The Divorce Expert: Slippage Is Tearing Marriages Apart! If Kids Are Your Top Priority & You Spot This You’ll Divorce In 1-3 Years!
02:44:20 Share

Every single marriage ages in desert force, but IT ends, but the majority of them. And because of slippage .

and what the slippery slippages.

James.

sixteen, is back the world's reading .

divorce lawyer with over .

two decades of experience, he offers practical.

no nonsense, vies for maintaining healthy relationships. We live in a society that presumes marriage is a good idea. You're about to do something incredibly dangerous that fails so much of the time.

And I think that is almost nothing to do with love. If you get married, that is what I will tell you. Have you talked about a pro? Getting married without one is risky activity.

But the truth is is having a child with someone is the most risky activity and relationship. There's so much stuff a person can do to torture you if they have a kid with you. And what i'll tell you is if the people who are obsessed with their children stop the attention to their part, which leads you right to my office.

okay. So if you want to give me one piece of advice to prevent me, my partner, ever ending up in your consultation room.

if there's a core message to my approach to relationships, IT, is that be the only advice ever gift to anybody?

James, if you think about the divorce you seen in cover case that broke your IT .

was a case that I won, that I should have lost. I remember looking at the judge and thinking like if letting this happen, she's going to lose because she's poor and he can afford a lawyer and he's going to win because he can afford a lawyer that knows how to put a document evidence. And there's something really wrong about that.

change.

Our last conversation.

I think, did almost ten million downloads in views across platforms. And I can't imagine the amount of messages you get on a daily, weekly, monthly basis from people that are interested in the subject of divorce, but also sort of interconnected subjects of love in and marriage in all of these things. When people contact you, what do they typically? So you're absolutely write.

I mean, the number of people that contacted me after our conversation exponentially increased IT. Also very much broader palot things people contacted me about. So a lot, a lot of my prior work, a lot of my writing prior or first conversation was very much tied to just relationship issues, divorce related issues.

So I would get a lot of messages from people saying i'm going through a terrible to board. I'm dealing with this situation even though you can't represent me because i'm in a different state or a different country. Could you give me some general advice? Um so people would reach out with very specific to my career topics. I got a lot of people talking to me about the conversation we had about our dogs and about loss and about the nature of um you know aging and endings and whether it's the ending of a marriage or the ending of a dog's life or our own lives and how the loss of our pets you brings us more sharply into focus about the mortality of everything around us so um yeah I mostly get people saying, oh you you gave voice to something that i'd felt and um IT IT was meaningful to me to do that and I I tried to write people back and just say, you know very briefly like i'm so glad that something in my perspective resonated with you.

If there was one message that you could give to everyone that messages you, so one singular message is a broadcast message, and you have to send IT to everybody that message you about all of these interconnected subjects. But you could only say a couple of sentences, and you think it's the couple of sentences that would most serve all of them in one go, regardless of what their issues are, because it's a fundamental message about love and marriage and divorce, all these things. What would that message be?

I am, I always said that I think the core truth i've learned in my life is that the hard thing to do and the right thing to do, or usually the same thing. So I would, I would often chAllenge anybody who reaches out to me about anything that that they're struggling with. I would say to them that what is the hard thing to do in this situation because that's probably the right thing to do.

The the other thing I would say is that although I really appreciate that someone would reach out to me in the hopes that I could give them some answer, I I pretty strongly believe that the only then you find on mountaintops as the then you brought up there. And and so I think a lot of a lot of the truth we know when we hear someone say IT out loud, it's IT resonates in away. But it's because we knew that was true. We already knew that was true. Maybe that person gave voice to IT when .

you said the thing about zana mountain tops. Yeah, can you say that again? And what do you mean?

Yeah I mean, you know you can also pass IT as the only wisdom we find, our mountain toxin, the wisdom that we brought up there. You know, there's this there's all of these sort of comparables of the monk who like in batman begins, you know, sort of in his in his flip flops and robe, sort of wanders up the mountain through the coal, trying to find this and master at the top of the mountain who has the wisdom that he can then share with him, and and very often like that wisdom inside of all of us that wisdom is something that whether we want to call IT or got what you want to call IT, your soul, whatever you want to call IT, that the wisdom is inside of you and that um we we we want I think sometimes to have other people validated for us or say IT out loud because perhaps we're not as articulate about IT, but to have someone give voice to IT gives us the ability to go okay, okay. So it's not just me. I think that's that's what I mean when I say the wisdom we find on mountain tops, I think we travel very, very far to find a joy and a wisdom that's inside all of us on .

that point, as you were talking about IT. And the reason I so picked by IT is i've got so many friends over the years who have been struggling in relationships and in their life and in their marriages, who have thought that the answer, all of those problems, was to basically get on a plane and move country or city to go somewhere else.

And so when you were saying that, I was thinking, I was thinking back for conversation had with my friend many years ago where he said you not going going to move to spain and you know, his life was in ruins really at the time his relation, his partner, had just cheat on him and was pregnant. And he thought moving to spain would solve the problem. He said, I remember the conversation with him where I said, like, by the way, all the problems are buying a plain ticket with you. Like they are going to spend .

with you wherever you go. You know, there you are. And so ite, a friend who was A A A hair dresser, and I remember once talking in him, was while he was cutting my hair.

And we got on the topic of, you know, because both of us are someone that people talk to, you know, people talk to me about their problems and their relationship as a function of my work is a divorce lair. And people sit with their pair of style list. And they'll talk, particularly women will talk for a long period of time about the things that are stressing amount and upsetting them.

And what he said to me is, you know, a lot of women, in particular, come in and they say, I want to cut. I want to get all off. I want to cut all off.

I want to cut very short. I want to cut IT very different, like, I want to just to hold. And he said, you know, there was a time early in his career where he would give them what they were asking for. So if they came in with super long hair and this said, I want a little short, very bob cut, he would do IT.

And then he would get a call from them a few days or weeks later going, oh my god, when can you fix you? Like, what do we do? And he said, what he started to figure out is what they, what they're really saying is a very human thing, which is, I don't want to be me anymore like, I don't want to be me anymore like, I can't do IT like, it's all too heavy right now.

Like, can I stop being me? Can I look different than me? Can I because IT, maybe I look different than me, i'll feel different than me and maybe i'll do things differently than the way of been doing them and I think that's so human, you know, to say and that's the same thing about, okay, that's i'm just gonna ve i'm going to move.

I am i'm just as guilty of this as anyone when i've had a really stressful, difficult week Carrying all of my clients, chaos and stress, and they're just bombs falling from the sky constantly in my life work. I got that set. I quit.

I'm done. I'm done. I'm just going to do media stuff. I'm just going to write books, not person lonesome and never set to put in the courtroom became my drop. I'm out and the reality is i'm tired.

I'm just tired like or okay if it's true that I made a place work transitioning IT, then just cut back so you don't have to cut all your hair off like and I said to mind my friend, that is the hair dresser so now what do you do? Do you try to talk them out of IT? And he said, now he said, I I kind of play a trick is like, I I do something a little different, but not so different.

And then I play up in my reaction to IT like, oh, I love IT like this. Look at how as soon as I didn't take as much as you said. But I think this is really and very often their threat, like they just go, oh yeah, this is great because I was symbolic, like IT was a symbolic thing for them that, no, i'm going to do something different and i'm going to look a little different when I look in the mirror and when I the merits going to remind me to be different.

But that's inside of you like I I, I mean, for me, we wake up every single day and decide to be who we are, where to continue being who we are like one of the reason why this is always so present in my mind is because, as a divorce lawyer, people have this very clear image of who they are, what their lives good to be. And very intentionally, they went, put on the White dress in the tuxedo, and they took the bows, and they were like, this is the path. This is the path.

I'm taking this path. And this is who I am. I am bob's wife, or i'm genes husband, and i'm gonna a mom or i'm going to be a dad.

I mean, this is what i'm going to do. And lows up, whether it's five years later, ten years later, twenty years later, when kids go off to college, whatever IT might be. And then they are what they're really struggling with this weight.

Who am I? Who am I now? Like the Barnes burned down? what? Like, what do I do? Like what i'm not bob's wife and what am I? You know, my bob's x wife is a terrible thing to be. I don't want to be defined by what i'm not anymore and used to be.

So what do I? Who am I now? And you know, watching people over the course of their divorce navigate that is one of the most inspirational things in the world because people are so much stronger and more resilient than they give themselves credit for when they're in the crisis of IT.

Was there ever a particular case that you think about that broke your heart.

you going to try to make me cry? And Steve.

and this feels unfair no, it's interesting because I I didn't our conversation last time was so interesting because we spoke so matter of fact about the subject of love and marriage ah and then for me to also learn at the same time that you are a deeply emotional person. What is the one case?

I've had a few. I mean, one of them I wrote about in my book, which was I represented IT was a case that I won, that I should have lost. I was, I represented a pmp. That's what he did for a living. And he owe a variety of of illegal businesses.

He's in prison um for a long time now but at the time he had a very brutally abused a woman who here children with and we went to there was a family court proceeding and the lawyer on the other side of the of the case, the lawyer who represented his his coal parent, his victim if he will um was very inexperienced SHE was an assigned lawyer so I was privately paid as I am and he was assigned by the state so he was getting I think at the time, twenty five dollars an hour, something like that versus my seven hundred and fifty an hour. And SHE was quite new as a lawyer. He was right out of school.

SHE wasn't quite sure of of what to do and how to do. IT and I was fairly experienced. IT was a perfect storm of like the worst factors of the system.

IT was someone who could afford a very good lawyer against someone who couldn't afford a good lawyer, and therefore got an inexperienced lawyer that wasn't terribly sure of themselves in a courtroom, and a judge who was very impatient, who just was in a bad mood that day. I don't know what he had for breakfast, what IT was, but he was an older judge. He had been on the bench for probably too long.

He retired a few years later. The key piece of evidence they had was a photograph of the way that my cly of this woman's face after my client had allegedly beat her up quite badly. And getting a photograph into evidence is very easy, but IT requires a very specific phrasing.

So what you say is, i'd like this to be marked for identification. You mark the photo and then you hand IT to the witness, you hand IT to the court office or hands IT to the witness. And you say, i'm showing you what's been marked as petitioners, one for identification.

Do you recognize that? Yes, what do you recognize IT to be? Is a photograph? Does that photograph fairly and accurately depict your face after he beat you up? Or does IT accurately reflect your face on the date you've been discussing? Yes, you on right, like IT put into evidence that's IT.

It's easy. Does IT fairly and accurately depict, for whatever reason, most likely lack of experience. Opposing council, I guess, didn't know how to get a photograph into evidence.

And Normally in that situation, a judge will be helpful, like they will just jump in and say, man, is this fairly? But this judge was just in the mood and posing council said, i'd like this to be marked and then he said, could give him to the witness and he said, what is that a photo up? So I did my job. I said, objection. She's asking about the contents of a document, not an evidence, which is my job judge said sustained .

which means which .

means my objection is correct so SHE said, uh, okay ah, i'm sorry ah who took this photo and he said, I, I, I don't I don't know who took SHE is okay well, what what is IT a photo of stood up up again objection asking about the contents of a document, not an evidence. And I could see opposing counsel getting flustered because he didn't know the words.

And my internal dialogue at that moment was just say IT just get IT right like just just say fair fairly and accurately depict as I just say IT like and I I remember looking at the judge and thinking, like you're letting this happen. You're letting this happen. Don't let this happen. Like she's poor. She's poor.

That's that's why she's gonna lose sheen to lose because she's poor and SHE can afford a lawyer and he's gone to win because he can afford to a lawyer that knows how to put a document evidence and there's something really wrong about that and the judge didn't the judge just let her drown and SHE SHE asked three, four more questions that were the wrong questions and then SHE just said, um I don't I don't know, I don't know what to say sorry and then you just said down and because got dismissed and we walked out and as we walked out, my client added me on the back and he said, you know, good lawyer is Better than twenty stick up men. And I remember thinking, this is, this is not a good day. It's not a good day.

And that case, that was long time ago and it's it's still stayed with me because I was I did my job and I I you know I represent my client, but I also represent the system. And I don't always believe in my client, but I have to believe in the system and I have to believe that I am not it's not my right to judge people's case. It's the judge is right.

Like like, I believe in this system. I believe in the adversarial system. But watching someone lose who shouldn't lose and winning when you know you shouldn't win does not feel good in this network.

Would you take back case again, exact same case, exact same person, exact same scenario. You asked to go do IT again tomorrow. Same opposition lawyer.

I would yeah. Well, first of many years later, and I still know that lawyer and she's actually become a really good, and i'm really proud of that.

if you are equally and experience the same woman, the same circumstances, the same victim.

you know, if I knew was gonna go that way, I probably, I would turn IT down. When I turn down, a lot of cases, I don't actually know if today I would represent him anymore. It's a hard question for me to answer.

I see I think you don't always you don't know in the consultation and like it's not like this guy came in to my office and said, yeah, I beat this woman terribly and would you retain would you represent me like that's very different. No oneness ever done that in my in my office like he came in and he said, yes, he's accusing me of all these horrible things. I didn't do any of that.

but you knew he did.

And my god, I think I knew he did. Yeah, the more I got to know him. I mean, in a consultation, you don't know like a job interview, you don't know what kind of employees somebody's gona be sitting across from someone in a one hour consultation. Most of the time i'm talking telling about their rights and obligations and how the legal process works like I don't really get to know them but throughout the process I started to figure out like, yeah.

this guy did said you a lot of cases these days, yeah, what are the kind of cases that you would absolutely turn down the respective of remuneration?

I turned down cases where I feel like the person. I think a lot of times I turned on cases that I don't think they need me like I don't think you need to bring a gun to a nike fight like I think if you can do with a scalpel, don't use a chain saur and i'm a chain saw so like, don't you don't need me and so I I I am very honest with people about you don't need me, i'm not the right tool for the task.

But there are a lot of cases I turned out that I think people are using. They want to web ize the legal system to punish their x for their transgressions, really unperceived like they want to. Their spouse was cheating on them and they want to just litigate them in this submission. They want them force them to spend a million lars and council fees by making ridiculous motions and by minimizing, you know, they're access to the kids and making them fight for every single hour of visitation they get with the kids. Like I i'm not interested in being a weapon that's used for you for that purpose ably.

Sometimes your job is to get us study of kids all the time, which means you basically taking children away from apparent.

You can look at that way is the best way to say IT.

yeah.

i'm jokingly said that before because when my kids were little and they would have those like you bring your dad to school day and you know, IT was like, oh, this is my dad, he's a firefighter and this is my dad. He's a doctor and I always feel like my sons were like, this is my dad. He's the reason why your firefighter dad only sees you an alternate weekends.

You and that felt a little strange, you know. And there were times were actually my kids were in school of people whose divorces I handled, you know, their parents. But yeah, I think I do have a tremendous impact on on people's access to their children.

Go positive and negative, like I help. I help people get access to children that's being withheld from them. I help people address parental alienation and negative gate keeping, the kinds of things that are really becoming much more insidious and prevalent in our culture, where where people are using children essentially as weapons against their act to their mad.

I mean, look, break up on any level are difficult, you know and and there's usually hurt feelings and anger and a break up. And I don't think that's abNormal, like I think you lose someone whether it's to death or whether it's to divorce or just to split up. There's manger, you know, there's resentment.

Why don't you love me? Why did you you love me the way I love you. Why did you wanna with me anymore? What does that say about me? Does this mean i'm a bad person because you don't want to be with me anymore like this? There are really universal themes like there's almost no one in the world in any culture that if you go to them, break up that they don't go, you know, they get IT like they get IT. My friend's .

going to break up at the moment. He's been with his partner for many, many years. And I when he sent me the voice now explaining, like we've been together eight years, we have broken up four times but he's been broken up with so he's he's the sort of victim person and which is the Better one debate .

really oh yeah, you want to want .

to break up with .

you or I mean, well, here's all side because I I have something of A P. H. D. In this one. I have to say, when someone has been broken up with, there is a tremendous unless IT was by some patently awful behavior caught with the girlfriend or the boyfriend, red hand like that, it's no one's going to even be much sympathy but if someone dumps you like it's it's not me, it's you like they just dump you there's a tremendous amount of sympathy like if somebody know if I call you and I said I just got broken up with you'd like, oh, make my man let's let's go out let that's tough man we've been there like don't tell you know what happened but when you break up with someone there's only so much sympathy people will give you because you know what we broke up if you're so upset about IT, get back.

What did you do? IT for them like you where are sometimes you know, you're just the one who call IT like it's not IT wasn't a happy relationship IT wasn't like you're sad that I had to end you know, like I didn't want to break up. I wanted the relationship to stay good and IT didn't so one of us has to be the grown up and say, okay, this things over now.

But I think that person actually sometimes deserves, you know just as much sympathy as someone who got dumped because they're both someone is experiencing a loss of sorts even if it's a loss that it's like, you know, I mean, it's a terrible metaphor, but if someone said you, I have a lung cancer, you would go, oh my god, that's horrible like a you okay, if someone said what I was a smoker for fifty years and I got lunch CER it's you go, well, what did you think I mean, of course you're still gonna. Oh my god, that's time. It's that you deserve IT it's me.

Yes, it's it's shocking. It's not a shocking if you ve been smoking for fifty years, but it's still quite sad and it's still A A journey this person's going up to go through. So that's the same thing. It's like I just went through a break up. Well, who's who is who decided to break up with you before I tell you if I feel bad for you or not, like I don't think that's a fair way to approach you break up.

A lot of people want to own. They want to owe IT. They want to say that they broke up with them, right? Well.

because it's very popular, but there is something .

empowering about, yeah.

I was my decision yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah or like what i'm glad they did because I i'll say sure that I was about to I was about to break up with that person yeah, that's very common. I think that's a pride thing now because you know there's something about the rejection of its you know a great example of this for me, which is is very it's always vacs to me professionally.

So a lot of people um i've handled a lot of divorces where someone breaks up with in a heterosexual marriage because they are coming out as gay or lesbian, okay, so they end the relationship. So in the heterosexual example, man and a woman are married to each other for a period of time and the man says i'm ending things with you because i'm gay. I've realized that i'm gay and i'd like to live my life as a gay man.

My thinking as someone has never had that happened to me. My thinking, and perhaps it's native like my experiences taught me that maybe i'm just strange, which I kind of knew. But this is another example of IT.

If if a woman broke up with me and said i'm breaking up with you because i'd like another man Better than you, that's very hard to swallow. It's like, I want to want like you, but Better than you. Whereas if he said i'm leaving you because i'd like to go be with a woman now it's like, well, I mean, I don't I don't have that like I can give you that.

It's not like I want someone a Better dancer. I want someone to funny. I want someone who has different parts than you and okay, I mean, that feels a little less like you're not rejecting me necessarily, are rejecting my entire sort of gender. Are you basically saying this isn't who I want, the opposite actually happens. Those are some of the most brutal and vitro c awful divorces you could possibly imagine.

And event actually gotten worse over the span of my career because over the twenty five years span of my career, when I started, when someone said, okay, my husband is leaving because he's gay and now he's going to live as a gay man, IT was actually OK to then say, yeah, he's a pervert and horrible human being and to because there was just such a wide for at homophobia at the time. I mean, willing Grace, like wild lily, even kissed his boyfriend on TV couldn't really have to have a boyfriend. He was like, so Young, Young people today have no idea how in my life time that that has changed so much.

Not to say there isn't still homophobia and not there's still not had enormous tivy, but the reality has changed tremendously. The boots on the ground reality. Now, if your spouse leaves you for a if, if I was married and my spouse left me for a woman and i'm upset about IT, i'm opening myself to an accusation of being homophobic and and the truth is like, no, whoever she's leaving me for, it's really upsetting or whoever she's been sleeping with, male, female, anything, it's upsetting because they're with another person. So I think there is in that phenomenon of people's break up, the sense of like, well, I was going to break up with the anyway is like a pride thing. I think I think there is a tremendous amount of of stuff that we Carry around when IT comes to those break up.

I've always wondered what heartbreak actually is because I fit between thinking a case like you should mention, the web rejection is a blow to our self. Steam is IT the loss of a future that we had, like built in our head because, yes, if you can understand what IT is, was inking. How do I get my friend advice on IT? Then I know what the advice should be or the support should be. Because if it's a loss of this future, then I care. I know I say this, if it's his self a steam, I can will boost to self a steam.

Yeah so I think it's all of those things, but I I think it's it's it's an ending. And I think that endings are hard. I think that saying to what I always try to do when I have friends going through a break up, and even with clients, is that, you know, every beginning is born of some other beginnings.

And so we talked about this last time we SAT down together where I said that, you know, I only got koba because buster died with your dogs. Yeah, my dog passed away thirteen, fourteen years ago, and my dog lets now thirteen years old. And and one, one, I only got one because the other died.

And I love both of those dogs so much. But if i'm being honest, I guess I have to say i'm glad that I lost burster so that I could have kaba. That sounds terrible because I don't mean I like I am glad that he dep. But death, like that ending was part of life just and IT made room for the beginning of the next thing.

And what I always tried to focus my clients on is that this relationship is ending, and that is there has to be honoring that, mourning that, feeling that, seeing IT as the transition, that IT is, grieving the loss of IT, but also realizing that every ending is the beginning of the next thing, and and there has to be an ending for the next thing to come and for the next beginning to happen. And I have now watched that cycle for thousands of clients over a span of twenty five years, where where their life is ending, who that I was, this person's husband, I was this person's wife. I was a dad who lived with his kid's full time that had them every thanksgiving, not every other thanksgiving.

That I had them every Christmas eve, not alternate years on in, even years there with me. And odd ears there with her like, what are you talking about? Like this was who I am, who am dying. Like, who I am is dying and I don't know who i'll be next.

And when you're in that right and when it's your first divorce is not mine but it's yours 医疗， it's very hard to see like just just like when someone dies, when buster died, I said at last time, I said, I will never do this again. I will never love anything like this ever again. I never let my hearts be broken like this again.

I'll never opened myself up like this again. Ever, never. This is the worst pain.

Why would I ever do this? Loving anything is stupid, insane. You're opening yourself up to the inevitability of loss.

And yet. Cobb was the great, such a joy. And now i'm near the end of that.

And what do you do? Well, i'd like to believe that now i'm not saying that's not gonna be as painful. When that happens, IT will be. But I no longer believe the world is ending.

Like, I understand that like the beauty of who he is was born of the empty ness that had to be created by the loss of Foster. Like I I understand that now. And so i'd like I said, will I do IT again? There's going na be a period time where I was saying no way and same thing with love like people get divorced.

I had a client last week said to me the right kind of in the middle of their divorce and I said, you know, eighty six percent of people are remarried within five years of their divorce and they said, oh, I am never doing there, are you kid? I am never doing this again and every time they say that, I laugh because I think to myself, and like, you're so wrong and I get IT like, you don't see IT right now. Like, right now I know you think that's true.

Like, but you will love again and you will when you love again, like, you will feel IT and you will be in IT and you will go and this ones perfect. This is great. Like, i've done divorces for people that spend million dollars in council fees and went through absolute hell when they're about to get married ago.

We should do you, prem, so, you know, ever have to do that again? Like, i'll do IT for free if you want. Like, let's just do and they go, no, no, no, this this is real, this is real and I sit there and I think, like, oh, my god, you've just you've learned nothing.

You don't like you. That was real too, until IT wasn't. But this is, you know, perhaps love is a delusion brought on by adequate lighting, I don't know.

But there's something in us that you know feels that pain and then there's something that is that forgets that pain. And I think that that know that's a good thing. That's a good cycle.

I think life is a game you can't win and so you play IT to the utmost to I love anything is insane because you are accepting that you're going to lose IT. To quote you said, you think life is a game you can't win yeah I don't .

think there is any winning. You die like that's the only truth, the only you know IT. Every story you know starts the same you were born.

Like every wikipedia page starts the same they were born, and every repetitive page will end exactly the same they died. That's that everything that happens in between is your life. But those are the only two inevitability.

Those are the only two real things for certain. So I look at IT is it's a game you can't win. Meaning, if you pursue money, like your money will eventually be useless.

The things you accumulate with IT will be useless. Every car you own, someone else will leave their own at some day. A little to get to the scrap junk yard someday or little you give IT to somebody like it's all your material possessions will be uteri meaningless.

Like we all went through this when the cobo lockdowns first started, everybody was like, and i've got all this money and i've got all these travel voulons res and know I can anywhere now and it's like, all okay. You know, you started to see the limitations, have the power go out in your house sometime, and they'll remind you that let go. wait.

Yeah, like everything I have, I just have like this much of a grip on IT. You got to do, just take that away and it's gone. That's IT, you know and it's the same thing with our health. It's the same thing with, you know, everything like everything is totally fine and wonderful, that and then you have a terrible splitting headache. And then the only thing that matters is that headache, you know and then that headache goes away.

And for like a day, you go, I don't have that headache anymore, but did you wake up today and go, I don't have a headache on the powers, on his mate and I don't have cancer isn't that good you know no, you know you walk around going like, oh, you know I really why why are not my page views where they're at or what to happen with this and why did that person be so nasty to me? Like we get caught up in all this stuff when in fact the only thing that you know again, if you keep, you know, uh, ebata the stock philosophers said, like keep death and everything horrible in your line of sight, sort of a mental mori, because nothing will bother you that much if you have that there. So I think life is a game that, look, we're playing IT.

We're doing our thing. Love is, but all love, all relationships and every single marriages in death or divorce. But IT ends, every relationship ends your child.

You will hopefully predecease your child, but your child will die someday. That's the nature of IT. So we have created a culture where we really try not to talk about that.

We really try to just keep that out of our gays. Let's not talk about IT. Our only depictions of death are preposterous. They're like the person in the death .

bed being like, I love you all .

and then just beautiful you beautifully. That doesn't look like that if you ever spend time with people on their death bed. I was a hospital launcher for many, many years, and I spent a lot of time with people who were dying, actively dying. And I have to tell you, like you hang out with somebody say it's not pretty IT doesn't smell good, doesn't sound good, but it's real, it's natural, okay? It's where it's all going.

And and the reason why I say this is not to be more bit, it's that we're doing ourselves a tremendous disservice by not acknowledging this because I can tell you how many families when I was a hospital volunteer, when their family member, their loved one, would die, would say to me it's not that they died, is that they died terribly, they died without dignity. And I would say to them, till they did, they died like everyone has like it's okay, likely just because IT wasn't like on TV where you you know it's sort of fade out and has a few final words, then fade out like the no one, very few. If anyone dies that way, it's not how works.

So we're not doing anyone like this is the part I don't understand is that we don't want to talk about divorce, you know, we don't want to talk about death. We don't want to talk about endings because I think there's something in our brain that says if we talk about IT, we're going to make that happen. And if we don't talk about IT will prevent that from happening.

And that seems to me insane, because these are things that are absolutely nothing inevitable when IT comes to death and highly likely when IT comes to diverse. So why not bring them back into the discourse? And i'll say the truth, I think one of the reasons why my conversations have become something people are interested in is because I think we're all fascinated by this, but we don't want to talk about IT over dinner conversation and we don't want to you. But but we know it's important. Something in us knows this is important, like this is something that needs to be talked about and thought about.

You did your theis, your masters thesis on the subject of death, titled on metaphor and mortality, the semantics of death and dying. yeah. Why would you write your thesis on the subjective death?

What was a different life? So I this before I went to law school, I had got I got out of college with a degree psychology and I decided I wanted to um I was a hospital volunteer. I that's my.

Therapy question I I can give you the answer. So I when I was quite Young um I think goes about six or seven years old. My mother was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer called leo mile sarcoma.

It's a soft tissue sarcoma and it's it's very rare. I was way too Young to understand what was going on. I I just remember my mother crying, the sound of my mother crying in the bathroom and running the sink so I wouldn't hear her crying.

But I I knew he was crying. I didn't really understand what death was like. I understood that my turbo had died. But I I grew up catholic, so I remember like you got to go to heaven. And that sounds a pretty good because I was like a really nice place, apparently.

And I remember hearing my mother talking on the phone to her sister and talking about the fact that he had six months. And I remember my sister, who six is older than me, explaining to me that mom was sick and SHE wasn't going to get Better. And I remember being so Young that I didn't really understand with that man, but I was scary and everyone was very upset, and then my mom didn't die.

What had happened is, depending on how you looked at IT, who was a miracle or IT, was science. And that is that the tumors had been capsule ted itself, meaning that the the immune system had essentially closed up around IT. So IT didn't size, are spread ed, in anyway, they went in.

They did surgery. Memorial sloan kettering cancer center. And, uh, he was fine. He was well.

And then five or six years later, he came back, and again, I got told, your mom has six months to live and set that point. I was, like, old enough to understand what that meant. And I was terrified by IT.

I was sadden by IT. And once again, he had surgery. SHE had all kinds of procedures and things that had to happen to deal with IT, but once again, he just maculate sly sort of docker bullet and SHE made IT.

And three years later he came back again. And then they said, your mom has six months to live. And I remember by that point thinking, yeah, you don't know how many times we've had this conversation.

Like, I don't believe you anymore. Like, and it's okay. Like, i'm not afraid because i've not like it's not gonna en, I know that something's gonna en a little work out and IT did once again, he had surgery.

Again, he had seven surgeries over the course of my into my twenties. And every single time the proglio sis was bad. And every single time they kind of took more pieces of her.

Unfortunately, because the type of cancer this is sometimes gets into other organs. And so they had to take, no, they had to take rovers or stern metaphors and authorities that they had to take. They had to change the way here.

They had do a balal resection. They had to do all kinds of awful things. And and IT changed. There was a painful life for my mom was very hard. And I remember, though, from a very Young age, being forced to think about death, being forced to sort of sea death as something that was just there, and that IT was part of things, and that there was no way around IT. And IT just became familiar, IT became sort of this person in our home, you know, this possibility that was always there.

And I remember every time I would get the call that my mom's s cancer had come back, there would be some part of me that thought, oh, is this the phone call? Because this is the one where this time she's gonna die. Like, is this the one and most of the time IT wasn't.

And ten years ten years ago, um once again, he had a recurrence SHE supposed to have a very complex surgery. My dad, nice SAT in the waiting room. My parents were married for fifty years and we SAT the waiting room.

We supposed be a eight hour surgery, which was very complicated. And the doctor came into the waiting room a half an hour into the surgery and said, you know we opened up it's like a bomb went off. There's nothing we can do.

We're going to close up put on hospice and um he passed away eight years ago after, you know she's on hospital over a year um and he died with us all around her. And there was something about the reality that we had been able to talk about death for so long that there was a tremendous peace there, like there was a tremendous sense of, well, this was going to happen. You know, this was part of our life.

You know that this was what was going to happen. And he had a tremendous piece about her, because IT had been part of her life for so long. So when I was in my late teens, I think my mom had three or four rounds of this, this cancer thing.

I just remember thinking, I have to confront this. I have to spend time around death again. I'm strange. You know, I was always afraid of spiders. I didn't like spiders when I was a kid.

So when I went off to college, I bought a tantia and I put IT in a glass next to my bed so that every morning I would wake up, and there was just this giant spider sitting there next to me, and i'm not afraid to spitters anymore. And IT got rid of that very quickly. And so I thought, you know, this is something that's been around me all the time and it's something i'm not quite a peace worth.

So i'm going to a confront IT and I went in to a hospital volunteer training and I remember was a weird thing for like a twenty year old to do. I had just got out of college. There was twenty one, and I think that was the only person under sixty who was in this volunteer training, in hospice training, hospital volunteer training. I would recommend to anyone, because they do things like they make you write your ology, your own logy, your own eulogy, yeah yeah they make you write your own, you logy like and they can either be, if you died right now, what would the uloe be um or if you died in your idealized future, what would you be um they make your right road like they make you confront the reality of thinking about death and and thinking about your own death and death of the people around you. And then after you've been to the training, they assign your families.

And I intended initially just to do IT as sort of a part time thing in the summer after I graduated college, I was working as a waiter and I had a lot of time during the day because at night I was I was waiting tables and um I got assigned to a bunch of families one at a time and and I I loved IT IT was the most IT was the most IT was the most life changing thing i've ever done like IT IT. There is something about when you're a hospice volunteer and you're just brought into a home and you're just there to be of service like you just if they want to talk, i'll talk if you want me to help do the dishes so that you can hang out with your loved one. That's great to do that like I I did yard work and a lot of times like people because caring for someone who's terminal a little in your home is hard and and like things like I want to run out to the store and get a few things myself like that's are you don't want to leave this person alone so a lot of times I was just there to sort of be relief just to sit with someone.

And and and every time I would walk out of a hospice home, I felt like I don't. I felt like a then monk shout, like, like I could hear the rain. I just felt like i'm alive like, like that.

That's not happening to me yet, like i'm not there yet like that that's not someone I love in that bed. Like I I have love for this person. I want to be there for the mum here of service.

But that's not my father. That's not my brother. That's not me. IT will be someday and one day IT was one day. IT was my mother, but IT wasn't me.

And as to tell you there's something about going through that experience when you're in your twenty is when you're so self sender and you're supposed to be you're kind of supposed to be self set, you're try supposed to say, like, what am I going to do with this life? What are to do with these hands? What I mean.

But there is something about at that stage in life to be told whatever you do with these hands, whatever you do with all this, that's what it's going to end. That's what it's going to end. Best case scenario.

Best case scenario, it's going to be in your own home with your family around you. Worst case in area is going to be on street somewhere prematurely, you know? So I was fascinated with death, and I I decided I was going to go to graduate school, and I was going to study panos gy. I was going to a study death and dying, that they were really earn any programs in that. So I went to new ork university s department of cultural communication, and I found neil postman, dr.

Neal postman, who was gonna be my because then why you back then and still gives you a lot of opportunities, kind of create your own curriculum as long as it's something serious, you know, academically serious and as long you can put together like an a malcom of class from different disciplines, we'll let you put together something very individualized. And so I put together a study about the cultural approaches we have to. And my master's deg.

Thesis was called the semantics of mortality, or arms are metaphor and mortality, the semantics of death, dying, and was published in a journal called the seta, which is the journal of general semantics. And what I did is I studied the words we use to talk about death and what they reflect on how we think about death. So, like you know, I remember when I was a kid or a dog when I was a child had to be um had to be using ized.

I remember the doctor saying we're onna put him to sleep and I remember thinking, no, your night is going to die. He's not going to sleep like i'm going to go to sleep later. Like he's not going to sleep, he's going to go to death. Like why are you calling at that? And I understood why.

Obviously an adult, like it's a in a primitive of culture, someone is an eternal sleep IT looks like, you mean you're sleep, you look like you're dad you know, i've held a mirror under sort of really like, right? And I will I understand where these not like doctors I explored doctors talking about, we lost the patient like. You don't know, worry is like, no, you know what room is that? No, we lost the battle. The battle against death, you're definitely and is that battle like that death record is amazing, that death always wins. Like, so if you're setting IT up for that battle like .

that that bad battle, we don't .

want to confront that which certainty we have and we act as if we are certain is something bad when in fact, absolutely no one can say with certainty what IT is and what happens except that it's inevitable .

having speak to so many people in the final days, weeks and months and final minutes, i'm really compelled to understand what I can learn from them, about how I should be living my life based on the types of things they then say to you, focus on. Prioritize yeah that .

that is true. Like you can learn a tremendous amount from that. And here's what I will tell you. I learned they don't talk about death like you go through this hospice training where they're very much preparing you to talk with people about their fear about their death or their imminence of their death.

And all people really wanted talk about is their grandkids, their kids, their wife, their husbands, what they did for a living and what they liked about IT. Like most of the time people talk about like the things that made them happy. Like I spent a lot of time just listening to people tell me about, tell me happy stories about their life, tell me moments that and then make a lot of sense to me, like, make a lot of sense to me.

Like if I said to you right now, like, what are five moments in your life where you just felt loved and happy, like you could stop and close rise and and they're be like and what a comfort IT would be like to have those and every once in a while, like when you're in that moment, you go, i'm in one of those right now, like i'm going to remember this moment, you know and but most of the time you don't like. Most of the time I just happens and then you look back and you go to remember that kiss, you know, or remember that you know that meal, or remember that and and you don't see IT what is happening. And that for me is, is what I really learned from doing hospital.

Was that, like all these people wanted to tell me about was, you know, when they were alive, like, really alive, not laying in a bed, dying, like they want to talk about like, yeah, I did this. I saw that. And, you know, I learned that in my mom's passing.

I remember my last day with my mom before he became so ill that he was not mobile and and not not really functional to have a discussion with. I just remember we just SAT there, and I told her about, like how great my sons were doing, her grandchildren and how great they were doing. And and I talked about how happy I was, and like, just how great life is and how great I and I just remember, like, SHE just was.

I remember thinking, like, h, that's what I would want. Like, I would want to know that. Like, yeah, he did IT, you did great. Like, look at, look at other stuff. It's here because of you, you know and to me like that that's what hospital work very much taught me was IT IT taught me that the um no one's really gonna are that much about you know some of the stuff that seems so fuck in important. It's just not that important like like the people talked about their kids, they talked about their grandkids.

They talked about, you know, the love of their life or if they if they had survived that love and you know they talked about how like or maybe you maybe many yet to see them again, you know and and it's very funny because I I remember, I remember talking to someone a few years ago in saying something about all me. I wish my mom had been alive to see me. Do you know this thing? And they said, I, you know, I I bet you seeing you, like, I bet you seeing you from your Allen, because this person's religious, and I really think you, you know, I don't believe that, but I really hope i'm wrong, like, I really hope i'm wrong. That would be amazing, like that be wonderful to be beautiful, you know. So I think hospice for me the reason why I I got into the homes work, the reason why my research interest became death related um was that that I just think life is Better when you have those things in front of you, when you when you remind yourself of the inevitability of endings.

which is the imagination of ourselves. Those words that you said said, we're just the imagination of ourselves. There's nothing to be afraid of.

Everything is connected. We're just in one state of being now and then will be in a different state of being. There is probably a benevolent .

force out there. That was something that came to me as a function of of, of, of. My my experiences with psychodeviant s very early in my life is was that realization was the realization that everything is connected and that there is some penev and something underneath for all of IT and that there's nothing to be afraid of.

And I think some of that was a function, of course, of of growing up in an environment where you couldn't deny death, where IT was sort of always present. And perhaps that was on my mind at that stage in my life when when I had those profound experiences, but that's stayed with me that's never gone away. That's been very, very much a part of my view of things that that um that perhaps we are just one conscious experience itself subjectively and that we we are just I heard what was he peat homes, the comedian recently talking about how, you know people say that like, we came from nothing.

I don't believe in god. I believe in nothing. And yeah yes, this whole bit of data is like, really so like instead of believing in god, which is something that you can't touch, can't prove, can't photographs, science can't prove a disproof you believe in nothing, which is something you can't see touch fuel science can't prove this proof like so if you're nothing just spontaneously ve creates everything that's pretty impressive.

nothing. And the game of things. So I think I think that I am very much a believer in the fact I like to believe whatever the name of IT is, whatever we want to call IT.

Having spent a lot of time with harpe's patients and having thought a lot about death, i'd like to think that we you know, we are drops of water and that when we die, we return to the sea, that we just merge with our creator again. I am not i'm not really worried that jim stops existing like cause I don't remember what I was before, jim. So I have no reason to think IT was something terrible and I don't know what i'll be after.

I'm jim, but I have no reason to think it's going to be something terrible. IT could just as easily be it's gonna be something fantastic and then i'm gona get there and go why did I get here sooner, you know and if there is a god that you might reeve en people like, yeah, why are you guys so fixated on not getting here? It's awesome.

You know like that temporary thing, like there's a reason why as an anim, you're supposed just there's all these things that will kill you, like it's supposed to be that, that happen sooner rather than later. But like that a very uncomfortable thought. Like it's an uncomfortable thought that like this might be hell or this might be the part that we should be afraid of.

Like this might be the part that's really hard. Like maybe what's before IT and what's after. It's really the easy part. And what's happening here is what's chAllenging. Like when someone dies.

I always thought to myself, like when someone dies, like the people who suffer er of the living, like the person is passed, they're gone now is why I ever believed in the death penalty because there like we're going to punish this person by they're going to die. Like when my grandmother died, I didn't like to think that IT was a punishment. Like put them in a box, feed them terrible food, that that sounds like a punishment like, you know, make them much bad TV.

I don't know something, but death like death to meet doesn't I don't like to think of death is punishment. I I am enjoying this ride and i'm enjoying this body and i'm enjoying all of this, but i'm not terrified of that. I'm genuinely curious. I'm genuinely curious. And when the time comes, I want to face IT with open, with your clean hands and an open heart.

Where does acceptance play in dealing with an ending like hom point is IT to accept. And when you when you 没有 clients as a divorce lawyer， now is part of the suffering, the resistance to accept the situation? Yes, even if IT wasn't your fault, because you this is sometimes people conflate this idea of acceptance would like you know justification i'm not saying justification. I'm saying except this is the situation you find yourself yeah.

I think that's very, very student and very real. I think there's a step before acceptance. So there's a number of steps before acceptance, but but the first one is acknowledged.

Like I think you have to acknowledge that something is happening before you can start because acceptance has to do with adJusting your emotional state and reaction to IT changing the level of tension in your body about IT you like every time i've ever gone to the dentist, there's this part of minutes a god hair comes, oh, got here comes it's going to hear, you know and it's like, i'm ready embracing, embracing and I have to my myself like, way stop, don't do that. Start soften n soften n soften n over over soften. And one of the reasons I love brazil introit, because when you're a White belt in brazil, introduce everything is like resisting everything, you know, trying to stop everything. And and then you you start to learn, like, no, no, like soften, like yield, like just, you know, protect the neck, move the hand OK go head to me going to do like and and there's something about that, like not trying to resist the thing.

but IT trust, what you are saying .

about trust in how natural something is, but it's acknowledging first. Okay, here is the reality of my situation. This marriage is ending, like there.

There is then parable or saying I heard many years ago, which is, if you don't learn to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life, and precisely the same amount of snow. Reality is reality. Like I, I broke my favorite teeth up.

I can be happy about that. I can be angry about that. I can be sad about that.

Either way, my teacup is gone. It's gone. It's IT like. And so I think that the acceptance piece first requires, okay, my life is finite. My life is fine out, my marriage is not permanently gifted to me, love is not permanently gifted.

IT is loan, whether it's the life of my, my life, the love of my dog, the love of my romantic partner, the love of my children, IT is on loan to me. IT is not permanently gifted. So there is just acknowledgement first.

Then it's not pulling from that, yielding from like it's it's about softening, softening and realizing that. okay. So now what do I do with this? Like what do I do? You know there's something about.

Mike, my therapy once said to you were talking about, we're talking about like resisting change in life. I was going through a transition in life and and I was having a hard time with IT. And he said, you know, he said, you're very curious.

He said, you. You try to like swim against the current and it's not gone to work or you just let go and let yourself go with the current and that's not gonna work. So you try to like, i'm gonna be the ocean and that doesn't work.

He's like surf. He's like surf. He's like surfing is kind of the perfect baLance like your not trying to fight the wave. You're trying to take IT where it's going to take you, but you're going to impose yourself on the process a little. You're going na use technique.

You're going to use your body and you're going to try to just see because there's an element in surfing just like you. So just like so many things in life of like yielding but also maintaining an active role, right? And I think that is in the demise of a relationship where the loss of someone, cause of death, or again, any transition, any ending.

First, it's about acknowledging the reality of what we had, what we were, you know, what our health was, whatever IT might be, and then saying, OK. And now this is changed, and I can resist IT, or I can yield to IT. I can accept that this is what's happened.

IT is snowing, my teacup is broken, whatever IT is. And then you can see what's next. Because, again, we don't know what's next. We don't know what that will lead to, like some of the worst things, some of the moments in my life where I want, oh my god, i'm never getting through this gave way to some of the greatest moments in my life.

Like just the just when the caterpillar thought its life was ending, IT became a butterfly, you know but I had the world had to end like, imagine being the bird in the egg. Know you've been warm and happy. Imagine being in the warm like you're warm, you're happy.

Everything is being shed to you. It's like lovely. You're just boy and floating around. And now if you're that bird, you ve got a break through a shell and get into this cold, weird world. You don't know how your wings work yet or if you're baby, it's like all blood and screaming. But you've got to to do that to get to the next thing.

And the next thing is beautiful, like the bird only gets to fly because IT broke through the egg and only broke through the eg, because I was brave enough to destroy the only world has ever known. And that's how I look at divorce in some ways, is the divorce is like this whole, whether i'm the one ending IT or my partner is the one ending IT, like something is ending what I never thought was gonna end and it's done. And now what I don't know, I don't know what, but I have no reason to think it's gonna horrifying. IT might be incredibly beautiful, but it's it's the road ahead of me now and and that to me, there's something very beautiful about that level of acceptance.

But the lights are rough. The lights rough on that road is a road with no street lamps. And that's what the uncertainty of ah IT is scary, right? We humans are particularly bad or dealing with uncertainty alone.

This I I studied uber ABS, which is this labatt. They had a uber to figure out how to build the perfect tax yapp. And they discovered that much of the reason why we love uber is because IT kills the uncertainty that we used to have when we called the taxes you on the phone. And then we had to stand there for seven or maybe seventeen minutes, hoping that IT was coming. And it's the same analogy you might find if no, you go to an airport and IT says flight is delayed now flight delayed is much worse than flight delayed two hours yeah because I can work with that yeah the flight delayed yeah with no certainty around how long i'm going to be stood in the world is like mental torture.

And the truth is there is something i'm i'm not, look, i'm not polyana about IT like there is something terribly frustrating, upsetting, difficult about your flight being delayed or your flight being cancelled, for example. But I in Frankfort, germany, I had the, I think it's the best meal of my entire life at a little tiny restaurant.

I only had that meal because I was flying back from poland and had a stop in Frankford that was supposed to be for one hour. And because of snow, they cancelled all the flights to essentially to the the united states. And I was stuck in Frankfort for the night.

Now I certainly had a few moments of, like, are you kidding me? Like, I have work, I have this, I think, but then something in me weren't okay. Like, you can be upset about this or you want me, but and I am going to make the flights happen and you can't walk home from Frankfort.

So what are you going to do? You're not been in Frankfort or see what happens. And I walked around Frankfort and I found this amazing little restaurant. And I was, I think, still, to this day, the best meal i've ever had in my life.

And i've gone back to Frank for three times just to eat that restaurant and the hotel that I found, because I was like that I need to a room. I need to get a room somewhere. Turned out, became one of my favorite hotels, and I stayed there several times.

So, you know, again, if you'd said to me in advance, jim would IT be awful. If you've got stuck in Frankford, I would be like, oh my god, be so bad. I have a courter period tomorrow, and I have this to do, and I have that to do.

My life would have been so much poor if I hadn't gotten stuck in Frank fruit. I had like four amazing trips and a bunch of amazing meals and all these incredible experiences because one time my flight gut cancelled caused a snow. And I tell you something, i'm really, really glad that flight got cancelled.

I wasn't at the time, at the time was very frustrated. I to call my assistant middle night like I got cancel. My study got a risk but the truth is like you just don't know, you just don't know, you won't know. You won't know until you're sitting ideally in a bed and there is a hospital volunteer city next to you and you're telling them all about the amazing meal that you hadn't Frankfurt that one time not you know, my flight got delayed once.

He said earlier to start this conversation, no one intends to end up in the consultation room with a divorce lawyer. But I wondered when you said that. I thought, you know, I bet even met someone in your life that didn't tend to end up there. I someone that got married because they wanted a the .

divorce yeah, yeah. I'm sure I, I, I have met. So i've met people because i'm in in the high networks and ultra high network space, the high network we define as like ten to a few hundred million and ultra high network is like five hundred million end up.

In in those spaces. Yeah there's there's certainly our people that get married who a wealthy person for what will be great financial benefit. But a lot of them are not planning on cashing the chips out necessarily. They see that as a possibility, but they more often are like, oh no, i'd like to ride this ride as long as possible because amount of money i'm going to have access to with this person is much greater than even when I divorced and take some of their things so um that that is certainly I would the overwhelming majority of people like ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of my of clients I have met in a twenty five year career did not mean to get divorced. They move towards divorce and eventually and many of them go, oh yeah, this I saw early on, we were doomed.

But, you know, love is so intoxicating, we fall in love so fast, you know, and we really do like have a tendency to, in the early days, like we tend to just be so forgiving of a person. I mean, think, god, that passes to some degree. Could you imagine like that when you Foster with your romantic partner, like they brush up against you and it's like electric, that feeling, you know, cause you we could would we as a world get stuff done if we felt like that, whatever about our romantic partner, if ten years into the relationship, when your partner brushed up next to you at the same, you won't like, oh god, you wouldn't get done.

Like, wouldn't get anything done. We would be a very unproductive world. So thankfully, that fades and changes. I hope that never goes completely away for any couple, but IT becomes manageable. You start to see this person a little more clearly, hopefully still with tremendous optimist.

What's the quick kest to marriage you ve ever .

represented with his marriage and divorce? marriage?

Seventy two hours.

Marriage to marriage to divorce? Yes, marry. Marriage to announce in that situation but I i've seen divorces that were seventy .

two hours yeah .

was one IT was that they were drunk in one IT was I do not to put IT was almost like a was almost like a game of chicken that went too far like they were. They had just sort of started dating. And one of them was like, I bet you wouldn't get my name tatti on you and they go, yeah then they went and got their name tattoo in each other.

And then they were like, well, I bet, won't I I like you so I get engagement ring and then they went, got an engagement ring and they were like, yeah, I think, would you marry? And then they got married. And then I think, like they pray, had a great night. Like that night was pray that might have been some mind bending sex, but then two days later they were like, wait, you know, do you don't actually want to have kids? So because I do and like, oh, you, they realized they were just compatible people.

Have you seen any patents there with compatibility? Then if a couple walks in and they have been together for, I guess, when you look back at the types of people we've represented, is there a certain length of engagement and boyfriend girlfriend phase that is typically conducive when IT working .

or not work? No, I don't see that constantly. I'm very fixated on pattern recognition, so i'm constantly thinking, i'm always looking at same religion, different religions or religious verses, non religious, or older and Younger, older man, Younger woman, Younger man, older woman.

Like what what permitted same culture, different culture, same races, different races like first generation to the U. S. Or you know both first generation or neither.

I don't I don't see those patterns. I really, if I did, i'd be the first to say that you know, I don't hesitate day stuff. But I i've not seen those patterns. I I have found if I was to say there was any and he pattern IT IT IT really is um I think substance use is probably the main thing like that if if one or both people are big drinkers or drug users, that's usually a good indication that the marriage is going to lead to divorce because substances issues tend to get worse in either both people, which causes all kinds of second order effects, or more commonly, one person, when they have kids or when they reach a slightly different stage in life, scales back on alcohol or drug use. And the other person has an unhealthy relationship with the substances and IT gets further down and that's the direction that IT goes.

And I had you said something, my interest as well, which kind of related to this. As you said, love is loan. And I I immediately thought of a friend who who brought me to a restaurant one day to basically tell me that him in his wife were being divorced in the way they described.

IT was quite heartbreaking because IT seem like they had a good relationship. It's kind of like they got busy with their jobs and the kid and they forgot to water the plant yeah like the I can describe IT because they are like good people. They didn't really appear to argue at all.

Yeah, they had this kid, both ceos. She's CEO. He's CEO. And it's like they like raised the kid and forgot to water to the relationship.

Yeah I i've always phrase that as they lost the plot like that they because when you get married, you're trying to write a story together and sometimes I think you lose the plot um like you know when you're reading and like always said, you stop and you go I don't really remember where I am in this like and you got to go back a few pages you know to like oo K I remember this part let me start there.

I think sometimes we lose the plot and when I think that happens in every relationship, every long term relationship, I think sometimes we lose the plot like other things are going on at work or you have kids and and kids require tremendous amount of your band with. So I get IT, but I think if you lose the plot, that's where it's like hard to it's is again acknowledged of IT like awareness, truth, being honest and saying, hey, I feel like we lost the pot like I feel like there's you know, we lost the plant. How do we get IT back? Like how but the problem is when you say to your partner, hey, I I feel like we kind of lost the plot rather than hearing that as, hey, this is really important to me.

You're really important to me. Yeah, works important. Kids important. But you and me, you and me, that's really important. Like it's equally, if not more important.

So I feel a certain way I feel like we've lost the plot. And i'm not saying that you're fault. I'm not saying it's my phone.

I'm saying the kids fall. I don't know whose fault is. I don't really care, but I don't want to lose the block because I care about you and I in this lot.

The story is important to me. People don't hear IT that way. People hear IT as we lost the plot, what would you want to do about IT like you? okay. Ay, so i'll just ignore the kid.

What what do you want and so i'm doing the best I can and that's like that's not the way to hear that I I understand I think it's very human to hear that that way but I genuinely believe that that you know yeah like you forgot to water the plants like nobody meant to kill the plant, but you kill the plant because you aren't thinking about the plant. And by the way, what's right there? You walk in every single day.

You're just not once thought, oh, I got remember to what are the plan and so I think it's very easy in marriage, in long term relationships. It's very easy to just forget that this is you're borrowing this, you know, this is not yours like person's not yours. This person is loan to you and it's by the way, it's the same with death like this person's long to you. They could be taken by divorce or by death. They could be taken with every marriage will end in one of those two things, death, divorce, for sure.

You've use this with slippage before. Yeah when does IT what happen and what does slippage mean?

I mean, slippage is everyone understand slippage. I think like it's not like you eat cake and then the next day your suit doesn't fit, like you just make lots of little choices and those little choices add up in all of a sudden your suit doesn't fit, you go away. When did that happen? know? And I think it's the same thing in relationships like, you know, in this timing way said in the sun also rises.

I went bankrupt the same way anybody does very slowly and then all at once. And I think that's how that's slippage, like it's just little raindrops that eventually become the flood. And and I think that's what happens in relationships is you you start to with good intentions, you're focused on other things.

Maybe you start to go, hey, I got this like because yeah when you were single, finding the one was big, I was big. I was a big priority in your life and then you found them. And then there's like a whole bunch is just high driving in celebration and it's like, also is so great.

I found the one you found you wanted the one, two and found and it's may, is this great? And then you go, got that. Now, what other stuff, you know, what other stuff can we do? Because now, like, i'm supercharge, I got you, you got me, we're going to do this thing and you, and what do you do? You make new life, make careers.

You go amazing places like you. It's not enough. It's not enough to just go. We got each other and it's so fun, delicious talking in here and just stay together, you know.

And I I always laugh with friends, by the way, because I can always tell when someone's like in love, because they put on a couple of pounds, you know, because they really do, because they they just go, like, do I wanna get up and go to the german to go? I likes IT on the couch and popcorn and watch something you let's do that. You know it's just like you you just so it's love weight.

It's like happy love weight. I love when I see IT on somebody like IT looks good on everybody. You know much Better. They like you believe me.

Like if you look at photos of me from when I had an eight pack, IT was the most miserable time in my life because I met the gym, just trying to beat the pain out of me, you know. So I think it's very, very Normal that people in that headiness of that, okay. So when that fades and now we're like in a sustainable pattern of a relationship.

And you're focusing on other things, little, tiny things started to you know and you don't want to make a thing of IT, you know want to say like go, by the way, going to file here, thrown a flag on that play. Now you just want to go to go. Now it's this little thing is a big thing about IT. And I think that that is how the process begins. And IT leads right to my office someday.

Jordan Peterson said something to me, jack, if you ve got my phone, yeah, I just wanted to play this thirty seconds of something. He said.

everybody keeps me. I, i've had conversation, which were Peterson.

I would be fascinating.

I imagine two people are telling him the same thing.

which is my friend is going through some difficulties in his relationship. And I sent him this little clip, which I onest ly, i'd keep this clip, but this is what Jordan says, that IT relates to slippage.

Here's something to understand about your marriage. Okay, you are gonna to listen to your wife ninety minutes a week. okay? And you might also just get that through your thick skull.

Now why? If you listen to enough, you can make peace and you can play. So there's a huge benefit.

If you don't listen to her, that will accumulate and you'll listen to her divorce court. Someone sent me that. I don't think he was you.

Someone sent me that. So yeah, I mean, I think that's a piece of what i'm talking about for sure. IT feels a little like the advice. Last time I was on, I was saying I found defensive, which is happy wife, happy life. Like I think there's this sense of like, well, what a man has to do is just sort of tolerate the like.

I don't think most men like don't want to listen to their wife for ninety because that point that seems to me and I know he's being hyperbolic and I love Jordan's work and I I find him fascinating and I really enjoy him. But when someone says to me, like all you have to listen your wife for ninety minutes a week, like that feels like you're going to sit there and you like how many more minutes so have to do this for, you know, there was a time where you couldn't went hear her like SHE was interesting and he was interested. But do you think .

the women that are listening to this right now that have husbands and boyfriends yeah think they their husbands and boyfriend likes IT when they hey, we need to talk about something.

But see who when in your life has someone saying that to you've been a precursor to something good? Hey, we need to talk about something never that's like, you know is a siron a good siron? What is this, sir, ever good? Like they're certain phrases. We really need to have a conversation that is not a good entry point and that's not because that means there's something wrong with that. But before you get to that, like how many women would say that, that you know in the interaction with their spouse, like they don't want, like a let's have a ninety minutes in the penalty box where you have to listen to me, talk to you, like that seems terrible. The thought of of of having to do that as like a practice sounds sort of like I, well, if I endure that for ninety minutes, the the bonus is I get sex or something like and that seems crazy to .

me as a divorce layer. If you think about the divorces youth seen in core and you've been consulted on extra, do you believe that the fact couple had spent fifty minutes, weeks, seat down, openly being honest with each other, they would have ended up in your consultation room?

I think if theyd made a practice like that as something deliberate, I mean, maybe he would make a difference. I think what's more important than the destruction of a ritual and the the time I I have a Better practice than that I have um so I have a chapter in the book called hit said now where I talk about sharing with your partner kind of promptly when something has rattled you the wrong way without saying we need to talk like just giving and I suggest people do at the email so that it's like you can say to your partner, like I listen, like I want you to reflect on this, like you don't have to answer right away. You don't have to be defensive.

And also you can be careful about how you pass IT because not everybody's very sure footed in their speech, right? So sometimes people, if you just try to do IT face to face, sometimes it's not onna come out clearly. So if you're writing, you can edit and be careful with.

But I I genuinely think sometimes people just need to check in in a relationship. And by the way, you have to if you want that, you also have to be willing to accept that in your direction, right? So I have a friend. I ve A, A, A friend who read my book, and he is a friend who actually then read my book.

And he said that he and his wife go for a walk once a week, and they make a delivery practice during that walk of sharing with each other, one or two or three things that the person didn't do perfectly in the relationship that week. And they hear IT with love like they deliberately from the beginning. While we're hearing this with love, we're hearing this as a practice is a deliberate practice, because our goal is to have a great relationship and keep IT great.

So we're going to hear IT that way. We're not going to hear that as a criticism, and we're going to hear IT as I love this relationship enough, to be honest with you, I want you to have you i'd rather you have an uncomfortable truth and uncomfortable lie. I'd rather not have resentment built up.

And then they always finish that walk with three things that the person did that made them feel loved or feel good or what. And that store you're ending on that positive note. And they said you'd never had a week where they didn't .

come up with something that I Y happy life phrase. There must be a reason why became what IT became popular? Well.

IT became popular because I think so many people were willing to accept the unbelievably ridiculous model of relationships that let us to a fifty six percent of vorce rate and probably another twenty or thirty percent staying together, unbelievably miserable, but not wanting to give a half their stuff. So yeah, like every misery loves company. Like everybody is sitting around going like, listen, women are like that every minutes I have. Like, I I just don't accept that. I don't accept that IT to be awful.

Why is IT not happy husband? Happy wife though?

Well, in reality, IT is, I think in reality it's happy husband. And happy wife equals happy marriage. Like.

but why did IT come into culture that that way around?

Because I think there there is a well, I mean, my personal opinion on this is I think manner probably easier to please in some ways like OK, you know I think matter either hungry or horny. So like either feed us or have sex with us. And that's kind of we're most of the time pretty happy.

Like I don't I don't we're not you know like which curtains should we pick out for the house? Like we're not that caught up. And I don't know a lot of guys caught up in that like when he came to weddings, like most of the guys I know weren't when they were Young men going like, what is my wedding gonna be?

Like, I can hear what i'm going to do like IT was very like I was a DJ abandon and what will the bar have and that's kind of what they were into and everything else was like, cool. Whatever you like like i'm excited to see you excited. That's what matters to me.

So simple.

I think, matter. Quite simple. yeah. And I think women and Better way, this is not a criticism of men.

It's not a criticism of women. And again, it's a generalization. I understand that. But like women, I think think god, women are much more nuances in my experience like they notice more sometimes are different things like like I think men and women bring different things to, and again, not every man, not every woman, but like, I genuinely believe that we bring different gifts to relationships and and when we embrace that, and by the way, that polarity, when we're dating, is the greatest thing in the world.

But of course, IT gets chAllenging because this person is not just your sexual partner. In a matter partner, there are your roommate, there are your compared there, your travel partner share a bathroom with them like you got like, this is a whole. Another thing, when you get married, the french have a saying that, you know, marriage turns the lover into a relative and and the truth is like not any your lover, you have this sort of it's why affairs are so intoxicating and wonderful because you just get the best parts, no kick up this person socked.

You don't have to listen to the fight they got in with their cousin. You know you don't have to be like I got to nine, went with them, know you didn't actually you're just getting the good stuff, the passion, the sex that you know which again, you you can have we can do relationships however we decide we want to do them. That's what's cool about IT is the two people in IT is what matters.

And I think even before social media, we were very much about, well, how is everybody else doing IT? Because I I guess that's the right way to do IT. And so yeah happy White, happy life was like less and just here, you know like just just make her happy because essential shut up and you can just wash football like in IT.

I I mean, look, that never appealed to me. That was never interesting to me. I think a lot of people absolutely buy into that model of relationships. What's more interesting to me than people who ve just given up, right people who've just said like, yeah, I know the hard thing to do in the right thing to do with the same thing, but i'm going to do easy thing because it's like what's more interesting to me is that I think sometimes people screw up their relationships, plead with completely good intentions. And the the example I I I give him my book about this is sex.

I think most people who been in a long term relationship will say, yeah, you know, the sex is become kind of predictable like it's become kind of a it's not as novel, you know and I think that happens for the absolute best of intentions. And that would be really lovely if we just acknowledged that because here's why IT happens, right? You get with a person you first dating first time you you know you get sexual with the person.

You throw every trick you've got at that person, right? You do all the things that you think they're going to like to see what they're going to like, right? Do they like the same stuff that other people like to do? They like something different, or what do they do? Same things you like, and you throw everything at IT and and you start, okay, they don't like that.

okay? This, they really like all, they make really nice noises when I do that, okay, and you start, and then what do you do? You start to get more efficient like I know doesn't like that.

So i'm going to do that, but I know he likes this some to do that a whole lot, right? And SHE does, I hope, the same thing SHE does that he loves IT when I do this and the sound that comes out of him when I do that. And what do you do?

You play the greatest ads. You play the greatest hits. Because why not? By the way, there's only so many hours in the day and we're got some stuff forgot to yet to.

So let's really throw the greatest hits at each other. We going to have a great time. Well, what did you just do?

You are trying to make each other really happy and be a really good lover to each other. But what did you just do? You just created a routine, just created a routine.

And here's the other thing about humans, which we all know. We ve never had a sexual partner for more than six months. Then you've noticed to the patterns, and by the way, you've thrown with them because you're doing the greatest hands.

Like I went to see spring scene to here born to run. That's what i'm there to say like I love IT do the greatest hits. But then if they do something different, there is some party you that goes, what was that? Where did that come from? We don't usually do that or we don't do in that order.

And by the way, sometimes that's exciting, right? Sometimes it's like, let's have six in one room what we ve got to bed right over the we always do something to do IT in the laundry room like I don't know. That's fun, right? It's fun to do something different.

Well, we get to a place where now when we do something different, we start to feel like we're going have to have a conversation about IT because it's like, why did you do that? That's a strange or there or sometimes people go, why did they do that different thing? Or they like, is that they're watching porn or they are cheating on me.

Where did they get that idea from? Is that something that they want? They want to start doing that? Is that part of the greatest tips I didn't realized IT.

Do they not like what i've been doing? And we start to sabotage again with good intentions. From day one, all you wanted was to make your partner happy.

And they wanted to make you happy. And look what you did. You made a routine. So the only way out of that spiral is to call IT to talk about IT, call IT out to say, hey, you, what feels like things you're kind of thing like, you know you know there anything I could do different or you might want different? And I think there's lots of ways to have that conversation.

How do we not have like, what's the worst way to have that conversation?

The worst way. Other conversation say, how can you not do this anymore? Used to do IT all the time.

You know, i've never why you ever let me this, or why don't you ever try that? That's the worst way to do IT blame. blame.

And also, whats on you? Yeah, why did you do? Or also that it's like because immediately to the person's reaction to that is going to be, well, here's why, you know, because of this, well, well, because you this, you know, well, how come you never do this? Like IT IT turns into that.

And I think there's a million other ways to do IT, all of which are Better. The the best one in my opinion. But i'm a lawyer and i'm dishonest a lot of the time is, you know, manipulation.

I think that there's a very positive minute. I manipulate people's emotional state for a living, right? Like that's my job is to make the other side scared my client feel safe.

The judge feel good about my client, bad about the other side. So like I try to use my powers for good. And I think here's a great way to use that power for good.

I think if there's something going on in dead that you want to try or do and you don't want to have the clinical commerce, you don't want to call an audible in the middle of sex and just start doing something different and you have your partner go, what the heck k was that? I think a great one is, oh my god, to dream I had about you last night. We just want to now wait, what what was the dream? Was the dream that I know, know, I don't even, I don't know, because I had dairy before.

Better something I don't know. I had the dirty st dream about. You tell me what human being, male, female, gay, straight, anybody isn't gonna no for real. What what was I do IT what you do IT what was IT when you tell them? You tell them the thing that you'd be interested in doing and they .

go IT was you and your brother. And okay.

if that something you're looking for, I don't know how to get as i'm very persuasive, I couldn't get I couldn't give your identity for that. But if it's something that you wanted to do, you say, yeah, this stream, this is what happened in your partner may react as, oh, really like you would like that and then you can go, yeah no, I mean, I don't know. I just, I was in my brain so I don't know.

Like IT seemed weird to me too. And then you can back out of IT without of being a thing. Or you can go, I know, maybe because if their reaction is, oh, I would.

Is that something you d want to do really? I don't know. Maybe IT is so consciously tried some time.

How many times to people end up in divorce? Caught because the likes went out in the bedroom?

I mean, how many would admit IT or how many is that really the case? Because here's i'll tell you, I would say a good at least eighty percent of the people I didn't at my office and fidelity was a piece of IT. But that tells me that sex is a big peace, you know, because most people who are in genuinely satisfying sexual relationships with their partner aren't looking how other sexual relationships.

Some people are just addicted to sex though. And I say this because I got some friends who people always think i'm like projecting, and i'm like secretly talking about myself. I I have a wide spectrum of individuals and their relationship with sex varies widely.

Some people I just think you're onna cheat forever regardless of you are with, because they have some like trauma related sex. And then some people are kind of don't have sex at all. So on on the end where you've got almost sex addiction behavior. Um i'm just wondering if if I guess, I guess the question that the border question was about how many how much is the lights going out in the bedroom does IT relate to people, I think.

of a divorce school. Well, I remember listening your conversation with gad and and him, you asking him flat out like, so how much of the motivation is sex like? And I think his answer was like, a tremendous amount of evolutionary biology is tie to sex like a tremendous amount of our motivation is born of sex, is about sex boot and not becoming food.

That's like our three primary motivators. So I think sex is incredibly important. I also think sex is constantly thrown into our line of sight.

So I think you can't discount that. I think I think sex is on social media like the amount of sex that is put in our face constantly now is shocking. It's shocking.

I be compared to your grandfather has not seen as many breasts in one lifetime as you'd see in one visit to instagram. Like I mean, there is just so much clear it's going on. It's you just can even so I think fundamentally, like of course, it's being thrown in our left side. Advertising everywhere surround. We live in a sexual .

and by how long you been a twenty five years. So since that time, things like only fans have emerged and pornography become a commonplace. Yeah, I image start.

You are the program y probable.

Wasn't divorce now everywhere.

Now that's everywhere. There's a lot of unique things that have i've watched evolved in my career, the proliferation ation of revenge porn, the number of people that have concerns about audio, video, photographs of them, because because every I mean, the proliferation of IT is also a function of the fact that everyone has a video camera and everyone has has has a camera, has sticked camera in their hand, you know so there's a tremendous amount of concern about you know this personnel images of me, photos of me.

Tremendous amounts of um you know cheating has gotten much, much easier then I used to be, I mean the idea of like connecting with a potential sexual partner and also having conversations with people. We have absolutely no business having conversations worth than having neutral entry points to get into. So like IT used to be like maybe you see the attractive soccer mom at your kids soccer practice and she's married. You're married.

But like if you settled up next to our and started talking, you're having a conversation with a group full of people and you called her on the phone at the house, that would to be weird, right? But if you like message her or you add on facebook, it's not weird because our kids are on the same soccer thing and maybe there's a facebook group for the soccer parents and then you post a picture of her self when SHE was on vacation. And you say, so where did you guys say we were thinking about them? And if you make a and and just think of you know and suddenly we're having a conversation and it's private, nobody else's there.

We're alone in the room. So I think it's pretty you know, it's become very conducive to cheating and it's also become a way for there to be a tremendous t of evidence of cheating that accidentally lands in the hands of your partner. So like I can't tell you how many.

Sounds like I know he's past now Steve jobs, but like divorced lawyers on a tremendous stead of gratitude for the amount of business he sent our way because apple's integration of its devices makes IT incredibly common that the text message from your lover comes up on your kidd's ipad because you didn't realize you logged into the same apple ID and IT comes up on the I message. And now your spouse is looking at the the text about how great the sex was yesterday and like i'm not being funny. That's like a once a weak thing that happens in divorce layers, offices and and I know IT wasn't intentional.

I know he wasn't like going mess up some marriages, but the truth is, is no, he creates and he is your opportunity for people to cheap because people can clan destiny communicate ways that they use to of these neutral entry points that lead to something negative and it's becomes something where you get caught because there's a tremendous eventide trail now. So I think these are all you know, these are all factors that have made IT harder. But again, born only fans like all those kinds of things, these are just more sort of outlets for the same.

You know it's it's like, you know, there's thousand restaurants and there's only one menu, you know and and that's all this is is is all the same stuff just in different permutations. I A diversely fifty years ago is dealing with some of the exact same things. It's different technologies. It's different know manifestations of the of the issue but it's all just hearing AK. It's all just males and females that tried to make this work and somehow IT came apart.

Do you think marriages good for love and like what you have your marriages i've been thinking .

with other i'm fine with getting married.

My issue is the wedding. I'm not a big fan of weddings. I think I don't know where this tradition of wedding came from, but getting like hundreds of people at a room in doing this, all the big gaps, the matter time, you have to weigh the I waiting three hours to be fair, the length of IT, the fact it's so stressful and IT causes I some of my friends i've watch like twelve to twenty four months of stress and agony arguments but it's like one day yeah .

and I just go I don't know but if you ever been to a wedding that was nontraditional yeah .

I like and let .

you go I was like a party .

yeah I to .

say something like I see on the opposite, which is I don't really believe in the legal institution of marriage. I think that has almost nothing to do with love. I think it's largely performative.

I think if people were maddy in love, they're madly in love and they could either marry or not get married. It's not gonna anything except the legal status of things. But I love, I love weddings.

I love weddings. I love them. I get, mister, I did every wedding. My son just got engaged. I can't wait. Like it's going be so because I think that I think there's something so on about like a big group of people all getting together and having a party over something as noble as two people finding each other in a world of eight billion people and like, I think there's something about like a group of people all getting up and go and like we're going to be cheer and for and we're going to be here for a and like, I love good food and I love like, I love being with people like, I think I think if the the first time everybody you love is in one room is your funeral, you're an idiot t like, I think there's something really beautiful like I should tell you, I got divorced many years ago but I have amazing photos of my mom from my wedding because it's like how many times in your life to put on like a fancy dress and have you had done and all that stuff and my mom lost her hair so many times because of chemo and all those other things.

And when he passed, like he was so sick for so many years and I was so afraid when he died, that's how I would remember her is in that bed sick and I to tell you, I look at those pictures of my mom from that wedding, smiling so big and you with, and i'm so glad I have those photos, i'm so glad, and I couldn't have him if we hadn't had this stupid party. And I remember deliberately saying to the DJ, because I was, what, twenty two years twenty two, I understand the DJ do not play a stupid chicken and dance thing. Do not play that like we're not doing that stupid thing.

We're not happening. And I don't know when that happened, but my mom must like gone to him and been like, play the chicken dance and he was like, i'm not just play the chicken dance and he was like you, but you play in the chicken. They played the chicken dance.

And I have says of me, I I will have that memory of my mother with that doing that stupid chicken dance and in my head until i'd die. And IT, i'm really glad to have you like, i'm really glad it's there. So I tell you, like, I think weddings are a blast and I think if you're in love with somebody and you love him so much that you're like, I we're going to do what I think have a wedding.

Don't get married, don't get married, have a wedding because getting married and having a wedding, you too don't have anything to do with the when if you ever gone to a wedding. And at the end of the wedding said, um, I just need to see the paperwork. Could you just show me the marriage license now I just need to make sure before I give you a gift and before I leave, it's going to make sure everything was notorious.

Ed, properly? No, no, what did you get? You didn't see what you know.

I've never saw my parents marriage license. They can to make the thing, I don't know. But have the part part have the party.

Why not have the party and don't have somebody else's party? You just described somebody else's party where you wait for three hours. Screw that.

Why would you even have to sit down? Dinner portion and the pastor burbs is the best part. So just give that you can do IT however you want. Like if there's a core message to my book and to my approach to relationships is you get to do IT however you want.

You know what almost all the people in my office have in common? They all tried to do IT a particular way that somebody told them that's how they're supposed to do IT. And IT didn't work, and it's got a terrible track record.

Like, like the way that most people do. IT fails fifty six percent of the time. So do IT different. You know, plenty of room to do IT different.

And the only two people that are qualified to decide how to do IT really are the two, were you at the eight billion choices? You picked each other, throw whatever party you want to. If your friends love you, they're gonna love that party.

And if you, if they don't love IT, they're going to go like, you know what that was. That was very them. You know, it's great.

And this is really what mean my partner kind of decided, and we talked about having like a wedding, whatever. And I think, you know, i'd love to do. And this is really inspired by seeing so many of my friends planning their weddings and looking very miserable in the process and having to basically cut back on things they loved in their life because they're saving.

They're saving for the wedding in two years, the time. So they can't go out on friday evening. They are onna have to cut back date night because .

they're got this wedding in two years.

And I just always think to myself, why don't you take say, if it's a hundred k ots say that you're spending on the wedding ten k why didn't you just divide in ten and have ten many parties and invite lots, you know. And then you get all .

these member answer to that question. Who's that way for? Not for them. Not for them. It's for the audience.

And the more this is, this is why we're driving a hundred miles an hour towards a brick wall in our culture because we are now doing IT for the audience. We're not doing IT for us anymore. And we have to live in our skin.

We have to live in our own lives. We have to live in our own relationships. So what we're doing for the audience, because IT looks good for the audience like this, is why we become a culture with White teeth and rotting gums, because we don't actually care what IT is.

We care what IT looks like. That's why so many people that three weeks ago, where hashtag blessed, hashtag best wife ever are in my office having a consultation and are having an affair. And I have that because underneath that, that air of, by the way, how many celebrities, how many celebrities are denied.

I have I have celebrity clients who their press releases, they're trode ced. They're talking about how happy they are there in my office. We're actively negotiating the dissolution of their relationship.

They haven't lived together because they lived in their separate homes on separate coast for the last year and a half. But they show up for each other at the red carpet and they do their thing, and then they part wait and don't talk to each other. But why? Why are we selling? Because we're selling a dream to people.

We're selling a dream and see what's interesting to me, as I actually think reality is pretty than the dream. And so if why would you start your relationship with A A anon mage to fake ness, or is someone else's vision of things? Why not started IT with an authentic expression of who you are to each other and how much you mean to each other? And like then the paperwork, whatever the pair works of paperwork.

do you have celebrity clients who are literally in fake relationship?

Yes, I have celebrity clients that are in fake relationships. I have celebrity clients that are in financial arrangement, fake relationships.

I had this big conversation with my friends the day because you know, there's a couple of like big celebrity names have broken up that we're aware of and I went back through their instagram ah just to see the way that they portrayed their whenever you see a celebrity relationship, it's like perfect, perfect, perfect over.

Well, they do they do what I call the rosio donal, right? Because rosio donal, for years there were rumors that he was a lesbian. And SHE did this whole thing about how he had a crush on time cruise and she's not a lesbian, an and SHE is crush on time cruise, and she's not a lesbian, and did that.

And then finally, with an issue like, of course, i'm, alas, me. Everyone knows i'm a lesbian. Everyone is known that for years and I felt like it's like you just get slit the whole country like.

And that's all celebrities do as they just gaslit us about their relationships like they just do the like our so in love to all these vicious rumors started by people that hate us to and me while yeah the whole things that wrote but see. That's not a celebrity alone phenomenon like. So what's great about celebrities is they have enough distance between them that they can hide that because most of them own a home in miami.

I own a home in L A, own a home in new york. And then they have some place in europe. Usually are italy like they have enough room to lose each other and to be OK with IT and just be like that. We're living our lives. They just have to be careful about not being seen out with other people.

I I always wonder if the public portrayal of a perfect relationship, corporates to a bad one, if you know, I mean, like, I think the people that would sit on valentine's day spring called the rose pettings, then they are get their puppy and their husband and say, right, can you take that photo? Yeah, probably taking twenty thirty photos for me in my head. I O people that like publicly portray a perfect relationship. Yeah, is is that like A A close of the insecurity? Or is that I think so?

I mean, I think that that and again, this is a functional largely of social media but I think there is um but we all sort of IT works and that's why I think people keep doing IT right? IT is like as there's a bad reward system at play here. But like so I live in manhattan, and I live right near, and my office is right near the vessel, and the vessel is this amazing, beautiful sculpturing in manhattan in in, in the west Chelsea.

And my office actually overlooks the vessels beautiful in the hutt in yard area. And so people, tourists from all over, come to take a picture by the vessel. And so every time i'm walking to and from the office, I passed the vessel, and there are always at least one hundred people taking pictures by the vessel.

And I find IT absolutely hilarious, because one of the things you see all the time, usually women, but men sometimes are guilty of IT, is the photo of the person per ending that they're not having their photo taken. So it's like they're just sort of standing. They're like this.

We're likely look over this way and their friend is taking the picture of people and I think you're myself when you post that yeah what are you took that picture? Or is they are ready to believe that the pop oxi we're following you like you you're just a regular person like there's look so clearly you set this. But here's the thing, like the thing about us as humans is I don't know that we look at that photo and go what is that? Is that like? I mean, look at like high.

We just like look at high fashion photos in like any magazine, vogue l things like that. Look at the position of people's bodies, like hope that seriously causes this, whatever you're going and look do that like pose IT zar, no one SKS again, visually looks good. I get IT maybe makes the clothes look as certainly no one sits like that.

So the thing of like the rose paddles and that is like, who does that really? And if they're doing, what are they doing? IT, because they think that's what you're supposed to do.

why? Because they saw IT, right? All those rose peddles, all those performative were maddy in love.

Look at how in love we are. Look as quick. Look at I love. Look at how in love we are. It's shower sex IT looks good. But all you're really doing, she's putting on a show, and that show leads you right to my office.

And the reason we like the show is because we want to believe in the fairy tale. We because if we see IT in my favorite celebrity couple, then IT almost keeps the hope alive. For me, it's the the antidote for the statistics around divorce. It's the antidote for the heartbreak I saw in my home. It's the antidote for the misery I see around me is look, fairy tales exists just like designate and that's why we want IT.

I get that and I think I understand why we do that. But I think it's also like pornography. It's it's A I don't want to see an idealized version. It's a style ized version of something people actually are doing.

But if you start to to think your sex life is inferior because IT doesn't look like pornography, you you're modeling IT against something that's very unnatural and not real and that is not indicative of what actual sex looks like or feels like or or how IT works logistically or how bodies work logistically. So we're getting educated the wrong ways. And it's again, not to tie we go from like marriage to sex to death.

But it's the same problem. My head in my master's theses IT really was like, we convince what we always, we shield people from death. We hide IT from people like, if someone, if I said my grandmother's dying, I wanted take my kids to see, you'd be like, what kind of sick beard are you like if you said i'm i'm going to walk around the graveyard, or I know you don't talk about death, you don't talk about this.

why? why? If these are things that are important, if these are milestone things in our lives, not talking about IT is not going to prevent that from happening.

So why not talk about honestly, like what's really going on? Like I ve got to say, you ever you know again, the antidote to some of this stuff is to say, like, who took that picture? That's weird. You didn't know they were taking off because you are looking at in the other direction. Like why not just start saying like i'm not gonna a be fully shit.

I remember many years ago, remember like waking up in new york city and my x girlfriend for many years ago was like pissed off at me because I was valentine's day and I hadn't text her and like told said, happy birthday but but I was in new york that was any different times in so six as well I was I hadn't even come and SHE has sent me a screen shot of another couple who were like, with the with the, you know, the rose patterns and the roses and stuff and SHE was infuriating herself based on an instagram potency of another couple yeah and I was being attacked because I wasn't .

meeting yeah and this is why I think we are living in a moment where there is more comparison than ever. I in my office constantly, I see IT in life. Constant is not, by the way, it's not just in the relationship thing though, because of course, people post their greatest heads.

People are constantly flaunting their relationship and showing everyone their relationship. But it's not even just your relationship with your significant other. It's your relationship with yourself. If I see one more person posting their workout routine, they're ona and cold plunge the diet routine of the, you know, their hashtag beast mode.

If I see one more person posting how they are parenting routine in the wonderful, intricate snacks that they make for their children, like all day long, there is an idealized style ized version of every single aspect of our life that is so much Better than the gag real that we're living. And we're watching IT and we're comparing ourselves to IT and our partner to IT, and we're going, how come my partner doesn't like that? They do not look like that.

Like all these videos. Are the person like getting up in the morning who you set up the camera? Does someone set up a camera like, and I really feel sometimes, like, i'm the crazy person going.

Guys, do you not see this? Like, do you not see this? And do not see that this is what's making you unhappy. You're unhappy with yourself. You're unhappy with your partner. You're unhappy with your relationship with your partner because you appearing IT to fiction and because it's on your phone instead of on the movie screen, you think it's real. Sometimes comparison can .

wake us up to things that we needed to know, though I think you the story of you go to the theme park that day, which I was reading about, and seeing that couple who pretty, I delic yeah, highlights to you .

that maybe this wasn't a .

park with them.

So I was with my ex wife and our Young kids and these college friends of ours, because we were college tweet arts and my wife night, and we were at theme park with them, with our all Young kids, and, you know, my x wives, a lovely person. I think she'd say nice things about me too. I'm a nice place to visit, which you wouldn't want to live there.

I think SHE tell you i'm a spectacular x husband and have leave a lot to be desired as husband truly fair, common. And I would say that, you know, there's a lot of people I love that I won't want to be married to and she's one of them. She's very happily, very married for a long time to a great guy.

And we were at this theme park with them, and they'd been married for roughly the same number years that we were at the time. And I remember the kids want to to go on some ride. And I was like, the permutations of seeding.

IT was like, three and three, and they are two kids. We were like, okay, i'll sit with these two kids. You sit with these two kids they said, great.

Where did I just told hands and go for a walk and they, like, held hands, and they started walk IT away. And I remember looking at them and thinking, we've really like each other. Like, you've really like each other.

And I remember thinking, like, I don't feel that way about her. Like, I love her, but I don't feel that way about her and I just IT wasn't like and then I went home and we got to worse together some more time. But I remember when we decided to divorce, we had some very honest conversations with each other about the marriage and about when we'd felt you. We were very good at post gaming IT because we stayed friends and I said to her, you know, I remember this moment when we were at the theme park with and he goes, oh my god, I remember that exact same oma and I said, yeah, I thought like they went often we're holding hands and remember thinking like, I don't love her like that and he was like, tim, i'm not making this up I thought the exec same thing is that I remember seeing IT and thinking like, yeah like, I don't like if they took our kids on this ride, we wouldn't be holding hands, walk through the .

park and why we just didn't .

have that between us.

What is that? I don't know.

That's magic. I don't know that thing, that thing, that magic part that nobody can really explain, I don't know. It's the thing is the reason why I ve never been home homophobic because I happened to be had a sexual, but I couldn't explain why.

Like, I don't know. It's a combination of biology, cultural pressure. I have no idea. I just know. What Sparks something in me is what Sparks something in me. And I don't think I have a right to say to another adult who has those feelings about another adult that they have, that they're wrong and i'm right or something.

I genuinely just feel like I don't know there's something magical about and there's something magical about romantic attraction and the feeling of like deep connection to each other. I mean, i've known though that couple now for the entire twenty eight years or the'd been married and they are legit super into each other. But they are the least performative people you'd ever meet.

They are very, they're very focused on each other, like they really like each other. Like he SHE refers to him as her boyfriend. You've been married for twenty eight years. They have two kids. They are like adults now and they should be like all my boyfriends coming home next week from, you know, a work trip and like SHE means her husband, but like he refers to as that and like he refers to her as my girl like he's like, yeah, well, my girl and I we're going to go to do this and I always like to I count twenty eight years marriage and that's how you guys feel about each other like, and it's jet. It's not like a thing.

It's like what is I don't know if I knew that that man, i'd find a way to tell people to do IT and bottle IT like I don't know, i'll tell what IT is. Is beautiful. It's beautiful.

It's funny. Be around like it's fun to be when you're not in a chAllenging marriage. Being around that is like the warmest, most wonderful place. It's not surprising to me that their two sons are like two of the most amazing Young men i've ever met.

How do they argue?

I think they i've never watched the argue, I imagine. So I imagine one answer would be privately. But um from what I understand because I have tried to reverse tion here a little bit with them like what is IT because i've talked about them enough in media now that they know like I always text them like I talked about you and when the book they were like, oh the was like k page of whatever that they thought, it's quite funny.

I think they play fair. Like they I don't know, they never lost the plot. They seem to really, I hope this comes out the right way.

They love their sons. They really love their sons. They're two amazing parents, but that seems to me like they both they view each other is the most important thing.

And she's always looking out for his happiness and he's always looking out for hers and it's an equal measure. Like I think he is very focused on him and what will make him happy, and he's very focused on her and what will make her happy. And they have both take tremendous joy in each other's joy.

And I think they both feel and they have I will say they have been through some things like he had metastatic breast cancer at one point, he had all kinds of and they they weather that storm. They weather that storm with Grace, humor and even deeper connection. And again, I don't know if it's partly luck that they like just hit the lottery with each other, but I I think some of IT is just that they they pay attention like it's important to them.

You're in a relationship, but you're not married anymore. You were married previously. Will you ever get married again?

I've said before that I don't think marriage is important to me. I I don't. Marriage from where i'm sitting is a contract that was written by the state that is supposed to define in some general way what this relationship is and create a set of rules.

The governor, and if you do a peanut, you can change that set of rules. But you're still saying, you know, I really want to get the government involved in this situation. I have no part of me that in my relationship goes, we really need to get the government involved in this. I just don't that's just not in me and I, and it's not only not in me, it's just seems subserve to me.

Marriage seems .

subside to me. Now I understand why people get married. I think I understand IT Better than most people, but I adjust to me doesn't make any sense.

What do you get?

I think in a lot more time, I think it's cultural pressure OK. I think it's performative. I think it's because we live in a society, if not a world that presumes marriage is a good idea.

I think that that is tied to medieval institutions. It's tied to things that are way before us and it's tied to partly land ownership. It's partly tied of religious concepts. It's know what froid talks about in civilization is this content is so we're not all killing each other over mates.

Know we've structured society around this idea of turning pair bonds, which by the way is a very healthy permutation with which to raise children and its very its fits our biology quite nicely, you know, in terms of the amount of time that a child in gestation verses. But I I think we just we're just like running a program that IT was here before us and that we've been taught as how it's supposed to be. This is what you do like. Again, ask the question.

You think it's a bad idea .

getting married? yeah. I think it's incredibly bad idea.

Think it's incredible dangerous idea. I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it's a dangerous idea. There is a difference to those two things. Like skydiving is a dangerous idea.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea if it's dangerous IT IT depends on how much joy you place on that thing, right? Like for me, the joy of jumping out of a plane as compared to the danger of jumping out of a plane precludes me from jumping out of planes. Maybe i'm missing out on something that's okay.

I'll live with that. There's lots of cool stuff to do. I haven't gotten board yet.

Marriage is kind of the same thing, like I think marriage is again, like cause I turn around the question, which is we know facts, facts. Marriage is overwhelmingly unsuccessful. IT is way more dangerous than skydiving.

Yes, you die from the skydiving, but the chances of a catastrophe skydiving incident is like point O O O three. And when where you die is point O O O O one, it's like very limited. The chances of dying from sky diving.

Where's the chances of divorce? again? Fifty six percent divorce rate.

How many staying together who are unhappy? And they just stay together after stuff for religious reasons or whatever. This is a technology with an unbelievably bad failure rate.

The more people die for marriage or sky diver.

I think more people wish they were dead from marriage than start skydiving. I think most people's sense of self, many people, people sense of self dies as part of an unhappy marriage. Like it's not a question of what you die. It's that you're alive and not living your life in a way that's enjoyable or in a way that's authentic to who you are. And I think a lot of people are doing that as a function of the choice that they made of marriage.

And again, i'm not saying don't get married, but what i'm saying is when someone says i'm getting married, why is IT impolite to say why, why you're about to do something incredibly dangerous that fails so much of the time? Why not just say why i'd like to why would you do that? It's stupid.

I'm saying why? Because most people's answer doesn't make any sense. what? Because, you know, I don't want to be alone.

Wait, you have to get married to not be alone. Join a church group, I don't know. Join a baking square in a softball team, you won't be alone.

What does that mean? Well, I want to have, you know, regular sex. okay? I don't know they getting married. The solution to that like it's not a guarantee of regular sex, like that's not. So if the question first, will you allow to ask the question why, if anything, if you don't say, oh my god, that's so great. You have any mercy issues .

people sake for the kids. You know, it's good for the kids .

and which kids the kids you ve already had and the kids are gonna head. We're getting married. So we and by the way, again, okay, you're saying society is good for I mean, I think what you're saying is it's good for mother and a father in a household with children together.

Rights of the pollard ity of male and female again, I know a lot of same sex couples that have very is very successful, happy children. So maybe you're saying a two parent family is a good thing that you can have to be male and female, whatever. Okay, that's all true. What does marriage license have do with that? What does the government getting involved to .

have to do with that?

He gives me security. What security secure? You're saying something that fails fifty six percent of the time makes you feel like you get security.

That's a really weird sense of security. I've got an airbag in my car that doesn't deploy seventy percent of the time. Would you drive around feeling safe? Or would you go like this is a lovely I don't want to participate in. I'm just going to strapped myself in and do something else. If i'm not going to rely on this thirty percent air bag.

You didn't have a job.

Well, that's that's my reason. I don't know. I really listen. I've been saying for years that I think I have tremendous job security, and that makes me very happy on one level, and that makes me very sad at another level that I have such job security.

I think I think I don't think we're getting Better at this. I think we're getting worse at IT. And I don't think by the time I retire, which isn't that far away, like I don't think we're going to a get so good at IT that i'm going to be out .

of a job as an intern and always looking for ways to connect and to create. And that's why decided to launch the conversation cards. I turned to shop fy, who also sponged this podcast.

And shop fy made IT so easy to set up an online store and reach all of you no matter where you are in the world. I remember the chAllenges we face when we first launch the disco conversation cards, managing inventory, ensuring a seas checkout process and reaching our audience. Sharp five stepped and made everything so straight ford and efficient.

IT was like having an entire team of experts by outside, allowing us to focus on creating content and connecting with you. What I love about shop fiers, no matter how big you intend to grow your business, they give you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. And to say thank you for listen to this podcast. We're giving you a try, which is just one dollar a month, and you can sign up by going to shop five dog card's slash ballet. The linker in the description .

below this episode is brought you by global x. Since two thousand and eight, global x has been committed to empower ing investors with an explorer intelligence solutions. Global x specializes in exchange traded funds that offer exposure to the artificial intelligence ecosystem, including themes like data centers, robotics, semiconductors, cloud computing. To learn more about global access, entire sweet of etf from covered calls, fixed income, emerging markets and more, visit global x etf dot com.

More and more people are getting pronounced, he said. To meet a lot of people contact these days, asking to feel to help with pronounced. One of the interesting things we were talking about before we started filming was it's really uncomfortable to potential partner and .

ask them for print up. I know a lot of people say that, and I think it's a question of how you enter the conversation again. I know I guess because I get paid to talk and i'm used to talking sometimes about difficult things with the judge or or revealing, you know things that are hard to reveal about someone and trying to make sure that they're not viewed negatively even though they might have behave negatively.

So I think print up it's all about how you bring up the conversation and and my preferred entry point for a print up when I talk to someone is every single person who gets married as a print up, it's either written by the government or it's written by the two people who love each other more than the other eight billion people in the world. I personally think that the two people in a marriage are Better qualified to create the rule set of their marriage. Then politicians, they don't know, especially when you consider the nature of politicians.

They won a popularity contest. They manage to offend this few people as possible, and they change constantly. So you're signing up for the most legally significant thing you're ever going to do other than die with a rule set that no one ever explains to you in advance.

And that can be changed by by people who don't know you based on who won a popularity contest. Kay, that sound smart to you or or did the two of you decide what the rules are going to be? And then starting from the beginning, which is where you are, you're doing a premium because is about to get married.

okay? Then you live your life in accordance with that rule set together. And when one of use deviating from IT or when a red flag goes up, like you go, hey, how come you doing at that way? Remember, we have that rule set.

And so I like that. I think pinups, I think print ups, even having a conversation about a print ups, I think, is a very healthy exercise for a couple. I cannot tell you how many people since our first conversation have stopped me on the streets of new york city and said, I got into the coolest conversation with my girlfriend about freeing ups and marriage after I saw you and Steven talking.

I've i've had probably like two people a week say that today it's it's a very always say to these people like you do weird stuff in bed, like you're watching diary of a CEO and that it's like because you knew others other stuff like i'm not a great on a shower thing but I dead is I like Stephen do but that's not the time maybe I guess that is any time to get but they know not try to her I know you broke seven million. I don't want to grow IT up, but I I do think that there is um. There is something to this conversation.

And I do think sometimes, like, you know, look, if you're in a relationship, you've had a hard conversation with the park. yes. And when you're in IT, it's not fun and you kind of go like how we ever going to get add of this is this sounds good to be now like good.

This is we have this feeling and it's like awkward and swear d and then you make IT through IT and then the next morning you wake up and maybe things are still little weird or something, but like, oh yeah and 那个 i like to believe that then there's this feeling of like how we did that thing。 Like that thing was a little weird. IT was little hard.

We lost the pop and we got a back and we're still here. Look, yeah look at us like gay go us. You know, I think there's real value in that. I think that again, the hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing. It's hard to talk about when this ends.

It's actually the thing i'm proud of. Most of my relationship is exactly what you just described there. I'm not proud of our relationship being perfect because it's not i'm proud of how imperfect IT is and how we continually resolve the conflict without coming out the other other side, presenting each other. We come out the other side proud of each other that I I was the t ones we like look at us who yeah and that's like the thing that my girlfriend has to me and says continues, i'm so proud of how much shit we've got through because he refers to IT, like with the roots have got even longer. And going back to your conversation about prints, that reminds me of what we're talking about before we start of recording this idea that people don't want to confront IT because you tried to get a stand at a wedding convention as a divorce.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I so I want to say one thing about what you said before that because I your verbal ge is very interesting to me because you said, you know, in my relationship, you know, we're not it's not perfect, but i'm proud of X, Y and z and I to tell you like I I don't know that sounds pretty perfect. Like I think that things are imperfect.

Like and that's that's perfect. Like there's no such things, a perfect relationship like that ever and that's perfect. Like it's perfect.

Like IT, I genuinely believe we're perfect. Like I think we're all flawed and we're perfect. Like where authentic, we're real.

So so I think that's a really important. If people's if perfection is the standard, we will all fall short. I think the reality is that we are all perfectly imperfect and that's really beautiful.

But yes, the wedding, so in in, in the united states, I don't know in the U. K, but in the united states, we have these things. They are called wedding bizarre or wedding expose or wedding fares.

And somebody came up with this and it's a brilliant business move, which is you rent a gigantea call or a small hall, depending on where some of them were done IT. Like giant convention centers. And you know, people who are associated with the wedding industrial complex, you know, they pay to have a booth.

So there's photographers, there's Bakers, there's and and you know, every table has like something, the hot grams of different pictures, the cake people might have, like little samples of cake. You know, there is all the little grab bags and things that people give out as wedding gifts. There is different travel things related to your honeymoon and where you might go.

There is different websites for, you know, your registry like there's so many wedding related waiting adjacent businesses. This is a multibillion dollar in street. So I reached out to like four or five different, smaller and bigger wedding expose.

And I said, in summer substance, i'd like to get a table and they said, great photographer Baker, what do you do? And I said, i'm a lawyer and I do divorce and family law, but it's just good be field around print ux. It's not going to be in any way negative about marriage.

It's gonna be. You know, just to congratulations on your engagement. Have you talked about a prem? And then i'll have brochures and things and you can, you know make sure that they pass muster that I don't say anything that would be offensive anyone.

I want anyone to be comfortable, any other vendors to be uncomfortable, but there's literally hundreds of vendors at this thing. So there's no reason not one wedding expo would rent a table to me. They refused my money.

They would not take IT. They would not take IT, no matter how flowery I said I make the language, no matter how respectful to the institution of marriage I said I would be. They would not let me buy a table.

They wouldn't take my mom. And those tables are not cheap, thousands of dollars to get a table at wedding expert. They would not take my money.

even though almost sixty percent people london divorce. And it's like a almost an inevitability. The probability is there's going to be a conversation about how we separate.

Well, as i've said before, every single marriages that end in death or divorce, the majority of them, and in divorce, the majority of them and in divorce, why wouldn't you allow me to have a table that just says if you'd like to have a print up here, i'm not trying to sell a print up on you like you're getting engaged. You need to print up.

It's just have you talked about a pru and information about that print? They would not even let me in the room. And I because because its shares the illusion, its reality.

They don't like reality. They don't see reality as what IT is, which I think, by the way, is quite romantic. I think there's something very nice about talking to your partner about, you know what, i'm afraid of losing you.

I don't want to lose you to deaf, even though I know someday I have to, but I don't want to lose you to divorce, see there. But man, almost sixty percent of marriages. And in divorce.

And if we've got divorced, like what would we be? like? I hope we wouldn't hate IT each other.

Like, I hope i'd still love you and care about you. I'd still want you to be well, even if you left me, I wouldn't hate you. I going to have one x girl friend that I go.

Man, I hate that person. Like, I wish all of them joy. I hope they're all happy, like our chapter together ended, but I wish all of them enjoy.

People don't like to go into things without optimism though and that the conversation around should we get a print up almost sounds like I think we're going to a break up some day.

I think you can hear at that, yes, but I don't think IT has to be that I agree with you about the openness. I think people would prefer to look at the bright side of things and to be optimistic. And I am not suggesting like I don't believe in fairy tales. I'm a realist.

That doesn't mean I get up every day just thinking about nothing but death and divorce and how is like it's not life is beautiful and lives meant to be lived and like what you think i'm not going to sit at a wedding and be like, do you know how many percentage of people I don't view IT that way? I think it's wonderful. Be but be realistic about things like I I don't want to get ill, but I have a physical every year.

I go to the doctor every year like I like to know what's going on. I like to be a really I don't plan on crashing my car, but I like knowing that I have a seat built in an air bag. And by the way, if my seat bag, my seat lt.

And airbag aren't working, I would like to know in advance because I am driving as if they're going to work. If you told me, by the way, jim, you're sept in your airbag aren't working, I would drive very, very, very carefully, right? So I think it's the same thing like just we can have an honest conversation and the optimistic divorce in the us.

Is very different from divorce in the U. K. And I actually learned what I think IT is.

I learned this from watching several things. But one video comes to mind from a couple of weeks ago. You'll know the case. There's a black actor who is currently posting a lot on his social media about how wife is like chasing him down for child's support.

Yes, yes, I don't member his name. I'm bad a celebrity names. I'm bad at that.

They represent them. And yes, I know who. yes.

And he was, he said on a couple of show, but he won his instagram and said, like my wife who had broken up with yeah he like basically doesn't really have a job at the woman or is making some money from cemento gram work is she's got this like pack of lawyers to email me and demand to see my bank statements because i've been doing well lately.

I've got a couple of new movies and stuff, and he wants to make sure he gets more money for me in the kids based on his success. And I never realized that was like that. I never realized that.

oh yeah, oh, it's modifiable. It's modifiable child sport for examples, modifiable every three years when there's .

a thirty percent changing income up or down. So if I have a wife and then we have four kids and then I break up with her and when I break up with her are making a million dollars year and then are making a hundred million thousand.

and what up childbirth goes up.

Like what was the numbers is on the percentages in in new york.

one child is seventeen percent, two is twenty five, three is twenty nine. And force thirty one percent of your growth income .

of my growth income.

gross income less fia point of seven, six five. So medication.

if my growth income is one hundred million dollars.

So theoretically, there are caps on the combined parental income everywhere. Yes, pretty much.

But judges have a tremendous amount of the question based on a variety of factors, including things like, what was the lifestyle of the children during the marriage? What are the reasonable needs of the children? Like celebrity divorces, I will tell you, there are some legitimate separate needs that celebrities, the children of celebrities, need, like know security. For example.

what's the biggest child support payments you ve ever heard of?

Well, I mean, daily had, I think he was twenty thousand dollars a month or period time. He's kind of a well known one. And IT was very well.

Publicly, the most i've ever had in a case is I had a client who got sixty five thousand dollars a month and shelf ort. But IT IT covered a lot of things. IT covered a portion of private school tuition, and IT covered a security detail. IT covered. These were very.

very high networks, public figures.

Well, the kid doesn't get the money. The parent who has primary philo custody .

is and they can do with IT whatever they want. They so they could go spend IT in vegas, correct? That you should .

have to provide receives. Well, what i've always said is, I mean, first of all, the systems complicated enough without people having to provide our seats to check the math of a person and what you're spending the child support on, like it's already overwhelming enough. If it's already difficult enough, like listen, what you're proposing would create a lot of additional work for me.

So I appreciate you. But IT is from my perspective, IT is a IT is a potentially very dangerous think what I always tell people is getting married without a principle is a barely risky acacia vy. Having a child with someone is is the most risky activity and relationships in terms of of the amount of emotional and financial damage.

A person can duty you have a kid with them. Having a kid with somebody, they can weapon SE that child. They can alienate that child.

They can use that child's needs to piggy back onto financial needs there. There's so much stuff a person can do to torture you if they have a kid with you. And there is so much legal wrangling and rambling to do. And what i'll tell you is.

You know, I ve I have a client who spent somewhere in the realm of one hundred thousand dollars in legal fees arguing over whether thanksgiving should begin on wednesday and and on sunday, or whether he would begin on thursday morning and end on thursday evening. Now that person's worth seven, eight hundred million dollars, so one hundred granted them, is not a lot of money. Most people, myself included, I just eat turkey another day like it's not worth that amount of money, right? To have that argument.

That's why having a kid with someone, you're opening up the door to potentially tremendous amount of battles. We're as if you're arguing over a fifty thousand dollars bank account and you spend thirty thousand dollars in legal fees even if you won only one twenty thousand dollars. If you lost, you're lost a significant so IT forces a certain rationality into the transaction, whereas your time with your kids, people could attribute whatever value they want to. That I have clients, we've thought over manual things about children that to me would be school to them were incredibly important.

You said that the two big reasons why people divorce are infidelity and money is IT a loss of money, a lack of money.

The person goes poor. It's that's a big piece of IT losing money um get ing money. We were losing money unexpectedly bad business and investment decisions. There was a period of time where I did a lot of divorces because people decided they were ready to try to be day traders and all the sudden they were like borrowing against retirement accounts. Yeah, they were learning the hard way that that if you short stocks, there's almost no limit how much money you can lose rpt to devices.

crp, tos, big.

I did a couple of divorces related that were crypto became very important and whether IT was on a heart while letter, whether IT was I mean, hiding money with cyp to some years ago. Encrypt a was first sort of on the scene when I really should have been buying bittorrent because I was like, you know three dollars or five dollars um there there was a period of time where most divorce lawyers and most judges did have didn't understand what cyp to even was.

I mean, try to explain to a seventy five year old judge who has an al email address what crypto currency was in the different tweet theory and bitcoin like and why you're concerned that they might have these funds on a hard wallet and they're looking at you going like I have have no idea what this is, you know, so tRicky. I M there's these are the things we, as a divorce 的 lawyer， or one of the things that makes IT a very exciting job is that were constantly, we're getting an education in all of these things. Like, I report, I remember I represented a surgeon, and I learned everything about how surgeons get paid, how they make money, how they hide money, what their expenses might be. And so then the next time I did a surgeon, and like, oh, I know this, know, first time I represented someone on a hedge fund or was a partner in a hedge fund, I had to learn about our capital accounts work and how people are paid in where you might be able to hide money.

Have you ever seen that where someone is, like, publicly thought, be ilina? And then you look at the bank statements during a divorce and you realized that they basically managed to hide everything. So they basically broke its all in someone else's name.

Well, yeah, there's supermoms tions of that one is people who are publickly incredibly wealthy and then in reality, their leverage to the Hilton broke, like, we broke. That happens a lot. And that happens a lot with celebrities.

Celebrities very often leveraged to the hilt because they had to hit record, or they had to hit movie or two. And then they think, oh, everything, I do gonna be like this. And so they just go out and buy tons of stuff.

And there's always people along your money, you know, especially if you're public figure and you have some money, write a couple of million box, you'd to get a couple million more, really easy. So, and then it's just very rapidly and they buy everybody else. They have the on there's always clingers around the person, you know, the whole onto rage that a lot of whom saffed ing money off of people. So there's a lot of people that look very wealthy and our dead broke and and I have a lot of those.

How does that play out and caught when the wife finds out that their partner the husband finds out that their .

wife was they're not happy. They're not happy and and it's hard because they think they have proof of something like the they are like but look, here is a picture of him with a Flora and it's like, right I can show you the papers that he doesn't he leases that for re like it's this much of a car payment like I I had like three bent leaves in a couple of the N O. Like my car hit crazy cars and yeah I was all leverage to .

the health IT was not the second.

The second problem is when someone is is um when you've hidden the money .

yeah I am trying .

to find the right adjective. There are enough of a saucier path that they're enough of a there are enough of a malignant narthex or they're enough of a careful planner that um they have created structures that that make IT almost impossible for their spouse to get anything in the divorce. There are so some of the things that people do in in the ultra high network space for generational wealth preservation and tax avoidance have second order effects when they get divorced, right? So a lot of wealthy people don't own very much of anything.

They own companies that own properties, and they have an interest in a trust of, or the benefit of their great grandchildren that owns companies that owned properties that they then borrow against, like their whole structure is a very complex that they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to trust in the states, attacks and accountants. So they pay almost nothing in taxes and so that they will have no estate issues. They will have to generation wealth.

Well, those things make a lot of sense from a wealth preservation and estate planning perspective. But they make a divorce really complicated because it's no longer marital money. It's owned by this trust is owned by this corporation. It's owned by I only have this percent interest in this thing, which is why we both benefit from the taxation of the so that's where IT gets like a little. What I do is is a fascinating job because we work with you very, very brilliant forensic accountants who kind of go in and try to recreate whether something was done as a fraudulent transfer in contemplate tion of divorce, or whether something was done for good faith reasons and you know, was done in a way that was designed to benefit the marriage.

as opposed to as divorce planning. The someone goes into A, I think i'm divorcing you, let's say, and I think in divorcing you, i'm going to a big power, but IT turns out in divorcing .

you that you get a big power because i've got I ve actually, I wrote an article of the women's magazine called the last remaining feminist taboo. And IT IT talks about a lot of female clients who are paying alumina to their husband's and and IT. It's things, you know, you could have a woman who is like a bela absa like glorious time um level feminist.

And when SHE gets told you know that like yeah you you got to pay him alumina, they like, i'm sorry what like no, he's man, he could work like he could work, he's the media get alimony and you're like no gender a construct and sex is actually, you know a construct socially and you're a CFO of the company and he's a really cute, long heard musician who you married because he's like fun you know like you are in four thousand times what he earns and you will a and so you have to pay m aleo y because it's just math. It's got gender blind. It's just math.

They're like you no, I am not paying alimony. He's a man. Got strong back to job. By the way, i've had men in that situation. O yeah not taken any money really.

They want they won't take IT money is the spouse of support I like but no.

it's for your it's to maintain the marital lifestyle. It's in order rehabilitate your earnings so that you can be so if, for example, I marry a woman from the U. K.

Who's a physician and now she's coming to the united states because we're in love and she's marrying me and he is going to lose her license to practice medicine because she's coming to the united states and it's a different licensure. okay. So now he moves here in reliance on us being married and we're married for a couple years and then we divorce. She's going to need because I now make a lot more money than her. She's going to need some money to get her back to a place where she's back to her earnings capacity.

So so if I married Taylor swift and work together for twenty years, do I get half?

You do not get half usually. No, no, it's I mean, first, all SHE has too many good lawyers that imagine you will get half. But I you would certainly I mean, there was a how much .

could you get me?

How much can I yet you from Taylor swift? I have to know much Taylor swift, I hope I don't think she's she's never made IT down the eye e yet has SHE.

But if I take IT down the aisle and then we stay together twenty years, my coming back, said James time.

because I say i'm going to get you as much as possible. I can promise you anything, but I am promising you. I'm going to get you as much as I can.

I mean, i'd have to know, i'd have to know what the finances are. I would have to share a billion dollars, a billion dollars in cash acquired during the marriage or prior to the marriage, all the quiet during the marriage. And have you have, have you get half? Listen, a del's x husband did very well.

Kelly Clarkson s husband very well. IT depends on how quite well look IT up. It's out there.

I don't member the exact numbers. It's out there. The reality is, as those were people, SHE had her most successful tour at the time. During the marriage, he had her most successful album at the time.

During the marriage, it's all the question of where things land in the trajectory of someone's life if you marry someone when they're on to come up, like jeff visus great example, like largest divorce settlement probably paid in history, was to his x wife. why? Because amazon wasn't to think when they got together, right? So so that was he was there for the whole trajectory.

If he got remarried now, she's not gonna get half because he wasn't there. There is a premarital. Component to that, if is significant.

if you got me five hundred million from Taylor with, then would you take like .

a commission like now IT dos prohibited from doing that, paid by the hour of that? I am an hourly way, junor. Like if I worked at mcDonald, perhaps you the rules, the rules, the government and by way, ride fully. So why? Because you otherwise would create an incentive for the lawyer to maximize recovery for their client rather than the recovery that makes sense for their client. So like i've had cases where the cash payout I get for my client is lower because I want to get them more support like child support or spouse support or I want to get them more of the real estate rather than the payout. So really, what we're supposed to do as lawyers has not be invested in the percentage of the result personal injure, lawyers like you slip and fall that stifle.

Last question for me is regarding me, my partner. I never to end up in your consultation room. We never wants to go there. If you were to give me one piece of advice to prevent me, I can't be, don't get married to prevent me in my partner ever ending up in your consultation.

Pay attention. Pay attention. Right now, you're paying attention like you're paying attention.

She's important to you. You're important to her. You're interested in, you're interesting. You know, I I would say pay attention and and pay attention two, three things, the you, the me and the way because there are three different things like you be you because you're who you fell in love with and don't let you go to four and sure like you be you don't let, don't let anything in the world. Don't let her.

Don't let the we don't let any of IT stop you from being you, because you're who SHE fell in love with and the SHE, right, who he is. So there's you, there's me. There's way.

So her remember who SHE had, let her be her like, make sure that SHE takes time to be her. Make sure you give space for her to be her, because that's who you fell love with. And let that person change, just like you might change sometimes from time to time.

And if things change too much, i'm not saying resisted, but note, IT pay attention, say, hey, this is going on. Is is that good things, bad thing like this? Just notice IT just pay attention.

And then the way like the you me in the way, like talk about, you know pay attention to the way, make sure we're watering the plant like make sure that that would be the only advice ever gift to anybody. IT has nothing to do with marriage. IT has to do with connection.

IT has to do with love. IT has to do with there's a reason why you found the way, right, like you can be you all by yourself and you can be her all by herself. But there's value in in being way and seeing each other other's blind spots.

And if there's value in that, treat IT like something valuable, don't let the world, don't let your own strength and weaknesses, don't let anything pull you off of that. Pay attention to you, the me and the way, and don't be afraid. The hard thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing.

So if it's harder to talk about IT, it's harder to point IT out. It's harder to say, hey, are we okay? Everything good? Like, you know, if that's harder, do that lean into that, James, we have a closing traditional .

pop cost for the loss gets leaves a question for the next guess not. The question of you is what is your most controversial opinion?

How god you couldn't .

be cancelled?

What is my most controversial opinion? I think. I think I eluded to IT my last superstation with you. I my most controversial opinion is that the most important thing in people's lives and their greatest accomplishment should not be their children.

It's the real hot like when you say to people like, I think it's if if you say the most important thing that ever happened, the greatest thing I ever accomplished in life was having children, I find that very I find that logic very strange. Because if you say the most important, greatest thing I ever did in my life was having children, well, is then the greatest and most important thing your children ever did gonna having children. And is the greatest thing their children ever did is having children.

Because that's the ideology of a virus or cancer cell. Like it's not like growth for the sake of growth, for the sake of growth. Like I think there has to be a higher, nobler purpose to life, then reproduction. So i'm not an anti natalist, but I tend to when someone says to me like my children and my greatest accomplishment, I tend to look at them and go like made some interesting choices.

Then I yes, science and sort of evolution and Charles Darwin might argue that that's exactly the point of life.

And IT is on the cellular level. And for squirrels and for pigeons and with monkeys, yeah but I think we're different than monkeys. Like if you've watched like we're very similar in lots of ways, but i'd like to think that, that there's something higher that we're called to.

And I don't know that reproduction should be the highest goal of the human beings life. I'm not one of these people that thinks like, don't have children. It's a terrible thing.

I have kids. I love. My kids was great. Having kids learned a lot about myself, and having children learned a lot about the life in the one I love spending time with them. I have a great relationship with my sons.

I look forward to being a grandfather, but the truth is like, is that the greatest thing I ever accomplished in my life? Absolutely not. It's it's in the top of of the list is a wonderful experience I had. But IT is not the thing. And I think that's a very I don't know why that is such a controversial opinion when I say that to people, they look at me like i've got lobsters coming out of my nose.

There's definitely two schools of thought that there's the one school of thought that you saying something earlier and I really start the conversation about how people lose their identity and they have children, and that causes all of this of psychological disfunction. And here am I now attached to this thing.

And where did my life, that is an independent person go? And kind of the one school of thought where when you're resisting becoming all about procreation, you're resisting becoming just i'm just hate to be a mother, father and then there's another group of people that go, absolutely, this is me. This is my purpose.

right? But see, I think like everything like we don't have to treat danger with the like. I think you can you can not reject the concept of having children are making them a priority, and you can also not make your children your entire identity.

I think that you can just sort of say, hey, my children are incredibly important to me. I love them. They're wonderful, but I also have other aspects of my life and self and other relationships that have value to me, and i'm not going to let them all be sacrifice that the alter of my children who is more .

likely to end up in your office. Which school have thought people who are obsessed .

with their children, I think people who are obsessed with their children stop paying attention to themselves, into their partner. That's been my experience of people who are obsessed with their children. I don't mean people who are focused on their children.

I mean people who make their children a high priority in their life. I'm talking about people that are like obsessed with their children, that their children are there. This is who I am.

I am a mother. This is who I am. I am a bother. Which cause, by the way, childhood temporary state, like theoretically, you are going to have a very close and intimate relationship on a data basis with your spouse a lot longer than your children.

If it's done properly, your children are supposed to leave and go start their own families and live their own lives, whereas your partner is not supposed to, in nineteen years or eighteen years, move out, you're supposed to stay there. So it's kind of smart to also feed not again, only fee, also feed that relationship. There's no reason why you can't simul to.

And by the way, sometimes being a really good, supportive person to your co parents and loving your wife and loving your husband is a wonderful gift to give to your children. IT models, great relationship behavior to them. It's showing that you love and respect to the other person who loves them as much as you do, like they're so much good in being a good parent that is made up of being a good, good parent, a good spouse, a good partner.

So you think you're more likely to end up in your divorce office. If you're obsessed with your children.

you make your children your absolute number one priority and your spouse falls very far down that list. Yes, for sure.

James. Thank you. Always great to see you. I love our conversations because the you know you're a divorce lawyer and you your practice, I guess, is dealing with divorces, but your wife of wisdom, knowledge and how at all into twins in the most beautiful wise in lightning way.

And just the overarching filter, if you're not being afraid to say things that most people wouldn't say, you're not being afraid to be politically correct, provides a message which is so important and quite unfortunately, rare. But it's so everything you say is so obvious in the sense that it's common sense, but it's common sense. That's completely .

uncommon.

Me, what I found in your book as well, I found the same level of gravity and wisdom and experience and diversity of experience, which ties to the central ideas. Everyone, if you didn't go by the book, last thing, you have to go by the book. It's got how to stay in love.

And it's my favorite book ever written on the subject of love and relationships and wow life, quite Frankly. So I think everyone needs to go get the old link below. And thank you so much. I love our conversion more, so I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the diverse a the very end of IT, you'll know I asked the guest to leave a question in the dark of a CEO. And what we've done is we turned every single question written in the door of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home.

So you've got every guest, we've ever had their question. And on the back of IT, if you scan that Q R code, you get to watch the person who answer that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answer the question.

The brand noon version to updated conversation cards out right now at the conversation cards dot com. They sold out twice instantaneously. So you are interesting getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards. I really, really recommend acting quickly.