More of a Divorce Attorney's Thoughts on Love and Marriage-James Sexton

You is the have sex with me like I really love it, because sex is really awesome, you know, like we that's okay, we know that, gang. It's like we can admit that whatever we're doing right now [ __ ] it'd be more fun, we could acknowledge that, just say it out loud. It's okay, you know. So what are we doing? We're going to trade that right? So if we're going to be in a monogamous relationship, what we're saying is, listen, I really like [ __ ] you, and I also would really enjoy [ __ ] lots of other people, but I am willing to forego the opportunity to [ __ ] lots of other people in exchange for the opportunity to [ __ ] you regularly. So is there, can we agree that there's going to be some minimum level of [ __ ] that we're both going to maintain for the purpose? And if the person said, well, yes, but you know, also one of the reasons why I [ __ ] you is that you show tremendous kindness and grace towards me and your complimentary to me, so could we, in exchange for those regular [ __ ] that are sufficient for you to forego all of the other potential [ __ ], that you're also going to show me a certain level of affection and attention that's going to make me feel good about myself? For a period, abs absolutely, very fair. This is a very fair transaction, right? So I know like okay, everyone's listening to that and going like, well, this is why I would not [ __ ] a lawyer, like I get it, but isn't there something honest about that? Four hours late, yeah, well, he's on, you know, he's like on pimp time, you know. It's kind of like, yeah, it's a different world for that. Yeah, yeah, that's funny, man. You know, I I've repres represented I've represented a number of people in sort of the underworld, and it is it is a fascinating mob. Divorces are actually like the easiest divorces.

In what way? So mob divorces, there's like this doctrine of mutually assured destruction where like she knows where the bodies are buried, and she also knows she could pretty easily be one of those bodies. So you know, usually like the mobster does not want to [ __ ] with things too badly, and the mob soon to be ex-wife, you know, like doesn't want to [ __ ] with the mobster too much. Like I I had one I I'll I'll tell you this is a great so I had, you know, nobody ever, by the way, if anybody ever comes in and says, oh, I'm in the mafia, they're not in the mafia. It's like it's like, you know, they don't say it. Yeah, there's a lyric from uh uh a rap I forget whose it is where he says, you ain't never caught a body, I know it because you talk about it. And I think the truth is is like people who kill people don't talk about killing people. The mob guys I've represented, they just say they have a variety of business interests, you know, like that's it, they just have a variety of business interests. What do you do? I'm an entrepreneur; I have a variety of businesses. I'm in importing, you know, or I'm in uh sewage or whatever it might be. Recycling. And I had one where it was mob family, so I had the daughter is my client, and she comes in and Mom is with her, her mom and Dad, and Dad is clearly the guy who's mobed up, and dad doesn't have a word to say, he just sits in the chair like this, he's just listening, just this Italian heavyset older guy, and his daughter's telling the whole thing, and I'm going through like the list of assets and I see that they own a restaurant. She owns a restaurant, and so I say, um, you know, just a quick question, I was like, I noticed that the restaurant is in your name, the daughter's name, and he goes, oh yeah, um I don't have anything to do at the restaurant though, that's just it's just in my name. And I'm like, well, I'm sorry, you know, I just I get paid to be paranoid. Why is it in your name? And she says, well, it couldn't be in my father's name or my brother's name because we couldn't get a liquor license cuz they have felonies. And I was like, okay, but you know, it could create a problem because it's in your name, it was acquired during the marriage, and you know, I would have some concern that he might try to argue that is, you know, and the father for the first time in this like hour meeting goes, yeah, he's not going to do that. So I went, um, okay, well, that's, you know, it's good to hear, but I just want to make sure that you know, like are we certain because you know, this is something we might want to get ahead of and figure out, and he goes, yeah, no, he's not going to make a claim for the restaurant. And I said, well, you know, I'm sorry, like I get paid to be paranoid, but you know, how do we know for sure that he's not going to make a claim to the restaurant? And the guy just stone face just goes, because if he tries to do anything with that restaurant, they're going to find him at the bottom of the Hudson River with a $5 bill in his mouth. And I went, okay, so he's not going to make a claim for the restaurant, and let's move on. And that is it was emblematic of what mob divor dives are like, because it really is like a you can't quite figure out what this person does for a living, but they have an incredible lifestyle. Like I had a client, a mobed up client whose koi pond cost $100,000 a month to maintain. Like think about that, you're spending over a million dollars a year to have oversized goldfish. Like that's incredible, like that's a and you know what he what did he actually make or what did he actually do? It was like a it was very amorphous; it was never you never get a straight answer about that, but again, very clean divorce, very un, you know, uncompact because unlike the the other side doesn't want to mess with the family.

Well, it's like I said, the doctrine of mutually destruction, like he doesn't want to mess with her too much; she's the mother of his kids. There's a certain sense of okay, you don't do that; she's a civilian to some degree, and also like she could jam him up, you know, she knows what a little bit about where things are and what's going on, and then meanwhile, she doesn't want to really him up cuz she knows that could be a very dangerous thing to do. So it's a it's a very interesting dynamic, and and in New York, I mean, you know, we we bump into those kinds of characters pretty it's very funny because in my profession to have like my 9:00 be a suite executive from a software company, my 10:00 is like a Goldman Sachs broker, and my you know 11:30 is like a mobed up dude from Staten Island who has like, you know, giant marble lions outside of his house and like knocked up his third stripper wife, you know. So it's a very uh it's a it's a it's a long day, and it's a really I almost get whiplash from dealing with like and by the way, they're all dealing with the same [ __ ]. It sounds like it sounds like my life. Yeah, that's exactly. Well, you know, it's we really both do get paid to talk to people who are in desperate situations, but who fundamentally have some of the exact same problems. It's just like the symptoms of the exact same problem. In a world where algorithms and financial incentives dictate the information we see, it's easy for important stories that slip through the cracks. This is powerful because it can heavily influence and divide public opinion. Much of what I do on softw underbelly is about digging deeper and trying to see beyond our own biases, and this is why Ground News is a perfect fit for my channel. On any given news story, their app and website combine every article published on it worldwide. We can also see context on each news source, like where it may fall on the political spectrum and how credible it is based on use of subjective language. This is important to think about if you're interested in for an educated opinion on topics that are in the news, especially on key issues as we head into a polarized election season. I particularly like their blind spot feed dedicated to showing news stories that are underrepresented in mainstream media, so I encourage you to check them out at ground.newsss. Subscribe through my link to save 40% off their Vantage plan. By subscribing or even gifting it to someone you know, you're helping hold the media accountable, and you're helping support this channel. Thank you for watching. I think that you know, because I've talked with psychologists, I've talked with all kinds of people, and I I was telling you this off camera, I I think you're a National Treasure because you you I've called you that before. That might be a first. We talk off camera sometimes, and uh I think because you're in the trenches, you're up to your elbows in all the crap that we're all going through with relationships and love and marriage and all this.

Yeah, I'm kind of there with my nose in it all the time. You have a better feeling for what's really going on and what works and what doesn't and why it falls apart and why it survives. Yeah, yeah, and I think I I think part of my skill is pattern recognition, and I think I see because again I I represent, you know, quant people from hedge funds, I represent, you know, executives, I represent doctors, and I represent, you know, like the opposite of that, you know, you're more the high-end and I yeah, and I but I but I see that we're all fundamentally struggling with the same things, and and the way that I see it like the the inside line that I have to it is a very very honest view of it. Like I I think people still lie to their therapists, I think because they're lying to themselves, but most of the time people don't lie to their lawyer because my only job is to protect them. Everything we discuss is attorney-client privilege, and they know like, you know, lying to your doctor, lying to your lawyer, we're like the two people you shouldn't lie to. So yeah, I think I do get a very candid view of it, and I think most divorced lawyers see I think most of my colleagues think I'm insane for having these kinds of public conversations. I mean, I've had some of my most respected colleagues say to me like, dude, what are you doing? Like why why would you come out and talk about how the sausage is made? Why would you talk about what we do or the insight that you get for like what what's the benefit of it? You know, it's certainly not from a marketing place. I have more clients than I could ever possibly f in a day. I have to turn people down, so it and it really is for me like this this doesn't feel at all like work like the the the work I do all day long where I'm putting myself in the head of someone or putting myself in the head of my adversary and trying to tactically make decisions on how to handle litigation like that that is exhausting by the end of the day, but this like I could talk to you for three four hours no problem. I sat down with Lex for like six hours; we edited it down to four hours, and we I think we took two 15-minute bathroom breaks, and I I didn't afterwards feel like, oh my God, I'm exhausted. I felt kind of invigorating because this shit's so interesting to me. I I it's interesting to everybody. Yeah, and I mean, look, you know, it's like the old saying like I'm not I'm not like this because I'm in Van Halen. I'm in Van Halen because I'm like this. Like I don't I don't think that I am like this because I'm a divorce lawyer. I think I became a divorce lawyer because I'm like this. I find people [ __ ] fascinating. It's the same reason why I liked your channel from before I was involved, you know, in it in any way. Like I was a fan for a really long time and a subscriber for for a long time actually. I'm still a subscriber. You're still hitting me for whatever it is, 10 bucks. It's worth it, but I I I I still uh I still love watching the the unfiltered stuff because the same reason I enjoy my work; it's it's it's just such an honest thing. Like we're so full of [ __ ] all the time. People are just walking around full of [ __ ] all the time. It's the same reason why I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu because you can't be full of [ __ ] in Brazilian jiu-jitsu like you know, if somebody pretends they're good at it, they're going to get found out real fast. Like you can't fake your way through it; you can't buy your way into it; you can't get a a fake version of it like you could have f f Rolex or a fake Birkin bag. Like you you're either good at it or you're not, and that's it. Like there's no hiding; there's no faking it, and and in our increasingly performative Instagram Society, there's something so like I think the feedback I got most from our first sit down was just people being like, yeah, this guy's real. Like you might not like what I have to say; I don't really like what I have to say sometimes. I mean, I wish some of it wasn't true; I wish that we were better at this; I wish that, you know, my profession didn't require what it does, you know, that that people didn't ever beat the [ __ ] out of each other like this or weaponize their intimacy with each other, but you know, I I I I find it fascinating still. I still by Sunday afternoon can't wait to get to the office on Monday. That's great. Yeah, that's how I am. I don't think most people are like that. I think most people spend five days a week looking forward to two. It's it's important to love your work. I tell my kids this; it's like just make sure you work for yourself; make sure you do something that you love to do, cuz otherwise you're yeah, you're you're swimming against the tide against under. And part of that, I mean, look, I've given that same advice to my kids, but part of that I think you have to temper because when I when I say to people like, oh, you know, do what you love, like I don't the world couldn't sustain that many baseball players in ballerinas. So I think when you give that advice to a kid, you know what you want to say to them is look like work on a lot of different things, try a lot of different things, see what you're good at, because sometimes enjoyment comes from competency. Like if you're very good at something, you're going to enjoy it more like, and I I enjoy what I do in part cuz I'm very good at it, and it feels good to be good at something, you know, but sometimes you don't develop that skill until you've sucked at it for a little while. Like I look back on my early career as a lawyer, and I'm [ __ ] mortified at some of the mistakes I made, some of the just rookie [ __ ] that I did, but the only way you learn is by just stepping on the rake, you know, and having to just whack you, and and as a lawyer like that's that's a little intimidating because you're [ __ ] with people's lives, you know. Now um but it's the only way to learn, you know, and that's why ideally, you know, you do like I did in my early career. I I represented assigned counsel people, so I was their free lawyer, so it's like, you know, they're they're certainly getting their money's worth, you know, you're doing the best you can for them, um but it's a very, you know, New York has a very tricky system when it comes to assigned counsel because you're entitled to assigned counsel no matter how preposterous your claims are sometimes. So like, you know, I've been assigned to cases where this person is just fluidly psychotic, like straight up should be in this chair being interviewed by you, and they are, you know, they they they have been given an assigned attorney whose job is to go in and advocate for the preposterous psychotic position that they've taken, like so you kind of look at it and go, okay, so I'm going to advocate for their delusion now, you know, but advocating for people's delusion is actually something I do pretty frequently, most often for millionaires now, so I guess I probably can't be that critical of it, but I mean, to to be successful in love, I think we either need to be really rageous or very naive and foolish, you know, at least at the start.

Yeah, or a combination of the two. Yeah, and then and then to make love last, you need to be very sensible and real, have realistic expectations. Yeah, I think for love to last, you have to think about the value of what it is you're doing. Like I think there's a a of all the people I know that have successful relationships, long-term relationships, and it's a limited number. I know a lot more people that have had a lot of unsuccessful ones, and that's not just the function of my professional life. I mean, I'm mindful of the fact that like I don't meet people who have great marriages or even solidly pretty good marriages. Like I meet people with, you know, terrible terrible situations, but even in my personal life, the people I meet that have successful long-term marriages, they're they're just able to see the value in the thing they have there, and they're willing to forgo other shiny objects in exchange for that, or they're people that are very religious. Like they have a to paraphrase n they they have a why so they can endure the how, you know. So I think if you genuinely are like, okay, I'm going to go to hell if I don't stay in this marriage, like that might be a power, you know, eternal damnation might be a powerful motivator not to to [ __ ] around too much, um but the truth is I I think the people that look at their marriage and go, yeah, like this adds long-term value to my life, it's like the people that go to the gym in the morning, it's like the people that eat healthy, you know, it's like, yeah, that might taste good right now now, but like long-term I'm going to regret that I had that, and I I I want long-term health more than I want the the bright shiny tasty thing, you know. It's like Goggin says, you know, or Jocko says, you know, that that that trading what you want now for what you want most, and I think marriage is kind of based on that, but but see that's the the problem is I think it that's not what that's not how we have it set up. We have it set up that it's all this intoxication and excitement in the beginning, and then I think people start to align their expectations with that, like it's going to be this fairy tale, it's going to be this wonderful time, we just love each other, and we just feel so much, and we pass each other and just touch each other. It's like the electric shock of it, you know, and we've all been there, like we all know that can't possibly last, like there's no way you're going to be able to have a functional Society if everybody is just intoxicated by their partner, you know, and that they the sound of their partner's voice just runs that chill down their spine that we've all felt like that has to pass at some point. It's supposed to pass at some point, but I think a lot of people when it passes they go, oh, well, [ __ ] that mustn't have been my soulmate because like that never would have passed if that was my soulmate, but it's like, no, of course, that's going to pass, like that's that's okay, like you get a new car, it's got the new car smell, it's got that excitement, and in a few months it's kind of just your car, but it's still a great [ __ ] car, like it still has all those features, and it's still like you just have you're just let go of this level of excitement that you had, the newness of it, you know, and I think people just haven't because we put so much value that's the part that you know I think I said in my conversation with Oryon like I I find so frustrating is that you know when I watch a group of women talk about men, you know, when they talk about the man they're dating or one of the friends in the

Group just just started dating someone. Everything the guy does, it's like, "Oh yeah," and then he text me, "Oh my God, he did like oh that's so," and meanwhile it's like the the guys who they're just [ __ ] on now, the guys who they're like, "Oh him like that? That was this guy six months ago and this guy now who they're all enamored with. Everything he does in eight months he's just going to be the [ __ ] guy, the boyfriend or the husband or whatever. So it really is like the new car analogy, you know? I people just sort of lose touch with it. And when that happens and that resentment builds up, obviously, you know, like people like me, you know, doing what I do for a living, people come in and they say like, "Aren't I entitled to this? And aren't I entitled to that?" And you know, and there's an anger that they have, and it feels like it's at their partner, but really it's a reality like they're mad at reality. They're mad at the fact that their partner is human and that their partner isn't going to stay perfect forever and that they're not going to continue to feel per- because really the truth, I mean at least in my experience of romantic love, is it's it's not even how much what you feel for the person, it's what that person makes you feel about yourself.

Like you look in the mirror when someone's like, you know, in love with you and passionate about you and like, you know, is So Into You, you know, you look at yourself differently. Like you look in the mirror and you're like, "Yeah, I am. Look at this [ __ ] guy," and you feel good, you know? And I I think that's why affairs like are so appealing to people, because they're with their partner and they're not impressive to their partner anymore, because no man's a hero to his butler, you know? It's our job as a as a romantic partner to build the other person's, our partners', s% 100%. And I don't think it's that [ __ ] hard. See, that's the part that really blows my mind is that like preventative maintenance is so easy. If you're not building your partner's self-worth every single day, you're you're you're dropping the ball. And not not only do we not build our partner's self-worth, we go the other way, which is it's become totally acceptable to take the piss out of your part-

I would love it if you would repeat what you said in our last talk with Orion about uh gatekeeping the negative. Oh, about negative gatekeep- Oh yeah, yeah, about the way people take each other down. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. No, I mean negative look the the Zeitgeist right now in the law is, especially when it comes to like custody and parenting stuff, is the the, you know, alienation and negative gatekeeping is really the order of the the day right now, cuz it's all over the place, you know? And and it's funny because people just insidiously like imagine that there's a a person sitting there with their kid going, "You know, by the way, your dad's an [ __ ]," you know? And the truth is like that's not what alienation looks like. Alienation looks like it's insidious. Like negative gatekeeping is when you're not overtly saying things like, "Oh, your dad's an [ __ ]." You do things like, "Here, here's the difference, ready? Hey, how do you have a good time with d this weekend? Oh, that's so great. What'd you guys do? Oh, you went to the park? That's nice. Did you guys have dinner? Oh, good. What'd you have? Pizza? Oh yeah, you like pizza. All right, well, go upstairs, brush your teeth. You know, we're going to watch a little TV before bedtime." Versus, "Hi, you're home. Oh, I missed you so much. Are you okay? Yeah, how did you have a good time with that? Everything was okay? It went okay? Okay, I missed you so much. What'd you guys do? You went to the park today? You went to the park? So cold out. Why did Dad take you to- Well, did you have your C- You didn't even have your cold on? Oh my goodness, I don't know why Dad would do that. What? Well, did you have dinner? What did you have? Pizza? Just pizza for dinner? That's it? No vegetables? Nothing like that? We know how important it is to eat your vegetables, right? I always say that to you. That's why I always make you, you know, I make you stuff that you're going to it's good for you, it's not just tastes good, right? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to make- Why don't you go upstairs and I'm going to make you a proper something to eat because you can't just have pizza for din- I don't know why Dad's so silly like that."

So now here's the thing, I just told you your dad's an [ __ ]. I just told you your dad's someone to be afraid of. He doesn't know how to take care of you, all those things, but I didn't say any of it. And when that kid gets assigned an attorney, okay, which is what happens in really ugly contest- you know, contested custody proceedings, they're they're going to ask that kid, "So does Mom ever talk bad about Dad?" And the answer is no. The answer is no. Dad didn't say- Mom said nothing about Dad overtly bad, there, but that's negative gatekeeping, and that's that's what we do. Like that's what we do. Like people don't sit around and say to their partner, "You know, I no longer love and respect you. I find you unattractive. In fact, I think you're the most loome harp you ever to castrate a man." Like no one ever says that. It's just the sort of what- Yeah, all right, whatever, fine. Yeah, you know, like and then you're back to your phone or just sitting there talking to the person. Huh, yeah, no, that's cool. What? Yeah, no. And all you're saying is, "You suck. You have no value to me. You're not interesting to me anymore. You're not as compelling as whatever's going on in this [ __ ] box in my hand." Like and that's what it is. So when people say like, "Oh, my partner, you know, they they're they no longer, you know, they no longer inspire me. They no longer excite me," it's like it's like a real chicken in the egg canundrum there. It's like, "Well, how how much of this was you ignoring your partner and not validating your partner, not giving your partner any affection, not giving your partner any attention of any kind?" And look, we're all guilty of this. When we first start dating someone, we all start dating someone, we're trying to close the deal, and we spend all this time like just trying to, you know, we see the best in them. We we bring out the best in them. Like we're interested and we're interesting. We bring our best self to the equation, and everything they do we're just we find it fascinating. We tell them how fascinating it is, how wonderful they are and how beautiful they are. And then I don't know how the [ __ ] that works that it's like in the job interview you're so gung-ho about getting this [ __ ] job and then you get the job, the job you were dying to get that there were other candidates for, when the romantic thing 8 billion other candidates and you got the [ __ ] job and now yeah whatever. I'll show up late. I'll phone it in. I won't get like and then you wonder why it didn't work out, or you wonder why your partner doesn't feel inspired by you anymore. It doesn't want to accommodate you anymore. And again, I said it the last time we talked, like it doesn't have to be like that. You can reverse that spiral. It takes some effort, but I think you can reverse it by just [ __ ] going back to that place in your head and and and minor- like how good does it feel for all of us when somebody just pays us the slightest compliment, the slightest bit of attention, shows us the slightest courtesy, gives us a little bit of grace? It's so powerful. It's so powerful. And when you're first dating someone, you're just overflowing with that abundance, right? Like you're just anything they do, like if they snort when they laugh, you're like, "Oh, she snorts when she laughs. I [ __ ] love it," whereas like, you know, a year into the relationship, it's like, "Oh my God, her [ __ ] laugh, they snorting like it. I don't understand that. I don't understand why that happen." Now again, I get that it's a spiral. I get that one of you at some point starts to let that slip, and then there's the resentment spiral starts and starts and starts, and it's a straight line right to my office from there, you know? But it it's a it's a pattern. Like I have a guy who's on his third supermodel right now. He's a big, you know, he's in private equity, worth billions, and he's married his third supermodel. Like he's he just keeps marrying [ __ ] models, and then he cheats on them with models. Like so I just find him like, "What what are you? You you're doing the same thing. Like you're running the same program over and over, and you think there's going to be a different result," you know? And every one of them, by the way, goes down the same path for like a couple of years. They're super into him, and then they start being like annoyed and resentful of him, and then they all start getting tons of cosmetic procedures, and they start to look like that weird, you know, like Frank- like that weird stretched-out thing that all the housewives on on the on the on the shows have, and then they wonder why he goes for like the fresh face, you know, younger version of- Cuz literally the only thing between them was he has money and she's hot. Like that's it. There was no other dynamic there. Like it's I mean you can make up some other stuff like, "Oh, she's nice and she listens to me," but like it's purely he's rich, she's hot. That's it. That's the equation. You don't need to go dig deeper than that, you know? It's like like this dog's being nice to me, right? You're feeding it bacon, of course it's going to be [ __ ] nice to you. Like it's like who doesn't like that dynamic? Like you're rich, she's hot, this is this is going to work. Here's the problem, he's going to get more rich, she's going to get less hot. You didn't see that coming. You didn't see that coming when it started. Like you didn't know that that's where this equation was going to go. Like did you think- And by the way, it goes the other way too. Like I've had the guys especi- the pandemic brought this one out where it was suddenly a different spiral, see? Because for years the game was a little bit rigged in favor of men because like the guy would get richer and the woman would invariably age and get less hot. So that changed with the pandemic because all of a sudden like people who had really successful businesses were straight up out of business. So you had people that were like one day owning an amazing restaurant that like everybody wanted to come to, and all of a sudden it was shuttered, and it had a burn rate, so in like two months the thing closed down, and all of a sudden the guy who was like super rich and there's no- because you know listen, the first million is the hardest. Like once you've made a million, it's pretty easy to turn a million into 10 million, you know? Whereas turning $100 into a million dollars, it could take a lifetime to accomplish that. But once you got a $100 million, going to be fine. Like you're going to you're going to turn that 100 million into 500 million pretty easily if you try. So the truth is like these guys aren't used to spiraling in the other direction, but it it went exactly that way. Like a bunch of people's businesses got shuttered, and the hot women like I wish I could say like it would be wonderful if I could say like and this is proof that women are just better than men because fundamentally like although these men, you know, they abandon this woman when she loses the beauty of her youth, the women when the men when they lost their financial health, the women st d [ __ ] abs [ __ ] lutely not. They were out. They were out the door. Like they were out the door with half of whatever was left, and they were out like it was a fire sale. Like they were like, "[ __ ] This ship's going down. I'm out of here right now." Like it was 2020. We were filing actions while the court was closed cuz women were like, "No, no, we got to get a snapshot right now of what the assets are because I want one half of the value right now because I think in six months this could all be gone," you know? So that was like a real for me a lesson in like, "Oh, okay, so women are as awful as men when it comes to this. Like that's good. It's good to know that there's, you know, equality of the sexes."

Do you do you see a difference in the I don't even know what word to use but the the likelihood that that they'll be a good partner? Do you see us- you see one sex as being better than the other at this? Oh boy, that's the question, isn't it? I mean, it's really like there's the talk with Orion you guys spoke about the yeah, the unspoken things in a relationship that are so important but we can't we're not allowed to speak about them. Yeah, which is which is for the man it's the fact that I just love the way you look and your body and the curve of your waist and ass and hips is just- yeah, we never- I mean, I guess guys do talk about that sometimes, but in general that the fact that the woman's sexiness and attractiveness is you you'll put up with a [ __ ] woman, you'll put up with a mean woman, you'll put up with a pain in the ass, your bipolar woman because she's so hot, whereas a for a woman the the fact that she is attracted to a man because the fact that she that he is a good provider and protect her and she's going to provide a lifestyle that she can't achieve on her own. And and there are exceptions to this where the woman is the yeah provider and the caregiver. Yeah, yeah, increasingly so, but we don't speak about these things. We talk about how kind somebody is. We have such a hard time accepting that there is a an aspect of romantic love and particularly marriage that is an economy. Like we don't want to call it that cuz an economy feels like it's like cheapening it and turning it into something that's financial, but what is an economy other than we're exchanging value, you know? So my labor translates to dollars, those dollars translates to bananas. So a certain amount of my labor is worth a certain amount of bananas, you know? And that's like how it works. That's an economy, and it's not a dirty word. Like no one ever walks around and says like, "I can't believe my pursuit of justice on behalf of my clients is being compared to purchasing bananas." Like [ __ ] you, you do your job for money. I do my job for money. Yes, I also enjoy what I do. I see value in it. I think I provide value to people and to the world. I believe in the system. I think that we have a good legal system that requires vigorous advocacy, but you know, do I do my job just for the love of the game? Like [ __ ] you. Like who does that? Like major league baseball players like they just play baseball for fun or musicians just play music for fun? [ __ ] you. You want to be famous. You want to make money or else you just be playing in a cafe because it's just the love of the music, right? Like you you you monetize things. I get it. That's capitalism. Like don't get mad at at the at the game, you know? Like that's the rule set. But I mean to say that you know that's why socialism doesn't work. Well, of course, but but see, look I- What is marriage but an economy? Like marriage is- Look, I'm going to bring certain value to this relationship. You're going to bring certain value to this relationship. The key problem I have with marriage as it is done currently here in the west and in other places but certainly the the the clay in which I work is that there are certain promises the law can enforce and there are certain promises it can't. So if we acknowledge the if we say the quiet part out loud that in the majority of heterosexual marriages the man brings protection and providing and the woman brings kindness, warmth and care, right, and sex. That's the economy. That's the economy. I didn't make that up. Don't get [ __ ] mad at me in the comments. I didn't make it up. It was here before me. It's going to be here after me. I promise, right? So that's the game. That's the economy. His roles, his obligations are enforcable by law. So state power can be used to enforce his obligations, not hers. The court cannot order her to be nice to him or to [ __ ] him or to stay pretty or to stay sweet and friendly to him and kind to him or speak nicely of him or raise the children in a in a meaningful way that you know creates value to him instead of teaching them to disrespect him, right? But his promises in that shelter, food, financial obligations, court can force you to do that. And if you don't do it, they can put you in jail or they can take away your driver's license, your professional licenses. So what is that? When you have a contract where only one side is enforcable by law under penalty of law? Like that is a dangerous game to play if you're a man, period. Is that unfair? It's not not always the man because sometimes the woman is the yeah increasingly so, but it's more often- But is that whole contract of marriage and divorce is that unfair to the wealthier person? Well, I would argue that it's what's what's called an adhesion contract. An adhesion contract in law school they teach you is a contract where where there is an imbalance of power between the parties entering into the contract so as that the contract itself is fundamentally unfair, you know? It's like like look, I'm not saying that that it's wrong that we allow people to enter into this transaction similarly like if there's an unknown musician and a major record company says, "Okay, we're going to sign you and make you famous and give you amazing producers and give you amazing people to work with, but we're going to keep 75% of the revenue for the rest of your career," like that's you know, it's not a great fair contract, but the truth is is there's a lot of musicians out there, and they can go on to the next one if they needed to, you know? So once you sign that deal, like just know you're signing a deal that's kind of unfair. You're signing a deal you don't have to sign it. Well, when you get married- I've been married, I've been divorced one time, and I both both of us- yeah, and I think when you're getting married, you never even consider the fact you might get divorced. We we fall in love and we're just like- and that's part of the reason I have to tell- it's part of the reason why I always loved the idea of working in divorce because I was a psychology major as an undergraduate. I thought I wanted to be a therapist. I thought be a psychiatrist, and I remember thinking because it was like the one thing like we're so full of [ __ ] we're so full of [ __ ] as a culture all the time about what we're doing and why we're doing it, and I just love just be [ __ ] honest. Like just be honest. And what was so beautiful to me about is you can't pretend you meant to get divorced. You didn't. I didn't. Like we're both divorced men when we got married. I was 22 when I got married, and I was we were going to stay together forever. We were going to be old people sitting on the front porch holding hands while the kids or grandkids ran around because I believed it. I believed the whole thing because I had no idea. I had no idea what was in store, what would be expected of me, expected of her, how we would both feel, how we would both change, like because how could you? How could you possibly know that at 22 years old or 24 years old or even 30 years old? Like I'm 51, man. I look back at the [ __ ] I believed when I was 30 and I go, "How was I?"

That stupid. How did I not see such obvious things about myself and about? But that's the nature of blind spots; is you can't see them. That's why they're blind spots. So I, I think fundamentally we don't look at marriage honestly, because we just, we want to believe so badly in this fairy tale. And why wouldn't we? It's [ __ ] beautiful. It's like a beautiful, the idea that there's just this person out of 8 billion people, and you're just going to somehow stumble into them, and then the two of you are going to feel that Rush that we all feel, even in the worst of relationships at the beginning, you know, and you, you just like, we want to believe it's so true.

I, I have to say something. I used to say, you know, when you're like a kid, you have like the, you have like the fantasy if you could be invisible, you know, like what would you do? You know, always when you're a teenage boy, you're like, I would be in like the girls' locker room or something, you know. It would always be something involved seeing boobs. But as an adult, I have to say, if I had the power of invisibility right now, I would break into a number of my clients' homes and go to their attic and find their [ __ ] wedding album, because I would love, I would love in a way I can't describe, to look at their [ __ ] wedding photos. 'Cuz the only experience I've had of these people is her on one side of the courtroom and him on the other side of the courtroom, and them just shooting daggers at each other across and like sniping at each other however they could, either directly or through their CS. And like the thought of like looking at these same two people like looking at each other with such like, oh, you're my person, I love you, like that's amazing. And by the way, don't you think we should like take people who are about to get married and make them look at the [ __ ] wedding video of those people and then make them come to court and watch it and just go, look at this, like why don't we do like Scared Straight? You remember they used to do Scared Straight? Like, they're like, you want a gang bang, kid? Well, now we're going to bring you and show you what your future's like and bring you to prison. Like, why do we do that with like young marrieds? You know, people get engaged and it's like, great. Before you can legally marry, you have to come hang out in the matrimonial part of New York County Supreme Court and you just have to sit there and watch these two people who used to [ __ ] love each other just as much as the two of you think you do, and now they are tearing each other apart, limb from limb, like it's Blood Sport, and they're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just for the pleasure of torturing each other. And you, you're, I want you, I'm telling you right now, like anybody who sat through that, I wish I could say they'd sit through it and they'd go, okay, you've opened my eyes to this. They wouldn't. They'd be like, well, that's them; they didn't truly love each other the way that my fiance and I truly love each other. And I'd say, I would have said the same thing at 22 or probably 24, you know. But I, I don't know when people sort of see the Matrix and go, oh [ __ ], okay. And sometimes I see it happen like in my conference room, like sometimes I'll have a client and he's just sitting there and I'll start going through things and he'll go, oh, like, oh [ __ ], this was like a professional hit, you know. And that's, you know, I, I, it's always humbling to be in the presence of that.

I don't know. I, I, I think women and men are, are we suffer from the exact same delusion. I think the system [ __ ] with people on both sides of that, but I, I think men really take the brunt of, of the hit a lot of the time, like. And I don't want to, you know, I've been sort of, you know, criticized as being, you know, red pill or being very, you know, but look, I'm, I'm just calling it like I see it. I think anybody who's rational and doesn't have an agenda would tell you that that men have a hard time in divorce litigation, harder time than women a lot of times. I'm not suggesting that it's easy to be a divorced woman. I think women have unique challenges when they're divorced. I talked about that in our last conversation, but I think the system itself is very, very hard on men.

Yeah, as a guy who's been through it, I would agree. But use that setback as a motivation to do better in the rest of, well, and ideally you do. I mean, you know, the, the fun part for me about what I do, I mean, there's a lot that's fun about what I do in that it's intellectually very exciting and it's like always, it's never boring. I'd rather be dead than bored. But one of the things that is really nice is you do see the arc of someone's sort of recovery from the implosion of their life, you know. And I have clients who like, they come in and they're just [ __ ] destroyed. Like, I'm not laughing at them, I'm just laughing at like the, oh [ __ ], like there's something so humbling about watching someone who's just been leveled, you know, like that they just can't even pretend that this went the way they wanted it to, and they, their spouse is cheating on them or, you know, whatever it is, and they just found out in like a cruel, awful way. You know, it's almost always some glitch with Apple. I have to tell you, I think Steve Jobs from his grave is like responsible for more divorces than he could ever, never possibly know. How's that? Because Apple's integration among all of its devices causes your IM messages to pop up [ __ ] everywhere. No, like, I, like, I don't have a whole lot of secrets going on in my life, but if I did, oh yeah, and like on my desktop of my computer at my office and at home, yeah, these texts keep showing, oh yeah, messages pop up on your iPad, they pop up and the kids playing with the iPad, you leave your Apple watch laying somewhere and it has messages on it. Who the [ __ ] is blowing you kisses at 2 in the morning? Exactly right. And by the way, sometimes the answer is like a dude in Bangladesh trying to steal my money; it's not like a person, but it creates this discussion of like, oh my God, what's going on-ology.

Yeah, yeah. And what's happened is, is there's so many people that find out very cruelly, you know, these kinds of things because, of course, people just can't [ __ ] keep their [ __ ] together. They just send text messages of like, last night's sex was so wonderful. You're like, why, why are you texting that? Why are you texting that to your married partner? Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, that's going to blow up in your face somehow. Like, was the rush or the tingle you got from sending that message worth the chaos that's about to cause? But it happens all the time. And, and I have these people come into my office and they're in this place of like shock and sadness and grief and like all the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross stages of, of death and dying. They all go through it when it comes to the death of a relationship, and they, you know, they, I watch them over the course of 6 months, 8 months, like go through anger, denial, sadness, bargaining, all those things, and then eventually like come out the other end and like three, four years later, I get invited to their next wedding, you know. And, and by the way, they invariably get remarried, like I so, and I, by the way, I have a standing offer that I've been making for 25 years that I've been doing this, which is if I do your divorce, I'll do your prenup for free for your next marriage. And everybody at the start of the divorce when I say that to them, well, next time you get married, I'm going to do your prenup for free, they go, I'm never, I am never getting married again. They're always full of it. 86% of people remarry within 5 years. I said it last time and it's still true. I, I tell you, I, I've only had three people take me up on that, but, but you know how many people get remarried? Tons, tons. But they're like, oh, no, this time is different. This time it's different. Like last time you spent $800,000 in counsel fees and a year of your life just in court constantly. And no, no, but this time it's different because this time we love each other. Got it.

I think you've single-handedly done more for the concept of pre-prenups than anybody. Allow, I have to tell you, if there has been a side effect of my conversation with you, my first conversation with you, it has been an inflow of prenups. I, I have more people, which, by the way, why couldn't I have found a way to publicize much more expensive things that I do? Prenups, you don't make a lot of money on prenups. Like, prenups are really easy to do; make a couple of grand doing a prenup, but it takes, you know, a certain amount of time to do it. Like, I really should have come up with like some other thing I could monetize, you know, because I get more four calls from people saying, oh, I saw you soft underbelly, I saw you here, there, and I'd like to, you know, you to do my prenup. And I mean, it's great. I think it is great that there's a proliferation of people that have figured out like, yeah, we should get prenups. And by the way, I'm seeing it on both sides now. I'm seeing a lot of women now coming in and saying, oh yeah, let's have a prenup. I have a lot of people who, this happens a lot, I've had a lot of people who saw my first interview and they go, yeah, my, my girlfriend and I watched it in bed and I was like, you guys should find better [ __ ] to do in bed than watching an interview with me, you know, for 3 hours. But he, they'll say, oh yeah, yeah, I was, I was, we were watching in bed and we both got a kick out of it, but we both were like, oh, we should do a prenup, and so can you meet with both of us? And I'm not really, we're not allowed to do that because it's a potentially adverse situation, like more for you is less for you, and more for you is less for you. But it's always very cool to me to think that like there are people sitting around, a couple can't come into your office to, to get a, they're really not supposed to. I mean, because you're, you're, you can only represent as an advocate, you can only represent one person in, you should get a figure out a way around that, 'cuz if I was about to marry somebody, I would want us both to like, yeah, you know. I always saw prenups as something that would destroy the purity of a, of a truly loving relationship, you know. It kind of just like, you know, there, there's an element of risk, sure, in a, in a marriage and something like that, and, and the prenup kind of takes away that risk. Now you know what you have to lose, you know what you have to win, and that's it. And it's like, that seems to taint the purity of the love. See, and I don't see it that way. I genuinely don't think that the risk of Love is what makes love compelling. I think that that there is an element of risk in love, but if anything, I think that element of risk actually, like to me, dampens the depth of love. Like, there's something wonderful about, it's probably genuinely trusting your partner and knowing that they're there because they want to be there.

Yeah, that's my mistake, because I think I'm an adrenaline junkie, so I'll find these riskier partners. I think that's part of, I, I mistake that is love. Yeah, and that's a pretty common mistake, I think. But, but you know, the, the way you should be looking at it is the way I encourage people to look at it, which is, you have a prenup, every marriage has a prenup; it's either a prenup written by the legislature, exactly, or it's a prenup written by you and the person you're picking out of 8 billion other choices. So to me, that's a no [ __ ] brainer. Like, I don't trust Chuck Schumer more than I trust my romantic partner, you know. And, and I think the reality is, is not only can the legislature change, but they can dramatically change the law. Like in 2016, spousal support or alimony in New York state, they changed it to a formula, completely changed it. Then Trump came into office and got rid of the taxability of alimony, the deductibility by the payer and the taxability to the recipient, so that completely changed the way alimony works. So again, those people have a prenup, they just don't know it, right? It was written by the legislature, and it can be amended by the legislature with like, and by the way, what's the legislature but a bunch of [ __ ] people that want a popularity contest, like? So it's not the best and brightest. Like, no one's ever gone to the DMV and said like, oh, this is the best and most efficient people in the world. No, they're [ __ ] people that wanted a government job. Like judges, like J, with all due respect to the bench, like judges are not like the best, brightest, hardest-working lawyers who are the most tenacious and thoughtful and knowledgeable. Like, you occasionally have a judge who you go, holy [ __ ], that one really is smart, but most of the time it's people that were like, yeah, I kind of want a nine-to-five job, and I'd like to have a pension and good health care, and I'd like what people have to stand up when I enter a room, you know, and call me your honor. Like, it's a sort of an ego thing more than anything else, because they could make 5, 10, 15 times the money if they were in private practice. So the truth is, like a lot of times it's not the best and brightest. So the politicians, the same thing. Like, you think they're going to solve the problem? You think they know your relationship and what you need and your partner needs better than the two of you do? I'd much rather do it with my partner than with the state, of course. And by the way, just the conversation is valuable. Like, why not have the conversation with your partner of like, hey, what do we owe each other? Like, what do we owe each other here? Like, and, and what does that origin come from, and why? Like, what am I giving versus what you're giving, and what am I giving up in exchange for what you're giving up, you know? Like, what is this economy? But see, that, that's the part again, I, I can't figure out if it's, we don't want to talk about that economy because it's unfair, and if we look at it, we're going to go, wait a minute, you know? Like the true concept of a red pill, like we're going to swallow it and go, oh no, wait a minute, this makes no sense, and then we're just going to march onto Extinction. Or if it really is that like, well, we just, you know, I don't want to know any astronomy when the stars appear, like there's something very magical about it, and I don't want to look at it and like, and, and we've just created disincentives to look at it. You know, I, I genuinely think anytime somebody tells me, oh, you don't need a lawyer, you definitely need a [ __ ] lawyer, you know. And anytime somebody says like, listen, I'm not going to lie to you, you are definitely about to [ __ ] lie to me. Like, so it's a thing with this, like whenever somebody's like, oh, how could you say that? Okay, I'm hitting some nerve somewhere. Like six million people watch that first interview, like that's, it's hitting a nerve in somebody, gang. Like people are watching that and going, yeah, I don't like that, that's true. But that is true, you know. And I think that's the reality, like, and nobody, again, nobody wants to call it out, like. So we, we create all these comfortable illusions, these precious illusions that we hold on to so tightly of like, you know, well, well, we both bring things to the relationship, you know, he brings, you know, money and stability and security, and I bring that, I pick that couch. Okay, like really? Because I could [ __ ] hire an interior designer and it would be a lot cheaper than a spouse. So you got to bring more than you can pick a nice couch. Like, you got to bring more than that. Well, I do the laundry. Okay, I can pay someone to do the laundry. Like, do you know how many of these things are easy to recreate? So what is the econ, like if it's, if it's an economy, if there's any aspect to love or marriage that is an economy, like let's be honest with ourselves about what we're trading for what, and it's okay, like it doesn't have to be exactly the same value. Like, I, I, I, I don't believe that that fairness, right, or, or, you know, requires that everyone brings the same exact things to the table or things of the exact same value to the table. It's just, you know, like when you look at Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, like we wouldn't be using iPhones if we hadn't had both of those people, and one of them was an engineer, one of them was a math guy, one of them was a guy with a solid workbench who knew how to make [ __ ], and the other guy was a visionary who just could imagine things, and then but he couldn't, he'd have just been like a derelict who had an interesting imagination if it wasn't for somebody who knew what the [ __ ] they were doing. And if you just know how to do stuff but you have no vision or creativity, you're useless, but together you're Keith and Mick, you know, together you make the magic, and that's why we have iPhones and iPads, which can then [ __ ] up everybody else's marriages. Like, we have all of this because people with disparate qualities and disparate gifts to give to the transaction went, hey, let's do this, you know. But, but again, like where does it break down? Well, use them again as an example; it broke down when one of them says, well, you'd be nothing without me, and the other one says, well, you'd be nothing without me, and it starts to, well, why not have the conversation early and often about, hey, am I still giving? Like, do you still feel like this is a good deal? Like, do you still feel like, 'cuz I, I want my partner to always, always feel like it's a good deal. I want every single day for them to go like, yeah, all in, it's a good deal. Like, yeah, this week I gave more than I got, but you know what, two weeks ago I got more than I gave, like, you know. And so, or when I was going through that thing when my mom was dying, man, I got a lot more than I gave, and you stuck around, like. And there, there's so much value to that, and there's so much beauty in that. That's what makes a relationship really great is when there's a magic between these two people that came together.

Of course, yeah. And the nature of Love is, is that, I mean, look, I, look, I have, there are chapters of my son's lives where I wanted to [ __ ] kill them, you know? Like Middle School. I hated my sons; they were impossible. They rolled their eyes at me; they were just miserable all the time. Again, I understand why; I was in Middle School. I remember what it's like; you're a [ __ ] walking gland, everything's awful; like it just, the happiest person in middle school is [ __ ] miserable. But the truth is, like, yeah, I didn't really like my kids at that age, you know. Now they're pleasure; now they're adults; I love hanging out with them. When they were little, little, absolutely love them, you know? Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, they love you so much, like I get it, you know. But the seasons of a relationship, I, I don't think there's anything wrong with like just calling it out and just saying, yeah, right now this is challenging, or right now this is, or right now we're missing each other, aren't we? Instead of just letting all that resentment build and build and build and build. Like, I, I always tell people that, you know, discovery.

Which is the process of mandatory financial exchange of information during a divorce proceeding? A contested divorce proceeding sometimes it can be 6 months; it can take [__] I mean, it takes forever to exchange, go through, you know, forensic accounting, go through everybody's books, especially in high net worth divorces. This is a very lucrative aspect of a divorce—going through everybody's books and organizing and calling foul when somebody doesn't produce something and subpoenaing records and doing, you know, finding out where somebody took the mistress and here's the hotel receipt and here's the Tiffany's receipt, and you know, it, it's this process of like weaponizing against your partner.

I remember once talking to my son when he was a teenager, and he said, oh, you know, it was just in the morning, and he said, like, oh, what you got at work today? You're you in court? And I said, no, I'm just doing a bunch of stuff for Discovery. And he said, oh, what's Discovery? And I said, uh, it's what you get when you leave the toilet seat up for 20 years, because it's what it is like. It's this resentment builds and builds and builds, and then you got this person; it's now their fault that your life is [__] up or that you're not happy in your life. It's their fault, the person who at the start of it you were madly in love with. Again, the person who I want to see the wedding album—like I just want to see, I want to see the wedding video. Everybody has these wedding videos now that are just like so carefully produced and so amaz—like I want to watch the wedding video of someone who spent $3 million in counsel fees like trying to [__] murder their spouse for the last four years. Like I, I legit want to see that video, like because I can't imagine that these people loved each other in that way. And that intoxicated public, all-consuming, I just want to shout it from the mountain tops how in love with this person I am.

Way, but I think we've also created a tremendous—I, I, I know for women in particular, we've, we've created a tremendous incentive to just get lost in the rush of the wedding. Like the wedding is such a spectacle; like it is such a spectacle. I mean, I still go to weddings, and I'm like amazed at how—I mean, I went to a divorce lawyer's wedding recently, and you'd think like a divorce lawyer's wedding would be like somewhat sedate, you know, considering what we do for a living. All the same [__], all the same traditional, you know, wedding stuff and the cake thing and the whole, all of it. And I'm watching it; I'm like, we really, we're gonna do this? We're just gonna all dive, like jump into this delusion with you, you know? And all this is the clay you work in, and you're going to do the whole thing; you're do the chicken dance and you're gonna do the, the DJ and introducing for the first time anywhere, Jane and John Smith, Miss and Miss—it, like you're going to do that whole thing, like you don't know where this goes, you know? And that to me, it's F—and I actually said, cuz I'm the guy who says this [__], I said, I was like, so pre-nup? Should do a pre-nup? She's like, no, we didn't really—are you really—like we're not—we're susceptible to this illness too, huh? Like we don't—we're not immune; we have no immunities; we have not built any immunities to this. So I don't know.

Well, I think what we want is that true unconditional love, like similar to—I know you're a dog lover—it's similar to how a dog loves its owner, yeah? And the way we love our dogs—you're so forgiving, you're so understanding, you, you, you'll tolerate bad behavior; you come back and you know your dog, yeah. I don't know how you make that, that love in a romantic setting. It's so, it's so interesting to me because I felt—I've felt unconditional love for my every dog I've ever had, and I felt it for my kids. I don't know that I've ever felt unconditional love for a romantic partner. Like when I describe unconditional love, what I mean is, if this person vomited on you, the only thing you can think is, are they okay? No, but it's like if you had a, God forbid, a terrible accident, you're disfigured, you no longer are tall and attractive, or let's say you lost your business by some freak accident, and you no longer were, um, you know, successful and and smart, your dog would still love you 100%.

Of course, of course, because they love something about you that's so easy, and that is that you love them too, and that you keep them warm and you snuggle them and you feed them, and like there's a simplicity. Why can't we love each other like that? I don't know, you know? I, I know. I remember the first time I really understood like the depth of unconditional love was when my older—he's now 27, but he was like four, three or four at the time—my son, and he was sick, and he woke up in the middle of the night; he had a very high fever, and I was like holding him and trying to like calm him down, and he puked all over me. And I remember all I could think was, I don't want him to be scared; like I don't want him to feel like—I don't want him for a second. And I remember I was like just going, it's okay, it's okay, oh, it's okay, it's okay. And nothing in me thought, oh, [__] gross, like, you know, like, like if you puked right now, I'd be like, whoa, like I would step right back; you know, like the smell of it would probably make me, but him—nothing in me, nothing in me would pulled away; nothing in me—all I, I had such clarity of purpose, like I didn't—there wasn't any part of me that felt anything other than make stay calm, make sure he knows he's okay, don't let him be scared, like cuz I love him that way, like. And I, it just was like, I was like, it's okay, oh, it's okay, yeah, get it out, it's okay, get it out, you know? And I remember thinking like, wow, this is, this is it, like, this is the thing, like, this is, this is that kind of love. I, I don't, I don't know. I don't—listen, it would be amazing to have that with a romantic partner.

Like there's something about just the purity of that love, and there is something about dominion. I mean, you have dominion over your kid; you have dominion over your animal. And by dominion, I don't mean dominance; I mean, like loving stewardship, like they wouldn't be okay without you; they need you. And maybe that's one of the reasons why we're having such [__] trouble in society right now with marriages is like you're not—your wife's not allowed to need you anymore. Like if she needs you, she's doing something wrong; she's not a boss babe; she's not a girl boss; like. And and there's something about like when someone needs you that it makes you feel like, oh, no, I'm going to do it; I'm going to be heroic; like I'm going to rise to the occasion. Like one of the things I love about being a man is like providing; I love—like I see that as a [__] gift; like I, like, yeah, I can do this; I can go out into the world and bend it to my will, and then I can bring that home and take care of the people I love, and I'm [__] proud of that. It's part of being a man; it's, it's the best part of being a man. I embrace that; I welcome it; like I want to put the women and kids to bed and go out looking for dinner, you know, and bring it home, like that's what I want to do. And then I want you to prepare it, and I want you to greet me with warmth and gratitude, you know? And like I think we've created a situation now where that's, that's a dirty word; like it's a dirty thing to say. But, but think about how we feel about our kids, how we feel about our companion animals, like dogs and cats. There's an element of need there—this person needs me. Like our, our love of animals is not, in my opinion, a function of that they have rights or that they have any—like they don't—they all are powerless and trembling to our power, and yet like we still will care for them, you know, because we, we see that we have power over them; we have dominion over them. So if your partner and your spouse, like think about like when, when you're talking about like, well, why do I feel this way about my dog? Why do I feel this way about my kids? Well, they need you; they need you; they're dependent on you; they trust you. And there's something about that trust in me that brings out a desire to be worthy of it, you know? Like I, I, I feel the way about my clients—like I love what I do, but part of it is like they've handed me the most important things in their lives and go, Jim, can you help with this? And I just look at that and go, well, [__] yeah, I'm going to do my best, man, like because you trusted me with this; you handed me this thing. But if they were like, I'm giving you this, but I'm not quite sure you're going to do a good job of it, so I'm going to make sure that I have somebody else on standby—be like, well, [__] you, like then don't just—don't use me, then don't have me be your guy, you know? So it's—I, I think it's kind of the same, you know, that, that there needs to be a rebalancing of like, you know, can we depend on each other? Can we trust? And I understand why, particularly women, you know, are, are skeptical of that. It's like, yeah, there's, there's a high cost to trusting somebody, you know? And if you trust the wrong person, like, yeah, you can get royally screwed over for it. But I, I just don't know; I just don't—I think there's got to be something there, like the way we care about our kids, that unconditional love, the way we care about our pets—are—I think that's an insight into the love we're capable of, and I, I think there are ways to leverage some of that same sensation towards our romantic partners.

There has to be, yeah. I, I think back to what I said at the beginning of our talk where I think you're a National Treasure. I think it's because you are realistic and pragmatic about the, the dangers in marriages, but you also still love the idea of this, our, our infinite capacity for love. Yeah, I still love love. I mean, see, I just don't believe in fairy tales, like, and I don't think you have to believe in fairy tales to be a romantic. I don't think you have to believe in fairy tales to, to believe in the, the redeeming power of love and to believe that love is the most important thing in the world, like. And and anybody, like when somebody says like, oh, do you believe in love? I'm like, of course, like I feel it; I feel love; I feel loved; like I, I love is everything, but I don't believe in fairy tales. And I don't think we do ourselves any favors by believing in fairy tales. Like I think that we do better—it's love to me, like an honest love is the greatest thing in the world. Like I don't have to like think the—I—my dog might just like me because I feed it; it, it's not going to make me love it any less; like it's not going to make it any less adorable to me. Like it's okay; like we can say, like it's okay to say to your partner, yeah, part of what I like about you is they have sex with me; like I really love it because sex is really awesome, you know? Like we, that's okay; we know that; okay? It's like we can admit that. Whatever we're doing right now, [__] it'd be more fun; we could acknowledge that, just say it out loud; it's okay, you know? So what are we doing? We're going to trade that right? So if we're going to be in a monogamous relationship, what we're saying is, listen, I really like [__] you, and I also would really enjoy [__] lots of other people, but I am willing to forego the opportunity to [__] lots of other people in exchange for the opportunity to [__] you regularly. So is there—can we agree that there's going to be some minimum level of [__] that we're both going to maintain for the purpose? And if the person said, well, yes, but you know, also one of the reasons why I [__] you is that you show tremendous kindness and grace towards me, and you're complimentary to me, so could we, in exchange for those regular [__] that are sufficient for you to forego all of the other potential [__] that you're also going to show me a certain level of affection and attention that's going to make me feel good about myself for a period? Absolutely. Very fair. This is a very fair transaction, right? So I know, like, okay, everyone's listening to that and going like, well, this is why I would not [__] a lawyer; like I get it. But isn't there something honest about that? These are the unspoken things, but so why does it have to be spoken? Like would you, would you like the [__] less, you know? If, if it was part of—if there had been a discussion about it, like I'm not saying every—there has to be like this ongoing discussion, but can't you early in a relationship just say like, yeah, you know, like this is the stuff I like about you, but you're, you're destroying the magic about it all. Why the fairy tale? Is why—listen, I've seen Star Wars; I know there's no such thing as Wookies; they're not real, but I still like the movie. It's okay; like I know there were no actual dinosaurs in Jurassic Park; I still like the movie because why? Cuz it's cool; it's exciting; it moves fast, and it's—you didn't know what was going to happen. Love's the same thing; like really like you don't know—come on, you, you're a billionaire, and a model is marrying you, and you don't know this has to do with your [__] money. And that's okay, by the way; like money is value; beauty is value; just say it; just say the quiet part out loud; just say, yeah, you're a billionaire; you know what that's going to be? It's going to be amazing to be in the orbit of a billionaire; you fly private; the best of everything; yeah, you're not the best-looking person I'd ever met; my personal trainer is 50 times hotter than you, but he makes 50 bucks an hour; you're a billionaire; you present me with incredible opportunities, and what I present to you—I'm stunningly beautiful, and I'm going to be the most great arm candidate. This is very fair; like why does this have to be a secret? By the way, everybody knows; like everybody knows. It's not like you go to their wedding and go, you know—I think it's just that they both really feel an empathy towards each other, or you know, they both really—they both love making a boat in a bottle, you know? That's, that's the hobby that bound them together; they both like pickle ball; like it's not that—it's clear what this transaction is, and that's okay. We, we love to—we love to criticize it; it seems—it's, it's the envy. But see, we critic—that's—I think you're onto something; I think we don't want to say, yeah, she's in it for the money, and he's in it for the beauty. The women are saying, I wish I could be her; the men are definitely thinking they, they wish they were him.

Sure, sure. But, but what you do is we say it like it's a bad—but they know they'll never be as beautiful as she is, and they'll know they'll never be as rich as she is, so they dismiss it. So they go like, oh, well, she's only in it for the money. And it's like, yeah, let's see what she looks like in 10 years, right? But, but again, like, and and if he lost all his money, he'd be [__]. And if—look, I, I know a lot of people—I shouldn't say a lot of people—I know a few people who are happily married for a long period of time who—he was a great provider, and she was stunningly beautiful, and she has aged in the way that everyone does—MH—and they are still as crazy about each other. That's great because, because there are other things they bring to the table; like there are other things in that relationship; there's empathy; there's kindness; there's trust; there's support of each other; like there's other things. Like, yes, beauty is, you know, the cheese in the rat trap, or beauty is like the, the, the, the curb appeal, you know, like, like the, yeah, the, the, the, the mannequin in the window looks great, and that gets you in the store, but the quality of the items is the store is what gets you coming back; it's not just the mannequin; it's the window. So I get that, like beauty is an entry point; even money is an entry point, gang; like it just is. Like the difference in your life when you have a hundred million or $500 million is negligible; it's negligible; like there's only two amounts of money—enough and not enough; that's it.

Do, do you think some of that is because we are, are reluctant to grow old or to accept that we're going to be old? Everyone seems to be so in love with the idea of being 24 years old. Well, I think we want to be 24. I mean, this is what my next book is about. I, I, I, I think everything that happens in our society is a function of our fear of death, yeah? I think everything comes down to our fear of death. We don't like aging because it reminds us we're going to die. Like everything in this society is structured to prevent you from thinking about the fact you're going to die, which is the only truth we really have. Like the only truth we really have—the only thing we can be certain of is you're going to die, and I'm going to die; that's it. There's everything else is almost an endless haze of possibilities, but you're definitely going to die, and I'm definitely going to die. And and everything in society is designed to prevent you from thinking about that because if you think about the fact that you're definitely going to die, and there is a definite number of summers you're going to see, and it's a finite number, and you just don't know it yet—it might be one; it might be 10; it might be 30; it ain't going to be 50, right? So you, if you know that you are not going to care about the [__] that people want you to care about; you are not going to care about, you know, how can I get this car or what watch do I have or, you know, my, my shirts are clean, but are they Clorox clean? You know, you're not going to give a [__] about any of that if you go, oh, wow, I'm going to die; like in the—I'm telling you right now, the reason why I never looked at it the way other people look at it is I was a hospice volunteer for a really long time. And if I—if I ever—I would never run for political office ever, but if I ever did, I would be on one platform, and that is that when people turn 18, they should have to spend a year as a hospice volunteer. Cuz if you spend a year with the terminally ill, you will never look at life the same again for the rest of your life. You will, you will have death right here in your peripheral vision, and you will never look at anything the same way again. You will not waste [__] time; you will not mince words; you will not be afraid, like cuz there's nothing to be afraid of because you're going to [__] die; like. And none of this is really going to matter; like so you, you just—I, I think there's become this again this cultural push to care about [__] to just be distracted by [__], you know, so that this game can just continue. Because if people really stopped and went, wait a minute, I have a finite number of days, and I just—I'm not…

Going to spend them being [ __ ] miserable, being a cog and a machine, the purpose of which is is is like not to serve me, but to serve some great greater bigger thing enjoyed by the one percent, you know. And I I think that's even marriage is a part of that. Marriage is a part of that. Marriage is about how do we tie people down into these small clusters and distract them, right? Because you get married, what do you need now? We need a place to live. We got a place to live. What do we need now? We should have kids. Well, we got kids; we're going to need the wheel, we need the the chair, and we need this, and we need the crib, and we need that, and it just puts people on this track, and then you just the next thing you know you turn around and you're like, holy [ __ ], I'm 70 years old, I got high blood pressure, I got 50 meds that I'm on now. I I squandered my entire life chasing something, and now okay, I've got ideally Economic Security, but I no longer have the physical health to really enjoy it in any significant way, and I no longer have really time. You know, like everybody I know who has time has no money, and everybody I know has money has no time, and everybody else, by the way, is jealous of everybody. So like when like all the women I know who are like, oh, I'm dating a rich guy, they're like, yeah, but he has no time. And all the women I know they're dating a guy who has lots of time, they're like, yeah, but he has no money, you know. So everybody's just looking at so unless you're like a trust fund kid who just has lots of money but doesn't actually have to work but works because they enjoy their work, how what percentage of the population is that? It's got to be tiny, right? So I I just think we we've set the rules of the game up in such a way that we're just jumping for one foot to the other. I I mean, I call it job security; I guess I should be happy about it. No, I see a big part of our problem now is that we all have these distraction devices in our hands. And if you go into like a doctor's office and there's eight people in the in the waiting room, all eight of them are under their yeah, it's surreal. It's surreal. It's like I just wonder what we were all doing. I remember what I was doing; I was dreaming about the future; I was trying to figure out ways to achieve my dreams; I was that's how my free time was spent. See, I used to read; I don't know that people read anymore. I I I always love to read, and reading requires like a certain imagination; it requires you to sit still in one place. Like even audiobooks, people just listen to the like my audiobook outsells by like 10 to one the actual book book because book like reading a book requires that you sit someplace and you actually in your voice, sorry, is your audiobook? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's eight and a half hours of me talking. Yeah, great. Yeah, that's like I I used to joke that that's like seven hours longer than my ex-wife actually ever listened to me, so yeah, eight and a half hours a long that's a long time listen speaker. Yeah, I was a long it's a long time to listen to we talk, but yeah, I mean the book did really well because I think that's the format people do it, and but it's because they're doing something else while they're listening, right? So how engaged are you really in that thing that you're doing if you're listening to an audiobook while you're doing it? Like I get it; like I listen to audio I used to run marathons, and when I would do like a 20-mile run, I would listen to a book, you know, because you you know you burn through a bunch of hours, but I have to tell you like yeah, I think we're all distracted, and the attention economy and the outrage economy is like definitely fueling some of this, and again that war of the Sexes thing that is everywhere online that I've been pulled into as a public-facing person who talks about relationships and gender stuff, I get dragged constantly by people like, oh, another white heterosexual man telling us what to do. And it's like, all right, guys, no problem; like don't don't listen to me; it's fine; like I prefer you don't listen to me; it's better for my bottom line if you don't listen to me; you make more money cuz you're going to need me or someone just like me, so don't listen to me; it's fine; like I'm trying to keep you out of my office; I'm trying to have you actually see the delusion so that maybe you can do something about it, or maybe you can get ahead of it. Like I'm legit trying to help you, but that's okay; like listen, you you try to feed a starving dog, I might try to bite you. Okay, cool, try to bite me; like I'm I'm trying to help; I'm not trying to [ __ ] on anybody; I didn't make it this way; like I wasn't responsible for gender roles in our society; I wasn't the one who sat down and said like, how do we form the patriarchy? Like it didn't happen, so but it is the way that it is, and and and most people are unhappy right now; like most people like most of the time what we're looking at on those devices is people talking about [ __ ] they're upset about; like that's most of what we do all day is listen to people talk about [ __ ] they're upset about; like this election that's happening right now is just here's the [ __ ] I'm upset about versus the [ __ ] that this person's upset about, and I'm upset about what [ __ ] they're upset about and not upset about, and back and forth; that's it; and and that's all that's online anymore; like Twitter is a Cesspool; like I went on Twitter for like a month, you know, cuz I was like, oh, this will be good for engagement, dude, that you I was on it; I was like, oh my God, all it is is just people like fighting with each other and talking [ __ ] about each other and criticizing, building nothing, creating nothing, having no point of view other than a contrarian one against what somebody else said; like doing the Cardinal mistake as a lawyer you never do, which is structuring your entire argument based on the opposite of the other person's argument and therefore giving them total control over your narrative because whatever you say I'm just going to say the opposite, great, so I've now given you total control over what it is that I have to say. Yeah, I mean, marriage, relationships, uh, romance, all that stuff is changing so much because of Technology, because of just the way our world has changed. Should we even get married? I mean, there still seems to be this societal pressure to to oh, you're getting married, good for you. Well, it's not only that there's societal pressure to get married; there's an assumption that you'll get married; there's an assumption that if you don't get married, there's something wrong with you, which again I've always said I think is [ __ ] nuts because the perfectly sane response when someone says I'm getting married would be why? Why are you? Why would you ever do that? Like there's a more than 50% chance that's going to end in divorce; why would you ever do that? Whereas it's like, oh my gosh, that's so great. Is it really? Like is that like that's our reflex thing; it's like, oh my God, that's so great; like when somebody my kid got engaged, oh my God, that's so great. No, you don't know that that's so great; it could be terrible; it could be terrible; like somebody says, oh, I'm starting my own business, oh my God, that's so great; like what are you doing? Like I'm selling ice to Eskimos; like okay, that's not a good business; like that's terrible; it's a terrible idea; like so really what you'd say if somebody says I'm getting married, you say, okay, how long have you been together? How well do you know this person? What's the dynamic of your relationship? But we don't; we just go, oh my God, it's so great; it's so great. Why? Because it's great; it's a leap of faith; it's a Triumph of Faith over reason. So the question of should we get married? Like I I've said before, I don't think marriage and love have very much to do with each other at all. I think that that correlation is not causation, and to suggest that like marriage somehow solidified people's love or it's emblematic of the depth of their love or anything [ __ ] [ __ ], all evidence to the contrary, you're wrong; I'm right, period. Like look at the math of this gang; like this is a technology that fails 56% of the [ __ ] time; you cannot tell me that like, well, you're just jaded. No, I'm not blind; probably more than 5 56% because there's plenty of people state divorce rate; how many people do you know that are unhappily married? I know more Unhappily Married people than divorced people, so realistically if you ask me, and I cannot prove this, I would say it's probably another 30% that are miserably married or don't want to give away half their [ __ ]. Now you got a tech that 86% of the time it fails; are you okay? And by the way, that about tracks for me cuz I know like what 50 couples and I know like three that are happy, maybe maybe what what's what's the secret in those three? They they're really I don't know; they know who they are; they like each other; the answer is they like each other; like they they they treat each other like they like each other; they don't talk [ __ ] about each other; like they're they're a unit; they're a thing, you know; like they're I don't know, man. I I got this buddy Chris, and he's so in love with his wife Amy, and I knew Amy in college; it's like you need to like the other person even if they were married to your best friend. I have to tell you I this couple's always been emblematic for me, and and they fell in love for the reasons anybody falls in love; she was stunningly beautiful and College; I knew her; I was her good friend; and he thought she was super hot, and she liked him cuz he was like a musclebound good-look dude; he was also very charming and dominant, and they've been married like 28 years, something like that, two kids; like she had a struggle with breast cancer; like I mean they they went through some [ __ ], and they are crazy about each other; that's great; like nuts about each other, to the point where you hang out with him and you talk to him when she's not around, and he'll he refers to her as my girl; he's like, oh, well, my girl and I were going to go do this; I'm like, dude, you've been marrying this one for 28 years; like is she's still your girl? Like I'm you're my idol; like that's so cool, man, that you still feel that way, but you know why he feels that way? Cuz she's talks about she calls him my boyfriend; she's like, well, my boyfriend's coming home from his business trip on Tuesday, and they're married, and they're married for 28 years, two kids, breast cancer, loss of jobs, moving all these they went through the bombs dropping, and they're crazy about each other because they're just [ __ ] nice to each other; like he treats her with so much respect; he's still like, oh my God, she's the most beautiful woman in the world; that's great; she's and you know what? She's still very beautiful, right? I knew her when she was 20, you know, and she's now in her 40s or whatever, maybe 50s; she still stunning for her age, right? She's not one of these people that injects a bunch of she's just like a naturally, but to him, he just still sees that 20-year-old; he still sees that girl he fell in love, and I can tell she looks at him and she's like, he's my hero; he's the greatest guy in the world; he's like that, and you know, like when I see that they I go, they won the lottery, and I don't mean like, oh, it's chance; I don't think it's chance; they they just give a [ __ ]; they just pay attention; like I've never heard them say a bad word about each other; like they're they're honest about like, well, yeah, he's this way, you know, or yeah, she's like that; she gets so worried about this or that, but like it's never with a sense of like, oh, like it's always with a sense of like, yeah, you know, he's very he's got his way; he likes to do things; that's it, you know, and like there's this but there's just tremendous again; they both bring tremendous value to the table, and I think that that that beauty thing to me because I do think there is a tremendous in heterosexual marriages; there's a tremendous amount, and probably in homosexual ones as well, but it the feeling of like, okay, the man has this woman, and she's beautiful, and that's what she leverages is she brings Beauty to the equation, but I think after a period of time like you kind of stop seeing the per, you know, like I don't know with you; like I see a picture of myself from 20 years ago and I go, oh my God, like I don't realize how much I changed in 20 years, you know, cuz you see yourself every day; like whoever discovered water, it wasn't a fish, you know. So you're in the thing; you don't see it. So I think when you're with a partner and you're with each other for that long, you maybe don't see each other age, you know, that much; like you the way you envision each other is the way you envision, so that's great; like just leverage that because you know if you if you have enough affection for this person and you you know there are there are couples that like you look at them; they've been together forever, and you look at them and they go, they still [ __ ]; I bet like they got that Vibe about them; like the two of them are still into each other, you know, and I I love that; like I think that's really like that's the secret, but I mean here's the thing; what if it's that simple? Like what if it's just pay attention, be nice to your partner, [ __ ] them, and compliment them; tell them, you know, just build them up; just build them up, man; like like 99% of like personal and professional interactions are about just building up other people; like that's really all it is; just bolstering other people, and you know, trying to see the good in them even when they're not hitting it out of the park. Some people are just they're just wired to be negative, and other people are well, we're feeding the negativity right now; like negativity is very very valuable right now; like people tune in to watch [ __ ] get [ __ ] up; you know, people people pay and want to see fails; like like I can see in my life; I'm a very positive person; I'm always thinking about the other my partner's self-worth, mental health, happiness, all that, and it's like because of that my relationships just flow so beautifully. Yeah, because I think you're see I think the so easy the you know just like Gandhi said that the perfect society would be an ordered Anarchy, so people would do the right thing and do the orderly thing because they want to do it; it's the right thing to do, not because they were imposed to under power of law. Now, again, I think that's very Pollyanna in terms of the approach, but I think in relationships there's something to that; like ideally in a romantic relationship, I'm trying to build you up; you're trying to build me up, and so we're both getting built up, and and that symbiosis really works, you know. But like any symbiosis, it's a very delicate ecosystem, so if you put like a new fungus into the ecosystem, all of a sudden it [ __ ] the whole thing up because it changes what this one eats, which changes how this one gets eaten, which changes how this one you know digests, which changes how this one decomposes, which changes the Moss; like everything affects everything else, and I think a marriage or a relationship is exactly like that; it's an ecosystem, and so you throw new technology in; you throw you know unanticipated changes into the relationship, and yeah, it can [ __ ] up the ecosystem; that's why I think there's value in talking about something other than just criticisms of relationship or of relationships in general; talking about what why when we felt good about each other, what was it that felt so good? Like I've said this before that you know you ever want to see people soften when they're talking about their partner; ask them about when they met; Everything Changes in a person when you say like, tell me how you met; like they they do the like, oh, well, I was this, and then he was this, and and like you just see the softness come over them because it was this moment of like possibility, you know, and and we're just so drunk on like the imagin because we live in imagination; I mean, I think we're the only species that really lives in imagination; the way we remember the past is to some degree in imagination, and certainly our perception of the future is Imagination, so so much of our time is spent in our own imagination, and at that moment you're when you meet someone, some future romantic partner, you're imagining what they're going to be to you and what you're going to be as a function of that relationship; like where it's going to all the places will go, you know; and so why not like in your day-to-day still put value in Imagining the possibilities of the two of you or talking about like when when did we last feel really connected? You know, like it's a question that our again our society is never going to want you to ask the question of like, when's the last time you felt really good? When's the last time you felt really happy? What were you doing? You know, and the answer might be surprising; like it it's very funny; there's a there's a line in Glen Gary Glenn Ross I think it is where he's talking about sex and he says like when I remember lovers of my past, I don't remember the orgasm; that's not what I remember; I remember the way the light hit her body when she got out of the bed; I remember the curve of her back; I remember the look of her face like with the little hair hanging down with a little sweat; like that's what I remember; like I don't remember the moment of of ejaculation; like I remember some like glimpse, some photograph in my mind of that, and it's emblematic for what that felt like, right? So if we know that, then why wouldn't relationships be about like creating those moments? Like curating those moments? Like reminding ourselves as what were the conditions under which that moment was felt and how do we how do we go back to that? How do we not get away from that so far away from the shore of that that we could never swim back? Yeah, because that's that's the direct path to me; we don't remember those those moments; we don't imagine ourselves as the other person as because they're getting older; you know, for a female romantic partner, you you envision yourself as okay, when she was 25 and beautiful, she looked a certain way, felt a certain way to be around her, but now she's 55 MH, and she's dealing with things that every woman has to deal with at but see men get a lot of [ __ ] for this because a lot of men there's this perception that like men just like and again I don't know; maybe it's just pushed by popular media, but there's this perception which I don't know if it's an accurate one; I don't think it is in my experience professionally and personally that like men just like find a beautiful woman, and then they kind of grow tired of her, and she gets older inevitably, and it's not her fault, and then they just find a younger model, and that's it. I'm sure there are examples of that, of course, but I don't think that's how it works; I I I really think the toxic thing people don't talk about is is that lack of appreciation for what a person brings to your life; like there's a period of time like you a lot of what men do; it's not that sexy; like I pay the electric bill; that's not that sexy; like I can't remember the last time somebody said to me like, oh my God, it's so great that the lights

Work like it's so great that we have internet, you know, like they don't do that. It's like, no, it's just there. But a great partner, a great female partner, understands that. That what is it? Cost to just say, yeah, you know? It occurs to me that I'm so [ __ ] lucky. Yeah, like, and how good does that feel, man? That like it is, oh my God, that's a drug. I chase that dragon all day long. That is what men want more than, want more than anything. Oh my God, when somebody says, "I eat my employees," and so many of these entitled women don't understand, they don't understand that it's so easy, so easy to just say, like, you know, "I'm so lucky," like, "I'm so—you do such a good job, man. You try so hard. You do such a good job. Like, I just appreciate what you do," and like, by the way, look at it. I mean, it's one of the reasons why I've always liked your channel is that you know, you can complain about your [ __ ] life, man, but then you watch, like, you know, somebody was sexually abused as a child and now has substance abuse issues and mental health issues that they're dealing with, and you look at it and you go, "I am so ungrateful. I am so—I should be ashamed of myself," like that my biggest problem today is like, "Oh, I'm very busy. I mean, I have time for lunch." Like, really? Like, oh my [ __ ] people. It's like being a hospital volunteer, you know? It's like, it's like that—that you look at what real people are dealing with, and you know, I, I think it's very easy for someone to say, yeah, you know, like I was thinking about the fact that like, if it wasn't for you, like my life would look so different right now, you know, like I would—it's Tuesday afternoon, and I'm at home, you know, I'm at home with, you know, a safe, comfortable home, and the electricity is on, like, and I'm so lucky for that, you know? And like, what does it take to say that to your partner, a humble partner, female partner, who's not acting entitled, who just is appreciative? Yeah, and by the way, here's the cheat code: when you have a humble female partner in a heterosexual relationship who's like, "Oh my God, I'm so grateful for, like, the fact that you want to get her the Hermes bag," oh yeah, because she's not an ungrateful [ __ ] [ __ ], you're going to give her, cuz you just are like, "Look at this, you know, here, look what else I can do." I mean, you can have—you could be a CEO or a garbage man; you could be 20 or you could be 80. Any heterosexual male, if you go, "I can't open this jar, can you help me?" We all go, "Yes, I certainly can," and open the jar, and we feel like a, like a million bucks. You know why? Because we love that we can do that. So I don't know why anybody didn't figure that cheat code out. Like, the more entitled you act, the more you act like, "Well, I helped you build this; this is our money," the more you do that [ __ ], the tighter we get, the more that I'm like, "You know what? Take your [ __ ] hat, see you. I'll make more." But, but if you just—if some—I'm telling you, somebody's figured this out out there, where someone should—there are women that have figured this out. I think there are. Yeah, I think there are. I think there are. So, so explain it for the women that are still like trying to grasp this. I think the idea is just, you know, how you feel when your guy says, "Man, I've married the prettiest girl in the whole world," you know, like, "I'm so lucky to have you. Like, you're so great." You know that feeling you have inside of, like, a, you know, like, okay, it's the same exact thing when you, when you say to a guy, you know, like, "I'm so lucky to have you," you know. I was talking to my, my girlfriend the other day; he was going through something, and the guy she's with just can't get a [ __ ] together, and like, just the fact that, like, you do such a good job of, like, making sure that, you know, we're safe and we have the things we need, like every guy that's like asking us to open the pickle jar, like we just feel like, yeah, thanks, you know? Cuz listen, like it's a grind, like it's a grind doing what we do, and, and, and all we really want at the end of it is some little bit of sweet—most of us—gratitude makes a guy want to do all the things that women want them to do.

I have to tell you something. I've spent hours and hours with divorcing men of all income levels, from billionaires to millionaires to, you know, the very working class earlier in my career, and they all tell me the same story, and that story is some variant of, "She just—she's not grateful at all anymore," like there was a time where I was her hero, and now I'm not. And that's what the girlfriend is like. Don't [ __ ] kid yourself; the girlfriend half the time is nowhere near as hot as the wife, but you know what she is? She's grateful. She's grateful. She's grateful. She's effusive in her gratitude. She makes him feel like a hero. She squeals with delight at his jokes, at his sex, at his whatever. She's just delighted as opposed to irritated, short-tempered, talking about all the things she doesn't have. Like, you ever want to just wreck a guy's day? Tell him that, like, oh yeah, you know, like Karen got this, you know, and so not—and you're like—and he's like, "Well, you said you wanted that, so I didn't—I got you this instead," like, and it's such a—you listen to it and you're just like, "Why would you do that? Why would you do that to that guy?" Like, he wouldn't come—I mean, ideally he wouldn't come home and go, "I saw Steve's wife; wow, she is looking good," you know, like you would, because how would that make you feel? It would make you feel small; it would make you feel awful. Like, why wouldn't you just lead with gratitude? And by the way, it's like any relationship, like if, if there's work that needs to be done, there's a way to do it, like you could start—make a praise sandwich, you know, the "Oh, I'm so grateful for the—you know, it would be cool if we could do X, Y, and Z, but you know, I'm so happy that we have—" Just—just pack it. But no, that right there is probably some of the best advice ever. Yeah, but here's the thing, like I, I don't know that people—everybody feels like—very—it's like advertising; it's a multi-billion dollar industry that everyone feels their exempt from. Like, if you ask people, "Are you affected by advertising?" They're like, "Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I drink Coke cuz I like Coca-Cola. It's got nothing to do with the billboards." Really, really? Because they spent a lot of money on those billboards; it mustn't be for no reason. Like, I, I genuinely don't think we're impervious to this [ __ ]. Like, we're just primates; that's all. Like, your dog likes you cuz you give it bacon; like, your partner likes you cuz you give them value of some kind. It's an economy, and that's okay. Like, again, whether you like it or not, this is how it is. So you can pretend it's not like that. It's just like death—you're going to die. You can pretend you're not going to die. If you think that's going to make your life better, to pretend you're not going to die, to keep it out of your view, not think about it until the last possible minute—maybe that's a way to live your life; I don't [ __ ] know. But personally, I think for me, I'm not doing that. I want to keep it in my line of sight. Same thing with relationships; I want to keep it in line of sight. Here's what I bring to the table; here's what I'm willing to—here's my offer. Okay? Do you—if you accept it, what's your offer? Tell me what it is you're going to bring to this; I'll tell you what it is I'm going to bring to this, and I'll be consistent. You can set your [ __ ] watch by me. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it. Like, I'm a man of will; I'm a person of focus; I'm disciplined. Like, if I say to you I'm going to do this, it's going to get done. You don't have to even check up on it; it's going to get done. So why wouldn't you do that in your relationship? But I, I understand why, because the culture is always trying to pull you off of it. Everybody around you—but also talking about these things is almost like the kiss of death. Like, all right, so the fact that we're even talking about this means we're falling apart. I never see—I never thought that, and I, I always thought, and this is one of the things women I think do better than men is like, they talk so much about their relationships to each other, and I just feel like, why can't we just do that with our partner? Like, why can't we just say to our partner, like, like what is it we're both feeling right now, and how is it going? And like, it doesn't—I'm not saying—listen, nobody wants your relationship to turn into like a therapy session all the time, and that you have to overly think it. Like, sometimes overthinking something takes the magic of it away, you know? But I think there's genuinely room for, you know, just—I don't know—remembering like how we felt someone's love and when we felt someone's love and why wouldn't you want to hear that? Like, I, I'm—I'm very—maybe I'm predictable, and maybe I'm very male, but like, I would never not want to hear my romantic partner tell me, like, you know, when I loved you so much, you know what you did that made me just feel so good about—I'm like, "Oh, I want to hear this. Like, I want to hear this," you know? Like, anything, even in bed, like, oh, you know, that what you do—that I love—oh my God, let me get some—I want to take notes. Yes, tell me, watch, please, you know? And, and by the way, if you said to me, like, you know what would you like—like, I'm—I'm gonna tell you—like, I never understood—like, I, I understand why women fake orgasm, but I always felt like, oh, don't—why would you—like, I want to know. I want to earn it. I want to know I got it right. Like, I don't want to think I got it right and I got it wrong, cuz I'm going to keep doing the thing I thought was the thing that did it right. So you're just—you're [ __ ] yourself up right now because I'm going to think that that hit the button and it didn't, you know? So why not just be—again, not that's not it, but something like, you know, like, oh, you know what you did was so great, and I've always thought like that's not that [ __ ] hard. Like, there's so many—I guess it's because I argue for a living, but I just feel like there's so many entry points to a conversation. I got pilloried online for daring to suggest that there was a safe way to talk to your romantic partner about something you want to try sexually, like, because no one likes talking about sex, right? Like, it feels too clinical, or it's like, if you have to ask for—you know, Oryan said in our, our joint interview, like, the [ __ ] you asked to ask for isn't a [ __ ]; it's fellatio. Like, so what you want is—it's not that you want a [ __ ]; you want your partner to want to give you a [ __ ]. Like, that's—that's part of the appeal of the [ __ ]. Exactly. Okay. But sometimes it is okay to, like, reality check with your partner about like where your, where your passions intersect or where your sex intersects. So I've always said to people—like, I got killed for this online where I said, you know, rather than saying to your partner, "Hey, I'd really like to try anal," or like, "Hey, I'd really like to try, you know, a threesome," or, "Oh, you know, I really like toes," you know, like, I, I don't know—those are three things that were not appealing to me, but I thought, you know, like, give an example—those three things—like, there's a way to do that that's ham-handed, like that, and then there's a way to do it that's like really, really palatable and likely to find some success. Like, "Oh my God, I had such a dream about you last night; it was like so dirty." "Wait, what? Really? What? What was it about?" You know? "No, I don't even want to say it. It's like, I don't know what the—maybe it's like I ate dairy before bed or something. It [ __ ] me up, though." "We know what it was; we were like, you know," and then we ended up like doing like anal, and really, yeah. And if your partner goes, "Oh, I would never want to do that," you can be like, "Yeah, no, I know, me neither; that's just so crazy." Or if they go, "Oh, really? Is that something you'd like?" You be like, "I, I don't know, like maybe I didn't think I did, but maybe like subconsciously I do, and now we're having a conversation, and now this is a very safe conversation, and then it's fun, right? Because then your partner's like, 'Well, you know, maybe we give that a shot,' or what." So how [ __ ] hard is that? You turn—you just turned something that could be really awkward into, into something really comfortable. And so—but my point is is that yes, I'm being manipulative, yes, like that's the nature of human interaction is we're going to be manipulative of each other. Like, you can call it out or you can just do it and pretend you're not doing it, but you're manipulating your partner. Like, you are—you're—you're manipulating everybody. Like, I always say, like my job is—I manipulate people's emotional state for a living; that's what I do. I make the judge feel good about my client, bad about the other side. I make the other side feel scared; I make the client feel safe. I'm manipulating everyone in that room's emotional state; that's my job. So I'm trying to use my powers for good, and in a relationship, by the way, you're using your powers for good. Why are you—why are you doing that manipulation, that little, "Oh, I had a dream last night" lie? Why? Cuz I want to deepen my sexual connection with my partner. So I'm happily monogamous with that person, who's not going to be into that. If you said to your spouse the day before, "Babe, I'd really like us to have really successful monogamy where we both feel really excited about the sexual relationship," she'd be like, "Abs[ __ ]lutely; that's a great unified goal." Okay? So just serve the goal; don't even have to like talk out in advance that that's the agenda. I assume that's the agenda. So what's wrong—what's wrong with doing that? Like, "Well, it's dishonest [ __ ] you." I think it's way more honest to call out the manipulation and to say, "Yeah, of course I'm manipulating my partner for the greater good of our relationship," and by the way, they're manipulating me all day long. Like, that's the nature of human relationship, as we're manipulating each other in some way, and that's okay, as long as the goal we're serving is a unified goal; it's a goal that we both—the same intention of serving. Yeah, it's—it's—I mean, back to the dog thing that we talked about earlier, the way a dog comes running to you and jumping and just is excited to see you every single time you come home—and that's—that's—that's a huge piece of the appeal; it's a huge part of the—yeah, it's a huge part of the appeal. There's something about—but even with your kids, it's the same thing, like when they're little—little—it's like they're just—they light up. I remember my—the first time he was six months old, my, my older son, when he was in the crib, and I walked in, and he just got this grin, and I thought, "Oh my God, he knows I'm his dad," like, and he's psyched to see me. Like, I'm that guy; I'm that guy who bounces him around, does the—on his belly thing, you know, like, and I thought, "[ __ ] man, this is great," you know? And by the way, like that's what we want our romantic partner to feel like, don't you—I don't know—didn't you ever, like, you know—didn't you ever like meet your romantic partner at the airport, you know, and you're just standing there, and everybody's getting off the thing, looking, and you're looking, and then all of a sudden you see—and you're like, "Ah, that one's mine," you know? And they see you, and there's this moment of like, "That one's mine," like, and, and like, God, that's so [ __ ] great. Like, it's so great, magical. And what it's about is, like, excitement; it's about excitement. About—see, I understand, like in the day-to-day of life, like how do you sustain excitement with another person? But it never happens with your dog. Like, you never find yourself going like, "This [ __ ] dog, I've had this dog forever; I gotta get a puppy; they're cuter." Like, you don't feel that way. You get deeper and deeper in love with it cuz why? Cuz it's still just as happy to see you, you know? And even though it can't like jump up like it used to, you know, cuz it's older, it's like, who cares? Like, it loves me that much, you know? And I think, I think because dogs—we know that we're losing them from minute one—like their lifespan is so short compared to ours that that impermanence stays right in our line of sight, but the gratitude that they show constantly is a huge part of it, too. Yeah, and it stays—it stays the same; it never—it never fades. Yeah, it never fades, whereas with humans, like the gratitude you showed in the first six months of the relationship is very different than you showed six—but I guess I, I have to ask the question of why, because I've never suffered from that. Like, I, I'm weird, you know; I've had the same smoothie for breakfast for like six years, and even when I'm like away and traveling, I find some way to approximate that smoothie. Yeah, I'm like you; yeah, I am a creature of habit, but I'm still—I still love it, like every day. I'm so like, "Mmm, this is good." But I, I—in my relationships, I—I realized the gr—like, people would say—never goes away with my wife. I was married for 17 years, and people would—after 12 years of marriage, people say, like, "You guys are newlyweds, right?" Yeah, like, "No, yeah," I've always, in relationships, tried to maintain that level of gratitude and tried to always remember how much this person is giving to me, and that they didn't have to give it to me; they could have given it to someone else, and that I'm lucky to have it. But I, I've rarely seen someone who could sustain that. I, I think it's—it's a hard thing for a lot of people to do, and I don't know why. I, I—it's the thing that more than anything baffles me about humans. Like, I, I see it in my employees even, like, why—why are you not like seeing how great this is? Like, why do I have to fire you to figure out that you have a great job that you just lost? Like, why can't you have—like, I still have every day tremendous gratitude for the ability to do this job. Like, there was a time 27 years ago where I was in law school, and I was like, "Oh my God, I want to be a divorce lawyer so bad," and I still every day get up and go, "I am so [ __ ] lucky I get to do this job. Like, I'm so—" And I'm smart enough to know, like, put things in your line of sight. Like, I have interns every summer, and there's something about having interns around that is really, really good for you professionally because when you have interns around, they, they want to be you someday, and it reminds you how [ __ ] lucky you are to be you, that you are what someone aspires to be, like, and when you look at that and you have that around you, you walk a little taller; you're like, "Oh yeah, like I'm—I'm something; I'm a [ __ ] lawyer," like.

I'm a successful divorce. Like this person is going to walk through coals for the next eight years to try to be me, like and that's so cool, like. And by the way, I I want to help facilitate that because I had mentors who helped facilitate me becoming what I am. But I got to tell you, like, why can't you in relationship the same thing? Like, just have that gratitude, have that sense of, like, man, like there was a time where you looked at this person and thought, Oh my God, if I could just have that person next to me, like if I could just catch their eye, or if I could just if I if they call me back, like I hope they call me back, or I hope they text me back, or I hope we see each other again, you know. And like there was a time where you wanted that so bad, and you got it. You got it; they're there now, you know. And I I don't think I don't know; I was never wired like I'm still so grateful. I'm still so grateful every single day. I don't take any of it for granted. And maybe it's because I do try to keep impermanence in my line of sight all the time, to realize that love is is not permanently gifted; it's loaned. It's always loaned, like you will. And I've always said that, like that's what makes love so brave is that you will lose every person you love. To love anything is insane because you you have opened yourself to the pain of losing it inevitably, like to love anything—a dog, a a romantic partner, a child—like you you will lose it. Like children, you lose them every day. Like children just grow and change every day, and then one day they kind of walk out the door and they live their lives, and that's what they're supposed to do. But like you're not you know like you're not, you know, I'm not Daddy anymore; I'm dad now, you know. Like and there was a time like there was a time that they called me Daddy for the last time, and and I wasn't aware of it when it happened, and if I'd known, would have started crying, you know, because I would have been like, wait, that's it; like I'm dad now forever, like [ __ ] I was Daddy for a long time, you know. Like but you get to a point where you you you know you again you you change into the thing you're supposed to be, and things transform and they move towards this inevitable ending. But I I think romantic love, like if you could just keep focused on the fact, like hang out in my office for a couple of weeks, man, and I think you'll you'll it won't jade you towards love; it'll make you realize how [ __ ] lucky you are to have it.

Yeah, that's that's what I see from what you're experiencing. You're seeing the ends of things, you know, whether is working as a hospice volunteer or what you're doing now; it's all about ending; it's all about endings. Yeah, and everything that also makes you appreciate what you have. Well, because every Seneca said that every new beginning comes from some others Beginnings end, like every beginning has to end so that the next beginning can begin. And I think love, like we we're alone, you know. We're alone, like we're we're born into ideally we're born into love, right? We're born into parents or a parent who loves us and shapes us. We're born as these half-formed things, you know, and and hopefully someone greets us on the other end who's you know kind enough to fill us in, you know, and take care of us and treat us with love and compassion. And and then we're really just looking to find love and connection, you know, for the rest of our life. I mean, I don't think it's a I don't think it's a coincidence that like sex, this thing that we're constantly chasing, is literally connection. You're literally inserting yourself inside someone; you are just connecting. Like, I mean, if that's not the best metaphor, you know, because that's what it is. Like we're trying to connect; we're trying to merge with this person physically, mentally, emotionally, like and like there a very noble goal, you know. And it's not that [ __ ] hard. I don't think it's that [ __ ] hard. I think we make it much harder than it needs to be, you know, because we are an ungrateful species, you know. And and I I genuinely blame our media-saturated society. I blame advertising. I think advertising is the opposite of therapy.

Yep, you know the purpose of therapy if the purpose of therapy is to create a sense of wholeness and wellness in someone, then advertising is the opposite. Advertising is designed to make you feel malcontent, like you don't have anything; you're not okay; you're not okay; you'll never the one message you'll never hear in any advertisement is you're fine; you're fine; everything's fine; you don't need to do anything; just be who you are. You'll never hear that, you know, because it has to be there's something wrong. But if you got this car or this watch or this towel or this whatever that you would then you'll be happy, you know. And then it just becomes a horizon that forever recedes and just keeps receding, and then people wonder why they're so miserable, why they make their partner miserable in their misery. But the truth is, like it it's not that [ __ ] hard; like it's not that hard. You're so lucky; we're all so lucky, man. We're we're a day above ground; it's a good day, you know. That was the thing about hospice is is working as a hospice volunteer, like I would walk out of a nursing home or someone's house where someone was imminently dying, and I was like a Zen monk, like a samurai, like I could hear the rainfall, you know, and I would just stand there and be like, I'm not dying; like I'm not in that situation. I don't have progressive multifocal lucal and cyop. I can talk; like I can like I don't I'm not D like I'm dying, but I'm not imminently dying, like and what a set of problems not to [ __ ] have, you know. And like we're real lucky in that regard, you know. And if you have a partner who like loves you and is grateful for you and is kind to you, I don't know anybody that's like, yeah, she's grateful and kind and really nice to me and really wants but you know she's not as hot as she used to be. I don't know anybody that says that. I don't think there's anybody. I think that's a fictional character; like I don't think that exists out there, you know. It's a boogeyman; it's been created to like convince people that you know well you have to engage this economy in a particular way. I don't think it's real, like I think that when people treat each other I think a lot of times there's an unkindness; there's a malcontent that comes with like I've met a lot of women that age, and they get mad at the world for the fact that they're aging and they're becoming invisible, you know. They're becom they had beauty, and now that beauty is gone, there's nothing more beautiful and attractive than a woman who has gotten into her 50s and 60s and even 70s and 80s who still has a beauty about her. Well, there is something more attractive than that; it's a 19-year-old girl. It's true. But but but what you're saying I think is that there is something uniquely beautiful about a woman who's aging with grace.

Yes, but that's like see I'm very honest about that though because I'm 51, and I'm doing better than some, but like there's an 18-year-old swimmer right now who's got me beat, like if looks is the thing, he's got me beat. Money's the thing; there's a 5-foot-4 dude working in Wall Street a couple blocks down from here got me beat, like so you got to bring something else to the table now. I think I have value, you know, but I'm not going to have it be that it's like well I'm going to stay as hot as an 18-year-old swimmer. I'm not guarantee it, you know, or I'm going to be the wealthiest person; I'm not guarantee it. Like in my line of work, it's not possible to make the money that some of these people make. So what you have to attribute different value, you know, because I'm beat by the 18-year-old swimmer, just like the 19-year-old girl who wakes up super hot. But what is that 19y? She's 19. When's the last time you talk to a 19-year-old? Trust me, I I couldn't possibly date a 19-year-old under any circumstances; we'd have nothing to say to each other, you know. And there's only so much sex you can have before eventually have to talk to somebody, and then you'd be like, wow, this is really something, you know. So I think there's tremendous value in every chapter of life, every stage of life, and we all know too, by the way, you know, a friend of mine said to me many years ago, we were talking about we were talking about the difference between beautiful and hot, and and he was like, and I was like, what do you you know what you're using those like synonyms? And he said, no, no, they're not synonyms. He's like, haven't you ever met a woman who was beautiful, but she wasn't hot? And I said, yeah. And he goes, okay. And haven't you ever met a woman who was hot, but she wasn't beautiful? And I was like, yeah, I get it. And he said, yeah, that that's a confidence thing, like that's a confidence; that's a how you carry yourself; that's a and that's a tremendous thing. I mean, I think that has tremendous value. I think a lot of a lot of value in men and women is a function of confidence. I think a lot of what people see in me as a professional is my level of confidence, you know. And and and again that's that's something that we can generate internally; it isn't something that you can buy.

How many how many years have you been an attorney? 25? 25. You've seen some crazy [ __ ]. I've seen a lot of crazy [ __ ]. What's the what's the craziest? Let's cover some of the topic, like what's the craziest prenup you've seen? Crazy PR stene has already gotten some traction, and that was that it was it was the woman lost $10,000 a month in alimony for every 10 pounds she gained during the marriage, which to me was a hilarious prenup, not because of the boorishness of the provision but the fact that as a lawyer all I could think about was how to game it, cuz I was like, okay, so there has to be a baseline weight on the date of marriage, so that day she should have like pennies in her pockets and heavy shoes, and then on the day that there's a divorce there'd have to be a weigh-in to see how much weight she gained, and she could be like a wrestler the week before, like wearing the sweatsuit like that, and it just showed me something about humans. But no pre I mean listen, prenups people put in fidelity clauses all the time, even against my recommendation, and then you have to define like well what is sexual? Cuz because if you say well you will lose a certain amount of money if you engage in sexual behavior with another person, well what is sexual behavior? Is it oral genital contact? Genital to genital contact? Is it digital to genital contact? Is it sexting? If it's sexting, what crosses the line between flirtation and sexual? Like so you you know lawyers what's funny about lawyers is how we have to [ __ ] quantify things all the time, like so people will say like you know um well I want a clause that says that he's not allowed to introduce the kids to a girlfriend until they're in a uh long-term relationship. Okay, how do you define long-term relationship? Like you have to define it in some way, and most of the time when you try to define it you're defining it with more vague subjective concepts. Well, a serious relationship. Okay, you just said the same [ __ ] thing, you know. Well, like a relationship likely to lead to cohabitation or marriage. Right? Said the same [ __ ] thing, like we got to pin this down. Well uh that they've been together for at least six months. All right, so six months. So if they're together four months and get married, he can't the kids can't meet the person, but if they're married if they're together six months and have no intention of getting married then it's a serious relationship and they can meet the kids. Like we think in generalities, but as lawyers we have to do things in detail. So to me, like that's the stuff in prenups that's hilarious is people try to uh mitigate by contract things that you really can't, you know. And and and so lawyers have to be put in the position of explaining to someone see like the the thing that makes my job so fascinating is is we are we are trying to apply contract rules and very like finite legal principles to people breaking up, like there is nothing more human and visceral and emotional than a breakup, and now we're applying the rules of evidence and like the the the structure of a courtroom to that trans that's insane, like that's an insane that's like saying there's a massive conflict; let's throw guns in. Like it's like, wait, no, don't throw guns and throw like pillows in; may they hit each other with the pillows, but by the way, they'll hit each other for real with the pillows, you know. So like you got to say like well I don't know what you want to throw at them, but don't make it anything that could be a weapon, you know. But the legal system like I have to tell people all the time like they'll come in and say like oh my ex is you know um uh really like denigrating the children, like denigrating me to the children, and I'll say oh like what what's going on? They'll be like oh well he's just like you know letting them like you know use their phones whenever they want to, and I'm like okay that's there's not a judicial solution to that problem, like your ex is an [ __ ], like your ex is an [ __ ], like a judge can't order him to stop being an [ __ ]; it doesn't work that way. There's no order like you are ordered to stop being an [ __ ], like so it turns into like very specific kinds of behaviors that you you sometimes have to say to clients like look I can't you and by the way you married this person, like you married this per this awful [ __ ] person; you married them, you know, because why? Cuz you wanted to wear the white dress and do the whole thing for Instagram, like what what was it, you know? Like you thought they were a fixer-upper; you thought they wouldn't be like they were this way. Like rarely rarely rarely does a person say oh my God they were the nicest best person, and then in the marriage they just turn into this villain. It's usually oh well ever since the day we got married they were controlling and nasty, ever since we got married they were this way. Okay, so why did you marry them, by the way? And when you say well from the day one of the marriage they were this way, great, why'd you have three kids with them? Then there was at least nine months between each of those kids that you could have rethought whether you want to double down and have another kid with this person, and yet you had three kids with this person, and then you come in and say to me, fix it; fix it; get a person in a black robe to order this person to be different than the way they've been for the entire time you've known them. I'm not going to be able to solve that [ __ ] problem; it's not going to happen. There's not a judge who's gonna I'm not Batman; I'm a lawyer; like I can ask judges for orders; I can ask judges to enforce orders; that's it; that's my superpower, guys, like I don't have the ability to fix your terrible choices, like you had kids with an [ __ ]; I'm sorry; you had kids with an [ __ ]; you're stuck with that [ __ ] now; you're going to be a grandparent with that [ __ ] now; you better learn to live with it; you got to figure out a way. And again, we can mitigate some of the damage; I can get some financial awards put in place; I can get a schedule put into place; there's lots I can do; I bring tremendous value to this transaction, but I can't fix it; that's an unsolvable problem, like you had three kids with an [ __ ], and and every once in a while cuz I'm human I'll have a long week and I'll get really tired and I'll just not be able to filter, and I'll say that to a client, cuz like a client be like I don't understand why we can't fix this, and I'm like, who the [ __ ] could fix this? Like I can't fix this; this thing was so broken when you got to my office; I can't fix it; I can mitigate some of the damage; I can improve things, but my God, you want me to fix that problem; there's no way; maybe a Hitman could fix that problem, but then you have whole second-order effects of other problems.

What's the craziest behavior you've seen between couples as they're separating? I mean, like, oh, I I mean, I've people lose their minds when they're separating sometimes. So I've seen, you know, I mean, I've seen everything from from you know the ridiculousness of people clearing out bank accounts and you know taking and hiding things. I mean, cash is always a very funny thing, like people sometimes have hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash in their house, and all of a sudden it's just [ __ ] gone, and there what are you gonna do? Like they can't go to the police and be like, hey, I have all this cash that I illegally put aside and didn't pay taxes on, and I need to make a police report that it's missing now, like you're not going to do that. And you get to see the real oh yeah nitty-gritty of what people's lives are really like, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know people can create a facade of what how oh no, listen, I have to say something; I know how full of [ __ ] everybody is, like I I I mean, listen, I I see it, you know. I see all the hashtag blessed on Instagram, and then I know they were in my office, you know. Like I I see with cele I've had celebrity clients who you know when they were publicly talking about our marriage is very strong and any rumors about our marriage, I mean, well, they're in our office, like they're already killing each other, like there there's so much dishonesty about relationships, like people it's just like the wealthy people that they're wealthy until they're bankrupt, you know. Like they walk around; they're flying private, and then they're you know they're they turns out they're $20 million in debt, you know, because they just did a great job; it's just like credit, you know; it's like consumer credit, like that's all like it just it just borrowed excitement about their relationship; it's not real, like people's perception, and again that's a social media thing because you're living your gag reel while everybody else shows you their greatest hits, like and that's why I just it's the most toxic [ __ ] thing in the world, like don't don't look at that; like look at the opposite of that honestly; that's what hospice is; that's what your channel is; look at the opposite of that. Yeah, look at how [ __ ] bad it could be; look at how bad it could be; look at the problems you could have today. Have have you seen like murders, things like that? Oh yeah, well, not Mur than God, not murders. I've seen attempted murders. I had one client who went to jail because he hired a Hitman to try to kill his wife, and he got caught; there was a dateline about it, and you see me in the back of the shot one. And um I had a client whose husband stabbed her 17 times and ran her over three times to the car, and he didn't kill her; she was in intensive care for a really long time. How did he do that? How did he like he just like set her up and yeah, he told her he had to meet her at a parking lot uh was the Sheron Crossroads in MAA New Jersey, and uh he said he had to drop something off related to the kids or whatever, and she came by herself, and uh he stabbed her a bunch of times, and then he uh ran her over twice with the car. Oh wow. She lived. She lived; she has some scars, but she lived, and he's in prison for

The rest of his life. But I mean, it just shows what a [ __ ] up the guy was. He couldn't get that right. Like, you stab somebody how many times and run them over twice, and they're still alive. Like, that's crazy. What is it that make us makes us choose these partners that are clearly, you know, in that situation? I think that he obviously had a screw loose, but I think um, she must have too, though. You know, she was—I mean, she's my client, so I don't really see her, you know, as plainly. I I don't see her as honestly maybe. But um, no, she wasn't she wasn't crazy. I think she um, I think people have a tendency to sometimes overlook, particularly women. There's a lot they'll forgive, you know. Like there's a lot—like I'm always shocked by guy female clients will come in and be like, "Oh yeah, and he was cheating on me with this person." I'm like, "Oh, and you didn't leave?" And they're like, "No." You know, I was like, "All right," you know. I think to myself, I'm like, "Wow, I could get away with a lot more [ __ ] than I give myself credit for." Women are very forgiving. Women think they'll change men. Maybe what's that saying? Women women go through a relationship hoping they can change men, and men go into a relationship hoping it'll never change.

That sounds like something Orion would say.

Yeah, I I agree with that. I mean, I certainly think that I think that um, I see a lot of female clients who are willing to overlook the foolishness and stupidity of their partner in some way. Um, the problem is is they roll their eyes at it, and the rolling of the eyes—like you might as well divorce the guy. Like it's it would be more dignified because I think you're going to lose them no matter what. You're just going to lose him in a worse way because there's there's nothing worse than being being lonely when you're with somebody. You know, if you're lonely and alone, that's fine, but lonely and you're sitting next to somebody—that's [ __ ] bad. I had a friend who once said to me that he knew when a relationship was over when in the middle of sex he thought, "One of these days I've got to get laid." Oh, and I I understood what he meant, which is that I I think there are times where we are in a relationship and feeling lonely, and that's a real red flag, you know, because that means we're not really present or our partner's not present, and and the tougher question to ask is why do we feel that way at that moment? Like, what's going on? Is it me? Is it her? Is it us? Is it the dynamic? Like, how do we get back to where we saw each other still and we felt seen and we didn't feel lonely, you know? Cuz it's really the opposite, right? Like that that initial rush we were talking about before—that's like the opposite of lonely, you know? And that's why I've said like New York City has its own unique brand of loneliness because there's something about when you feel alone and you're surrounded by people in this incredibly dense population and yet you feel completely alone because no one interacts with each other, no one talks to each other, there's nothing friendly going on, you know? And and so I think that's a piece of it. I think that that there's a I I've seen people forgive insane things. I've also seen—one of the things that still fascinates me, and this is a very female thing—how women will, in competition with other women, fight for the love of a guy who's complete piece of [ __ ]. Like, so like she's married to this guy; he is no [ __ ] prize. Like, not good-looking, not a lot of money, whatever it might be, just utterly [ __ ] useless. Like a guy you look at and like, yeah, just [ __ ] good riddance. To bad rubbish, go live your life; there's a lot of other people; go find another one. And he's cheating, and instead of "He's cheating, so I'm out," it becomes, "All right, well, I'm I'm going to win this battle," and then the girlfriend is like, "No, I'm going to win this battle," and they're both fighting over this [ __ ] dumpster fire of a man, and you're looking at it going like, "This has nothing to do with this guy; this has to do with you want to win. Like you want to win over her; you want to win the beauty pageant or whatever pageant it is in your mind," which to me these two women should both be like, "[ __ ] this guy," and both split. Like, but but there's something about like that woman versus woman competition for a mate that is like a whereas men—I I just don't see that as often. Like if a man's woman is cheating on him, he's not going to be like, "Well, I'm going to win her love back." He's like, "[ __ ] her," and that's that. He's out. He's out. And I've said it before that that's why we're so different. When a woman finds out a man's cheating or a man finds out a woman's cheating, the man says, "Did you [ __ ] him?" and the woman says, "Do you love her?" Because the value is different. Like in in in our minds, that value is different. And and I I think there's something fascinating about that, but it also shows why, like Shakespeare is saying, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Like I have never seen the level of vitriol that I've seen in some of my female clients or the spouses of some of my male clients. Like I I have seen people who do not let go of that brutal hatred that they have for their partner. Like that they just—it it becomes a defining characteristic of who they are. What a toxic way to go through your life. Very toxic way to go through life. You know, my my first interview with you, I talked about the the hand job guy.

Talked about case the handob guy?

Yes. And that that case was still going on at the time.

Oh, it was?

And she saw it. She saw—she was pissed. She was pissed. Her lawyer said to me like, "Yeah, she saw you talking about K." I was like, "How do you know I was talking about this case? I I could be I could have lots of hand job cases. There could be tons of them," you know. Like, in fact, there are, you know. Like people are not as unique as they think they are, you know. But I remember thinking like, you know, it's how many years later, and there's still no insight on her part. There's no—she doesn't calmed down at all. She's as angry and bitter as she ever was. Like, and all I could think is, "Didn't you want more for your life than this? Like you're letting this person define your existence. Like you're letting your hatred for this person, who by the way you loved, married, had children with, can still have children with and have to co-parent with—like your defining characteristic is the depth of your hatred for this person, which is in no way dissipating and in fact is only—it seems to be solidifying as years pass on. Like that's who you are. Like that's what a horrible thing to be. Like I can almost think of nothing worse than that. Like what what is your defining characteristic? My hatred for another person? Like that's my defining characteristic? Like like what an unbelievable—like why why would any man ever want to be with that woman? Like why would any woman want to be around that woman unless they were equally bitter and miserable as that person? Like why would children want to—grow up in a home with someone who's that angry at someone those children love? Like wouldn't couldn't you just have the dignity and grace to go, "Yeah, he's a [ __ ] idiot. He's an idiot." Like this guy was so immature that he couldn't express his needs, and he had to like go and, you know, do dumb stuff at a massage parlor. Like he couldn't just express it, or he didn't have the courage to say, "Hey, you know, I'm unhappy. I think we should end this thing," you know? Like, in steady—and again, you know, if you talk to the guy, like he had a good excuse. He was like, "Hey, listen, I didn't want to—the marriage—like I just thought, all right, we don't have a sexual component anymore to our relationship, and now we'll just be like, you know, people running a daycare center together, and I'll get my sexual needs met in a way that's not going to threaten the the the health of this marriage." It's so awkward to have these conversations.

Then I mean, like, yeah, but it's—

lot—

You know what's more awkward than it? Three years of litigation.

Right. Right. I mean, so—and millions of dollars in counsel fees. Like how do you present the idea of a prenup to somebody you're about to get married with? I think again, I think what you say is there's a prenup no matter what; it's just written by the legislature; it's written by us. I think you see it as an invitation to talk about the value we give and the value we receive. I think there's something very romantic about that. I don't think that has to be sterile. I mean, I was joking earlier about like the contractual nature of it, but like what is more loving than saying to your partner like, "When do you feel the most loved by me? I want to know. Like I want to know because I want to make you feel that way as often as I can for as long as I can." Like, and and and don't you want to know like when I feel your love? Like cuz if you if you do ask, I'll tell you. Like I'll tell you. And and what a fun conversation to have. Like what a fun thing to do. Like to sit there and to say to each other like, "Oh, you know, you know when I when you did that thing—" Like because I tell you something, you'll be shocked. You'll be shocked. Like because we're we're from different species, men and women sometimes. Like like I I I I'm always astounded when I hear women talking about a man and they're like—I remember once listening to two women talking about a man, and they were like, "Oh yeah, and he like does that thing. Like he has a he wears like a cross or something, and you just see it like sort of sticking out of his T-shirt just a little." "Oh, I love that." I'm like, "Wait, what? You love what? What is that you love?" Like that's [ __ ] whereas a man—like we'll say like, "Oh, you know how sometimes when they have their hair up and then that one little hair kind of—" "Oh, that one little hair. We love that one." I don't know that women know that. Like maybe they do. I don't know. Maybe that's why there's so many of them have that little hair. I don't know. But I don't care; it doesn't make me like it less. Like you know that little one little hair. So like what if what if we could just in the prenup conversation—like clearly I want this to work; I'm marrying you. Like clearly I want this to work. Like we're getting married; clearly I'm invested in this thing, but I'm human. So can't we just have a conversation about what is it you like so much about me and what is that I like so much about you and what will be our language if I'm failing you? I want you to tell me. Like, Mark, if you thought this interview's not going well, I want you to stop me. Don't let me go for 3 hours and then go, "That was all right." Like stop and go, "You know, Jim, you're a little this; you're a little that." Like [ __ ] tell me. Like I can give you what I can't give you what you want. I don't hear what you don't say. I can't give you what you want if I don't know what the [ __ ] you want. You know? And a lot of times I don't know. Like nobody quite knows. So why not say, "Hey, we're getting married; we're doing this thing. I want it to stay as good as it is now, or even if possible get better. I can't imagine how it could, but what if it gets even better? And how do we do that? Well, we do that by you tell me what you like about me; tell me 10 memories of me that make you feel the most close to me; tell me three things I do that make you happy; tell me three things I do that make you want to [ __ ] me." I'll do the same. Like, and then what what's the downside of that? What's the downside of that? What's the cost? Doesn't even cost anything. Of course, no one's trying to sell that to you online. It doesn't [ __ ] cost anything. You can't monetize that advice. Like there's nothing there's no there's no secret to that. You know, like when people are like, "Well, marriage is hard work." If you consider paying attention hard work, yeah, I guess it's hard work. Like that's insane. I remember someone, a friend of mine getting married and saying to me, "Oh, well, we just moved in together, and it's like, you know, it's kind of hard," you know. Like it's hard when you first move in together. And I was like, "No, it's not. It's like [ __ ] putting Ikea furniture together. It's amazing." Like you mean moving together is hard? No, it's not. That's ridiculous. Like so I don't think that that's—like I think that the prenup conversation can be really really—it's actually should be the easiest conversation in the world because what are you saying? Like, yeah, you want to frame it as like, "I'm concerned this marriage isn't going to work." Like that's not what it is. It's, "Listen, marriages generally don't work; more often than not they fail. So how are we going to not let that happen? Cuz I don't want it to happen; you don't want it to happen; I don't want it to happen. Great. And in 10 years, you hope we're still like [ __ ] and we love each other and we're excited about each other. Right? Okay, cool. I feel the same way about that. So how are we going to do it? How are we going to do it?" And if the other person goes, "Well, I don't know; I don't want to talk about that," I would be like, "All right, well, then how committed to it are you? Like what why can't you just say like, 'Yeah, I don't know; I don't know either,' but you know what? We're the two people got to figure it out. We're the only two people got to figure it out." So again, most people only talk about their relationship when they go to marriage counseling when the marriage is already—the wheels are coming off. Like I would actually say there's a there's a school of thought that would say from the beginning of marriage go to marriage counseling or before marriage go to marriage counseling. Start talking about this [ __ ]. Like my son just got engaged. My older son just got engaged. 27 years old, got engaged. I'm all for it; I'm cheering for him, but [ __ ] talk about it, man. Like talk about it. Talk about what you're doing with each other; talk about what you love about each other; talk about when you feel good and when you feel bad; you know, when your when your partner hurts you. Tell me. Communication is a—it's the whole thing. But again, man, there's no way to monetize it, so no one wants to talk about that. You know, everybody wants to talk about the complicated stuff. Everyone wants to talk about like, "Oh, go to this seminar; buy this thing; or take this"—you know, it's not what it is. Like it really just is like just talk to your partner about, you know, what they want. And again, it doesn't have to be—if you're not verbal, because I understand not everybody's like as as comfortable in this the world of extemporaneous speaking as I am. That's fine. Like it's job security for me. But write something to each other. I don't know. Like something—draw a [ __ ] picture. I don't care. You smoke signals. Like if it's it's either worth something or it's not, you know? And I I happen to believe it's worth—it's your primary relationship. Like that's huge. That's huge. And if you give a [ __ ] about it, or just get divorced; get divorced like civilized human beings. Let's just go, "Well, it didn't work." Like why does it have to be like it was a failure? It was awful? It wasn't a failure. We had some kids; we had some time together; we had some laughs. Okay, didn't work out. Most marriages don't. Let's move on. See if we can roll the dice again. Maybe we will, you know, with somebody else and figure it out. And maybe we'll be better at it in some other permutation down the road. Maybe we we couldn't unlearn the habits that we learned together, and we couldn't undo it, but maybe the next one will be better at it. Like why can't you just have that like, "Yeah, we'll always have Paris. It was great," kind of thing? Like I don't I don't have any hate in my heart for any ex I've ever had my whole adult life.

Yeah, that's great. One great way to be.

Not one—most of them I have some tenuous contact with, you know. Like we'll text each other now and then, or we'll email each other, and it's always with love. I'm cheering for them. I'm cheering for every [ __ ] one of them. I really am because they all help make me the man I am. They all deserve happiness. You know, maybe I wasn't the right one for them, but you know what? Like somebody is. I hope. And so many of them, you know, of of of my my ex-wife is very happily remarried to a great guy who's like great for her. He's [ __ ] nothing like me. We're totally different personalities. Great guy though. Perfect for her. You know, I have a lot of like ex-girlfriends who are remarried or who married now to really like great guys who suit them very well, most of whom are absolutely nothing like me, which is a good sign because we didn't work out, so hopefully something different will work out. You know, but again, even even my son—like I don't look at his coming marriage as like, "Well, it's forever, and it's magic, and it's—" Dude, I don't believe in fairy tales. Like, dude, you know, put in—stay in touch; connect; do your thing; try to stay connected. If you don't, okay, it's not a failure, you know? But but like try to maintain it if you care about something; maintain it. You know? But if you don't maintain—if you care about it and you don't maintain it and it falls apart, don't [ __ ] whine. Take it like a man. Like don't don't sit there like—don't not [ __ ] your husband for seven years and then you get mad that he's paying someone to jerk him off. Like that's [ __ ] stupid. Like you know, if if you're sleeping with him regularly and he never told you there was any deficiency in the relationship and that he's off doing that, you have every right to be angry. No problem. Every right in the world. But don't you dare ignore your partner's needs. Don't you dare not tell your wife or girlfriend how beautiful she is and how wonderful she is, and then when some other dude tells her she's beautiful and that she's wonderful and she ends up flirting with or hooking up with that guy, don't you dare be indignant about it. I don't care you pay her [ __ ] bills; I don't care that you bought her a Birkin bag. How hard hard is it to tell her she's pretty? Like and if you stop doing that, that's on you, man. And I'm not saying the penalty for that—like the wages of sin is death—or the penalty for that is that someone has has carte blanche to cheat on you, but how dare you be surprised, or how dare you have that righteous indignation that all these divor—I have all these divorcing people that are just like so indignant. "I can't believe you did that." Really? You can't believe it? Really? Cuz I don't think that's true. I think you I think why you're really mad is that you absolutely believe it, and you absolutely had the opportunity to probably move out of the [ __ ] way of that thing, and you chose not to. Instead, you chose to—it's like somebody being like, "I can't believe I got fat." Really? You ate Doritos all day long and never worked out. You can't believe you got fat, huh? It's really shocking. Like I'd be—if you were like, "Oh, I've been training for a marathon, and all I do is eat lean proteins, and somehow I got fat."

Okay, go see a doctor now. There's a problem. But like most of the time, of course, you're getting fat. Like, of course, your relationship's falling apart. You're not doing anything with it; you're not paying attention to it; you're not doing preventative maintenance on it. And that's the thing: if people did preventative maintenance on their relationships before and during the marriage, I would be out of business, period.

Jim, you're amazing. I'll say it again: you're a National Treasure. I'm so glad you think so. It's very funny to me because the first time you reached out to me, I remember thinking, "I don't really have anything to say that would be interesting to anybody." And the fact that, like, I can't walk down the street now without people being like, "Hey, you're that divorce lawyer," and then tens of millions of people have seen this stuff, is still shocking to me because I still don't—I was actually on my way over to talk to you today, and I thought to myself, "I don't really have anything to say," like, "I don't really know what it is I would say," like, "I don't really have anything to say." Two hours, two hours, 15 minutes? Has it really been two? I have no idea. If you told me it was a half an hour, I'd be like, "Yeah, probably." You go another two hours? I probably could, because I... I but I see... I still don't know why this is interesting. Like, I, I really am baffled. It's what we all struggle with most.

What's funny to me is, so I've had a number—always respect people's privacy—but I've had a number of very successful and well-known people reach out to me and say, "Oh, I saw yourself on the Underbelly interview." You have a lot of celebrities that like your stuff, and um, and some of them even like reposted clips of it on their TikTok or whatever. And uh, and I think to myself, "Oh my God, you're so good at like acting, or you're so good at business, or you're so good at this," and this is hard, like the relationship, and it really is. It's like a great equalizer, like we're all struggling with this. And isn't there something really beautiful and great about that? That like, no matter how much money you have, whatever gender you know, presentation you have, whatever, like we're all just kind of struggling with this. And like, isn't that beautiful? And couldn't we just say like, "Ah, [ __ ]," like, "I, I really want to be good at this," you know, "and I'm not," like, and and maybe if we said that to our partner, like maybe they would be like, "Yeah, I'm really nervous that I'm not good at..." Like, "I don't, I don't get why you were interested in hearing what I have to say, but you are," like, "you're interested in hearing what I have to say." Okay, so then like, I'm just going to trust that and lean into it, be like, "Okay, cool. Like Mark sees something in me. Maybe I don't see it in myself, but he sees it in me," and like there's something really beautiful about that. And that's what love can be like. Love can be like, "I don't know why this person loves me, but they do," you know, and and like, you know, I know why I love them, I think, you know, and and okay, and tell them, like tell them, tell them all the things you love about... Love is all we all need. That's it.

The older I get—I have to tell you, you and I are both, you know, in the later end of middle age—and uh, yeah, the older I get, the more that I'm like, yeah, I hate to sound like John Lennon, but like, love is all you need. It's all you want; it's the only thing we're, we're here to try to cultivate, and it's the thing that feels the best, and it's the thing that feels the most rewarding, and it's defined differently by different people, I think, in terms of what, what they love, you know, the love of a pet, the love of a romantic partner, the love of a child, the love of whatever. But yeah, it's just love, man. The two lessons that have been the hardest learned for me, and the ones that I didn't figure out until I crossed the line of 50, was that really love is all we're looking for, and that the hardest thing in the world to be is yourself. Like, it's so hard to be yourself; like the world is constantly trying to turn you into something different. And like, if you can figure out a way to just be yourself, that, that, that's really the hardest thing to be, but it's the best thing to be, and that's what other people want from you the most.

Yeah, yeah. And it's the thing only you can do. Yeah, you know, it's the, like, like, like you're the only one that can be you, you know, and and there's something really beautiful about that, I think. I didn't get to read the 30,000 comments on, on, on our first interview, um, but the couple of them that I read, the thing that had me always scratching my head was they were like, "This guy's so real. This guy's so real." I thought to myself, I'm like, "Well, okay, yeah, that is true, like I'm, I'm real, like I'm being very unfiltered," you know, but like, isn't—I mean, shouldn't we all just have more room to just be real? Like, to just be honest, like with each other, with our partner? Like, isn't that just the core of what I'm saying is like, just be real? Like, just be real with your partner, be real with yourself. Like, just be honest, 'cause maybe you don't see it, like maybe don't see what you have to say or the value that you bring to the situation. Maybe you think what you bring to the relationship is your looks, or maybe you think what you bring to the relationship is your money, but actually maybe it's something totally different than that. It's something intangible; it could just be something magical. Like there's something magical about love, you know? There's something magical about our connection to each other. So yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. It's always good to see you, though.

Likewise. All right, J, till next time. Thanks. Thank you, man. [Music] I'm in the middle of the mountains, that river running wild, as peaceful as a shadow and carefree as a child. Sunlight singing to me a soft and gentle song, singing, "Soak it all in, darling, for you're right where you belong." Right Where You Belong, right where you B—oh, you been down in that Valley, but came back before too long, right away you belong. [Music] You Been to Hell and Back Again. Nobody knows your story, at least not the full one, 'cause you've learned you can't trust just anyone. Life is dead some heavy blows, some made you strong, but you shouldn't have to work so hard to find where you belong, fight where you belong, find where you belong. You been down in that Valley, you've been down far too long, just find where you belong. [Music] Maybe, as maybe a state of mind, it may be the furthest thing from what you think you find, but listen to that voice inside, it won't guide you wrong. Trust in time, my friend, you'll find the Bri—where you belong, right where you belong, right where you belong. There will still be valleys, but you won't stay too long, but there's a place your heart can heal, there's a place where you can [Music] feel you're right where you [Music] where you where [Music] you you [Music] [Applause] [Music] he