TRIGGERnometry - How Not To Ruin Your Marriage - World's Leading Divorce Expert

00:00:00.000 what is the fastest and best way for me to end up sitting across from you in your law office

00:00:06.940 infidelity would be number one men losing their job is a tremendous tracker as to divorce

00:00:12.820 very often substance use issues come up because a person starts drinking more to cope if you want

00:00:17.400 to screw your marriage up the best way to do it is to just stop paying attention to it just don't

00:00:21.640 water the plant it'll die everybody harps on the statistic that roughly 56 percent of marriages

00:00:27.740 end in divorce but the more interesting statistic to me is that 87 percent of people who get divorced

00:00:34.200 are remarried within five years of their divorce it failed catastrophically the wheels came off and

00:00:42.000 87 percent within five years go all right let's give it another shot

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00:01:32.940 james welcome to trigonometry great to be here oh it's great to have you on you are literally like

00:01:38.840 the world's leading expert on divorce which is a great thing to be an expert in i guess i feels a

00:01:43.020 bit like being like the best looking leper you're you're you're known for something that people really

00:01:48.300 kind of don't want to even talk about because saying the word it's like saying voldemort and

00:01:52.460 that somehow you'll summon it so but yeah no i appreciate that i've uh i've become well known as

00:01:57.820 a divorce lawyer right and look to be honest we're not pro divorce obviously but the reason we wanted

00:02:02.520 to talk to you is one of the things i imagine is true is if you've seen a lot of people go through

00:02:07.320 that process and help them through that you probably have a good insight into how not to be in that

00:02:12.280 situation in the first place is that fair to say yeah absolutely i mean i think if you wanted to talk to

00:02:16.680 you know someone about how to take good care of your car you wouldn't talk to the person at the

00:02:22.920 car dealership who sells brand new cars and only deals with brand new cars i think talking to a

00:02:26.940 wedding planner about how do i make my marriage and the happiness and contentment within it last

00:02:31.600 would probably be the last person to speak to if i was looking to find information about how to keep

00:02:36.780 my car in its best mechanical shape i would talk to a car mechanic because all they do is see cars

00:02:41.080 that break down all day and they see where where do systems start to fail what are the parts that

00:02:46.100 there's strain on and i think as a divorce lawyer for over 25 years yeah i've seen all the permutations

00:02:51.660 of ways that people lose something that they never meant to lose i mean i think divorce is in an incredibly

00:02:58.900 performative moment in our culture it's something you can't pretend you meant to do like everyone who

00:03:05.180 got married gets married with the hope at least or intention of staying together and yet over 50 percent

00:03:12.560 of marriages and in divorce and that has amplified over time as i understand right yeah we didn't used

00:03:19.840 to get divorced at these sort of rates no i mean divorce was not uh uh culturally as acceptable of

00:03:26.520 a thing so i think there's a huge piece of of that um but yeah no it it generally the the divorce rate

00:03:32.700 has been above 50 percent since the 1990s and it sometimes goes up as high as 56 it sometimes goes

00:03:40.040 as low as 53 but it hasn't been below 50 in quite a long time and by the way just one thing to clarify

00:03:45.100 because i think people get confused it's not that 50 of people who get married get divorced it's 50

00:03:51.080 of marriages get divorced in other words you've got some serial offenders going on that is correct

00:03:55.940 yes and and although the statistic for for first marriages is somewhere in the area of 48 so it's

00:04:02.400 not far from 50 and and what i would say in response to that because i think people say that in a way to

00:04:09.120 sort of assuage the concern of of well it's not quite as bad i mean first of all toyota had a car that

00:04:15.620 the brake line failed 0.0001 percent of the time and they spent billions of dollars recalling all of

00:04:22.140 those cars because that was considered an irrationally high risk even if it was 48 percent

00:04:27.300 48 is a gigantic number if i said there's a 48 chance when you walk out of here you're going to

00:04:32.060 get hit in the head with a bowling ball you'd either stay inside or wear a helmet but i i also think

00:04:37.080 what's important is that's how many catastrophically fail meaning that they divorce right how many

00:04:43.560 people stay together unhappy for the children for religious reasons because they don't want to give

00:04:49.100 up half of their things because there's pressure in their culture i mean let's be conservative and

00:04:54.440 say it's another 10 i would say it's probably closer to 20 or 30 but that's speculation there's no way to

00:04:59.480 prove it but now we're talking about a technology that fails 60 to 70 to 80 percent of the time

00:05:06.020 you could make an argument from a legal standpoint that that is a reckless act it's no longer negligence

00:05:11.300 you know negligence is a failure to perceive a substantial risk recklessness is a conscious

00:05:17.420 disregard for a substantial risk so there's a good argument to be made that marriage is not

00:05:22.720 not only negligent it's in fact reckless so if i'm a man and a woman i imagine some of the reasoning

00:05:27.880 is different for the two sexes what is the fastest and best way for me to end up sitting across from

00:05:34.000 you in your law office that's a great way to parse the question um i mean my answer is not going

00:05:40.660 to be a sexy answer i think because i think we we we fall in love very quickly and we fall out of love

00:05:48.600 the same way we go bankrupt very slowly and then all at once and so i think the answer i would say

00:05:56.860 is if you want your marriage to fall apart stop paying attention just stop paying attention to your

00:06:03.720 marriage just say okay i've got that now i'm married now i don't have to think about that anymore i can

00:06:08.560 focus on all the other things in life i can focus on the kids i can focus on work i can focus on my

00:06:12.120 hobbies i have this i found my person we've signed on with each other we put the rings on

00:06:16.860 we're locked in they're stuck with me i'm stuck with them that's it and no longer do

00:06:22.200 whatever that thing was that you did when you first met this person whatever the thing was that you did

00:06:29.380 that made them feel loved and seen and that that showed them that you saw them and that you loved them

00:06:35.120 and maybe inspired them to to make you feel loved and make you feel seen because i think there's a

00:06:40.960 spiral that happens in unhappy relationships you know where it's like well you're she's not sleeping

00:06:45.860 with me well i'm not sleeping with you because you haven't said a kind word to me in weeks so i

00:06:48.980 haven't said a kind word to you in weeks because we're never in the same room we're never in the

00:06:51.540 same room because the kids are really demanding well the kids are so demanding i'm at work half the

00:06:54.920 time what would you like me to do now we've got a great you're both right and miserable you know

00:06:59.900 but you could reverse that spiral just as easily which is by showing each other some kindness some

00:07:05.520 attention i mean what does it take i've often said like what does it take to leave a note for your

00:07:11.380 wife you know it was so fun watching the tv with you last night i married the prettiest girl in the

00:07:17.100 world what does that take 10 seconds 10 five seconds and what what does it cost nothing right but

00:07:24.920 when when we're dating someone when we first meet someone when we're trying to close the deal

00:07:29.380 you know we we do these little things that that again we're interested and we're interesting

00:07:37.820 to this other person and then once we marry we have a tendency to just stop doing that so i would say

00:07:43.680 if you want to screw your marriage up the best way to do it is to just stop paying attention to it

00:07:48.440 just don't water the plant it'll die yeah isn't it also part of the problem james that you sign

00:07:54.500 this contract it's a legal contract and you basically sign it when you're out of your mind

00:08:00.580 on the most powerful drug in the world it's like you get mdma mixed with ecstasy mixed with

00:08:09.720 a running endorphin type high and then all of a sudden you get presented with a contract you're like

00:08:15.000 yes i'll sign anywhere yeah wherever all over if i get to have sex and see you again one more time

00:08:21.080 amen amen and and it's absolutely that and i'll even take it a step further it's it's not even a

00:08:27.980 contract you'd get to read like the contract that you sign the marriage license that you sign doesn't

00:08:34.660 have any terms and conditions that's right it just says i'm agreeing to the terms and conditions

00:08:40.580 which terms and conditions whichever ones the government comes up with like that's why i always

00:08:46.760 tell people you know people i do a lot of prenuptial agreements and people come in and they'll

00:08:50.480 say well what's the best way to talk about a prenuptial agreement and i say well every marriage

00:08:55.160 has a prenuptial agreement every single one it's either written by the government or it's written by

00:09:02.080 the two people who purport to love each other more than the other eight billion other options

00:09:05.580 so whether you're on the left whether you're on the right whether in the center i don't think

00:09:10.480 anyone has ever walked into the department of motor vehicles and said oh yeah oh these people

00:09:16.760 should be in charge of everything these people should be in charge of my my intimate relationship

00:09:20.780 and what the rules are in the event that it falls apart so if you don't have a prenuptial agreement

00:09:25.540 what you're essentially doing is saying whatever the government thinks is best is fine with me and by

00:09:31.540 the way what other contract that you ever sign in your life other than a marriage contract can be

00:09:37.440 changed by individuals outside of the relationship with or without your consent with or without your

00:09:45.640 knowledge unless you were looking for it and following the statutory changes that are happening in

00:09:50.300 family law and when they change it to something you don't agree with you have no right to opt out you

00:09:56.680 have no right to say oh oh you know what now that there's a formula for alimony and i don't actually

00:10:02.240 think that's fair i would like to declare my marriage void and they say oh no sorry you already

00:10:06.360 signed up you already signed up so you are in this rule set that we've just made up for you

00:10:11.480 but most people don't even know what those rules are the first time they learn it is sitting across

00:10:17.200 from me it's such a profound point and it's the harshest way to learn that particular lesson the

00:10:23.680 worst time the worst time to learn how to fight is when you're in a fight exactly i think the thing

00:10:29.080 that a lot of people feel with prenuptials is that isn't it the ultimate boner killer you know what i

00:10:35.940 mean you're in you're in the romantic phase of love you this is gonna work forever see they're

00:10:41.640 not lawyers you know lawyers are i i jokingly say my job is full contact storytelling and i think that

00:10:48.220 it depends on how you parse it if you parse it as look i love you more than anything in the world but

00:10:53.680 this might not work out so we really need to sign up okay yeah you're right that's a total boner

00:10:58.540 killer like it's a lady boner killer more than anything else like most men would be like whatever i don't

00:11:02.420 care you know so like let's be honest there's not a lot of men that are prenup adverse there's a lot

00:11:07.160 of women that are prenup adverse and that's okay that's the structure of of the economy that we've

00:11:11.740 created for love because love is an economy i don't think it's a dirty word to say that love is a kind

00:11:16.560 of an economy it's an exchange of value between people and and that doesn't mean it's not useful

00:11:21.300 it doesn't mean that it's not important but it's an economy you know anytime if you're trading apples for

00:11:25.940 apples there's no need for that economy how many apples is worth how many apples it's an equal number

00:11:30.240 how many apples worth how many coconuts okay now we have something different in play but i think

00:11:34.880 fundamentally you know when you talk about a prenuptial agreement yeah you could talk about it

00:11:39.820 in that bare bones way or you can say something like you know i don't just want you to feel loved i

00:11:46.820 want you to feel safe because i don't think you can i've represented victims of domestic violence and

00:11:51.600 i can tell you you can't feel loved if you don't feel safe like fundamental to our intimate

00:11:55.840 relationships is the ability to feel safe to feel physically safe to feel emotionally safe

00:12:00.800 to feel that we can be ourselves and that this person will love us even if there's an ugly side

00:12:05.360 to us even if there's parts of us that we don't particularly like or understand to know that this

00:12:10.280 person said no i'm i'm signing up for you warts and all i'm signing up for you when you have the

00:12:15.100 flu and you look awful i love you and i'm going to be here and when you're all dressed up and we're

00:12:20.160 going out to dinner i'm here and i love you but you don't have to be all dressed up and ready to go out

00:12:24.420 for dinner for me to love you so that's part of feeling safe and i think a prenuptial agreement

00:12:29.140 is about look all marriages end they end in death or divorce but they all end so is getting life

00:12:37.820 insurance saying i hope we die or i'm certain that we're going to i mean i'm certain you're going to

00:12:43.100 die we're all going to die but really what you're saying with the prenuptial agreement is look in the

00:12:48.060 event that this marriage ends in something other than death whether it's my fault your fault the fault of

00:12:54.000 circumstances beyond our control what would you need to feel safe and what do i need to feel safe

00:13:00.640 and how can we make each other feel loved and protected and seen by each other and i think that

00:13:05.320 can actually be an invitation to a very meaningful connection between two people and is it the case

00:13:10.320 that i've read and obviously pushed back on this a lot of prenups aren't worth the paper they're

00:13:15.640 printed on or is that a merely a uk law thing no and it's not even merely a uk law thing because even

00:13:21.120 in the uk there there there are prenups that are binding the problem is and this is getting

00:13:26.560 exponentially worse thanks to large language models because now everyone thinks that why would i bother

00:13:31.760 paying an attorney i can just go to chat gpt and i can spit out a prenup a a properly drafted properly

00:13:38.800 executed prenuptial agreement that contains all of the necessary information and waivers and statutory

00:13:45.200 language is a binding contract between two people and they are very heavily enforced and i could tell

00:13:51.840 you some horror stories of prenups that i wish couldn't have been enforced because i represented

00:13:57.600 the person who wanted to set them aside but in fact they were upheld by the court because the right to

00:14:02.240 contract is a fundamental right as long as the contract is not what we call unconscionable an unconscionable

00:14:07.840 contract is a contract that no fair dealing person would ever offer and no reasonable person with

00:14:14.640 knowledge of the circumstances would ever accept so it's a very high burden on unconscionability

00:14:19.840 so prenuptial agreements are in fact binding but what happens is people go on they try to find one

00:14:25.280 online they try to save you know the couple of hundred dollars it might cost for them to have a

00:14:30.160 prenuptial agreement and they make something that's not properly put together it's not upheld by

00:14:35.920 a court and then they go around and tell 4 000 people that they know oh prenups aren't worth the paper

00:14:40.960 that they're printed on okay i mean yes prenups that you drafted yourself and didn't include

00:14:47.680 stature but a prenuptial agreement drafted by an experienced attorney who understands the law and

00:14:52.960 has experience with what these kinds of agreements need to have in order to be you know binding and and

00:14:58.000 defensible is a binding contract so coming back to to the way that marriages uh head towards ruin what are

00:15:05.920 some of the most common things that people will say i understand the big picture is you stop paying

00:15:10.240 attention to the relationship but what are the things that tend to be the the final straw that

00:15:15.440 breaks i mean infidelity would be number one infidelity is but i i often say i think infidelity is

00:15:21.520 the symptom as opposed to the underlying illness i think that people who are still deeply connected to

00:15:26.000 each other very often don't have the privilege towards cheating on each other but of course infidelity

00:15:31.120 is present in a good probably 75 80 percent of the cases that we encounter as divorce lawyers wow

00:15:36.960 and and again whether that is a function of the fact that these people have disconnected so much

00:15:41.120 and there's a human need to find connection with another person um that's entirely possible can i

00:15:47.520 just put just to clarify what what do you mean by infidelity are we talking about the sexual act are

00:15:52.720 we talking about something called emotional infidelity well how do we i'm generally referring to

00:15:59.040 some intimate contact so physical contact with some intimacy whether that's actual sex or whether that's

00:16:05.040 some other physical intimacy between two people i do think there is such a thing as emotional affairs

00:16:11.040 and i do think that is valid i i think you know if you really tried to drill this question down with

00:16:16.480 an unpleasant thought experiment and you thought well which would you rather have that your partner

00:16:21.680 you know on a random night went out with friends has a couple of drinks and ends up making out with

00:16:26.400 someone making out kissing kissing kissing right versus um them having an ongoing texting relationship

00:16:34.960 and sending suggestive messages to someone over the course of six months now one of those feels to

00:16:39.600 me much more intimate than the other so i i don't i mean i would choose to have neither if possible

00:16:46.720 but but i i think we can agree that there is something about you know the the intimacy of a

00:16:52.800 relationship it doesn't just have to be manifest in the physical it's often manifest in the things

00:16:57.840 we share with each other the vulnerabilities we share with each other the you know the the the

00:17:02.320 ongoing connections who is it we want to share our experiences with you know so i think there are

00:17:07.760 tremendous and i think again men and women maybe process those things differently i've always said that

00:17:12.960 in my experience when a man and a woman find out that their partner has cheated they ask different

00:17:19.280 questions a man's first question is did you sleep with him and a woman's first question is do you

00:17:24.320 love her and i i've always said that says something about how we interpret love in heterosexual

00:17:31.360 relationships well right and we had evolutionary psychologist david buss who's one of the founders

00:17:36.160 of the field who talks about the evolutionary reasons for that yeah you know the man's concerned

00:17:40.480 about paternal certainty effectively the woman's concerned about attachment and is he going to remain

00:17:47.040 and provide and be committed etc so infidelity is kind of the final symptom anything else uh financial

00:17:53.680 impropriety is a big piece i think dishonesty and betrayal i mean they're really all forms of betrayal

00:17:59.360 you know i i think financial betrayal is a big piece what does that look like what does that mean

00:18:03.760 where someone has been incurring massive amounts of debts and not letting their spouse know it where

00:18:08.000 someone has entrusted to their spouse usually a woman entrusting to a man that you know that that

00:18:13.680 you're a good provider and you're maintaining a financial stability for her and for the children

00:18:17.920 and in fact it turns out it was a house of cards and you weren't being honest about that

00:18:22.000 um sometimes it goes the other way where where you have a man who um you know his wife has a spending

00:18:27.680 issue and she's been dishonest about it and suddenly she turns around and says yeah i've incurred several

00:18:31.920 hundred thousand dollars worth of debt and now you know he's the breadwinner so he's the one who's

00:18:36.480 going to be responsible for dealing with it so those kinds of betrayals are you know they're not the

00:18:42.560 same as a sexual impropriety but it's similar in the sense that you know i i thought we had an

00:18:47.600 agreement i thought we were going to be honest with each other about this particular thing and and we're

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00:20:27.760 seconds to melt in your mouth sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light rich creamy

00:20:34.240 chocolatey arrow truffle feel the arrow bubbles melt it's mind bubbling and what about timelines are

00:20:42.400 there any like if you're looking at it as a young couple and you're going no one ever tells you any of

00:20:49.600 this right but well i've been married for 23 years now my wife and i got married at 20 and you know

00:20:55.760 you have your ups and downs everybody does thanks and what i think is also true from some of the

00:21:01.680 things i read but you tell me what you think is that there are certain points in the relationship

00:21:05.760 they're almost like relationships each one is unique but they all follow certain pathways where

00:21:10.800 after x number of years a certain thing happens yeah yeah is there any truth to any of this yeah i mean

00:21:15.760 you know there was often talk of what was called the seven-year itch you know that after seven years and

00:21:20.160 in variables of seven you know so seven year 14 year there there was some you know luster of the

00:21:27.600 marriage gets lost and i think there's something to that i think it's tied to life stages so i think

00:21:31.840 when you're newly married of course you're newly married it's excitement it's early days it's you

00:21:35.920 know the intoxication we were talking about earlier then i think very often within the first five to

00:21:41.600 seven years there's the presence of the first child right and the first child creates a tremendous

00:21:46.800 bond between two people they see each other in a different way it creates some stresses too it

00:21:51.280 creates some fatigue it creates a three-year-old okay so you know very well yeah yeah but but it

00:21:56.240 also in addition to creating fatigue and stress and those kinds of things it also you fall in love

00:22:01.840 with a different version of your wife she's not just your wife now she's also the mother of your

00:22:06.080 child and you watch her with your child and you kind of go like oh look at like how how our child

00:22:10.320 loves her and how much i love the fact that she loves this child and i'm sure she feels the same

00:22:14.320 way she looks at you and she says oh like it's not just my husband now this is also you know that

00:22:19.360 like my my little you know my child's father you know like and that's a very like a new person you're

00:22:24.240 falling in love with again after a few years of that you know around the kids three five maybe goes

00:22:32.240 off to school now we start to have again because this is a multivariate equation we start to have a

00:22:37.760 loss of identity because now the child is not as dependent i mean what other species other than humans

00:22:42.960 come out that half-formed that helpless right like we we come out completely half-formed and hope

00:22:48.080 whoever's waiting on the other side is going to fill us in you know so this is something that that

00:22:52.560 there is an extended period of time you're just coming out the other end of where you know you're

00:22:56.960 this is a helpless creature so you know after that passes and now this child has a little bit of

00:23:02.560 autonomy and agency and kind of is doing its own thing a little bit there is a sense of of a little

00:23:08.000 loss of identity there's a little loss of the hands-on nature of that project that can start

00:23:13.440 to create in people a sense of distance from each other or of reconnection to each other if it's

00:23:18.320 handled the right way if it's handled the right way it can be an opportunity to say hey this organism's

00:23:23.120 not as dependent on us now in that time that we used to have together that we've lost we can reconnect

00:23:28.320 during that time but very often people do other things with it they say oh you know i've been putting

00:23:32.240 off getting to the gym because you know i i haven't lost all the weight or got my body back to where it

00:23:36.960 was so they go to the gym now they're in a different social circle they're interacting

00:23:40.640 with other people who don't know them as a mom and who know them as a an independent woman or a man

00:23:46.080 and suddenly we have opportunities we have opportunities for new connections with people

00:23:50.960 that start to create in us a dissatisfaction add to this what i consider the greatest amplifier in the

00:23:57.520 world and the greatest help to the practice of matrimonial law that we ever didn't need that is

00:24:02.960 social media because in social media you're watching everyone's greatest hits while living

00:24:09.280 your gag reel right so you're comparing your relationship and all of its flaws and all of

00:24:15.040 its chaos with the curated perfect images of everyone else's marriage and parenting so of course you're

00:24:22.080 going to be very dissatisfied with yourself and you're going to feel like you're not doing as well so

00:24:26.240 i i think that that is where those things start to strain i think once kids go off to you know once

00:24:34.320 kids get some autonomy in the form of you know a car or a license or go off to university that's another

00:24:40.720 opportunity for people to disconnect um once the children have you know for example completely gone

00:24:47.040 out of the household now they finish university maybe they marry themselves or they become autonomous

00:24:51.440 that's another stress point so i think it's always transition points and stress points i think you

00:24:57.920 know for some people we have what we call the midlife crisis i think it happens later than midlife i think

00:25:02.800 it happens in the late 40s early 50s and i don't think that many people live to 100 so it probably

00:25:07.760 should be seen as the life stage of when people's children aren't as dependent on them or where people

00:25:12.880 are solidified enough in their career that it's kind of set it and forget it and it's no longer as much of

00:25:17.600 a challenge their career they know how to do what they do and it's not you know you're not out there

00:25:22.000 like hunting the way that you were of like i got to eat what i kill like you've got an abundance if

00:25:26.560 you've done it right you've got some money put aside and now you start asking questions about like

00:25:30.480 what's the point of all of this your body's starting to change in ways that are not the desirable way

00:25:37.280 there are ways that are your back hurts a little more and you know everything feels a little bit more

00:25:41.040 i'm there i've got the gray hair for it and and you start to say you know hey if i have a limited

00:25:46.480 number of days is sitting next to this person you know who we've heard all of each other's stories

00:25:53.120 and they no longer find my jokes quite as funny because they've heard them all is that the best

00:25:57.520 life has to offer because i think love if you think about it love is is not just something we

00:26:05.360 experience in our feeling towards the other person i think if you think about you know when

00:26:09.760 you first met your wife it wasn't just that you fell for her you fell for who you were when you

00:26:16.480 were with her you know how you felt about yourself when you were with her like how seeing yourself

00:26:24.800 through her eyes like the wonder she felt towards you and the adoration and admiration that she felt

00:26:30.400 for you how it made you feel about yourself i mean you're making me hard yeah yeah but i mean i think but

00:26:35.200 i think that's a piece of it you know there and no one's a hero to their butler right like

00:26:39.200 familiarity breeds contempt there's no way around that i'm not saying we don't have bonds with people

00:26:42.960 we spend a long time with but there is something about having you know a person who you have a a

00:26:49.520 physical and sexual relationship with who just thinks you're amazing totally thinks you're the most

00:26:54.960 handsome man in the world and brilliant and funny and smart and we've really culturally i mean not just

00:27:02.160 in the us in the uk everywhere we've made it sort of cute to talk about your spouse like oh my husband

00:27:11.120 is just such a lovable idiot you know and my wife is like yeah the most loathsome harpy ever to castrate

00:27:15.840 a man you know and it's sort of like quaint like that's an acceptable way to the person you've chosen

00:27:23.200 over eight billion other options that's the person you're going to take the piss out of on a regular

00:27:27.520 basis and around other people like that seems very odd to me but it is something that i think in early

00:27:33.600 days anything that person does it's kind of cute you know if she snorts when she laughs you know you're

00:27:40.560 like she snorts when she left 10 years into the marriage when she snorts you're like is there

00:27:45.120 something wrong with you why do you do that when you laugh you know it's just the nature of of how we

00:27:50.080 are so these transition points is such an interesting thing i mean my wife and i are desperate for some

00:27:55.840 time together because our son's been yeah three-year-old yeah full-on uh and i we both look

00:28:02.160 forward to that i think i'll go back home and check you better check um but how she hasn't come to my

00:28:07.760 office that is a good sign um how does how does a couple really navigate those transition points

00:28:17.760 effectively how how a couple think about those periods and prepare for them perhaps yeah so in in

00:28:24.720 my book what i talk a lot about is tell everybody the title uh well if you buy it in the uk it's

00:28:30.320 called how if you buy it in the usa it's called how to stay in love if you buy it in the uk it's

00:28:34.240 called how to not up your marriage which tells you everything you need to know that's exactly right

00:28:40.160 about the us and uk yeah and it tells you why i've always enjoyed uk humor better than us

00:28:45.520 humor from douglas adams to the young ones yeah i was i was bred on it so um but yeah there's a

00:28:50.960 chapter in the book called um hit send now and it's about this i don't think particularly radical

00:28:57.680 concept but it's about you know i whenever you send an email you know if you're sending a heartfelt email

00:29:03.360 something that you know you're going to quit a job or you're going to tell someone something you're

00:29:06.640 afraid to tell them i've always said there's something odd about when you hit send but it's

00:29:10.560 like well it's out there now like take it back you know and so that inspired the idea to me of you

00:29:17.360 know one of the things i like about email is i can be very thoughtful in how i compose what i'm

00:29:21.440 saying i can rewrite it i can leave it in drafts until the next morning and decide does it still

00:29:25.680 say what i want it to say and when i receive an email i don't have to automatically acknowledge i

00:29:31.040 received it i don't have to immediately respond to it i can digest what it's saying and i can give my

00:29:36.160 response the same thought maybe that this person ideally gave to the to the draft itself so i had this

00:29:43.040 idea of what why couldn't you in your relationship do something similar to that work that into a sort

00:29:48.960 of day-to-day or week-to-week practice of really before the fire becomes fire while it's still smoke

00:29:56.480 just sort of putting things out there and it doesn't even have to be only sort of negative things

00:30:02.560 although the the negative things are normally born like no single raindrops responsible for the flood

00:30:07.520 but the flood's made of nothing but raindrops so it's all these little things and you know if you've

00:30:11.600 been married for 20 years then you know the feeling of sitting with your spouse and you're at the

00:30:17.440 kitchen table and you're having a you know a a heated discussion about the best you know traffic

00:30:23.600 route to take to get to the place you're going that afternoon and you know 20 minutes later it's like

00:30:28.880 and i never liked your mother and she's never respect you're like wait wait where did that come

00:30:33.040 from how did we get to that how long have you been holding that in your back pocket but that's what

00:30:38.080 happens is there's these little things that build up over time so i think the antidote is to to those

00:30:44.880 kinds of catastrophic failures as silly as it sounds is very basic communication it's very

00:30:50.960 basic and early communication if something blips on your emotional radar what is the harm in saying

00:30:57.600 to your partner look i just want to say when we were talking the other day and you made that little

00:31:03.040 joke about my sister maybe you were just joking but for a second it sat kind of weird with me because

00:31:08.320 i like the fact that you like my sister and it felt like what you said maybe it means that you don't or

00:31:12.560 something so if i misunderstood you i'm i'm sorry but and then it's an opportunity for this person to

00:31:18.480 say oh no i was just kidding or to say but again it's not in the context of the conversation because

00:31:23.200 that can bring out something defensive in someone and it also gives you a chance to think about how you

00:31:28.240 parse it because if for example and i'm not using your relationship as an example but if you were to

00:31:33.280 say to a spouse when you have a three-year-old if you were to say to your spouse you know we don't

00:31:36.960 have sex as often as we used to you know we got a three-year-old running around all the time like

00:31:40.320 it's understandable but we don't have sex as often as we used to that invites a defensive dialogue well

00:31:46.320 of course we don't we've got a three-year-old running around and i'm exhausted at the end of the

00:31:49.440 day and you've been traveling all the time interviewing james sexton so i mean you know what am i

00:31:52.560 supposed to do whereas if he's spoken to my wife i mean i can neither confirm nor deny attorney clan

00:31:59.040 but if you said to her you know gosh i i miss you so much like i miss feeling even just physically

00:32:05.200 close to you you know i love when we're so like connected to each other in that way you think she's

00:32:10.080 not going to like hearing that you know and then that parlays into a conversation about like oh

00:32:14.160 remember when we did it out remember we gotta i would love to get back to that where we could do

00:32:18.800 that you know and i know i'm not around as much but man when i'm around we i really want to make a

00:32:22.800 point of making sure that we stay so connected because it means so much to me who's going to

00:32:26.800 argue with that it's all really about the framing of the dialogue and i think that that is what the

00:32:32.480 idea of hit send now is is it's the idea of of making a deliberate practice of that of telling your

00:32:38.800 partner hey i want to love you well and i want you i know you want to love me well right i want to be

00:32:46.960 good at this i want to be good at us this is important to me so i want you to feel free to

00:32:53.680 tell me when i get it wrong i'd even love it if you'd tell me when i get it right like you've been

00:32:59.440 married 20 years i bet if you said to your wife or if i said to your wife tell me 10 times that you've

00:33:07.440 felt loved by him 10 things he's done that made you feel loved five or six of them you could probably

00:33:13.680 guess i bet there'd be a few that you would go really i didn't even know you noticed i did that

00:33:19.360 or i didn't even notice that i did that like and i bet the same is true if i said to you when do you

00:33:23.840 feel loved by your wife but don't you want to know like is there anything you'd want to know more

00:33:30.000 like what a wonderful thing to know when you because don't you want the people who you love to

00:33:34.240 feel your love well when do you feel it like and when do you not feel it what are some things i do

00:33:39.920 that make you not feel my love because i know i'm not doing them intentionally you know so so what can

00:33:45.760 i do how can i get better at this you know you're we're constantly refining like it astounds me that

00:33:52.720 you know my my book is a relationship book at its core and if you walked into you know someone's home

00:34:01.360 who's married and they had the seven habits of highly effective people or the power of habit by

00:34:05.840 charles durring or they had you know any of those tony robbins you know any of those books

00:34:10.800 you go look at this jim's so successful but he still wants to keep the point on the sword sharp

00:34:15.520 like i love it you know he's always a self-help no not in britain mike you see really you see a

00:34:20.160 relationship book and you go oh what's going on at home with jim you know yeah instead of saying oh look

00:34:26.800 at this like his relationship means so much that he wants to he wants to stay good at it he wants

00:34:31.440 to continue to there's just something about acknowledging that we might not be great at

00:34:36.800 this as a species that feels like you're acknowledging you're doing something wrong or

00:34:41.280 your partner's doing something wrong or you've chosen incorrectly i don't understand why that is

00:34:46.000 you know it's so many interesting points that you've raised and one of the myths that i want to

00:34:52.320 explore and maybe it's not a myth maybe it's truth but it's misrepresented on the internet is the

00:34:58.240 classic one they're all angry menus online and there's lots of angry men who say the line

00:35:05.440 80 of women initiate divorce 78 there you go 78 people love weaponizing that statistic yeah i i think

00:35:14.080 that i understand why people try to weaponize that statistic they're trying to present the suggestion

00:35:20.160 that marriage is like a casino that women get entry to being very good looking and young and youthful

00:35:26.480 and then they get in there they watch the man accumulate a big bank of chips and then when the

00:35:31.520 guy's high up enough they go all right i'm cashing out and then they go okay if that was the case

00:35:37.440 i would be the first to say it believe me i i say lots of things that i get accused of misogyny

00:35:42.880 because i talk about a lot of gendered things and again these aren't my opinions this is what i'm

00:35:47.600 observing i represent men i represent women i've been representing men and women for 25 years of

00:35:51.920 practicing matrimonial law so i'm just reporting who's sitting on the other end of the chair and

00:35:55.920 what i see in the course people lie to their therapist all the time they lie to their friends

00:35:59.200 all the time they don't lie to their divorce lawyer there's no reason to lie to your divorce lawyer i'm

00:36:02.880 going to find out i have subpoena power i can look at all your records like there's no reason

00:36:07.040 to lie to me every my only job is to protect my clients so you can tell me the truth i'm here to

00:36:12.240 protect your secrets and advocate on your behalf so i get a very very unfiltered view of things so

00:36:17.600 if women were just saying oh yeah i've cashed out i'm doing great like i got into this thing and now

00:36:21.600 he's not doing well and i'm out or he's doing so well that i can now afford to take half his

00:36:25.520 shit and i'm gone the truth is i i don't think that's why that statistic is what it is i think that

00:36:31.440 there are probably an equal number of women that are as dissatisfied in their marriage as there are men

00:36:37.520 because men you know men represent 30 something percent of commencement of divorces something i

00:36:43.440 have seen many men do and i think i've in a 25 year career only seen maybe two women do is go out for

00:36:52.240 milk and never come back they just leave they just go yeah i'm done or they go away on a business trip

00:37:00.880 and then they send their wife an email or call her and say yeah i'm not coming home i've met someone

00:37:05.280 else i'm sorry that tends to be a male thing okay it's not a female thing part of that is that men

00:37:12.560 are still primarily the wage earners and breadwinners so they have the funds with which to go and get

00:37:16.480 themselves an apartment or to do whatever it is that they need to do to just leave but very often

00:37:21.280 when they do it they just go and then they don't make any arrangements they don't say oh and here's how

00:37:27.680 the electric bill is going to get paid and here's how the mortgage is going to get paid and here's how

00:37:31.280 the children's school tuition is going to get paid so then the woman comes into my office or an office

00:37:36.160 like it and says what do i do he left he says he's not coming back the bills aren't getting paid he's

00:37:43.120 been the breadwinner i've been home taking care of kids for the last 10 years what i can get a job but

00:37:48.240 i'm only going to make minimum wage i'm not going to be able to pay all of these expenses and i don't

00:37:52.320 know what's going on and i say okay we have to commence a divorce action and then they say well no i

00:37:57.440 don't want to get divorced and i said well it doesn't matter if you don't want to get divorced

00:38:01.600 you need a court order and the only way to get a court order is to commence an action and the

00:38:05.120 only action you have to commence is an action for divorce you can't commence an action for the guy

00:38:09.600 left there's no such thing it's a divorce action so then you have to file a divorce action so that's

00:38:15.040 where a lot of that statistic comes into play if i saw a trend of a large number of women in the world

00:38:23.920 who were just deciding you know what i'm just going to cash out on men i'd be the first to say

00:38:30.240 it i know i have lots of friends in the red pill space that would be thrilled that i could write a

00:38:35.760 book about i'd sell lots of books because there's lots of people that want to hear simple answers to

00:38:40.240 complicated questions and if i could offer it to them honestly i would i don't think that's the case

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00:40:42.400 you know i've got a lot of female friends and when they break up with their relationship or they

00:40:47.280 get divorced and i ask them why they always say the same things he he wasn't checking in he wasn't

00:40:54.000 appreciating he wasn't listening he wasn't making the effort he wasn't taking the time i checked out and

00:41:00.000 then it was a couple of years before i made the break yeah is that what you find yeah all the time

00:41:04.560 i think that's a very very um common fact pattern that you just described what i would add to it

00:41:12.480 is very often it's he checked out he stopped paying attention to me look i think attention is

00:41:17.200 for women what sex is for men you know women women men want sex and will give you attention in exchange

00:41:25.280 for it women want attention and they'll give you sex in exchange for it you know and so it's an

00:41:30.000 economy and again i i think that's a very fair economy which is why the chances of you getting

00:41:34.880 laid if you say to your partner you're the most beautiful woman in the world you're just so you're

00:41:39.200 so wonderful you know my i'll i'll digress for a second my my son texted me the other day and he said

00:41:45.840 dad can you send me some money and i said you know son i just looked at my texts i haven't got a text

00:41:51.360 from you in a week i said let me give you a bit of advice because i feel like i'm a financial booty

00:41:57.040 call for you i said and i have no problem with the concept of a booty call but if you're going to be a

00:42:02.640 man let me tell you something you need to know about a booty call if on a friday night you text a

00:42:08.240 girl at 1 a.m saying hey are you up i was just thinking of you she knows why you're texting her

00:42:15.920 if you haven't texted her in a week she's not necessarily going to be receptive to that text

00:42:21.120 but if on wednesday you think you know i'm going drinking on friday i should send that girl and

00:42:30.160 you send her a hey i just heard a song it made me think of you hope you're doing well

00:42:36.400 the chances when you text her on friday at 1 a.m and say hey are you up what are you doing

00:42:42.000 there's a part of her that's going to go i know why he's texting but you know he did text on wednesday

00:42:46.720 like he is clearly interested in me your chances are going to go up i said if you texted me on

00:42:51.120 wednesday and said hey dad how are you doing hope all's well just wanted to say hi we should get

00:42:56.160 lunch sometime soon now when you text me and say you want some money i'll be very quick to send you

00:43:00.400 that money but because you didn't warm me up at all with any kind of foreplay the answer is no you know

00:43:05.200 so i think that that's a bit the attention piece and the sex piece something men need to figure out is

00:43:11.440 pay a little bit more attention give a little more compliments to your spouse and and the receptivity

00:43:16.560 towards what it is that you need is going to be much more receptive i believe in the long term

00:43:21.280 but i do think that ultimately you know when it comes to women falling out of love when they feel

00:43:29.840 unseen unappreciated and we live in a society by the way that is constantly there's a barrage of

00:43:34.720 attention coming at women i mean any woman goes on instagram she's instantly you're a queen fire you

00:43:39.600 know all the million texts whereas men who cares shut up go to work like there's not a lot of that

00:43:44.080 coming from us dating apps the same thing happens you know so i i think that there's a tremendous

00:43:49.280 amount of affirmation coming from all directions for women this is why i've always said by the way

00:43:53.200 that i think the i don't know if in the uk you have the concept of the hall pass you have paul

00:43:58.640 so everyone has like a celebrity all right that you say like oh you know if i i get to sleep with you

00:44:03.920 know this celebrity nagella lawson was mine for a long time you know um and and you know a woman's

00:44:10.240 might be you know harry styles you know here's the problem with that equation the chances i'm not i'm

00:44:17.520 using them as examples i don't know either of them the chances of like like a male celebrity like a harry

00:44:23.920 styles meeting my girlfriend at an airport lounge and her saying hey do you want to run off in the

00:44:30.480 restroom and have a quick shag and him saying yeah why not is probably higher than if i ran into

00:44:37.600 jello lawson and i said you know uh just so you're aware i'm allowed to uh to have sex with you if

00:44:44.880 you'd like to then she's gonna go really i can't because women walk out the door and it's just they're

00:44:49.360 barraged by penis options you know whereas men it's not quite so simple so i think for women

00:44:55.040 they're that the the flow of attention that's coming from random places the amount of cultural messages

00:45:00.160 telling them how wonderful and amazing and how girl boss that we're just girl bossing them right

00:45:03.920 into the sun that's coming at them constantly so i don't know how many men can really keep up with

00:45:09.280 that but if you don't keep up with it at all and you just have a sort of learned helplessness where

00:45:13.120 you go all right look i can't possibly give her enough attention so i'm just going to give her none

00:45:16.880 whatsoever i think that's when the disconnection happens and that's when very often infidelity

00:45:24.240 happens with women i've always said men cheat more but women cheat better like women cheat

00:45:30.800 bigger women cheat in ways that are like the soft place to land the exit out of the relationship and

00:45:36.960 culturally by the way women get away with cheating in a way that men don't if a man cheats on his wife

00:45:44.800 he's a piece of garbage who couldn't keep it in his pants if a woman cheats on her husband it's

00:45:50.160 you know she was desperate for love and attention and this was her journey and she needed to figure

00:45:54.880 out who she was and she needed to learn that the relationship was truly over and only by crossing

00:45:59.600 that final threshold of being with another person did she really solidify in her mind

00:46:03.920 the distance that had developed between she and her spouse she's the hero of that story even though

00:46:09.360 she's the one who cheated do you think there's some truth to that though you you kind of did a

00:46:13.680 satirical take on it it was i i think there's truth look i think the truth is at the bottom of a

00:46:18.320 bottomless pit and i think as someone who gets paid to tell people stories i will tell you that

00:46:25.440 that you know most people if you really listen to their story there there's there's some element to

00:46:35.120 it where they're a sympathetic character i mean i'm skeptical anytime someone tells me the story of

00:46:39.840 their life and they're the hero of the story i prefer when someone tells me the story of their life

00:46:44.640 and they have heroic moments and they have weak moments and then you know that gives a credibility

00:46:48.800 to the story but yes of course there's something to that but it's equally true that you know that

00:46:54.000 the man might be in a position where yeah she just has continually beat me down emotionally and

00:46:58.880 egotistically and she's so constantly getting praise and attention and i really am just this person by

00:47:04.400 the side and meanwhile i take such good care of her and our family and you know i have a barrage of

00:47:09.360 attention from women but i've always ignored it and then finally i got so lonely that you know that

00:47:14.480 that the attention of this other female just started out as something that was kind of innocent and then

00:47:18.880 it turned into something less innocent but it really taught me how disconnected i had come from that and

00:47:23.680 how hungry i was for the connection physically and emotionally to another person that's a real story

00:47:29.120 it's a truthful story it's a fair story again the answer in both of those situations if we're being

00:47:35.040 moral and truthful is to go back to our partner and say hey i'm thinking of sleeping with this other

00:47:41.600 person that's how far apart we are now can we fix this because if we can't let's end it and if we want

00:47:49.840 to fix it okay then we got to fix it because it's broken right now we don't want to do that that's hard

00:47:56.000 but that's exactly the right thing to do it's exactly the right thing to do it's the only thing to

00:48:00.960 do it's the moral thing to do i mean but it's understandable that people don't do that right

00:48:07.280 i mean i i my sons are adults now but when they were growing up i said to them look i don't have a

00:48:12.080 lot of wisdom to offer you because i think a lot of the wisdom that's out there isn't worth very much

00:48:16.960 but the most wise thing i've ever been taught and the most wise thing i have to import to you is that

00:48:22.000 the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are almost always the same thing that's such a good point

00:48:29.680 about life in general but in relationships in particular because in a marriage the hard thing

00:48:35.600 to do is to tell your spouse how you're feeling honestly and candidly the hard thing to do is when

00:48:41.840 your spouse says something critical of you or something you don't want to hear but need to hear

00:48:46.720 to hear it from love to hear it as yeah this person wants to tell me the truth they love me enough to

00:48:53.040 tell me an uncomfortable truth like that's the that's the hard thing to do but it's the right thing to do

00:48:58.160 it's the right thing to do if you want what you purported to have wanted when you married this

00:49:03.280 person which is i want it to be you and i the two of us a team together connected holding each other's

00:49:10.000 hand in this terrifying uncertain world and we will have each other because i i i tell you i believe

00:49:17.040 very deeply in the romantic love of two people i really believe in the i won't even say marriage

00:49:24.160 because i think marriage and love are you know correlation isn't causation and i don't really

00:49:28.640 know that there's even much of a correlation between marriage and love but i i don't think

00:49:32.480 i can learn everything i need to know about myself from myself i need someone who sees my blind spots and

00:49:38.640 i want to have someone who i can help see theirs and and we can ideally at the end of our lives

00:49:45.680 i mean there's no greater blessing i could offer your marriage than to say

00:49:50.320 that i hope at the end of your life your spouse says this person helped me become the most authentic

00:49:58.000 version of myself the realist version of myself and that you can look at her and say you helped me

00:50:03.360 become the best and most authentic version of who i am like that what greater blessing could you offer

00:50:09.840 someone's marriage than that james and there's some other stats that i want to look into as well because

00:50:15.120 i'd be very we go from love to step just right in there just me and james are having a conversation

00:50:20.320 about marriage typical man but what about this numbers yeah go on man go on so i read this stat

00:50:28.240 that i think it's around a third of men leave their wife or initiate divorce when they have cancer

00:50:35.760 or they get diagnosed with a serious illness the man gets cancer the woman the woman gets cancer right

00:50:40.960 and on the flip side another stat that i read was uh about i think it's 30 percent of all the

00:50:49.120 women initiate divorce when the man loses his job yes how true is that yeah or are there myths

00:50:55.920 surrounding it and is it just stats that we actually need to explode the cancer one i can't speak to

00:51:01.920 i i will certainly say that in my experience of watching the demise of thousands of marriages ringside

00:51:10.720 that i i do think men sometimes hit the eject button faster than women when challenges occur

00:51:18.320 which is always uh a bit surprising to me because i do think the masculine ideal is one of meeting

00:51:26.560 challenges and the warrior concept and so i i've always found that sort of baffling that when things get

00:51:34.400 hard in a relationship that a man would um not want to deal with the hard aspect of it is a little

00:51:41.360 strange but i can't speak to the veracity of that statistic i can tell you if if the statistic about

00:51:47.280 job loss is only one third i'd be surprised i think it's probably actually much higher than that my

00:51:53.280 experience is that when men lose their job there is a tremendous high divorce rate that comes with it the

00:51:59.920 only the only the only thing that i have seen as reliable of a tracker of a coming divorce other

00:52:08.160 than a man losing his primary wage earning function losing his primary job is the death of a child the

00:52:17.360 death of a child is almost always the death of a marriage that when people lose a child the statistics

00:52:22.640 are are very very grim over 85 percent of people who lose a child uh end up getting divorced partly

00:52:29.760 because i think they remind each other of this very painful reality of of having lost a child but men

00:52:36.000 losing their job is a tremendous tracker as to divorce i think again there is a school of thought

00:52:43.440 that would like to say that that's that women are cashing out the chips and oh well he lost his job

00:52:48.720 he's no longer useful i think the the rate of increased substance use issues that comes with

00:52:55.520 a man losing his job i think scott galloway could speak very intelligently to this that um the the

00:53:00.880 things that happen to a man as his place in the society in the ecosystem of the world that that when

00:53:08.160 a man loses his job he is losing his manhood he is losing his function as a wage earner he is losing

00:53:14.880 the the way he defines himself i mean within the first 10 minutes of meeting a man oh so what is

00:53:19.120 it that you do you know it's i mean it's ingrained in our cultural zeitgeist as to how we interact

00:53:24.240 with each other i mean in in japan you hand your business card to someone and you take their business

00:53:28.560 card it's sort of fundamental to so what is it that you do you know so i think when a man loses that

00:53:33.040 he's losing his identity very often substance use issues come up because a person starts drinking more

00:53:37.360 to cope with the stress and depression that comes with having lost their job so it's also a powerlessness

00:53:43.200 that men have to experience when you lose your job i mean very often you're talking about people who

00:53:46.800 work within the context of a corporate structure so when they lose their job it's through no fault

00:53:51.760 of their own but also they're utterly powerless and now they can't provide for their family they

00:53:57.680 feel powerless they feel impotent they feel awful and that's going to impact the manner in which they

00:54:02.400 interact with their spouse so again if a woman files for divorce because they're oh you lost your

00:54:07.600 job sorry i'm out that is probably different but i don't think statistically that's what's happening i

00:54:12.000 think what's happening is a man loses his job and then some time passes and during that time period

00:54:17.200 very often that man increases the amount he's drinking he's angry he's frustrated he's lashing

00:54:22.480 out at his spouse these are all things that have a concomitant effect so then when she leaves oh you're

00:54:28.480 leaving me because i lost my job no i'm leaving you because you lost your job you've been sitting

00:54:33.440 around the house depressed you're screaming at me and at the children constantly and you're drinking

00:54:37.920 10 times more than you used to so if you want to say it's because you lost your job yeah that was

00:54:42.720 the first domino that fell but plenty of people lose their job and don't add all of those you know

00:54:48.560 injuries to the insult right so i think that is that is again one of those i wish i'm constantly

00:54:55.520 looking for patterns i'm constantly older man younger woman younger man older woman like what what

00:55:01.920 i'm constantly lived together before didn't same religion different religion do jews do better at

00:55:06.640 marriage than christians how are muslims at it like i'm constantly trying to look for patterns

00:55:10.960 if they were there i'd be the first person to say it but i i really don't i think we are

00:55:16.320 multi-dimensional organisms human emotional complexity comes into this and it's an ecosystem

00:55:22.080 you know and like any ecosystem like you take the lizards out of the ecosystem you don't have the

00:55:27.760 same ecosystem less lizards because the lizards ate the insect and the insect ate the plant and the plant

00:55:33.920 was something that this other animal ate and now everything's screwed up we have a whole new

00:55:38.400 ecosystem so man loses his job or a baby is born or a person gets diagnosed with cancer it's not just

00:55:45.520 we have the old marriage plus baby or we have the only i'm sure when you look at your marriage it's not

00:55:50.880 it was our marriage plus baby it's like before baby after baby correct everything is different

00:55:56.240 after that because it's an ecosystem it's a non-additive system so you have to think about

00:56:01.440 the problems in marriage that same way which is why when you're saying to people here's how you

00:56:06.400 fix marriage or or better yet maintain it because it's a whole lot easier to maintain it than to fix

00:56:13.040 it it's like it's a whole lot easier to maintain a healthy weight than to gain a ton of weight and

00:56:17.440 then try to lose it so my books my writing all of my speaking on this is all about how do you stay in

00:56:24.320 love it's easy to fall in love any idiot can do it but now we're in love how do we stay there

00:56:31.040 because once we go off the cliff and we fall out of love it's much much hard

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00:57:52.640 it's a really profound point and there's another thing i want to talk to you about which angry men

00:57:59.760 talk about and it's not just what reddit groups are you hanging out in really i'm too right-wing

00:58:05.360 yeah i was gonna say yeah no i'm joking but it's a very serious issue and i've seen friends go through

00:58:10.400 it and it's really really has a profound impact on them which is the family courts and they say

00:58:16.880 family courts are biased in favor of the mother you know it's as a man you're going to always get

00:58:22.560 a rough deal it feels like you're always trying to prove that you're not an arsehole and you're

00:58:27.440 going to get completely cleaned out by lawyers etc what are the truths yeah what are the myths

00:58:34.160 what's the gray areas yeah i mean look that is fair comment i i i will not say that it that all

00:58:40.480 court look courts are made up of people i mean our legal system i i jokingly say our legal system is

00:58:45.680 the worst one in the world except for all the other ones but but you're absolutely correct that there are

00:58:52.160 a gigantic number of men that get an incredibly raw deal in the family court system why i think there's

00:58:59.920 a very complex myriad of answers to that question i think you have to start with the fact that under

00:59:06.480 her skin is under her sovereignty right so a baby is born from a woman maybe it's a controversial thing

00:59:13.040 to say that but i don't think it shouldn't be but you are you know in new york this is a controversial

00:59:18.000 thing to say but women have babies yeah and women theoretically feed babies right so so there is a

00:59:24.640 a bond between a mother and an infant that is undeniable and i don't think that we devalue men

00:59:30.240 i don't think it's misandrist to say that there is a very special and unique bond between mother and baby

00:59:35.760 100 she carried this child for nine months the sound the scent all of the things this there is

00:59:41.760 a bond between mothers and children that is beyond something that men particularly when they're in

00:59:47.760 those what we call tender years or those very early infant years very hard and look i say that as a

00:59:52.800 father when my kids have a very deep relationship with me they always have but when they get sick they

00:59:58.400 want their mom when they are scared they want their mom when they're they love their mom especially when

01:00:03.040 they were quite little when they were afraid of the monster in the closet they needed dad and i was

01:00:06.480 very quick to come in with the anti-monster powder that was actually just baby tallick but they didn't

01:00:10.480 know it um but the reality is that yes we we serve different roles to some degree and the woman's role

01:00:16.400 with a child early on is very profound so we're starting from that place now courts are made up of people

01:00:25.600 and for a long time like many institutions of power i mean early in my career 25 years ago the bench

01:00:31.920 was predominantly white heterosexual men it was old white men it was old men with gray hair like

01:00:37.600 it was great because i would go in and i would wear my suit and i was very sort of i looked like the

01:00:41.120 kind of guy they used to have a beer with when they were young and i kept my hair short and i kept my

01:00:45.280 face you know nicely shaved so that i would please that type of a person that has changed dramatically

01:00:50.960 like judges now primarily women very often women of color very often uh lesbian women of color um there

01:00:58.720 there has become a you know again the bench particularly in new york where i practice

01:01:04.080 resembles society now and and it almost has over corrected in the same way that like every bank

01:01:09.920 commercial the bank officer is black you know the couple is biracial or gay or gay and biracial like

01:01:15.920 we've just created this world of like oh yes this is the imagined world that we all would like to live

01:01:20.400 in and the bench is starting to look like that now again what has that created well it's created

01:01:26.720 opportunities for the court system to view gender differently to view male and female roles

01:01:35.120 differently we also now have marriage equality so you know you have two men with children two women

01:01:39.600 with children so there's no mother or father there's now just two parent one and parent two so a lot of

01:01:45.920 that has changed i will tell you it's gotten better in recent years because when it was primarily old white

01:01:51.920 men they were looking at it and going like well mothers sacred mothers mothers are the greatest my

01:01:57.840 mother was the greatest you know and they their fathers were like my father my father went to work

01:02:02.480 every day i didn't make my mother did all the heavy lifting of parenting my dad kept the lights on and

01:02:07.280 he was there to discipline us every now and again and go out back and play catch and things like that

01:02:11.440 taught me how to fish but is he you know the person who on a day-to-day basis what happened at school

01:02:16.800 are you okay and your friend got in a fight with you oh my gosh i must have felt that was my mom that

01:02:21.760 was all my mom and that was okay that was their respective roles so a lot of the former bench that's

01:02:30.000 how they viewed society that's how they viewed you know again they're humans these are like judges are

01:02:35.360 just people like there's a school of thought that says you know what do you call a lawyer with a 50

01:02:40.800 iq your honor because i make per year about 30 times what a judge makes so if i'm an intelligent

01:02:51.520 lawyer unless i'm incredibly deeply committed to the furtherance of justice which not that many

01:02:58.160 people are that deeply committed to that that they would give up a 30x pay increase you're not getting

01:03:03.760 the best and brightest people in the world on the bench no offense to the judges i appear in front of

01:03:08.240 i'm sorry guys but the truth is you're not getting the best and brightest you're getting people that

01:03:12.240 you know kind of want to move the meat through the machine they want a nine-to-five job they want

01:03:15.520 guaranteed health care they want all the things that come with being a judge so i i think it is very easy

01:03:22.640 to think that the way it was 30 years ago is the way it is i don't think that's the case anymore but

01:03:28.960 there are certain basic realities you know like if if early on in a child's life a child spends a

01:03:35.120 tremendous amount of time with mom mom is going to be very resistant to dad having a big role in

01:03:42.480 the case party's divorce by the way a lot of divorcing men don't spend a lot of time at home

01:03:49.120 before they're getting divorced why because they're unhappy so they don't go home they just stay at work

01:03:55.920 later or they go out to the bar after work and they don't go home so they don't end up spending much

01:04:01.040 time with the kids but it's not that they don't love their kids it's that they just don't want to be

01:04:04.400 with this person they're unhappy with and it's unhappy with them they don't want their children

01:04:07.760 to be exposed to like the passive aggressive relationship between mom and dad so they stay out

01:04:12.080 of the house longer and what happens when they get divorced he gets weaponized against them well

01:04:16.400 he was never home he never helped the kids with the homework and the guy says well wait give me a

01:04:20.640 chance like i yeah i didn't go home i didn't want to go home it was tense at home we didn't really

01:04:25.840 like each other very much but now we're getting divorced and i don't just want to be the fun

01:04:30.720 parent i want to do the heavy lifting i want 50 of the time i want to to do the fun part and i also

01:04:36.560 want to do the part where i you know make sure the homework gets done and that they eat their broccoli

01:04:40.080 and brush their teeth and and i understand when women go well he's never done that before right but

01:04:44.880 when would he have had opportunity to do it before so again it's a it's a complex thing and anytime

01:04:50.720 someone says the system is rigged you know that's such an easy way to claim defeat rather than fight any kind

01:04:58.640 of a battle it's just go oh well it's just the game's rigged so i'm not even going to play yeah

01:05:03.600 and james i'm curious what happens when people come in and sit down with you

01:05:10.480 what percentage broadly speaking would you say of people who are i mean it sounds like the way

01:05:15.280 you've presented is kind of the vast majority of people get married with good intentions of staying

01:05:20.080 together and then it doesn't work out because they probably didn't do the things that they did

01:05:24.160 initially to make it work right so there's none of this like planning and manipulation or whatever

01:05:29.040 but by the time they get to a divorce yeah are people in a different place now and they're kind

01:05:34.160 of like f you or i'm gonna make you pay for the xyz sometimes yeah i mean i would say i get a number

01:05:42.640 of varieties so i get what i would call the tire kickers which are the people who come in and say

01:05:48.400 i'm not ready to do anything yet but i can smell that things aren't going right and i'd like to

01:05:53.520 just know what my rights and obligations potentially are i love those people i prefer

01:05:57.920 those people i think it's really good for a person to come in when they're having some problems and

01:06:02.400 they say you know i want to understand like what what will it look like if this goes in that direction

01:06:07.760 why do you love them because i think they're being proactive and i think they're asking a question

01:06:12.480 they probably should have asked before they got married which is what legally is going to happen

01:06:16.080 when i sign a marriage contract and what effect does it have on my rights and obligations

01:06:20.320 like most people have absolutely no idea what they did legally when they got married it's the

01:06:25.760 most legally significant thing you're going to do other than dying and you didn't even get a pamphlet

01:06:30.480 you didn't get anything that explained to you what it was legally that you opted out of the title system

01:06:34.800 like that's amazing like if you buy your wife a rolex watch you bought yourself one half of a rolex

01:06:39.920 watch like you're one person in the eyes of the law but no one ever explains that to you we're just

01:06:44.400 talking about what cake you're going to have so i think that it's valuable for someone to come in and

01:06:49.360 say i'm i'm thinking about this direction or i'm afraid my spouse is thinking that we're heading in

01:06:56.720 this direction what could it look like and then they can make informed decisions about how hard they

01:07:02.160 want to steer out or into that right because hopefully one of those possibilities is to work

01:07:06.480 harder on the relationship 100 and and nothing i would ever say to someone in that setting would ever be

01:07:11.760 to hasten the demise of their marriage it would always be you know you're here for information

01:07:16.480 and i want to share that information with you i want you to understand your potential rights and

01:07:19.520 obligations what paths you might take whether you go to a mediator or an arbitrator or go through

01:07:24.240 litigation and i'm also going to use that as an opportunity to say look are you in individual

01:07:29.440 counseling of some kind where you can sort of process these things are you and your spouse have you

01:07:33.520 ever tried speaking to someone together have you ever thought about talking together with a

01:07:37.360 counselor or clergyman or someone who might be able to help you navigate the challenges that

01:07:41.680 you're having it's totally okay to have challenges in a relationship people have challenges all the

01:07:46.080 time in relationships i even have people who come in and say that said i want a divorce i caught him

01:07:50.800 cheating i intercepted a text message came up on my ipad that was supposed to go to his iphone because we

01:07:55.680 have the same i message logged in i mean i owe steve jobs a tremendous debt of gratitude he has the

01:08:01.280 integration of apple devices has created more people finding out about their spouse's affairs than

01:08:06.080 anything else in the world but they come in and they say look i want a divorce you know i just found this out

01:08:10.400 and i i if i immediately said great we'll file i'll file it right now i would be i think doing a

01:08:15.520 very irresponsible thing what i often say is okay if we want to file for divorce we can file today we

01:08:20.480 can file tomorrow we can file next week i'm not retiring don't worry but let's just take a breath

01:08:25.840 let's talk about what your paths might be rights and obligations and then let's see because there

01:08:30.160 are lots and lots of people they don't talk about it very often there's lots of people that have

01:08:35.120 issues of infidelity that happen in a marriage and they make it through it they move through it they

01:08:39.360 figure out a way they forgive they forget sometimes the forgiving is in the forgetting

01:08:43.680 sometimes they forgive but they don't forget but they try to make some changes and so it doesn't

01:08:47.440 happen again so i try to give them a very honest assessment of things so that's one type of person

01:08:51.840 who comes in there are the and again sometimes it's just hey things aren't great i see some storm

01:08:57.200 clouds coming i want to know my rights and obligations sometimes it's the storm is here i caught them

01:09:02.560 cheating or i'm cheating and i just got caught okay that's a little more serious but again doesn't

01:09:09.040 necessarily mean it's over but it's good that it's fra it's fragile we can agree it's fragile so

01:09:13.760 let's talk about what your rights and obligations might be sometimes people come in they've been

01:09:17.280 served with papers you know their spouse is moving forward with a divorce okay let's talk about you've

01:09:22.560 been served with papers here's what you have to do legally to defend on that and here's the paths

01:09:26.640 that we might take from here so it's very rare that someone comes in and it's like a professional hit

01:09:32.560 you know like they're like i've been planning this for six months i've got here's the bank statements

01:09:36.560 here is that every once in a while someone does come in and they're very organized to the point

01:09:41.600 where it begs the question like wow how long i mean are those more women or men more women yeah of

01:09:47.680 course that's why i said women are more tactical and they're thinking and they're more patient in

01:09:52.720 some ways i mean their prefrontal cortex develops way before ours does so it could be a function of

01:09:56.480 that but yeah i mean i've had women i had a woman come in last week who her husband has been cheating for

01:10:04.160 about eight months and she has had full access to his messages and texts and emails for that entire

01:10:11.200 time and she's just been tracking it in real time oh and she's just like every lie she's tracking it

01:10:18.880 and she gave me this whole timeline and i'm just looking at and you know i had two thoughts one was

01:10:24.880 this guy has no idea he has no idea that he's completely exposed two other people's infidelity

01:10:33.280 is hilarious like there's just nothing funnier than reading someone's messages to their because

01:10:37.440 we all think we're so interesting and sexy and fascinating but it's just completely goofy

01:10:41.600 all the like you know like oh baby i missed you so bad like when you read like i'll tell you this

01:10:46.640 we have like dramatic readings of it sometimes at lunchtime in my office like in the conference room

01:10:51.280 we'll all get together and we'll like you know we'll have one of the female staff members will

01:10:54.320 read the female part and one of them will read the male part and they're like baby when i was inside

01:10:58.560 you last night it was the greatest feeling ever you know like we're just reading it out loud going

01:11:02.880 do these people have any idea but ultimately you know um she what i thought was scarier is that

01:11:10.160 she has managed to just continue to act like nothing's wrong for six months with this guy i couldn't do

01:11:16.080 that i could you couldn't i couldn't do it for a day no i'd be like six months like and i mean

01:11:21.840 explicit stuff explicit stuff which by the way i will tell you as a divorce lawyer you end up having

01:11:27.040 to see a lot of naked pictures of people and it's never people you'd want to see naked pictures of

01:11:32.160 it's like being in a nude beach it's never people there that you'd want to see naked but

01:11:36.160 james this is a question i really wanted to ask because i don't think we we we talk about divorce

01:11:43.520 do people regret divorce do people look back have you ever seen that where people go

01:11:48.880 you know what she was or he was the love of my life and yeah i you know it was a heat of the moment

01:11:56.000 i said what i said we did what we did but actually we kind of threw it away i think what you're describing

01:12:03.040 is people regretting the demise of a relationship i think divorce is burying something that's dead

01:12:10.960 most of the time and it's not man i regret that we buried that it's i regret that it died

01:12:17.600 you know i always tell people i don't make it rain i sell umbrellas

01:12:22.160 i think that there are a lot of people that say you know we could have done better

01:12:25.680 we could have done different you know i i i'm a divorced man myself i've been divorced for 20

01:12:30.800 years from the mother of my kids and a very friendly divorce she's a lovely lovely human being

01:12:34.880 one of my favorite human beings in the world she's been remarried for 15 years

01:12:38.800 our oldest son just got married a couple of months ago and we had a wonderful time all of us at the

01:12:42.800 wedding her family my family all of us together and uh i have to say like there there are many times

01:12:50.000 where she and i even though she's very happily married we'll say like man we really screwed

01:12:55.680 that up we screwed it up you know if sheer power of will could make two people love each other forever

01:13:00.560 we probably would have but we just got a lot of things wrong and then sometimes you're so far from

01:13:06.560 center that you just kind of go yeah it was the right thing to do and i think our divorce was the

01:13:11.520 right thing to do i think that her very happy marriage you know is proof of that i think our

01:13:16.480 sons are very well adjusted happy young men who had a great you know relationship with both of their

01:13:21.760 parents and she and i've had a great co-parenting relationship we both moved on to have really

01:13:25.360 fulfilling relationships but is there something very sad about it that it's like oh we probably

01:13:31.040 could have done better you know yeah of course but but we didn't know that at the time you know

01:13:36.400 and i don't think anybody takes glee in the demise of a relationship i think most people when they

01:13:43.280 when they marry they have good intentions you know but things fall apart the center cannot hold

01:13:50.560 you know it's the nature of things and and you know one of the things i've there's a line of one

01:13:55.680 of my favorite poems um is a poem by joseph brodsky it's called a song he wrote it when his wife died

01:14:01.200 and the refrain of the poem is i wish you were here dear i wish you were here and one of the lines

01:14:05.120 is i wish you were here dear i wish you were here i wish i knew no astronomy when the stars appear

01:14:10.400 because i think that there's something very like magical about the stars until you learn astrology

01:14:14.400 and then astronomy and then you're like oh yeah it's actually a dead

01:14:17.840 light that's hitting us now you know i i think that all of us if we look back on our relationships

01:14:23.360 that weren't successful or even our relationships that are successful we look at it and we go you

01:14:28.400 know i could have done better i could have done there's almost nothing i've done in my life that i

01:14:32.720 don't look at and go oh i could have done better you know the first three years of your child's life

01:14:36.880 i bet there's some things that you go i wish i'd been a little more patient when that happened

01:14:40.240 or i wish i'd handled that differently and i think that's a sign of a mature human being to say you know

01:14:46.800 oh i could have done better and i wish i had done better but we did what we did you know we made the

01:14:51.600 choices that we made i think that the hard thing to do and therefore the right thing to do is while

01:14:57.360 you're in the relationship constantly subject yourself to that vigilance rather than later look

01:15:05.040 back and go what could i have done to keep this together while you're in it what can i do to keep this

01:15:13.200 strong what can i do to help this person feel loved and seen what do i need from this because

01:15:18.880 i think the most dangerous i will tell you in 25 years of practicing divorce law and seeing very

01:15:23.520 candid versions of people i think the most dangerous lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves

01:15:29.200 i think we constantly lie to ourselves about what we need and what we want and what will make us happy

01:15:34.000 and what won't and i think that if we could be more honest with ourselves it would be the starting

01:15:39.680 point of being more honest with our part you shouldn't have to rearrange your life to deal

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01:16:59.280 information it's it's it's a really really interesting insight into human nature um and i i suppose

01:17:08.480 the question i wanted to ask is do you think sometimes divorce is the easy option uh and maybe also do

01:17:16.000 people then try to go for a divorce and they discover actually isn't that easy at all it might it might be

01:17:21.440 the conclusion of their problems but actually it's very painful and traumatic and especially terrible for kids

01:17:27.760 look at the limits of their lives yeah i mean i think you're always trading one set of problems for

01:17:31.600 another if you're unhappily married you have one set of problems but you don't have another if

01:17:35.760 you're divorced you have one set of problems but you don't have another if you're single one set of

01:17:39.440 problems not another married one set not another so i think life's about picking the set of problems

01:17:43.040 you're interested in having and then moving forward with that set of problems and trying

01:17:47.040 to live your life within that set of problems right i i think that sometimes the process of divorce

01:17:55.360 is something that reminds people what they mean to each other so i have seen a lot of divorces

01:18:00.320 that start and then stop and and i don't find that that surprising i mean i find when you're

01:18:08.400 in the midst of death you know or illness you're the most acutely aware of the value of of life

01:18:14.560 and good health you know i think you know when you get over being sick you find yourself going

01:18:19.200 oh i'm going to take better care of myself and then you forget yeah and then very promptly you

01:18:23.280 go back to like yeah whatever you know because that's human nature but i do think that sometimes

01:18:28.160 we have to come right up to the edge of losing something to to to see the value that it has in

01:18:32.880 our life sometimes physically separating from someone is something that makes you feel their

01:18:38.320 absence in a real way so i think that's a piece of it um i do think that there are people that

01:18:45.840 never recover from their divorce i think that there are people who

01:18:52.000 the wound of it and the process of it because divorce can be incredibly ugly i mean it's

01:18:58.320 it's intimacy weaponized like if anybody knows your soft targets it's your wife like it you know to

01:19:06.880 you know personally i think to love anything is insane like it's insane it's it's just not rational

01:19:15.520 to love anything because to love anything is to accept the inevitability of losing it like you get

01:19:21.520 a dog greatest thing in the world having a dog you're going to lose that dog like that dog is going

01:19:27.120 to die before you most likely they have a really short lifespan personally i think it's worth having it

01:19:33.040 you know but you are when you decide you're going to love that stupid dog you have decided you are

01:19:38.240 going to open yourself up to the inevitability of that pain so i i think there's a tremendous amount

01:19:43.600 of bravery involved in loving anyone or anything because to love anything is to say okay i'm going to

01:19:49.760 accept the pain of losing this because you will lose your wife you'll lose her to death or you'll lose

01:19:54.480 her to divorce i hope it i hope you lose her to death what a bizarre thing right like in what world

01:20:02.480 do you say as a courtesy i hope your marriage ends in death but i do i hope your marriage ends in death

01:20:08.720 because the other option is it ends in divorce so i hope it ends in death so there is something about

01:20:14.800 saying okay i'm going to fully accept the risk of this and some of that risk is that if you let this

01:20:23.520 person see authentically into who you are and what you're afraid of and what really hurts you and what

01:20:30.240 your soft points are they can weaponize that against you if they want to like we all know anyone

01:20:36.160 who's in a relationship even like the two of you are in a relationship with each other i guarantee you

01:20:41.440 each have a sentence in your head that you could say to the other one that you know would make them

01:20:47.440 like go home that night crying like we anyone you're close with and know and care about you know what

01:20:54.400 they're insecure about you know what they're afraid of you know what they're ashamed of so you have in

01:20:59.520 your head you've got it in the chamber there you've got a thing that you go you know if i ever i would

01:21:04.720 say this to the person and and by the way you probably would never want to say it to that person

01:21:09.280 because when you love someone you wouldn't want to hurt them even if they hurt you you wouldn't want

01:21:13.760 to hurt them like that you know like but i guarantee you know the thing you could say to your wife and your

01:21:19.280 wife knows the thing that she could say to you that would reduce you to just absolute tears that's

01:21:24.880 the risk but you have to take that risk if you're going to have a relationship that's why i think to

01:21:30.640 love something is brave it's insane but it's brave because you're saying i'm going to expose the

01:21:35.840 possibility of being hurt by you but because of that risk divorce is brutal it's just it can be brutal

01:21:44.480 because even the friendliest divorce is a shift of this fundamental relationship this foundational

01:21:52.560 relationship and it feels like everything is on the line like where you live when you see your

01:21:58.800 children your basic finances the person who you thought was your person and you were theirs like all of

01:22:06.240 that is falling apart it's what drew me to being a divorce lawyer i was a psychology major as an

01:22:10.880 undergraduate and i wanted very much to maybe be a therapist and then i realized therapists have

01:22:15.600 to listen more than they talk and that wasn't but i realized that you know there is something incredible

01:22:21.360 about the opportunity because a divorce you know the barn is burned down and now i can see the moon

01:22:28.720 you know like everything's fallen apart and now what and to be part of the architecture of a person's

01:22:36.080 next chapter to me even after 25 years it's still the most like humbling amazing beautiful thing to

01:22:42.080 be part of to help be part of the architecture of someone rebuilding a life when it feels like

01:22:47.680 everything is everything is lost everything's at risk i mean your point about loving is so true

01:22:53.040 because i mean children are the the best example of this yeah because you bring a child into the world to

01:23:02.720 you love more than anything that you've ever loved but obviously you know i remember speaking to a

01:23:07.520 very good friend of mine after having a child said i've got some fears now that i didn't know were

01:23:11.040 possible oh yeah not even that like your heart is walking around right exactly it's just walking around

01:23:16.800 and like everything is is putting it at risk right and and and like you can handle it yourself like i

01:23:24.960 could handle my pain like but my kids pain like oh like the the the terror that comes with that but

01:23:32.240 it also creates these opportunities to like you know i mean again like the the you know i i remember

01:23:39.840 you know my sons are adults now but i remember my now 28 year old he's a lawyer too when he was like

01:23:47.040 five maybe he had terrible pneumonia and he was so sick he had 103 or 104 fever we kept calling the

01:23:54.080 pediatrician and they kept saying okay if it goes up to 105 you got to get him to the hospital

01:23:58.480 and he was laying in my lap and and i was the most scared i've ever been in my life like i had never

01:24:05.840 felt terror like that and i was 22 when he was born so i was probably 27 28 and he was sweating and cold

01:24:13.200 and like kind of like so feverish that he was out of it and he kept sort of kind of going in and out of

01:24:17.680 consciousness and i remember having this big ridiculous smile on my face and going it's okay

01:24:24.720 it's okay buddy you're okay you're okay don't worry don't be scared it's okay it's okay and inside

01:24:30.400 i was screaming i was just screaming inside like i i can't handle this i'm not ready for this i'm not

01:24:37.200 qualified like i want my mom like i don't know what's like this is bad like i don't know what to

01:24:41.920 do like i'm terrified he's gonna die oh my god is he gonna die but i was like okay no you don't get to

01:24:46.480 do that like you you need to be you need to be it's okay it's okay it's okay and now it's what 20

01:24:53.600 something years later he survived he's fine i can still feel that feeling

01:25:01.040 that's the terror that comes with real love like that's the terror that only loving something more

01:25:08.000 than you've ever loved yourself like to me it's worth it to me it's the greatest thing because the love and

01:25:13.600 the pride and the joy like the you know that same seven-year-old you know i i sat with a hundred

01:25:22.160 people when he got married a couple of months ago and watched a beautiful young woman who he went to

01:25:27.040 law school with stand there and in front of all these people say these vows and they wrote their own

01:25:33.200 vows and she was like you're the strongest man i know you're the bravest man you make me feel so safe

01:25:37.840 and i i was weeping because i thought like we did it like we did it this is what we wanted to do

01:25:44.800 we wanted to create a man like that and we did we did we found we created one that a brilliant woman

01:25:50.560 she's a lawyer to like goes yep that's my guy that's the one i want and what an incredible thing

01:25:56.880 now if you want that you've got to have that terrifying moment you've got to have all those

01:26:00.960 i said all the other terrifying moments that i'm sure are soon to come you know or will come down

01:26:05.680 the road so yeah i think i think love is the greatest thing in the world but i think it is an

01:26:12.000 absolutely insane terrifying thing yeah it's the best i i was gonna ask as someone who's watched

01:26:20.560 thousands and thousands of people not not only watch but participated in the process of them

01:26:25.600 getting divorced and often acrimonious circumstances how did you feel watching your son get married

01:26:32.080 i felt that i think the same way anybody else does i felt i'm cheering for them i felt choked up by it

01:26:39.280 i felt an abundance of optimism that's probably totally misplaced um you know they have as good

01:26:48.000 a shot at happiness as anybody right and and i you know i've been pilloried matt walsh gave me a whole

01:26:53.680 rash and a crap for this because i i said that that marriage is like the lottery you're probably

01:26:59.840 not going to win but if you win what you win is so good that it's worth buying a ticket now he harped

01:27:06.640 on the fact that you can't do anything to improve your chances of winning the lottery but you can do

01:27:11.360 things to improve your chances of staying married that wasn't my point my point was you're probably not

01:27:18.720 going to win statistically but that that if you win it's like winning the lottery like that so i i look

01:27:27.440 at my son as he was getting married and i thought there is a 50 plus percent chance that this will end

01:27:33.600 in divorce but i hope it doesn't because if it doesn't the value it will add to his life will be

01:27:40.160 phenomenal and if it does end in divorce i hope it ends in the way that his mother and i's marriage

01:27:46.640 ended which is with love and with respect for each other and with care for the children that

01:27:52.320 may come of that marriage and i again i i think happily ever after can mean happily ever after

01:28:00.720 separately it doesn't like divorce doesn't have to be a failure like things can end and they can end

01:28:08.080 with love and with dignity and with respect like we we could stop viewing divorce as failure and we could

01:28:15.600 start viewing it viewing love and romantic love like chapters in a long book and maybe you have

01:28:24.880 you know people you dated and those are some chapters and then you find your one true love and then you

01:28:28.960 live out the rest of your story with that person i hope that's what happens for you i hope that's what

01:28:32.640 happens for my son i hope that's what happens for every married person i know who's happily married

01:28:37.520 but it may be that sometimes marriages need to end and when they end that there will be some other love

01:28:43.520 some other chapter that's waiting for you that you wouldn't have got to if you hadn't been through

01:28:47.680 this dark chapter or difficult chapter or a chapter that was bright and then ended in some negative way

01:28:53.120 it's a unique and rare thing

01:28:57.440 the kind of acrimony like when i i don't go to a lot of parties but you know when when i do go to a

01:29:02.880 party and people say oh what do you do for a living so i'm a divorce lawyer they go oh my god you must

01:29:07.040 have stories and if i said to them yes you know there was this couple and they fell in love and

01:29:12.800 then they gradually you know learned that the venn diagram of things they had in common is getting

01:29:17.520 smaller and they grew apart emotionally and then they decided that it would be good for the two of

01:29:21.760 them to potentially end the relationship so they partid amicably divided their assets and they both

01:29:26.560 spent time with the children in different ratios the person would go like well that's the most boring

01:29:30.720 ridiculous story ever like what that's not interesting at all they want to hear like and then he took a

01:29:34.880 chainsaw and he cut the car in half and he said you can pick which half you want that's the story

01:29:39.120 which true story by the way that's the that's what people want to hear the people who talk about

01:29:44.400 their divorce are usually people who went through a really ugly traumatic divorce like my divorce is

01:29:49.920 one of the least interesting things about me yeah and and one of the least interesting things about

01:29:53.600 my ex-wife but people who've been through a really ugly divorce it scars them and it becomes

01:29:57.920 fundamental to their identity and it becomes something they talk about just like you know people don't

01:30:02.160 talk about the prenup that got upheld they talk about the prenup that got set aside you know so

01:30:07.040 people tend to talk about people don't talk about all the planes that flew and landed safely they talk

01:30:11.520 about the one that crashed but thankfully that's the menar you know what you were talking about through

01:30:17.280 a lot of this it really reminded me actually of one of my teaching day of my teaching days because

01:30:24.000 you're talking about hope i remember when i was teaching year three which in the uk is seven and

01:30:28.960 eight year olds and we used to do this thing called philosophy for kids so and for half an hour 40

01:30:34.560 minutes once a week we do philosophy basic philosophy with the kids god i love the uk

01:30:39.200 and i remember i sat down with the kids seven eight years old and i and the question was i put on the

01:30:43.920 board would you rather own a dog and have it die or not own a dog and never experience and have it die

01:30:57.840 but never experienced what it's like to own a dog put your hands up every single kid in the room

01:31:04.320 put their hand up and goes i want to own a dog of course of course it's something that's so deep within

01:31:11.200 us yeah it's the hope and you know and you'd ask the kid and they they might not be able to articulate

01:31:16.560 it because deep down we all know that the most special thing the thing that we all desire above

01:31:22.880 everything else is love yeah and connection yeah and if you deny that and you say you're not going

01:31:29.120 to get involved or you don't want to get married all of these things what you're denying yourself is

01:31:33.600 the shot yeah and that's all any of us have it's the shot well and that's you know i believe that

01:31:39.120 marriage is the triumph of faith over reason i think it really is a faith it's an act of faith

01:31:45.680 it's an act of saying i believe in the possibility over reason over logic over statistics that the

01:31:53.360 connection that i feel for this person that that my life will have value or deeper value because of this

01:32:01.360 and i think you know proof denies faith like there's really no way to prove that a love is going to last

01:32:07.360 there's no formula like you just have to have faith it's an act of faith and i i'm a person who i

01:32:12.960 think that our lives would be very empty if we didn't have faith in some things and i think

01:32:18.000 faith in love like love is all around us love is everywhere like when people say to me all the time

01:32:23.520 well you're a divorce lawyer do you believe in love and i was thinking it's such a funny like do i

01:32:26.640 believe in gravity like gravity exists whether i believe in it or not like love is everywhere it's

01:32:31.360 all around me i feel it i experience it all the time and and my life would be poorer for it it's the only

01:32:38.240 thing like i think every single thing we do we do to find love feel love feel worthy of love like

01:32:46.560 everything is tied to love and i think that you know love is it's all around us it's it's you know

01:32:53.040 i i think love is in some ways like the greatest insight into god for any of us because you know

01:32:58.480 jesus said you know the kingdom of god is within you and all around you well i think love is within

01:33:02.640 you and all around you and the question is is how much of it will you open yourself to i don't think

01:33:07.360 you can let yourself be completely open to all of it i think that we have to that to do it properly

01:33:14.800 and with depth we have to connect to another person and say okay i'm going to commit to connecting to

01:33:20.000 you in this deep and profound way that's why i think pair bonds really work and i think maybe that's

01:33:24.160 why we were designed the way we were designed physically you know what's why life is born of the

01:33:29.600 connection of a man and a woman it has to be a metaphor for something it has to be has to have some

01:33:34.320 meaning i have faith in that so i i genuinely you know everybody harps on the statistic that roughly

01:33:41.040 56 percent of marriages end in divorce but the more interesting statistic to me is that 87 of people

01:33:48.000 who get divorced are remarried within five years of their divorce that's an insane number that means

01:33:56.160 you've tried it it failed catastrophically the wheels came off and 87 percent within five years

01:34:07.360 go all right let's give it another shot yeah and i think to me that's an incred that's not a statistic

01:34:13.840 of how stupid people are i think that's a statistic of how deeply we need and want this and i think

01:34:19.680 that's something worth fighting for it's something brave it's the hard thing to do so it's probably the

01:34:24.880 right thing to do what a great way to end our brilliant conversation james been absolutely

01:34:29.760 blast it was so much fun having you on absolutely we're going to go to sub stack where our audience

01:34:34.560 are going to get to ask you their questions but before we do what's the one thing we're not talking

01:34:38.960 about that we really should be before james answers a final question at the end of the interview make

01:34:44.240 sure to head over to our sub stack the link is in the description where you'll be able to see this

01:34:50.320 what's the funniest story you've had as a divorce lawyer do you think it's fair that someone

01:34:54.800 poor can marry someone rich have a two-year marriage then claim a large chunk because they can

01:35:00.000 divorce reveals who people really are what's the biggest surprise you've seen in human behavior

01:35:05.120 during that process what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be

01:35:15.520 i think we're not i mean i know it's very popular to just you know crap all over social media these

01:35:21.200 days but we're not talking about the antagonistic effect that social media is having on relationships

01:35:27.680 on marriages in particular i think that there's a chapter in my book called if we were going to

01:35:32.240 invent an infidelity generating machine it would be called facebook i think you could amend that now to

01:35:37.760 say meta instagram but i i think we're not talking about the fact that again not to sound like jaron

01:35:46.000 lanier but i think we we need to give a really serious look at what impact social media is having

01:35:53.760 on our perception of our relationships our perceptions of each other and as romantic prospects

01:36:00.400 our satisfaction with our sex lives i think it's having a profoundly negative impact and we're not

01:36:05.520 looking at it because um we're busy looking at the effect on the individual not on the couple

01:36:10.640 the only thing i would say about that and obviously that is a thing that people do say a lot and i i

01:36:16.720 think there's a lot of truth to it is it's also about the way you use it and i think we should also

01:36:22.320 remember that because i can tell you i agree i i'm someone who like i was never an instagram person

01:36:28.000 it just isn't my medium but because of you know what we do and blah blah i'm on it all i see on my

01:36:34.080 instagram literally all i see is really cool parenting stuff yeah that makes me more connected to

01:36:40.480 my wife and it's like oh oh we're not the only people that are struggling with this stupid thing

01:36:45.520 that this person has managed to make funny so you've got an algorithm that's that's figured out

01:36:50.480 you know what's going to resonate with you in a positive way and i imagine it's also because

01:36:54.640 like when i see something i don't like i'm like don't show me more of this right right so i think

01:36:58.800 what you're talking about is having an active relationship with it so and when i was in graduate

01:37:03.040 school at nyu my mentor and i was his research assistant was neil postman dr postman who wrote

01:37:09.120 amusing ourselves to death public discourse in the age of television technopoly the surrender of

01:37:13.040 culture to technology a number of other books before he passed away and one of the things that

01:37:17.600 neil used to say all the time is that there is a difference between watching a program on television

01:37:23.600 and watching television because watching television was you just sat back and let it feed you right

01:37:30.880 tick tock your youtube algorithm whatever that might be whereas watching a program so what you're

01:37:37.920 describing is someone having an active relationship with their social media and their algorithm so i

01:37:42.880 don't want to see more of that meaning i don't want to be around that i'm not going to like stop

01:37:48.240 showing me women in bikinis i don't need to see that like if i hang around a barbershop long enough

01:37:52.480 i'm going to think about getting a haircut so don't do it and oh yes i want more of this because that

01:37:57.360 feeds good things within me great you're describing a person with discipline i think the majority of

01:38:02.480 people probably lack that level of discipline and so they're getting carried in directions

01:38:08.320 that again i don't know that they would be you know when we apply technology to an efficient system

01:38:13.840 you magnify the efficiency and when you apply technology to an inefficient system you magnify

01:38:17.440 the inefficiency i think the same thing is true when you apply social media to a functional relationship

01:38:24.080 where the person is committed to the relationship you can amplify the efficiency and the commitment

01:38:29.760 when you apply it to someone who's having challenges in their commitment and in their

01:38:33.920 focus on their relationship it can amplify the lack of focus or the distractions from the relationship

01:38:39.360 and it can amplify the antagonistic things to that relationship so i i think again teaching people

01:38:47.600 to curate their use of social media differently once they're married could be a very useful thing but

01:38:52.960 again we don't have like premarital classes we don't you know you want to get a driver's license

01:38:58.480 you got to take a little test you got to do a road test you get married let's go get married it's no

01:39:02.560 waiting period just go ahead and marry you 50 bucks elvis will do it for you in vegas

01:39:07.360 like but maybe we should be you know people on the right in particular there's a lot of people

01:39:12.080 talking about how how we should get rid of no-fault divorce how there should be more barriers to exit

01:39:18.400 and i've always felt that that's got it completely backwards that's like saying you know oh there's a lot

01:39:22.560 of people with broken bones in hospitals we should just close all the hospitals because then people

01:39:26.640 wouldn't get so many broken bones like i think you're mixing it up i think we should have barriers

01:39:30.880 to entry i think it should be a little harder to get married like if you want to get married in the

01:39:34.240 catholic church you go to pre-cana you have to go and you learn about marriage you learn about

01:39:38.400 contraception you learn about you know there's usually catholic happily married couples that will

01:39:44.000 talk to you about hey here's our city the men will be put in one room and the guy will you know

01:39:48.160 say hey listen you have to learn to do this with your wife and that with your wife and

01:39:51.040 the women will say hey listen men are like this you got to watch out and there's a lot of that

01:39:55.520 there's none of that outside of the religious context i mean that happens in the jewish rabbinical

01:40:00.160 context there's you know people will take time to say hey men this is what you need to learn about

01:40:04.720 your wife women this is what you need to learn about your husband and being a wife and how deal with a

01:40:08.880 husband you know anything like that in a secular context in society so maybe something like that would

01:40:13.520 be useful that's the thing maybe we're not saying is that premarital education barriers to entry

01:40:19.360 might be a good idea well it sort of sounds like pre pre-relationship education

01:40:24.320 really because all of that stuff is going to be useful for for any relationship for any relationship

01:40:28.080 yeah which is interesting because you know if you ask me how much use did i have for like you know

01:40:37.280 algebra or like how to divide uh fractions it wasn't a lot no but if you gave me some education and like

01:40:46.080 how to talk to women or you know how to you know navigate conflict within the context of a romantic

01:40:53.120 relationship because you can't win an argument with your spouse it's not possible it's not possible

01:40:59.840 if you lose you lost and if you win you lost because you've upset your spouse you've made them

01:41:05.360 feel like a loser that's not helpful so you can't win an argument with your spouse someone could have

01:41:10.240 taught you that in fifth grade someone could have taught you that and like we could we could do a better

01:41:14.240 job of teaching people these life skills these real things but we don't i mean maybe it may explain

01:41:19.920 the popularity of my work to some degree is that we're consuming so much i've always wondered i'm

01:41:26.000 like why do tens of millions of people are they interested in what a divorce lawyer has to say about

01:41:30.720 love and relationships but i think it may be for some people the first real education that they're getting

01:41:36.880 on how to facilitate the demise of a happy relationship and you can reverse engineer from that

01:41:42.480 something about how to keep us together you know i'll finish with this it's so funny the the stories

01:41:48.720 that you're telling just remind me of when i back to my former career i remember there was a little

01:41:53.760 boy he was 11 years old and he got in an argument with a girl she started it and she said something nasty

01:42:00.880 to him and he went well you're fat

01:42:06.480 and then she burst into tears all her friends swarmed around it exploded everything and i literally had

01:42:15.440 to remove him from the room because it kicked off i had to get somebody else to come and take care of

01:42:20.160 the girls the boys were oh and i had to take him outside and he looked at me went what did i do what

01:42:25.440 what did i do what did i do i said jayden it's something you're gonna need to know and i'm

01:42:31.840 saying it to you not as a teacher i'm saying it to you as one man to someone who will be a man one

01:42:36.720 day and a future man don't ever make a comment or make fun of a woman's way and he went yeah but

01:42:42.720 she said i go it doesn't matter you will never win this yeah and i'm telling you right now if you

01:42:48.320 learn one thing from me learn this yeah never make fun of a woman's weight even if you're right you'll

01:42:53.920 always be in the wrong i'm willing to bet that that lesson stuck and i'm telling you right now

01:42:59.760 it's a lesson that like any man should probably learn fairly early in life like and and it it's

01:43:05.520 also useful in the in the gender context to realize that like there are things you're not going to be

01:43:11.600 allowed to say that a woman might get away with saying like if she called you fat it would probably

01:43:16.160 be okay but you calling her fat is going to you're the villain i guarantee it in this story you will

01:43:21.440 be the villain no matter what vile thing she said to you before so yeah i mean these are lessons that

01:43:27.440 we all know this stuff is true but what is where's the context where we're going to say it out loud to

01:43:32.720 each other you know and i i don't think the place to learn it is when you've already unpinned the grenade

01:43:38.720 i mean he learned it the hard way you know like and i that's kind of what i'm trying to do is just

01:43:43.360 say to people like if you're in my office it's already too late like i'm trying to get you out of my

01:43:48.560 office i'm trying to steer you in the direction that the thought of divorce is just you know

01:43:53.760 something that fleetingly passes your brain when your spouse does something particularly

01:43:57.440 boneheaded but the rest of the time it's something you would never consider so i hope

01:44:01.200 to put myself out of a job i i suspect i probably won't but it's been great having your last thank

01:44:07.280 you thanks for head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where james is going to answer your questions

01:44:11.760 sitting before you is a married man who's only ever been with his wife and francis the forever

01:44:18.720 fornicator as a divorced man who of the two do you envy the most

01:44:25.760 don't forget to click the link in the description of this episode to grab the special cyber ghost

01:44:42.960 vpn discount it's completely risk-free so check it out today broadway's smash hit the neil diamond

01:44:51.280 musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true story of a kid from brooklyn destined

01:44:57.200 for something more featuring all the songs you love including america forever in blue jeans and

01:45:02.800 sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the next musical mega hit is here the neil diamond

01:45:09.040 musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th 2026 the princess of wales theater get tickets

01:45:16.480 at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - February 22, 2026

How Not To Ruin Your Marriage - World's Leading Divorce Expert - James Sexton

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