Divorce Expert: Slippage Is Tearing Marriages Apart! If Kids Are Your Priority You’ll Divorce!

every single marriage ends in death or divorce but it ends but the majority of them end because of slippage and what does slippage mean slippage is Jame ston is back the world's leading divorce lawyer with over two decades of experience he offers practical noons advice for maintaining healthy relationships we live in a society that presumes marriage is a good idea you're about to do something incredibly dangerous that fails so much of the time and I think it has almost nothing to do with love but if you get married here's what I will tell you have

you talked about a prenup getting married without one is a fairly risky activity but the truth is having a child with someone is the most risky activity in relationships there's so much stuff a person can do to torture you if they have a kid with you and what I'll tell you is the people who are obsessed with their children stop paying attention to their partner which leads you right to my office okay so if you were to give me one piece of advice to prevent me and my partner ever ending up in your consultation room

if there's a core message to my approach to relationships it is that' be the only advice I'd ever give to anybody James if you think about the divorces you've seen in court was there ever a case that broke your heart yeah it was a case that I won that I should have lost I remember looking at the judge and thinking like you're letting this happen she's going to lose cuz she's poor and she can't afford a lawyer and he's going to win because he can afford a lawyer that knows how to put a document into

evidence and there's something really wrong about that [Music] this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to

make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that you want me to speak to and we continue to do what we do thank you so much James our last conversation I think did almost 10 million downloads and Views across platforms and I can't imagine the amount of messages you get on a daily weekly monthly basis from people that are interested in the subject of divorce but also the sort of interconnected subjects of love and and marriage and all of these things when people

contact you what do they typically say you're absolutely right I mean the number of people that contacted me after our conversation exponentially increased it also very much broaden the pallet of things people contacted me about so a lot of a lot of my prior work a lot of my writing prior to our first conversation was very much tied to just relationship issues divorce related issues so I would get a lot of messages from people saying I'm going through a terrible divorce I'm dealing with this situation you know even though you can't represent me because I'm

in a different state or a different country could you give me some general advice um so people would reach out with very specific to my career topics I got a lot of people talking to me about the conversation we had about our dogs and about loss and about the nature of um you know aging and endings and whether it's the ending of a marriage or the ending of a dog's life or our own lives and how the loss of our pets you know brings us more sharply into Focus about the mortality of everything around us

so um yeah I mostly get people saying oh you you gave voice to something that I'd felt and um it it was meaningful to me to do that and I I try to write people back and just say you know very briefly like I'm so glad that something in my perspective resonated with you if there was one message that you could give to everyone that messages you so One Singular message it was a broadcast message and you had to send it to everybody that's messaged you about all of these interconnected subjects but you could only

say a couple of sentences and you think it's the couple of sentences that would most serve all of them in one go regardless of what their issues are because it's a fundamental message about love and marriage and divorce and all these things what would that message be I mean I've always said that I think the core truth I've learned in my life is that the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing so I would I would often challenge anybody who reaches out to me about anything that that

they're struggling with I would say to them that what is the hard thing to do in this situation because that's probably the right thing to do the the other thing I would say is that although I really appreciate that someone would reach out to me in the hopes that I could give them some answer I I pretty strongly believe that the only Zen you find on mountaintops is the Zen you brought up there and and so I think a lot of a lot of the truth we know when we hear someone say it out loud

it's it resonates in a way but it's because we knew it was true we already knew it was true maybe that person gave voice to it when you said the thing about Zen and mountaintops yeah can you say that again and what did you mean yeah I mean you know you can also parse it as the only wisdom we find on mountain tops is the wisdom that we brought up there you know there's this you know there's all of these sort of Zen Parables of the of the monk who like in Batman Begins you know

sort of in his in his flipflops and robes sort of wanders up the mountain through the cold trying to find the Zen master at the top of the mountain who has the wisdom that he can then share with him and and very often like that wisdom is inside of all of us that wisdom is something that whether we want to call it our gut whether you want to call it your soul what whatever you want to call it that that the wisdom is inside of you and that um we we we want I think sometimes

to have other people validate it for us or say it out loud because perhaps we're not as articulate about it but to have someone give voice to it gives us the ability to go okay okay so it's not just me and I think that's that's what I mean when I say the wisdom we find on mountain tops I I think we travel very very far to find a joy and a wisdom that's inside all of us on that point I as you were talking about it and the reason I was so piqued by it is

I've got so many friends over the years who who have been struggling in relationships and in their life and in their marriages who have thought that the answer to all of those problems was to basically get on a plane and move country or city to go somewhere else and so when you were saying that I was thinking I was thinking back to a conversation I had with my friend many years ago where he said you know I'm going to move to Spain and you know his life was in Ruins really at the time his relation

his partner had just cheated on him and was pregnant um and he thought moving to Spain would solve the problems and I remember the conversation with him where I said like by the way all the problems of buying a plane ticket with you yeah like they're going to Spain with you wherever you go you know there you are and so I had a friend who was a uh a hairdresser and I remember once talking to him was while he was cutting my hair and uh we got on the topic of you know because both of

us are are someone that people talk to you know people talk to me about their problems and their relationship as a function of my work as a divorce lawyer and people sit with their pair of stylist and they'll talk particular women will talk for a long period of time about the things that are stressing them out and upsetting them and what he said to me is you know um a lot of women in particular come in and they say I I want to cut I want to cut it all off I want to cut it

all off or I want to cut it very short I want to cut it very different like I wanted just to hold it and he said you know there was a time early in his career where he would give them what they were asking for so if they came in with super long hair and they said I want a little short very bob cut you know he would do it and then he would get a call from them a few days or weeks later going oh my god when can you fix it like what do

we do and he said what he started to figure out is what they what they're really saying is a very human thing which is I don't want to be me anymore like I don't want to be me anymore like I can't do it like it's all too heavy right now like can I stop being me can I look different than me can I because maybe if I look different than me I'll feel different than me and maybe I'll do things differently than the way I've been doing them and I think that's so human you know

to to say and that's the same thing about okay that's I'm just going to move I'm going to move I'm going to like I'm just as guilty of this as anyone when I've had a really stressful difficult week carrying all of my clients chaos and stress and there's just bombs falling from the sky constantly in my line of work I go that's it I Quit I'm done I'm done I'm just going to do Media stuff I'm just going to write books I'm not practicing law anymore I'm never setting foot in the courtroom again mic drop

I'm out and the reality is I'm tired I'm just tired like or okay if it's true that I'm at a place where transitioning it then just cut back it's you don't have to cut all your hair off like you and I said to my my friend who's the hairdresser so now what do you do do you try to talk them out of it and he said no he said I I kind of play a trick he's like I I do something a little different but not so different and then I play up in my reaction

to it like oh I love it like this look at how it's so I didn't take as much as you'd say but I think this is really and he said and and very often they're thrilled like they just go oh yeah this is great because it was symbolic like it was a symbolic thing for them that no I'm going to do something different and I'm going to look a little different when I look in the mirror and when I look in the mirror it's going to remind me to be different but that's inside of you

like I I I mean for me we wake up every single day and decide to be who we are or to continue being who we are like and and and one of the reason why this is always so present in my mind is because as a divorce lawyer people have this very clear image of who they are and what their life's going to be and very intentionally they went and put on the white dress and the tuxedo and they took the vows and they were like this is the path this is the path I'm taking

this path and this is who I am I'm Bob's wife or I'm Jen's husband and I'm going to be a mom or I'm going to be a dad and I'm going to this is what I'm going to do and then it blows up whether it's 5 years later 10 years later 20 years later when kids go off to college whatever it might be and then they're what they're really struggling with is wait who Am I who am I now like the barns burn down what like what do I do like what I'm not Bob's wife

then what am I you know I'm Bob's ex-wife that's a terrible thing to be I don't want to be defined by what I'm not anymore and used to be you know so what do I who am I now and you know watching people over the course of their divorce navigate that that is one of the most inspirational things in the world because people are so much stronger and more resilient than they give themselves credit for when they're in the crisis of it was there ever a a particular case that you think about that broke your

heart you're going to try to make me cry again Stephen this feels unfair no it's interesting because I I didn't I our conversation last time was so interesting because we spoke so matter of fact about the the subject of love and marriage and then for me to also learn at the same time that you are a deeply emotional person what is the one case I I've had a few I mean one of them I wrote about in my book which was I represented I it was a case that I won that I should have lost

I was I represented a pimp that's what he did for a living and uh he owned a variety of of illegal businesses uh he's in prison um for a long long time now but uh at the time he had uh very brutally abused uh a woman who he had children with and we went to uh F there was a family court proceeding and the lawyer on the other side of the of the case the lawyer who represented his um his co-parent his victim if you will um was very inexperienced she was an assigned lawyer so

I was privately paid as I am and she was assigned by the state so she was getting I think at the time $25 an hour something like that versus my 750 an hour and she was quite new as a lawyer she was right out of school she wasn't quite sure you know of of what to do and how to do it and I was fairly experienced and a judge who was very impatient who just was in a bad mood that day I don't know what he had for breakfast or what it was but he was

an older judge he'd been on the bench for probably too long he retired a few years later the key piece of evidence they had was a photograph of the way that my cent of This Woman's face after my client had allegedly beat her up quite badly and getting a photograph into evidence is very easy but it requires a very specific phrasing so what you say is I'd like this to be marked for identification you mark the photo and then you hand it to the witness or you hand it to the court officer who hands it

to the witness and you say I'm showing you what's been marked as petitioners one for identification do you recognize that yes what do you recognize it to be it's a photograph does that photograph fairly and accurately depict your face after he beat you up or does it accurately reflect your face on the date you've been discussing yes your honor I'd like it put into evidence that's it it's easy does it fairly and accurately depict for whatever reason most likely lack of experience opposing Council I guess didn't know how get a photograph into evidence now normally

in that situation a judge will be helpful like they will just jump in and say ma'am does this fairly but this judge was just not in the mood and posing Council said um I'd like this to be marked and then she said could you hand it to the witness and she said what is that a photo of so I did my job I said objection she's asking about the contents of a document not in evidence which is my job judge said sustained which means which means my objection is correct so she said uh okay uh

I'm sorry uh who took this photo and she said I I I don't I don't know who took it she says okay well what what is it a photo of stood up again objection asking about the contents of a document not an Evidence and I could see opposing Council getting flustered because she didn't know the words and my internal dialogue at that moment was just say it like just get it right like just just say fair does it fairly inaccurately depict is it just say it like and and and I I remember looking at the

judge and thinking like you're letting this happen you're letting this happen don't let this happen like she's poor she's poor that's that's why she's going to lose she's going to lose because she's poor and she can't afford a lawyer and he's going to win because he can afford a lawyer that knows how to put a document into evidence and there's something really wrong about that and the judge didn't the judge just let her drown and she she asked three or four more questions that were the wrong questions and then she just said um I I

don't I don't know I don't know what to say I'm sorry and then she just sat down and the case got dismissed and we walked out and as we walked out my client patted me on the back and he said you know a good lawyer is better than 20 stickup men and I remember thinking this is this is not a good day it's not a good day and that case that was a long time ago and it's it's still stayed with me because it it was I did my job and I I you know I

represent my client but I also represent presentent the system and I don't always believe in my client but I have to believe in the system and I have to believe that I am not it's not my right to judge people's case it's the judge's right like like I believe in this system I believe in the adversarial system but watching someone lose who shouldn't lose and winning when you know you shouldn't win does not feel good in this line of work would you take that case again exact same case exact same person exact same scenario you're

asked to go and do it again tomorrow same opposition lawyer I would yeah well first of all it's many years later and I still know that lawyer and she's actually become a really good one and I'm really proud of that if she was equally inexperienced the same woman the same circumstances the same victim you know if I knew it was going to go that way I probably I would turn it down I mean I turn down a lot of cases I don't actually know if to I would represent him anymore it's a hard question for

me to answer I see I think you don't always you don't know in the consultation and like it's not like this guy came into my office and said yeah I beat this woman terribly would you retain would you represent me like that's very different no one's ever done that in my in my office like he came in and he said yeah she's accusing me of all these horrible things I didn't do any of it but you knew he did in my gut I think think I knew he did Yeah the more I got to know

him I mean in a consultation you don't know like in a job interview you don't know what kind of employee somebody's going to be you know sitting across from someone in a one-hour consultation most of the time I'm talking telling them about their rights and obligations and how the legal process works like I don't really get to know them but throughout the process I started to figure out like yeah there's this guy did this you said you turned down a lot of cases at you know these days yeah what are the kind of cases that

you would absolutely turn down irrespective of remuneration I turn down cases where I feel like the person I mean a lot of times I turn down cases that I don't think they need me like I don't think you need to bring a gun to a knife fight like I think if you can do it with a scalpel don't use a chainsaw and I'm a chainsaw so like don't you don't need me and so I I I'm very honest with people about you don't need me I'm not the right tool for the task but there are

a lot of cases I turn down that I think people are using they want to weaponize the legal system to punish their EX for their transgressions real and perceived like they want to their spouse was cheating on them and they want to just litigate them into submission they want them force them to spend a million dollars in Council fees by making ridiculous motions and by minimizing you know their access to the kids and making them fight for every single hour of visitation they get with the kids like I I'm not interested in being a weapon

that's used for yeah for that purpose presumably sometimes your job is to get custody of kids essentially which means that you're you're basically taking children away from a parent you can look at it that way it's a harsh way to say it but I've jokingly said that before because when my kids were little and they would have those like you know bring your dad to school day and you know it was like oh this is my dad he's a firefighter and this is my dad he's a doctor and I always feel like my sons were

like this is my dad he's the reason why your firefighter dad only sees you on Alternate weekends you know and that felt a little strange you know and there were times where actually I my kids were in school with people whose divorces I had I had handled um you know their parents but yeah I I I think um I do have a tremendous impact on on people's access to their children both positive and negative like I help I help people get access to children that's being withheld from them I help people um address parental alienation

and negative gatekeeping the kinds of things that are really becoming much more Insidious and in our culture where where people are using children essentially As Weapons against their ex who they're mad at I mean look breakups on any level are difficult you know and and there's usually hurt feelings and anger in a breakup and I don't think that's abnormal like I think you lose someone whether it's to death or whether it's to divorce or just to split up there's some anger you know there's resentment why don't you love me why don't you love me the

way I love you why don't you want to be with me anymore what does this say about me does this mean I'm a bad person because you don't want to be with me anymore like this these are are really Universal themes like there's almost no one in the world in any culture that if you go to them breakups that they don't go you know they get it like they get it my friend's going through a breakup at the moment um he's been with his partner for many many years and I when he sent me the

voice note explaining like we've been together eight years we've kind of broken up four times but um my the he's been broken up with so he's he's the sort of victim per se and which is the better one to be really oh yeah you want someone to break up with you oh I mean well here's what I'll say because I I'm I'm something of a PhD in this one I have to tell you when someone has been broken up with there's a tremendous amount unless it was by some patently awful Behavior you know like they

got caught with the girlfriend or the boyfriend red-handed like then it's no one's going to give you much sympathy but if someone dumps you like it's not it's not me it's you like they just dump you there's a tremendous amount of sympathy like if somebody call if I called you and I said dude I just got broken up with you'd be like oh M come on man let's let's go out let's that's tough man we've all been there like don't say you know what happened but when you break up with someone there's only so much

sympathy people will give you because you know well we broke up if you're so upset about it get back what did you do it for then like you whereas sometimes you know you're just the one who called it like it's not it wasn't a happy relationship it wasn't like you're you're sad that it had to end you know like I didn't want to break up I wanted the relationship to stay good and it didn't so one of us has to be the grownup and say okay this thing's over now but I think that person actually

sometimes deserves you know just as much sympathy as someone who got dumped because they're both someone who's experiencing a loss of sorts even if it's a loss that it's you know I mean it's a terrible metaphor but if someone said to you I have lung cancer you would go oh my God that's horrible like are you okay if someone said well I was a smoker for 50 years and I got lung cancer it's not like you go well what did you think I mean out of course you're still gonna go oh my God that's Terri

it's not like you deserve it it's ter I mean yes is it shocking no it's not as shocking if you've been smoking for 50 years but it's still quite sad and it's still a journey this person's going to have to go through so it's the same thing it's like I I just went through a breakup well who's who picked who decided to break up with who before I tell you if I feel bad for you or not like I don't think that's a fair way to approach break up a lot of people want to own

they want to own it they want to say that they broke up with them right as well because that that's very popular makes well there's something empowering about yeah I was my decision yeah yeah yeah or or the like well I'm glad they did because I I'll tell you the truth I was about to I was about to break up with that person you know yeah that's very common I think that's a pride thing though because you know there's something about the rejection of it's over you know a great example of this for me which

is is very um it's always vex me professionally so a lot of people um I've handled a lot of divorces where someone uh breaks up with in a heterosexual marriage because they are coming out as gay or lesbian okay so they end the relationship so in in the heterosexual example man and a woman are married to each other for a period of time and the man says I'm ending things with you because I'm gay I've realized that I'm gay and I'd like to live my life as a gay man my thinking as someone who's never

had that happen to me my thinking and perhaps it's naive like my experience has taught me that maybe I'm just strange which I kind of knew but this is another example of it if if a woman broke up with me and said I'm breaking up with you because I'd like another man better than you that's very hard to swallow it's like I want one like you but better than you whereas if she said I'm leaving you cuz I'd like to go be with a woman now it's like well I mean I don't I don't have

that like I can't give you that it's not like I want someone who's a better dancer I want someone who's funnier I want someone who has different parts than you and okay I mean that feels a little less like a reject you're not rejecting me necessarily you're rejecting my entire sort of gender you're you're basically saying this isn't who I want the opposite actually happens it it it those are some of the most brutal and vitriolic awful divorces you could possibly imagine and they've actually gotten worse over the span of my career because over the

25 year span of my career when I started when someone said okay my husband is leaving because he's gay and now he's going to live as a gay man it was actually okay to then say yeah and he's a pervert and horrible human being and because there was just such a widespread homophobia I at the time I mean you know Will and Grace like will couldn't even kiss his boyfriend on TV he couldn't really even have a boyfriend it was like so you know young young people today have no idea how in my lifetime that

that has changed so much not to say there isn't still homophobia not that there's still not had re normativity but the reality has changed tremendously the boots on the ground reality now if your spouse leaves you for a if if I was married and my spouse left me for a woman and I'm upset about it I'm opening myself to an accusation of being homophobic and and the truth is like that no whoever she's leaving me for it's really upsetting or whoever she's been sleeping with male female anything It's upsetting because they're with another person so

I I think there is in that phenomenon of people's breakups the sense of like well I was going to break up with them anyway is like a pride thing I think I think there is is a tremendous amount of um of stuff that we carry around when it comes to those breakups I've always wondered what heartbreak actually is because I I I flip between thinking Cas it's like you mentioned the word rejection is it a blow to our self-esteem is it the loss of a future that we had like built in our head because yes

if you can understand what it is I was thinking how do I give my friend advice on it then I then I know what the advice should be or the support should be because if it's a loss of this future then okay I you know I know I'll say this if it's his self-esteem okay I'll boost his self-esteem yeah so I think it's all of those things but I I think it's it's it's an ending and I think that endings are hard I think that saying to what I always try to do when I have

friends going through a breakup and even with clients is that you know every beginning is born of some other Beginnings end so we talked about this the last time we sat down together where I said that you know I only got cabba because Buster died which is your dogs yeah my my dog that passed away 13 14 years ago and my dog that's now 13 years old and and one one I only got one cuz the other died and I love both of those dogs so much but if I'm being honest I guess I have

to say I'm glad that I lost Buster so that I could have cabba that that sounds terrible because I don't mean it like oh I'm glad that he but death like that ending was part of life just and it made room for the beginning of the next thing and what I always try to focus my clients on is that this relationship is ending and that's there's there has to be honoring that mourning that feeling that seeing it as the transition that it is grieving the loss of it but also realizing that every ending is the

beginning of the next thing and and there has to be an ending for the next thing to come and for the next beginning to happen and I have now watched that cycle for so thousands of clients over a span of 25 years where where their life is ending who they I was this person's husband I was this person's wife I was a dad who lived with his kids fulltime that had them every Thanksgiving not every other Thanksgiving that I had them every Christmas Eve not alternate years on in even years there with me and odd

years there with her like what are you talking about like this was who I am who I'm dying like who I am is dying and I don't know who I'll be next and when you're in that right and when it's your first divorce it's not mine but it's yours you know it's very hard to see like just just like when someone dies you know when when Buster died I I said it last time I I said I will never do this again I will never love anything like this ever again I'll never let my heart

be broken like this again I'll never open myself up like this again ever never this is the worst pain why would I ever do this loving anything is stupid it's insane you're opening yourself up to the inevitability of loss and yet cabba was the great such a joy and now I'm near the end of that and and what do you do well I I like to believe that now I'm not saying that's not going to be as painful when it happens it will be but I no longer believe the world is ending like I understand

that like the beauty of who he is was born of the emptiness that had to be created by the loss of Buster like I I understand that now and so I like I said will I do it again there's going to be a period of time where I'll say no way and same thing with love like people get divorced I had a client last week say to me they're they're right kind of in the middle of their divorce and I said you know 86% of people are remarried within 5 years of their divorce and they

said uh oh I am never doing that are you kidding I am never doing this again and every time they say that I laugh because I think to myself I'm like you're so wrong and I get it like you don't see it right now like right now I know you think that's true like but you will love again and you will when you love again like you will feel it and you will be in it and you will go oh and this one's perfect and this is great like I've done divorces for people that spent

a million dollars in counsil fees and went through absolute hell and and when they're about to get remarried I go you know we should do your prenup so you don't ever have to do that again like I'll do it for free if you want like let's just do and they go no no no this this is real this is real and I sit there and I think like oh my God you've just you've learned nothing at all like you that was real too until it wasn't like but but this is you know perhaps you know

love is a delusion brought on by inadequate lighting I don't know but there's there's something in us that you know feels that pain and then there's something in us that forgets that pain and I think that that you know that's a good thing that's a good cycle I think life is a game you can't win and so you play it to the utmost to love anything is insane because you are accepting that you're going to lose it it's a quote you said you think life is a game you can't win yeah I don't think there's

any winning you die like that's the only truth the only the you know what every story you know starts the same you were born like every Wikipedia page starts the same they were born and every Wikipedia page will end exactly the same they died that's it everything that happens in between is your life but those are the only two inevitabilities those are the only two real things for certain so I I look at it as it's a game you can't win meaning if you pursue money like your money will eventually be useless the things you

accumulate with it will be useless every car you own someone else will either own it someday or it'll get to the scrap junkyard someday or it'll you'll give it to somebody like it's all your material possessions will be utterly meaning like we all went through this when the co lockdowns first started everybody was like you know I've got all this money and I've got all these travel vouchers and they're like yeah you can't go anywhere now and it's like oh okay well what do I the you know you started to see the limitations of things

have the power go out in your house sometime and it'll remind you that like oh wait yeah like everything I have I just have like this much of a grip on it all you got to do is just take that away and it's gone and that's that's it you know and it's the same thing with our health it's the same thing with you know everything like everything is totally fine and wonderful and then you have a terrible splitting headache and then the only thing that matters is that headache you know and then that headache goes

away and for like a day you go I don't have that headache anymore but did you wake up today and go I don't have a headache oh and the powers on isn't that great you know and I don't have cancer isn't that good you know no you don't you walk around going like oh you know I really why aren't why aren't my page views where they're at or what happened with this and why did that person be so nasty to me like we get caught up in all this stuff when in fact the only thing

that you know again if you keep you know uh uh epicus the stoic philosopher said like keep death and everything horrible in your line of sight sort of momento Mory because nothing will bother you that much if you have that there so I think life is a game that look we're playing it we're doing our thing love is but all love all relationships end every single marriage ends in death or divorce but it ends every relationship ends your child you will hopefully predecease your child but your child will die someday that's the nature of it

so we have created a culture where we really try not to talk about that we really try to just keep that out of our gaze let's not talk about it our only depictions of death are Preposterous they're like the person in the deathbed being like I loved you all and then just beautiful you know beautifully done death doesn't look like that if you ever spent time with people on their deathbed I I I was a hospice volunteer for many many years and I spent a lot of time with people who were dying actively dying and

I have to tell you like you hang out with someone's they it's it's it's it's not pretty it doesn't smell good doesn't sound good but it's real it's natural it's okay it's where it's all going and and the reason why I say this is not to be morbid it's that we're doing ourselves a tremendous disservice by not acknowledging this because I can tell you how many families when I was a hospice volunteer when their family member their loved one would die would say to me it's not that they died it's that they died terribly they

died without dignity and I would say to them no they they died like everyone dies like it's okay like they just because it wasn't like on TV where you you know like sort of fade out and say a few final words then fade out like no one very few if anyone dies that way it's not how it works so we're not doing anyone like this is the part I don't understand is that we don't want to talk about divorce you know we don't want to talk about death we don't want to talk about endings because

I think there's something in our brain that says if we talk about it we're going to make it happen and if we don't talk about it we'll prevent it from happening and that seems to me insane because this these are things that are absolutely inevitable when it comes to death and highly likely when it comes to divorce so why not bring them back into the discourse and I'll tell you the truth I think one of the reasons why my conversations have become something people are interested in is because I think we're all fascinated by this

but we don't want to talk about it over dinner conversation and we don't want to you know but but we know it's important something in US knows you know this is important like this is something that needs to be talked about and thought about you did your thesis your Master's thesis on the subject of death titled well you do your research on metaphor and mortality the semantics of death and dying yeah why would you write your thesis on the subject of death well it was a different life so I this is before I went to

law school I I had gotten out I got out of college with a degree in Psychology and I decided I wanted to um I was a hospice volunteer I I um why I have to ask my therapist that question I I I can give you the answer so I when I was quite young uh I think I was about six or seven years old my mother was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer called leomo saroma it's a soft tissue saroma and it's it's very rare I was way too young to understand what was

going on I I just I remember my mother crying the sound of my mother crying in the bathroom and running the sink so I wouldn't hear her crying but I I knew she was crying I didn't really understand what death was like I understood that my gerbal had died but I I grew up Catholic so I remember like you got to go to heaven and that sounded pretty good because it was like a really nice place apparently and I remember hearing my mother talking on the phone to her sister and talking about the fact that

she had 6 months and I remember my sister who's 6 years older than me explaining to me that mom was sick and she wasn't going to get better and I remember being so young that I didn't really understand what that meant but it was scary and everyone was very upset and then my mom didn't die what had happened is depending on how you looked at it either it was a miracle or it was science and that is that the tumors had encapsulated itself meaning that the the immune system had essentially closed up around it so

it didn't metastasize or spread in any way they went in they did surgery Memorial slung keran cancer center and uh she was fine she was well and then five or six years later it came back and again I got told your mom has 6 months to live it's at that point I was like old enough to understand what that meant and I was terrified by it I was saddened by it and once again she had surgery she had all kinds of procedures and things that had to happen to deal with it but once again she

just Mor miraculously sort of ducked a bullet and she made it and 3 years later it came back again and then they said your you know your mom has six months to live and I Remember by that point thinking yeah you you don't know how many times we've had this conversation like I don't believe you anymore like and and it's okay like I'm not afraid because I'm not like it's not going to happen I know that something's going to happen and it'll work out and it did once again she had surgery again she had seven

surgeries over the course of my into my 20s and every single time the prognosis was bad and every single time they kind of took more pieces of her unfortunately because the type of cancer this is sometimes gets into other organs and so they had to take you know they had to take her ovaries forced her into menopause in her 30s then they had to take they had to change the way her had Do a bowel res section they had to do all kinds of awful things and uh and it changed her it was a painful

life for my mom it was very hard and I remember remember though from a very young age being forced to think about death being forced to sort of see death as something that was just there and that it was part of things and that there was no way around it and it it just became familiar it became sort of this person in our home you know this possibility that was always there and I remember every time I would get the call that my mom's cancer had come back there would be some part of me that

thought oh is this the phone call like is this the one where this time she's going to die like is this the one and most of the time it wasn't and 10 yeah 10 years ago um once again she had a recurrence she was supposed to have a very complex surgery my dad and I sat in the waiting room my parents were married for 50 years and uh we sat in the waiting room it was supposed to be an 8 hour surgery because was very complicated and the doctor came into the waiting room a half

an hour into the surgery and said you know we opened her up it's like a bomb went off there's nothing we can do we're going to close her up and put her on hospice and um she passed away eight years ago after you know she was on hospice for over a year um and she died with us all around her and there was something about the reality that we had been able to talk about death for so long that there was a tremendous peace there like there was a tremendous sense of well this was going

to happen you know this was part of our life you know that this was what was going to happen and she had a tremendous peace about her because it had been part of her life for so long so when I was in my late teens I think my mom had had three or four rounds of this this cancer thing I just remember thinking I I have to confront this I have to spend time around death you know I I again I'm strange you know I was always afraid of spiders I didn't like spiders when I

was a kid so when I went off to college I bought a tarantula and I put it in a glass terarium next to my bed so that every morning I would wake up and there was just this giant spider sitting there next to me and I'm not afraid of spiders anymore and it it got rid of that very quickly and so I thought you know this is something that's been around me all the time and it's something I'm not quite at peace with so I'm going to confront it and I went and did a hospice

volunteer training and I remember I you know it was a weird thing for like a 20-year-old to do I had just gotten out of college I was 21 and uh I think I was the only person under 60 who was in this volunteer training and hospice training hospice volunteer training I would recommend to anyone because they do things like they make you write your eulogy your own eulogy your own eulogy yeah yeah they make you write your own eulogy like and it can either be if you died right now what would the eulogy be um

or if you died in your idealized future what would it be um they make you write your own obituary like they make you confront the reality of thinking about death and and thinking about your own death and death of the people around you and then after you've been through the training they assign you families and I intended initially just to do it a sort of a part-time thing in the summer after I graduated college I was working as a waiter and I had a lot of time during the day CU at night I was I

was waiting tables and um I got assigned to a bunch of families one at a time and and I I loved it it was the most it was the most it was the most life-changing thing I've ever done like it it it uh there was something about when you're a hospice volunteer and you're just brought into a home and you're just there to be of service like you're just if they want to talk we'll talk if you want me to help do the dishes so that you can hang out with your loved one that's great

I'll do that like I I did yard work and a lot of times like people because caring for someone who's terminally ill in your home is hard and and like things like I want to run out to the store and get a few things myself like that's hard because you don't want to leave this person alone so a lot of times I was just there to sort of be relief just to sit with someone and um and and every time I would walk out of a hospice home I felt like I don't know I felt

like a Zen monk I felt like like I could hear the rain I just felt like I'm alive like I'm like that that's not happening to me yet like I'm not there yet like that's not that's not someone I love in that bed like I I have love for this person I want to be there for them I'm here of service but that's not my father that's not my brother that's not me it will be someday and one day it was one day it was my mother but it wasn't me and I have to tell

you there's something about going through that experience when you're in your 20s when you're so self-centered and you're supposed to be you're kind of supposed to be self-centered you're you're supposed to say like all right what am I going to do with this life what I going to do with these hands what I but there is something about it that stage in life to be told whatever you do with these hands whatever you do with all this that's where it's going to end that's where it's going to end best case scenario best case scenario it's

going to be in your own home with your family around you worst case scenar it's going to be on a street somewhere prematurely you know so I was fascinated with death and I I decided I was going to go to graduate school and I was going to study thanatology I was going to study death and dying but there really aren't any programs in that so I went to New York University's Department of culture and communication and I found um uh Neil Postman Dr Neil Postman who was going to be my because NYU of back then

and still gives you a lot of opportunities to kind of create your own curriculum as long as it's something serious you know academically serious and as long as you can put together like an amalgam of classes from different disciplines they'll let you put together something very individualized and so I put together a a study about or the cultural approaches we have to death and dying and my Master's Degree thesis was called the semantics of mortality or I'm sorry metaphor and mortality the semantics of death and dying and was published in a journal called Etc um

which is the Journal of General semantics and it what I did is I studied the words we use to talk about death and what they reflect on how we think about death so like you know I remember when I was a kid and or our dog when I was a child had to be um had to be euthanized I remember the doctor saying we're going to going to put him to sleep and I remember thinking no you're not he's going to die he's not going to sleep like I'm going to go to sleep later like

he's not going to go to sleep he's going to go to death like why are you calling it that and I understood why obviously as an adult like it's a in A Primitive culture someone it's an eternal sleep it looks like and when you're asleep you look like you're dead you know I've held a mirror under some you're like all right and I will I understand where these Med like doctors I I explored doctors talking about we lost the patient like wait what what you don't know where he is like no you know what room

he's in no we lost the battle the battle against death you're definitely going to lose that battle like that's they death's record is amazing death death always wins like so if you're setting it up for that battle like that's a that's a bad battle we just don't want to confront it though do we that's the essence of why we use the words pass on pass which is fascinating to me because it is the only certainty we have and we act as if we are certain it's something bad when in fact absolutely no one can say

with certainty what it is and what happens except that it's inevitable having spoke to so many people in their final days weeks and months and final minutes I'm really compelled to understand what I can learn from them about how I should be living my life based on the types of things they then say to you focus on prioritize yeah that's it's that is true like you can learn a tremendous amount from that and here's what I will tell you I learned they don't talk about death like you go through this hospice training where they're they're

they're very much preparing you to talk with people about their fear about their death or their imminence of their death and all people really want to talk about is their grandkids their kids their wife their husband what they did for a living and what they liked about it like most of the time people talk about like the things that made them happy like I I spent a lot of time just listening to people tell me about tell me happy stories about their life telling me moments that and it made a lot of sense to me

like it made a lot of sense to me like if I said to you right now like what are five moments in your life where you just felt loved and happy like you could stop and close your eyes and and and there'd be like and and what a comfort it would be like to have those and every once in a while like when you're in that moment you go I'm in one of those right now like I'm going to remember this moment you know and but most of the time you don't like most of the

time it just happens and then you look back and you go God I remember that kiss you know or remember that you know that meal or remember that and and you don't see it when it's happening and that for me is is what I really learned from doing hospice work was that like all these people wanted to tell me about was you know when they were alive like really alive not laying in a bed dying like they want to talk about like yeah I did this or I saw that and you know I I learned

it in my mom's passing I remember my last day with my mom before she became so ill that she was not mobile and and not not really functional to have a discussion with I just remember we just sat there and I told her about like how great my sons were doing her grandchildren how great they were doing and and I talked about how happy I was and like just how great life is and how great I and I just remember like she just was I remember thinking like oh that's what I would want like I

would want to know that like yeah you did it like you did great like look at look at all this stuff that's here because of you you know and to me like that that's what hospice work very much taught me was it it it taught me that that um no one's really going to care that much about you know some of this stuff that seems so important like it's just not that important like like the people talked about their kids they talked about their grandkids they talked about you know the love of their life or

if they if they had survived that love and and they you know they talked about how like oh maybe you know maybe I'm going to get to see them again you know and and it's very funny CU I I remember I remember talking to someone a a few years ago and saying something about oh you know I wish my mom had been alive to see me do you know this thing and they said oh I I you know I I bet she's seeing it like I bet she's seeing it from you know because this person

was religious and I remember thinking you know I don't believe that but I really hope I'm wrong like I really hope I'm wrong that would be amazing like that'd be wonderful it'd be beautiful you know so I I think hospice for me the reason why I I got into the hospice work the reason why my research became death related um was that that uh I just think life is better when you have those things in front of you when you when you remind yourself of the inevitability of endings we're just the imagination of ourselves those

are words that you said you said we're just the imagination of ourselves there's nothing to be afraid of everything's connected we're just in one state of being now and then we'll be in a different state of being there's probably a benevolent Force out there that was something that came to me as a function of of of um of my my experiences with psychedelics very early in my life is um was that realization was the realization that everything is connected and that there is some benevolent something underneath all of it and that there's nothing to be

afraid of and I think some of that was a function of course of of growing up in an environment where you couldn't deny death where it was sort of always present and perhaps that was on my mind at that stage in my life when when I had those profound experiences but um that's stayed with me that's never gone away that's been very um very much a part of my view of things that that um that perhaps we are just one Consciousness experience itself subjectively and that we we are just you know I heard what was

it Pete Holmes the comedian recently talking about how you know people say that like oh we came from nothing I don't believe in God I believe in nothing and you know he has this whole bit about him he's like really so like instead of believing in God which is something that you can't touch can't prove can't photograph in science can't prove or disprove you believe in nothing which is something you can't see touch feel science can't prove or disprove like so if you're nothing just spontaneously you know creates everything that's pretty impressive nothing and it's

game of things so I think I think that I am very much a believer in the fact I like to believe whatever the name of it is whatever we want to call it having spent a lot of time with hospice patients and having thought a lot about death I I'd like to think that we you know we are drops of water and that when we die we return to the Sea that we just merge with our creator again and I'm not I'm not really worried that JY stops existing like cuz I don't remember what I

was before gy so I have no reason to think it was something terrible and I don't know what I'll be after I'm gym but I have no reason to think it's going to be something terrible it could just as easily be it's going to be something fantastic and that I'm going to get there and go what what why didn't I get here sooner you know and if there's a God that he might greet me and be like yeah why are you guys so fixated on not getting here it's awesome you know like that temporary thing

like there's a reason why as an organism you're supposed to just there's all these things that'll kill you like it's supposed to be that that happens sooner rather than later but like that's it's a very uncomfortable a thought like it's an uncomfortable thought that like this might be hell or this might be the part that we should be afraid of like this might be the part that's really hard like maybe what's before it and what's after it's really the easy part and what's Happening Here is what's challenging like when someone dies I've always thought to

myself like when someone dies like the people who suffer are the living like the person who's passed they're gone now that's why I never believed in the death penalty because they were like we're going to punish this person by they're going to die I'm like well my grandmother died I I didn't like to think that it was a punishment like put them in a box feed them terrible food that that sounds like a punishment you know like you know make them watch bad TV I don't know something but death like death to me doesn't I

don't like to think of death as punishment I I I I'm enjoying this ride and I'm enjoying enjoying this body and I'm enjoying all of this but I'm not terrified of that I'm genuinely curious I'm genuinely curious and when the time comes I want to face it with open with you know clean hands and an open heart where does acceptance play in dealing with an ending like how important is it to accept and when you when you meet your clients as a divorce lawyer now is part of the suffering the resistance to accept the situation

yes even if it it wasn't your fault because you know this is sometimes people conflate this idea of acceptance with like you know justification I'm not saying justification I'm saying accept this is the situation you find yourself in yeah I I think that's very very astute and very real I think there's a step before acceptance or there's a number of steps before acceptance but but the first one is acknowledgement like I think you have to acknowledge that something is happening before you can start because acceptance has to do with adjusting your emotional state and reaction

to it changing the level of tension in your body about it you know like every time I've ever gone to the dentist you know there's this part of me it's like oh here it comes oh God here it comes this is going to hurt here comes you know and it's like I'm ready I'm bracing I'm bracing and and I have to remind myself like wait stop don't do that yeah stop soften soften soften over and over soften it's one of the reasons I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu because when you're a white belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu everything

is like resisting everything you know trying to stop everything and and then you you start to learn like oh no no no like soften like yield like just you know protect the neck move the hand okay go ahead try and choke me like you're not going to do it like and and there's something about that like not trying to resist the thing but trust what you were saying there about trust in how natural something is but it's acknowledging first okay here is the reality of my situation this marriage is ending like there there's a there's

a a a Zen Parable or saying I heard many years ago which is if you don't learn to find joy in the snow you will have less joy in your life and precisely the same amount of snow reality is reality like I I broke my favorite teacup I can be happy about that I can be angry about that I can be sad about that either way my teacup is gone it's gone that's it like and so I think that the acceptance piece first requires okay my life is finite my life is finite my marriage is

not permanently gifted to me love is not permanently gifted it is loaned whether it's the life of my my life the love of my dog the love of my Roman IC partner the love of my children it is on loan to me it is not permanently gifted so that's just acknowledgement first then it's not pulling from that yielding from like it's it's about softening softening and realizing that okay so now what do I do with this like what do I do you know there's something about my my therapist once said to me we were talking

about um we were talking about like resisting change change in life I was going through a transition in life and and I was having a hard time with it and he said you know uh he said you're very curious he said you you try to like swim against the current and it's not going to work or you just let go and let yourself go with the current and that's not going to work so you try to like I'm going to be the ocean and that doesn't work he's like surf he's like surf he's like surfing

is kind of the perfect balance like you're not trying to fight the wave you're trying to take it where it's going to take you but you're going to impose yourself on the process a little you're going to use technique patience you're going to use your body and you're going to try to just see because there's an element in surfing just like in Jiu-Jitsu just like in so many things in life of like yielding but also maintaining an active role right and I think that is in the demise of a relationship or the loss of someone

because of death or again any transition any ending first it's about acknowledging the reality of what we had what we were you know what our health was whatever it might be and then saying okay and now this has changed and I can resist it or I can yield to it I can accept that this is what's happened it is snowing my teacup is broken whatever it is and then you can see what's next because again we don't know what's next we don't know what that will lead to like some of the worst things some of

the moments in my life where I went oh my God I'm never getting through this gave way to some of the greatest moments in my life like just when the just when the caterpillar thought its life was ending it became a butterfly you know but it had the world had to end like imagine being the bird in the egg you know you've been warm and happy imagine being in the womb like you're warm you're happy everything's being fed to you it's like lovely you're just buoyant and floating around and now if you're the bird you

got to break through a shell and get into this cold weird world and you don't know how your wings work yet or if you're a baby it's like all blood and screaming but you got to do that to get to the next thing and the next thing is beautiful like the bird only gets to fly because it broke through the egg and it only broke through the egg because it was brave enough to destroy the only world it's ever known and that's how I look at divorce in some ways is that divorce is like this

whole whether I'm the one ending it or my partner is the one ending it like something is ending that I never thought was going to end and it's done and now what I don't know I don't know what but I have no reason to think it's going to be horrifying it might be incredibly beautiful but it's it's the road ahead of me now and and that to me there's something very beautiful about that level of acceptance but the lights are off the lights are off on that road it's a it's a road with no Street

lamps and that's what the uncertainty of yeah it's scary it's scary right we humans are particularly bad with dealing with uncertainty I learned this when I when I studied um Uber Labs which is this laboratory they had at Uber to figure out how to build the perfect taxi app and they discovered that much of the reason why we love Uber is it because it kills the uncertainty that we used to have when we called a taxi on the phone and then we had to stand there for seven or maybe 17 minutes hoping that it was

coming and it's the same analogy you might find if you know you go to an airport and it says flight is delayed now flight delayed is much worse than flight delayed two hours because I can work with that yeah but flight delayed yeah with no certainty around how long I'm going to be stood in this airport for is like mental torture and it's the same and and the truth is there is something I'm I'm not look I'm not Pana about it like there is something terribly frustrating upsetting Difficult about your flight being delayed or your

flight being cancelled for example but I in Frankfurt Germany I had the I think it's the best meal of my entire life at a little tiny restaurant I only had that meal because I was flying back from Poland and had a stop in Frankfurt that was supposed to be for 1 hour and because of snow they canceled all the flights to essentially to the United States and I was stuck in Frankfurt for the night now I I certainly had a few moments of like are you kidding me like I have work I have this I

have that but then something in me went okay like you can be upset about this all you want man but it ain't going to make the flights happen and you can't walk home from Frankfurt so what are you going to do you've not been in Frankfurt before see what happens and I walked around Frankfurt and I found this amazing little restaurant and it was I think still to this day the best meal I've ever had in my life and I've gone back to Frankfurt three times just to eat at that restaurant and I the hotel

that I found because I was like all right I need a room I need to get a room somewhere turned out became one of my favorite hotels and I stayed there several times so you know again if you'd said to me in advance Jim would it be awful if you got stuck in Frankfurt I would be like oh my God that' be so bad I have a court appearance tomorrow and I have this to do and I have that to do my life would have been so much poorer if I hadn't gotten stuck in Frankfurt

I had like four amazing trips and a bunch of amazing meals and all these incredible experiences cuz one time my flight got canceled because of snow and I tell you something I I'm really really glad that flight got canceled I wasn't at the time at the time it was very frustrating I had to call my assistant the middle of night and be like all right you got to cancel all my stuff you got to Res but the truth is like you just don't know you just don't know you won't know you won't know until you're

sitting ideally in a bed and there's a hospice volunteer sitting next to you and you're telling them all about the amazing meal that you had in Frankfurt that one time not you know my flight got delayed once you said earlier at the start of this conversation no one intends to end up in the consultation room um with a divorce lawyer but I wondered when you said that I thought you know what I bet you've met someone in your life that did intend to end up there I someone that got married because they wanted the divorce

yeah yeah I'm sure I I I have met so I've met people because I'm in in the high net worth and ultra high net worth space High net worth we Define as like 10 to a few hundred million and ultra high net worth is like 500 million and up in in those spaces yeah there's a there's there certainly are people that get married to a wealthy person for what will be great financial benefit but a lot of them are not planning on cashing the chips out necessarily they see it as a possibility but they more

often are like oh no I'd like to ride this ride as long as possible because the amount of money I'm going to have access to with this person is much greater than even if I divorce and take some of their things so um that that is certainly I I would the overwhelming majority of people like 99.999% of my of clients I have met in a 25-year career did not mean to get divorced they they they move towards divorce and eventually many of them go oh yeah this I saw early on we were doomed but you

know love is so intoxicating we fall in love so fast you know and we really do like have a tendency to in the early days like we we tend to just be so forgiving of a person I mean thank God that passes to some degree could you imagine like that you know when you first are with your romantic partner like they brush up against you and it's like electric that feeling you know could you we couldn't what would we as a world get stuff done if we felt like that forever about our romantic partner if

10 years into the relationship when your partner brushed up next to you at the sink you went like oh God you wouldn't get anything done like you wouldn't get anything done you we would we would be a very unproductive world so thankfully that Fades and changes I I hope it never goes completely away for for any couple but it becomes manageable you start to see this person a little more clearly hopefully still with tremendous optimism what's the quickest marriage you've ever represented quickest marriage and divorce marriage 72 hours from Marriage to divorce from Marriage to

divorce yes marriage marriage to annulment in that situation but I've I've seen divorces that were 72 hours were they drunk what was the yeah it was in one it was that they were drunk in one it was um I don't know how to put it it was almost like a it was almost like a game of chicken that went too far like they were they just sort of started dating and one of them was like I bet you wouldn't get my name tattooed on you and like oh yeah and then they went and got their

name tattooed in each other and then they were like well I bet we wouldn't I'd like you so I'd get an engagement ring and then they went and got an engagement ring and they were like oh yeah well I would I you know would you marry me and then they got married and then I think like they probably had a great night like that night was probably that might have been some mind-bending sex but then two days later they were like wait you know do you you don't actually want to have kids oh CU I

do and like oh you're you know like and they realized they were just fundamentally incompatible people have you seen any patterns there with compatibility then so if if a couple walks in and they've been together for I guess when you look back at the types of people you've represented um is there a certain length of Engagement and boyfriend girlfriend phase that is typically conducive with it work working or not working no I don't see that pattern I I'm constantly I'm very fixated on pattern recognition so I'm constantly thinking I'm always looking at same Religion different

religions or religious versus non-religious or older and younger older man younger woman younger man older woman like what what permeation same culture different culture same races different races like first generation to the US or you know both first generation or neither um I I don't I don't see those patterns I really I I if I did I'd be the first to say it you know I don't hesitate to say stuff but I I've not seen those patterns I I have found if I was to say there was any any pattern it it it really is

um I I think substance use is probably the main thing like that if if one or both people are big drinkers or drug users that's usually a good indication that the marriage is going to lead to divorce because substance use issues tend to get worse in either both people which causes all kinds of second order effects or more commonly one person when they have kids or when they reach a slightly different stage in life scales back on alcohol or drug use and the other person has an unhealthy relationship with the substances and it gets further

down and that's the direction that it goes in I had um you said something earlier which really peaked my interest as well which kind of relates to this is you said love is loaned and I I immediately thought of a friend who who brought me to a restaurant one day to basically tell me that him and his um wife were being divorced and the way they described it was quite heartbreaking because it seemed like they had a good relationship it's kind of like they got busy with their job and the kid and they forgot to

water the plant yeah it's like the only way I can describe it cuz they're like good people they didn't really appear to argue at all they had this kid they're both CEOs she's a CEO he's a CEO and it's like they like raised the kid and forgot to water the relationship yeah yeah I I've I've always phrased that as they lost the plot like that they were because when you get married you're trying to write a story together and sometimes I think you lose the plot ah like you know when you're reading and like all

sudden you stop and you go I don't really remember where I am in this like and you got to go back a few pages you know to like oh okay I remember this part let me start there I think sometimes we lose the plot and I and I think that happens in every relationship every long-term relationship I think sometimes you lose the plot like other things are going on at work or you have kids and and kids require a tremendous amount of your bandwidth so I I get it but I think if you lose the

plot that's where it it's like hard to it's a it's again acknowledgment of it like awareness truth being honest and saying hey I feel like we lost the plot like I feel like there's you know we lost the plot how do we get it back like how but but the problem is when you say to your partner hey I I feel like we kind of lost the plot rather than hearing that as hey this is really important to me you're really important to me yeah work's important kids important but you and me you and me

that's really important like it's equally if not more important so I feel a certain way I I feel like we've lost the plot and and I'm not saying it's your fault I'm not saying it's my fault I'm saying it's the kid's fault I don't know whose fault it is I don't really care but I don't want to lose the plot because I care about you and I and this plot this story is important to me people don't hear it that way people hear it as we lost the plot well what do you want me to

do about it like you know oh okay so I'll just ignore the kid what do you what what what what what do you want I'm sorry I'm doing the best I can and that's like that's not the way to hear that I I understand I think it's very human to hear it that way but I genuinely believe that that you know yeah it's like you forgot to water the plant like and nobody meant to kill the plant but you kill the plant because you weren't thinking about the plant and by the way what right there

you walked past it every single day you just not once thought oh yeah I got to remember to what of the plan and so I think it's very easy in marriage in long-term relationships it's very easy to just just forget that this is you're borrowing this you know this is not yours like this person's not yours this person is loaned to you and it's by the way it's the same with death like this person is loaned to you they could be taken away by divorce or by death they could be taken away every marriage will

end in one of those two things death or divorce for sure you've used this word slippage before yeah when does it happen and what does slippage mean I mean slipp is everyone understands slippage I think like it's not like you eat cake and then the next day your suit doesn't fit like you just make lots of little choices and those little choices add up and all of a sudden your suit doesn't fit you go wait when did that happen you know and I think it's the same thing in relationships like we you know Ernest Hemingway

said in um The Sun Also Rises um I I went bankrupt the same way anybody does very slowly and then all at once and I think that's how that's slippage like it's just Little Raindrops that eventually become the flood and and I think that's what happens in relationships is you you start to with good intentions you're focused on other things maybe you start to go hey I got this like because you know when you were single finding the one was big that was big that was a big priority in your life and then you found

them and then there's like a whole bunch of just high-fiving and celebration and it's like a this is so great I found the one you found you wanted the one too and you found it it's me isn't this great and then you go all right we got that now what other stuff you know what other stuff can we do cuz now like I'm supercharged I got you you got me we're gonna do this thing and you go and what do you do you make new life or you make careers or you go amazing places like

you're do it's not enough it's not enough to just go we got each other and it's so fun and let's just tuck in here and just stay together you know and I I always laugh with Friends by the way because I can always tell when someone's like in love CU they put on a couple of pounds you know cuz they really do cuz they're just they just go like do I want to like get up and go to the gym or do you want like sit on the couch and eat popcorn and watch something yeah

let's do that you know and it's just sort of like you know you're just so it's love weight it's like happy love weight and I I love when I see it on somebody like it looks good on everybody you know much better than like if you believe me like if you look at photos of me from when I had an eight pack it was the most miserable time in my life CU I'm at the gym just trying to beat the pain out of me you know so I I I think it's very very very normal

that people in that headiness of that okay so when that Fades and now we're like in a sustainable pattern of a relationship and you're focusing on other things little tiny things start to you know and you don't want to make a thing of it you don't want to say like oh by the way calling a foul here throwing a flag on that play no you just sort of go like oh no it's it's just little thing it's not a big thing to worry about it and I think that's the that is how the process begins

and it leads right to my office somay Jordan Peterson said something to me Jack have you got my phone yeah I just wanted to play you this um 30 seconds of something he said everybody keeps telling me I have to have a conversation with Jordan Peterson this it would be fascinating I imagine two people are telling him the same thing which is my friend is um going through some difficulties in his relationship and I sent him this little clip which I honestly I keep this clip saved in my phone because I have to send it

to so many of my male friends but this is what Jordan says and it relates to SLI here's something to understand about your marriage okay you are going to have to listen to your wife 90 minutes a week okay and you might as well just get that through your thick skull now why if you listen to her enough you can make peace and you can play so there's a huge benefit if you don't listen to her that will accumulate and you'll listen to her in divorce court someone sent me that I don't think it was

you someone sent me that so yeah I mean I think that's a piece of what I'm talking about for sure it feels a little like the advice last time I was on I was saying I I found offensive which is happy wife happy life like I think there's this sense of like well what a man has to do is just sort of tolerate the like listen I I don't think most men like don't want to listen to their wife for 90 because that impose that seems to me and I know he's being hyperbolic and I

love Jordan's work and I I I find him fascinating and I really enjoy him but when when someone says to me like oh you have to listen to your wife for 90 minutes a week like that feels like you're going to sit there and be like how many more minutes do I have to do this for you know there was a time where you couldn't wait to hear her like she was interesting and she was interested but do you think the women that are listening to this right now that have husbands and boyfriends yeah think

they their husband and boyfriend likes it when they said hey hey we need to talk about something but see who when in your life has someone saying that to you been a precursor to something good hey we need to talk about something that that never that's like you know is this siren a good siren when is this siren ever good like there's certain phrases we really need to have a conversation that is not a good entry point and that's not because it means there's something wrong but before you get to that like how many women

you know would say that that you know in the interaction with their spouse like they don't want like a let's have a 90 minutes in The Penalty Box where you have to listen to me talk to you like that seems terrible you know the the thought of of of having to do that as like a practice sounds sort of like all right well if I Endure that for 90 minutes the the bonus is I get sex or something like and that seems crazy to me as a divorce lawyer if you think about the divorces you've

um seen in court and you've sort of cons consulted on Etc do you believe that if that couple had spent 90 minutes a week sat down openly being honest with each other they would have ended up in your consultation room I think if they'd made a practice like that as something deliberate I I mean maybe it would make a difference I I think what's more important than the the structure of a ritual and the the time I I have a better practice than that I have um so I have a chapter in the book called

hit send now where I talk about sharing with your partner kind of promptly when something has rattled you the wrong way without saying we need to talk like just giving like and I I suggest people do it via email so that it's like you can say to your partner like Hey listen like I want you to reflect on this like you don't have to answer right away you don't have to be defensive and also you can be careful about how you parse it because not everybody's very sure-footed in their speech right so sometimes people if

you just try to do it face to face sometimes it's not going to come out clearly so if you're writing you can edit it you can be careful with it but I I genuinely think sometimes people just need to check in in a relationship and by the way you have to if you want that you also have to be willing to accept that in your direction right so I have a friend I have a a friend who read my book and he's a friend who actually then read my book and he said that he and

his wife go for a walk once a week and they make a deliberate practice during during that walk of sharing with each other one or two or three things that the person didn't do perfectly in their relationship that week and they hear it with love like they deliberately from the beginning go we're hearing this with love we're hearing this as a practice it's a deliberate practice because our goal is to have a great relationship and keep it great so we're going to hear it that way we're not going to hear it as a criticism we're

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

it became cliche why it became popular well it became popular because I think so many people were willing to accept the unbelievably ridiculous model of relationships that's led us to a 56% divorce rate and probably another 20 or 30% staying together unbelievably miserable but not wanting to give up half their stuff so yeah like every misery loves company like everybody is sitting around going like well listen women are like that you got to spend 90 minutes with them happy wife happy life like and I I just I just don't accept that I don't accept that

it has to be awful why is is it not happy husband happy wife though well in reality it is I think in reality it's happy husband and happy wife equals happy marriage like but why did it come into culture that that way around because I think there's there's a well I mean my personal opinion on this is I think men are probably easier to please in some ways like okay you know I think men are either hungry or horny so like either feed us or have sex with us and that's kind of we're most of

the time pretty happy like I don't I don't we're not you know like which curtains should we pick out for the house like we're not that caught up in I don't know a lot of guys caught up in that like when it came to weddings like most of the guys I know weren't when they were young men going like what is my wedding going to be like I can't here's what I'm going to do like it was very like is there a DJ or a band and what will the bar have and that's kind of

what they were into and everything else was like cool babe whatever you like like I'm excited to see you excited that's what matters to me so men are simple I think men are quite simple yeah and I think women and by the way this is not a criticism of men it's not a criticism of women and again it's a generalization I understand that but like women I think thank God women are much more nuanced in my experience like they they notice more sometimes or different things like there like I I think men and women bring

different things to and again not every man not every woman but like I genuinely believe that we bring different gifts to relationships and and when we Embrace that and by the way that polarity when we're dating is the greatest thing in the world but of course it gets challenging because this person's not just your sexual partner or romantic partner they're your roommate they're your co-parent they're your travel partner share a bathroom with them like you got like this is a whole another thing when you get married the French have a saying that you know marriage

turns a lover into a relative and and the truth is like not any of like you're you know you're lover you have this sort of you know it's why Affairs are so intoxicating and wonderful because you just get the best parts you don't have to you don't have to you know pick up this person's socks you don't have to listen to the fight they got in with their cousin you know you don't have to be like I got to spend 90 minutes with them you know you can actually you're just getting the good stuff the

passion the sex the you know which again you you can have you we can do relationships however we decide we want to do them that's what's cool about it is the two people in it is what matters and think even before social media we were very much about well how is everybody else doing it because I I guess that's the right way to do it and so yeah happy wife happy life was like listen just here you know like just just make her happy because then she'll shut up and you can just watch football like

and it I I I mean look that never appealed to me that was never interesting to me I I think a lot of people absolutely buy into that model of relationships what's more interesting to to me than people who've just given up right people who' just said like yeah I know the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are the same thing but I'm just going to do the easy thing because it's like H what's more interesting to me is that I think sometimes people screw up their relationships complet with completely good

intentions and the the example I I I give in my book about this is sexs I think most people who've been in a long-term relationship will say yeah you know sex has become kind of predictable like it's become kind of it's not as novel you know and I think that happens for the absolute best of intentions and it would be really lovely if we just acknowledged that because here's why it happens right you get with a person you're first dating first time you you know you get sexual with the person you throw every trick you've

got at that person right you do all the things that you think they're going to like to see what are they going to like right do they like the same stuff that other people liked or do they like something different or they you know what do they do they like the same things you like and you throw everything at it and and and you start okay they don't like that okay this they really like oh they make really nice noises when I do that okay and you start to and then what do you do you

start to get more efficient like oh I know she doesn't like that so I'm not going to do that but I know she likes this so I'm gonna do that a whole lot right and she does I hope the same thing she does that he loves it when I do this and the sound that comes out of him when I do that I said what do you do you play the greatest hits you play The Greatest Hits hits cuz why not and by the way there's only so many hours in the day and we got

some stuff we got to get to so let's really throw the greatest hits at each other and we're going to have a great time well what did you just do you were trying to make each other really happy and be a really good lover to each other but what did you just do you just created a routine just created a routine and here's the other thing about humans which we all know if we've ever had a sexual partner for more than six months then you've noticed the patterns and by the way you're thrilled with them

because you're doing the greatest hits like I went to see spring scene to hear born to that's what I'm there to see like I I love it do the greatest hits but then if they do something different there is some part of you that goes what was that where did that come from that was we don't usually do that or we don't do it in that order and by the way sometimes that's exciting right sometimes it's like yeah let's have sex in the laundry room what we got a bed right over there yeah we always

do it over do it in the laundry room like I don't know that's fun right it's fun to do something different well we get to a place where now when we do something different we start to feel like we're going to have to have a conversation about it because it's like well why did you do that that's a strange or they or sometimes people go why did they do that different thing are they like is it they're watching porn are they cheating on me where did they get that idea from is that something that they

want and they want to start doing that is that part of the greatest hits and I didn't realize it do they not like what I've been doing and we start to sabotage again with good intentions from day one all you wanted was to make your partner happy and they wanted to make you happy and look what you did you made a routine so the only way out of that spiral is to call it to talk about it call it out to say Hey you know it feels like things are kind of in like we're in

a you know is there anything I could do different or you might want different and I think there's lots of ways to have that conversation how do we not have that conversation like what's the worst way to have that conversation the worst way to have that conversation is say how come you don't do this anymore you used to do it all the time or you know I've never we why won't you ever let me this or why don't you ever try that that's the worst way to do it blame blame and also it's on you

yeah why you do or also that it's like because immediately the person's reaction to that is going to be well here's why you know because of this well because you this you know well how come you never do this like and it it turns into that and I think there's a million other ways to do it all of which are better the the best one in my opinion but I'm a lawyer and I'm dishonest a lot of the time is you know manipulation I think that there's very positive man I manipulate people's emotional state for

a living right like that's my job is to make the other side scared my client feel safe the judge feel good about my client bad about the other side so like I I try to use my powers for good and I think here's a great way to use that power for good I think if there's something going on in bed that you want to try or do and you don't want to have the clinical convers like you don't want to call an audible in the middle of sex and just start doing something different and have

your partner go what the heck was that I think a great one is oh my God the dream I had about you last night woo he just you don't even want to know wait what what what was the dream what what was the dream he had no no I don't even I don't know it's because I had Dairy before bed or something I don't know I I had the dirtiest dream about you you tell me what human being male female gay straight anybody isn't going to go no for real what what was I doing what

were you doing what was it then you tell them you tell them the thing that you'd be interested in doing and they go it was you and your brother and okay if that's something you're looking for I don't know how to get I'm very persuasive I couldn't get you I couldn't give you an entry point for that one but if it's something that you wanted to do you say yeah I had this dream and this is what happened and your partner May react as oh really like you would like that and then you can go

yeah no I mean I don't know I just it was in my brain so I don't know like it seemed weird to me too and then you can back out of it without it being a thing or you can go I don't know maybe because if their reaction is oh yeah would is that something you'd want to do be like I don't know maybe it is subconsciously or we try it some time how many times do people end up in divorce court because the Lights Went Out in the bedroom I mean how many would admit

it or how many is it really the case well because here's what I'll tell you I would say a good at least 80% of the people that at my office infidelity was a piece of it so that tells me that sex is a big piece you know because most people who are in genuinely satisfying sexual relationships with their partner aren't looking to have other sexual relationships some people are just addicted to sex though and and I say this because I got some friends who people always think I'm like projecting and I'm like secretly talking about

myself but I'm actually not I've met wide spectrum of individuals and their relationship with sex varies wildly some people I just think are going to cheat forever regardless of who they're with because they have some like trauma related to the Chase and sex and then some people are kind of you know don't have sex at all so on the on the end where you've got that almost sex addiction behavior um I'm just wondering if if uh I guess I guess the question there the broader question was about how many how much is the lights going

out in the bedroom does it relate to people ending up in divorce court well I remember listening to your conversation with Gad and uh and and him you you asking him flat out like so how much of the motivation is sex like and and I think his answer was AB like a tremendous amount of evolutionary biology is tied to sex like a tremendous amount of our motivation is born of sex it's about sex food and not becoming food that's like our three primary motivators so I think sex is incredibly important I also think sex is

constantly thrown into our line of sight so I think you can't discount that I mean I think sex is on social media on like the the amount of sex that is put in our face constantly now is shocking it's shocking I mean compare it do your grandfather has not seen as many breasts in one lifetime as you'd see in one visit to Instagram like I mean there is just so much cleavage going on it's you just can't even so I think fundamentally like of course it's being thrown in our light ofite advertising everywhere it's surrounded

we live in a sex saturated environment how long have you been a divorce lawyer 25 years so since that time things like only fans have emerged and pornography's been become common place yeah I imagine at the start of your career the term pornography probably wasn't used much in divorce no hardly ever hardly ever is it used now it's everywhere now it's everywhere there's a lot of unique things that have I've watched evolve in my career um the prol eration of revenge porn the number of people that have concerns about audio video photographs of them you

know because every I mean the proliferation of it is also a function of the fact that everyone has a video camera and everyone has a has a has a a camera sophisticated camera in their hand you know so there's a tremendous amount of concern about you know this person has images of me photos of me tremendous amounts of um you know cheating has gotten much much easier than it used to be I mean the idea of like connecting with a potential sexual partner and also having conversations with people we have absolutely no business having conversations

with and having neutral entry points to get into so like you know it used to be like maybe you see the attractive soccer mom at this your kids soccer practice and she's married and you're married but like if you saddled up next to her and started talking you're having a conversation with a group full of people and if you called her on the phone at the house that would be weird right but if you like message her or you add her on Facebook it's not weird because our kids are on the same soccer thing and

maybe there's a Facebook group for the soccer parents and then she posts a picture of herself when she was on vacation and you say oh where did you guys stay we were thinking about going to Jamaica and then she says oh this and you go oh you know and suddenly we're having a conversation and it's private nobody else is there we're alone in a room so I think it's pretty you know it's become very conducive to cheating and it's also become a way for there to be a tremendous amount of evidence of cheating that accidentally

lands in the hands of your partner so like I can't tell you how many times like I know he's passed now Steve Jobs but like divorce lawyers owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for the amount of business he sent our way because Apple's integration of its devices makes it incredibly common that the text message from your lover comes up on your kid's iPad because you didn't realize you logged into the same Apple ID and it comes up on the iMessage and now your spouse is looking at the the the text about how great the

sex was yesterday and like I I'm not being funny that's like a once a week thing that happens in divorce lawyers offices and and I know it wasn't intentional I know he wasn't like I'm gonna mess up some marriages but the truth is is it you know it creates an easier opportunity for people to cheat because people can CL desant communicate in ways that they used to not and they have these neutral entry points that lead to something negative and it's become something where you get caught because there's a tremendous evidentiary Trail now so I

I think these are all you know these are all factors that have made it harder but again porn only fans like all those kinds of things these are just more sort of outlets for the same you know it's it's like you know there's a thousand restaurants and there's only one menu you know and and that's all this is is is it's all the same stuff just in different permutations like a divorce lawyer 50 years ago was dealing with some of the exact same things it's different Technologies it's different you know manifestations of the of the

issue but it's it's all just heartbreak it's all just males and females that tried to make it work and somehow it came apart do you think marriages are good for love and like what's your view on marriages I've been thinking I think marriage and love have very little to do with each other I'm fine with getting married my issue is the wedding I'm not a big fan of weddings I think I don't know where this tradition of weddings came from but getting like hundreds of people in a room and doing this whole the big gaps

the m time you have to wait the waiting three hours to be fed the the length of it the fact that it's so stressful and it causes some of my friends I've watched like 12 to 24 months of stress and Agony and arguments but this like one day yeah and I just go I don't know but have you ever been to a wedding that was non-traditional yeah like and that you go oh that's cool it was like a party yeah and it's like them and they took the out cuz I have to say something like

I see I'm the opposite which is I don't really believe in the legal institution of marriage I think it has almost nothing to do with love I think it's largely performative I think if people were madly in love they're madly in love and they could either marry or not get married and it's not going to change anything except the legal status of things but so I love but I love weddings oh I love weddings I love them I get Misti eyed at every wedding my son just got engaged I can't wait like it's gonna be

so because I think that I think there's something so fun about like a big group of people all getting together and having a party over something as Noble as two people finding each other in a world of 8 billion people and like I think there's something about like a group of people all getting up and going like we're going to be cheering for you and we're going to be here for you and like I love good food and I love like I love being with people like I I think if I think if the the

first time everybody you love is in one room is your funeral you're an idiot like I think there's something really beautiful like I I have to tell you I um you know I got divorced many years ago but I have amazing photo of my mom from my wedding cuz it's like how many times in your life do you put on like a fancy dress and have your hair done and all that stuff and my mom lost her hair so many times because of chemo and all those other things and when she passed like she was

so sick for so many years and I was so afraid when she died that that's how I would remember her is in that bed sick and I have to tell you I look at those pictures of my mom from that wedding smiling so big and you know with and it I'm so glad I have those photos I'm so glad and I wouldn't have had them if we we hadn't had this stupid party you know and I remember deliberately saying to the DJ cuz I was what 22 Yeah I was 22 I remember saying to the

DJ do not play that stupid chicken dance thing do not play that like we're not doing that stupid thing we're not happening and I don't know when it happened but my mom must have like gone to him and been like play the chicken dance and he was like I'm not supposed to play the chicken dance and she was like yeah but you're playing The Chicken Dance she they played the chicken dance and I tell you something I I will have that memory of my mother with that doing that stupid chicken dance in my head until

I die and it I'm really glad I have it like I'm really glad it's there so I tell you like I I think weddings are a blast and I think if you're in love with somebody and you love them so much that you're like all right we're going to do our thing dude go have a wedding don't get married don't get married have a wedding because getting married and having a wedding the two don't have anything to do with the when have you ever gone to a wedding and at the end of the wedding said

um I just need to see the paperwork could could you just show me the marriage license now just need to make sure before I give you the gift and before I leave I just want to make sure everything was notorized properly no no one did you you didn't see wedd you don't I've never saw my parents marriage license they could have made the whole thing up I don't know but have the party have the party why not have the party and don't have somebody else's party you just described somebody else's party where you wait for

three hours screw that why would you even have the sit down dinner portion the pastor derves is the best part so just do that you can do it however you want like if there's a core message to my book and to my approach to relationships is you get to do it however you want you know what almost all the people in my office have in common they all tried to do it a particular way that somebody told them that's how they're supposed to do it and it didn't work and it's got a terrible track record

like like the way that most people do it fails 56% of the time so do it different you got plenty of room to do it different and the only two people that are qualified to decide how to do it really are the two of you out of 8 billion choices you picked each other throw whatever party you want to if your friends love you they're going to love that party and even if they don't love it they're going to go like you know what that was them that was very them you know it's great and

this is really what me and my partner kind of decided on we talked about having like a wedding or whatever and I was like you know what I'd love to do and this is really inspired by seeing so many of my friends planning their weddings and looking very miserable in the process and having to basically Hut back on things they loved in their life because they're saving they're saving for the wedding in two years time so they can't go out on Friday evening they they're going to have to cut back date night because they've got

this wedding in two years time great great start to a marriage and I and I just always think to myself why don't you take say if it's 100K let's say that you're spending on the wedding or if it's 10K why don't you just divide it in 10 and have 10 mini parties right and invite lots of you know and then you get all these memories you know the answer to that question cuz who's that wedding for it's not for them them it's not for them it's for the audience and the more this is this is

why we're driving 100 miles an hour towards the brick wall in our culture because we are now doing it for the audience we're not doing it for us anymore and we have to live in our skin we have to live in our own lives we have to live in our own relationships so what we're doing for the audience because it looks good for the audience like this is why we've become a culture with white teeth and rotting gums because we don't actually care what it is we care what it looks like that's why so many

people that three weeks ago were hash bless # best wife ever are in my office having a consultation and are having an affair and are have because underneath that that air of and by the way how many celebrities how many celebrities are denying I have I have celebrity clients who their their press releases their interviews they're talking about how happy they are they're in my office we AC L negotiating the dissolution of their relationship they haven't lived together because they've lived in their separate homes on separate coasts for the last year and a half but

they show up for each other at the Red Carpet and they do their thing and then they part ways and don't talk to each other but why why are we sell it because we're selling a dream to people we're selling a dream and see what's interesting to me is I actually think reality is prettier than the dream and so if why would you start your relationship with with a a an homage to fakeness or to someone else's vision of things why not start it with an authentic expression of who you are to each other and

how much you mean to each other and like then the paperwork whatever the paperwork is the paperwork do you have celebrity clients who are literally in fake relationships yeah 100% 100 I have celebrity clients that are in fake relationships I have celebrity clients that are in Financial Arrangement fake relationships I had this big conversation with my friends the other day because you know there's a couple of like big celebrity names who've broken up um that we're aware of and I went back through their Instagram oh yeah just to see the way that they portrayed their

relation because whenever you see a celebrity relationship it's like perfect perfect perfect over yeah well they do what I they do what I call the rosie odonnell right cuz Rosie O'Donnell for years there were rumors that she was a lesbian and she did this whole thing about how she had a crush on Tom Cruz and she's not a lesbian and she has a crush on Tom Cruz and she's not a lesbian and and then finally one day she was like of course I'm a lesbian everyone knows I'm a lesbian everyone's known that for years and

I felt like it's like you just Gat lit the whole culture like and that's all celebrities do is they just Gaslight us about their relationships like they they just do the like oh we're so in love we're so all these vicious rumors started by people that hate us and and meanwhile yeah the whole thing eroded but see that's not a celebrity alone phenomenon like what's great about C celebrities is they have enough distance between them that they can hide that because most of them own a home in Miami own a home in La own a

home in New York and then they have some place in Europe usually or Italy like they have enough room to lose each other and to be okay with it and just be like yeah we're living Our Lives they just have to be careful about not being seen out with other people I I always wonder if the public portrayal of a perfect relationship correlates to a bad one if you know what I mean like I think the people that would sit on Valentine's Day sprinkle the rose petals then they'd get their puppy and their husband and

then they'd say right can you take that photo they're probably taking 20 or 30 photos for me in my head I go people that like publicly portray a perfect relationship is it is that like a a cloak of the insecurity or is it I think so I mean I think that that and again this is a function largely of social media but I think there is um but we all sort of it works and that's why I I think people keep doing it right is like it's there's a bad reward system at play here but

like I I so I live in Manhattan and I live um right near and my office is right near the vessel and the vessel is this amazing beautiful sculpture in in Manhattan in uh in in the west Chelsea and my office actually overlooks The Vessel it's beautiful in the Hudson yards area and so people tourists from all over come to take a picture by The Vessel and so every time I'm walking to and from the office I pass The Vessel and I there are always at least hundred people taking pictures by The Vessel and I

find it absolutely hilarious because one of the things you see all the time and it's usually women but men sometimes are guilty of it is the photo of the person pretending that they're not having their photo taken so it's like they're just sort of standing there like this or like they look over this way and their friend is taking the picture from over here and I think to myself when you post that yeah what are who took that picture is it are we to believe that the paparazzi were following you like you're you're just a

regular person like there's like so clearly you set this up but here's the thing like the thing about us as humans is I don't know that we look at that photo and go what is what is that like I mean look at like high we just like look at high fashion photos in like any magazine Vogue L things like that look at the position of people's bodies like oh seriously pause this whatever you're doing and look do that like don't P it bizarre no one sits you know again visually looks good I get it maybe

it makes the clothes look a certain way no one sits like that so the thing of like the rose petals and the like who does that really and if they're doing it are they doing it because they think that's what you're supposed to do why because they saw it right all those rose pedals all those performative we're madly in love look at how in love we are look guys quick look at at how look at how in love we are it's shower sex it's it looks good but all you're really doing is just putting on

a show and that show leads you right to my office and the reason we like the show is because we want to believe in the fairy tale we because if we see it in my favorite celebrity couple then it almost keeps the hope alive for me it's it's the the antidote for the statistics around divorce it's the antidote for the Heartbreak I saw in my home it's the antidote for the misery I see around me is look fairy tales exist just like Disney and that's why we want it I get that and I think I

understand why we do that but I think it's also like pornography it's an it's a I don't want to say an idealized version It's a stylized version of something people actually are doing but if you start to to think your sex life is inferior because it doesn't look like pornography you're you're modeling it against something that's very unnatural and not real and that is not indicative of what actual sex looks like or feels like or or how it works logistically or how bodies work logistically so you're you're we're we're getting educated the wrong ways and

it's again not to tie you know go from like marriage to sex to death but it's the same problem I had in my Master's thesis it really was like we convince what we always we Shield people from Death we hide it from people like if someone if I said my grandmother's dying I want to take my kids to see you'd be like what kind of sick bastard are you like if you said oh I'm I'm going to walk around the graveyard or I'm you don't talk about death you don't talk about these why why if

these are things that are important if these are Milestone things in our lives not talking about it is not going to prevent it from happening so why not talk about honestly like what's really going on like I have to tell you you ever you know again the antidote to some of this stuff is to say like who took that picture that's weird like you didn't know they were taking it oh cuz you were looking in the other direction like why not just start saying like yeah I'm not going to be full of I remember many

years ago I remember like waking up in New York City and my ex-girlfriend from many years ago was like pissed off at me because it was Valentine's Day and I hadn't text her and like um told said happy birthday to her but I was in New York so was on a different time zone so 6 a.m. where I where I was I hadn't even woken up yet and she'd sent me a screenshot of another couple who were like with the with the you know the rose petal and the roses and stuff and she was infuriating

herself based on an Instagram post she'd seen of another couple and I was being attacked because I wasn't meeting that standard yeah and this is why I I think we are living in a moment where there is more comparison than ever you must see that in your office right I see it in my office constantly I see it in life constantly it's not just by the way it's not just in the relationship thing though CU of course people post their greatest hits people are constantly flaunting their relationship and showing everyone their relationship but it's not

even just your relationship with your significant other it's your relationship with yourself if I see one more person posting their workout routine their their sauna and cold plunge the diet routine of the you know their hashtag beast mode if I see one more person posting how their parenting routine and the wonderful intricate snacks that they make for their children like all day long there is an idealized stylized version of every single aspect of our life that is so much better than the gag reel that we're living and we're watching it and we're comparing ourselves to

it and our partner to it and we're going how come my partner doesn't look like that they don't look like that like all these videos of the person like getting up in the morning who you set up the camera there's someone set up a camera like and and I really feel sometimes like I'm the crazy person going guys do you not see this like do you not see this do you not see that this is what's making you unhappy you're unhappy with yourself you're unhappy with your partner you're unhappy with your relationship with your partner

because you're comparing it to fiction and and and because it's on your phone instead of on the movie screen you think it's real sometimes comparison can wake us up to things that we needed to know though and I think you'll the story of you going to the theme park that day which I was reading about and seeing that couple who were pretty idyllic yeah highlighted to you that maybe this wasn't the they just had their 20th wedding anniversary last week yeah what happened so you were at theme park with them so I was with my

ex-wife and our young kids and these were College friends of ours because we were College sweethearts my ex-wife and I and we were at uh theme park with them with our all young kids and you know my ex wife's a lovely person I think she'd say nice things about me too I'm a nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there um I think she'd tell you I'm a spectacular ex-husband and have have leave a lot to be desired as a husband probably Fair comment and I would say that you know there's a

lot of people I love that I wouldn't want to be married to and she's one of them um she's very happily remarried for a long time to a great guy and we were at this theme park with them and they'd been married for roughly the same number of years that we were at the time and I remember the kids wanted to go on some ride and it was like the permutations of seeding it was like three and three and they had two kids so we were like okay I'll sit with these two kids you sit

with these two kids and they said great we're going to just hold hands and go for a walk and they like held hands and they started walking away and I remember looking at them and thinking well they really like each other like like they really like each other and I remember thinking like I don't feel that way about her like I love her but I don't feel that way about her and it just it wasn't like and then I went home and we got divorced we together some more time but I remember when we decided

to divorce we had some very honest conversations with each other about the marriage and about when we'd felt you know we were very good at post gaming it because we stayed friends and I said to her you know I remember this moment when we were at the theme park with and and she goes oh my God I remember that exact same moment and I said yeah and I thought like they went off and we holding hands and I remember thinking like I don't love her like that and she was like Jim I'm not making this

up I thought the exact same thing she's like I remember seeing it and thinking like yeah like I don't like if they took our kids on this ride we wouldn't be holding hands walking through the park and why we just didn't have that between us what is that I don't know that's magic I don't know that thing that thing that magic part that nobody can really EXP explain I don't know it's the thing it's the reason why I've never been homophobic because I I happen to be heterosexual but I couldn't explain why like I don't

know if it's a combination of biology cultural pressure I have no idea I just know what sparks something in me is what sparks something in me and I don't think I have a right to say to another adult who has those feelings about another adult that they have that they're wrong and I'm right or something I I genuinely just feel like I don't know there's something magical about love I mean there's something magical about Roman attraction and the feeling of like deep connection to each other I mean I've known th that couple now for the

entire 28 years or that they've been married and they are legit super into each other but they are the least performative people you'd ever meet they're very they're very focused on each other like they really like each other like he she refers to him as her boyfriend they've been married for 28 years they have two kids that are like adults now and they she'll be like oh my boyfriend's coming home next week from you know work trip and and like she means her husband like she refers to him as that and like he refers to

her as my girl like he's like yeah well my girl and I were going to go do this and I'm always like dude like how are 28 years of marriage and that's how you guys feel about each other like and it's legit it's not like a thing it's like legit I don't know if I knew that man I'd find a way to tell people to do it and bottle it like I don't know I'll tell you what it is it's beautiful it's beautiful it's fun even be around like it's fun to be it when you're

not in a challenging marriage being around that is like the warmest most wonderful place it's not surprising to me that their their two sons are like two of the most amazing young men I've ever met how do they argue I think they I've never watched them argue I imagine so I imagine one answer would be privately but um from what I understand cuz I have tried to reverse engineer a little bit with them like what is it cuz I've talked talked about them enough in media now that they know I'm like I always text them

like hey I talked about you um and when the the book they were like oh you know I was like Hey Pig whatever you know and they they thought it was quite funny I I think they play fair like they um I don't know they never lost the plot they seem to really they I hope this comes out the right way they love their sons they really love their sons they're two amazing parents but it seems to me like they both they view each other as the most important thing and she's always looking out for

his happiness and he's always looking out for hers and it's an equal measure like I think she is very focused on him and what will make him happy and he's very focused on her and what will make her happy and they both take tremendous joy in each other's joy and I think they both feel and they have I will say they have been through some things like she had metastatic breast cancer at one point she had all kinds of and they they weathered that storm they weathered that storm with Grace humor and even deeper connection

and I again I I I don't know if it's partly luck that they like just hit the lottery with each other but I I think some of it is just that they they pay attention like it's important to them you're in a relationship but you're not married anymore you were married previously will you ever get married again I've said before that I don't think marriage is important to me I I don't marriage from where I'm sitting is a contract that was written by the state that is supposed to Define in some general way what this

relationship is and create a set of rules that govern it and if you do a prenup you can change that set of rules but you're still saying you know I really want to get the government involved in this situation I I have no part of me that in my relationship goes we really need to get the government involved in this I just don't that's just not in me and I and it's not only not in me it's just seems absurd to me marriage seems upset to me mar I understand why people get married I think

I understand it better than most people but I it just to me doesn't make any sense why do they get married I think we need a lot more time I think it's cultural pressure okay I think it's performative I think it's because we live in a society if not a world that presumes marriage is a good idea I think that that is tied to Medieval institutions it's tied to things that are way before us and it's tied to partly land ownership it's partly tied to religious Concepts it's partly you know what Freud talks about in

Civilization it's this intense it's so we're not all killing each other over mates it's it's you know we've structured society around this idea of turning pair bonds which by the way is a very healthy permutation with which to raise children and it's very it fits our biology quite nicely you know in terms of the amount of time that a child's in gestation versus you know but I I I think we've just we're just like running a program that it was here before us and that we've been taught is how it's supposed to be this is

what you do like again ask the question you think it's a bad idea don't you getting married yeah I think it's an incredibly bad idea I think it's an incredibly dangerous idea I I don't think it's a bad idea I think it's a dangerous idea there's a difference between those two things like skydiving is a dangerous idea I'm not saying it's a bad idea but it's a dangerous idea it it depends on how much joy you place on that thing right like for me the joy of jumping out of a plane as compared to the

danger of jumping out of a plane me from jumping out of planes maybe I'm missing out on something that's okay I'll live with it there's lots of cool stuff to do I haven't gotten bored yet marriage is kind of the same thing like I think marriage is again like because turn around the question which is we know facts facts marriage is overwhelmingly unsuccessful it is way more dangerous than skydiving yes you die from the skydiving but the chances of a catastrophic skydiving incident is like 0.003 and a one where you die is 0.001 it's like

very limited the chances of dying from skydiving whereas the chances of divorce again 56% divorce rate how many Stay Together who are unhappy and they just stay together because they don't give up half their stuff or for religious reasons or whatever this is a technology with an unbelievably bad failure rate the more people die from marriage or skydiving well I think more people wish they were dead from Marriage Mar than star skydiving I think most people's sense of self many people's sense of self dies as part of an unhappy marriage like it's not a question

of will you die it's that you're alive and not living your life in a way that's enjoyable or in a way that's authentic to who you are and I think a lot of people are doing that as a function of the choice that they made of marriage and again I'm not saying don't get married but what I'm saying is when someone says I'm getting married why is it impolite to say why why you're about to do something incredibly dangerous that fails so much of the time why not just say why I'd like to I'm not

saying why would you do that it's stupid I'm saying why cuz most people's answer doesn't make any sense well because you know I don't want to be alone wait you have to get married to not be alone join a church group I don't know join a baking squad join a softball team you won't be alone what does that mean well I want to have you know regular sex okay I don't know that getting married is the solution to that like it's not a guarantee of regular sex like that's not you know so if if the

qu first of all you're not even allowed to ask the question why if anything if you don't say oh my God that's so great you have intimacy issues people say for the kids you know it's good for the kids and which kids the kids you've already had or the kids you're going to have you're saying we're getting married so that we can have and by the way again okay you're saying societally it's good for I mean I think what you're saying is it's good for a a mother and a father in a household with children

together right so the polarity of male and female again I I know a lot of same-sex couples that have raised very successful happy children so maybe you're saying a two- parent family is a good thing that it doesn't have to be male and female whatever okay that's all true what does the marriage license have to do with that what does the government getting involved have to do with that it gives me security what what's security security you're saying something that fails 56% of the time makes you feel like you get security that's a really weird

sense of security if I said to you I've got an airbag in my car that doesn't deploy 70% of the time would you drive around feeling safe or would you go like this is a lottery I don't want to participate in I'm just going to strap myself in and do something else because I'm not going to rely on this 30% airbag you wouldn't have a job well that's that's main reason I don't know I mean listen I I've been saying for years that I think I have tremendous job security and it makes me very happy

on one level and it makes me very sad on another level that I have such job security I think I think I don't think we're getting better at this I think we're getting worse at it and I I don't think by the time I retire which isn't that far away like I I I don't think we're going to get so good at it that I'm going to be out of a job as an entrepreneur I'm always looking for ways to connect and to create and that's why I decided to launch the conversation cards I turned

to Shopify who also sponsor this podcast and Shopify made it so easy to set up an online store and reach all of you no matter where you are in the world I remember the challenges we faced when we first launched the D Co conversation cards managing inventory ensuring a seamless checkout process and reaching our audience Shopify stepped in and made everything so straightforward and efficient it was like having an entire team of experts by our side allowing us to focus on creating content and connecting with you what I love about Shopify is no matter how

big you intend to grow your business they give you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level and to say thank you for listening to this podcast we're giving you a trial which is just $1 a month and you can sign up by going to shopify.com Bartlet the link is in the description below more and more people are getting prenups you said to me that a lot of people contact you these days asking to for you to help with prenups one of the interesting things we were talking about before

we started filming was it's really uncomfortable to turn to your partner and ask them for prap I know a lot of people say that and I think it's a question of how you enter the conversation again like you know I I guess cuz I get paid to talk and I'm used to talking sometimes about difficult things with the judge or or revealing you know things that are hard to reveal about someone and trying to make sure that they're not viewed negatively even though they might have behaved negatively so I think prup it's all about how

you bring up the conversation and and my preferred entry point for a prup when I talk to someone is every single person who gets married has a prenup it's either written by the government or it's written by the two people who love each other more than the other 8 billion people in the world I personally think that the two people in a marriage are better qualified to create the rule set of their marriage than politicians they don't know especially when you consider the nature of politicians they won a popularity contest they managed to offend as

few people as possible and they change constantly so you're signing up for the most legally significant thing you're ever going to do other than die with a rule set that no one ever explains to you in advance and that can be changed by by people who don't know you based on who won a popularity contest okay that seems smart to you or or do the two of you decide what the rules are going to be and then starting from the beginning which is where you are if you're doing a prenup because you're about to to

get married okay then you live your life in accordance with that rule set together and when one of you is deviating from it or when a red flag goes up like you go hey how come you're doing it that way remember we have that rule set and so I I like that I think prenups I think prenups even having a conversation about a prenup I think is a very healthy exercise for a couple I cannot tell you how many people since our first conversation have stopped me on the streets of New York City and said

I got into the coolest conversation with my girlfriend about prenups and marriage after I saw you and stevenh talking I've had I've had probably like two people a week say that to me it's it's a very I always say to these people I'm like you do weird stuff in bed like you're watching Diary of a CEO in bed it's like it's you know there's other stuff like I'm not great on the shower thing but in bed you don't you know it's I like Stephen too but that's not the time maybe it is but they I

guess it is anytime's a good time please don't but they know not trying to hurt your I know you broke 7 million I don't want to screw it up but I I I I do think that there is um there is something to this conversation and I do think sometimes like you know look you you're in a relationship you've had a hard conversation with your partner yeah and when you're in it it's not fun and you kind of go like how are we ever going to get out of this is this how it's going to

be now like we're just we have this feeling and it's like awkward and it's weird and then you make it through it and then the next morning you wake wake up and maybe things are still a little weird or something but like oh yeah and I'm like I like to believe that then there's this feeling of like hey we did that thing like that thing was a little weird it was a little hard we lost the plot but then we got it back and we're still here look at us yeah look at us like yay

go us you know I think there's real value in that I think that again the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing it's hard to talk about when this ends it's actually the thing I'm proud of most in my relationship is is exactly what you just described there I'm not proud of our relationship being perfect cuz it's not I'm proud of how imperfect it is and how we continually resolve the conflict with without coming out the other side resenting each other we come out the other side proud

of each other we like you know that Meme where I think it was the hot ones me more they're like look at us who would have thought yeah and that's like the thing that my girlfriend turns to me and says continually is I'm so proud of how much we've got through because she she refers to it like the roots have got even longer and going back to your conversation about prenups it reminds me of what we were talking about before we started recording this idea that people don't want to confront it because you tried to

get a stand at a wedding Convention as a divorce laer yeah yeah yeah so I so I want to say one thing about what you said before that because I I your verbiage is very interesting to me because you said you know in my relationship you know we're not it's not perfect but I'm proud of X Y and Z and I have to tell you like I I don't know that sounds pretty perfect like I think that things are imperfect like and that's that's perfect like there's no such thing as a perfect relationship like ever

and that's perfect like it's perfect like it I I genuinely believe we're perfect like I think we're all flawed and we're perfect like because we're authentic we're real so so I I I think that's a really important if people if Perfection is the standard we will all fall short I think the reality is that we are all perfectly imperfect and that's really beautiful MH but yes the the the wedding so so in in in the United States I don't know in the UK but in the United States we have these things they're called wedding bazaars

or wedding Expos or wedding fairs and it somebody came up with this and it's a brilliant business move which is you rent a gigantic hall or a small Hall depending on where some of them are done at like giant convention centers and you know people who are associated with the wedding industrial complex you know they pay to have a booth so there's photographers there's Bakers there's and and you know every table has like something the photographers have different pictures the cake people might have like little samples of cake you know there's all the little grab

bags and things that people give out as wedding gifts there's you know uh different uh travel things related to your honeymoon and where you might go there's different web websites for you know your registry like there's so many wedding related wedding adjacent businesses this is a multi-billion dollar industry so I reached out to like four or five different smaller and bigger wedding Expos and I said in some and substance I'd like to get a table and they said great photographer Baker what do you do and I said oh I'm a lawyer and I I do

divorce in family law but it's just going to be themed around prenups it's not going to be an any way negative about marriage it's going to be you know just a congratulations on your engagement have you talked to about a prenup and then I'll have brochures and things and you can you know make sure that they pass Muster that I don't say anything that would be offensive to anyone I don't want anyone to be uncomfortable any other vendors to be uncomfortable but there's literally hundreds of vendors at this thing so there's no reason not one

Wedding Expo would rent a table to me they refused my money they would not take it they would not take it no matter how flowery I said I'd make the language no matter how respectful to the institution of marriage I said I would be they would not let me buy a table they wouldn't take my money and those tables are not cheap it's thousands of dollars to get a table at wedding expell they would not take my money even though almost 60% of people end in divorce and it's like a almost an inevitability the probability

is yeah there's going to be a conversation about how we separate as I've said before every single marriage ends it ends in death or divorce the majority of them end in divorce the majority of them end in divorce why wouldn't you allow me to have a table that just says if you'd like to have a prenup here I'm not even trying to sell a prenup on you like you're getting engaged you need a prenup it's just have you talked about a prenup and information about that PR they would not even let me in the room

and I because because it shatters the illusion it's reality they don't like reality they don't see reality as what it is which I think by the way is quite romantic I think there's something very nice about talking to your partner about you know what I'm afraid of losing you I don't want to lose you to death even though I know someday I have to but I don't want to lose you to divorce either but man almost 60% of marriages end in divorce and if we got divorced like what would we be like I hope we

wouldn't hate each other like I hope I'd still love you and care about you or I'd still want you to be well even if you left me I wouldn't hate you like I don't have one ex-girlfriend that I go man I hate that person like I wish all of them Joy I hope they're all happy like our our chapter together ended but I wish all of them Joy people don't like to go into things without optimism though and the the conversation around should we get a prenup almost sounds like I think we're going to break

up someday I think you can hear it that way but I don't think it has to be that I agree with you about the optimism I think people would prefer to look at the bright side of things and to be optimistic and I am not suggesting like I don't believe in fairy tales I'm a realist that doesn't mean I get up every day just thinking about nothing but death and divorce and how like that's not life is beautiful and life's meant to be lived and like what you don't want to sit like I'm not going

to sit at a wedding and be like do you know how many percentage of this people are going to get divor I don't view it that way I think it's wonderful be but be realistic about things like I I don't want to get ill but I have a physical every year I go to the doctor every year like I like to know what's going on I like to be a realist I like to I don't plan on crashing my car but I like knowing that I have a seat Bel in an airbag and by the

way if my seat bag my my seat belt and airbag aren't working I would like to know in advance because I'm driving as if they're going to work if you told me by the way Jim your seat belt and your airbag aren't working I would drive very very very carefully right so I think it's the same thing like just we can't have an honest conversation and be optimistic divorce in the US is very different from divorce in the UK and I I actually learned well I think it is I learned this from watching several things

but one video comes to mind from a couple of weeks ago you'll know the case there's a black actor who is currently posting a lot on his social media about how his wife is like chasing him down for child support oh yes yes I don't remember his name I'm bad at celebrity names unless I represent them but yes I know who he is and he he said on a couple shows but he went on his Instagram and said like my wife who I've broken up with who like basically doesn't really have a job at the

moment or is making some money from some some Instagram work is she's got this like pack of lawyers who email me and demand to see my bank statements because I've been doing well lately I've got a couple of new movies and stuff and she wants to make sure she gets more money for me and the kids based on his success and I never realized it was like that I never realized that oh yeah oh yeah it's modifiable it's modifiable child's for example is modifiable every 3 years when there's a 30% change in income up or

down so if I have a wife and then we have four kids and then I break up with her and when I break up with her I'm making a million dollar a year and then I'm making a $100 million a year MH goes up child sport goes up to like what what what are the numbers what depends on the percentages in New York one child is 177% two is 25 three is 29 and four is 31% of your gross income of my gross income your gross income Les FICA point 765 Social Security Medicare if my

gross income is $100 million so theoretically there are caps on the combined parental income everywhere yes pretty much but judges have a tremendous amount of discretion based on a variety of factors including things like what was the lifestyle of the children during the marriage what are the reasonable needs of the children like celebrity divorces I will tell you there are some legitimate separate needs that celebrities the children of celebrities need like they you know security for example what's the biggest child support payments you've ever heard of well I mean Diddy had I think it was

$20,000 a month for a period of time um he's kind of a well-known one and it was very well publicized the most I've ever had in a case is I had a client who got $65,000 a month in sh sport but it it covered a lot of things it covered a portion of private school tuition it covered a security detail it covered you know these were very very high net worth you know public figures what kid needs $65,000 a month well the kid doesn't get the money the parent who has primary physical custody gets the

money and they can do with it whatever they want they correct so they could go spend it in Vegas correct that's that's not fair you should have to provide receipts well what I've always said is I mean first of all the systems complicated enough without people having to provide receipts to check the math of a person and what they're spending the child support on like it's already overwhelmed enough and it's already difficult enough like listen what you're proposing would create a lot of additional work for me so I appreciate it but it it is from

my perspective it is a um it is a potentially very dangerous thing what I always tell people is getting married without a prenup is a fairly risky activity having a child with someone is is the most risky AC it in relationships in terms of of the amount of emotional and financial damage a person can do to you have a kid with them having a kid with somebody they can weaponize that child they can alienate that child they can use that child's needs to piggy back onto financial needs there's there's so much stuff a person can

do to torture you if they have a kid with you and there's so much legal wrangling and rambling to to do and what I'll tell you is it it you know I've had I have a client who spent somewhere in the realm of $100,000 in legal fees arguing over whether Thanksgiving should begin on Wednesday and end on Sunday or whether it would begin on Thursday morning and end on Thursday evening now that person's worth you know 7 or $800 million so 100 Grand to them is not a lot of money most people myself included i'

just eat turkey another day like it's not worth that amount of money right to have that argument that's why having a kid with someone you're opening up the door to potentially tremendous amount of battles whereas if you're arguing over a $50,000 bank account and you spend $30,000 in legal fees even if you won you only won $20,000 if you lost you lost significant so it it it forces a certain rationality into the transaction whereas your time with your kids people could attribute whatever value they want to that I've had clients who fought over minuscal things

about children that to me would be minuscal to them were incredibly important you said that the two big reasons why people divorce are infidelity and money yeah is it a loss of money a lack of money the person goes pull um it's that's a big piece of it losing money um G gambling money or losing money unexpectedly bad business and investment decisions there was a period of time where I did a lot of divorces because people decided they were going to try to be day Traders and all of a sudden people's you know they were

like borrowing against retirement accounts yeah they were learning the hard way that that if you short stocks there's almost no limit to how much money you can lose um crypto divorces crypto's big I did a couple of cryp divorces related that where crypto became very important and whether it was on a hard wallet or whether it was I mean hiding money with crypto very some years ago when crypto was first sort of on the scene when when I really should have been buying Bitcoin because it was like you know $3 or $5 um there there

was a period of time where most divorc lawyers and most judges did have didn't understand what crypto even was I mean try to explain to a 75-year-old judge who has an AOL email address what cryptocurrency was and the difference between ethereum and Bitcoin like and why you're concerned that they might have these funds on a hard wallet and they're looking at you going like wh what I have I have no idea what this is you know so It's Tricky I mean there's these are the things we as a divorce lawyer one of the things that

makes it a very exciting job is that we're constantly we're getting in education in all of these things like I represent I remember I represented a surgeon and I learned everything about how surgeons get paid how they make money how they hide money what their expenses might be and so then the next time I did a surgeon I'm like oh I know this you know first time I represented someone who owned a hedge fund or was a partner in a hedge fund I had to learn about how capital accounts work and how people are paid

and where you might be able to hide money have you ever seen that where someone's like publicly thought to be a billionaire and then you look at their bank statements during a divorce and you realize that they've basically managed to hide everything so they they're basically broke it's all in someone else's name well yeah there's two permutations of that one is people who are publicly incredibly wealthy and then in reality they're leveraged to the Hilton broke like way broke um that happens a lot and that happens a lot with celebrities um celebrities are very often

leveraged to the hilt because they had a hit record or they had a hit movie or two and then they think oh everything I do is going to be like this and so just go out and buy tons of stuff and there's always people who loan you money you know especially if you're a public figure and you have some money right a couple of million bucks you can get a couple million more real easy so and then it just very rapidly and they buy everybody else they have you know there's always clingers around the person

you know the whole Entourage that a lot of whom are siphoning money off of people so there's a lot of people that look very wealthy and are dead broke um and and I have a lot of those how does that play out in court when the wife finds out that their partner or the husband husband finds out that their wife was they're not happy they're not happy and and um and it's hard because they think they have proof of something like they they're like but look here's a picture of him with a Ferrari and it's

like right I can show you the papers that he doesn't he leases that Ferrari like it's this much of a car payment like I had a guy who had like three Bentley's and a couple of you know like McLaren he had crazy cars and yeah it was all leverage to the hilt it was not he didn't own them you know what's the second permutation of that the second permutation is when someone is is um when they've hidden the money yeah they I I'm trying to find the right adjective that they're enough of a sociopath that

they're enough of a uh they're enough of a malignant narcissist or they're enough of a careful planner that um they have created structures that that make it almost impossible for their spouse to get anything in the divorce there the the so some of the things that people do in um in the ultra high net worth space for generational wealth preservation and tax avoidance have second order effects when they get divorced right so a lot of wealthy people don't own very much of anything they own companies that own properties and they have an interest in a

trust for the benefit of of their great grandchildren that owns companies that own properties that they then borrow against like there's their whole structure is a very complex and they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to trust in Estates attorneys and accountants so they pay almost nothing in taxes and so that they will have no estate issues they will have intergenerational wealth well those things make a lot of sense from a wealth preservation and estate planning perspective but they make a divorce really complicated because it's no longer marital money it's owned by this trust it's

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

the marriage as opposed to as divorce planning there must be scenarios where someone goes into divorce I I think I'm divorcing you let's say and I think in divorcing you I'm going to get a big payout but it turns out in divorcing you that you get a big payout because I've got more money than you that happens a lot that happens a lot I've actually I I I wrote an article uh for for one of the women's magazines um called the last remaining feminist taboo and it it talks about a lot of um female clients

who are paying alimony to their husbands and and it it stings you know you you you you could have a woman who's like a bella abzug like Gloria steum level feminist and when she gets told you know that like yeah you got to pay him alimony they're like I'm sorry what like no he's a man he can work like he can work he's the men you'll get alimony and you're like no gender is a construct and sex is actually you know a construct so and you're a CFO of a company and he's a really cute

long-haired musician who you married cuz he's like fun you know like and you earn 4,000 times what he earns annually and so you have to pay him alony because it's just math it's got It's gender blind it's just math and they're like yeah no I am not paying alimony he's a man he's got a strong back tell him to get a job by the way I've had men in that situation go yeah I'm not taking alimony really they went take they won't take it alimony is like the spous of support okay like what but child

support or no it's for your it's it's to maintain the marital lifestyle it's it's in order to rehabilitate your earnings so that you can be so for example um I marry a woman from the UK who's a physician and now she's coming to the United States because we're in love and she's marrying me and she is going to lose her license to practice medicine because she's coming to the United States and it's a different lure okay so now she moves here in Reliance on us being married and we're married for a couple of years and

then we divorce she's going to need cuz I now make a lot more money than her she's going to need some money to get her back to a place where she's back to her earning capacity so if if I marri Taylor Swift and we're together for 20 years do I get half you do not get half usually no no it's I mean first of all she has too many good lawyers I'd imagine if you a will to get half but I you you you would certainly I mean there was a how much could you get

me how much could I get you from Taylor Swift I'd have to know how much Taylor Swift has I also don't think she's she's never made it down the aisle yet has she but if I take it down the aisle and then we we stay together 20 years and I come back just said James it's time here's what I'm going to tell you I'm going to get you as much as possible I can't promise you anything but I am promising you I'm going to get you as much as I can I mean you know I'd

have to know I'd have to know what the finances are I would have to she has a billion dollars in cash billion dollars in cash acquired during the marriage or prior to the marriage during the marriage all acquired during the marriage you're getting half there you go you're getting half you're getting half listen uh uh Adele's ex-husband did very well um K Clarkson's ex-husband did very well it depends on how quite well look it up look it up it's out there I don't remember the exact numbers but it's out there the the reality is is

those were people she had her most successful tour at the time during the marriage she had her most successful album at the time during the marriage it's all a question of where things land in the trajectory of someone's life if you marry someone when they're on the come up like Jeff Bezos great example like largest divorce settlement probably paid in history was to his ex-wife why cuz Amazon wasn't a thing when they got together right so so so that was she was there for the whole trajectory if he got remarried now she's not going to

get half because she wasn't there there's a premarital component to that that is significant if you got me 500 million from Taylor Swift then would you take like a commission like an no it doesn't work that way we're prohibited from doing yeah paid by the we get paid by the hour you're prohibited I am an hourly wage earner like if I worked at McDonald's who who who prohibits you the rules the rules that govern and by the way rightfully so why because you otherwise would create an incentive for the lawyer to maximize recovery for their

client rather than the recovery that makes sense for their client so like I've had cases where the cash payout I get for my client is lower because I want to get them more support like child support or spousal support or I want to get them more of the real estate rather than the payout so really what we're supposed to do as lawyers is not be invested in the percentage of the result personal injury lawyers like you slip and fall that's different last question for me is regarding me and my partner I never want to end

up in your consultation room we never want to go there good if you were to give me one piece of advice to prevent and it can't be don't get married um to prevent me and my partner ever ending up in your consultation room it wouldn't be don't get married oh okay it would what would it be pay attention just pay attention right now you're paying attention like you're paying attention she's important to you you're important to her you're interested and you're interesting you know I I I would say pay attention and and pay attention to

three things the you the me and the we because those are three different things like you be you cuz you're who she fell in love with and don't let you go too far from sure like you be you don't let don't let anything in the world don't let her don't let the we don't let any of it stop you from being you cuz you're who she fell in love with and the she right who she is so there's you there's me there's we so her remember who she is let her be her like make sure

that she takes time to be her make sure you give space for her to be her because that's who you fell in love with and let that person change just like you might change sometimes from time to time and if things change too much I'm not saying resist it but note it pay attention say hey this is going on is is that a good thing is it a bad thing like you know let's just notice it let's just pay attention and then the we like the you the me and the Wei like talk about you

know pay attention to the Wi make sure we're watering the plant like make sure that that'd be the only advice I'd ever give to anybody it has nothing to do with marriage it has to do with connection it has to do with love it has to do with there's a reason why you found the we right like you can be you all by yourself and she can be her all by herself but there's value in in being we and seeing each other's blind spots and and and and and if there's value in that treat it

like something valuable don't let the world don't let your own strengths and weaknesses don't let anything pull you off of that pay attention to you the me and the we and don't be afraid hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing so if it's harder to talk about it it's harder to point it out it's harder to say hey are we okay is everything good like you know if that's harder do that lean into that James we have a closing tradition on the podcast where the last guest leaves

a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for the question left for you is what is your most controversial opinion oh God you going to be cancelled what is my most controversial opinion I think I think I alluded to it my last conversation with you um I my most controversial opinion is that the most important thing in people's lives and their greatest accomplishment should not be their children that's a real hot like when you say to people like I think it's if the if if you say the most important thing that

ever happened the greatest thing I ever accomplished in life was having children I find that very um I find that logic very strange because if you say the most important greatest thing I ever did in my life was having children well is then the greatest and most important thing your children ever did going to be having children and is the greatest thing their children ever did is having children because that's the ideology of a virus or a cancer cell like it's not like growth for the sake of growth for the sake of growth like I

I think there has to be a higher nobler purpose to life than reproduction so I'm not an anti-natalist but I tend to when someone says to me like my children are my greatest accomplishment I tend to look at them and go like made some interesting choices then I guess science and sort of evolution in Charles Darwin might argue that that's exactly the point of life is oh no and it is on the cellular level and for squirrels and for pigeons and we're monkeys yeah but I think we're different than monkeys like if you've watched like

we're we're very similar in lots of ways but I'd like to think that that there's something higher that we're called to and I don't know that reproduction should be the highest goal of a human being's life I'm not one of these people that thinks like don't have children it's a terrible thing I have kids I love my kids was great having kids learned a lot about myself in having children learned a lot about life and the what I love spending time with them I have a great relationship with my sons I look forward to being

a grandfather but the truth is like is it the greatest thing I ever accomplished in my life absolutely not it's it's in the it's in the top of the list it's a wonderful experience I had but it is not the thing and I think that's a very I don't know why that is such a controversial opinion when I say that to people they they look at me like I've got lobsters coming out of my nose there's definitely two schools of thought there there's the one school of thought that you saying something earlier and it really

at the start of the conversation about how people lose their identity when they have children and it causes all of this sort of psychological dysfunction and who am I now I'm attached to this thing and where did my life as an independent person go you know that that that's kind of the one school of thought where where you're resisting become becoming all about procreation you're resisting becoming just I'm just here to be a mother or father and then there's another group of people that go absolutely this is me this is my purpose right but see

I I think like everything like we don't have to treat dandruff with decapitation like I I think you can you cannot reject the concept of having children or making them a priority and you can also not make your children your entire identity I think that you can just sort of say hey my children are incredibly important to me I love them they're wonderful um but I also have other aspects of my life and self and other relationships that have value to me and I'm not going to let them all be sacrificed at the altar of

my children who's more likely to end up in your office which school of thought people who are obsessed with their children I think people who are obsessed with their children stop paying attention to themselves and to their partner that's been my experience of people who are obsessed with their children I don't mean people who are focused on their children I don't mean people who make their children a high priority in their life I'm talking about people that are like obsessed with their children that their children are there this is who I am I am a

mother this is who I am I am a father which Because by the way childhood is a temporary State like theoretically you're going to have a very very close and intimate relationship on a day-to-day basis with your spouse a lot longer than your children if it's done properly your children are supposed to leave and go start their own families and live their own lives whereas your partner is not supposed to in 19 years or 18 years move out they're supposed to stay there so it's kind of smart to also feed not again not only feed

also feed that relationship there's no reason why you can't simult and by the way sometimes being a really good supportive person to your co-parent and loving your wife and loving your husband is a wonderful gift to give to your children it models great relationship Behavior to them it it it's showing that you love and respect the other person who loves them as much as you do like there's so much good in being a good parent that is made up of being a good co-parent a good spouse a good partner so you think you're more likely

to end up in your divorce office if you're obsessed with your children you make your children your absolute number one priority and your spouse Falls very far down that list yes for sure James thank you always great to see you I love our conversations because they're you know you're a divorce lawyer and you you know your practice I guess is dealing with divorces but your width of wi wisdom and knowledge and how it all intertwines in the most beautiful wise enlightening way and just the overarch filter of you not being afraid to say things that

most people would wouldn't say you not being afraid to be politically correct provides a a message which is so important and quite um unfortunately rare but it's so everything you say is so obvious in the sense that it's common sense but it's common sense that's completely uncommon that means a lot to me that's what I found in your book as well I found the same level of brevity and wisdom and experience and diversity of experience which ties into these Central ideas everyone if you didn't go by the book last time you have to go byy

the book it's called how to stay in love um and it's my favorite book ever written on the subject of love and relationships and wow life quite frankly so I think everyone needs to go and get the book I'll link it below um James thank you so much it's great to see you I love our conversations I I hope we have many more so I really appreciate you thank you for having me it's great to see [Music] you isn't this cool every single conversation I have here on the DI of at the very end end

of it you'll know I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO and what we've done is we' turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home so you've got every guest we've ever had their question and on the back of it if you scan that QR code you get to watch the person who answered that question we're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question the brand new version 2 updated conversation cards are

out right now at Theon conversation cards.com they've sold out twice instantaneously so if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards I really really recommend acting quickly [Music] a e