World No.1 Divorce Lawyer: This Is A Sign You’ll Divorce In 10 Years!

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/49d228df3708a150

If you had to give one relationship ritual to stay in love, what would that be? Once a week tell your partner three things that you love about them and three things they could have done better.
But some people thinking, well, if I told Dave that we're gonna start writing these news to each other, he's gonna cringe and not gonna do it. Bullshit. Uh honestly. Dave can't name three things he likes about you? Really, Dave? Is that a big ask? I absolutely call bullshit on that. The bigger question is, what's uncomfortable about that for you? And look, I'm not a therapist. I'm a divorce lawyer.
I represent some of the most high achieving minds, athletes, entrepreneurs, and they're just as bad at this as anybody. Because there's a part of us that's afraid to poke at what do you love about me?
What am I getting wrong?
And it's not just romantic relationships.
My mom died ten years ago after a long battle with cancer.
There was a lot between us that
Needed to be said and wasn't said.
And there's a part of me that wishes she was here.
So that
I could
I've apologized for some things that I got wrong, but
We don't do that because people just don't want temporary discomfort. And so I think there's something deeply courageous about love, about commitment, about saying I'm gonna give them.
The opportunity to hurt me like it's scary, but I'm brave. You know, your marriage will end. It ends in death or divorce. And for two people at the end of their relationship to say this person helped me become the most authentic version of myself.
That's the greatest gift you could give to him.
As you can see from this photo, I just proposed to my fiancing I'd like some advice on how not to mess this up. Like if my fiance ends up walking into your practice, what is the reason she's likely to end up there? The number one reason that I'm gonna have a woman sitting across from me divorcing someone who's a great provider, great protector, just
That is not obvious to everybody, and it'll keep me in business for the rest of my life.
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Uh

James.
As you can see from this photo.
I just
proposed to my fiance and gladly she said.
Yes. So I've brought you here in part because I'd like some advice on how not to mess this up. Because I know from speaking to you previously
About fifty percent of people that get down on their knee.
And uh messing it up in some way. Before we get into this though.
And before you help me figure out how to stay in love and not mess it up. Yeah.
Where do you find us at?
as it relates to love as a society. If you were to zoom out and diagnose society's
relationship with the subject of love and
The
um ability to keep it, find it.
And understand it. Where are we?
I think we
We're in this really uncomfortable moment as a culture. I think we we want more than anything to feel real connection. I think we're sick.
of just looking at screens. I think we came out of the pandemic with a feeling of okay, I want to be in the world with other people and feel the warmth of real people.
And yet
We have
An increasingly
lower number of useful tools in
Finding connection and staying connected, which are two totally different skills.
And
Yeah.
We're yearning for it more than ever. So we're more hungry than we've ever been.
And we have no idea how to cook.
In your head.
Because you've seen so many people go through divorce and relationships fail. Yeah. There must be a sort of checklist of things that I'm likely
To mess up.
Yeah. I mean, well, you know, first of all, when I when I knew you you know heard you got engaged
I was thrilled.
Because
I'm always cheering for people. I really am. I'm always cheering for love. And so I think in our prior conversations, you're obviously someone who loves very deeply, and and the fact that you found this person, you know, to me.
is the most lovely thing you know I I think at its core
This is your favorite person.
I just can't think of anything more lovely than that. Like the idea that
You would look at a person and go
You're my favorite person.
And and that person would look at you and say, You're my favorite person, and that you would know that it's true.
Like when they say it, then it's true. Like that.
That feels to me like something worth
Pursuing. That feels like something that if I tried to get it and I failed, I'd try again because if you could find it.
It's just about the greatest thing in the world. Like the
The thought to me that you know I I
I won't get to give a toast at your wedding, but I will say that if I was going to give the toast, it would be
Th there are
Two wishes I have for you, you know, your marriage will end. I mean I've said it to you before in one of our first conversations, every marriage ends, it ends in death or divorce. I hope yours ends in death.
And I hope when it ends in death.
That
Let's send you off first.
That when you're dying
That she will say
Hopefully to you.
Or to those around.
You helped me become the most authentic version of myself.
And you're still my favorite person.
Because I can't think of a greater blessing than that.
Like for two people at the end of their life, at the end of their relationship, to say, This person helped me become the most authentic version of myself.
And they're still my favorite person.
That's the greatest gift you could give to another human being, I think. And I like the idea.
That
Even in the face of knowing.
That
This is risky. This is something that may not work. This is something that statistically the odds are against.
But I'm gonna give it a shot because
You know, there's something it
adds to my life and there's something I add to her life and
You know, we're gonna we're gonna give it a shot. I don't know. I I found that very beautiful. As a divorce lawyer who's also a very big fan of love, do you ever find yourself trying to
Get someone not to get a divorce.
Has there ever been an instance where you you looked at the situation and thought, you know what?
They should just get back together.
Yeah. I what I'll say is
My first thought is often
Is this person accurately perceiving the situation that they're in? So people will come in and they'll say
You know, it really people come to me in very different situations. So sometimes people will come to me and they're they're they've been served with divorce papers, like the marriage is over.
And now it's about okay, we have to react defensively.
So
А іно, Піпоком Туй офіс.
The situation is often so dire and so broken that they're coming in to hire me for that specific purpose. But I will say without question.
Та іфайгений сенс.
That this person would either a benefit from individual therapy that might help them view the relationship differently and come to the relationship differently.
I will not hesitate to refer them.
And then there are people that
And it's more common
U then you'd think that something awful has happened in the relationship.
They had an affair and got caught.
They caught their spouse having an affair.
They've lost their job and it created tremendous discord in their relationship. And that often will feel to me like something that perhaps would benefit from
the intervention of mental health professionals or everyone just taking a breath and taking a minute, especially when there's kids involved. But even when there aren't.
Are your clients predominantly men or women?
It's pretty much an even split. Really? Yeah. I represent a lot of
Either
Very high achieving, high net worth individuals or people married to them.
And are the reasons that they come to you, those two different groups?
Different.
Like the reason why they want a separation.
Is it fundamentally different?
So the specific example of cheating, I would say
Men get caught cheating more often than women.
Does that mean they cheat more? No, it means they get caught cheating more.
I I don't think that anyone could really truly accurately say
You know, I know people love statistics and I know that that you know guests have a tendency to come on and say, Well, seventy two percent of people who are b
Everything I'm saying is based on what I've observed in twenty five years of facilitating the demise of marriages.
Men and women both cheat.
Men cheat in just more scatter shot stupid ways than women do. When women cheat in my experience professionally,
It's usually an indication of like the it's the absolute end of this relationship. The relationship is over, and this is either a soft place to land or it's sort of a final.
Opportunity for this person to solidify this woman to solidify in her head that yeah, this thing is over. Whereas men
I I've really had
Hundreds at this point of men sit across from me.
Who've been caught in an affair.
Or
sense that they're about to get caught in an affair.
And they say to me, Like, Yeah, this had nothing to do with my wife. Like I love my wife. It had nothing to do with that. It just
I don't know. I just
I don't know why I did what I did. I just did it.
And I I know everyone kind of.
Wants to
'Cause in civilized society it feels good to kinda go like
Can't believe that. That's how could someone say that?
Shut up. Like if you have if you have potato chips in your cabinet.
You know, you you
You know that you're not supposed to eat them. You don't want to eat them. You want vibrant good health. You want to take care of your but they're there.
Through there.
And you're human.
And like I can control my food environment better than my brain. Like I have a lot of resolve when I wake up in the morning. But at about seven, eight o'clock at night when I'm a little bit tired and it's been a long day and I deserve something nice
If the potato chips are there, I'm eating the potato chips. Like we're human.
We're human. There are times where we're just feeling lonely.
Or hungry or angry or tired or some combination of those factors. And
This warm thing, like the connection to another person, the the joy of flirtation, the excitement of of feeling the energy between yourself and whatever it is type of person that you're attracted to.
I think it's very normal.
And then the problem becomes
that you're not thinking about the consequences of those things. If you were thinking about the consequences of those things, you'd make better choices. But we all know that discipline is trading what you want now for what you want most.
And sometimes it's hard to remember what you want most and to keep it in your line of sight. So from your experience, you know, if my fiance someday ends up walking into your practice.
What is the
reason she's likely to end up there.
From her perspective, asking you to help her.
Get out of the relationship with me.
The most obvious, if you're gonna be like the most the average, the statistical average, it would be that you've stopped seeing her and stopped noticing her. In in the list of things that are important to Steven.
that she's somewhere in the middle to bottom of that list. Like for for a high achiever like you, for someone who's entrepreneurial in the manner that you are for someone who
You know, it lives the kind of lifestyle that you do where you're on this coast one day and this country another day and flying here on a moment's notice and getting invitations to interesting things and you have to triage'cause you couldn't possibly do all the things that you'd like to do. It usually would be
That she
Just feels herself slipping in the rankings.
And I think that that is often not a function of
what your di like that lifestyle I just described
It's a function of where you take time to fit her into that.
Because I genuinely have found tremendous number of examples of people.
And this is in the relationship work.
who have that level
of intensity in their life and that level of chaos in their schedule and it's unpredictable.
But they have that ability every morning.
Or every afternoon.
Or every once in a while, but consistently.
To say
Hey.
I have a minute between recordings, I just wanted you to know I was thinking of you. Or hey, you know, I heard that song when I was in the car from here to here, and it makes me think of you, and I can't wait to see you next week. You know, something like that to me.
Like
How hard is that?
By the way, doesn't have to be like a global lifestyle. It could even be, hey, we got a couple of kids and two dogs, and you know, my my mom is sick and I got to tend to her. So I'm super busy. But how do you let your partner know, hey, you're still really important.
We're still really connected to each other. Cause that's the number one complaint. That's the number one reason, particularly with women.
That I'm gonna have a woman sitting across from me, divorcing someone who's a great provider, great protector, great all of those things.
That is not obvious to
Everybody. And I I'll be honest, it's not it wasn't necessarily obvious to me. The way that I operate
Naturally. And this is just the way that I am. I've spoken to so many of my friends to understand how they operate and
the way that their brain works is when I'm here
The only thing I'm thinking about
is this. And I almost I'm remarkable at forgetting everything else.
Mm-hmm.
And and being completely here. Now that sounds like a good thing.
But it also means that I can
lose fourteen hours and forget to
To check in, I can forget, you know. Is it is it also true when you're with her?
Yes, when we
Have
Scheduled the time. But
So you know when we schedule the time to go and do something together, I'm I'm there, I'm not on my phone, I'm not doing anything else. Good. I think that's a tremendous priority. I'm hearing more and more from people.
The feeling of, yeah, we're together, but we're not together.
We're sitting there and they're on their phone or they're doing other things. And I think that it's really, really important.
That
One of the
really important aspects of relationship be that there is time where you give each other that level of focus. But again, you know, like it's just not something we
Are necessarily taught. We have maybe we have our parents as models, but very often they're they're not good models.
For some reason I've chosen someone who's like the opposite of me.
In terms of the way that probably. And when I've spoken to some of my friends who are quite like me, they've also chosen partners who are the opposite of them. Could you imagine? I know. Could you imagine two of you? Like imagine me with me.
You know, you with you that would like it would be so intense. This is why
It becomes so easy to misunderstand because we go through life assuming the other person has the same perspective as we do. And they feel the same way that we do about things and what's the solution to that?
I've had to learn.
Two
Check in.
Yeah. But don't you think she loves that about you? She does. She actually just sent me a message this morning saying thank you so much because I said when I left this time, I said listen, I'm gonna FaceTime you every day.
Even if it's for just one minute. Yeah. So Isn't that lovely though. You're still trying to figure out how can I be better at this thing. And that's amazing. That's a beautiful thing. You know, what's so funny is
If I walked into your home
And on the table.
There was, you know, the power of habit by During or the seven habits of highly effective people.
I would go, Oh look at look at Steven, he's still so successful, he's still trying to sharpen the point of the spear. Amazing, you know. But if you walk in and you see a book, you know, How to Stay in Love, you go, ooh.
Things all right with Steven, like things going okay. What's going on with the relationship?
Why why don't we as a society
Just acknowledge we're
We're kind of bad at this. We're kind of bad at maintaining connection. We're kind of bad at helping like feeling loved and feeling worthy of love and helping our partner feel loved and figuring out how to maintain connection. And maybe the key.
Is
That little thing.
That one minute
Face time that one minute of saying hey, maybe we should try this other thing.
What are you actually saying?
What you're actually saying is I want to be good at this job.
How can I be good at this job? How can I stay good at it? How can I get even better at it?
Like we go for the job interview and we want this job so bad. Like that's what dating is.
Dating is I'm sending my resume all over the place.
I'm sending it all over the place. I hope I can find something, something that suits my skills and my needs and where they want me, and and I'll be well compensated and I'll get something from it and I'll give something to it because I have all this talent and I have all this stuff and I wanna give it to a worthy cause, and I wanna be compensated for that, and I wanna feel part of something.
That's all dating is is it's a job interview, and then you get the job.
And for a little while you're like.
It's the ball my God, you should see the ball. Office is amazing. And you should and I could j I knew exactly what's gonna you know there's room for growth. There's room for growth in this job. It's gonna be great, you know, and I I really feel like there's room for advancement. Like this could be the job, this could be my career, this could be my vocation, it could be meaningful and wonderful. I think I have something I could contribute to. And we're so excited.
And you jump ahead three years later and we're like.
Job. Yeah, no, I gotta go to work again. Like, yeah, all right, here you go. That's it. You know, I got a friend who just got the best job. Oh my God, they had their they got the great and that's all we instead.
Of trying to remember that at some point.
The relationship that you're in.
But something you aspire.
Like the idea.
That you were some day gonna find a person.
У Just
Was your
favorite person and you were their favorite person and you were gonna be there for each other and see each other's blind spots and help each other like figure out who you are and be it.
And that you were gonna grow together and change together, and some core things would stay exactly the same, and some things would change in beautiful, meaningful ways, and you'd see each other through amazing things and terrible things, and all the things that the world throws at you. You'd never be alone again.
Because you'd have this person.
Like
Ан сам
It's
Considered sort of odd.
to check in and want to be good at that job and have performance reviews.
Like you run teams, you run so many teams. How how often do you go, we don't need to have performance reviews?
I think at the heart of this is we assume
probably through media and social media that
Relationships are supposed to be
Effortless. Why?
I don't it's just this kinda what you see, right? Like I remember
I remember um
My girlfriend telling me the other day, she was like, Oh, there's this couple I follow on Instagram and they're like amazing.
Um, they're like the perfect couple and it's just just turned out that
The guy is sleeping with someone else.
And I th and again I thought well
That watch my girlfriend vicariously watching that couple for the last
five years has probably increased her expectations on what a relationship should be. Cause she's just had this sort of two dimensional window. But there was some
the natural mess of relationship was taking place outside of you. And we all just have the 2D window. Like relationship problems on Instagram.
Broadcasting that doesn't
Doesn't try to follow a ship. No. And what what I'll also say is look, we formulate a lot of our conception.
Of what
A relationship should look like
By portrayals of relationships in film and television, right? Yeah. Okay.
So
Can we agree?
That the rom com
Or the romantic film.
is basically just an emotional version of pornography.
Like it's a stylized
Excerted
Falsehood.
That's designed to amplify the the most visually and emotionally compelling or stimulating aspects of things. Like, yes, there's conflict, but it gets cleaned up very neatly and very nicely. Like there's it's so this perception that that relationships should be effortless.
Is based I think on
Largely that.
Which is this feeling that and again whether a story is a comedy or a tragedy depends on where you end the story.
Right.
So we always end the story in a spot where it's like Ta da they're in love and they walk off hand in hand, but
Right, they walk up into life.
They walk off into this ecosystem of life that's
Filled with complexity.
And there's factors beyond our control that are impacting our emotional state and the emotional state of our partner, the you, the me, and the we.
So there's a lot going on, and and the thought
That well, this should be effortless. Everything else is a lot of work, and potentially and by the way, the opposite.
Like
This is effortless and this is a drudgery.
And we tend to just see things in that binary way.
Unnecessarily. Like we've made so much progress as a society when it comes to not viewing everything in a binary.
Like there's there's not as much rigidity about gender roles anymore. There's not as rigid rigidity about, you know, are you a worker, are you like a career person or a family person? Like there's a sense of way you can kind of be.
A little bit of both. Lo look at these things as a spectrum a little bit.
So
But this we're still pretty glued into this idea that like relationships are supposed to be the smoothest, easiest thing, or
Relationships are hard work. You're not supposed to be happy all the time and shut up if you think that that's what you're oh you're not happy. Nobody's happy or no you're not supposed to be happy. It's not the point of marriage. The point of marriage is a commitment. A relationship's supposed to be simple.
I don't know what you mean by simple.
Simple to navigate? No they're obviously not simple to navigate'cause fifty six percent of them end in divorce. Is it gonna be hard?
If your definition of hard
is I have to pay some level of attention to it.
Then yes, it's gonna be hard.
Is that hard?
Like is that hard? Really? Is that hard? Like I don't think it's that hard. Paying attention.
Isn't that
Hard.
Remembering to pay attention
Might be hard.
But
Don't you
Create reminders for yourself. You've got so many gadgets.
And you can't have some reminder in the day of like oh
Huh.
Keep her in my line of sight. Again, it doesn't mean you don't love her, that she's not front of mind. It means you're a driven, hardworking person. I'm a driven, hard working person. There's tons of times where
Very important things in my life aren't front of mind, but that's why I use reminders.
So to invite that question that I asked at the top of this.
If I am to come to you at some point in the future, James
And I say listen, I need a divorce.
Mm-hmm.
What am I likely to give as the reason for that based on
You know, who I am and how that correlates to the clients like me that you deal with. Yeah. So the reason you're going to give and the hunt underlying reason is different. So the the reason you're gonna give is gonna be a practical reason, which is either I've met someone else, she's met someone else
Um, we've had a terrible fight and uh said things that we can't take back. I had a spectacular failure financially, and she's just bailing on me because she sees that the future's really rocky, or she made some terrible decision and did something awful that's a betrayal that I can't abide by.
But again, that's the presenting reason.
Underneath that is the bigger reason, which is we lost the plot.
We lost the plot.
Like the
That's a ch that's the start of a chapter in a story.
It's the end of a chapter and the start of a chapter, that photo.
Like the first chapter in that story.
Was
Возвіз персонал.
Wandering around on the same planet.
Trying to figure it out.
trying to figure out what they're doing. And they have their origin story.
And they have their, you know, their complimentary pathologies.
That developed over time.
And then
You know, they found each other.
Eight billion people in the world.
And somehow their paths intersected.
You know, and they started to
have this connection. And so there was the you and there was the me and then there was the we.
And that Venn diagram started.
Right. And then you start to fill it with things. You fill it with people, you fill it with experiences. And this is just a stop along the way.
Like this these two people, this is just a moment. It's an incredible moment.
It can be
Like cumran. It can be like a moment.
That there was this
And then everything after this. It's a punctuation mark. Like I like to say that life has punctuation marks.
Like you had a kid.
You lost your job. You got a job. Whatever. Those are punctuation marks. This is a big punctuation mark.
And it will either be
You know, the beginning of the end.
Or the end of the beginning.
You get to write that.
You get to write that chapter.
But
This is a moment for me, the reason why this is a beautiful moment.
Is this a moment of tremendous optimism?
This is a moment where the two of you said
You're my favorite person.
And and I I want to write
This next chapter.
With you
As as having a different title in it.
But really
Like the title's just a symbol.
The the ring is just a symbol.
It's just a simbol of a commitment, it's a simbol.
Of of a promise.
And all the promises is a symbol of intention. That's all. It's just an intention. Our intention is we're not gonna be alone anymore. We're gonna do this together. And by the way, you're already not alone. The fact that you got to this place that you would ask this question.
That that's a beautiful
Confirmation of the fact that you don't feel alone.
We would have lost the plot.
Yeah.
Yeah, you would have lost the plot of the story. I so this is a story. Where does this story go? Where do you want it to go? You want it to go to a future that features
The two of you old together some day.
Maybe it features children, maybe it features
Companion animals. And what what is the most likely reason that we would lose the plot?
You stop paying attention.
You stop you stop doing what you're currently doing. How did you get to this beautiful moment?
You start doing the opposite.
You got to this moment by paying attention. You got to this moment by making this a priority. You got
To this moment by by keeping this front of mind, by valuing what is this but a symbol of you are valuable to me. Why did you get on one knee?
Why do you get on one knee? I mean think about the symbols of all of this. We live in a world of symbols.
The outfit I'm wearing
I'm saying something to you.
I take this seriously. That's why you wear a suit. Is you wear a suit to say I take this seriously. So what why did you do this? What is this a symbol of I'm down on one knee? Why? I'm humbling myself in front of you. I'm offering something to you. I'm hoping you will accept the gift I am giving to you. Like there's something very lovely about that symbol.
Is this is this what you call slippage?
Slippage is exactly
When you start to
Unintentionally. Again, people rarely have slippage.
Intentionally.
It's usually that
Okay.
We got that knocked out now. We can focus on the other stuff.
And that's slippage. Slippage is the small
Disconnections, small disconections.
That
In
Of themselves mean nothing. Like no single raindrop's responsible for the flood. That little raindrop it's just a little raindrop. That's all it really is. But slippage is.
This gradually increasing
Number.
of small disconnections that eventually leads to the giant marriage killer.
That you come in and say, Here's why we're getting divorced.
But
It wasn't that. It it was all these little
pieces but at some point
You were there.
Do you think people
spot the slippage in the moment, but they don't think it's big enough to fight about or do something about. A hundred percent.
And that's
That's the cognitive bias, that's the fallacy.
That will keep me in business for the rest of my life.
Because people
Just don't want temporary discomfort. Like
Power?
Desire for joy.
versus our aversion to pain.
Our aversion to pain will win every single time. We know this.
That's why there was an opiate crisis more so than a cocaine crisis. Cause one of those things is about making you feel really good, and the other is about getting rid of pain.
Like the the human desire, any scientist will tell you this. Ask our friend Andrew Huberman, ask anybody, they will tell you the human desire to escape pain is the controlling.
Aspect of self.
So
S escaping pain, even discomfort.
Even discuss and again, this is this is pushed by the narrative that love should be easy.
If you're gonna make if anything's uncomfortable about it, you must be doing it wrong. Maybe you're not with your soulmate.
You know, it would be so easy and effortless. You'd always know what the other person wanted. You'd never have to tell them. They would know. They would know you well enough to know what it is that you need and they would get you. Even though, by the way
Really?
Really?
Like, I'm fifty three years old, I've been in therapy for twenty years.
I get like seventy percent of this guy.
I think.
Like at best.
Like and I'm in here.
I'm in here and I get about seventy percent of this guy.
Like and I'm supposed to get you a hundred percent.
'Cause we're exchanging bodily fluids? Like we're I'm supposed to just cause we've slept in the same bed. I'm supposed to get you a hundred percent and get ahead of stuff. Like I get me seventy percent. And that's with a lot of reflection.
So I I really think
That it's wildly unfair.
for us to to to think
That
You know, this should be effortless, this should be easy and that it should never be uncomfortable. It's okay to be like I I think because of what I do for a living.
I have to tell people things they don't want to hear all day.
'Cause it's true.
And I tell them what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.
And you know, when clients say to me at the end of a consultation or conversation, like, Oh my God, I feel so much better, I always go, That's great, that wasn't my intention.
Because I don't want anyone I talk to professionally to think I am telling you something to make you feel better. I'm not here to make you feel better. I'm not a therapist. I'm here
To tell you the truth.
And if the truth makes you feel better, great.
If the truth makes you uncomfortable, at least you know the truth now.
So I feel like in relationship again, if what you want most.
Is lasting lifelong connection where we get each other as best we can. We can help each other navigate self and each other.
As best we can, and we cannot lose the plot.

That is
Really beautiful right now.
So everybody listening can probably think about something in their relationship which
has gotten a little bit worse since they first got into that relationship.
And it could be the way that they
argue is getting a little bit worse. They're not listening as much.
Maybe the voice the the tone has gone up or it's getting a little bit more angry. Yeah. Um whatever it is in their relationship, what do they need to do now? It's like it's not
Flooded yeah. Yeah.
But there's a look at it, best time to talk about it. There's a puddle. So what I do for a living
In court.
is I try to manipulate people's emotional state.
That's my job.
Like my job is to go and make the judge like my client dislike the other side. I want the other side to feel scared. I want my client to feel safe. I want the court reporter who's taking things down and the court officer to like me.
And to like my client. So that when we take a break in testimony and they go in the back with the judge, they go, I like Jim, he's a really good lawyer. Or oh, his client seems so nice, or boy, the other guy seems like a jerk, or boy, that other lawyer's a jerk. Like so I'm here manipulating people's emotional state. That's my job. Like that's what a trial lawyer does. We manipulate people's emotional state. We play with the levers, right? So
I say this.
As
To say
We should be doing this in our relationships.
There's nothing nefarious about that. These are tools.
And how you use them.
Will will give you a sense of whether it's good or bad or whatever. Look, if what you are doing
is to maintain connection.
How you parse it is going to be everything.
So even the way you just said that, like well something's kind of going wrong in the relationship. Okay, we're already off to the wrong
Narrative. Because when someone tells you something's been done wrong
There's this automatic defensive response of Well, I didn't mean to do it wrong, and well, I you know, it's not my fault that I did it wrong, it brings out something defensive in us. Rather than saying,
Something's changed.
Have you noticed that something changed?
Have you noticed that remember when we used to talk to each other about the you know, sometimes like and I don't know if it's something that I've done and if it is, you know, I I I really would appreciate you telling me, but like when we
Have been fighting lately, like the the tone seems to have changed. Have you noticed that?
Is it just me?
I now
It's a non defensive dialogue. I'm not accusing you of something, I'm noting.
That something has changed, and by the way.
Good!
We love each look at how much we love each other in that picture.
Like look at put the wedding photos up somewhere. Look at that moment.
We were nuts about each other in that moment. We were everything the other person ever wanted and more.
So anytime something has changed from that, don't you want to know?
Don't you wanna know? And by the way, not in an accusatory fashion. The most common one is we're not having sex as much as we used to.
We're not having sex with you. We're not having as much sex. I'm not getting as much oral sex as I used to get. We're not getting Okay.
There's a way to say that the way I just said it that's just gonna blow up in your face. It's not gonna work.
Because it's the well well you haven't been around as much. Well I haven't been around as much as I'm working so much and I don't see you spending less. Well, you know, y honestly, if it s comes down to that I'd spend a lot to not have you g treat me this way.
Now we're just having a fight.
Whereas if we say like, Oh, remember how close remember when we went away? I was just thinking yesterday about when we went away that weekend. Remember we ended up not even leaving the room. It was so fun. I love when we're like feeling that connected and close, you know. I feel like
I feel like lately sometimes like we're maybe not as connected and close. Like and if there's something I'm
I'm doing that's making that like I I really want to get it right. Like I really want to get it right. You know, there's something about
Apologizing first?
Like having some humility in relationship that has tremendous value, like when a lawyer
Like I'll I'll tell you one of my trade secrets.
You know I
My job is a very combative job sometimes.
So there's times where being very aggressive is the right move, but there's times where being aggressive just doesn't accomplish anything. And if I'm interacting with a lawyer for the first time, this is someone I haven't had cases with, so we don't know each other except by reputation.
And they come at me really hard.
The first thing I'll do is apologize.

I'm sorry, I just have to say like
Your tone, like you're coming at me, like it.
If I said something
In our initial interaction
That made you feel like
that I didn't have respect for you or that, you know, I didn't value your perspective, or like it I have a tendency to interrupt people sometimes. I have a tendency to so if I offended you, I apologize. Cause the way that you're kind of talking to me, like I feel like I must have said something wrong or I must have. So I apologize absolutely if I did.
Yeah.
What is the pr what choice do they have, but to then go, Oh no, no, that's
That's just my tone. That's just how I Oh yeah, well of course. Look, hey, we all have a game phase right there. I just felt like oh my God, like this guy's coming at me so hard. Like I I felt like I must have said something inadvertently or you know, and and then everyone's kind of calmer now.
You know, so I think that
This is a very easy way.
to invite
discussion about these small preventative maintenance things without turning it into a whole like because we again we just think that oh if I bring that up, it's gonna turn into a whole thing. It doesn't have to turn into a whole thing.
Period.
Yeah, I think I asked that in part because
I
It's something that I I've like subtly noticed that when we were when when we first met seven years ago, we were much more patient.
I'm like, I probably need to have a conversation about
returning to being more patient when we're trying to solve problems. We kinda like rush through them now.
I just I'm like, Oh, you play this forward.
Mm.
Pay this forward a decade or two decades, I'm like, damn, we're really not gonna be great at solving problems if we don't just like slow slow down with them.
Yeah. And a lot of that just means like listening to the other person's point of view a bit.
Yeah, and that's hard. That's hard. Because
You know
Your your brain moves quickly. Like it's something I struggle with in relationship, for sure. Like any kind of relationship is I'm very like, all right, come on, we gotta land this plane. Like let's go. Like skip to the end. Time is money. Like what are we what are we doing? Where are we going with this? Like and I
I'm terrible at it. I interrupt people constantly. Like I'm I'm not good at that. And it's something I'm working on because
I I
I think
I know what they have to say next.
And I'm wrong a lot of the time, especially in relationship, I'm wrong. Like it's not a popular opinion to say that men and women are different.
But men and women are different.
And I and and and they I don't say that to say one is superior and one is inferior.
I say that to say that we're different.
We we navigate things differently.
We
experience life differently. We're treated differently from a societal standpoint. We've had different life experiences. And I genuinely believe
That it would be very valuable for us.
In relationship.
T.
To sort of think, hey, I don't
really know everything about how this person is wired. It took me
Fully
Forty some odd years, if not fifty.
To figure out.
That
If I'm in a romantic relationship with a woman and she comes home and starts telling me about something that's upsetting to her.
That she doesn't want what my male friends want.
Like if I called a buddy of mine, if I called you, I've called you before, if I called you and I said, Steven, I'm having this problem, man, I'm dealing with one of my sons and he's doing X Wednesday.
I ex if you went
That must be very hard, Jim.
I'd be like,
Yes, it is, Steven. That's why I call you. Do you have any suggestions? Like what do you think I should do here? Like you're a smart guy. I called you because I wanted you to help me.
Very often that is the opposite.
Most women want
You need hear them.
Give them some support.
You guys can have this conversation. A couple can have this conversation. You can say, Hey, listen.
Right now, in this moment.
We're not
You're not coming to me with a problem.
But when you come to me with a problem
My natural proclivity is to start throwing solutions, and I've I've learned
Or I I heard Sexton say on Steven's show that, you know, maybe that's not the best way. Do you find that's true?
Like, do you want me to maybe like when you say these things, could I because again, this is a job. I want to be good at this job.
Why why is it wrong for me to ask you how to how can I be better at this job? I found it really useful to state explicitly to
m my fiancee what my needs are in those situations.
And again, it didn't come naturally to her and vice versa. Like it didn't
What she needs from me in those situations
is the opposite of what I need from her in this situation. I'm thinking particularly when she's like going through something and she's struggling with something.
She wants me to
B.
Be present and she
Um often wants like some advice on it.
And she
And her advice is like the opposite of mine often.
And
in the inverse, when I'm g going through those situations.
I actually
Don't want to talk about it at all.
Yeah. I just wanted to be there. Yeah.
Yeah, but what but what would be wrong?
With saying.
In that moment.
I've got a menu.
I've got a menu for you.
Can you tell me which one you want?

Just like you said, you're hungry.
And I said, What are you hungry for? Do you want sushi?
Do you want to do it?
Me to make you something?
Do you want some cheese toast?
Do you want us to go out someplace and we can get burgers? What is it you want?
Right. W couldn't you just say, Hey, I've got a menu.
I can just listen.
And tell you I love you.
And just be here.
I can
Give you some solutions and and how I might handle the problem.
I can
try to distract you and tell you a funny story about something that happened to me today, or I can pick you up and tickle you. We can go in the other room and roll around in the sheets for a little while and take your mind off it, and then we can figure out which of the other options you might want. We can go for a walk together and we can talk about it or not talk about it.
What would you like on the menu?
'Cause that's I'm serving all of those things for you.
Which one would you like? And the worst thing she could say is
I don't know. And then you go, okay, then I'm gonna pick one.
I'm gonna pick one and if it feels good, great. And if it doesn't
You'll tell me, okay? And I won't be offended.
Like
Again.
What'd that take, Stephen?
Thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds throw that out there.
Like
That that's instead of just blindly throwing darts at the target not knowing where the target is.
If you had to
Give everybody listening.
One relationship ritual.
That you would think would most
increase the probability that they stay together, stay in love.
Mm.
What would that r relationship ritual be?
I think that once a week you should make a specific
Task.
Of telling your partner three things that you really like about them.
And every week it should be something different.
I think you should tell your partner if you really wanna want to take the advanced edition of this.
Do you want to turn it from a 30-second task into like a whole five minutes that you devote to your relationship? You know, I feel about relationship maintenance the way that I have you ever heard the story, I think the Dalai Lama is the one credited with saying it. That's that a high high end executive paid a colossal amount of money to have a private audience with the Dalai Lama.
And the Dalai Lama said to him, You know, um, if you're searching for inner peace, you should meditate for fifteen minutes a day.
And the executive said, I don't have fifteen minutes a day to meditate. And he said, Then you should meditate for an hour a day.
I feel the same way. If you don't have five minutes a week to devote to your
Spouse or partner.
Then you're gonna need hours. I think you should actually set aside hours. Like five minutes a week, I would suggest the following exact sis just systematic, basic thing. This is what my next book is about. It's about a systematic approach to being good at love. And the idea is
Once a week.
I think here's the advanced version.
But minimum.
Just
Write down, send an email, send a text, whatever it is.
Tell your partner.
Three things.
That you love about them.
The advanced version is
Tell your partner three things you love about them.
Tell them three times this week that they made you feel loved.
Here's three things you did this week that made me feel loved.
Like here's three when you sent me that message and said that made me feel so soft, that made me feel very loved.
Like whatever it is, I'm sure you could find off the top of your head three things that she did this week that made you feel loved. And it's only Monday.
People
At home.
are in relationships right now. They're hearing you say that and some of them are still not gonna do it.
Why do you think they're not going to do it?
Like what is that mental conversation they're having when they go out? I think we're s I well, I think we're I think they think it's pointless.
I think they they might be at a point in their relationship where it feels like what would be the point? We're so far gone it wouldn't help.
I think s
More than anything?
My my real feeling on this?
The secret?
That I don't think people want to say out loud.
I I think we're terrified.
I think we're terrified. And I think what we're terrified of is not
is not the future of our relationship. I think what we're terrified of is that we we feel like we're not worthy of love.
I think it's most people's fundamental terror.
I think most people's fundamental fear is that if you knew me, you wouldn't love.
If you could see
Me.
The real me.
Like the me that's in here.
All the weakness, all the fear.
Of a horrible
Selfish thoughts.
All the perversity, all the
All the darkest things that are inside of me and every single one of us.
та if you could if you saw
You couldn't possibly love me.
And
The feeling that comes with that.
Which is
So you love
the character I'm playing.
That's not showing you all those things. I'm just
I'm just showing you the best parts of myself, if you saw the real mi.
You wouldn't really love me.
I think our greatest fear is that we're not worthy of love, and I think that
There's a part of us that's afraid.
To like
Poke at
What do you love about me?
What do I love about you?
How how what am I getting wrong?
Like again, like finishing that exercise.
You know
Here's some things here's three things I love about you.
Here's three things you did this week that made me feel loved.
Here's three things I could have done better.
Or tell me three things I could have done better, or tell your partner three things they could have done better. And then if you want to have a fun one thrown in there, because I think you should end on fun stuff. Here's three things you did this week that made me want to have sex with you.
I guess some people would
Are listening right now and they're thinking, Well, you know, I'm I'm dating Barry or they're thinking I'm j dating Joanne and she is
She is not.
Verbally.
Intimate in this way. She would if I suggested this to her Write it down. Don't do it. But but even written down, if I told Dave that we're gonna start writing these notes to each other about three things I like, he's gonna cringe and he's bullshit.
Bullshit.
Uh honestly, really?
That's that's too hard.
Too much of an ask.
Like
Dave, I don't care what Dave does for a living. Dave could be a ditch digger for a living who's not articulate in any way.
Dave
is moving in with you.
They've married you.
Dave went out and put his money on the counter and bought a ring.
B
Dave can't name three things he likes about you?
Really, Dave? Is that a big ask? Is that hard, Dave? Like, come on. I absolutely call bullshit on that. Maybe he doesn't want to. Okay, that's a different conversation. Why don't you want to? What what's uncomfortable about that for you?
It is uncomfortable for some people, isn't it? Yeah. It's very uncomfortable for some people. It's quite interesting that you could be in a loving relationship with someone, but also be
at some deeper level scared of intimacy. And I'll be honest.
Because
It's just me and you, nobody's listening. Sure, of course.
I think at some client privilege. I think at some level I've always been
No scared of intimacy makes it sound more conscious than it is.
Mm.
But at some deeper level, I've always been
I don't know, a bit disconnected intimately when it comes to like
Uh being able to articulate
These things.
We keep it simple. That that's why I wanna keep that simple.
I didn't say
What is what is your love for me rooted in?
And what is the nature of our connection and how does it fit into the broader context? Like I had a very challenging relationship with my mother growing up, and I feel like you fill some of the wounds that well to guys, we we don't need like Sigmund Freud doesn't have to show up in the relationship.
What are three
We could do it right now in this relationship.
What are three things I like about you?
What are three experiences you and I have had with each other that made each other laugh?
Like we have a friendship. Like what a joy that is, by the way. Like what a joy it is to sit across from someone and say, You know what I like about you? Shit, man, I I wanna hear that list. Like that's lovely. Do you think the whole idea of people being avoidant?
And sort of anxious. You know, this attachment stuff. Do you that does that stuff track to what you've seen? It does, but you know, I I also think too, like, I don't understand why we treat
Our connections to other people
Differently than things we are like.
Exercise. Exercise. Okay.
Haven't been to the gym at all.
You go to the gym.
You're gonna be sore.
You're not gonna be able to lift a lot.
You're gonna have to start slow and for a couple days you're gonna be sore. And if you go, ooh, I I that was I was very sore after that. I'm not going back to the gym. Okay, then you're never gonna get fit.
And you're never gonna get past the source stage. Cause if you go, I'll wait a month and then I'll go back and do the same thing again, guess what? You're just gonna You have to move through the uncomfortable part.
To get to the part where it starts to feel really good and you're not as sore. Yeah, you'll sometimes still be sore. You push it a little too hard, maybe work out with Huberman that week. But you know what? Other weeks, like you go, hey, I don't feel sore, I just feel strong and healthy. So
There's gonna be moments where this might feel a little weird, it might feel a little awkward, it might feel a little sore. There might be weeks where that kind of a simple little practice feels a little like, oh, it feels a little uncomfortable, or you have a list of things that you did this week that made me feel loved, I have to reach for it. Okay, great.
Isn't that
Little uncomfortable conversation.
That might prevent slippage, isn't that little conversation?
Better.
Ні лонгтер іпакт.
Of having a distance start growing between the two of you.
that eventually becomes impossible to navigate because it becomes a chasm between the two of you.
Do you think the attachment style theory has any truth to it from what you've seen?
Do you tend to find people are
You know, there's some people that are avoidant of intimacy, there's some people that are anxious, there's some people in in the middle. Yeah, I mean look, I I think that we're all
creatures of our

And I think a lot of our
I'm amazed as a fifty three year old man in therapy.
How often
A lot of my challenges are rooted in seven year old Jim.
As a man that talks so much about love, I'm I'm curious to know what it is that you still struggle with in terms of
You know,'cause I I I mean, I know from my own experience that I can know every I can know so much I sit here with experts all day, every day. It's not like I don't know this stuff.
Yeah. But then putting it into practice is a different task. Yeah. I mean it's why you'll never hear me use myself and my relationships as an example, because I think you can be
You know, an incredibly skilled person at
Uh
the theory of something and then in its practical application you have your own unique challenges.
I think that
Using yourself as the example and your relationships as an example is dangerous because I I learned it in my own professional life when I
I had a very friendly divorce.
And so my experience of divorce is
the unique function of the constitution of my ex-wife and of me and of our unique circumstances that brought us where we are. So if I use that as the basis for my analysis of things, I think it's a very shallow sample size.
I I know for me
My greatest challenge in every relationship I've ever had.
But even in my
My professional relationships.
Is
Acknowledging when I need help.
I I think because I was raised in an environment where
A lot of my needs weren't met.
My father was a
very serious alcoholic, my mother was trying to tend to a very serious alcoholic.
When I needed something, even from a very young age, I I felt a lot of shame.
Because it wasn't met with
You know, I'm hungry for breakfast.
Like of course, let me make you some breakfast. It was met with what, you can't make your own breakfast? What's wrong with you?
And I think it's a
This guy.

Yeah, yeah, that was me. That was me.
My Bruce Lee poster.
And my ch it was Chuck Norris up there.
Um yeah, this is probably like
Nine, nine years old. Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate. This is my room.
Yeah. I was very, um very lonely.
I was really lonely, I was really sad.
And
Um
I loved martial arts because
There was this
Very clear.
kind of masculinity on display?
Like this protective strong
Superpower.
That you could
Build.
It wasn't just gift to you, like you didn't win the genetic lottery, like you could through discipline.
And practice
You could have this superpower that would make you feel safe.
And and that was
But I
obsessed about having.
There's still a lot of that.
That person, that young man still in me that
is afraid to ask for help.
I wanted to be someone who I could do.
Do it all for myself.
And I I I wish I could say looking back that it was because that was my natural proclivity as to want to be very self-actualized, but it really was that I was just absolutely
sad and terrified that if I asked, I'd be shamed. If I said, like, could you be nice to me.
Yeah.
The answer would be no.
So
I learned how to
Do everything.
Like
I cook amazingly well.
Like I'm good at
a lot of things. I'm good at most things. Almost anything I put my mind to I'm good at.
But it took me a lot of years to figure out that
That
Although that has served me really well.
And it's built.
My career and
the security and safety that came with being so successful and having financial success.
And
You know, now some level of notoriety.
It took me a long time to figure out that that also has been the greatest obstacle in my life.
And I
It
I'm learning.
At the age of fifty three.
That this guy
Is
Like he's still there.
And
Talking to me all the time.
And I've learned now
Again through my own therapy to say to him like
Oh, I hear you.
Like I hear you. I'm glad you're still there.
Like you don't have to be so scared anymore.
I'm not
I'm grateful to him.
I think that's the best thing to aspire to.
It's too.
Make peace with that.
Like I'm sure in you.
There is some little boy.
Like
Hiding in some part of his room.
Feeling
Very lost and very lonely.
And I don't think there's anything wrong or weak.
У нашлин, воно стронг.
About
Acknowledging that that's still a voice in your head.
And acknowledging that that voice in your head, like
It it brought you where you are.
But it also held you back in some ways.
And you're never gonna get rid of it.
But maybe what you'll do is hear it for what it is, which is is it's a voice that was once there really important to save you.
And it did a really good job of that.
But but it's okay.
Like it's okay. You don't have to beat that out of you, but you don't have to listen to it either. You don't have to let it drive the car.
I was thinking as you were speaking about how
Those of us that

John me take this fitter back.
Oh, whichever. It's great. Fun to see that guy.
I it's funny that you pulled that out, I have to tell you.
It's a lovely it's a lovely thing.
I think there's something to learn from
Those versions of ourselves.
Like
If you hang out with kids
Y you just see like
Mm. They don't have all that hate in their heart.
They hate naps.
The end of the list.
Like everything else. Like they just want to like love each other and hug each other and
Play
And when they like think they hurt someone, they stop and they're very scared'cause they didn't mean to.
And then we turn into these creatures.
They're just attacking each other all the time.
You know?
And I think at the end of the day, like all we want is that
Like all we want is to just be like that.
Warm, open
version of ourselves before the world beat the shit out of us.
And maybe that's what love's supposed to be. Like maybe what love is is an opportunity for us to like
Reconnect to that part of our selves that was just so simple.
Like I just want you to love me. I want to be loved by you.
I want you to feel worthy of my love. I want to feel worthy of yours. Like
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I was thinking about how um
There's a lot of people that
at a very early age had to be very independent for whatever reason. Maybe a parent wasn't around, maybe in your case, you know, I've heard
You know, doing this podcast you get a bit of pattern recognition where you
You sometimes think Oh, okay, so if one of the parents was an alcoholic or Adult children of alcoholics were were I remember reading the book.
Recovery, adult children of alcoholics. I stumbled on it when I was in college in a bookstore.
And I remember reading it and going
They've been reading my diary? Like what the holy'cause there was this profile of like w one of the types, one of the archetypes of
adult children of alcoholics is that you
Yeah, control, control, control, control.
Like wanting to control everything because life feels so chaotic.
when you live with an alcoholic when the person
Who is supposed to be
your primary care giver
And the primary mechanism for you to feel safe.
feels unpredictable and chaotic.
And that is it creates in you this constant sense of a heightened, you know.
heightened sense of I need to hold on as tight as I can.
And also that drove you to be incredibly independent. Yeah.
Independence and
Connection seemed to be on like two ends of the spectrum.
And I say this in part because I look at
I look at all my friends that are very, very, very independent and I would say that they typically struggle the most to form relationships because they've kind of built their own castle with a moat. Yeah.
And j generally if we zoom out on this point of
Independentcy. Yeah.
I would say that the narrative in society over the last I know ten, twenty years or whatever is
Has been
Point it out.
glorifying independent and not dependency. Dependency is like not cool. Yeah. It's like be your own boss, start your own business down on your own two feet. Yeah. Yeah. I so I used to view
I would say the defining characteristics of my thirties and forties.
Was the belief
That there were two
Versions of Jim Sexton.
One was
The one that was the most forward facing.
At that time.
Which was lead pipe cruelty and mercenary sensibility. Like I'm I'm I'm gonna do this job, I'm gonna do it really well.
I'm gonna get better and better at it.
I'm gonna
Just take my skill set and weaponize it.
And that's who I'm gonna be.
And then there was this other part of me that was always there. I kinda stuffed it in there.
Closet for a while.
But like
gets misty eyed when I talk about love and
cries when I think about dogs and
You know, watch his love on the spectrum and can't make it through an episode without weeping three or four times. Like this very soft
Gentle, loving, compassionate, empathetic, sensitive part of me.
And I felt like they were two warring forces.
There were two versions of me.
And the question was how can I beat
That soft little

Out of me.
And be the final form, which is like the me.
That's a machine.
That can just do it. Like that can just do what needs to be done and do it in a way that nobody else can do. And I'm very blessed.
that I am in my line of work.
What Yoyoma is in cello.
Like in a courtroom.
I
Have a God given talent.
And I remember thinking, Okay, that's the final form of me as a master in the courtroom. And and everything else is just what do I need to do to get there.
I remember my ex wife saying to me
You know, you will never love any woman.
As much as you love the law.
Like every woman who you ever meet for the rest of your life will be playing second fiddle to how much you love being in a courtroom. You're great.
in a courtroom and you have no idea what to do in your living room.
Like in your living room.
You're just totally
Paralyzed.
Whereas in a courtroom, you know every it has why? It has defined rules. It has a cadence. I know what the goal is. Like I know exact it's controlled chaos. I'm great at it.
So there was a part of me
That went okay.
There's this soft, warm, wonderful, lovely, empathetic side of me.
And then there's this real successful and that's the one that got me everywhere. That's the one that got me everything I have. So I have to figure out how to get rid of this one and keep this one.
Like
And for
My entire thirties and most of my forties, that was my primary thing, was trying to figure out how to get rid of that part of me. And no matter how loudly I blared nine inch nails.
On on on my headphones.
And tried to become a machine.
I couldn't get rid of that part of me.
And then I came to realize
I think in part because of this work.
I think because of like somehow I stumbled into
being in a position where I end up talking about feelings a whole lot.
And it's
Somehow I I I got brought in to have go here's this interesting divorce lawyer who's gonna talk about divorce stuff, and somehow I ended up talking a lot about love.
And softness and warmth and compassion.
Yeah. No, exactly. And what I came to learn from that.
From from giving that voice.
Is that there actually isn't two warring forces.
It's two very authentic aspects of self.
That have to exist inside of me.
And each one of them creates the other in some ways. Like I don't think I'd be anywhere near as good of a lawyer and courtroom advocate.
If I didn't have a tremendous sensitivity
And empathy and couldn't put myself in the heads of the various people in the room. So I think that when we start to see what seems opposite traits in us instead as authentic representations of aspects of who we are, that we have to learn how to do
Let them dance.
Let them move together in some way, and there's times.
Where this guy
Should take the lead.
And there's times where that very focused
Self that's not a
You know, is very
Mission driven.
That person should lead.
And f and for men in particular, like we've been taught a rigidity.
Like the gender role for men
has a tremendous rigidity. I mean, I grew up in a time where you either got to be Clint Eastwood or Richard Simmons. Those were your two choices. You either had to be
You know, like icy a hundred percent.
Or you had to be, you know, you could be warm and fuzzy, but then you were just not really masculine.
And I just don't think that's the case. Like you look at
Like I've spent all twenty years on the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Mat.
I have to tell you, like there's some dudes could snap your neck with like any with their thumb.
And they're
Some of the warmest, most lovely people because these are all authentic aspects of self. And to know that like
The soft warm version of me.
Feeding it.
Letting it spend some time, letting it be in conversation.
It makes me better.
At the other part.
It makes me more authentic. It makes me better at that part. And by the way,
Letting that part out
It hasn't done anything to diminish this part. So when you start to see it that way, I I really think that there's a tremendous
broader menu of possibilities out there.
I've got several friends in my life that have really struggled with relationships and love.
And uh
For those people that have really, really struggled in love and they look around at everybody else and everybody else seems to
Have worked it out or at least be working through a situation, but they look at themselves and go, That just doesn't work for me. What's going on? Why am I the only one in my friendship group?
That hasn't
Found or isn't in a relationship.
And they kinda beat themselves up about it.
Starting point.
Why is this happening to me? And start looking at
When did it start happening?
And what's the consistent thread through all of it? And are there people that I could ask that question of who know me and love me and would be willing to tell me honestly? And if there aren't, great, what are some resources out there in terms of the wisdom of other people that might share that experience? I think there's so many entry points.
to that conversation with yourself. I think the start
Із то, ам дроні.
Лак во гірте солюшу із на.
Is to pretend everything's fine, and that's the ecosystem we've created.
We're we're living our gag reel.
And watching everyone's greatest hits.
А микроagд.
All day long.
To tell everyone how great we're doing.
And how we're crushing it.
And how great we feel and how focused we are because why? Because we're terrified that if we said, I don't know, I feel like I'm drowning.
I feel like I'm drowning sometimes. I have moments where I feel so put together and then I have moments where I think I'm drowning.
And and by the way.
When people have that kind of honesty.
There's something so beautiful about it.
Like I have to tell you, like one of the things that people say about me
When I go, I don't understand why anything I'm saying resonates with anybody. People are like, dude, you're so real. It's so real. It's so blunt and honest and like real.
This is
It's in every one of us is that same realness, that same basic just
All it is is just saying out loud, like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Like I don't have it all figured out. And that's okay, because I have some things really figured out.
So maybe if I've got these things really figured out and you've got these other things really figured out and we're just stop bullshitting each other for five minutes.
And instead go
You know, I'm doing great on this, but like this I feel like I'm a train wreck on.
Like every high achieving friend I have, every celebrity friend I have, every person I have friends who people look at them and go, Oh, dude, he is

Like you're my friend. People look at you, they go, he's murdering it. There are aspects of your life that you're like, I gotta work on that.
There's tons of aspects of my life where I go, I gotta work on that. Like I g I figured all these other things out, but
I haven't figured that out yet.
And you know what? It's so lovely.
To have that conversation.
Like
Why
Why can't we just make some space for that, all of us, a little bit more? I don't think it's that hard.
It's at least as important as our workout routine. It's at least as important as remembering someone's birthday.
Yeah, I I I I wonder why that I wonder why it is that we um
There's so little space for us to
Work on our connection challenges.
These days it hasn't been prioritised.
We become what we behold, we prioritize what we've been told to prioritize. We've been told to prioritize
Conspicuous consumption.
We've been taught that the measure of a person is is how much financial success they have. That's why I genuinely believe that if we continue to barrel along.
Using
The s the metric of success.
Being
Financial above all else, really. Consumption, what we own, what we wear, what we have, or w how we look.
Right.
As the priority.
We're barreling towards nothing.
Whereas if we were to change that and say, Hey, like
Choy.
Peace.
Finding some peace within ourselves.
Finding some
Balance that feels
Right to us individually. I think that's a really good simple word, which people don't think about enough when they're thinking about the KPIs of success in their life, which is
How do I feel?
I think we've all grown up
In different context learning to tune out of
how I feel and in its place per
How does the world feel about me?
as like the primary metric. And it's like I I was thinking the other day that actually
You know, we can go do all these podcasts and books and whatever else.
But we were all born with this.
sort of internal
compass that tells you every day how you feel.
But like none of us tune into it.
Yeah.
And actually the metric becomes like how many followers do you have? How rich are you how It's beaten out of us.
By the world.
Like I I I will tell you
You always get the most emotional stuff out of me, Steve.
I will tell you my most shameful moment as a parent.
So I have two sons. They're twenty six and twenty eight. Twenty eight year old just got married in September. He's a lawyer. He's
Awesome.
He must have been
Five or six.
And something happened.
Like
And he was
He started crying.
Like someone hurt his feelings or something happened, but it wasn't
I don't know, it wasn't that big of a deal.
Like it it to me at the moment. I mean I was in my
Twenties.
He was twenty four when I was twenty four when he was born.
So yeah, I was in my twenties.
And he was crying, he was crying and I like I wanted him to stop crying'cause it made me
sad to see him cry. Like I love him so much, like that I was like
It made me so uncomfortable to see him crying.
And I remember I like
I like
grabbed him, not roughly, I grabbed him and I just looked at him and I was like, control yourself.
Like control yourself.
Like calm down and control yourself.
And I remember like he
He managed to do it.
It's
Twenty something years later.
Like
And I
I'm ashamed of that.
Because
I understand what I was trying to say to him.
Like I was trying to say to him, I I don't want you to be in pain.
Like I'm uncomfortable with your pain. I also want to
I wanted to say something to this guy probably, which is like, dude, like you're the world's not gonna be nice to you if it knows that you have all these feelings. Like you gotta find a way to hide it. There's so much going on in that moment, but
Like
I look back on that moment and I just think like
No, like that was the wrong thing to do.
Like it was the wrong thing to do. Like
I don't think we should be telling
People.
Not just boys, like boys particularly, maybe, but I don't think we should be telling people like control yourself, like stop feeling so much.
Like I think I think
I think there's a difference between
Trying to like get people to control their feelings.
And not letting like everything be governed by the transient feelings that you have from moment to moment.
And I I think it's a harder, more subtle message.
But like I think
fe if we lead with the feelings, if we lean into the feelings first, we identify the feelings first, if we figure out what it is we wanna feel, we want the other person to feel, to bring it back to marriage, to bring it back to connection.
Yeah.
What were the questions I was asking earlier that that exercise?
When did I make you feel loved this week?
Here's some things you did that made me feel love this week. Here's some things that made me feel desire towards you this week. Here's some things you did this week that
Made me feel less than loved by you.
Or they made me feel less connected to you. Like
Вай, виджет і чета.
Learn.
How to identify our feelings and feel our feelings. Like maybe we'd need more Mr. Rogers and less
You know, intense
Self help. Like maybe we just need more
Help.
Not
trying to control our feelings, but just figure out what they are and feel them.
I think uh you know a lot of us are
distracting ourselves as a way to avoid feeling anything. Because even I I was thinking about like a practical way for you to get back in touch with actually how you're feeling. And every solution I came up with was like interrupted by doing it. Well the best definition of addiction I've ever heard was from a therapist, Dave Clugman.
Who said to me
Um, addiction is anything you do to get away from feeling what you w would have felt if you'd done nothing at all.
And I've always said to people work is my favorite narcotic.
Like if you look at the most productive times in my life, they were almost always when something awful was happening in my personal life. Either I was getting divorced, my mother was dying.
Some some
Painful thing was happening. So I took tremendous comfort in feeling in control and competent, which is how I feel at work.
So the the more I'm working
Is usually a gauge of of
where there are aspects of my life that I don't want to feel certain things. And again, that's why I think that the
The best question to ask at the start of therapy, the only question really is what is it I'm afraid to feel?
I think because we're closing off on this section.
where we were talking about people who have struggled in life.
It is probably worth just closing the section by
Giving them.
A why.
As to
Like the the reason why they should
Take love seriously.
And stop distracting themselves and stop avoiding it and stop avoiding going to therapy. Yeah.
Brushing it under the carpet.
Like what what is what is the why there? Why should they take love seriously?'Cause they could continue to, you know, bomb on for the next ten, twenty years and become
really professionally accomplished. Mm-hmm.
And you know, get rich, nice house, nice holidays.
Yeah.
Those are all great things.
Those are all worthy pursuits.
I think when you look back on your life
Whatever stage of your life you're in.
Most people
Will recall a moment where they felt loved.
Where th where they felt tremendous love.
as the highest points of their life.
I I think even celebrity
And I represent a lot of celebrities and now
Like you, I've had a little taste of it.
That's really just the praise of strangers.
It's like the love of strangers.
Which is lovely.
It's lovely. It's like Nutra sweet. It's sweet.
It's not sugar, but it's sweet.
Like feels good to have
Strangers.
Adore you.
Lovely.
Yeah.
But is it the same?
As having someone who genuinely knows you.
And has a history of with you?
And really loves you.
Like, I think all of us know if we're honest.
That when we look back on our life at the moments where we felt the most
Glad that we're here.
It was usually
Something that we felt that made us feel loved.
Or that we got to feel love towards someone else or s or ideally a combination of the two.
So I think
Romantic love.
Із агрейтні, антаби
Someone who's religious and therefore believes that marriage is a sacrament that you're called to for the purpose of creating children.
You don't have to be someone who believes that
You know.
Marriage is good for society and therefore that's why we have to do it is if you love America or you love the UK, you have to do this for the country.
It really can just be to look inside your own experience as a human being and look inside your own feelings and say, Okay.
When have I felt truly loved, when have I felt love and were those the highest
moments in my life, were those the best moments in my life. A lot of those other things that you just described, like
holiday it's usually not by yourself. It's usually with other people. It's usually with someone, even if it's transient love. It's some kind of connection to another person. So the the bigger question is is is the unique form of love
that that comes with a pair bond.
Right.
I you find one person.
And you make that person your person.
Like
Is that the permutation?
That works for you.
And
I think there are a lot of people
who try at that and fail. The majority of people try at that and fail.
Is the solution to that.

I don't think so.
I think the solution to it is to figure out
When it works, because when it works, it it's so good.
Right, talk to anybody who's really had a great successful long term relationship.
Again, even if it eventually ends, even if
You know, happily ever after means happily ever after separately. If you had ten, twenty years of your life.
Where you felt deep, wonderful, intimate connection with another person and great sexual satisfaction, all kinds of other things like

You know, at best.
Right? Like you're
You're getting married.
Right.
And if you have a monogamous marriage.
I would like to think
That
You will sleep with as many women as you want to.
Which will be one.
And she will sleep with as many men as she wants to.
Which will be one.
Cause when I'm full
I'm not hungry.
I don't need more to eat.
Like when I'm satisfied
I don't need more.
Like
If if the goal of a monogamous marriage, if the goal of a traditional marriage
Із готу сей до іче.
Hey, you and I
We're going to share space, we're gonna share a journey together, we're gonna play a very important role in each other's lives.
We're going to add to that there's this romantic and sexual component, which makes it something other than a friendship.
And most marriages you're saying we're gonna only share that aspect of self with each other.
Okay. So
If that's what you want.
And what comes from that.
Is
You know, something you want to feel, and that is I want to feel deeply connected. I want to feel a connection that gets deeper and deeper. I want to feel safe in this relationship emotionally.
Physically
I want to feel safe in it.
Like
I just think that there's tremendous value.
In saying that out loud to each other.
From the beginning.
And saying to each other.
What can we do?

To if we both have decided this is something we're going to do, we don't have to do it, but we're going to do it.
How can we
Keep this thing.
lovely and connected.
And I I think the answer really is not that complicated.
Do you think prinops?
Help marriages last.
Yes.
You're saying that's a divorce lawyer who gets paid to
Right. No,'cause it's the least profitable thing we do. Oh, okay. Yeah. Pre ups are so easy.
Like they're
You know, they're really like
To the point now where they're essentially automated. Like I see a future where AI's just gonna do them. Like it's really not that tricky. Do you think I should get a prenup?
Yes, of course.
Why do you think I should get a prenup. You have a prenup.
It'll need to be written by the state legislature.
Or it'll be written by you and she. Who do you trust more? You been to the DMV?
Have you walked into the DMV and went, Oh, these people are great. They should be in charge of everything. I mean, you know what? They should make the rules for our marriage. And by the way.
Even though this legislature changes constantly, like whoever you are, whatever your political views are, in the last twenty years, at some point you've gone, I cannot believe who's in charge here.
I cannot believe is in charge of the government. Whatever side of the aisle you're on.
So
What you're saying because your marriage has a prenup.
You get married, you've got a prenup.
Юрсейн ай тръст.
The legislature of the state in which we will be residing in the future, in the event we break up.
More
Then I trust my partner, who I've chosen out of eight billion options. I imagine a lot of people listening would

Be scared to mention.
A prenup to their partner.
And those people in particular, by the way, it's just like I said about, you know, I don't have fifteen minutes a day to meditate, great, then you need an hour.
If you'd be scared to mention a prenup to your partner.
Then then you should definitely mention a prenup to your partner, because what that means is I'm afraid to have a hard conversation with my partner.
And if you're gonna get married
You should get
accustomed to having hard conversations. Life is gonna come at you very fast, and there's gonna be lots of things that happen that require hard conversations. What if my opponent says no?
Says no to the pre and up? Yeah.
Have a conversation about why.
And they say, W you don't trust me? Like you think I'm gonna take your stuff? This is not very sexy. This is
Well, arguably you don't trust me equally.
Right.
Because that trust works both ways. So what you what what you're saying when you say I you don't trust me.
Is you're saying that
You don't trust that this marriage is going to last.
Or you don't trust, юсен юнт т.
That in the event this marriage ends, we won't be fair to each other.
Right.
So why would you marry someone?
Who you don't believe that they're going to be fair to you. What you're
You're not protecting yourselves against each other.
You're protecting yourselves against
the government making the rule set in the event that that your marriage ends in something other than death.
You know I've got a friend.
Um there's two people that convinced me that I should get a prenup.
Mm-hmm.
One of them with you.
Thanks. Um
And then the other was at watching a friend go through divorce. And he said to me
Actually when we we went for dinner one time, that
It was sure what it was. It was looking at his face.
And seeing
the like depression in his face.
from the process because not only had it ruined his relationship with his ex wife because they've gone through this onslaught for seven years where two sets of lawyers were fighting either side. He said that he'd paid for the lawyer her lawyers. Yeah.
Which he has to do, which I always think about.
earning individuals should be responsible for the legal reasonable legal fees of the
The less uh earning spouse.
Her lawyer has now got like a skyscraper.
Whereas when this divorce started, he was in a small little office. Now he's got like some massive building because he's had to spend tens of millions on her lawyers.
And yeah, I met clients who paid millions.
The other thing he said was that
He has
Her lawyer.
is trying to inflate his assets.
Uh-huh.

That his business is worth
Billions of dollars. Now I know why this divorce is taking so long. They have dueling experts.
So instead of of the two lawyers hiring neutral a neutral expert to value his business interests.
What they've
elected to do instead is to hire individual partisan experts. And that happens sometimes. And when you hire an individual partisan expert, of course you're going to
You know, if you represent the party who wants half of this thing, you're gonna in find someone you can the cigarette companies had doctors who were willing to testify that cigarettes are good for you.
Like you can find an expert to say almost anything if you pay them enough. So you find credible experts that will overly value the business. And then because value is speculative. And then the other side has an incentive to hire experts who will deliberately diminish the value of the business. And then you have two opportunities. One is
You can play with the data set.
And you can impeach the data set. And then the other is you can impeach the conclusion that came from the data set. So you can say you used the wrong data and that's how you got to the wrong conclusion, or you can say you use the right data, but you came to the wrong conclusion, or some combination of both. Like this is the shit I get to do all day in a courtroom is to like
try to engineer those optics or prevent those optics from being engineered.
And say
That I was going through a divorce now with my partner.
Hm. My wife
Which
Well, Hallelujah.
would theoretically tr be trying to say that this podcast is worth a billion dollars. Because then
Theoretically she's entitled to a larger percentage. Yeah. She might be entitled to five hundred million. And if the judge believes that this podcast is worth a billion, I need to find a way to pay her five hundred million.
Yeah.
Even if I don't have it.
It can be paid over time. It's what's called a distributive award. It can be paid over an extended period of time. And my lawyer's gonna be trying to argue that this is worth nothing. It's absolutely effortless. It's worth nothing. You should have negative contingency discounts, a key man discount. It's a lack of discount for marketability. There's yeah, th this is all I do all day. This is the gig. And and see
You know why you want a prenup?
Is'cause God forbid
For both of you.
That that happens.
Like
You're
You're gonna pay me.
I get a thousand dollars an hour.
To help people navigate that kind of chaos.
Order create that kind of chaos.
As a weapon.
Against a person.
Or to just threaten.
That kind of chaos. Doesn't that mean it's your in your interest to
Stretch to amplify conflict and stretch it out and protract it.
And by the way
I manipulate people's emotional state for a living. I said that earlier. You don't think I could use my powers for evil to get my client terrifying worried that forces are aligning against him. By the way, that's how good lawyers
get their reputation as being good lawyers.
Because sometimes we have a client where we could potentially make millions of dollars.
And we settle the case.
W then like
ten thousand dollars worth of fee. Like I have a case right now
Where my opposing counsel is, I I would consider the only lawyer in New York City better than me.
Like he's sort of like an idol to me in the sense that he's such a good trial lawyer.
And he's my adversary on this case. And it's not the first case we've had against each other. And we are like when the two of us go in a courtroom, it's like T Rex is fighting.
We're gonna settle this case in like two phone calls.
Because we both
are just not the kind of people that are gonna necessarily amplify conflict. We we
We have our reputation.
Because we don't
Do that like the best of us.
That's how you ear the reputation. The people that do that amplifying of conflict.
Word gets out.
Word gets out and that's it. This is a business where you live and die by your reputation.
Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself.
I'm inviting ten thousand of you to come even deeper into the diary of a sea.
Welcome to my inner circle.
This is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that we've never ever released. And so
Much more.
In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have.
But remember for now we're only inviting the first ten thousand people that joined before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to DOAC Circle dot com. I will speak to you there.
So I have
Some Ms here or something.
Love M. Um
Explain to me.
So
This is actually a great illustration of what a prenup should be.
Okay.
All a prenup is. A prenup is not a referendum on the likelihood of us breaking up.
A prenup is not a commentary on how much we trust each other. A prenup is not um
You know, an opportunity to screw the person you're about to
join lives with.
Okay.
A prenup is a rule set.
It's creating tranches.
Okay.
So
You have some things.
She has some things.
Right now.
You don't owe her anything, she doesn't owe you anything.
Yours is yours, hers is hers.
You're in the title system.
Can we talk about
If we're just dating.
So if you're dating, I heard that there's some laws where if you date someone long enough
Eventually.
they can basically argue that they own your stuff. Yeah. So that's called what used to be called common law marriage or
It makes you responsible for what is called palomony.
Which is like alimony for a friend, palimony. Okay. Um, most jurisdictions no longer honor that. It doesn't exist.
It was largely a function of the absence of marriage equality.
So once marriage equality occurred, once gay and lesbian individuals could marry
The court system essentially started saying there's no such thing as a quasi marital relationship anymore. If you are married, you're married. If you're not, you're not.
So if you decide to live together and you don't have a marriage, then
You can't have a quasi-marital relationship anymore. Now that marriage equality is the law of the land, and everyone who wants to get married is allowed to get married, you can't say, Well, we were kinda like married, but we weren't married. Like you're either married or you're not married. Those are the two tranches. So
That situation you're in the title system
Yours is yours, hers is hers. There is no we except for the voluntary we.
Okay.
Using coming back to this example of these Ms and prenups.
What?
Marriage is
Simply put.
There's you.
There's me.
This is we this is the bucket of we.
Okay.
When we get married
We're gonna take you.
I didn't put it all.
See I didn't put it all?
Right.
I'm keeping this separate. That's called separate property.
Okay, in California this is called community property. This is anything I acquire during the marriage.
Okay.
This is separate property. If I keep it separate.
It stays separate.
Okay, it stays separate.
Keep that thought.
This is
Huh.
Okay.

S she's put
Some of her is in there too. May not be exactly the same, but it's pretty close to it. And by the way
We just got married, it's pretty obvious to see.
Which one's which, right?
Okay. So so this is
Any marriage really with or without a prenup.
Okay. This is what marriage looks like. There's you and there's me and there's we. We're combining. And by the way, this isn't just for assets and liabilities. This is like the nature of our stuff, our furniture, the things we bring to the relationship. You could even argue it's like what we watch on TV, right? It's you, me, we, and we combine the two.
Okay? Now you and I both know this is actually what it starts to look like. It never stays just neat, does it? It always starts to get kind of mixed up together. In the law we call that commingling.
Okay.
Now.
Here's what's interesting.
With a prenup.
This stays.
This simple.
Because anything you put in this
Bucket.
It's married.
And that could be stuff I bought for the house, it could be a joint bank account.
Be anything.
Okay. All we're doing when we have a prenup.
Is yours.
Mine.
Hours.
And we're defining that.
So
Maybe I want you to feel I'm very invested in this relationship, so I throw some more in.
Hey babe, I just got a bonus at work. I'm throwing it into the Wii.
I'm keeping a little over here.
I'm keeping a little over here. Wait, can you do that of the
The marriage with a prenup? Yeah. So you can add to a prenup. With a prenup, what you're saying
Is
If it's in my name, it's mine. Asset or liability. If it's in your name, it's yours. Asset or liability. If it's in our joint names, we divide it fifty-fifty, or how we agree in writing. But we create three separate buckets, yours, mine, and ours.
Okay.
Дійно возьмет Калифорния.
After seven years.
Or in the state of New York, if you co mingle assets in any way.
This is solely things in your name. This is solely things in her name. Things you owned before marriage. This is the you and the me before you got married.
Community property now.
All of it. Everything. All of it.
Every bit of it. You didn't have a prenup.
Everything that's in it.
Everything in here.
Is
Is subject to division.
Everything that's in here is subject to identification, valuation.
And division.
And think about
Think about
Sorting that out.
And also going back to my friend.
Some of the value.
Of these assets.
Is up for debate.
Sure.
Sure. Not only is the value because look, some of these are cracked and some of them aren't, and did they crack in this process or were they cracked before? Did she crack them or did you crack them? And which ones are worth more than the others? And were these the same at the beginning? It doesn't matter. It's all in and by the way.
Take
Take out the marital pro take out your property now.
How long is that gonna take you?
It's impossible to do. Once you're in the community property system, once you've put something into the we category, if you get married without a prenup.
You can unintentionally
Buy into this.
Into this system.
Which by the way
I make a very comfortable living.
Helping people sort this out.
Whereas
Whereas
Yeah.
All you had to do
Was agree on the rule set.
Of yours, mine, ours. And then this is intentional.
Now I understand why that's scary for some people.
'Cause you have to have a conversation about
Well, are we putting that in joint names?
Well, you got that bonus. Are you putting it in my account or your account or
Some in your account and some in my account, or some in this
But isn't it better?
If I was
Uh financially motivated.
individual and I was marrying, say, you, and you were
Adelina.
I mean it's very much in my interest to avoid this prenup.
Maybe.
Yeah. Because then I'm you know, it's all gonna become we in seven years time. So I've just got to be with you for seven years and then I can bounce out of this and I'm gonna make half a half a billion dollars. Have you ever seen that? Of course. Have you ever seen but here's also what I will say to you.
Flip that story for a second.
So we're married for six and a half years.
It's going pretty well.
We're at the six and a half year mark.
You're you're a billionaire.
You're probably not stupid.
Right?
Are you gonna take that bet?
Is it seven years is the moment when the moment.
When it all becomes community property.
So do you find some very successful people Yeah they spike the divorce rate at six years, six and a half years.
Cause why? It's the same reason why I tell people don't put
Don't put what we call, you know, sunset clauses in a prenup.
Because people people all have the bright idea that they're gonna oh, well we'll do a prenup but after ten years it'll go away.
After ten years.
You know, it'll self destruct, like in Mission Impossible.
And all that does is makes people ask really icky questions at the nine and a half year mark.
Where they have to start going.'Cause seven years
Seven years is like the honeymoon's over, maybe you got a kid or two, and all of a sudden you go, Okay, do I want
Fully one half of everything I owned prior to the marriage to now be subject to division?
Is it going that good? Do I wanna take this bet? Like look, we live in reality.
What you're doing when you marry someone is you're marrying your destiny to them and you're making decisions.
About a future that you can't see, it hasn't happened yet.
If seven years is the moment when
our assets become
commingled to the point that community property where we have to kind of split our assets in a relationship. Have you ever seen someone get to like seven years in one day?
And then fall for divorce. Yeah, I've had people who wait until the exact moment. Like there's other
There's other formulas that are applicable. Like I I have plenty of people right now that have come to me for a consultation and they're like, Yeah, I'm not gonna file for another six months because we'll hit twenty years in six months. And when we hit that, it kicks up to another level of alimony in terms of the formulas.
Like, here's the thing.
When the government makes decisions for you.
They set numbers.
Like there's a highway.
Near where we are right now.
It's fifty five miles an hour.
is an acceptable legal speed to drive on that.
Fifty six, and you're committing a crime.
Seventy-six and you're committing a different level of crime. 106 and you're committing a higher level felony crime, right?
Is fifty six and fifty five that much different? No, we had to pick a number, so we picked that number.
So
Do you
Trust.
The government
to pick the number.
That's the only question to ask when you're thinking about a prenup is do I trust the government so much that I'm gonna let them pick the number? Personally, I don't.
Personally, if I like someone so much that I've decided I'm going to choose them out of eight billion other options, I would think I have enough faith in that person to come up with a rule set between us that we've and by the way, not a complicated rule set. If it's in my name, it's mine. If it's in your name, it's yours. If it's in our name, it's ours.
Then you can have all the conversations you want about why aren't you putting things in joint names or why are you putting things in joint names? And here's what I need to feel safe. Cause here's the thing. If you're the billionaire or you're the person marrying the billionaire.
You both wanna feel, remember, we're going back to what is it you wanna feel? What is it you wanna feel? That's the key question.
You what do you want to feel? You both want to feel safe, isn't that fair?
I've represented a lot of victims of intimate partner abuse and domestic violence and coercive control. And I can tell you, you can't feel loved if you don't feel safe.
And there's lots of ways for a person to feel unsafe.
Фізикли, емоцій, фінаншалі. Т'лацова. Ай хоп.
You want to make your fiance feel safe, and I hope she wants to make you feel safe.
So one of the ways that you make her feel safe, by the way, you can't protect her from everything in the world. You know that, right? Like somebody drops a nuke, there's nothing you're gonna be able to do to help her with that.
Okay. There's lots of things that can happen that you can't keep her safe from, but you're gonna do your darndest, and that's great.
Okay? And by the way, like she wants you to feel safe.
She wants you to feel safe and not taken advantage of and loved for who you are.
Right. I I have every confidence she does not love you just for money. There's lots of people with money in the world.
So she loves the unique combination of things that are you, one factor of which may be that you're a very successful man professionally, and that makes her feel safe, and that makes her feel secure, and it makes her feel like she can really have a future with you that's a bright and lovely one, and she can focus her energies on things other than fine. It's great.
This is great, man! We're both happy, we're doing the thing!
So what is wrong?
В часто кіпін з конверсає.
An ongoing conversation about what is it we need to feel safe because if you
Or in that dynamic where she's gorgeous and he's rich.
If she says to him, hey
If we split up
I'm gonna like need some things.
Like I I'm not really focusing on finances and you have so much more than me.
You're telling me the guy's not gonna say? Yeah, it makes sense.
And by the way, when's the time to have that conversation? When you're madly in love with each other in the beginning of this thing, when you're on your knee in front of the restaurant, you know, uh proposing to the person. You don't have it when you're breaking up.
That's the worst time to have that conversation. Have it when you're first.
having that abundance of optimism and connection to each other, and then
And then by the way, what does he feel unsafe?
He feels unsafe that he's saying look
I'm willing to contribute financially to this relationship. Clearly, I've proven that. I bought you a Birken bag, I bought you a car, I pay for your bills, I'm signing on to marry you and to give you a wonderful, beautiful life.
Are you entitled to a hundred percent or fifty percent of everything I've ever owned?
I have so much more than you right now. Like that seems wildly do are you saying that everything I earn from the date of marriage on we should split? Like that's what's great about a prenup. You can make whatever rules you want to.
In that situation.
So I I believe there is genuine value in having honest conversations about these things. Look at
It's just Ms.
It's just money.
The end of the day!
And by the way, this has no more real value than the pieces of paper you're holding in your pocket that we've attributed value to. If anything, this tastes good. Chew on money all you want.
It won't help.
I did have this conversation with my partner and we we talked about it and she was very um
She was very supportive of a prenamp'cause she also wants one. And she wants to protect her assets and the business that she's built and all those kinds of things, which was
Is what
I acknowledged, you know, that I'm I earn more money. So in the event that
We have a big family in the future, we have four or five kids.
You know, I think I need to contribute more to make sure that she's fine in the event. Of course. But but see, this is the point.
You're a reasonable person.
If your response when she said well, you know I
We may want to have a family, and you know, if we do, like you have so much more than me, and although I'm signing off to protect your assets, like you know, the pursuits I I am really concentrating my day on are not
Purely financial. They're more for the good of the world or for the good of individuals. I'm a helper. I'm a person who wants to to to make the world a better place. You know, I know a little bit about her that I know that these are these are her goals. Her goal is not to be, I want to be the CEO of everything. Her goals is to help the world and to help people. That's beautiful. That's probably one of the reasons why you love her.
And so
Isn't that
a conversation the two of you should have now and say, well, of course. And by the way, if we have kids, I'm gonna need different things. What's great about a prenup is you can make one that says, if we don't have kids, it's this. If we have kids, it's this. Like there's protections you can put in that make sense to both of you.
What about pets? I've heard about
This pet nup.
Yeah. What's a pet nup? And do people actually Yeah. Yeah, a pet a petnup is I actually created the site, trusted petnup.com.
And uh it's free.
It's a hundred percent free. It's uh if you it's a pay as you wish, so if you want to
to pay anything towards it. It 100% of it goes to animal shelters, basically, to to 501 C3 animal shelters. But essentially
What we have found is happening more in the legal system right now is the equivalent of custody cases, but for companion animals.
So people have a dog, people have a cat, people have a bird, people have any combination of animals. We feel deeply emotionally invested in our pets.
Um the law for many years looked at pets as what was called chattel. Chadel is property.
And property is essentially like if you killed someone's dog.
You owed them the replacement value of the dog.
What you tend to see
From a legal perspective here.
Uh
At one point they bought a pet together
They never really clarified who owns the pet. They go through a divorce, they're both arguing over the pet. That happened a lot. Yeah. That was the most common permutation. Sometimes it was they got a pet together while they were dating, and one of them was living, you know, in their own apartment or whatever, and the dog or cat was living with them, and then they merge their homes, and now they both grow deeply attached to the people.
To this animal. And you know, they've spent five years or 10 years together with this animal. And now they both like a child. They both have this like a stepchild is very similar. Like it's not my blood child, but it's, you know, a someone who I've spent a long time with and been part of their care. And I mean something to them.
What does the Well for many, many years pets were considered chattel. They were considered property. So, you know, I I remember a case
In New York County.
Where the parties could not agree on what to do with the dog, like who would keep the dog, and the judge said, Okay, I'm ordering the dog to be sold and the proceeds divided.
And of course the people then went outside and figure it was very Solomon like the people went outside and figured out a visitation schedule for the dog.
But what we're just saying is just like anything in a prenup.
Do this in advance.
Just do this in advance. You have a pet, have a pet nub. Even if you're not getting married, if you're cohabitating or you're dating someone, have a contract that says we both care about this animal, we've adopted this animal, or we've purchased this animal, or we brought this animal into our lives. And now, in the event that our relationship ends.
Here's what the rules will be.
We will
jointly make important medical decisions and be guided by the veterinarian's, you know, perspective. Um, it if either of us ever is going to give up the animal for adoption, the other person will have the automatic right to adopt the animal. If
The time eventually comes where there has been a recommendation of euthanasia by we will both be entitled to be there when we say goodbye to that dog, or we'll both be entitled to jointly agree on where that
Animal's ashes will be or where they'll be buried, or we'll each be entitled to one half of the ashes, or we'll have a visitation schedule for the dog in the event that we separate. That's what a petnup is. A petnup is a contract between two people. Look, just like kids.
Pets didn't ask for this. Pets didn't ask for you guys to break up.
It's not their fault.
Like I don't know anybody that ever broke up'cause of the dog or the cat. I'm sure there's somebody out there, but that's not what it's about. So it is very, very useful to have in advance a rule set. I like rules in advance. I like to know the rules of the game that we're playing because we can adjust our behavior accordingly.
Is um divorce increasing?
Statistically.
So it's
The most recent statistic is the divorce rate is slowly going up. It was low. It had it had gone down.
It went down during the pandemic.
Part of that was a function of access to the court system.
When you again when you're looking at the divorce rate, the divorce rate is calculated based on the filing of what's called certificate of dissolution of marriage, which is the final document that's filed with the state.
by the court system when a divorce has been finalized. So all you're really seeing there is what marriage has catastrophically failed and f and there was a judgment of divorce center. There are many people that just go out for milk and never come back, or they physically separate and then they never finalize a divorce. They're not factored into that statistic.
So and the people who quietly stay together miserable or live in different places and just move out and never finalize their divorce. That that that statistic doesn't include any of those people. These are just the people that it actually ended in divorce and that divorce was registered with the state. But the divorce rate went down.
And then it
The divorce filing rate spiked when the court systems opened back up post pandemic.
And now it's steadily going back up again. Now what's interesting is the marriage rate.
is going down
And the average age at which people marry is going up.
I was looking at the generational divide here and it says
Younger couples, so millennials and Gen Z, divorce rates have plummeted. They are marrying later, cohabiting first, and statistically more selective, leading to more stable marriages. However
there is something called the grey divorce. Divorce rates for
People over fifty.
um they refer to as gray divorce has doubled since nineteen ninety and tripled for those over sixty five. Yeah. Grey divorce is a uh something that a lot of divorce lawyers are thinking and talking a lot about right now, which is that first of all, people are living much longer.
People are living in a different way much longer thanks to things like erectile dysfunction medication. Like, you know, an eighty year old having, you know, a active sex life is not something that really existed.
So often.
prior to the pharmaceutical advent of erectile dysfunction drugs, which really only occurred in the last twenty years.
So there's a big change in in what a seventy year old or eighty year old's quality of life is and what they look like and what their health is like. So you know, with with uh hormone replacement therapy, with you know, all the different medications that are out there, people are living more
Uh sexually
uh you know and romantically charged lives in their elder years than they used to, which often leads people to say, you know what, I've got ten more years, I'm not gonna stay in this unhappy relationship and I'm gonna split up. I actually don't think, by the way, that those two statistics that you just talked about.
are unrelated. I think millennials, they haven't been married for that long yet.
Like the question of catastrophic failure of a marriage, like I I've said it before that people get divorced the same way they go bankrupt, very slowly and then all at once.
Well two of the reasons given in the research I did as well were quite
Quite
unobvious on the surface. One of them is that women in this generation, boomers and Gen Z, are more likely to have their own careers and retirement savings than previous generations, meaning they can afford to leave unhappy marriages. That's peace. And when I've spoken with menopause experts and so on, they've they've told me they see this often that in the season of life women will, you know, make a decision to

And the other one is the reduced stigma about divorce. Yeah. So divorce is no longer seen as a moral failure, making it socially easier to split later in life.
I believe that that's true. I think that
We've definitely changed the manner in which we relate to divorce. We no longer consider it a catastrophic failure socially. I think that we often see it as the ending of a chapter and the beginning of a new one. I don't think that that's bad. I think to stigmatizing divorce
And seeing that okay, sometimes it is better for people when the relationship is no longer working for both of them and they've done the things they've tried to do to make it work and they've decided that happily ever after means happily ever after separately. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Similarly, you could make the argument that one of the reasons millennials and again, only time will tell.
that millennials are better at
uh staying married is gonna be that they go into it with more realistic expectations. They don't go into it with the expectation that this person's gonna be their everything. They they look at it and go, Yeah, as a human being, I'm marrying another human being. I haven't quite figured myself out.
Which of your books was more popular?
How not to fuck up your marriage.
Straight talk from a divorce lawyer who's seen it all. Or
How to stay in love.
So how to stay in love has been out longer.
Yeah. So it's done quite well.
Um, over the period of time. It's in its fourth printing right now.
And what what about this book do you think was resonant? Is there a p particular idea that was number
One in this book.
A it was the first
Book written by a divorce lawyer to head on
Take on the topic of how to not get divorced. It was a how not to book, basically. So I think that that was the
The key concept was uh keeping people connected and and what you could learn. Look, who are you going to go to if you want to learn how to keep your car in good condition? A new car dealer?
Or a mechanic.
Like a new car dealer only sees brand new cars. They don't know anything about
You know, about how to actually keep one together. Mechanics are good at that. We tell you where the predictable points of failure are. So I think that was what made the book popular.
What's the most important thing we didn't talk about that we should have talked about as it pertains to
The subject of
Holding on to this very precious thing.
And very elusive thing for many called love.
You know, something I've been thinking a lot about lately.
is too
And I say this to you as an engaged man and as a friend.
I think there's two seemingly contradictory
assumptions people make when they get married that I hope you're not making.
Okay. I hope this couple, neither person in this couple is making.
One.

Marriage will change the other person.
So, you know, Steven works so much and he's so hard charging, but once we get married he'll come home more and he'll be home more and he'll calm down more.
You know
She's uh uh, you know, very worried about me when I'm I'm making something up, but she's worried about me when I'm out and on the road and she's worried about temptation bothering me. But once we're married, she'll know we have a really solid commitment. She won't have that worry anymore.
Okay.
Thinking.
That marriage is going to change someone.
is a very
Dangerous assumption.
And a lot of the people that come into my office.
They entered marriage thinking this is going to change things that I want to see changed.
The contradictory second thing.
Just thinking
Once we get married.
Nothing will change.
Thinking this is so lovely.
She's so wonderful.
I love the version of me she brings out, so I'm so wonderful when I'm with her. And her thinking he's so wonderful, and I love who he how he makes me'cause you know, we don't just love
The person.
We love the person we are when we're with that person.
We love that person makes us feel about ourselves. That's a lovely thing. It's one of the best things about love, right?
So
Making the assumption
that that will never change.
That nothing about this related the marrying
Will somehow build a wall around this beautiful, wonderful, warm thing that we found together, and it'll protect it from all the other things in the world, and nothing will change, and it'll just stay wonderful is another.
very dangerous assumption.
So
Even though it seems like a contradiction.
I hope that things change.
And I hope some things don't change.
And the only way that I can think of
To let those two contradictory elements peacefully coexist in a manner that doesn't lead directly to the desk in front of me.
is to just keep talking about.
And when things change.
Just talk about it.
Just point it out, not with judgment, not with anger, not with the belief that because something changed it's bad, and not with the change that change is automatically good.
Just saying hey.
Remember these two people?
That guy's a little different now. Is that okay?
Why did that happen? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Do you miss him?
Is there something that we could do that's different or better? Like
These two people found value.
In each other.
They they love the other person and they love who they are when they're with the person. And again, I'll I'll say it again.
Your marriage will end, I promise.
I hope it ends in death.
And I hope when it ends.
That you will look at her and you will say
She helped me become the most authentic version of myself.
And she's still my favorite person.
That's the greatest gift.
That you could give to her.
and that you can give to each other and that I think the two of you together could give to the world.
And that's worth all the M and Ms.
Why do you point to authenticity as being so important in this
Context.
'Cause you use that word, she helped me become the most authentic version of myself. Why does that matter?
Because it's not about becoming the version of you that she envisions for you.
Or her becoming who you want her to become.
I think that sometimes love
The person doesn't become
What we wanted them to be.
And I think sometimes what we wanted them to be might not be the most authentic version of who they are.
You know, Cahill Gobron and the Prophet.
When he's talking about children.
He says that children are living arrows.
And and and that you
You fire the arrow.
And yes, your aim has something to do with it, but the wind has something to do with it, and so many other things have something to do with it.
And so
Інога'
The archer with the steady hand, and the arrow that's straight.
And I feel like
If you were to say
This person
Became who I wanted them to become.
Like cause I again I think our duty it in the best symbiosis
You
care a lot about her.
Even more so than you do about yourself.
And she cares about you.
Even more so than she does about herself, but not.
To have you become the man she wants you to be, and not for her to become the woman you want her to be.
You want to be of service to her, and she wants to be of service to you. I want to help you become the most authentic version of you.
I can see your blind spots. You can't. That's why they're blind spots. So I'm gonna help you.
Become the most authentic version of yourself. That's the promise.
That should be the promise in marriage is I want to help you become, I'm gonna do what I can to be of service to helping you become the most authentic version of yourself. And when you become it.
you'll still be my favorite person.
Because at the core of you
Is this thing that I love?
I hope I do a good job.
I hope you do too.
Scary, isn't it,'cause you think of all the ways you can fuck it up. It's like Do you know what I mean? But you know what? There's so many ways you can't scrape.
Like
If you're not scared, it's not brave.
It's brave'cause you're scared and you do it anyway.
And it's worth doing it.
Because if the prize at the end of it is figuring out
Who you are and helping someone figure out who they are.
And having a partner in all of this.
Like what's better than that, man?
What what riches could you hold that are greater than that?
Like that's the greatest gift you could seek in life.
And and by the way
It also has the power, if it's done right, to transform the world.
Because it really is.
Family.
Community.
Culture.
World.
You know?
And so
Yeah. It's it's
The fact that you say it's scary.
is great.
Because it means you realize this is a serious thing.
And if something that you realize is serious, you're gonna make a concerted effort to be good at.
Amen.
You have a closing tradition, as you know.
The question left for you.
Is what is the most significant dream
you have had in the past year.
And how did it change your behavior?
Yeah.
Go on.
I know I'm gonna get through this without crying.
I had a uh
I dream about my mom.
Okay.
My mom died ten years ago after a long battle with cancer.
There was a lot between us that
Needed to be said and wasn't said.
We had
Some peace and some closure, but
There's a lot I didn't.
Hadn't figured out about myself.

And there's a part of me that wishes she was here.
So that
I could
I've apologized for some things that I got wrong and
I could have understood her better.
And I had a dream.
That she was just there.
Just sitting with me.
And my mom was like me, she
Never shut up.


But just
constantly talk and talk over you and
I got that from her, her very energetic.
She also cried constantly.
And for for joy, tears of joy. She would listen to music and just start crying'cause it was so beautiful. I realized I got that from her.
Most of the really warm things in me came from her.
And in this dream she
Just sat there silently.
And I kept talking to her.
I don't remember what I was saying, but I just kept talking to her.
And she just sat there quietly and just
It was pating my leg.
And I
I remember I woke up.
And I felt.
I felt very like
Calm.
I felt very
Like I'd spent time with her.
And I thought to myself
I think that
That was something.
I don't know if it was her visiting me, I don't know if it was God talking to me, I don't know if it was just my subconscious telling me something I needed to see.

But I felt like it was saying to me that
You know.
That sometimes the words got in the way.
Between the two of us.
And then
Maybe what really mattered the most was just that we were next to each other.
And I tried to
Since I had that dream.
Um
Do that more.
With the people I love.
It's
It's hard for me to stop talking.
And
I'm learning.
With my sons and with the people that I love.
But sometimes.
Just being next to them is nice.
Yeah.
I don't
Need to uh
I'm really good at talking.
So I just keep doing it.
And that maybe sometimes it's nice to just stop.
Just be with someone.
And so
I felt like that.
That was a very powerful dream. It was a very simple dream.

It it changed the way I'm trying to relate to people.

See how me to cry again, man. Killing me.
At the end of the day it all comes back to love, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Does it.
Isn't it funny? All reds. Isn't it funny?
Like we've added all these layers of complexity to it.
That's all it comes down to. Isn't it crazy?
Yeah, it really is. Someone asked me that on stage like last week, I was speaking in the Middle East somewhere and they asked me about
Like what does everybody want?
That was literally the question and my answer was love. And we all w we're like confused about the path to it. So some of us think the path to it is like if I get the number one podcast, maybe that'll meet.
Or maybe that would mean I'm worthy of love. Yeah. Like we we we come to
We've come to associate accomplishment.
With being worthy of love.
And that's really all that it is.
Like it's really all that it is. Like what otherwise, what's the purpose of it? Like
How many supercars can one person have and how much joy can they really give you? You can only drive them one at a time.
You know, like it really is about like no, I feel worthy. I feel worthy of love. I feel proud of who I am, which is I'm proud of who I am, which means I'm worthy of love. It it really all comes back to love. It really all comes back to love.
The the the two things that
Late middle ages helping me see.
Is that the hardest thing to become is yourself.
Your authentic self.
And that really all any of us want is to be loved.
Like and to be worthy of love.
And that
Everything you have will add up to a great pile of nothing.
Other than
The people who you love and the people who loved you.
And experiences you had with those people.
That's it.
That's all that matters.
Everything else is noise.
James, thank you.
Thank you.
Always good to see you.
It's easy.
Uh