Divorce Lawyer on Signs of a Doomed Relationship | James Sexton

As a divorce lawyer, I have a ringside seat. I see the amount of communications, infidelities, betrayals that start with “You’ve seen the end of a lot of marriages. Do you think that’s the reason that you don’t believe so much in marriage?” God gave 10 commandments. If you believe that, and two of them were “Don’t sleep with people you’re not married to,” “Don’t commit adultery,” “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife.” Those are two separate Commandments. Thou shalt not kill. Got one. To learn how to drive, you’ve got to take a written test, that you know how the rules of the road work. Then you have to get a learner’s permit. Then you have a period of time that’s unw—that you have to learn how to drive. Then you’re allowed to get a driver’s license. Marriage? You can meet a stripper in Vegas, and Elvis will marry you for 50 bucks. Twenty minutes later. People don’t wake up and go, “You know, I’m going to screw my life up today.” It’s a series of small bad choices, and one of the most common ones [Music] is…

Tell me about the idea that you divorce the person you married because that’s it—it’s so obvious, and yet it’s like, “Oh, wait a minute. Yeah.” Well, you know that I mean a lot of people say you you don’t divorce the person you married, right? So that that was kind of what that’s born of. I’ve had a lot of people say to me, “Well, you know that like the when the ring comes on, the mask comes off,” you know, and when you marry somebody, you get to see their their, you know, their true face. But when you divorce them, you really see their true face. And I think to some degree there there’s a little bit of Truth to that. In—in I think Weinstein said, um, “To know a thing, know its limits.” When you push it past its tolerances, its true nature emerges. So I think you you do see a very different side of someone when you put them into conflict with you, right? Like you you you know where loyalties lie when something’s put under stress. I mean, in times of abundance, you know, everybody’s very like, “Yeah, whatever,” gregarious. Whereas when there’s times of scarcity, all of a sudden it’s like, “Well, wait a minute, you know, this half’s mine, or this piece is mine.” So divorce brings out something very primal, I think, in people. Some people—um—but but the idea that like, you know, “I can’t believe that this person is is is being, you know, so petty,” or “I can’t believe this person is so antagonistic or so narcissistic or so focused on themselves rather than the children.” And then you talk to the client, and you get, as a divorce lawyer, the history of the marriage in real detail, because it’s like the clay from which I build my narrative, you know, when I’m when I’m representing somebody in court. And you just see along lines like, “Well, how did you not know like this person is the same person you were married to?” Like I have a client right now who—I’ve gotten—I don’t want to say an argument with my own client, but you know, when at the negotiating table and in the courtroom, I’m going to say whatever has to be said to advocate from my client’s point of view. But behind closed doors, I’m very blunt and candid with my clients. I really try to say to them, “You know, look, I’d rather you pay her than pay me. I’d rather that you you know get this resolved.” And I’ll talk to them about what battles are worth fighting and which ones aren’t worth fighting, because sometimes they don’t see that clearly. Like there was a time in my career where whatever a person wanted to fight for, I would fight for it. And then they’d call me like two years after their divorce and say, “You know, why did we spend $5,000 arguing over this $3,000 thing?” And I’d go, “Well, because you wanted to, and I told you you were going to do that, and you said, ‘I don’t care, let’s do it.’” And they’re like, “Yeah, but you were thinking clearly, I wasn’t.” And I, you know, I get, “Yeah, but…” But when you see people in that frame of mind, you you find yourself being put in the position as as I was just recently where you say to someone like, “Okay, but you know, why do you think like what—there’s some problems that don’t have a Judicial solution, right? Like you married an awful person, and then you proceeded to have two children with that awful person. Like this was your solution to the problem. Like, ‘Oh, I married this person,’ and right away it was obvious they had substance use disorder or mental health issues or narcissistic, you know, tendencies or whatever myriad of transgressions, you know, they were involved in. And then when you went, you know, what, ‘I—I’ll—that’s going to fix this,’ not ‘I’m going to get divorced,’ not ‘We’re going to go to counseling,’ not ‘I’m going to say to this person, if you don’t go to therapy, I’m not going to work with you, I’m not going to stay with you in a relationship.’ Your solution was, ‘Let’s have a couple of kids.’ Yeah, which to me, I don’t know that there’s a solution to that problem. I can create some bumpers. I can get a judge to issue some orders that are going to, you know, keep this person in line. And hopefully everybody drives a little slower when the cops are behind them. So now that they know there’s a judge watching what they do, maybe they’ll put on their best face. But you know, I I don’t think marrying someone changes the fundamental tenants of who they are.

No. And I don’t think divorcing someone… yeah, you see the the organism under stress, but they’re not going to be a fundamentally different… like if they were a fair-minded person during the marriage, if they were someone prone to compromise or someone who would concede the possibility of their own error pretty readily, they’re probably still going to be that. Yeah, yeah. The the idea that somebody transforms into this monster you never saw it coming… it’s… it’s… well, and that’s look, understand that creature in our imaginations, you know, like I I know as a human being, I do that all the time, especially in relationships. Like you always imagine like—because I think there’s so much vulnerability in being in a romantic relationship. Like you’re really showing this person your soft spots, and you’re—you can’t help—I mean, I know I can’t help but think like, “Oh, if they ever weaponized that…” Like I’m sharing with this person such an an, you know, intimacy. People equate intimacy with sexuality, but intimacy is defined as the ability to be completely yourself with another person. And so for me, I know I’ve always found that being emotionally very open with someone and being very like, “Yeah, that that’s the thing my mom used to do, or my dad used to do, or this is like my soft spot,” that like if somebody hits that, like, “Oh, it stings.” And that can be so necessary to have a good relationship, like to be able to say to someone like, “Hey, here’s my blind spot, or here’s the part of me that’s wounded. Like, can we, you know, maybe we can help heal because we break in relationship, and we heal in relationship.” So I think it’s really really important and necessary in relationships to be vulnerable and to be brave in that way, you know. And it has to be scary because it if it’s not scary, it’s not brave, you know. But when you do that, of course, how could you not in your mind go like, “Oh my God, if they they’ve got this, you know, they’ve got this ammo on me, they know my soft spots.” Now—y—yeah, exactly right. I don’t think any of it came from uh, you know, a uh a space alien uh or a volcano. But yeah, I mean, it’s definitely it’s definitely stuff deep inside of us that that I don’t think we can change, you know. Yeah, it it’s—I guess if they’re nickel and diming during the marriage, they’re nickel and diming during the divorce. If they’re vindictive during the marriage, they’re vindictive during the divorce. That’s been my experience, and and and what I’ve seen a lot of people go through ringside, um, you know, is exactly that experience. And and again, the other way, which is like, I was a server for many years. I worked in restaurants all through college and even part of high school and and graduate school. So I’m whenever I go to a restaurant, like I I wildly overtip. I’m mindful of of the demands of that. And when I’m hiring, you know, for my firm, I I have a lot of employees, and every single one of them I make sure that they worked in food service at some point, because once you listen, if you’ve slung, you know, prime rib for $69.99 and gone home at 2:00 in the morning, you know, like if you’ve hustled, sold for an hour and a half for a table to get a $3 tip, like you’re thankful for every… I’m I’m still—I’ve been doing this job as a lawyer for 25 years. I still every day that I go home, I don’t smell like prime rib. It’s not 2:00 in the morning. I’m lucky. I feel… yeah, I’m so ahead of the game because that was such a challenging physically, mentally, you know, like and for for people just love to beat up on their servers, you know. So I am so profoundly aware of that, having done that job, that I try to be really really sympathetic to uh uh to any server who who who’s providing service to me. But I similarly, you know, if you have that kind of approach to people and you’re getting divorced, you’re probably going to be pretty like, you know, laid-back and thoughtful and, “Okay, well, look, I…” You know, like I think if you if you who you are in the marriage and who you are in the divorce is very often the same, and sometimes that’s great, and sometimes that’s awful. Yeah, it’s… have you ever seen anybody who was kind of crappy during the marriage but then stepped up during the divorce? Yeah, I’ve seen that a lot, but it’s usually because they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. I see it’s not uncommon. I always tell clients when when they they get caught cheating or their spouse gets caught cheating, there’s a window, there’s a very short window where where this person feels very badly, usually for what they’ve done, and they’re like, “Okay, I’m going to just throw money at this, or I’m going to throw reasonableness at this and just try to salvage what’s left of being like a good guy or good woman in this person’s eyes.” And unfortunately, I tell most of those clients like, “It’s never going to be enough. Like you could give three quarters instead of half, and they’d be like…” And you’re sure? ‘Cause you better have, ‘cause you stink! Like they just are so mad and they’re so hurt that there’s nothing you can throw at it that’s going to make it better. But then eventually what happens is during that window of like, “Oh my God, I feel very guilty, and let me just throw some things at this and hope that it works,” um, that window closes and turns into, “Well, you know, I did this because you were cold, and you were always so cold, you didn’t meet my needs.” And that’s it. Suddenly it turns it. And that’s a perfect storm because you’ve got the person who’s been cheated on and the cheater who now has the permission of their own conscience to have been cheating, and now they’re just… and was trying to be nice and was trying to be consolatory and now was like, “You smacked my hand away,” and now boom, the gloves are off, and we’re going to throw hands, man.

It’s… you’ve said that marriage is negligent behavior. Tell me about that. I mean, we probably have to define negligence. Yeah. Well, I think it it it fits the definition of negligence. So negligence is a failure to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk of serious harm. Yeah, right. That’s the definition. Black’s Law—you were law school grads, come on. So that that’s—NE versus re recklessness, which is a conscious disregard for a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm. And so you might remember from torts in the first year, the BPL analysis, right? They—I mean, a little bit, really. Yeah, see, I—it’s got stuck in my head, you know. But yeah, and I have one of those memories that like I can I know the entirety of Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt album, you know, but I can very—I can’t remember my kids’ birthdays. Oh, good. But I have the whole… yeah, the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. My ex-wife thinks it’s hilarious. Um, so the reality is is that that negligence is defined essentially as what’s called a BPL analysis, which is the burden of not engaging in activity and what is it relative to the likelihood of harm and the seriousness of harm. So if there’s a likelihood of harm, but it’s minimal harm, then it may not be negligent, if especially if not doing the thing is a substantial burden, right? Whereas so like driving, for example, if you drive, there is a substantial likelihood you’ll get in a car accident at some point, and a car accident can be a very high degree of harm. However, refraining from driving would be very difficult to do, especially in some areas of the world, right? So driving can’t be said to be a negligent activity. Skydiving? Okay, the the risk of harm is fairly high. If something goes wrong, the risk of catastrophic harm is incredibly high, and the problem or the the burden of refraining from skydiving is minimal, right? So that is negligent and inherently negligent activity, right? So marriage, you could pretty easily argue with a 56% fail rate. Okay, so that’s the—is that the stat? That’s the current stat. That’s the current stat. It’s always a moving target, but the current stat is 56. Now, again, that’s just the divorce rate. So that’s the people who went in and filed a divorce and are getting divorced. Okay. What percentage of people stay together for the kids or for religious reasons or because they don’t want to give away half their stuff? Like that’s a pro—I would imagine a fairly high number, but let’s just forget those people. Let’s say that as success stories of some kind. Sure, like the, you know, “What—we’re winning the—we’re winning the battle because we’re not getting divorced. We’re both miserable, but this endurance contest continues, and we’re winning.” Setting a terrible example. Yeah, we’re setting a ter—this exactly right. We are going to hang in there, and we’re going to not get divor—you know, it’s really admirable, I guess, in some way. Is this this 56% of couples or 56% of marriages? Okay, so the people who get divorced like five times, they’re skewing this a little bit. Yes, but that they represent a very small percentage of the population. If you look at just the first marriage failure rate, it’s like 48%. That’s pretty bad. It’s still really bad. I mean, look at it, put it in relative terms. Toyota had a car in the 90s that at a 0.001 brake failure rate, and they recalled the entire line of vehicles until they could fix it. ‘Cause they were like, “That is an unacceptable risk. 0.001, not even 1%.” So let’s use—but let’s use 56, let’s use 48, whatever you want to use. This is a huge number. It is more likely than not that that it will fail. So what is the likelihood of harm? That’s high. What is the severity of the harm? Most people who’ve been through a divorce will tell you it was one of the most traumatic experiences of their life. Some will tell you it was absolutely catastrophic. I mean, any of us who’ve ever had a breakup know like a breakup is tough. A breakup is—you can say to anybody in any culture like “breakup,” and they go, “Yeah,” like we all know that feeling in the pit of your stomach and you know like that we all have that. So a divorce is just that on steroids, you know. Yeah. The trick is to be lonely and play video games by yourself all day. I mean, listen, there’s a school of thought that says that that you know, like not having uh extended relationship with any kind of intimacy and just sort of lead-pipe cruelty and mercenary sensibility is the way to go. I don’t know. I’m I’m not—I don’t know that I’m the expert on the the right way to do it, you know. I I I my mother used to always say that she couldn’t define intelligence, but she could spot stupid a mile away. I I don’t really know what makes people happy, MH, but I know what doesn’t. I know what makes them miserable, and I can see a lot of that in the context of relationship. Sure. And so in terms of negligence, yeah, it is more likely than not going to cause serious harm. So the bigger question on that calculation then is what’s the burden of not doing it, which to me gets us back to the fundamental question, which is if you said to me, “I’m getting married,” the proper response culturally is, “Oh, that’s so great. Congratulations. Congratulations. When? What kind of cake are you going to have? Are you going on an island? Or are you going to do a big thing? Or are you gonna have a band or a DJ? What are you gonna do?” Instead of, “Why?” Yeah, that’s a rude response. It’s a very rude response. But but here’s the thing: why? If I if you were if I caught you in your corporate lawyer days and you said, “I’m leaving the practice of law,” and I said, “Why?” Perfectly legitimate question. Sure. That’s what everyone said. And if you said, “I’m sure”—and if you said, “’Cause I’m going to start a podcast,” what’s a podcast? Anyone who loves you would have said, “This is a terrible idea.” That is exact—a terrible idea. Of course, they did. And listen, now everybody looks back and goes, “Oh my God, I always knew you were going to be so successful.” Yeah, I would have bought stock in you if I could have. That’s what I hear. I I appreci—you and I have a—when I left the firm I was working for 24 years ago and said, “I’m going out on my own. I have no clients. I have nothing. I just have the hubris of youth and a law degree and and a lot of confidence at that time,” an irrational level of confidence at that time. I my skill set only just recently caught up with my level of confidence. And everybody who cared about me was like, “You can’t—this is not fi—the dreams, man. If you build it, they might not come. Like that is not a great idea.” And now, of course, all of them are like, “We always knew you were going to be so successful as a lawyer, and you always had such a skill level.” But look, the the truth is that that I think we need to ask the question, “What is the problem to which marriage is a solution?” Because I I’m stunned that we don’t ask that question when someone says, “I’m getting married.” If—why is it weird to say “why?” This is a technology that fails the majority of the time. Why would you do that? And if you say, you know, I think most people have never really even contemplated that question, even married people have not contemplated that question. They they just haven’t. Why did we get married? It’s just the thing you do. It’s assumed you’re going to do it. But I I work from the—and maybe it’s it’s my own pathology—but I work from the preposition that tradition is peer pressure exerted by dead people. It’s really what tradition is. So when you just do something because that’s a thing we do as a species, I’m very quick to say, “Right, but why?” Like why? Because there’s lots of things we do that when you go, “Why?” Oh, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Like that that adds up. You know, we do it for a reason. If something is a tradition, I can work from the assumption that there must be a logic behind it. But if the proof, the undisputable proof out there is that this does not seem like a good idea, like marriage, why would you continue to work from the assumption it’s a great idea? You should definitely do it, and it’s a default mode. And if you don’t do it, you have intimacy issues. There’s something wrong with you. Like if you say, “I’m in such a happy relationship, but we are never going to get married,” it instantly becomes, “Oh, what’s going on with gy—to me—issues here? Yikes!” And the truth is, it might be just good sense. I got a buddy who got married because his wife is from another country, and it was a huge pain to have her stay here, get pregnant, have a kid, citizenship of both the European country that she’s in, and he can’t get insurance there. So I was like, “That’s a good reason.” Great reason. That’s a great reason. It’s a pragmatic reason. It’s a practical reason. Uh, if you say, “Look, I have terrible health insurance, and my soon-to…”

Be my spouse, my romantic partner. I've been with for a number of years, has phenomenal, low-cost health insurance that would cover my dental, optical, and everything. Perfectly pragmatic, good reason, you know. Religious. We have—we come from a religious tradition, my—my spouse, I, or my soon-to-be spouse and I—that we believe religion, you know, that marriage is a covenant from God, or we believe it's a sacrament, or we believe that it's okay. Cool, good reason, good reason. I don't know that it's going to make it work any better, but it certainly is a good enough reason. But just asking the question—the fact that asking that question is considered rude in the face of the overwhelmingly bad statistics—right, I just don't understand why that's a weird thing to say.

No, it's not. Although you're in a unique position of credibility when it comes—I think probably a lot of people don't really want to hear your opinion when they—you're—until—I'm definitely the skunk at the picnic. Like I—I—I—people are—are simultaneously fascinated by what I do and terrified to let it anywhere near.

Well, it's like a hitman, exactly. It's like, "Oh my God, my friend is so interesting. Do not invite that guy to the Christmas—"

Yeah, yeah. People love the—"What do you do?" "Oh my God, you must have some stories," and they're real into it. But—but I think they—they—they all want to believe that they're personally exempt from the things that I've seen and that the people in my office are somehow different than them and that they're, you know, completely—like the rules that I see don't apply to them. And I think that's, you know, there's something in us that wants that. I get it.

Well, they think you're just Real Housewives all the time, reality TV show plates thrown across the kitchen. When I would assume the story, correct if I'm wrong, is more like, "Yeah, they got married and it was great, and then, over time, stuff—" They just stopped really being—

Yeah, I mean, you know, there is a lot of the Real Housewives stuff in my office. I've actually represented some of the actual Real Housewives, um, but I—I definitely—the majority of divorces—the majority of divorces don't need someone like me. That's one thing. So—so you don't need me if you're just two people, lower middle class, middle class, upper middle class, two kids, a house, and 401k, and you just got to split it up, you don't need me for that. Like I'm—I'm—I'm a chainsaw; I'm not a scalpel, you know. Like you—you use me when—when—when there are stakes and when you need—I'm a weapon, you know. Like you—when you need a weapon, you know, I'm a weapon. That's my job. And so the kinds of cases I handle tend to have a crazy component to them, or at least the potential for crazy.

So you want me—like there's a saying that police officers carry guns so they don't have to use them, you know, and so sometimes people hire me so they don't have to use me. I see—like they hire me, and I'm the threat of—"Oh yeah, those five magic words: 'Please call your first witness.' Like those are going to get said if you take the wrong turn here, so let's get this thing done." Like the—the better I get as a trial lawyer, the less often I have to try cases. It's like the better you get as a fighter, the less often you have to fight, probably because people look at you and go, "Yeah, I'm not gonna—I'm not gonna swing on that guy." So the best trial lawyers in this city—like we all know each other, but we end up just negotiating with each other; we don't have trying cases against each other that often because it's a doctrine of mutually assured destruction. We both have nukes.

Sure. But the majority of marriages end with a whimper, not a bang. I mean, they're—they're two people that just grow apart in some fashion. And I've said it before that, you know, people—people's relationships fail, whether married or not. We fall in love really fast, and it's instantaneous, almost, and chemical and pheromonal and all that stuff. But we fall out of love like we go bankrupt, or like we gain weight: very slowly, and then all at once. And so it's like—it's—it's this quick rush, you know. And look, I mean, you know, falling feels like flying for a little while, you know, until you hit the ground, right?

But I get that—like we—we fall in love super fast as a species, and then when we're falling in love, or anyone around us is falling in love, we absolutely—like we just love being around it. Even—like you listen to those same group of women, you know, that you see in the restaurant—like rolling their eyes, talking about their husband who's just such an idiot, you know. And then one of the women in the group who's either divorced or not married yet starts talking about a guy who she's seeing—"What did he do? Oh my God, that's so romantic! Oh my God! And then where did he take you? Oh my God, that's so amazing!" As if that guy is not, in five years, going to be who she's talking about the same way they're talking about current spouses. And—and vice versa, the men—it's the same thing. It's like the—you know, right now they're sitting there talking, rolling their eyes about their spouse. Well, and the buddy who's single—"Oh my God, this woman's so great! She's perfect! She's amazing!" This is—this is a glitch in our programming, I will tell you. Just personally, we do not let our—my group of friends does not let—we don't allow—if a guy's like, "Hey, my spouse is doing this thing"—if it's serious, we'll talk about it. But if it's just like, "Oh, she's so dumb," this—we're like, "Hey, man," because that—that feels like that's the beginning or symptom of something that is not healthy.

Yeah, I applaud you for that. I've been very vocal about the fact that I think we need to stop trash-talking our partners.

Yeah, 100%. We need—we need to—the world is beating the crap out of us enough. Your—your partner should be—I'm not saying they shouldn't see your blind spots; I'm not saying they shouldn't call you out when you get it wrong. I think that's one of the best things about being in a relationship is having somebody who—with love—like with your good intentions and—and heart, you know—like you know it's coming from a place of love, and they're like, "Hey, man, you're not seeing this, but this is what this is like." I love that. To me, that's the whole reason I want friends like that; I want a romantic partner like that; I want all the people—I want coworkers like that. Like I want people who aren't afraid to—to tell me the truth. I don't want a bunch of yes-men around me. But it's—there is something so toxic about creating an environment where the default mode is everybody talking trash about their partner because, I mean, just the pain to me of—like this person who's supposed to be your cheerleader, your main support—it's like the only person who's supposed to be on your team all the time, besides maybe your parents—

And yeah, I mean, I think anything comes out of your mouth if you're in a—in a relationship, you know, anything comes out of your mouth—would it come out of your mouth if your partner was standing right there? Even interacting with the opposite sex, or—or—or whoever, you know, your—your preference would be—like, you know, if you're with someone romantically and you're talking to someone else who's a potential romantic partner, you know, and you're talking to them in a manner that you would not be speaking to them that way if your partner was standing next to you—that's a problem, as far as I'm concerned. I think that you should—you know, and the truth is—is not just from a morality place; I'm not saying it from there. I'm saying in terms of the love you want. Because if you behave one way around your—your spouse or partner and another way in their absence, then really are you ever going to feel your spouse or partner's love? Because you're going to be like, "Oh, well, they love what they think I'm like, but I'm not actually like that." So then you created a situation where you—you never really will feel their love.

Yeah, that's an interesting—it's a very interesting point. I think it—especially—I—I think media is a little bit complicit in this, right? You have like the Everybody Loves Raymond, where the guys are all idiots and it's funny, but it should stay on TV only. And then you have like the locker room talk with guys, and it's just—you have to draw a line. So I'm not saying you can't be like, "Wow, that girl that you're dating right now is—is beautiful, man. Good for you." That's fine. But when it's like, "Oh, our wives are all fat and ugly," it's like, "Hey, you know, eventually you're going to start believing that if you don't already."

Yeah, and—and also, I—I think you're onto something because I do think sometimes people do it from a—a place of—of trying to like team-building, right? So you don't want to be—if you're in a room full of people who are all talking about how their spouse sucks, you don't want to be the one voice that goes, "Oh, no, mine's great." Like it feels rude; it feels rude to say to that person. So you're like, "Okay, I got to find something about mine to say bad." But—but the truth is—like I—I—I just think long-term that's super toxic, and I think it's one of the most antagonistic things to—to happy relationships.

If you look at people—I talked about this with—with Lex—uh, Fridman when I was on his show. He—he was talking about—I think he was talking about Joe Rogan, actually, was good friends with, and he was talking about how Joe's been married, you know, for a really, really long time and how when he talks—like his wife looks at him like—like, "Oh, like this guy's so smart! He's so awesome!" You know, and like what a lovely thing to have. And—and by the way, like you would not ever hear Joe Rogan say a bad thing about his spouse ever. Like you—you search the archives—you've heard him say some crazy stuff about a bunch of crazy stuff, but you'll never hear him trash-talking his spouse. And—and that I think is really admirable and is probably why he has one of the more successful marriages out there for a long period of time because this is not a person who's trash-talking their spouse.

Yeah, yeah. It's—it's interesting how that becomes a default for—like you said—for so many guys. But again, I think it's easy to snap out of that, too. You just decide that you're not going to do that anymore. And when your friends—or when you're trying to—when you're trying to lead the way on this—I mean, I just say—like how did you—you brought this up in a show—you say like, "How do you guys—how did you guys meet?" Yeah, and—and then it's—it—it changes the mood. And I—I will force my friends to tell me this story repeatedly. And look, one buddy of mine was like, "Why do you keep asking me that? You've heard this before." And I'm like, "Hey, I'm trying to snap you out of this."

Yeah, pulls you out of it. You know, there was a scene in Godfather 2 that I always really liked where—in the—you know, playing the young Don Corleone is—uh, sitting in a theater with his—like buddy, one of his consiglieri friends, you know, this before he's The Godfather. And he says, "Oh, you know, this girl—this girl who's in this show—I'm so in love with her! She's the most beautiful woman in the world! She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen!" And she comes on the stage, and he says to De Niro's character—like, "Look, isn't she beautiful? Isn't she the most beautiful woman you've ever seen?" And you know, classic De Niro, you know, Godfather, Don Corleone, he says—you know, essentially in Italian, but it's translated—he says, um, you know, essentially—"For me, there's my wife. But yeah, that's great." And I thought, like, "That's so money! Like that's so—like that's so—like yeah, you know, for me, there's my wife, but you know what? Like that's great. That's great." And I have a couple of buddies that—like that's how they talk about their—their wife is that they're like, "You know, listen, I—I found my girl, but that's great for you." Like are you—and you could say it and them—like, "Oh, man, check this girl out. Isn't she stunning?" And they're like, "Beautiful girl. I mean, listen, for me, there's my wife, but that's great, you know." And I—I think there's something so—um—there's so—I mean, again, this is my conception of masculinity—like I think there's something very masculine and cool about a guy who's like, "Yeah, like I—I picked a good one. Picked a good one, and I'm happy."

It's also—like you said—a lot of this is just peer pressure nonsense, or—like machismo crap. You actually—had—speaking of looks, you said something—or I read something you said—being—essentially, I'm paraphrasing here—"Being hot is one of the most lucrative things you can do." I'd love to hear you talk about this, 'cause most people would never—actually—no one didn't say it out loud, but everybody knows it's true. I mean, it's like these people won the genetic lottery. Like being good-looking—being attractive is incredibly valuable. Look, you've either got to be super talented, rich, or good-looking. Which one of those is the easiest thing to—to be? Right? There are people that are just born like that—just born six foot and gorgeous, like—and that's it. And—and if—if you get to pick which of those things you want to be, right, you know, whether you want to be, you know, born rich—that's certainly nice. But to get rich, most people have to work at it. Brilliant—to be brilliant—like look, some people are born with a high IQ, but there's still a lot of work that has to go along with becoming educated in some fashion. Being good-looking? Yeah, okay, you got to take care of yourself; maybe have to eat the right things. Once you pass a certain age, you have to work out. Once you pass a certain age—me, I think for your 20s you can kind of get away with any number of things.

Sure. But I think the truth is—yeah, like I—I look at—I do a lot of divorces for people in finance. I'm a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, so we are the hub of commerce. Many of my wealthiest clients, worth hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, are in finance. They're partners at huge firms—like Goldman Sachs and any of the other, you know, investment capital type of firms. And they typically marry yoga teachers, models, um, artists, you know, creatives—people who do not really—they're not lucrative earners, but they just happen to be extremely attractive. And many of my clients—what a coincidence—in finance—yeah, they are not the most attractive; they are not people who, if you went in a room and said, "This woman and this man," you would go—"They're not on the same level in terms of their looks." So I don't think it's profane or inappropriate or insulting to anybody to say that there is an aspect of love that is an economy, yeah. You know, it's—love is a—a feeling; love is a verb—like to act with love. But love is an economy, and I—I think we should be a little more honest about that in the world. I—I think as a divorce lawyer, I don't have the luxury of being able to pretend that it's not. I understand why we want to pretend that—"No, it's the heart, and that's all that it is, and there's nothing else to it." There's an economy to it, gang. Like we all know that.

Well, nobody's being—nobody's really being honest about this, right? Like if you ask—well, everyone's being honest—a lot of people being honest—acting honestly—no one is saying it out loud. I'm saying the quiet part out loud, right? The—the guy would probably never—well, it depends on the guy, but he's probably going to go—"You know, we just clicked; it was great." He's not going to go—"Yeah, I'm a fat, schlubby dude who smells bad, but I'm—" Shocking to me because that's—you would think—I mean, some of these guys are—are—are the most intelligent people—like they're the smartest person in the room, and they understand—like some of them are quant people—that they understand—like they understand mathematics and numbers in a way that I never will. They're not risk-averse; if anything, they lean into risk. So they're constantly doing the calculus in their head of like—risk versus reward. So these are smart, tenacious, hardworking, forward-thinking people who are disciplined, and when it comes to love, they're the total opposite; they're just idiots, and they—and they really legit don't see what's plainly in front of them. They know she's not—it's not just that you click; it's not that she's an old soul. So the fact that she's 25–30 years younger than you doesn't mean anything 'cause she's an old soul, or you're young at heart—like it's—it's just not totally—and again, I just think there's something silly about that—that it would just be so much nicer and more honest to say, "You know what? I bring a lot to the table in terms of resources and stability and security. She brings a lot to the table in terms of energy and enthusiasm and beauty. And she brings to my life a—a—a type of beauty that inspires something in me and makes me feel so alive." And I mean, as a heterosexual man, like when I walk past a beautiful woman and smell the perfume of her and the—like it's lovely—like it's a lovely feeling. I mean, even if you never act on that—even if you never have any interaction with that woman again—just being in the presence of beauty is a lovely feeling, you know. And I'm sure that—that—I had a conversation with a—with a bisexual friend of mine, and I said, "So do you just experience that all day with like every gender?" And he was like, "Yeah." And I was like, "My God, like how do you get anything done?" You know, I was like—"You walk down the street and—"

Raises the bar.

Yeah, you're just surrounded by gorgeous people, you know, of—of both genders. Like what a lovely gift to be able to—to experience that. But the truth is that there's—I just think there's nothing wrong with saying that—with saying that, "Yes, part of what I really like about this person is their beauty, their youth, and part of what this person likes about me is my stability and financial security, and the fact that I want to use my resources to make their life more comfortable and beautiful." You know, I—I've had plenty of cases—very often prenups—where—so they're still married—where, you know, "He brings a lot of finance to the table; she's a creative person who"—you know—"unfortunately, we don't reward many of the arts and the creative pursuits of the world out there—like we don't—you know, a person who does Reiki and is helping a bunch of people or who works as a therapist or a teacher isn't making that much money compared to someone in finance who's like really creating nothing; they're just moving numbers around columns; they're making billions doing it." What's wrong with saying, "You know, I want her to be able to do this beautiful, wonderful thing for the world or for the people who she serves and to—to also be able to enjoy abundance and beauty and travel and all the wonderful things that come with resources"? So what's wrong with that? I don't think there's anything wrong with that as long as it's honest, right? As long as everyone is being candid with each other about what that exchange is made up of.

Yeah, I think because it's not romantic, or it's considered like distasteful to say, but why isn't it romantic? I think that robs the romance.

I 100% agree with—like I don't have to—I—I often quoted the Joseph Brodsky poem that I like very much called—um—um, a song—where there's a line where he says, "I wish I knew no astronomy when stars appear," because there's something about knowing astronomy that makes the stars less beautiful. But I don't know that's true. I don't think—I—I think—I think if anything—like I have a—one of my best friends is an art history professor, and—um—I like to go to museums here in New York; it's one of the reasons I live—

In New York, and whenever I go to an art museum with him, because he knows like the life history of every artist—way more interesting that way. Oh my God, like I love Francis Bacon, but then when he was like, yeah, he was like a closeted homosexual who was raised in this, you know, Roman Catholic society, Irish Catholic society, and then you see like the pain in his art and like the the the the kind of bondage that's a big theme in his art, it makes so much more sense, and it's so much more—it doesn't rob it of its beauty or anything; it makes it more beautiful because you understand it better, you get your hands around it.

Honestly, I don't—I'm not an art guy at all, but if I go on a really good tour where somebody's like, "What does this look like to you?" and I'm like, "Oh, it's like a photograph, but it's a painting," she goes, "Exactly! He painted something in motion, and the way he did that was to make it look like a photograph," and I'm like, "This is a million—" I would have walked right past that and been like, "Where's Van Gogh?" Take a picture, look at it, admire it, leave. It was just—and isn't there something beautiful about like the truth? You know, as someone who who who's involved in full-contact storytelling, I always tell my clients like the truth just sounds different; it just feels different; like you can just feel the truth sometimes, and I really think there's something very beautiful about truth.

And I think in relationships, like there's there's a real beauty to be found in being radically candid with each other—yeah, about what you're really feeling, what you're really afraid of, what really, for good or for bad, like is is hitting you the wrong way. And that's why in my my my book, I talk a lot about—I call it "hitting sin" now, but essentially, like being radically candid with your partner about when little things rub you the wrong way, in a non-attacking way, so it's not met with defensiveness, and in a non-confrontational way. I recommend things like an email, so a person can parse it carefully, and then they can digest it in their own time, talking about these little seeds of hurt before they grow into these like bushes of resentment, you know. And I think it's a whole lot easier to control it when it's just that little seed. My my wife is good at this; she's—and she's helped me get better at this. She'll say something like, "Hey, you know, the other day when this happened, that kind of just made me feel like you weren't on my team in that conversation." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's, you know what? I was up—I did that, and I—you're right. I almost—I kind of should have seen that coming. Maybe next time I won't do it that way," or what. And it's so—yeah, there's so much value in that discussion, and there's so much value in also learning then how the other person thinks.

Because I'm sure in that response, like your first response is, "Okay, well, first of all, I'm sorry because I know I didn't mean to hurt you. I know that I know that I'm sure I did—I'm sure I did, and so I apologize for that. 'Cuz I know I didn't mean to, but here's what I was thinking—like, here's why I said that, because it wasn't—well, good because I wanted to hurt you. It was—no, I said that because I—I understood it this way, or I didn't realize that bothered you, and that's why—" like. And I think when you understand how this person's thinking better—like, I—I have found—I said it earlier, and I'll say it a thousand times—like, we break in relationship, and we heal in relationship. And I think when you've had difficult relationships, or you've had unquote-unquote unsuccessful relationships that that result in not a happily ever after, but instead ending, and then, you know, moving in your own directions and starting new relationships, you can look at each of those as like, "Okay, now I know a bunch of things about what doesn't work for me, both in terms of what I could do different, or what I want different in a partner, or what I won't do again in terms of how I handled something." And I'd like to think we just get better and better at this if we approach it the right way—mindfully.

Yeah, you're—you're on to something. I will say every time I've had a long-term relationship in my life, I'll go, "All right, what worked in this one?" This isn't even necessarily a conscious process; this is just like, "I really like these five things about her; these other things were the deal breaker—like she was, you know, super XYZ, or she—" Like I dated a girl who was really great, but she was very religious, and she was like, "I think gay people are all going to hell," and I was like, "I'm—I'm—my kids—that bridge too far—I can't do it." And we talked about this a lot, and she's just like, "I don't even dislike them; I just think that they're all going to burn in hell," and I'm like, "That's right—I'm not raising kids in this environment," and so I was like, "I want these eight things that were really great, if possible, but I can't deal with these two things that were not great," and I—but I found that friends of mine who are divorced and like a mess, they tend to make the same mistakes over and over again, or they're stuck in this weird pattern. I go, "So you broke up with her because of this? Your new girlfriend has all of those same downsides, but she's different in other ways. I'm so confused." Well, this is the reality of like people not being in therapy, as far as I'm concerned. I—I really do think that that like one of the things that—one of the things I'm so grateful to have seen happen in my lifetime is the normalization of of of mental health services—when people go into therapists, because I think one of the best things you can do for yourself is like, "Okay, I find this attractive—okay, why? Like, why—why is that attractive to you? Is there something—is there a wound that you had that that helps heal, or is there a wound that you had that that repeats for you, and therefore justifies that original wound? Like, so are you just hurting yourself? Like, 'Oh, this is a familiar kind of pain, so I'm just going to keep signing up for it?'" Like. And and for for men—I don't know if this is true for women because I've never been a woman, but I know for myself as a man and many of my male friends—yeah—is like who my penis is interested in and who I should be interested in—like, who's good for me—are very different, and I don't know if that's true for women. Like, I don't know if the clitoris is like, you know, it has its own mind of like, "Oh, I like that—that's really bad for my prefrontal cortex—like that's really bad for the rest of my biology." And so I—if that's the case—like, I'm not saying don't indulge that—like, cupcakes are bad for you, but you can have a cupcake once in a while; it's okay. You know, just know like this is not my new eating plan, and this is not like what I'm going to eat every day. If this becomes a staple of your diet, you're going to be unhappy. So, you know, I don't mind if somebody says, "Listen, I—I find this very attractive—I don't know why—" Like does desire—you know, when I was teaching my own children who are now adults—when I was teaching them, because I had a lot of gay and lesbian friends at the time they were little, and I live in Chelsea, so I'm—I'm primarily a gay area, and I was always surrounded by, you know, gay men and—and so explaining to my son's like, "Yeah, well, you know, some—some boys like boys, and some girls like girls, and some boys like girls." You know, "How I like your mom? She has pretty blonde hair, and I think Mom is super pretty because she has pretty blonde hair. Well, some people like, you know, women with dark hair, and some men like men with dark hair—like people like different things, but what's nice is someday you're going to figure out what you like, and hopefully you're going to like something, and someone's going to like the same thing that you like, and the two of you are going to hug and kiss each other, and that's one of the nicest things in the whole wide world." That was like basically my 101 explanation. Both of my sons ended up quite well-adjusted and in happy relationships.

So the truth of all of this is, you know, we can't explain certain aspects of our desire. Mh, so why not just acknowledge like, "Yeah, I really like that—that it's not good for me; it doesn't work for me; it leads me down dark roads—I've learned that, but I still really like it, so I might have to just look at it from afar and go, 'Yeah—'" Like listen, I used to smoke cigarettes many many years ago. I quit smoking 20-plus years ago, but I still look at someone smoking a cigarette—I can't watch *Mad Men* and not go, "Oh God, that looks so good," you know? Like whiskey—yeah, listen, you tell me I'm dying next week, I'm going to start smoking again for sure, you know? Like, and I'm sure the minute I took one puff, I'd be like, "Oh my God, how did I ever do this?" Guar—but I have to tell you, like in my mind, like I know it's really bad for me, but it's something that was alluring to me and and looks compelling to me. Maybe the reality of it wouldn't be as good as what it is in my mind, but I've learned enough to know I'm not going to tempt fate, because I think if I went and bought a pack of cigarettes and started smoking them, within a week I'd be smoking two packs a day, so I'm not going there. It's—you got to treat it like drinking—well, or drinking, depending on how you drink, I guess, but like for me—yeah, not at all. I mean, for me, it's rarely—I'll have like an Old Fashioned—sure—it's very occasional. And you get like you said—guys who only date like really bad-for-them people—true—women too—there's tons of women who date the wrong man over and over—in my own circle, I guess—sure—and you just go, "When are you gonna—when are you going to learn?" And it's like this is—you don't have whiskey for breakfast generally, but this is our—this is a a biological blind spot; it really is—like it's—and and I think it might be part of the programming—like it might be part of our biological programming is that that there there are some things that I think are just hardwired into human beings—like if you—if you talk to any woman who's given birth, they will tell you that right after they gave birth, the thought of ever having a kid again—they were like, "Oh my God, I'll never do this again—it was so physically painful—it was so awful—it was so horrific"—and like six months a year later, their brain goes, "Oh, wasn't that bad?" It's like, "Wait, what—what was that?" Yeah, they forgot something in us, but I didn't forget that—puts that aside and goes, "Nope"—like memory is kind for that reason, you know? And and so I think it's the same thing with relationships; it's—there's some voice inside of us that I think comes from some deep part of our biology, our wiring, that says, you know, "Oh, no—it's gonna be different this time—like this time it's love—this time it's real," even if you're self-aware. Man, I—I got to be careful—I don't make this person too obvious.

I have a friend that I knew when I was younger and that I still—a hedge fund guy—like, well, smart guy—very smart—he only dated the most—the most horrible, meanest women that he could find. And his parents were both fine—I met them; they're great. Yeah, uh, his sister was a sweet gal. If—if he found somebody who was just kind of horrific most of the time, that's what he liked, and he—he goes, "Yeah, I just really love this," and I'm like, "You got to be so careful." Married a totally perfectly nice woman—thank God—uh, but it was—it was that—may have been that—that phenomenon that like, you know, that he found something exciting about the conflict and the chaos, and that's okay—like I said, it's—listen, if you're a thrill-seeker, you might look for that, but if you had—thank God he had the good sense to say, "Longterm, that's not what I'm going for—like I'm going to go for something longterm and and committed that's going to be a lot calmer than that." I mean, he would—he literally—there were girls—he is in the minority—were girls where we go, "I think she's like a psychopath," yeah, 'cause she wanted to be a—I remember this one—wanted to be a brain surgeon, and we were like, "Wow, she's so smart," and then we found out that one of the things she liked was cutting people open and then writing her initials on people's skulls when she was cutting their skulls open, and I go, "Why?" And she's like, "Just so I'm there, and they can never get rid of me," and I was like, "Well, that's creepy as hell—that is creepy—that's super creepy"—and yet—very creepy. She sounds very interesting. Well, you know what I mean? Like, she sounds very interesting—like I—if you gave me a choice between someone who on the weekends wants to make like tuna noodle casserole and go to like the local like parade for like whatever, you know, Arbor Day, or someone who does like that—yeah, sign me up—like I—I'm going to—I'm—I don't know that I'm going to want to marry either of those people, raise children with them—I'm not doing that with either of them, but I have to tell you, if you ask me which of those two you want to talk to, I—I—this—the brain-carving chick—I want to talk to her—that is interesting to me. I'll—in—she's probably divorced by now. Well, who knows—um, you might already know—you might—yeah, you might already know her.

Maintaining a healthy marriage is like maintaining a healthy weight, and and I think—I—I don't know if you said this, but don't wait until your teeth are falling out to go to the dentist—that's sort of to our earlier point, right? About—I said that—I—I definitely said that because my sister's a dentist, and I always use her as the example. My sister always says to me that, you know, "By the time you have a toothache, it's too late—like there's a bunch of things I could have done for you before you got a toothache, but now that you got a toothache, it's too late." So that's the original title of of my first book was, "If you're in my office, it's already too late." Oh, nice. And so I—I genuinely believe that by the time divorce is anything other than a fleeting thought you have when your spouse does something really boneheaded, it's—it's pretty far along—like you're starting to really have a toothache at that point. So I—I genuinely believe in preventative maintenance. I think that it's much easier—as—as the metaphor you said—it's—it's much easier to maintain a healthy weight than it is to gain a ton of weight, then try to lose all that weight, and it's also worse for you to do it that way—like it's better to just try to create a steady state and understand that every now and then you're going to put on a couple pounds or lose a couple pounds unexpectedly—more often put on a couple pounds unexpectedly—um, but it's the same kind of thing—you're occasionally going to have turbulence with your partner—you can't—it's hard to relate to yourself much less to another person in such an intimate world and antagonistic world—like you can have—you know, that's why I always say to people like, "Why do we learn how to fight with our partner while we're in a fight with our partner?" That seems really stupid to me—like—like why not when you're getting married or starting a relationship and you have this abundance of goodwill together where you just really like each other more than anything in the whole wide world—like when you're first dating? I love talking to people who are just drunk on the like how into each other they are—like that—that stage is so fun to even be around—like it's—it's why we watch rom-coms and stuff—like it's so fun to watch people who are just like enamored with this other and everything they do is awesome, and like even—they like things they do that are kind of annoying—they're like, "Oh, and this is like this little picadillo with their personality—" Like, you know, you know that five years later it's going to be like, "Why are you breathing like that?" But at that—that first date or that fifth date, it's like, "Oh, and he breathes so weird—it's so cute!" Her nose whistles when she sleeps—like that whistling is going to drive you nuts and finders—but—but again, what is it about—it's about how you're approaching this thing, and and and like you're—you're—you got Christmas in your eyes all the time with this person. So to me, figuring out a way to sustain that high, or like how to continue to to stand in the presence of that, is is really the key. I—you know, the book I'm working on now is about endings, and it's about how when we put ourselves in the mind of the ending, we—we really savor everything that leads to it much better. So like, when we are in the presence of death, we're very much alive; when we're in the presence of illness, we're grateful for our good health and mindful of our good health; you know, when we see someone who's lost their job, we're so grateful for the job we have; you know, when—when there's so much—we can—like every new beginning came from some other beginning's end, and there's something really beautiful about what I do for a living in that I see all of these endings, and they all came from people that were facing in the same direction at one point—like at some point they were like, "Let's do this!" There's 8 billion people in the world, and let's—let's pick each other, and let's hold hands, and let's try to navigate it together and try to help each other go through it, and you know—like it's so beautiful—it's such a worthwhile sentiment—maybe it's a foolish sentiment, I don't know, but it's so human. And and the fact that somehow they—so many of them—50% or more—lose the plot—yeah—and I—I just think there's something beautiful about that—that we keep trying—we keep trying to not lose the plot, and we keep stepping on the same landmines over and over and over again. And so I think preventative maintenance is probably the key, because you all started in the same spot, which is madly in love with each other, so why not have conversations about, "Hey, how are we going to keep this on track when we disagree? When we fight, what should that look like? What do you need? Do you need a minute, or are you the—like, 'Okay, we got to deal with this right now—we can't go to bed angry' type? Because if one of us is that, and one of us is the other type, we got to figure out how to balance that the right way," you know—like have some—some of those conversations when there's still so much goodwill between the two of you.

Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Remember, you can also enjoy the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our podcast feed is a treasure trove of insights from intellectuals, authors, spies, artists, athletes, pioneers, engineers, former bosses, and business leaders, all sharing their amazing stories and secrets to success. For more information, click the link in the description. Now, back to the show. It sounds to me like you believe in love, but not necessarily in marriage. Is that accurate? I—I think those two things are not um causal, and I'm not even sure they're correlated. I—I think—I'm a huge believer in love. I think love is the greatest thing; it's the why we're here. I think that it—it—I mean, it's literally why we're here, and it's also—I think the purpose of of life—I mean, the greatest things—I—I've been loved, and I've loved, and there is nothing in the world that has the the value of loving and being loved, as far as I can see. And so that's the greatest—it's—it should be the—

Height of what we're looking for in life and looking to create in life. I don't know what marriage has to do with that. Marriage is a contract. Marriage is a legal status. I understand and I get pillared in the comments every time I do an appearance saying, "You know, well marriage is a covenant and people marry because of God and everything is okay." That's their belief system. Listen, my beliefs don't require that you believe them, so that's fine. Like if you believe that, then knock yourself out. Like, fill your boots, buddy. But you know, it's not going to change the divorce rate. I, I think ultimately interesting, I believe in love and I believe that marriage is a conception of the state, and it's when I'm talking about marriage, I'm talking about the law. I'm talking about the legal status of marriage. I'm not talking about the sacrament of marriage. I'm not talking about religious covenant marriage. I am talking about the legal status. And, and, and to me, two people who are very in love with each other and one of them says, "Let's get the government involved," makes no sense to me.

Is I don't know if I have ADHD, but it took me like 10 hours to do in law school what other people could read in 3 hours. Yeah, was the same one. It was not man. And I remember briefing, remember when you have to brief the cases? I remember in theory we were supposed to; that took me so I was not, I was not a great law student. I, I, I was, I'm, I'm a good lawyer, and I was not a great law student because I, I got there and I went, "Okay, so like how does the curve work?" And it was very steep at the time, and I went, "Okay, so most of these people want to work for," I went to Fordham Law School, most of the people were, were fighting to work for the big firms, Cravath, Swaine, all the firms that I do divorces for their partners now, and they all wanted to do that, and I was like, "Yeah, that's got—" I'm not even applying for those jobs. I want to be a divorce lawyer. And so I knew it didn't really matter. Just give me a C and set me free.

And then when I figured out how the—I saw almost every movie that was out from 1997 to 2000 because I went to school at the Lincoln Center Campus of Fordham Law and the Sony Pictures theater, yeah, which was a 10-plex, was right there. So instead of going to class, I would just go to the movies. So I saw, I saw a lot of—if we ever play Trivial Pursuit, there's any questions about a movie that came out between '97 and 2000, we're good. Yeah, I did go to class, but I did not buy the books after my first year. First of all, they were like $1,000. Yeah, they were really expensive, and you didn't need them. But you did a good—you obviously did something right, 'cause you were in like a white-shoe firm. You went to Michigan or a top 10 school. They were like, "We'll hire you if you have a pulse and you're not a complete a-hole. You don't like carve your initials in people's skulls," right? Yeah, even then, probably could have—would there was having, having divor—having represented some partners at big firms, there's some—they're into some kinky stuff. They—I'm sure they are. The more buttoned-up somebody is in their professional life, the more they get their freak on in their personal—I've seen every manner—I'm not a—I'm a kink-affirming human being, but I, I have seen every manner of perversion. It's very, you know—I trained for many years, I trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and um, the academy that I train at, there's a lot of uh, women who train there as well. And one of the women I've trained with for many years is a dominatrix in the city, and she's an African-American woman, jacked like you wouldn't believe, like just so muscular, just physically an intimidating presence and phenomenal at Jiu-Jitsu. We've rolled together many times, and she, she throws me around like a rag doll. It's, it's something to see. Um, but we've come to develop a friendship over the years, and uh, when I found out what she does for a living, you know, she said, "Oh, well, something about, oh, this is useful in my profession." I said, "What?" You know, "What do you do?" I thought she did security. She must, you know, something where she, she had to restrain people. She does insecurity, and she said, "Oh, I'm, I'm a dominatrix." And I said, "Uh, oh, that's so interesting." I said, "So we both spent a lot of time with judges," yeah, and she laughed, and she's like, "Oh, you have no idea." And, and, and the conversations we've had is, you know, the more powerful the, the man, the more likely it is that they're paying somebody to, you know, consult them for having a small penis and, you know, smack them around. And I mean, listen again, I'm a kink-airing guy, but, but the more—it's just still the more buttoned-up somebody is, you know, the more that, that very often they have a really, really interesting personal life.

Goodness, yeah. Some of the stuff that, I mean, you know, Apple is single-handedly responsible for the majority of divorces I can see right now. I was going to ask, man, iMessage, iPhone, the fact that Apple's always creating these ways for you to get your messages everywhere has just doomed so many marriages because the kids on the iPad, and all of a sudden the mistress or the, the paramour text message comes up and like, "Who's, who's Bob? You know, who's Sandy? What's this picture of?" And it, it, it causes absolute chaos. But the more that, you know, you as a lawyer read people's, you know, text messages with their lovers and their infidelities or their, you know, their early in the marriage or relationship, their exchanges with each other, the more you just go, "Wow, the private lives of people is just fascinating." Yeah, man, it's uh, you, you've seen the end of a lot of marriages, and I'm—is that do you think that's the reason that you don't believe so much in marriage, or were you kind of always this way? Did you have personal stuff that came into it? Were your parents all right?

Um, no, my parents were married for over 50 years until my mom passed away, and my dad was at her bedside when she passed away, and, and uh, she, she had a long battle with cancer, and um, they had a lovely marriage. I think like any long-term marriage, they had their challenges within it, yeah, but they loved each other very, very well, and um, their lives were better for each other's presence. And so I, I certainly did not—um, and my own marriage ended in divorce, but was a very friendly divorce when my kids were quite little, they were five and seven, and now they're 25 and 27, um, and my ex-wife's still one of my close friends, and, and she's been remarried for over a decade to an awesome guy who I welcome as he's been part of my family now for, for many years. So um, I don't think it was a personal vendetta with marriage. I think it's just doing what I do for a living, I, and, and looking at the numbers in an honest way, I just think, you know, marriage is, is we put things on marriage that that don't belong to marriage. We default to marriage as a good idea when clearly it is not a good idea for many of the people who engage in it, and I just, I'm just not sure why there aren't barriers to entry. Like we've created as a society a lot of barriers to exit, even with no-fault divorce. It is challenging and expensive to get divorced even if you don't have any property together, even if you don't have children together. It's still a couple of grand and some headache to get divorced, and at worst it can be millions of dollars in counsel fees. So with so many barriers to exit, okay, and anytime a barrier to exit is even slightly modified, everybody goes on the right, in particular, goes ballistic and is like, "How are you making it so easy to get divorced? You're going—people are just going to run," which, by the way, is so funny to me. Like if you're like, "We have to board up the doors because if we don't, everyone's going to leave," it's like, "Well, then maybe they should leave," yeah, like if everyone's so miserable, like maybe this isn't a good idea, gang, right? Like 'cause if the idea is like, "Well, we have to marry to procreate, and we have to pro—" Like, really, guys? Like, are we the ideology of a virus? Is that what's going to be our governing principle now? Is that like we have to reproduce why? So that they we can create offspring who can reproduce? Like, wow, that's the whole goal, huh? That's the whole nobility of our society. That's what we're heading towards. So I, I genuinely don't, I don't have a thing against marriage when it works. I've, I've said in the past, and again, I—everything I say I get pillared for; it's why I don't read the comments. You shouldn't, YouTube, I don't—is I don't—the lowest comment in—I, I don't because I just don't. And, and I get emails and like, I just don't pay much attention to it because again, my beliefs don't require that you believe them, gang. And this isn't like, I'm not an academic. Like, I'm not here like speculating, and I'm, I'm, I'm down here with my nose in it, and you can sit there in your academic world or in a psychologist's chair wherever you're calling me from, right, and say, "Oh, yeah, well, that's not true." Okay, maybe it's not true of your marriage. I, I've seen thousands of marriages end. It's—you're like Neil deGrasse Tyson arguing with a flat-earther. It's like we're not even talking the same language, man. And the truth is like, even when—says some of it is speculation, like what I'm doing is—no, this is what's going on. Like, this is the reality of it, and I'm, I, I listen, there's lots of reality I don't like either, but I have an honest relationship with reality. So I, I genuinely think that marriage when it goes right—I have said marriage is like the lottery. You're probably not going to win. And I don't mean that that there's infinitesimally small chances of you winning; there's a pretty good chance. And, by the way, unlike the lottery, there's things you can do to make a marriage successful. So the lottery is pure luck, but what I, what I mean when I say that is, look, you got to be in it to win it. So I get it that people buy a ticket, but why not be honest with yourself about the likelihood of this failing and then A, being vigilant about not having that happen, and B, having plans in place for if it doesn't, in the form of a prenuptial agreement? Because every marriage has a prenup; it's either one written by the government, right, or one written by the two people that like each other so much that they go, you know, out of eight billion people in the world, I'm picking you. So to me, I think you're better qualified—these two people—to make the rules that are going to govern their coupling than the future legislators because I, I, I've very rarely seen a problem that I go, "You know, politicians definitely improve that." Yeah, like there's no way, there's no way I would sign up to have the most fundamental truths of my life—where I live, my kids, my finances—governed by a shapeshifting legislature of whatever state I happen to be in at the time the marriage breaks down. Are you kidding me? You're going to let that govern? So yeah, I, I do not—I am not a fan of marriage in the sense that I think the way we currently do it doesn't make sense, but I think love is the greatest thing in the world, period.

It's, it's interesting, right? Because if you have a prenup or a postnup uh, that you create, you can dictate a lot of the things that will happen in your relationship with your children, with your assets. If you don't get married, you almost—is there a way to legally to create a legal contract that is binding that says like, "Hey, we're not getting married, but we have to live in California unless we mutually agree not to?" Yeah, there's a whole—and, and we have a whole body of case law because before marriage equality, a lot of what we did were cohabitation agreements for, for same-sex couples because marriage wasn't an option. So we used to—I used to, early in my career, I was part of a group; I was a consulting attorney for Lambda Legal, and I was with a group of lawyers—one was some, some were estate planning lawyers, some were real estate lawyers, and I was kind of the family lawyer of the, of the group—and we used to go to Episcopal churches and give—let them—they would let us use their space in the state of New York, all over New York, and we used to give seminars on what same-sex couples could do since they couldn't get married. So like you can put your property in an LLC, and you can create a partnership agreement, and you can actually like treat your, your coupling like it was a corporation where you each bring—like, you know, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak both did different things for Apple, but they both had, you know, ownership, you know. So we, we created all these interesting like hacks and ways to do stuff because we didn't have marriage equality, and so that was like what we did. So now, yeah, there's tons of ways—there's a long body of case law supporting people's ability to contract to whatever they want to contract to. Like you and I can go out tomorrow and buy a property together and say, "Okay, I'm investing the money, and you're going to fix it up, and then we're going to share in the proceeds the following way," and you know, you can have essentially the equivalent of a prenup in a relationship where you're not getting married. Yeah, that's—I, I bring this up because I think a lot of people listening are, "Oh, I can't, I can't do that because I'm not getting married, so I'm totally off the hook," and I, I want to sort of highlight that that's not—yeah, no, that's not the case. I mean, you know, not marrying certainly does protect from certain types of exposure, and most jurisdictions have eradicated common-law marriage or what we used to call like palimony, which is like the alimony you pay to a person you weren't married to. Um, most jurisdictions have gotten rid of those concepts. Um, so the truth is what you really want to connect with is what is it that we expect of each other? What is the—and again, it's like a business partnership. In any business partnership, like it's an economy, you know, we're both bringing—like you would never look at your business partner and say, "You know, you seem very concerned about money," like, right? You're my business partner, of course, like please be more concerned about money. Why? Why wouldn't you? You're—like if you're moving in with someone and they said like, "Well, you seem very concerned about like where you're going to live," right? Yeah, like that's a pretty normal thing to be concerned about. You know, like I'm giving up—I'm going to move in with you, and I'm going to give up where I live, and if we break up, you're the owner of this property, so I'm going to need—because you make a lot more money than me—I'm going to need money to get myself a place. Um, you know, I'm going to need to be able to take the furniture that I brought, or if we buy furniture, like if I buy furniture for this place, does it stay here? Does it go with me? Like, why not have a conversation about those things and then codify it in some way? I don't think that's unromantic. I think that's pragmatic. I think that it's an act of love to say to your partner, "Hey, I understand what you're scared of. Like, I know you trust me, but you know, it's okay to, to go—" But if—but if you know—because why wouldn't you? Like, why, why wouldn't you? If somebody says, "Hey, I know you're a good driver, but I'm going to wear my seat belt," you know, like if somebody puts on a seat belt, I don't look at them and go, "What? You think I'm a bad driver?" No, you might not cause the accident, somebody else might, or maybe you look like you're a good driver, but you're going to get distracted somehow. Like you're certainly not going to intentionally—I'm not putting on the seat belt because I know you're going to intentionally drive us into a wall. Like that's a ridiculous thing. But, but you wouldn't be offended. But, but having any convers—again, it's this bubble that we've created as a society that if you even dare be pragmatic when talking in matters of love, you somehow don't believe in love, and I think it's the biggest crock of—that's ever been sold to us. I, I think there is something, in my view, incredibly romantic about being honest with each other about, "Here's what I'm scared of. Here's what I never want us to turn into. Here's what I worry we would turn into, and I don't want—want to—" I'm, I'm believing in this, so because I believe in it, like let's make each other really comfortable. Like, I kind of love when you're in a relationship and you don't have to ask for what you need. Like that's one of the best things about being in a relationship is when the person anticipates your needs and tries to meet them without you having to ask like a beggar with a cup out. Like it feels nice to have somebody go like, "Oh, I got you that because I, I know you like those." Like that's what, what, what better act of love is there than that? So why not say to your partner, "Listen, I know you trust me. I know you love me, but you know what? I just never want you to be afraid that if we split up, you're not going to be taken care of. Like you—" That's so—like I love you. If I love you, there's nothing you could do that would make me want you to just burn in hellfire for all of—it's why I never could really—even being raised Catholic my whole life, I never could get on with the whole Christianity hell thing. Like that God who loves us like a good father, according to Jesus, you know, like I'm a good father. I'd like to think I'm at least a mediocre father, and there's—I can tell you there's nothing my kids could do that I would go, "Well, you need to be in eternal torment, yeah, for eternity. You're going to be tormented." Like there's nothing—there's—listen, there's some stuff they could do that I'd be like, "All right, I'm not talking to you anymore. Yeah, I'm not hanging out with you anymore. Like, I'm not letting you borrow the car," you know, but there's nothing they could do that I would go, "Well, hellfire for you for all of eternity." That's craziness. Like what kind of vindictive psychopath is that? Yeah, that's an Old Testament God, so I get it. But, but the truth is like with humans, I think—think there's nothing wrong—if you love me, if I love you, like I'm not going to weaponize against you, and I'm not going to be afraid to talk about how to keep you feeling safe. We should all feel safe in our relationships.

Social media has to be like a cheating machine. Oh, yeah. One of the chapters in my book—because it was written in 2018—is called, um, "If, if we were going to invent an infidelity-generating machine, it would be called Facebook." Yeah, I would change that now to say it would be called Instagram, but it's Meta company, so it's the same thing. Sorry, sorry, Mark. You must see a lot of—well, this DM, or—I mean, it's just aside—it's an invitation aside from the algorithm feeding us like everything that it figures out we like in terms of visual stimulation, um, you know, you, you ever just, you know, just pull up the suggested and show it to your partner? My Explore tab, I'm like offended that it knows me so well. It knows me too well. Yeah, and when I look at it, I'm like, "Oh, that is—that is not great." Um, but yeah, that, that's—I mean, look, the algorithm pushes us in directions, but also again, people don't set out to ruin their lives. Like people don't wake up and go, "You know, I'm going to screw my life up today." They—it just happens, right? And so I think it's a lot of—it's a series of small bad choices, and one of the most common ones is we have—social media gives us entry points into conversation with people that we really have no business talking—

Privately, with like that, it's just a temptation that we're not going to be able to handle. You hang out in a barber shop long enough, you're going to get a haircut. Like you, you put somebody in touch with someone they're attracted to on a regular basis, and flirtation is going to start. It's the nature of the creature that we are, so.

Social media creates all of these opportunity points to start talking to each other. It seems like in the 80s—and I was a kid then, so I don't really know—but it seems like in the 80s you'd have to, as a guy, you'd have to like see one of the other soccer moms, and then you'd have to somehow go create, go through a little bit of effort to create an opportunity where you're talking to them. And then it happens again, and there's not other people around; it happens again and again and again. People did it; they still did it even then, like, so even with all of these barriers. I mean, go back further. God gave 10 commandments, if you believe that, and two of them were: don't sleep with people you're not married to; don't commit adultery; don't covet your neighbor's wife. Those are two separate Commandments. Thou shalt not kill—God only had to say that once. So this is a problem that's been around for a while; it's a human problem. So yeah, I mean, I, I think ultimately, even when it was hard to do, people did it in abundance.

So now it's so easy to cheat. I mean, you can be sitting on the couch next to your spouse, talking with someone who you're trying to sleep with or are actively sleeping with, and what are you doing on your phone? Like, no, whatever, what are you doing on your phone? You could be doing anything on your phone, because we do everything on our phones. Our phones are like—we are wired into these things. Yeah, my, my wife will go, "What are you doing? Trolling? Troll, troll, troll," because I met her online. She's kidding, obviously, but it was, it's, it's like a funny inside joke because I met her on Twitter, which I don't use, and she's like, "Oh yeah, you know, you can meet women on there," and it's true; that's where I met my wife. Yeah, so it's like, well, listen, it is, it is the place where everybody gets involved in nonsense. I have to tell you, I see that as a divorce lawyer; I have a ringside seat, and I, I see the amount of communications and infidelities and betrayals that start with, "Hey, wow, it looks like you guys had a great time on that vacation. Where did you stay?" You know, or, "Oh wow, you know, throwback picture. I had that t-shirt, too." You know, "Oh my God, I went to that concert," or you know, and it's like an entry point, and you just start chatting, and you know, this—we're human, I get it—but you're inviting—you know, avoid the near occasion of those things. Like when I want to lose a couple of pounds, I don't have any junk food in my house, because I can control my food environment way better than I can control my brain. Like my brain is constantly trying to, to screw with me.

Yeah, this is like some James Clear thing, right? Like you want to watch less TV, get rid of the TV, put it someplace convenient, right? Like, 'cause I, I don't trust my brain. Tired, gym sex, at the end of a long day is going to like want to eat and drink and like just relax, relax and feel bad for himself and do whatever, like, and, "I deserve it," you know, and like, like that, that dopamine hit that you get on social media, you know, especially like—I, I have something of a following now, so anytime I ever go on social media, you get, you know, "You're so brilliant, you're so amaz—" I was, I was on the street the other day, and I was meeting some colleagues of mine for lunch, and I was standing outside of a restaurant, and I'm talking on the phone, and a guy just walks past me, and he kind of sees me, and then he turns back around, and I'm on the phone, and he just walks up, and he goes, "I just want to tell you that you're awesome," and I was like, "Thank you," and I thought to myself, "No wonder my celebrity clients are such idiots," like, because they just—random people just coming up to you and saying you're awesome, like, like what is that not going to do to your ego? Like, how—there's no scenario where that doesn't feel good.

Well, even if the repeated look that happens quite a bit to anybody with online sort of presence, right, even if it doesn't inflate your ego, the opportunity—you went from random guy on the internet to, "Oh, person with status," and status is like a drug, even if it's not your status, and you find yourself looking for that hit. Yeah, like now that I get stopped on the street and recognized anywhere I go, I, I find myself sometimes when I'm feeling low looking for it. Like I'll deliberately go out and sort of be, you know, wearing what I'm wearing right now, which is what I'm wearing—my sleeves up a little bit more—you know, people recognize me much more readily, and, and you really do. And look, I, it's human, like I get it, that there's this part of you that feels sad or insecure or low or whatever, and it's a hit to have someone compliment you. And listen, anytime somebody stops me and says, "Oh, I'm a fan of your work," like, it's wonderful, like that makes me—so why I do it, I do it. It doesn't happen to any divorce—I'm aware of—and, and, and it's a lovely, beautiful thing. I have to tell you, I used to say, "No lawyer gets fan mail." Now I got to change my—I get a lot of fan, fan mail. I got a lot of fan—I got a lot of women in my DMs, and I, I get a lot of fan mail, and uh, I think, but I think if you're a man with even vaguely an emotional vocabulary, uh, and maybe a full head of hair, that that kind—but maybe you don't even need full head of hair. Scott Galloway probably gets a ton of, ton of uh—so curious, I'm gonna ask him. He's got to get big time. Yeah, I'm such a fan of him; he's great. Did you see his Ted Talk he did recently? I did. Talk about—I was always a fan of, of his work. I listened to Pivot forever, until I just got to the point with Kara Swisher, I was like, "I just can't"—that's—but I love Scott Galloway, everything the guy does. And I'm an NYU alum, although I didn't go to the business school, so I didn't get to study with him. Um, it was probably before his time. I think I was gonna say he's not that old—would have been like 2—although, you know, he's jacked, though. My goodness, I mean, you like—he's just—it's so easy to hate the guy, but I, because he's just awesome. But yeah, I mean, his viewpoint is so incredible, and he really gets it right on a lot of these things, and um, I, I really do think that he must get inundated with attention.

You know, and you do get a tremendous amount of attention. The interesting thing is, is when you're in the relationship space, like I am, you know, people think you have some secret knowledge, and, and, and I, I don't. I really don't. Like, I, I, I've said it before, you know, that I, I don't know what intelligence looks like, but I can spot stupid a mile away. Like, I don't know necessarily what makes a relationship a happy relationship; I just have become an expert in what screws up relationships, and I'm hoping I can help people reverse-engineer that into something better. How many people come into your office and are essentially learning about what the marriage contract entails for the very first time? 95%? Oh my God, that high? 95%? Well, ask any—listen, go to anybody who's married, go to anybody who's married and ask them about the spouse's elective share. Ask them if they know what that is. Ask them how child support is determined in the in the county in which they reside or the state in which they reside. Ask them how spousal support is done. Overwhelming majority of people have absolutely no idea. That's what I mean is that people learn—like if you genuinely wanted to improve the state of marriage or people's relationship to it, you would probably create some barriers to entry, like, to, to, to learn how to drive, you've got to take a written test that you know how the rules of the road work, then you have to get a learner's permit, then you have a period of time that's unwaived that you have to learn how to drive, then you have to take an exam that shows you know how to do this thing, and then you're allowed to get a driver's license. Marriage—you can meet a stripper in Vegas, and Elvis will marry you for 50 bucks 20 minutes later. I was the best man at an Elvis wedding, and I have to say they're divorced now, surprisingly. So you see the shock on my—yeah, it's uh, it wasn't even a spur-of-the-moment decision, but uh, still an Elvis wedding. It was—any—well, I digress. The reality is that I, I think most people who get married never educate themselves. I think in a perfect world, every person, as part of getting a marriage license, would have to spend an hour with a divorce lawyer. Make them take—like, uh, when's the last time you renewed your driver's license? That that test was harder than I remember. Yeah, to change states. Yeah, my dad was like, "I don't think I can pass this test," because he took the online version, and I was like, "Hey, that might be an indication that you should no longer be driving."

So I, part-time, when I first got out of graduate school, when I got my Master's Degree at NYU before went to law school, I was teaching at NYU and I was teaching a couple other colleges part-time just to make, make ends meet. I got $400 a credit, so that's how—wow, abysmally bad that market was—geez, but it was a lot of money to me at the time. I'd been a waiter. And one of the things that I used to do with my students—you would never be able to do this now; it would be considered like a hate crime—but I used to—because I, I taught courses in like culture and communication, okay, and I used to make my students take the citizenship exam for, for the United States. United States. They were all US citizens by birth—the majority—the majority of my students were, you know, they were born in the United States; they were naturalized citizens; they never had to take a citizenship exam. The answers that I would get from students of like, "What are the three branches of the government?" and they would be like, "Democrat, Republican, Conservative." Oh, that's pretty bad. Like, I mean, you would look at it and just go, "Okay," but it's true, like we, we have taken for granted what we're supposed to know, what it's assumed we know. Like it's assumed that the driver's test that you took, whatever many years ago, that you remember at a four-way stop what the order of who gets to go is. I don't think that's true based on what I've seen in terms of driving. I don't think most people remember this stuff. Similarly, I don't think most people remember basic civics, and I don't think most people remember anything they learned in driver's ed or anything they learned in basic civics. Like, I think if you gave most people the citizenship exam, they would fail, and, and, and if we, we don't deport people for failing the citizenship exam if you're already a citizen, but I, I have to tell you, your vote equals mine, and if you don't know the three branches of the United States government, why do you get to vote?

Oh, it's funny you bring this up, man. Uh, there's a—I won't say them out loud—but there, there's always this, "Get everyone, get the vote out," and I always pass on the campaign of—why are—pass reason because—think everybody vote—in fact, rather that if you have no idea, and if you're one of those people who's like, "Oh, I like this guy's last name; it's really easy to remember," if you, if that's how you vote, I beg you not to vote. There—the, you know, an educated citizenry is the cornerstone of democracy, and the problem is, for all of time, for all of time, people were like, "I would vote for him; he seems like the kind of person you'd like to have a beer with." And people been saying that since Alexander Hamilton's days. I mean, this is like a thing is that, oh yeah, he seems like a good dude, you know, and, and there's something to that, like there's something to charisma, you know, like I won't say that that his charm had nothing to do with me voting for Obama. Like he was incredibly charming; he was incred—he seemed like a dude you'd want to hang out with, and he seems like a guy—if you hung out with him, he would be fun to hang out with, you know, and he and Michelle, like they—there's a vibe there, like the two of them look like—like they're still at it, you know, like that's—and I got to tell you, I love when I see married people that've been married for a while, and they still look like—if you walk them past the broom closet, they might just jump in there and have sex. I, I, I love, like, you know, "What? Sign up. Sign up for that. Sign up for that coupling." That's awesome. Why you have those YouTube comments—stuff like this—it might be—I think this is—this is—it brings out a lot of feelings in people. Yeah, know—people—brings out a lot of people who didn't turn it off 'cause they're like, "He voted for Obama. I thought he was smart until then." Slam the door, slam the laptop. Yeah, I said something about Trump the other day, about his, about a prenup that one of his marriages had been challenged—the prenup he had with Ivanka—and um, I remember somebody wrote this thing about it—"He was doing well until he started slagging Donald Trump," and I was like, "Guys, I'm not political." Like this was not—I wasn't making fun of him; I was making fun of, you know, I was talking about his prenup, and I was talking about, you know, how, how um, he, like any man, you know, did not see this blind spot in a prenup, and you know, I, I, I, I think it's—but yeah, it's very charged times. People are just—wait—it's the joy of the internet is people are just dying to, to, to pillory you for something you said. I mean, it's, it's almost like a sport.

Doing what I do for a living, though, I'm, I'm, I, I don't really let the praise in, and I don't really let the criticism in. It doesn't mean anything; I just keep doing my thing. Like, doing what I do for a living, one side of the equation usually hates me, so there's a lot of people out there that just hate me, and I'm really comfortable with that. Like it's fine. Being polarizing is not something I do as a strategy, but it's something that's a natural result of, well, per my personality and the fact that I have a public—a microphone in front of me any given time. But it's, it's interesting about not letting the praise in and not let—you almost—it would be amazing if you could only let the praise in, but then the criticism you could keep at bay unless it was constructive. It would be dangerous. It's very hard to do, and it's—you're right—it's—I think it'd be dangerous, not a good idea, because I think that you, you'd get high on your own supply. Like, I think you would just very quickly spiral into a—I, I whenever anybody says something, you know, like, "Oh, you're good at this, or you're great at this," I always go, "Yeah, opinions vary," and it's true, opinions vary. Like, I look, I, I don't know that I'm right. I, I never thought the things I have to say would reach the audience that they've reached. You know, when I think of the fact that at this point tens of millions of people have spent several hours listening to me, that's shocking, and they want more. Well, some of them—a lot of them—still want more, and that's very, very interesting to me. I feel very grateful for it; I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to do it, um, but I, I never really did it for the—you know, not to over-quote Rick and Morty, but there's a scene where, where Rick says, you know, "Your booze means nothing to me; I've seen what you cheer for," and I sort of feel like that's the reality. Like if you want to conduct the orchestra, you got to turn your back to the audience, and, and so I don't really say anything—I say for the clicks, for the likes—to have people are like, "You should have a podcast, you should have a show, you should have this, you should have that," and it's, it's, it's never been for that purpose. I have a very specific set of things I'm qualified to talk about. I get sometimes from people saying, "Oh, you repeated this perspective on this podcast and this podcast. You got good sound bites." That's okay. Yeah, well, the truth is, is I'm not a stand-up comic who has like a set, and then I'm going to burn that set, and I'm going to write a whole new set. I, I'm a lawyer; I'm a divorce lawyer; I try to give the most accurate and efficient answer in the most interesting, entertaining, or digestible manner—ideally all three. So yeah, once I get it right, I'm not going to just change it so I have new material for the public, you know, and that's why I've really cut back a lot even on, on how much I do appearance-wise, because I, I feel like I've said a lot of the things I needed to say or wanted to say. I've reached a very broad audience. I'm working on a new book now that, you know, gets into different terrain, um, which I think will be an interesting thing to have conversations about, but until then, you know, I, I certainly am always very excited—like this interview, I was excited for because I know your work, and you tend to dive a little deeper, as you already have in this conversation, than just the surface level.

If I do one more—so divorce lawyer, writing books about relationships—how did that come about? Like, why don't you listen to one of 50 podcasts that I've been on where—three tips of how to—dude, if I get one more top three—any—everybody wants life to be a BuzzFeed—like, what are three things people can do to divorce their—I wrote a whole book on this, man, which I didn't read for in preparation for this. Just—okay. But you know what? I love the honesty of it; love the honesty of that. If someone just said that to me—if someone just went, "Yeah, I never read your book; I never watched any of your interviews; I wrote these questions, and I'm going to ask all of them"—you know what? And even that, there's an honesty to it. Like I just don't—the most dangerous thing a person can do is believe their own—oh yeah. And so to me—me—like, yeah, you, you give a lazy interview, I'm going to give you lazy answers, and they're not necessarily even lazy; I'm just going to answer the way I always answered. You know how many times I have to tell people the same things in 25 years as a divorce lawyer? Do you know how many times I've had to explain alimony? How many times I've had to explain child support? How many times I've had to explain every aspect of divorce? And I want to do it—sure—and my clients deserve that. I do it in a way that's interested and interesting and engaged, and 'cause they, they pay for that. I was going to say, at least you can bill in six-minute increments. Yeah, I don't sit there and go, "Child support is based on a presumptive statutory cap of your gross income less FICA, which is 0.0765 from whatever the gross income is, and child support for one child is 17%, two children's 25%—" if you're—lawyer talk to you that way—like I've actually thought about like, okay, why don't I do the speech and then just like put them in a room, be like, "Here, watch this video, and then I'll be back." Like a job training—atonal hang back—exactly right. But, but look, you're paying me 750 bucks an hour; you're going to get the steak and the sizzle, so I'm going to do—

The thing is, so I can give the same opinion or the same speech and make it compelling and make it interesting. I, you know, that’s part of the job of being a trial lawyer. Roll up those sleeves and shut the door; that’s what you do. That’s right.

What are some trends that you see in—speaking of crappy questions, this will start as a crappy question, but it’ll be a real one—what are some trends that you see in marriage? Because it looks like we’re actually, from the outside in, yeah, getting kind of more conservative than marriage has been in the past, or than than social mores have been in the past. But it could be an illusion based on my age. I don’t know.

Yeah. Um, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the last couple of years there. Uh, people are getting married older than they used to.

Well, that’s yeah, for sure. That’s a fact. These are these are numbers. Um, people are getting married later; they’re having children later. Um, people are definitely exponentially getting prenups, way more than they used to.

Interesting. Okay. There is no way to track this.

Oh, well, because prenups are not filed anywhere; they’re a private document. And as someone who’s represented a number of celebrities and sports figures, I can tell you I have seen interviews with my client who I’ve done a prenup for where they are saying, “Oh, yeah, we we we’re not having a prenup,” and I’m watching them. That’s interesting. I have their prenup in my safe, signed, you know. And well, cuz it’s not recorded anywhere. It’s not. And, by the way, and and interviewers have no right really to ask people if they have a prenup or not. I mean, I guess you’re a public figure; people can ask whatever question you want, but you have the right to lie to people if they ask you an inappropriate question.

I guess that’s true, but I think it sets the wrong example, which is we we we we put up on Instagram us picking the cake and us picking the venue and us picking what wine we’re going to serve and us picking the dress and the shoes and everything else. People don’t advertise the fact they had a prenup, but but for whatever reason, I have to say in the last five years, I would say 3x, 4x in terms of prenups. Part of it is that I’ve come to be known as someone who does prenups, so I I I do a lot of talking about prenups, so I have a lot of people now that say I probably do three consults a week for prenups, and I get retained by most of the people who who consult with me about a prenup. Um, so I do a lot of prenups, but but among my colleagues, like I’m part of all the professional organizations, New York State Bar Association, all the different family law divisions and family law committees, and we all are saying the same thing, which is yeah, like young, the people in their 20s and 30s, which is the prime marriage ages, they’re getting prenups; they’re they’re approaching things much more pragmatically. I see it in my own sons. There’s a there’s a pragmatism and a re a realism, and there’s also a a radical kind of candor where, you know, people are talking more openly about gender issues, uh, sexual orientation, um, therapy and mental health stuff. We’re talking more candidly and honestly about the things we struggle with, and I think that’s translating into a broader openness about the technology of marriage and the concerns that younger people are having about it. And so I I think that’s kind of good. I think that’s a really good thing. I think that that the more people are talking about prenups, normalizing—like it took a while to normalize therapy—okay, we should be normalizing prenups. Like there’s nothing wrong with normalizing prenups. And again, the best way to do it, as far as I can tell, is to just point out to everybody that either the government writes your prenup or you write your prenup.

Yeah, that’s that’s a really good way to look at it, because most people would then, at that point, I would think, not allow the government default to come into place, like having a will.

Well, when I was on uh, Matt Walsh’s show on The Daily Wire, um, you know, Matt Matt and I disagree on a lot of things, you know, from a political place, and we met by getting in like a little tussle with each other on Twitter, which I’m no longer on, but which at the time I was still on before I realized what a just unbelievable cesspool it is. Um, but but the truth is, like I I think Matt’s very entertaining; I think he’s very intelligent. We have different perspectives on a lot of things, but it’s rooted in us having some fundamental different beliefs. But we had to sit down at his studio in in Tennessee, uh, which, by the way, I have to say his staff and everyone in that operation, Daily Wire, was the nicest, most courteous, professional people I think I’ve ever dealt with. They were they were a pleasure, and he was an absolute pleasure to talk to, and even though we disagree on a bunch of things, our dialogue about marriage—which he is a huge fan of; I mean, he’s married, he’s got six kids; he’s very much of the like, “Yeah, we got married; we don’t have a prenup”—or, but we had so much commonality in our perspectives because we’re both skeptical of the government and we’re both skeptical of government control and we’re both pessimistic about government’s ability to manage our affairs better than the individual. So we had a lot of common ground from this sort of libertarian vibe that we both had, even though I’m more of a progressive liberal, he’s a staunch religious conservative, but we have this commonality of like, “Listen, I don’t know the solution, or we might differ on the solution, but we both agree whatever the solution is, the government ain’t going to be the one to solve it,” so we should go in with this pragmatic approach. And and I I think this is something that on both sides of the aisle people are saying, “Okay, yeah, there’s something wrong with the way we do marriage, and there’s something wrong with just jumping without a parachute.”

I think a lot of people, when I was doing criminal defense, just in law school clinic stuff, people would say, “How do you protect somebody that you know is guilty?” And I’m sure you get some flavor for that, like I get a lot of that.

Yeah. How do you how do you represent a perpetrator of domestic violence?

Yeah, yeah. That’s that’s an interesting thing, because I represent so many victims of intimate partner abuse, coercive control, and domestic violence. How do you represent a perpetrator of violence, intimate partner abuse, control, or or, you know, how do you just eviscerate somebody on cross-examination and you’re like, “This is prob—”

I can answer that. Yeah, I can. Oh, no, that happens all the time. And and um, I mean, part of it is that I grew up a fighter, and I still train martial arts to this day, so some of my best friends have punched me in the face, choked me, and tried to break my limbs. Yeah, so. And I’ve tried to do the same thing to them. So I I grew up in the fight sport, so I don’t have to hate you or be angry angry at you. In fact, some of my best friends, we we try to kill each other all day, so that that’s the mindset I came from. But the way I’ve always answered that question, and it’s a truthful answer, is it’s not always easy, but I represent the client and I represent the system, and I don’t always believe in the client; I don’t always feel great about the client, but I believe in the system. Like I believe that my role in the machinery of our system is an important one. I believe in democracy; I believe in our legal system. I don’t think it’s perfect; it has flaws, but it’s like, you know, it’s like the economy, like it’s we have the worst one except for all the other ones. Like I think I think we do a pretty good job of due process. I really like that we error on the side of letting a guilty person go free rather than an innocent person go to jail. So I like our burdens of proof; I like due process; I like the right to confrontation. And so if you believe in this system, you have to be willing to do your part in the system, and I can do that. I’m I’m very comfortable. I I have people that I like very much that my job is to take them apart piece by piece in a divorce, and I will do it without hesitation, dispassionately, with no malice in my heart. It’s my job.

It’s got to be tough when you’re getting an emotional reaction from—because like, look, if you go up against me and I’m a fellow divorce lawyer, this is just us playing chess; we could have lunch right afterwards; it doesn’t really matter as long as we’re not talking about the case.

Yeah, or even if we are, I suppose. But if if there’s a woman up there or a guy and he’s crying because his wife is—he knows his wife is planning to abscond with their children and you’re just dismantling this dude, there’s got to be a little bit of—it’s personal for them; it’s not personal for you, right? How do you compartmentalize that, or do you—

I I’ve never had an issue with it, because again, I believe in the system; I understand my role in it; I believe believe that our emotion clouds our our judgment and our ability to do what is necessary. I mean, I there’s a there’s a line from from the first season of True Detective where he says, um, “Do you ever worry that you’re a bad man?” And he says, “The world needs bad men; we keep the other bad men from the door.” And that’s how I view it. I view it like, you know, yeah, I’m a weapon, and that’s what I chose to do, and that’s what I’m really good at. I don’t know why that is; I don’t know why I was built that way, but that’s how I’m built. I think I might be built different than a lot of people, but I can do that. I can dispassionately dismantle in that way, and I think the world needs that, you know. I I there’s a line from Reesus Sardonicus I always really liked, um, to the point where I memorized it. He said, um, “I have resigned myself to temporary complicity with evil in order to accomplish certain strategic objectives for people whose suffering is greater than my need to maintain moral purity.”

That’s that’s a that’s quite a feat of memory. And that’s how I view it. I think that my need to maintain moral purity is subservient to the the ability I have to relieve suffering. I have more clients that are victims of domestic violence than perpetrators, thankfully. I have more clients that need someone like me. It most often a good-hearted, nice person finds themsel—up against someone who’s their opposite, so their opposite is a narcissistic abuser, and you need someone who can dispassionately go in and and take that person on. You know, Cormac McCarthy said, “There are two things that’ll make a man confess his sins: God and pain.” And not everyone believes in God; everyone believes in pain. So sometimes my job is to inflict pain, emotional pain, financial pain, create and cultivate leverage and then use it. That’s my job. And and my job, most often thankfully, is to do that for someone who there is some moral ground behind it. But have I, in my career, had occasion where I’ve I’ve been weaponized against what probably was a really good person? Yes. Is that hard to do? It’s not hard to do. Is it is it hard emotionally to process it? Yeah, it is. But you know, the truth has a way of coming out sometimes, despite my best efforts. Like I lose sometimes. Sure, I lose, because our system our system gets the truth out there; like people have to answer for things. I like the court system. I don’t like the fact that people in the world right now, we live in a post-truth era, and everybody gets up and can say whatever they want about, “Oh, this is what this does, and this is what that does,” and there’s no way to fact-check anything, and nothing’s tethered to objective reality. So I like court because you got to shut up; everybody’s got to shut up and answer; you have to answer. Like the right for to confrontation, I love cross-examination because my attitude is, “No, no, you said it; you said it.” I always keep my children’s best interest at heart. Okay, I’m gonna show you 15 examples of places you didn’t do that, and you’re gonna have to answer for it. And to me, I like that; I think that’s fair. I think I want to live in a world where that’s how things are done.

I I love that. I I’m wondering if you ever won a case you just thought, “I shouldn’t have won that.”

Yeah. Yeah. There’s a chapter in the book actually about that, and where I I talk about representing a—he was actually a pimp; that’s what he did for a living; he was a pimp—and uh, he he was a perpetrator of domestic violence, and I won because my adversary in court was a very inexperienced lawyer, and the it was a perfect storm, and the judge was in a very bad mood, and the judge—this lawyer who was a brand-new lawyer at the time, who is since actually—I’ve followed their career and had cases with them—who since become one of the best lawyers I know, um, but was a real neophyte; might have even been their first trial—and they couldn’t get a a a photograph into evidence; they they couldn’t lay the proper foundation, and the judge, who should have stepped in and been helpful, was just in a mood and was not letting the photograph—was just like, “Yep, you can’t lay the foundation; I’m not letting it in”—and I was doing my job; I was objecting and doing the things I I was supposed to do, and I remember just being in there going, “This is not good; this is not right; the wrong thing’s going to happen.” And we walked out of court; we won, and the guy smacked me on the back and he said—on there—forget it; he said, um, “One good lawyer is better than 20 stickup men.” Oh, and I remember I went home that night and I just felt very—that’s a long hot shower. Here’s what I’ll tell you. And and I I’ve said this before; I’m not giving anything away. I when I recorded the audiobook, my publisher, Henry Holt McMillan, they said, “Well, we want you to read your own audiobook,” so it’s like eight and a half hours of my voice. So they they put you in a booth, and you have to read your entire book out loud, and you do it in pieces. And when I got to that chapter, I had to stop a couple of times because I got choked up because I I talk about in the chapter when I—like it was like, “No, like I’m some—you’re supposed to stop me; like you’re supposed to stop me; like what are you what are you doing? Like I’m winning; I shouldn’t be winning; like the truth should—is not going to come out here.” Yeah, you know. And and that was very hard for me because I believe in the system, and it’s supposed to work, and sometimes it doesn’t because of humans that are in it. And and so that was hard, but I did my job. I know I did the right thing because I believe in the system, and I think if I threw the game then it starts to ask questions of, “Well, when do you throw the game? When do you have the right to throw the game?” And I don’t think that’s the right I don’t think that’s the way to do it. Well, everybody, what is what do they tell us in law school? Everybody deserves a zealous zealous advocacy; advoc—everyone has the right to zealous advocacy within the bounds of law.

What uh, what what if you know that there’s a smoking gun? I keep going back to iMessage. What if you know that like, all right, they got photos of you with with with her with the par—there’s there’s 8,000 texts and photos in that thread of you guys on vit—planning to go with like—do you do you do you have to go full Eminem strategy where you’re like—eight mile strat—the Eight Mile strategy?

We call it the Eight Mile—call it—yeah, we call it the Eight Mile strategy.

Yeah, you do the Eight Mile strategy. I mean, that’s our our favorite thing is the Eight Mile strategy. You bring it out; you bring it out as part of your narrative first. So I I I tell them all the things that the guy’s about to say about me, and then I hand the mic to the other side, you know. So I do that that that last rap battle of 8 Mile, um, where yeah, you just lay out all the worst things about your case and you just own them, and you you present the counternarrative to them before the other side can do it. You watch the opposing counsel crossing out pages and pages—

I was just going to say, isn’t that a good feeling when you’re seeing counsel go—yeah, they sigh and they just—they—and you’re watching them just cross out pages of cross-examination; they flip the legal pad over again and again.

It really is. They—I’m telling you, it’s the last scene in 8 Mile, because I remember the first time I saw that movie, I saw it in the theaters, and I remember watching that rap battle and being like, “Oh my God, how are they gonna end this thing?” Because you know he’s got to win, but how’s he going to win? And just the feeling of like, “Here, tell these people something they don’t know about me,” and handing them the mic and you just go—that is the most brilliant thing in the world. And I have to tell you, like I’ve seen on the witness stand again and again, like when a when a client talks about their humanity and talks about their flaws and they admit when they lost their temper and they said something stupid or did something stupid, there ain’t a person in that courtroom that that that can cast the first stone. Like everybody in that courtroom looks and goes, “Yeah, like you probably—I’ve probably done dumb things too,” you know, didn’t get caught or maybe did.

Yeah, yeah. So I think there’s a lot of value in um in in taking that approach to things.

Yeah, you’ve got a great mindfulness exercise that I love, and I am not Mr. Mindfulness; I am not that guy. Uh, people who—I I just I feel like there’s a lot of hype around this stuff, but there’s a core of really good stuff in there. This one I love—tell me about this—this the Thich Nhat Hanh one about hugging someone.

Uh, yes, that is—yeah. So so Thich Nhat Hanh was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk; he passed away some years ago, but he uh he wrote a number of really beautiful books about mindfulness and awareness and uh the nature of life and suffering. They’re very simple books, much like Sharon Salzberg, who’s another Buddhist writer. And this is actually my my my next book is about exactly this concept. But essentially what what Thich Nhat Hanh was encouraged people to do is when you are hugging someone who is in your life who you love, whether it’s your spouse or your child or your dog or cat or your cousin or your friend who you haven’t seen, you should close your eyes and hug them and think about the fact that they’re there and you’re hugging them, and then for a moment you should think about that they’ve died; you should imagine that they’ve died and that your holding their body, hugging their body for the last time before you let go and it’s taken away. And then you should remember that they’re there and they’re alive and you’re hugging them. And if you can train yourself to do that—some people think that’s a morbid exercise; I I don’t think it is. I think we are most keenly aware of the beauty of life when we’re in the presence of of death, when we realize that that love and life are not permanently gifted but are loaned to us. And so I’m a big proponent of that mindfulness exercise. I’m a big proponent of being mindful of endings, because when you are mindful of endings, you are very much aware of the impermanence of things; how everything is leading to some inevitable conclusion. All marriages end; your marriage will end. I promise; your marriage will end. It will end in death, or it will end in divorce, but it will end.

I hope it ends in death. Yeah, doesn’t that sound weird to say out loud? But I hope it does. I hope I go first. I hope I hope it ends in—

No, I hope you both go simultaneously and in a painless way.

Exactly right. And but but the truth is, we when—

We remind ourselves that all marriages end, that everything ends. We're much more conscious of the value and beauty of the thing that's in front of us. And so I am, as a divorce lawyer, I have made my day-to-day living in endings. MH, and before that I was a hospice volunteer for many years, and so I spent a lot of time in the presence of death. And I can tell you, when you spend time in the presence of death, you walk out of a hospice visit just so grateful, just so grateful that you're alive, you're not dying, that that that's not your father or mother or brother or you on that bed. And you're you're so you're not worried about what your stock market's do, and you're not worried about some minor, you know, somebody cut you off in traffic; like you just—the volume has turned so far down on that stuff. And I I think it's the same thing as a divorce lawyer; all I do is watch things end, and it makes me not a pessimist, like it makes me not think, "Oh well, it's all doomed," and it makes me so grateful that there's love and that people somehow manage to keep it together and want it so badly. And and I I think that bringing into your vocabulary a a mindfulness about endings can make your life much much better and stronger. And that's where really the focus of my work and my writing now is moving.

Jim Seon, thank you very much.

Pleasure. It was great to be here, Jordan. I appreciate you having me.

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