00:00:00
all marital problems stem from two things and that's what about sex how
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often is sex the issue in divorce oh my God James ston the world's number one
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divorce lawyer specializing in billionaires athletes and celebrities for over two decades giving him a unique
00:00:20
insight into how relationships fail and succeed there's about a 56% chance that
00:00:26
your marriage will end in divorce yet 86% of people agree Mar within 5 years
00:00:31
but most people have no idea what they are getting themselves into and a great example of that would be prenups who
00:00:38
gets what when they break up correct and the most shocking prenup I've ever seen said that for every 10bs the wife gained
00:00:45
she would lose $10,000 a month in alimony 10 lb of weight and that was enforceable do money issues lead to
00:00:52
divorce oh it's controversial what's the quick if someone's gone from Marriage to divorce 48 Hours who cheats more men or
00:00:57
women you'll be shocked to hear it's have you ever seen violence during a divorce they ran her over four times and
00:01:03
stabbed her Jesus Christ so here's the question then should we get married and then do you think love is a terrible
00:01:09
idea I think it's insane to love anything because someday that'll be gone and this thing's
00:01:16
going to break my heart no matter what I
00:01:24
lose but that's not a reason not to love and I I think there's something really
00:01:30
important there congratulations diio gang we've made some progress 63% of you that
00:01:37
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00:01:46
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and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode
00:02:02
James I've never spoken to somebody that does what you do what do you do I'm a
00:02:08
divorce lawyer I'm a divorce lawyer who represents people in contested divorce
00:02:14
and custody proceedings in court so it's the fact that you've never spoken to someone who does what I do is a good
00:02:20
thing it it it means that either you've not married or it means that you've successfully married to the point where you would never end up in my office by
00:02:26
the time someone sets foot in my office something's gone terribly wrong in their
00:02:31
life because no one ever meant to meet me no one ever meant to be in my office ever what is the probability that
00:02:39
someday I do meet somebody like you and not in this context well if you marry
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there's about a 56% chance that your marriage will end in divorce now that doesn't take into consideration how many
00:02:52
people may consult with a divorce lawyer because they're having difficulty in their marriage but they choose
00:02:57
subsequent to meeting me not to divorce for some particular reason whether that's they don't want to part with half of their funds or they've just decided
00:03:04
it's easier to stay miserable and with a person or they're staying together for the kids but they wanted to know what their rights were so if you marry the
00:03:12
the chances of meeting someone like me are are more likely than not if we look at it that way because it's more than
00:03:18
50% so it's a it's a high number you know but if we Define failure as all of the other things you've described there
00:03:23
we kind of stay together but we're miserable or we stay together for some other reason how what percentage of
00:03:29
marriages on that basis do you think actually fail I mean if we consider the if we
00:03:36
consider failure staying together miserable for the children or staying together for financial economic reasons
00:03:43
and then we add that to the 56% that end in divorce then I mean it would be very hard to track that but I I think it's
00:03:50
generous to think it's another 20% probably but but I mean think about what that adds up to that means that you've
00:03:57
got you've got something that fails 70 75% of the time that's a that's a
00:04:04
negligent activity that's uh you know that's that is more likely than not to cause significant harm in your life so I
00:04:12
I I don't say that to sound like the Grim Reaper when it comes to marriage I I actually really think marriage is a
00:04:17
lovely thing and I get MTI eyed at weddings like anybody um and not just for you know future business purposes um
00:04:24
I I I I think I think the statistic that's even more interesting to me
00:04:30
than how many marriages end in divorce or how many people stay together miserable is that 86% of people who
00:04:38
divorce remarry within five years so think about that now you've you've done
00:04:44
this thing it's failed you've gone through this difficult process of having
00:04:50
to undo it and now within five years 86% of people remarry I mean so that that
00:04:57
tells you how important this is to us as humans how drawn to this idea this
00:05:03
technology of marriage we are and and that to me is fascinating
00:05:08
because I I've often said like I'm not sure what marriage was designed what
00:05:14
problem is marriage designed to
00:05:19
solve see the fact that it takes this long to think if I said to you what what purpose does this technology this mug
00:05:27
what does it serve well that's easy right it's hard to drink out of your hands and someone would have to keep coming up and pouring things in our
00:05:33
hands okay well that's pretty straightforward what what problem does this solve well that's easy right we we
00:05:38
want to get you know the ring stains around we get yelled at by our significant other for not using a coaster so these are easy things but
00:05:44
marriage something so ubiquitous that it's assumed it's assumed if you're dating someone for a few years and you
00:05:52
say guess what we're getting married everyone goes of course phenomenal congratulations that's great of course
00:05:59
you're going to do do that you know you make an honest woman of her of course whereas if you say you know we we've
00:06:04
been together for 3 4 years we decided we're not going to get married people go o what's wrong with this guy he's got intimacy issues he's not getting Mar you
00:06:10
know what's the problem that you don't want to get married whereas rationally the response should be you know oh yeah
00:06:18
we're getting married what are you kidding me why are you doing that it's like someone saying I'm going to go skydiving it's like wait are you crazy
00:06:25
that's a dangerous thing to do you know and it's not I mean listen skydiving it's not like the 75% 76% of people die
00:06:32
who are skydiving so the truth is like it it it makes very little sense to me
00:06:38
that marriage is assumed to be a thing you will do when in fact we as a species
00:06:45
are so unbelievably bad at it that sort of 86% that then get remarried after
00:06:53
divorce are they then have they learned from their mistakes are they better at this time it's different this Time It's
00:07:00
Different it's this time I'm really in love that other time when I thought I was in love that wasn't it this time
00:07:07
it's different it really it's it's it's a blind spot you know and again where does it come from you'd have to ask
00:07:13
people smarter than me you know it could be Neuroscience it could be the realm of a real deep social psychology it could
00:07:21
just be a cognitive bias I have no idea it could be a delusion brought on by inadequate lighting you know but but the
00:07:27
whatever it is we go oh yeah but this one's different this one I I did a prup
00:07:33
last week for a guy who went through the one of the ugliest divorces I've ever
00:07:38
seen and that's not hyperbole like I've been doing this for 25 years just to say so for me to say the ugliest divorce
00:07:44
I've ever seen is that's amazing that's like that's a really big deal that's
00:07:49
like a michelene chef saying this was the best meal I've ever had so this guy had a horrific divorce that lasted four
00:07:56
or five years he's remarrying a woman 30 years younger than him who he met four
00:08:02
months ago and when I said to him as artfully and tactfully as I could you
00:08:08
know you you've only known this person for a short time and you know have you thought about maybe just you know being
00:08:14
a little cautious in terms of you've seen how difficult a divorce can be you know do you think maybe it might be he I
00:08:21
oh no this is I've never felt anything like this I've never been this in love I've never been so connected with
00:08:27
someone we just get each other and you know the it would be very indelicate and
00:08:33
rude for me to say like snap out of it man you got to get your like really you
00:08:39
know bring your logical brain to this this equation do not bring the part of you that's just filled with romance and
00:08:46
has Christmas in your eyes like really you got to look at this honestly do you see a lot of gold
00:08:52
diggers do you see a lot of gold digger sort of um patterns I.E you see someone
00:08:58
that's incredibly wealthy you see see someone that's I know 40 years younger than them yeah yeah I see a lot of that
00:09:03
I mean I you know I'm hesitant to say gold diggers because I think that has a a pejorative like built into it that
00:09:11
that that somehow I think that that people bring different things to the table in relationships I I I think love
00:09:18
is an economy and I don't I'm not saying that in a way that that devalues love I
00:09:24
think that love is a verb I think that love is an emotion and I think that love is an economy you know there there is a
00:09:31
a giving and taking of value and and that can be incredibly symbiotic you
00:09:37
know that can be incredibly healthy and wonderful that that you know I am way too serious and the person who I'm with
00:09:44
is going to bring lightness and levity to the relationship and I'm going to help them be a little more serious and they're going to help me lighten up you
00:09:50
know and I'm hard charging and hardworking and everything's like 10 moves ahead and And my partner's going
00:09:56
to like help me calm down and help me you know not be so hard charging and and
00:10:02
be a little softer and be a little Kinder and rest my head and give me a sort of warm place to do that like
00:10:08
that's beautiful we're each bringing something different so if I'm a powerful
00:10:13
hardworking financially successful financially secure man and I meet a
00:10:19
young beautiful woman who has energy and excitement and who has tremendous gifts
00:10:26
but doesn't have the resources to be able to do much with that you know like she's a talented artist but you know
00:10:31
she's busy working you know a thankless awful job you know like slinging cappuccinos you know and and she she's
00:10:38
not able to in this Prime of her life focus on this thing she's so talented at and I can say to her Hey listen why
00:10:45
don't you focus on that and I have resources and abundance of them and I'm happy to share them with you and and
00:10:52
feel like I'm part of your success and you in turn are part of My Success because you give me this wonderful
00:10:58
respit from the chaos of my work and and like I don't think that that's a dishonest economy I don't think that so
00:11:06
like to say a gold digger sort of implies like oh she's in it for the money and it's like okay well I'm in it for the beauty you know so does that
00:11:12
mean I'm a horrible shallow person or is beauty beautiful is beauty something you want to be around and and if we're
00:11:19
honest about the interaction how is that predatory how is that unfair to either
00:11:26
of us you know if if we're honest about it like what's harder for me to deal with is when I have a client who is you
00:11:33
know 150 pounds overweight 5 foot7 um and and there is just nothing
00:11:40
about him that aesthetically or even personality wise a woman would go oh
00:11:45
that's my guy but he's a billionaire you know and and he's got a young gorgeous
00:11:51
woman who's allegedly madly in love with him and he really believes that it's his
00:11:57
personality and has nothing to do with with the fact that he's a billionaire or that that is a very small consideration
00:12:03
that feels to me like the worst kind of of delusion you know whereas you could
00:12:08
very honestly say like yeah we each bring different things to the table we each bring different things to each other's lives and then yeah so it is it
00:12:16
is a quote unquote gold digger but you know it's also a man who wants to to to
00:12:23
buy the company of someone who might not otherwise be interested in him if he wasn't successful so I think there's a
00:12:30
there's a give and a take in that relationship I think that's very fair have you have you seen examples of the
00:12:36
the latter example where you know you describe that billionaire where there's not many redeeming qualities
00:12:42
where they're heading towards marriage they don't yet have a
00:12:48
prenup you're maybe advising them that they should get a prenup and they're not interested because they're so deluded by
00:12:54
the belief that the person is interested in their wonderful personality or yeah so so the prenup conversation is a
00:13:01
really interesting one because I I I do a lot of prenups let just Define what prup is sure prenuptual agreement is a
00:13:08
contract between two people that defines the rule set essentially for their marriage so so marriage when we talk
00:13:15
about marriage you know people tend to just sort of use the word marriage and they're actually talking about a number
00:13:21
of different things like in some context marriage is a spiritual commitment right
00:13:26
it's a religious commitment it's tied to in Catholic ISM it's a Sacrament in in
00:13:31
Judaism it's a covenant with God you know in Islam it has its own status so
00:13:37
marriage exists as a religious concept socially we have a definition of
00:13:43
marriage right like I am married to this person we have married our Destinies to each other we have agreed that we are
00:13:49
each other's person and then marriage has a specific legal definition and my
00:13:56
job as a divorce lawyer is to take that piece apart for someone or to create
00:14:02
protections for people who are contemplating entering into that legal status so like you you've been to
00:14:07
weddings right I'm sure you've never at the end of the wedding said um great guys I had a wonderful time the cake was
00:14:14
delicious um I need to see the paperwork can I can I see the license now I just want to make sure everything was done
00:14:19
properly and that there were witness you've never said that you've never said to your your parents can I see your
00:14:25
marriage license I'd like to make sure everything's in order here that's not how works like we don't do that so you
00:14:31
could go have a wedding and tell people that you're married and never actually
00:14:37
legally marry you could just tell people that you're married you don't check people's paperwork like you can just
00:14:42
wear a ring if you want to and similarly if you don't wear a ring it doesn't mean you're not legally married like you
00:14:48
could be legally married and still take your ring off and you're still legally married if it was just as easy as taking the ring off I'd be out of a job so
00:14:56
marriage is a legal status that's one of the meanings of marriage and a prenuptual
00:15:01
agreement the way I would describe it is two people deciding that they having
00:15:08
picked each other out of8 billion people to choose from in the world are in a
00:15:13
better position to make the rules that will govern the economics of their
00:15:18
relationship then the legislature would be then politicians would be and anyone
00:15:23
who's ever been to the Department of Motor Vehicles or who's ever been to you know any government agency very rarely
00:15:31
would you interact with a government agency and go we should definitely put these people in charge of our our family
00:15:37
life like they're going to do a great job they're they're really crushing it you know like that's not something
00:15:42
people yet most people who are married have almost no idea what legal rights
00:15:48
and obligations were conferred on them by getting married they they just have no idea it's the most legally significant thing they're going to do in
00:15:54
their life other than die and they have no idea what their rights and obligations are and those rights and
00:16:00
obligations can change so like politics and the legislature and the way that
00:16:06
rules that govern the spousal support rights child support rights the division
00:16:11
of property those are subject to change by government change so for example in
00:16:18
the United States um alimony spousal support maintenance whatever we want to call it which is a payment a person
00:16:24
makes to their spouse when there's been an economic disparity in the marriage and now they're getting divorced
00:16:29
fored that used to be tax deductible it used to have no formula it was at the discretion of a judge then in 2016 Trump
00:16:37
came into office and he said yeah I'm not letting it be tax deductible anymore so completely changed now you're already
00:16:43
married at this point and now the rules about what governs your marriage have changed so there aren't a lot of
00:16:50
contracts in the world that people could enter into that the terms could wildly change due to circumstances beyond your
00:16:56
control and you're still in that same contract so prenuptual Agreements are designed for two people who at that
00:17:04
moment have an abundance of affection for each other if they didn't then there's no reason that they should be
00:17:09
getting married that they make up a rule set that's going to govern their relationship and that typically as we
00:17:15
see it in movies and such and we hear about it in culture is really deciding who gets what when they break up right
00:17:20
correct now it's hard to say in advance who gets what when we break up sometime
00:17:27
in the future because we don't know what we're going to have in 10 years in 20
00:17:32
years so what do you do you create structures like you create you know I I
00:17:38
refer to the simplest prenup as a Yours Mine and Ours which is if it's in my
00:17:43
name whether it's an asset or a liability it's mine free from any Claim by you free from any obligation to you
00:17:50
if it's in your name it's yours free from any Claim by me any obligation to me ours if it's in our joint names then
00:17:56
we're equally responsible for it if it's an obligation or we equally are entitled to half the value of it if it's an asset
00:18:04
that to me just creating those three buckets now here's the problem you
00:18:09
create those three buckets you both sign off on it and you get married you can't just set it and forget it now you
00:18:16
actually have to have conversations with this person that you're married to which theoretically you should be able to do
00:18:22
right like if you've decided this is going to be my primary relationship this is the person I'm going to tie my
00:18:28
destiny to you should be able to talk about hey I just got this big bonus at
00:18:33
work I'm going to put this much in my soul account and I'm going to put this much in the joint account and then you should be able to say if you're the
00:18:39
other person well why why are you putting so much of it in your personal account like are things weird with us or something or is there you know have some
00:18:45
conversation again about why are we marrying it's it's that economy concept
00:18:50
which is look what do I owe you if I marry you I'd like to know that in
00:18:56
advance because people say to me all the time you know well I married this person
00:19:01
and uh when we got married uh he had nothing he had nothing and he built his
00:19:07
business while he was married to me and I was very you know there for him while he was building it so therefore I
00:19:14
believe I'm entitled to half the value of that business now that's a logical argument I don't know that I agree with
00:19:21
it but it's logical but keep going with that logic right so if that was true and
00:19:28
I built this business and my wife who was married to me while I was building that business she helped make that okay
00:19:35
well her mother and father helped make who she is so I owe them something right
00:19:42
like I because if they hadn't done what they did I wouldn't have her and if I didn't have her I wouldn't have my business so how much do I owe them and
00:19:49
you know now that I think about it her grandmother definitely influenced who her mother was which influenced who she
00:19:55
was which influenced what she did for me so just can you let me know in advance
00:20:00
how far down the chain do I owe people and how much do I owe them they can't all get half so did they get half of the
00:20:07
half of the half or do I like and and if this is the logic that we're going to
00:20:12
follow then I would like to know in advance what that is because there are
00:20:18
no other transactions where if you went into to purchase a car and you said how much is this car and they said
00:20:25
money he said well how much you know it's a good amount okay I again we just keep talking in abstractions I'd like to
00:20:31
know what does this add up to how much is it you know and even if you can't make it a dollar number it's x% of last
00:20:39
year's earnings or like give me a formula something to tie it to and at least have that conversation because
00:20:45
then you can decide am I going to sign up for this thing or not you must meet a lot of people who are in a relationship
00:20:52
where one of the people doesn't want to have a prup yes cuz I cuz I when I think
00:20:58
think about having a prup I'm with a a woman at the moment we've been together for 5 years um frankly if I said to her
00:21:04
I want to get a prenup she would be all for it she would that's the type of person she is she would be all for it doesn't care she' be all for it
00:21:10
excellent um you've done well but I can imagine in other relationships I'd be nervous to even say the words because
00:21:17
immediately you're thinking about how you're getting out before you get in yeah well and you know there there's a
00:21:22
lot to that there's a lot to unpack there so the first thing I would say is all marriages end
00:21:29
they end in death or they end in divorce but they all end right and so if you said I'm going to get life insurance it
00:21:36
would be foolish for someone who's with you to say wait are you planning on dying soon like it no but in the event
00:21:42
that I do I'd like to make sure that things are taken care of in a certain way and in the event that I do there's going to be enough things to be upset
00:21:48
and sad about for the people around me so I'd like them to have one less thing you know and I I I also know that
00:21:54
there's a possibility I hope I won't but there's a possibility that I'm going to die in an hour so i' really hope it
00:21:59
doesn't happen but I can't say it's definitely not going to happen so divorce you know when we look at
00:22:04
statistics like that it's okay to say hey look you know what I hope this never happens but if it did what do we owe
00:22:12
each other you know what would you need like it's not just a conversation about what do I want to keep what am I
00:22:17
entitled to keep it's also what would what would you need have you seen it break down a marriage because someone
00:22:23
mentioned a prup have you seen it yeah I've seen marriage I've seen marriages that were scheduled to to happen not
00:22:29
happen because the prenup discussion happened but more often than not I've seen the threat of not marrying someone
00:22:37
because they want you to sign a prenup cause a person to fold in their
00:22:43
request for a prenup which to me is a really bad start for a marriage so I've had a lot of clients who come in say
00:22:49
look I I want to have a prenup I have a lot of confidence in this marriage I really love this person but I would like
00:22:55
to you know have a prenup in place and I draft to PR up for them and it has reasonable terms and they give it to
00:23:01
their fiance and their fiance says yeah I'm not signing that it's not happening and instead of saying okay like then
00:23:09
you're choosing for us to not marry you know that's okay but like I love you and
00:23:14
I'd love to marry you but this is something that I need in order to feel comfortable with that um they they just
00:23:20
go okay yeah never mind and they walk away from it and and um because they're intimidated and I think that's a that's
00:23:27
an awful way to start marriage like I think that's much worse than having a
00:23:32
discussion about difficult things like I don't think you would think it's
00:23:37
irresponsible you've been with with a woman for five years to say to her let's
00:23:43
say a year ago or let's say four years ago to say to her you know we're going
00:23:49
to get in a fight sometime that's going to happen like we're going to disagree about something it'll probably be my
00:23:54
fault I'll probably say something stupid I do that sometimes so when we get in a fight someday which again I hope we
00:24:01
don't I'll do everything I can and not ever get in an argument with you but at some point some's goingon to you're
00:24:06
going to say something it's going to hurt my feelings I'm going to take it the wrong way I'll say something you'll take it the wrong way or maybe I'm just an idiot sometimes I'll be in a bad mood
00:24:13
and I'll say something or I'll have too many drinks and I'll say something to upset you when that
00:24:18
happens how do you how do you like to fight like what's best do you need a minute like do you need a minute to calm
00:24:25
down do you need to like sleep on it or do you need to like we got to fix this
00:24:30
right now I can't go to bed angry like I won't be able to sleep I won't be able to function like like do we have to
00:24:36
address it right then and there because you know the best time to talk about how we're going to argue when we're not
00:24:42
arguing you know the worst time to learn how to fight in the middle of a fight that's the worst time to learn how to
00:24:48
fight so I like a prup I think a prup can be a very romantic thing because
00:24:55
it's basically saying look I love you you love me we want this thing to work
00:25:00
or else we wouldn't be signing up for it but in the event it breaks down you have a right to know what you're entitled to
00:25:06
I have a right to know what I'm entitled to we both have an interest in making sure that we both have the things we
00:25:12
need so that neither of us feels like we're crawling out of this relationship instead of walking out of it like if I
00:25:18
lose you I'm going to have a lot more to be sad about than my stuff well boy let
00:25:24
me tell you not knowing where I'm going to live or how I'm going to pay my bills that's going to add a layer of pain and
00:25:30
complexity to what is undoubtedly going to be a really hard situation so let's take that off of each other let's let's
00:25:36
know that because I don't ever want the person who lays their head on the pillow next to me to be there because they
00:25:43
don't want to get divorced I I would rather that it be that they like having me there next to
00:25:49
them that their life is better because I'm there that they feel like I bring value to their life and they bring value
00:25:56
to mine not well I don't want to go through all that in that case of that
00:26:01
person you referenced there where they came to you for a prenup their partner gave them an ultimatum and said listen no I'm not signing that how do you kind
00:26:07
of draw the line between being a lawyer versus like a therapist or an
00:26:13
advisor as sort of like a relationship advisor yeah I mean I have to tell you it's a very seamless I I don't um I
00:26:21
don't think it's easy to distinguish between we're attorneys and counselors at law my I have an undergraduate degree
00:26:27
in psychology M and I think I use it as much as I use my law degree because this
00:26:32
is so personal that it's very hard to not give human advice while I'm giving legal
00:26:39
advice and I'm dealing in the clay of of you know human emotion and human human
00:26:45
connection and human Frailty and human emotional complexity I thought prenups were illegal I thought they were like
00:26:51
people went and got them but they when it comes to enforcement enforcement they don't hold up you know it could be true
00:26:57
in the UK but it's certainly not in the USA it's they they are enforcable they are binding sometimes they're crazy how
00:27:04
enforcable they are really like it's because the nature of a penup is as long
00:27:09
as it was not what's called unconscionable unconscionable is a contract that is so unfair that no fair
00:27:17
dealing person would offer it and no sane person would accept it so that's
00:27:22
what unconscionability is so you have to be a contract is to be unconscionable
00:27:29
for it to be set aside okay now I have seen some prenups that were in their
00:27:38
interpretation unconscionable meaning you know at the time they
00:27:44
entered into it he had nothing and she had nothing and now they're getting divorced and under the terms of this
00:27:51
he's going to walk out with $100 million and she's going to walk out with almost nothing but as long as it was not
00:27:58
unconscionable at the time it was made if it's unconscionable in its
00:28:04
performance it's still binding so I have seen the outcome of prenups sometimes be
00:28:12
shockingly unfair but you have a right to contract as long as it wasn't fraud as long as it
00:28:18
wasn't duress or undo influence or if someone was under the you know uh influence of drugs or alcohol when they
00:28:24
signed off on it it's a binding contract because we believe in in in human autonomy and agency and the right to
00:28:30
make decisions about your life and your future so is that ex example really is that the the most shocking one you've
00:28:37
seen no the most shocking prenup I've ever seen which was
00:28:42
enforcable um had a provision that said that for every 10 pounds the wife gained
00:28:49
in the marriage she would lose $10,000 a month in alimony 10 pounds of weight yes
00:28:55
yes so so it was very wealthy man who was wear marrying a very attractive
00:29:01
woman but he was very concerned that she was going to become less attractive and he was going to become more wealthy so
00:29:08
his solution to this was in the prenuptual agreement he wanted a clause
00:29:14
that said she would get if they divorced she was going to get like $70,000 a month for
00:29:21
alimony but for every 10 pounds she gained from the date of marriage she
00:29:27
would forfeit 10,000 a month worth of alimony and it was designed to sort of
00:29:32
create an incentive that she would remain thin and that was enforceable meaning
00:29:39
they tried to challenge and set aside that provision and the court said this
00:29:45
is a disgusting provision I don't know why you married this person but it's
00:29:50
enforceable it's a contract the two of you signed it and you had a right to sign it and you agreed to these rules and they may be ridiculous rules but you
00:29:57
agreed to them and you have a right to do that do you think that was love again I I think it's a kind of love
00:30:04
I think it's a form of love I is it a form of love I'd be interested in no I think it's very shallow in some ways
00:30:10
there's something very honest about it I mean you can't argue with the fact that there's something very upfront about it
00:30:18
he was making very clear and putting in writing here's the value you bring to this relationship you know I consider
00:30:25
your physical appearance vitally important to this relationship and by the way don't skip the other side
00:30:31
of that equation yeah she was going to get $70,000 a month that's very impressive
00:30:38
number so you know I I think she she also understood there was a value to be
00:30:44
attached to him as well you know and and it's so it's is it something I would be
00:30:50
interested in on either side of that equation no but do I have a right to say
00:30:56
to someone that's not love I I don't think I have a right to say that to someone I think that if this is
00:31:01
an economy the two of you have agreed on that you know as a lawyer see my my job
00:31:06
as a lawyer is not to look like I don't look at it that way I look at the engineering of it so like if I'm
00:31:13
representing her in that transaction all I could think is okay so we're going to
00:31:19
want her Baseline weight to be as high as possible so I'm going to want her to
00:31:24
have pennies in her Pockets after at the day we sign the prenup because you have to establish a baseline right because if you say gaining 10 pounds you'd have to
00:31:31
establish a baseline weight on the date of the marriage so she was weighed on the day of the marriage well in or about the date of the marri the parties
00:31:37
acknowledge that on on her about the date of marriage she weighed approximately X pounds so if I'm her I
00:31:43
want that to be as high as possible so I'm going to be putting pennies in my pockets and eating as many cheeseburgers as I can before the weighin now we're
00:31:50
getting divorced I'm going to be like a wrestler I'm going to be in the sauna I'm going to be sweating as much as I
00:31:57
can I'm going to take diuretics I'm going to eat nothing but like grilled vegetables for a week or two you know
00:32:02
and I'm going to I'm going to take off every ounce of clothing I can because I want to minimize my weight this is why
00:32:08
this is why lawyers don't get invited to parties because that's how we analyze problems like I didn't hear that and go
00:32:13
what is the nature of their coupling I looked at it and I went oh I could play with that I could look I could I could
00:32:19
whoever I'm representing in that transaction I could figure out a way to you know kind of make that work you become a coach kind of is I
00:32:27
mean it it turns into an engineering question as opposed to a human
00:32:32
question I heard about this thing when I was reading your book of these um also watching some of your stuff online that
00:32:37
I didn't know existed which was Fidelity contracts Fidelity Clauses yeah Fidelity Clauses yeah yeah so it's something
00:32:43
people include in prenuptual agreements and also sometimes in what's called a postnuptial agreement so a postnuptial
00:32:48
agreement you know nupal meaning marriage pre meaning before marriage post meaning after marriage so if you
00:32:55
didn't get a prenup but your marriage for what whatever reason becomes fragile
00:33:00
maybe someone learns of an affair or maybe you're starting to have difficulties with each other but you don't want to
00:33:06
divorce but you'd like there to be some clarity as to if we divorce what will
00:33:12
the rules be you can do something called a postnuptial agreement okay and and that would in the event you divorce make
00:33:18
the divorce a little less acrimonious because you've resolved certain issues it's basically like the prenup you
00:33:24
should have had okay so I have seen people in both prenups and in postnups
00:33:29
put in what's called Fidelity Clauses which essentially are a clause that say that if you cheat on your spouse here's
00:33:37
what the penalty will be and it could be a financial penalty it could have you know a support related context it could
00:33:44
have be a percentage of certain ownership rights you know things that you have are they a good idea from what
00:33:50
you've seen are they useful in I think they're a terrible idea yeah from a legal standpoint they're a terrible idea
00:33:55
for for a couple of reasons one defining cheating is very tricky you know if if
00:34:02
you're if we're going to Define cheating as a specific form of sexual
00:34:07
contact I guess that's a pretty clear definition but but even infidelity it's not all created equal I mean I think we
00:34:14
could all agree that if you if your
00:34:19
partner when they were drunk on vacation or at a party you know had some kind of
00:34:26
fleeting sexual ual contact with another person and then woke up the next day and went oh my God what did I do I regret
00:34:32
this so much but they're never going to see this person again it was just a stupid diance it happened you know again
00:34:38
not excusing that behavior but that's different than if you were having an ongoing affair with another person or I
00:34:46
think there are probably some people if they were being honest if they said would you rather
00:34:52
that your spouse on a drunken Night Out kissed somebody or was texting another
00:34:58
person five times a day for six weeks and sharing the most intimate thoughts
00:35:04
you know and what we call an emotional affair well I mean I I think we can agree that like something about an
00:35:09
emotional affair like someone becoming your Confidant there there I've once heard someone say and I in my
00:35:15
professional life I found it to be true that when men find out that a woman who
00:35:21
they're with has had an affair their first question is did you sleep with him
00:35:26
when women find out a man had an affair their first question is are you in love with her and I think that tells you a lot
00:35:33
about men and women's relationships because there's a sense of okay what what was this was this sex or was this
00:35:42
like I'm I don't love you anymore I don't want you in my life anymore because those are two really different
00:35:48
things and and so a Fidelity Clause is a oniz fits-all concept that just says
00:35:54
okay we're going to Define cheating and then there's 's going to be a penalty for you doing it now again in
00:36:02
what I've observed in life cheating is its own penalty cheating turns your life at best cheating turns your life into
00:36:09
like an unbelievably complicated like jumping from one foot to another lying
00:36:15
to everyone involved like rarely does anybody get out of infidelity without
00:36:21
hurting themselves and a bunch of other people whether it's not only their partner but even the person who they
00:36:27
cheat with or or that person's partner like there's so there's so much pain to go around when when cheating happens and
00:36:35
so to say and there's going to be an economic penalty you know it's a bit like you know using drugs is a legal in
00:36:44
a lot of places but I can't imagine that there's a heroin addict who goes you know I'm going to shoot up oh wait it's
00:36:50
illegal I don't want to get in trouble yeah I'm like that's not how it works like you're adding insult to injury you
00:36:56
know this person they're already in a very difficult position I don't think making it illegal is going to do much
00:37:03
except create an underground economy same kind of thing I I think that infidelity there should be sufficient
00:37:10
incentives in a relationship to not cheat and there there are already by
00:37:17
definition so many consequences for cheating that adding to that an economic penalty I don't know that a person's
00:37:24
going to be about to cheat and then go this could cost me like 20 more Grand no I'm not going to do it are you seeing
00:37:30
more and more people getting those prenups yeah prenups are I have to tell you there's a generational shift
00:37:36
happening I I see a lot of people in their I've been doing this job for 25
00:37:41
years and I will tell you the people currently in their 20s and early 30s
00:37:47
like the prime demographic for marriage mid mid 20s to mid-30s are getting prenups at a rate
00:37:55
that I would say is probably 5X what it was 10 years ago 15 years ago certainly
00:38:01
25 years ago from when I started I think there's a more pragmatic view of
00:38:07
relationships I think that there's there's a lot more open discussion I
00:38:13
mean although there is a tremendous increase in the amount of like performative look how happy we are you
00:38:19
know meanwhile it's like you know white teeth and rotting gums you know like we're we're we're doing the performative
00:38:25
social media look at how great hash blast and mean all our life is you know is our relationship is is rotting from
00:38:30
the inside um and we see a lot of that like I I I have tell you something I see people in my office who publicly are
00:38:38
having the greatest relationships ever like if you believe their social media they are so madly in love and it shocks
00:38:45
me because I think about all the people that are dissatisfied in their perfectly
00:38:50
acceptable relationship cuz it's not as amazing as that relationship and meanwhile that relationship is nowhere
00:38:57
near that amazing as they'd have you believe it and and we've got the audacity now as a culture that people
00:39:03
without any apology you know do the we're perfectly happy these hateful rumors that we're unhappy are terrible
00:39:09
and then we've decided to Amic be heart ways we asked you to respect our privacy during this difficult time and you're
00:39:15
like okay but wait a minute like a month ago when there was rumors that the two of you were splitting up you yelled at
00:39:20
all of us for saying it's so mean that we're speculating and now you're like yes we've split up so we were right so we you were making us feel awful about
00:39:27
our elves and how madly in love you were with each other but now you know we were
00:39:32
basing our lives like we're we're basing our our our level of satisfaction on watching your greatest hits while we
00:39:38
live our gag reel do you think there's something in the idea that those that endeavor to convince the world that
00:39:44
they're happy in their relationships are often not as happy 100% I'll actually
00:39:49
extrapolate that further my my father's a southerner so he has a lot of Southern folksy things he says and one of them
00:39:55
was empty barrels make the most noise and he used to say that to me when I was a kid all the time whenever
00:40:01
somebody had something fancy that they owned because I grew up without a lot of money and they someone would drive a beautiful car and say wow that car is so
00:40:07
cool he'd say you know empty barrels make the most noise that that the people that that have true joy in their
00:40:13
relationship really don't feel like they have to advertise it people who have like I I represent some of the
00:40:20
wealthiest people in the world like New York is the epicenter of Commerce and
00:40:25
finance for the United States and and to some degree for the world you know in the UAE you're more likely to find a
00:40:31
goldplated Ferrari but in New York like Finance Wall Street like it is it is the
00:40:37
home of it so I represent I have a client who's worth $8 billion do you would walk past him on the street you
00:40:43
would never know he has very much money at all he drives a Jeep Grand Cherokee which is like a very mid-range car he
00:40:50
wears like you know totally non-descript clothing like he just looks like a typical middle-aged dude and would not
00:40:57
look at him and go like he gets his haircut at like Super Cuts for 25 bucks like he's not Posh in the things that he
00:41:04
owns and does and he's he could buy you know he his income annually is like the
00:41:10
gross domestic product of a few compan of a few countries and you know he's not
00:41:15
but then yet I have clients who appear to be incredibly wealthy and as a
00:41:21
divorce lawyer I get to see the absolutely unfiltered version of people's finances and I tell you they
00:41:27
are deeply in debt many of them you know this is particularly true of celebrities you know celebrities have to live these
00:41:34
big performative lives because if they they don't you know drive a posh car and
00:41:40
they don't wear the the latest designer labels there's this sense of oh are they not doing well and especially with sort
00:41:45
of influencer culture you know there's just so much like you know everything everyone's wearing and doing has to be
00:41:52
the best of the best and the most expensive I I find very often these are the more people have to flaunt their
00:41:59
wealth the less wealth they probably have like you know Money Talks Like wealth Whispers And it's very
00:42:06
comfortable just Whispering it doesn't feel like it has to prove to the world in fact it it would rather that everyone
00:42:11
not know who it was there was a time where Fame was an unfortunate side
00:42:18
effect of talent so you were really good at something so then everybody heard about
00:42:23
who you were and all of a sudden everybody knew who you were and that was UNT it cuz you couldn't go out to eat
00:42:28
anymore you couldn't just live your life anymore now of course there were times where it probably felt really nice you
00:42:33
know it feels good listen I I walked down the street in New York City sometimes people today guys said to me hey man love your stuff thanks that's
00:42:40
great feels nice definitely nice there's times where it doesn't there's times where I'm on my phone I'm I'm in the middle of talking to a client and
00:42:46
somebody's standing there next to me waiting to talk to me and I know they're waiting to say something so lovely but there's a part of me it's like okay man
00:42:52
I I got to like do what I'm doing right now I'm I'm doing the thing you know and and now being famous is the goal for so
00:43:00
many people so I I think there is definitely when people say look at how
00:43:06
happy we are look at how happy we are look at how happy you know it's like please tell me how happy we are because
00:43:12
if you don't tell me how happy we are I'm GNA have to look at this relationship and I'm going to see how unhappy we are you know when someone
00:43:20
wants to be famous it's like tell me I have value please tell me I have value oh God please tell me I have value
00:43:26
because you know the the reason I was never really interested in being famous is that the praise of strangers
00:43:35
never really felt that important to me like if the people in my life think I
00:43:40
have something interesting to say and care about me and like me that's really meaningful to me and I'm touched for
00:43:46
anyone who's ever appreciated my work or enjoyed it but I never said like I really want to get out there and you
00:43:53
know have people know who I am and tell me I'm smart because because I I know I'm smart like it's okay like you know
00:43:59
my beliefs don't require you to believe them and and so I I think this performative culture when it comes to
00:44:06
relationships is an unfortunate thing because again we're comparing ourselves
00:44:13
we can't help as a species but compare ourselves to the things we see around us
00:44:18
why did you must see so much of that in your office where someone comes in and they say my marriage isn't working and they use the they use a comparative
00:44:25
measure they say well you know and they they're like this and we're not so right
00:44:31
but how much sex are they having how much like how much sex is enough sex like honestly like we don't talk about
00:44:37
these things we don't we don't there's so much of our day-to-day life that
00:44:42
we're constantly feeling like we're not doing well based on nothing like I don't
00:44:49
think I'm doing that well compared to what I'm not good-look enough compared to what a photoshopped image of a person
00:44:56
on steroids yeah you're right you don't look like a photoshoop person on steroids you're not
00:45:01
supposed to like women are going into doctors offices saying make me look like
00:45:07
this and showing the doctor something that's been photoshopped that person doesn't look
00:45:12
like that like how would you know you're not having enough sex how much sex are people having is that frequent one sex
00:45:19
yeah sex is huge sex is huge it's well I mean first of all it better be because
00:45:24
what's the difference between a spouse and a roommate otherwise like it was just like oh we're going to be partners in a home together like you
00:45:30
don't have to marry each other to do that you can just live together and be I mean sex is the glue sex is the thing
00:45:36
that brings you together sex is what makes a romantic relationship a romantic
00:45:42
relationship and again it can be any number of varieties of sex it can be preferences of sex it can be anything
00:45:48
but we don't talk about we talk about all kinds of things in in polite Society
00:45:53
now if you can call it that I mean we talk more than we ever did about you know transgender issues and lgbtq plus
00:45:59
issues and I think that's progress I think it's great that people can talk about anything we can talk about Kink we
00:46:05
can talk about like I'm a big fan of people being able to speak openly about the things that make them happy and make
00:46:10
them feel good and you know not having to feel ashamed about certain things but
00:46:16
Baseline like how how well we're not having enough sex okay compared to what
00:46:22
the sex we used to have as a couple that makes sense that makes sense to me like if we said Baseline and say hey we used
00:46:28
to have sex every day when we first started dating we had sex four times a
00:46:33
day okay but then the you know luster wears off you know now we we used to have sex once a day now once a week is
00:46:41
that okay is that natural is that part of the progression of a relationship or is that a sign that one or both of us
00:46:48
are feeling dissatisfied with each other can we talk about that and not have it be a fight can we talk about that and
00:46:54
not hear it as a as a something that we have react defensively too and that's that's the stuff I tried to talk about
00:47:00
in my book is that people come in and they go well you know we're unhappy with a child I was cheating on her but I was
00:47:05
cheating on her because she wasn't sleeping with me well I wasn't sleeping with him because he's never nice to me well I'm not nice to her because every
00:47:10
time I talk to her all she does is put me down okay and and you sit here going okay so you guys have just been in this
00:47:16
death spiral you know just going down and down and down you started at I love
00:47:22
you more than 8 billion other people in the world but somehow you just started
00:47:28
to do this death spiral and now you're right you won you guys you won you're both right you don't have to sleep with
00:47:35
him you don't have to be nice to her you don't have to say a kind word you don't have to do any of that you don't have to
00:47:40
be married great news you don't have to be married but you decided to be married
00:47:46
you signed up to be married so at some point this made sense to you you liked
00:47:51
each other that much and you were both pointing in the same direction and at some point you lost the plot
00:47:57
so my feeling is wouldn't it be better before you completely lose the plot to
00:48:05
just do the preventative maintenance what's preventative maintenance talk about are we still as
00:48:12
connected as we were are we still as excited as we were are we still you know are we still attracted to each other are
00:48:20
we still enjoying each other physically mentally like emotionally we don't want to do that though because it's uncomfortable right okay lots of things
00:48:27
are uncomfortable that are so good for you you know exercise is uncomfortable until you get in a rhythm of it and it
00:48:33
feels really good you know so how how would you know if the first time you went to the gym and you worked out and
00:48:39
then you went home and you were like oh my God I'm so sorry I'm never working out again then you will never get into
00:48:44
an exercise routine you have to get through that part where everything's really sore and you're still sometimes
00:48:50
going to be sore you overdid it you know but you start to realize yeah but it's also bringing tremendous value to my
00:48:56
life you know and so why not like why not trade what you want now which is
00:49:02
comfort in the moment for what you want most which is real connection real
00:49:08
intimacy like real joy and and and that can be and again we want it 86% of
00:49:14
people who get divorced wouldn't get remarried within 5 years if we didn't want it if we didn't believe it was possible and if you've ever met someone
00:49:22
who is happily married over a long period of time you won the lottery like they're so
00:49:29
their lives are just so much better because they just go I had this partner
00:49:35
because this is terrifying like life is terrifying and it's brutal and it and it and it ends it
00:49:42
invariably ends we're all going to die everyone we love is going to die like we're playing a game you can't win to
00:49:49
the utmost and to me to have a partner in that someone who you can hold their
00:49:55
hand and go when you're scared I'll be here for you and when I'm scared you'll be here for me and you'll help me see my
00:50:02
blind spots and I'll help you see yours and let's just do this thing and we'll never be alone like what a gorgeous
00:50:09
thought that is what a beautiful thought that is what a worthy Pursuit that is
00:50:14
but yeah you got to be uncomfortable once in a while you got to tell each other something other than what the
00:50:19
other person wants to hear once in a while but to me like if the payoff is
00:50:26
real conect ction keeping real intimacy keeping your partner happy and satisfied
00:50:32
with you so that the thought of splitting up or running off with somebody else is just a fleeting thought
00:50:37
that maybe occasionally jumps into their head like that seems such a worthwhile investment to
00:50:43
me preventative maintenance I want to just drill down a little bit into what that actually looks
00:50:49
like because there'll be a lot of people right now including myself who heard you use this term preventative maintenance
00:50:55
and immediately I thought Jesus Christ CH I probably should do that a little bit more sure what do you mean by preventative maintenance it can be lots
00:51:01
of things I think it can be I try to give a lot of examples but I I think some of the simplest examples are very
00:51:08
small gestures of courtesy I mean think about when you first started
00:51:13
dating all the little things that made the back of your neck tingle about this person like they would say the littlest
00:51:20
thing about you and it made you so happy cuz they were noticing you you know and
00:51:25
they they they saw beautiful things in you and that made you see and feel those things in yourself you know that that's
00:51:32
a be amazing thing we can do for each other you know and and so I mean at its core level like the the
00:51:40
the the example I've given to a lot of my male friends and and several of them have done it and I've got a lot of
00:51:46
really good feedback on it is leave leave a note just leave a note in the morning when you leave for work or
00:51:51
wherever it is you're going just leave a note you know it was so great hanging out with you last night I'm with the prettiest girl in the whole
00:51:57
world can't wait to see you again that's it what does that take 10 seconds 10
00:52:02
seconds and and every guy I meet who I say that to they go yeah the first time
00:52:08
I did it she was like what is going on why did you leave me that note what are you what what what is what's going on
00:52:14
but then after a little while like if this is just something you do that you go yeah I just you know I want to make a
00:52:19
practice of like how I want to tell you this stuff I forget to tell you sometimes you know like what does that
00:52:25
take like what does it take for your partner to say to you you're so smart like I just love being around you like
00:52:32
you're so handsome I'm so lucky like what does that take that's nothing doesn't cost anything takes nothing to
00:52:38
do that why don't we do it I don't know I don't know I I think we just whoever
00:52:44
discovered water it wasn't a fish like I think you're just in it and you just stop seeing it and that person's just
00:52:50
there and again I don't know and I also think culture is antagonistic to it cuz the example I give to people because
00:52:56
people love their dogs and I love my dogs but like dogs are a great way to
00:53:03
look at this rationally because I've got a 13-year-old dog I got him when he was
00:53:08
a puppy now he's 13 and like me he slowed down a lot his back hurts he's not quite the puppy he used to
00:53:15
be I have never once looked at that dog and gone I got to get a puppy this old
00:53:22
this old dog he didn't look as cute as he used to and like oh my God if seen how cute puppies are like I would never
00:53:28
it's my dog man I fall more in love with that dog every single day you know and yeah sure puppies are cute and they're
00:53:34
great and I'll pet them but that's my dog man I wouldn't trade all the puppies in the world for that
00:53:40
dog your partner your romantic partner like what when did it become acceptable
00:53:47
as it as it is in in culture to just just piss all over your partner like
00:53:54
every guy it's like the h I'm married to the most loathsome harp you ever to castrate a man like this one the old
00:54:01
ball and chain and women it's like the guy is like oh this idiot like this just lovable idiot you know he doesn't know
00:54:08
he doesn't know anything he's so stupid men are so stupid like when did that what do you think's going to come from
00:54:14
that other than this disdain that we can then have for each other and this sort of disrespect as opposed to being like
00:54:21
so into each other which is what you were when you were strangers you know when you didn't know each other you know
00:54:28
every all the same women sitting around in a group of women talking about how much their husbands suck when their
00:54:35
female friend goes oh my God I'm seeing this guy I just started seeing what did he oh my God he sounds so great all all
00:54:42
this is all this is is your guy five years ago but somehow now you're you're
00:54:49
really GNA buy the delusion that if she it all works out with him and they get married and they
00:54:55
do their little fairy tail thing and the cake and the dress and the whole thing that in 5 years she's still going to be
00:55:00
like he's so great no it's going to be again just like the rest of you so we
00:55:07
need to start as a culture you know perhaps changing the way because I think
00:55:14
there is something about that where we you know we're trying to like not make people self-conscious so we just like take the piss out of our partner all the
00:55:20
time in front of you know people or around other people and I I don't find that Charming do you think that will we
00:55:26
get get to The Lovable idia oh my God happy wife happy all that stuff which is part of culture what the hell happy wife
00:55:31
whoever said that should just be beaten to death happy wife happy life like if I hear one more person give that advice to
00:55:37
somebody I have to tell you that is just the most ridiculous what does that even mean happy wife happy life if she's
00:55:44
happy then I'm happy because is that true I think I think it's used by men
00:55:51
who believe that their wife is always unhappy so if she's not shouting at me
00:55:58
and I can just sit here and watch the football yeah then all all is well is that something to Aspire
00:56:04
too you know man I can't wait what for someday for my kids to just sit there
00:56:11
while the up person in the other room is just mildly dissatisfied with them and
00:56:16
they can just sit and watch you know the football game really that's that's what we're aspiring to that's what you hope
00:56:22
for like I got to tell I just don't I think our goals are really misc LED you know my greatest accomplishment in life
00:56:29
is my children really that's your greatest accomplishment in life is your children what let me ask you this what
00:56:35
will your children's greatest accomplishment in life be having children because guess what this is the
00:56:40
ideology of a cancer cell growth for the sake of growth for the sake of growth for the sake of growth reproduction for
00:56:47
the sake of reproduction I don't think that's the highest noblest goal I think there should be something in there about
00:56:54
Quality of Life about making the world or the experience of others better like again it's not for me to Define but but
00:57:02
I certainly I don't intelligence is hard to Define but I can spot stupid a mile
00:57:08
away and I have to tell you a good relationship you know it's kind of hard to quantify but man I know what sucks I
00:57:15
know a bad relationship when I see one and we all know them so what's more
00:57:22
uncomfortable that relationship where you know Le she's not yelling at me and she's only mildly dissatisfied and I can
00:57:28
just be left alone for an hour and watch the football or having to have an uncomfortable conversation again while
00:57:34
you're still like each other but there's a little slippage there's a little something going in the other direction
00:57:40
and I don't want it to go too far I mean put it into the physical context it is a whole lot easier to maintain a healthy
00:57:47
weight than to gain a 100 pounds and then try to figure out how to lose it that's much much harder and it's much
00:57:54
worse for you and the chances of actually accomplishing it are way lower whereas maintaining a healthy weight
00:58:01
that's not an unrealistic thing to be able to do is a I had sat here with a one psychologist um who I'm sure you'll
00:58:08
know very famous individual um called Jordan Peterson and he said to me he
00:58:13
said he was shouting when he said it he said listen he was you're going to have to sit down for 90 minutes a week and
00:58:19
you're going to have to listen to her and she's going to tell you everything that's wrong and he goes if you don't listen to her for 90 minutes a week
00:58:25
you'll be listening to her in divorce court and he was he was almost shouting when he says it the analogy he's making
00:58:31
and what he's saying is what you're saying yeah is you're going to have to I you know Jord I I find Jordan Peterson
00:58:38
very entertaining I've been a fan of his work a long time um and I I loved actually your conversation with him um
00:58:45
what I will say is I think that he's sort of hyperbolic in his presentation sometimes which I I enjoy but I think we
00:58:51
totally agree on this I think that that what he's saying more than anything is that you can invest now in cander and in
00:58:59
listening to this other person in a non-defensive manner and and so there's a chapter in my book called hiten now
00:59:08
where I talk about exactly that where I say you need to be able to have these conversations but have them in a
00:59:14
way that that you're hearing it and you're saying it you're agreeing it's a
00:59:20
contract that we know we love each other so we're going to try to say it with love we're going to try to hear it with love because I'm only saying it cuz this
00:59:28
is important to me this relationship and I want it to be good for you and for me so I'm going to go out on the limb here
00:59:35
I'm gonna take this risk because you're worth it you are worth it for me to take this risk it's scary I'm not excited
00:59:41
about having to say it but you know what like I care enough and when you say things to me I'm going to hear it I'm
00:59:46
going to hear it as you saying I care so much about this relationship I'm going to say this harder thing to say and it
00:59:52
might be little it might be you know you said the other night you were talking about my sister sister and you made that little joke about her and it felt like
00:59:58
you were like kind of making fun of my sister and I thought you liked my sister and it's really important to me that you
01:00:03
like my sister cuz I really like my sister so maybe I misunderstood you and if I did okay great let me know that hit
01:00:09
send now just hit send now the reason I said hit s now is when
01:00:14
you you ever like write an email where you said something important and you like write it rewrite it and you craft
01:00:20
it and you're like about to hit send and you're like oh boy and then you hit it and you're like
01:00:26
well it's there now can on send it now like it's done I hit send now that's where I got the term hit send now
01:00:33
because but I but I said like make it a technique like say to your partner I
01:00:38
want to do this I want you to do it and I want to do it but I want to make it clear like make the subject heading of
01:00:45
the email hitting send now okay so they know so they know this is not an attack
01:00:52
this is something I want to get off my chest you don't have to respond right away you don't have to respond in
01:00:58
writing if you don't want to but I just want to put this out there because I want you to digest it and the key to
01:01:04
this is I read in your book is to do it quickly yep and do it honestly yep yep and and and to again to make a point of
01:01:12
calling this out as a technique when you're in a good place so when you're already in a good place there's an
01:01:18
abundance of Goodwill between us we're in a good spot that's a good time to say hey look this is good man and this is
01:01:24
important so let's keep it good and the way we're going to do that is if I say to you you know we used to I'm making an
01:01:30
example we used to have sex five times a week and now I feel like it's like you
01:01:35
know once a week maybe and I I think you're so attractive I love I love it like I don't feel any less attracted to
01:01:41
you and I know you know we've been busy and things like that but like I don't want to see that slip I want you to be the person that fills all my desires and
01:01:48
all my fantasies I don't want to look at porn I don't want to think about other things I want to really be focused on you is there something I'm doing that
01:01:56
causing you to be less interested in me is there something I could do that would spark things better is there something
01:02:01
going on that I need to know in terms of how you feel about me yeah but what if it's personal and what if it's offensive
01:02:08
what if it's isn't it better to know if it's personal and it's offensive isn't it better to know like because I have
01:02:14
tell you I'll come up with a thousand different reasons that might be and only one of them might be accurate and the other 999 might be complete garbage in
01:02:22
my mind like I might be convinced that it's cuz you're cheating I might be convinced that I'm not attractive to you all of a sudden cuz you know my hair got
01:02:29
grayer or I got a bad haircut or something stupid what if it's that then wouldn't you rather know wouldn't you
01:02:34
rather know wouldn't you and find some other and listen I'm not saying by the way everything isn't everything right
01:02:42
like there are things in relationships that you might just say yeah I don't know that's changed like I used to be
01:02:47
really into that and no I'm not anymore you know or that used to mean a lot to me and now it doesn't and that gives
01:02:52
your partner a chance to say well look it's still really important to me so can we find some common ground how frequent
01:03:01
is sex the issue in divorce as in not I'm not talking about Affairs I'm saying
01:03:07
sexlessness yeah that's a great question so and also is it increasing yeah so here's what I'll say there there's
01:03:14
reverse engineering the demise of a marriage is a very difficult thing for anybody to do because the two people in
01:03:20
the relationship aren't even really fully aware of what's going on in themselves much less each other and then
01:03:26
an outside Observer asking them so like you can do all the studies you want of
01:03:32
people's self-reported satisfaction or lack of satisfaction in a relationship or what caused them to become
01:03:38
dissatisfied that is so loaded up with people's delusion and people's projection and all these other things
01:03:44
that I don't think you could quantifi so everything I'm saying I'm saying as a divorce lawyer who I think is empathetic
01:03:51
and who I think for a living puts myself in other people's mind to try to
01:03:56
understand what they're doing and why they did what they did and come up with the best and worst possible excuses for
01:04:02
it and then to tell that story right like I'm a full contact Storyteller that's my job so and my job if you're
01:04:09
really honest is to manipulate people's emotional state my job is to make a judge feel good about my client bad
01:04:15
about the other side make the other side feel scared make my client feel safe that's my job is to manipulate
01:04:20
everybody's emotional state through the power of Storytelling that's what being a divorced lawyer is it sounds sexier
01:04:26
when I say it that way but that is what it is so when we look at that as the
01:04:31
job where does sex fall into that equation it's it's everywhere in that
01:04:37
equation because again it is the thing that separates this relationship from other kinds of relationships sex is a
01:04:45
thing that is definitional to a romantic relationship now again will it always be
01:04:50
the same will it always stay at the same level of importance no but is it a great
01:04:56
in the coal mine that you know like something's off with the sex now that that that that the tragedy's not far
01:05:03
behind yeah like because almost every couple when I talk to my side of the
01:05:10
equation about when did this thing start when did the ship start to sink there was certainly some change in sex because
01:05:18
again sex is definitional in terms of what distinguishes a romantic relationship from a platonic
01:05:25
relationship because listen guys we can do this however we want as a society we don't have to get married we do not have
01:05:32
to get married we just have to we just have to reproduce but we could just decide hey we're just going to reproduce
01:05:39
and we're going to live in like colonies of platonic you know relationships and we'll just have sex for the purposes of
01:05:44
breeding at certain times and then we'll figure out who gets to raise what kids and that'll be that we don't do that and
01:05:51
and it's not like well we don't do that because we made a set of rules societies don't do that they've never really done
01:05:57
that like there there's somehow this permutation in the human and animal kingdom keeps coming up where we have
01:06:04
pair bonds and we reproduce with the person who's our partner and then we sort of work together and you know how
01:06:09
much does the tribe how much does the rest of the world get involved in that how extended is the family how extended
01:06:15
is the tribe that varies right from species to species from culture to culture from time to time but we this
01:06:21
fundamental idea of like reproduction between you know the male and the female of the species and there being some then
01:06:28
continued interaction and a sharing of responsibilities towards the rearing of the young it's pretty common right so
01:06:35
what's the thing that makes A and B it's the sex like there's there's there's sex
01:06:42
there's some romantic or sexual component to that relationship that then leads to reproduction of some kind so I
01:06:49
think when you take that out of the equation or when there's a change in that there's a disruption in the force
01:06:55
right there's a disruption in the system and then you can trace it back like yeah
01:07:01
we and again sometimes it's not direct cause and effect like oh we started having less sex so then we stopped being
01:07:07
nice to each other sometimes we stopped being nice to each other so we stopped having as much sex but it's an element
01:07:13
it's always an element there you know and then that's my key piece of advice to everyone in the book that I try to
01:07:19
say over and over and over again if you had to like summarize it is pay attention just pay attention
01:07:26
to to what you're feeling to what your partner's feeling and then say it you know I I I say that all marital problems
01:07:34
stem from two things I don't know what I want and I don't know how to express it
01:07:43
and I think if you can figure that out if you can figure out what you want and figure out how to express it that's like
01:07:50
99% of the battle when someone gets to you how
01:07:55
often do they go from getting to a Divo lawyer having that conversation we want to separate to repairing and rebuilding
01:08:02
and getting back to happiness yeah it's a great question so I as my career has
01:08:09
progressed I am now a guy who you hire when you're in a really bad situation so
01:08:14
I'm a trial lawyer so now you know you can do things with a scalpel and you can do them with a chainsaw I'm a chainsaw
01:08:21
now like now I'm you hire me because your Situation's bad because you're more
01:08:27
expensive is that no I'm more expensive because I'm really good in high conflict
01:08:33
situations I'm really tactical I'm really strategic I think 10 moves ahead
01:08:39
and I outpace everyone with my work ethic I wake up at 400 a. and I wake up
01:08:44
very sharp and I wake and I'm immediately thinking about clients and cases and I'm dedicated to this work in
01:08:50
an absolutely insane way in a way that is in no way good as a human being it's
01:08:56
really really I'm a great lawyer I'm questionable as a human being but I'm really really good as a lawyer because
01:09:02
I'm better at this than I've ever been at anything in my life have you ever seen someone get to you and then go back
01:09:07
to perfect like yeah for many years in my career early in my career the first decade or more of my career when I
01:09:14
handled more sort of regular people's divorces you know um yeah I would
01:09:20
frequently I would frequently try to steer people if I thought that that was possible I still to this day if I think
01:09:25
it's possible for people to work something out either in individual counseling or in individual counseling
01:09:32
and then maybe couples counseling I will steer them in that direction of course who cheats more men or women I think
01:09:39
both men and women cheat with a tremendous amount of frequency I think that um I don't think that you could
01:09:46
really say one does it more than the other I think that
01:09:53
more more men men are accused of having ruined the relationship by cheating than
01:10:01
women are who's more dissatisfied with this the amount of sex men or women men generally men want more sex men
01:10:07
generally want more sex women want more quality sex men are quantity based when
01:10:13
in my experience coming to sex and that's like men would rather have
01:10:19
frequent sex that may not be the highest possible quality but it like kind of gets the job done I mean it's the same
01:10:25
reason why pornography is more popular with men than women I think that men are just like I got to get the poison out of my system here I got to get on with my
01:10:31
day and I'm not going to be able to think straight until I just get that over with and so I I think that that
01:10:37
um women it's it's a it's a different I don't think women you know have don't
01:10:43
find sex important I I hate to make generalizations about about gender um but I from my seat the number of men
01:10:52
that come in and say to me like yeah like she's just not sleeping with me well what did she expect like of course I slept with somebody else like she was
01:10:58
like sleeping with me once a week she was sleeping with me once a month I've had clients who came in were like yeah we hadn't had sex in six years six years
01:11:06
like first of all why would you put up with that second of all if you're this person's spouse how what the hell did
01:11:12
you think was going on you thought things were okay like yeah we haven't had sex in six years we just forgot to
01:11:17
do that like I get it if you didn't clean your gutters in six years or you know maybe like I get it if you didn't change your oil in a year like it's a
01:11:24
bad idea but like I get it I could slip your mind like oh my God I been to the dentist in a year but sex you must have
01:11:30
had a lot of affair stories oh my God please if you could have like a PhD and infidelity I would have it yeah I mean
01:11:36
it's because cheating is a huge component to divorces so many divorces
01:11:41
but the question is always cause or effect and the danger of putting so much emphasis on
01:11:47
cheating is that it's an oversimplification so someone comes in and goes we're getting divorced why
01:11:53
because he's sleeping with his secretary I get it like yes that's true that is
01:11:59
one of the variables that has led to your divorce but you you hadn't slept with him in three years so I'm not
01:12:06
saying that makes the cheating forgivable but you're saying you had a really super awesome healthy marriage
01:12:12
and then this nefarious secretary came into the picture and suddenly he was wooed away no there were conditions that
01:12:19
made that very likely to happen right and so let's start going back a little
01:12:25
further in the cause like the truth is at the bottom of a bottomless pit so we
01:12:30
can try to reverse engineer this and say well he slept with his secretary because you weren't sleeping with him I wasn't
01:12:36
sleeping with him because he wasn't nice to me well I wasn't nice to him because he was never paying any attention to me well I wasn't paying attention to her
01:12:41
because what did I want to pay attention to she's hasn't changed at all or she's changed so much and she's nothing like she used to be there and and again
01:12:48
everyone you'll be shocked to hear when they tell the story of their life
01:12:53
they're usually the hero they rarely come into my office and go listen I'm a piece of
01:12:59
garbage you know but I will tell you when it comes to cheating sometimes they do I was going to say you must have had
01:13:06
people come in and admit things to you about their current affairs that you just blow your mind is there a particular example where you go that was
01:13:12
the most shocking example that I'd heard of someone deceiving the marital
01:13:19
commitment yeah I mean I've had people come in and tell me stories that I just
01:13:25
think to myself like how how did you actually like just the engineering of it
01:13:30
like I've had people who came in and they had multiple they had two families happening at once and neither of them knew about the other like that that the
01:13:38
mistress who he started a family with like thought he was divorced and the
01:13:44
wife thought that he was traveling for business and like he would literally have Christmas with both he would have
01:13:50
Thanksgiving with both like he would and he just found a way to sort of logistically do it I've seen things like
01:13:56
that many times I mean I've seen people it's almost become a cliche that people who sleep with their their sister-in-law
01:14:04
or their brother-in-law or cousin oh I haven't seen mother-in-law yet father-in-law um I have seen
01:14:10
father-in-law yeah I have seen father-in-law yeah I saw that saw that one I there's a chapter in my book about nannies how people sleep with the nanny
01:14:17
that's pretty common why you talk in the book about how wealthy clients like to sleep with the nanny yeah I don't know
01:14:24
what that's about I mean I do I have a theory about it and I I I think that what I call the nanny Fascination I
01:14:30
think that it's not that hard to understand like the nanny is a lot of
01:14:37
the characteristics of the wife right she's good with the kids she's there to
01:14:42
be a supportive other to the husband um she's a helpmate you know but without
01:14:48
any of the autonomy an agency without any of the like she's an employee at the
01:14:53
end of the day so much simpler of a relationship in the sense that it's like you got to do a good job or I'm going to
01:14:59
fire you you know so not talking back yeah don't talk back because I'm your employer you know and you're not gonna
01:15:05
so I think I get it you know I get it I also think too that and this is this is
01:15:11
this is Dangerous Ground especially in the year of Our Lord 2024 but I think
01:15:17
she's also a version of the wife like she's a version of the wife when the
01:15:23
wife was just the woman like she has a life outside the home like she when
01:15:28
she's not nannying she's out doing stuff and so she's got things to talk about
01:15:34
like she's gone places she does things there's something mysterious about her you know and I I think that's one of the
01:15:40
advice I give in the book is is that I think that um wives can can embrace the
01:15:46
part of themselves that's the nanny like take the time to like don't let your
01:15:51
spouse and your children Eclipse Who You Are like who you are is who your husband fell in love with like your your your
01:15:58
kids exist because a man and a woman found each other attractive you know and and so don't don't forget in your desire
01:16:07
to be a good parent and your desire to be a good partner don't forget to be really good to yourself and to to
01:16:13
cultivate your interests and your passions and to try to enjoy them as best you can you know without shirking
01:16:18
obviously none of us wants to Sher our responsibilities to our families and to our children but you're important like I
01:16:24
think I think people are the husband and the wife you know are important or or in a same-sex marriage husband husband wife
01:16:30
wife it's you're important to each other you know remember who you are remember the value you brought to the
01:16:35
relationship people often go to divorce lawyers when their marriages break down but listen I'm a huge fan maybe the
01:16:41
biggest fan you'll ever meet of serial killer documentaries sure and just murder documentaries period there's not
01:16:47
one I haven't seen I've seen them all and in those documentaries the f one of the first things you learn is that if the wife goes missing like of the time
01:16:56
it's the husband um and I was I just thinking about how that kind of some people might see it as a choice go to you yeah I
01:17:04
should be laughing here but or take care of myself listen there's a reason
01:17:10
because I I understand how trapped people feel I think that you sign on for
01:17:17
this thing that feels so good love we fall in love so fast have you seen that
01:17:24
doent on Netflix American dream was it American what was that documentary on Netflix where the guy has a wife and two
01:17:31
kids and then he meets a younger woman out and about at work and he instead of
01:17:37
getting a divorce he decides to murder his wife and the two baby girls smother
01:17:44
them both and dump them in a barrel at work in and he's seemingly I obviously
01:17:50
he's not but seemingly no he's seemingly a normal guy yeah who as you say just looked like he
01:17:57
was trapped in a situation where he met someone new had this family didn't know how to handle it and made this horrific
01:18:03
decision yeah yeah I mean I think um I mean that's an extreme example but I I
01:18:11
actually when you spend enough time with people who are in horrifyingly awful situations like
01:18:18
they've they're having an affair for many years they've hidden money or they done
01:18:25
you know like they they've engaged in transgressions that if their spouse found out about it they would just be
01:18:31
like are you kidding me you know and I think most of the time like it
01:18:37
starts with just one sort of bad choice you know and then that bad choice leads to a series of choice like you know they
01:18:44
always say if you watch enough serial killer things it's not the crime it's the coverup you know you don't get caught for the crime you get caught for
01:18:50
the cover up it's like the things you do to try to cover Your Tracks is the thing leave the tracks and it's it's the same
01:18:57
I I I think have you seen murder in your practice do you deal with that is that part of your work I you know thank God I
01:19:04
I've only had one client in 25 years of practice who there was an active effort
01:19:12
made by their spouse to try to kill them and they they ran her over four times and stabbed her um thought she was dead
01:19:20
left her for dead and six months of surgeries and all kinds of things later she survived she's well she has injuries
01:19:27
for the rest of her life that will plague her but she is alive and he is in prison for the rest of his life uh
01:19:32
that's thank God the only time I've ever seen that happen I mean I see a lot of domestic violence I see a lot of
01:19:38
intimate partner abuse she was your client in that case she was my client in that case yeah she was your client
01:19:43
before that happened to her yeah she was my client before that happened to her he was a he was a a perpetrator of domestic
01:19:49
violence for many years but there was nothing in his history that would lead you to believe that he had that prop it
01:19:55
towards violence the divorce was going very badly for him I was doing my job very well um and he you know he I don't
01:20:04
want to say he snapped because he gives it too much credit um I I I think he just got it in his head that she was his
01:20:10
enemy and the cause of everything bad that had ever happened to him and that killing her would be better choice and
01:20:16
he got her to meet him in a a a sort of remote location a parking lot of a hotel
01:20:22
under a false pretense that he wanted to give her something related to the kids or something and uh he stabbed her
01:20:28
several times then ran her over several times he did it himself did it himself yeah he did it himself and it was it was
01:20:36
shocking I mean you you don't want it what's happened more commonly is I've had clients who've committed suicide and
01:20:44
self harm and I've had clients who their spouse um you know committed suicide
01:20:49
that's happened many times where people I think feel they they're losing everything their whole life's Fallen
01:20:54
falling apart they can't imagine what their post divorce life will be or
01:21:00
they're so horrified by the behavior they engaged in during that they they think that it's just impossible to get
01:21:06
out of this situation so you would be working with a client and then you get a notification an email a message saying
01:21:12
that they've ended their life yeah yeah it's more commonly happened to me it's
01:21:18
only happened to me where I a client I lost a client that way once it's happened four times on the other side
01:21:26
where I got an email saying this person's been found and um you know it ends the case obviously
01:21:34
so it's a hard thing as a professional because I
01:21:40
know that I've done a lot to make this person's life very difficult because
01:21:46
that's my job but if that person had hired me you know a month before their house
01:21:54
did I would have been arguing for their benefit I would have been arguing as their Advocate I would have been trying to help them as best I can and instead I
01:22:02
was hired by their spouse and my job is to kind of take them apart as best I can like I'm a weapon you know a divorce
01:22:08
lawyer is a weapon and a weapon in the hands of a good person is protects things and a weapon in the hands of a
01:22:13
villain is very harmful so how's your work hav made you CME yeah
01:22:19
sure absolutely I think I've cried for a lot of reasons about my work I've cried cried from frustration when I couldn't
01:22:27
when Justice wasn't served and and I felt that I could have done more or
01:22:33
different um out of frustration I've cried I've cried I think I've cried more
01:22:39
often out of beauty I I I I'm much more welled up by what I by things that are
01:22:47
beautiful to me than things that are upsetting to me like I I'm astounded by
01:22:53
the strength of people sometimes I'm astounded by the resilience of people um
01:22:59
you think of an example on either end of the spectrum yeah yeah
01:23:06
um you know I had a client I got him his dog back you know there's something about
01:23:12
animals that I think is just so like it's just so pure how much we love them like they don't really they don't care
01:23:18
what we make they don't care if we're impressive or not or if anybody bought our book if anybody how many views we
01:23:24
have or clicks we have like they don't they just love us you know maybe it's cuz we feed them maybe it's cuz we
01:23:30
scratch them the right way but I want to believe that it's just that they're just so much heart and so much love you know
01:23:36
and I had this guy who at the beginning of the case he just said look man I don't care like I don't care what I have
01:23:41
to pay her I don't care what get me my dog like just get me my dog she doesn't really love the dog but she took the dog
01:23:47
because she knows how much I love the dog so just get me my dog back like I just want my dog back and he was this
01:23:53
older cruff guy this the last guy you would think you know would like that the
01:23:59
dog would be that important to him and we fought really hard we and we got him his dog back and I remember when I came
01:24:06
out and I ran down the lake okay I got you this we got you this we got you this and you and the dog and he started
01:24:11
crying and I started crying like a child you know because I there was just something so beautiful about like that
01:24:17
yeah that's What mattered to him like that he got his dog back you know and and I I could imagine in my head like
01:24:23
the the reunion between those two and that was very moving to me the
01:24:29
impermanence of a relationship with a dog is something that I've heard you talk about before yeah and how we can
01:24:36
and sort of the impermanence the fact that we only have dogs for a short time I've got a dog as well and I've had it since it was a puppy and it now has gray
01:24:42
hairs and it's older and it doesn't run like it used to and little Pablo I'm get I'm now realizing that he's in the last
01:24:48
season of his life yeah um and it just makes you want to play with them more
01:24:53
and cherish those moments more and be kinder and give them another treat and
01:24:58
yeah and we're we're If we're honest we're we're always losing
01:25:05
everyone all the time like and and that's why to love
01:25:10
anything is insane right because to love anything is
01:25:15
to expose yourself to the inevitability of losing it and I've learned that I learned that as a hospice volunteer for
01:25:22
many years and I've learned that as a human being and I've learned that as a divorce lawyer that like we're all
01:25:28
losing everything all the time even our child like you have a child that child
01:25:33
tomorrow the child they were the day before is dead is gone they're a new thing every day until you know until all
01:25:41
of us are ghosts until all of us are gone and so to
01:25:47
me keeping that awareness in your mind is everything like like you you honor
01:25:55
that dog by saying you know what I I took for granted when this was a puppy
01:26:01
peeing on everything and running around and eating all my shoes you know like I
01:26:06
I didn't realize like there was a limited amount of time like there is a there is a finite number of times you
01:26:13
will watch the sunset you don't know that number but it exists you just don't
01:26:19
know it yet there's only so many more Summers that you will be here to see you
01:26:25
just don't know the number it could be one it could be a hundred I it's probably not a hundred right so I think
01:26:34
to me when people say like well how is a divorce lawyer so like you know into
01:26:39
love and such a romantic at heart like how could you not be how could you not be when you're confronted every day with
01:26:47
how fragile love is and how transient it is and how powerful it is it's it means
01:26:54
so much to us so much of what we do all day is to find love and to be loved and
01:27:00
to feel worthy of love and and and then we have it and we just kind of forget we
01:27:06
have it until it's going away and then it's too late or it's gone and now it's
01:27:12
completely too late like if you realize was it Pablo you're done if you realize
01:27:17
how amazing Pablo is when Pablo's gone shame on you like you should when you
01:27:24
pick him up and smell him you know like that's the to me like that's everything there there's a I don't know if you ever read tikn Han's work the Buddhist monk
01:27:31
so tikn Han was a um a Vietnamese Buddhist monk he was nominated for the
01:27:37
Nobel Peace Prize in like the 80s he wrote some beautiful books he passed away a few years ago but he wrote um
01:27:43
several books one of them being peace is a beautiful one he's written a whole bunch of books peace in every step but
01:27:49
he he as a Buddhist monk has this mindfulness exercise and I've said it to people I've
01:27:55
shared it with people a couple times they always look at me like I'm insane when I say it so I'll share it with you because you you brought up death if I
01:28:02
bring it up too much in polite conversation people just think I'm morbid and then they're like all right all this guy does is talk about death and divorce we got to hang out with like
01:28:08
nicer more fun people but he has this mindfulness exercise and it's this he says when you hug someone think about
01:28:15
the fact that they're there and you're hugging them then close your eyes and they think
01:28:22
about that they've died and this is the last time you're hugging them before you let go of their body and
01:28:28
it's taken away and then remember that they're alive and you're hugging
01:28:34
them like how could that not choke you up like how could you not like when you
01:28:41
hug your dog you you will someday most likely
01:28:46
have to put your dog down right you will have to make the very painful but very responsible and loving decision that the
01:28:53
best of this dog's life is over and that there's nothing but pain ahead I've had to do it several times in my life it's
01:28:59
heartbreaking but it's the Final Act of love and service to something that you've had dominion over and taken care
01:29:05
of and have the duty of taking care of and I I know every time you I've had to
01:29:11
do that three times and just smelling it and going oh that's it like that's it
01:29:19
it's gone now
01:29:26
and the memory of that scent it'll
01:29:32
fade but like right now that dog's alive Pablo's alive and
01:29:38
you can smell him and and and and you're not letting go of him now he's there
01:29:44
he's there right now like so how do you not right now just breathe that in every
01:29:52
chance you have because you don't know how many more times you'll have and and
01:29:58
I don't when people say to me like well how can you think so much about death or how can you think so much about break
01:30:04
like how can you not haven't you ever lost anything have you forgotten what it was like to have it
01:30:11
like did you not keep in your mind like how beautiful this was and how it's gone
01:30:18
like my mother died eight years ago and I I found a old video tape that
01:30:24
I didn't even know like existed and it was my dad had like gotten a video camera and he'd like shot you know all
01:30:30
these video and I could hear my mother's voice and like hearing it I went like it
01:30:37
oh my God like that was her voice like I haven't heard it in eight years and I heard it again and it was so familiar
01:30:44
you know and I thought to myself oh my God like I'm so glad I got to hear that
01:30:49
but when she was alive I never thought like oh my God she's here like I get to
01:30:54
hear her voice because someday that'll be gone like it'll be gone the memory of her voice will be
01:31:01
gone it will fade every like tears and rain it will just fade and so to to me
01:31:08
like that if we could just have that presence of mind when it comes to love
01:31:13
like love is not permanently gifted it is loaned and the people you love the dog
01:31:20
you love the people they're loaned to you and you're Lo to them and if you could just remember every day to treat
01:31:27
it like something that's impermanent and that you're losing all the time like cuz I I'll tell you something I think it's
01:31:33
insane to love anything because of the pain that it's going to cause but oh my
01:31:38
God man I love that pain because it means I got to feel it like I I I know
01:31:44
when I got my dog cabba I only got cabba because bustard
01:31:50
died if he hadn't died then I never would have had room in my life to get another dog so in some horrible way I
01:31:59
guess I'm glad that he di like but that's not how it works how it works is that he died Buster and I went I will
01:32:06
never love again I will never do this to myself again I will never feel this pain
01:32:11
again it's the worst thing in the world I will never expose myself to that and
01:32:17
then a friend called me up and said hey man we're doing an adoption event with this dog and I just need you to watch
01:32:23
him for the night he's a puppy he's got M he's a little goofy thing but like I just need you to watch him for the night
01:32:29
and I was like yeah you know what I don't have the kids this weekend like I'll watch a dog for a night then you fell in love brings this
01:32:38
stupid dog this little stupid mange ridden worms and he walks in to my apartment
01:32:46
and he pees immediately on the floor and I thought oh I just got a
01:32:51
dog I just got a dog again I'm doing this again and that was 13 years ago and
01:32:58
man I'm so glad like I'm so glad and and he'll he'll sit there you know with his
01:33:04
little gray face now and he'll sit there next to me and he'll look at me he's just is crazy about me as I am about him
01:33:11
because he knows I saved him and I know he saved me and he looks at me and I think to
01:33:17
myself oh you're going to kill me like you're going to kill me when I lose you
01:33:22
and it's going to happen sooner rather than then later I'm not going to have another 13 years I'm lucky if I have another year but man like I don't know
01:33:31
I'll do it I I'm so glad I did it he saved you yeah yeah because he he he
01:33:37
reminded me of a thing I forget that we all forget that I have an infinite capacity for
01:33:44
love no matter what I lose cuz we're just losing all of it all
01:33:52
the time but that's not a reason not to love
01:33:57
that's not a reason not to like it's it's so brave to love and it's only brave because it's
01:34:05
scary like if you're not scared it's not brave it's only brave because it's
01:34:10
terrifying it's terrifying to know like this thing's going to break my heart and
01:34:17
I'm going to let it I'm going to let it break my heart because the joy that it's going to give me in the interim like I
01:34:22
wouldn't trade that for for anything in the world and and you know right now if you say to me when cabba passes away
01:34:28
will I ever do it again I'm like nope absolutely not absolutely not but you
01:34:33
know what I'm lying I'm lying like I'm lying I'll I'll love again I know it I know it and and I think it's the same
01:34:41
thing with romantic love our hearts get broken we we we you know we fall apart
01:34:48
we break in relationship and we heal in relationship and we recover from that breaking in relationship and I I think
01:34:55
there's something really really important
01:35:03
there you you've really accomplished me the first person who got me to cry on a podcast it's pretty it's really
01:35:09
something to be proud of I cry all the time though to answer your question yeah I cry constantly for a guy who's like
01:35:14
tattooed up and down and does Brazilian jiu-jitsu for fun I cry constantly usually because something's
01:35:20
beautiful I think that that's what moves me the most is how beautiful it all is
01:35:26
like I I think this is all it's a game we can't win you know and we just keep
01:35:32
playing it and that's so lovely like it's so brave it's so it's so cool that
01:35:38
like it's all ending all the time and we just keep doing it you know we just keep doing it CU if there's something in our
01:35:45
hearts that wants it you know maybe that's I don't know like I'm not a religious person
01:35:50
but maybe that's some insight into the nature of God that that like we we come from something
01:35:57
and we disconnect and then we spend all our life trying to reconnect to something want to talk to you about our
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get started now the link is in the description below it's interesting because you I saw in your face when we
01:37:03
halfway through the conversation that um you were talking about how beautiful love was and I could see the emotion in
01:37:08
your face when you talking about how beautiful love is and it's it's contrasting because at the start of the conversation I would have thought that
01:37:13
you thought marriage and love was just this like terrible idea obviously there's a distinction between the two it's everything no it's everything I I
01:37:20
think I think doing what I do for a living I see that better than most people like because we just keep putting
01:37:26
these giant bets on the table and we wouldn't do it if we didn't think the prize was worth it you know but see I
01:37:33
also believe too that we need to start looking at
01:37:39
romantic relationships like chapters in a long book like I don't soulmates we but but
01:37:46
see soul I have to tell you whoever created the term soulmate like I owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude
01:37:51
because they they really helped facilitate divorcees in Industry because the idea that we have a
01:37:59
soulmate and that that's the one always creates the possibility that
01:38:04
a this person's perfect for us for how could I be dissatisfied with them if they're perfect for me I must have picked the wrong one and look that one
01:38:11
over there that might be the perfect one why because I feel as great about them
01:38:17
as I did about this one when I first met it but I just don't remember that as much anymore so the soulmate thing oh
01:38:22
it's great for business for me but I think it's terrible for human beings I think you probably could have a whole
01:38:28
bunch of people that you could have had a very satisfying romantic relationship with
01:38:33
again not to keep comparing things to dogs but like because you love the dog
01:38:38
you have now does it mean you didn't really love the dog you had like that's ridiculous it's like people who have
01:38:44
children don't go like well I you know I couldn't love anything more than this other child so I'm not having any more
01:38:49
children because you know I couldn't possibly love it's like no you have an infinite capacity for love so if you have two children you have five children
01:38:56
like you love all the children that you have you know so it's chapters you're saying I think you should look at relationships as chapters just because a
01:39:04
relationship ends in something other than death right
01:39:09
it ends in divorce it ends in a breakup whatever it might be it doesn't mean it wasn't successful did did you leave it a
01:39:16
better person than than you came to it with did did they did your partner did
01:39:21
did you learn from it did did you learn what you want or don't want did you learn how you should behave or how you
01:39:27
shouldn't behave did you learn something about how you want and need to be
01:39:33
loved or how you fail in your attempts to convey love to someone else like it
01:39:42
why not look at it as what was good for me in this chapter may not be the
01:39:48
sustaining thing like who you find attractive and what's compelling in your 20s and your 30s and your 40s and your
01:39:54
50s it's going to be different you talk to a lot of 20-some year olds and say what car do you want when you're in your Lambo want the lambo great you're going
01:40:01
to put a car seat Lambo if you get one car and that's car you're going to drive for the rest of your life okay and
01:40:08
you've never been 50 yet so you don't know what you're going to want when you're 50 now there's this idealized
01:40:15
thing where everybody goes like well but you know you'll grow together and then what you'll want you'll grow together
01:40:20
and you'll change okay where what are you BAS in that on like is that is that a thing is that demonstrably true or is
01:40:28
that just like your hope like we we hope we'll grow together and we'll grow in complimentary ways because why because
01:40:34
of proximity because we're near each other we're going to grow in complimentary ways like is that naive I
01:40:41
think that might be naive like I don't have any proof of that God so many of the couples you see they must be
01:40:49
confused as to whether this relationship is actually broken or we're just like
01:40:54
not doing the work I think that about a lot of my friends like they they'll come to me and say my relationship struggling
01:40:59
and the first thing you try and figure out is whether this is something that is fixable or it's they're the wrong and
01:41:05
what do you do in that equation you compare right yeah you compare and what
01:41:10
are you compareed to something fake yes you compare to something
01:41:17
fake you compare it to the romcom yeah which is basically porn for women yeah
01:41:23
right like it's it's an idealized stylized version you saw Titanic you you
01:41:29
know why they had that perfect romance cuz he died before he could screw it up
01:41:34
you think 10 years later she'd have been like keep painting your French girls go no she wouldn't have she'd have been
01:41:39
like forget it what are you doing get a job you know there would have been issues in that relationship so it only
01:41:45
was perfect because it ended it ended before they could screw it up you know they end the movie like the the old
01:41:50
thing I think it was Orson Wells who said you know whether something's a comedy or a tragedy depends on when you end the story you know so it's
01:41:57
relationships like you ever want to test that theory in the reverse go out with a couple that's unhappy with each other
01:42:03
and then say to them so tell me about how you met all of a sudden they like soften tremendously and they start like
01:42:10
talking about who the who they were and who their partner was back in that day when they when it was all a possibility
01:42:16
and and they were choosing each other you know and so I think there's tremendous value
01:42:24
in you know great example I always try to like take non-relationship examples
01:42:29
of relationship items so one of my sons when he was a
01:42:35
teenager was very critical of me as a father he was very like sort of dismissive of me as a father we were
01:42:41
talking about something and he sort of said like well Dad you know you're not like the perfect father and I said well first of all like I don't know what a
01:42:47
perfect father is I was like but what are you comparing me to
01:42:53
your idea of a perfect father or like a father you actually know and have
01:43:01
seen because here's the thing if you compare me to your perfect father in
01:43:06
your imagination I'm going to compare you to my perfect son in my imagination and guess what you
01:43:12
suck cuz CU we all suck compared to the ideal of our imagination and by the way
01:43:19
I said to him learn this lesson now because if you compare a woman you're in
01:43:24
a relationship with with your imagined ideal of a woman I promise you you will
01:43:31
be dissatisfied for the rest of your life in your relationship and if she Compares You To
01:43:36
Her idealized Imagination of what the perfect man would be she's going to be disappointed we need to start comparing
01:43:44
relationships to real relationships but how are we going to do that if we're so
01:43:49
deeply committed to lying to each other about how great our relationship is
01:43:55
what's the quickest someone's gone from Marriage to divorce that you've seen in terms of how long the relationship lasted yeah 48 hours you're joking no 48
01:44:03
hours but that's usually an annulment that's I mean Vegas baby um yeah it
01:44:08
happens sometimes that happens sometimes where people just have like immediate immediate regret you know or they
01:44:14
married on a whim I mean you can there's no like there's a waiting period to get a firearm you know there's a waiting
01:44:20
period for almost anything marriage you go right now get married no problem you just go you just go to Justice of the
01:44:26
Peace pay $40 license fee and you're married that's it go to Vegas you can get b guy Nam guy dressed like Elvis
01:44:32
will marry you for 50 bucks you said there's two main reasons why people get divorced infidelity which we've talked
01:44:38
about and the other one we haven't talked about which is money I found this very interesting because um I wouldn't
01:44:45
imagine that money issues and it's not the money issues we think about it's not someone going broke yeah it's not that
01:44:51
in your book you talk about it being trans transparency yeah so so I mean money is
01:44:56
power right money has a lot to do with power
01:45:02
and I think there's a lot you know there's a it's a misattributed to Oscar wild but it's not something he would
01:45:07
have said there's the saying that that everything in the world is about sex except sex which is about
01:45:12
power and I think money is about power money is about control money is about opportuni
01:45:19
security it's about a whole bunch of things but it's not really about money like money is just a a currency right
01:45:25
that we trade in so I think money has a whole bunch of complicated stuff tied up
01:45:31
in it it's why we can't in polite conversation like talk about what did you pay for that how much do you make
01:45:37
you know it's it's considered sort of and delicate to do that because we've loaded it up with all kinds of emotional
01:45:43
things about worth and relative worth and so you know it's not
01:45:48
uncommon that people are dishonest with themselves and with each other money it's also not uncommon in a
01:45:57
relationship that one of two Dynamics emerges either one person has a tremendous
01:46:03
amount of economic disparity like Leverage or they have economic power
01:46:11
that they can or or can't leverage because of marriage or both people have
01:46:17
somewhat equal bargaining positions and then something changes so like I see a tremendous number of of divorces when
01:46:24
husband and wife are both working and husband loses job big big precipitar for divorce
01:46:31
because men it sends them spiraling into a depression that they've lost this job
01:46:37
that much of how they Define themselves in sort of the traditional masculine gender role is that of a provider and a
01:46:43
protector and now I failed at that through no fault of my own they laid off the entire Northeast region it's not my
01:46:48
fault but I no longer have a job and then I have to go around and try to find what and redefine myself and at the same
01:46:55
time my spouse has managed to keep their job and I've seen a lot of women that
01:47:01
when their spouse loses the job and they become the breadwinner they find that
01:47:07
very unappealing that they they that a man as the bread winner was appealing
01:47:12
the man as economic equal is appealing the man as I have to take care of him
01:47:18
financially and provide for him very uncomfortable so I see when a man loses
01:47:23
his job I I would love if they kept statistics on these kinds of things but I can tell you in my practice I've seen
01:47:30
plenty of women lose their job it has no impact on the marriage men lose their job in a heterosexual male female
01:47:37
marriage it is it is disastrous consequences a great deal of the
01:47:42
time and I think that has a lot to do again it's not about money it's about
01:47:48
what the money symbolizes it's about providing it's about power control
01:47:53
respect for the ability to to to go out there and like Forge something from the world we said at the start of this
01:47:59
conversation on this subject of money sometimes you give legal advice and sometimes you give human advice as it relates to money should I be telling my
01:48:06
partner how much money I have because I imagine there's kind of two different legal there's a legal answer and a human answer yeah I mean they're entitled to
01:48:12
find out so like part of yeah part of part of well in a divorce you have
01:48:17
what's called mandatory discovery which is that I have a right to review all of your financials in that process so a
01:48:23
tremendous amount of what I do all day and my team is they we go through people's books like we go through the
01:48:30
credit card slips we got through all the economics to find out like where the money is where it went you know and
01:48:37
that's how we find out what everybody spent on their girlfriend or boyfriend and all the credit card receipts really
01:48:42
when someone says I've got the receipts like no I've got the receipts because I can I can subpoena them meaning I can
01:48:48
get them directly from the credit card company I can get them directly from your employer all your about what you
01:48:53
actually were given and it's very hard to move money around without leaving a trace these days like but a lot of
01:48:59
people then must be trying to hide money cuz I think I've heard of cases where there was one particular case of a footballer who apparently put everything
01:49:05
in his mother's name did you see that mean yes and the problem with that is it's a great story makes for a great
01:49:13
story but there are in most jurisdictions protections against that
01:49:19
because it's what's called a a transfer in contemplation of divorce so so it's essentially a form it's like a
01:49:24
fraudulent conveyance it's it's designed to thwart someone's otherwise appropriate legal remedy so if
01:49:32
I know I'm being sued and that this person has a valid claim so I sell my Lamborghini for $5 to
01:49:40
my brother the court can void that transaction but what if I before that
01:49:47
before there was any you know suspicion of divorce or any issues I put everything in my my brother's or my mom's name do that you're allowed to do
01:49:54
as long as it was not done yeah I actually have seen that many times I I've seen well I represent a lot of
01:49:59
people in finance and people in finance have a way of seeing money very differently and I've seen people who
01:50:07
over a 20year period like did things to take things out of the marital estate so
01:50:13
that they were beyond the reach of the Court let's be quite surprising when you're the other partner and you assume that your partner is super rich you go
01:50:20
for the divorce and you find out that they they nothing it's more common that people don't realize the debt structure
01:50:26
that they're living under because a lot of people live under a tremendous debt structure this happens in Celebrity
01:50:32
divorces a lot because a lot of it is the appearance of wealth but it's not actual wealth and so you know they're
01:50:38
they're highly leveraged and so what does that mean for the average person that doesn't know what credit card debt
01:50:45
primarily credit card debt is a big thing or that cars that you don't own the cars you lease the cars so they're
01:50:50
actually owned by the bank even your home if if your home you know 70 80% of the equity in your home is the bank's
01:50:57
mortgage then you don't really have much you don't own your home the bank owns your home I think this is something people misunderstand is that you get 50%
01:51:05
of your partner's assets and you get 50% of their debts of course well you get your you get the assets net of
01:51:12
liabilities yeah and most people like their net worth is what do you own net
01:51:18
of liabilities so there are a lot of people making a very very good living but they don't really have a lot of
01:51:24
assets because what they've done is they've leveraged in a tremendous way they have they have mortgages and and
01:51:29
they have debts accumulating they have leased automobiles they have you know jewelry that they took a personal loan
01:51:35
to guarantee where that they purchased jewelry knowing that it will immediately depreciate in value you know that the
01:51:42
resale on it is much much lower than the value that they just paid for it so it's a it's a it's an illusion in many ways
01:51:49
what about the opposite of that where someone was in a relationship ship and their partner thought they were like
01:51:56
broke or didn't have much money it turns out their sound a fortune yeah what's actually funnier is when somebody when
01:52:03
someone really through no fault of even their own comes into some massive amount of money like I've had people I actually
01:52:11
had a client who won the lottery and so he went from like nothing
01:52:17
he had like a minimum wage kind of a job and they lived a very modest life and
01:52:23
they were unhappily married but they were like well we you know can't really afford to live as a couple we certainly
01:52:28
can't afford to live apart like it's bad enough we can't pay our electric bill to have two electric bills we'd have a hell of a time and he won the lottery he used
01:52:35
to play the Power Ball and he won like you know some insane amount it was like I don't know $50 million so then after
01:52:41
taxes it's like a 50% tax it was like $25 million and he was beyond thrilled
01:52:47
until he got told yeah she's gets half she gets exactly half and he was like wait why I bought the ticket I'm like
01:52:54
you are one person in the eyes of the law if she won the lottery you'd get half of it you won the lottery she gets
01:53:00
half of it it's how it works did they stay together no of course not she was like they're miserable with each other I
01:53:05
mean at that point he was suddenly very motivated that maybe we should stay together but she was like I get wait a
01:53:10
minute I get I get you know half a 25 million and I don't have to deal with you anymore see you and that was it that
01:53:17
was it that's why he was in my office she had served him with divorce papers what about
01:53:22
LGBT couples yeah does everything we've said apply an equal measure do they do
01:53:28
they get divorced in the same do they have the same issues with talking about sex do they yeah you know I don't I I
01:53:34
don't think I think a lot of the same things are true meaning impermanence
01:53:40
soulmates all of those kinds of issues but I think
01:53:46
because gay and lesbian couples were forced to the outskirts of the culture
01:53:52
they were the outsider for so long so much of my life even as a 51-year-old
01:53:58
man so much of my life I saw my gay and lesbian friends ostracized marginalized
01:54:05
and put on the periphery that when you are put on the periphery there is as awful as that is
01:54:12
and as unfair as that is and unjust as that is and how much it should rightly offend our sensibility to see people
01:54:18
marginalized and ostracized it creates a certain Freedom where it's like okay then we we don't
01:54:25
have to follow those rules we can make our own rules invention yeah we can just we can do it how we want to do it
01:54:31
because you know what they think we stink they think we're the worst they think we're just you know okay so then
01:54:37
we can we can do it how we want to do it because no matter what they're not going to accept us so we might as well do it
01:54:43
the way it makes sense for us instead of you know tradition is pure pressure from dead people so if you're someone who's
01:54:50
like my parents have rejected me sorry tradition is is peer pressure exerted by dead people I mean it's really what it
01:54:57
is I'm not saying Traditions aren't valuable but at their core tradition is peer pressure from dead people like your
01:55:03
grandma did it this way so you should do it this way like okay your grandma lived in a whole different time your grandma
01:55:08
did not have the entire totality of human wisdom in her hand that she could
01:55:14
press a few buttons on so to say oh yeah like the same rules the same
01:55:20
institutions the same ways of being they should be exactly the same that's insane we didn't make rules for
01:55:26
non-heterosexual relationships so they they're getting to make their own rules and it turns out and they did and they
01:55:32
did like I have a lot of gay male friends I live in Chelsea which is a section of New York City that for many years was a primarily gay male section
01:55:40
to live in and so I happen to have a lot of gay male friends and it's very funny
01:55:46
to me because when I would talk to them even before marriage equality and before the sort of widespread accept of gay and
01:55:53
lesbian families um and gay and lesbian lives and relationships as being valid
01:55:58
like it wasn't that long ago that Will and Grace like will couldn't kiss his boyfriend on TV this was like the 90s
01:56:05
that that was going on so this isn't that long ago G I have suits older than
01:56:11
that like this is a thing so what you know they they used to my gay mail
01:56:16
friends used to have these very kind of non-conventional permutations of relationships they were like yeah you
01:56:21
know we we can kiss other people but like we can't have sex with other people or we can do oral sex with other people
01:56:28
we can't but we have to let them know that we're doing like because they were like Hey we're on the outskirts we get to kind of make up our own rules and
01:56:35
there's something very and what's funny to me about that is when marriage equality was coming about and i' I've
01:56:42
been a Consulting attorney for for something called lamba Legal which is a a gay and lesbian legal defense which
01:56:50
you know 20 years ago it meant like the the right to exist like the right to
01:56:55
like not be fired from your job because you're gay like that seems to me like
01:57:01
basic human rights you know the idea now like we've gone quite far in terms of
01:57:07
now there's some controversies that I kind of go okay wait I'm not quite sure even as someone who's identified as a progressive liberal for quite some of my
01:57:14
life I I don't know that I can go this bridge too far but but the basic
01:57:19
fundamental right like the right to marry I always felt you know what if you want to be able to participate in this
01:57:26
unbelievably failing technology you have every right in the world like if you hate gay people let them marry why
01:57:35
should they be having all the fun like let them marry and I remember sort of thinking that jokingly and when marriage
01:57:41
equality finally happened in the United States I went to a good friend of mine
01:57:46
who will remain nameless and I said to him he'd been in a long-term relationship maybe like two years and I said so man psyched you like you know
01:57:53
you get married he goes no I'm not psyched why would I be excited about this and I said what do you mean like
01:57:59
you can get married now he goes yeah like I never had to deal with that I never had to have the
01:58:05
conversation it never had to be like you know where's this going you know are we in a he's like if anything I could go
01:58:12
like oh I would marry you but oh the government they won't let me oh I wish I
01:58:18
wish we could but the government it's out of my hands he's like now now I have to have this conversation now
01:58:24
I have to like well where is this going and are we getting married and what do you think and if we should we move in and should we even kids should we have
01:58:31
kids like it used to be we were barred from having kids or adopting kids now we can adopt kids it's no problem it's like
01:58:37
great now I got to have that conversation so again I'm not suggesting that that we shouldn't have
01:58:44
marriage equality we shouldn't have the freedom to adopt and to have children but I I think it's a fan bargain for
01:58:50
everybody and and so my experience of of gay and lesbian couples currently cuz I'm currently
01:58:58
doing a number of divorces for lesbian couples and gay couples I think that you know the
01:59:04
honeymoon period isn't quite over yet like marriage equality has only been the law of the land for like you know 10
01:59:11
years something like that so give it some time we'll see maybe they're better at it maybe they'll be worse at it maybe
01:59:16
they'll be just as equally awful at it as we are what about open relationships do they work
01:59:23
more you know I'm I'm not qualified to answer that question for the following reason I meet a lot of people who have
01:59:31
tried various types of ethical non- monogamy
01:59:37
polyamory but they all have in common that they're in my office yeah of course so I see all the ones that didn't work
01:59:45
yeah so me saying well I've met a lot of couples where they tried the polyamory
01:59:50
thing or they tried ethical non monogamy and it didn't work and it led to divorce is like an oncologist saying like dude
01:59:57
everybody's got cancer I met like 10 people today who have cancer right you're an oncologist like of course you
02:00:02
meet a lot of people that have cancer like a a guy who's a cab driver doesn't meet that many people who have cancer like you might meet one or two but he's
02:00:08
not going to meet all of them but you working cancer so you're going to meet people like I happen to meet people getting divorced so all of the I've met
02:00:16
a lot of people that gave that a shot and it did not work now again was that
02:00:22
the like in case of emergency break glass like let's just try this have you ever seen it
02:00:27
work I've never in any of my friendships in any of my personal relationships I've
02:00:33
never seen non- monogamy successful but I don't think
02:00:40
we're quite at a place as a culture where we're really being honest
02:00:46
about monogamy like Esther Perell some of her work I think is brilliant about
02:00:53
monogamy infidelity because I I don't think it's quite I think there are a lot
02:01:00
of couples where there is non- monogamy happening but there's sort of a don't
02:01:06
ask don't tell policy and there's a sense of you know if this is what you
02:01:11
need to do to sort of stay happily committed because if we're honest a a
02:01:18
marriage is a whole bunch of different relationships in one relationship it's
02:01:23
your roommate it's your co-parent it's your travel companion it's your family
02:01:29
companion meaning like they have to deal with your mother-in-law and your father-in-law too and like it's a whole
02:01:35
bunch of relationships and it may be that men and women or a particular man and a
02:01:43
particular woman in a relationship have a different sense of how important sex
02:01:48
is and you know it's okay to delegate it's okay to say you know
02:01:56
listen I don't really like football so go watch football with your friends do you see that a lot where the partner or
02:02:03
the the other partner that you're not dealing with has accepted yes the other partner cheating well not cheating but
02:02:10
they've allowed them to just quietly go in I've had a lot of people who come in and say to me he had a bunch of Affairs
02:02:16
over the years and I just let it go like or she had a bunch of Affairs over the years and it wasn't didn't make an issue
02:02:22
of it yeah really and see just the fact that you and it's understandable I'm not criticizing you but the fact that you go
02:02:28
really is okay why would that be that shocking like people cheat all the time
02:02:35
people step outside of their relationship all the time people like diversity of sexual partners okay so
02:02:40
here's the question then have you ever seen an affair in the presence of
02:02:45
someone being in love I don't know that i''d be qualified to say whether someone was in love or not here here's what I
02:02:52
will say because love is an emotion and Love Is A Verb so I've seen I've certainly seen people that were having
02:02:59
Affairs and in every aspect of their outward life appear to be deeply
02:03:05
committed to their marriage okay so they were okay they were an economic provider they were a diligent parent they were uh
02:03:12
attentive to the emotional state of their partner they still had an active sexual relationship with their partner
02:03:17
but it wasn't a uh let's say a terribly prolific one perhaps um so you can't
02:03:22
cheat and be in love sure I mean listen just the term cheat you know like like
02:03:28
okay well then a cheat meal like you can be on a healthy diet and enjoy a cheat meal you know and and it there's
02:03:33
something great about it because it's a cheap meal it's like a little thing you do to treat yourself and then you go back to eating healthy and regular right
02:03:40
because look at there's something about the human desire for variety there's
02:03:45
something about passion I mean you know I always say this I'm not a religious person but like we're all familiar with
02:03:51
the Ten Commandments you know and and theoretically if that story is true
02:03:56
which again it's not provable or disprovable but God handed down 10 rules
02:04:03
like that's they talked to humanity and said here's 10 rules don't kill good one
02:04:10
honor the Sabbath good one okay don't cheat on your
02:04:16
spouse don't covet your neighbor's wife it got two it got two rules like he
02:04:23
didn't say thou shalt not kill like seriously don't kill that's no but but don't sleep with other people got two
02:04:31
out of 10 rules from God theoretically like that's amazing that should show you
02:04:38
how long this has been a thing how human of a problem or issue or compulsion this
02:04:45
is it's the most human thing this desire like yeah we want to you know Freud
02:04:50
civilization and its disconect intense you know all of these all of these Brilliant Minds from all over the world
02:04:57
over the whole span of time have struggled with monogamy have struggled
02:05:03
with sex have struggled with the desire for sex Wars are fought over sex people
02:05:09
rise and Empires rise and fall people rise and fall I I I used to say that like I think 90% of what most of the men
02:05:16
I do they do to get laid they do they why work card so I can
02:05:22
make money why so I can get a nice car why so I can attract beautiful women like look at look at the red pill space
02:05:28
the manosphere all this everything is about making yourself appealing to women or making yourself appealing to
02:05:33
potential sexual partners whether it's just one or a whole diversity of them okay that's a different thing but it's
02:05:39
about that it's about that so should we get
02:05:46
married should we get married I mean from a job security place I hope people
02:05:52
continue to get married because if they don't I'll be out of a job but in seriousness I I don't
02:05:59
think I think we will continue to get married should we I don't think we should say all of us
02:06:06
should I think we should ask the question I think we shouldn't assume we should get married that's what I think I
02:06:14
think that we should ask the question what is the problem to which marriage is a solution and do I have that problem
02:06:21
and will it solve that problem because the fact that it's an odd question to
02:06:28
say when someone says I want to get married that it would be odd for me to
02:06:35
go why yeah why is that weird like if you said I want to have a
02:06:42
podcast why it's a perfectly reasonable question I want to go to
02:06:47
Florida why I like the weather I have a friend there whatever I want to get married why what do people respond when
02:06:56
when you typically ask that question what's the most frequent response to the reason for the invention of the
02:07:01
technology of marriage because I I posted many years ago that I I was suspicious about marriage and I remember
02:07:06
all the comments that I got and different people arguing different things well it's it holds them it holds the it's controversial it's super
02:07:13
controversial people get very attached to it I remember one of them I remember was a case that it's the best
02:07:18
environment to raise kids in when the parents are in that kind of bond I had another one which means that you stay and you solve the problems instead of
02:07:24
running away so marriage is really good for that regard but but you know the reasons why people say marriage makes
02:07:30
sense what are those key reasons why I think that there's religious reasons that's a big one I get all the time like
02:07:37
like in the comments there will be like a billion people that go marriage is a covenant between God and and as if like
02:07:43
I hadn't heard of this you know as if I didn't go to Catholic School my entire life like yes I get it I get it that's a
02:07:50
belief you have and that's okay like my beliefs don't require that you believe them yours may require that I believe
02:07:58
them and that's okay like where' you going to agree to disagree if your fundamental thing is that God spoke to
02:08:04
you and told you a thing whether it was in written form or verbally like I can't
02:08:09
argue with that you sound like you're a big fan of love and not a big fan of marriage I'm a fan of marriage to the
02:08:16
extent that it facilitates love but I just don't see a Nexus between those two things I don't think these two two
02:08:21
things have that much to do with each other and I think to the extent that they have something to do with each other they probably could have existed
02:08:27
without the marriage like I think I think marriage is a symbol of something
02:08:33
and I don't think you need the symbol to have the something it's confusing a finger pointing at the Moon with the
02:08:38
moon like it's it's confusing the the the S like marriage is supposed to be I
02:08:45
think a symbol and I love it for that I love the idea of two people people who
02:08:52
are so excited about how they make each other feel and how the effect they have
02:08:58
on each other and the effect that the other has on them that they want to get up in front of a bunch of people who
02:09:06
they know and say this is my person I found them and I'm I'm going to stick
02:09:13
with them through good and through bad and I'm going to see their blind spots and I'm going to not be a yes man I'm
02:09:20
going to tell them when they get wrong but with love and I want them to do the same thing for me I want them to to
02:09:25
cheer for me and I want them to be on my side and I want them to disagree with me when I need to be disagreed with so I don't make really dumb decisions just
02:09:32
because I got a cheerleader all the time behind me like I got a cheerleader because I need one the world sucks and everybody's always criticizing me and I
02:09:37
criticize myself constantly but having this person next to me who goes man you can do this come on get up you can do it
02:09:44
you know or I fell down it's okay people fall down you're great get up come on you can do it or who's going to say to
02:09:49
me you know that's I know you're doing this for this reason and I get it but I don't I don't think it's going to make
02:09:55
you feel what you think it's going to make you feel so maybe don't do it and I'm going to go okay they wouldn't say that if it wasn't out of love so I'm
02:10:01
going to hear that and I'm not going to be afraid of it like and I want to get up we're going to say this to a bunch of people and then we're going to wear
02:10:06
Rings because it'll be a reminder for us and for the world that I got a person I
02:10:11
got a person and that's my person you know dude how do you not cheer for that that's incredible it's great but you can
02:10:18
have that without the yeah of course without the contract are you going to get the government involved like well you have to get the government involved
02:10:24
really like you that story I just told that's that's the story that's the
02:10:30
feeling that's the interpersonal connect when you say to most people they say I'm getting married you
02:10:36
go why they first of all they look at you like you have lobsters coming out of your nose like they've never the
02:10:42
question never even occurred to them why because you get married that's what you do that's insane but if you say to them
02:10:49
why they'll usually say something that's a total non-answer well I'm in love okay
02:10:57
what why does that mean you have to get married well because I want to you know I want to maintain that connection okay
02:11:02
wait how how specifically is marriage going to maintain that connection and
02:11:08
again if it's a public declaration okay I think there's value in a public declar if I want to I don't smoke cigarettes
02:11:14
but if I wanted if I was smoking cigarettes I want to quit smoking cigarettes there's value in getting up
02:11:20
and saying hey guys just so y all know I'm going to quit smoking and if you love me I want you to help hold me
02:11:26
accountable so if you see me smoking or if I ask you for a cigarette don't give me one because I really do want to quit
02:11:31
smoking you know there's value in that there's value in the tribe all going all right man you know that's what you want
02:11:37
let's do it we're gonna we're committed to it it's the same thing with marriage if Mar if the purpose of marriage is to
02:11:42
say hey guys it's really hard to be monogamous I don't know if anyone's noticed so and like the world is really
02:11:48
antagonistic to marriage but like I really want all the great things that come from having a person who sees my
02:11:53
blind spots and who's supporting me and I'm supporting them and the symbiosis the beauty of that relationship and the
02:11:59
connection of those two people so I want you to hold me accountable I want you my friend that when I you see me looking at
02:12:06
the other girl that you go to me hey hey bro forget about what you got at home come on man you got a good you got a
02:12:11
good one what are you doing you know like I want you to hold me accountable I want women out there to see that wedding
02:12:17
ring and to go yep not him not him even if he talks to me not him he's married let's let's leave that one why cuz if if
02:12:24
it was my one I wouldn't want him talking to some other girl so I'm not going to talk to him you know instead
02:12:31
it's not what we do that is not what we do as a culture you ever want to get laid put on a wedding ring and go out
02:12:37
suddenly you're safe suddenly you're a guy they can talk to and he's not on the make because he's married he's obvious
02:12:42
he's wearing an outward symbol of his relationship again like this is crazy it's crazy because we're just not being
02:12:50
honest about what this thing really is marriage is a legal status it's a government
02:12:58
intervention it's a it it everything else is just stuff we're putting on top of it and calling it that thing but you
02:13:06
can have all that stuff without having legally the status of marit James we
02:13:11
have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for but I
02:13:17
might have told them who they're leaving it for and the question that's has been left for you is a brilliant one because
02:13:22
it's very on topic and once in a while this happens when was the first time you
02:13:29
experienced true love oh boy you made me cry
02:13:36
again um was the first time I experienced true
02:13:43
love gosh that's a great question and just the fact that just the experience
02:13:49
of being asked that question is running my mind through the most lovely
02:13:55
slideshow of so many times I felt loved and felt deep love so boy what a lovely
02:14:04
thing to ask every morning if I could like that's a lovely question because just the fact that there's just
02:14:11
the fact that there's a competition going on in my brain right now is the greatest thing in the world cuz all the
02:14:17
stuff that's running through my head and it's so diverse there's me kissing an
02:14:22
amazing woman for the first time and feeling that there's my sons each of my
02:14:30
sons kissing me or hugging me there is cabba and Buster and pickles lady and
02:14:38
Maggie every dog I ever had and there's an image I can imagine of it there's
02:14:44
my the first thing that popped into my head which is going to sound crazy but
02:14:49
maybe it's the stage in life that I'm in when I was a little boy my my father my father was not a
02:14:58
particularly effusively loving guy he was a Vietnam veteran he was a bad
02:15:04
alcoholic um he's been sober now for eight years I'm very proud of him um and
02:15:11
he's in his 80s now but growing up he was very unemotional to me and I
02:15:17
remember um I had this best friend Tom and we had pizza one night at my my
02:15:24
parents house and um you know pizza's cut into like eight slices and Tommy and I were like you
02:15:30
know growing boys we wanted to eat you know the CRA we ate really fast you know we each ate our three slices and my dad
02:15:35
would have had two left you know for him and uh we ate so fast that that our
02:15:41
six slices were gone and there was just two left and I I know my dad was like super hungry but he was like if you guys want
02:15:48
you can have you can have them and I remember you know we just ate them like you would obliviously like a kid
02:15:56
and a couple of weeks later I was at my friend's house same friend and his they ordered pizza and there was like you
02:16:03
know same thing eight slices and and his dad ate like four slices and I remember
02:16:10
thinking my dad would never do that and I remember I felt very
02:16:16
loved cuz I remember thinking like this is a guy who' never said he loved me like ever it just wasn't in his
02:16:22
vocabulary it wasn't who he was but I just remember thinking like oh he loves me like it it satisfied him
02:16:31
more to see me eating that extra piece of pizza than what eating that piece of
02:16:37
pizza would have given to him and I remember thinking like oh he loves me so I would say to
02:16:45
me that was a very pure and true kind of love and when I had my
02:16:52
sons I remember thinking oh I get I get that like they can have the whole
02:16:59
pizza so to me that's you know that's
02:17:04
true love is when it's it's not even sacrificing to give that the joy of the
02:17:10
other person just gives you so much joy and fills you so much that that it's just the greatest thing
02:17:21
James thank you thank you for um all the work you do you've given me so interesting you know went into
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this conversation thinking I'd learn about divorce and relationships but I leave this conversation with a profound
02:17:35
appreciation for love good that's great in a way that I don't think I've ever had before and I also with that profound
02:17:42
appreciation I think causes you to want to take a certain set of actions I hope so the and I think about what you said
02:17:47
about the impermanence of Love you've made me want to cuddle Pablo because I know that I don't have many years left
02:17:53
with him but also there's many people in my life that maybe I do have many years with I don't know how many years I have with them you don't and I have to tell
02:18:00
you I I think I'm really grateful to hear you say that I hope you do that
02:18:05
because I really think we are the most we are the most aware of the joy of
02:18:12
our good health when we're in the presence of illness we are most aware of
02:18:18
the beauty of life when we're in the presence of death and the impermanence and we can be the most
02:18:26
aware of the power and presence and beauty of romantic love when we remember
02:18:34
that that it is impermanent it is not permanently gifted it's loaned and that
02:18:39
we're blessed to have it for however long we have it so if if that's what
02:18:46
anyone walks out of talking to a divorce lawyer thinking about out then then
02:18:53
mission accomplished thanks for having me
02:18:59
St we released it the first time and it sold out instantly we released conversation cards again and they sold
02:19:05
out instantly for a second time we've updated the cards put all the new questions in and we've introduced a
02:19:12
Twist on the back of the conversation cards now we've got different levels of vulnerability so level one these are
02:19:19
more sort of surface level questions and by the time you get down to level three the questions become a little bit more
02:19:25
challenging a little bit more vulnerable and that's really where connection happens the brand new version 2 updated
02:19:33
conversation cards are out right now at the conversation cards.com
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[Music]
02:19:50
ah
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[Music]
