,
2:09:02 I think is a very healthy exercise for a couple.
2:09:04 I cannot tell you how many people
2:09:06 since our first conversation
2:09:09 have stopped me on the streets of New York City and said,
2:09:12 “I got into the coolest conversation
2:09:15 with my girlfriend about pre-nups and marriage
2:09:16 after I saw you and Stephen talking.
2:09:21 I’ve had probably like two people a week say that to me.”
2:09:23 It’s a very, I always say to these people,
2:09:25 I’m like, “You do weird stuff in bed.
2:09:27 Like you’re watching Diary of a CEO in bed.”
2:09:30 It’s like, you knew no, there’s other stuff.
2:09:31 Like I’m not great on the shower thing,
2:09:34 but in bed, you know, I like Stephen too,
2:09:36 but that’s not the time maybe.
2:09:37 – It is. – But I guess it is.
2:09:38 Anytime’s a good time.
2:09:39 – Please turn.
2:09:40 – But they know I’m not trying to hurt you.
2:09:42 I know you broke seven million.
2:09:43 I don’t want to screw it up.
2:09:50 But I do think that there is something to this conversation.
2:09:51 And I do think sometimes like,
2:09:53 you know, look, you’re in a relationship.
2:09:55 You’ve had a hard conversation with your partner.
2:09:56 – Yeah.
2:09:59 – And when you’re in it, it’s not fun.
2:10:00 And you kind of go like,
2:10:01 “How are we ever going to get out of this?
2:10:02 Is this how it’s going to be now?”
2:10:06 We have this feeling and it’s like awkward and it’s weird.
2:10:07 And then you make it through it.
2:10:09 And then the next morning you wake up,
2:10:12 and maybe things are still a little weird or something,
2:10:13 but like, “Oh yeah.”
2:10:17 I like to believe that then there’s this feeling of like,
2:10:18 “Hey, we did that thing.”
2:10:19 Like that thing was a little weird.
2:10:20 It was a little hard.
2:10:22 We lost the plot, but then we got it back and we’re still here.
2:10:23 – Look at us.
2:10:24 – Yeah, look at us.
2:10:25 Like, “Yay, go us.”
2:10:28 You know, I think there’s real value in that.
2:10:30 I think that again, the hard thing to do
2:10:32 and the right thing to do are usually the same thing.
2:10:36 It’s hard to talk about when this ends.
2:10:39 – It’s actually the thing I’m proud of most of my relationship
2:10:41 is exactly what you just described there.
2:10:43 I’m not proud of our relationship being perfect
2:10:44 because it’s not.
2:10:47 I’m proud of how imperfect it is
2:10:49 and how we continually resolve the conflict
2:10:52 without coming out the other side resenting each other.
2:10:53 We come out the other side proud of each other.
2:10:55 We’re like, you know that meme where the,
2:10:56 I think it was the hot ones meme where they’re like,
2:10:57 “Look at us. Who better thought?”
2:10:59 And that’s like, the thing that my girlfriend
2:11:01 turns to me and says continually is,
2:11:06 “I’m so proud of how much shit we’ve got through.”
2:11:11 Because she refers to it like the roots have got even longer.
2:11:12 And going back to your conversation about prenups,
2:11:14 it reminds me of what we were talking about
2:11:15 before we started recording.
2:11:17 This idea that people don’t want to confront it
2:11:19 because you tried to get a stand
2:11:21 at a wedding convention as a divorce lawyer.
2:11:23 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:11:27 So I want to say one thing about what you said before that
2:11:30 because your verbiage is very interesting to me
2:11:32 because you said, you know, in my relationship,
2:11:34 you know, we’re not, it’s not perfect,
2:11:36 but I’m proud of X, Y, and Z.
2:11:38 And I have to tell you, like, I don’t know,
2:11:39 that sounds pretty perfect.
2:11:43 Like, I think that things are imperfect.
2:11:45 Like, and that’s perfect.
2:11:48 Like, there’s no such thing as a perfect relationship.
2:11:51 Like, ever. And that’s perfect.
2:11:52 Like, it’s perfect.
2:11:56 Like, I genuinely believe we’re perfect.
2:11:58 Like, I think we’re all flawed and we’re perfect.
2:12:00 Like, ’cause we’re authentic, we’re real.
2:12:03 So I think that’s a really important,
2:12:06 if people’s, if perfection is the standard,
2:12:08 we will all fall short.
2:12:12 I think the reality is that we are all perfectly imperfect
2:12:13 and that’s really beautiful.
2:12:18 But yes, the wedding, so in the United States,
2:12:20 I don’t know in the UK, but in the United States,
2:12:22 we have these things, they’re called wedding bazaars
2:12:24 or wedding expos or wedding fairs.
2:12:25 And somebody came up with this,
2:12:27 and it’s a brilliant business move,
2:12:29 which is you rent a gigantic hall or a small hall,
2:12:30 depending on where some of them are done
2:12:32 at, like, giant convention centers.
2:12:35 And, you know, people who are associated
2:12:37 with the wedding industrial complex,
2:12:40 you know, they pay to have a booth.
2:12:44 So there’s photographers, there’s bakers, there’s,
2:12:46 and, you know, every table has, like, something.
2:12:48 The photographers have different pictures.
2:12:51 The cake people might have, like, little samples of cake.
2:12:53 You know, there’s all the little grab bags
2:12:55 and things that people give out as wedding gifts.
2:12:58 There’s, you know, different travel things
2:13:00 related to your honeymoon and where you might go.
2:13:03 There’s different websites for, you know, your registry.
2:13:06 Like, there’s so many wedding-related,
2:13:08 wedding-adjacent businesses.
2:13:11 This is a multi-billion-dollar industry.
2:13:16 So I reached out to, like, four or five different,
2:13:19 smaller and bigger wedding expos.
2:13:22 And I said, in some instance, I’d like to get a table.
2:13:25 And they said, “Great, photographer, baker, what do you do?”
2:13:26 And I said, “Oh, I’m a lawyer.”
2:13:29 And I do divorce and family law,
2:13:32 but it’s just going to be themed around prenups.
2:13:35 It’s not going to be in any way negative about marriage.
2:13:37 It’s going to be, you know, just a congratulations
2:13:38 on your engagement.
2:13:40 Have you talked about a prenup?
2:13:42 And then I’ll have brochures and things.
2:13:44 And you can, you know, make sure that they pass muster,
2:13:47 that I don’t say anything that would be offensive to anyone.
2:13:48 I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable,
2:13:49 any other vendors to be uncomfortable.
2:13:52 But there’s literally hundreds of vendors at this thing.
2:13:53 So there’s no reason.
2:13:59 Not one wedding expo would rent a table to me.
2:14:01 They refused my money.
2:14:02 They would not take it.
2:14:03 They would not take it.
2:14:07 No matter how flowery I said I’d make the language,
2:14:09 no matter how respectful to the institution of marriage,
2:14:10 I said I would be.
2:14:13 They would not let me buy a table.
2:14:15 They wouldn’t take my money.
2:14:17 And those tables are not cheap.
2:14:19 It’s thousands of dollars to get a table of wedding expo.
2:14:21 They would not take my money.
2:14:24 Even though almost 60% of people end in divorce.
2:14:26 And it’s like almost an inevitability.
2:14:29 The probability is there’s going to be a conversation
2:14:31 about how we separate.
2:14:32 As I’ve said before, every single marriage ends.
2:14:34 It ends in death or divorce.
2:14:36 The majority of them end in divorce.
2:14:39 The majority of them end in divorce.
2:14:41 Why wouldn’t you allow me to have a table
2:14:45 that just says if you’d like to have a prenup here?
2:14:48 I’m not even trying to sell a prenup on you.
2:14:49 Like you’re getting engaged.
2:14:50 You need a prenup.
2:14:52 It’s just have you talked about a prenup.
2:14:54 And information about that prenup.
2:14:56 They would not even let me in the room.
2:14:59 And because it shatters the illusion.
2:15:00 It’s reality.
2:15:02 They don’t like reality.
2:15:05 They don’t see reality as what it is,
2:15:07 which I think by the way is quite romantic.
2:15:09 I think there’s something very nice
2:15:11 about talking to your partner.
2:15:13 About you know what I’m afraid of?
2:15:15 Losing you.
2:15:17 I don’t want to lose you to death
2:15:19 even though I know someday I have to.
2:15:21 But I don’t want to lose you to divorce either.
2:15:25 But man, almost 60% of marriage is end in divorce.
2:15:28 And if we got divorced, like what would we be?
2:15:30 Like I hope we wouldn’t hate each other.
2:15:32 Like I hope I’d still love you and care about you.
2:15:34 I’d still want you to be well.
2:15:37 Even if you left me, I wouldn’t hate you.
2:15:39 Like I don’t have one ex-girlfriend
2:15:42 that I go man, I hate that person.
2:15:43 Like I wish all of them enjoy.
2:15:45 I hope they’re all happy.
2:15:47 Like our chapter together ended.
2:15:49 But I wish all of them enjoy.
2:15:53 People don’t like to go into things without optimism though.
2:15:57 And the conversation around should we get a prenup
2:16:00 almost sounds like I think we’re gonna break up someday.
2:16:02 I think you can hear it that way.
2:16:03 But I don’t think it has to be that.
2:16:05 I agree with you about the optimism.
2:16:08 I think people would prefer to look at the bright side of things
2:16:09 and to be optimistic.
2:16:11 And I am not suggesting.
2:16:15 Like I don’t believe in fairy tales.
2:16:16 I’m a realist.
2:16:18 That doesn’t mean I get up every day
2:16:20 just thinking about nothing but death and divorce
2:16:22 and how it’s not, life is beautiful
2:16:24 and life’s meant to be lived.
2:16:25 And like what, you don’t want to sit,
2:16:27 like I’m not gonna sit at a wedding and be like,
2:16:29 do you know how many percentage of this
2:16:30 is people gonna get divorced?
2:16:31 I don’t view it that way.
2:16:32 I think it’s wonderful.
2:16:35 But be realistic about things.
2:16:37 Like I don’t want to get ill,
2:16:39 but I have a physical every year.
2:16:41 I go to the doctor every year.
2:16:42 Like I like to know what’s going on.
2:16:43 I like to be a realist.
2:16:46 I like to, I don’t plan on crashing my car
2:16:49 but I like knowing that I have a seat belt in an airbag.
2:16:55 And by the way, if my seat belt and airbag aren’t working,
2:16:57 I would like to know in advance
2:17:00 because I’m driving as if they’re going to work.
2:17:01 If you told me, by the way, Jim,
2:17:04 your seat belt and your airbag aren’t working,
2:17:08 I would drive very, very, very carefully, right?
2:17:09 So I think it’s the same thing.
2:17:12 Like just, we can’t have an honest conversation
2:17:14 and be optimistic.
2:17:17 Divorce in the US is very different from divorce in the UK.
2:17:18 And I actually learned, well, I think it is.
2:17:22 I learned this from watching several things,
2:17:24 but one video comes to mind from a couple of weeks ago.
2:17:25 You’ll know the case.
2:17:26 There’s a black actor
2:17:29 who is currently posting a lot on his social media
2:17:31 about how his wife is like chasing him down for child support.
2:17:32 Oh, yes.
2:17:34 Yes, I don’t remember his name.
2:17:35 I’m bad at celebrity names.
2:17:35 I’m bad at celebrity names.
2:17:36 Unless I represent them.
2:17:38 And yes, I know who he is.
2:17:39 And he was, he said on a couple of shows,
2:17:40 but he went on his Instagram and said like,
2:17:42 my wife, who I’ve broken up with,
2:17:45 who like basically doesn’t really have a job at the moment
2:17:48 or is making some money from some, some Instagram work,
2:17:51 is she’s got this like pack of lawyers who email me
2:17:54 and demand to see my bank statements.
2:17:56 Because I’ve been doing well lately.
2:17:58 I’ve got a couple of new movies and stuff.
2:18:00 And she wants to make sure she gets more money
2:18:03 for me and the kids based on his success.
2:18:04 And I never realized it was like that.
2:18:05 I never realized that.
2:18:06 Oh yeah.
2:18:07 Oh yeah, it’s modifiable.
2:18:08 It’s modifiable.
2:18:11 Child support, for example, is modifiable every three years
2:18:13 when there’s a 30% change in income up or down.
2:18:17 So if I have a wife and then we have four kids
2:18:18 and then I break up with her.
2:18:20 And when I break up with her,
2:18:22 I’m making a million dollars a year.
2:18:24 And then I’m making a hundred million dollars a year.
2:18:26 What’s up?
2:18:27 Child support goes up.
2:18:27 To like what?
2:18:28 What are the numbers?
2:18:29 Bends on the percentages.
2:18:31 In New York, one child is 17%.
2:18:32 Two is 25.
2:18:33 Three is 29.
2:18:36 And four is 31% of your gross income.
2:18:37 Of my gross income.
2:18:40 Your gross income, less FICA, 0.0765, Social Security Medicare.
2:18:42 If my gross income is a hundred million dollars.
2:18:48 So theoretically, there are caps on the combined parental income.
2:18:48 Everywhere.
2:18:50 Yes, pretty much.
2:18:54 But judges have a tremendous amount of discretion
2:18:56 based on a variety of factors,
2:19:00 including things like what was the lifestyle
2:19:02 of the children during the marriage?
2:19:04 What are the reasonable needs of the children?
2:19:06 Like celebrity divorces, I will tell you.
2:19:10 There are some legitimate separate needs
2:19:13 that celebrities, the children of celebrities need.
2:19:16 Like they, you know, security, for example.
2:19:17 What’s the biggest child support payments
2:19:18 you’ve ever heard of?
2:19:22 Well, I mean, Diddy had, I think it was $20,000 a month
2:19:23 per period of time.
2:19:26 He’s kind of a well-known one
2:19:27 and it was very well publicized.
2:19:30 The most I’ve ever had in a case
2:19:33 is I had a client who got $65,000 a month in child support.
2:19:37 But it covered a lot of things.
2:19:41 It covered a portion of private school tuition.
2:19:43 It covered a security detail.
2:19:45 It covered, you know, these were very, very high net worth,
2:19:46 you know, public figures.
2:19:49 What kid needs $65,000 a month?
2:19:50 Well, the kid doesn’t get the money.
2:19:52 The parent who has primary physical custody gets the money.
2:19:54 And they can do with it whatever they want.
2:19:54 Correct.
2:19:56 So they could go spend it in Vegas.
2:19:56 Correct.
2:19:57 That’s not fair.
2:19:59 You should have to provide receipts.
2:20:02 Well, what I’ve always said is, I mean, first of all,
2:20:03 the system is complicated enough
2:20:05 without people having to provide receipts
2:20:06 to check the math of a person
2:20:08 and what they’re spending the child support on.
2:20:10 Like, it’s already overwhelmed enough
2:20:11 and it’s already difficult enough.
2:20:13 Like, listen, what you’re proposing
2:20:15 would create a lot of additional work for me,
2:20:17 so I appreciate it.
2:20:19 But it is, from my perspective,
2:20:24 it is a potentially very dangerous thing.
2:20:28 What I always tell people is getting married
2:20:32 without a prenup is a barely risky activity.
2:20:35 Having a child with someone
2:20:40 is the most risky activity in relationships.
2:20:45 In terms of the amount of emotional and financial damage
2:20:47 a person can do to you, have a kid with them.
2:20:49 Having a kid with somebody,
2:20:50 they can weaponize that child.
2:20:52 They can alienate that child.
2:20:54 They can use that child’s needs
2:20:56 to piggyback onto financial needs.
2:20:59 There’s so much stuff a person can do
2:21:01 to torture you if they have a kid with you.
2:21:03 And there’s so much legal wrangling
2:21:05 and rambling to do.
2:21:11 And what I’ll tell you is I have a client
2:21:14 who spent somewhere in the realm of $100,000
2:21:16 in legal fees arguing over
2:21:19 whether Thanksgiving should begin on Wednesday
2:21:20 and end on Sunday
2:21:22 or whether it would begin on Thursday morning
2:21:24 and end on Thursday evening.
2:21:29 Now, that person’s worth $700 or $800 million.
2:21:31 So $100,000 to them is not a lot of money.
2:21:34 Most people, myself included,
2:21:36 I’d just eat turkey another day.
2:21:39 Like it’s not worth that amount of money
2:21:40 to have that argument.
2:21:45 That’s why having a kid with someone,
2:21:46 you’re opening up the door
2:21:49 to potentially tremendous amount of battles.
2:21:54 Whereas if you’re arguing over a $50,000 bank account
2:21:56 and you spend $30,000 in legal fees,
2:21:58 even if you won, you only won $20,000.
2:22:00 If you lost, you lost significant.
2:22:05 So it forces a certain rationality into the transaction.
2:22:06 Whereas your time with your kids,
2:22:09 people could attribute whatever value they want to that.
2:22:12 I’ve had clients who fought over miniscule things
2:22:15 about children that, to me, would be miniscule.
2:22:17 To them, were incredibly important.
2:22:18 You said that the two big reasons
2:22:21 where people divorce are infidelity and money.
2:22:24 Is it a loss of money, a lack of money?
2:22:25 The person goes poor.
2:22:27 That’s a big piece of it.
2:22:30 Losing money, gambling money,
2:22:32 or losing money unexpectedly,
2:22:34 bad business and investment decisions.
2:22:36 There was a period of time where I did a lot of divorces
2:22:38 because people decided they were going to try to be day traders.
2:22:41 And all of a sudden, people were barring
2:22:42 against retirement accounts.
2:22:44 Yeah, they were learning the hard way
2:22:46 that if you short stocks,
2:22:48 there’s almost no limit to how much money you can lose.
2:22:49 Crypto divorces.
2:22:50 Crypto’s big.
2:22:52 I did a couple of crypto divorces.
2:22:54 They were crypto became very important,
2:22:56 and whether it was on a hard wallet or whether it was,
2:22:58 I mean, hiding money with crypto very…
2:23:01 Some years ago when crypto was first sort of on the scene,
2:23:03 when I really should have been buying Bitcoin
2:23:06 because it was like $3 or $5,
2:23:09 there was a period of time where most divorced lawyers
2:23:13 and most judges didn’t understand what crypto even was.
2:23:16 I mean, try to explain to a 75-year-old judge
2:23:19 who has an AOL email address what cryptocurrency was
2:23:21 and the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin.
2:23:23 Like, and why you’re concerned
2:23:25 that they might have these funds on a hard wallet
2:23:27 and they’re looking at you going like,
2:23:30 “Well, I have no idea what this is.”
2:23:31 You know, so it’s tricky.
2:23:32 I mean, these are the things we…
2:23:33 As a divorce lawyer,
2:23:35 one of the things that makes it a very exciting job
2:23:37 is that we’re constantly…
2:23:40 We’re getting an education in all of these things.
2:23:41 Like, I represent…
2:23:43 I remember I represented a surgeon
2:23:48 and I learned everything about how surgeons get paid,
2:23:49 how they make money,
2:23:50 how they hide money,
2:23:52 what their expenses might be.
2:23:53 And so then the next time I did a surgeon,
2:23:54 I’m like, “Oh, I know this.”
2:23:56 You know, the first time I represented someone
2:23:58 who owned a hedge fund or was a partner in a hedge fund,
2:24:00 I had to learn about how capital accounts work
2:24:01 and how people are paid
2:24:03 and where you might be able to hide money.
2:24:05 Have you ever seen that where someone is, like,
2:24:06 publicly thought to be a billionaire
2:24:09 and then you look at their bank statements during a divorce
2:24:11 and you realize that they’ve basically managed
2:24:13 to hide everything so they’re basically broke.
2:24:14 It’s all in someone else’s name.
2:24:17 Well, yeah, there’s two permutations of that.
2:24:21 One is people who are publicly incredibly wealthy
2:24:22 and then in reality,
2:24:23 they’re leveraged to the hilt and broke.
2:24:25 Like, way broke.
2:24:27 That happens a lot.
2:24:29 And that happens a lot with celebrities.
2:24:31 Celebrities are very often leveraged to the hilt
2:24:32 because they had a hit record
2:24:34 or they had a hit movie or two
2:24:35 and then they think,
2:24:38 “Oh, everything I do is gonna be like this.”
2:24:40 And so they just go out and buy tons of stuff
2:24:42 and there’s always people who loan you money,
2:24:44 you know, especially if you’re a public figure
2:24:45 and you have some money, right?
2:24:46 A couple of million bucks.
2:24:49 You can get a couple million more real easy.
2:24:50 So, and then it just very rapidly
2:24:52 and they buy everybody else.
2:24:54 They have, you know, there’s always clingers around the person,
2:24:56 you know, the whole entourage
2:24:58 that a lot of whom are siphoning money off of people.
2:25:01 So, there’s a lot of people that look very wealthy
2:25:04 and are dead broke and I have a lot of those.
2:25:06 How does that play out in court
2:25:08 when the wife finds out that their partner
2:25:10 or the husband finds out that their wife was completely broke?
2:25:11 They’re not happy.
2:25:13 They’re not happy.
2:25:19 And it’s hard because they think they have proof of something.
2:25:20 Like, they’re like,
2:25:22 “But look, here’s a picture of him with a Ferrari.”
2:25:25 And it’s like, right, I can show you the papers
2:25:27 that he doesn’t, he leases that Ferrari.
2:25:29 Like, it’s this much of a car payment.
2:25:31 Like, I had a guy who had like three Bentley’s
2:25:33 and a couple of, you know, like McLaren,
2:25:36 he had crazy cars and yeah, it was all leveraged to the health.
2:25:38 It was not, he didn’t own them, you know.
2:25:40 What’s the second permutation of that?
2:25:45 The second permutation is when someone is, is…
2:25:47 When they’ve hidden the money?
2:25:49 Yeah, they, I’m trying to find the right adjective
2:25:51 that they’re enough of a sociopath,
2:25:55 that they’re enough of a malignant narcissist,
2:25:57 or they’re enough of a careful planner
2:26:02 that they have created structures
2:26:05 that make it almost impossible for their spouse
2:26:06 to get anything in the divorce.
2:26:15 So, some of the things that people do in the ultra-high net worth space
2:26:21 for generational wealth preservation and tax avoidance
2:26:27 have second order effects when they get divorced, right?
2:26:29 So, a lot of wealthy people don’t own very much of anything.
2:26:34 They own companies that own properties
2:26:36 and they have an interest in a trust
2:26:40 for the benefit of their great-grandchildren
2:26:42 that owns companies that own properties
2:26:45 that they then borrow against.
2:26:49 Like, their whole structure is a very complex…
2:26:51 And they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars
2:26:53 to trust in estates, attorneys, and accountants,
2:26:56 so they pay almost nothing in taxes.
2:26:58 And so that they will have no estate issues,
2:26:59 they will have intergenerational wealth.
2:27:02 Well, those things make a lot of sense
2:27:06 from a wealth preservation and estate planning perspective,
2:27:10 but they make a divorce really complicated
2:27:12 because it’s no longer marital money.
2:27:14 It’s owned by this trust.
2:27:15 It’s owned by this corporation.
2:27:16 It’s owned by…
2:27:18 I only have this percent interest in this thing,
2:27:22 which is why we both benefited from the taxation of it.
2:27:24 So, that’s where it gets like a little…
2:27:28 What I do is a fascinating job
2:27:32 because we work with very, very brilliant forensic accountants
2:27:35 who kind of go in and try to recreate
2:27:38 whether something was done as a fraudulent transfer
2:27:40 in contemplation of divorce
2:27:43 or whether something was done for good faith reasons
2:27:45 and was done in a way that was designed
2:27:48 to benefit the marriage as opposed to as divorce planning.
2:27:51 There must be scenarios where someone goes into a divorce.
2:27:53 I think I’m divorcing you, let’s say,
2:27:55 and I think in divorcing you, I’m going to get a big payout,
2:27:57 but it turns out in divorcing you that you get a big payout
2:27:58 because I’ve got more money than you.
2:27:59 Yeah, that happens a lot.
2:28:00 That happens a lot.
2:28:01 I’ve actually…
2:28:05 I wrote an article for one of the women’s magazines
2:28:07 called “The Last Remaining Feminist Taboo”
2:28:11 and it talks about a lot of female clients
2:28:13 who are paying alimony to their husbands.
2:28:15 And it stings.
2:28:20 You can have a woman who is like a Bella Abzug,
2:28:22 like Gloria Steinem-level feminist,
2:28:25 and when she gets told that like,
2:28:27 “Yeah, you got to pay him alimony.”
2:28:29 They’re like, “I’m sorry? What?”
2:28:31 Like, “No, he’s a man. He can work.”
2:28:33 Like, “He can work. He’s not meant to get alimony.”
2:28:35 And you’re like, “No, gender is a construct
2:28:38 and sex is actually, you know, a construct socially.”
2:28:41 And you’re a CFO of a company
2:28:44 and he’s a really cute, long-haired musician
2:28:47 who you married because he’s like fun, you know?
2:28:52 Like, and you earn 4,000 times what he earns annually
2:28:54 and so you have to pay him alimony
2:28:55 because it’s just math.
2:28:57 It’s got gender blind. It’s just math.
2:29:00 And they’re like, “Yeah, no, I am not paying alimony.
2:29:01 He’s a man. He’s got a strong back.
2:29:02 Tell him to get a job.”
2:29:06 By the way, I’ve had men in that situation go,
2:29:07 “Yeah, I’m not taking alimony.”
2:29:08 Really? They won’t take it?
2:29:09 They won’t take it.
2:29:10 Alimony is like the…
2:29:11 The spousal support.
2:29:14 Okay, like child support or…?
2:29:15 No, it’s for your…
2:29:17 It’s to maintain the marital lifestyle.
2:29:18 Okay, so when you do this…
2:29:20 It’s in order to rehabilitate your earnings
2:29:21 so that you can be…
2:29:25 So, for example, I marry a woman from the UK
2:29:26 who’s a physician
2:29:28 and now she’s coming to the United States
2:29:30 because we’re in love and she’s marrying me
2:29:34 and she is going to lose her license to practice medicine
2:29:35 because she’s coming to the United States
2:29:37 and it’s a different licensure.
2:29:40 Okay, so now she moves here in reliance on us being married
2:29:42 and we’re married for a couple of years
2:29:43 and then we divorce.
2:29:45 She’s going to need…
2:29:47 Because I now make a lot more money than her…
2:29:50 She’s going to need some money to get her back to a place
2:29:52 where she’s back to her earning capacity.
2:29:54 So if I married Taylor Swift and we’re together for 20 years,
2:29:55 do I get half?
2:29:58 You do not get half usually, no.
2:29:58 No, it’s…
2:30:00 I mean, first of all, she has too many good lawyers
2:30:02 I’d imagine for you to get half.
2:30:05 But you would certainly…
2:30:06 I mean, there was a…
2:30:07 How much could you get me?
2:30:09 How much could I get you from Taylor Swift?
2:30:10 I have to know how much Taylor Swift has.
2:30:13 I also don’t think she’s never made it down the aisle yet, has she?
2:30:15 But if I take it down the aisle
2:30:16 and then we stay together 20 years
2:30:18 and I come back to just say, “James, it’s time.”
2:30:19 Here’s what I’m going to tell you.
2:30:20 I’m going to get you as much as possible.
2:30:23 I can’t promise you anything, but I am promising you.
2:30:25 I’m going to get you as much as I can.
2:30:27 I mean, you know, I’d have to know…
2:30:29 I’d have to know what the finances are.
2:30:29 Billion dollars.
2:30:30 I would have to…
2:30:31 She has a billion dollars.
2:30:31 And cash.
2:30:34 Billion dollars and cash acquired during the marriage
2:30:34 or prior to the marriage?
2:30:35 During the marriage.
2:30:36 All acquired during the marriage?
2:30:37 You get half.
2:30:38 Then you get half.
2:30:39 You get half.
2:30:39 You get half.
2:30:42 Listen, Adele’s ex-husband did very well.
2:30:46 Kelly Clarkson’s ex-husband did very well.
2:30:47 It depends on how…
2:30:48 Quite well.
2:30:48 Look at all.
2:30:49 Look it up.
2:30:49 It’s out there.
2:30:52 I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it’s out there.
2:30:53 The reality is, is those were people…
2:30:58 She had her most successful tour at the time during the marriage.
2:31:02 She had her most successful album at the time during the marriage.
2:31:06 It’s all a question of where things land in the trajectory of someone’s life.
2:31:08 If you marry someone when they’re on the come-up,
2:31:11 like Jeff Bezos, great example.
2:31:15 Like largest divorce settlement probably paid in history was to his ex-wife.
2:31:15 Why?
2:31:19 Because Amazon wasn’t a thing when they got together, right?
2:31:21 So that was…
2:31:23 She was there for the whole trajectory.
2:31:28 If he got remarried now, she’s not going to get half because she wasn’t there.
2:31:31 There’s a premarital component to that that is significant.
2:31:34 If you got me 500 million from Taylor Swift then,
2:31:36 would you take like a commission?
2:31:37 No, it doesn’t work that way.
2:31:38 I’m prohibited from doing that.
2:31:39 You’re prohibited.
2:31:40 We get paid by the hour.
2:31:40 You’re prohibited.
2:31:43 I am an hourly wager and are like, if I worked at McDonald’s…
2:31:45 Prohibits you.
2:31:47 The rules, the rules that govern.
2:31:48 And by the way, rightfully so.
2:31:49 Why?
2:31:57 Because you otherwise would create an incentive for the lawyer to maximize recovery for their client
2:32:00 rather than the recovery that makes sense for their client.
2:32:07 So like I’ve had cases where the cash payout I get for my client is lower
2:32:12 because I want to get the more support, like child support or spousal support,
2:32:16 or I want to get the more of the real estate rather than the payout.
2:32:23 So really what we’re supposed to do as lawyers is not be invested in the percentage of the result.
2:32:26 Personal injury lawyers, like if you slip and fall, that’s different.
2:32:29 The last question from me is regarding me and my partner,
2:32:32 I never want to end up in your consultation room.
2:32:34 We never want to go there.
2:32:38 If you were to give me one piece of advice to prevent,
2:32:39 and it can’t be, don’t get married.
2:32:43 To prevent me and my partner ever ending up in your consultation room.
2:32:44 It wouldn’t be, don’t get married.
2:32:45 Oh, okay.
2:32:46 What would it be?
2:32:47 Pay attention.
2:32:48 Just pay attention.
2:32:49 Right now you’re paying attention.
2:32:51 Like you’re paying attention.
2:32:52 She’s important to you.
2:32:54 You’re important to her.
2:32:55 You’re interested and you’re interesting.
2:33:01 You know, I would say pay attention and pay attention to three things.
2:33:08 The you, the me, and the we, because those are three different things.
2:33:12 Like you be you because you’re who she fell in love with.
2:33:14 And don’t let you go too far from shore.
2:33:15 Like you be you.
2:33:17 Don’t let, don’t let anything in the world.
2:33:19 Don’t let her, don’t let the we,
2:33:21 don’t let any of it stop you from being you
2:33:23 because you’re who she fell in love with.
2:33:26 And the she, right?
2:33:27 Who she is.
2:33:28 So there’s you, there’s me, there’s we.
2:33:31 So her, remember who she is.
2:33:32 Let her be her.
2:33:34 Like make sure that she takes time to be her.
2:33:36 Make sure you give space for her to be her
2:33:38 because that’s who you fell in love with.
2:33:39 And let that person change.
2:33:42 Just like you might change sometimes from time to time.
2:33:45 And if things change too much, I’m not saying resist it.
2:33:48 But note it, pay attention.
2:33:49 Say, hey, this is going on.
2:33:50 Is that good thing?
2:33:50 Is it a bad thing?
2:33:52 Like, well, you know, let’s just notice it.
2:33:53 Let’s just pay attention.
2:33:55 And then the we, like the you, the me, and the we,
2:33:58 like talk about, you know, pay attention to the we.
2:33:59 Make sure we’re watering the plant.
2:34:01 Like make sure that that’d be the only advice
2:34:02 I’d ever give to anybody.
2:34:04 It has nothing to do with marriage.
2:34:06 It has to do with connection.
2:34:07 It has to do with love.
2:34:13 It has to do with there’s a reason why you found the we, right?
2:34:15 Like you can be you all by yourself.
2:34:17 And she can be her all by herself.
2:34:22 But there’s value in being we and seeing each other’s blind spots.
2:34:27 And if there’s value in that, treat it like something valuable.
2:34:31 Don’t let the world, don’t let your own strengths and weaknesses,
2:34:33 don’t let anything pull you off of that.
2:34:37 Pay attention to you, the me, and the we.
2:34:38 And don’t be afraid.
2:34:39 The hard thing to do and the right thing to do
2:34:41 are usually the same thing.
2:34:42 So if it’s harder to talk about it,
2:34:44 it’s harder to point it out.
2:34:46 It’s harder to say, hey, are we okay?
2:34:47 Is everything good?
2:34:49 Like, you know, if that’s harder, do that.
2:34:50 Lean into that.
2:34:54 James, we have a closing tradition on the podcast
2:34:55 where the last guest leaves a question
2:34:57 for the next guest not knowing who they’re leaving it for.
2:34:59 The question left for you is what is
2:35:02 your most controversial opinion?
2:35:05 Oh, God, you’re going to be canceled.
2:35:10 What is my most controversial opinion?
2:35:17 I think I alluded to it in my last conversation with you.
2:35:23 My most controversial opinion is that the most important thing
2:35:25 in people’s lives and their greatest accomplishment
2:35:26 should not be their children.
2:35:30 That’s a real hot, like, when you say to people,
2:35:34 like, I think it’s, if you say the most important thing
2:35:36 that ever happened, the greatest thing I ever
2:35:38 accomplished in life was having children.
2:35:43 I find that very, I find that logic very strange.
2:35:46 Because if you say the most important, greatest thing
2:35:48 I ever did in my life was having children,
2:35:50 well, is then the greatest and most important thing
2:35:52 your children ever did going to be having children.
2:35:55 And is the greatest thing their children ever did
2:35:57 is having children because that’s the ideology
2:35:59 of a virus or a cancer cell.
2:36:01 Like, it’s not, like, growth for the sake of growth,
2:36:02 for the sake of growth.
2:36:04 Like, I think there has to be a higher nobler
2:36:07 purpose to life than reproduction.
2:36:09 So I’m not an anti-natalist.
2:36:12 But I tend to, when someone says to me,
2:36:14 like, my children are my greatest accomplishment.
2:36:15 I tend to look at them and go, like,
2:36:18 made some interesting choices then, I guess.
2:36:21 Science and sort of evolution in Charles Darwin
2:36:23 might argue that that’s exactly the point of life.
2:36:25 Oh, no, and it is.
2:36:30 On the cellular level and for squirrels and for pigeons.
2:36:31 And we’re monkeys.
2:36:34 Yeah, but I think we’re different than monkeys.
2:36:36 Like, if you’ve watched, like, we’re very similar
2:36:38 in lots of ways.
2:36:41 But I’d like to think that there’s something higher
2:36:42 that we’re called to.
2:36:45 And I don’t know that reproduction
2:36:49 should be the highest goal of a human being’s life.
2:36:52 I’m not one of these people that thinks, like,
2:36:52 don’t have children.
2:36:53 It’s a terrible thing.
2:36:54 I have kids.
2:36:55 I love my kids.
2:36:57 Was great having kids.
2:36:59 Learned a lot about myself in having children.
2:37:01 Learned a lot about life and the what–
2:37:03 I love spending time with them.
2:37:04 I have a great relationship with my sons.
2:37:06 I look forward to being a grandfather.
2:37:09 But the truth is, like, is it the greatest thing
2:37:10 I ever accomplished in my life?
2:37:11 Absolutely not.
2:37:14 It’s in the top of the list.
2:37:16 It’s a wonderful experience I had.
2:37:17 But it is not the thing.
2:37:18 And I think that’s a very–
2:37:21 I don’t know why that is such a controversial opinion.
2:37:24 When I say that to people, they look at me
2:37:26 like I’ve got lobsters coming out of my nose.
2:37:27 There’s definitely two schools of thought there.
2:37:29 There’s the one school of thought that–
2:37:31 you were saying something earlier,
2:37:32 and it really, at the start of the conversation,
2:37:34 about how people lose their identity
2:37:35 when they have children.
2:37:37 And it causes all of this psychological dysfunction.
2:37:37 And who am I now?
2:37:39 I’m attached to this thing.
2:37:41 And where did my life as an independent person go?
2:37:44 That’s kind of the one school of thought
2:37:50 where you’re resisting becoming all about procreation.
2:37:52 You’re resisting becoming just–
2:37:53 I’m just here to be a mother of father.
2:37:55 And then there’s another group of people that go,
2:37:57 “Absolutely. This is me. This is my purpose.”
2:37:59 Right. But see, I think like everything,
2:38:01 like, we don’t have to treat Dandruff with decapitation.
2:38:06 Like, I think you cannot reject the concept
2:38:08 of having children or making them a priority.
2:38:11 And you can also not make your children
2:38:12 your entire identity.
2:38:14 I think that you can just sort of say,
2:38:18 “Hey, my children are incredibly important to me.
2:38:19 I love them. They’re wonderful.
2:38:23 But I also have other aspects of my life and self
2:38:25 and other relationships that have value to me,
2:38:28 and I’m not going to let them all be sacrificed
2:38:30 at the altar of my children.”
2:38:31 Who’s more likely to end up in your office?
2:38:33 Which school of thought?
2:38:35 People who are obsessed with their children.
2:38:39 I think people who are obsessed with their children
2:38:41 stop paying attention to themselves and to their partner.
2:38:45 That’s been my experience of people who are obsessed
2:38:45 with their children.
2:38:47 I don’t mean people who are focused on their children.
2:38:48 I don’t mean people who make their children
2:38:50 a high priority in their life.
2:38:52 I’m talking about people that are like obsessed
2:38:54 with their children, that their children are there.
2:38:57 This is who I am. I am a mother.
2:39:00 This is who I am. I am a father.
2:39:03 Which because, by the way, childhoods is a temporary state.
2:39:08 Like theoretically, you’re going to have a very close
2:39:10 and intimate relationship on a day-to-day basis
2:39:13 with your spouse a lot longer than your children.
2:39:15 If it’s done properly, your children are supposed to leave
2:39:19 and go start their own families and live their own lives.
2:39:22 Whereas your partner is not supposed to in 19 years
2:39:24 or 18 years move out.
2:39:26 They’re supposed to stay there.
2:39:28 So it’s kind of smart to also feed.
2:39:33 Not again, not only feed, also feed that relationship.
2:39:36 There’s no reason why you can’t simultaneously.
2:39:40 And by the way, sometimes being a really good supportive
2:39:44 person to your co-parent and loving your wife
2:39:47 and loving your husband is a wonderful gift
2:39:48 to give to your children.
2:39:51 It models great relationship behavior to them.
2:39:55 It’s showing that you love and respect the other person
2:39:56 who loves them as much as you do.
2:40:00 Like there’s so much good in being a good parent
2:40:04 that is made up of being a good co-parent,
2:40:05 a good spouse, a good partner.
2:40:09 So you think you’re more likely to end up in your divorce office
2:40:10 if you’re obsessed with your children?
2:40:13 If you make your children your absolute number one priority
2:40:17 and your spouse falls very far down that list.
2:40:18 Yes, for sure.
2:40:20 James, thank you.
2:40:20 Always great to see you.
2:40:24 I love our conversations because you’re a divorce lawyer
2:40:27 and your practice, I guess, is dealing with divorces.
2:40:30 But your width of wisdom and knowledge
2:40:33 and how it all intertwines in the most beautiful,
2:40:35 wise, enlightening way.
2:40:39 And just the overarching filter of you not being afraid
2:40:41 to say things that most people wouldn’t say.
2:40:43 You’re not being afraid to be politically correct.
2:40:47 Provides a message which is so important
2:40:49 and quite unfortunately rare.
2:40:55 But it’s so, everything you say is so obvious
2:40:56 in the sense that it’s common sense,
2:40:58 but it’s common sense that’s completely uncommon.
2:41:00 That means a lot to me.
2:41:01 That’s what I found in your book as well.
2:41:05 I found the same level of brevity and wisdom and experience
2:41:07 and diversity of experience
2:41:09 which ties into these central ideas.
2:41:10 Everyone, if you didn’t go by the book last time,
2:41:11 you have to go by the book.
2:41:12 It’s called How to Stay in Love.
2:41:15 And it’s my favorite book ever written
2:41:18 on the subject of love and relationships and life,
2:41:19 quite frankly.
2:41:20 So I think everyone needs to go and get the book.
2:41:21 I’ll link it below.
2:41:23 James, thank you so much.
2:41:23 It’s great to see you.
2:41:24 I love our conversations.
2:41:25 Me too.
2:41:26 I hope we have many more.
2:41:26 Me too.
2:41:27 I really appreciate you.
2:41:28 Thank you for having me.
2:41:28 It’s great to see you.
2:41:34 Isn’t this cool?
2:41:37 Every single conversation I have here on The Diary of a CEO,
2:41:38 at the very end of it, you’ll know,
2:41:43 I asked the guest to leave a question in The Diary of a CEO.
2:41:47 And what we’ve done is we’ve turned every single question
2:41:51 written in The Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards
2:41:53 that you can play at home.
2:41:55 So you’ve got every guest we’ve ever had,
2:41:58 their question, and on the back of it,
2:42:02 if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person
2:42:04 who answered that question.
2:42:07 We’re finally revealing all of the questions
2:42:10 and the people that answered the question.
2:42:14 The brand new version two updated conversation cards
2:42:18 are out right now at theconversationcards.com.
2:42:20 They’ve sold out twice instantaneously.
2:42:21 So if you are interested in getting hold
2:42:24 of some limited edition conversation cards,
2:42:26 I really, really recommend acting quickly.
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