Why Do Relationships Fail? with a Million Dollar Divorce Attorney

22:18But the reason the Catholic Church didn't let priests get married wasn't that because Jesus wasn't married. Like Jesus also didn't wear socks. Yeah. But they let priests wear socks. So what was the reason? To contain that? Because they didn't want to have to pay. They didn't want to share. When a priest died, they didn't want to have to take care of the widow. The Catholic Church was just being cheap. Primarily. I mean, that's how they amassed. Catholic Church is like the third largest landowner in the United States. Back to these four questions. So nowadays, now that we're not big landing families.

22:45That's a great time to ask the question right now. Why is, to what problem is this technology a solution between two renting humans in your city? So I don't think you're even allowed to ask that question, which is what's funny to me. Like, because if you ask most people, why are you getting married? It's like, well, because you get married. It's like a thing you do, you know? Like it's not, well, my parents got married. My grandparents got married. My great-great parents got married. Like everybody in my line got married. That's how I exist. And tradition is in one sense. the wisdom of people who came before us and the lessons they learned.

23:15And tradition in another sense is peer pressure exerted by dead people. Yes. And so I think it's largely the latter. Because your great-great-grandmother got married. Your great-great-grandmother probably had a buggy whip also. And she definitely did not have a cell phone. Like she definitely didn't have the entire sum total of human wisdom instantly accessible in her hand from the sky. So why would a technology that worked for her automatically be presumed to be correct for you? That's kind of crazy to think it would be. So if you ask, but what's funny about it is if I said to you, you know, Nima, I had a conversation with my girlfriend and we've decided we are never getting married.

23:54It would be like, oof, like, are you have commitment issues? Is the relationship not good? Like, what's going on? If I said to you, we're getting married. If you said, really, why? Like, that would be rude. Or if somebody said, I'm having kids, really, why? But it's not an unreasonable question to say, really, why? Like, why are you getting married? What value add will that give to your relationship? You're divorced. And would you get married again? I would only get married again if it was very important to my partner that I get married again. I would have to be with someone who had a good reason why they wanted to get married.

24:29I can't imagine marrying someone super religious, but if someone was very religious and we were in love, and they were like, this is really important to me. Okay. If you have a prenuptial agreement, getting married to someone, get married as many times as you want. Like with a prenuptial agreement, there's very low stakes to get married. It's like dating or cohabitating. It's more like cohabitating. Cohabitating is more of a commitment. You have a kid with somebody, strap in. Like strap in. You're with that person forever now. You're gonna have grandkids with that person. You actually can't divorce.

24:56Like I have celebrity clients who come in all the time or very often athletes, they come in and they got like a big NFL contract or an NBA contract and they're going to get married to their high school sweetheart, who was like the ride or die was with them all the way through. And they'll be like, am I an idiot for getting married? And I'm like, no, if you have a prenup, get married all you want. Don't worry, getting married is about the most fun thing in the world. Being married is challenging, but getting married is fun. It's a party, man. I grew up with parents who were married until my father passed.

25:21And I grew up in a culture that really celebrates weddings and marriages. I was not that deeply into it. And I don't think that everyone has to get married, in part because I have a sister who's 18 years older to me who never got married. And I also grew up spending a lot of time in Europe where a lot of people don't get married and they just have children and they're partners for a long time. But I think if I were to marry, the reason I would do it is because I want to grow old and die with someone. I believe that this person is like... And you believe that marriage would be required for that.

25:49If I really believe that this person was like... Again, I don't know that that has much to do with marriage. But does the paperwork help you stay in it, lock it in for that time? All evidence would suggest no. Look, I understand the compulsion to marriage. I heard a saying once about God, that God is the name we give to a blanket that we put over a mystery to give it shape. So marriage to me, I get it. I get love. I get the desire to find another person and to say, let's share, let's join our destinies together. Let's find in each other something we can trust. You'll see my blind spots. I'll see yours.

26:29will always try to approach this with good faith. Like when I say something to you that sounds critical, it's not critical because you're my favorite person. It's that I want you to be the best and most authentic version of yourself because I'm crazy about you. But at the end of your life, I want you to be able to say, this person helped me become the most authentic version of myself. I want to be able to say, you helped me become the most authentic version of myself. And we're still each other's favorite person. That's the goal. So now everything else, including marriage, are just bricks we put around that.

27:04All that is, is just, it's just us trying to cling to a thing. It's attachment. And it just leads to suffering. Just like we think, oh, you know, if I do this, I won't ever get sick. You're going to get sick. Brian Johnson's going to die. I know he doesn't want to. Don't tell him that. Don't tell him that. Because he's busy eating seaweed and whatever else he's doing. And God bless the man for trying. but he's gonna die. He's gonna die, I promise. So the truth is every marriage ends. Yes, either by death or divorce. It ends in death or divorce. So what we're doing with marriage is we're trying to bolster something.

27:39And I appreciate it's a very human thing to try to do that. The conception, the romantic conception that two people could call it pair bond or call it solidify an estate and their marriage would only end at death. Do you think it's good for the world? Do you think marriage is a good ambition for people to have? I think that kind of bond that you're describing, I don't think marriage is a good ambition. I think that that kind of connection to another human being is the best ambition you could have. I think it's the most worthy ambition. But you think the technology, the marriage, the bricks, that gets in the way of that thing.

28:14I think it gives people a false sense of security that creates in people habits that make the actual thing fall to shit. I've got this ring and this person's here and they're in and they're stuck with me and I'm stuck with them and we're together now So I can focus on the million other things that need to be focused on But it's so funny. It's about language. It's like I have a number of questions For you that are about that and beautiful ambition I call that love when we use that but yeah, but love doesn't carry the temporal Depends on how you just you know, I mean we overuse the term You'll fall in love with many people.

28:47Hopefully you're not going to marry Although someone told me recently that your first marriage is for family, your second marriage is for love, and your third marriage is for money. Interesting. Do you think that's true? I've heard people say that your first marriage would be for money and your second marriage for your sure love. That sounds better. That sounds like a more strategic calculation. You know, I think those kinds of axioms are like super funny and popular, but I don't know that there's a lot of truth to it. So we'll distinguish between marriage and the forever love for this. Love that.

29:12Should marriage be like more of a subscription model where instead of me saying, oh, I want to be married for 50, 60 years. Instead, I say, you know, I'd really like a five year lease on this. It's already a subscription model, though. I mean, marriage, you can end your marriage anytime you want. So it's, you know, you don't technically have to stay married. You can get married, divorced anytime you want to. I think what we're what you're saying when you say that is a good point. and that is that I think there should be a constant reflection on, is this marriage still creating value for the two of us?

29:47Do we still see that this is beneficial? I think that should be a practice. That's what my writing is about. The idea that if this thing that you were searching for so intensely and were so overjoyed to have found is in fact important to you, why wouldn't you do routine maintenance on it? Why wouldn't you do these very little things? And again, I think the answer is because when you get married, you go, oh, I'm married now. They're not leaving and I'm not leaving and we're in this thing so we don't have to think about it anymore. And I think that that's really unfortunate because you're signing on for a relationship that requires the same maintenance as any other relationship.

30:25So should we like go to the DMV every five years and renew our marriage license? The government has to be involved in that because I think the ending of the thing would still be all the same complicated disconnections anyway, whether you did it on a routine cycle or whether you did it when something catastrophic happens on one or both sides. I think what we should be doing is having a regular practice of, you know, what was the purpose of church or synagogue or mosque? It's to, with a regular interval, whether it's once a week or on holidays, to gather together and reaffirm our shared faith in something bigger than ourselves and to experience community with other people who share that faith.

31:04That is a model that works, right? So why isn't love like that? Why isn't there some process whereby we're checking in, whether it's daily, whether it's weekly, where we're just checking in, like, what did I do this week that made you feel loved? What are some things I could have done better this week? What are some things this week that made you want to tear my clothes off? And what are some things? And we share that information with each other so we can stay good at this thing. It's so funny. I have friends who have that kind of relationship and I've dated people who like to do like a weekly meeting.

31:36It also can feel like work and marriage is work and relationships are work and all things. Well, I think it can feel like work. It depends on, I think that like anything that feels like work, you could create ways to make it fun as well. Yeah, you can make it sexy. You know, yeah. Like I think there's a reason why we go to gyms because we try to find ways to like, okay, I know I have to do this, but what can I do to make it a little more fun? And so I think that it can be fun or sexy or there can be some reward to it or there can be some, but again, I even think the pursuit of it is fun. I think having conversations about like, if somebody said to you, like, you know, tell me three things you like about, like we've just met, tell me three things you like about me already.

32:12I'll tell you three things I like about you. Okay, I can tell you. Do you want me to tell you? Yeah, go for it. Yeah. And by the way, how fun is this? Yeah. We're already having fun. This is good. Like I'm excited to hear and I have no idea what you're going to say and you have no idea what I'm going to say. I don't know what you're going to say. Should I go first or do you want to go first? Go first. your depth of knowledge about art, culture, literature, and how you're weaving together different parts of these worlds. That feels very nice to hear. That's lovely to hear. It makes me feel good about myself.

32:41I like myself a little bit more. Like, oh, yeah, I guess I do know some stuff. And isn't that lovely that this person notices it? So I'll give you one now. Okay. So I think that you're in this conversation. You're interested and you're interesting. And you're bringing sort of your own. You've talked a few times about your own relationships. and you talked about your parents. And I felt like that you shared about your father and that your father was older and you're losing. Like, I feel like you're being very open. And that feels really nice to be in a space where someone's being open like that.

33:10It makes me want to be open. Like, so this is fun. Isn't this fun though? Should we keep our other two for afterwards? We don't share them with everyone. Or we have them with coffee. I mean, but the truth is this doesn't have to be drudgery. It doesn't have to be work. It's kind of fun to know. And by the way, like you're reminded me of some things about myself that I take for granted. Like we don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish. So having another person, like part of what we fall in love with isn't the other person. It's how the other person makes us feel about ourselves. Yeah, that's the most important thing when you're dating.

33:41And it's so intoxicating. Like when someone is just so enamored with you and your beauty that they just, when they see you walk in, you just see that look of like, oh, look at her. Like that, you see yourself differently in the mirror. Like, I know, like, when I have been an object of desire, you know, and someone is like, oh my God, I think you're so hot. Like, you look in the mirror and you're like, all right. But again, like, it's so beautiful to have that thing. And then we have it. And we kind of like, most people who are in long-term committed relationships, if you say, when is the last time you just, apropos of nothing, just said to your partner, like, you're just so fucking hot, man.

34:22Like, I just love looking at you. Like, that is, when have you ever heard someone said that to you? And it was unwelcomed in your relationship. It's amazing. It's also how you receive that. I remember I was dating someone who were doing some long distance. And I said to him, oh, it's really stressful to try to stay connected. And in the evening, we had this kind of back and forth about it that it didn't feel good. And the next day, he left me a voice note. And he was like, I'm really glad you told me how you feel. Because if you don't tell me how you feel, I can't change my behavior to better meet your needs.

34:52And I was like, oh, that's hot. but it's nice when someone can communicate the thing. Well, because what was in that, I see you. Yeah. I heard what you said. I want to be good at this. Yeah. Like, I want to be a proper offering to you because that's kind of what we are. Like, when you're dating, you're like, oh, I'm an offering and you're an offering. And we're trying to sort of say to each other, like, hey, are you interested in this? Like, am I interested in this? Like, and how much of it do I want? I've never thought of myself as an offering. You kind of are. I mean, you have. If you've ever gone on a date, when you are doing your hair and your makeup, you are preparing yourself as an offering.

35:32Yeah, I guess so. You really are. You're preparing yourself. I didn't dress like this because it's comfortable. You did as an offering to me? Well, it's an offering to you and to the world. Well, here's what I'll tell you. This is a statement. Why do you wear a suit to a job interview and to court, but you don't wear it to the beach? Because this is a message. That is, I take what I'm doing seriously. So you merit my seriousness. So I was like, okay, I'm not going to wear jeans. I'm going to wear this because you merit my seriousness. That's an offering. Yeah. The other reason I liked it is not to give too much love to my former flame, but is because it invited the opportunity to have more of those conversations.

36:10It made it safe to say things. And I think that's so much of what makes relationships successful is when it is safe to communicate. Yeah. And I also think that the more you can trust each other in a relationship, Like, what is intimacy except the ability to be completely yourself with another person? I think our greatest fear as humans is that we're not worthy of love. Like, I think that's what we're most afraid of. That if someone could see all of the, like, ugliness inside of us, all of the insecurity, the sadness, the shit we need to work on, the things we get wrong, the ignorance we have, the fear, all of it.

36:44I think we feel like, oh, no, you only love me because you don't know that stuff. Like if you love the person I performed in front of you, but like if you could see my face, my real face, you wouldn't love me. And the truth is, I actually don't believe that's true. We give other people so much more grace than we give ourselves. Like if there was a person in my life who talked to my son, the way I talk to myself in my head, I would have fucking killed them. But I think one of the things about love that's so appealing to us, that true love, that idea, that romanticized love, is the idea that we could potentially be worthy of love.

37:30And the feeling that we know how much we love the people we love, and to feel like that helps you love yourself in a different way. And in that case, the offering is a distraction. It's not like the suit or whatever it is. I think there's something really lovely about people, a woman wanting to be beautiful for me and me wanting to be handsome and charming for her. I think that that's a statement of intention and there's something really lovely about that. And I think we've lost that in some ways culturally. And I think if we went back to that, it would actually be very lovely. I think the idea - You think we've lost that?

38:02Yeah, I think that the idea of courtship and dating, because it's tied up in gender roles in a really complicated way, and the idea of pursuit, and I think that we lost something really lovely in that. Yeah, I think a lot of people still want that. I mean, I count myself in that category. I think most people want it and were afraid to say it out loud because there's stuff that came with it that nobody wants to come back. Hang tight for a second. We'll be right back. Okay, here's a question. So now I want to turn the conversation to like, what makes someone good at divorcing? Going through a divorce themselves?

38:40Yeah, like what makes it? Yeah. Well, who's it? Give me three characteristics of a good divorce client. A person who concedes the possibility of their own error, a person who can step back from their emotional state when making important decisions, and a person who, if they have children can put the long-term needs of their children ahead of their short-term feelings. I think those are three really useful things. I would say overall, the best trait for a person going through a divorce to have is discipline, which I would define as the ability to trade what you want now for what you want most. When you talk about those three qualities, some measure of accountability, understanding that's bigger than yourself, some level of awareness and ability to separate yourself from that emotion.

39:27And a third is a sense of mission or purpose or something long-term bigger than yourself. Being willing to trade your immediate desire for your long-term goal. So not an instant gratification whore. Yeah. And also just the feeling of like, I know what I want right now, but I know what I want most. That's actually, by the way, the same trait that would make someone good at marriage. I'm saying all three of these traits seem like, oh my God, if someone was good at this, that makes someone good at relationships. Yeah. There's a book by Sherry Huber that I like called How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything.

39:56And she's a Buddhist writer, but very good one. Very simple, but profound. And yeah, I think that the traits that would make you good at divorce are the traits that would probably make you a good spouse or a good parent or a good person. So divorces can be like a crash course in how to become really good at a relationship. Yeah. Yeah. It can be an opportunity to be forced to learn humility. And how would someone who's out in the dating world evaluate someone's Goodness to divorce goodness to divorce. Yeah. Capacity for divorce Interesting question. I've never heard it parsed that way, but I like it like Should you date someone you think would be a good future ex-husband?

40:34Yeah I mean, I've never heard it parsed that way. I really like that when I start dating someone I often say oh my future ex-boyfriend Just yeah, I kind of love that But yeah, well, I actually have a friend who introduced who's happily married and he introduces his wife as this is my current wife. And it's funny because it's true. Like he's like, what? I didn't say anything. She's my current wife. And he's like, right, but it implies that you had a prior one or that there's another one in the future. And he's like, no, I just said she's my current wife. She is currently my wife. But I think it's a hilarious way to refer to someone.

41:04This is my current wife. Or this is, I'm always looking for a future ex-wife. You know, that's one of those. Exactly, that's a common future ex-boyfriend. So what, yeah, how would you evaluate that? Well, I actually do that. I like I've always done that in dating. I always look I always am interested in someone how someone refers to their exes. I remember when I first got divorced many, many years ago, I went on a date with a woman, very beautiful woman. And she was in a similar situation to me. I had very young kids. She had several young kids. She was divorced. And I was like, Oh, we might have some things in common.

41:36It was like literally the first date I went out on post divorce. and I remember it was going quite well and we were having dinner and and at some point I said something about like an art exhibit or something I said oh you know we should maybe go to it sometime it'd be fun to go and you know as I said it I'm like oh I kind of just like implied a second date in the middle of the first one but she went um oh yeah that'd be really cool you know like the kids are with the asshole next weekend so I could and I just remember thinking oh yeah this isn't gonna happen yeah like we're not doing that like and I we made it through the dinner and then I you know kind of was like, you know, thank you.

42:07It was nice to meet you. But, you know, I think we're in different places. And the truth is, like, I think how someone talks about their exes tells me a lot. Even again, even if their exes are like a villain straight out of Grendel, I still feel like, you know, there's a way to sort of relate to people in your past, even who've wronged you or hurt you in the narrative of describing your own life that is healthy. And there's a way that I think can be toxic. Okay, so that's one. That's actually testing the first criteria. So I would look for how people would speak of the narrative of their ex. I think also, too, again, the traits that would make you a good ex, that you could still concede that there was something of value you learned in that relationship.

42:51So evaluating these characteristics of good divorce at the beginning of a relationship could maybe help marriages or relationships do better. So if you were to redesign the technology of marriage, right now, it's pretty quick to get married and very hard to get divorced. What are the guardrails you would put into marriage? It's a great question. I don't think in hundreds of interviews anyone's ever asked me. So I really applaud it because I've been waiting to be asked it. It's a great question. You have to answer right to go? No one's asked me it. Yeah. Yeah, because I've thought a lot about this.

43:22Yeah. I think there should be barriers to entry. Which ones? First, you should have to have an individual consultation with a divorce lawyer. because I think you have to understand how something ends potentially before beginning it. So I think you should be educated as to your rights and obligations in the event that this marriage ends in the manner in which the majority of marriages end. We don't have discussions about it. If you ask most people, like, and I know this acutely because the time that most people learn legally what happened when they got married is when they come into my office for a consultation because now they're getting divorced.

43:56That's the worst possible time to learn that. You should have learned that before. So I think having a consultation individually without your soon-to-be spouse present with a divorce lawyer is a very productive thing. And I actually have some data to support this because I've been doing prenups for 27 years. And at the end of doing a prenup, usually people still feel very good about you. It's a pleasant transaction. The number of people that I have done prenups for and then subsequently done a divorce for them is infinitesimally small, which either means that people are getting prenups with me and going to other lawyers for the divorce.

44:37But if that were true, then I would have people coming in who other people did their divorce and I'm doing, or other people did their prenup and now I'm doing their divorce. And that doesn't happen. So the truth is, I think people who have prenups get divorced less. And there'd be no way to prove this. It's an unfalsifiable premise because you don't file a prenup anywhere. So there's no record that people have prenups. But I believe that people who have at the beginning of a marriage a conversation with a divorce lawyer, because the first thing you do if you have a prenup consultation with me is I educate you what your rights are in the absence of a prenup and then how we might want to modify those with a prenup.

45:10So you're learning as a pre-married person, a person who's about to get married, I'm going to give you an education of here's your rights and obligations in the absence of a prenup. And here's what we can modify them to be with a prenup. But learning that I think is incredibly important. So that's number one. Just even the nuts and bolts of like, hey, if this starts to fail, what's this procedure? How do we negotiation, mediation, arbitration, litigation? What's the difference? Again, first time you learn about that should not be when you're in it. Okay, so number one, you're going to give them - So number one, premarital education provided by a divorce lawyer.

45:43You're not going to a priest, you're going to a divorce attorney. You're going to a divorce? Why a priest? Just kidding. Okay. But the truth, like pre-CANA, like, oh yeah, I'm going to go talk to someone who's never married and not allowed to marry about what it's like to be married. Cool. That makes a huge amount of sense. Like, that's great. Like, that makes no sense whatsoever. So talking to a divorce lawyer individually, I think that you should have some similar to pre-CANA, there should be some successfully married people who provide as a service to people, like talk to some people that have had success at long-term marriage.

46:15There should be some counseling between like a young person who's thinking about getting married or a young couple who's thinking about getting married. Wouldn't you want to talk to someone who's, I mean, look, if you're founding a company, wouldn't you talk to successful entrepreneurs and failed entrepreneurs? so even talk to some divorced people. There should be some opportunity for people who are thinking about this very serious thing that everyone, whatever side of the aisle they're on, is like, this is the foundation of our society, is the family, and the family's foundation is the couple, right?

46:44So if everybody believes that, if you believe your own bullshit and you think that's true, put your money where your mouth is and have some arrangement where if you're gonna get married, you have to take it seriously. So you have to have that premarital education, again, with a lawyer, with happily married people, with unhappily married people, have a waiting period, have a permit that you have to get. I mean, listen, to drive a car, you have to take, you have to wait till a certain age. Then you have to take a written test to get a permit. Then you have to have the permit for a period of time and take driver's education.

47:13Then you have to have a road test and you still get a conditional license. And then that conditional license, you have to drive appropriately for a period of time and then you get your full license. Marriage, 50 bucks, guy dressed as Elvis, you're married. You don't get a pamphlet, nothing. You did the most legally significant thing you're going to do in your whole life other than die. and you got nothing. Sometimes people do have a bit more sunk cost. They do like, you know, the wedding in Europe, the big destination wedding. And that's like the, let's sink in a million bucks. The wedding industrial complex is amazing.

47:40But that's not the right investment to be making upfront in a marriage. I love a good party. So if you want to throw a party. No, you don't actually. You don't love a good party. No, weddings. I make an exception for weddings. I love weddings. So, okay. So your James Sexton reinvention of marriage is going to have item one, individual counseling with a divorce attorney. to talk about what the end of a marriage could look like. Individual and group counseling with successfully married people and unsuccessfully married people, divorced people or people who are unhappily married. That's number two.

48:10That's another premarital education component. Number three is a waiting period. I think there should be a waiting period. I think we're all hopped up on pheromones. I think that you're like into it. I think you should have to like get your marriage license and then you got to wait 30 days or 60 days or whatever it might be before you can actually get married. And what should the marriage license test be? I mean, I've thought about this and I've thought there's some aspects that it could be a test of, were you listening to what the lawyer said? Like it could be about what's about to happen to your legal rights and obligations, or it could be interesting to have it be about this other person.

48:42I actually think in a perfect, like if I get to design society, I would say it would be a test about some important questions about this person. Like the reality show. Do they want to have children or not? Do they want like the newlywed game? Yeah, the newlywed game where they're like, What's your husband's favorite kind of ice cream? And they blindfold each other. Yeah, because I think there should be, but I think there should be some uncomfortable questions. They do this in pre-K now. Like the Catholic Church does have this right. I have a very funny quick story I'll tell you that I've never had an opportunity to tell on a show.

49:09My parents were very young when they got married and they were married for 50 plus years till my mother passed away. And my father was like out of the hills of Virginia. He had an outhouse until he went off to the Naval Academy and then unfortunately went off to Vietnam. But he married my mom before he went off to Vietnam. He was like 20 years old. And he was kind of a country bumpkin, like admittedly. And he went to pre-Cana, and they had them fill out separately these quizzes. And it was about like, do you want to have children? Do you believe that children should be raised in the Catholic faith?

49:41Do you believe that children should be subject to corporal punishment? And one of the questions was, do you believe in extramarital sex? And my father wrote, yes. and you know this is way before like the times of ethical non-monogamy and polyamory and the priest was sort of shocked by this and said to him in a conversation with he and my mother why do you think that that would be okay and he says well i think like you know like if you want some like i think it's okay like to want and you know he's like right but like marriage is a sacred covenant and you're really only meant to be together as a monogamous couple my father thought it meant extra sex in marriage like extra marital sex like not just when you want to make a baby oh god but like extra sweet like it was adorable you know my mother was like mortified because she read it she was like what do you mean you believe in extra marital sex and he was like you know like extra like it's good to have extra like i love it like you don't just want to do it when you have kids like that was the sentence he said that they were like oh okay But I think having that conversation, like we know the things that people end up fighting about when they're married.

50:50So why not in the front end? And what it is is that we don't want to puncture the illusion. But why not puncture the illusion and then actually go, okay, there's a depth of intimacy here. I think that this quiz test that people love taking, as we discussed, should have – I think it's helpful because it tests for attentiveness. I think it should have small details like the newlyweds game and it should have the person's aspirations. Let divorce lawyers write it, I'm telling you. because we see the fail points. Don't talk to, if you want to know anything about your car and like how to keep it running, don't talk to the new car dealer.

51:22The new car dealer is just going to sell you a car. This is your website. Talk to a mechanic. Like you talk to a mechanic, they're going to tell you, yeah, this car, here's the fail points on this car. Here's the systems that break in this car predictably. Here's the routine maintenance you could do to prevent this car from falling apart. And that's, divorce lawyers are the ones who know. We watch this fall apart all the time. If you got a group of divorce lawyers and therapists who do marriage counseling for unhappily married people or individual counseling for recently divorced people. And you said, guys, put together a questionnaire of the questions people should ask someone when they're considering marrying them.

51:54We could put together a really useful tool. I want you to do that. Yeah, like with all my free time? I actually think it'd be great to have, you have this great book called How to Stay in Love. I prefer the British title, which is - How to Not Fuck Up Your Marriage. How to Not Fuck Up Your Marriage. Says everything you need to know. Why are the Americans are so Puritan? I know. I mean, that's such a better title. I know, it is a better title. Much better. But your next book, the How to Not Fuck It Up, the How to Not Fuck It Up American Edition, could have this new marriage technology that you could be like the Mark Zuckerberg of marriage.

52:21Wow. Try not to fuck it up. Yeah, try not to. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg's fucked up a lot of marriages, but not his own, thankfully. He's definitely done some damage through creating the meta platform. Yes. Actually, that's a good segue to where I would like to do a little bit of a paddle round. It doesn't mean what people might think it means. But we have two paddles here. That's just that one I want to on camera. A green and a red. Okay. So, okay. I want to know if these things are green flags or red flags. And I'm going to actually answer too. I'm not going to look at yours when I do mine. For people who are listening, we're fully clothed and we have two paddles.

52:59And one side is red and one side is green. And we're going to see if these things are green flags or red flags in a relationship. Okay. Got it. Okay. I appreciate that you pointed out that we're fully clothed. It's really good. For the podcast audience. I'm naked from the waist down, but I have the full tie on, you know what I mean? Just because I want to keep it classy. The DJ Diplo was on my show and he did take off some clothes. And so people rushed to watch it on Spotify because they were like, turn on the video. Unfortunately, it was not all, not all. I think Diplo would look better naked than me.

53:29He's younger. I don't know. One day I'll have you both here and we can, we can judge. So best friends with an ex. Best friends with an ex? Best friends. Red. Okay. We're both doing red. Okay. Okay. Friends with an X. Green. Green. Okay, we're both agreeing. Follows thoughts on Instagram. Follows what? Oh, thoughts? Thoughts. Not like deep thoughts. Not thoughts. Thoughts. Yes. Follows thoughts on Instagram. I have a problem with the framing of that question. What, are you a hot activist? No, I just think that what is appealing to men and what's appealing to women is different. I don't think you're following Harry Styles just because you like his music.

54:09I actually was at a wedding with Harry Styles and I couldn't recognize him in a lineup. Yeah, but like, I will tell you, like I know a lot of women that they're not following him because they like his music. He looks good shirtless. Okay, well amend this to following hot people of the gender that you're attracted to that you do not know on Instagram. Yes, got it. Many of them. I'm gonna go green. You're using green flag? I'm gonna go green. Because you think it's like, why, a good... I think that it's cathartic. I think that it's human. I think that it's normal. I'm not, listen, And do I think it's great for relationships?

54:38Probably not. But do I think that it's a very human thing? That's literally the question, James. It's a good relationship. I think it's a very human thing. And I think there are much bigger fish to fry. Somebody who wants to share social media accounts or share accounts or passwords. I'm going red. Me, red too. Okay, we're red on that. Okay, somebody who wants a prenup. Green. See, this is green for me, but I would say that earlier, some of your work has helped me change my mind on it. I used to think it was terribly unromantic. And now I understand that if I don't have a prenup with somebody, you have one with a state.

55:11You have one anyway. Every marriage has a prenup. One separate bedrooms. For me, for me, that's green. Red flag. That was my hot take. Really? I had like millions of views on that. And people had very strong feelings about it. Yeah, I know. I think you should enjoy the bedroom. You should have fun in the bedroom. You should snuggle in the bedroom. You should do all the fun sex things you do in the bedroom. And then go sleep in your own room like a civilized person. because I like to sleep in a bed starfished out, ideally with one or two dogs in the bed with me. I snore because my nose has been broken 22 times.

55:43Like you sleep, who cares? Like, again, this is me. If two people, if I was with someone who said, I love the feeling at night of us spooned together and that gives me some comfort and grace. Okay, then I'm in, that's cool. I'm not opposed to it, but I think starting off like that, It's just like there's something nice about waking up. I wish there was a technology. After you redesign marriage technology, you can redesign bed technology. I think it would be good if like a bed splits apart in the middle of the night and maybe transports you to another quiet room. But like if you could have something that does that.

56:16Yeah. Because I like the idea of like going and then but by the alarm clock, it gets back in. Yeah. I mean, what I would say is in a perfect world, too, you would wake up together, but then without morning breath and with like that kind of funky hair. Do you not keep blistering pocket patches on your - I wake up at 4 a.m., so it doesn't matter. There's literally, I'm always the first one up, so it doesn't really matter. You brush your teeth, you're good to go. Okay, one separate bank accounts. I think green flag for me. Yeah. I don't know, I'm a purple flag on that. I think there should be you, me, and we on finances.

56:49If we have joint bank accounts and you buy me a birthday present, I get to see it on the statement. I think it would be, there's some modicum of privacy that I think is useful in relationship. And so I think that, you know. When you come back on the show, we're going to talk all about finances because I want to talk about is marriage a transaction. But let's do a quick lightning round. Okay. What is more important in a relationship? We can put away the paddles. Sorry, guys. More important in a relationship, how you have sex, how you spend money, how you spend time? In order, I would say how you spend time, how you have sex, and how you handle money.

57:20I think how you spend time is incredibly important. I think that the priority you give to each other and yourselves individually impacts, I think, the whole ecosystem of the relationship. I think sex is the glue for a romantic relationship, but what separates it from a friendship or a roommate situation. And I think money is a very important piece of things, but it's usually what the money represents more so than the money itself. I represent a lot of ultra-wealthy people, and there are only two amounts of money, enough and not enough. That's it. So I have clients that are billionaires that work as if they're going to die tomorrow and they don't have any money and they have to work like every penny is the most important thing.

58:00And I have clients that are worth 10,$20 million that are like, yeah, whatever. Money's just something you need in case you don't die tomorrow. Interesting. Who wins the most in a typical divorce? Or who wins most often in a typical divorce? The lawyers. Yeah, because if I win, I get paid. And if I lose, I get paid. Okay, I was going to ask you. That's great. People can't win a divorce. People can't win a divorce. Litigants can't win a divorce. There's no such thing as winning a divorce. It's like winning a nuclear war. You didn't win. You know, you try to minimize the destruction. You try to maximize the post-divorce life that you and ideally this other person has.

58:37But you don't win. There's no winning. All right. That's who wins a divorce. There was a viral story about a woman who was 34, 35 and exited a 10-year relationship. She had wanted her ex to pay for her egg freezing. Yeah. What do you think about that? I understand the logic behind it. I think that if you are with someone for an extended period of time during your maximum fertility years, that it's not unreasonable to say that I didn't anticipate that I was going to have to start my relationship journey again at an age where now the likelihood of me finding another person, coupling with them, connecting with them on a deep enough level that I would feel comfortable assessing whether or not we should have children together, than conceiving and having a child together is far enough out of the timeline that now I'm going to have to engage into reproductive technology that I didn't have to before.

59:26That makes sense to me. I've made that argument before for people. There is in the law a concept called diminished lifetime earning capacity. And essentially, it's one of the many factors, one of the 14 factors for whether someone should get alimony or not. And the way that diminished lifetime earning capacity works is if, for example, a woman takes five years out of her career to raise children until their school age. It's like stepping out of the marathon at mile 10 for a half an hour, and then jumping back in the race. You will never catch the people. You don't get to do your 30s over again in your 40s.

1:00:03So I think that that is just an extension of that same concept. And it's very fair. It seems fair to me. Do you think we should have some kind of like pre-dating agreement that contractually requires that the... No, because I think the more that we try to put contractual barriers around human emotional complexity of relationships, the more we screw it up and create second order. We create a lot of second order effects that don't work. What is cheaper in the long run? A brief affair that shows you the benefits of the partner you already have or a therapist, a really good therapist? Oh, that's an interesting question.

1:00:42I think a good therapist doing their job could help you see some of the blind spots and the frailty and humanity that would draw you to infidelity. But I do think sometimes people need to burn their hand on a fire to figure out that it was hot. I think the pain of therapy is way better, though, than the pain of terrible mistakes. Actually, though, I always find if you want to see a change in someone's behavior, pain is not often a good way to get them there. Yeah, I think a lot of times pain makes people bitter. Like the unexamined kind of pain is not good. Senseless pain is not good. The unattended sorrow is not good.

1:01:14I can speak from experience in that I have personally made tremendous mistakes and been in therapy. And I think I learned a lot from both. But man, I wish I'd learned some of the things from therapy instead of from pain. I've watched a lot of people make mistakes. Good people make mistakes. I don't really know that I believe in good or bad people. Like I've represented abusers and the abused, the cheater and the cheated on. You spend enough time with any of these people, you see it's like hurt people, hurting people mostly. It would be great if people from a sooner age engaged in useful therapy.

1:01:45Okay. I think a lot of therapy isn't useful therapy. And you've talked about this great divorce. You hear about people getting divorced in their 60s and you're like, is that liberation or is that just like foregoing a good retirement plan? The scarcity of time creates an urgency for people to try to find joy. Like I've represented a lot of people who made the decision to leave a marriage when they were in their 70s or even 80s. and a lot of times when you talk to them, they're like, yeah, I don't have much time left and I'm not going to spend it resentful and angry or with a person who I'm sitting next to them and I feel alone.

1:02:16So when you look at those people, do you think they should have called it much earlier? I don't think so, but I mean, my worldview is very like John Lennon's, you know, there's nowhere you could be that isn't where you're meant to be. Like I think that things happen when they're supposed to happen. And I think that there's joy to be found in every chapter in your life. I do talk sometimes about how gray divorces are interesting to me when they're infidelity-based, because that's something that's been happening a lot lately when someone is in their 80s and they have a younger woman that they found in her 60s.

1:02:50And I sort of find myself going, I mean, as a man, as a heterosexual man, I find myself thinking like, oh God, I'm going to be thinking with my penis when I'm 80. Like I really thought, you say that like it's a, like a fait accompli. Like I, I really believed that, you know, at 80 something, I wouldn't be chained to an idiot anymore that I would just see a beautiful woman and I'd be like, Oh, there's a human being. And I would just not be, you know, hypnotized by it the way that I am as, as you know, for my entire adult life. But yeah, apparently in your eighties, you're still susceptible to that.

1:03:22There's also like, I think that the life you didn't have, right. So that romanticization can just build up over time. And my favorite Kierkegaard quote is, I'm gonna mistranslate it, but it's something like, the greatest sorrow is for our memories, especially the ones we didn't make. Only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic too. There's something about the beauty of the loss or the pain of it. I think nostalgia is a remembered kind of pain. And I think there's something sort of beautiful about that pain. So I like to look at relationships as chapters in a really long book. And I think like the best books, there's moments of fear, moments of sadness.

1:03:59There's parts of it that make you cry, parts of it that make you laugh uncontrollably. And I really love that we're all writing this story. It's funny you say that. I often use that metaphor. And I said it yesterday to a friend where we're speaking about why we keep in touch with exes if we do. And I actually hate the word ex. I think it's like a kind of terrible visual and kind of violent word. But former flames, former lovers. When you see someone, my ex-wife, I used to introduce her as the mother of my sons. And one day she said to me, like, why do you introduce me that way? She's like, it sounds like I'm like a baby mama you were never married to.

1:04:34And I said, well, I don't like to introduce you by what you're not. Right. Like, oh, this is not my wife. Yeah. Like, this is my ex-wife. Like, I'd rather say what you are to me, which is you are the mother of my kids. And she's like, oh, okay, I guess if you parse it like that, it makes more sense. But I think it is very odd that we introduce exes in that way. In that way. I should say like my former boyfriend, my boyfriend at the time. If you want to be really cool in European, you do, they'll like, that's my former lover. That's what I say. I love that one. It makes you sound really cool. My former lover.

1:05:01I like saying former flame. Yeah. Because you never know how long it burned. And you never know if he'll come back. Sometimes they do. You know, men sometimes are like cockroaches. They're like, can I come back? They just keep coming back. Yeah. And women just always go away very gracefully. No, they go away like crazy people. But then they never come back, I feel like. Do they? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That hasn't been my experience, but maybe I'm a harder habit to break. I don't know. We'll dig into that. But I was saying to a friend yesterday that I feel that every person I've been with, they hold the keys to some chapter of my life.

1:05:28Yeah, and a relationship's an ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, you add a lizard to it, you don't have the old ecosystem plus a lizard. You have a whole new ecosystem because the lizard eats this bug and that bug no longer eats this plant and that plant doesn't grow the way it used to. So now it changes the stream. And if you take the lizard out, you don't go back to the old ecosystem because now the whole thing's been fundamentally changed. So I like to take a very ecological approach to relationships in general and think about the fact that who you are at the conclusion of a relationship is not who you were when you entered it.

1:06:01And now with this person leaving your life in some fashion, you're changed. So you will be a different version of yourself. And I have found as a 53-year-old man that, you know, I think back on sort of the Wikipedia article of my relationships and, you know, what felt like just catastrophic, giant, the world is ending, you know, breakups. It's like a foot. Oh, yeah, we dated for like a year and a half. Yeah. You know, oh, yeah, she's lovely. Her mom is so nice. I miss her mom sometimes. Like, and we, you know, and you, by the way, you're in this ecosystem. Like, I miss a lot of my ex-girlfriend's moms.

1:06:36Oh, totally. Like I didn't have, I had a complicated relationship with my own mother. I had mom stuff in terms of like not having moms around. And I really like, I was very blessed that almost every one of my ex-girlfriends, their mom was like a pleasure and liked me. And I loved that energy of being around them. And so when we broke up, I remember thinking like, oh shit, like I'm going to miss her mom. You know, like Nina, I miss your mom. Like Stephanie, I miss your mom. Like there's a lot of moms. Call this man. Yeah. Call me. Like I'm out here. You didn't break up with me. You know, it wasn't you.

1:07:05I have that too. And I think because my parents were older, that I often like really click with someone's parents. And there's the second part of the breakup, which is like, oh, I have to break up with our family. I love their family. I'm on the other side of that now. I have a 28 year old son who just got married. And, you know, I remember when he said, oh, we're getting married. They were law school sweethearts that had been together. She's amazing. She's an incredible woman. You know, if you think like sort of more philosophically about what's happening there, Like my son, like who I taught that the cow says moo, like now he's six, four, but like he was, you know, pint size when I met him, he like, he comes home and he's like, oh, she's going to be in our family now.

1:07:46And you're like, wait, what? Who? Like she's going to be in our family. Like I don't, you're sleeping with her. I'm not like, I don't have like the bond to her that you do. I've met her four times. What do you mean? She's going to be in our family. I thought you were going to say something like really sweet. It was just, it's weird that someone's like this person's going to be in your family now. And by the way, thank God, she's wonderful. She's the lizard in your ecosystem. She's a new lizard in the ecosystem. She's a new lizard in the ecosystem. And she's made the whole forest lovely. But there is something strange about this person is now going to be in our family because my kid has decided, oh, yeah, this person's going to be in our family unilaterally.

1:08:22He's decided she's his favorite person. And she is his favorite person. And for some reason, he's her favorite person, which I'm like, that's wild because I know this kid. He's probably your favorite person, too. He's one of my favorite people. He's in the running. My whole apartment smelled like Axe body spray for years. Oh, really? When he was a teenager, boy funk, that's the worst. The only thing worse than being a teenage boy is raising them. That's really. The girls are challenging, but they're also the old saying of, your daughter is your daughter for life, and your son is your son until he finds a wife.

1:08:51I think it's different. I think it's like girls and their dads, and moms and their sons. Girls and their dads is fascinating. It's like girls and their dads. I kind of am jealous of that. I wish I'd had the chance to have that experience, Because the way a girl loves a good dad, even as an adult, is something to stand in awe of. People will often be like, why are you single? If I'm single at the time. And I'll say, I think there are two types of single women. There are single women with good daddy issues, and there are single women with bad daddy issues. And I'm definitely in the good daddy issue category.

1:09:20It's like your bar is so high. So high. Because you know how it is to be deeply loved by a man and adored by a man. and you're not for the first time hearing from a guy who's a potential suitor that you're the most beautiful girl and you're so special and so wonderful because your dad has been saying that to you for your whole life so there's something really amazing about and even more than that like seeing his relationship with my mother my father passed away a few years ago because he was older when i was born but like to my dad's dying breath like if you offered him something he'd always be like, did you offer it to your mom first?

1:09:55And he was like, that generation of like, responsible, devoted family man. I mean, they had a range marriage. That type of manhood or that type of masculinity for me is like the ideal one, like the one where a man is very excited to be in the role of provider and very excited to be in the role of protector and, you know, really enjoys that and sees like that sense of like service to the family as the ideal. Like, I think that's a really healthy pursuit. And I think that when it's done the right way, I think it's a really beautiful contribution to the family unit, to the community, to the society and to the world.

1:10:37It's not at the moment, I think, having its moment. Like, I think young men are having a hard time right now. And there's a lot of smart people talking about what that means and why it's happening and what to do with it. And as a father of two sons and as a, you know, I was a young man, I understand, you know, some of those unique challenges. I think a world where men are flailing is never going to be a good world for women. And I think a world where women are flailing is never going to be a good world for men. I think we really need each other. Yeah. Okay. Some audience questions. Let's do it.

1:11:06Actually, before we ask this question, let me just ask you. You have talked about yourself as like a weapon in the courtroom. you're like a gun and you get and you also said point me at someone and a gun in the hands of a good person can protect and the gun in the hands of a villain is dangerous is that a little bit like an nra like guns don't kill people people kill no one could argue with the accuracy of that like that is true i i'm not a big nra guy but i definitely guns don't kill people people with guns kill people the part they leave out is they go guns don't kill people people kill people no No, no, no.

1:11:38People with guns kill people. And people with fully automatic firearms kill a large number of people in a really short time. So that's the part they leave out, which I don't think is the kind of thing so small you could leave it out without impacting the substantive value of the argument. But I am a weapon. Like our judicial system is designed that each person is entitled to zealous advocacy within the bounds of law. So my job sometimes is to obfuscate the truth. And my job sometimes is to bring the truth to light. Have you ever had a win since you win in divorces? Have you ever had a win that made you feel guilty?

1:12:16All the time. All the time. I wouldn't say it's a I have a successful outcome, meaning the client has an objective and I achieve the objective. I help achieve the objective. I don't feel as good about it as if I was helping a worthy person obtain what I consider to be a morally correct outcome. But it doesn't keep me up nights. I represent a client and I represent a system. And I don't always believe in the client, but I always believe in the system. And the other side of the coin of our system of due process is that everyone has an advocate. And you have to accept that. Like you have to accept that in order for that system to work, the villain has to have an advocate.

1:12:58And so there's a line from Rhesus Sardonicus I used to have hanging in my office that it's, I've resigned myself to temporary complicity with evil in order to accomplish certain strategic objectives for people whose suffering is greater than my need to maintain moral purity. So I do not consider myself someone who needs to maintain moral purity. So I'm comfortable being a weapon. Okay. Michelle asked, who don't you end up representing and why? Poor people because they can't afford me very often. I represent some people pro bono through domestic violence projects that I work with, but I don't anymore really represent people that don't have money.

1:13:36Like people who can afford to hire me are usually people that have money. Since you have a lens, how does rich people divorce look different to poor people divorce? Overall, rich people divorce is harder and easier. It's harder in the sense that they have more things, so it's harder to divide those things. And also, they have less of an incentive to be reasonable because they have a lot of money available for council fees. So, if, you know, most people wouldn't spend$50 ,000 arguing over whether Thanksgiving for the purposes of visitation should be defined as Wednesday through Sunday or just Thursday for the holiday.

1:14:10But if you've got$20 million, you might be willing to spend 50 grand on that. I have no right to tell you whether or not like I would eat turkey another day. But if you know, if you're somebody that that's important to you, you have the right just like I wouldn't buy a car for a half a million dollars. But I know I have clients who own 10 cars worth way more than that, because they have lots of money. It's easier in the sense that when people can barely afford the home they have, and the cell phone they have, and the singular family plan they have, and now they need two, it's much harder. And so rich people, like I have a client who's like, okay, so I'll keep this house in the Hamptons and we'll buy her another house in the Hamptons and I'll have this apartment and she'll buy an apartment and you know what?

1:14:51We'll buy another apartment or we'll have a nanny and the nanny can travel between our two homes. Like, so what does money do? Like I've been broke and I've had money now. It's much easier having money. It's great because all that it does is it doesn't solve, like you still get sick. The people you love still get sick. It doesn't solve the fundamental, But God, it makes so many things easier. Like if my phone breaks, I don't have to go, oh my God, what am I going to get another phone? Like I don't have to worry about what something costs. That's amazing. Okay. What consistent mistake do smart people keep making in divorce?

1:15:23Wanting their story to be told in a way that they think will vindicate them, thinking that the divorce process will give them closure. I tend to believe that closure is a myth that people think that there's going to be, because Hollywood told them that there's going to be like some moment where you and your ex will have some conversation or some conflict, and then you'll both realize, okay, this is it, and this is closure. It's just not how it works. It's not how relationships end. I appreciate that you believe in redemption, but not closure. I think that's problematic, actually. I think closure's a myth.

1:15:53I just think it's a myth. I did hospice work for a really long time, and the most painful thing I would hear from people when their loved person, who we were a volunteer for, would pass away, is they would say, it's not that they died, I knew they were going to die. It's that they died without dignity because they were the way you are when you die. Like having been in the room with hundreds of people when they die, like I know what it looks like and sounds like and smells like, and I know what the agonal breath sounds like. And we do people a tremendous disservice by having them think something unnatural was happening just because it looks different than on TV where you go, I loved you all.

1:16:31And yet nobody dies like that. That's your propaganda. that you studied. So to me, well, and that was actually what my master's thesis was on. It was actually called The Semantics of Death and Dying, Metaphor and Mortality. It's published. Oh, I will read it. Yeah, you can look at it. I will read it. I've only seen one person die, which is my dad, but I was holding his hand when he died. Yeah, I was holding my mom's hand when she passed. It's really nice. Yeah, it's lovely to be connected to another person when they cross over and the feeling that you were there for like a moment that's so important.

1:17:00But there's something really beautiful about that moment if you are ready for it, you know, if you're ready for what it looks like and sounds like and feels like. And we don't do that with people. We don't teach them that like, it's okay. It's going to be scary. It's going to sound different. It's going to look different. You won't always remember. I remember thinking, well, I always remember my mom this way. Like, will this be the image of her, this like whittled away from cancer, you know? And the truth is like, memory is kind. I remember her with hair. I remember her healthy and happy and smiling.

1:17:31So it's a lovely thing. It takes some time sometimes. It takes quite a bit of time. But I think the myth of closure is tied to something like that. It's this idea that the divorce process will give you that closure. It won't. The divorce process is like someone dying. They have to die for you to start to heal. And I think that the stages of grief from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross are applicable to divorce because divorce is the death of a marriage. Ilana asked, oh, I have this too, tips for dating a divorcee. That's a good one. And statistically, it's important because a lot of people are divorced. If they have children, it's going to be different than if they don't.

1:18:05But I would definitely say overall, if you're going to date someone who's divorced, realize that they've been through a unique experience that's not that unique, but that they probably have some scars from that relationship. They might have a better sense of what they want and don't want, so they might set boundaries in a different way that might feel abrupt to you, but it kind of has nothing to do with you. As a divorced man myself, I know for me post-divorce, there was this real sense of, okay, I'm going to be very clear because I think that it's dangerous to not be clear in relationships. So to say like this close, no closer, or these are the things I'm willing to do and these are the things I'm not willing to do, or these are the compromises I'm willing to make and these are the compromises I'm not.

1:18:49I find that people who are divorced sometimes have a clearer sense of who they are in relationship and who they're not, and who they've been unsuccessful at being in a relationship. You can't pretend that you meant to get divorced. Nobody meant to get divorced. You meant for it to work. So I think that piece is big. I think you have to be prepared to accept the fact that this person had a very deep relationship with another human being, which requires you to have a certain sense of self. I think this discourse that's all around right now about body count and things like that. Like that has a lot to do with, you know, people's insecurity over people's past and the sense that I tend to believe because of what I do for a living and also my experiences of being and observing human beings is that we're kind of born again in every relationship and we bring different things to it.

1:19:40So to me, like someone who had a past where they had lots of relationships, I don't think that that means that they're destined to be that way. Just like if someone hasn't had a lot of relationships in their past, it means that they're going to be fidelitous for their whole life. Like that person might be like a dog let out of a cage. So I think ultimately, a divorced person, you're going to have to get used to the fact that they have had a deep connection to another human being to the point where they decided out of 8 billion options, they're choosing that person. So if you're not the kind of person that can handle that at some point they felt a deep connection to another person, I think you're going to have a hard time with that.

1:20:15Okay. I have this thing, which is I feel like if I'm going to date a divorced person, I want to know the quality of their relationship with their former partner, especially when there are kids involved. So I say like, I'll date a divorced guy with kids if he has a good relationship with her mother. And I'm totally happy to date a widower as long as he didn't kill his wife, which is a similar corollary. I think it's harder with a widower because a widower, like we put a halo sometimes on the dead. And if you're divorced, like I've always had the ability in post-divorce relationships that if anyone feels any jealousy towards my ex, like When my kids were young and I would, if I was dating someone, talk about, they would talk about their mom.

1:20:53And if they got jealous, which is normal and natural, like to hear someone talking about their ex in fond terms, even though they're doing it for the benefit of their children, I understood that. But I would say if I wanted to be married to that person, I would be still. We're not together anymore. That should tell you something. One of my best friend's husbands asked me this question, and it was quite shocking to get from him. I want a divorce in a year. What do I do or not do? I believe he's asking for a friend. Oh, meaning how do you, like what we call divorce planning? Yeah. Well, it depends on if you want to approach this in a being planning, like in a pragmatic way or tactical way.

1:21:32Yes. Because I happen to be of the belief that Patton had, which is if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck. So I think if I know a year in advance, like that you're going to get divorced, there's all kinds of nefarious things I could suggest that you would do to prepare yourself for that, to increase the quality of optics in favor of your claims and decrease the quality of optics in favor of the claims likely to be asserted by your spouse. There's so many things. The minute you are seriously thinking about divorce, that's when you should go see a divorce lawyer because you should start thinking about how to tactically approach the situation.

1:22:06I have a lot of people in my office currently who probably won't get divorced for a year or two, but they're already starting to tactically plan. The further out in advance I know you're going to start shooting, the better you come to me sooner, right? Like come to me as soon as you can before we start doing any. Like, let me use a metaphor because sometimes those are easier. When I was a kid, my parents used to have lots of barbecues. My mom would go to the store and she would buy lots of like lovely groceries. And then she would make a marinade and she would do all this stuff. And then my dad would take it and put it on the grill and then take it off the grill.

1:22:41And everyone would say, oh my God, Noah, you're such a great cook. He did this much. She did this much. Being in a courtroom is putting it on the grill. Got it. Like when I'm, my favorite thing in the world is being in a courtroom doing a trial. But by the time we go in there, we've won or lost this case to some degree. Like a lot of it is the prep. So I think it's the same kind of thing. By the time you start your divorce, there's so much that could have been manipulated and sort of done tactically. Okay. James asked, have you ever seen a couple get divorced that you thought they should get back together?

1:23:16Yes. And did they? No. No. What made you think they should get back together? I've seen people that I feel like if they'd given themselves some time and a chance, they probably would have figured it out. They could have figured it out. It most often happens. It's very sad. The divorce rate between people who lose a child is very high. Yeah, it's like 70%. Because they remind each other of this unmeasurable loss. And I've seen a few people in that situation. I've done divorces in that situation. And there's a part of me that feels like if they had found a way to grieve, and if they'd found a way to move through their pain and attend to their sorrow, that they wouldn't lose each other in the process.

1:24:00They're stacking losses on top of losses. And that made me very sad. There's lots of other questions I have for you, mostly about money, the finances. Someone asked a really good question. Jesse asked, how often are both people aware of their financial reality? Usually one person is more aware of the financial reality than the other. Sometimes, quite often, I would say, men are very much in control of the finances and have a lot more information about the finances than the women. But it's quite often that one spouse is the person in charge of money. Should you be able to FOIA someone's divorce proceedings?

1:24:34I know there are discussions with you, FOIA being a Freedom of Information Act for people listening. No, matrimonial finances are sealed, and I think for a reason, because there's so much private information that you get about their assets and liabilities and expenses. And you just know so much about people by the end of the case that it's shocking. I get to look really like underneath everybody's everything. It's really amazing. Well, speaking of closure, it's the end of our conversation today, but we'll be back. Part one is over. Yeah, part one is over. But we end every episode asking our guests what's a question that they have that they don't know the answer to?

1:25:07What's a dumb question that we could help answer for you the next time you come back? I have a very practical question that's haunted me for many years that I bet someone would be able to answer for me. What is graph paper actually for? Oh my God, I love graph paper. Yeah, I like to color in it. But like, what is it actually for? Like, I was always very bad at geometry. I think it has something to do with geometry. I just always felt like there's intelligent people. And then there's like intelligent people at the level who would know how to use graph paper. Like, what do all those other buttons on the calculator do?

1:25:37Yeah. Like those really weird ones that look like a symbol of something that I don't know what it is. Like, to me, that's a smart person. Okay, we're going to find the use case for graph paper. I don't think Diplo would be a good choice. No, you already have that. But I think you should find someone who could, if you can answer this, I would appreciate that. Neil deGrasse Tyson. He probably uses graph paper. He would totally know how to use graph paper. Yeah, he is a graph paper user. And he would know what a lot of those buttons do. That would be excellent. He's already been on the show, but we're going to email him.

1:26:00Let him know. I'll give him like a coupon for a divorce if he can answer it for me. You got to send him a graph paper notebook. Yeah, there you go. That's it. All right. Thank you so much, James, for being with us. A lot of fun. Jim Sexton. And you can find his book, How to Stay in Love, or the British version, How to Not Fuck It Up, wherever you get your books. Wherever fine books are sold, or you can listen to me for eight and a half hours on Audible if you like to. Yes. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

1:26:24I feel like I would have paid Jim Sexton's rate for his advice and that time. And I'm so grateful that he came and spent the time with me today and that he will be back for more Smart Girl Dumb Questions. I entered this conversation very curious about divorce, which I guess for me would be jumping the gun since I haven't even gotten married yet. But I feel like there's so much to learn from someone like Jim about how we start relationships. I went into that conversation, I think, dumb about the practicalities of divorce and marriage and how it works out. I left a lot smarter about how divorce isn't just rooted in what he called the number one cause for divorce, this kind of disconnection.

1:27:02But also the kind of layered social trends that we're seeing, how they have collapsed the institution of marriage over time. I really appreciated hearing how Jim would redesign marriage. And I think if we are going to have a technological review committee for the technology of marriage, it would make sense to fill it with divorce attorneys. So send me your questions for Jim as well, because we will definitely have a part two with him. You can drop them on socials at smartgirldumbquestions. Just slide into our DMs. You can also send me an email at naima raza101 at gmail.com or call us at 1-855-MY-DUMB-Q.

1:27:37that's it for this episode of smart girl dumb questions today's episode was produced with desta wundra dana balut and melissa lee gibson it was edited by darlena chiem and mixed and engineered by johnny simon i'm your host name araza and we'll see you next week on smart girl dumb questions sorry this is your valentine's day message for me

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