The Divorce Expert: Slippage Is Tearing Marriages Apart! If Kids Are Your Top Priority & You Spot This You’ll Divorce In 1-3 Years!

25:27Okay, so they end the relationship. So in the heterosexual example, man and a woman are married to each other for a period of time. And the man says, I'm ending things with you because I'm gay. I've realized that I'm gay and I'd like to live my life as a gay man. My thinking, as someone who's never had that happen to me, my thinking and perhaps it's naive, like my experience has taught me that maybe I'm just strange, which I kind of knew. But this is another example of it. If a woman broke up with me and said, I'm breaking up with you because I'd like another man better than you. That's very hard to swallow.

26:11It's like, I want one like you, but better than you. Whereas if she said, I'm leaving you because I'd like to go be with a woman now. It's like, well, I mean, I don't, I don't have that. Like, I can't give you that. It's not like I want someone who's a better dancer, I want someone who's funnier. I want someone who has different parts than you. And okay, I mean, that feels a little less like a reject. You're not rejecting me necessarily. You're rejecting my entire sort of gender. You're basically saying this isn't who I want. The opposite actually happens. Those are some of the most brutal and vitriolic, awful divorces you could possibly imagine.

26:50And they've actually gotten worse over the span of my career. Because over the 25 year span of my career, when I started, when someone said, okay, my husband is leaving because he's gay and now he's going to live as a gay man, it was actually okay to then say, yeah, and he's a pervert and a horrible human being. And because there was just such a widespread homophobia at the time, I mean, you know, willing grace, like Will couldn't even kiss his boyfriend on TV. They couldn't really even have a boyfriend. It was like, so, you know, young, young people today have no idea how in my lifetime that that has changed so much.

27:27Not to say there isn't still homophobia, not that there's still not had normativity, but the reality has changed tremendously the boots on the ground reality. Now, if your spouse leaves you for a, if I was married and my spouse left me for a woman, and I'm upset about it, I'm opening myself to an accusation of being homophobic. And the truth is, like, no, whoever she's leaving me for, it's really upsetting. Or whoever she's been sleeping with, male, female, anything, it's upsetting because they're with another person. So I think there is in that phenomenon of people's breakups, the sense of like, well, I was going to break up with them anyway, is like a pride thing.

28:12I think, I think there is a tremendous amount of stuff that we carry around when it comes to those breakups. I've always wondered what heartbreak actually is, because I flip between thinking, okay, it's like you mentioned the word rejection. Is it a blow to our self -esteem? Is it the loss of a future that we had built in our head? Yes, yes. If you can understand what it is, I was thinking, how do I give my friend advice on it, then I know what the advice should be, or the support should be. Because if it's a loss of this future, then I can, I know, I'll say this, if it's his self -esteem, I can't elbuce to self -esteem.

28:47So I think it's all of those things, but I think it's an ending, and I think that endings are hard. I think that saying to what I always try to do when I have friends going through a break up, and even with clients, is that every beginning is born of some other beginnings end. So we talked about this the last time we sat down together, where I said that I only got Cabo because Buster died. Which is your dog's? Yeah. My dog that passed away 13 -14 years ago, and my dog that's now 13 years old. And one, I only got one because the other died, and I love both of those dogs so much. But if I'm being honest, I guess I have to say I'm glad that I lost Buster so that I could have Cabo.

29:36That sounds terrible, because I don't mean it like, oh, I'm glad that he died, but death, like that ending was part of life. And it made room for the beginning of the next thing. And what I always try to focus my clients on is that this relationship is ending. And that's, there's, there has to be honoring that, mourning that, feeling that, seeing it as the transition that it is, grieving the loss of it. But also realizing that every ending is the beginning of the next thing, and there has to be an ending for the next thing to come, and for the next beginning to happen. And I have now watched that cycle for thousands of clients over a span of 25 years, where, where their life is ending.

30:24Who they, I was this person's husband, I was this person's wife, I was a dad who lived with his kids full time, that had them every Thanksgiving, not every other Thanksgiving, that I had them every Christmas Eve, not alternate years on, in even years there with me and odd years there with her. Like, what are you talking about? Like, this was who I am, who I'm dying, like, who I am is dying. And I don't know who I'll be next. And when you're in that, right, and when it's your first divorce, it's not mine, but it's yours, you know, it's very hard to see. Like, just, just like when someone dies, you know, when, when Buster died, I said it last time, I said, I will never do this again.

31:11I will never love anything like this ever again. I'll never let my heart be broken like this again. I'll never open myself up like this again, ever, never. This is the worst pain. Why would I ever do this? Loving anything is stupid. It's insane. You're opening yourself up to the inevitability of loss. And yet, Cabo was the greatest such a joy. And now, I'm near the end of that. And what do you do? Well, I like to believe that now, I'm not saying that's not going to be as painful when it happens, it will be. But I no longer believe the world is ending. Like, I understand that like the beauty of who he is was born of the emptiness that had to be created by the loss of Buster.

32:02Like, I understand that now. And so, like I said, will I do it again? There's going to be a period of time where I'll say no way. And same thing with love. Like, people get divorced. I had a client last week saying to me, they're, they're right kind of in the middle of their divorce. And I said, you know, 86 % of people are remarried within five years of their divorce. And they said, oh, I am never doing that. Are you kidding? I am never doing this again. And every time they say that I laugh, because I think to myself, I'm like, you're so wrong. And I get it. Like, you don't see it right now. Like right now, I know you think that's true.

32:41Like, but you will love again. And you will, when you love again, like you will feel it, and you will be in it, and you will go, oh, and this one's perfect. And this is great. Like, I've done divorces for people that spend a million dollars in council fees and went through absolute hell. And when they're about to get remarried, I go, you know, we should do your prenup so that you don't ever have to do that again. Like, I'll do it for free if you want. Like, let's just do it. And they go, no, no, this is real. This is real. And I sit there and I think like, oh, my God, you've just, you've learned nothing at all.

33:15That was real too until it wasn't. But, but this is, you know, perhaps, you know, love is a delusion brought on by an adequate lighting. I don't know. But there's, there's something in us that, you know, feels that pain. And then there's something in us that forgets that pain. And I think that that, you know, that's a good thing. That's a good cycle. I think life is a game you can't win. And so you play it to the utmost to love anything is insane because you are accepting that you're going to lose it. It's a quote you said. You think life is a game you can't win. Yeah, I don't think there's any winning.

33:52You die. Like, that's the only truth. The only, the, you know, it, every story, you know, starts the same. You were born. Like every Wikipedia page starts the same. They were born. And every Wikipedia page will end exactly the same. They died. That's it. Everything that happens in between is your life. But those are the only two inevitabilities. Those are the only two real things for certain. So I look at it as it's a game you can't win. Meaning, if you pursue money, like your money will eventually be useless. The things you accumulate with it will be useless. Every car you own, someone else will either own it someday or it'll get.

34:37To the scrap junkyard someday or it'll give it to somebody like it's all your material possessions will be utterly meaningless. Like we all went through this when the COVID lockdowns first started. Everybody was like, you know, I've got all this money and I've got all these travel vouchers and they're like, yeah, you can't go anywhere now. And it's like, oh, okay. Well, what do I, you know, you started to see the limitations of things. Have the power go out in your house sometime. And it'll remind you that like, oh, wait. Yeah, like everything I have, I just have like this much of a grip on it.

35:03All you got to do is just take that away and it's gone and that's that's it, you know, and it's the same thing with our health. It's the same thing with, you know, everything like everything is totally fine and wonderful. And then you have a terrible splitting headache. And then the only thing that matters is that headache, you know, and then that headache goes away. And for like a day, you go, I don't have that headache anymore. But did you wake up today and go, I don't have a headache. Oh, and the power is on. Isn't that great? You know, and I don't have cancer. Isn't that good? You know, no, you don't.

35:36You walk around going like, oh, you know, I really, why aren't, why aren't my page views where they're at or what happened with this? And why did that person be so nasty to me? Like we get caught up and all this stuff went in fact, the only thing that, you know, again, if you keep, you know, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, every relationship ends. Your child, you will hopefully們 pre -decease your child but your child們 will die someday.

36:17That's the nature of it. So we have created a culture where we really try not to talk about that. We really try to just keep that out of our gaze. Let's not talk about it. Our only depictions of death are preposterous. They're like the person in the deathbed being like, I love you all. And then you're just beautiful. You know, beautifully I guess it doesn't look like that. If you ever spend time with people, I'm their deathbed. I was a hospice volunteer for many, many years, and I spent a lot of time with people who were dying actively dying. And I have to tell you, like you hang out with somebody, and say it's not pretty.

36:59It doesn't smell good, it doesn't sound good, but it's real, it's natural, it's okay. It's where it's all going. And the reason why I say this is not to be morbid, it's that we're doing ourselves a tremendous disservice by not acknowledging this, because I can tell you how many families when I was a hospice volunteer, when their family member, their loved one, would die. Would say to me, it's not that they died, it's that they died terribly, they died without dignity. And I would say to them, don't they? They died like everyone dies. Like it's okay, like they, just because it wasn't like on TV, where you, you know, looks sort of fade out, and say a few final words and then fade out.

37:37Like no one very few, if anyone dies that way, it's not how it works. So we're not doing anyone. Like this is the part I don't understand, is that we don't want to talk about divorce, you know? We don't want to talk about death. We don't want to talk about endings, because I think there's something in our brain that says if we talk about it, we're going to make it happen. And if we don't talk about it, we'll prevent it from happening. And that seems to me insane, because these are things that are absolutely inevitable when it comes to death, and highly likely when it comes to divorce. So why not bring them back into the discourse?

38:20And I'll tell you the truth, I think one of the reasons why my conversations have become something people are interested in, is because I think we're all fascinated by this, but we don't want to talk about it over dinner conversation. And we don't want to, you know, but we know it's important. Something in us knows, you know, this is important. Like this is something that needs to be talked about and thought about. You did your thesis. Your master's thesis on the subject of death, titled on metaphors and mortality, the semantics of death and dying. Why would you write your thesis on the subject of death?

38:55What was a different life? So this is before I went to law school, I had gotten out of college with a degree in psychology, and I decided I wanted to, I was a hospice volunteer. I, I, why? I have to ask my therapist that question. I, I can give you the answer. So I, when I was quite young, I think I was about six or seven years old. My mother was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer called leomyosarcoma. It's a soft tissue sarcoma, and it's, it's very rare. I was way too young to understand what was going on. I, I just, my remember my mother crying, the sound of my mother crying in the bathroom and running the sink, so I wouldn't hear her crying, but I knew she was crying.

39:46I didn't really understand what death was. Like I understood that my gerbil had died, but I grew up Catholic, so I remember like you got to go to heaven and that sounded pretty good, because it was like a really nice place, apparently. And I remember hearing my mother talking on the phone to her sister and talking about the fact that she had six months. And I remember my sister, who's six years older than me, explaining to me that mom was sick and she wasn't going to get better. And I remember being so young that I didn't really understand what that meant, but it was scary and everyone was very upset.

40:24And then my mom didn't die. What had happened is, depending on how you looked at it, who there was a miracle or it was science, and that is that the tumors had encapsulated itself, meaning that the immune system had essentially closed up around it, so it didn't attest to size or spread in any way. They went in, they did surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and she was fine, she was well. And then five or six years later, it came back. And again, I got told your mom has six months to live. It set that point, I was like old enough to understand what that meant. And I was terrified by it, I was saddened by it.

41:04And once again, she had surgery, she had all kinds of procedures and things that had to happen to deal with it. But once again, she just miraculously sort of ductabulled and she made it. And three years later, it came back again. And then they said, your mom has six months to live. And I remember by that point thinking, yeah, you don't know how many times we've had this conversation, like I don't believe you anymore. And it's okay, I'm not afraid, because it's not going to happen. I know that something's going to happen and it'll work out. And it did once again, she had surgery again. She had seven surgeries over the course of my into my 20s.

41:44And every single time the prognosis was bad, and every single time they kind of took more pieces of her, unfortunately, because the type of cancer this is, sometimes gets into other organs. And so they had to take, you know, they had to take rovaries, forced her into metapause in her 30s, then they had to take, they had to change her the way her, they had to do a bowel resection, they had to do all kinds of awful things. And it changed her. It was a painful life for my mom, it was very hard. And I remember, though from a very young age, being forced to think about death, being forced to sort of see death as something that was just there and that it was part of things and that there was no way around it.

42:24And it just became familiar. It became sort of this person in our home, you know, this possibility that was always there. And I remember every time I would get the call that my mom's cancer had come back, there would be some part of me that thought, oh, is this the phone call? Like, is this the one where this time she's gonna die? Like, is this the one? And most of the time it wasn't. And 10, yeah, 10 years ago, once again, she had a recurrence. She was supposed to have a very complex surgery. My dad and I sat in the waiting room. My parents were married for 50 years. And we sat in the waiting room.

43:12It was supposed to be an eight hour surgery because it was very complicated. And the doctor came into the waiting room a half an hour into the surgery and said, you know, we opened her up. It's like a bomb went off. There's nothing we can do. We're gonna close her up and put her on hospice. And she passed away eight years ago after, you know, she was on hospice for over a year. And she died with us all around her. And there was something about the reality that we had been able to talk about death for so long that there was a tremendous peace there. Like, there was a tremendous sense of, well, this was gonna happen, you know, this was part of our life, you know, that this was what was going to happen.

43:59And she had a tremendous peace about her because it had been part of her life for so long. So when I was in my late teens, I think my mom had had three or four rounds of this cancer thing. I just remember thinking, I have to confront this. I have to spend time around death. You know, I, again, I'm strange, you know, I was always afraid of spiders. I didn't like spiders when I was a kid. So when I went off to college, I bought a tarantula and I put it in a glass terrarium next to my bed so that every morning I would wake up and there was just this giant spider sitting there next to me and I'm not afraid of spiders anymore.

44:36And it got rid of that very quickly. And so I thought, you know, this is something that's been around me all the time and it's something I'm not quite a piece with so I'm gonna confront it. And I went and did a hospice volunteer training. And I remember, I, you know, it was a weird thing for like a 20 year old to do. I had just gotten out of college. I was 21. And I think it was the only person under 60 who was in this volunteer training. And hospice training, hospice volunteer training, I would recommend to anyone. Because they do things like they make you write your eulogy. Your own eulogy? Your own eulogy.

45:10Yeah, yeah, they make you write your own eulogy. Like, and it can either be if you died right now, what would the eulogy be? Or if you died in your idealized future, what would it be? They make you write your own obituary. Like they make you confront the reality of thinking about death and thinking about your own death and death of the people around you. And then after you've been through the training, they assign you families. And I intended initially just to do it as sort of a part time thing in the summer after I'd graduated college. I was working as a waiter and I had a lot of time during the day because at night I was waiting tables.

45:52And I got assigned to a bunch of families one at a time and I loved it. It was the most life -changing thing I've ever done. Like, there is something about when you're a hospice volunteer and you're just brought into a home and you're just there to be of service. If they want to talk, we'll talk. If you want me to help do the dishes so that you can hang out with your loved one, that's great. I'll do that. I did yard work. And a lot of times, because caring for someone who's terminally ill in your home is hard. And things like, I want to run out to the store and get a few things myself. That's hard because you don't want to leave this person alone.

46:36So a lot of times I was just there to sort of be relief just to sit with someone. And every time I would walk out of a hospice home, I felt like a Zen monk. I felt like I could hear the rain. I just felt like I'm alive. Like I'm a, like that. That's not happening to me yet. Like I'm not there yet. Like that's not someone I love in that bed. Like I have love for this person. I want to be there for them. I'm here of service, but that's not my father. That's not my brother. That's not me. It will be someday. And one day it was. One day it was my mother. But it wasn't me. And I have to tell you there's something about going through that experience when you're in your 20s, when you're so self -centered and you're supposed to be.

47:27You're kind of supposed to be self -centered and you're trying to say like, all right, what am I going to do with this life? What am I going to do with these hands? What am I? But there is something about it. That stage in life to be told, whatever you do with these hands, whatever you do with all this, that's where it's going to end. That's where it's going to end best case scenario. Best case scenario. It's going to be in your own home with your family around you. Worst case scenario, it's going to be on street somewhere, prematurely. So I was fascinated with death. And I decided I was going to go to graduate school and I was going to study thanatology.

48:02I was going to study death and dying, but there really aren't any programs in that. So I went to New York University's Department of Culturing Communication. And I found Neil Postman, Dr. Neil Postman, who was going to be my, because NYU back then and still gives you a lot of opportunities to kind of create your own curriculum, as long as it's something serious, academically serious. And as long as you can put together like an amalgam of classes from different disciplines, they'll let you put together something very individualized. And so I put together a study about the cultural approaches we have to death and dying.

48:39And my master's degree thesis was called the semantics of mortality, or I'm sorry, metaphor and mortality, the semantics of death and dying. And was published in a journal called the et cetera, which is the Journal of General Semantics. And what I did is I studied the words we use to talk about death and what they reflect on how we think about death. So like, you know, I remember when I was a kid or a dog when I was a child had to be, had to be euthanized. I remember the doctor saying we're going to put him to sleep. And I remember thinking, no, you're not, he's going to die. He's not going to sleep.

49:17Like, I'm going to go to sleep later. Like, he's not going to go to sleep. He's going to go to death. Like, why are you calling it that? And I understood why, obviously, it's an adult. Like, it's a primitive culture, someone, it's an eternal sleep. It looks like, I mean, you're asleep. You look like your dad, you know? I've held a mirror under so I'd be like, all right. And I will, I understand where these, like, doctors, I explored doctors talking about we lost the patient. Like, wait, what? You don't know where he is. Like, no, you know what, Rumi is in. No, we lost the battle. The battle against death.

49:50You're definitely going to lose that battle. Like, that's, that's, that's record is amazing. Death, death always wins. Like, so if you're setting it up for that battle, like, that's a, that's a bad battle. We just don't want to confront it. They're doing it. That's the essence of why we use the words. Like, which was fascinating to me. Because it is the only certainty we have. And we act as if we are certain it's something bad. When in fact, absolutely no one can say what certainty what it is and what happens, except that it's inevitable. Having spoke to so many people in their final days, weeks and months, and final minutes, I'm really compelled to understand what I can learn from them about how I should be living my life based on the types of things they then say to you focus on, prioritize.

50:41Yeah, that's, that is true. Like, you can learn a tremendous amount from that. And here's what I will tell you I learned. They don't talk about death. Like, you go through this hospice training where they're, they're, they're very much preparing you to talk with people about their fear about their death or their immanence of their death. And all people really want to talk about is their grandkids, their kids, their wife, their husbands. What they did for a living and what they liked about it. Like, most of the time people talk about like the things that made them happy. Like, I spent a lot of time just listening to people tell me about, tell me happy stories about their life, tell me moments that, and it made a lot of sense to me.

51:23Like, it made a lot of sense to me. Like, if I said to you right now, like, what are five moments in your life where you just felt loved and happy? Like, you could stop and close your eyes and, and there'd be like, and what a comfort it would be like to have those. And every once in a while, like when you're in that moment, you go, I'm in one of those right now. Like, I'm going to remember this moment, you know? And, but most of the time you don't. Like, most of the time it just happens. And then you look back and you go, God, remember that kiss, you know, or remember that, you know, that meal, or remember that, and you don't see it when it's happening.

52:03And that, for me, is what I really learned from doing hospice work, was that like, all these people wanted to tell me about was, you know, when they were alive, like really alive, not laying in a bed, dying. Like, they want to talk about like, yeah, I did this, or I saw that. And, you know, I learned it in my mom's passing. I remember my last day with my mom before she became so ill that she was not mobile. And not really functional to have a discussion with. I just remember we just sat there and I told her about like, how great my sons were doing, her grandchildren, how great they were doing.

52:39And I talked about how happy I was. And like, just how great life is. And how great I feel. And I just remember like, she just was, I remember thinking like, oh, that's what I would want. Like, I would want to know that like, yeah, you did it. Like, you did great. Like, look at, look at all this stuff that's here because of you. You know, and to me like that, that's what hospice work very much taught me was it taught me that no one's really going to care that much about, you know, some of this stuff that seems so fucking important. Like, it's just not that important. Like, like the people talked about their kids, they talked about their grandkids, they talked about, you know, the love of their life.

53:25Or if they had survived that love and they, you know, they talked about how like, oh, maybe, you know, maybe I'm going to get to see them again, you know. And it's very funny because I remember talking to someone a few years ago and saying something about, oh, I wish my mom had been alive to see me do, you know, this thing. And they said, oh, I bet she's seeing it. Like, I bet she's seeing it from, you know, because the person was religious and I remember thinking, you know, I don't believe that, but I really hope I'm wrong. Like, I really hope I'm wrong. That would be amazing. Like, that'd be wonderful.

54:03It'd be beautiful, you know. So I think hospice, for me, the reason why I got into the hospice work, the reason why my research interests became death -related was that I just think life is better when you have those things in front of you when you, when you remind yourself of the inevitability of endings. We're just the imagination of ourselves. Those are words that you said. You said, we're just the imagination of ourselves. There's nothing to be afraid of. Everything's connected. We're just in one state of being now and then we'll be in a different state of being. There's probably a benevolent force out there.

54:41That was something that came to me as a function of, of, of my experiences with psychedelics very early in my life is, was that realization? Was the realization that everything is connected and that there is some benevolent something underneath all of it and that there's nothing to be afraid of? And I think some of that was a function, of course, of growing up in an environment where you couldn't deny death, where it was sort of always present. And perhaps that was on my mind at that stage in my life when I had those profound experiences. But that stayed with me. That's never gone away. That's been very, very much a part of my view of things that, that perhaps we are just one consciousness, experience, self -subjectively, and that we, we are just, you know, I heard, was it Pete Holmes, the comedian recently, talking about how, you know, people say that, like, oh, we came from nothing.

55:38I don't believe in God. I believe in nothing. Yeah, he has this whole bit of that. He's like, really? So, like, instead of believing in God, which is something that you can't touch, can't prove, can't photograph, and science can't prove or disprove, you believe in nothing, which is something you can't see, touch, feel, science can't prove or disprove. Like, so if you're nothing just spontaneously, you know, creates everything, that's pretty impressive, nothing, and it's game of things. So I think that I am very much a believer in the fact. I like to believe whatever the name of it is, whatever we want to call it.

56:10Having spent a lot of time with hospice patients and having thought a lot about death, I'd like to think that we, you know, we are drops of water and that when we die, we return to the sea, that we just merge with our creator again. And I'm not, I'm not really worried that Jim stops existing. Like, because I don't remember what I was before Jim. So I have no reason to think it was something terrible. And I don't know what I'll be after I'm Jim, but I have no reason to think it's going to be something terrible. It could just as easily be it's going to be something fantastic. And then I'm going to get there and go, what, what, why didn't I get here sooner?

56:53You know, and if there's a god that you might be grieving, be like, yeah, why are you guys so fixated? I'm not getting here. It's awesome, you know? Like that temporary thing, like there's a reason why as an organism, you're supposed to just, there's all these things that'll kill you. Like it's supposed to be that that happens sooner rather than later. But like that's a very uncomfortable thought. Like it's an uncomfortable thought that like this might be hell, where this might be the part that we should be afraid of. Like this might be the part that's really hard. Like maybe what's before it and what's after it's really the easy part.

57:29And what's happening here is what's challenging. Like when someone dies, I've always thought to myself like when someone dies, like the people who suffer the living, like the person who's passed their god now, that's why I never believed in the death penalty. Because they were like, we're going to punish this person by, they're going to die. I'm like, well my grandmother died. I didn't like to think that it was a punishment. Like put them in a box, feed them terrible food. That sounds like a punishment, you know? Like, you know, make them watch bad TV. I don't know something, but death, like death to me doesn't, I don't like to think of death as punishment.

58:08I'm enjoying this ride and I'm enjoying this body and I'm enjoying all of this. But I'm not terrified of that. I'm genuinely curious. I'm genuinely curious. And when the time comes, I want to face it with open, with you know, clean hands and an open heart. Where does acceptance play in dealing with an ending? Like how important is it to accept? And when you meet your clients as a divorce lawyer now, is part of the suffering, the resistance to accept the situation? Yes. Even if it wasn't your fault. Because you know, this is, sometimes people can flake this idea of acceptance with like, you know, justification.

58:49I'm not saying justification, I'm saying, accept this is the situation you find yourself in. Yeah. I think that's very, very astute and very real. I think there's a step before acceptance. So there's a number of steps before acceptance, but the first one is acknowledgement. Like I think you have to acknowledge that something is happening before you can start. Because acceptance has to do with adjusting your emotional state and reaction to it, changing the level of tension in your body about it. You know, like every time I've ever gone to the dentist, you know, there's this part of me. It's like, oh, here comes, oh, God, here comes, it's gonna hurt, it hurts.

59:23You know, and it's like, I'm ready, I'm bracing, I'm bracing. And I have to remind myself, like, wait, stop. Don't do that. Yeah, stop. Soften, soften, soften, over and over, soften. And it's one of the reasons I love Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu. Because when you're a white belt in Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu, everything is like resisting everything, you know, trying to stop everything. And then you start to learn, like, oh, no, no, like soften, like yield, like just, you know, protect the neck, move the hand. Okay, go ahead, try and choke me. Like you're not gonna do it. Like, and there's something about that, like, not trying to resist the thing.

1:00:00But it's trust. What you was saying about trust in how natural something is. But it's acknowledging first, okay, here is the reality of my situation. This marriage is ending. Like, there's a, there's a, a, a zen parable or saying I heard many years ago, which is, if you don't learn to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life and precisely the same amount of snow.

1:00:32Reality is reality. Like, I broke my favorite teacup. I can be happy about that. I can be angry about that. I can be sad about that. Either way, my teacup is gone. It's gone. That's it. Like, and so, I think that the acceptance piece first requires, okay, my life is finite. My life is finite. My marriage is not permanently gifted to me. Love is not permanently gifted. It is loaned. Whether it's the life of my, my life, the love of my dog, the love of my romantic partner, the love of my children, it is on loan to me. It is not permanently gifted. So there's just acknowledgement first. Then it's not pulling from that.

1:01:22Yielding from, like, it's about softening, softening, and realizing that, okay, so now what do I do with this? Like, what do I do? You know, there's something about, my therapist once said to me we were talking about, we were talking about like, resisting change in life. I was going through a transition in life and I was having a hard time with it. And he said, you know, he said, you're very curious. He said, you, you try to like, swim against the current and it's not going to work. Or you just let go and let yourself go with the current and that's not going to work. So you try to like, I'm going to be the ocean and that doesn't work.

1:02:09He's like, surf. He's like, surf. He's like, surfing is kind of the perfect balance. Like, you're not trying to fight the wave. You're trying to take it where it's going to take you. But you're going to impose yourself on the process a little. You're going to use technique, patience. You're going to use your body and you're going to try to just see, because there's an element in surfing, just like in jiu -jitsu, just like in so many things in life, of like, yielding but also maintaining an active role, right? And I think that is in the demise of a relationship, where the loss of someone, because of death, or again, any transition, any ending.

1:02:52First, it's about acknowledging the reality of what we had, what we were, you know, what our health was, whatever it might be. And then saying, okay, and now this is changed. And I can resist it or I can yield to it. I can accept that this is what's happened. It is snowing. My teacup is broken, whatever it is. And then you can see what's next. Because again, we don't know what's next. We don't know what that will lead to. Like some of the worst things, some of the moments in my life, where I want, oh my god, I'm never getting through this, gave way to some of the greatest moments in my life. Like just when the caterpillar thought it's life was ending, it became a butterfly, you know?

1:03:35But it had the world had to end. Like imagine being the bird in the egg. You know, you've been warm and happy. Imagine being in the womb. Like you're warm, you're happy, everything's being fed to you. It's like lovely, you're just buoyant and floating around. And now, if you're that bird, you got to break through a shell and get into this cold, weird world. You don't know how your wings work yet. Or if you're a baby, it's like all blood and screaming. But you got to do that to get to the next thing. And the next thing is beautiful. Like the bird only gets to fly because it broke through the egg.

1:04:10And it only broke through the egg because it was brave enough to destroy the only world it's ever known. And that's how I look at divorce in some ways. Is the divorce is like this whole, whether I'm the one ending it, or my partner is the one ending it. Like something is ending that I never thought was going to end. And it's done. And now what? I don't know, I don't know what. But I have no reason to think it's going to be horrifying. It might be incredibly beautiful, but it's the road ahead of me now. And that to me, there's something very beautiful about that level of acceptance. But the lights are off.

1:04:45The lights are off on that road. It's a road with no street lamps. And that's what the uncertainty of... Yeah, it's scary. It's scary, right? Humans are particularly bad with dealing with uncertainty. I learned this when I studied Uber Labs, which is this laboratory they had at Uber to figure out how to build the perfect taxi app. And they discovered that much of the reason why we love Uber is it because it kills the uncertainty that we used to have when we called the taxi on the phone. And then we had to stand there for seven, or maybe 17 minutes, hoping that it was coming. And it's the same analogy you might find if you go to an airport and it says flight is delayed.

1:05:18Now, flight delayed is much worse than flight delayed two hours. Because I can work with that. But flight delayed, with no certainty around how long I'm going to be stood in this airport for, is like mental torture. And the truth is, there is something... I'm not, look, I'm not polyanna about it. Like there is something terribly frustrating, upsetting, difficult about your flight being delayed, or your flight being canceled, for example. But I, in Frankfurt, Germany, I had the... I think it's the best meal of my entire life at a little tiny restaurant. I only had that meal because I was flying back from Poland and had a stop in Frankfurt that was supposed to be for one hour.

1:06:06And because of snow, they canceled all the flights essentially to the United States. And I was stuck in Frankfurt for the night. Now, I certainly had a few moments of like, are you kidding me? Like I have work, I have this, I have that. But then something in me went, okay, like you can be upset about this, all you want, man, but it ain't going to make the flights happen. And you can't walk home from Frankfurt. So, what are you going to do? You've not been in Frankfurt, or see what happens. And I walked around Frankfurt and I found this amazing little restaurant. And it was, I think, still to this day the best meal I've ever had in my life.

1:06:44And I've gone back to Frankfurt three times just to eat at that restaurant. And the hotel that I found, because I was like, all right, I need a room. I need to get a room somewhere, turned out, became one of my favorite hotels and I stayed there several times. So, you know, again, if you'd said to me in advance, Jim, would it be awful if you got stuck in Frankfurt? I would be like, oh my god, that'd be so bad. I have a quarter periods tomorrow and I have this to do. And I have that to do. My life would have been so much poorer if I hadn't gotten stuck in Frankfurt. I had like four amazing trips and a bunch of amazing meals and all these incredible experiences.

1:07:20Because one time my flight got canceled because of snow. And I tell you something, I'm really, really glad that flight got canceled. I wasn't at the time. At the time, it was very frustrating. I had to call my assistant middle night and be like, all right, you got to cancel all my stuff. You got to risk it. But the truth is, like, you just don't know. You just don't know. You won't know. You won't know until you're sitting ideally in a bed. And there was a hospice volunteer sitting next to you. And you're telling them all about the amazing meal that you had in Frankfurt that one time. Not, you know, my flight got delayed once.

1:07:55You said earlier at the start of this conversation, no one intends to end up in the consultation room with a divorce lawyer. But I wondered when you said that. I thought, you know what, I bet you've met someone in your life that did intend to end up there. I, someone that got married because they wanted the divorce. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I have met. So I've met people because I'm in the high net worth and ultra high net worth space. High net worth we define as like 10 to a few hundred million and ultra high net worth is like 500 million end up. In those spaces, yeah, there's certainly our people that get married to a wealthy person for what will be great financial benefit.

1:08:44But a lot of them are not planning on caching the chips out necessarily. They see it as a possibility. But they more often are like, oh no, I'd like to ride this ride as long as possible because the amount of money I'm going to have access to with this person is much greater than even if I divorce and take some of their things. So that is certainly, I would, the overwhelming majority of people like 99 .9999 % of my, of clients I have met in a 25 year career did not mean to get divorced. They moved towards divorce and eventually many of them go, oh yeah, I saw early on we were doomed. But love is so intoxicating.

1:09:31We fall in love so fast. And we really do have a tendency to in the early days like we tend to just be so forgiving of a person. I mean, thank God that passes to some degree. Could you imagine when you first are with your romantic partner like they brush up against you and it's like a lektric that feeling, you know? Because we couldn't, what would we as a world get stuff done if we felt like that forever about our romantic partner? If 10 years into the relationship when your partner brushed up next to it the sink you went like, oh God, you wouldn't get anything done. Like you wouldn't get anything done.

1:10:04You would, we would be a very unproductive world. So thankfully that fades and changes. I hope it never goes completely away for any couple. But it becomes manageable. You start to see this person a little more clearly. We hopefully still with tremendous optimists. What's the quickest marriage you've ever represented? Quickest marriage and divorce? Yeah. Married 72 hours. From marriage to divorce? From marriage to divorce. Yes. Marriage to an element in that situation. But I've seen divorces that were 72 hours. Like what they drunk? What was the, yeah, was the, in one it was that they were drunk in one it was, I don't know how to put it.

1:10:43It was almost like a, it was almost like a game of chicken that went too far. Like they were, they had just sort of started dating. And one of them was like, I bet you wouldn't get my name tattooed on you. And they're like, oh yeah. And then they went and got their name tattooed on each other. And then they were like, well, I bet we, I wouldn't, I like you so I'd get an engagement ring. And then they went and got an engagement ring. And they were like, oh yeah, well, I would, you know, would you marry me? And then they got married. And then I think like, they probably had a great night. Like that night was probably, that might have been some mind bending sex.

1:11:13But then two days later they were like, wait, you know, you don't actually want to have kids. So because I do. And like, oh, you're, you know, they, and they realized they were just fundamentally incompatible people. Have you seen any patterns there with compatibility dance? If a couple walks in and they've been together for, I guess when you look back at the types of people you've represented, is there a certain length of engagement and boyfriend, girlfriend phase that is typically conducive with it working or not working? No, I don't see that pattern. I'm constantly, I'm very fixated on pattern recognition.

1:11:46So I'm constantly thinking, I'm always looking at same religion, different religions or religious versus non -religious or older and younger, older man, younger woman, younger man, older woman. Like what, what permeate, same culture, different culture, same race is different races. Like first generation to the US or, you know, both first generation or neither. I don't, I don't see those patterns. I really, if I did, I'd be the first to say it. You know I don't hesitate to say stuff. But I've not seen those patterns. I have found, if I was to say there was any pattern, it really is, I think substance use is probably the main thing.

1:12:35Like if one or both people are big drinkers or drug users, that's usually a good indication that the marriage is going to lead to divorce. Because substance use issues tend to get worse in either both people, which causes all kinds of second -order effects, or more commonly, one person when they have kids or when they reach a slightly different stage in life, scales back on alcohol or drug use, and the other person has an unhealthy relationship with the substances and it gets further down and that's the direction that it goes in. I had, you said something, Ali, which really peaked my interest as well, which kind of relates to this, is you said love is loaned.

1:13:22And I immediately thought of a friend who brought me to a restaurant one day to basically tell me that him and his wife were being divorced. And the way they described it was quite heartbreaking because it seemed like they had a good relationship. It's kind of like they got busy with their jobs and the kid and they forgot to water the plant. It's like the other way I can describe it because they were like good people. They didn't really appear to argue at all. They had this kid, they're both CEOs, she's a CEO, he's a CEO, and it's like they like raised the kid and forgot to water the relationship.

1:13:55Yeah, I've always phrased that as they lost the plot. Because when you get married, you're trying to write a story together and sometimes I think you lose the plot. Like you know when you're reading and all of a sudden you stop and you go, I don't really remember where I am in this. And you gotta go back a few pages to like oh okay, I remember this part, let me start there. I think sometimes we lose the plot and I think that happens in every relationship, every long term relationship, I think sometimes we lose the plot. Like other things are going on at work or you have kids and kids require a tremendous amount of your bandwidth.

1:14:31So I get it. But I think if you lose the plot, that's where it's like hard to, it's a, it's again acknowledgement of it, like awareness, truth being honest and saying, hey, I feel like we lost the plot. Like I feel like there's, you know, we lost the plot, how do we get it back? Like how, but the problem is when you say to your partner, hey, I feel like we kind of lost the plot. Rather than hearing that as, hey, this is really important to me. You're really important to me. Yeah, it works important, kids important, but you and me, you and me, that's really important. Like it's equally if not more important.

1:15:14So I feel a certain way. I feel like we've lost the plot. And I'm not saying that to your fault, I'm not saying it's my fault, I'm saying it's the kids fault. I don't know whose fault it is. I don't really care. But I don't wanna lose the plot because I care about you. And this plot, this story is important to me. People hear it that way. People hear it as we lost the plot. Well, what do you want me to do about it? Like, you know, oh, okay, so I'll just ignore the kid. What, what, what, what, what, what do you want? I'm sorry, I'm doing the best I can. And that's like that's not the way to hear that.

1:15:43I understand. I think it's very human to hear it that way. But I genuinely believe that, you know, yeah, it's like you forgot to water the plant. Like, nobody meant to kill the plant, but you killed the plant because you weren't thinking about the plant. And by the way, let's right there. You'll walk past it every single day. You just not once thought, oh yeah, I gotta remember to water the plant. And so I think it's very easy in marriage, in long -term relationships. It's very easy to just forget that this is, you're borrowing this, you know, this is not yours. Like, this person is not yours.

1:16:18This person is loaned to you. And it's, by the way, it's the same with death. Like, this person is loaned to you. They could be taken away by divorce or by death. They could be taken away. Every marriage will end in one of those two things, death or divorce, for sure. You've used this word slippage before. Yeah. When does it happen? And what does slippage mean? I mean, slippage is everyone understands slippage, I think. Like, it's not like you eat cake and then the next day your suit doesn't fit. Like, you just make lots of little choices. And those little choices add up and all of a sudden your suit doesn't fit.

1:16:52And you go, wait, when did that happen? You know, and I think it's just in the relationships. Like, we, you know, Ernest Hemingway said in the Sun also, rises, I went bankrupt the same way anybody does, very slowly and then all at once. And I think that's how, that's slippage. Like, it's just little raindrops that eventually become the flood. And I think that's what happens in relationships is you, you start to with good intentions, you're focused on other things. Maybe you start to go, hey, I got this. Like, when you were single, finding the one was big. That was big. That was a big priority in your life.

1:17:33And then you found them. And then there's like a whole bunch of just high -fiving and celebration. And it's like, oh, it's so great. I found the one. You found it the one too and you found it. It's me, is this great? And then you go, all right, we got that. Now what other stuff, you know, what other stuff can we do? Because now like, I'm super charged. Like, you, you got me, we're gonna do this thing. And you go, and what do you do? You make new life for you. Make careers, you go amazing places. Like, it's not enough. It's not enough to just go, we got each other and it's so fun. And let's just tuck in here and just stay together, you know?

1:18:04And I always laugh with friends, by the way, because I can always tell when someone's like in love because they put on a couple of pounds, you know? Because they really do, because they're just, they just go like, do I want to like get up and go to the gym? Or do you go, I like sit on the couch and eat popcorn and watch something. Yeah, let's do that, you know? And it's just sort of like, you know, you're just so, it's love -weight, it's like happy love -weight. And I love when I see it on somebody, like it looks good on everybody, you know? Much better than like, if you believe me, like if you look at photos of me from when I had an eight pack, it was the most miserable time in my life, because I'm at the gym just trying to beat the pain out of me, you know?

1:18:38So I think it's very, very normal that people in that heaviness of that, okay, so when that fades and now we're like in a sustainable pattern of a relationship and you're focusing on other things, little tiny things start to, you know? And you don't want to make a thing of it. You don't want to say, like, oh, by the way, calling a foul here throwing a flag on that play, no, you just sort of go like, oh no, it's just little thing, it's not a big thing, the way about it. And I think that's the, that is how the process begins and it leads right to my office someday. Jordan Peterson said something to me.

1:19:14Jack, have you got my phone? Yeah. I just wanted to play you this 30 seconds of something he said. Everybody keeps telling me I have to have a conversation which Jordan Peterson is like. It would be fascinating. I imagine two people are telling him the same thing, which is, my friend is going through some difficulties in his relationship and I sent him this little clip, which I honestly, I keep this clip saved in my phone, but I've listened it to so many of my male friends. But this is what Jordan says and it relates to slippage. Here's something to understand about your marriage, okay? You are going to have to listen to your wife 90 minutes a week, okay?

1:19:47And you might as well just get that through your thick skull. Now why, if you listen to her enough, you can make peace and you can play. So there's a huge benefit. If you don't listen to her, that will accumulate and you'll listen to her in divorce court. Someone sent me that. I don't think it was you, someone sent me that. So yeah, I mean, I think that's a piece of what I'm talking about for sure. It feels a little like the advice last time I was on, I was saying I found a fence of which is happy wife, happy life. Like I think there's this sense of like, well, what a man has to do is just sort of tolerate the, like listen, I don't think most men like don't want to listen to their wife for 90, because that seems to me and I know he's being hyperbolic and I love Jordan's work and I find him fascinating and I really enjoy him.

1:20:40But when someone says to me like, well, you have to listen to your wife for 90 minutes a week, like that feels like you're gonna sit there and be like, how many more minutes so I have to do this for? There was a time where you couldn't wait to hear her. Like she was interesting and she was interested. But do you think the women that are listening to this right now that have husbands and boyfriends think they, their husband and boyfriend likes it when they said, hey, we need to talk about something. But see, when in your life has someone saying that to you been a precursor to something good? Hey, we need to talk about something.

1:21:16That never, that's like, you know, is this siren a good siren? When is this siren ever good? Like there's certain phrases we really need to have a conversation. That is not a good entry point. And that's not, because it means there's something wrong. But before you get to that, like how many women would say that in the interaction with their spouse, like they don't want like a, let's have a 90 minutes in the penalty box where you have to listen to me talk to you. Like that seems terrible. You know, the thought of having to do that as like a practice sounds sort of like, all right, well, if I endure that for 90 minutes, the bonus is I get sex or something.

1:21:58Like and that seems crazy to me. As a divorce lawyer, if you think about the divorce as you've seen in court and you've sort of consulted on et cetera, do you believe that if that couple had spent 90 minutes a week sat down openly being honest with each other, they would have ended up in your consultation room? I think if they'd made a practice like that as something deliberate, I mean, maybe it would make a difference. I think what's more important than the structure of a ritual and the time, I have a better practice than that. I have, so I have a chapter in the book called Hit Send Now where I talk about sharing with your partner kind of promptly when something has rattled you the wrong way.

1:22:45Without saying we need to talk. Like just giving, and I suggest people do it via email so that it's like you can say to your partner like, hey, listen, like I want you to reflect on this. Like you don't have to answer right away. You don't have to be defensive. And also you can be careful about how you parse it because not everybody's very sure footed in their speech, right? So sometimes people, if you just try to do it face to face, sometimes it's not going to come out clearly. So if you're writing, you can edit it and be careful with it. But I genuinely think sometimes people just need to check in in a relationship.

1:23:18And by the way, you have to, if you want that, you also have to be willing to accept that in your direction, right? So I have a friend, I have a friend who read my book and he's a friend who actually then read my book. And he said that he and his wife go for a walk once a week. And they make a deliberate practice during that walk of sharing with each other one or two or three things that the person didn't do perfectly in their relationship that week. And they hear it with love. Like they deliberately from the beginning, we're hearing this with love, we're hearing this as a practice, it's a deliberate practice because our goal is to have a great relationship and keep it great.

1:24:03So we're going to hear it that way. We're not going to hear it as a criticism. We're going to hear it as, I love this relationship enough to be honest with you. I want you to have, I'd rather you have an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie. I'd rather not have resentment build up. And then they always finish that walk with three things that the person did that made them feel loved or feel good or what, and that's so you're ending on that positive note. And they said they've never had a week where they didn't come up with something. That happy wife, happy life phrase. That must be reason why it became cliche.

1:24:36Why it became popular? Well, it became popular because I think so many people were willing to accept the unbelievably ridiculous model of relationships that's led us to a 56 % divorce rate and probably another 20 or 30 % staying together unbelievably miserable, but not wanting to give up half their stuff. So yeah, like every misery loves company. Like everybody is sitting around going like, well, listen, women are like that. You got to spend 90 minutes with them. Happy wife, happy life. Like, wait, and I just don't accept that. I don't accept that it has to be awful. Why is it not happy husband, happy wife though?

1:25:13Well, in reality it is. I think in reality it's happy husband and happy wife equals happy marriage. But why did it come into culture that way around? Because I think there's a, well, I mean, my personal opinion on this is I think men are probably easier to please in some ways. Like, you know, I think men are either hungry or horny. So like either feed us or have sex with us. And that's kind of where most of the time pretty happy. Like I don't, we're not, you know, like which curtains should we pick out for the house? Like we're not that caught up in that. I don't know a lot of guys caught up in that.

1:25:47Like when it came to weddings, like most of the guys I know weren't when they were young men going like, what is my wedding going to be like? I can't, here's what I'm going to do. Like it was very like, I was there DJ or a band and what will the bar have. And that's kind of what they were into. And everything else was like, cool babe, whatever you like. Like I'm excited to see you excited. That's what matters to me. It's a medicine pull. I think men are quite simple. Yeah, and I think women, and by the way, this is not a criticism of men. It's not a criticism of women. And again, it's a generalization.

1:26:14I understand that. But like women I think thank God. Women are much more nuanced in my experience. Like they notice more sometimes or different things. Like they're like, I think men and women bring different things to them. And again, not every man, not every woman. But like I genuinely believe that we bring different gifts to relationships. And when we embrace that. And by the way, that polarity when we're dating is the greatest thing in the world. But of course, it gets challenging because this person's not just your sexual partner or a metapartler, they're your roommate, they're your co -parent, they're your travel partner, share a bathroom with them.

1:26:55Like you got, this is a whole nother thing when you get married. The French have a saying that marriage turns a lover into a relative. And the truth is, like not any of, like you're a lover. You have this sort of, it's why fairs are so intoxicating and wonderful, because you just get the best parts. You don't have to pick up this person's socks. You don't have to listen to the fight they got in with their cousin. You don't have to be like, I got to spend nine minutes with them. You can actually, you're just getting the good stuff, the passion, the sex, which again, you can have, we can do relationships, however we decide we want to do them.

1:27:35That's what's cool about it is the two people in it is what matters. And I think even before social media, we were very much about, well, how is everybody else doing it? Because I guess that's the right way to do it. And so, yeah, happy wife, happy life was like, listen, just here, you know, like just make her happy, because then she'll shut up and you can just watch football. Like in it, I mean, look, that never appealed to me that was never interesting to me. I think a lot of people absolutely buy into that model of relationships. What's more interesting to me than people who've just given up, right?

1:28:13People who've just said like, yeah, I know the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are the same thing, but I'm just gonna do the easy thing, because it's like, yeah. What's more interesting to me is that I think sometimes people screw up their relationships with completely good intentions. And the example I give in my book about this is sex. I think most people who've been in a long -term relationship will say, yeah, you know, whether the sex has become kind of predictable, like it's become kind of, it's not as novel, you know? And I think that happens for the absolute best of intentions and it would be really lovely if we just acknowledged that, because here's why it happens, right?

1:28:56You get with a person, you're first dating, the first time you, you know, you get sexual with the person, you throw every trick you've got at that person, right? You do all the things that you think they're gonna like to see what are they gonna like, right? Do they like the same stuff that other people like or do they like something different, or what do they do, they like the same things you like, and you throw everything at it. And you start, okay, they don't like that, okay, this they really like, oh, they make really nice noises when I do that, okay, and you start to, and then what do you do?

1:29:24You start to get more efficient. Like, oh, I know she doesn't like that, so I'm not gonna do that, but I know she likes this, so I'm gonna do that a whole lot, right? And she does, I hope, the same thing. She does that, he loves it when I do this, and the sound that comes out of him when I do that, what do you do? You play the greatest hits. You play the greatest hits, cause why not? And by the way, there's only so many hours in the day, we got some stuff we gotta get to, so let's really throw the greatest hits that each other and we're gonna have a great time. Well, what did you just do? You were trying to make each other really happy and be a really good lover to each other, but what did you just do?

1:29:53You just created a routine. You just created a routine, and here's the other thing about humans, which we all know, if we've ever had a sexual partner for more than six months, then you've noticed the patterns. And by the way, you're thrilled with them because you're doing the greatest hits. Like I went to see Spring Seen to hear Born to Run, that's what I'm there to see. Like I love it, do the greatest hits. But then if they do something different, there is some part of you that goes, what was that? Where did that come from? That's what we don't usually do that, or we don't do it in that order.

1:30:21And by the way, sometimes that's exciting, right? Sometimes it's like, yeah, let's have sex in the laundry room. What? We got a bed right over there, yeah, we always do it over there, we'll do it in the laundry room. Like, I don't know, that's fun, right? It's fun to do something different. Well, we get to a place where now we're gonna have to have a conversation about it. Because it's like, well, why did you do that? That's a strange or that, or sometimes people go, why did they do that different thing? Are they like, is it they're watching porn? Are they cheating on me? Where did they get that idea from?

1:30:48Is that something that they wanted? They want to start doing that? Is that part of the greatest hits? And I didn't realize it? Do they not like what I've been doing? And we start to sabotage, again, with good intentions from day one. All you wanted was to make your partner happy and they wanted to make you happy and look what you did. You made a routine. So the only way out of that spiral is to call it, to talk about it, call it out. To say, hey, it feels like things are kind of, and like, was there anything I could do different, or you might want different? And I think there's lots of ways to have that conversation.

1:31:22How do we not have that conversation? Like, what's the worst way to have that conversation? The worst way to have that conversation is to say, how come you don't do this anymore? You used to do it all the time, or, you know, I've never, why won't you ever let me this? Or why don't you ever try that? That's the worst way to do it. Blame. Blame, and also it's on you. Yeah, why did you do it? Or also that it's like, because immediately the person's reaction to that is going to be, well, here's why, you know, because of this. Well, because you this, you know, well, how come you never do this? Like, and it turns into that.

1:31:52And I think there's a million other ways to do it, all of which are better. The best one, in my opinion, but I'm a lawyer and I'm dishonest a lot of the time, is, you know, manipulation. I think that there's very positive, I manipulate people's emotional state for a living, right? Like, that's my job, is to make the other side scared, my client feels safe, the judge feels good about my client, bad about the other side. So like, I try to use my powers for good. And I think here's a great way to use that power for good. I think if there's something going on in bed that you want to try or do, and you don't want to have the clinical conversation, you don't want to call an audible in the middle of sex and just start doing something different and have your partner go, what the heck was that?

1:32:33I think a great one is, oh my God, the dream I had about you last night. Ooh, you just, you don't even want to know. Wait, what? What was the dream? What was the dream that you had? No, no, I don't even, I don't know, it's because I had dairy before, better, something. I don't know. I had the dirtiest dream about you. You tell me what human being, male, female, gay, straight, anybody isn't going to go, no, for real, what? What was I doing? What were you doing? What was it? And you tell them. You tell them the thing that you'd be interested in doing. And they go, it was you and your brother and...

1:33:04Okay. If that's something you're looking for, I don't know how to get, I'm very persuasive, I couldn't give you an entry point for that one. But if it's something that you wanted to do, you say, yeah, this dream and this is what happened and your partner may react as, oh really? Like you would like that? And then you can go, yeah, no, I mean, I don't know. I just, it was in my brain, so I don't know. Like it seemed weird to me too. And then you can back out of it without it being a thing. Or you can go, I don't know, maybe. Because if their reaction is, oh yeah, is that something you'd want to do?

1:33:35I'd be like, I don't know, maybe it is subconsciously. You try it sometime. How many times do people end up in divorce court because the lights went out in the bedroom? I mean, how many would admit it? Or how many is it really the case? Well, cause here's what I'll tell you. I would say a good, at least 80 % of the people that ended up in my office and fidelity was a piece of it. But that tells me that sex is a big piece. You know, because most people who are in genuinely satisfying sexual relationships with their partner aren't looking to have other sexual relationships. Some people are just addicted to sex, though.

1:34:09And I say this because I've got some friends who, people always think I'm like projecting and I'm like secretly talking about myself, but I'm actually not. I've met a wide spectrum of individuals and their relationship with sex varies wildly. Some people I just think you're gonna cheat forever regardless of who they're with because they have some like trauma related to the chase. I'm sure. I'm sure. And then some people are kind of, you know, don't have sex at all. So on the, on the end where you've got that's almost sex addiction behavior, I'm just wondering if, if, I guess the question there, the broader question was about how much is the lights going out in the bedroom?

1:34:44Does it relate to people ending up in divorce court? Well, I remember listening to your conversation with Gad and him, you asking him flat out. Like, so how much of the motivation is sex? Like, and I think his answer was that, like a tremendous amount of evolutionary biology is tied to sex. Like a tremendous amount of our motivation is born of sex. It's about sex, food and not becoming food. That's like our three primary motivators. So I think sex is incredibly important. I also think sex is constantly thrown into our line of sight. So I think you can't discount that. I mean, I think sex is on social media, on like the amount of sex that is put in our face constantly now.

1:35:25Is shocking, it's shocking. I mean, compare it, do your grandfather has not seen as many breasts in one lifetime as you'd see in one visit to Instagram. Like, I mean, there is just so much cleavage going on. It's she just can't even, so I think fundamentally, like of course it's being thrown in our line of sight, advertising everywhere, it's surrounded. We live in a sex saturated environment. How long have you been at divorce lawyer? 25 years. So since that time, things like only fans have emerged from pornography, but become commonplace. Yeah. I imagine at the start of your career, the time pornography probably wasn't used much in divorce.

1:35:59No, hardly ever. Is it used now? It's everywhere now. It's everywhere. There's a lot of unique things that have, I've watched evolve in my career. The proliferation of revenge porn, the number of people that have concerns about audio, video, photographs of them, you know, because I mean, the proliferation of it is also a function of the fact that everyone has a video camera and everyone has a camera, a sophisticated camera, in their hand. You know, so there's a tremendous amount of concern about, you know, this person has images of me, photos of me, tremendous amounts of, you know, cheating has gotten much, much easier than it used to be.

1:36:40I mean, the idea of like connecting with a potential sexual partner and also having conversations with people we have absolutely no business having conversations with and having neutral entry points to get into. So like, you know, it used to be like, maybe you see the attractive soccer mom at your kid's soccer practice and she's married and you're married. But like if you settled up next tour and started talking, you're having a conversation with a group full of people and if you called her on the phone at the house, that would be weird, right? But if you like message her or you add her on Facebook, it's not weird, because our kids are on the same soccer thing and maybe there's a Facebook group for the soccer parents.

1:37:12And then she posts a picture of herself when she was on vacation and you say, oh, where did you guys stay? We were thinking about going to Jamaica and then she says, oh, this thing goes on, you know, and suddenly we're having a conversation and it's private, nobody else is there. We're alone in a room. So I think it's pretty, you know, it's become very conducive to cheating and it's also become a way for there to be a tremendous amount of evidence of cheating that accidentally lands in the hands of your partner. So like, I can't tell you how many times like I know he's passed now Steve Jobs, but like divorce lawyer's own, a tremendous debt of gratitude for the amount of business he sent our way.

1:37:49Because Apple's integration of its devices makes it incredibly common that the text message from your lover comes up on your kid's iPad because you didn't realize you logged into the same Apple ID and it comes up on the iMessage. And now your spouse is looking at the text about how great the sex was yesterday. And like, I'm not being funny. That's like a once a week thing that happens in divorce lawyer's offices. And I know it wasn't intentional. I know he wasn't like, I'm gonna mess up some marriages. But the truth is, is it creates an easier opportunity for people to cheat because people can clandestinely communicate in ways that they used to not and they have these neutral entry points that lead to something negative.

1:38:30And it's become something where you get caught because there's a tremendous evidentiary trail now. So I think these are all factors that have made it harder but again, horn, only fans, all those kinds of things. These are just more sort of outlets for the same. You know, it's like, there's a thousand restaurants and there's only one menu. You know, and that's all this is. It's all the same stuff just in different permutations. Like a divorce lawyer 50 years ago was dealing with some of the exact same things. It's different technologies. It's different manifestations of the issue. But it's all just heartbreak.

1:39:13It's all just males and females that tried to make it work and somehow it came apart. Do you think marriages are good for love? And like what's your view of marriages? I've been thinking, I've never lived very little to do with each other. I'm fine with getting married. My issue is the wedding. I'm not a big fan of weddings. I think, I don't know where this tradition of weddings came from, but getting like hundreds of people in a room and doing this whole, the big gaps, the matter of time you have to weigh the, waiting three hours to be fed, the length of it, the fact that it's so stressful. And it causes, some of my friends I've watched like 12 to 24 months of stress and agony and arguments, but it's like one day.

1:39:54I'm not just going, I don't know. But have you ever been to a wedding that was non -traditional? Yeah, like my friend. And then you go, oh, that's cool. It was like a party. Yeah, I did. It's like them. I mentioned the bullshit out. Because I have to say something. Like I, see I'm the opposite, which is I don't really believe in the legal institution of marriage. I think it has almost nothing to do with love. I think it's largely performative. I think if people were madly in love, they're madly in love and they could either marry or not get married and it's not going to change anything except the legal status of things.

1:40:22But, so I fucking have things. I love, but I love weddings. Oh, I love weddings. I love them. I get misty -eyed at every wedding. My son just got engaged. I can't wait. It's going to be so. Because I think that, I think there's something so fun about like a big group of people all getting together and having a party over something as noble as two people finding each other in a world of 8 billion people. And like I think there's something about like a group of people all getting up and going, like we're going to be cheering for you and we're going to be here for you. And like I love good food. And I love like I love being with people.

1:40:54Like I think if the first time everybody you love is in one room as your funeral, you're an idiot. Like I think there's something really beautiful. Like I have to tell you, I got divorced many years ago. But I have amazing photos of my mom from my wedding. Because it's like how many times in your life do you put on like a fancy dress and have your hair done and all that stuff? And my mom lost her hair so many times because of chemo and all those other things. And when she passed, like she was so sick for so many years and I was so afraid when she died that that's how I would remember her is in that bed sick.

1:41:28And I have to tell you, I look at those pictures of my mom from that wedding, smiling so big. And I'm so glad I have those photos. I'm so glad. And I wouldn't have had them if we hadn't had this stupid party. And I remember deliberately saying to the DJ, because I was what, 22? Yeah, I was 22. I remember saying to the DJ, do not play a stupid chicken dance thing. Do not play that. Like we're not doing that stupid thing. We're not happening. And I don't know when it happened, but my mom must have gone to him and been like play the chicken dance. And he was like, I'm not supposed to play the chicken dance.

1:42:01And she was like, yeah, but you're playing the chicken dance. She, they played the chicken dance. And I would tell you something, I will have that memory of my mother with that stupid chicken dance in my head until I die. And I'm really glad I have it. Like I'm really glad it's there. So I tell you, like I think weddings are a blast. And I think if you're in love with somebody and you love them so much that you're like, all right, we're gonna do our thing, go have a wedding. Don't get married. Don't get married, have a wedding. Because getting married and having a wedding, you don't have anything to do with it.

1:42:31When have you ever gone to a wedding? And at the end of the wedding said, I just need to see the paperwork. Could you just show me the marriage license now? I just need to make sure before I give you the gift. And before I leave, I just want to make sure everything was notarized properly. No, no one. You didn't see, I've never saw my parents' marriage license. They could have made the whole thing up. I don't know, but have the party. Have the party. Why not have the party? And don't have somebody else's party. You just described somebody else's party where you wait for three hours and screw that.

1:42:58Why would you even have to sit down dinner portion? The pastor or dervises the best part. So just do that. You can do it however you want. Like if there's a core message to my book and to my approach to relationships is, you get to do it however you want. You know what almost all the people in my office have in common? They all tried to do it a particular way that somebody told them that's how they're supposed to do it. And it didn't work. And it's got a terrible track record. Like the way that most people do it fails 56 % of the time. So do it different. You got plenty of room to do it different.

1:43:35And the only two people that are qualified to decide how to do it really are they two of you? Out of eight billion choices. You picked each other, throw whatever party you want to. If your friends love you, they're gonna love that party. And even if they don't love it, they're gonna go like, you know what? That was them. That was very them, you know? That's great. And this is really what me and my partner kind of decided on we talked about having like a wedding or whatever. And I was like, you know what I'd love to do? And this is really inspired by seeing so many of my friends planning their weddings and looking very miserable in the process and having to basically cut back on things they loved in their life because they're saving for the wedding in two years time.

1:44:14So they can't go out on Friday evening. They're gonna have to cut back date night because they've got this wedding in two years time. Great start to marriage. And I just always think to myself, why don't you take say, if it's a hundred K, let's say that you're spending on the wedding or if it's 10 K, why don't you just divide it in 10 and have 10 many parties and invite lots of, you know, and then you get all these memories. But you know the answer to that question because who's that wedding for? It's not for them. It's not for them. It's for the audience. And the more, this is why we're driving 100 miles an hour towards a brick wall in our culture because we are now doing it for the audience.

1:44:51We're not doing it for us anymore. And we have to live in our skin. We have to live in our own lives. We have to live in our own relationships. So what we're doing for the audience, because it looks good for the audience. Like this is why we've become a culture with white teeth and rotting gums because we don't actually care what it is. We care what it looks like. That's why so many people that three weeks ago were hashtag blessed, hashtag best wife ever are in my office having a consultation and are having an affair and are having it because underneath that, that air of, and by the way, how many celebrities, how many celebrities are denying?

1:45:30I have celebrity clients who, they're press releases, they're interviews, they're talking about how happy they are. They're in my office. We're actively negotiating the dissolution of their relationship. They haven't lived together because they've lived in their separate homes on separate coasts for the last year and a half. But they show up for each other at the red carpet and they do their thing and then they part ways and don't talk to each other. But why? Why are we selling it? Because we're selling a dream to people. We're selling a dream and see what's interesting to me is I actually think reality is prettier than the dream.

1:46:03And so if, why would you start your relationship with an homage to fakeness or to someone else's vision of things? Why not start it with an authentic expression of who you are to each other and how much you mean to each other and then the paperwork, whatever the paperwork is, the paperwork. Do you have celebrity clients who are literally in fake relationships? Yeah, 100%. 100%. I have celebrity clients that are in fake relationships. I have celebrity clients that are in financial arrangement fake relationships. I had this big conversation with my friends the other day because there's a couple of big celebrity names who've broken up that we're aware of.

1:46:48And I went back through their Instagram just to see the way that they portrayed their relationship. Because whenever you see a celebrity relationship, it's like perfect, perfect, perfect over. Yeah. Well, they do what I call the rosy -odonal, right? Because rosy -odonal, for years, there were rumors that she was a lesbian. And she did this whole thing about how she had a crush on Tom Cruise and she's not a lesbian and she has a crush on Tom Cruise and she's not a lesbian and did that. And then finally, when she was like, of course I'm a lesbian, everyone knows I'm a lesbian. Everyone's known that for years.

1:47:19And I felt like it's like you just gaslit the whole culture. And that's all celebrities do is they just gaslight us about their relationships. They just do the like, oh, we're so in love. So all these vicious rumors started by people that hate us and me, well, yeah, the whole thing's eroded. But see, that's not a celebrity alone phenomenon. What's great about celebrities is they have enough distance between them that they can hide that. Because most of them own a home in Miami, own a home in LA, own a home in New York, and then they have some place in Europe usually or Italy. Like they have enough room to lose each other and to be okay with it and just be like, yeah, we're living our lives.

1:47:56They just have to be careful about not being seen out with other people. I always wonder if the public portrayal of a perfect relationship correlates to a bad one, if you know what I mean. Like I think the people that would sit on Valentine's Day, sprinkle the rose petals, then they'd get their puppy and their husband and then they'd say, right, can you take that photo? They're probably taking 20 or 30 photos. For me and my head, I go, people that like publicly portray a perfect relationship. Is that like a cloak of the insecurity or is it? I think so. I mean, I think that, and again, this is a function largely of social media, but I think there is, but we all sort of, it works.

1:48:37And that's why I think people keep doing it, right? It's like there's a bad reward system at play here, but like I, so I live in Manhattan and I live right near, and my office is right near the vessel. And the vessel is this amazing beautiful sculpture in Manhattan in the West Chelsea. And my office actually overlooks the vessel. It's beautiful in the Hudson Yards area. And so people, tourists from all over, come to take a picture by the vessel. And so every time I'm walking two and from the office, I pass the vessel. And there are always at least 100 people taking pictures by the vessel. And I find it absolutely hilarious, because one of the things you see all the time, it's usually women, but sometimes you're guilty of it, is the photo of the person pretending that they're not having their photo taken.

1:49:29So it's like they're just sort of standing there like this, or like they look over this way. And their friend is taking the picture from over here. And I think to myself, when you post that, yeah. What are, who took that picture? Or are we to believe that the paparazzi were following you? Like you're just a regular person. Like there's, like so clearly you set this up, but here's the thing, like the thing about us as humans is I don't know that we look at that photo and go, what is, what is that? Like, I mean, look at like high, we just like look at high fashion photos in like any magazine, Vogue, Elle, things like that.

1:50:04Look at the position of people's bodies. Like, oh, seriously, pause this, whatever you're doing, and look, do that. I'm poor with it. But it's hard, no one sits, again, visually, looks good. I get it, maybe it makes the clothes look a certain way. No one sits like that. So the thing of like the rose petals and the, like, who does that? Really? And if they're doing it, are they doing it? Cause they think that's what you're supposed to do, why? Cause they saw it, right? All those rose petals, all those performative where madly in love, look at how in love we are. Look guys, quick, look at how in love we are.

1:50:39It's shower sex. It looks good, but all you're really doing is just putting on a show. And that show leads you right to my office. And the reason we like the show is because we want to believe in the fairy tale, because if we see it in my favorite celebrity couple, then it almost keeps the hope alive for me. It's the antidote for the statistics around divorce. It's the antidote for the heartbreak I saw in my home. It's the antidote for the misery I see around me is, look, fairy tales exist just like Disney. Right. And that's why we want it. I get that. And I think that's why people do understand why we do that.

1:51:16But I think it's also like pornography. It's a, I don't want to say an idealized version. It's a stylized version of something people actually are doing. But if you start to think your sex life is inferior because it doesn't look like pornography, you're modeling it against something that's very unnatural and not real. And that is not indicative of what actual sex looks like or feels like or how it works logistically or how bodies work logistically. So we're getting educated the wrong ways. And it's again, not to tie, you know, go from like marriage to sex to death. But it's the same problem I had in my master's thesis.

1:52:03It really was like we convince what we always, we shield people from death. We hide it from people. Like if someone, if I said my grandmother's dying, I want to take my kids to see, you'd be like, what kind of sick bastard are you? Like if you said, oh, I'm going to walk around the graveyard or I'm going to, you don't talk about death. You don't talk about these. You said, why? Why? If these are things that are important, if these are milestone things in our lives, not talking about it is not going to prevent it from happening. So why not talk about honestly, like what's really going on? Like I have to tell you, you know, again, the antidote to some of this stuff is to say like who took that picture?

1:52:45That's weird. Like you didn't know they were taking it. Oh, because you were looking in the other direction. Like why not just start saying like, yeah, I'm not going to be full of shit. I remember many years ago, I remember waking up in New York City and my ex -girlfriend for many years ago was like pissed off at me because it was Valentine's Day. And I hadn't text her and like told said happy birthday to her. But I was in New York, so I was on a different time soon. So it was 6am where I was. I hadn't even woken up yet. And she'd sent me a screenshot of another couple who were like with the, you know, the Rose petals and the roses and stuff.

1:53:18And she was infuriating herself based on an Instagram post you'd seen of another couple. And I was being attacked because I wasn't meeting that standard. Yeah, and this is why I think we are living in a moment where there is more comparison than ever. You must see that in your office, right? I see it in my office constantly. I see it in life constantly. But it's not just, by the way, it's not just in the relationship thing, though. Because of course, people post their greatest hits, people are constantly flaunting their relationship and showing everyone their relationship. But it's not even just your relationship with your significant other.

1:53:52It's your relationship with yourself. If I see one more person posting their workout routine, their sauna and cold plunge, the diet routine of the, you know, their hashtag beast mode. If I see one more person posting how they're parenting routine and the wonderful intricate snacks that they make for their children, like all day long, there is an idealized, stylized version of every single aspect of our life that is so much better than the gag reel that we're living. And we're watching it. And we're comparing ourselves to it and our partner to it. And we're going, how come my partner doesn't look like that?

1:54:27They don't look like that. Like all these videos of the person like getting up in the morning, who you set up the camera? The someone set up the camera. Like, and I really feel sometimes like, I'm the crazy person. Going guys, do you not see this? Like, you not see this? Do you not see that this is what's making you unhappy? You're unhappy with yourself. You're unhappy with your partner. You're unhappy with your relationship with your partner because you're comparing it to fiction. And because it's on your phone, instead of on the movie screen, you think it's real. Sometimes comparison can wake us up to things that we needed to know though.

1:55:04And I think you're the story of you going to the theme park that day, which I was reading about, and seeing that couple who were pretty idyllic. Yeah. Highlights to you that maybe this wasn't the worst. They just had their 20th wedding anniversary. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So you were a theme park with them. So I was with my ex -wife and our young kids. And these were college friends of ours, because we were college sweethearts my ex -wife and I. And we were at a theme park with them, with our all -young kids. And my ex -wife's a lovely person. I think she'd say nice things about me too. I'm a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

1:55:43I think she'd tell you I'm a spectacular ex -husband and have, have, leave a lot to be desired as a husband. Probably fair comment. And I would say that there's a lot of people I love that I wouldn't want to be married to, and she's one of them. She's very happily remarried for a long time to a great guy. And we were at this theme park with them, and they'd been married for roughly the same number of years that we were at the time. And I remember the kids wanted to go on some ride. And it was like the permutations of seating. It was like three and three, and they had two kids. So we were like, okay, I'll sit with these two kids.

1:56:14You sit with these two kids. And they said, great, we're going to just hold hands and go for a walk. And they held hands and they started walking away. And I remember looking at them and thinking, what, they really like each other. Like, I think they really like each other. And I remember thinking, I don't feel that way about her. Like I love her, but I don't feel that way about her. And it just, it wasn't like it, and then I went home and we got divorced. We went together some more time. But I remember when we decided to divorce, we had some very honest conversations with each other about marriage and about when we felt, we were very good at post gaming it, because we stayed friends.

1:56:58And I said to her, I remember this moment when we were at the theme park. And she goes, oh my God, I remember that exact same moment. And I said, yeah, and I thought they went off and we're holding hands. And I remember thinking, I don't love her like that. And she was like, Jim, I'm not making this up. I thought the exact same thing. She's like, I remember seeing it and thinking, yeah, I don't, if they took our kids on this ride, we wouldn't be holding hands walking through the park. And why? You just didn't have that between us. What is that? I don't know, that's magic. I don't know, that thing, that thing.

1:57:35That magic part that nobody can really explain. I don't know, it's the thing. It's the reason why I've never been homophobic because I happen to be heterosexual, but I couldn't explain why. Like, I don't know if it's a combination of biology, cultural pressure, I have no idea. I just know what sparks something in me is what sparks something in me. And I don't think I have a right to say to another adult who has those feelings about another adult that they're wrong and I'm right or something. I genuinely just feel like, I don't know, there's something magical about love. I mean, there's something magical about romantic attraction and the feeling of like deep connection to each other.

1:58:11I mean, I've known that couple now for the entire 28 years that they've been married and they are legit super into each other. But they are the least performative people you'd ever meet. They're very focused on each other. Like, they really like each other. Like, he, she refers to him as her boyfriend. They've been married for 28 years. They have two kids that are like adults now. And they should be like, oh, my boyfriend's coming home next week from, you know, work trip and like, she means her husband. But like, she refers to him as that. And like, he refers to her as my girl. Like, he's like, yeah, well, my girl and I we're gonna go do this and I'm always like, dude, like, how are 28 years of marriage and that's how you guys feel about each other.

1:58:55Like, and it's legit. It's not like a thing. It's like, what is legit? I don't know. If I knew that man, I'd find a way to tell people to do it and bottle it. Like, I don't know. I'll tell you what it is. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's fun to even be around. Like, it's fun to be. When you're not in a challenging marriage, being around that is like the warmest, most wonderful place. It's not surprising to me that there are two sons or like two of the most amazing young men I've ever met. How do they hug you? I think they, I've never watched the mark you. I imagine. So I imagine one answer would be privately.

1:59:31But from what I understand, because I have tried to reverse engineer a little bit with them, like, what is it? Because I've talked about them enough in media now that they know. I'm like, I always text them like, hey, I talked about you. And when the book, they were like, oh, yo, I was like, hey, page, whatever. They thought it was quite funny. I think they play fair. Like, they, I don't know, they never lost the plot. They seem to really, I hope this comes out the right way. They love their sons. They really love their sons. They're two amazing parents. But it seems to me like they both, they view each other as the most important thing.

2:00:08And she's always looking out for his happiness. And he's always looking out for hers. And it's an equal measure. Like, I think she is very focused on him and what will make him happy. And he's very focused on her and what will make her happy. And they both take tremendous joy in each other's joy. And I think they both feel, and they have, I will say, they have been through some things. Like she had metastatic breast cancer at one point. She had all kinds of, and they weathered that storm. They weathered that storm with grace, humor, and even deeper connection. And again, I don't know if it's partly luck that they like just hit the lottery with each other.

2:00:51But I think some of it is just that they pay attention. Like it's important to them. You're in a relationship, but you're not married. Anymore, you were married previously. Will you ever get married again? I've said before that I don't think marriage is important to me. I don't, marriage from where I'm sitting is a contract that was written by the state that is supposed to define in some general way what this relationship is and create a set of rules that govern it. And if you do a prenup, you can change that set of rules, but you're still saying, you know, I really want to get the government involved in this situation.

2:01:36I have no part of me that in my relationship goes, we really need to get the government involved in this. I just don't, that's just not in me. And it's not only not in me, it just seems absurd to me. Marriage seems absurd. To me, I understand why people get married. I think I understand it better than most people, but it just to me doesn't make any sense. What do they get married? I think, I need a lot more time. I think it's cultural pressure. I think it's performative. I think it's because we live in a society, if not a world, that presumes marriages a good idea. I think that that is tied to medieval institutions.

2:02:25It's tied to things that are way before us. And it's tied to partly land ownership. It's partly tied to religious concepts. It's partly, you know, what Freud talks about in civilization. It's this contents. It's so we're not all killing each other over mates. It's, you know, we've structured society around this idea of turning parabands, which by the way is a very healthy permutation with which to raise children. And it fits our biology quite nicely, you know, in terms of the amount of time that a child's in gestation versus, you know. But I think we just, we're just like running a program that was here before us and that we've been taught is how it's supposed to be.

2:03:08This is what you do. Like again, ask the question. You think it's a bad idea, didn't you? Getting married? Yeah. I think it's an incredibly bad idea. I think it's an incredibly dangerous idea. I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it's a dangerous idea. There's a difference between those two things. Like skydiving is a dangerous idea. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it's a dangerous idea. It depends on how much joy you place on that thing, right? Like for me, the joy of jumping out of a plane has compared to the danger of jumping out of a plane precludes me from jumping out of planes. Maybe I'm missing out on something.

2:03:40That's okay. I'll live with it. There's lots of cool stuff to do. I haven't gotten bored yet. Marriage is kind of the same thing. Like I think marriage is, again, like, because we get, turn around the question, which is, we know facts, facts, marriage is overwhelmingly unsuccessful. It is way more dangerous than skydiving. Yes, you die from the skydiving. But the chances of a catastrophic skydiving incident is like 0 .003. And one where you die is 0 .001. It's like very limited, the chances of dying from skydiving. Whereas the chances of divorce, again, 56 % divorce rate, how many stay together, who are unhappy, and they just stay together, because they don't give up half their stuff, or for religious reasons, or whatever.

2:04:28This is a technology with an unbelievably bad failure rate. And what people die from marriage, or skydiving? Well, I think more people wish they were dead from marriage than skydiving. I think most people's sense of self, many people's sense of self dies as part of an unhappy marriage. Like, it's not a question of will you die. It's that you're alive and not living your life in a way that's enjoyable, or in a way that's authentic to who you are. And I think a lot of people are doing that as a function of the choice that they made of marriage. And again, I'm not saying don't get married. But what I'm saying is, when someone says I'm getting married, why is it in polite to say, why?

2:05:08Why? You're about to do something incredibly dangerous that fails so much of the time. Why not just say, why? I'd like to, I'm not saying, why would you do that? It's stupid. I'm saying, why? Because most people's answer doesn't make any sense. Well, because, you know, I don't want to be alone. Wait, you have to get married to not be alone. Join a church group. I don't know. Join a baking squad. Join a softball team. You won't be alone. What does that mean? Well, I want to have, you know, regular sex. Oh, okay, I don't know that getting married is the solution to that. Like, it's not a guarantee of regular sex.

2:05:47Like, that's not, you know, so if the question, first of all, you're not even allowed to ask the question, why? If anything, if you don't say, oh my God, that's so great, you have intimacy issues. People say, for the kids, you know, it's good for the kids. And which kids, the kids you've already had or the kids you're gonna have, you're saying we're getting married so that we, you know, and by the way, again, okay, you're saying societally, it's good for, I mean, I think what you're saying is it's good for mother and a father in a household with children together, right? So the polarity of male and female.

2:06:18Again, I know a lot of same -sex couples that have raised very successful happy children. So maybe you're saying a two -parent family is a good thing that doesn't have to be male and female. Whatever, okay, that's all true. What does marriage license have to do with that? What does the government getting involved have to do with that? It gives me security. What security? Secure, you're saying something that fails 56 % of the time makes you feel like you get security? That's a really weird sense of security. If I said you I've got an airbag in my car that doesn't deploy 70 % of the time, would you drive around feeling safe?

2:06:46Or would you go like, this is a lottery, I don't wanna participate in. I'm just gonna strap myself in and do something else because I'm not gonna rely on this 30 % airbag. You wouldn't have a job. Well, that's man -reason. I don't know. I mean, listen, I've been saying for years that I think I have tremendous job security and it makes me very happy on one level and it makes me very sad at another level that I have such job security. I think I don't think we're getting better at this. I think we're getting worse at it. And I don't think by the time I retire, which isn't that far away, like I don't think we're gonna get so good at it that I'm gonna be out of a job.

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2:09:14That's netsuite .com slash botlet. More and more people are getting pre -namps. You said to me that a lot of people contact you these days asking for you to help with pre -namps. One of the interesting things we were talking about before we started filming was, it's really uncomfortable to turn to your partner and ask them for pre -namps. I know a lot of people say that, and I think it's a question of how you enter the conversation. Again, I guess because I get paid to talk, and I'm used to talking sometimes about difficult things with a judge or revealing things that are hard to reveal about someone and trying to make sure that they're not viewed negatively even though they might have behaved negatively.

2:09:50So I think pre -namps, it's all about how you bring up the conversation. And my preferred entry point for a pre -namp when I talk to someone is, every single person who gets married has a pre -namp. It's either written by the government or it's written by the two people who love each other more than the other eight billion people in the world. I personally think that the two people in a marriage are better qualified to create the rule set of their marriage than politicians they don't know, especially when you consider the nature of politicians. They want a popularity contest. They manage to offend as few people as possible and they change constantly.

2:10:30So you're signing up for the most legally significant thing you're ever going to do other than die with a rule set that no one ever explains to you in advance and that can be changed by people who don't know you based on who won a popularity contest. Okay, that seems smart to you. Or, or did the two of you decide what the rules are going to be? And then starting from the beginning, which is where you are if you're doing a pre -namp because you're about to get married, okay? Then you live your life in accordance with that rule set together. And when one of you is deviating from it or when a red flag goes up, like you go, hey, how come you're doing it that way?

2:11:14Remember, we have that rule set. And so I like that. I think pre -naps, I think pre -naps, even having a conversation about a pre -namp, I think is a very healthy exercise for a couple. I cannot tell you how many people since our first conversation have stopped me on the streets of New York City and said, I got into the coolest conversation with my girlfriend about pre -naps and marriage after I saw you and Stephen talking. I've had probably like two people a week say that to me. It's a very, I always say to these people, I'm like, you do weird stuff in bed. Like you're watching Diary of the CEO and that's like, it's kind of, you knew there's other stuff.

2:11:54Like I'm not a great, I'm a shower thing, but I'm dead, you know, I like Stephen too, but that's not the time maybe. But I guess it is, any time to get time. Please turn. But they know I'm not trying to hurt you, super. I know you broke seven million, I don't want to screw it up. But I do think that there is something to this conversation. And I do think sometimes like, look, you're in a relationship, you've had a hard conversation with your partner. Yeah. And when you're in it, it's not fun. And you kind of go like, how are we ever going to get out of this? Is this how it's going to be now? We have this feeling and it's like awkward and it's weird.

2:12:30And then you make it through it. And then the next morning you wake up and maybe things are still a little weird or something, but like, oh yeah. And I like to believe that then there's this feeling of like, hey, we did that thing. Like that thing was a little weird, it was a little hard. We lost the plop, but then we got it back and we're still here. Look at us. Yeah, look at us. Like, yay, go us, you know. I think there's real value in that. I think that again, the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing. It's hard to talk about when this ends. It's actually the thing I'm proud of most of my relationship is exactly what you just described there.

2:13:05I'm not proud of our relationship being perfect because it's not. I'm proud of how imperfect it is and how we continually resolve the conflict without coming out the other side resenting each other. We come out the other side proud of each other. We're like, you know, that meme, whether I think it was the hot ones, meme whether they're like, look at us, who would have thought? And that's like the thing that my girlfriend tells to me and says continually is, I'm so proud of how much shit we've got through because she refers to it like the roots have got even longer. And going back to your conversation about pre -napps, it reminds me of what we were talking about before we started recording.

2:13:39This idea that people don't want to confront it because you tried to get a stand and a wedding convention as a divorce. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to say one thing about what you said before that because your verbage is very interesting to me because you said, you know, in my relationship, you know, we're not, it's not perfect, but I'm proud of X, Y, and Z. And I have to tell you, like, I don't know, that sounds pretty perfect. Like, I think that things are imperfect. Like, and that's perfect. Like, there's no such thing as a perfect relationship. Like, ever. And that's perfect. Like, it's perfect.

2:14:16Like, I genuinely believe we're perfect. Like, I think we're all flawed and we're perfect. Like, because we're authentic, we're real. So I think that's a really important. If people, if perfection is the standard, we will all fall short. I think the reality is that we are all perfectly imperfect. And that's really beautiful. But yes, the wedding, so in the United States, I don't know in the UK, but in the United States, we have these things they're called wedding bazaars or wedding exposor, wedding fairs. And somebody came up with this, and it's a brilliant business move, which is you rent a gigantic hall or a small hall, depending on where some of them are done at, like, giant convention centers.

2:14:56And, you know, people who are associated with the wedding industrial complex, you know, they pay to have a booth. So there's photographers, there's bakers, there's, and, you know, every table has, like, something. The photographers have different pictures. The cake people might have, like, little samples of cake. You know, there's all the little grab bags and things that people give out as wedding gifts. There's, you know, different travel things related to your honeymoon, and where you might go, there's different web websites for, you know, your registry. Like, there's so many wedding related, wedding adjacent businesses.

2:15:32This is a multi -billion dollar industry. So I reached out to, like, four or five different, smaller and bigger wedding expos. And I said, in some insubstance, I'd like to get a table. And they said, great. Photographer, baker, what do you do? And I said, oh, I'm a lawyer. And I do divorce and family law, but it's just going to be themed around pre -numps. It's not going to be an anyway negative about marriage. It's going to be, you know, just a congratulations on your engagement. Have you talked about a pre -nump? And then I'll have brochures and things. And you can, you know, make sure that they pass muster.

2:16:08That I don't say anything that would be offensive to anyone. I don't want anyone to be uncomfortable. Any other vendors to be uncomfortable. But there's literally hundreds of vendors at this thing. So there's no reason. Not one wedding expo would rent a table to me. They refused my money. They would not take it. They would not take it. No matter how flowery I said I'd make the language. No matter how respectful to the institution of marriage I said I would be. They would not let me buy a table. They wouldn't take my money. And those tables are not cheap. It's thousands of dollars to get a table of wedding expo.

2:16:43They would not take my money. Even though almost 60 % of people end in divorce. And it's like a almost inevitability. The probability is there's going to be a conversation about how we separate. As I've said before, every single marriage ends at ends in death or divorce. The majority of them end in divorce. The majority of them end in divorce. Why wouldn't you allow me to have a table that just says if you'd like to have a pre -nump here? I'm not even trying to sell a pre -nump on you. Like you're getting engaged. You need a pre -nump. It's just, have you talked about a pre -nump? And information about that pre - they would not even let me in the room.

2:17:19And I, because it shatters the illusion, it's reality. They don't like reality. They don't see reality as what it is, which I think by the way is quite romantic. I think there's something very nice about talking to your partner. About you know what I'm afraid of losing you? I don't want to lose you to death even though I know someday I have to. But I don't want to lose you to divorce either. But man, almost 60 % of marriage is end in divorce. And if we got divorced, like what would we be? Like I hope we wouldn't hate each other. Like I hope I'd still love you and care about you. Or I'd still want you to be well.

2:17:58Even if you left me, I wouldn't hate you. Like I don't have one ex -girlfriend that I go man, I hate that person. Like I wish all of them enjoy. I hope they're all happy. Like our chapter together ended, but I wish all of them enjoy. People don't like to go into things without optimism though. And the conversation around should we get a prenup? Almost sounds like I think we're going to break up some day. I think you can hear it that way. But I don't think it has to be. I agree with you about the optimism. I think people would prefer to look at the bright side of things and to be optimistic. I am not suggesting.

2:18:34Like I don't believe in fairy tales. I'm a realist. That doesn't mean I get up every day just thinking about nothing but death and divorce and how much life is beautiful and life's meant to be lived. And like, you don't want to sit. I'm not going to sit at a wedding and be like, do you know how many percentage of this people are going to get to before? I don't view it that way. I think it's wonderful. But be realistic about things. Like I don't want to get ill, but I have a physical every year. I go to the doctor every year. Like I like to know what's going on. I like to be a realist. I like to, I don't plan on crashing my car.

2:19:10But I like knowing that I have a seat belt in an airbag. And by the way, if my seat belt in airbag aren't working, I would like to know in advance because I'm driving as if they're going to work. If you told me, by the way, Jim, your seat belt in your airbag aren't working, I would drive very, very, very carefully. Right? So I think it's the same thing. Like just we can't have an honest conversation and be optimistic. The voice in the US is very different from the US in the UK. And I actually learnt, well, I think it is. I learnt this from watching several things, but one video comes to mind from a couple of weeks ago.

2:19:48You'll know the case. There's a black actor who is currently posting a lot on his social media about how his wife is like chasing him down for child support. Oh, yes. Yes, I don't remember his name. I'm bad at celebrity names. I'm bad at celebrity names. And the rest I represent them. And yes, I know who he is. And he said it on a couple of shows, but he went on his Instagram and said, like, my wife who I've broken up with, she, like, basically doesn't really have a job at the moment or is making some money from some Instagram work, is she's got this, like, pack of lawyers who email me and demand to see my bank statements because I've been doing well lately.

2:20:20I've got a couple of new movies and stuff. And she wants to make sure she gets more money for me and the kids based on his success. And I never realised it was like that. I never realised that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's modifiable. It's modifiable. Child support, for example, is modifiable every three years when there's a 30 % change in income up or down. So if I have a wife and then we have four kids and then I break up with her. And when I break up with her, I'm making a million dollars a year. And then I'm making a hundred million dollars a year. What's up? Child support goes up. It's like what?

2:20:51What's the numbers? What's the numbers? It depends on the percentages. In New York, one child is 17 % to his 25, three is 29 and four is 31 % of your gross income. Of my gross income, gross income, less Vica. .075. Fifth Social Security Medicare. If my gross income is a hundred million dollars. So theoretically, there are caps on the combined parental income. Everywhere. Yes, pretty much. But judges have a tremendous amount of discretion based on a variety of factors, including things like what was the lifestyle of the children during the marriage? What are the reasonable needs of the children?

2:21:28Like celebrity divorces, I will tell you, there are some legitimate separate needs that the children of celebrities need. Like they, you know, security, for example. What's the biggest child support payments you've ever had of? Well, I mean, did he had, I think it was $20 ,000 a month or a period of time? He's kind of a well -known one and it was very well publicized. The most I've ever had in a case is I had a client who got $65 ,000 a month in child support. But it covered a lot of things. It covered a portion of private school tuition. It covered a security detail. It covered, you know, these were very, very high -net worth, you know, public figures.

2:22:10What kid needs $65 ,000 a month? Well, the kid doesn't get the money. The parent who has primary physical custody gets the money. And they can do with it whatever they want. Correct. So they could go spend it in Vegas. Correct. That's not the snow path. You should have to provide receipts. Well, what I've always said is, I mean, first of all, the system's complicated and enough without people having to provide receipts to check the math of a person and what they're spending the child support on. Like, it's already overwhelmed enough and it's already difficult enough. Like, listen, what you're proposing would create a lot of additional work for me, so I appreciate it.

2:22:40But it is, from my perspective, it is a potentially very dangerous thing. What I always tell people is getting married without a prenup is a barely risky activity. Having a child with someone is the most risky activity in relationships. In terms of the amount of emotional and financial damage a person can do to you, have a kid with them. Having a kid with somebody, they can weaponize that child, they can alienate that child, they can use that child's needs to piggyback onto financial needs. There's so much stuff a person can do to torture you if they have a kid with you. And there's so much legal wrangling and rambling to do.

2:23:29And what I'll tell you is it, you know, I've had a client who spent somewhere in the realm of $100 ,000 in legal fees arguing over whether thanksgiving should begin on Wednesday and end on Sunday or whether it would begin on Thursday morning and end on Thursday evening. Now that person's worth, you know, $700 or $800 million. So 100 grand to them is not a lot of money. Most people myself included, I'd just eat turkey another day. Like it's not worth that amount of money, right, to have that argument. That's why having a kid with someone, you're opening up the door to potentially tremendous amount of battles.

2:24:13Whereas if you're arguing over a $50 ,000 bank account and you spend $30 ,000 in legal fees, even if you won, you're only $120 ,000. If you lost, you lost significant. So it forces a certain rationality into the transaction. Whereas your time with your kids, people could attribute whatever value they want to that. I've had clients who fought over minuscule things about children that to me would be minuscule. To them were incredibly important. You said that the two big reasons where people divorce are infidelity and money. Is it a loss of money, a lack of money? The person goes poor. That's a big piece of it.

2:24:51Losing money, gambling money, or losing money unexpectedly, bad business and investment decisions. There was a period of time where I did a lot of divorces because people decided they were going to try to be day traders and all of a sudden people were like barming against retirement accounts. Yeah, they were learning the hard way that if you short stocks, there's almost no limit to how much money you can lose. Crypto divorces. Crypto's big. I did a couple of divorces. They were crypto became very important and whether it was on a hard wallet or whether it was, I mean, hiding money with crypto very some years ago when crypto was first sort of on the scene when I really should have been buying Bitcoin because it was like $3 or $5.

2:25:30There was a period of time where most divorce lawyers and most judges didn't understand what crypto even was. I mean, try to explain to a 75 -year -old judge who has an AOL email address what cryptocurrency was and the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin and why you're concerned that they might have these funds on a hard wallet and they're looking at you going like, what, I have no idea what this is. So it's tricky. These are the things we, as a divorce lawyer, one of the things that makes it a very exciting job is that we're constantly, we're getting an education in all of these things. I remember I represented a surgeon and I learned everything about how surgeons get paid, how they make money, how they hide money, what their expenses might be.

2:26:16And so then the next time I did a surgeon, I'm like, oh, I know this. The first time I represented someone who owned a hedge fund or was a partner in a hedge fund, I had to learn about how capital accounts work and how people are paid and where you might be able to hide money. Have you ever seen that where someone is like publicly thought to be a billionaire and then you look at their bank statements during a divorce and you realize that they've basically managed to hide everything so they're basically broke. It's all in someone else's name. Well, yeah, there's two permutations of that. One is people who are publicly incredibly wealthy and then in reality, they're leveraged to the Hilton broke, like way broke.

2:26:49That happens a lot. And that happens a lot with celebrities. Celebrities are very often leveraged to the hill because they had a hit record or they had a hit movie or two and then they think, oh, everything I do is going to be like this. And so they just go out and buy tons of stuff and there's always people who loan you money, especially if you're a public figure and you have some money, right? A couple of million bucks. You can get a couple of million more real easy. So and then it just very rapidly and they buy everybody else they have. There's always clingers around the person, the whole entourage that a lot of whom are siphoning money off of people.

2:27:22So there's a lot of people that look very wealthy and are dead broke. And I have a lot of those. How does that play out in court when the wife finds out that their partner or the husband finds out that their wife was not happy. They're not happy. And it's hard because they think they have proof of something. Like they're like, but look, here's a picture of him with a Ferrari. And it's like, right, I can show you the papers that he doesn't, he leases that Ferrari. Like it's this much of a car payment. Like I had a guy who had like three Bentley's and a couple of like, he had crazy cars and yeah, it was all leveraged to the hill.

2:28:00It was not, he didn't own them, you know. What's the second permutation of that? The second permutation is when someone is, is, is, um, when they've hidden the money. Yeah, they, I'm trying to find the right adjective that there are enough of a sociopath, that there are enough of a, uh, there are enough of a malignant narcissist or there are enough of a careful planner that, um, they have created structures that, that make it almost impossible for their spouse to get anything in the divorce. There are, the, the, so some of the things that people do in, um, in the ultra -high net worth space for generational wealth preservation and tax avoidance have second order effects when they get divorced, right?

2:28:50So a lot of wealthy people don't own very much of anything. They own companies that own properties and they have an interest in a trust for the benefit of their great grandchildren that owns companies that own properties that they then borrow against. Like, there's, their whole structure is a very complex and they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to trust in a state's attorneys and accountants, so they pay almost nothing in taxes. And so that they will have no estate issues, they will have intergenerational wealth. Well, those things make a lot of sense from a wealth preservation and a state planning perspective but they make a divorce really complicated because it's no longer marital money.

2:29:36It's owned by this trust, it's owned by this corporation, it's owned by, I only have this percent interest in this thing which is why we both benefited from the taxation of it. So that's where it gets like a little, um, what I do is, is a fascinating job because we work with, you know, very, very brilliant forensic accountants who kind of go in and try to recreate whether something was done as a fraudulent transfer in contemplation of divorce or whether something was done for good faith reasons and, you know, was done in a way that was designed to benefit the marriage as opposed to as divorce planning.

2:30:12There must be scenarios where someone goes into a divorce. I think I'm divorcing you, let's say. And I think, in divorcing you, I'm going to get a big pout but it turns out in divorcing you that you get a big pout because I've got more money than you. Yeah, that happens a lot. That happens a lot. I've actually, I wrote an article for one of the women's magazines called the last remaining feminist taboo. And it talks about a lot of female clients who are paying alimony to their husbands. And it stings, you know, you can have a woman who's like a Bella Abzug, like Gloria Steinem, level feminist.

2:30:46And when she gets told, you know, that like, yeah, you got to pay him alimony. They're like, I'm sorry. What? Like, no, he's a man. He could work. Like, he could work. He's the men who get alimony. And you're like, no, gender is a construct. And sex is actually, you know, a construct socially. And you're a CFO of a company. And he's a really cute, long -haired musician who you married because he's like fun, you know? Like, and you earn 4 ,000 times what he earns annually. And so you have to pay him alimony because it's just math. It's got genderblind. It's just math. And they're like, yeah, no, I am not paying alimony.

2:31:24He's a man. He's got a strong back. Tell him to get a job. By the way, I've had men in that situation go, yeah, I'm not taking alimony. Really, they won't take it. They won't take it. Alimony is like the... The spells of support. Okay, like, well, but child support would... No, it's for your, it's to maintain the marital lifestyle. Okay, sweet. It's in order to rehabilitate your earnings so that you can be... So for example, I marry a woman from the UK who's a physician. And now she's coming to the United States because we're in love and she's marrying me. And she is going to lose her license to practice medicine because she's coming to the United States and it's a different licensure.

2:32:00Okay, so now she moves here in reliance on us being married and we're married for a couple of years and then we divorce. She's going to need, because I now make a lot more money than her. She's going to need some money to get her back to a place where she's back to her earning capacity. So if I marry Taylor Swift and wait together for 20 years, do I get half? You do not get half usually. No, no. It's, I mean, first of all, she has too many good lawyers that imagine for you to get half. But you would certainly, I mean, there was a... How much could you get me? How much could I get you from Taylor Swift?

2:32:33I have to know how much Taylor Swift has. I also don't think she's, she's never made it down the aisle yet, has she? But if I take it down the aisle and then we stay together 20 years and I come back to say James, it's time. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to get you as much as possible. I can't promise you anything, but I am promising you. I'm going to get you as much as I can. I mean, you know, I have to know, I'd have to know what the finances are. I would have to, she has a billion dollars. It's cash. Billion dollars in cash acquired during the marriage or prior to the marriage. During the marriage.

2:32:59All acquired during the marriage, you get in half. There you go. You get in half. You get in half. Listen, Adele's ex -husband did very well. Helly Clarkson's ex -husband did very well. I won't put you in. It depends on how quite well. Look it up, look it up. It's out there. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's out there. The reality is, is those were people, she had her most successful tour at the time during the marriage. She had her most successful album at the time during the marriage. It's all a question of where things land in the trajectory of someone's life. If you marry someone when they're on the come -up, like Jeff Bezos, great example, like largest divorce settlement probably paid in history was to his ex -wife.

2:33:38Why? Because Amazon wasn't a thing when they got together. So that was, she was there for the whole trajectory. If he got remarried now, she's not going to get half because she wasn't there. There's a pre -marital component to that. If you got me 500 million from Taylor Swift then, would you take a commission? Like an hour? It doesn't work that way. Oh, prohibited from doing that. We get paid by the hour. You're prohibited. I am an hourly wage earner. Like if I worked at McDonald's, prohibits you. The rules, the rules that govern. And by the way, rightfully so. Why? Because you otherwise would create an incentive for the lawyer to maximize recovery for their client rather than the recovery that makes sense for their client.

2:34:24So like I've had cases where the cash payout I get for my client is lower because I want to get the more support, like child support or spousal support, or I want to get the more of the real estate rather than the payout. So really what we're supposed to do as lawyers is not be invested in the percentage of the result. Personal injury lawyers like you slip in fall, that's different. The last question from me is regarding me and my partner, I never want to end up in your consultation room. We never want to go there. If you were to give me one piece of advice to prevent, and it can't be, don't get married, to prevent me and my partner ever ending up in your consultation room.

2:35:07It wouldn't be, don't get married. Oh, okay. What would it be? Pay attention. Just pay attention. Right now you're paying attention. Like you're paying attention. She's important to you, you're important to her, you're interested in your interesting. You know, I would say pay attention. And pay attention to three things. The you, the me, and the we. Because those are three different things. Like, you be you, because you're who she fell in love with. And don't let you go too far from sure. Like, you be you. Don't let anything in the world, don't let her, don't let the we. Don't let any of it stop you from being you, because you're who she fell in love with.

2:35:49And the she, right? Who she is. So there's you, there's me, there's me. So her, remember who she let her be her. Like, make sure that she takes time to be her. Make sure you give space for her to be her, because that's who you fell in love with. And let that person change. Just like you might change sometimes from time to time. And if things change too much, I'm not saying resist it, but note it. Pay attention. Say, hey, this is going on. Is that good things? Is it a bad thing? Like, well, you know, let's just notice it. Let's just pay attention. And then the way, like the you, the me and the way.

2:36:19Like, talk about, you know, pay attention to the we. Make sure we're watering the plant. Like, make sure that that'd be the only advice I'd ever give to anybody. It has nothing to do with marriage. It has to do with connection. It has to do with love. It has to do with, there's a reason why you found the we, right? Like, you can be you all by yourself. And she can be her all by herself. But there's value in being we. And seeing each other's blind spots. And if there's value in that, treat it like something valuable. Don't let the world. Don't let your own strengths and weaknesses. Don't let anything pull you off of that.

2:36:57Pay attention to you, the me and the we. And don't be afraid. The hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing. So if it's harder to talk about it, it's harder to point it out. It's harder to say, hey, are we okay? Is everything good? Like, you know, if that's harder, do that. Lean into that. James, we have a closing tradition with podcast where the last guest leaves the question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question left for you is, what is your most controversial opinion? Oh, God, you're going to be canceled. What is my most controversial opinion?

2:37:34I think... I think I alluded to it. My last conversation with you. My most controversial opinion is that the most important thing in people's lives and their greatest accomplishment should not be their children. That's a real hot like when you say to people, like, I think it's... If you say the most important thing that ever happened, the greatest thing I ever accomplished in life was having children. I find that very... I find that logic very strange. Because if you say the most important, greatest thing I ever did in my life was having children, well, is then the greatest and most important thing your children ever did?

2:38:15Going to be having children. And as the greatest thing their children ever did is having children, because that's the ideology of a virus or a cancer cell. Like, it's not... Like, growth for the sake of growth, for the sake of growth. Like, I think there has to be a higher, nobler purpose to life than reproduction. So, I'm not an anti -natalist, but I tend to when someone says to me, like, my children are my greatest accomplishment. I tend to look at them and go like, made some interesting choices, then, I guess. Science and sort of evolution in Charles Darwin might argue that that's exactly the point of life.

2:38:47Oh, no, and it is on the cellular level and for squirrels and for pigeons. And with monkeys. Yeah, but I think we're different than monkeys. Like, if you've watched, like, we're very similar in lots of ways. But I'd like to think that there's something higher that we're called to. And I don't know that reproduction should be the highest goal of a human being's life. I'm not one of these people that thinks, like, don't have children. It's a terrible thing. I have kids. I love my kids. Was great having kids. Learned a lot about myself in having children. Learned a lot about life. And what I love spending time with them.

2:39:26I have a great relationship with my sons. I look forward to being a grandfather. But the truth is, like, is it the greatest thing I ever accomplished in my life? Absolutely not. It's in the top of the list. It's a wonderful experience I had. But it is not the thing. And I think that's a very, I don't know why that is such a controversial opinion. When I say that to people, they look at me like, I've got lobster's coming out of my nose. There's definitely two schools of thought there. There's the one school of thought that you're saying something earlier. And it really started the conversation about how people lose their identity when they have children.

2:39:58And it causes all of this sort of psychological dysfunction. And here I am right now. I'm attached to this thing. And where did my life as an independent person go? And that's kind of the one school of thought where you're resisting becoming all about procreation. You're resisting becoming just a, I'm just here to be a mother of father. And then there's another group of people that go, absolutely, this is me. This is my purpose. Right. But see, I think like everything, like we don't have to treat danger with decapitation. Like, I think you can not reject the concept of having children or making them a priority.

2:40:32And you can also not make your children your entire identity. I think that you can just sort of say, hey, my children are incredibly important to me. I love them. They're wonderful. But I also have other aspects of my life and self and other relationships that have value to me. And I'm not going to let them all be sacrificed at the altar of my children. He's more likely to end up in your office, which school of thought? People who are obsessed with their children. I think people who are obsessed with their children stop paying attention to themselves and to their partner. That's been my experience.

2:41:07So people who are obsessed with their children. I don't mean people who are focused on their children. I don't mean people who make their children a high priority in their life. I'm telling about people that are like obsessed with their children, that their children are there. This is who I am. I am a mother. This is who I am. I am a father. Which, because by the way, childhood is a temporary state. Like theoretically, you're going to have a very close and intimate relationship on a day -to -day basis with your spouse a lot longer than your children. If it's done properly, your children are supposed to leave and go start their own families and live their own lives.

2:41:43Whereas your partner is not supposed to in 19 years or 18 years move out. They're supposed to stay there. So it's kind of smart to also feed. Not again, not only feed, also feed that relationship. There's no reason why you can't, simile to, and by the way, sometimes being a really good supportive person to your co -parent and loving your wife and loving your husband is a wonderful gift to give to your children. It models great relationship behavior to them. It's showing that you love and respect the other person who loves them as much as you do. Like, there's so much good in being a good parent that is made up of being a good co -parent, a good spouse, a good partner.

2:42:29So you think you're more likely to end up in your divorce office if you're obsessed with your children? If you make your children your absolute number one priority and your spouse falls very far down that list, yes, for sure. James, thank you. Always great to see you. I love our conversations because you're a divorce lawyer and you're a practice, I guess, is dealing with divorces. But your width of wisdom and knowledge and how it all intertwines in the most beautiful, wise, enlightening way, and just the overarching filter of you not being afraid to say things that most people wouldn't say. You're not being afraid to be politically correct.

2:43:08Provides a message which is so important and quite unfortunately rare. But it's so, everything you say is so obvious in the sense that it's common sense, but it's common sense that's completely uncommon. That means a lot to me. That's what I found in your book as well. I found the same level of brevity and wisdom and experience and diversity of experience which ties into the central ideas. Everyone, if you didn't go by the book last time, you have to go by the book. It's called How to Stay in Love. And it's my favorite book ever written on the subject of love and relationships in life, quite frankly.

2:43:43So I think everyone needs to go and get the book. I'll link it below. James, thank you so much. It's great to see you. I love our conversations. Me too. I hope we have many more. So me too. I really appreciate you. Thank you very much. It's great to see you.

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