The Divorce Lawyer Reveals Why Marriages Really Fail

Summary

---

Podcast Summary

We Need To Talk with Paul C. Brunson
Episode: The Divorce Lawyer Reveals Why Marriages Really Fail
Date: May 5, 2026
Guest: James Sexton (Famed Divorce Attorney & Author)

---

Episode Overview

In this candid and eye-opening conversation, Paul C. Brunson invites James Sexton—often dubbed the world’s most famous divorce lawyer—to unpack the real reasons marriages fail. Sexton blends his hard-won legal expertise with heartfelt human insights, challenging common assumptions about marriage, divorce, and long-term relationships. From the myth of “winning” a divorce to the radical idea of consulting a divorce lawyer before marriage, the episode swings from legal tactics to vulnerable truths, revealing why satisfaction (not just endurance) should be the measure of marital success.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Uncomfortable Truth About Marriage and Divorce

• Every Marriage Ends

  • [01:27] “I hope your marriage ends in death. Because someday, this will end either in death or divorce. But marriages fail 70% of the time.” —James Sexton
  • Sexton frequently emphasizes that, no matter how much we romanticize it, every marriage ends—either with death or in separation. Keeping this in mind should inspire us not to take love for granted.

• Barriers to Entry, Not Exit

  • [05:45] Sexton advocates for making marriage harder to enter and easier to exit:
    • “Everybody thinks that barriers to exit is the answer... That makes zero sense to me... You get married, you don’t even get a pamphlet... you just did the most legally significant thing you will ever do other than dying.”

Expectations, Prenups, and Ownership

• Lack of Education About Marriage

  • [07:11] Most people only discover what their marriage meant legally when facing divorce.
  • [08:16] Prenups remain taboo. Even celebrities often deny signing them publicly.
  • Notable Quote: “Every marriage has a prenup. It’s either written by people who love each other or by the government.” —James Sexton [09:02]

• Conversation as Safety & Romance

  • [10:06] Sexton reframes the prenup conversation as an act of deep care:
    • “The conversation around a prenup could be the most beautiful and romantic conversation, because it’s about—how do you feel safe? How do I make you feel safe?”
    • “[11:23] If I love you, I don't think you can feel loved if you don't feel safe.”

The Reality of Divorce: Tactics and Humanity

• Divorce Isn’t Winning—It’s Survival

  • [39:19] “You don’t win a divorce. You survive it. You get out the other side with as much intact as you possibly can, but you don’t win.”
  • [41:05] “Not only can you not win a divorce, you can’t win a fight with your spouse. If you win, you lost.”

• Preparation and Advocacy

  • [42:33] “Go talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later. ... I’m going to make the argument right now that you should see a divorce lawyer before you get married.”
  • Sexton’s tactical advice: know your rights, understand potential custody standards, and recognize that people divorce the person they married—and their personality under stress is usually a more extreme version of themselves.

Why Do Marriages Fail? Symptoms vs. Causes

• Core Issue: Disconnection, Not Just Cheating

  • [58:12] “Cheating... is the symptom of the underlying illness. The underlying illness is disconnection. Because happy people don’t cheat on each other, satisfied people don’t cheat on each other.”

• Measuring Success: Satisfaction, Not Duration

  • [15:16] “Divorce just means catastrophic failure. ... You don’t get married to say I hope we can stay together even if we’re completely miserable.”

• Staggering Stats

  • [60:13] "86% of people are remarried within five years of their divorce."
  • [61:07] “Second marriages have a much higher satisfaction rate than first marriages, but they have a slightly higher failure rate.”

Maintenance and Repair: The Real ‘Work’ of Marriage

• The Importance of Checking In

  • [29:03] “Just keep checking in. ... I want you to tell me three things I did this week that made you feel loved. Three things I could have done better.”
    • Regular, honest check-ins are more powerful than grand gestures.

• Little Things Make the Difference

  • [32:29] “It's just these little things this person does that make you feel seen and appreciated...”

• How Arguments Go Wrong

  • [33:02] “If you do that consistently and your partner still doesn’t show up for you...this thing might be irreparably broken. ... Both people have to be invested.”
  • [34:43] “If I say, ‘why don’t we have sex like we used to?’, all I do is create defensiveness.”

Human Complexity & The Role of the Divorce Lawyer

• Representing People at Their Worst
  • [26:22] “I genuinely believe in the system of representation that gives everyone the right to due process and the right to an advocate.”
  • [27:22] “The line of good and evil runs through the human heart... There is evil in me. ... Just like there is in all of us.”

Memorable Moments & Standout Stories

• The Beauty and Pain of Relationships

  • [14:44] “I get misty eyed at every wedding I go to. ... And somehow the minute we walk out of that wedding, I think we just start habits of mind that take this thing apart piece by piece. No single raindrop’s responsible for the flood, but the flood comes to many.”

• Amicable Isn't Interesting—But Most Divorces Are

  • [22:27] “Most divorces aren’t ugly. ... They’re sad. They’re painful.”
  • [22:54] “Sometimes happily ever means happily ever after separately.”

• Most Memorable Case

  • [54:22] Sexton tells a harrowing but inspiring story about helping a domestic violence victim:
    • “By the time this longtime abuser even knew, [his wife] was on a plane to California... with their daughter. Orders of protection and temporary orders of custody... All done before he even knew it was coming.”

On Marriage as a Priority

• Cherishing the Finite

  • [68:06] Moving segment about love’s pricelessness:
    • “Would you give up Jill for $10,000? ... For a million? ... For $100 million and 30 days left with her? ... No. Because the value of the time goes up. That’s love. There’s nothing else you own [about] which you would answer that way.”
    • “We are losing everything, all the time, always. ... That is not at all pessimistic. ... That's the most beautiful thing in the world.”

• Love as a Verb and a Feeling

  • [75:55] “Love is a feeling, and love is a verb... It’s also what we do.”
  • [76:01] “At the start of marriage... the goal is, someday I want you to be able to say: I helped you become the most authentic version of yourself, and you helped me.”

---

Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• On the End of Marriage:

  • [01:27] “I hope your marriage ends in death. Because someday, this will end either in death or in divorce.” —James Sexton

• On Prenups:

  • [09:02] “Every marriage has a prenup. It's either one that's written by the government... or it's a prenup that's written by the two people who love each other more than 8 billion other options.” —James Sexton

• On Real Marital Success:

  • [15:13] “I think [marriage satisfaction rate] should be the metric we're looking at... If somebody said to me, ‘Oh my, I was married 50 years, we were happy for 5 of them...’ What did you win?” —James Sexton

• On Preparation:

  • [42:33] “You should see a divorce lawyer before you get married. ... You should understand before you get married what a court would look at and think about in a divorce.”

• On Maintaining Connection:

  • [29:42] “Every Saturday, spend ten minutes... Tell me three things I did this week that made you feel loved... Three things I could have done better…”

• On Why People Cheat:

  • [58:12] “Cheating is a symptom of the underlying illness. The underlying illness is disconnection. Because happy people don't cheat on each other.”

• On Value of Partnership:

  • [68:43] “That's love. ... There's nothing else in your life other than a person or an animal you love that you would answer that way.” —James Sexton

• On Being Your Partner’s Favorite Person:

  • [106:16] “If you can get back to first principles... You're my favorite person.”

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------|-------------------| | Barriers to Entry vs. Exit for Marriage | [05:45] | | The True Role of Prenups | [08:16] – [10:06] | | Satisfaction vs. Longevity in Marriage | [15:00] – [15:16] | | What Divorce Actually Is | [16:24] | | Sexton's Approach as a Trial Lawyer | [20:02] – [21:06] | | Why Most Divorces Aren't Ugly | [22:26] | | Core Reason Marriages Fail | [58:12] | | Marriage Satisfaction Data & Remarriage | [60:13] – [61:07] | | The Value of Time and Love | [68:06] – [68:43] | | Love as Verb & The Michelangelo Effect | [75:55] – [77:04] | | Memorable Conversation with Son | [100:50] – [106:10] | | Practical Marriage Maintenance—The “Check-in” | [29:03], [77:26] |

---

Couples Analysis Segment

• [83:31] Discussion of public celebrity marriages (Travis & Kelsey; Bezos & Scott; Harry & Meghan):
  • Factors weighed included wealth, fame, support systems, prenuptial agreements, and vulnerabilities.
  • Key advice: For high-stakes individuals, prenups are a must; fame makes everything harder; and “yes men” in your circle can be a danger to real accountability and lasting connection.

---

Takeaways

• The root cause of marital failure isn’t the “big things” like cheating—it’s the underlying, often slow-growing disconnection.
• True marital success is measured in satisfaction and support, not mere endurance.
• Preventative work—ongoing honest communication, realistic expectations, clear agreements, and seeking advice early (even before marrying)—is far more effective than crisis-response.
• Love, at its core, involves making your partner feel safe, seen, and chosen—every day.
• Even the fiercest divorce lawyer is, at heart, deeply romantic, believing in both the beauty and the fragility of human connection.

---

For those considering marriage, in a relationship, or navigating divorce, this episode is a call for radical honesty, humility, and relentless care—for your partner, your relationship, and, ultimately, for yourself.

---

Host: Paul C. Brunson
Guest: James Sexton
Podcast: We Need to Talk
Original Air Date: May 5, 2026

---

Transcript

[James Sexton]

Focus features in Blumhouse Obsession.

[Podcast Host]

When I have a crush on a

[James Sexton]

guy no one knows.

Be careful.

I wish Nikki loved me more than anyone in the entire world.

Who you wish for? Obsession is 96% fresh on rotten Tomatoes.

I love you so, so so so much.

It's blood soaked nightmare fuel.

What kind of spills you put on her?

You have been warned. Obsession rated R under 17 animated without parent only theaters May 15 with special engagements in Dolby.

[Podcast Host]

This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more slow burns, second chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummer ahead to learn more. See you this summer.

[James Sexton]

I hope your marriage ends in death. Because someday this will end either in death or divorce. But marriages fail 70% of the time. And so just work on these three things.

You are the most famous divorce attorney in the world.

What is the problem to which marriage is a solution?

I don't. You tell me.

Me? Yeah. You're married. What do you want me to tell you? Listen, here's what I'll tell you. People would answer, I'm lonely. Guess what? There's a special loneliness when you're unhappily married because you've got sitting next to you your person.

Yes.

And you feel so alone. I just think there's something really beautiful about our desire to love and to be loved. Like I remember saying once, do you know how much I love you? Do you know I love you because I want you to feel my love.

How do we determine if we should be divorced or just simply work on the satisfaction?

The first step is always, this is wild. So this is why, like, you should see a divorce lawyer before you get married. You just did the most legally significant thing you will ever do other than dying. And you think about, what cake will we have?

Okay, what are three things that you wish people knew before they got married?

Hey there.

Before we begin the episode, I just want to say thank you for choosing we need to talk. Doing this podcast is one of the greatest joys of my life and I want to continue to share it with you. So hit follow. And the Bell icon. It takes just a second, and it helps us to continue to grow this podcast. James Sexton, we need to talk.

Let's talk.

All right, so first I have to gas you up.

Okay.

All right, I'm going to gas you up.

I'll take it.

So we started this podcast a little over a year ago. I created a list of people that I most wanted to interview. You were on that list.

That's very. Wow.

You were on that list. So I'm going to say, in my opinion, you are the most famous divorce attorney in the world.

I probably am at this point. Which is a little bit like saying, like, you are the best looking guy in the leper colony. Like, yes, I am the most recognizable and well known divorce lawyer.

Are you proud of that?

Yeah, I am proud of that. I love what I do. I love my job. I love my work. I still spend four or five days a week in court. I've. I've worked very hard to hone my craft as a trial lawyer. I represent amazing people who trust me with the most important things in their lives. Their children, their wealth. And I love being in court. I love the art of argument. I love advocacy. I love being in a courtroom. I love cross examination. I love everything about being a trial lawyer. And I also love the fact that through sort of. I don't want to say no fault of my own, but through sort of a fortuitous tripping into this quasi celebrity, people know me as a divorce lawyer now.

Yes, they do. Now, I will say this. I hope I never have to use you.

Good. Yes. I hope you don't either. Well, I'll say it even worse. I hope your marriage ends in death. Oh, God. I mean, it's the truth. Yeah. Every marriage ends.

True.

It ends in death or divorce. And when you say to someone, congratulations on your marriage, what you're saying is, congratulations, I hope this ends in death, because it's always gonna end. And I actually think there's a reason to keep that in your line of sight. Because if you don't keep that in your line of sight, you make the mistake of thinking that love is permanently gifted rather than loaned. And really, every day you get up and make a decision to continue to loan your love yourself, your being, your connection to this other person. But I think we just very quickly go, okay, I've got that covered. I've got this now. And I'm just gonna focus on other things. Yes. And we just let that gradually fall apart.

So let me ask you this. I've had a theory, and you tell me if this is nonsense or this is a decent theory.

Okay.

That marriage should be much harder to get into but much easier to get out of.

Yeah. So we share this perspective, do we? It is wildly unpopular. Everybody thinks that barriers to exit is the answer. Get rid of no fault divorce, make it harder for people to get out of marriage. And I have to tell you, like, that makes zero sense to me. Like, you buy a house, okay. You have a lead paint disclosure, a hud, one that explains the loan, all kinds of documentation that explains the transaction you're engaging in. You get married, you don't even get a pamphlet. You get nothing. You just did the most legally significant thing you will ever do other than dying. You changed your property ownership rights, your rights and obligations related to supporting another person, your estate rights of who inherits what. You've changed so many of your rights and no one even knows they did it. They think about what cake will we have.

Exactly.

They don't think about what I just did from a legal status standpoint. And that's amazing. The first time most people get an education in what happened legally the day they got married is in my office sitting across from me. Which, by the way, the worst time to learn how to fight is when you're in a fight. Yes. And so it's a very bizarre thing that we, you know, we don't have more barriers to entry.

Yes.

And I think there are. If we, you know, if we stopped and said, okay, wait, what would this look like? If it made sense if we took the problem of over 50% of marriages ending in divorce. Right. Which, I mean, think about that number. Like, that's the number that catastrophically failed, that ended in divorce. What percentage stayed together for the kids but are unhappy? What percentage stayed together for economic reasons, but they're very unfulfilled in that relationship? 10%? 20? Now you have something that fails 70% of the time. Wouldn't you take that seriously? Wouldn't you look at that and say, we need to be cautious about entering into this? But we don't.

So why do you think this is. And this is interesting, because I didn't even realize that we would go in this direction. And why are we not spending more time talking about expectations? Why are we not even discussing prenups? I don't even know what percentage of people have prenups, but I would Imagine it's small.

It's very hard to say because they're not filed anywhere.

Oh, interesting.

They're not filed anywhere. A prenup is held in the office of the two council who drafted only enters into, like, a record if the marriage ends in divorce. And even then, it's part of a sealed matrimonial record. So you'd never know. And let me tell you, there are a lot of people that have prenups that you don't know that they have prenups. Like, I've represented some public figures who I watch an interview with them, and they're asked, oh, did you guys have a prenup? You're getting married? And they go, oh, no, we didn't want it. And I'm, yes, you do. It's in my safe. You signed it on my conference room table. But of course, attorney client privilege, no one's allowed to say. And people still feel like if they acknowledge that they have a prenuptial agreement, that somehow they're betraying, like, their commitment to the marriage, which, you know, my feeling on that has always been and continues to be. Every marriage has a prenup. Every marriage has a prenup. If a prenup. All a prenup is, is a set of rules that are going to govern this relationship in the event it ends in something other than death. Because every marriage has a prenup. It's either one that's written by the government and subject to change by the government with or without your permission, and then you can't opt out of it if they change it to something you don't like, or it's a prenup that's written by the two people that allegedly love each other more than the 8 billion other options. Now, for me, my relationship, my rules. I wouldn't look at a politician like, I've never walked into the Department of motor Vehicles and said, yeah, these guys are killing it. This is great. We should make them in charge of my relationship. The government, whatever political party you're with, sometime in the last 12 years, you have said the government has gone down the toilet, whichever side you're on. Because both sides have had gripes.

It's true.

No matter what country you live, no matter what country you live, every country has had its moment where people go, what did we just do? So you're trusting those people to write your prenuptial agreement. That seems crazy to me. And by the way, it seems like a wasted opportunity because I feel like the conversation, you know, with your soon to be spouse. It's an invitation. Like, the conversation around a prenup to me could be the most beautiful and romantic conversation because it's a conversation about how do you feel safe? How do I make you feel safe? Like someday this will end. Right. And I hope it ends in the two of us passing away many, many years from now.

Right.

But if it doesn't, like having the courage to say to someone, I want to protect you from everyone who could hurt you. Including me. Including me. Because I'm gonna hurt you. Like, I hope only a little. I hope I hurt your feelings. Cause I say the wrong thing. I hope. But we will hurt each other. Like, we will love each other and we'll hurt each other if we take a long enough journey together. Like, that's. Both of those things will happen. So if I love you, I don't think you can feel loved if you don't feel safe.

Yes. I think a challenge that many people have because I think about myself. I don't have a prenup.

Yeah.

But I also know I had nothing asset wise when I started my marriage. So if we have. If someone feels like they don't have any assets, is a prenup still important?

Yeah, Because I just think it's a rule set. Like, it's just a rule set. Like, I think it's really just buckets. You're creating buckets and saying it's not like you get a prenup and you set it and forget it. And that's it. All you're doing is setting rules and then saying, okay. Like the simplest prenup just says yours, mine, and ours. If it's in your name, it's yours. If it's in my name, it's mine. If it's in joint names, we'll split it 50, 50. And then every time something comes in, you have to put it in which bucket you want to. In whole or in part. Which I think is great because it's an invitation to say, hey, what are we doing with this now? Like, how do we. And it's an invitation for the person, if you can share honestly with each other, to say, like, oh, that doesn't feel good to me. That feels like I'm being excluded from that.

When you said mine, yours, ours.

Yeah.

That's very clean.

Right.

But I think that historically, marriage was for men, always ours. Right. It always was ours. Because when I was doing some research in the UK, this blew my mind. It wasn't until 1975 that women could open a bank account.

Yeah. Isn't that wild?

Right. And so we're talking about, you know, our lifetime, right?

Yeah, it's a lifetime.

So you think about it is it's always been ours. From the male perspective, that could be one. Is that one reason why prenuptial agreements are finally now just being discussed?

Throughout history, like, marriage has been different things at different times. Marriage was originally sort of the union of families for land ownership purposes. And then there was a period of time where marriage became, you know, look at the ceremony of marriage. A woman's thought father walks her down the aisle and gives her to the husband because now she's the husband's property. Now, I have met some of the most feminist women in the world who are just autonomy agencies, C suite executives, and they're feminists and they're girl bossing all the way. And then when you go so at the wedding, like, what are you. And they're like, oh, no, my father will give me a wedding. And I'm like, what, what is this? Like, this is. This is like the most. This institution is completely outdated. Like, this belongs in a society where women aren't allowed to open bank accounts. Their father owns them and then he hands them off to this person. Are you gonna, like, trade five mules? Also, like. But most, you know, we just. I think we just love the idea. Like, it's just so. And by the way, why wouldn't we? It's so lovely. It's the most lovely thing in the world. Like, I. I have been a divorce lawyer for over 25 years. I get misty eyed at every wedding I go to. It's the most lovely thing. And somehow the minute we walk out of that wedding, we start, I think, like, habits of mind that start taking this thing apart piece by piece. And no single raindrop's responsible for the flood.

But the flood comes to many.

Yeah, to most.

To most. To most.

To most. Yeah.

Cause it's interesting, you Talked about, what,

70%, 75%, 56% of marriages end in divorce. Roughly. But then if you factor out another 10 or 20% stay together, unhappily for the children or because they don't want to give away half their stuff, now you're looking at like 76%.

So I interviewed Dr. John and Julie Gottman.

Oh, brilliant. Yeah.

And they shocked me when they told me that their research shows that 80% of marriages are unhappy.

Unhappy. Yeah. So they've spent a lot of time looking at the marriage satisfaction rate.

Yes.

Which actually I think should be the metric we're looking at.

Yes.

Because again, divorce just means catastrophic failure. But really, you don't get married to say, I really hope we can stay together even if we're completely miserable. Like, if somebody said to me, oh my, I was married 50 years, we were happy for five of them, but for 45, we were just absolutely miserable when we did it, we won, I would look at them and say, what did you win?

Yes.

You know, whereas if someone. And again, we all maybe know like one married couple or two married couples that are just. They love it, they're happy, they're in it, you see it on them when they're. And I mean, those people won the lottery. It's incredible. Like they're just. Their lives are by every metric better because they have each other. And that's why I think, you know, we, you know, we keep trying, man. Like, it's the two legged dope, man. We just keep, like, we keep fiending

for it, but we're not winning because you said, so. Divorces, catastrophic failure. But what is divorce exactly? Does it mean? Is it the division of assets? Is it like, technically?

I mean, divorce is technically the termination legally of the marital relationship.

The termination?

Yeah, the termination of the marital. The undoing of the marital relationship. So it is the termination. Now, what does that usually entail? It usually entails deciding custody and access with children, like who's going to have the kids and when, if there are children, then support, which is child support, which is how are we going to pay the expenses related to our children. And spousal support or alimony or maintenance. Every state calls it something different. And then the third piece of what a divorce is is what we call equitable distribution, which is the division of assets. Figuring out who has what and how we're going to divide it. And a lot of, like, horse trading is what lawyers do. So we'll say like, all right, you keep your 401k and I'll keep the house. And that's a lot of what lawyers do. So it's basically just untying of the knot, the unwinding of all the things that happened legally when we got married.

Okay, so now you mentioned your book. I read your book. It was phenomenal. So this is how not to F Up youp Marriage.

Exactly.

Right. Which just came out 2025.

Yep.

And in it, there was something that you mentioned that I want to look at is so as a divorce attorney, your clients are telling you things that they don't even tell their therapist.

100%. Well, there's no, you know, the two people in your life, you should just absolutely lied to are your lawyer and your doctor. Because our only job is to protect you. Everything you tell us is confidential, and that confidentiality even survives your death. So, like, if your client tells you a secret when they die, you're still not allowed to tell anybody that secret. And so tell me the truth. And my job is to protect you. And that's why I think I have a lens, an insight that other people don't have.

Yes, And I agree. I agree. Absolutely. So now when people see you, though, you think it's too late. Like when they come into your office when they're wanting to hire you. At that point, they're not trying to rehabilitate their marriage. Yeah.

I mean, I've said before that I think by the time you get to a divorce lawyer's office, you are in a very bad spot. Now, that's not to say that because you've consulted with a divorce lawyer, it means your marriage is absolutely over. No more so than saying that once you have type 2 diabetes and you've been overweight for an extended period of time, that it's over. Forget it. No. You can lose weight, you can exercise, you can try to manage your health as best you can and rehabilitate the aspects of it that have now been subject to a challenge. But I think we can all agree that if you can work on these things before they get that bad.

Yes.

Like, if you can work, it is so much easier to maintain your weight and maintain good health than it is to let your health go off a cliff and then try to crawl your way back up. Like, my sister's a dentist and she always said to me, if you have a toothache, there's a very limited number of things I can do for you. There's a ton of things I can do to prevent you from ever having a toothache. But by the time you have a toothache, you have caused serious and almost irreparable damage to your tooth. But there's things you could do to never have a toothache. That's what my writing is about. So in my day to day job, my job is to divorce trial lawyer. I handle very contentious, difficult cases because, you know, there are things you do with a scalpel and there are things you do with a chainsaw. I'm a chainsaw. Like, I'm a weapon in court. I'm a weapon. You point me at the other side.

Can you describe some of that, of what you're doing from a weapons standpoint in your.

Yeah, I mean, I describe what I'm doing as full contact storytelling. It's really what it is. I'm a storyteller. Like, my job is to go in and tell the judge a story about who my client is in the context of their marriage and their parenting. Now, what is interesting about that, because people will say to me, like, oh, you're a good storyteller. I'm a great storyteller, and here's why. It's hard enough to be a good storyteller, but tell a story while someone's trying to stop you from telling a story and they're trying to tell the opposite story. That's what you have to be. In a courtroom. In a courtroom, I have to tell you the story of my client. And by the way, my job is to manipulate people's emotional state. That's my job. Like, fundamentally, my job is to manipulate people. I want the judge to like my client and dislike the other side. I want the judge to listen to me and trust me and not trust the other lawyer. I want the other side to feel scared, and I want my client to feel safe. So all I'm trying to do is simultaneously tell a story and tell it in a way that makes all those people feel all those emotions. That's a lot of plates to spin,

regardless of your client, because I would imagine that you're having people come to

you who are, listen, I don't wear the white hat. I always tell people I represent my client, and I represent the system. I don't always believe in the client, but I always believe in the system. That's my role as a lawyer, and I take it seriously. I took an oath to vigorously defend my client within the bounds of advocacy. So I'm gonna win or lose a fair fight. And I will tell you, the truth has a way of coming out in a courtroom. Okay. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, like, sometimes my job is to throw up smoke and to try to, like, make red herrings and detract attention. And I think that's, you know, that's the way the system works. And I think it's fair. But, you know, it's combat. It is combat. It's combat. It's chess. It's thinking about a few moves ahead. It's setting up so the person will go after that, and you can kind of tack around them. It's very strategic, and I absolutely love it.

Yeah. I tell you, every time I hear court cases. Well, should I say divorce cases? They're always framed as nasty.

Well, I think that's actually because What I will tell you is, thankfully, the majority of divorces are not ugly.

They're not?

No. They're sad. They're painful. Like, as a divorce lawyer, when you tell people you're a divorce lawyer, the first thing all of them say, you must have such stories. You must have such great stories, right? And if I said, oh, my God, you want to hear one? I've got a great one.

Okay.

So there was this couple, and they met when they were in their 20s. You know, they met at university, and then they decided that they really liked each other so much that they were going to get married, and they got married. And then gradually they sort of grew apart and realized that they had, like, different goals and different values and different things that were important to them. And they'd grown, but they'd grown in ways that, like, moved them away from each other. So they, you know, got together and amicably divided their various assets, and they figured out how they were going to share time with their children, who they loved so much, and that really, like, they're the two people who love this child more than anyone else in the whole wide world. And they knew that they were someday going to be grandparents together and deal with each other always going to be family to each other forever. And then they amicably resolved things and moved on with their lives. They would go, that's like, the dumbest. Like, what was that? Boo. Like, boo. Right? But if I go. And Betty took a chainsaw and he literally cut her car in half and left a note saying, pick which half you want, bitch. Like, true story, by the way. Yeah, that story is the story people want to hear. And by the way, the people who talk about their divorce incessantly are people who went through traumatic, awful divorces because I'm divorced. I got divorced 20 years ago. Very friendly, lovely. I have two children with a wonderful woman. One of them got married in September this year of last year, and she's been remarried 15 years to a wonderful guy. We all get along, like everybody at our son's wedding, we all hung out, took pictures, had a dance, had a drink, patted each other on the back for how wonderful we've done. They were 5 and 7 when we split up. So that my divorce, the least interesting thing about me, sometimes happily ever means happily ever after separately. And by the way, time has proven that my ex wife has been married to her husband for 15 years, far longer than we were ever married. And they love each other. You see it on them. And as someone who knows her and loves her he's great for her. Like, he's a. He's. And if you met him and met me, you'd go, oh, there's. You could not. No one woman would love both of these men. Like, he's quiet. He's very calming in his energy. He's very, like, we're total opposites, and he's perfect for her.

Do you feel as if, because you've gone through a divorce amicably, that that gives you additional perspective when it comes to your work?

It does. Unfortunately, it hasn't been particularly useful because the kinds of people that need someone like me can't do that. Like, if you need me, it's because there's a fight happening. Like, a real fight happening. I'm not the guy you hire because you just need to process an uncontested divorce. My divorce took, like, a month and two grand. We went to a mediator, we sat down and said, okay, you'll keep this, I'll keep this. We'll do this when it comes to things. And then we, by the way, we put the piece of paper away and just made it up as we went along. If she needed something, I was here for her. If I wanted different time with the kids, we were flexible with each other. Like, we just acknowledged that, hey, we're family. We're gonna deal with each other. We'll figure things out along the way. There's gonna be times where it's effortless and easy. There's times where it might be challenging, but we'll just figure it out together.

Okay. Got you. But do you ever struggle with the type of person? Cause I would imagine that there are people coming to you who might have conducted sexual assault or abuse, and, and obviously they're telling you everything.

Yeah.

You're aware of it all?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you ever struggle with representing them?

No, because I, I genuinely believe in the system of representation that gives everyone the right to due process and the right to an advocate. I, I, I get that question a lot. Like, people will say, like, how can you represent this? And my answer to that is, you know, you're in the wrong country. Like, if you're in the UK or the usa, like, we have due process. Like, people have a right to an advocate, and my job is to be an. And again, like, I take great comfort in the reality that, you know, the truth has a way of coming out sometimes, despite my absolute best efforts to try to obfuscate the facts. Reality is reality. Facts are facts. It's very rare that excellent advocacy can completely, you know, detract attention like a lawyer is at best, makeup. Like, what is makeup? Is makeup a lie? No. Makeup is accentuating the positive, dissenting the negative. But you can't take a hideously ugly human being and put makeup on them and now they're gorgeous. Like, you do the best that you can with what you have. And by the way, I don't believe that there are just evil people walking around doing evil things. Like, I have spent a lot of time with the cheater and the cheated on the victim of domestic violence and the perpetrator of domestic violence. And I wish, having spent time with each of those people, I could tell you, oh, yeah, there's just evil people. And if we just could figure out who they are and segregate them, then we'd be fine. That's not how it works. Like, human emotional complexity. The line of good and evil runs through the human heart. And you have to cut out a piece of your heart if you want to get rid of evil. There is evil in me. There is darkness in me. There is selfishness in me, just like there is in all of us. And part of marriage. I believe the most beautiful part of marriage at its best is you're not deluding yourself into thinking that I'm perfect and I'm good. You're looking at me and going, there's beauty in you and kindness in you, and there's weakness in you, and there's frailty in you, and there's shortsightedness and selfishness in you, and there's empathy and compassion in you. And I want all of that.

However, we know because of the Gottmans, right, and these other researchers, that most of us are not happy. Low satisfaction in our marriages. So if we are in a relationship and we feel as if there's low satisfaction, how do we determine if we should be divorced or just simply work on the satisfaction?

Yeah. So I think the first step is always identifying what it is that you want and then identifying how you've been sharing that with your partner. And how do we do that? I genuinely believe it's really easy. It's really, really easy. Just keep checking in. Keep checking in. Make it a habit, make it a practice, not a bug. Make it a feature that, you know, like, I mean, think about what would happen in a relationship if from the day you got married, you said, every Saturday we're going to spend 10 minutes, and if we're apart, we'll do it via email.

Right.

I want you to tell me three things I did this week that Made you feel loved. Three things. And if I'm brave, tell me three things that I could have done better in my connection with you this week. Or if we want to have fun, tell me three things I did this week that made you want to have sex with me. Tell me three things that turned you on. Three moments where you were like, mmm, I want some of this. This is nice. I'm liking him right now. Oh, my God. Do I want to know?

Yes.

Like, do I want. And by the way, how much fun would it be? How much fun would it be to hear that? And I have to tell you, you'd be shocked. Sometimes the answers, like, cause I know what I'm trying to do to make you feel loved. But the things that actually make someone feel loved, sometimes it's totally different than me.

Absolutely. You could be 15 years in your relationship and be completely shocked.

Completely shocked. And now, here's the thing. People's pushback on that as well. You know, like, it feels like that would be. Like, it's. Now it's another thing to do. You don't have 10 minutes a week to do that.

Absolutely. I remember talking to someone, this is the Gottmans as well. They were saying how the six minute. In essence, they were talking about how long a kiss should be. Remember talking to people, saying, hey, you know, they're saying, you should actually kiss for six minutes, you should kiss six times, et cetera. They said a lot of the guys would say, paul, I just don't have the time. I don't have the time to do it. And this goes to that question of if you have a partner and you feel as if that has slipped.

Yeah, slippage. Yeah, slippage. Right.

You feel that is slipped.

That's going away.

How do you determine if you should divorce versus work on something?

It's a great question. So what you're really asking is if I feel there's distance between my partner and I, we've lost the plot. Yes, that happens. Right? That happens. Like, I love to read at night. It's how I wind down. I don't like to be on a screen, so I like to read a little bit. And because I'm doing it at night, I'll be a few pages in. All of a sudden, I'll kind of realize I'm tired and I don't really know what I'm reading anymore. And then I'll try to stop and go, well, where did I lose it? And I'll go back, and it's usually a couple pages, and then I'LL recognize the last thing I remember, and I'll go, okay, that's where I'm going to put the bookmark. And now I'm going to close my eyes. You lose the plot. It happens. What you're describing is a situation where my partner maybe doesn't recognize that we've lost the plot or isn't committed to. Let's do some work to reverse this spiral that we're down. And the way to do that, I think, is little tiny things, like little gestures. I don't think it has to be grand gestures. I actually think if you think about love and when you feel loved by your partner, it's very rarely like these grand gestures.

True.

It's just these little things this person does that makes you feel seen and appreciated. What does it cost to just in the morning when you leave, like, hey, I married the prettiest girl in the world. Can't wait to see you tonight on the couch when I get home. What does that take? Three seconds? It's free. Who wouldn't want to get that note? Who wouldn't want to get a note in their briefcase that says, you're the handsomest guy I know? Thanks for this weekend. It was so fun.

Yes.

Like, who wouldn't get that and go, I want to meet that with the same kind of energy? And by the way, if you do that consistently and your partner still doesn't show up for you, now we might need to have a conversation that, okay, this thing might be irreparably broken, because I agree, both people have to be invested in this. And sometimes people just are in different places, and one of you is not gonna get back where you need to be. But I think most people want to try and do their part, but that's not what we do. What we do instead is, you have failed me. And even just the way we parse things, we do it in this confrontational way. Like, if I say to my partner, like, I'm not satisfied with the frequency of our sex life, okay? And I say to my partner, why don't we have sex like we used to? Remember? We used to keep not keeping our hands off each other. And now we have sex once every two weeks. What is that going to instill in my partner but defensiveness? Well, we know that you're always at work, and then when you get home, you're tired, and there's so many other things. We have to talk. Now. We're just off to the races because we're defending our positions as opposed to saying, you know, What I was thinking about today, I was thinking about. I remember when we went, we were first dating and we went on that little vacation. We didn't have any money and we rented that little. Remember, we, like, we didn't leave the bedroom for like two days, you know, like, that was so, like, God, I like, I, I can. I remember the scent of your skin. Like, it was so. And I have to tell you, like, I still, I still feel that way about you. Like, I don't know. I was at work the other day and I just, like, I was thinking about you and I was just like, you know, dude, now we're going somewhere.

Yeah, the delivery.

Yeah, now we're going. Because I'm focusing on that positive piece on the connection as opposed to the disconnection.

Right. But as you said, most of us, we approach it because we're approaching it from a place of pain.

Yeah.

That we are. The disconnection.

Right.

Have you ever noticed how many of your friends are sitting on great business ideas? It's usually nothing to do with thinking their idea isn't good enough and everything to do with the execution side.

Feeling a bit too technical.

But with our show sponsor, Shopify, so much of the technical side is taken care of for you. It enables you to set up your own online store without a developer. You just pick a store template, customize it to your own branding, upload some product photos, set your prices, and you're live. Shopify looks after your payments, inventory, orders, returns. It even helps with calculating shipping rates. And if you also want help selling your products, Shopify's built in tools write product descriptions, create email campaigns, and schedule social posts for you too. It makes the technical part of running a business so much easier. So give it a try yourself and sign up for your one pound per month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk needtotalk.

[Podcast Host]

Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie's science bag support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grownups.

[James Sexton]

So when your mind won't switch off,

[Podcast Host]

you've got something that can help your racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance.

[James Sexton]

Find Ollie sleep solutions for the whole [e-mail] that's O L L-Y.com

[Podcast Host]

with Plan B emergency contraception, we're in control of our future. It's backup birth control you take after unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation and it won't Impact your future fertility. Plan B is available in all 50 US states at all major retailers near you, with no ID, prescription or age requirement needed. Together we've got this. Follow Plan B on insta at Plan B. One step to learn more. Use as directed.

[James Sexton]

So if we have that perspective and if we do that work and we feel as if the marriage cannot be repaired, is the best move to then have the conversation straight away. And the reason why I bring that up is because I've read some research somewhere that stated that many women know one year prior to leaving their partner, and these are in heterosexual relationships, they know one year prior, and they spend a lot of that year plotting on how to. How to get out.

Yeah, right.

And so the question, though, is if you feel as if you can't repair the relationship or your partner won't be able to repair it, should you immediately have that conversation or should you approach it another way, given your experience as a divorce attorney?

So this is where my human advice and my legal advice are discordant.

Okay, okay.

So I wear two hats. One of them is person who talks about how to stay married and how to not F up your marriage. And the other is, I'm a tactician whose job is to facilitate the demise of unhappy marriages. So the tactician in me would say, if I'm going to punch you, I'm not telling you the punch is coming. So if you're going to divorce someone and there's going to be a fight, I want it to be that when you realize you're in a fight, the fight's over. Like General Patton said, if you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck. Like, my job is ideally to have all the pieces lined up so that when you know the other side knows you're in a fight, the fight's over. Like, they're in the valley and I've got high ground. Human advice. I think you owe it to yourself and to your partner to express where we're at and to say, look, I think we've reached the terminal stage of this where if this doesn't get fixed, if we don't make changes, this is gonna have to end. Like, the things you sometimes have to do to shore up defenses and create levers are antagonistic to repair.

So let's look at that. Let's look at someone who's in a relationship and they know they want out. Perhaps they have kids, maybe there's some assets tactically, then they should not have the conversation immediately. What should they do?

I think it depends. See, I Personally, I've represented extremely wealthy people for a really long time now. Before that, I represented, you know, regular mom and pop type people. I grew up poor and I didn't have any money. College, when I was in university, I worked as a waiter, as a server. Like, I had nothing. When I started my career as a Lawyer, I borrowed $5,000 from friends and from my dad and built it into the multimillion dollar thing that it is now. And now thank. After 25 years of doing this profession, I have economic security, I have success. I have all those wonderful things I believe there are. And I say this representing like, I have a client who's worth $8 billion right now. There are two amounts of money. Enough and not enough. So the first question you need to ask yourself is tactically, if I reveal to this person that this marriage is ending and I'm going to need to have us move forward with the demise of this marriage, I need to protect myself. Maybe because this person is the type who's vindictive, is the type that's different than a situation where you're saying, because here's the thing. If the only thing I have to lose is some stuff, okay, take some stuff. It's stuff. It's not the end of the world. Like, what are you gonna. You're gonna get tactical advantage and get a little more of my assets, okay? Like, I'm losing something much more precious than some of my stuff. Like, prioritize. Cause here's the thing. Like, you don't win a divorce. You don't win a divorce. Like, you survive a divorce, you get out the other side of it with as much intact as you possibly can, but you don't win. Like, nobody ever walks out of divorce going, yeah, I won. Like, you don't win. It's the end of something. It's a death. You grieve it. Like you follow Elizabeth Kubler Ross stages of death and dying. You bargain, you're sad. You go through all of those things before acceptance, and that's totally understandable. You're grieving the death of this marriage. And so again, you have to ask yourself, what's the goal? Cause I'll tell you the truth. Not only can you not win a divorce, you can't win a fight with your spouse. You can't win. You will never win a fight with your spouse. If you win, you lost. You made them feel small. You won. Yay, victory. Great job. You made your spouse feel dumb. You made your spouse feel small. You made your spouse feel sad. Or you lose the argument, and then you lost the argument. You can't win an argument with your spouse, like, because the idea of this is connection, to stay connected to each other. Anything that is antagonistic to that connection is the enemy of marriage.

But if you feel as if your partner would be vindictive. So, for example, I have a friend. This is a true story. I have a friend who wanted to ensure that he got custody of the children.

Sure.

And so I think of him almost in this situation. Would it have been smart to not have the conversation and to put things in place so that he would.

100%. Yeah. So the best thing you could always do is go talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later. It's confidential. No one's ever gonna find out. They're not allowed to tell anybody. I have people who come in a year, two years, three years before they're actually even gonna file or when they're just thinking about it. Oh, I've had people who come in 10 years before. It's great. Listen, some people are super tactical, and some people, it's that they're kind of. We call them tire kickers. Like, they're like, well, the relationship's not going great, and I want to know, like, what are my rights and obligations and what are things I should be thinking about? Wait a minute. Look, I'm going to make the argument right now that you should see a divorce lawyer before you get married. I think you should understand before you get married what a court would be looking at and thinking about in a divorce in the event your marriage ends in the likely, statistically likely outcome. You know what, the divorce.

At first, I said, this is wild and crazy, but, you know, I like this. This should be part of the. It's hard to get into.

Why wouldn't it be? Yeah.

Sit down.

Why wouldn't you sit down with a divorce lawyer? I can explain to you legally what's about to happen when you get married.

Yes.

What changes to your rights and obligations are about to happen. And I can explain to you that, for example, your friend. Your friend is married to someone who. Their relationship is tenuous. He's not sure. Maybe this is a combative person. A vindictive person.

Yes.

Okay. And by the way, you divorced the person you were married to. So, you know, if like people is one of the most astounding things still, after so many years of doing this, is people come in and they'll say to me, like, I can't believe he's being so vindictive and cheap and angry. I'm like, oh, what, what was he like during the marriage? Vindictive and cheap and angry. I'm like, why would you think he'd be benevolent during the divorce? Like he was this way. So like if anything it's just gonna be this. Under extreme stress.

Yes.

So it's gonna be a little worse than even than it normally would be. So if your friend came in and said, look, the wheels are still on this thing, but I'm worried that it might be unstable. What are the kinds of things a judge is going to look at when making decisions about custody? Now I can educate you. I can talk about joint custody, sole custody, shared custody. I can talk about different parenting access schedules. I can talk about what are the standards that a judge looks at when making decisions about custody. I can talk about what I call the negative case and the positive case, which is not just what's wrong with your co parent because you might be just as awful as them, just in different ways. So what's the negative case is what's wrong with the co parent or where are there areas that they could be better that they aren't? Versus where are areas where I'm strong as a co parent and I can talk to you about what are the evidentiary standards and what are some ways that you can shore up and prepare. So I would say, hey, make sure we go to parent teacher night, make sure we go to the pediatric appointments. Make sure that you're part of the day to day routine of your child and not just doing the fun stuff because by the way, you might be a super great dad, but you trust your co parent because they're good as a co parent, they're a good parent and you kind of don't like to be home because when you're home you guys argue. So you want the kids to not be around that and you don't really feel like it, so you stay away. Okay, now you're setting up a terrible custody case because you're not home. She's the primary caregiver to the children. She does most of the heavy lifting of day to day parenting. You have set up a bad custody case in the future. So now again, do you think anybody, if they came into my office and I gave them that conversation, that primer on look, I hope your marriage doesn't end and if it ends, I hope you don't have a custody battle. But if you did, here's the kinds of things a judge might look at and here's some ways to. Do you think anybody would have that meeting with me and then go, you know, I was really happy in my marriage before this, but now I'm going to go home and just get divorced. Like, no, you just like, I get a physical every year, right. One of the lawyers who works for me for many years now, he doesn't get a physical. And when I said to him, hey man, you're over 40, why don't you get a physical? He goes, I don't want to know. I kind of hate doctors. I was like, okay, not having a physical is a guaranteed way to end up eventually seeing a whole bunch of doctors. So if you hate doctors, definitely go get a physical so that you don't have things going on that you don't know about. It's not going to say your ignorance won't save you.

Yeah, it's like your sister and the toothache. Were you saying the dentist? Yeah. What are three things that you wish people knew or took into consideration before they got married?

As a lawyer or as a relationship person?

As a lawyer.

Okay.

As a lawyer, as the number one divorce attorney in the world, three things

that people should know before they get married. One would be what did their parents conflicts look like? Okay, so did their parents yell at each other? Did their parents ice each other out? Was there domestic violence and intimate partner abuse? And then also, how does that translate to yours? Because people tend, in my experience, to either become like their parents or the opposite.

Yes.

So what does this look like and what was your reaction to it and what work, if any, have you done on that?

Okay, that's fair. That's one.

Number two, I would say assess very clearly what your priorities are. Like, what's important to you. If custody and your children is the most important thing to you, if economic outcome is what's most important to you. Like, identify very honestly for yourself what your goals are in terms of what's important here. Because I will tell you an unfortunate reality is the person who cares less about the well being of the children has tactical advantage in custody litigation. So if you don't care about your kids and screwing up your kids, you have tactical advantage in custody litigation. You can put them right in the middle of the situation, you can weaponize them, you can try to bribe them emotionally, you can create loyalty binds and engage in alienation and negative gatekeeping. There's all kinds of horrible, horrible things you could do. So identify kind of what's important to me, what's important to my partner, and who are they. Like, have an honest conversation with yourself and your counsel about who is my Partner. Because if you're against someone who's going to be villainous, potentially, you got to bring a different toolkit to the situation. Like, it's better to have a trial lawyer and not need me than to need a trial lawyer and hire a mediator. Because you think maybe if I hire a really friendly person, that it'll keep it friendly. It's not how it works. Like, it's not how it works. The main levers in my experience as a litigator are fear and greed, goodness. It's not empathy. It's not empathy. It's not compassion. It's fear and greed. My job is to cultivate leverage and decide how and when to use it.

So is that almost number three? So two is having this frank, honest, open discussion. But three is really.

Three is shore up the fences and get good lawyer and really trust your counsel, if you found good counsel. And then trust the fact that sometimes the path to peace is war. There are so many people in New York City who hates me because I was a weapon pointed at them. And my job was to take them apart. And I did it, and I did it well. And I'm proud that I did it because it's my job. But I had no hate in my heart towards them. Nothing. I wish all of these people the best. I hope they have good lives. My job was to protect my client, and I did my job. And I'm not afraid to acknowledge that. And by the way, I would rather I embrace their hatred, because every bit of their hatred that they point at me is not pointed at their spouse. It's not pointed at their. Like, I don't have to go to their kid's wedding someday.

But I would imagine, though, these are a lot of powerful people that hate you.

Yeah.

Do you ever fear for your life?

No, because I don't really cling to my life. Like, I have a very Buddhist approach to my life. I look at life like life is finite. It's going to end. If I think every day I try to wake up and go, today's a good day to die. Today's a good day for this to go out. It's gonna end someday. And if it ends like that, it will. Look, I practiced Brazilian jiu jitsu for 20 years. I keep a shotgun under my desk. And if somebody's gonna come at me, that's a lot to try to get through. But if you're that committed to it, you'll be able to do it. And I'm real easy to find. I stay in a four Block radius in New York City, I'd be pretty easy to assassinate. Most of the time, I think people who hate me, they know it's not me. They're mad I did my job the right way. Like, they're not. You know, they're mad at their situation. But if it's easier to hate me,

like, it's okay to hate me, then you cover for your client.

Yeah, and I'd rather cover for my client.

It's a dangerous business.

Yeah, it can be. It can be. I get a lot of hate mail. I keep it. I have a whole folder of death threats. I have a whole folder of, you know, hate mail that people have sent me when I represented their spouse. There's a lot of people online. They write, like, reviews, like they were my client. But I know that it's the other side. Like, this is a profession where a lot of people hate you, and that's okay. Like, I don't. I am not. I have. You have to have a very defined sense of self to do what I do at the level I do it. Like, you just have to have a sense of, like, yeah, I'm a tool.

At what point, though, does the threat elevate enough to bring a shotgun into your office?

I mean, again, I just. I'd rather have a shotgun and not need it than need a shotgun and not have it. Like, I just have it there. Cause it's like, hey, listen, like, if it happens that somebody comes busting through the door, I've got protection in place. I don't embrace violence. I don't taunt people. Like, if I taunt the other side, it's tactical. I'm trying to get them to lose their cool on the witness stand. I do that all the time. I'll taunt the other side constantly. Like, if someone's on the witness stand and I'm getting under their skin and I think I can get them to explode, I will do that. I will push them. I've even had it that the judge is looking away, and I kind of wink at them, like. Or I'll kind of, like, blow them a kiss. Like, something to amp them up, because I want them to blow up. And I go, you, Honor, you see? You see what's happening right here? This person is having such a hard time controlling themselves. Can you imagine how they are at home?

Goodness.

You know? And again, that's the job. Like, I'm an advocate. I'm a weapon. That's my job is to go in and to just. And again, I don't Want to give the impression that, like, everything I do is go in and just terrorize. You have to have a full toolkit in this business.

Right. This is the. These are extreme cases.

They're extreme examples. Like, what's funny about my professional life is I am one of the only professions that someone would come into your office the first time they meet you and say, I heard you were a ruthless, vicious son of a bitch. That's why I'm here. Like, that's why I'm here. I was described as the sociopath you want on your side. I was described as a courtroom gunslinger. And I've also been described as a compassionate advocate, as a person. Like, if you read reviews of me, they are all over the place. Like, some clients will say, oh, my God, Jim is such a calming presence. And he, like, dialed down all the aggression that was in the room. And every time my spouse tried to, like, amp it up, he would sort of just bring it back and slow a pace. And there are some people that are like, Jim Sexton cross examined my spouse to the point where they almost died on the stand. And he just ate their lunch. And he's brutal.

And.

And they're both right.

They're both right.

Absolutely. Cause I bring a full toolkit to it.

I cannot wait to hear the answer to this one. From what you can share, what's the most memorable case you've ever had?

Oh, my gosh.

There are some good ones in the book, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Penis would be up there. That's in the book. Gosh. I would say the ones that, to me, are the most meaningful is when I get to represent someone who's been a victim of intimate partner abuse and domestic violence, because I get to feel heroic. There's something really beautiful about that. Like, I get to be of service. Yes. And I had a case in the last few years where I was able to just very strategically, by the time this long time abuser even knew, I mean, and it required a tremendous amount of planning. Like, he would monitor her location on her phone. So we had to get another phone to her so she could leave that phone at home when he was at work and then come to us, because he would be tracking her location otherwise. And we had, like, by the time he knew a divorce had been commenced, she was on a plane to California from New York with their daughter. And we already had orders of protection and temporary orders of custody in effect before he even knew it was coming. And it was, like, over very quickly. He I like dogs. Like I'm a dog person.

Same here.

Steven got me to cry on his show about talking about my dogs and this guy beat the crap out of their six month old puppy. I mean he beat it terribly. And thank God it was captured on a ring doorbell, like a motion cam that they had because this guy was like incredibly charismatic. Like he looked like just a nice guy. He looked like a nice guy. Like he was kind of dorky. Yes. And he was very likable and he was very like, you would never believe that this guy was a vicious, villainous person until you watch him beating a six month old black lab puppy and listen to him screaming at it and watch this little puppy like cowering and trying to get away from him and its tail still wagging because it doesn't know what to do and it's trying to get in the door to just get away from him and its tail is still wagging because it's a dog. It's innocent, it didn't do it. And he's just kicking it and throwing it and thank God it's fine by the way. The dog's fine now. But I will tell you, I'm human. I'm human. And I watched that video because I had to watch that video and I wanted to crawl under my desk and cry like it was horrible to watch. Like that anyone could be that cruel, that anyone could be that vicious, like this innocent, sweet. And by the way, like he was vicious to everyone in his life. He was just a vicious person. And I just remember taking the case and thinking, I'm going to destroy this guy. Like I'm gonna just take him apart piece by piece. And I did exactly that. And it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. And she is now divorced, she has full custody of her daughter, sole custody of her daughter. The dog is very healthy and well, look at that. And he will probably remain the miserable person that he is. I know he hates me. He's probably watching. He, he. I think you watched some of my other appearances where I've mentioned his case and I hope he knows that, you know, I'm still here. Yes, I'm still here. And if he comes back and he tries to push it again, I'll be here. He'll be here.

What's the number one reason why someone comes to your office to see you and seeking you out? Or should I say, what's the number one reason that you've seen for divorce?

So the answer that most people want when they ask me that question is, is there a singular or are there identifiable things that you see in the terminal stage of a marriage? So the obvious and accurate answer is there's cheating is usually a massive, like they're almost, I would say a good 85% of divorces. There's some element of cheating in the situation or financial impropriety. Those are very real things. But I don't see those as the cause. I see those as the symptom of the underlying illness. The underlying illness is disconnection. The underlying illness is that these. Because happy people don't cheat on each other, satisfied people don't cheat on each other.

Was it 84, 85% of people who are seeking a divorce have cheated or have been a part of.

Yeah, have been. Infidelity is involved in the equation. Somehow either or both people have cheated. And again, how you define cheating is very subjective. So it's a question of like, is emotional infidelity infidelity or as purely as it's sexual. Like for the purposes of divorce, in fault based states, adultery was defined as like genital contact, essentially. So, you know, I think most of us would agree that your spouse could cheat without touching anybody's genitals or having anybody touch theirs.

I think so. You know, just to go back to, you had mentioned it was interesting you talked about, and tell me if this is, if I heard this correctly.

85% of people are remarried within five years of their divorce. Is that the metric? Oh, no, no. But is that, that's the stat that when I throw that out, people swallow their teeth? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. That 56% of marriages end in divorce.

Yes.

That roughly 10 to 20% more, you're estimating, are unhappy but stay together for the kids. But 86% of people are remarried within five years of their divorce.

Within five years.

Within five years. So these are people that catastrophically fail that marriage.

Yes.

And 86% are remarried within five years.

That's mind blowing. Then from that cohort, is the divorce rate higher or lower?

Higher.

Yeah, I would imagine.

But the marriage satisfaction rate is higher. Is it? Yes. So the ones who. So I think that teaches me. Right. And again, we have to extrapolate lessons from the data.

Yes.

And again that all. That's all, you know, subjective stuff. I think what that says is there are some people that are just not good at marriage and they could do it a bunch of times and they're just not good at it.

Okay.

And then there are people that, like most people aren't great at something. The first Time they do it, they screw it up, but they learn something from that and then they're better at it and they enjoy it more.

Look at that.

And so for me, second marriages have a much higher satisfaction rate than first marriages, but they have a slightly higher failure rate. Something like 58% of second marriages end in divorce. So it's a slightly higher failure rate. What I find beautiful about how quickly and consistently people get remarried is that it tells me something about how important this is to us. And that's not Lawyer Jim talking now, that's relationship person. Like, I hesitate to say relationship expert, but relationship, relationship person, you know, because I really think that's beautiful. It means that this is really important to us. Like this is something we want to be good at. It's something we need. It's something that, like, I think it's something that's just beautiful to us and, and we run to it. Like we, we just want it so bad. Like it. Because something in us wants this thing.

Yeah, we want it.

Like we want this connection. And I, I think it's the most lovely thing that we just keep trying and we just keep. And we're so human. Like we're so human that we fail so consistently at this thing through our own weakness and shortsightedness. And I think there's something really beautiful about that. Like I, I just think there's something really beautiful about our desire to love and to be loved because I think, I think our greatest fear is that we're not worthy of love. I think our greatest fear is that if someone knew us, they wouldn't love us.

Do you project that marriage rates will increase, decrease or stay the same?

I think we are doing what we do as a culture, which is we overcorrect. So I think for a period of time the marriage rate was down, the divorce rate was up. Now I'm seeing a lot of resurgence of traditional religion and traditional gender roles. So I think we're going to roll in the other direction. All of a sud and there's going to be more people getting married, fewer people getting divorced, more rigidity of gender roles, and then I think once again we'll overcorrect in the other direction. Like I've lived through as a 53 year old man, I've watched this pendulum swing a few times and for some reason we just can't get ourselves into the middle. What is the problem to which marriage is a solution? I don't.

You tell me.

[Podcast Host]

Me?

[James Sexton]

Yeah, you're married. What do you want me to tell you listen. What is the problem? Here's what I'll tell you. People would answer, okay, spring just slid into your DMs.

[Podcast Host]

Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner. Those sandals that can keep up with you. And hang some string lights to give

[James Sexton]

your patio a glow up.

[Podcast Host]

Spring's calling, Ross. Work your magic.

[James Sexton]

I'm lonely. I don't want to be lonely. Guess what? But you can be married and be lonely. Sure can. There's a special loneliness when you're unhappily married because you've got sitting next to you a person who's supposed to be your person.

Yes.

And you feel so alone and by yourself and isolated. So it's not a cure for loneliness. I want a steady supply of sex. We have sex, and this is a way to guarantee we're going to keep having sex. Can you even say that out loud and not laugh? The fact that you're married as a guarantee that you're gonna have a steady supply of sex is like saying, I live near a restaurant. So that guarantees I'm gonna get to be well fed every single day.

Buffets every night.

Right? Right. So what is it? My parents want me to get married. Okay. Like that's a reason. That's a reason a lot of people would answer. God wants me to get married. Right. That's a big one. That's a big one. I can't argue with that. Okay. Okay. And again, if you say the reason I got married is because God wants me to. Cool. Then you also acknowledge that God also handed down these two rules. Doesn't that tell you this has been a problem for a really long time? Yes. Like. Cause personally, I don't know when infidelity was invented, but I feel like it was probably like 10 minutes after monogamy was invented.

Right. So you think monogamy came first?

I mean, I guess it had to be by definition. Right? Like, it had to be otherwise. Like, Right. Otherwise there's nothing that there's no rule to break.

It could have been a theory.

Right. But I. I believe it was probably like a cave, you know? And the caveman and whatever was kind of grunted that he's gonna, you know, this is his. This is his woman or whatever.

Yes.

And they're by the fire, and she's with the kid and holding onto it. And he was like, all right, I'm gonna. You know. He didn't say it eloquently, but he was like. Like, I'm gonna go. And I'm gonna go get the el. And he walked out to get the elk and saw like another decent looking loincloth. And he kind of went like, well, I'm out here getting an elk anyway. I might as well say hello over here. And that's it.

And that's it.

We're off to the races. Ten minutes later, we're off to the races. You know, and we've evolved this as we have most things, but the underlying thing, like, you know, technology offers us real solutions to imaginary problems and imaginary solutions to real problems.

Okay.

So, like, this has been a real problem for a real long time, and now we have much more complex ways to cheat and much more complex ways to figure out that someone's cheating and sort of punish them or, you know, identify it if they do. But the core problem is still the same.

Exactly. And this gets to your point of looking at this as a job. And how can I be the best at this job? Yeah. Which to some people say, oh, that's not romantic. Well, you know what?

That's not romantic.

I mean, some, some people would argue.

I think that's the most romantic.

That's. That's sexy.

I think it's the sexiest thing that you're. You're worth it.

Yes.

Like I like again, you're my favorite person. Right. So you know you have a spouse, right?

Yes.

What's your spouse's name?

Jill.

Okay, so, Jill, so let me. If you don't mind, I want to

ask you a question.

And I'm not going to cross examine you. It might feel like it if I told you, like, by the way, these are lovely sneakers that you're wearing.

Thanks.

Okay, thank you. If I said to you, I'll give you $10,000 for those sneakers, would you give them to me?

Absolutely.

Okay, good. If I said to you, will you give me Jill for $10,000? The answer's no. Right.

Correct.

Thank God.

But for a million, we could talk now.

Now. Okay. No, that's my next question. No, no, that's my next question.

Really?

For $10 million?

Yes.

Would you get rid of Jill?

You know what's so interesting about this is I've had this exact conversation with Jill and I reached a point where I said there is no amount of money.

All right? So now wait. But I want to add an element to this.

Okay.

I want to add. Because you're saying there's no amount of money. So if I said to you, for $10 million you're going to leave your wife, the answer is no. Hundred million dollars. The answer is no. Billion dollars. The answer is no. Right.

Correct.

Okay. Now here's the hard question, and I apologize for it in advance, please. You got 30 days left with her. I can see the future. Okay. 30 days left with her. I'll give you $100 million to give up those 30 days. Okay, so that's. She's going anyway, right? She's going in 30 days. Right. No matter what you do. So you can have lifetime economic security, and all you're losing is 30 days with Jill.

Yes. Would you do it? No. Because the value you get, the time goes up.

That's love. Yeah, that's love. Ask that question of someone about their dog, you get the same answer.

Yes.

Ask someone that about their kids, you get the same answer. There's nothing else you own that you would answer that way. There's nothing else in your life other than a person or an animal you love. There's nothing else you would say that about. Fair. And that, to me, that's the most beautiful thing to find that in another person. Here's the other thing. You're going to lose Jill. Right? And Jill's going to lose you. You are playing a game. You can't win. We're going to die, all of us. We are losing everything, all the time, always. There is a finite number of times you will kiss Jill. There's a number. I don't know it yet. You don't either. Sure, I hope it's there. It's such a high number. But it could be five. Like, there's a finite number of sunsets you're gonna see.

Yes.

It could be a thousand. It could be now, again, that is not to me at all pessimistic. That, to me, is not at all dark. Because even knowing that you wouldn't take $100 million to lose 30 days with her, that to me, man, you won. You won. I don't care what you do from here. I don't care if you become the most successful podcaster, writer, relationship expert in the whole wide world. You won. You won. Like, that's it. You won. Do you know how few people win? And you have this thing. Isn't it the most important thing? Like, how do we not make this a priority? How do we spend so much time in our petty grievances with each other and these little resentments that we have towards each other and these little, like, you didn't meet my needs exactly when I wanted you to. You didn't hear what I didn't say and anticipate my needs. Like, you love her, she loves you like this is the most beautiful, wonderful, precious thing. Would you spend 10 minutes a week, 10 minutes a day to just cultivate it and water it and cherish it, to tell her every single day, I have you. I found you. Eight billion people, I found you. Like this, to me, is the most beautiful thing in the world. And we treat it like it's disposable, like we have it. We take it for granted. We forget about it. We just don't do anything with it. That, to me, is baffling. It's baffling.

This is why your work is so important, you know, this is why we want to continue to have conversations like this. And we need to talk because I'm with you.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree. You know, I often tell people, I say, you know, everything else in my life is icing because I have the cake. Yeah, I already have the cake. So everything else is icing. Everything else is. You know, and this is the reason why I have that same perspective that you have. And I think, how beautiful is it to be able to have that in your life? You know, you're talking about love and how you define it. I've struggled with that same topic. Where I've landed on is a place that you feel utterly safe. So to your point of intimacy, it's where you feel that you can be truly yourself. You're truly yourself.

Yeah.

And seen and seen.

I think that. And I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this, because I see in your writing, like, you. You touch this and it is a contradiction. But I see you as, like, identifying it as a contradiction. I love it. People get married and they make two opposite mistakes that seem like contradictions. One is, this will change this person. Like, if we get married, things will change. Like right now, he doesn't really take our relationship seriously, but if we get married, he will. Right now, he drinks too much, but if we get married, he won't. Or, you know, right now, she doesn't really take our relationship seriously and she doesn't make it a priority. But if we get married, she will. Okay, so thinking that marriage will change the relationship is a mistake.

Yes.

Okay, agreed, Agreed. And thinking nothing will change if we get married is also a mistake?

Yes.

Like thinking, this is so great. We have lots of sex. We love each other. It's so great. We enjoy each other's company. And it's going to stay just like that. If you just want to keep it forever. Right. It'll stay. So it feels like a contradiction.

Yes.

Like, don't make the mistake of Thinking your marriage is gonna change somebody. And don't make the mistake of thinking that your marriage won't change and that the people like, well, okay, so you're saying it's not gonna change some things. It's definitely gonna change other things. But you can't really make a list of which is gonna be which and how it's gonna happen.

Yes.

How do we reconcile that? That's the question. That, to me, is the million dollar question.

Yes, it is. It is. Have you ever heard of the Michelangelo effect?

No.

So it's this notion within relationships, at least, where. What your partner. So with Michelangelo, right. He's looking at the stone, and a lot of people will say, what I'm going to do is I'm going to create the most incredible statue from the stone. But Michelangelo will look at the stone and say, I'm going to unleash the most incredible statue that's already within.

Yeah. I'm going to remove everything that's not Michelangelo.

Exactly.

I'm going to remove everything that's not David.

Exactly.

Exactly. That's not David. Yeah. I'm going to remove everything that's not. Yeah, yeah. That's beautiful.

Yeah. So I'm going to unleash it. The way that a lot of people and I look at relationships, great relationships, is we are that to our partner. We are helping our partner to unleash.

I love that.

And as we are unleashing, what we're doing is we're re falling in love with that person we had, Youngblood, who now is like, oh, my God. Youngblood is one of the.

Yeah. Biggest stars. I know.

Isn't that crazy? It's amazing.

The Ozzy thing, I think, helped that.

Yeah, exactly.

Right, right. Yeah. Their relationship made me cry. It was such a sweet thing.

It was.

It was such a deep connection. And. Yeah, I love that. Like, I made it because I'm getting older. I love, like, that intergenerational.

Yes.

Thing where, like, I idolize you and, like, the. The older person's like, well, I. You have youth. There's so much of you that, like, there's so many lessons you haven't learned yet. Like, I just found that so beautiful.

It's almost like Ozzy handed the baton, you know, to.

To youngblood. So beautiful.

But Youngblood says something that was so profound. He said, you know, you have to fall in love with the same person 12 times.

Yeah.

Right. And he was talking about half year. This is what you have to continue to do. And I've realized that in my relationship with Jill, this is, in essence, what's happened. We have almost reached the end of one marriage.

Yeah.

And then we would enter a second. And as we're entering the second, I'm falling in love with this new person that's been unleashed.

Who you're becoming, who you're becoming.

And then the third person and then the fourth person. And so now I'm on the 20th person.

But you're describing what I think we know to be true, which is love is a feeling and love is a verb.

Yes.

You know, love is. Love is how we feel, and it's also what we do. We act with love. Like you love Jill, meaning you feel love to Jill, but you also love Jill. Like, you make a point of loving her, engaging in behaviors that are loving to her and that support that love and shape that love. And again, that's why, when I think about what. Because I like to begin with the end in mind. I like to begin, like, if I don't know where I'm going, I find it very hard to get there. So I feel like you should, at the start of a marriage, say. And again, for me, the goal is someday I want you to be able to say, I helped you become the most authentic version of yourself, and you helped me become the most authentic version of myself. And you're still my favorite person. And I'm still your favorite person, because that covers both bases. That covers the verb of love. Like, I loved you. I helped you become who you are, not who I want you to be, who you are authentically.

Yes.

And I love you. Like, the feeling of love is in me for you. I enjoy you. I embrace you. I still would pick you out of the room and the choice of people to choose from. So that covers the feeling, and it covers the action.

It does. It does. And that also connects to something you said earlier, which I completely agree with, and that is this notion of checking in.

Yeah.

I think that is something that I've seen. You know, this isn't any deep research, but I've just kind of seen the more successful, higher satisfaction couples. They have some type of.

They build it in, built check in,

whether it's every day, it's every week, and it's almost an assessment as to a hundred percent.

Look, you know, you're married. You understand. You sometimes have a disagreement with your spouse about something, like, you're something innocent, like, what's the best way to cook this particular type of broccoli? You know, and 10 minutes later, it's like, you know, I never liked your Mother. And she never liked. And you're like, what? How long have you had that in the chamber? Like, what? Like, where did that come from? And what that really is, I believe, is like, these little things built up over time and that you don't let the valve off and then it blows up about something else. Like, you're not mad at broccoli. You're mad at me.

Exactly.

You're mad at me. And by the way, rightly so. Like, if I leave a bunch of dishes in the sink, you're not mad at me for leaving a bunch of dishes in the sink. The sink. Like, if I had a stomach virus and it hit me as I was doing the dishes, you wouldn't go, why did you leave the dishes in the sink? What it is, is those dishes are a message.

Yes.

I don't really care about you. You like the house to be clean, but I can't be bothered. And also, you do this. I don't feel like it. Like, you clean up after me. I don't feel like cleaning up after myself. Like, that's what you're mad at. You're mad at the disrespect of this. It's not about the dishes. It's about what the dishes symbolize. And so that, to me, like, I often believe it's not about the sex. Like, when people are like, oh, you know, our sex life is unsatisfying. It's not even the sex necessarily as the attention, the affection, the desire. Like, you meet your partner and they're interested and they're interesting, and you're all hopped up on each other and you're all fascinated by each other. And, you know, you walk past each other and your skin touches each other and you feel it in your toes. Like, it's almost intoxicating thing in the world. Like the, you know, the intoxication of early romance is incredible.

Yes.

But we'd never get anything done if you maintained that level, right? Of like, just drunk with distraction of this person that you just can't stop thinking about them. Like, God, if you said to me, like, oh, my God, I feel about Jill today exactly as I did when we were three weeks into the relationship, I would be like, dude, are you okay? I mean, it's amazing. But how do you get anything done? Because again, I'm not suggesting that you don't still have the same depth of feeling, maybe even something better, because it's been replaced by, like, all of that excitement and affection and love, but it also has, like, a depth of connection. Now it has, like, a familiarity, like, you know, just what to do and just how to touch each other and just how to turn each other on. Like, what a great superpower that could be. Yes, but. But come on, it's gonna shift. It's gonna. And why don't we have built into our marriage the ability to go, hey, things are shifting and changing. I've been in therapy for 15 years. 20 years I've been in therapy. I go do therapy once a week. Sometimes it was because my life was on fire, my mom was dying, I was getting divorced. All the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to. And a lot of the time, it was just that, like, yeah, I want to figure this out. I want to be good at being me. I want to figure out what it means to be me. I want to understand my childhood stuff and how it still affects me. And I find tremendous value in being in therapy. But I have to tell you, as a man who's 53 years old and been in therapy for a good 20 years of it, I think I understand, like, 70% of myself. Maybe. There you go. Maybe, by the way, I'm in here.

Yes, I'm in here.

And I kind of just get about 70. Some of it. I'm still like, why did you do that? Like, I'm a mystery to me, right? What chance do I have of knowing you better than that?

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. That's a great point. It's like almost the older I get, the more I realize how little I know about myself.

Right. What a mystery I am. And by the way, you can embrace that mystery and you can even say to your partner, hey, I don't see my blind spots. That's where there are blind spots.

Exactly. What do you think?

But if it's loaded, if you have. Again, that's why I said it's simplicity and complexity. If it starts from a place of, I know I'm your favorite person. I know you are cheering for me. So when you point out something I need to work on or a blind spot that I'm not seeing, I know you are not doing it to hurt me.

Yes.

You are doing it to help me become the best and most authentic version of myself, to help me find happiness. Because I don't know about you, but I am constantly doing things that submarine

my own happiness all the time.

All the time. Like a couple a day. And so I love the idea of having another person who will say to me, right, you sure you're doing the like, hey, listen, you get to do what you want to do, but are you sure that's going to serve you? And I go, no, I think it's good. They go, last time that this. And I go, shit.

Yeah, you're right.

Hey there.

We have conversations just like this one every week, so if you haven't already, hit follow and the bell icon, and I'll see you for the next one. What I want to do is I want us to talk about couples.

Okay?

And these are couples. Some of them have yet to be married. Some of them are married, and we believe they're happy. Let's do it. Some of them are broken up. And I want us to talk about the setup. Okay. Whether or not prenups would be better, how the divorce happened, etc.

Yeah, let's do it.

So let's just randomly grab these folks.

I love it.

Okay. This is.

I hope none of them I'm retained by at this point. I hope not. Hopefully they're not from New York.

Actually, we could just edit it out. You'll just.

That's right, that's right, that's right.

Okay, so first, let's talk about these couples. So you know about this.

Travis and Kelsey. Travis, absolutely. Travis and Kelsey.

Okay, so now what do you think? Because.

Well, let's talk about what they've got going for them.

Okay.

And let's talk about what we got against them.

All right, let's do that.

Because again, every. Every relationship has some tailwinds and some headwinds. Right? Okay, so let's look at the tailwinds and the headwinds. Okay? So tailwinds, the things that are supporting them, moving them forward in a positive way. Right. They're both very successful, driven people. Yes, they're both. This is a first marriage, right, for them both. Like, they are both people that are doing this for the first time. And they're not super young, Right. They're not like children. They've lived some life. Taylor's written some amazing albums about her breakups. Like her, I'm almost disappointed that we won't have more Taylor breakups because it creates such prolifically good music. Right. They're both pragmatic because they're both very successful financially. Her by an order of magnitude greater than him. But they're both very successful at their craft. They have both spent a tremendous. So they have a lot of these wonderful commonalities. Right. And they also. Both are incredibly successful in their field and yet still say, hey, I'm really amazing as an athlete. I'm really amazing as a musician and an artist, But I need something. I need love. I need connection to another person. They have tremendous resources individually and between them. So when they have challenges, they're going to be able to have those resources. They won't have scarcity. They won't have to make very painful, difficult choices about, like, hey, you know, we only have this amount of money and our child needs, and so now you can't have this thing. You need it. And which of us is going to sacrifice, like, either of them or both of them could quit working and they'd never need to work again their whole life. So they have lots of great tailwinds.

A lot of tailwind.

Lot of tailwind. But, uh. Oh, lot of headwind. Really.

A lot.

A lot of headwind. A lot, A lot of headwind.

Okay.

They're both very successful, wealthy people who are celebrities and in the public eye. Everything they're doing will be scrutinized. Every gesture will be taken as something potentially controversial and interesting. Unless she came out today without her wedding ring on. What's that about? Is there trouble in your relationship? She's going to a yoga class. She didn't want to wear the ring. Like, good Lord. It's not a big deal, but there's going to be a Greek chorus of people talking about everything they do and scrutinizing everything they do. And, you know, on the Internet, someone's going to say, you're doing it so good. And someone's going to say, you are doing it so wrong, no matter what. What you do. Right. And they're living under a microscope all the time. And by the way, they're surrounded by people that are just going to yes them to death. They're surrounded by people that want some piece of something that they can give them. So they go, oh, my God. Yeah. No, absolutely. So when they go, I can't believe Travis did this. They go, I know. Girl. How dare he? You're a girl boss and wonderful. You deserve better than that. And when he goes to his people, his team around him, the people, people who he's feeding, they're gonna go, yeah, man. You know, Taylor, you don't need that just because she thinks she's so great. Because you got, you know, you were. You're the right one in this one. So they both have yes men around them, and that's super dangerous. Super, super dangerous. They. They both have the ability to walk away from each other and be completely fine.

Yes.

Like, I've done a lot of high net worth financially. I'VE done a lot of high net worth divorces. And I will tell you, when you have the ability to go, yeah, we'll just buy two new houses. Yeah, we'll just buy two new vacation houses. Like, you don't have that much incentive to not quit other than the emotional incentive to not quit. Right, right. Like. Cause it's not like, oh, no, if we split up, I'm not going to have the things I need. You'll have everything you need. These people have enough money. Either one of them individually, they're going to have everything they need for the rest of their lives unless something catastrophic happens.

Does that increase the need for a prenup between these two?

I think both of these are people that are intelligent enough to know they have both had teams of lawyers working on their contracts, their lives, their business ventures, suing and being sued like, you're nobody till somebody sues you. Trust me, every high net worth client I have has sued and been sued. And they look at lawyers like plumbers. Like, you just, there's something you need. Like they both have something. Spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on lawyers because they are engaged in contracts, they're engaged in business, they both own businesses, they both own companies. Like, of course they're around lawyers all the time. So there is, I think, a fully zero percent chance these people don't have a prenup. But if they have a prenup, would my wish be that they will admit it? They will come out of the closet with their prenup and normalize prenups? Yes, Yes. I wish they would. Because people see these two people and go, man, they really like each other. Listen to her album and tell me she doesn't feel very strongly about him. Watch how he engages her when the two of them are talking with each other in the public sphere and tell me that there's not a genuine bond of affection. And by the way, both of them have lots of options, which is both a headwind and a tailwind. Are you telling me this guy couldn't get some other girl? Are you telling me this girl couldn't get some other guy? They're good looking and rich and talented and amazing public figures. You're telling me that they have fame, celebrity, money, all this stuff. You're telling me they couldn't. And by the way, sometimes that's a headwind. Yes, because it's. So why would I put, you know, how many? And by the way, here's the other thing. They both have. And a lot of my clients have this, too. And you. And I have it just a little bit. Okay? They're famous. They're famous. And let me tell you, that's dangerous. Being famous is dangerous. This level of famous is a whole nother level of famous. I'm this famous, and I have to tell you, it's bad for me. It's bad for me. I remember, like, I live in an apartment, and my office where I work is, like, three blocks from there. So I walk to work.

I can take this one, too.

I walk to work all the time.

Okay.

And about a year and a half ago, it started that when I take that walk, invariably one or two people will go, hey, the divorce lawyer. Or they'll go, jim or James. And I'll turn around and they'll go, a big fan. You know, people. Can I take picture with you?

Yes.

At first it was like, once a week. It happened. Then it became like once a day, twice a day. It happened now three, four, five times a day, just in that walk. Okay. Then one day, out of the blue, nobody stopped me. I don't know what it was like, but nobody stopped me. And I went, huh? What's going on? Why didn't. Why didn't anybody. Like, am I. Did I walk too fast? Like, am I. Am I falling off? Is there? And then, thank God, some voice in the back of my head went, dude, don't do that.

Really?

We're going to do this now? We need that dopamine hit now. This is not going to end well. Don't chase that dragon. Like, they are incredibly famous, which means they the praise of others. Like, I have to tell you, I've represented celebrities for many years, and I've been, like, an E list celebrity for, like, a year. And I see now why some of my celebrity clients are unbelievably awful people. Because I walk down the street and three or four people go, excuse me. I just want to tell you, you're awesome. How does that not go to your head? How do you not get drunk on that? So this is why, like, I do a lot of celebrity divorces, because celebrities get divorced a lot because they got a whole bunch of people all the time telling them how wonderful they are, and yet their spouse can't possibly affirm them that broadly and constantly.

It's interesting that you say that, because I have someone else.

Here we go. But this is a fun game.

Yeah, this is. Let's go here. All right.

Oh, this was expensive. But this is Bezos 1.0. This is before he got, like, all the testosterone Going through his system and

looked like Superman before he became Superman,

before he became bionic.

So this is Jeffrey Bezos and Mackenzie Scott. Right.

So they. There's so much to learn from these two. Before. Yeah, before he found. That's why she got Amazon. She got a full on half, baby.

So she got. Yeah, so she got half.

So now she got half. But what became difficult about this case was not what was she entitled to there. I don't think there was any argument over it. What this was is a great illustration because I've done divorces not of this individual and, but of this level. And what's interesting about that is because I've represented some C Suite executives and they have tremendous amounts of stock ownership. Many of them founders, for example, have like, I've done a few of those. What ends up happening is she's entitled to half of everything that was acquired during the marriage, including his ownership interest in Amazon, which is a controlling interest.

Yes.

The problem is if you cut this in half, he no longer has a controlling interest in the company. And there are shareholders who actually have a superior ownership interest to his. Yes, that is dangerous, not just to him, but to the company and to her if she wants that stock to be worth much of anything. So I've had clients, many very high net worth clients like this who come in and say, figure out what I have and give her half. Like, we don't hate each other, we're splitting up. Like, figure out what I have and give her half. And it takes about a dozen lawyers, six, six months to figure out what you have, how to value it and then how to divide it in half in a way that doesn't damage it. Like sometimes it's a math and accounting issue. And that's what this was, is this was not a situation where she had to take him to court and he had to take her to court. And they were arguing this had to do with how do we do this in a way that maximizes value, doesn't shirk his responsibility to his shareholders, and doesn't submarine what is arguably one of the most valuable companies in the world.

But this also brought up a few questions I saw. So MacKenzie got 38 billion with a B. With a B. The largest divorce settlement payout in the history at that time. But a question that was brought up by many people was, okay, if you are a founder or you are founding something, or you believe that you're creating something incredible, how do you protect that when you enter a marriage? I would assume it's prenup it's prenup. This is it.

It's a prenup period. It's prenup.

It's a prenup.

Yeah. If he had a prenup, he'd been protected. He'd been fine.

Okay.

He'd been fine.

He turned out okay, though.

They're both doing fine. I mean, actually, the funny PS of her story is, you know, she ended up marrying like a school teacher. Yes. And then they got divorced.

They got divorced.

Yeah.

And I would imagine she had a prenup for the school teacher.

I would bet. We don't know, but I would bet.

All right, I have one more that

I want to do. All right. This. You have a bunch more you want. I mean, we're only gonna do one more. We'll have to do it again sometime. This is a fun game. I love this game. Nobody plays games with me. This is great. I thought we'd do charades next.

Okay, so now this one, many people. This is a controversial one.

If this is a picture of my ex wife, we're gonna have a problem. No, I'm kidding.

She's like this. All right, take a look at this. Do you know these two?

I am aware. I am aware of these non royals. Okay.

All right, so you have in your hand, you have Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Okay. Now the reason why I wanted to.

I thought it was William's brother and the girl from Suits, but yes. Now I see. So tell me how, tell me how you really feel about them. Just kidding.

All right, so the reason why I wanted to bring this up is because reportedly they do not have a prenuptial.

Yeah. That's not surprising to me.

Why is it not surprising?

I think it would get very complicated with royals. A lot of what the royals have isn't theirs. It's really owned by the country. Like it's owned by the royal family. As a family. It's akin to a trust. Like there are a lot of ultra wealthy individuals that own very little. That everything like generational wealth is still like the number one wealth. Like that's like. When I look at my life, I chose my parents poorly in terms of like all I inherit from my father. He's alive still, but all I will inherit from him is a genetic predisposition to alcoholism and high blood pressure. Like I'm not inheriting any money from the guy. So a lot of what he owns is not owned by him. A lot of what she owned, obviously she was a kind of C list actress who was like on and again, that's not to be pejorative. It's a very difficult business. She was doing well in it, but she wasn't getting up for any Academy Awards. Like this was not someone who was an A list celebrity in terms of their skills as an actor or their status as an actor. I shouldn't say their skills, their status as an actor. So they married and, you know, they seem to have now tried to leverage their fame into more money. Right. Like I represent wealthy people, I represent famous people. I represent famous, wealthy people. I represent wealthy, not famous people. I represent some famous, not wealthy people. In terms of who you should probably want to be, wealthy and not famous is really good. Yes, wealthy and famous is good. It's pretty good. It's a little irritating. You lose a lot of your privacy, but you get some access that maybe just a wealthy person wouldn't have. You get some status and ego boosts that you can buy a lot of status and ego boosts. But fame and wealth is, is a good, you know, combination. Famous and not wealthy sucks.

I see.

And, and they were to some degree famous and not wealthy.

So.

And that's challenging.

Let, let's say that they split up. What do you suppose happens in that divorce? What goes where? Who gets what?

Yeah, I mean, you know, they've got kids, so there would definitely be some custody related issues. Their question of sort of where they want to be geographically would now be restricted by a function of the fact that they have children under the age of 18 and both have a right to be involved in the children's lives until the children at least reach the age of 18. So they'd be geographically fixed. He is as some. I'm not giving away any secrets to say that he has alienated himself from his family in many ways and he has foregone certain opportunities that he previously had purportedly for the purpose of deepening his connection to his wife. Yes, she has tried a number of ventures that have been sort of hit or miss, successful in terms of public sentiment and also success from a pecuniary perspective. So I think they have a lot of the same challenges that a lot of couples would have. Except the part that I think is really difficult is it would be extraordinarily public. Public. I mean, a divorce is at best a knife fight in a closet with your kids in the closet and you could just start stabbing, but you're just going to hurt everybody. Now it's a public spectacle. Like there are. I will say this. These are two human beings, so they're as flawed as every human being. And they have God in them the same way every human being does. They are struggling with a relationship, probably the same way everyone struggles with relationship. They want to be good at it. It's not always easy. It's challenging. Yes, but they are. And I've represented famous people, so I can tell you, like, they are so under scrutiny, and that's really hard. I know people look at famous people and go, oh, my God, it would be so cool to be famous. And by the way, there are some parts of being famous that are amazing. Like, you get access to things, you get praised constantly. It's good for your ego. But it's also like when you step on the rake. Everybody's watching. And, man, I gotta tell you, there are more people cheering for these two, their demise than there are cheering for their success. These are two young people trying to figure it out. They've made some really big moves. I think we can all agree they've made some bad moves here and there. Like, I think they would say it if they were being honest. They would admit that this is not what they. It didn't. It's not going exactly the way they meant it to, necessarily. I'm cheering for them. I'm cheering for everybody in that sense. Like, even earlier, when I'm talking about the guy who hit the dog and stuff, I'm cheering for, man, I hope he gets it together. I hope he sits down and spends a lot of time in therapy and figures out what's going on with him that could let him be that kind of person. I don't wish him ill. I don't wish him ill. I don't want any sentient beings to see him.

Yeah, we don't want to see a divorce happen here. And namely, because of what you mentioned, because they don't have the prenup, because of how famous they are, the structure. This would be a nasty one.

That would be like a lawyer's dream.

So there's a question that everyone gets. It's the final question. And that is. And I can't wait to hear your answer on this, is you think of all the incredible conversations you've had throughout your life.

Yeah.

Which one is the most memorable? Who was it with? And what did you learn? Wow.

Gosh, I'm torn. I have two. One, I was a hospice volunteer for a really long time. And when you're a hospice volunteer, you spend a tremendous amount of time with someone who's imminently dying. And I had a lot of conversations with people who were dying in the days and weeks immediately prior to their death. And I look at all of those conversations as one conversation, and what I will tell you is it was never about death. It was never about the fact that they were dying. It was always about their life. It was always about. And it was never about their stuff. Was always about the things that connected them. Like, it was about love. It was about people. So all of those conversations were incredibly meaningful and important to me. If I had to pick a singular conversation that was the most resonant for me. My son and I. My younger son And I. He's 26 now. It was maybe about eight or nine years ago. He was in his late teens, early 20s, something like that. And we just weren't connecting. Like, we were just in a weird spot in our relationship. He was really hostile to me in some ways and, like, gave me very little grace. And I was very critical of him. He wasn't the person I wanted him to be. He didn't do things, though. Like, I loved him so much. I mean, he's my kid, but he just wasn't. Come on, man. See it. Like, dude, just do the thing. Like, come on.

What?

You know, and. And I suggested to him that we, like, sit down together with a therapist and try to figure it out. And he was open to that. And in that conversation, he was rightfully. He was, like, saying, like. He was criticizing me. He was saying, like, you know, like, here's where you were challenged. Like, you didn't do this as a father. You didn't do that as a father. And you could have been better at this, and you could have been better at that. And I remember saying to him, like, are you comparing me to an actual person? Or, like, your imagined idea of what a father should be? Because my imagined son is amazing, right? And your imagined dad, perfect dad, is amazing. That's unfair. And learn this lesson now, because if you compare your spouse one day to your imagined perfect spouse, you're going to be very disappointed in a real person, right? And I remember in that conversation, I just kept saying, look, man, like, I don't know. I don't know how I could do better. I can't undo the past. I want to be better at this. And we were getting kind of frustrated with each other, and at some point I said to him, do you know I love you? Like, do you know how much I love you? Do you know I love you? Because I want you to feel my love? Do you not? Like. And if you don't, like, what am I getting wrong? Because Like, I want to be good at this. Like, I love you, and I want you to feel my love. And if you don't feel my love, like, I don't know what to do. Like, help me. Help me. Like, help me love you in a way that you feel it, because I want you to feel it. And it was a very powerful moment between the two of us because he sort of broke down, too, and he said, like, no, I know you love me, dad. And I was like, all right, well, how do you know? Like, what are some things that make you know I love you? And he started running down this list of like, well, you. You know, when I was a kid, you did this. And, you know, whenever I do this, you always sort of help me figure it out. And whenever I. And all of a sudden, we were coming from this place of recognition of all the things we were giving to each other and all the ways we were trying, even if we weren't successful, all the ways we were trying, and we weren't so fixated on all of these perceived ways we were failing each other. We were just hyper fixated on, no, you know, you do it. And all of a sudden, he was defending me. All of a sudden I was going, yeah, and I could have done better. And then he's like, no, come on. Like, you. Look, man, you were trying. Your dad never did that for you. How would you have known? And then, you know, he was like, well, you know, I could do a better job at this. And I'm like, hey, when I was your age, I didn't figure that out. I didn't figure that out till I was in my 30s. And all of a sudden, the whole thing. The whole thing spun around, and we're both trying to, like, give each other grace and build each other up. And, like, it was a turning point in our relationship. And we have since then, been very deeply connected as father and son. Because I think there was something about the, like, breaking in that conversation of just saying, like, what do I do? And I think what that was about was just being willing to just humble yourself at the beauty and awe of love.

Yes. That also underscores to me the importance of what you've been talking about. And that is perspective.

Yeah.

You know, you had that perspective around your son. Your son had perspective around you, and that was that. That created that inflection point for you.

I genuinely believe we get back to basics. And that's. You're my favorite person. Yes. Because I will tell you, I can say to both of my sons, they're my favorite people and. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And I'm among their favorite people. I mean, my older son just got married. I hope his wife's his favorite person.

Right.

But you're a close second, hopefully. Yeah, I'm in the running. You're in the running, you know, and it's okay. Like that's okay. Like that's where we're supposed to land in the world. If you can get back to first principles and the foundation of your connections, which is usually love and the desire to be connected, I think there's so much promise in that. So to have a divorce lawyer who undoes ties for a living say to you, lean in and love.

Exactly, exactly.

That's what I'm saying.

And I think that's why your work is so important and your perspective is so important and what you're saying. It seems quite simple, but it's profound. And I'm going to use this now. It really does resonate with me, this whole litmus test around you're my favorite person.

It's a good way to go.

It is, I think that it's a concept that we can all apply.

It's easy. Immediately, immediately. It's the easiest thing in the world to say. And it's again, it's so simple and so resonant and so beautiful to be able to say that.

Well, we need you to continue to speak.

I'm still at it.

You need to continue to write. I want to go on the record saying that you need a podcast.

Okay. This is just what I need. I already have a full time job. That is already the harshest mistress. My ex wife will tell you I canceled vacations constantly. I've canceled. How many times did I cancel our interview because some billionaire needed me in a courtroom? Like, I already had a job. Now I've got a part of part time media job on top of that and you're trying to give me another job. I mean, you're killing me, man.

You're Jamaican. Jamaica.

I've been 23 jobs, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, I do like jerk chicken too. So yeah, you're official. Yeah, that works. Yeah, I'm in there.

James Sexton. Yes. Or Jim. Our discussion around prenups I found to be very important. How James framed it was great. And that is just simply sit down your partner and say, okay, what's mine, what is yours and what is ours. And as we move forward, how are we going to place things in those categories? And when I think about that Framing the way that myself and Jill walked into our marriage is we said, everything is going to be ours. So we literally walked in. Bank account, ours, home hours. The business that we create, any businesses will be ours. Children, our. Like everything was ours. So in hindsight, I see that we actually had a conversation like that, but we just placed everything in the same bucket. What a fascinating guest for us to have, someone who is undoubtedly one of, if not the most famous divorce attorney in the world. So just to have his perspective, I think is fascinating. Someone who himself has gone through the process of divorce, who is a romantic. You'd think that those two things can't coexist or that person can't have those beliefs, but he does.

Yeah.

Fascinating. James Sexton is just figuring out that relationships are his passion. What is the number one reason for fights in a relationship?

Nothing. Most couples fight about absolutely nothing. Oh, really? However, we found that the number of times that a person hears contempt predicts how many infectious illnesses they're going to have in the next four years. Goodness.

Dr. John and Dr. Julie Gottman, leading experts in relationship research with over 50 years of experience. John is renowned for his groundbreaking work on marital stability, while Julie is an acclaimed clinical psychologist.

Men who kiss their wives goodbye live an average of five years longer than men who don't. We've really started to understand what makes the difference between people have a great sex life and people say they have an awful sex life.

Please tell us.

Pick three times a year where you just go to a motel for an overnight. You know, it's magic. If it's a good relationship. Yeah, but braid them in. Don't interrupt me. We went to a therapist, and you two went to the therapist. Therapist believed that what made relationships work was clear boundaries. She said to me, john, you can say no to Julie. And I said to Julie, do I sound like her? And she said, yeah, you do. But when you consider the divorce rate has been at 50% for decades, you realize their faith in marriage has been broken.

So I ask you, is marriage outdated?