The Matt Walsh Show - The Realities Of Love, Marriage & Divorce

00:00:00.000 You know, we've created these ridiculous tropes of like the wife who's like, oh, he's such an

00:00:06.840 idiot to the husband and the husband who's like, oh, I married the most loathsome harpy ever to

00:00:11.380 castrate a man. And this is somehow cute. This is somehow funny, you know, and it's not. It's

00:00:17.120 not. It's a recipe for disaster. I'm sitting with James Sexton, who's a divorce lawyer,

00:00:27.020 author, someone who speaks publicly and frequently about marriage and family-related issues. James,

00:00:35.040 wonderful to have you. Thanks for sitting down with us. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you.

00:00:37.900 So let me give a little bit of background for the audience. I first became aware of you,

00:00:43.980 I think this was maybe a year ago now, several months ago. You were on a podcast with, I guess,

00:00:49.940 some guys in the red pill space. And you had some criticisms for me, which we'll get to.

00:00:55.020 And then I responded in kind of a snippy way, I think. And then we went back and forth on Twitter

00:01:00.320 and we realized that, oh, it's fine. And then I saw you on Iced Coffee Hour, a show that I've also

00:01:09.160 been on. And I thought the conversation you had on that show was really, really interesting. You had

00:01:15.620 a lot of great insights. And I'll admit that at first I thought, you know, being a divorce lawyer,

00:01:20.660 we would be much farther apart on most of these kinds of issues. But I found that I agreed with

00:01:27.100 probably 90% of what you said. I'll take that. And even the 10% that I didn't agree, it wasn't

00:01:33.060 unreasonable, you know. So I was somewhat surprised by that. I guess I'll start by asking just what

00:01:40.100 made you decide to start speaking so publicly about these kinds of issues?

00:01:45.180 You know, I think being a divorce lawyer, you get to see something that most people don't get to see,

00:01:52.560 like this very candid view of what happens when love falls apart. When people who used to love

00:02:02.280 each other and know each other with like the depth that only married people do, almost like what happens

00:02:07.860 when you weaponize intimacy. And by the time people come to my office, it's so far along. Like

00:02:15.740 it's so broken. And it's almost like someone who's gained 800 pounds and now says, okay, I want to

00:02:21.920 lose weight. Like they're at the bottom of this mountain, you know, and it's so hard to even imagine

00:02:27.220 getting up there. Whereas if they just maintained their weight, like that's so much easier. And so I

00:02:33.040 really found myself just thinking about how as a divorce lawyer, you have this very unique insight

00:02:39.520 into, you know, the dissolution of what was someone's most profound relationship. And I think

00:02:47.540 that you, you get to see it in this really honest way because you can't really lie to your, I mean,

00:02:51.780 you could lie to your divorce lawyer, but it'd be stupid. It's like lying to your doctor, you know,

00:02:54.780 our only jobs to protect you and there's attorney client privilege attached. So I don't know.

00:02:59.520 I just felt like I had a unique perspective that, that, that, um, came by virtue of my experience.

00:03:04.760 And I thought, you know, I get paid to talk and I like to talk. And I thought this would just be a

00:03:09.480 labor of love is that I would write the books and, and, uh, speak about the books. And it kind of,

00:03:14.760 you know, it, it, it caught on more than I ever thought it would. Uh, now, obviously I want to get

00:03:19.480 into, to, um, all of these, all these related issues, but I mentioned the first, the first time I saw you

00:03:25.660 was on this, uh, podcast with, I think guys that would identify themselves as red pill.

00:03:31.080 A hundred percent. Yeah. Rolo Tomasi would call himself, I think the godfather of the red pill.

00:03:34.960 And what a group of those guys. Do you consider yourself as part of that scene?

00:03:38.260 No, I don't. And I've been outspoken about that. I, I, I have a lot of respect for those guys. I

00:03:43.320 think they're asking interesting questions. Um, I've said pretty vocally that for, for guys who talk a

00:03:50.580 lot about not really caring too much about what women think, they talk about it pretty obsessively.

00:03:57.320 Um, and I, I, I don't really know that, you know, a person who worships an idol and a person who

00:04:02.440 destroys an idol are both idolaters. I think Nietzsche said that. So I, I tend to think that, um,

00:04:08.780 I think each of these spaces has something to contribute to the discussion. I, you know, I, I, um,

00:04:15.640 I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. And there were times where I've,

00:04:19.200 you know, listened to you talk about divorce lawyers and you've talked about us as like

00:04:23.460 leeches and bloodsuck. And I never kind of took that personally. Cause I thought, you know,

00:04:27.660 he doesn't necessarily know what the job is. Like I imagine from someone who's a not divorced,

00:04:34.540 never needed a divorce lawyer, hopefully never would need a divorce lawyer.

00:04:38.680 And he's never been a divorce lawyer that you would have this understandable image that we're

00:04:43.400 like predatory in some way that we're hoping marriages end. But that's like saying like an

00:04:48.680 oncologist is hoping people get cancer. Like, no, this is a problem. This is a real thing.

00:04:54.120 And it requires solutions. We don't need as divorce lawyers to stoke the flames of situations.

00:05:01.660 So, you know, I, I think to tie it back to the, to the red pill space and to that discussion,

00:05:06.080 I'm very comfortable talking to like any number of people who may share or not share my point of

00:05:12.260 view, but who have interesting questions that they can ask about marriage. Cause it's something I,

00:05:16.560 I don't claim to know everything about, you know, I'm, I'm a divorced person myself.

00:05:21.860 I'm very blessed that my ex-wife and I have had a wonderful relationship, but we, we divorced when

00:05:27.320 our kids were five and seven. And now our sons are both, you know, adults, 24 and 27. And,

00:05:33.300 you know, we've managed to have a great relationship. She and I, as, as people who,

00:05:38.080 you know, love our children in common, she's been remarried for many years. I've been in a

00:05:43.140 relationship for many years and we, you know, we, we've done a really good job. I think it's the

00:05:48.580 best second place we could be, you know, it's, it's, if you can't keep your marriage together,

00:05:54.080 um, there's a lot to be said for figuring out a way to part with a lot of love. But I think the

00:06:00.300 red pill space is a space that is asking interesting questions about, you know, why do we do the things

00:06:07.140 we do as couples? What is wrong with the divorce system and the marriage system at present?

00:06:13.440 How does it disproportionately affect men versus women? And those are good questions to ask.

00:06:18.800 Um, I probably have described divorce, divorce lawyers as leeches and bloodsuckers.

00:06:23.180 I think specifically you said leeches and bloodsuckers. I didn't take it personally, but

00:06:26.600 in fairness though, to both of us, I'd probably describe people in media the same way, even though

00:06:31.620 I'm, even though I'm in media. So there's exceptions to every rule, every rule, I suppose.

00:06:35.540 Uh, staying on the red pill for just a moment. Sure. Um, there's been kind of, and they're not

00:06:42.020 the only, uh, factors here, but there's been kind of this backlash against marriage, uh, in recent

00:06:47.720 years. Now we know, we know on the left that the left has been my view opposed to the institution

00:06:54.860 of marriage or wanting to sort of redefine it out of existence. Basically, um, on the right,

00:07:00.580 generally it used to be while we're standing for the institution of marriage, it seems like in recent

00:07:04.620 years you have people who, I don't know if they call themselves on the right or not, but they're

00:07:08.640 certainly not on the left who now have taken a very, take a very dim view of marriage to an extent

00:07:13.400 that seems new to me anyway, in the last several years. Um, what do you, what do you make of that?

00:07:20.440 Why do you think that that, have you noticed that too? And why do you think that's happened?

00:07:24.200 Yeah, I've definitely noticed that too. I think it's happening for a variety of reasons,

00:07:27.700 but you know, one of the things that I think characterizes you and your perspective, right?

00:07:33.320 Is, is you recognizing the importance of basic definitions? Like what is a woman? What is a man?

00:07:38.600 Right? So when we're talking about marriage, you have to make a huge distinction, I think,

00:07:43.840 between the legal institution of marriage, which is governed by the legislature, which is politics,

00:07:50.820 okay? Which is, it changes the way the wind blows. It changes with the administration's changes.

00:07:55.640 Like that is a different thing. There's a set of rules right now, governing your relationship with

00:08:01.420 your wife. And in five years, it could be a completely different set of rules, but you signed

00:08:08.120 up to take that ride that wherever the legislature takes it, you're going along for that ride.

00:08:14.640 That's weird. There's, there's not a lot of things in our culture that are like that. Like when you

00:08:18.780 get a driver's license, they couldn't say, well, by the way, we've changed the rules. And if you have a

00:08:23.160 driver's license, um, every year that you have it, you now have to pay the following tax for it.

00:08:27.940 Like you go, well, wait a minute. When I signed up for the driver's license, that wasn't a thing.

00:08:31.080 Well, marriage, the rules of spousal maintenance, child support, um, the rules that govern fault

00:08:36.440 versus no fault, the rules that govern equitable distribution of property, they are subject to

00:08:41.080 massive change, usually tied to political circumstances. Like there's rulings that were just

00:08:46.000 passed in New York that now changed the domestic relations law to say that if you fail to provide

00:08:50.180 gender affirming care to your child, that this is by definition proof that you're not an appropriate

00:08:55.500 custodial parent. Now that's changed with the judicial zeitgeist, right? But you've signed up

00:09:01.260 when you legally marry for that. Now, look, you and I both, you know, are people who have a Catholic

00:09:07.520 background. So, you know, I wouldn't identify as Catholic anymore necessarily, but I went to Catholic

00:09:12.540 school my whole life. So when I talk about marriage, you know, am I talking about the legal status of

00:09:17.320 marriage? Am I talking about the sacrament of marriage? Because a lot of times when I hear

00:09:21.840 people in the conservative space talking about marriage, they're talking about the religious

00:09:27.440 institution of marriage. They're talking about the spiritual concept of marriage. They're talking

00:09:31.840 about the commitment that marriage represents, but they're also talking about it from a religious

00:09:37.100 perspective as a covenant from God. And so that's a very different thing to be talking about than the

00:09:43.500 legal institution of marriage. Because I know a lot of conservatives who are rightly critical of

00:09:49.860 the government and rightly critical of saying, you know, I don't know who should make the rules, but it's

00:09:55.560 definitely not the people who work at the DMV. It's definitely not Kamala Harris. It's definitely not

00:10:01.020 Chuck Schumer, you know, and yet they're quick to say, oh, you should go get married. Definitely go get

00:10:06.180 married. Submit yourself to the jurisdiction of these people when it comes to the most fundamental

00:10:11.520 things in your life. Your marriage, your property, your relationship with your children. Those are big

00:10:16.680 things. So I think what you're seeing are people arguing about a term, but they're arguing about

00:10:26.080 different things a lot of the time. Like the left is saying everybody should be allowed to get married.

00:10:31.800 We want everyone to be able to marry. There shouldn't be any rules on marriage to some degree. You should be

00:10:35.700 able to marry two, three people if you wanted to, right? Because it's not too far of a jump to get to

00:10:40.500 those things. And then the right, you have people saying, oh, marriage is an institution. It's amazing. It's

00:10:47.320 wonderful. It's the foundation. It's the bedrock. I mean, I've listened to the advice that you give to young

00:10:51.460 people, which I don't think is bad advice to say, hey, you know, you're never going to be certain that this is the

00:10:57.000 person you should marry. So find someone you like. You have similar values. You care about each other and make a

00:11:02.620 commitment and move forward in life together. It's a beautiful sentiment, you know, and that's a worthwhile

00:11:07.580 sentiment. But I think the red pill space is somewhere kind of weirdly between that and this

00:11:13.720 sort of neo, I don't know what you'd call it. You know, it's like not quite conservative, but it's also

00:11:20.700 like trying to tear down the institution of marriage. But at the same time, it's not really, you know,

00:11:27.260 fully rejecting the concept of pair bonds. So I don't completely understand that perspective,

00:11:33.540 but I do think we have a very conflicted and multi, like it crosses party lines, people's

00:11:41.920 interest in or aversion to marriage. Yeah, I think you're definitely right that we are. We often are

00:11:47.800 talking about different things, which makes the conversation confused and often fruitless. I would

00:11:54.480 say, and I know that people in the red pill space would probably take exception to this, but from my

00:12:01.400 perspective, it seems like they take a view very similar to the lefts in that they're kind of anti

00:12:09.060 the institution. But what makes them not the left is that they are approaching it from what seems to

00:12:15.980 be pretty anti-woman view. And I use that term very cautiously because calling anyone anti-woman or

00:12:24.620 anti-man, of course, it's something the left does all the time. I thought I was going to hear you say the

00:12:27.840 word misogynist. I was going to heart attack. I don't know what's going to happen there. But

00:12:31.640 yeah, I wouldn't say misogynist, just, just out of principle, I refuse to use that term.

00:12:37.300 You could argue that anti-woman is basically a, it seems like a synonym. Synonym. I'm sorry.

00:12:42.300 And I know that they would say, well, that's not true at all. It's just, and maybe what I'm

00:12:45.940 hearing is just the problem is who I'm hearing it from. And I'm getting a lot of this from my

00:12:49.760 comment section and stuff. But most of what I get, 90% of what I hear from that crowd when

00:12:56.000 they're criticizing institutional marriage is focused on women and the problems with women

00:13:01.200 and that women are not, are not, you just can't, you can't trust women enough to marry them.

00:13:07.120 Part of that is their audience though. I think that, you know, they're, they're definitely like

00:13:12.040 Rolo Tomasi is a great example. Rolo wrote a series of books, The Rational Male, that I think

00:13:17.220 are brilliant books. They're very, very well-reasoned. He's an excellent writer.

00:13:21.800 I always really enjoyed his writing and I think his perspective, although I don't agree

00:13:25.660 with every piece of it, you cannot argue that it's not well-reasoned. It really is.

00:13:30.220 But the majority of his content online, which is eagerly consumed primarily by young men,

00:13:37.920 is, is not as, you know, academic as his writing. It's not as, because I think it's much

00:13:43.240 more popular to sort of get on and talk about, you know, the issues with women and, and, you

00:13:48.220 know, 304s and all these sort of terms that are used to, to sort of popularize that conversation

00:13:53.640 and dumb it down a little bit to make it a little more entertaining. I don't think that

00:13:58.580 it has to be that way. I think that some of these people in that space may not have much

00:14:04.900 of a point of view or may not have really thought about these things in any depth. And it really is

00:14:08.820 just born of a sort of annoyance at the, what they see as benefits women receive. Many of which I

00:14:15.260 think are undeniable that there are tremendous, you know, like we, we had in the United States,

00:14:21.920 what was called the maternal presumption until about the 1980s. And that was a presumption that

00:14:26.620 children would go to the custody of the mother, no matter what, unless you could prove she was an

00:14:31.000 unfit mother, they automatically went to the mother. Now, you know, again, is there something to that?

00:14:37.100 Sure. Under your skin is under your sovereignty. And, you know, when you, woman births a child,

00:14:41.180 feeds a child, like she certainly has a bond. Anyone who's ever seen a child and their mother

00:14:44.880 knows that there's a very special bond there. But to suggest that automatically a woman is a

00:14:51.660 superior custodial parent to a, to a father, like that's, you know, that, that, I don't know how you

00:14:56.360 could say that's not misandrist, you know? So I think that there are issues with this and they're

00:15:00.700 identifying those issues and they're giving them some oxygen. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

00:15:05.420 Too far south is north. I think that, you know, that has to be part of the discussion. It can't

00:15:11.860 be the whole discussion. Yeah. And it's certainly true that, that men suffer all kinds of unfair

00:15:18.760 disadvantages in the system. I have, I take no issue with that at all. That does need to be talked

00:15:23.220 about. What I, one of the things I take issue with is when, when the argument seems to be not

00:15:29.840 just that women have unfair advantages. Yes. Let's talk about that, but that somehow one of

00:15:35.380 the major problems for the institution of marriage these days is like the quality of women is, uh, is,

00:15:41.040 is too low. You can't marry them. And I do hear that a lot. Um, and the thing is, even that I think

00:15:47.080 is partially true that, but, but the other part that we're leaving out is that the quality of men is

00:15:53.400 also right. Is it the quality of people right now? People are, we live in a culture that does not

00:15:59.840 exactly encourage virtue. Well, and it encourages a form of like individualism above all else,

00:16:07.960 which is antagonistic to marriage. Like marriage is about parenting is about my will is not the most

00:16:15.680 important thing. I'm not the sun around which everything rotates now. Like I'm going to make

00:16:20.880 this person, my person, and I'm going to tie my destiny to theirs. I'm going to make, you know,

00:16:25.820 my heart is walking around, you know, when you have kids, like you realize that, you know, once

00:16:30.480 you're, I remember my grandmother saying to me when my, my son is now 27, when he was, you know,

00:16:34.960 little, little. And I just said to her like, God, I never thought I could love something as much as I

00:16:39.380 love this kid. And she was like, yeah, your heart's walking around, you know, and, and to do that,

00:16:44.580 you have to have some defined sense of self, but not such a defined rigid sense of self

00:16:50.620 that, that self is the only thing we've done such self-esteem work over the last 15 years,

00:16:55.940 that what do we esteem other than the self anymore? What do we serve other than the self

00:17:00.540 anymore? And so, yeah, marriage is definitely doesn't fit into that equation, but maybe marriage

00:17:05.160 is a solution to that equation. Maybe marriage is a way for people to sort of say, Hey, I'm not the

00:17:10.680 most important thing. And that maybe if I make this other person a real priority and they do the same

00:17:17.000 for me, and we have this beautiful symbiosis where we see each other's blind spots and we're committed

00:17:21.380 to each other, hard times and easy times, maybe that is a solution to some of the problems that

00:17:26.660 we're in. But, you know, again, I mean, where, where I think I bump into, to a lot of issues is

00:17:32.800 there's a lot of discourse about, you know, why women commence more divorces than men.

00:17:37.960 And there's a lot of discourse about the impact of no fault divorce. And these are all things that

00:17:42.780 I think get thrown into this dialogue and weaponized in ways that aren't honest and

00:17:48.500 aren't effective because they're, they're used by people on, you know, the, the, let's say the

00:17:53.560 red pill space or, you know, whatever we want to call it to say, well, Oh, you can't marry women

00:17:58.200 because look, women commenced divorce actions and 73% of divorces are commenced by women. So that

00:18:03.860 means women are coming into the casino, making all the money that they can and then cashing their

00:18:07.540 chips out 73%. Why does that statistic is true? Isn't it? It is. Yeah. Yeah.

00:18:12.460 So how do you, how is that not a sort of indictment on the way that women approach marriage?

00:18:17.680 Facts all come with points of view, you know, and, and, and here's the thing that

00:18:21.340 maybe a divorce lawyer sees that other people don't see.

00:18:25.960 Who commences a divorce action is not always, I would even say not often an indicator of who

00:18:32.820 wanted to end the marriage. It just means who filed the paperwork. So if a woman marries a man

00:18:40.140 and she realizes, Hey, I've cashed out everything I can for this guy. And now I want to bounce on the

00:18:44.900 relationship. I'm filing a divorce action. You're right. If 73% of, of divorces were commenced by

00:18:50.920 women under those circumstances, that's a strong argument. 50% would be a strong argument.

00:18:56.360 The reality is much more frequently than that. I see a guy who runs off with his secretary,

00:19:02.720 stops paying any expenses related to the residents. He's been the breadwinner of the family for so many

00:19:07.900 years. And he's not going to just set up like a franchise. Like he's leaving this wife and two

00:19:11.800 kids. And you know, a man who leaves his wife for his mistress just leaves a job opening.

00:19:15.660 So now he's going to go to the mistress and he's going to start going to have a family with her

00:19:19.180 now, but he's not going to take care of his responsibilities towards the family he already

00:19:22.220 has. What does that woman do? She comes into my office and she says, help. You know, the mortgage

00:19:28.000 isn't being paid. He changed the utilities to my name. I don't have a job or I have a job as a teacher

00:19:33.460 part-time because I've been raising our children. What do I do? And I have to say to her, you have

00:19:37.900 to file for divorce. And she says, well, I don't want a divorce. I'm not the one who wanted a divorce.

00:19:41.980 I want to figure out a way to reconcile. I want to go to counseling. I want to work it out. I'll

00:19:46.040 forgive him for the transgression if we could just figure it out for our kids. But the problem is,

00:19:52.660 you know, you can't force someone to stay married to you. You can't force someone to come back home

00:19:57.640 and pay the bills unless you file the divorce action. So we filed divorce actions all the time for

00:20:03.420 people who do not want to get divorced, but who are in a position. I can't just go to court without

00:20:09.800 an action and say, judge, can you issue an order? You know, I have to have an underlying action and

00:20:15.880 the action is an action for divorce. So that's why that statistic is so wildly misleading. Now,

00:20:22.160 again, I'm not saying that there aren't plenty of examples of women taking the advantages that the

00:20:29.660 system gives to them financially and or when it comes to custody and weaponizing that against men.

00:20:37.040 But you cannot just look at that statistic and say, oh, that's proof that women are cashing out

00:20:42.820 of marriages. I cannot tell you how many clients, how many women in a 25 year career just in my office

00:20:50.000 I have seen who do not want to commence a divorce action. They want to figure it out. They want to

00:20:55.260 reconcile. They want to go to mediation if they are going to split up. They want to be friendly and

00:20:59.740 figure it out. But the only way to get a judge involved in temporary orders in place is by filing

00:21:04.920 something. How often do you think, because the scenario, the hypothetical scenario you just laid

00:21:09.820 out there seems like a pretty clear good guy versus bad guy scenario. Yeah. Of course, I guess

00:21:18.700 it's pretty common, pretty common. And if we were to, this is a real life scenario and we were to go

00:21:24.360 talk to the man, he might say something like, well, yeah, I did move out of the house. But for 10

00:21:28.360 years before that, she was whatever. She was emotionally withdrawn. She, you know, it was a

00:21:33.340 dead marriage. It was sure that would justify what he did, but they would say that. So I guess my

00:21:38.220 question is in your experience, how often in a broken marriage, is there a clear this guy or this

00:21:46.480 woman is wrong and this one's right? Or is it always just a jumble of both sides are wrong?

00:21:52.260 You know, I often say that the truth is at the bottom of a bottomless pit when it comes to marriage,

00:21:57.360 because I feel like if you say, it's one of the reasons why no fault caught on, because fault-based

00:22:05.280 divorce got everybody really caught up, especially the lawyers, in proving whose fault it was that you

00:22:12.620 were going to get divorced. And it really was exactly the discussion. I mean, sometimes you

00:22:17.980 have the perfect villain and the perfect, you know, victim, but a lot of the time there's

00:22:22.460 complexity to it. You know, it's, well, he was sleeping with this person, right? But that's

00:22:27.000 because, you know, you weren't sleeping with him. Well, I wasn't sleeping with him because he never

00:22:29.380 talks to me. Well, I don't talk to you because all you do is fight when we talk. And it's like,

00:22:33.720 you kind of go, all right, well, you're right. Like, none of the things you guys did were the

00:22:38.520 solution. Like the solution was not stop talking to him completely. And then it wasn't stop sleeping

00:22:43.640 with him. And then it wasn't stop, you know, so you should sleep with somebody else. Like there

00:22:47.480 were ways to solve this, you know, that didn't involve letting it metastasize in the way that it

00:22:52.980 has. But, you know, I, I do think sometimes it's not that nuanced. I mean, you know, I've said before

00:23:01.340 that, you know, there's 10 commandments in the Bible and two of them are don't sleep with people other

00:23:07.420 than your spouse. I mean, thou shall not kill God one, but don't covet your neighbor's wife and

00:23:12.360 don't commit adultery. It's like God was saying, like, don't steal, don't bear false witness against

00:23:16.200 your neighbor. Don't sleep with someone you're not married to. Seriously, don't sleep with someone

00:23:20.000 you're not married to. And I think this shows you how long this has been a problem, you know,

00:23:25.520 a real problem in societies, all kinds of societies, infidelity, adultery, our inability or

00:23:31.740 unwillingness to control our sexual desires, you know, and sometimes you see pretty clear examples

00:23:38.120 of that in divorces where people are just, you know, running around like, like they weren't married.

00:23:43.620 You're seeing it more in the modern culture where there's really not a, you know, people aren't like

00:23:51.500 put up as heroes for being fidelitous in their marriage and being dedicated to their kids. It's not

00:23:58.120 really as sexy of a thing, you know, as, as, you know, like, yeah, I moved on. I had to find who

00:24:04.300 I truly was. And again, there's a gender imbalance there too. A man has an affair. He's a lying

00:24:10.000 scumbag. A woman has an affair. It's the guy's fault most of the time. Well, you know, he pushed

00:24:15.140 her into the arms of another man. She had to figure out who she was. You know, she, she had to find

00:24:19.440 comfort. She's human. She deserves comfort. If I dared in court to say, well, of course my client slept

00:24:24.920 with his secretary, you know, he, he needed comfort. He's human. You know, he was on a,

00:24:29.080 he was an eat, pray, love kind of a journey. I'd be, I'd be held in contempt, but you know,

00:24:34.880 in the modern time, this is an acceptable argument to make. It's certainly true that for men,

00:24:39.080 infidelity can never be a journey. That's no, only women can go on those kinds of journeys. Yeah.

00:24:44.620 In a weird way, I guess I take,

00:24:46.860 I take a weird sort of comfort in the idea that at least a large number of divorces

00:24:54.400 there's not a clear bad guy because it, then it feels like, well, as kind of, as you pointed

00:25:02.440 out, one, even if one person in that whole, in this whole storm had tried to do the right

00:25:09.180 thing, it may have, it may have saved the whole thing. But I guess when I get people,

00:25:12.940 people become nervous. I think one of the reasons they don't want to get married in the first place

00:25:15.900 is, is they worry that they'll be put in a situation where it could all go to hell totally

00:25:23.400 outside of their control and they might end up married to some sort of like sociopath without

00:25:28.200 knowing it. Um, and then you can have someone just rip everything away from you with no matter,

00:25:33.440 no matter if you do everything perfectly. Yeah. Um, and the, everything they rip could rip from you

00:25:38.700 in a divorce, it's really everything. Like it's, it's the most fundamental things. Like it's your,

00:25:46.080 when you get to see your children, it's your finances in a real tangible way. Like people

00:25:52.780 get broken financially in a divorce, not just even the process of divorce is incredibly expensive,

00:25:58.120 but, but just cutting everything in half and creating support obligations based on earning

00:26:02.240 capacity. There's so many ways this can go wrong. So marrying someone is, is such an unbelievable act

00:26:09.080 of faith and trust in the present you, but also the future you, like if you get married in your twenties,

00:26:19.760 you know, will 40 something year old, you still be the same person or at least grow in similar ways?

00:26:26.860 Like, will you, will you grow in the same direction? Because people have women and men have midlife

00:26:33.460 crisis and, and have, you know, just fundamentally shift and change in, in sometimes really profound

00:26:40.520 ways. And now this, your destiny is inextricably tied to this person's destiny and, and more so

00:26:47.280 your children who you love more than yourself, most of the time are, are tied to this person's destiny

00:26:53.180 too. And this person now knows you better than anyone in the whole world. They know your weak spots.

00:26:59.080 They know what gets to you. I mean, there's nothing more frightening than, than someone who

00:27:04.380 you've trusted with everything coming at you in the other direction.

00:27:08.840 How often do you think it is that, um, you have a situation where either the man or the woman is

00:27:14.540 just a total villain, a total sociopath and the other, the people, you know, the other, the other

00:27:22.100 party involved really couldn't have done anything to prevent it all from going South. Like,

00:27:26.340 do you think that's a, happens often? You know, those are two distinct questions. So one I would

00:27:32.640 say is thankfully it's infrequent that you have someone who just fundamentally like completely

00:27:41.500 fooled a person, like a perfect sociopath, you know, like a malignant narcissist, um, or who just

00:27:47.720 was totally like a normal person and then just did this 180. So that, that doesn't happen often when it

00:27:54.480 does. I think it's, I think more often people don't want to see what's in front of them.

00:28:01.280 So people will come in and they'll say to me, like, I can't believe he's being so petty and

00:28:05.260 vindictive. And I'll say, well, you know, what was he like during the marriage to people? Well,

00:28:09.520 he was petty and vindictive. I'm like, why would he be any different in the divorce? Like you're

00:28:13.160 divorcing the person you were married to. So if you're married to a person who's like reasonable,

00:28:17.860 thoughtful, puts the kids first, concedes the possibility of their own error,

00:28:22.440 that person, when you divorce them is very often exactly that same person. So you're going to have,

00:28:27.040 so like, I, I don't do as many straightforward, you know, reasonable divorces anymore, but that,

00:28:34.560 that is the majority of divorce. The majority of divorces are people just saying, okay, one or both

00:28:39.480 of us have decided this has to end and let's try to do it in a way that preserves our co-parenting

00:28:45.040 relationship. You don't hear about that. It's not interesting. Like I don't get invited to parties,

00:28:49.200 but if I got invited to a party and somebody said, what do you do for a living? And I said,

00:28:52.740 I'm a divorce lawyer. They go, oh my God, you must have such stories. But like, they don't want the

00:28:56.160 story of, yeah, there were these two people and then they grew apart and ultimately they decided

00:28:59.920 to divorce, but they've treated each other with respect. Like they don't want that. They want the

00:29:03.020 one where I'm like, yeah. And then he took a chainsaw and he cut the bed in half and he said,

00:29:06.420 you can have this half. And that's the story they want to hear. Those are the people that talk about

00:29:10.840 their divorce for the next 15, 20 years. Yeah. Someone actually took a chainsaw, cut the bed in half.

00:29:15.420 Yeah. You'd be amazed how many things I've had people come in and tell me that they got cut in

00:29:20.800 half, that their spouse left as a symbol of the broken home, a cut in half, whatever. There's so

00:29:26.560 many things. So here's a broad question. Why do people get divorced? I feel like this is like,

00:29:34.220 what is a woman? Because they don't want to be married anymore. No. Why do people get divorced?

00:29:39.600 I think there's a lot of reasons why people get divorced. If I was going to take like a big answer for

00:29:43.780 that. I guess I'll narrow it down. What do you think is the main, what we often hear is that

00:29:50.320 money is the main reason people get divorced. Is that true in your experience? I don't think

00:29:56.500 that's true at all. That's not true in my experience. I think money is a source of tension

00:30:01.140 between people. It gives people something to fight over. I will actually say now that I represent

00:30:06.260 people primarily in the high net worth space or an even ultra high net worth space, like hundreds of

00:30:11.180 millions of dollars, that the more money people have, the less incentive they have to be reasonable

00:30:16.180 with each other because the money doesn't really mean anything anymore. So if they spend $2 million

00:30:19.840 in counsel fees, they don't really care. And if they got an extra million or two in the divorce,

00:30:24.520 they don't really care. Because if you're getting $100 million, getting $102 million isn't going to

00:30:29.260 change your quality of life that much. So I don't think money conflict is really like the

00:30:35.700 precipitating factor of people's divorces. More commonly people say infidelity, infidelity,

00:30:41.240 cheating. And cheating is absolutely present in a majority of the cases that come into a divorce

00:30:47.540 lawyer's office in some form, whether it's an emotional affair, whether it's a physical affair,

00:30:52.760 whether it's a dalliance or like a long-term affair, like a full relationship. Those are very

00:30:59.280 commonly present. But I think it's actually overly simplistic to say that was the cause of the

00:31:05.380 divorce. Because I think fundamentally marriages end because of disconnection. I think we fall in

00:31:11.820 love very fast. Like love is an emotion and love is a verb. It's an action. So like the emotion of

00:31:19.900 love, you feel very quickly. You feel attraction. You like this person. Everything they say is funny.

00:31:24.980 They brush past you and it sends a tingle through you. Like we've all been there.

00:31:28.260 But that's not a real foundation to build something on, you know. And if it causes you to

00:31:34.720 stop seeing this person clearly and talking about important things like shared values,

00:31:39.640 shared upbringing, like what is our worldview and what was it put together by? And, you know,

00:31:44.500 what are our thoughts about faith or what the goal of life is or the meaning of life is? We don't

00:31:49.040 have some commonality towards that. So I think what really happens is we fall out of love the way we go

00:31:57.140 bankrupt, which is very slowly and then all at once. And divorce is what happens when you get

00:32:03.040 to the all at once. But to say that the all, like the infidelity was the cause? No. The

00:32:08.880 disconnections back earlier, that's when you could have steered out of this thing by trying to figure

00:32:14.560 out a way to either reconnect or better stay connected.

00:32:17.600 So you think that the infidelity is what happens during the free fall, during the all at once?

00:32:22.320 It's done by then, I think. It's done by then. I'm not saying, I've seen a lot of people come back

00:32:26.220 from affairs. That's not something people like to talk about publicly, you know, because in the sort

00:32:31.540 of, again, current climate, current zeitgeist, like you don't, you know, it's not cool to like forgive

00:32:37.280 your spouse for an affair. But a lot of couples do work through things like that. They say, yeah,

00:32:43.280 I did something really stupid and I shouldn't have. And I got distracted. I lost the plot of

00:32:47.280 the story we're writing together. And I'm sorry, it won't happen again. Like we shouldn't disconnect.

00:32:51.920 Like we should figure out a way to work through this together for the benefit of our children and

00:32:56.060 for the benefit of each other, you know, and people move on. They go to, you know, they go to

00:33:00.500 counseling or they work with a rabbi or a priest or whoever they're going to work with to like

00:33:04.380 reconnect in real ways. But, you know, it's very easy. Like, wouldn't it be great if there's just

00:33:11.060 one thing you could blame everything on? So that's what happens sometimes is he has an

00:33:17.880 affair or she has an affair. And then that becomes, well, we got divorced because he had

00:33:21.540 an affair. Your marriage had so many problems with it. Like his affair was one of them, but

00:33:28.220 it showed up way after some of these other things.

00:33:31.580 And your experience, is it men or women that are more likely to have an affair or is it?

00:33:35.420 That's changed a lot in recent years. I've been doing this 25 years. So I've seen a lot

00:33:39.580 of trends in that time. It used to be mostly men having affairs that were the sort of, you

00:33:46.120 know, the precipitating factor of the marriage ending. But I would say in the last five, 10

00:33:50.900 years, a lot more women having, you know, having affairs, a lot more.

00:33:56.180 Do they have affairs differently? Is it a different sort of thing?

00:33:58.900 You know, I've been asked that before. I don't, I don't really know that I could say that it's

00:34:05.700 that different. I think all affairs are kind of equally ridiculous. I mean, when you see them

00:34:09.900 as a divorce lawyer, you see them differently. Like we, we have like the text messages that got

00:34:14.080 revealed, you know, and like, and when you read this stuff, you just kind of look like we're so

00:34:18.960 ridiculous, like as a species, we're just so silly. Like we, we think we're being sexy or we think

00:34:24.580 we're being, and it's just preposterous when you read this stuff. But I mean, I think women,

00:34:28.960 women tend to, in my experience, in my office, the affair is like, okay, I found a soft place to

00:34:40.240 land. Like I'm leaving. I've got the next one lined up. Whereas men, a lot of times it's just,

00:34:46.320 they, they're being idiots. They're not thinking clearly. They're just, you know, it's more sexual

00:34:51.980 in nature. It's less about like, I've had a lot of, cause like, you know, I represent people who've

00:34:57.000 been cheated on and I represent people who've done the cheating. Like I represent perpetrators

00:35:00.220 of domestic violence. I represent victims of domestic violence. Like I represent my client

00:35:04.080 and you very often don't know what's really going on until you've already been retained.

00:35:08.700 And then you're in, you know, you're in this case. So you're kind of stuck with your client.

00:35:13.760 And I will say that, you know, I've had a lot of clients that, you know, you, you spend time with

00:35:21.480 these people and you kind of get it. Like I've had clients who come in and say, yeah, like I had this

00:35:26.700 affair and she found out about it usually because of the iPad, like the iMessage thing. You know,

00:35:31.780 the kids have an iPad and then you have your iPhone and you don't realize your iMessage is

00:35:35.200 hooked to your iPad. And now the kid starts seeing text messages from the secret girlfriend, like

00:35:39.200 very common. I feel like Apple was probably responsible for more divorces than, than they

00:35:44.340 realize. Um, Facebook to Instagram meta is really a big tech companies have not been great for

00:35:50.400 marriage, but. So these are, these are not evil geniuses having these affairs apparently that they.

00:35:54.760 No, they're just people. They're just people. They're just flawed people. But I'd tell you,

00:35:59.780 I've had a lot of clients in my office who particularly men who had affairs and they're

00:36:07.420 like legitimately heartbroken. I mean, they're sitting across from me saying like, this had

00:36:11.420 nothing to do with my wife. Like, and, and, and they don't realize how crazy that sounds,

00:36:18.300 you know, like I do, cause I'm going to have to argue to a judge. So I'm very mindful of how

00:36:22.500 something sounds, but you'll say, what do you mean? It had nothing to do with your wife.

00:36:26.360 And they're like, I wasn't even thinking about my wife. Like, and I go, well, that's the problem

00:36:30.740 is you should have been, but, but they really are sincere when they say I, but I really loved

00:36:37.620 my wife. I, I love the family we have together. I love the history we have. I love our children.

00:36:43.220 I love her parents, but I just, we don't, we don't have that connection anymore that we had,

00:36:50.220 like a romantic or sexual connection. And, you know, again, I'm not a marriage counselor. I'm not

00:36:56.320 a therapist, but like sex is the glue. I mean, you know, what's the difference between a roommate

00:37:01.300 and a spouse, you know, like you're, you have a romantic and sexual connection to this person. And

00:37:07.260 if that's gone completely out of the marriage, or it used to be 90% of your relationship and now it's

00:37:14.180 1%, like that's not healthy. That's not a good idea. Like it's not necessarily a, a human,

00:37:22.520 you know, a human needs not being met there. So I'm not saying the answer is go have an affair.

00:37:28.380 I don't think that's the answer at all. I can tell you from ringside seats, that's actually the worst

00:37:32.940 way to approach that. But acknowledging it's a problem, I think could be a good start.

00:37:38.180 Yeah. I mean, you say that society, we don't like to talk about the possibility of forgiveness

00:37:42.840 after an affair, which is true. I'd say we even, we even less do we like to talk about

00:37:48.520 what you can do to help affair proof your marriage. Yeah. You know, what you can do to sort

00:37:58.840 of prevent your spouse from having an affair. Because if we talk about that, then it sounds like,

00:38:01.980 well, you're victim blaming. Right. So what, so I guess we've already sort of covered this,

00:38:05.220 but what is it? I find having a, as a married man myself, the idea of having an affair, I honestly

00:38:12.940 find it mysterious. Like I'm not, and I'm sure everybody says that, but it, not only because

00:38:17.860 I love my wife and I would never do that, but also even on top of that, it just, this is the thing

00:38:23.560 that ruins everyone's life. You see just what an absolute, how it just lays to waste lives.

00:38:30.180 Everyone involved. Everybody involved. And it's like, there's, there's nothing in the world less

00:38:35.540 appealing than that. And yet, and yet people do it. It's very common. So what is it that?

00:38:42.280 Well, I think that that's a testament to how deep our desire for connection and, and romantic and

00:38:50.640 sexual connection is. And I think when you talk to people that have successful marriages,

00:38:56.320 the majority of the time, they still, you know, find like time to make sure that they're exciting to

00:39:06.920 each other, that they're loving to each other, that they, you know, um, that they pay attention.

00:39:13.680 You know, a lot of it's about just paying attention that, that talking about, you know,

00:39:20.240 what you need from each other in an honest way, having difficult conversations when you have to,

00:39:24.620 you know, neither dwelling in what's wrong in the relationship nor denying it all the time.

00:39:29.760 Like, I think, you know, look, you're, you're, you're married. You have six kids. Like right now

00:39:34.800 you're at the stage in life where you guys are just trying to like manage this like massive,

00:39:39.340 you're running a childcare center together basically. And just find in the midst of that,

00:39:44.420 you know, some affection and connection and love for each other in some way. Like that's,

00:39:48.640 you know, again, is it sex? Is it attention? Is it compliments? Is it praise?

00:39:53.360 Like when you talk to, to men who are happily successfully married, they'll very often say

00:39:58.100 like, yeah, I make a point of like telling my wife how beautiful she still is and how I would

00:40:02.240 still pick her out of it. Even just now, when you were describing your marriage, you're like,

00:40:05.880 well, I wouldn't do that. Cause I'm crazy about my wife and I've got a really great wife. Like,

00:40:09.300 okay, well you're already, I'm sure you tell her that, you know, I'm sure, you know, the,

00:40:13.580 the cynical jaded, you know, uh, Matt Walsh, when he's alone with his wife is very honest about

00:40:19.360 how lucky he is and how blessed he feels and how, you know, how, how, uh, uh, much he admires the

00:40:26.160 mother she is. Like, these are all, what, how, what does it cost to do that, to say that to your

00:40:30.880 spouse? And I think if, if, and what does it take for a wife? And again, I've never been a wife,

00:40:36.960 but like, what does it take to make your husband feel smart or sexy? You know, we've created these

00:40:43.780 ridiculous tropes of like the wife who's like, Oh, he's such an idiot to the husband and the

00:40:50.900 husband who's like, Oh, I married the most loathsome harpy ever to castrate a man. And this

00:40:55.100 is somehow cute. This is somehow funny, you know? And it's not, it's not, it's a recipe for disaster.

00:41:01.460 Like talk to married people who are happily married. And this is what I said on, on one of the shows I

00:41:08.400 was on that, that caught your, uh, your ire and made your show, which I was as a fan stoked when I,

00:41:14.260 when I was mentioned by you, but I said, marriage is like the lottery. You're probably not going to

00:41:20.220 win, but if you win, what you win is so good that it's worth buying a ticket. Now you rightfully

00:41:27.620 and fairly criticized that because a lotteries out of my control, whereas marriage isn't out of my

00:41:32.460 control. It's not completely out of my control. There's parts of it. They're out of my control.

00:41:36.060 And of course the chances of winning a lottery are infinitesimally smaller than the chances of

00:41:41.820 a successful marriage. What I meant is that it's so good. It's the jackpot, like, like 50%

00:41:50.340 approximately of marriages end in divorce. And you've got to assume there's another, at least 10,

00:41:55.720 20% that are unhappy, but staying together either for economic reasons or because of the kids.

00:42:01.080 That's bad. It's bad numbers. It really is. It doesn't mean you shouldn't get married,

00:42:05.320 but it's bad numbers. You know, it means you should take this seriously. My, my son who's 27

00:42:10.900 got engaged a couple of weeks ago to his longtime girlfriend and I am cheering for them. Like I'm

00:42:17.160 glad he's getting married. I think that it is a really, really beautiful thing to do. And if it

00:42:23.420 were, my parents were married for over 50 years till my mom passed away and, and their lives were better

00:42:29.040 for the fact that they were together and loved each other really well, but you know, is it like,

00:42:35.500 take it seriously, take it really seriously. Don't think that this is just a simple thing. Like, oh

00:42:41.760 yeah, we're madly in love with each other. We like each other. Now we've picked each other out of the

00:42:44.720 8 billion people in the world. So all we got to do now is just sort of ride this thing and it'll be

00:42:48.580 fine. No, no. Like you have to be vigilant and protect this thing. If you're struggling with

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00:44:00.880 Just real quickly, and I ask this because I don't know, you mentioned the 50% divorce statistic.

00:44:06.180 It seems like it's really difficult to get actual statistics on this. And is the 50% accurate from

00:44:12.700 your... Yeah, 50%. I mean, it's the reason why I'm sticky with this is that when they talk about

00:44:18.000 the divorce rate being over 50%, they're including people who are married multiple times. And when

00:44:23.660 you're married more than once, like second time, third time, the statistics get worse each one.

00:44:28.660 So the divorce rate in subsequent marriages is higher than the divorce rate for first-time

00:44:33.320 married people. So when you put all of those together in one category, it skews it upwards.

00:44:39.340 But some of this is just a bunch of people really bad at marriage who keep getting married over and

00:44:43.740 over. I've done... I had one guy did four out of his five divorces and three of his prenups. And

00:44:49.480 he just kept getting married. I wanted to say to him, I appreciate the sort of annuity that's coming

00:44:55.280 with this, but you're just bad at being married. Don't be married. You're not good at it. But again,

00:45:00.460 he kept trying. It's the triumph of faith over reason, I guess. But I think the statistics are tricky.

00:45:05.240 The other problem is too, is the people who stay married, but legally separate,

00:45:11.820 you know, like guy goes out for milk and never comes back and they don't actually divorce because

00:45:16.220 the statistics are compiled based on what's called a certificate of dissolution of marriage,

00:45:19.880 which is you file with the state when you finalize a divorce. There's a lot of people that

00:45:23.840 even don't go about getting divorced. They just split. They just move out and that's it.

00:45:28.560 And then there's people that stay together and are pretty miserable, but they never get divorced.

00:45:31.740 So the lowest that the statistic is ever quoted as being for first time marriage failure is like

00:45:39.880 43%, which is still really bad. To put it in perspective, Toyota had a car that had like a

00:45:46.500 0.0001% of the cars. There was a problem with the brake line. They recalled all the cars and they said

00:45:54.260 it's going to cost us millions and millions of dollars, but that is too high of a risk. Like think

00:45:59.460 about the statistic, even if it's 40%, that's a giant number of people with a giant amount of

00:46:06.080 misery. Like it's a, it's a really profound thing to get divorced. I think that's, yeah,

00:46:11.880 even 40% obviously is way, way, way too high. The only, uh, the, the stipulation I always like to make

00:46:18.720 is that let's say the divorce rate is 40%. It doesn't follow necessarily that your individual risk of

00:46:27.620 getting divorced is 40%. Absolutely. Because there are, right. There are things that you can do that

00:46:32.480 we've already talked about. There's a ton of things you can do. And, and just the fact that

00:46:36.640 you asked the question, what can I do to not get divorced or not be in a place where divorce is

00:46:43.000 anything other than a fleeting thought when I'm angry at my spouse in the moment. And there's plenty

00:46:48.500 you can do, but, but that's where I've had issue with some of the comments you've made publicly about

00:46:55.640 no fault divorce, because no fault divorce feels to me, the criticism of no fault divorce feels to

00:47:03.440 me like you're saying we should create barriers to exit. And I, I think there should be barriers to

00:47:09.400 entry because once, once you're in this situation where one or both of you are out, I don't know how

00:47:17.900 forcing people to stay in that situation or making it more expensive or protracted to get out of the

00:47:23.680 situation that you're in is helpful. But I think there is a logic to saying, Hey, this causes a

00:47:30.660 tremendous amount of pain the way we're doing it right now. There's like a huge fail rate on this

00:47:35.220 technology of marriage, right? This legal status of marriage. So why don't we make like, you know,

00:47:41.380 with guns that people are, Oh, we should have a waiting period of X number of days. Well,

00:47:45.880 I don't know waiting period about getting married. Why don't you have to take a test

00:47:49.300 with this other person? Why don't you have to sit down? Like, you know, as Catholic,

00:47:52.840 you have to do pre-cana, you know, and you have to say, and what part of pre-cana is not just

00:47:56.740 talking to a priest. It's talking to married couples. It's talking to, you know, he put the

00:48:00.500 men in a room with, with a husband and he talks honestly about, yeah, we've been married 25 years

00:48:05.140 and we're in this religious, you know, Catholic marriage and here's how we maintain it. And here's how

00:48:09.580 it's strong, you know, and the women, you know, talk to the women and, and then there's,

00:48:13.320 you know, the men maybe talk to the women, like it's a really, there's some education,

00:48:17.200 premarital education. You get a learner's permit before you're allowed to get a driver's license.

00:48:21.760 You have to take a test and you have to get your learner's permit. Then you have to drive for a

00:48:25.560 little while and they have to take a road test. That's to get a driver's license. Like this is

00:48:30.960 marriage, nothing, 20 bucks in Nevada and Elvis will marry you. And it's a legal status.

00:48:37.900 What do you think should be, I was going to mention as you already did,

00:48:40.440 in the Catholic church, this is, that's exactly the system that's put in place.

00:48:47.440 I guess you could call it a, I don't know if I'd call it a barrier to entry, but it is,

00:48:50.560 it's a, it's a longer entry. You have to walk, you know, you have to complete,

00:48:54.300 it's not so much barriers put in the way, but it's.

00:48:56.920 It's a checklist. It's, it's, it's, I mean, nothing great is ever achieved without

00:49:02.200 having to struggle a little bit. Right. And why not make it that, you know, you want this thing,

00:49:07.360 you want all that comes with it. Like, great. You got to do a couple of things. You got to learn

00:49:11.440 a little bit about each other. How do you think that this could, that could work outside of a

00:49:15.200 religious institution? I don't know. You know, I think marriage for the majority of people is not

00:49:20.580 a religious sacrament. I think for the majority of people, it's cultural. And that's the disagreement,

00:49:25.660 you know, you had with Joe Rogan and that I think a lot of people would have when it comes to issues

00:49:30.880 like same-sex marriages, they would say, well, marriage is about a commitment and it's about

00:49:35.080 validating the legitimacy of a relationship. You know, if someone says, oh, this is my girlfriend,

00:49:40.300 it's like, well, she could have been your girlfriend for like a week. It's not serious.

00:49:42.940 Whereas you say, oh, this is my wife. It's like, okay, well, that's his wife. Like that's,

00:49:46.760 that's a big thing. That's a status. You know, even though someone's your girlfriend for 10 years

00:49:50.880 or someone's your wife for 10 minutes, there may be a disparity in how well, you know,

00:49:54.920 this person or how invested in you this person is, especially when marriage is so easy to achieve

00:49:59.940 that you can just literally go anybody, you know, and just get married. So I think what does it look

00:50:06.000 like? I don't know. It could be as simple as just encouraging people who successfully are married

00:50:14.140 to, you know, be available to or talk to or have, I mean, I don't know that you can see, I mean,

00:50:20.880 in the current situation, it's, you can't tell anybody to do anything without getting pilloried for

00:50:25.200 it. So I don't really know that if you put any barrier, see, I don't use barrier as a bad thing.

00:50:32.600 I think that, you know, I see a barrier as like something they'll be overcome. It's a hurdle.

00:50:37.800 It's an obstacle. And it's something to be, find a way to climb past or get around. And so this is a

00:50:43.500 challenge, like accept that challenge. And I, I just don't know that, that, um, what the formula,

00:50:49.040 the recipe is I I'd like to think that some of the people that are very publicly talking about

00:50:57.420 the virtue of marriage, the value of marriage, like a lot of Jordan Peterson's current work,

00:51:04.360 when he talks about marriage, I think is very, very well done because he's talking about both

00:51:10.860 the privilege and the challenge and the call to action and the duty and all the things that come

00:51:17.440 with, you know, marriage. And instead of just, we spend so much time, like talking about the cake

00:51:22.980 and talking about the dress. And it's just another thing for your Instagram profile. It's just another

00:51:28.300 opportunity to performatively, you know, talk about yourself. Like we've made, we've made this idea

00:51:34.920 that is about joining yourself to another person so you can create life and sustain life. And we've

00:51:42.720 made it about me, me, me, me. And, and I don't know how, how do you do that? How do you turn

00:51:48.700 something that's supposed to be so selfless into something that's even more selfish than being

00:51:54.640 alone? What do you think are the, the major, uh, cultural misconceptions about

00:52:01.720 romance and relationships that have contributed to the decline of, uh, of, of marriage? Uh, I'll give

00:52:10.720 you, I'll give you one of mine and then I'll hear yours. Um, and there, there's a lot to choose

00:52:15.040 from. We've already talked about some of them. I think, and I've talked before about this, uh,

00:52:19.540 this idea, uh, popularized though, not invented of course, by a lot of the Disney, uh, movies that

00:52:27.440 my generation grew up on. Uh, but this idea that you, you know, you got to find your soulmate,

00:52:32.300 uh, you find, you find your soulmate and then you marry your soulmate and, uh, and then,

00:52:37.860 and then you'll be happily ever after. And you know, the problem with that idea is that

00:52:42.540 it gives, it gives you this notion that there's one person out there of the 8 billion who was

00:52:47.100 destined for you and the stars and you have to find that person. And if you find them,

00:52:53.500 then everything's going to be fine. It's going to work out. But then of course it's like,

00:52:56.680 well, you might end up marrying someone who's not that one person of 8 billion.

00:53:01.100 And then what happens when you get married and then you actually meet your real soulmate?

00:53:04.920 Um, so what I like to say is that, is that, you know, a soulmate is not someone

00:53:09.760 you make your soulmate through marriage. Uh, you it's, it's in, it's in the act of saying,

00:53:16.380 I do that you're choosing, you're selecting them and saying to them, you are my soulmate because I

00:53:22.480 chose you, right? Uh, you are the one because I chose you. It's not, I didn't choose you because

00:53:26.700 you're the one you're the one because I chose you. Um, and I think when you look at it that way,

00:53:30.800 you're taking more control over your relationship. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a,

00:53:35.780 you know, I actually think that a slight variant of that really preserves what is most beautiful

00:53:42.560 in those Disney concepts, because I would argue that that person is your soulmate then like that.

00:53:48.100 They are exactly the wonderful, perfect, flawed person. They're supposed to be just like, and they

00:53:53.800 see you as the wonderful, perfect, flawed person that you are and you're their person. And they're

00:54:00.200 going to commit to you warts and all. They're going to take the best parts of you and the worst

00:54:05.340 parts of you. And they're going to love you. Like again, love you as a feeling and love you as a

00:54:09.980 verb. And, and I think that's like the most beautiful thing. What I think is the problem with

00:54:14.700 like the Disney version of romance or what I would call like the rom-com. Like I think rom-coms

00:54:19.420 is like porn for women, you know, and it really is this idea that you'll find this one and then

00:54:26.340 it'll just stay perfect. It'll start perfect or it'll start with like a little wacky zany. Oh,

00:54:31.380 it's not going to work out. And then it'll be perfect. And then once it's perfect, it's perfect

00:54:35.180 forever. And, and only in Titanic did that actually happen because he dies. Like if he'd stayed alive

00:54:42.960 in six months, she'd have been like, all right, enough painting with the French girls. What are you

00:54:46.580 doing? Come on. Like, like get a job. You got to get it together. Like the

00:54:49.400 truth is the Disney films and all the things they all end with like the kiss and the crescendo of

00:54:56.200 the music. And then it doesn't show you like the day to day life that, that is challenging because

00:55:01.920 the world's coming at you all the time and kids are amazing and they solidify your bond, but they're

00:55:08.100 also super antagonistic to your bond. You can't, you know, just like do whatever you want as a couple

00:55:13.580 anymore. You can't, you know, have sex every time you want to, you can't go on dates as often as

00:55:17.460 you'd like to, you're committed to these kids and you might have the best plans in the world of what

00:55:21.160 you're going to do. And then one of them gets a vomiting virus and you're like, all right, that's

00:55:23.880 it. I guess we're not doing that. But again, that, that can be a beautiful imperfection if we hold it

00:55:30.660 in the right esteem. I think you're absolutely right that we, we have created this idea of a soulmate

00:55:36.100 that you're going to meet this person and they're going to be the best friend, best roommate, best

00:55:41.300 conversationalist, best lover, best co-parent, best travel companion, all of it. And if they get any of

00:55:48.660 it wrong ever, you found the wrong one. You picked the wrong one. The right one might be out there

00:55:53.380 somewhere and it might just be your secretary or it might just be your tennis instructor, you know,

00:55:57.580 and, and that to me, that feels really, really unfair to do to people, but we continue to shove it down

00:56:03.260 everybody's throats because it makes for great films, great content. We, I think you want to

00:56:08.780 believe, you know, but I don't think it's that far of a jump. Like it, you know, what you described is

00:56:13.920 not unromantic of a sentiment to say, like, I think it's a very beautiful sentiment because it's

00:56:20.880 acknowledging our imperfection, like the inevitability of our disappointing each other at some point,

00:56:27.940 if we're going to be so closely tied together, but that we're not going to give up. Like we're not

00:56:32.980 going to give up on each other. We're not going to give up on this, this thing we're building

00:56:36.440 together. And that's a beautiful, beautiful sentiment that is worthy of esteem.

00:56:42.700 Talking about cultural trends. One of the, one of the big ones, of course, is people are getting

00:56:46.420 married a lot later. Significantly later. I think the age of first marriage now for men is

00:56:52.020 30.

00:56:53.500 30s. Yeah.

00:56:54.160 It's in the early 30s.

00:56:55.060 Early 30s. And, you know, you go back a hundred years, it was probably 10 years younger than that.

00:56:59.400 Totally.

00:56:59.500 Um, so do you think that that, that, that is, uh, your experience in your profession,

00:57:05.640 uh, is that a positive development? Are people less or more likely to get divorced when they

00:57:13.540 get married later? Does it have no effect?

00:57:15.240 I don't know the numbers on that. What I can say is my, from where I'm sitting, you know,

00:57:21.180 from, from practicing in the court system and exclusively doing, you know, hundreds,

00:57:26.100 if not thousands of divorces now. I think the later in life people get married, the more

00:57:32.000 defined sense of self they have and the more challenging it is for them to unify that self

00:57:39.880 with another person. But when people marry younger, they, they're still in that transition

00:57:50.240 stage where they haven't really, you know, built who they are yet. And so it's, it presents a

00:57:58.380 different, unique kind of challenges. Now, again, like I think there's a change in when people have

00:58:02.640 children too. You know, people used to just get married and you'd have kids. Like if you didn't,

00:58:06.900 I remember my grandmother saying, cause my, my then wife and I, you know, we were married for like

00:58:11.980 two months and she got pregnant with our son. And I remember like people would do the math,

00:58:17.320 you know, they would be looking, I'd be seeing them say, Oh, when did you get married? And when

00:58:20.600 does she do? And I, you know, we've been engaged for two years, but I remember my grandmother saying

00:58:25.680 to me like, Oh, it didn't, when she was growing up, she was like, if you weren't pregnant within

00:58:29.840 six months of getting married, people want to know why you weren't sleeping together. And you didn't

00:58:33.080 wait until you had like the perfect conditions for the baby to arrive. You were like, yeah, we'll figure

00:58:36.980 it out. Like we'll figure it out. And, and that was part of what built the bond between the two of

00:58:42.440 you is overcoming that adversity together. And that, that challenge together, you know,

00:58:47.080 we had nothing when we met each other and now we've built the things that we have. So I think

00:58:51.840 that there is something lost in getting married later in life, both that you don't have as many

00:58:58.040 opportunities to grow together and endure together through challenging times. And, and also because

00:59:03.480 you have such a defined sense of self that becomes more and more solidified, a routine that's more and

00:59:09.060 more solidified. You've probably in the current culture had a lot more sexual partners prior to

00:59:15.300 marrying. So you're going to be doing a lot of comparing in terms of like your sexual satisfaction.

00:59:20.440 And there's been a lot of research on that. So I, I think that these are all factors that play into

00:59:26.000 it. But again, we, we don't look at it in an honest agenda free way. Like everybody kind of brings

00:59:33.940 their own, they look at the same set of data and go, this proves that men suck. Oh no, it proves that

00:59:38.740 women suck. Oh no, it proves that you should never get married. No, it proves you should get married

00:59:42.320 much younger. Like, and they're just taking the same data set and just all extrapolating from it,

00:59:46.780 whatever point they want to make, like their prejudgment of what the outcome should be.

00:59:51.000 They find data in that pool to support it, but I don't think it's an honest enterprise.

00:59:57.300 Well, you know, you know, my spiel on this, if you listen to the show about getting married young,

01:00:00.900 because I'm, yes, I probably talk about it quite frequently. Yes. But what you just said there

01:00:05.960 about not having, not having your own, for me, one of the big things is, is when you get married

01:00:11.040 young, you don't have your own stuff yet. Like you don't have, when I got married to my wife,

01:00:16.960 we didn't have, you know, I didn't, I had $5 or something in the bank account and I didn't have

01:00:21.440 any property or anything. And so now there's not what I hear from, from a lot of married couples,

01:00:27.060 but there's this tension of, well, this is my money. This is my stuff. And I don't,

01:00:33.220 that's not something we really struggle with because I don't, everything that we have,

01:00:38.580 we got together. And so for me to look at any of it, like for me to look at my house and say,

01:00:43.840 well, this is my house. It's just sort of absurd. Like, what do you mean? It's just mine. We all

01:00:48.140 live here. Or the money in particular, like it's not just my money. But that's because you were at a

01:00:53.320 completely different place. I mean, if you by some, in some alternate universe built the things

01:01:02.880 you built today, and then you met your wife, you know, and, and, and, you know, and have said very

01:01:09.880 clearly, like you wouldn't be where you are. You wouldn't have done the things you did if it wasn't

01:01:12.960 for her being part of your life. So that's amazing. And that's wonderful. And there's a lot of people

01:01:16.680 that would say, I wouldn't have all the wonderful things I have if it wasn't for my spouse. I wouldn't,

01:01:20.760 you know, I say it about my ex-wife to this day. We've been divorced for 15 years. And I,

01:01:25.740 I still say everything I have, I wouldn't have if it wasn't for her. She, she was with me

01:01:30.220 during the hardest times and she'll always be family to me. She'll always be someone who's

01:01:35.660 important to me. She'll always, I'll always have her back because of that. We always will have a lot

01:01:40.360 of love for each other because of that. But the truth is that, you know, if you had all the things

01:01:46.660 you have now, and then you met your wife and you're married for five or six years and then

01:01:52.840 you're splitting up, is she entitled to half of all of it? Like, that's an interesting question.

01:01:58.720 At what point do your successes become your own? I mean, that's the challenge, right? Like you're,

01:02:06.020 you wouldn't have what you have if it wasn't for your wife. Well, your wife wouldn't be who she is

01:02:10.020 if it wasn't for her dad. So, and her dad wouldn't be who she is or who he is if it wasn't for his

01:02:16.360 father. So does her grandfather, should you give him like half your stuff if he needed it? Like,

01:02:22.620 yes, there's value to family. Of course, like you owe her parents a certain debt of gratitude and

01:02:27.540 respect and you want to be there for them. You've joined our families together, but do you owe them

01:02:32.880 what you've built? Cause they helped build her and she helped build you. Like how far out does this

01:02:38.000 succession chain go? And how much do you owe? And again, reasonable minds could disagree.

01:02:44.080 Reasonable minds could say, no, no, the minute you marry somebody, everything should be equal.

01:02:49.140 But I guess what's baffling to me as a divorce lawyer is no one explains this rule set to you

01:02:54.340 before you get married. Nobody explains to you that conundrum, that question of like, when does it

01:02:59.940 become ours as opposed to, you know, what if you had the opposite spouse? What if everything you

01:03:06.640 accomplished, you accomplished in spite of this person? What if, what if this person said to you,

01:03:11.220 you know what, man, no one cares what your point of view is. Like get a job, man, get out to Home

01:03:17.060 Depot and get a job. Like this sitting in your car, talking to yourself is weird and it's never going

01:03:22.020 anywhere. And then it does go somewhere. Do you owe her half? Did you succeed because of her in spite of

01:03:28.080 her? And then the question becomes, what do you owe? And by the way, who's the one to decide?

01:03:32.520 The legislature, people that work at the DMV, they're going to get to decide how much I owe

01:03:38.040 someone and how, what we built is a we versus a me. Like that's true. That's why I always talk

01:03:44.980 about prenups. I like prenups because prenups is a couple saying we know better than the government.

01:03:52.800 We know better than the government. We know our rules. Like we have a right to our rules. Listen,

01:03:57.560 you want to wear a mask for the next five years. Cool. You have the right to, if you want to in

01:04:03.920 your home with your family, yeah, man, that's your right. And we all have the right to make rules that

01:04:10.440 match up with our specific view. So why can't a couple that's decided they're going to join their

01:04:16.160 lives and build family together? Why can't they make the rule set that they're agreeing to at the

01:04:22.060 beginning of this thing? And then they, they, they play the whole thing out with that rule set in

01:04:27.680 mind. I like that idea. I think there's a lot of, of autonomy and agency, and it's like a libertarian

01:04:34.720 thing to do to say, Hey, you know, we're not going to let the government decide what we owe each other.

01:04:40.240 We're going to decide what we owe each other now in advance. What's, um, my, uh, most surprised you'll

01:04:48.240 learn. We don't have a prenup and, uh, I wouldn't have gotten one and I've been generally opposed to

01:04:54.000 them. Um, and the reason I want to get your take on this, I guess for me, whatever, I'm not as worried

01:05:04.440 about the exit plan because, um, I don't go into a marriage planning to leave it. You know, this is,

01:05:11.640 we, we do make a lifelong commitment and I realize that 40% of people don't follow that commitment.

01:05:16.460 But when I say I do, you know, sickness and health till death do us part, that, that either means

01:05:24.120 something to you or it doesn't. And so my challenge is if I'm saying that I'm saying till death do I

01:05:30.940 part, I promise you. And yet we've already had a conversation, but if we break up, here's what

01:05:36.140 we're going to do. Then I don't know how both of those can exist at the same time because I clearly

01:05:41.320 am not quite, I didn't, I didn't quite believe it when I said till death do us part because I do see

01:05:47.740 this other possibility. Um, that's fair. That's a fair comment. You know, I, but what I'll say is

01:05:53.280 this, all marriages end, they end in death or divorce, but they all end. Your marriage will

01:05:57.940 end. I promise. I hope it ends in death. That's a weird thing to say to someone. Like, I hope that

01:06:02.680 ends in death, but I hope your marriage ends in death. I hope you stay together and it's till death

01:06:07.780 do us part, but you will part. You will do your marriage will end. Marriages end. They end in

01:06:13.220 death or divorce. But a prenup doesn't come in. But a prenup does not look, I think the reality is

01:06:19.600 there is a rule set governing your marriage. There is whether you like it or not. There's a rule set

01:06:24.540 that governs your marriage and there are legal protections in place for you and for your wife

01:06:31.220 and for your children. You didn't write them. You don't even necessarily know what they are.

01:06:35.460 You don't really care because you're happily married. And you're like, it doesn't matter.

01:06:39.020 I don't care what those rules are. I'm never going to play that game. So I don't care what

01:06:42.600 those rules are. But look, the truth is the statistics for marriage are quite grim.

01:06:48.120 And I don't think if you and your wife had agreed on a rule set at the beginning of the marriage,

01:06:53.920 that it would have doomed your marriage. I don't think that you're staying married to your wife or

01:06:58.140 she's staying married to you because you know it would be financially disadvantageous for the two of

01:07:03.040 you to split up. I don't think it enters into your mind. And I actually think there's value

01:07:06.700 in having your spouse know that, you know what, like you've built success and you've built it

01:07:13.420 alongside your wife and your marriage. Okay. If she left tomorrow, she'll be fine. The law protects

01:07:18.900 her. She's going to get a whole bunch of lovely assets and she's going to be able to have a good

01:07:23.820 life. She's not leaving though. And that must feel good because that tells you that she's not

01:07:28.500 leaving because she's not cashing out. She's staying. She's like, no, I'll stick with this

01:07:32.700 guy. Right? I mean, that to me is part of the value of something like a prenuptial agreement.

01:07:38.260 Because what you're saying is, look, you shouldn't stay with me because you're afraid of getting

01:07:42.760 divorced from me. You should stay with me because you want to be married to me. Your life is better

01:07:47.460 because we're married to each other. And my life is better because we're married to each other. So

01:07:51.040 I don't think that pretending that there is not a possibility that your spouse or partner

01:07:59.240 could fail in or abandon their commitment to you and having some rule set in place for if,

01:08:07.860 God forbid, that happens. Like, I hope you don't ever die young, but I hope you have life insurance.

01:08:14.240 You got six kids. Like, so you have it. And it's not committing yourself to the fact you're going to die

01:08:19.420 soon or young or that you need. But you have it just in case. And I don't think that there's

01:08:24.500 anything wrong with that just in case. I don't think that that, I don't act more reckless because

01:08:28.940 I have life insurance. I don't go skydiving because I've got insurance or who cares? Like,

01:08:33.220 you don't go skydiving because you don't want to go skydiving. You don't want to risk your life.

01:08:36.480 Your life's too much fun or you love it too much. Yeah, I think the argument for a prenup that I could

01:08:43.280 personally find potentially compelling, although I still wouldn't want one for myself,

01:08:48.340 it's too late. But it's too late anyway, right? But I guess it's a question of does the prenup

01:08:55.800 disincentivize divorce more than not having one? Because that's the other concern that I know

01:09:04.980 people on my side of this discussion have about prenup is that are you in some ways not just

01:09:11.060 acknowledging the possibility, but also in some ways incentivizing divorce or making it sort of easier

01:09:15.820 as an escape hatch. Yeah. Or, but you could also make the argument, I have heard some people make

01:09:21.800 the argument that, well, actually having the prenup is a disincentive for divorce in some

01:09:28.500 circumstances. What do you think? You know, I think one of the places where you and I have an

01:09:33.700 overlapping logic is we both like reality. I just like living in reality. I like to know what the

01:09:40.000 rules are. I like to know, I think there's value in living in reality, like being honest about what's

01:09:46.660 really going on. Like, and I, I, I just think knowing the rules that govern this incredibly

01:09:53.900 important, if not the most important relationship in your life, knowing what those rules are and not

01:09:59.960 letting it be subject to change by judges who are elected in a popularity contest, like letting them

01:10:07.780 decide what governs your marriage in the event it was to split up. Like that seems just insane to me.

01:10:16.060 And I, yeah, is it make it easier to divorce? It does. It does. It will make a lot less money for me.

01:10:23.520 If, if, if people went out and had prenups, divorce, when I do a divorce and someone's got a prenup,

01:10:30.000 I'm not making very much money on that divorce. I might make five, 10 grand on that divorce,

01:10:33.620 but a litigated divorce, $25,000 retainer. I've had clients who paid me two, $3 million in counsel

01:10:40.360 fees for their case, because that's what divorces are insanely expensive, insanely expensive. I'm

01:10:47.200 $750 an hour and I'm nowhere near the most expensive person in New York. Like I have colleagues who are

01:10:52.560 $1,500, $1,800 an hour and, and you know, great lawyers, but like to say that, yeah, will it make it

01:10:59.640 easier to divorce? I guess it would, it would make it less expensive to divorce. It would make it less

01:11:05.460 expensive in terms of the counsel fees. But if the only thing that is keeping you from getting

01:11:12.180 divorced is that, well, it'd be kind of difficult. I don't know what does that say about your

01:11:16.780 commitment to your marriage? Like, I don't think you're not getting divorced because it's, you know,

01:11:21.540 really expensive and kind of awful to go through a divorce. You're hopefully married because your life

01:11:26.080 is better. You made a commitment. You take that commitment seriously. And, and ultimately you

01:11:30.460 believe your life is better, you know, because of that marriage and because of your commitment to it.

01:11:35.720 So I, I just don't think that, I think the pros outweigh the cons. I think the, the ways it could

01:11:42.820 improve how people feel about a marriage and how they feel in the marriage outweigh the, I don't know,

01:11:53.120 if there's a temptation to get divorced because it's easy to get divorced. Like what does that say

01:11:58.680 about the quality of the marriage? It certainly doesn't say anything great about the marriage.

01:12:03.080 The last thing I'll say about this, I'll let you have the last word on a prenup. If you get to a

01:12:08.360 point, I totally agree with you. If you get to a point where the only thing keeping you from getting

01:12:11.720 divorced is how miserable the process will be, then you're, you're in rough shape. Then you're,

01:12:17.020 you're, you're in a dire situation in your marriage. That's like red alert.

01:12:20.580 You played a clip from your show a couple months back. You played a clip from some either former

01:12:27.480 adult film star or some music. I don't remember what it was. It was a woman. And she was talking

01:12:31.660 about how like, ladies, like get divorced. It was like, come on. Like what? Cause you don't want

01:12:37.340 to do the paperwork. Right. And you were like mocking the fact that you were like, yeah, that's,

01:12:41.840 that's what's keeping people from getting divorced is the paperwork. Like it, and this is your

01:12:45.840 commitment to your marriage is like, well, you know, I'm not committed to the marriage, but I don't

01:12:48.720 want to do any paperwork. Like this is how shallow you're at. That's what, that's why if you, right,

01:12:54.640 if you get to that point, very bad situation. Right. But, uh, if, if, if that's all you have,

01:13:03.620 if that, if that's, I look at, that's like the last line of defense, there are, there are much

01:13:08.100 better reasons to stay in a marriage, much better reasons, much better. But if you get up to that

01:13:12.920 line and that stops you and maybe you don't want to live there now, if you're living in that law on

01:13:18.480 that line for 50 years of a marriage, that's a miserable time, but maybe it stops you and you

01:13:25.160 turn back around and you find a better reason to stay married. I look a little bit like, you know,

01:13:29.460 uh, as a, as a Christian myself, um, you don't want your, the thing that drives you in life shouldn't

01:13:36.660 be the fear of hell. Like that shouldn't be, it should be more love of God and desire to be with God

01:13:42.120 in eternity. But if you get to a point where the fear of hell is what stops you for, if that,

01:13:48.680 if that's like the last line of defense and that stops you from committing whatever terrible sin,

01:13:53.080 then it's better than not having that fear. And then maybe that'll stop you. You'll turn back

01:13:57.040 around and you'll find better, uh, a better motivation. As I look at that sort of the same

01:14:00.880 in, in marriage. I, so I've never, I've never gotten close to that line where that's the thing

01:14:06.640 that stops me, but, um, maybe it's better to have it than not. I don't disagree that there is some

01:14:14.660 additional incentive and, but I, but I believe, you know, act as if you had faith and faith will

01:14:21.860 be given to you. Like, I think that when you have like faith, my feeling toward faith is that

01:14:28.980 the questioning is part of having faith. Like part of having faith is not being certain and, and, and,

01:14:36.660 and giving those questions over to God or saying like, you know, I don't know what I believe. Like,

01:14:42.480 and I, I want to be wrong. Like I want the part of me that doesn't believe to be wrong. Like I want

01:14:48.220 to believe that it's wrong. And I think the same thing can be said for marriage. Like there's a part

01:14:52.840 of anyone that goes like, what would my life have been if I hadn't tied myself to this person? Or what

01:14:57.880 would my life be like if I, if I didn't, wasn't responsible for anyone right now? If I had all

01:15:03.220 the beautiful things that I have in life that my spouse helped build with me and incentivized it,

01:15:08.480 but if I had all of them, but I didn't have this person. And I think, you know, sometimes ideally

01:15:13.160 the answer is it would be empty because it doesn't mean as much. Like I want this person more than I

01:15:17.020 want anything. But I do think that sometimes like it's worth, you know, remembering like the way you

01:15:23.520 scale priorities is by looking at what is the cost of a thing. So I don't disagree with what you're

01:15:29.620 saying, but I, I just think that all the prenup is doing at its core is taking an existing rule set

01:15:39.100 that applies to your marriage. And instead of having the government make it and change it whenever it

01:15:45.300 feels like it, it's a rule set that you and your spouse have come up with. And I like that. I'm,

01:15:52.080 I tend to prefer things that the, the invested parties put together more than government institutions

01:16:01.480 and politicians. Let me ask you to wrap up here. Um, just to make it more specific, what do you think?

01:16:14.400 Well, we'll start with women. We've talked about in general, what spouses can do to keep their

01:16:19.540 marriages to, to, to, to avoid having to visit you. Yeah. Um, so what could, what, what should women

01:16:25.460 do specifically? Sex, sex. Yeah. It's just sex. Yeah. No, I, I hate to say it, but I think that's a

01:16:31.500 huge piece. I, I, the most common thing I hear from men is that their wife stopped sleeping with them,

01:16:38.720 stopped being intimate with them, playful with them in a sexual way. Like there is a tremendous,

01:16:44.020 you know, um, amount of before marriage. Women are very much more so than ever encouraged to be

01:16:54.160 objects of desire and to, you know, use their sexuality to entice a partner. Um, and, and then

01:17:02.220 there is a equal, if not heavier, opposite encouragement about like, you don't owe your spouse sex.

01:17:10.640 You're right. You don't, you don't owe your spouse sex. They don't owe you compliments or

01:17:16.560 a kind word. Like you don't really owe each other any of that. But why did you get married?

01:17:22.820 Like if you, if you, this isn't about what you owe each other. This is about what gives this other

01:17:28.340 person joy and inspires the best in them and vice versa. And how can we do that? Cause that same

01:17:33.720 cycle of misery that people experience that lands in my office, which is, you know, like, well,

01:17:39.340 why should we, why should I sleep with him? He wasn't, he was working all the time this week.

01:17:42.580 Well, why, you know, she said, why should I, you don't want to come home when I come home? All

01:17:45.640 she does is complaints to me. What that cycle of misery, it can also go the other way. Like just

01:17:50.620 be kind to your spouse, be, you know, be sweet to your spouse, be sensual to your spouse. Always

01:17:56.420 lovely things that you were to each other when you were dating, when it wasn't like locked in. And now,

01:18:01.080 well, this is my person. I don't have to tend to this anymore. You know, that's like saying like,

01:18:04.480 oh, well, this is my house. I don't have to take care of it anymore. I bought it already.

01:18:06.920 Okay. Well, yeah, you bought it. You invested in it. It's yours. Like treat it with respect and,

01:18:12.440 and love and like, treat it like, like always be closing. You know, like you should always be

01:18:17.680 trying to like close the deal with your wife. Like you're playing above the rim. You know,

01:18:22.560 she is too. Like you're both lucky to have each other. So why wouldn't you treat each other like

01:18:27.100 that? Like, why wouldn't you treat each other? Like I've got this thing and it was loaned to me.

01:18:31.820 It's not mine. I don't own it. It's, it was a loan from God. It was a loan from

01:18:36.400 the universe. And, and I, I'm, I get to continue every day to like have this person's affection

01:18:42.560 and attention. And I want to treat them with that same affection and attention. So for men,

01:18:48.300 a lot of them, it's sex. Yeah. They love, you know, this is why prostitution is such a thing.

01:18:53.100 It's why infidelity is such a thing. Sex is important. It's important to women too,

01:18:58.200 but it is very important to men. And women, in my experience, it's not that different. It's just

01:19:07.040 attention and affection. You know, it's attention and affection. It's, it's, um,

01:19:13.800 I'm trying to think of a cleaned up way to tell a story from my book, but there's a, there's a story

01:19:20.000 in my book about, uh, when I was talking to a female client of mine and I said to her,

01:19:25.520 um, was there a moment where you knew your marriage was over? And she's talking about how

01:19:30.980 there was a type of granola that she liked to put in her yogurt for breakfast. And it was only like

01:19:35.620 sold at this one store. And she said, our husband used to always just get it for like, just when it

01:19:41.340 would just about be empty, the bag, it would just be a full bag. And she's like, she's like, it always

01:19:46.580 made me feel loved. Like it always made me feel appreciated, but I didn't have to ask him. And that

01:19:51.980 he didn't even ask for like credit for it. Like, Oh, did you see I got you your granola? Like it

01:19:56.860 was just this thing he did. It was just like, like bringing in the trash or something. It was like

01:20:00.360 something he did as just a sign. And she said, one day the granola ran out and she was like,

01:20:05.900 I thought, well, maybe he's busy. He didn't notice or whatever. And then she, she sort of like left

01:20:10.160 the bag in there, the empty bag and they never replaced it. And she said, I thought to myself,

01:20:14.620 is this thing like on its way out? And I remember finding that story like quite sad because I

01:20:21.480 thought, well, you know, like there are those little things that we do for each other that

01:20:25.000 somehow you just stop doing, you know, and they're really the thing that is so special and so

01:20:30.220 important. And I said to her, is there anything you did for him? And she, she kind of blurted out

01:20:36.880 an explicit act that she used to do with him pretty frequently and how she'd stopped. And I,

01:20:41.860 I spit out my coffee across the courthouse waiting room. So that stopped right around the

01:20:46.440 time of the granola. There was a, yeah. Yeah. Well, and she said like, I, she said, you know,

01:20:51.300 we used to like have a very physical relationship and then, you know, like with the kids and we

01:20:56.240 didn't have as much time. And, you know, she's like, we used to like sometimes in the morning

01:20:59.460 before he'd go off to work, I would just like have a little fun thing with him. And she said,

01:21:03.160 you know, and then it got to the point where I was like, well, you know, we'll do it tonight when the

01:21:05.400 kids are, you know, and then we'll both enjoy it and we'll both have fun. So, and then, you know,

01:21:09.020 sometimes like we'd be tired and it wouldn't happen or whatever. And

01:21:11.680 she's like, I don't know why I stopped. Like, I don't know why I didn't just,

01:21:15.320 she's like, it'd take like five minutes in the morning and he'd be in a great mood all day.

01:21:18.480 And he'd be texting me like, oh, this morning was so hot. It was so great. And she was like,

01:21:21.940 yeah, it was, that was my granola, I guess. Like that was what I, it was something that made him

01:21:26.400 feel special. It made him feel valued. It made him feel seen. It made him feel like I was committed to

01:21:31.520 him. And so like, what if it's that simple? Like, what if it's that simple? What if it's just

01:21:37.760 leaving your wife a note before you leave for work that says, I married the prettiest girl in

01:21:43.000 the world. See you later. Like, what if it's just that? Like, yeah, there's no product you have to

01:21:48.860 buy. Like advertisers will never jump all over it because it's like not a thing, a course you can

01:21:53.800 take or whatever. What if it's just pay attention, just be kind to this person, treat them with love,

01:21:59.680 like treat them, treat them like you're cheering for them. You know, what if it's that simple?

01:22:06.260 I don't know. I think it might be from what I see from the seat I'm in watching these people just

01:22:11.780 crush each other in courtrooms and tear apart their lives and the lives of their children.

01:22:17.680 Like, what if it's just granola? What if it's just little acts of kindness?

01:22:23.720 I had a, uh, there's a YouTube video I saw years ago and I can't remember who the guy was.

01:22:29.680 Uh, but I think about it sometimes before I was even married, but the guy was talking about,

01:22:34.840 and I, and I was never sure it resonates with me a lot. And I don't know,

01:22:39.520 I guess it resonates with, uh, with marriages generally, but he was talking about the same

01:22:43.400 issue. What can women do? What can men do? And what can women do, um, to prevent, uh, the divorce?

01:22:50.020 And one thing he said is that for women, you know, aside sex was the first thing he said.

01:22:55.600 Mm-hmm. The second thing was, was taking your husband's goals and dreams seriously.

01:23:03.560 Yeah.

01:23:04.020 Taking him, taking him seriously and taking his goals in life seriously.

01:23:09.000 And cheering for him.

01:23:10.300 Yeah. Yeah, right.

01:23:11.400 Yeah. Cheering for him. Like, I, I think a lot, a lot of men I know who are in happy marriages,

01:23:17.660 and there's not a lot of them, but the ones that I know that are in happy marriages like when you

01:23:23.820 watch their wife watching them when they're talking, it's like, she's looking at him. Like

01:23:31.820 just the most brilliant stuff is coming out of his mouth. Like, and there's just this sense of like,

01:23:37.120 wow, like, like she's like cheering for this guy. Like she believes in him, you know? And,

01:23:41.780 and that makes a man stand taller, you know? I think when you talk to men who've had affairs,

01:23:47.520 which I've had a lot of conversations with men who've had affairs, a lot of them say like,

01:23:51.820 I've had a couple of clients who, who didn't even actually have sex with the person who they

01:23:55.720 were having an affair with. They, they just solved some problems for them. I had a client who,

01:24:00.900 he had three women who he was like, just helping them with like things, financial things,

01:24:06.980 or like helping them figure out some problem that they had. And, and I was like, what,

01:24:12.620 you really weren't sleeping with this person? And he was like, no, I never, you know, he's like,

01:24:16.500 I just wanted to feel like a hero. Like I wanted to feel like, he's like, there's something about

01:24:20.600 to like a heterosexual man, like the feeling of a woman being like, you're my hero. Like,

01:24:25.920 look at that. Like, look at you. Like, I mean, come on. Why do you think we like to open the pickle

01:24:29.480 jar? You know, it's like, and then she's like, oh, and we're like, we did this, you know? Like,

01:24:35.260 it's a real thing. So why, like, maybe this is just part of being human is that like, maybe men,

01:24:41.540 we just like that. We like to feel like we're a big, strong man. And so, okay. So humor me,

01:24:47.040 you know, humor me, throw me a bone with that. Like, why not, what's that cost? Like, what does

01:24:51.840 it really cost to praise me when I opened the pickle jar? What does it cost to tell your spouse

01:24:57.500 they're beautiful or that they're funny or that they're smart or that they're a great mom or that

01:25:02.320 whatever? It's just that you're happy that you picked them, that you'd still pick them. You know,

01:25:06.560 if you were still in a room with a bunch of people, they're still the one you'd pick.

01:25:09.720 Like, what, what does it cost? Nothing costs nothing. And the dividends I think that can pay

01:25:14.760 anyone would acknowledge anyone. It's why when you say to someone, even the most unhappily married

01:25:21.420 couple, tell me about when you met, they just soften completely. You ever go to a dinner party and

01:25:28.120 like, there's a couple that it's like, maybe they got in a fight on the drive over. There's an

01:25:31.500 iciness between them. If you just go like, Oh, so tell me the story. I have the two of you met.

01:25:35.180 The whole thing, their whole demeanor changes because it takes them back to that time when

01:25:39.400 they were seeing each other with the eyes of someone who like, I'm cheering for you and

01:25:43.040 you're cheering for me and we're in this thing.

01:25:44.780 So the last question, do you have any, do you have hope for the, the, the institution

01:25:54.580 of marriage in the future? Do you have hope that eventually you'll, you'll be out of a

01:25:58.100 job or at least I hope I'll retire before you have much work to do it.

01:26:02.340 Yeah. I am. I'd love to be out of a job. I'd find something else to do. I do have hope

01:26:08.860 for the future of marriage. I do. I think that, you know, the statistic I always talk about

01:26:14.160 that people don't quote as often is that approximately 50 to 56% of marriages end in

01:26:21.140 divorce, but 86% of people are remarried within three years of their divorce.

01:26:28.460 So think about what that says. That tells you people that did this thing and saw it go down

01:26:34.280 in some version of flames, sign back up for it. 86% within three years. Like that tells you

01:26:40.900 everything you need to know about how much we want this kind of specific relationship,

01:26:46.800 this man and woman bond as a pair, two of us together. Like that's how big this is.

01:26:54.220 So I have a lot of faith in the possibility of it being better. Like one of the things I admire

01:26:59.840 in my sons in their twenties, like their generation is the way they came up with things like Uber

01:27:06.420 is by going, well, why can't we do it different? Like, why can't we, you know, like traditions are

01:27:11.940 important, but traditions are also pure pressure exerted by dead people. So like, why not ask

01:27:17.380 questions and say, well, why do we do it that way? And very often there'll be a good answer,

01:27:21.580 but sometimes the answer is, I don't know. I just, cause that's how my grandfather did it.

01:27:25.320 And that's how his grandfather did it. And it's like, okay, but they lived in a different world.

01:27:28.660 They didn't have, you know, the entire of human civilization's knowledge in their hand,

01:27:35.560 you know, that, that they could press a couple of buttons and listen to every song that was ever

01:27:39.680 written. Like things have changed. So maybe there are ways for us to, as a society, like do it better.

01:27:48.200 Like, I think there, there are, because it's important enough, but we got to find a way to like

01:27:54.720 get people to buy in. I mean, this is something that I genuinely believe whatever party lines you

01:28:00.080 belong to, whatever you think, like, I just think this is something we can all find some commonality

01:28:04.900 in. Like it really is the desire to make marriage work. I just can't imagine anybody openly admitting

01:28:13.480 that they're anti good marriages, you know, or the proliferation of good marriages. I think there's a

01:28:20.800 lot of people that are subterfuging, you know, the, the, the conditions that make for good marriages.

01:28:26.700 But I, I don't think there's a lot of people that would say like, oh yeah, I'm really trying to screw

01:28:30.840 up marriages out there. Like I don't, I don't make it rain. I sell the umbrella, but I'd love it if I

01:28:36.000 went out of business. Well, we'll end on a, on that hopeful note. We don't, we don't do that a lot

01:28:41.060 around these parts, but I think that's important. So it's more like a Michael Knowles thing.

01:28:45.240 Yeah, it is. It is. He's more of the cheerful one, but James Sexton, really appreciate it.

01:28:49.620 Absolutely a pleasure.

01:28:50.540 Appreciate it.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 04, 2024

The Realities Of Love, Marriage & Divorce ｜ Matt Walsh Interviews James J. Sexton

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