What Actually Predicts Divorce, and What Women Really Want in a Partner — ft. James Sexton

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1:32Welcome to Prof. Gian Relationships, a special two-part series about love, marriage, and what it takes to make a partnership last. We're joined by divorce attorney and author James Sexton, who's become a bit of a, like, almost like a, I don't know, a relationship guru, having seen kind of the other side of what a successful relationship looks like. Together, we're going to try to answer your questions about what predicts divorce, how couples maintain both fairness and desire, and what we've learned from navigating complicated relationships. James, it's great to see you. Yeah, good to see you too, Scott.

2:02Always fun. Yeah, the algorithm is clearly, you're, and I feel as if I know you better than I do because I'm getting so much insight into you. I really enjoy your social media presence and your ability to break stuff down. I really appreciate it, man. You know, I think we've run a lot of parallel paths in terms of not only our NYU affiliations, but also our status as divorced men who had children and kind of been through the whole experience of it and talk a lot about the intersection between relationships and work and life and balance and how to try to get the whole thing right. And also, you really saw me through the entire pandemic.

2:44I listened to Pivot just nonstop over and over. Between Pivot and the Peloton bike, it was like the only thing that kind of kept me sane. So I feel like I'm in your servitude forever now. All right, let's roll. So neither of us have seen these questions. The question number one comes from Jacob Stav on Instagram. Which is the most important predictor of a divorce and the one for keeping a relationship? Go for it, James. You know, I think the biggest predictor of divorce is something subtle, and that is just disconnection between two people. I think everybody looks for, like, the big relationship killers, you know, like people who are in open relationships or people who, you know, sometimes that's the blood and the water, you know, of the relationship being in distress.

3:24But I think it's actually much more subtle than that. I think people get divorced and their relationships fall apart the same way that I think Thomas Wolfe said people go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once. So I think it's a lot of little small pieces of disconnection that eventually just catastrophically lead to the failure. You have a great story about one of your clients and it involved granola. Do you know what I'm talking about? Can you? Oh, yeah. Can you talk that story? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I talk about in the book, too, where I had a client very put together, beautiful young woman in her 30s, and she was getting divorced, two young kids.

4:02He You know, you spend a lot of time with people when you, you know, you go a lot of miles when you're their divorce lawyer and you get to know them really well in a very candid way. And I was just sitting outside of the courthouse with her and we were chatting. I was drinking espresso on a lunch break. And I just said something along the lines of like, when did you realize that the relationship was over? And she told me a story about how there was granola, this particular type of granola that she would put every morning in her yogurt. And they only sold it at this one Whole Foods. And she said he used to just always like buy the granola for her.

4:31She never had asked for it. He didn't ask for like, you know, what Chris Williamson calls good boy points, you know, and we do something for our significant other and we go, oh, babe, did you see what I did? He would just do it. And she said it made her always feel so loved. And at some point she said, you know, it just the granola just ran out. And and she kept waiting for him to refill it. And he never did. And she realized, you know, yeah, this thing's going down. And I I said to her, was there anything like that on your end? And without missing a beat, she said, yeah, blowjobs. and I spit my espresso across the courthouse.

5:04And she said, yeah, when you're first dating, I was like, you know, like I would give them to them pretty often. Sometimes in the morning, it'd set them off on the right tone for the day. And she said, and then at some point, you know, maybe when the kids came or life got in the way, she said, I just got to the point where I was like, oh, well, you know, I'll wait till tonight and we'll have sex and we'll both enjoy it. She's like, but I don't really know why I stopped. She's like, it wasn't like something happened. We both just, and really it stuck in my mind because there was this sense of like, There's this atrophy that starts to happen, and it starts to create this weird spiral where it's like, well, I don't owe you that.

5:36Well, I don't owe you this. What's interesting to me about that as a divorce lawyer is I see the effect of it. But then in this work I do in the relationship space, I find myself thinking, well, you could kind of reverse that spiral, which is I don't have to send a text in the middle of the day saying, hey, babe, I was thinking of you or leave a note in the morning that says, hey, I had a lot of fun watching a movie on the couch with you last night. I married the prettiest girl in the world. But it's nice to do that. It doesn't cost anything. It takes 30 seconds. And maybe it reversed. Because I said to her, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

6:07Was it the granola or the blowjobs? What ran out first? And she really couldn't tell me. And so I think there's a lesson there. Yeah, the research I've seen on an empirical level from John Gottman's Love Lab work at the University of Washington, UW, is that contempt is a very strong indicator of divorce. And when you're out with a couple and one is rolling their eyes or just finds everything their partner's saying to be, they can't hide their disgust. Yeah, I've always said the most dangerous phrase for me, the biggest predictor of a divorce is when I hear someone respond to their spouse with the following, what?

6:50Like, what? Like, It's just that contemptuous, what are you on about? And it's fascinating because we all, you know, like you said, you sit down sometimes with couples or you go out with couples and you can just feel on people, you know, when there's this sense of like disrespect or disconnection. But what's interesting is you can also reverse it. You know, when you're out to dinner with that couple, all you have to do is say to one of them, so tell me about when you guys met. How'd you guys meet? And you can actually see like a softening happen when they're telling that story because they go back in time to that place where there was still this abundance of optimism and connection.

7:25So a lot of my work is really about, you know, as a divorce lawyer for 25 years in the trenches on these things, like I see how it catastrophically fails. And if you want to figure out how to keep something together, like if you want to figure out how to keep your car together, you don't talk to a new car dealer, you talk to a mechanic who's seen him break down, you know? So that's how I try to view this is look, whether you like it or not, this is just what's sitting across from me in a courtroom and in an office. The other factor, and it's much more uncomfortable to talk about because it's not aspirational and it just has sexist overtones, but I think there's data to back this up.

7:59What I have found is a pretty strong predictor of divorce is economics, specifically when the man in the relationship starts making, stops making money or is making less money than the woman. And it's uncomfortable to talk about, but I personally, that's where I have found. And also divorce, the likelihood of divorce doubles when the woman starts making more money than the man. And it's not something we like to talk about because it positions women in an uncomfortable light. I would also argue that what we're missing in that data set is that I think men, when they don't, when they lose their economic vitality, they become insecure and, and quite frankly, unproductive in the relationship.

8:49So, so I would even say counterproductive in the relationship. They become antagonistic to the relationship. And resentful. And, and in other words, it's not just a woman saying you're no longer the baller you where I'm out. It's just the economic strain, the lack of self-esteem on the man's part creates real agitant in the relationship. Your thoughts, James? Yeah, 100%. I mean, I see it all the time. I see it from both sides because I represent husbands, I represent wives. What it more often is, is the cascading effect of a man loses his job, he feels emasculated. He feels like his role as a provider, again, even if both of them are working people, both of them are successful, even if she makes more money than him, when there is that loss or that demotion or some disgrace associated with work, there's this sense of self that gets taken away from a man, you know, and that causes him to have a kind of self-hate that then radiates at everyone around him.

9:47Substance use issues start to kick up. He starts to drink a little bit more. He starts to smoke a little more, whatever it might be. And then there's this effect. And again, it's super easy in this world we've created of boys versus girls on the algorithm to say, oh, well, this is a man being insecure over his woman or this is a woman cashing her chips out at the casino because now he's not making money anymore. But really what it is, is what did the job loss? What were the second order effects of that on his internal life and the way that he shows up in the relationship and how he feels about himself?

10:17I see it all the time. And I've represented, like I said, both sides of that equation. And it's a really heartbreaking thing to see because, you know, there are so many politicians on the right in particular that talk so much about the sanctity of marriage and wanting to preserve and protect marriage. And yet, when we look at the statistics that talk about marriage does better when people have economic stability and can meet their basic needs, they're not in distress. People who have a bachelor's degree or higher have lower divorce rates. When you start to point these things out and say, hey, maybe creating conditions where there's catastrophic job loss and putting massive strain on marriages might be more worth your attention than griping about no-fault divorce and how it's ruining the world.

10:59So there are real solutions to these problems, but they're part of a serious discourse as opposed to like the boy versus girl thing that works so well. I've also thought that in a very, I don't know, coarse, I think all relationships are a certain form of transaction. It's just a question of the currency and the cadence. Unless you're family, I would argue, there's a really healthy level of what I'll call irrational loyalty within families. And I actually think that's important for the survival of the species. I describe family as people you otherwise wouldn't choose to hang out with. But what I saw...

11:34That's because we both survived having teenage sons. That's probably why. There you go. There's no way I'm getting a return there. No way. They're never going to be up at 2 a.m. worried about me. I just know. There's no way the home they're going to put me in is going to cost them more than UVA has cost me this year. Jell-O has never cost that much. Yeah, that's right. But my dad was a case study in marriage and divorce, married and divorced four times, as far as we know. And his third marriage, a really nice woman, Linda, first person who ever spoiled me. But my dad was never very engaged. Quite frankly, he was never very nice.

12:08Didn't bring a lot of emotional or domestic support to the relationship, but he was a good provider. And then when he stopped being a provider, and I hope Linda doesn't take too much offense to this because I don't mean it as a criticism. I think she did the math and said, all right, if you're no longer bringing in money and you're no longer really present in the relationship and you're not picking up slack with domestic and emotional labor, I'm out. And I think a lot of men, quite frankly, don't, when they lose their economic vitality or it reduces, I think a lot of women wake up and say, okay, I'm paying the bills and I'm fucking doing the dishes.

12:47And I'm the one picking up the kids. There's a sense that men have, too, of purpose in the workplace that very often, you know, over time when that, I mean, I've had clients who, you know, a person retires and their spouse, you know, literally comes in and says, look, I said for better or for worse. I didn't say for lunch. Like, I did not plan on having this person around. I have a routine. I have a life. And now this person's sort of doddering around without direction because they were, you know, spending so much of their time and their emotional and physical bandwidth on work. And now that's gone.

13:17The most successful retired people are retired people who, you know, just replace work with some other volunteering or a church or whatever it might be. So I think that there is a clear in every part of our lives. There's a sense of like, do you have a place to go, a thing to do, and something to be passionate about? And I think when we lose that, we lose a big piece of our inner compass. And I think when we flail in our sense of self, how can we not flail in relationship? I mean, a relationship is the you, the me, and the we. So if the you or the me starts falling apart, how is the we supposed to hold it together?

13:51Yeah, let's, I thought that was great. Let's move on to question number two, which also comes from Instagram. Miss V Lady asks, modern relationships often promote equality, but attraction frequently depends on differences in power, competence, or polarity. How do couples preserve both fairness and desire over decades without one undermining the other? James? You know, I tend to think we need to be thinking about equity and not equality. I think fairness is what's important. I mean, I've said before when I talk about relationships, look, if I love to cook and you don't like to cook, the school of thought that says, well, we should do 50-50 on the cooking.

14:29Okay, so you should spend half the time doing something you don't enjoy and I should lose half the time doing something I enjoy. It doesn't make any sense. But that being said, you should know how to cook a little bit. Like I'm going to be away at some point and you need to like do something other than DoorDash. Same thing with finances. You know, I have tons of clients who come in and they just know absolutely nothing about the marital finances because the other person in the relationship, you know, enjoy doing the investing and balancing the books and keeping an eye on things. So I always tell clients and I always tell friends, look, you know, everybody should know how to do everything a little bit, but you should be leaning into the fact that you don't marry yourself.

15:06You know, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, each one of them without the other. Without Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs would have been, you know, a very, a guy with a lot of vision and he couldn't really accomplish very much. And without, you know, Steve Wozniak, you know, Steve, I'm sorry, without Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak would have just been a really talented software engineer who didn't really know how to have vision of anything. Together, they changed the world. I think the best couples, whether it's, you know, John and Paul or whether it's, you know, the Jobs and Wozniak combination, like I think the best couples, we have complementary sets of skills.

15:39We have complementary pathologies in terms of where our insecurities lie and how we can complement those for each other. But the best thing to do, obviously, is to be able to say that quiet part out loud. We're really taught in this culture, I think, now, in this moment that we're in, that, well, why do you like that? And why do you feel that way? Look, you feel how you feel. And by sheer power of will, if you think you're going to change your feelings or your desires, that's as insane as thinking you can pray the gay away. It just doesn't work. The desire we have is the desire we have. And it's rooted in culture, biology, you know, so many things that for us to pretend that we're going to be able to just modify it based on, you know, being more evolved in the culture, I think it's foolish.

16:23We can be the most girl boss culture in the world, but look at Fifty Shades of Grey, look at Twilight, look at all romance novels out there, look at all of the film that's out there. it's usually some archetypal, big, bold, strong, dominant guy who's still the hero. Of course, he has an emotional vocabulary now, but it's still that kind of an archetype. And again, it's speaking to something in us. And I think feminism and the idea of liberation from the rigidity of gender roles was there to serve men and women without allowing us to access the real volume that's contained in us and letting us be who we really are without those restrictions.

17:04I think in relationship, you got to do the same thing. Yeah, it's so, and again, I'll be accused of being a Gen X boomer here and out of touch and some of that might be true. But what I have found is that TikTok and Instagram and most podcasts are lying to you about what women want in a man. I do think that there is absolutely a recognition and an appreciation for men who are willing to be vulnerable, more in touch with their feelings. And generally speaking, women have leveled up and they're demanding that men bring more to the table. It's just a marketplace, right? If all of a sudden men just got much better looking and, you know, much more successful and interesting, they would want higher caliber mates.

17:50It's, you know, if the marketplace affords you with economic independence and you're not economically indentured to someone, then you might think, well, maybe being alone is a better, is actually a pretty good plan B. So the market has shifted and men have to adjust to that. Having said that, I have found this notion that if you were to build the perfect man according to social media, it would be this guy who's working on himself, very sensitive, listens all the time. that's called a friend that's called your gay best friend yeah and i don't think that's the guy women want to have sex with i'm sorry i i think things have changed but i still think there is a a a i don't know for lack of a better term a masculine male energy that regardless of what women claim to say in their TikToks or on social media is not who women want to mate with.

18:48Well, I think who we claim we're attracted to and who we're attracted to may very often be different things. I think you and I are of the same generation. So we had two choices growing up. We could be Clint Eastwood or Richard Simmons. Those were your two choices. There was nothing in between. There was nothing in between. And that was kind of our two choices. And so I feel like now, you know, raising sons who are 26 and 28, I see that they have a broader emotional palette to choose from, which is amazing. But I still think the truth is the truth. And it was true of my father and it's true of my generation and it's true of my sons.

19:20And I suspect it'll be true of their sons, which is that every girl wants a bad boy who's only good for her. And every man wants a good girl who's only bad for him. And that's it. And that's always been. And I think it will always be because I think this is something about the human creature, the heterosexual relationship dynamics, that's just an archetype that feeds for all of us. And it's been very successful in the dating marketplace. But I think you're right. We've now created this prodigious amalgam of traits that are just totally disconnected from reality because we want someone who's a billionaire but also has an abundance of free time and isn't obsessed with work but also is incredibly physically healthy but also knows how to have fun and be laid back and eat whatever and be decadent.

20:04These are like all contrary things and trying to find this perfect union of contrary things is absolutely bananas. Literally recently, I've had three women approach me and say, do you have any single friends? These are very progressive, impressive women. And then they'll say under the breath as if it's embarrassing. They're like, and this might surprise you, but I like kind of like a more manly man. I'm like, yeah, no shit. That's called being a woman. And it's nothing to be, that doesn't mean, it doesn't mean the man can't be emotionally sensitive and vulnerable, but they say it as if it's like a, like they're almost a little bit embarrassed by it.

20:40The other, and I realize you're not a therapist, you're a lawyer, but most of my friends, and I don't know if this is generational, most of my friends kind of fit into the stereotypical mode of that the guy is mostly responsible for the economics of the household and the woman is responsible for the kind of emotional and domestic labor. That is the vast majority of my friends to varying degrees. There are some exceptions, but 80%, 90%. And that's what guys, I don't care what they say, that didn't happen by accident. That's what the guy wanted. That's what the woman wanted. That's what the guy was attracted to.

21:13He was attracted to someone who would be really impressive in the relationship and at home and a good mother and all that. And I don't know if it's because I was raised by a single mother that always worked. We had no choice. My mom was up, you know, was out of the house before I was even up and home late because she had to work. And I have always, my ex-wife was an investment banker and then the COO of e-commerce companies worked her ass off. My longest term relationship out of marriage was with a surgeon. And then my current partner worked at Goldman Sachs. I have always been really drawn, not for economic reasons, but like professionally impressive women have always flicked my back.

21:58That's just really sexy to me. Yeah, but it's not the economics, like you said. I think it's the same thing for men. I just find it a turn on. I find impressive, professionally impressive women. I want to have sex with them. I find that impressive. Well, and also what's underneath it, you know, because I have a buddy who was, I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, women like to date men with beards. And I said, well, yeah, of course, women like beards. You know, I got the clean shaving thing going, but I, you know, you got the like, oops, I didn't know I was sexy stubble. It happens. It's a thing women like, I get it.

22:28But the truth is, is that there's something underneath that. And my friend said to me, you know, the thing that's nice about a guy with a beard is it shows he has patience. Because in order to grow a proper beard, you have to have a little bit of patience. And I've always thought that about money and economic success, unless it's inherited wealth. The reality is, is what I think a lot of people find attractive about a person who's successful and competent in the workplace or who's been successful in the game of money, is it says something about their tenacity. It says something about their drive, their focus.

22:56100%. And how incredibly appealing is it to think about that drive, that focus, that determination, that tenacity being pointed at you and at your desire, your pleasure, your happiness, your goals together as a couple. When someone's successful economically, in theory, they're saying, hey, I can set a goal and I can trade what I want now for what I want most. Those are the traits we want in a partner. So it makes sense to me that these are the things people want. Yeah, that really resonates because I've read research that says women aren't physically or optically attracted to a guy with big pecs and big biceps.

23:32What they're attracted to is a guy who clearly has discipline, shows up and can commit to something because those types of attributes will make that person a good partner. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be back in a minute.

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