Does Marriage Kill Love? with a Million Dollar Divorce Attorney

Summary

Smart Girl Dumb Questions

Episode Title: Does Marriage Kill Love? with a Million Dollar Divorce Attorney
Host: Nayeema Raza
Guest: James Sexton, Esq., Divorce Attorney
Release Date: February 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Nayeema Raza sits down with renowned divorce attorney James Sexton to tackle the deceptively simple question: “Does marriage kill love?” The discussion dives deep into the realities of modern marriage, analyzing why relationships fail, the myths we’re sold about love, and whether traditional marriage—viewed as a “technology”—serves our needs today. Drawing from thousands of cases and real-world experience, Sexton explores what makes relationships resilient (or doomed), highlights the mismatch between romantic ideals and legal realities, and proposes ways to rethink—or even redesign—the institution of marriage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Cycle of Divorce: Why It Peaks in January

Timestamps: [00:00]-[01:29]

• “Holiday ceasefire” means people avoid divorcing near the holidays, but filings spike in January, like a “gym rush.”
• Repeat clients exist: co-parenting disputes, serial marriages, and “marriage terrorists” who never seem to learn.

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The Reality Behind Divorce & Dissatisfaction Rates

Timestamps: [01:29]-[03:57]

• Divorce stats are misleading: many unhappy couples stay together for practical reasons (“off the radar”).
• Estimated that up to 70-75% of marriages are unsuccessful, if you include functional but unfulfilling ones.
• “We’ve sold people some imagined view of what this is supposed to look like that bears almost no resemblance to reality.” — James Sexton [03:40]

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Cultural Mythmaking: The “Marriage Industrial Complex”

Timestamps: [03:35]-[04:13]

• Marriage is culturally marketed and idealized (“propaganda”)—much bigger business than divorce.
• Rom-coms and social media have set unrealistic expectations for effortless, lifelong romance.

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The Gottmans’ Four Horsemen & Disconnection as Root Cause

Timestamps: [03:57]-[05:26]

• Criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling are all symptoms of disconnection.
• Sexton: “We fall in love really fast, and we fall out of love the way we go bankrupt: very slowly, then all at once.” [04:13]

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Why Marriages Really End (and Why It's Subjective)

Timestamps: [05:26]-[07:55]

• Every relationship narrative is biased; even lawyers, armed with “forensic evidence,” never glimpse the full truth.
• “The truth is at the bottom of a bottomless pit.” — James Sexton [07:20]
• No-fault divorce has made the process less combative, but barriers to leaving marriage remain.

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The Law & Economics of Divorce

Timestamps: [07:55]-[11:03]

• No-fault divorce is recent (2016 in NY); previously, proving “fault” was expensive and required testimony.
• Getting married is easy and cheap; getting divorced is costly and complex—especially for the wealthy.
• “Love is grand and divorce is a hundred grand.” — James Sexton [09:23]

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Cultural & Religious Dimensions

Timestamps: [12:13]-[13:42]

• Religious communities may have fewer divorces but often have uglier proceedings due to cultural pressure to invent “acceptable” reasons for divorce.

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On Love, Simplicity, and Human Connection

Timestamps: [14:11]-[17:28]

• Sexton contrasts the simplicity/purity shown in “Love on the Spectrum” with the complexity people create in their real relationships.
• “All I want is to hold somebody’s hand and they hold mine, and this is terrifying… but it’s so simple and so human.” — James Sexton [15:45]
• The modern world’s abundance of options and social complexity increases expectations and choice confusion.

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Marriage as Technology: What Problem Does It Actually Solve?

Timestamps: [17:28]-[24:17]

• Sexton applies Neil Postman’s “four questions” model for technology to marriage.
• Historically, marriage solves issues of property, inheritance, and social alliances, not inherently the issue of lasting love or successful childrearing.
• “Marriage is a threesome. It’s two people and the state. It’s a really unsatisfying threesome.” — James Sexton [21:23]

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Should Marriage Be Redesigned?

Timestamps: [24:17]-[33:13]

• Sexton argues that the legal status of marriage provides a false sense of security, encouraging neglect.
• The institution, as designed, often fails to reinforce the actual maintenance required for lasting love.
• “Marriage gives people a false sense of security that makes the actual thing fall to shit.” — James Sexton [28:13]

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Subscription Model & Routine Maintenance

Timestamps: [29:10]-[33:13]

• Suggests “subscription model” for marriage—periodic reflection and renewal.
• Regular check-ins, like attending church, could help couples maintain and strengthen their bond.
• Fun, affirming conversations (listing qualities you appreciate in each other) are simple ways to nurture connection.

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What Makes for a “Good” Divorce (and a Good Marriage)

Timestamps: [38:39]-[40:09]

• Traits for healthy divorce (and marriage):
  • Accountability/conceding error
  • Emotional discipline
  • Long-term focus, especially for children
• “The ability to trade what you want now for what you want most… is the same trait that makes you good at marriage.” — James Sexton [39:45]
• Divorce can be a “crash course” in learning relationship skills—if you pay attention.

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Redesigning Marriage: Sexton’s Suggestions

Timestamps: [43:12]-[48:01]

1. Barriers to Entry:
   • Mandatory individual consultations with a divorce lawyer before marriage to understand rights and obligations.
2. Premarital Counseling:
   • Sessions with both happily and unhappily married couples, and divorced individuals.
3. Waiting Period & Knowledge Test:
   • Built-in period between license and wedding; tests about practical/relational knowledge could be required.
   • “Divorce lawyers see the fail points! Let us write the test.” — James Sexton [51:11]

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Playful “Green Flag/Red Flag” Lightning Round

Timestamps: [52:22]-[57:16]

• Friends with exes: green flag. Best friends with exes: red flag.
• Following “hot” strangers on Instagram: green flag (“It’s human”).
• Prenups: green flag.
• Separate bedrooms or bank accounts: green/purple flag. “There should be you, me, and we” in finances.
• In ranking importance: Time together > Sex > Money.

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Who Really Wins in Divorce?

Timestamps: [58:06]-[58:39]

• “The lawyers win… if I win, I get paid. If I lose, I get paid… You can’t win a divorce. It’s like winning a nuclear war.” — James Sexton [58:12]

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Audience Q&A Highlights

Timestamps: [71:04]-[84:57]

• How Rich vs. Poor Divorce:
  • Rich people have more to divide and less incentive to compromise; more expensive and complex but less existential threat than for poor families.
• Why Do Smart People Still Suffer in Divorce?
  • “Wanting their story to be told and thinking the process will bring closure—closure is a myth.” [75:23]
• Dating Divorcees:
  • Expect clear boundaries, faster communication about what is/isn’t acceptable, “scars,” and distinct relationships with former partners to manage.
• Advice on “Divorce Planning”:
  • If you’re considering divorce, consult a lawyer early for strategic preparation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We fall in love really fast, and we fall out of love the way we go bankrupt—very slowly, and then all at once.” — James Sexton [04:13]
• “Love is grand and divorce is a hundred grand.” — James Sexton [09:23]
• “Marriage is a threesome. Two people and the state. It's a really unsatisfying threesome.” — James Sexton [21:23]
• “The only thing I have to sell is advice… if you give me inaccurate or incomplete information, I’m going to give you advice about a fictional person.” — James Sexton [11:11]
• “If you ask most people why are you getting married? It’s like, ‘Well, because you get married, it’s what you do.’ Tradition is peer pressure from dead people.” — James Sexton [23:18]
• “The traits that will make you good at divorce are the traits that would probably make you a good spouse or a good person.” — James Sexton [39:52]
• “Closure is a myth… You can’t win divorce. It's like winning a nuclear war.” — James Sexton [75:51]
• [Light-hearted] “If I want to disappoint two people at once, I’ll have dinner with my parents.” — James Sexton [21:31]
• “My son is my son until he finds a wife.” — James Sexton [68:51]

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Additional Insights

• The “Marriage as Attachment” Analogy: We chase paperwork and ceremonies thinking it insulates us from loss or uncertainty, but it can’t.
• Redefined Success: True relational success isn’t “not divorcing,” but helping each other become more authentic, fulfilled people.
• Sex, Money, Time: Of the classic relationship stressors, how couples spend time is most crucial.
• On Pain and Therapy: “Pain makes people bitter. Unattended sorrow is not good...I wish I'd learned lessons in therapy and not from pain.” — James Sexton [61:07]
• On Memory and Loss: We remember those we lose (in love or death) kindly—even if the ending was sharp or painful.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Divorce “Season” & Repeat Clients: [00:00]-[01:29]
• Divorce vs. Unfulfilled Marriages: [01:29]-[03:57]
• Unrealistic Marriage Myths: [03:35]-[04:13]
• Marriage as Technology: [17:28]-[24:17]
• Redesigning Marriage: [43:12]-[48:01]
• Relationship “Maintenance” & Routine: [29:10]-[33:13]
• Green Flag/Red Flag Game: [52:22]-[57:16]
• Who Wins Divorce? [58:06]-[58:39]
• Q&A: [71:04]-[84:57]

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Tone & Language

The tone is candid, witty, and deeply reflective—James Sexton delivers hard truths with sardonic humor, insider anecdotes, and memorable analogies, while Nayeema injects curiosity, personal context, and deft facilitation. The conversation flows lightly in moments (paddles, exes, parents) and deeply in others (pain, closure, the social function of marriage).

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For Further Reflection

James Sexton leaves us with the provocative notion that maybe, before starting any new marriage, we should all sit down with someone who’s seen more endings than beginnings. If marriage is a technology—what kind of update, maintenance, or even recall, does it really need?

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Next episode (teased): marriage and money—stay tuned!

Transcript

[James Sexton]

The holiday ceasefire just ended. The end of the month.

[Naeema Raza]

Holiday ceasefire?

[James Sexton]

Yeah. Nobody wants to start a divorce action right around the holidays, but January 2nd, it's like the same reason gyms are crowded. Everybody just goes apeshit. And they're like, I'm gonna lose £200 right now in the form of my spouse.

[Naeema Raza]

Smart Girl, Dumb questions. Should I marry someone I can divorce? And what does the end of a relationship teach you about how to start one? I'm Naeema Raza, this is Smart Girl, Dumb Questions. And today my guest is the legendary divorce attorney James Sexton, Esquire. What does esquire mean?

[James Sexton]

I think it's just an honorarium term they put at the end of lawyers. It technically means gentleman. That you're a gentleman, are you? I'm, you know, maybe. I mean, I'm a gentleman, but not a gentleman. But yeah, I think I try to be a gentleman in a courtroom, probably less so.

[Naeema Raza]

And how many of these things have you done?

[James Sexton]

I've handled thousands of cases. I've been practicing law for 27 years.

[Naeema Raza]

You and I are going to have to have a second date because I had so many questions for you.

[James Sexton]

Love that.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm going to have you come back at some point.

[James Sexton]

Listen, you're in. We're in the same city, so that's easy. We're in the same neighborhood.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you ever have clients like that where you're like, I know I'm gonna see that client again?

[James Sexton]

Well, I mean, I have some repeat customers. Like, I have people who have very contentious co parenting relationships and they have young kids. So you go, this is gonna be like an annuity. Like they're just gonna keep coming back or their ex is just gonna keep bringing them back. Sometimes you have people that are gonna continue to get married over and over again and they don't seem to get better at it. So they're married four or five times and you're doing their prenups and then you're doing the divorces when it invariably fails.

[Naeema Raza]

The marriage terrorists were the one I was most interested in. Like the people that come back and they don't get. I want to start though on like, what is happening with divorce and what culturally causes divorces. Because I think a lot of people ask you specific questions about, you know, in my marriage, this. But I think there are also some broader structural things happening in society which taps out.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, I mean, I think we're, we're. The marriage rates have been down, so the divorce rates have commensurately been down. So I don't think that, like, you have to look at all of these metrics. And I think, you know, it's very difficult to study something like marriage satisfaction, which is probably more important than divorce. Like, if you think about divorce, a divorce is a marriage that catastrophically failed. Meaning, like it's irredeemable and broken and ends. But how many marriages are also unsuccessful but don't catastrophically fail? Like the two people just, you know, don't ever formalize their divorce, so they're kind of off the radar. Like someone just goes out for milk and never comes back. Or how many people just stay together sort of miserable, you know, either for the kids or. Cause they don't want to give up half their things. So when you add that to the actual catastrophic failure, failure rate of like 53 to 56%, you're looking at like 70, 75% maybe of, of, of this particular type of relationship ending badly.

[Naeema Raza]

And do you think that the, the rate of dissatisfaction would be higher in marriage than, say, any other relationship? Like partnerships?

[James Sexton]

I think probably. I mean, I think because the expectation that's placed on it is so high, I think that the disappointment is commensurate with the expectation. It really is like a relationship where individually and culturally we've been told to expect so much from it. We're constantly barraged with, you know, social images, whether it's on social media or whether it's in film, like rom coms and things like that, where we're told that it should be sort of effortless and magical. And of course, you always end the rom com with them, you know, kissing or the music's, you know, rising. But, you know, whether something is a comedy or a tragedy depends on when you end the story. And so if you end the story at that high point, people go, oh, okay, that's what my relationship supposed to look like. And in reality, that's not how it works.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, we market the fuck out of marriage.

[James Sexton]

Oh yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

And it's, I think you've called it propaganda, 100%.

[James Sexton]

I think the marriage industrial complex is a gigantic business. It's slightly bigger than the divorce industrial complex. And you know, we, we've really sold people some imagined view of what this is supposed to look like that bears almost no resemblance to reality.

[Naeema Raza]

So let's start at the end of this. You're familiar with the Gottmans? Sure, John and Julie Gottman. And they have these four horsemen that predict 90 plus percent of divorce. And they are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

[James Sexton]

They are four behaviors that to me, have the same root cause. So it's four symptoms of the underlying pathology. And the underlying pathology is disconnection. I think people, we fall in love very quickly. What is love other than. And what is marriage other than? Essentially, four words. You're my favorite person. It's really. It. You're my favorite person. And then this person's supposed to say, you're my favorite person, too. And the idea is we rapidly become this other person's favorite person, and we have a tremendous amount of optimism and a tremendous amount of. We're very generous in our estimation of them early in the relationship. And then, of course, they're human, and we're human, and so we start to fall off from that. But we love the idea of it so much, and culturally, we've been sold this sort of picture of what it's supposed to look like. And I think it's understandable that then we start to manifest those symptoms, you know, of. Of dismissal, contempt, disrespect, like all of those. But they're all manifestations of the same thing, which is that we fall in love really fast, and we fall out of love the way we go bankrupt, which is very slowly, and then all at once.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. I mean, and. And those characteristics they describe, they say they present themselves in massive force, kind of like five to six years, often before somebody divorces. So how long do you think, on average, we wait before we leave a relationship?

[James Sexton]

Yeah, in my experience, I think people. People, very often, they're holding on less than they used to. I think we're a more impatient culture than we once were. I mean, we're. We're not big on delayed gratification anymore. So I think I've seen the. The windows getting smaller between dissatisfaction and divorce.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. I have this sense that no one really knows what happens between two people in a relationship. Like, even the two people, like, I feel I have a version of what happened and why a relationship ended.

[James Sexton]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

My boyfriend, lover would also have a certain kind of story. And the truth is, maybe somewhere in between those two things, maybe it's not.

[James Sexton]

Well, I think a lot of our life is in our imagination, which is subjective. Our past is an imagination and our future is an imagination. The only thing that actually exists is the present. So I think when you're remembering the past, you're remembering a story you've told yourself about what that looked like. I think David Byrne from the Talking Heads in one of his lyrics, said it best that facts all come with points of view, and facts don't do What I want them to. Someone whose job is to what I call engage in full contact storytelling, like I'm supposed to tell my client's version of the story of the marriage. I've learned that, yeah, it's a very subjective thing. Anytime someone tells you the story of their life or their relationship, and they're the hero of the story. I'm very skeptical.

[Naeema Raza]

If no one knows what happens between two people, do you think you know what happens between the two people?

[James Sexton]

I think I have a more. A more impartial view, so I think I can see it more clearly because I'm not emotionally invested in it. I'm very interested in the other side's view of things from a negotiation or litigation standpoint.

[Naeema Raza]

And you also have all the forensic evidence.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, so that's what I try to do is I try to load up as much of the factual matter as I can and from that sort of. With context clues, I try to then go, okay, where is the truth of this situation? To the. To the extent that there is a truth, I have learned, and I say to clients all the time that the truth is at the bottom of a bot. Bottomless pit and that you're rarely going to actually get there. And the good news is you don't actually have to get there much of the time, because sometimes at the conclusion of a relationship, I think the better thing to say is it's everybody's fault or it's nobody's fault, but it doesn't really matter whose fault it was. We're here now.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, so. Dumb question. There's a thing called no fault divorce.

[James Sexton]

That is what New York is, and most states are no fault. It means that you no longer have to plead fault grounds. It used to be that in order to. There were what we called barriers to exit, meaning you couldn't just divorced because the marriage wasn't working out. You had to prove. And when I was first started practicing, for the first decade of my practice, we were a fault state. And fault trials were you had to prove adultery, you had to prove cruel and inhuman treatment. And it had to be to such a degree that it was having a delirious impact on the person's mental health. And you had to bring incompetent testimony. So you had to bring in, like a therapist to say, yes, this marriage is bad for this person and otherwise.

[Naeema Raza]

What, the state was going to keep you married?

[James Sexton]

Yeah, yeah. They would deny your petition for divorce. They would say, you don't have grounds for divorce.

[Naeema Raza]

And how long ago was this?

[James Sexton]

It only ended in 2016. Yeah, 2016 in New York.

[Naeema Raza]

Wild.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. We were one of the last states to.

[Naeema Raza]

Why was New York like.

[James Sexton]

Well, and by the way, the conservative right will tell you right now. Like, I had a debate with Matt Walsh on the Daily Wire because they're all hopped up on we need to get rid of no fault divorce, which I'm all for because it adds like 20, $30,000 in legal fees to every single case when you have to do fault based. And then everyone had the same weird tricks we would use to try to, you know, get past the fault things, but it was just a total waste of time. And I don't think creating barriers to exit is a good like. Yeah, it doesn't help anything.

[Naeema Raza]

There are already so many barriers.

[James Sexton]

Barriers to entry.

[Naeema Raza]

That's what, that's your whole theory, right? Like, why is it it's like $50 to get married at city hall and it's at least, probably 55 and you don't any information?

[James Sexton]

Well, I always joke that love is grand and divorce is 100 grand.

[Naeema Raza]

Is that how much it usually costs?

[James Sexton]

No, not for my clients. My clients is a lot more than that.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, I mean, including what they have to pay in alimony and print up or just their legal fees.

[James Sexton]

I'm talking about even legal fees. Like, legal fees are, you know, it depends on the divorce. But like two people with W2 wage earners, got a couple kids, a house, little equity in it, some retirement accounts, maybe 30, 40 grand in legal fees they're going to spend on a divorce. But it's still a big chunk of money for people. I mean, when billionaires divorce, it's like T. Rex clashing. It's not that they're meaner, people are more aggressive. It's that I've done some very friendly divorce for very wealthy people and they come in and say, okay, figure out what I have and give the person half. But it takes eight lawyers six months to figure out everything they have. And everything they have is fluctuating. Because a lot of the things that ultra wealthy people do for wealth preservation and tax avoidance, like having their assets in trust and the trust zone LLC and the LLC zone properties that you pay certain. So these are all like legal and smart strategies. But when you get divorced, it's a mess because you don't technically own this stuff. It's not as simple as a W2 wage earner getting divorced. So very high net worth people when they divorce, even if it's super friendly, it's complicated.

[Naeema Raza]

What's the biggest divorce Bill, you've served.

[James Sexton]

To someone the biggest, meaning council fees that.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I probably.

[James Sexton]

One of. I mean, one of my cases spent about 3 million in council fees over the course of three years. There's about a million a year in council fees. Yeah, there's quite a few cases that it's at least $1 million worth of council fees. But if you have, you know, $8 billion, that's really not that big of a hit, you know.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you think people are honest with you through their divorces?

[James Sexton]

Yes. Well, it's very foolish not to be honest with you.

[Naeema Raza]

It's expensive, I'm sure, to lie.

[James Sexton]

I always tell clients at the consult, there's certain things I say at every single consultation because they're things that I feel like every client needs to hear. So I say them at the consult. I have, like a soliloquy I go into at the beginning of a consult. And one of the things that I say is the only thing I have to sell is advice. And it's going to be based on my experience and my knowledge. But if you give me inaccurate or incomplete information, I'm going to give you advice about a fictional person, and it's not going to be worth anything. So tell me the truth. Like, the two people you shouldn't lie to are your lawyer and your doctor. Our only job is to protect you. Attorney client privilege is attached. I don't work for the government. I don't work for the irs. I don't work for the court system. You tell me you killed somebody, I'm going to take that secret to my grave, and my job is going to be to help get you out of trouble from it. So tell your lawyer the truth. And people take that seriously, and they tell us where the bodies are buried and they tell us what's going on in an honest, candid way. And by the way, like, we're. We're doing a forensic review of all of your finances. Like, we're going to see where the money went. We're going to see that there was a girlfriend. We're going to see that you Venmo'd this person regularly. Like, we're going to see everything that happened.

[Naeema Raza]

What is the current divorce rate for first marriages?

[James Sexton]

The divorce rate hovers around 50%. Right now it's a little lower, but It's. It's been 53% for a number of years. It's just gone down recently.

[Naeema Raza]

And that's in the U.S. in the U.S. and how does that compare globally? Do you know?

[James Sexton]

Yeah, we're like number 14 globally. The more super religious a culture culture is, the less divorce there is. I represent a tremendous number of clients in the Hasidic Jewish community. It's a very significant high net worth population in New York. And they have a fairly significant divorce rate. And they have very ugly divorces sometimes.

[Naeema Raza]

Really?

[James Sexton]

And I've asked many years ago, one of the rabbis who sends cases to me, why are these divorces so ugly? Because they need a tool like me, which means, like, if you need me, I'm a weapon. And I'm like, why do you guys always have these ug divorces? And what he said is, well, in your culture, secular culture, you can just get divorced because you're unhappy. He's like, in Hasidic Jewish culture, you're not allowed to get divorced just because you're unhappy. It has to be that the other person is like mentally ill or abusive. So you have to create this narrative. And it's usually dueling camps like families. And also, you know, this is not a culture that gets to watch tv. So this is like the most entertaining thing going on in the community sometimes is like, so they, you have 15, 20 people show up to watch Court, you know, and it turns into to real shit show.

[Naeema Raza]

They make life reality television. Yeah, it's pretty cool because they don't have reality.

[James Sexton]

I mean, the funniest thing is that somehow a lapsed Catholic German ended up being the divorce lawyer to the history who's negotiating the Khalimoid period and who gets Shamini, Ezret and Simchatora.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, that's like, maybe one of the few good reasons I've heard for having reality television is it can make your your own breakups less dramatic.

[James Sexton]

I can't watch those. Like reality. Like, you know, every once in a while like someone will be like, oh, do you want to watch, you know, like the Real Housewives of Da Da? I'm like, no. Like I'll do that.

[Naeema Raza]

The one that you might like is Love on the Spectrum. Have you seen that?

[James Sexton]

I not only love Love on the Spectrum, Love on the Spectrum is possibly my favorite show of all time.

[Naeema Raza]

It is beautiful.

[James Sexton]

I've watched every season of every country that's done it. I cry every single episode.

[Naeema Raza]

I love like a little kid.

[James Sexton]

I cry like a little kid. I am particularly susceptible to that show because doing what I do, the layers of complexity that people add on to their relationships, and my job is to sort of undo the Gordian knot of that complexity. There's something about watching these neurodivergent people who just want so badly to love someone and be loved. And it's so pure. The part of the show that I just think is so unbelievably beautiful that it makes me cry is we're always so critical of the person that we're dating or considering dating. And it's like, well, I like him, but he's not tall enough. Or I like this, but she also this. And like, we get so picky in New York. Maybe it's also very specific. But like, we're just. There's so many options. There's just so many options. And everyone's so gorgeous and accomplished and it's like, you know, it's just such a insane pool. And to have these two people that like, you're watching the conversation and they're terrible at it. You know, they're not good at a conversation because they have these communication issues and they're like, you know, you're watching, going like, oh, God, talk about your pets. Talk about something. Come on, man, you're doing it. You're doing so good. You're doing so good. And it's going awfully. And then they do like the off camera interview with her. Like, how do you think it's going? And he's like, it's going really great. She's so nice, she's so wonderful. And then they're like. Cause all they want is that moment where it's like, will you be my girlfriend? Yes. Will you be my boyfriend? Yes.

[Naeema Raza]

And then they hold hands.

[James Sexton]

That's right. And that's the thing that makes me just go into like I'm a puddle. Because the idea that like, that's all it really is, like, that's all it needs to be for any of us is the. Like, this is fucking terrifying. Like, I just wanna hold somebody's hand. Like, that's all I want. I just wanna hold somebody's hand and they hold mine and. And this is terrifying. And it's gonna end in death. So, like, can we just have each other? And like, when we're scared, we won't be alone. And when we're inspired, we'll have each other to have fun with it. Like, and we'll just be each other's favorite person and it'll be real to me. This is so fucking simple and so human and yet it is so complicated. We've added so many layers of complication on top of it.

[Naeema Raza]

Has it always been like that? Like this?

[James Sexton]

No, I don't think it was always like that. I mean, I've Been here a little longer than you, but not so long that I can say I remember the old days. But what I will say is we are getting far more layers of complexity onto things. I mean, I think we are really thinking a lot about much bigger ideas. We have much bigger pools of options now. I think dating apps and even just social media, like, we see and interact intellectually and interpersonally, even if it's, again, like in a virtual manner with so many more people than people used. You used to see other people in church or synagogue or shul or whatever it was. You'd see people. But you knew the people that grew up in your geographic vicinity. Even when I was young, in the 70s and the 80s, like, you knew the people that lived in your neighborhood. Totally different world now. And it's created a massive amount of choice confusion in all of us. And we also, at the same time, are just being barraged with criticism from every direction.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, you've called marriage a bad technology.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, I mean, I call marriage a technology because it is a technology.

[Naeema Raza]

What is the technology meant to do?

[James Sexton]

Well, I mean, all technology solves a problem. Before I became a lawyer, I went to graduate school at nyu. I finished my master's degree. I was working on my PhD in a subject called media ecology. It's the study of information environments as if they were physical environments. So my master's thesis was I used Jacques Ellul, who created the concept of propaganda. Unfortunately, his work informed a lot of Goebbels and how he put together Nazi propaganda. But he was a brilliant thinker, Elul. And so I. I looked at advertising as propaganda. So I was essentially studying advertising using a traditional propaganda model. And that got me interested in persuasion and got me interested in mass persuasion and thinking about information environments as environments. So, like the model, I said, of a forest with lizards added and subtracted from it. So I think when you. When you look at an environment and when you add a technology to it, there are Neil Postman, Dr. Postman, who was my mentor. He passed away some years ago. He wrote some amazing books. He wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, Technopoly, which is the surrender of culture to technology, the disappearance of childhood. But one of his things he used to talk about was something called the four questions model, which is, anytime you encounter a technology, you should ask yourself four questions. What is the problem to which this technology is a solution? Who has that problem? How does it solve the problem? And what new problems might it create?

[Naeema Raza]

Wait, sorry, I want to do that again.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. What is the problem to which this technology is a solution. Who has this problem? Because very often people will say to you like, oh, you know, this is the problem of your whites not being white enough on your shirts. Okay, but I don't have that problem.

[Naeema Raza]

Sometimes you have a problem problem. The problem is not big enough to have a problem. Right.

[James Sexton]

The problem of cruise control in a car is the problem of having to step on the gas. Like, who has that problem? If you do a lot of long haul driving, maybe the third question is the easiest answer. How does it solve the problem from an engineering standpoint? Like what does it actually do that solves the problem? The fourth question is the most interesting one and the one that's kind of hardest to track and that is what new problems might it create? So, you know, when I apply that four questions model to the technology of marriage, I think that's in and of itself just. That first question is a really interesting one. What is the problem to which marriage is a solution? Now for some people, they might have a totally different answer than someone else. But most people, if you ask them what is the problem to which marriage is a solution, they would say the problem of not being married, which is not. That doesn't make sense.

[Naeema Raza]

Isn't it the solution to how do you reproduce and raise a human?

[James Sexton]

No, no. To reproduce you have sex with each other?

[Naeema Raza]

Yes, I have sex with.

[James Sexton]

And then to raise a human, you have proximity to each other and the child. You don't ever have to get the government involved.

[Naeema Raza]

But originally when this started, was that not the problem to which marriage was a solution, but because marriage pre existed.

[James Sexton]

Are we talking about government pair bonds or marriage? Because marriage. Okay, so pair bonds is a whole different technology.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, and that's actually inbuilt to us.

[James Sexton]

Marriage is a layer we added to pair bonds. Like animals have pair bonds.

[Naeema Raza]

So marriage is the government intimate.

[James Sexton]

Animals have tons of pair bonds and they raise children within pair bonds very often and within a larger community. None of them get married. Like none of them have a city hall that they have to go to. None of them have put paperwork involved. They break up like in a lion's den. You know, people, they break up sometimes they kill each other's kids, they kill each other. Like there's a. But they don't get married. So pair bonds is a different thing. If you ask me the question of what is the problem to which pair bonds are a solution, we can answer that all day.

[Naeema Raza]

Different.

[James Sexton]

Okay, so marriage is a very specific thing.

[Naeema Raza]

So define marriage. Marriage is.

[James Sexton]

Well, again, marriage is different things. To different people. If you ask someone who's religious, why do you get married? They will tell you God told you to.

[Naeema Raza]

But marriage is a contractual agreement as you're defining it.

[James Sexton]

It's between two people in the state.

[Naeema Raza]

Two people and the state. Yeah, it's a threesome.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, it's a threesome. It's a really unsatisfying threesome.

[Naeema Raza]

Who didn't want to have a threesome with a government?

[James Sexton]

If I want to disappoint two people at once, I'll have dinner with my parents.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, so this is the definition of this technology. And yeah, to. What was that a solution then?

[James Sexton]

Well, originally.

[Naeema Raza]

Originally, yeah.

[James Sexton]

The idea, if you take the religious piece out, because the religious piece is a huge piece, but if you take out the religious piece, it was land ownership. It was passing land between families. It was uniting clans by marriage so that land ownership would be preserved. That's why people married people within their family. And you married, like third cousins and things, because you would keep your wealth within the family because you wanted to create a lineage. And then by marrying other families into that lineage and creating children of that, you would create these sort of bonded families. It had a lot to do with ownership. It had a lot to do with land preservation. You know, the main reason, of course, people will tell you that it was, you know, scriptural. But the reason the Catholic Church didn't let priests get married wasn't that because Jesus wasn't married. Like, Jesus also didn't wear socks, but they let priests wear socks.

[Naeema Raza]

So what was the reason to continue?

[James Sexton]

Because they didn't want to have to take. When a priest died, they didn't want to have to take care of the widow.

[Naeema Raza]

The Catholic Church was just being cheap, primarily. I mean.

[James Sexton]

I mean, Catholic Church is like the third largest landowner in the United States.

[Naeema Raza]

Back to these four questions. So nowadays, now that we're not big landing, that's a great time to ask.

[James Sexton]

The question right now.

[Naeema Raza]

Why is to. What problem is this technology a solution between two renting humans?

[James Sexton]

I don't think you're even allowed to ask that question, which is what's funny to me. Like. Cause if you ask most people, why are you getting married? It's like, well. Cause you get married. It's like a thing you do, you know, like, it's not. When my parents got married, my grandparents got married, my great, great parents got married. Like, everybody in my line got married. That's how I exist. And tradition is, in one sense, the wisdom of people who came before us. And the lessons they Learned and tradition, in another sense is peer pressure exerted by dead people.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[James Sexton]

And so I think it's largely the latter because your great great grandmother got married. Your great great grandmother probably had a buggy whip also. And she definitely did not have a cell phone. Like, she definitely didn't have the entire sum total of human wisdom instantly accessible in her hand from the sky. So why would a technology that worked for her automatically be presumed to be correct for you? That's kind of crazy to think it would be so, if you ask. But what's funny about it is that if I said to you, you know, Nima, I had a conversation with my girlfriend, and we've decided we are never getting married, it would be like, oof. Like, you have commitment issues. Is the relationship not good? Like, what's going on? If I said to you, we're getting married, if you said, really, why? Like, that would be rude. Or if somebody said, I'm having kids, really, why? But it's not an unreasonable question to say, really, why? Like, why are you. Why are you getting married? What do you. What value add will that give to your relationship?

[Naeema Raza]

You're divorced.

[James Sexton]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

And would you get married again?

[James Sexton]

I would only get married again if it was very important to my partner that I get married again. I would have to be with someone who had a good reason why they wanted to get married. I can't imagine marrying someone super religious. But if someone was very religious and we were in love and they were like, this is really important to me. Okay. If you have a prenuptial agreement, getting married to someone, get married as many times as you want. Like, with a prenuptial agreement, there's very low stakes.

[Naeema Raza]

It's like dating. You're just dating.

[James Sexton]

It's like dating or cohabitating.

[Naeema Raza]

It's more like cohabitating.

[James Sexton]

Cohabitating is more of a commitment. You have a kid with somebody, strap in. Like, strap in, you're with that person forever. Now you're gonna have grandkids.

[Naeema Raza]

You actually can't divorce.

[James Sexton]

Like, I have celebrity clients who come in all the time. Or, you know, very often athletes, they come in and, you know, they got, like, a big NFL contract or an NBA contract, and they're gonna get married to their high school sweetheart. It was like the ride or die was with them all the way through, and they'll be like, am I an idiot for getting married? And I'm like, no. If you have a prenup, like, get married all you want. Like, don't worry about getting married's about the most fun thing in being married is challenging, but getting married's fun. It's a party, man.

[Naeema Raza]

I grew up with parents who were married, you know, until my father passed. And I grew up in a culture that really celebrates weddings and marriages. I was not that deeply into it. And I don't think that everyone has to get married. In part because I have a sister who's 18 years older to me who never got married. And I also grew up spending a lot of time in Europe, where a lot of people don't get married and they just have children and they're partnered for a long time. But I think if I were to marry, the reason I would do it is because I want to grow old and die with someone. I believe that this person.

[James Sexton]

And you believe that marriage would be required for that?

[Naeema Raza]

If I really believe that this person was a dad, I don't know that.

[James Sexton]

That has much to do with marriage.

[Naeema Raza]

But does the paperwork help you stay in it, lock it in for that time?

[James Sexton]

Well, all evidence would suggest no. Look, I understand the compulsion to marriage. Like I heard a saying once about God, that God is the name we give to a blanket that we put over a mystery to give it shape. So marriage, to me, I get it. Like, I get love. I get the desire to find another person and to say, let's share. Let's join our destinies together. Let's find in each other something we can trust. You'll see my blind spots. I'll see yours. We'll always try to approach this with good faith. Like when I say something to you that sounds critical, it's not critical because you're my favorite person. It's that I want you to be the best and most authentic version of yourself. Because I'm crazy about you. But at the end of your life, I want you to be able to say, this person helped me become the most authentic version of myself. I want to be able to say, you helped me become the most authentic version of myself. And we're still each other's favorite person. That's the goal. So now everything else, including marriage, are just bricks we put around that. All that is is just. It's just us trying to cling to a thing. It's attachment. And it just leads to suffering. Just like we think. Oh, you know, if I do this, I won't ever get sick. You're gonna get sick. Brian Johnson's gonna die. I know. He doesn't want. Don't tell him that. Cause he's busy eating seaweed and whatever Else he's doing. And God bless the man for trying, but he's gonna die. He's gonna die, I promise. So the truth is, every marriage ends.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. Either by death or divorce.

[James Sexton]

Or divorce. So what we're doing with marriage is we're trying to bolster something. And I appreciate it's a very human thing to try to do that.

[Naeema Raza]

The conception, the romantic conception that two people could call it pair bond or call it solidify an estate and their marriage would only end at death. Do you think it's good for the world? Do you think marriage is a good ambition for people to have?

[James Sexton]

I think that kind of bond that you're describing, I don't think marriage is a good ambition. I think that that kind of connection to another human being is the best ambition you could have. I think it's the most worthy ambition.

[Naeema Raza]

But you think the technology, the marriage, the bricks that gets in the way.

[James Sexton]

I think it gives people a false sense of security that creates in people habits that make the actual thing fall to shit. I've got this ring and this person's here and they're in and they're stuck with me and I'm stuck with them. And we're together now, so I can focus on the million other things that need to be focused on. But it's so funny.

[Naeema Raza]

It's about language. It's like, I have a number of questions for you that are about that end beautiful ambition. I call that love when we use that. But yeah, but love doesn't carry the temporal.

[James Sexton]

Depends on how you definition of love. I mean, we overuse the term love.

[Naeema Raza]

You'll fall in love with many people. Hopefully you're not gonna marry. Although someone told me recently that your first marriage is for family, your second marriage is for love, and your third marriage is for money.

[James Sexton]

Interesting.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you think that's true?

[James Sexton]

I've heard people say that your first marriage should be for money and your second marriage, for sure, love.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, that sounds, that sounds like a more strategic calculation.

[James Sexton]

But you know, I think those, those kinds of axioms are like super funny and popular, but I don't know that there's a lot of truth to that.

[Naeema Raza]

So we'll distinguish between marriage and the forever love for this. Should marriage be like more of a subscription model where instead of me saying, oh, I want to be married for 50, 60 years, instead I say, you know, I'd really like a five year lease on this.

[James Sexton]

It's already a subscription model, though. I mean, marriage, you can end your marriage anytime you want. So it's you know, you don't technically have to stay married. You can get married, you know, divorced, anytime you want to. I think what you're saying when you say that is a good point, and that is that I think there should be a constant reflection on is this marriage still creating value for the two of us? Do we still see that this is beneficial? I think that should be a practice. Like, that's what my writing is about. The idea that if this thing that you were searching for so intensely and we're so overjoyed to have found is in fact important to you, why wouldn't you do routine maintenance on it? Why wouldn't you do these very little things? And again, I think the answer is because when you get married, you go, oh, I'm married now. They're not leaving, and I'm not leaving. And we're in this thing so we don't have to think about it anymore. And I think that that's really unfortunate because you're signing on for a relationship that requires the same maintenance as any other relationship.

[Naeema Raza]

So should we, like, go to the DMV every five years and renew our marriage?

[James Sexton]

Life has to be involved in that. Because I think the ending of the thing would still be all the same. Complicated disconnections anyway, whether you did it on a routine cycle or whether you did it when something catastrophic happens on one or both sides. I think what we should be doing is having a regular practice of, you know, what was the purpose of church or synagogue or mosque? It's to. With a regular interval, whether it's once a week or on holidays, to gather together and reaffirm our shared faith in something bigger than ourselves and to experience community with other people who share that faith. That is a model that works, right? So why isn't love like that? Why isn't there some process whereby we're checking in, whether it's daily, whether it's weekly, where we're just checking in? Like, what did I do this week that made you feel loved? What are some things I could have done better this week? What are some things this week that made you wanna tear my clothes off? And what are some. We share that information with each other so we can stay good at this thing.

[Naeema Raza]

It's so funny. I have friends who have that kind of relationship, and I've dated people who like to do, like, a weekly meeting. It also can feel like work, and marriage is work and relationships are work and all kinds of.

[James Sexton]

Well, it does feel like work. It depends on. I think that, like anything that feels like Work. You. You could create ways to make it fun as well.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, you can make it sexy, you know?

[James Sexton]

Yeah. Like, I think there's a reason why we go to gyms. Cause we try to find ways to, like, okay, I know I have to do this, but what can I do to make it a little more fun? And so I think that it can be fun or sexy, or there can be some reward to it, or there can be some. But again, I even think the pursuit of it is fun. I think having conversations about, like, if somebody said to you, like, you know, tell me three things you like about. Like, we've just met. Tell me three things you like about me already. I'll tell you three things I like about you.

[Naeema Raza]

I can tell you. Do you want me to tell you?

[James Sexton]

Yeah, go for it. Yeah. And by the way, how fun is this? Yeah, we're already having fun.

[Naeema Raza]

This is fun.

[James Sexton]

Like, I'm excited to hear. And I'm. I. You have no idea what you're gonna say, and you have no idea what I'm gonna say.

[Naeema Raza]

I don't know what you're gonna say. Should I go first or do you want to go first?

[James Sexton]

Absolutely.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, so three things I like about you. I like your depth of knowledge about art, culture, literature, and how you're weaving together different parts of these worlds.

[James Sexton]

And that feels very nice to hear. That's lovely to hear. It makes me feel good about myself. I like myself a little bit more like, oh, yeah, I guess I do know some stuff. And isn't that lovely that this person notices it? So I'll give you one now.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, I'll do it.

[James Sexton]

So I think that you're in this conversation, you're, like, interested, and you're interesting, and you're bringing sort of your own. You've talked a few times about, like, your own relationships, and you talked about your parents, and I felt like that you shared about your father and that your father was older and you lose. Like, I feel like you're being very open, and that feels really nice to be in a space where someone's being open like that. It makes me want to be open like. So this is fun.

[Naeema Raza]

Good.

[James Sexton]

Isn't this fun, though?

[Naeema Raza]

Should we keep our other two for afterwards so we don't share them with everyone?

[James Sexton]

I mean, but the truth is, this doesn't have to be drudgery. It doesn't have to be work. It's kind of fun to know. And by the way, like, you're reminded me of some things about myself that I take for granted. Like, we don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish. So having another person, like, part of what we fall in love with isn't the other person. It's how the other person makes us feel about ourselves.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, that's the most important thing.

[James Sexton]

When you're creating so intoxicating. Like when you. When someone is just so enamored with you and your beauty that they just. When they see you walk in, you just see that look of like, oh, look at her. Like that you see yourself differently in the mirror. Like, I know, like, when I have been an object of desire, you know, and someone is like, oh, my God, I think you're so hot. Like, you look in the mirror and you're like, all right. But again, like, it's so beautiful to have that thing. And then we have it and we kind of. Like, when most people who are in long term, committed relationships, if you say, when is the last time you just, apropos of nothing, just said to your partner, like, you're just so fucking hot, man. Like, I just love looking at you. Like, that is. When have you ever heard someone said that to you? And it was unwelcomed, like, in your relationship. It's amazing.

[Naeema Raza]

It's also how you receive that. Like, I remember I was. I was dating someone who we're doing some long distance, and I said to him, oh, it's really stressful to try to stay connected. And in the evening, like, we had this, like, kind of back and forth about it, that it didn't feel good. And the next day he left me a voice note, and he was like, I'm really glad you told me how you feel, because if you don't tell me how you feel, I can't change my behavior to better meet your needs. And I was like, oh, that's hot. It's nice when someone can communicate with you.

[James Sexton]

Well. Cause what was in that? I see you. I heard what you said. I want to be good at this. Like, I want to be a proper offering to you. Because that's kind of what we are. Like, when you're dating, you're like, oh, I'm an offering, and you're an offering. And we're trying to sort of say to each other, like, hey, do you. Are you interested in this? Like, am I interested in this? Like, and how much of it do I want?

[Naeema Raza]

I thought of myself as an offering.

[James Sexton]

You kind of are. I mean, you have. Like, if you've ever gone on a date when you are doing your hair and your makeup, you Are preparing yourself as an offering.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I got that.

[James Sexton]

Like, you really are. You're preparing yourself. Like, I didn't dress like this because it's comfortable.

[Naeema Raza]

You do as an offering.

[James Sexton]

Like, you dress like. Well, it's an offering to you and to the audience. Well, here's what I'll tell you. This is a statement. Why do you wear a suit to a job interview and to court, but you don't wear it to the beach? Right. Like, it's. Cause this is a message that is, I take what I'm doing seriously. So you merit my seriousness. Yeah. So I was like, okay, I'm not gonna wear jeans. I'm gonna wear this because you merit my seriousness. That's an offering.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. The other reason I liked it is not to give too much love to my former flame, but is to. Is because it invited the opportunity to have more of those conversations. It made it safe to say things. And I think that's so much of what makes relationships successful, is when it is safe to communicate.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. And I also think that the more you can trust each other in a relationship, like, what is intimacy except the ability to be completely yourself with another person? I think our greatest fear as humans is that we're not worthy of love. Like, I think that's what we're most afraid of. That if someone could see all of the, like, ugliness inside of us, all of the insecurity, the sadness, the shit we need to work on, the things we get wrong, the ignorance we have, the fear, all of it. I think we feel like, oh, no, you only love me because you don't know that stuff. Like, if you. You love the person I performed in front of you, but, like, if you could see my face, my real face, you wouldn't love me. And the truth is, I actually don't believe that's true. We give other people so much more grace than we give ourselves. Like, if there was a person in my life who talked to my son the way I talk to myself in my head, I would have fucking killed them. But I think one of the things about love that's so appealing to us, that true love, that idea that romanticized love, is the idea that we could potentially be worthy of love. And the feeling that we know how much we love the people we love. And to feel like that helps you love yourself in a different way.

[Naeema Raza]

And in that case, like, the offering is a distraction. It's not like the suit or whatever it is.

[James Sexton]

I think there's something really lovely about people, A woman wanting to be Beautiful for me and me wanting to be handsome and charming for her. I think that there's a statement of intention and there's something really lovely about that. And I think we've lost that in some ways culturally. And I think if we went back to that, it would actually be very lovely. I think the idea. You think we've lost people? Yeah, I think that the idea of like courtship and like dating in like a. Because it's tied up in gender roles in a really complicated way.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, so let's see.

[James Sexton]

And the idea of pursuit and I think that we lost something really lovely in that.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I think a lot of people still want that. I mean, I count myself in that category.

[James Sexton]

I think most people want it and we're afraid to say it out loud because there's stuff that came with it that nobody wants to come back.

[Naeema Raza]

Hang tight for a second. We'll be right back. Okay, here's a question. So now I want to turn the conversation to like, what makes someone good at divorcing?

[James Sexton]

Going through a divorce themselves.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, like, what makes a. Yeah, well, who's a. Give me three characteristics of a good divorce client.

[James Sexton]

A person who concedes the possibility of their own error. A person who can step back from their emotional state when making important decisions. And a person who, if they have children, can put the long term needs of their children ahead of their short term feelings. I think those are three really useful things. I would say overall, the best trait for a person going through a divorce to have is discipline, which I would define as the ability to trade what you want now for what you want most.

[Naeema Raza]

When you talk about those three qualities, some measure of accountability, understanding that's bigger than yourself, some level of awareness and ability to separate yourself from that emotion. And the third is. Is a sense of mission or purpose or something long term bigger than yourself.

[James Sexton]

You're willing to trade your immediate desire for your long term goal.

[Naeema Raza]

So not an instant gratification whore.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. And also just a feeling of like, I know what I want right now, but I know what I want most. That's actually, by the way, the same trait that would make someone good at marriage. So that's.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm saying all three of these traits seem like, oh my God, if someone was good at this, I would. That makes someone good at relationships.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. There's a book by Sherry Huber that I like called how youw Do Anything is How youw Do Everything. And she's a Buddhist writer, but very good one. Very simple but profound. And yeah, I think that the Traits that would make you good at divorce are the traits that would probably make you a good spouse or a good parent or a good person.

[Naeema Raza]

So divorces can be like a crash course and how to become really good at a relationship.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, yeah. It can be an opportunity to be forced to learn humility.

[Naeema Raza]

And how would someone who's out in the dating world evaluate someone's goodness to divorce? Goodness to divorce. Yeah. Capacity for divorce.

[James Sexton]

Interesting question. I've never heard it parsed that way, but I like it. Like, should you date someone you think would be a good future ex husband? Yeah, I mean, I've never heard it parsed that way. I really like that.

[Naeema Raza]

When I start dating someone, I often say, oh, my future ex boyfriend.

[James Sexton]

Just because I. Yeah, I kind of love that.

[Naeema Raza]

But.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. Well, I actually have a friend who introduced. Who's happily married and he introduces his wife as this is my current wife. And it's funny because it's true. Like, he's like, what? I didn't say anything. She's my current wife. And he's like, right, but it implies that you had a prior one or that there's another one in the future. And he's like, no, I just said she's my current wife. She is currently my wife. But I think it's a hilarious way to refer to someone as my current wife. Or this is. I'm always looking for a future ex wife. You know, that's what it is. Exactly.

[Naeema Raza]

That's a common future ex boyfriend. So what? Yeah. How would you evaluate that?

[James Sexton]

Well, I actually do that. That I like. I. I've always done that in dating. I always look, I always am interested in someone. How someone refers to their exes. I remember when I first got divorced many, many years ago, I went on a date with a woman, very beautiful woman, and she was in a similar situation to me. I had very young kids. She had several young kids. She was divorced. And I was like, oh, we might have some things in common. It was like literally the first date I went out on post divorce. And I remember it was going quite well and we were having dinner and. And at some point I said something about like an art exhib. I said, oh, you know, we should maybe go to it sometime. It'd be fun to go. And, you know, as I said it, I'm like, oh, I kind of just like implied a second date in the middle of the first one. But she went, oh, yeah, that'd be really cool. You know, like, the kids are with the asshole next weekend, so I could And I just remember thinking, oh, yeah, this isn't going to happen. Yeah, like, we're not doing that. Like, we made it through the dinner. And then I, you know, kind of was like, you know, thank you. It was nice to meet you. But, you know, I think we're in different places. And the truth is, like, I. I think how someone talks about their exes tells me a lot. Even again, even if their exes are like a villain straight out of Grendel, I still feel like there's a way to sort of relate to people in your past, even who've wronged you or hurt you, in the narrative of describing your own life. That is healthy. And there's a way that I think can be toxic.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, so that's one. That's actually two first criteria I would.

[James Sexton]

Look for how people would speak of the narrative of their ex. I think also too, again, the traits that would make you a good ex, that you could still concede that there was something of value you learned in that relationship.

[Naeema Raza]

So evaluating these characteristics of good divorce at the beginning of a relationship could maybe help marriages or relationships do better. So if you were to redesign the technology of marriage right now, it's like pretty quick to get married and very hard to get divorced.

[James Sexton]

Yes.

[Naeema Raza]

What are the guardrails you would put into marriage?

[James Sexton]

Great question. I don't think in hundreds of interviews anyone's ever asked me. So I really applaud it because I've been waiting to be asked it.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you have pressure ready to go?

[James Sexton]

No one's asked me it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've thought a lot about this.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[James Sexton]

I think there should be barriers to entry.

[Naeema Raza]

But which ones?

[James Sexton]

First, you should have to have an individual consultation with a divorce lawyer, because I think you have to understand how something ends potentially before beginning it. So I think you should be educated as to your rights and obligations in the event that this marriage ends. In the manner in which the majority of marriages end, we divide. You don't have discussions about it. If you asked most people like, and I know this acutely because the time that most people learn legally what happened when they got married is when they come into my office for a consultation. Cause now they're getting divorced. That's the worst possible time to learn that. You should have learned that before. So I think having a consultation individually without your spouse, soon to be spouse, present with a divorce lawyer is a very productive thing. And I actually have some data to support this because I've been doing prenups for 27 years. And at the End of doing a prenup, usually people still feel very good about you. It's a pleasant transaction. The number of people that I have done prenups for and then subsequently done a divorce for them is infinitesimally small. Which either means that people are getting prenups with me and going to other lawyers for the divorce, but if that were true, then I would have people coming in who other people did their divorce and I'm doing or other people did their prenup and now I'm doing their divorce, and that doesn't happen. So the truth is, I think people who have prenups get divorced less. And there'd be no way to prove this. It's an unfalsifiable premise because you don't follow a prenup anywhere. So there's no record that people have prenups. But I believe that people who have at the beginning of a marriage, a conversation with a divorce lawyer. Because the first thing you do if you have a prenup consultation with me is I educate you what your rights are in the absence of a prenup and then how we might want to modify those with a prenup. So you're learning as a pre married person, a person who's about to get married. I'm gonna give you an education of, here's your rights and obligations in the absence of a prenup, and here's what we can modify them to be with a prenup. Right. But learning that I think is incredibly important. So that's number one. Just even the nuts and bolts of like, hey, if this starts to fail, what's this procedure? How do we. Negotiation, mediation, arbitration, litigation. What's the difference? Difference again, first time you learn about that should not be when you're in it.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, so number one, you're gonna Premarital.

[James Sexton]

Education provided by a divorce.

[Naeema Raza]

You're not going to a priest, you're going to a divorce, you're going to.

[James Sexton]

Why a priest?

[Naeema Raza]

Okay.

[James Sexton]

But the truth, like Pre Cana. Yeah, like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go talk to someone who's never married and not allowed to marry about what it's like to be married. Cool. That makes a huge amount of sense. Like, that's great. Like, that makes no sense whatsoever. So talking to a divorce lawyer individually, I think that you should have some similar to pre Cana. There should be some successfully married people who provide as a service to people, like, talk to some people that have had success at long term marriage. There should be some counseling between like a young person who's thinking about getting married or a young couple who's thinking about getting married, Wouldn't you want to talk to someone who's. I mean, look, if you're founding a founding company, when you talk to successful entrepreneurs and failed entrepreneurs, so even talk to some divorced people, there should be. Be some opportunity for people who are thinking about this very serious thing that everyone, whatever side of the aisle they're on, is like, this is the foundation of our society is the family, and the family's foundation is the couple. Right? So if everybody believes that, if you believe your own bullshit and you think that's true, put your money where your mouth is and have some arrangement where if you're going to get married, you have to take it seriously. So you have to have that premarital education again, with a lawyer, with happily married people, with unhappily married people, have a waiting period, have a permit that you have to get. I mean, listen, to drive a car, you have to take. You have to wait till a certain age. Then you have to take a written test to get a permit. Then you have to have the permit for a period of time and take driver's education. Then you have to have a road test, and you still get a conditional license. And then that conditional license, you have to drive appropriately for a period of time, and then you get your full license. Marriage. 50 bucks. Guy dressed as Elvis. You're married. Married. You don't get a pamphlet, nothing. You did the most legally significant thing you're gonna do in your whole life other than die.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, sometimes.

[James Sexton]

And you got nothing.

[Naeema Raza]

Sometimes people do have a bit more sunk cost. They do like, you know, the wedding in Europe, the big destination wedding. And that's like the let's sink in a million wedding. Industrial wedding. Industrial. But is that not. But that's not the right investment to be making up front in a marriage.

[James Sexton]

I love a good party. So if you want.

[Naeema Raza]

No, you don't actually. You don't love a good party.

[James Sexton]

Weddings. I make an exception for weddings. I love weddings.

[Naeema Raza]

So, okay, so your, your James Sexton reinvention of marriage is going to have item one, individual counseling with a divorce to talk about what the end of a marriage could look like.

[James Sexton]

Individual and group counseling with successfully married people and unsuccessfully married people, divorced people, or people who are unhappily married. That's number two. That. That's another premarital education component.

[Naeema Raza]

Number three is a waiting period.

[James Sexton]

I think there should be a waiting period. I think we're all hopped up on pheromones. I think that you're, like, into it. I think you should have to, like, get your marriage license and then you got to wait 30 days or 60 days or whatever it might be before you can actually get married.

[Naeema Raza]

And what should the marriage license test be?

[James Sexton]

I mean, I've thought about this and I've thought there's some aspects that it could be a test of. Were you listening to what the lawyer said? Like, it could be about what are. What's about to happen to your legal rights and obligations, or it could be interesting to have it be about this other person. I actually think in a perfect, like, if I get to design society, I would say it would be a test about some important questions about this person.

[Naeema Raza]

Like the reality show, do they want.

[James Sexton]

To have children or not? Do they want, like, the Newlywed Game?

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, the Newlywed Game, where they're like, what's your husband's favorite kind of ice cream? And they blindfold each other and then.

[James Sexton]

They say, yeah, because I think there should be. But I think there should be some uncomfortable questions. They do this in Pre Cana. Like, the Catholic Church does have this, right? I have a very funny quick story I'll tell you that I've never had an opportunity to tell on a show. My parents were very young when they got married, and they were married for 50 plus years till my mother passed away. And my father was like, out of the hills of Virginia. He had an outhouse until he went off to the Naval Academy and then unfortunately went off to Vietnam. But he married my mom before he went off to Vietnam. He was like 20 years old and he was kind of a country bumpkin, like, admittedly. And he went to Pre Cana and they had them fill out separately these quizzes. And it was about, like, do you want to have children? Do you believe that children should be raised in the Catholic faith? Do you believe that children should be subject to corporal punishment? And one of the questions was, do you believe in extramarital sex? And my father wrote, yes. And, you know, this is way before, like, the times of ethical non monogamy and polyamory. And the priest was sort of shocked by this and said to him in a conversation with he and my mother, why do you think that that would be okay? And he says, well, I think, like, you know, like, if you want some, like, I think it's okay, like, to want. And you know, he's like, right, but like, marriage is a sacred covenant and you're really only meant to be together as a monogamous couple. My Father thought it meant extra sex in marriage. Like, extra marital sex. Like, not just when you want to make a baby.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, God. But like, extra sweet.

[James Sexton]

Like, it was adorable, you know? And my mother was, like, mortified. Cause she read it and she was like, what do you mean you believe in extramarital sex? He was like, you know, like, extra. Like, extra. I love it. Like, you don't just want to do it when you have kids. Like, that was the sentence he said that they were like, oh, so sweet. Okay, that's right. But having that conversation, like, we know the things that people end up fighting about when they're married, so why not in the front end? And what it is, is that we don't want to puncture the illusion. But why not puncture the illusion and then actually go, okay, there's a depth of intimacy here.

[Naeema Raza]

I think that this quiz test that people love taking, as we discussed, should have. I think it's helpful because it tests for attentiveness. I think it should have small details like the newlyweds game. And it should have the person's aspirations.

[James Sexton]

Let divorce lawyers write it. I'm telling you because we see the fail points.

[Naeema Raza]

This should be your next.

[James Sexton]

Don't talk to. If you want to know anything about your car and, like, how to keep it running, don't talk to the new car dealer. The new car dealer is just going to sell you a car.

[Naeema Raza]

This is your life.

[James Sexton]

Talk to a mechanic. Like, you talk to a mechanic. They're going to tell you, yeah, this car. Here's the fail points on this car. Here's the systems that break in this car. Predictably. Here's the routine maintenance you could do to prevent this car from falling apart. And that's. Divorce lawyers are the ones who know. We watch this fall apart all the time. If you got a group of divorce lawyers and therapists who do marriage counseling for unhappily married people or individual counseling for recently divorced people. And you said, guys, put together a questionnaire of the questions people should ask someone when they're considering marrying them. We could put together a really useful.

[Naeema Raza]

I want you to do that.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, like, with all my free time.

[Naeema Raza]

I actually think it'd be great to have. You have this great book called how to stay in love. I prefer the British title, which is.

[James Sexton]

Is how to not up your marriage.

[Naeema Raza]

How to not up your marriage says.

[James Sexton]

Everything you need to know.

[Naeema Raza]

Why are the Americans are so puritan? I mean, that's such a better title.

[James Sexton]

No, it is a better title. Much better.

[Naeema Raza]

But your next book of the. How to not fuck it up.

[James Sexton]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

How to not fuck it up. American edition could have this new marriage technology that you could. You could be like the Mark Zuckerberg of marriage.

[James Sexton]

Wow.

[Naeema Raza]

Try not to it up.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, I try not to. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg's fucked up a lot of marriages, but not. Not his own, thankfully. He's definitely done some damage through creating the meta platform.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. Actually, that's a good segue to where I would like to. I would like to do a little bit of a paddle round, which doesn't mean what people might think it means, but we have two paddles here. You can.

[James Sexton]

That's just. That one I won't do on camera.

[Naeema Raza]

A green and a red.

[James Sexton]

Okay.

[Naeema Raza]

So, okay. I want to know if these things are green flags or red flags. And I'm going to actually answer too.

[James Sexton]

I'm not going to look at yours.

[Naeema Raza]

But for people who are listening, we're have. We're fully closed and we have two panels, and one side is red and one side is green. And we're going to see if these things are green flags or red flags in relationship.

[James Sexton]

Okay, got it.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay.

[James Sexton]

I appreciate that you pointed out that we're fully clothed.

[Naeema Raza]

Just wanted for the podcast audience.

[James Sexton]

I'm naked from the waist down, but I have the full tie on. You know what I mean? Just because I want to keep it classy.

[Naeema Raza]

The DJ Diplo was on my show, and he did take off some clothes, and so people rushed to watch it on Spotify because they were like, turn on the video.

[James Sexton]

Sure.

[Naeema Raza]

Unfortunately, it was not all.

[James Sexton]

Not all the. I think Diplo would look better naked than me. He's younger.

[Naeema Raza]

I don't know. One day I'll have you both here and we can.

[James Sexton]

We can judge.

[Naeema Raza]

So best friends with an ex.

[James Sexton]

Best friends with an ex.

[Naeema Raza]

Best friends. Red. Okay, we're both doing red. Okay. Friends with an ex.

[James Sexton]

Green. Green.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, we're both agreeing. Follows Thoughts on Instagram.

[James Sexton]

Follows what? Oh, thoughts. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

Not like deep thoughts.

[James Sexton]

Thoughts. Thoughts. Yes. Follows thoughts. Thoughts on Instagram. I have a problem with the framing of that question.

[Naeema Raza]

What are you a hot activist? What's the.

[James Sexton]

Think that what is appealing to men and what's appealing to women is different? I don't think you're following Harry Styles just because you like his music.

[Naeema Raza]

I actually was at a wedding with Harry Styles. I couldn't recognize him in a lineup.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, but like. Like, I will tell you, like, I know a lot of women that they're not following you because they like his music. He looks good shirtless.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, well, amend this. Following hot people of the gender that you're attracted to that you do not know on Instagram.

[James Sexton]

Yes.

[Naeema Raza]

Got it. Many of them.

[James Sexton]

I'm gonna go green.

[Naeema Raza]

You're using green flag.

[James Sexton]

I'm gonna go green.

[Naeema Raza]

Cause you think it's, like, why a good.

[James Sexton]

I think that it's cathartic. I think that it's human. I think that it's normal. I'm not. Listen. Do I think it's great for relationships? Probably not. But do I think that it's a very human question, James.

[Naeema Raza]

Is it good for relationships?

[James Sexton]

I think it's a very human thing. And I think that if there are much bigger fish to fry.

[Naeema Raza]

Somebody who wants to share social media accounts or share accounts or passwords.

[James Sexton]

I'm going red.

[Naeema Raza]

Me red, too. Okay, we're red on that. Okay. Somebody who wants a prenup.

[James Sexton]

Green.

[Naeema Raza]

See, this is green for me. But I would say that earlier, some of your work has helped me change my mind on it. I used to think it was terribly unromantic, and now I understand that if I don't have a prenup with somebody, you have one with the state.

[James Sexton]

You have one anyway. Right? Okay. Every marriage has a prenup.

[Naeema Raza]

Want separate bedroom for me.

[James Sexton]

For me, that's green. That was my hot take. I had, like, millions of views on that, and people had very strong feelings about it.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[James Sexton]

I think you should enjoy the bedroom. You should have fun in the bedroom. You should snuggle in the bedroom. You should do all the fun sex things you do in the bedroom and then go sleep in your own room like a civilized person. Cause I like to sleep in a bed starfished out, ideally with one or two dogs in the bed. With me, I snore. Cause my nose has been broken 22 times. Like, sleep is. Who cares? Like, again, this is me. If two people. If I was with someone who said, I love the feeling at night of us spooned together, and that gives me some comfort and grace. Okay, then I'm in. That's cool.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm not opposed to it, but I think starting off like that, it's just like, there's something nice about waking up. I wish there was a technology. After you redesign marriage technology, you can redesign bed technology. I think it'd be good if, like, a bed splits apart in the middle of the night and maybe transports you to another quiet room. But, like, if you could have something that does that. Because I like the idea of, like, going and then. But, like, Six by the alarm clock. It gets back in.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. I mean, what I would say is in a perfect world too, you would wake up together, but then without morning breath and with like that kind of pocket.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you not keep Listerine pocket patches on your.

[James Sexton]

I wake up at 4am it doesn't matter. There's literally I'm over, always the first one up. So it's you brush your teeth, you're good to go.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. Want separate bank accounts.

[James Sexton]

I think green flag for me.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I don't know. I'm a purple flag on that.

[James Sexton]

I don't know. I think there should be you, me and we on finances. If we have joint bank accounts and you buy me a birthday present, I get to see it on the statement. I think it would be there is some modicum of privacy that I think is useful in relationship. And so I think that, you know.

[Naeema Raza]

When you come back on the show, we're going to talk all about finances because I want to talk about is marriage a transaction? But let's do a quick lightning round. What is more important in a relationship? We can put away the paddles. Sorry, guys. More important in a relationship, how you have sex, how you spend money, how you spend time.

[James Sexton]

In order, I would say how you spend time, how you have sex and how you handle money. I think how you spend time is incredibly important. I think that the priority you give to your chudher and yourselves individually impacts, I think, the whole ecosystem of the relationship. I think sex is the glue for a romantic relationship and what separates it from a friendship or a roommate. Sit. And I think money is a very important piece of things, but it's usually what the money represents more so than the money itself. I represent a lot of ultra wealthy people and there are only two amounts of money. Enough and not enough. That's it. So I have clients that are billionaires that work as if they're gonna die tomorrow and they don't have any money and they have to work like every penny is the most important thing. And I have clients that are worth 10, $20 million that are like, yeah, what? Whatever. Money's just something you need in case you don't die tomorrow.

[Naeema Raza]

Interesting. Who wins the most in a typical divorce or who wins most often in a typical reverse? The lawyers.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, because if I win, I get paid and if I lose, I get paid.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, I was going to ask you. That's great.

[James Sexton]

People can't win a divorce. People can't win a divorce. Litigants can't win a divorce. There's no such thing as winning a divorce. It's like winning a nuclear war. You didn't win. You know, you try to minimize the destruction. You try to maximize the post divorce life that you and ideally this other person has, but you don't win. There's no winning.

[Naeema Raza]

All right? That's who wins a divorce. There was a viral story about a woman who was 34, 35 and exited a 10 year relationship. She had wanted her ex to pay for her egg freezing.

[James Sexton]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

What do you think about that?

[James Sexton]

I understand the logic behind it. I think that if you are with someone for an extended period of time during your maximum fertility years, that it's not unreasonable to say that I didn't anticipate that I was going to have to start my relationship journey again at an age where now the likelihood of me finding another person coupling with them, connecting with them on a deep enough level that I would feel comfortable assessing whether or not we should have children together, then conceiving and having a child together is far enough out of a timeline that now I'm going to have to engage in a reproductive technology that I didn't have to before. That makes sense to me. I've made that argument before for people. There is in the law a concept called diminished lifetime earning capacity. And essentially it's one of the, one of the, many factors, One of the 14 factors for whether someone should get alimony or not. And the way that diminished lifetime earning capacity works is if, for example, a woman takes five years out of her career to raise children until their school age. It's like stepping out of the marathon at mile 10 for a half an hour and then jumping back in the race. You will never catch the people. You don't get to do your 30s over again in your 40s. So I think that that is just an extension of that same concept and it's very fair. It seems fair to me.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you think we should have some kind of like pre. Nup. Predating agreement that contractually requires that the.

[James Sexton]

No, because I think the more that we try to put contractual barriers around human emotional complexity of relationships, the more we screw it up. Second order we create. Create a lot of second order effects that don't work.

[Naeema Raza]

What is cheaper in the long run? A brief affair that shows you the benefits of the partner you already have. Or a therapist, a really good therapist.

[James Sexton]

Oh, it's an interesting question. I think a good therapist doing their job could help you see some of the blind spots and the frailty and humanity that would draw you to infidelity. But I Do think sometimes people need to burn their hand on a fire to figure out that it was hard. I think the pain of therapy is way better, though, than the pain of terrible mistakes.

[Naeema Raza]

Actually, though, I always find if you want to see a change in someone's behavior, pain is not often a good way to get them there.

[James Sexton]

A lot of times pain makes people bitter. Like, the unexamined kind of pain is not good. Senseless pain is not good. Unattended sorrow is not good. I can speak from experience in that I have personally made tremendous mistakes and been in therapy, and I think I learned a lot from both. But, man, I wish I'd learned some of the things from therapy instead of from pain. I've watched a lot of people make mistakes, good people make mistakes. I don't really know that I believe in good or bad people. Like, I've represented abusers and the abused, the cheater and the cheated on. You spend enough time with any of these people, you see, it's like hurt people, hurting people mostly. It would be great if people from a sooner age engaged in useful therapy.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay?

[James Sexton]

I think a lot of therapy isn't useful therapy.

[Naeema Raza]

And you've talked about this gray divorce. You hear about people getting divorced in their 60s and you're like, is that liberation or is that just, like, foregoing a good retirement plan?

[James Sexton]

The scarcity of time creates an urgency for people to try to find joy. Like, I've represented a lot of people who made the decision to leave a marriage when they were in their 70s or even 80s. And a lot of times when you talk to them, they're like, yeah, I don't have much time left, and I'm not going to spend it resentful and angry or with a person who I'm sitting next to them and I feel alone.

[Naeema Raza]

So when you look at those people, do you think they should have called it much earlier?

[James Sexton]

I don't think so. But I mean, my worldview is very like John Lennon's. You know, there's nowhere you could be that isn't where you're meant to be. Like, I think that things happen when they're supposed to happen. And I think that there's joy to be found in every chapter in your life. I do talk sometimes about how gray divorces are interesting to me when they're infidelity based, because that's something that's been happening a lot lately when someone Is in their 80s and they have a younger woman that they found in her 60s. And, you know, I sort of find myself going, I mean, As a man, as a heterosexual man, I find myself thinking like, oh, God, like I'm gonna be thinking with my penis when I'm 80. Like, I really thought. You say that like it's like a fait accompli. Like, I really believed that, you know, at 80 something, I wouldn't be chained to an idiot anymore. That I would just see a beautiful woman and I'd be like, oh, there's a human being. And I would just not be, you know, hypnot by it the way that I am as. As, you know, for my entire adult life. But yeah, apparently in your 80s, you're still susceptible to that.

[Naeema Raza]

There's also, like, I think the life you didn't have. Right. So that romanticization can just build up over time. And like my favorite Kierkegaard quote is, I'm gonna mistranslate it. But it's something like, the greatest sorrow is for our memories, especially the ones we didn't make.

[James Sexton]

Only unfulfilled love can be truly romantic too. You know, there's something about the beauty of the loss or the pain of it. I think nostalgia is a remembered kind of pain. And I think there's something sort of beautiful about that pain. So I like to look at relationships as chapters in a really long book. And I think, like the best books, there's moments of fear, moments of sadness. There's parts of it that make you cry, parts of it that make you laugh uncontrollably. And I really love that, you know, we're all writing this story.

[Naeema Raza]

It's funny you say that. I often use that metaphor. And I said it yesterday to a friend where we were speaking about why we came keep in touch with exes if we do. And I actually hate the word ex. I think it's like a kind of terrible visual and kind of violent word. But former flames. Former flames.

[James Sexton]

Well, you're introducing someone. My ex wife. I used to introduce her as the mother of my sons. And one day she said to me, like, why do you introduce me that way? She's like, it sounds like I'm like a baby mama you were never married to. And I said, well, I don't like to introduce you by what you're not.

[Naeema Raza]

Right.

[James Sexton]

Like, oh, this is my. Not my wife. Like, this is my ex wife. Like, I'd rather say what you are to me, which is you are the mother of my kids. And she was like, oh, okay. I guess if you parse it like that, it makes more sense. But I think it is very odd that we introduce Exes in that way.

[Naeema Raza]

In that way, just say like, my former boyfriend. My boyfriend at the time.

[James Sexton]

It would be really cool. In European, you do the like, that's my former lover.

[Naeema Raza]

That's what I say. I love that one.

[James Sexton]

It makes you sound really cool. My former lover.

[Naeema Raza]

I like saying former flame because you never know that how long it burned and you never know if it'll come back. Sometimes they do, you know, men sometimes are like cockers. They can come back.

[James Sexton]

They just keep coming back. Yeah. And women just always go away very gracefully.

[Naeema Raza]

No, they go away like crazy people. But then they never come back. I feel like.

[James Sexton]

Do they? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That hasn't been my experience. But maybe I'm a harder habit to break. I don't know.

[Naeema Raza]

We'll dig into that. But I was saying to a friend yesterday that I feel that every person I've been with, they hold the keys to some chapter of my life.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. And a relationship's an ecosystem, you know, like, like any ecosystem, you know, you. You add a lizard to it. It. You don't have the old ecosystem plus a lizard. You have like a whole new ecosystem because the lizard eats this bug and that bug no longer eats this plant. And that plant doesn't grow the way it used to. So now it changes the stream. And if you take the lizard out, you don't go back to the old ecosystem because now the whole thing's been fundamentally changed. So I like to take a very ecological approach to relationships in general and think about the fact that who you are at the conclusion of a relationship is not who you were when you entered it. And now with this person leaving your life in some fashion, you're. You're changed. So you will be a different version of yourself. And I have found as a 53 year old man that, you know, I think back on sort of the Wikipedia article of my relationships and you know, what felt like just catastrophic giant. The world is ending. You know, breakups. It's like a foot. Oh yeah. We dated for like a year and a half. Yeah. You know. Oh yeah. She's lovely. Her mom is so nice. I miss her mom sometimes. Like, and we're. And we. And you, by the way, you're in this ecosystem. Like, I miss a lot of my ex girlfriend's moms.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, total.

[James Sexton]

Like, I didn't have. I had a complicated relationship with my own mother. I had mom stuff in terms of like not having moms around. And I really, like, I was very blessed that almost every One of my ex girlfriends. Their mom was like a pleasure and liked me and I loved that energy of being around them. And so when we broke up, I remember thinking like, oh shit, like I'm gonna miss her more, mom, you know, like, Nina, I miss your mom. Like Stephanie, I miss your mom. Like there's a lot of moms call this man. Yeah, call me. Like, I'm out here. You didn't break up with me, you know, it wasn't you.

[Naeema Raza]

I have that too. And I think because my parents were older that I often like really click with someone's parents. And there's the second part of the breakup which is like, oh, I have to break up with our family. I love their family.

[James Sexton]

Well, I'm on the other side of that now because I have a 28 year old son who just got married. And you know, I remember when he said, oh, we're getting married. They were law school sweethearts, had been together for. She's amazing. She's an incredible woman. You know, if you think like sort of more philosophically about what's happening there, like my son, like, who I taught that the cow says moo. Now he's six four. But like he was, you know, pint size when I met him. He like, he comes home and he's like, oh, she's gonna be in our family now. And you're like, wait, what? Who? Like, she's gonna be in our family? Like, I don't. You're sleeping with her. I'm not. Like, I don't have like the bond to her that you want. I've met her four times. What do you mean she's going to be in our family?

[Naeema Raza]

I thought you were going to say something like really sweet and it said, you're just weird.

[James Sexton]

It was just. It's weird that someone's like, this person's going to be in your family now. And by the way, thank God, she's wonderful.

[Naeema Raza]

She's the lizard in your ecosystem.

[James Sexton]

She's a new lizard in the ecosystem and she's made the whole forest lovely. But there is something strange about this person is now going to be in our family. Because my kid has decided, oh yeah, this person's gonna be in our family unilaterally.

[Naeema Raza]

He's decided she's his favorite person and.

[James Sexton]

She is his favorite person. And for some reason he's her favorite person. Which I'm like, that's wild because I know this kid.

[Naeema Raza]

He's probably your favorite person too.

[James Sexton]

He's one of my favorite people. He's in the running, you know, he's. I had to, like, my whole apartment smelled like Axe body spray for years.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, really?

[James Sexton]

When he was a teenager. Boy funk. Oh, that's the worst. Well, the only thing worse than being a teenage boy is raising them. It's really. The girls are challenging, but they're also, you know, the old saying of, you know, like, your daughter is your daughter for life and your son is your son till he finds a wife.

[Naeema Raza]

I think it's different. I think it's like girls and their dads and moms and their sons. It's like girls.

[James Sexton]

And I kind of am jealous of that. I. I wish I'd had the chance to have that experience because, like, girl. The way a girl loves a good dad, even as an adult, is something to stand in awe of.

[Naeema Raza]

People will often and be like, why are you single? And I'll. If I'm single at the time, and I'll say, I think there are two types of single women. There are single women with good daddy issues, and there's single women with bad daddy issues. And I'm definitely in, like, the good daddy issue category. It's like, your bar is so high.

[James Sexton]

So high. Because you know how it is to be deeply loved by a man and adored by a man. And you're not for the first time hearing from a guy who's a potential suitor that you're the most beautiful girl and you're so special and so wonderful. Cause you're dad has been saying that to you for your whole life. So there's something really amazing about that.

[Naeema Raza]

And even more than that, like, seeing his relationship with my mother. My father passed away a few years ago because he was older when I was born, but, like, to my dad's dying breath, like, if you offered him something, he'd always be like, did you offer it to your mom first? And he was like that generation of, like, responsible, devoted family man.

[James Sexton]

I mean, there's something that type of. Of manhood or that type of masculinity for me is like the ideal one. Like, the one where. Where a man is very excited to be in the role of provider and very excited to be in the role of protector and. And, you know, really enjoys that and sees, like, that sense of, like, service to the family as the ideal. Like, I. I think that's a really healthy pursuit. And I think that when it's done the right way, I think it's a really beautiful contribution to the family unit, to the community, to the society, and to the world. It's not at the moment, I think having its moment. Like, I think young men are having a hard time right now, and there's a lot of smart people talking about what that means and why it's happening and what to do with it. And as a father of two sons, and as a, you know, I was a young man, I understand, you know, some of those unique challenges. I think a world where men are flailing. Flailing is never going to be a good world for women. And I think a world where women are flailing is never going to be a good world for men. I think we really need each other. Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. Some audience questions.

[James Sexton]

Let's do it.

[Naeema Raza]

Actually, before we ask this question, let me just ask you. You have talked about yourself as, like, a weapon in the courtroom. You're like a gun. And you get. And you also said, point me at.

[James Sexton]

Someone, and a gun in the hands of a good person can protect. And the gun in the hands of a villain is dangerous.

[Naeema Raza]

Is that a little bit like an nra? Like, guns don't kill people. People kill people.

[James Sexton]

No one could argue with the accuracy of that. Like, that is true. I. I'm not a big NRA guy, but I definitely. Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. The part they leave out is they go, guns don't kill people. People kill people. No, no. People with guns kill people. And people with, you know, people with fully automatic firearms kill a large number of people in a really short time.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[James Sexton]

So that's the part they leave out, which I. I don't think is like, the kind of thing so small you could leave it out without impacting the substantive value of the argument. But I am a weapon. Like, our judicial system is designed that each person is entitled to zealous advocacy within the bounds of law. So my job sometimes is to obfuscate the truth, and my job sometimes is to bring the truth to light.

[Naeema Raza]

Have you ever had a win since you went in divorces, have you ever had a win that made you feel guilty?

[James Sexton]

All the time. All the time. I wouldn't say it's a. I have a successful outcome, meaning the client has an objective, and I achieve the objective. I help achieve the objective. I don't feel as good about it as if I was helping a worthy person obtain what I consider to be a morally correct outcome, but it doesn't keep me up nights. I represent a client, and I represent a system. And I don't always believe in the client, but I always believe in the system and this other side of the coin of Our system of due process is that everyone has an advocate. And you have to accept that. You have to accept that in order for that system to work, the villain has to have an advocate. And so there's a line from Rhesus Sardonicus I used to have hanging in my office that I've resigned myself to temporary complicity with evil in order to accomplish certain strategic objectives for people whose suffering is greater than my need to maintain mor purity. So I do not consider myself someone who needs to maintain moral purity. So I'm comfortable being a weapon.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. Michelle asked, who don't you end up representing, and why?

[James Sexton]

Poor people, because they can't afford me. Very often I represent some people pro bono through domestic violence projects that I work with, but I don't anymore really represent people that don't have money. Like, people. People who can afford to hire me are usually people that have money.

[Naeema Raza]

Since you have a lesson. How does rich people divorce look different to poor people divorce?

[James Sexton]

Overall, rich people divorce is harder and easier. It's harder in the sense that they have more things, so it's harder to divide those things. And also, they have less of an incentive to be reasonable because they have a lot of money available for council fees. So if, you know, most people wouldn't spend $50,000 arguing over whether Thanksgiving, for the purposes of visitation, should be defined as Wednesday through Sunday or just Thursday for the holiday. But if you've got $20 million, you might be willing to spend 50 grand on that. I have no right to tell you whether or not, like, I would eat turkey another day. But if, you know, if you're somebody that. That's important to you, you have the right. Just like I wouldn't buy a car for a half a million dollars, But I know I have clients who own 10 cars worth way more than that because they have lots of money. It's easier in the sense that when people can barely afford the home they have and the cell phone they have and the singular family plan they have, and now they need two split that. Yeah, it' so rich people, like, I have a client who's like, okay, so I'll keep this house in the Hamptons, and we'll buy her another house in the Hamptons, and I'll have this apartment, and she'll buy an apartment. And you know what? We'll buy another apartment. Or we'll have a nanny, and the nanny can travel between our two homes. So what does money do? Like, I've been broke and I've had money. Now it's Much easier having money. It's great, because all that it does is it doesn't solve. Like, you still get sick. The people you love still get sick. It doesn't solve the problem. But, God, it makes so many things easier. Like, if my phone breaks, I don't have to go, oh, my God, what am I. Go get another phone. Like, I don't have to worry about what something costs. That's amazing.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. What consistent mistake do smart people keep making in divorce?

[James Sexton]

Wanting their story to be told in a way that they think will vindicate them, thinking that the divorce process will give them closure. I tend to believe that closure is a myth that people think that there's going to be. Because Hollywood told them that there's going to be, like, some moment where you and your ex will, like, have talk. They'll have some conversation or some conflict, and then you'll, like, both realize, like, okay, like, this is it and this is closure. Like, it's just not how it works. It's not how relationships end.

[Naeema Raza]

I appreciate that you believe in redemption, but not closure. I think that's.

[James Sexton]

I think closure is a myth, actually. I just think it's a myth. You know, I did hospice work for a really long time, and the most. The most painful thing I would hear from people when their loved person, who we were a volunteer for, would pass away is they would say, like, it's not that they died. I knew they were gonna die. It's that they died without dignity. Because they were the way you are when you die. Like, having been in the room with hundreds of people when they die. Like, I know what it looks like and sounds like and smells like, and I know what the agonal breath sounds like. And we do people a tremendous disservice by having them think something unnatural was happening just because it looks different than on tv, where you go, I loved you when.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[James Sexton]

And yet nobody dies like that.

[Naeema Raza]

That's your propaganda.

[James Sexton]

Like, right. So. So to me, well. And that was actually what my master's thesis was on. It was actually called the Semantics of Death and Dying. Metaphor and mortality. Yeah. You should publish it.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, I will read it.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, you can look at it.

[Naeema Raza]

I will read it. I've only seen one person die. It was just my dad, but I was holding his hand when he died.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. I was holding my mom's hand when she passed.

[Naeema Raza]

It's really nice.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. It's lovely to be connected to another person when they. When they. When they cross over. And the feeling that. That you were there for a moment, that's so important. But there's something really beautiful about that moment if you are ready for it, if you're ready for what it looks like and sounds like and feels like. And we don't do that with people. We don't teach them that it's okay. It's gonna be scary. It's gonna sound different, it's gonna look different. You won't always remember. I remember thinking, will I always remember my mom this way? Will this be the image of her this whittled away from cancer? And the truth is, like, memory is kind. I remember her with hair. I remember her healthy and happy and smiling. But sometimes it's a lovely thing.

[Naeema Raza]

Takes some time, sometimes to take time.

[James Sexton]

But I think the myth of closure is tied to something like that. It's this idea that, like, the divorce process will give you that closure. It won't. The divorce process is like someone dying. They have to die for you to start to heal. Like. And I think that the stages of grief from Elisabeth Kubler Ross are applicable to divorce. Cause divorce is the death of a man. Marriage.

[Naeema Raza]

Ilana asked. Oh, I have this too. Tips for dating a divorcee.

[James Sexton]

That's a good one. And statistically it's important because a lot of people are divorced. If they have children, it's going to be different than if they don't. But I would definitely say, overall, if you're going to date someone who's divorced, you know, realize that they've been through a unique experience that's not that unique, but that they probably have some scars from that relationship. They might have a better sense of what they want and don't want. So they. They might set boundaries in a different way that might feel abrupt to you, but it kind of has nothing to do with you. You know, as a divorced man myself, like, I know for me, post divorce there was this real sense of, okay, I'm going to be very clear, because I think that it's, like, dangerous to not be clear in relationships. So to say, like, this close, no closer. Or these are the things I'm willing to do, and these are the things I'm not willing to do. Or these are the compromises. Compromises I'm willing to make. And these are the compromises I'm not. I find that people who are divorced sometimes have a clearer sense of who they are in relationship and who they're not and who they've been unsuccessful at being in a relationship. You can't pretend that you meant to get divorced. Nobody meant to get divorced like you meant for it to work. So I think that piece is big. I think you have to be prepared to accept the fact that this person had a very deep relationship with another human being, which requires you to have a certain sense of self. You know, I think this discourse that's all around right now about body count and things like that, like that has a lot to do with, you know, people's insecurity over people's past and the sense that I tend to believe because of what I do for a living and also my experiences of being and observing human beings is that we're kind of born again in every relationship and we bring different things to it. So to me, like someone who had a past where they had lots of relationships, relationships, I don't think that that means that they're destined to be that way. Just like if someone hasn't had a lot of relationships in their past, it means that they're going to be fidelitous for their whole life. Like that person might be like a dog let out of a cage. So I think ultimately a divorced person, you're going to have to get used to the fact that they have had a deep connection to another human being to the point where they decided out of 8 billion options, they're choosing that person. So if you're not the kind of person that can handle that at some point they felt a deep connection to another person, I think you're gonna have a hard time with that.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, I have this thing which is I feel like if I'm gonna date a divorced person, I wanna know the quality of their relationship with their former partner.

[James Sexton]

Sure.

[Naeema Raza]

That's important, especially when there are kids involved.

[James Sexton]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

So I say like, I'll date a divorce guy with kids if he has a good relationship with your mother. And I'm totally happy to date a widower as long as he didn't kill his wife, which is a similar parler.

[James Sexton]

I think it's harder with a widower because a widower, like we put a halo sometimes on the dead. And if you're divorced, like I've always had the ability in post divorce relationships that if anyone feels any jealousy towards my ex, like when my kids were young and I would, if I was dating someone, talk about, you know, they would talk about their mom and if they got jealous, which is normal and natural, like to hear someone talking about their ex in fond terms, even though they're doing it for the benefit of their children, you know, I understood that. But I would say if I wanted to be married to that person, I would Be still like, we're not together anymore. Like, that should tell you something.

[Naeema Raza]

One of my best friend's husbands asked me this question, and it was quite shocking to get from him. I want to divorce in a year. What do I do or not do? I believe he's asking for a friend.

[James Sexton]

Oh, meaning how do you like what we call divorce planning? Yeah, well, it depends on if you want to approach this in a being planning, like in a pragmatic way or tactical way.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[James Sexton]

Because I happen to be of the belief that Patton had, which is, if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck. So I think if I know a year in advance like, that, you're going to get divorce. There's all kinds of nefarious things I could suggest that you would do to prepare yourself for that, to increase the quality of optics in favor of your claims and decrease the quality of optics in favor of the claims likely to be asserted by your spouse. Like, there's so many things like I. The minute you are seriously thinking about divorce, that's when you should go see a divorce lawyer, because you should start thinking about how to tactically approach the situation. I have a lot of people in my office currently, apparently.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[James Sexton]

Who probably won't get divorced for a year or two, but they're already starting to tactically plan. The further out in advance I know you're going to start shooting, the better. You come to me sooner, right? Like, come to me as soon as you can. Before we start doing any, like. Let me use a metaphor, because sometimes those are easier. When I was a kid, my parents used to have lots of barbecues. My mom would go to the store and she would buy lots of, like, lovely groceries, and then she would make a marinade and she would do all this stuff, and then my dad would take it and put it on the grill and then take it off the grill, and everyone would say, oh, my God, Noah, you're such a great cook. He did this much, she did this much. Being in a courtroom is putting it on the grill. Got it. Like, when I'm. My favorite thing in the world is being in a courtroom doing a trial. But by the time we go in there, we've won or lost this case to some degree. Like, a lot of it is the prep. So I think it's the same kind of thing. Like, by the time you start your divorce, there's so much that could have been manipulated and sort of done tactically.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. James asked, have you ever seen a couple get divorced that you thought they should get Back together?

[James Sexton]

Yes.

[Naeema Raza]

And did they?

[James Sexton]

No. No.

[Naeema Raza]

What made you think they should get back together?

[James Sexton]

I've seen people that. I feel like if they'd given themselves some time and a chance, they probably would have figured it out. They could have figured it out. It most often happens. It's very sad. The divorce rate between people who lose a child is very high.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, it's like seven.

[James Sexton]

Because they remind each other of this unmeasurable loss. And I've seen a few people in that situation. I've done divorces in that situation. And there's a part of me that feels like if they had found a way to grieve and if they'd found a way to move through their pain and attend to their sorrow, that they weren't really. They wouldn't lose each other in the process. Like, they're stacking losses on top of losses. And that made me very sad.

[Naeema Raza]

There's lots of other questions I have for you, mostly about money, the finances. Someone asked a really good question. Jesse asked, how often are both people aware of their financial reality?

[James Sexton]

Usually one person is more aware of the financial reality than the other. Yeah, sometimes. Quite often. I would say men are very much in control of the finances and have a lot more information about the finances than the women. But it's quite often that one spouse is the person in charge of.

[Naeema Raza]

Should you be able to foia someone's, like, divorce proceedings. I know there are discussions with you FOIA being a Freedom of Information act for people.

[James Sexton]

No. Matrimonial fires are sealed. And I think for a reason, because there's so much private information that you get about their assets and liabilities and expenses. And you just know so much about people by the end of a case that it's shocking. I get to look really, like, underneath everybody's everything. It's really amazing.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, speaking of closure, it's the end of our conversation today, but we'll be back.

[James Sexton]

Part one is over.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, part one is over. But we end every episode asking our guests what's a question that they have that they don't know the answer to? What's a dumb question that we could help answer for you the next time you come back?

[James Sexton]

I have a very practical question that's haunted me for many years that I bet someone would be able to answer for me. What is graph paper actually for?

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, my God, I love graph paper.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, I like to color in it. But, like, what is it actually for? Like, I was always very bad at geometry. I think it has something to do with geometry. I Just always felt like there's intelligent people people and then there's, like, intelligent people. Like, the level. Who would know how to use graph paper? Like, what do all those other buttons on the calculator do? Yeah, like those really weird ones that look like a symbol of something that. I don't know what it is like to me, that's a smart person.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, we're going to find the use.

[James Sexton]

Yeah, I don't think Diplo would be a good choice. No, I think you should find someone who could. If you can answer this.

[Naeema Raza]

I can actually. He probably uses.

[James Sexton]

He would totally know how to use grass graph paper.

[Naeema Raza]

He is a graph paper.

[James Sexton]

And he would know what a lot of those buttons do. Excellent.

[Naeema Raza]

He's already been on the show, but we're gonna. We're gonna email him, let him know.

[James Sexton]

I'll give him, like a coupon for a divorce if he can answer it.

[Naeema Raza]

You gotta send him a graph skin. A graph paper notebook.

[James Sexton]

Yeah. There you go. That's it.

[Naeema Raza]

All right. Thank you so much for being with us.

[James Sexton]

A lot of fun.

[Naeema Raza]

Jim Sexton. And you can find his book how to Stay in Love, or the British version, How to Not it up, wherever.

[James Sexton]

You get your books, wherever fine books are sold. Or you can listen to me for eight and a half hours on audible if you like to.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. Thank you so much for being here.

[James Sexton]

Thank you for having me. Pleasure.

[Naeema Raza]

I feel like I would have paid Jim Sexton's rate for his advice and that time. And I'm so grateful that he came and spent the time with me today and that he will be back for more. Smart girl. Dumb questions. I entered this conversation very curious about divorce, which I guess for me would be jumping the gun since I haven't even gotten married yet. But I feel like there's so much to learn from someone like Jen about how we start relationships. I went into that conversation, I think, dumb, about the practicalities of divorce and marriage and how it works out. I left a lot smarter about how divorce isn't just rooted in what he called the number one cause for divorce, this kind of disconnection, but also the kind of layered social trends that we're seeing, how they have collapsed the institution of marriage over time. I really appreciated hearing how Jim would redesign marriage. And I think if we are going to have a technological review committee for the technology of marriage, it would make sense to fill it with divorce attorneys. So send me your questions for Jim as well, because we'll definitely have a part two with him. You can drop them on socials. At Smart Girl Dumb Questions just slide into our DMs. You can also send me an email at naimaraza101mail.com or call us at 1-855-MY-UN that's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Today's episode was produced with Desta Wonderad, Dana Boulute and Melissa Lee Gibson. It was edited by Darlene Achiem and mixed and engineered by Johnny Simon. I'm your host, Naeema Raza, and we'll see you next week on Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Sorry, this is your Valentine's Day message for me.

[James Sexton]

Sam.